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Got a question for all my fellow Battlestar Galactica fans out there. One of the major plot devices in BSG1 is the idea that the Cylons have developed new "models" that are not only human-like in appearance, but are, in fact, virtually indistinguishable from "organically-grown" human beings even under rigorous medical examination. Yes, Baltar did come up with a supposedly reliable test that can distinguish Cylon from human, but that was difficult even for a man of his "unique genius" to design and administer. To a typical schlep like the ship's doctor, there's no way to tell the difference. Here's what bothers me, then: Given our current level of technology here on Earth -- which I assume is inferior to what the Colonial Fleet has at their disposal -- the minimum some machine race would have to do to make a human replica that we couldn't detect using any number of run-of-the-mill tests that examine cellular or genetic structure, would be to replicate our physical structure all the way down to the molecular level. Now, let's assume that the Cylons have done this, using some sort of nanotechnology, for example. How is the resulting "machine" not literally "human"? Tags: Battlestar Breaking News! After a month-long boycott of his trial, Saddam and his team of lawyers relented and returned to court today. Then they stormed out again mere hours later. I've resisted commenting on these proceedings because it all just seems so absurd but I just.. can't.. take it.. anymore. Who is running this circus? What kind of court is this? Clown court? This is a fucking criminal trial, right? The defendants in criminal trials aren't allowed to just get up and walk out whenever they want. And yes, I realize this isn't an American court, but still, if anything I'd think Iraq's new "government" would have even stricter rules for these sort of proceedings. Someone make this asshole SIT DOWN for fucksake. Look, I am deeply unhappy with the fact that we illegally invaded this guy's country and toppled his regime. Who knows when the ramifications of that awful decision will be done playing themselves out? That said, Saddam's an evil bastard, and since seeing him tried and punished might just be the only good thing that comes of this war, you'd think someone could at least figure out how to do it right. And here's the really weird thing that's been bugging the shit out of me: Saddam has to know he's going down, right? At the end of the day, he's going to either be executed or thrown in a cell for the rest of his life. If he thinks he's avoiding either of those fates, he's nuts (a distinct possibility, I admit). It would take an entire brigade of Marcia Clarks to fuck this "case" up. So why's he acting this way? Seriously, he was a dictator. Ruled his country with an iron fist. Struck fear in the hearts of his citizens. And this is how he wants to be remembered? The clown in the defendant's seat? The stooge in the suit with the silly, wide-eyed, bewildered look on his face? There's just something strangely out-of-character about this. Maybe he really has gone completely around the bend. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory: With the exception of some genuinely funny song-and-dance routines by the Oompa-Loompas, a surprisingly uninspired riff on the original. Depp played Wonka as way too much of an uptight jerk, with none of the playfulness I remember in the character. The "bad" children were two-dimensional throwaway acts. Oh, and the preachy, sentimental joys-of-family ending? I sure don't remember that in the original. As might be apparent, I'm hacking around with my site today. Pardon the mess. UPDATE: Well, after a day of tireless tweaking and fussing around, my page is now fully compliant with the W3C HTML 4.01 Specification. (Pauses for applause) Thank you. Thank you very much. Oh, and, following some banner adjustments, we're no longer fixed-width (although I recommend 800 as a minimum). Wow, been a while since I geeked out... UPDATE: Oh yeah, that RSS icon over to your right? That works. Went looking for a new music tool to rip, store, and burn with today. Didn't find one. Instead, I found Pandora. And it's fucking amazing. Pandora is a free "music discovery" service. It leverages this thing they did called the Music Genome Project, which analyzes and groups artists according to similarity across a range of metrics, allowing you to create a "station" by selecting an artist to use as a starting point in the musical universe. After that, they take over, offering up song after song from what they consider the local music "neighborhood". So, I go there, sign up -- did I mention it's free? -- and it asks me for an artist to start from. I enter "Ben Folds". They play a song by Ben, and then off we go. Soon, I'm listening to "Catch the Sun" by Jamie Callum, and I'm liking it. A while later, it's "Prodigal" by a band called Porcupine Tree. That one went right on the favorites list. Hell, I might buy their CD. Most of the other stuff? Also good. In fact, I'd say the thumbs-up/thumbs-down ratio is about 3-to-1 right now. (BTW, I nicknamed my Ben Folds station "Hangover Radio".) I'm thinking after I get out of the shower, I'll create an AC/DC station and see what they come up with. Fun stuff. I highly recommend checking it out. A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick: The story of an undercover narcotics agent slowly losing his mind(s). Starts out very slowly, then gradually builds in intensity and pacing, becoming weirder, bleaker, and more depressing. As usual, Dick creates a high-contrast, edgy world populated with unforgettable characters. Can't wait to see the movie. Bill Simmons delivered a "transcript" today from the first annual Atrocious NBA General Manager Summit, and I swear it is one of the funniest things I've ever read in my life. The part towards the end about Knicks GM Isaiah Thomas and the living room... I was trying to read it to Tracy and I couldn't, because I literally had tears streaming down my face. Even if you're not that familiar with the NBA, check it out. The man is the maestro of comedic sports journalism. Yesterday's post on the upcoming DaVinci Code movie sparked a predictable bit of back-and-forth between those who liked and did not like the book, and it got me thinking a bit about different authors I've liked/disliked over the years and about what makes for a good/bad read. If I had to list, in order of importance, the elements that, to me, make up a good work of fiction, that list would go: 1. Great characters Characters come first for me. Always have. I simply cannot enjoy a work of fiction unless the author does something to make me care about the characters. They need to become real to me. I want to hear their voices and see their faces. (As an aside: Am I the only person who, as I read, has to have an actor or other person in my imagination as a "stand in" for the fictional character?) The quickest way to develop a character, in my opinion, is through good dialog. You can tell me what a character is thinking, sure, and you can give me history and details and quirks, but the best way to show me what this "person" is about is to let me listen to them talking to the other people in the world you're trying to create for me. I have an extremely hard time reading page after page of a book with no dialog, no interaction. In fact, that's why so many of the "classics" left me cold as a kid: So many of them seemed to be reams and reams of description stingily punctuated with dialog and action. The best example of character development I've come across recently was Dennis Lehane's Kenzie & Gennaro series. I read all five of them, in order, back-to-back, in a matter of weeks. Could. Not. Put. Them. Down. And the main reason was that, ten pages into the first book, these people were in my living room with me. They were people I'd known my whole life. People I'd go to a bar and hang out with. (OK, fine: It certainly helped that the series takes place in the greater Boston area, and Lehane continuously draws on the rich and readily identifiable culture of my homeland in his writing.) The DaVinci Code was the polar opposite experience for me. Dan Brown's mega-best-seller fell short for me in the end not because of the silly, simplistic, linear plot, but because, with ten pages left in the book, he still had not managed to make me give a rat's ass whether his two protagonists lived or died. They were cardboard cut-outs, still indistinct and unfocused in my head. I have a name for this particular failing. I call it "Crichton's Syndrome". Michael Crichton is the worst of the worst when it comes to drawing characters. And it really stands out in his work, because he's usually dealing with plots and subject matter that are inherently interesting. (Put aside his recent descent into pseudo-scientific shilling. The man does have a decent body of work to consider prior to that.) Take The Andromeda Strain. Alien space virus threatens to wipe out all of humanity. Should be thrilling stuff, no? Except that, since that particular Earth was populated by Michael Crichton characters, I was practically rooting for the virus. Gotta have great characters. The rest is negotiable. A few other examples to ponder. I loved Douglas Coupland's Generation X. The book had no plot whatsoever, at least in the sense of a series of interesting and interconnected events that goes somewhere. The subject matter -- the lives of three bored, alienated Gen X'ers -- was utterly mundane. But the characters fascinated me. They resonated for me. They were witty. They thought about the same idle, stupid shit that I thought about. Didn't care that they weren't doing anything interesting. Big fan of William Gibson's work. Good (but not great) characters with lots of cool stuff going on. Also, as you'd expect in the case of the prophet of cyber-punk, the work was idea-rich and the atmospherics were amazing. So the fact that Gibson couldn't sustain a coherent plot on a million-dollar bet didn't bother me much in the end. At the moment, for me, The King of All Authors is, hands-down, Neal Stephenson. Characters? The people he creates leap off the page at you: Hiro. Raven. Young Waterhouse. Old Waterhouse. Ancient Waterhouse. Half-Cocked Jack. Eliza. All real to me. All burned into my memory for the ages. Ideas? Read Cryptonomicon and you'll see why I listed Stephenson as one of the five living people I'd most like to have a beer with, stating: "[H]e's one of those rare types whose knowledge is both broad and deep. He's also fearlessly imaginative when it comes to speculating about the future." Plots? Multithreaded, densely-woven, highly original, and unpredictable. (Sigh) Of course, if he could just learn how to write an ending, he might just become the Greatest Writer of All Time. Anyhow, those are just some of my thoughts after thirty or so years of being a gluttonous consumer of fiction. What do you all think? What is it about a book that keeps you up until the small hours, unable to stop reading? Readers, I have something today that I've been reticent to share in this space. Reticent because I'm not sure how an off-the-cuff interpretation of an obscure 15-year-old song would go over. Reticent because there's a good chance that the deep insights that struck me many years ago upon hearing this song might be so obvious as to be banal. On the other hand, it might just be the rare Truly Original Thought that crashes my cranium. So, fuck it. Here is my interpretation of Particle Man by They Might Be Giants: Particle man, particle man Is he a dot, or is he a speck? "Particle Man" is an ambassador from the Quantum realm, a stand-in for all subatomic particles everywhere, but he is also much more. What's he like? Well, that's rather tricky to convey to the lay public. The important thing isn't so much what, specifically, Particle Man is, but what he represents: The probabilistic, indeterminate nature of reality at its deepest levels. Particle Man stands as a mute sentry at the limits of human understanding. He reminds us that the hard-and-fast conceptual boundaries we draw in our minds do not represent objective truth but are, at best, a co-creation between the universe and ourselves. Triangle man, Triangle man "Triangle Man" is the fearsome champion of the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm, and as such carries with him all of the attendant baggage of the reductionist, determinist mindset. Triangle Man's power is matched only by his arrogance. Triangle Man is having none of this sissy-ass indeterminate fuzziness. "What is, is, motherfucker!" he shouts, smashing his beer bottle on the table and ripping Particle Man's throat out with the jagged edge. And so it goes. Particle Man may have the "truth" on his side, but most nights, in an intellectual bar