It seems like the entire internet is shutting down these days. I guess it’s a result of the recession — people don’t have time to write blogs. But several sites I’ve enjoyed — Baseball Toaster, Top Five, Fire Joe Morgan, Pajamas Media, Stephen Bainbridge, Culture 11 — are shut down or about to be.
I guess it’s the inevitable consolidation that was due for the blogosphere. For now, I’m still here.
South Carolina authorities are thinking of pressing charges against Michael Phelps for taking a bong hit. For some reason, I don’t think a nation filled with drunk, obese, cigarette-smoking fast food addicts has any business getting its boxers in a bunch over a 23-year-old taking a bong hit. Half of Americans have done what Phelps did, including the current and past Presidents.
A look into what the Save Darfur movement doesn’t understand. I am constantly astonished by the number of people who think that complex and difficult problems can be solved just by choosing to care about them.
Radley Balko fires back on the stupid controversy about a 23-year-old kid smoking pot. I agree with every word.
This is enough to make some a feminist. But it would be thoughtless, insensitive and evil of me to point out the pressure to engage in insane fashion trends comes mostly from other women. I have yet to meet a man who thinks anorexia or foot-binding is hot. Quite the contrary in fact — most men like women with some curve and non-gangrenous feet.
And men aren’t exempt from evil fashion stupidity. I’m still convinced that neckties shorten one’s lifespan.
I’ve liked the Steelers since I was a kid. The local team (Falcons) sucked, my NFC team was the Packers and I hated the Cowboys slightly less than I hated the Communists. The first piece of sports-team related junk I remember having was a Steelers garbage can. So they became my AFC team just in time to enter a decade of stagnation.
Moreover, I’m living in “Stillers” country now. If I pulled for the Cardinals, my neighbors would throw snowballs at me and mock the way I shovel the driveway.
In principle, I don’t mind the idea of the Cardinals winning since they are the ultimate NFL Cinderella and Kurt Warner is an amazing story. In practice, the Bidwells are evil skinflints and I can not possibly countenance a Cardinal championship until they return their prior title to its rightful owners — The Pottsville Maroons. Incidentally, if you like football books, Breaker Boys, which goes into the 1925 travesty, is a good one.
I hear Obama is pulling for the Steelers because they are most similar to his Bears. I’d like to think that’s in earnest. But I have to note that Pennsylvania is a key swing state.
Just sayin’.
So sometime today, I’ll run out to Pittsburgh to pick up the wife unit. What’s odd is that she’s flying through Baltimore, which is equidistant from State College (State College, being the exact center of the state, is three hours from everywhere). I could just as easily drive to Baltimore and save her a three-hour layover. But Southwest — usually a reasonable airline — charges more for flying from Baltimore. So we save money by taking an extra leg and using more fuel.
I know this isn’t exactly unusual with the way airline fares work. Maybe they’re trying to promote Pittsburgh or something.
Update: After finding out here Pittsburgh flight was delayed, Sue eventually got them to pull her luggage off and I picked her up in Baltimore. This was good because I got to deposit some checks (no Bank of America here), have dinner at one of our old haunts and remember why I didn’t care to live in Baltimore any longer.
The rain forests are recovering as nations grow richer and people cease having to chop down jungle so that they can farm or log.
This is an idea libertarians have been pushing for 30 years or more — that the best way to keep people from chopping down the rain forest was to make them so rich that they didn’t need to.
Yup, those engineered crops are pure evil, aren’t they?
Cato has a rundown of the more than 200 economists who oppose the economic stimulus package. Reasonable people can disagree and I’m not saying those 200 are right. What I am saying is that the contention made by the President and Vice-President that no one disagrees on the idea of the stimulus; that Paul Krugman’s depiction of anti-stimulators as mere partisan hacks, is just garbage.
It’s. Just. Not. True.
I know why they are being so vociferous and trying to shout down dissent. It’s because the more people look at this bill, the more ridiculous spending they find.
Do you want to know the difference between a real conservative and fake one? A real conservative would want the people who knowingly shipped contaminated peanut butter to go to prison.
Sneeze pornography? Yup. I have to admit the girl is pretty cute.
Think of these kinds of government cramdowns as doing it on the faux-cheap. It looks inexpensive, because the government isn’t shelling out directly. But making things artificially cheap by hiding the pricetag from yourself encourages you to do things you oughtn’t–just ask the current holders of “investment” properties purchased with “innovative” mortgages. In the end, the bill always comes due–and the accrued interest is usually a killer.
I really hope the rumors that the NYT will hire her to replace the disgusting Bill Kristol are true. McArdle is one sharp lady.
The Grateful Dead did this for years. Too bad no one at RIAA has learned the lesson.
Not too long ago, conservatives were thought of as the locus of creative thought. Conservative think tanks (full disclosure: I was one of the three founding trustees of the Heritage Foundation) were thought of as cutting-edge, offering conservative solutions to national problems. By the 2008 elections, the very idea of ideas had been rejected. One who listened to Barry Goldwater’s speeches in the mid-’60s, or to Reagan’s in the ’80s, might have been struck by their philosophical tone, their proposed (even if hotly contested) reformulation of the proper relationship between state and citizen. Last year’s presidential campaign, on the other hand, saw the emergence of a Republican Party that was anti-intellectual, nativist, populist (in populism’s worst sense) and prepared to send Joe the Plumber to Washington to manage the nation’s public affairs.
I don’t what it is, but sometimes a thing will just grab me as hysterically funny. I will laugh way out of proportion to the funniness of it. Part of it is the way that humor can build. When you’re laughing, every subsequent joke seems even funnier. But sometimes a joke just strikes my brain funny and I think I might die.
I just encountered a prime example. Via Cracked’s humorous article on infomercials, I found these two lines about the Pasta Pro (that stupid pot with holes in it). From Cracked:
For our money, the cameo by cocksucker husband, who irritably taps his watch when his wife drops the pasta, is the clear winner. The expected “Where’s my dinner bitch?” comment is never uttered, but it is practically swirling around on screen in capitalized letters like tiny angry-man sugar plums.
Also, on top of saving your marriage, the amazingly versatile Pasta Pro fits both gas and electric stoves.
You try to pull that shit with a regular pot, the bastard’s likely to burst into flame. You won’t have time to worry about that, though, as the fierce blows rain down from your husband’s belt.
So that set me up. Then this knocked me down from the infomercial product review message board:
Shitty Pot, Great Entertainment Value
7/17/2008 – Jenn of Alberta, Canada writes:
My boyfriend got this pot as a gift. He used it once and when he went to drain the pasta, the lid stuck to the pot and wouldn’t come off. He was very hungry. Instead of throwing out the pot, he decided that he was going to have some [] pasta whether or not the pot was going to cooperate. He eventually took it outside with a baseball bat and smashed it in. Not surprisingly, it didn’t take too long considering how [] the pot was to begin with. Two stars! One for the crappy pot and one for the strange looks he got from the neighbours that day.
I literally could not finish that comment the first time because I was laughing so hard. It made me have to go the bathroom. It’s not that funny, really. You probably don’t find it funny at all. But for some reason, it struck me at the right moment and put me in near hysterics.
This has become less common as I get older. When I was a kid and camping out, we could recite dumb jokes that, when combined with copious farting, would nearly result in suffocation. Such events are rare and memorable now. They were common then. It’s nice to watch my daughter get to the stage where I can make her laugh uncontrollably just by making her rubber ducks dance together.
Update: Also, is it just me? Or do the models in these infomercials seem to spend an inordinate amount of time holding the product in front of their chest? If I had to think of a theme for infomercials, it would be, “She’s not wearing a bra.”