And oh yeah, I almost forgot...

I'm writing Gawker at night again this week. They asked me back, amazingly. Come over and say hi!

Quote of the week

College grads don't deserve to be feted by celebrities, or honored, or lifted up with inspiring words. They deserve to be BROUGHT THE FUCK DOWN BY THE CRUSHING WEIGHT OF REAL LIFE'S BITTER DISAPPOINTMENTS. They deserve a stern lecture from someone like me, who is NOT famous, NOT inspiring, and NOT attractive to look at.

I bet you grads had one hell of a spring, didn't you? Oh, I bet you spent your whole spring taking a miniscule courseload, lounging on blankets outside on the quad, fucking each other, drinking your gay little Twisted Teas... I bet you even smoked pot on Wednesday morning, just for the hell of it. I bet you just had the time of your fucking lives the past four years, didn't you?

YOU MAKE ME SICK.

Guess what, fuckos? Party's over. You're out of college now, and your parents are now too poor to nurse you through grad school. No more fantasy life for you. No more ice luges. No more intellectual discourse. No more ripe teenage pussy. That's all over now. YOU ARE FUCKED. Your days will now consist of searching for a job in a marketplace where no available job of any sort fucking exists. Your commencement speaker will probably tell you your class "faces enormous challenges," or some bullshit euphemism like that. This is a lie. A challenge is something you can overcome. You, on the other hand, are completely, unavoidably fucked. You're not going to cure cancer. You're not going to stop wars. You're not going to save the planet. If you're lucky, you may stumble upon a $2 coupon for Honey Nut Cheerios one day. That will be about it.

Otherwise, you are entering a world that is running out of money, a world that will slowly choke itself to death unless it somehow stumbles upon a miraculously clean, cheap energy source that has yet to be invented and almost certainly never will be. Ten years from now, your degree will be 1/100th as useful as a fucking life vest. So wipe that nauseating smile off your faces and heed now this glimpse into your very near future…

-My buddy Drew Magary writes a commencement address to the nation's graduates each year over at Deadspin, and he nailed it once again. Seriously, go read it...it'll make your fucking day.

I'll be somewhere else for the next few days

All this week I'm filling in for Ryan Tate on the night shift at Gawker, so I'll be posting infrequently here, but posting a lot over there, so come over and say hi.

Rachael Ray's corn porn

Now, one of the nice things about having a moderately read blog is getting all sorts of fun stuff sent in from readers via the emails. Now, with that said, you people have failed me, because for some reason months have gone by without anyone bring this to my attention...



Just try harder next time, OKAY!

"Sexual Healing" performed by the Hot 8 Brass Band

These guys do a pretty fucking fantastic rendition of one of the greatest songs ever recorded...



Have a great weekend! And thanks for sending this over Logan!

It's just about time for Michael Arnone's 2009 New Jersey Crawfish Festival!

Oh yes! It's that time of year again. The 2009 Crawfish Fest is almost upon us. Since I've moved to New York, this is something I look forward to each year. It's like a mini-Jazz Fest, filled with great musicians and bands from Louisiana, not to mention all the restaurants from back home that make the trek up to serve their gumbo, boudin, etoufee, jambalaya, fried alligator, pralines...I could on and on and on...and, oh yeah, thousands of pounds of succulent BOILED CRAWFISH!

This is from the official festival press release...

Over the past 20 years Michael Arnone's Crawfish Fest has become one of the most exciting events on the summer festival circuit, presenting a cornucopia of Louisiana music, food and related culture. The 20th Annual Crawfish Fest, scheduled for Saturday May 30 and Sunday May 31, at the Sussex County Fairgrounds, Augusta, New Jersey, will showcase a stellar collection of award-winning Louisiana musicians, including several headline acts from the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

Four stages (three of which are under cover) will feature 24 Bands playing New Orleans Funk, New Orleans R&B, Delta Blues, Brass, Cajun and Zydeco. Multiple Best of the Beat and Big Easy award winners Bonerama and the incredibly hot Big Sam's Funky Nation will bring the irresistible dance grooves of New Orleans' brass band sound to the Jager Pavilion Stage. However, that's not all. Two of the best solo artists currently working in New Orleans, the incredible vocalist John Boutte and one of the city's greatest songwriters, Paul Sanchez, will join forces for what is sure to be an unforgettable performance.