fight, "Definitely" hands "Possibly" its ass on a plate. Universe man, Universe man He's got a watch with a minute hand, "Universe Man" is the Cosmos itself. He is All that Exists. Some might describe him as the Indescribable Ultimate, entirely missing the contradictory nature of that statement. Universe Man's stance towards the petty squabbles of the smaller creatures he contains might best be captured as "benevolent tolerance". Or perhaps "tolerant benevolence". He does not take sides. He is flexible and, for the most part, accommodating. Universe Man, through his actions, quietly and patiently suggests to us that things might go more smoothly if we worked within his rhythms. But he knows we're not listening. And it really doesn't bother him all that much. Person man, person man Is he depressed or is he a mess? "Person Man" needs no introduction. Person Man is the sum total of all the strife and struggle that has plagued the human species since the dawn of history. He is our collective ineptitude and our individual ignoble identities. Person man strives in vain to rise above his base nature but, ultimately, remains shackled in a jail of his own construction. Person Man looks through the bars of his cell and is tormented by the possible futures he cannot break out and grab hold of. Person Man despairs. Triangle man, triangle man And so he shall continue to despair until he frees himself from the tyranny imposed by his chosen master, Triangle Man, and allows his true genius to flourish. For only when Triangle Man's reductionist intelligence is tempered by Particle Man's holist wisdom will we learn to live most excellently, to dance in time with Universe Man's sublime symphony, and to at last be free. That's right, people, it's time for a little Survivor blogging! Survivor Panama: Exile Island, the latest installment of television's first and finest reality show, is up to speed and rolling along nicely. We've got good guys, bad guys, people getting on each others' nerves, alliances made and broken, pretty much everything the show typically brings to the table. This time, though, Tracy and I also have a local rooting interest. Terry, the Air Force pilot, is from right here in beautiful Simsbury, Connecticut (aka "the Shire" in Toast-speak). Thus far, he's clearly the smartest guy in the game, and he seems likable enough, so we're pulling for him. Last night, he found the hidden immunity idol on Exile Island, piecing together the clues that had been left for him and digging it up. Should prove interesting after the merge, when he's sure to be a huge target. Speaking of "Exile Island", with the question of Who Will Find the Idol settled, I'm not sure how much that particular gimmick has left in it. OK, so people get sent there and have to make due on their own for a night or two. Whatever. Not as much of a twist as I was expecting it to be. Then again, maybe they've got something else in store. Maybe they'll send two people there at some point for some added scheming opportunities. Who knows? The real excitement this season comes not from any artifice on the part of the producers, but from the way the tribes sorted themselves out. Picking "playground style", the fifteen contestants who remained after episode one sorted themselves almost magically into "Asshole" and "Non-Asshole" tribes. The only exception was Bruce (aka "Mr. Miyagi"), who got assigned to the Asshole tribe after they voted off their first member. (Well, so far, Bruce is an exception. He has come off as a bit of an egomaniac at times.) Our homie Terry is the leader of the Non-Asshole tribe (La Mina). The "leader" of the Asshole tribe (Casaya), to the extent that these fuckups have one, is Shane, a tattooed, rail-thin, ADHD-afflicted head case of the first order. Seriously: We are four episodes in, and Shane has already earned himself a permanent seat in the Survivor Hall of Hate, right alongside Judd, Boston Rob, and Susan Hawk. The dude has no redeeming value whatsoever. He just randomly goes around acting out, pissing and moaning, and tooling on his tribe-mates. And check this out: This self-described "three-packs-a-day smoker", who knows he's going on Survivor, decides to quit the day before the start of the show. Brilliant, right? At one point, in episode two, as he's going through mad withdrawal, he asks his tribe-mates to vote him off because he's so miserable. Of course, five minutes later, he changes his mind. Right. The fact that his tribe-mates didn't vote him out immediately is a testament to how screwed up the rest of them are as well. Ah, but then, guys like Shane are why I love this show. It wouldn't be good reality television if you couldn't hate on total strangers that you're, like, a million times cooler, smarter, and more honorable than. One complaint about Survivor as a series: Once, just once, I'd really like to see them have a season in a non-tropical location. How about Survivor: Adirondacks? Why not Survivor: Monument Valley? Survivor: Iceland? OK, I actually know why they'll never do a cold-climate season: No chance to show off butts, boobies, and brawn. Annoying, but true. But those other locations? You could do a season in the Adirondacks in August. It's plenty warm. And the forest presents totally different challenges than a tropical locale does. Bears, for one. They'd be the top item on the Survivor: Adirondacks threat-down every night. Oh, and speaking of the brawn-fest, enough with the GQ guys with the 1% body fat. We need more Judd-like bodies on this show. Tell you this: Despite my generous sheath of lard, I assure you I could crush most of these more sculpted motherfuckers in the strength/endurance challenges. (Well, why don't you go on the show then, Toast? Because I will absolutely not risk being made to eat a bug. Not going to happen. I'd refuse, my tribe-mates would vote me out, and that would be that. Also, I could not spend forty nights away from Mrs. Toast.) Just saw the trailer for The DaVinci Code for the first time and, lo and behold, Tom Hanks is starring in it. I cannot imagine a more appropriate casting choice. The most mediocre, bland, and overrated novel of my lifetime meets the most mediocre, bland, and overrated actor of my lifetime. Bravo! "Blogosfear": New term for Right Blogistan. "Simper Fi": Motto of the 101st Keyboarders. Great rant by Salkowitz on the UAE Ports contract clusterfuck. Go read. So, the SDCC (South Dakota Coat-hanger Coalition) is gearing up to pass a law which will pretty much outlaw all abortions in their state. In addition to the potentially unwholesome effect of forcing more human beings to be born in South Fucking Dakota, this law will deprive South Dakotan women of their right to control their own bodies, doubtless leading some of them to have unwanted children (bonus!) and many of them to have back-alley abortions in which some of them will die (wicked bonus! sinners!). Because, as so many have patiently pointed out in the past, the demand for abortion does not go away simply because you make it illegal. No worries, though. The important issue here is that maybe, just maybe, a few more of those cute little South Dakotan embryos and zygotes and blastocysts and fetuses with their cute little invisible souls will be carried to term come hell or high water. This law will be challenged, of course. That's actually the intent of those behind it. Once challenged, it will eventually make its way to the Supreme Court, where Scalia and Thomas and Roberts and Alito and maybe another Bush Appointee will get their grubby little hands on it. At which point, if I were a betting man (and I am), I'd bet we lose Roe. And do you know what I'll do then? I'll ask "Are you happy now?" All of you who smirked at the Pro Choice crowd for being so hysterical. All of you who mocked "single issue" voters. All of you armchair political theorists who assured us that the right wing didn't really want to take away abortion rights because that's what they use to motivate their base. All of you who urged compromise and said that the left and the Democrats should reach out to embrace the anti-choice electorate. All of you who said, sure, womens' issues are, um, important and shit, but, you know, we're trying to win elections here. Yeah. All of you. I'll ask you "Are you fucking happy now?" That's what I'll ask you on the day we lose Roe. Start working on your response, motherfuckers. Oh my. The new Disturbed album has a cover of Genesis' Land of Confusion. Oh my. Got up this morning, parked myself in front of my computer with my morning coffee and fired up the browser. Checked my mail. Clicked over to Google News for a quick pre-shower scan of the morning's stories. First headline that caught my attention? Bush Defends Port Deal (Yawn) Ahhhhh, yep, the daily "Bush Defends" headline. As much a part of my morning ritual, it seems, as the grind-n-brew going off, the weigh-in, and kissing my wife through the shower curtain. How many days have started like this, I wonder? Bush Defends NSA Wire-Tapping Program Bush Defends Alito Bush Defends Miers Bush Defends FEMA Director Brown Bush Defends Use of Pre-War Intelligence Bush Defends Detention Policy It's a little bit like getting hit in the face with a rubber hammer each morning. Annoying and painful, sure, but also monotonous and numbing. The subjects turn over daily. The response is always the same. No variability in the output. None. Zero. Mechanical. Programmed. Predictable. We are witnessing the Animatronic Presidency. By special request from my man Fridge, the Beer Blogging Archive. I even alphabetized the schizzle for your ease of reference. Wanna hear something weird? I started going to a new dentist last week. Nice place. Everything's all state-of-the-art and whatnot, with digital X-Rays, "trans-oral" photography1 and etc. But get this: No spit sinks. You want to relieve yourself of saliva during the proceedings, you are entirely dependent on the person wielding the suction tube. I asked the guy fitting me for a crown about it today, and he said they opted not to have them installed. He said the sinks got too gross, were unhygienic, blah blah blah. Well you know what? I produce a lot of spit, and I'm just not sure I'm comfortable being at someone else's mercy to make it go away. Players who overbid their fellow members of Contestant's Row by a dollar are without honor and should be forever shunned by men and women of good conscience. "I hate yoga. All that fucking breathing." --somewaterytart Kevin Drum, who I'd thought was constitutionally incapable of hating on anything, reminds me of a topic I've been meaning to bust a hate on for at least a week now, eXtreMe sportZ: PSEUDO-SPORTS....I have a huge rant about all those X-Games pseudo-sports at the Winter Olympics that's been roiling around in my head for a while and could spill out onto the blog at any moment. You know the ones I'm talking about: moguls, halfpipe, snowboardcross, freestyle skiing, and so forth. I'll spare you the full rant, but the short version is: stupid faux urban-chic-meets-Nanook uniforms, stupid faux "I'm just here to have fun" hipster attitude, stupid faux "progressive" drivel from the announcers, and stupid real iPods stuck in their ears even during competition. I figure that if the competitors themselves don't take their sport seriously enough to care about winning it, then there's no reason for me to take it seriously enough to watch it. Oh, yes, Kevin, brother, shout it out. Extreme sports. How do I hate them? Let me count the ways. The mind-numbing sameness of them all. Every eXtreMe sport is about the same thing: Tricks. And every eXtreMe sport essentially has the same set of tricks: Jumping up in the air and turning around n times while simultaneously doing something superficially stylistic.
Whoa! See? That's some eXtreMe schiZZle, readers. Check me out: I'm eXtreMe blogging! I just did an 1800 with my laptop with my hand down my pants! And then there's the language. The culture. It pains me. The notion that an entire segment of the emerging "sporting" world is being taken over by dumbasses who deliberately wear clothes that don't fit and speak in a weird patois of hip-hop/surfer-dude just makes me want to launch a gnarly plume of hurlage, yo. There's something profoundly unserious about it all. Yo, dude, witness the ubiquitous "hang-loose" signs exchanged by the participants in last week's Olympic half-pipe competition. Something about seeing a French guy busting out such a surfer staple nearly brought me to the brink of existential despair. Yo. These things aren't sporting events, they're just a bunch of kids at the beach/in the parking lot/on the mountain goofing around, boasting, and trying to impress each other. I'm sorry if that makes me sound like an old curmudgeon. It's all good if these punks wanna fuck around, just keep it off of ESPN. And away from the Olympic games.
