Thursday Night TV

It has been too long since we've sat in the TV's warm glowing warming glow long enough to get a deep, rich suntan from the gamma rays. A fluke Thursday night off helped to fix this, and we went straight to NBC for old time's sake. Now, we've been keeping up with The Office thanks to the magic of TiVo and Bittorrent, so the re-run last night didn't do much. Scrubs, too, seems dull in comparison to the Charlie Brown-Scrubs mash-up that made the rounds earlier this month.

But Tina Fey's show--dude! we've totally been missing the goddess's newest vehicle! forgive us, Tina, for failing you! Last night's re-run featured her in a Blind Date with Stephanie March after Alec Baldwin (whose talents are being wasted in this show; a cardboard cut-out would do just as well in his role) assumes Tina is a lesbian. Let's just pause there a moment and consider the possibilities...

Yes, yes, everyone else has seen the show. Two months ago, probably. And you have all rightly dumped on its writing. But Tina Fey. On a date with a hot blonde lesbian. This is what TV is SUPPOSED to be about, people!

Cop-Out of the Year

Time's Person of the Year is YOU?! What a steaming pile of horse shit.

Let's imagine the possible scenario at the Time editorial office that led to this, shall we?

Writer: "I fkn hate this time of year... I don't want to have to re-read a pile of fkn news articles to write up some Fkr of the Year. Can't we just recycle 'The Computer'? Or maybe 'The Internet'?"

Cover Design Artist: "Yeah, those abstract ones really get my creative juices flowing!"

Financial: "Speaking of which, we can't afford any new photography for the cover this year, so you are going to have to stick with whatever graphics you can steal from Google Images."

Public Relations: "Sales are down. The cover story needs to kiss the average moron's ass."

And so instead of you know, reporting on something, they just put a reflective piece of foil on the cover and blathered about how YOU are something else.

Warren Buffet gave something like 50 billion dollars to poor people--But hey, I gave some homeless guy a buck. Unranked FSU beat "No. 1" Duke--But I beat some half-drunk kids in a game of pool. Or look at the competition as TIME sees it: Hugo Chavez said what we've all been thinking and called a spade a spade (I've been saying it for years now, btw). The Pope was crucified for suggesting that we argue with militant Islamists rather than crusading against them. An alligator finally obliged Steve Irwin and bit his head off... Meanwhile, I've watched and re-watched all the funniest Daily Show clips about Bush, managed to not get killed in the War on Terror, and squashed a few really big roaches, which are kinda like alligators... You know, all in all, I have had a good year.

Left Behind is Left

You know those obnoxious Left Behind books? There's a whole shelf of them at Barnes and Noble, crowding out the interesting-sounding Faith/Theology/Spirituality section and encroaching on the Philosophy section, and this pulp is neither Faith nor Wisdom.

Now there is a video game based on the books--a blood-bath shoot-em-up in the style of The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto with the simple goal of converting as many heathens as possible, or, barring that, killing 'em to let God sort 'em out. The battleground for souls is none other than a photo-real simulation of New York City. Not clear yet whether this was designed as a training simulator for Islamofascist terrorists or Pat Robertson wannabes...

Since Wal-Mart has made some filthy lucre from the Left Behind books, they are trying their damnedest to cash in on the game, too. But the game has come under fire from a slew of prostesters, ranging from Christian homeschoolers who consider Left Behind required reading to plain old "won't somebody please think of the children" wailers. That's right! Christian fundamentalism is bad for family values, and the Christians only partly disagree. It's beautiful!

Teach the Controversy

The New York Times on the Holocaust Deniers Orgy in Iran:

Among those attending from the United States was the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, whose prepared remarks, published by the Iranian Foreign Ministry, asserted that the gas chambers in which millions perished did not actually exist. He said on Monday that the depiction of Jews as the “overwhelming victims of the Holocaust gave the moral high ground to the Allies as victors of the war, and allowed Jews to establish a state on the occupied land of Palestine.”

We have it on high authority that The Mississippi schools' history books will soon be edited to include this viewpoint, right alongside Creationism.

We don't mean to make light of the Holocaust, mind you. We're just saying that the same knuckle-headed thinking that makes "Christians" want to circumvent rational discussion of ideas like evolution that ought to inform our world makes "Christians" like David Duke want to circumvent rational discussion of events that ought to inform our world.

Also, we are sick, physically sick, at the idea that all Iran knows of America is George Bush and David Duke. I see why they want to nuke us.

Mayan Groups Angered by Apocalypto

According to the BBC, Central Americans who may or may not be Mayan have seen the trailer for and they aren't happy:

Activists in Guatemala - once home to a large part of the central American Mayan empire - said Apocalypto was unrealistic.

"The director is saying the Mayans are savages," said Lucio Yaxon, a human rights activist.

...

Only the film's trailer has been seen in Guatemala, but some Mayan leaders say scenes of Mayans with bone piercings sacrificing humans promote stereotypes about their culture.