Known as the single most important Louisiana and New Orleans Style Music, Food and Camping festival north of the Mason Dixon line, the Crawfish Fest features an assortment of New Orleans fare including boiled crawfish with corn and potatoes, pork sausage and chicken Jambalaya, grilled alligator sausage, Shrimp Creole, Fried Catfish, raw oysters, Po-Boys and more. Festival enthusiasts, who prefer a more traditional menu, may choose from grilled Portabella mushroom sandwiches, vegetarian Red Beans, burgers, hot dogs, ice cream, fruit cups, sno-balls and other desserts. All dishes are $8.00 or less.

You can check the musical lineup and view the menu and buy tickets to the festival at their official website, www.crawfishfest.com. And they have drunken shuttle buses that run from Port Authority to the fairgrounds!

And here's a short video from the festival three years ago to give you a taste...



Aw Jesus this can't get here fast enough! I might just live on the fairgrounds for the entire weekend this year.

(click on the poster to enlarge it)

Quote of the day

Glenn Beck is Fox 3.0. The sheer variety of his tics—weeping, clowning, etc. (for a video sampler, click here)—make him appear more a performer than a news broadcaster. But the effect is to convince his few critical viewers that he's a human performer, thereby obscuring the reality that he isn't human at all.

Our brief tour through the world of Artificial Intelligence has surely enabled you to spot the giveaway that this commentary is computer-generated. It lies in the high frequency of words expressing an exaggerated sense of disaffection: "trouble," "trust," "lying." Other words Beck favors: "socialism," "slavery," "destroy," and "confiscate." Clearly Fox News has some sort of Web crawler trolling hard-right Web sites to compile their newest bot's vocabulary. Another clue is Beck's face, which resembles the exaggeratedly pink and rounded human faces generated by Pixar's state-of-the-art computer animators. Pixar can design convincing-looking robots, but its people remain highly stylized. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Fox subcontracted to Pixar the visual component to its Beck software. Yet another clue is Beck's recent statement, in a New York Times profile, that he identifies with Howard Beale, the news anchor played by Peter Finch who cracks up on air in Network. In Beale's climactic speech in the film, he says: "We'll tell you any shit you want to hear." What better definition of what chatbots do best?

However they did it, my hat's off to Fox. For 59 years the world has waited for a machine that could pass the Turing test in some definitive, inarguable way. Fox News has done it. Let me be the first to nominate Roger Ailes for the unclaimed Loebner grand prize of $100,000. Can a Nobel be far behind?

-Slate's Timothy Noah takes a hard look at Glenn Beck.

Artie Lange on Bob Uecker's use of the "cough button" and Harry Caray's hallucinations

Last night Norm Macdonald was the guest on the Late Show with David Letterman. On the show, he shared a story about his friend Bob Uecker, which was funny, but it reminded me of another funnier story about Uecker that Artie Lange told on the show a couple of months ago. It's pretty great...

Morning links 5/8/09

-A student at a Pennsylvania Christian college has been booted from school for doing gay porn to pay his tuition. (Fox News)

-New Orleans appears to be a lock to host the Super Bowl in 2013. (Nola.com)

-New York teenagers basically tell Bristol Palin to shut the fuck up and go back to Wasilla, Alaska. (ABC)

-The nationwide manhunt for the Wesleyan killer has come to an end. (New York Times)

-That Drew Peterson dude whose wives keep dying has been arrested for the murder of his third one. (MSNBC)

-Can In-N-Out burger survive and maintain its quality of product if it expands? (LA Times)

-The family of a 6-year old who disappeared thirty years ago in downtown NYC now think they know what happened to him. (New York Magazine)

-The CIA says that Nancy Pelosi was fully briefed on the torture of suspected terrorists. (Washington Post)

-A UK man thinks that an addiction to energy drinks caused his son to commit suicide. (Daily Mail)

-The WHO is still saying that up to two billion people could get swine flu. (Breitbart)

-Dick Cheney doesn't think there's anything wrong with the current state of the Republican party. (Politico)

America's leading conservatives are shocked and appalled over Obama's lust for fancy, elitist condiments, among other things

There's just so much all-around nuttiness going on with the right wing today, it's almost mind-boggling. Let's review...

-Just about every conservative "thinker" under the sun is bloviating all over the place over the fact that Obama ordered a cheeseburger and asked them to hold the ketchup and add dijon mustard to it. No, seriously. Apparently "Real Americans" slather ketchup on their burgers and hold the mustard. For the record, I prefer neither. I'm a mayo man you see! Does that make me a commie too? Anyway, Jason Linkins at HuffPo has a nice roundup of video and audio clips from the usual suspects expressing outrage. This is what it's come to.

-My old buddy Joe the Plumber announced today in Time Magazine that he's leaving the Republican party to join the Aryan Nation or something. Who knows?