Storm King makes a grand entrance, and I love that. There's a strong hard alcohol undertone that presents itself immediately -- right up front, no waiting for the aftertaste -- and informs you of this beer's intentions. The body here is mildly heavy and the carbonation, while not pronounced in the glass, foams up nicely in your mouth with little provocation. Chewing on it thusly, you discover what I'd call a perfect hop-malt balance, right around 60/40, the hoppy edge predominating but the malty foundation right there at your beck and call. You'll also notice a smoky/ashy tone that really comes through in the medium-to-long aftertaste, as well as a hint of espresso. Very pleasant if your taste buds happen to swing that way. Oh, and since you asked, %ABV is a robust 9.1, making this brew a great way to jump-start your afternoon. Finally, gotta give props for the great name, the menacing packaging, and whoever it was who wrote this blurb on the label: "Emerging from the deepest shades of darkness, a rolling crescendo of flavors burst forth from this robust stout." Seriously, all I could think of when I was reading this was the album cover for Judas Priest's Screaming for Vengeance: "From an unknown land and through distant skies came a winged warrior..." Storm King. Check it out. If your local distributors don't carry it, petition them to do so. Rating: 9.0
UFO is the beer equivalent of meringue: Soft and airy and light but not entirely insubstantial. The flavors float and suggest themselves, rather than asserting themselves outright. This is a good thing after you just got your ass handed to you by a particularly pugilistic stout, but under normal circumstances I like my weissbiers a little more tangy and playful. See, this beer is kinda shy. More impressions: As is characteristic of the breed, the body is lemony-golden and cloudy. The carbonation is very fine-grained, but in the mouth, it foams up champagne-fast. I sense that, somewhere in here, there might be a hop, but it's hiding, and doing a very good job of it. Malt predominates, but it's a soft, slightly flowery malt, nothing too sweet. The biggest disappointment is the comparative lack of tartness, as compared with most weissbiers I've had. A perfect weissbier should be tart. It should have that tangy, zingy edge to it. I'm not getting that at all from UFO. It could be that the creamy texture is taking the edge off the beer's flavor. Whatever the case, the resulting effect is pleasant but bland, and bland is a cardinal sin in my book. Rating: 4.5 Note: That was originally a 4.0, but I bumped it up a half point because it just delivered an awesome belch. Well, hey, howdy! The Disgruntled Chemist has taken up beer blogging! Head on over and check out his reviews of Spaten Optimator and Ruination IPA. Beer blogging. It's like cat blogging, only far more important. My buddy Paul forwards to me this article analyzing the phenomenon of success in the blogosphere. Nothing Earth-shattering, but it is certainly worth a read. A few excerpts that caught my eye: When Shirky compiled his analysis of links, he saw that the smaller bloggers' fears were perfectly correct: There is enormous inequity in the system. A very small number of blogs enjoy hundreds and hundreds of inbound links -- the A-list, as it were. But almost all others have very few sites pointing to them. When Shirky sorted the 433 blogs from most linked to least linked and lined them up on a chart, the curve began up high, with the lucky few. But then it quickly fell into a steep dive, flattening off into the distance, where the vast majority of ignored blogs reside. The A-list is teensy, the B-list is bigger, and the C-list is simply massive. In the blogosphere, the biggest audiences -- and the advertising revenue they bring -- go to a small, elite few. Most bloggers toil in total obscurity. Economists and network scientists have a name for Shirky's curve: a "power-law distribution." Power laws are not limited to the Web; in fact, they're common to many social systems. If you chart the world's wealth, it forms a power-law curve: A tiny number of rich people possess most of the world's capital, while almost everyone else has little or none. The employment of movie actors follows the curve, too, because a small group appears in dozens of films while the rest are chronically underemployed. The pattern even emerges in studies of sexual activity in urban areas: A small minority bed-hop, while the rest of us are mostly monogamous. Yep, that's me: A monogamous C-Lister toiling in obscurity. I'm not bitter though. First-movers get a crucial leg up in this kind of power-law system. This is certainly true of the blogosphere. If you look at the list of the most-linked-to blogs on the top 100 as ranked by Technorati -- a company that scans the blogosphere every day -- many of those at the top were first-movers, the pioneers in their fields. So true. It's funny, I remember when Eschaton was just starting up and Atrios was just this dude who hung out with a bunch of us in the Bartcop chat room. It always seemed kinda odd to me that, a few years later, he had become one of the Big Men of the Blogosphere. In politics, the highest is Daily Kos, one of the first liberal blogs -- with 11,182 links -- followed closely by Instapundit, an early right-wing blog, with 6,513. Uncountable teensy political blogs lie in their shadows. That's funny: 11,182 "followed closely" by 6,513. Um, yeah, if you use a logarithmic scale maybe. For advertisers, the whole lure of blogs is that they're cheaper than regular newspapers and TV. Plus, blogs offer tightly focused niches, which advertisers love. "You wanna reach New York, you buy on Gothamist. You want to reach mommies, you buy on Busy Mom. How does traditional media match that?" asks Brian Clark, an ad buyer who orchestrated Audi's blogvertising last year. You want to reach people who enjoy reading the largely-unfocused ramblings of an irritable middle-aged software developer? TwoGlasses is your choice. There's more interesting tidbits if you read the whole thing. The upshot for me? Damn I'm glad I'm not huge. Too much work, too much competition, too much pressure. Yeah, a wider readership would be fun, but not if I had to actually, you know, work at it. I like the fact that I can go days or weeks between "serious" posts, that I don't have to stay caught up with the political outrage of the hour, and that if I disappear for a week nobody flips out on me. It's a low-pressure gig you know? Well, except for the beer blogging. I have become a bit of a slave to the beer blogging... My favorite part of the NBA's All-Star weekend, the three-point shootout, is going on as I type. UConn's own Ray Allen is in the finals with Gilbert Arenas and Dirk Nowitzki. Ray's going to win, because Ray friggin' rules this event. Dirk's lighting it up right now, but his 18 isn't going to beat Ray Allen. No no no, I tell ya. Not going to happen. OH RAY. Make a liar out me?! Oh, no, Ray, you punked me. How do you miss an entire rack, dude? Fuh-huck. Well, congrats there Dirk. Hey, by the way, the Knicks' Quentin Richardson was eliminated in the first round. Seriously, shouldn't they have a rule that no Knicks can participate in a shooting contest? Next up, the Slam Dunk contest. Please don't let Chris Anderson be in it this year. That was painful to watch. Earlier, Dwayne Wade beat out LeBron (King) James in the skillz competition. That's cool. We all know Bron-Bron let him win. (I love LeBron James. Some day soon he will bring me my first fantasy basketball championship. It's inevitable.) OK, this is bizzarre. Musical guest: Andrea Bocelli. This must be part of David Stern's master plan to help the NBA shed it's links to hip-hop culture. Splendid. Man, I hate opera. WOO HOO!!! Clyde Drexler is one of the judges for the Slam Dunk contest!!! And, uh, wait, that's the Rising Stars Slam Dunk Contest. As opposed to, say, actual stars. So we've got the Sixers' Andre Iguodala, who's pretty cool, and then Hakim Warrick of the Grizzlies (who just opened with a nice two-handed reverse), Nate Robinson (too many Knicks on my television tonight), and the Hawks' Josh Smith. Iguana just landed a nice windmill dunk off of a bounce pass to himself. Sweet. Now 5'9" Nate the Knick just did a two-handed jam off a 360. Got him several 10's from the judges, but I didn't think it was all that. He's just getting love from the judges 'cause he's short. Josh Smith did the obligatory dunk from the free throw line, which impressed nobody. Second set of first-round dunks now, and Warrick just eliminated himself with a jumping-over-a-teammate-in-a-chair dunk that flopped badly. What's Iguana got up his sleeve? He's moving all the cameramen back from behind the basket. OH, DAY-YUM!!! Something NEW! Iverson rebounds the ball off the back of the backboard, Iguana comes in from behind the basket and delivers a reverse jam. Perfect. All five judges gave him tens. And then Iguodala runs down the tunnel like he's heading for the locker room. Aw, man. That was the most impressed I've been by a dunk in years. Little Nate's second dunk was nothing to write home about. Josh Smith is now stinking up the joint, missing two tries in a row. He's going bye-bye. Iguana and L'il Nate in the finals. I know I've said this before, but I love Cingular's slogan: "More bars in more places" Uh oh, Nate's pulling a Chris Anderson. Three failed attempts of a self-alley-oop off the backboard. Make it four. Five. He's trying a different dunk now and still missing. Six failed attempts. Seven. This is embarrassing. Dude, put the ball in the hole and go home. Eight. Finally makes a through-the-legs tomahawk on his ninth try. OK, Andre, bring it. Oh, this thing's over after the first dunk. Iguodala just took a bounce, then swung it behind his back, changing hands for a windmill jam. This thing is done. Oh, look at this, Nate's bringing out Spud Webb out of the crowd to assist him on his last dunk. It's a short NBA Guy convention. Wow, not bad, Nathaniel. Dude just jumped over a standing Spud Webb for a one-hander. Shit, he coulda hurt himself if he didn't make that. Here's Andre though. Let's see. Yikes, three straight misfires. Is this an upset in the making? OH MY GOODNESS. It's a tie! Iguana's last dunk fizzles and it's a tie! We're goin' to a DUNK OFF! L'il Nate is wasting a lot of time here trying to set up his approach. Bunch of misfires. You know, an artful stunt dunk loses something when it takes you a dozen tries to set it up. Another miss. (5 minutes elapse) Finally he nails it. Double through-the-legs, then a bounce off the back board for a mini windmill. Not bad. 47 out of 50. And here comes the Lizard. Eh, that was... difficult looking but not altogether impressive. Little judging controversy there as one judge pulled down a 10 and made it a 9, handing the contest to Nate Robinson. That was fun. And odds are I'm the only blogger in the universe live-blogging the NBA's All-Star Saturday night. See ya. Million Dollar Baby: Well now, that was a fucking uplifting experience. Tomorrow night, I think I'll just lay down on the floor and have Tracy pile rocks on my chest. That should be fun too. (Note: The following post was the Question of the Day at Shakespeare's Sister on February 16th, 2006.) Evenin', Shakers. Toast here with a question for you to ponder. Over at my place last night, I basically accused the writers of Lost* of going all Right-Wing Noise Machine on us. Here's why. In last night's episode, Sayid, with the aid of the crazy French woman, gets his hands on a stranger who might just be one of the Others. The stranger denies this. Sayid tortures him to find out what's what. Sayid quickly concludes that the stranger is one of the baddies, but his torturiffic performance is interrupted by Jack the Walking Conscience. Episode's nearly a wrap at this point, but first, a sunset confessional: Sayid, talking to Charlie on the beach, reveals that he doesn't feel the slightest bit guilty about torturing that dude. Why? Well, because he knows in his torturer's gut that he is in league with the Others. And we all remember how evil the Others are, don't we? We remember what they did and how remorseless they were about it, right? Just before the credits roll, Sayid says that Jack stopped him because he has "forgotten" what the Others did and what they're like. He then turns and looks directly into the camera and, in an earnest voice, asks "What about you, Charlie? Have you forgotten?" So, to summarize: Bad Guys do horrible things. Good Guy tortures someone he thinks is a Bad Guy, justifying it by invoking past acts of other Bad Guys. Good Guy asks those who would judge him: Have You Forgotten? Now, I was pretty livid about this. You ask me, I think this is about as blatant as a TV show can get in terms of pitching a sermon. Seriously, those last two minutes on the beach were like watching a Davey And Goliath episode from Hell. And, as you can guess, the message this particular sermon contained is one that I find loathsome in the extreme. Others have taken issue with this assessment and reaction, however. Couple of buddies of mine in the comments section of my original post basically told me I was being paranoid, that this was just entertainment and that I should take off my political hat and just enjoy the show. My question to you is: Where do you draw the boundary between your entertainment-consumer self and your political self? Are you someone who can shut off the political analysis circuit when you sit down to watch a movie or a show? Or are you someone who can't help "see" the political