give me your hungry

Earlier today I caught a bit of CNN coverage and noticed that John McCain was speaking in front of s sign reading "Fudge Haus". Which I thought was pretty funny. Later, I see on Crooks and Liars a picture of him speaking in the cheese aisle of a supermarket. What's going on here? Some kind of Pavlovian strategy? Are they sruggling so much that they're resorting to the message: "Mccain=fondue"?

Corvette Summer

Bob Novak: He's not dead, that's the main thing.

Bobby, Bobby. While it is certainly a good thing that that the guy who bounced off your windshield is alive, I think the "main thing" for you ought to be that you hit a dude and kept driving. Outing covert CIA agents didn't satisfy your blood lust, eh? Had to take matters into your own hands?

Also, thank god the Corvette's okay.
Do people still drive those things? Was the dealership out of Deloreans?

Linguo IS dead

We all have friends who communicate primarily through pop culture references and quotations. I can very easily lapse into this behavior myself. I s'pose this could be viewed as a distancing mechanism, a substitute for real expression, but I prefer to see it as employing a common language. There are just some situations, in certain company, where the most meaningful thing you can say is "you using the whole fist, doc?", or "I wonder who owns that moon?".

Which is to say: your mileage may vary, but I for one got a little choked up reading this webcomic.

Beakerthoven

Oh, Jokerman, you don't show any response

Saw The Dark Knight last night, and if you haven't seen it get thee to a cinema. It's purty damn nifty.
'Course everyone's talking about Heath Ledger's performance, including "ooh an Oscar maybe", which would make for a hell of an acceptance speech. Ledger was a super-creepy Joker, but I kept thinking "who does he remind me of?". As someone who's done a smidgen of what I guess you could "acting", I know that my "method" was basically to combine impressions of people, say Ed Wynn and Danny Kaye or something, to create a new color. That's probably not really acting, but I often suspect this is what many of our stellar actors are really doing (see: Johnny Depp doing Keith Richards in the Pirate movies, Johnny Depp doing Georgia O'Keefe at the end of Blow, Daniel Day Lewis channeling John Huston in There Will Be Blood). So it kept bothering me: "He's DOING somebody!". Then at one point it dawned on me. If you haven't seen The Dark Knight, this'll mean nothing to you, but if you have, let me know if you think I'm crazy:

you can have no idea what a delightful thing a Lobster Quadrille is

One of Rochester's finest bands, The Lobster Quadrille, has one of them "music video" things! Please enjoy, and if you look closely you will see a Dad and Mom of Grizzly persuasion carousing in the background.

I don't want to burst your bubble

To the person who somehow found their way here by doing a Yahoo search of "should I pop a hemorrhoid?":

The answer, unequivocally, is yes! Everyone should, once in their lives. I haven't, yet, but someday I hope to remedy that.

Now it just falls to you to decide: whose?

I see a pretty butterfly

Today I can thank Titivil for hipping me to the Watchmen trailer.
I can't remember the last time I saw a movie trailer that made me want to jump up and down like a three-year-old, shouting "canwego canwego canwego canwego?", but this one did it. Everything (at least in the trailer) looks exactly how I'd want it to. When has that ever happened? Nite Owl's airship thingy: perfect! Rohrshach: creepy!
That three-year-old (me) doesn't know if he can wait 'til 2009. How many wake-ups is that?
Forgotten is the pain of finding out that Terry Gilliam wasn't going to direct it, and gone is my usual reluctance to shill for a major motion picture.

I'm auditioning to be the new WH press secretary

Let's be clear here. We're talking about a "time horizon", not a "timetable". I realize you might be confused, because a table is horizontal. Here's the difference, though: a table is right here, and you can put stuff on it. A horizon is always over there somewhere, which is why you can't put anything on it or bump into it when you go to get a snack in the middle of the night.