-And just when you thought they couldn't embarrass themselves even more, the Republicans in the Senate released this new promotional video today to scare every Bubba under the sun into believing that Obama's closing of Guantanomo Bay will result in terrorists blowing up the nation's local VFW halls...


(via Wonkette)

Just fucking embarrassing.

The rapping flight attendant almost makes me want to book a Southwest Airlines flight right now!

So that's what DJ Jazzy Jeff is doing these days...



Thanks for sending this over Molly!

The deep purple bruise on my shoulder and the Manny Ramirez story that wasn't

So last night I ventured out into the rain (Seriously, it's like fucking Seattle around here these days!) to have a couple of drinks with my buddy A.J. Daulerio, he of Deadspin.com and cookie sheet to the face fame. We met at this joint near his apartment in Carroll Gardens called the Zombie Hut, where we sat for a few hours bullshitting around and watching the NBA playoffs. Over the course of the three hours or so we were there, we each put down a half dozen or so of the Zombie Hut's signature concoction, the appropriately named "Zombie," and at the end of the night, A.J. convinced me to get down into a three-point stance on the wet sidewalk and attempt to take out a parking meter with my shoulder. Now, before I go any further, I should note that he, A.J., does this sort of shit all the time. If I had a dollar for each time I've heard Daulerio say, "hey Cajun Boy...how bout you shot-put that ATM machine through the window," I'd have a few hundred bucks, but this time, on this night, I, with my capacity for rational thought somewhat impaired, decided to appease him, so I took on the parking meter. Twice. And I failed both times. I mean, they must really reinforce those things these days because it didn't even budge! But hey, I do have a lovely shoulder contusion to show for it today!

Convinced that I wasn't giving it my best effort, A.J. also attempted to take out the parking meter, an effort that proved as equally futile as my own. I even snapped this blurry photo of his failed attempt on my Blackberry...



My point in telling you all of this is to make mention of the fact that in all of the time we hung out together getting hosed and generally acting like idiots, not once did A.J. mention that he was was this close to breaking a major story about Manny Ramirez using steroids. But then the news broke today that Major League Baseball was suspending Ramirez for failing a drug test, and A.J. subsequently came forward with his story.

Now, I'm not sure what I'm more pissed about...the fact that I finally succumbed to Daulerio's relentless peer pressure, or that he never made mention of his Manny Ramirez scoop the entire night, but regardless, his story is a great read and I highly suggest you go over to Deadspin to check it out.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin loves to take family vacations paid for by city vendors

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, noted lover of pussy and guns and one of the most unpopular elected officials in the history of American politics, is in deep shit again. Surprise! You see, Nagin had this guy, Greg Meffert, who was the city's chief technology officer. Meffert, while employed by the Mayor's office, was also doing work for a tech firm called Netmethods. Netmethods outfitted Meffert with a corporate credit card. That's where the fun starts. From Nola.com...

Mayor Ray Nagin has said he remembers only one trip paid for by his former tech chief Greg Meffert, a 2004 family vacation to Hawaii, but records show the mayor and his family flew first-class to Jamaica in November 2005 on Meffert's vendor-provided credit card.

The cost of the airfare to Montego Bay for Nagin, his wife Seletha, their sons Jeremy and Jarin, and daughter Tianna was $6,532 -- all covered by technology contractor NetMethods.

Unlike the Hawaii trip, there's no evidence that Meffert or his family accompanied the Nagins to Jamaica.

The newly exposed credit card records are a part of a civil lawsuit in which NetMethods' competitors allege unethical favoritism by the Nagin administration.

Separately, the FBI is investigating possible influence-peddling in City Hall in an inquiry that appears to be centered on Meffert and Mark St. Pierre, who ran NetMethods as well as Imagine and Veracent, two small firms that got the bulk of the city's technology work while Meffert was chief technology officer.

When asked last week about other trips paid for by NetMethods, Nagin said he remembered taking only one trip with Meffert -- the one to Hawaii.

"There's some other charges on a credit card statement that suggest I may have taken" another trip, Nagin told WVUE-TV. "But nobody can verify that."

Ha! There's something almost admirable in Nagin's brazen "fuck you bitches now pay me" attitude toward the whole thing. He just doesn't give a shit anymore. Personally, I think he may actually be slowly going insane, but then again, he never really was all there to begin with.

Shaq wants to do unspeakable things to Krispy Kreme donuts

You see, there's lots of famous people who coulod have made this video and it would have been funny. It would have been funny because certainly all of us can relate to a lust for a Krispy Kreme or any other forbidden culinary fruit, especially when that lust is set to a Mariah Carey tune. But it's Shaq's facial expressions that really sell this. I mean, I can feel his pain here, and that is why I laughed all the way through it...