undercurrents in everything, even "mere" entertainment? Are there some buttons you cannot abide having pushed while other issues are allowed to slide? Will you give a favored show or artist a "free pass"? We're all pretty passionate about our beliefs here, and yet there are an awful lot of us who are hopeless culture and entertainment addicts too. How happily do the two coexist for you? *For those of you who don't watch the show, quick background: Bunch of people were on a plane that crashed and are now stranded on an island where there are a bunch of other people -- imaginatively called "the Others" -- who are really, really bad and occasionally kidnap, kill, and generally make life scary for our first group. OK? Good. "Have you forgotten?" Those were the last words that Sayid said to Charlie in tonight's episode of Lost. After telling Charlie how awful, how merciless, how remorseless, and how dangerous the "Others" on the island are. All by way of explaining to Charlie why he felt no guilt about just having tortured this guy they captured who he thinks is one of the "Others". Hmmmm. Anyone sense an allegory here? Dear Creators of Lost: Love your show so far, but if you start preaching Right-Wing Shitism in your storylines, you'll lose me as a viewer so fucking fast it'll make your head spin. Rana linked to an interesting tool the other day called a "Johari Window". It's a sort of interactive personality inventory. I created one for myself by choosing, from a grid of 55 possible descriptive words, what I think are the six most salient aspects of my personality. Now, what you can do is go to my Johari Window and pick what you think are the six most salient aspects of my personality. What should emerge is a picture of "How I See Myself" versus "How Others See Me". This happens to be an issue which I've always been fascinated by and curious about. Will the two (or more) views be convergent or divergent, and if so what traits One request: Don't be afraid to pick terms I might consider critical, but please don't goof on me. If I see anyone choose "patient" or "religious" I'm going to know you're up to something. Have fun. And if you make one for yourself, do let me know. As Tracy and I ready to sit down to a steak dinner and a bottle of wine, I wanted to quickly wish all of you a happy Valentine's Day. I hope tonight finds you in the arms of someone you love. And if it doesn't, well, keep your chin up. True love is out there for you. It might just take you a while to find your way to it. Trust me, I know whereof I speak. OK, I had to do this:
Go ahead. Do your worst. During the Super Bowl, Pizza Hut rolled out an ad for their newest monstrosity, a pizza crust made of these little depth-charge shaped dough pellets called Cheesy Bites. The commercial, which features Jessica Simpson in a slinky dress singing "These Bites Were Made for Poppin'", isn't particularly offensive in its own right (unless, of course, you find Jessica Simpson's ubiquitous media presence offensive, which I totally understand). No what annoys the shit out of me about this is the product itself. It's the latest in a string of Stupid Pizza Tricks from a company that can't even nail your basic cheese slice. Memo to Pizza Hut: Your pizza sucks. Sorry, but there it is. Your product is garbage. Want to attract more customers? How about this? Instead of adding a second layer of dough with cheese in between the layers, why not work on making dough that doesn't taste like recycled newsprint? Instead of filling your crust with cheese, why not first find a cheese that doesn't have the consistency of partially-dried glue? Instead of wowing us by distributing cheese and sauce all the way to the edge, why not first make the sauce distinguishable from watered-down tomato paste? And this newest thing with the detachable dough-and-cheese nuggets? Just what the fuck is that all about? Where does an idea like that even come from? Somebody in marketing have a bad acid trip? And the cheese fixation. Cheese cheese cheese! Cheese everywhere! In the crust! Under the dough! In little detachable balls! Cheese out your ears! Cheese up your ass! What the fuck?! PROPORTION, you morons! BALANCE! A good pizza has the right amount of each ingredient. It's not a damned Cheese Delivery System. FUCK. Your pizza tastes like shit. Knock it off with the cheesy gimmicks and work on your fundamentals. We're back! We survived the Blizzard of '06! Yep, Tracy and I head down to the city for the weekend and they get hit with the Before moving on to this week's brew under review, I want to make a bar recommendation: Vintage at 51st Street and 9th Ave is one of the coolest bars I've been to in a long time. Awesome beer selection, focusing on the hard-core European-styles such as barley wines, abbey ales, and big-bodied stouts. I got my hands around a glass of Ommegang's Hennepin Ale, which was wonderful. Wish I had brought something to take notes on so I could tell you more about it. Oh, and I had a great Scotch Experience. I'm heading to the head, and I ask Tracy to order me a Macallan, right? So the bartender comes over, she orders, and he says "12 year or 18"? And do you know what my girl did? Oh, I think you do. Lemme tell you, the Macallan 18 cracked my top 5 the moment the first molecule hit my tongue. Their 12-year is a flowery, grassy malt (and one of my favorites as well), so I was expecting that only, you know, more so. Man, was I surprised. The 18-year has a much more aggressive flavor. It's almost got a cigar malt taste to it. Lots of wood and peat and smoke and just mmmmmmmm. Yowsa. So, yeah, Vintage. Check it out.
Now I remember what I like about Dogfish Head so much: Their IPA's. Seriously, this is what I think happened with this beer: They have an allotment of hops, and by the time they're finished brewing their 60-minute, 90-minute, and 120-minute IPA's, there are no hops left. How else to explain Raison D'Etre which is all malt. Here I sit with a mouthful, bathing my tongue in this brew, and I'm trying to sense even the slightest bitterness going on and, nope, nuthin'. All malt. Now, it's a good maltiness, mind you. Very nice taste. Carmelly with a hint of fruit. But it really could use some balance, just a hint of hops to keep things on track. The body is medium weight with decent carbonation. Short aftertaste. This beer definitely isn't looking to kick you in the face. 8% ABV, although you don't get even a hint of that from the flavor. Wish I could give these guys the thumbs-up here, but they broke one of my cardinal rules for ales and went one-dimensional. Rating: 4.5 Tracy and I are off for our annual Valentine's Day Weekend trip to that greatest and most wondrous of all the metropoli of Planet Earth, New York City. We will walk the Brooklyn Bridge, our bridge, the bridge upon which I proposed to her. Perhaps we will have time for a little jaunt through Central Park. Certainly we will have time to hook up with my cousin and her fiance for a few beers. We will dine in our romantic Italian restaurant, feasting and sipping way-too-expensive wine, and then Tracy will leave her fourth consecutive lip imprint on the wall of the ladies room (it's a tradition this place encourages). Back to our hotel, walking through the snow which is forecast, where we will fall into each others' sweet embrace. (That's it, I'm writin' a romance novel.) Oh, the fun we're going to have. Should we make it back at a reasonable time tomorrow, I have a beer on deck I'd like to share with you. No promises, though. The storm bearing down on us looks substantial. There's even a chance we could be trapped -- trapped! -- in NYC! Oh, the horror. Have an excellent weekend, friends and readers. We are outta here. One of the most annoying bits of right-wing dogma -- yes, I know, there are so many to choose from -- is their blind insistence on the notion that market competition is always superior to either government-run or private monopolies. Common sense and experience eventually lead most of us to realize that there is no "one-size-fits-all" solution for all problems. Not anywhere. Not ever. Eventually, I thought I'd get around to writing about this subject in greater detail. But, instead, I slacked. And now look what happened: Salkowitz has it totally covered: Back in the old days, there was one phone company and one set of telephone books. It may not have been ideal, but at least it was useful. As a consumer, you had some reason to believe the listings were comprehensive. As an advertiser, you had reason to believe that the right people would see your ad. Now there's competition. But unlike most instances of the free market, this is one place where multiple options helps nobody... [T]here are the different listings publishers, all duplicating their own investments: multiple sets of ad sales forces, multiple production and distribution systems, printing and paper costs. It's wasteful, but there's a great incentive to stick it out, because the last one standing will then have access to all the ad revenues in the market. In the meantime, no single publisher gets a decent return on investment, consumers and advertisers are confused, there are mountains of paper being dumped into recycling unread and unused, and there's no mechanism to weed the effective listings from the worthless ones. It's a complete failure of competition and an argument for that rare bird of the free market system, the natural monopoly. I point this out because free market ideologues have a blind spot when it comes to these sorts of situations. There are limited cases where the systemic costs of competition - poor information, redundant infrastructure, need to support multiple standards and practices around the same activity - exceed the benefits of choice and low prices. At the same time, the usual sorting functions of competition don't work very well, either because the market players have no pricing power or because the lack of a clear market leader makes it necessary for customers to spend more than they ordinarily would to "cover their bets." In these cases, competition creates inefficiencies that wouldn't ordinarily exist. I can think of plenty more examples besides phone books that I think fall into this category, starting with phone companies. Some I could be wrong about -- could just be my low tolerance for being hassled by marketers angling for my business in newly competitive markets -- but the point stands. Some services really are better provided by monopolies. Yep, this one's for the missus. My wife Tracy works as a "float teller" for a local bank. What this means is that, from week to week or even day to day, they move her around to different branches depending on staffing needs. The upshot of this is that she's always somewhat less familiar with the customers than the regular staff, and so she has to ask for ID more often when transacting business. You would not believe the ire this provokes. You would not believe the stories she tells me of customers just fuming. "I've been coming to this branch for YEARS! How DARE you ask me for ID!!!???" "Give me that back! I'll just wait for someone who knows me to wait on me." "What?! You want identification before you cash that $5,000 check?! Well, then, I'll just have to take my business elsewhere. How do you like that?" Or the most absurd ever: "You can see I'm a police officer, right? And you're still going to ask me for ID?" (When she told me that last one, I was like "Yep! License and registration, officer.") People, what is the fucking problem here, exactly? It's a big world. Not everyone who interacts with you is going to be privileged enough to have made your acquaintance. When they ask for ID, it's not to hassle you or demean you. It's either for your protection or for theirs. That's it. Know how many times in my life I've complained about showing someone an ID? Never. Never got in the grill of a bank teller cashing a check, even if I'd been going to that bank forever. Never complained about a merchant asking for a second form of ID when I'm using a credit card. Hell, you want two forms? Here you go. Thanks for protecting me from fraud. Don't complain the two or three times a year I get carded buying booze, even though I'm 37. I consider it a compliment. Hell, I don't even complain when the security guards at my office ask me to flash my badge. You can't be troubled to show ID to someone with a legitimate reason to ask for it? Get the fuck over yourself, K? OK, so to recap the neocon-crafted Iran meme that's creeping through the mainstream media: "Iran is very very very skeery. They're building nucular weapons! They could have 'em in a year! Six months!! NEXT WEEK! Wemustattack NOW. Right now! Call in the airstrikes! Attack to defend ourselves while we still can! terror Terror TERR-rORRRRR!!!" Listen, we've got a saying here in New England -- maybe you have it where you are too: "Bush fool you once, shame on you. This Danish cartoon brouhaha is truly jack hammering away on my last nerve. Specifically, I am being driven to distraction by the absurdly off-base responses of some of my fellow progressives. If you had asked me prior to this week what the progressive consensus on something like this would be, I'd have guessed something along the lines of "While these op-ed cartoons may inflame indignation in some quarters of the Muslim world, the criticisms they contain are legitimate and, in the interest of maintaining the free flow of ideas, we support the newspaper's decision to publish them." Man, did I read that wrong. Rather than a fairly unanimous response to what I, at least, considered a clear-cut set of