"Gibson replays... an offensive and racist notion that Maya people were brutal to one another long before the arrival of Europeans and thus they deserved, in fact, needed, rescue," said Ignacio Ochoa, director of the Nahual Foundation that promotes Mayan culture.

If we took Gibson's movies seriously, we'd say:

1. Aren't the Maya extinct?

2. They should ask the Jews how THEY feel about Gibson.

3. Why do we have to attack every movie as racist, or sexist, or bigotted? Why don't we just make a movie about a bunch of people with no lives and no opinions, performed by actors with no distinguishing facial features and ambiguously tan skin coloring that expresses absolutely no views and ambiguously recounts a uneventful story? Would that make you happy?

But Gibson has made all that sort of discussion irrelevant all by himself.

Pigeons. Really?

This weekend's NYTimes proudly features 5,000 words on the winged rat of the city. Its full of factoids about the vermin, like the theory that all of today's pigeons are believed to be descendents of aristocratic birds liberated when French revolutionaries sacked their lords' manors. The pigeon haters are locked in a culture war with the pigeon feeders:

“Most of the pigeon feeders are in some way crazy,” Daniel Haag-Wackernagel said, summarizing, rather informally, a psychological study he helped write on the subject. “It is impossible to influence these people.” The most relentless have no family and few interpersonal relationships. They adopt pigeons as surrogate children. He described women — older women — who worked as phone-sex operators and prostitutes to pay for birdseed. This may be the pigeon’s greatest co-evolutionary triumph: the black magic whereby these grubbing little birds have sought out their depredated, human counterparts and transformed them into senseless disciples.

What's more, the pigeon haters have banded together a la the Minutemen to track pigeons and call the cops on the little old ladies who offer the enemy handfuls of seeds and stale bread. We're all for harassing that old guy with the shopping cart full of birdseed, but we worry this mash-up of animal control and border vigilantism will run the other way: Will Conrad Burns be feeding immigrants birth control pills at the local soup kitchen? Shudder.

Booker Prize

And the Prize goes to Kiran Desai for The Inheritance of Loss. We can only imagine that her mother is pissed, having been shortlisted THREE TIMES herself before the judges gave the thing to her daughter. Maybe Kiran will be generous and share the prize money. Hah!

BTW, it bothers us, it really bothers us, that we've never read a Booker shortlist novel until AFTER it shows up on the list.

UDATE: And the Nobel goes to Orhan Pamuk ("Snow" and "My Name is Red").

Because it worked so well in Berlin...

...the Current Occupant has decided that the war on terror will be won by building a vast moat around Baghdad. Did we say moat? Beg pardon. We meant "security ring." Moats conjure up such crude images of Medieval warfare (Crusade, anyone?).

Yeah, we know we started off with a Berlin wall analogy, but then got mixed up with the moat thing. It is all so non-sensical that we just don't care.

But the real mental disconnect: Building 60 miles of trenches and fortified gateways around a vulnerable city is a fan-FKN-tastic idea. So why haven't we done it in New Orleans? Put it another way: Mr Bush, if Iraq is so damn important to you, and America so unimportant to you, why don't you just go steal an election there and let us get on with our business?

So that's what those hipsters with laptops in the coffee shop are doing

The New York Times is on to them. The Week in Review editors ordered up a batch of term papers on typical freshman assignments such as "Compare and contrast Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World." The results were exactly what you'd expect from some hipster who had himself dodged college writing assignments:

...Papers written to order are just like the ones students write for themselves, only more so — they’re poorly organized, awkwardly phrased, thin on substance, but masterly in the ancient arts of padding and stating and restating the obvious.

If they’re delivered, that is. The “Lord Jim” essay, ordered from SuperiorPapers.com, never arrived, despite repeated entreaties, and the excuse finally offered was a high-tech variant of “The dog ate my homework.” The writer assigned to the task, No. 3323, was “obviously facing some technical difficulties,” an e-mail message explained, “and cannot upload your paper.” The message went on to ask for a 24-hour extension, the wheeziest stratagem in the procrastinator’s arsenal, invented long before the electronic age.

No. 3323, we know who you are. We had a roommate in college who never, ever, turned in a paper on time; he was too busy begging for extensions to actually write the damn thing. He was a philosophy-music theory double major; according to his father, this double major would make him doubly unemployable. Good to know he found work all the same.

For our part, our greatest moment in our college composition class was when we plagiarized the marketing blurb off the back of a Toni Morrison novel and turned it into the introductory paragraph and thesis statement of our "critical essay." The professor gave it an A--and let's be honest, 5 pages of drivvel suits Toni Morrison to a T.

Garrison Keillor Gettin' Feisty

Last week at Salon, Keillor wrote about how America Eats Its Young, a piece that was both spot-on and gloriously bitter.

This week he has his finger right on America's pulse:

We really are one people at heart. We all believe that when thousands of people are trapped in the Superdome without food or water, it is the duty of government, the federal government if necessary, to come to their rescue and to restore them to the civil mean and not abandon them to fate. Right there is the basis of liberalism. Conservatives tried to introduce a new idea -- it's your fault if you get caught in a storm -- and this idea was rejected by nine out of 10 people once they saw the pictures.