Let's say we're out sailing with Iraq, and Iraq says "Hey, just a question: when are these fucking troops leaving?". We now have an answer:
"See that line over there? When we get to that line".
So, let's review: timetable? No. Time horizon? Yes.

taking a wide stance on foreign oil

Larry Craig doesn't want you getting your nozzle jerked at the gas station.

Steve Guttenberg. Steve... Guttenberg.

These days, there is very little that makes me laugh out loud that isn't about 18" tall and carrying a stuffed octopus, but I just read this Observer interview with Steve Guttenberg and, though I can't quite put my finger on why, I found it guffawish:

The Goot does have his vices.

“I indulge in wine, and I love vodka, I do,” he said. “And I love scotch, you know. And I love weed. And I love women. And I do have, you know, those … Addiction is such an overused word."

Hah!

And how's your career going, Steve?

“I go in spurts,” he said.

Well, Steve, you're 49. You can't expect the same steady stream you had when you were younger.
But how's your career going?

laughing at a belief

I'm almost loath to keep throwing words at Covergate, but I think it points to some things that perennially get the Grizzly goat, so, a few thoughts.

I'm very tired of being painted as an elitist or somehow out of touch with America because I have, and expect my fellow Americans to have, a slight tendency towards thoughtfulness. It has been my hope that an Obama presidency might be a harbinger or catalyst towards bringing us out of these anti-intellectual Dark Ages we've plunged ourselves into. Although I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the Obama campaign issued a "oh yeah, we're offended too 'cause we're as dumb as you are we promise" as a response, it does on some level disappoint.

Is it really naive to think there's a level of stupidity that doesn't deserve to be legitimized?

As usual, someone has expressed my view of Coverfuffle more astutely than I am able, and even though it's in Newsweek I think it's pretty good.

A few snippets that I found particularly noteworthy:

This line of reasoning--i.e., don't satirize something stupid because the people who believe it might be stupid enough to take you seriously--strikes me as painfully paternalistic.

Does it help Obama to have Blitt's sketch broadcast on television? Maybe not--which why his press shop lashed out...

...it's not Remnick's job to do what's best for Obama. The fact is there's nothing wrong with pointing out the absurdity of a rumor ("Obama is a Muslim") by amplifying it to ridiculous, obviously satirical proportions ("Obama is a Muslim who will dress in Islamist garb and worship bin Laden as president"). In fact, laughing at a worthless belief is one of the best ways to show that it isn't worth believing.


Please also see the Slate article linked in the Newsweek piece, wherein another "thing I wish I said" is said, by Jack Shafer:

Only weak thinkers fear strong images. The publication that convenes itself as a polite dinner party, serving only polenta and pureed peas, need not invite me to sup.

ah, nostalgia

I'd like to thank the MSM echo chamber for providing me with a sweetly nostalgic moment over the weekend. I was driving along thinking about the utter ridiculosity of the New Yorker "Covergate", when the Dire Straits' song "Money For Nothing" came on the radio.

I was transported back to high school, and the attempt to remain patient while I explained that Mark Knopfler, when he sang "that little faggot with the earring and the makeup", was portraying a character, was mocking that character's ignorance. See? No? Are ye completely daft?!

I was a pirate in high school.

Some things never change. I mean, I'm not a pirate any more, but jeez, people, are ye completely daft?!

I do so wish that Obama's reaction to the cover had been, "Oh, that's funny". I guess we don't want to offend the "offended" base...

under the sign of the water-carrier

That wonderful fourth column of ours at work:

WASHINGTON - The Senate finally is expected to pass a bill overhauling rules on secret government eavesdropping, completing a lengthy and bitter debate that pitted privacy and civil liberties concerns against the desire to prevent terrorist attacks.

Well, that is the debate as one side of it would like it framed, so you go, reporter/mouthpiece Pamela Hess!

he hates these cans!

I wonder what would've happened if her sign had read "I hate the gooks".

say it, Hitchens!

Repeat after me: women are funny!