issues, I have read a slew of responses condemning Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper that first started this, and questioning their motives. More problematically, I have seen numerous attacks on the content of the cartoons, including a lot of deeply misguided nonsense suggesting they represent nothing but irresponsible, racist provocation and "hate speech". If there has been condemnation of the extremists tossing bombs and raising all manner of hell about this in the Islamic world, it's largely taken the form of caveats that say, as an afterthought, "not that violence is the answer, of course". Where to even begin with all this? First, let's look at the context of what happened and the actors involved. Most of the critics lining up against Jyllands-Posten have been quick to point out that it's a "right wing" newspaper. Now, I am not entirely certain that the European right is an exact analog to the American right. Frankly, I imagine not all the particulars line up. But, putting that aside, so what? Let's not give in to the knee-jerk response that any idea emanating from a "right wing" source must, by definition, be wrong. (Suspect, sure, but not wrong.) At the very least, please keep in mind the old "broken clock" cliche, and realize that whatever the paper's motives, we should all be able to keep our heads about us and judge the cartoons themselves on their content. I would also point out, as Shakes tried to repeatedly yesterday, that as long as we're getting hung up on motives here, let's not forget that many of the cartoons now circulating out there and enraging Muslim populations were not originally published by J-P, but instead reprinted and circulated by Islamic Mullahs looking to whip up anti-Western sentiment. Which just goes to show that fundamentalist preachers are pretty much the same wherever you go: They know what buttons to push to get their flock in a frenzy. Now, as I said above, what's really got my teeth on edge about this whole thing is the assertion that these cartoons represent "racism". I have seen them compared with depictions of black men being lynched. I have seen parallels drawn to the offense given by Native American sports mascots. I have even, most despicably, seen someone repeat a joke about Jews being sent to the ovens, along with the suggestion that if the reader was outraged by that joke, then "now you know how Muslims feel." That last comment showed such a complete lack of perspective that it truly sent me around the bend for a moment. You see, none of the images I saw portrayed in these oh-so-controversial cartoons joked about killing innocent Muslims. They were decrying violence, not urging it. Nor, for that matter, would I describe them as "racist" in the way that I understand the term. No references to "camel jockeys" or "towel heads". No, what I saw was perfectly legitimate criticism both of the behavior of Islamist jihadists and of the fundamentalist religious tenets that, in part, drive them to do what they do. There is something particularly dishonest about the way certain people are seeking to shield fundamentalist Islam from criticism by crying "racist". It's disgusting, really. Let me break this down for you: Race ≠ Religion Got it? Yes, there is often overlap and convergence between race, culture, and religion. Judaism is a particularly good example of this. But while there is often a strong correlation between religion and culture, there's a much looser coupling between religion and race, if you construe "race" to mean one's genetic heritage and the gross physical identifiers that go along with it: Skin color, facial features, hair texture, and whatnot. No one chooses their race. That is why, in civilized circles, it is utterly off-limits for criticism. You can, albeit to a limited degree, choose your culture. Or, at the very least, once you're an adult you can choose to transcend the confines of the culture you were born into. There is, therefore, more wiggle room for making critical statements about the culture of other groups. This is still problematic, of course. Witness the predictable uproar in the United States whenever anyone not of southern stock dares to make critical comments about the culture of that region. Religious beliefs, in my opinion, are at the other end of the spectrum from race. You can absolutely choose to change or discard your religious beliefs. All it takes is a mind, the willingness to look at the world without prejudice, and some time for introspection. We are each equipped with some or all of those in varying degrees. To the extent that you retain the religious beliefs of your upbringing, you do not get a "free pass". In fact that is why most religions have some sort of analog to the Catholic ritual of "confirmation". Upon attaining adulthood, you "own" your beliefs. They are your responsibility, as it were, and part of that job is being ready to accept legitimate criticism of them and either defend them or not as you like. The bottom line is that nobody gets to claim immunity from criticism for their religious beliefs, neither as individuals nor on behalf of their culture. A liberal society starts to die the moment we start walling off certain ideas from debate. Do you understand? That is from Western Society 101, a class I thought was on all our schedules at one point. That imperative does not take a back seat to some vague desire not to inflame or offend the sensibilities of others. It is our Prime Directive, and we turn our backs on it at our peril. Some have put the actions of the publishers at Jyllands-Posten in the "protected-but-unwise" category, as if to grudgingly say "Yes, we support your right to say these things, but, really, is this necessary?" I emphatically disagree with that position as well. I saw nothing particularly over-the-top or reprehensible about these images. Again, it seemed to me that the editorial payload was aimed squarely at the violent and socially destructive ideas embedded in jihadist Islam. For the life of me I cannot understand why anyone -- particularly progressives -- would seek to shield the barbaric extravagances of fundamentalist Islam from criticism. A religious tenet which promises adherents lavish rewards in the afterlife for the taking of innocent "infidel" life on Earth is not to be indulged. It should be condemned, and reform urged. So, too, with the tenets which codify the treatment of women as second-class citizens, and which urge the death penalty for homosexuals. Are there really any liberals out there who think the world should remain silent on these subjects for fear of "offending" anyone? I hope not. I would urge those of you on the left who are up in arms about these "racist" "right-wing" Danes and their "offensive" cartoons to reconsider your position. Don't condemn the act because of your assumptions about the actors. Don't throw your lot in with the "offended" party simply because you identify Muslims as an aggrieved minority, perpetual victims of the bullying West. And don't buy into the stifling myth that all religion is sacrosanct and off-limits, regardless of the contents of a given belief system. Yesterday, in one of the more raucous comments threads at Shakes' place, someone brought up the fact that Iran was readying to print a series of op-ed cartoons mocking, belittling, and even denying the Holocaust. Commenter quixote replied: "Let the Iranians print whatever they want. Let's show them how this is handled in a free country." For the first time in a long, long time, I was able to look at my own culture, at the political tradition I was born into, and think to myself, "fuck, yeah!" Via Atrios, a tiny spot of good news: George C. Deutsch, the young presidential appointee at NASA who told public affairs workers to limit reporters' access to a top climate scientist and told a Web designer to add the word "theory" at every mention of the Big Bang, resigned yesterday, agency officials said. That's one less imbecile out there working to make the world a more stupid place. Good riddance. CONGRATULATIONS PITTSBURGH STEELERS The marginally better team won tonight. It certainly didn't qualify as a dominant performance, and neither team did anything truly impressive, but the Steelers made fewer mistakes and made a couple of big plays when they needed to. Happy for Bettis. Happy for Cowher. Happy for Big Ben. Congrats, gentlemen. And do you know what the best thing about the Steelers winning the Super Bowl is? They're not the Patriots!!!! (10:05 PM) Game. Over. Terrible ending for the Seahawks. They stumbled across the finish line. (10:00 PM) Winding up here. Seattle driving for a possible TD, but only a minute left. They need a miracle finish, and I'm not feelin' it. (9:43 PM) Hasselsack goes down. Punt. The Seahawks are about to come aground on Nahgunnahappen Point. (9:35 PM) Oh, fuckin' Spaghetti Monster. Here I am watching Hasselbeck scramble for the first down and more, screamin' "Go Matt!" and then he -- apparently -- coughs it up. This review is the game for the Seahawks. The Steelers get this ball now and they're guaranteed three, making it a two TD game. Big review... Overturned! Seattle keeps it. Still alive. (9:30 PM) Uh oh. Trick play. Randle-El with the TD throw. And how things have turned in the last few minutes. Slipping away now for the Seahawks. (9:25 PM) Just a terrible break there for Hasselbeck. I mean, long, grinding drive, then they get the catch at the two called back on a penalty, and then a few plays later the pick. Lot of effort to come away with no points. Damn. (9:18 PM) New Leader! The Sprint "Benny Hill" commercial completely cracked my shit up. (9:12 PM) The Seattle defense is at least looking good these last two series. Horrible field position for Seattle after that last punt, however, stuck at their own two. (9:10 PM) Overheard: "Hey, Hon, what do you think of 'Lofa' for a baby name?" (9:00 PM) Just wanna say, if I were a player on either of these teams, there's no way I'd lay hands on that Lombardi Trophy before I'd won it. That is seriously bad Sports Karma. (8:56 PM) Oh, shit! One guy left to beat. Throw a fucking block. How do you not take that to the house? Better get seven on this, 'Hawks. Make this a game, dammit. Touchdown, Jeremy Stevens! Steelers 14 - Seahawks 10. We still have a game here. (8:53 PM) That Hummer H3 commercial was just wrong. (8:50 PM) OK, this game is slipping away from the Seahawks, and from me. Every time I turn my head away for a second, I miss a Seattle possession. I look up and the Steelers are driving again. Sorry, Rob. It's this thing that happens when I'm rooting for a team. (8:45 PM) Next up, auditioning for the role of "Goat", Josh Brown. Ack. Hey, who cares? The Wing Goddess just walked in! Oh, check this out, both women are sitting here watching the Bud commercial with the baby horse pulling the giant carriage and it's a chorus of "Ooooohhhhh". Yikes. (8:38 PM) 30,000 HITS!!! I rule. (8:34 PM) "Fast" Willie Parker is in the house! 75 yard TD run. So much for the shitty pace to the game. Now, come on Seahawks. Step up. (Note: Longest TD run in the history of the Super Bowl. Nice.) (8:11 PM) Yay! "Start Me Up". What a great selection. BTW, Dear Mick Jagger, you're a thousand years old. Your band is about as relevant to a 2005 prime-time sporting event as, say, a Stephen Foster musical review would be. But, hey, safe choice by ABC. No danger of a stray nipple this year. Unless yours sags out the bottom of your shirt... (Wow, Tracy just pointed out that they changed the "dead man cum" line. Sad.) This second song, on the other hand, seriously blows... Jagger just introduced Satisfaction by saying "Here's one we could have done at Super Bowl I." Funny. OK, thank you, ugly old men. Go bye-bye now. (8:09 PM) Allright, much as I loathe Robert Palmer, that "Addicted to Lost" commercial was outstanding. (7:57 PM) Steelers 7 - Seahawks 3 at the half. Not a terribly exciting game thus far. Well, at least we've got the Rolling Stones coming up at the half. That oughta be really fucking exciting. I think I'm going to go watch Tracy make wings. Hey, BTW, time out for Props to Toast: Coming up any moment now on 30,000 hits. And that's not per hour, people, or per day. No, that's 30,000 hits since I've been doing this. Two and a half years. And yet... paltry as it may seem... 30,000 times somebody, somewhere, has clicked a button to load a page to see what typings I have emanated. There's something... touching... about that. Contemplating that number, I feel connected to my fellow men and women, across the nation and even the world. Thank you all. Thank you for caring what I think. Or accidentally loading my page. Or searching Google on the phrase "Bud Light pour down center" (my number one search phrase last month). Whatever. OK, back to halftime. (7:52 PM) Ooops. Uh... sorry if things got a little weird there. We had slipped into a nearly-seven-minute DVR delay without knowing it. (sheepish grin). OK, we're back in real time. (7:48 PM) Roethlisberger TD under review. Looks like the tip of the ball crossed the front edge of that white line. The women are saying no. But what do they know? Certainly nothing in the replay to make them think it's clearly short. Pittsburgh 6. That's what I'm feelin'. Yep. I'm right. OK, Seattle, time to step it up. (7:41 PM) Jesus. I can't believe Roethlisberger took a broken play on third down and found a guy open at the three. That was luck. Or skill. Or something. Just a heck of play, however you spin it. (7:34 PM) Uh-oh! We have a new front-runner in the ad competition. That Michelob Ultra Amber commercial