We love his use of the term Current Occupant, btw, as in:

After the disasters of the 20th century, Europe put nationalism aside and adopted civilization, but we have oceans on either side, so if the Current Occupant turns out to be a shallow jingoistic fool with a small rigid agenda and little knowledge of the world, we expect to survive it somehow. Life goes on.

Makes us think of the bumper sticker, "George Bush is listening. Use big words."

Busy as hell is no way to be

We've been busy as hell the past couple months. This month looks less painful, so maybe we'll see you around.

We'd like to give a shout-out to the Percolator, who remodeled her digs as well as getting digs of her own. The new Blogger, now in beta, looks like it will be the perfect opportunity to make some changes around here, too. (It's gonna have category tags, people!)

Sorry. Don't know where all the LiveJournal sentimentality came from.

Check this out: Richard Pevear, half of the masterful husband and wife translating team that has done Dostoevsky proud, translated The Three Musketeers this month. We've only started it, but it is mellifluous. Dumas was the Spielberg of his day, or more specifically, the Spielberg-Lucas of his day: Before Indiana Jones, there was D'Artagnan. Speaking of which, The Last Crusade was a damn good flick. That Irish lass who played Dr Schneider seems to have all but disappeared since then, unfortunately--apparently she has problems with on-screen nudity and won't even take a role as a scantily clad vixen. Damn shame.

Dear Reader

Posting will be light in the coming weeks. We are starting a new job where the promise of an 80-hour work week requires more skill and efficiency than we possess this early on, and there is also this curiously vexing female (abstinent and teetotaling but incredibly sexy by virtue of being the quickest witted smart ass we know) we can't get off our minds, with the result that there isn't time for blogging.

We'll get to you with some Friday drinks in a couple weeks though. Promise. God knows we'll need one if we don't get anywhere with the girl.

Have Some Watermelon

It has been cold and rainy around here all month. But it is finally starting to warm up and we want watermelon.

Sure, you could just slice it open and bite right in, but how about this: Spiking it up! Cut out a core from the watermelon, just deep enough that it will tightly hold the neck of a bottle of your favorite vodka or light rum. Open the bottle and insert it; prop up the watermelon in your refrigerator so that the bottle of booze is upside down. Overnight, the watermelon will soak up the liquor as it chills. The next day, slice it however you like and enjoy. DD recommended. On second thought, better get two 'melons: One for right now and one to soak up the vodka for tomorrow.

Cool Photography... For a Purpose

You know that transparent screen trick people do with their computer wallpaper? Amnesty International has started doing the same thing with their ads:

If only the US were well-behaved enough that we could be friends with AI...

Wild

Go here. Stare at the color-negative picture for a minute. Without moving your eyes, move your mouse, which swaps the color-negative for a black-and-white photo--but wait! you see it in full color! How'd they do that?!

Al Gore's Movie

Now that we've settled into our new digs in Beantown, we hit up the Coolidge for a showing of Al Gore's masterpiece (website here). After his appearance on SNL last month, we remembered how much we like the guy, so how could we not see the movie? A documentary about a PowerPoint (excuse, Keynote) presentation is an odd format: We get snippets of Al Gore playing professor alternating with tidbits about why the environment matters to him, which range from the loss of his sister to lung cancer, indirectly attributable to Gore Farms' tobacco to his college science teachers, who pioneered the measurement of atmospheric CO2. What it comes down to, more than the environment or how sexy a PowerBook and Keynote can make statistics, is what a great president Al Gore could have been.

Look at it like this: He lays out his credentials as a gentleman farmer. He shares his universal sense of humor. His accent is unmistakably Southern but refined. His Biblical references (he calls some of his slides a "nature hike through the Book of Revelations") are perfectly tuned to meet the religious requirement without going over the right field foul line. He is the spurned suitor trying his damnedest to prove that living well is the best revenge; he seems to say, "All of this could have been yours, baby, but you went with the grinning loser. Have a nice life!"

Date and Time

It is 06:06 06/06/06; just had to commemorate that with a post. BoingBoing has been having fun with numbers this year, too--back in April, the clock briefly read 01:02:03 04/05/06, and in August, the clock will, for a moment, record 11:10:09 08/07/06.

The Sisyphus of Morons

Bill O'Reilly is making an ass of himself, as usual, and Keith Olbermann is all over it. Nearly a year ago, O'Reilly justified Abu Ghraib by saying that American soldiers slaughtered some SS Officers at Malmedy during the Battle of the Bulge--except that Malmedy went the other way 'round, with the SS Officers slaughtering Americans. He repeated this horsepuckey again the other night and Olbermann stepped up to defend the honor of the slain Americans and pour some whoop-ass on C&L has the Olbermann video, replete with Simpsons references and Stewie voice-over, along with a rough transcript.