where the dude clocks the chick playing flag football was awesome. (7:26 PM) Ohhhhhhhhhh!!! Big Ben throws the Big Pick. Tracy just announced "The Steelers aren't playing their game." When pushed for a description of the Steelers "game", she said "better than this". (7:22 PM) And with 10:44 left in the second quarter, the Steelers suddenly get back-to-back first downs! Welcome, Pittsburgh, to Super Bowl 40! (7:20 PM) BTW, my scoreboard right now reads: Ads 14 - Game 0 (7:18 PM) Seahawks caught a break there. Looked to me like that could have just as easily been ruled a catch and a fumble on Stevens. Anyhow, another punt. (sigh) Oh, hey, liked the "streaker" commercial, the newest addition to Bud's "Horses Playing Football" series (which Tracy absolutely adores). Good stuff. (7:13 PM) Another Pittsburgh possession, another Pittsburgh three-and-out. Great return by Warrick. Minus 10 yards for a holding penalty. Eh. (7:05 PM) The Aleve commercial with Leonard Nimoy doing the "Live Long & Prosper" sign was good, but the Ameriquest "That Killed Him" commercial was outstanding. (7:04 PM) Brutal offensive pass interference call on Seattle. Just terrible. That's some ticky-tack shit to call. Looks like the 'Hawks are going to have to settle for three here. Yep. Almost a sweet TD pass there on third down, but McFadden couldn't come down with it. And Josh Brown knocks it through for three. Fuckin' ream job. (6:55 PM) Another three and out for the Steelers. Very exciting game so far. Good field position for the Seahawks after the punt. (6:53 PM) Finally, here come the good commercials. Loved the FedEx one with the cavemen. "But, FedEx doesn't exist yet!" Excellent. (6:50 PM) Another pass-heavy drive for the 'Hawks, another punt. (6:38 PM) I've said this before and I'll say it again: "False Start" penalties in the NFL are bullshit. A player on offense should be able to do whatever the hell they want, up to and including jumping jacks, so long as they don't cross the line of scrimmage before the snap. It's absurd that a guy can get called for a false start for twitching a finger, lifting a foot, batting an eyelash. And with two false starts on their first drive, the Steelers go 3 and out. (6:34 PM) First drive for the Seahawks was awfully heavy on the pass. I would've thought we'd be seeing more of the Ghost, you know? Punt. (6:27 PM) I'm glad they brought Tom Brady back for the coin flip. Otherwise I would have had to, I dunno, pour fire ants up my nostrils or something. Oh, and Joey Porter was so cool talking shit and trying to mix things up during the coin flip. I think someone's trying to compensate for not having a penis. I really do. (6:18 PM) Topped, incredibly, by the lameness of the Harrison-Ford-hosted Dr. Seuss intro. Who the christ was the target audience for that? (6:15 PM) Horrid, awful, putrid, nasty mutilation of the national anthem by Aaron Neville and Aretha Franklin. Ugh. (6:10 PM) We're sitting here watching the MVP parade, and the Giants' Otis Anderson comes out. Suddenly, Tracy is like "Otis Anderson! I know him! He was my coach at football camp!" (Tracy won a trip to football fantasy camp about five years ago.) So she runs upstairs, gets her autographed football, comes back down, and sure enough, there's his name: "To Tracy, Good Job. O. J. Anderson #24, NY Giants! Your Coach!" That's my girl. She so rocks. (6:00 PM) For what it's worth, I'm rooting for the Seahawks. One, I've got a hunch they're going to win. Two, I've got a $10 bet with my Mom. Three, I don't want Salkowitz to have to donate $50 to the RNC. And four, Rob, you were right: They're basically the Jets West, a team with a tradition of fucking up. So if the Seahawks can win a Superbowl... hey, you never know. (5:55 PM) Stevie Wonder with cornrows looks like a hip-hop Klingon warrior. (5:20 PM) It is time to retire the whole "I'm going to Disney World!" thing. I'm sorry, but these are grown men. You think any of these guys, upon winning the Super Bowl, are actually thinking "Yeah, Disney World. That's where I wanna go celebrate. Screamin' kids everywhere. Seven dwarfs walkin' around. Cool." Enough already. I can't wait for the first time the clock runs out on a championship and they put the camera on one of the winning players and he shouts "I'm goin' to Vegas, baby!" (5:15 PM) Shaun Alexander's nickname is "The Ghost"? First I've heard of it. I can't decide if that's dorky or cool. I'll have to mull that over, Shaun, and get back to you. (4:10 PM) Fuck you, ABC. They just ran a montage of Super Bowls through the years, with songs and video snippets correlating to the various years, and what do they decide to slide in there? Bill Clinton saying "I did not have sexual relations with that woman". Nice. Where's the 2003 footage of Bush lying about Saddam's WMD's? Couldn't dig that up? Assholes. (4:05 PM) I am sick to death of Joey Porter. Dude, just shut up. If there's a player on the Seahawks who's letting this imbecile's tough-guy act bother them, I'd be shocked. I hope someone takes his punk-ass out of this game. See how he runs his mouth as he's riding off the field on a cart. (3:50 PM) T-Minus 130 minutes (give or take) until Super Bowl XL. The fridge is stocked with beer. We have an ample supply of snacks laid in. Currently watching the beginning of hour three of ABC's pre-game coverage. Because you just can't get too much pre-game coverage. Our live-blogging today will feature game commentary, ad reviews, plus the usual random thoughts. I'm trying something different this year that I've seen other people do with live blogging, and I'll be putting the new stuff at the top. Also the comment link. Don't let it confuse you. Anyhow, feel free to stop by and leave your 2 cents on the Big Event.
Mackeson is still a very good beer, but I have to say up front that coming back to it all these years later is just a shade disappointing. The beer hasn't changed, but, alas, I have. Back when my twenty-year-old tastebuds were first exposed to Mackeson's pitch-black brew, it seemed downright exotic. Now, hundreds upon hundreds of microbrews, specialty brews, and high-end imports later, it's, well, just another very good beer. The first thing you notice as you're pouring a Mackeson is that someone has replaced your beer with used motor oil. It is dark and shiny in appearance and fills the glass silently, as there's very little carbonation in the body and almost no head to speak of (note: Now that I think about it, that last part could be an artifact of using a frosted mug). Take a mouthful and you are overwhelmed by the bittersweet flavor of dark chocolate. The body is thick, cloying even, and its syrupy texture leaves a thick lining on the roof of your mouth. The malt is cranked all the way to eleven on this brew, but beneath the intense sweetness lurks the lingering flavor of hops. Not a well-rounded mixture by any stretch, but not one-dimensional either. A word of warning: Mackeson is a heavy beer. It settles in your stomach like cement. Two in one sitting is the most you want to do before switching to a lighter-weight beer. Something like Guinness, for example. Overall, Mackeson still delivers. And the good news is that it's cheaper to buy than ever before, down to around $8 a six-pack as opposed to the same for a 4-pack back in the day. Love those market forces. Rating: 6.5 Shakes has a post up soliciting commentary from lefty bloggers on the controversy and ensuing violence surrounding the publication in a Danish newspaper of some editorial cartoons that were "offensive" to Muslims. Here's my response: They're cartoons. They're ink on paper. Regardless of the ideas they express, they do not justify the violent reaction we are seeing in the Muslim world. Period. I saw two of the cartoons in question. The first was an image of the prophet Mohammed's head with a glowering expression and a fuse coming out of it. I could be off the mark, but I believe this cartoonist was trying to express the idea that Islam is a violent religion. (shrugs) Fair enough. Kinda tacky. But, agree or disagree, it's certainly not the first time someone's expressed that idea. Hardly controversial. The second cartoon showed a long line of suicide bombers arriving in the afterlife, and an -- angel? saint? dunno. -- stationed to receive them who is announcing "I'm sorry, but we've run out of virgins!" Now, this one was actually funny, if you ask me. Furthermore, it expresses an idea that, to my mind, is unarguably true: That these jihadists who are blowing themselves up are doing so in part because they hold the irrational, superstition-based belief that they are going to heaven and will be rewarded. Certainly, I can understand how devout Muslims would find these cartoons insulting. But, hell, I see editorial cartoons that piss me off on a regular basis. You know what I do when I see a cartoon that expresses an idea I find disagreeable? I write a letter to the fucking editor. I don't go tossing Molotov Cocktails at the offending paper's offices. It's a Freedom of Speech thing. I honestly don't see how anyone who considers themselves a liberal can side with the violent lunatics who are flipping out over this, or line up behind those who are calling for the publisher of the cartoons to be punished and/or censored. That's not the way we play it on our side of the divide, and we shouldn't be tempted to make an exception simply because someone's religion is at the root of this. Our political tradition is founded on the free exchange of ideas, and religious faith is just another idea. We should make no special allowances for it. Kevin Drum and a handful of other bloggers met with Wesley Clark yesterday, and the subject of Iran's nuclear program came up. Here was Kevin's take-away: Contrary to conventional wisdom, which suggests that Iran's research sites are too widespread to be destroyed via bombing, Clark believes that a military strike on Iran could wipe out its nuclear program very effectively indeed. He figures that a 14-day bombing campaign plus a few special-ops missions -- which he described in some detail -- would pretty much put them out of business. What's more, he also seems to believe that an operation like this is very much under active consideration within the White House and the Pentagon. One thing I miss about the Soviet Union and the Cold War: Having someone around to tell us "No". It simply never occurred to me that, absent the check on our behavior that another nuclear-armed superpower provided, we'd start storming around the world like the schoolyard bully, smacking around whoever we wanted to without so much as the pretense of real provocation. But then, who could have predicted the group of shameless assholes we now have at the helm coming to power? And who could have predicted that their nominal "opposition" party would aid and abet them in their madness? It's starting to take shape. We can all see it coming now. Our government is readying to attack another sovereign state that has not attacked us. That is unacceptable. How are we any better than the rogue nations we constantly bemoan if we do this? What gives us the right? Won't somebody in our government take the side of lawfulness and principle this time around? Our nation has been hijacked, the cockpit door is locked, and it seems that every last person with an ounce of decency is trapped in coach, helpless to avert the disaster the madmen are steering us towards. With all that's going on in our troubled nation -- illegal wars, unconstitutional spying programs, activist right-wing judges who seek to deprive women of their reproductive rights -- it's hard, sometimes, to decide where to focus your outrage. Amidst all the chaos and injustice, however, there is one issue on which this blogger can no longer remain silent: Drunken frat parties. I am concerned that this venerable tradition is under attack. Consider this item from U. S. News: Four nervous freshmen huddle on the sidewalk outside the Delta Upsilon house at Colgate University. It's homecoming weekend at the 2,750-student school in upstate New York, the party inside the house is raging, and they're on a quest for beer. They take out their wallets, eyeball their fake ID s, and consider the wisdom of presenting them to the private security guards at DU's front door. Deciding the ID s won't pass muster, they keep walking. They don't have to go far to find a party they can get into. In the backyard of a nearby private house, there are no security guards and no colored wristbands for the underage. This parallel party universe is the domain of the brothers of Delta Kappa Epsilon, a renegade fraternity that Colgate barred from campus for refusing to sell its house to the school and join a new student-residence initiative. But while the college threatened to expel any students who set foot in the DKE house, the order continues in exile. At the house where some brothers now live, they continue to provide for their classmates: kegs of light beer, rock music, and that ubiquitous collegiate drinking game, beer pong. And the occasional joint is smoked. This was exactly the type of scene Colgate University hoped to eradicate last year when it forced 10 fraternities and sororities to sell their houses to the university or face derecognition. In school-owned buildings, all parties must be registered in advance, and private catering companies--complete with ID-checking security guards--must run events where alcohol is served. DKE, the only fraternity that refused to sell, filed a lawsuit charging that the school violated its right to freely associate as well as antitrust laws by exerting monopoly-like control over the student housing market. Last month, the frat asked the local district attorney to investigate the legality of the housing plan. The university steadfastly defends its actions, saying its plan will bolster Greek life. The frat, however, feels endangered. "The situation sucks because we cannot sit down to dinner in our own house," says Sam Higgins, DKE president. Allow me to echo Mr. Higgins sentiment: This situation sucks. As it happens, my own fraternity, Phi Sigma Kappa, is also under attack. The administration at my alma mater, RPI, is out for blood, investigating and suspending fraternities right and left for the abominable crime of providing alcohol to minors, and we are in the crossfire. There is a very real possibility that we might get run straight out of existence, what with the two-and-a-half year probationary period that's hanging over our head at the moment. (Two and a half years without rush might as well be a death sentence for greek organization.) I arrived at RPI in the fall of 1986 with no intention of joining a fraternity. I did intend to party my ass off, however, and when the fine men of Phi Sigma Kappa invited me and my dorm mates up to their house for a keg party, who was I to say no? Further, when one of the more colorful brothers came by my room the following Wednesday and inquired as to whether I would like to join him at one of the many excellent drinking establishments in downtown Troy, who was I to say no? And when, weeks later, after I had gotten booted from the strip club they'd taken us to for having an insufficiently convincing fake ID and this same sympathetic brother had escorted me elsewhere to find libations and, as we were sitting there at the bar, he asked me "So, Toast, you ever thought of joining a fraternity?" who was I to say no? The ensuing years were one wild, messed-up, entertaining, and occasionally puke-stained ride. Wouldn't trade those memories for anything. Unfortunately, there are forces afoot who would take those memories-in-the-making from our chapter's active members. Here's the thing about college: It's not just a place you go to get you some book learnin'. It's a place where teenagers go and, for the first time, get to live their lives unsupervised. It's where the leash comes off and you get to run around and raise some fucking hell. And that's a good thing. You make mistakes. You do really stupid shit. You make an ass out of yourself. You have fun. And as you go along, you learn a few things about yourself, and slowly but surely you grow up. (Well, sorta.) Oh, one more thing: If you're like most college students, you drink yourself absolutely fucking silly, laws be damned. This is the paragraph where I condemn the drinking age. Feel free to skip it if you've heard this before. The 21-year-old drinking age in this country is a goddamned disgrace. At sixteen we let people drive a car. At eighteen we let them participate in the democratic process, weighing in on who should lead us as a people. And, oh yeah, we let them fight and die for our country. But they have to wait three more years before they can legally crack a beer. That, my dear readers, is some fucked-up shit. It makes no sense whatsoever. But don't hold your breath for anyone to suggest changing it, because nobody's got the stones to confront the puritanical pussies who set the national cultural agenda. Luckily, most young people treat the drinking age law the way it deserves to be treated: They wipe their ass with it. Kids go to college and they party. They drink in their dorms. They drink at bars. And they drink at parties, many of which are held at fraternities and sororities. That's the way it's always been. That's the way it always will be. Well, except maybe the last part. See, college administrators, you might be able to snuff out frat parties, but you're sure as shit never going to stop underage drinking. Oh, but Toast, it's against the law! Yah. So is speeding. Everyone who obeys the speed limit raise your hands. Think that's a facile analogy? Reckless driving kills a shitload of people in this nation every year. Comparable to deaths from alcohol. (Yes, I realize there's overlap.) But we, as a society, tolerate speeding. Hell, we encourage it, with our focus on performance vehicles. Nobody tries to eradicate speeding. What we do, instead, is try to keep it from getting out of hand. Cops go after the extreme cases. They nail the guy going 100 miles per hour, not the one doing 66. Makes sense, no? That's the way we should treat underage drinking, too. Acknowledge that it's going to happen and work at the margins to keep anyone from getting hurt. And, actually, that's the way it has worked for decades now. College administrators winked at parties on campus. They'd come down on you occasionally, like if you were out pissing in the street and shit (not that I ever witnessed such a thing), but by and large they let it go. Probably, they realized that having a big old frat party with 600 people getting hammered was a lot easier to keep tabs on than 600 individuals heading out to apartments and bars and clubs and trying to get their kicks that way. Not anymore though. Seems some people have it in their head that the college experience needs to be more tightly controlled: Meanwhile, colleges have expanded their educational mission, often blurring the line between classroom and dorm room. "We don't care what students do outside the classroom, so long as that experience is educational," says Adam Weinberg, Colgate's dean. "In the old Greek system, there were too many wasted educational moments." To that ambitious end, the school now offers theme dorms, including Peace Studies House, Ecology House, and Asia Interest House. I'll wait while you wipe the vomit off your monitor. The Peace Studies House? Yay! Are you shitting me? Mr. Weinberg, let me set you straight: What students do outside the classroom is none of your fucking business. Every damned moment of one's college years doesn't need to be "educational". Your effort to regiment and control the lives of your students is just a pathetic attempt to extend the already overly-structured upbringing these kids have suffered through into the one period of their lives where they're finally supposed to have some freedom. That's a stupid shame. Fraternity parties present college students with a reasonably safe place to get loaded. Ban them and you're not eliminating the scourge of underage drinking, you're just chasing it further underground. You're fucking with a fine tradition and you're not accomplishing a damned thing. Almost done. One more point and one sidebar. In the discussions around my own house's current difficulties, I've been surprised to see a lot of middle aged alums coming down on the administration's side, yakking about underage drinking is against the law and we have to be realists and blah diddy blah blah blah. Fuck that noise, OK? I, for one, refuse to sell out the young guys of today who are only looking to do the same shit we did. And it was illegal then too. It may be the case that they're in for some hard times, that they might need to grit their teeth and put up with whatever unfair crap the admin slaps them with. Fine. Whatever. But I don't want to hear any tut-tutting or see any finger waving from people who have conveniently forgotten what it's like to be that age. Last word: When it's time to party, always party hard. Dear Duke Fans, I am writing to inform you that the University of Connecticut Men's Basketball team ("the Huskies") are going to win this year's NCAA Division I national championship. As this will no doubt prove embarrassing to you, given the all-too-predictable hype surrounding your program this season, I will make you the following offer: Mail me all of your Duke paraphernalia -- jerseys, hats, bumper stickers, foam fingers, etc. -- and I will burn it for you in my backyard (I have a permit). This will provide you with an easy and discrete solution for erasing all traces of your association with this loser team without the associated emotional trauma of doing the job yourself. If you wish, you can also provide me with a credit card number and I will purchase and ship back to you a comparable item featuring the UConn Huskies logo. Don't worry, it's a big bandwagon and there's plenty of room. (Note: J. J. Reddick, if you are reading this, send me your uniform jersey and I will buy you a Marcus Williams jersey.) Sincerely, Toast
We got a package in the mail today from Joe Grooming. The package contained one small canister of grooming compound, this white stuff that I put in my hair to make it behave because, yes, I Am A Giant Metrosexual Beast. Anyhow, that's not the important part. The important part is the packing material, pictured at left. I've never seen anything like this before. It's this hexagon-cut recycled brown paper. Makes an awesomely weird noise when you stretch it out. Very effective product, too. All the cushioning you could want for small items, with none of the reliance on fossil-fuel-derived materials that we've all come to expect in that department. I am oddly tickled by this. Tracy tried to make a hat out of it. Digby summarizes the character of Time Magazine's Joe Klein: Joe Klein is everything that is wrong with the allegedly liberal punditocrisy. His anachronistic establishment politics are wrongly seen by many, including many elected Democrats, as the "reasonable" middle ground for which we must strive in order to attract some ephemeral centrist voter who exists only in their imaginations. He is the embodiment of the now wholly irrelevant DLC experiment. With none of the down home common touch of Clinton or the earnest idealism of Gore, he is nothing but a big bowl of warmed over 90's centrist hype in a time where battles lines are by necessity, sharply drawn. He's the political equivalent of reruns of "Mad About You." I think that last line might just qualify as "hate speech". You know what's weird? For the past (almost) two weeks I've been thinking Pittsburgh. I've just assumed, yeah, the Steelers are going to win this. No problem. Yesterday, out of nowhere, I'm thinking, no, the Seahawks are taking this. Just a random thought crashing into my cranium. Seattle. No one sees it coming, and it's going to be Seattle. Weird. Update: OK, sorry, I'm still a tad "swimmy" this morning, as my Tracy likes to call it, so maybe I'm over-reacting, but is Bill Simmons fucking insane? Check out this graf (emphasis mine): When I was growing up in the mid-'70s, the Steelers, Raiders and Cowboys were the only NFL teams that mattered. They were the BMOCs. Now the Steel Curtain is back. And they did it in the second-best possible way -- three straight upsets on the road against the top three teams in the AFC (only a win in Foxborough would have been sweeter.) So how can anyone say this wasn't the best AFC representative? Maybe the Patriots were more talented this season, but the fact remains, they turned the football over five times against Denver ... a team that Pittsburgh obliterated a week later. Um, yeah, Bill. The Steelers beat the three top seeds in the AFC, but it definitely would have been sweeter if they had beat the Patriots because, well, you know...? (Please e-mail me if you know the answer to this.) And, sure, maybe the Patriots were more "talented" than Pittsburgh. Or even Seattle. Maybe Indy? Hell, let's just say, because we're making random unsupportable assertions, that the Patriots were the league's most "talented" team this year. Yep, them Patriots had all kinds of "talents". Funny how they didn't wind up going deep in the playoffs, then, wasn't it, Bill? Must've been some weird fluke, no? Ya fuckin' homer. Oh no... The worst Super Bowls were always the matchups that came out of nowhere -- like Tampa playing Oakland three years ago or Atlanta screwing up the inevitable Denver-Minnesota showdown in 1999. We never know what to do with these Super Bowls, simply because we weren't prepared for them. Or the Patriots being the turd in the 2001 punchbowl? You remember, the team that scored a total of three offensive touchdowns in as many playoff games? Well, I'll give Simmons this: He's got me genuinely excited for tomorrow's game. And that's what sports writers are supposed to do. Holy synchronicities, Batman! OK, so yesterday, over at Shakes' place, in what magically morphed into the funniest fucking comment thread in the history of the Blogosphere, a bunch of us are answering the Question of the Day (What are your biggest sexual/romantic turnoffs?), and Tart chimes in with some snark about how Vegans are really shitty in bed, right? Well this dude "Derek" goes completely monkey-fuck insane over this -- starts writing these comments that are like chapters from his upcoming work Mein Vegan-Kampf -- making bizarre declarations to the effect that one cannot simultaneously be a liberal/progressive and eat meat. Told us we were all no better than Freepers. Hilarity ensued. Oh, people, I'm tellin' ya: Shakers are, by and large, a kind and considerate lot, but prick them and they do bleed; flame them and they will show you whole new dimensions of the term 'ridicule'. Anyhow, here's the capper: I'm surfing about today, I go over to the Daou Report, and what is the first blog I see referenced? Meat-Eating Leftist. How weird is that, right? But wait, it gets better. What's the first post I see when I get there? This gem of a religion-bashing post, the text of which reads like it was stolen from my own cerebral cortex while I slept. I'm telling you, there's something in the air. I sense a good weekend coming up...
If you loathe Joe Lieberman -- and really, why wouldn't you? -- you should go to Lamont's website right now and sign up. That means you non-Nutmeggers too. I don't need to point out that this race has national significance. But, screw it, I will anyhow. Lieberman is the poster child for so much of what is wrong with today's Democratic party. A crypto-theocrat, a stubborn and unapologetic hawk, and all too often a sellout to corporate interests, Lieberman's biggest flaw transcends all those issues: He's a "FOX News" Democrat. When the right-wing noise machine needs someone to throw Howard Dean under the bus, stab his own party in the back, and give Bush political cover, they know Joe's their man. That's inexcusable, and that's why Joe must go. Back to the event. Democracy for Greater Hartford held this meet-and-greet at the Bertucci's in West Hartford (that's a restaurant chain, for those who don't know; they make a mean pizza). Not an ideal venue given the music and other ambient noise, the distraction of people ordering food and drink, and the arrangement of the two dozen attendees at one single long table. But, hey, what are you going to do? That was the night Ned could make it, and the organizer couldn't get the group's usual room at the West Hartford library. Tracy and I had already eaten dinner but, not wanting to make the other attendees feel uncomfortable, we figured we could at least do drinks. She ordered a nice shiraz and I had a couple of pints of Sam Adams Winter Ale. Always ready to take one for the team, that's us. This was our first DfGH event. I'm always mildly fascinated (wait, can a person be mildly fascinated?) to see what kind of people turn up at progressive political gatherings. One thing that has pretty much always held true is that I end up being the youngest person there, and this time was no exception. This did not surprise me so much when I was a twentysomething, but I'm thirty seven now. Come on, Generation Y. Get your friggin' act together. Anyhow, aside from that: The gender mix was roughly 60/40 between men and women. There was an older gentleman from our neck of the Shire looking the traditional hippie part, a nice pagan guy (so identified by the pentagram ring on his pinky finger), a handful of older suburbanites, and a few business-looking types (read: Men in suits). Everyone was friendly and talkative, a welcome change from the awkwardness that frequently runs beneath lefty political gatherings that I've been to. And then the Man of the Hour arrived. Physical impressions first. Lamont looked to be about average height, but with a very sleight build, particularly the really narrow shoulders. He has a reasonably handsome face and a full head of salt-and-pepper hair. Good, upright posture, not slouchy at all. Seemed comfortable in his skin. My take is, throw a suit on him with a better set of shoulder pads and he'll make a perfectly acceptable visual impression on people. And, let's face it, the bar in the "Better Looking Than Joe Lieberman" competition isn't set terribly high. As he walked in, Lamont noticed the stacks of bumper stickers, provided by our friends at DumpJoe.com, with slogans reading "Dump Joe!", "Joe Must Go!" and "Anti-War: Anti-Joe". He remarked that we needed to get some positive stuff out there, not just make this an "Anybody But Lieberman" campaign. I chuckled inwardly, thinking to myself, "Dude, the only reason you're here is because of the giant wave of anti-Lieberman sentiment that the Chinless Wonder has brought down on himself. Don't question it, just grab a surfboard and hop on for the ride." Because of the limitations of the venue, Lamont spent most of his time milling about, introducing himself to the various clusters of people along the table. He did speak to the entire group briefly, however, taking us through the key events which led him to believe that today's GOP required stronger, smarter, more principled opposition than Connecticut's wayward Democratic Senator was giving it. First among these was, of course, the Iraq war. Lamont claims that he was opposed to the idea from the beginning, a statement I found heartening given all the mealy-mouthed equivocation of the "I thought it was a good idea but then they messed it up" crowd. He didn't go into much detail on this topic, didn't link his opposition to the Iraq invasion to a broader take on the incompetent and deceitful way Bush has pursued the "war on terror" or a principled opposition to the notion of pre-emptive war. Then again, to be fair, this wasn't a stump speech so much as a handful of personal recollections. One of the other big turning points for him, Lamont told us, was the Terri Schiavo affair. He recalled his flabberghasted reaction to Lieberman's complicity in the GOP's decision to insert itself into the affairs of this one family. According to Lamont, Lieberman showed up on Meet the Press during the course of this hideous drama and said something to the effect of "I feel very strongly that, when there's any doubt in cases like this, the government must err on the side of life." In response to which Lamont thought to himself at the time, "Wait, this guy's pro-choice? Why does he want the government intruding in a decision like this?" (Having been unaware of Lieberman's take on the Schiavo controversy, I nevertheless took this revelation in stride, smoothly lowering my opinion of the man a few more floors deeper into Hell's sub-basement.) After this brief talk, Lamont came down to our end of the table to introduce himself. He was pleasant enough. Firm handshake, easy smile, etc. His one-on-one skills were... hmmmmm... adequate. He doesn't yet have the effortless, fully-engaged conversational style that more seasoned pols develop. Example: He was telling us how he'd recently talked to Howard Dean, and when he finished I said "Well, you know, Dean could use a few more allies in the Senate, instead of guys like Lieberman whose first instinct is to undercut him." And then there was this 2-second pause where Lamont was just looking at me, like he was cross-referencing the "Dean" and "Senate" and "Lieberman" files in his head and formulating a response. (Or perhaps thinking "Dude, you're a little old for a soul patch and earrings.") Finally, he comes back with something like "Yes, absolutely. Howard tells it like he sees it and we should respect that." I don't say this as a knock on the man. I imagine it takes time to adjust to perfect strangers lobbing opinions at you. Hopefully he can be a little quicker on his feet down the line is all I'm sayin'. A little while later, a large man with thinning blonde hair came by and introduced himself as Lamont's (not quite a) campaign (yet) manager. ("/bodyguard" I mentally appended.) I was well into my second pint of Voice Box Disinhibitor/Universal Lubricant, comfortably in that Zen space I get to around beers 3 through 6 where I can hold up my end of a conversation about quantum chromo-dynamics, run the table at nine ball, and defend myself against up to four simultaneous attackers. So I slipped the safety to "off" and went to town. "Have you guys talked to Weicker? Is he backing Ned or still thinking about running himself?" Yes, they recently spent an hour down at Weicker's place on the shore, and he's endorsed Lamont's run. He is, however, thinking of signalling to voters that, should Lieberman win the primary, he'll be ready to enter the general election as an independent. "That doesn't seem like such a great idea, strategy-wise. That could suppress turnout if people thought they had Weicker as a safety valve." (Noncommittal nod.) "Have you had any communication with the national party apparatus? Or are they basically pretending you don't exist?" Definitely pretending Lamont doesn't exist, and they don't dare push the matter because if the DNC gets dragged into it they'd pretty much be forced to officially back Lieberman. "What about prominent progressive bloggers? Are you working with them to nationalize this? Bring in donations from out-of-state?" (Note: I thought about using the term "netroots" but the more I rolled it around, the more dorky it felt.) Yes, they have every intention of leaning on blogs big and small to get the word out. Noted that Kos has been talking up the race several times a week, and that MyDD is planning to do a feature of sorts on Lamont soon. "Ah. Very well then. Good work. Carry on." (I didn't really say that last part. It was more of a brief, awkward silence where he thought "Are you through?" and I thought "Yep, I'm out.") Overall, my feeling walking out to the car was that Lamont seemed credible enough to sign on with, and that he might just have what it takes to pull it off come August. Not that I know a fucking a thing about making that judgement, as my direct experience with campaigns clocks in at -- let's see, when did we leave? -- ninety minutes. Still, for what it's worth, he seemed like a good guy, said the right things, and, oh yeah, he's got van-loads of his own cash to help make this happen. What I'm really looking forward to now is seeing him give an actual speech and finding out how he comes across on television. That opportunity should come soon enough, I hope. In the meanwhile, I consider myself enlisted in the Lamont Army and stand ready to do my part kicking Lieberbutt. Wanted to follow up on my patent outburst the other day. My buddy the Vanilla Maq suggested the following possibility in comments: [C]ompanies sometimes file patents as a defensive strategy. What you are trying to avoid is some 'little guy' patenting emoticons and suing Cingular figuring he can get a big settlement. You want to make sure you can use them, not stop someone else from using them. So here's an idea: Why not create a legal device along the lines of a reverse patent? Basically, this would follow the patent application process, only the applicant would seek to document that the idea/concept/process in question exists in the public domain, has existed there for x number of years, and that it is in wide use. If the application was approved, it would effectively prohibit anyone else from filing an exclusive patent on that same thing. Last night I was reading the chapter in Al Franken's The Truth about the Terri Schiavo affair. I thought I knew the full extent of the GOP leadership's despicable behavior during those events. Turns out that, in Tom DeLay's case, I didn't know the half of it. Here's an extended passage: In 1988, DeLay, along with his mother, his aunt, and the rest of the family, decided not to take extraordinary measures to prolong the life of Tom's father, Charles Ray DeLay. Charles had been critically injured in a freak accident when his home-built backyard tram jumped the track and slammed into a tree. According to Tom's aunt JoAnne, doctors told the family that Charles would "basically be a vegetable." "Tom knew -- we all knew -- his father wouldn't have wanted to live that way." Tom's mother, Maxine DeLay, told the Times. The family decided not to connect Charles to a dialysis machine, and he passed away on December 14, 1988, with his family by his side. In marked contrast to the Schiavo case, Tom DeLay never accused the DeLay family of "an act of barbarism," "medical terrorism," "murder," or "homicide." He did, however, join his family's lawsuit against the maker and the distributor of a faulty coupling that had contributed to the accident. The lawsuit was settled in 1993 for $250,000, and Tom signed over his portion to his mother. Three years later, DeLay cosponsored a bill to override state product liability laws like the one cited in DeLay v. Midcap Bearing Corp and Lovejoy, Inc., part of his career-long campaign to defend corporations from "predatory, self-serving litigation" brought by trial lawyers who "get fat off the pain" of plaintiffs and the "hard work" of defendants. These "frivolous, parasitic lawsuits" had to stop. Thankfully, President Clinton vetoed the bill. He said it "tilts against American families and would deprive them of the ability to recover fully when they are injured by a defective product," like a home-built backyard tram. I relate this story to serve as a reminder: The people we're fighting are not garden-variety corrupt politicians. They're monsters. They have no conscience, no sense of ethics or justice or fairness, no pity and no remorse. The "movement" conservatives who have their boot on this nation's throat might as well be an army of Tom DeLays, grinning sadists who give fuck-all about playing by the rules or doing the right thing. Remember that fact when you find yourself furious at the Democrats. They are disappointing. They are a bunch of listless screw-ups. But the enemy they're trying to deal with also has them at a distinct unfair disadvantage. Fighting monsters is damn hard work, and most people simply aren't equal to the task. So I get home a few minutes ago, and as I'm walking through the dining room to go put away my briefcase, I catch a cylindrical object in my peripheral vision sitting on our dining room table. I turn to look, and it is a bottle of Laphroaig, the world's finest single-malt Scotch whisky (IMHO). As I had run out of this briny, peaty, spell-binding nectar of the gods over the holidays, I was immediately suffused with happiness to see a fresh bottle had found its way to our household. But whence had it come, and why? This most prized of all beverages is not inexpensive, after all. I suspected my dear wife Tracy had made this discretionary purchase on my behalf, but I could not fathom her motives. "???" I asked her. "I thought you should have it for when we celebrate!" she replied, her eyes sparkling with joy. "Celebrate... ?" I queried. "Today is the third anniversary of our first 'official' date." Tracy answered. Ah yes. It was, in fact, three years ago this day that we took to the snowy streets of Springfield and Longmeadow, Massachussetts on our way to our first dinner together as an item, Tracy having judiciously concluded mere days before that, yes, we would be more than just friends. My life has been on an uninterrupted upward trajectory ever since. Happy Anniversary, Princess. I am the Luckiest. (...I just got verklempt...) Would whoever is running that BlogAd with the mutant Tom DeLay/Roy Blunt face please stop? That is some seriously disgusting and disturbing shit. It's like the GOP Elephant Man. Fuck you, Dubya. You fucking liar. |
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Ladies and Gentlemen, we have got a keeper here for you this weekend. Damn! Three straight weeks I've been eyeing 
Switching gears entirely, let's take a look at 
So, decided to revisit 
Decided to go Old School this weekend, revisiting Mackeson Triple Stout, which was one of my favorite beers back in the old Holmes & Watson days, when I first began exploring the wide world of beer in earnest. (H & W is a pub in Troy, NY, that, in the late eighties/early nineties had an unrivalled beer selection -- over three hundred types typically in stock, both in draft and bottles.)
OK, this might be the most inane post I've ever committed to the bits and bytes of the blogosphere, but I had to share.
Last night, Tracy and I went to the "Meet Ned Lamont" event in West Hartford. 