Quote of the day

I recall being told, when I first moved to Los Angeles and was living on an isolated beach, that the Indians would throw themselves into the sea when the bad wind blew. I could see why. The Pacific turned ominously glossy during this period, and one woke in the night troubled not only by the peacocks screaming in the olive trees but by the eerie absence of surf. The heat was surreal. The sky had a yellow cast, the kind of light sometimes called "earthquake weather." My only neighbor would not come out of her house for days, and there were no lights at night, and her husband roamed the place with a machete. One day he would tell me that he had heard a trespasser, the next a rattlesnake.

"On nights like that," Raymond Chandler once wrote, "every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen." That was the kind of wind it was. I did not know then that there was any basis for the effect it had on all of us, but it turns out to be another of those cases in which science bears out folk wisdom. A few years ago an Israeli physicist discovered that not only during such winds, but for the ten or twelve hours which precede them, the air carries an unusually high ratio of positive to negative ions. No one seems to know exactly why that should be; some talk about friction and others suggest solar disturbances. In any case the positive ions are there, and what an excess of positive ions does, in the simplest terms, is make people unhappy. One cannot get much more mechanistic than that.

-Joan Didion.

The hot winds are blowing around in southern California again, and even though I've never lived there, there's something that excites me about that.

Sarah Palin is going to murder Mitt Romney

So some Palin fanboy made this video. I have nothing else to add other than to say it's going to be hella fun watching these two epic tools rip each other shreds over the next few years...

Morning links 5/7/09

-David Simon, creator of The Wire and Treme, is really becoming a bit of an insufferable blowhard with his crusade against bloggers and the internet. (Gawker)

-Kelly Ripa has a cock growing out of her belly button. (Dorothy Mantooth)

-SNL's Will Forte feels funnier when he has a fake mustache on (who doesn't?). (Starpulse)

-Pressure is building for David Vitter to drop his little hissy fit over Obama's FEMA nominee. (Nola.com)

-What the fuck is up with the Mormons baptising Obama's dead mother into their faith? (Wonkette)

-Wildfires are spreading through southern California again. (NBCLA)

-Oprah basically caused a nationwide riot with her little KFC promotion. (Gawker)

-The guy who oversaw the recovery of New Orleans for the past 2 1/2 years post Katrina is leaving his post. (New York Times)

VISA is hungry so you'd better feed it with ridiculous American consumption damnit!

My internet buddy Peter Atencio directed this fake VISA ad and it's wonderful...

VISA is Hungry! - watch more funny videos

On use of the word "retarded"

Recently I've had a couple of people make note of the fact that they don't like it when I use the word "retarded" in reference to certain people and their actions, as they view this word as a slight to people with mental disabilities. Personally, I don't feel that way (obviously!). I mean, I don't think I've ever referred to someone who was mentally challenged as "retarded." Maybe as a kid trying to be cool, but never as an adult. It's just not a word I would use in that regard. It lacks sympathy, which is what people who have been stricken with mental disabilities through no fault of their own deserve...lots and lots of sympathy.

Like, I can't imagine applying that word to someone with a mental disability in a normal conversation. Let's say I had a friend who recently gave birth to a child with Down's Syndrome. I couldn't even begin to think about calling up a mutual friend I shared with that person and saying, "did you hear about Maude...she had a retarded baby!" I mean, it's just not something I would say. It's just so 1950s or something, a word from a throwback time where the mentally handicapped were institutionalized and lobotomized with regularity and few people thought twice about it. The word "retarded" is not one that I connect in my mind with mentally handicapped people. It is, however, a word I connect with "normal" people who do and say incredibly stupid things. And I suppose Google does as well because when I checked an online dictionary for an updated definition of the word, take a look at the Google ad that popped up next to it...



Look, I've never really understood why people get their panties in such a wad over some words, I mean they're just words for Christ's sake, but, in fairness, I do understand how some words can evoke visceral reactions. I just never felt that the word "retarded" was one of them. If someone wants to take a shot at convincing me otherwise, go right ahead...my mind is always open. Until then, don't be surprised if you see me use the word "retarded" in reference to Joe the Plumber, Sarah Palin, and a host of others. So there.

(UPDATE: Commenter "KJT" points out that Dan Savage has heard the same gripe from his readers.)

Bristol Palin on fucking: "It will ruin your life with amazing blessings from JESUS!"

So Bristol hit the morning talk show circuit today in her role as the nation's newly appointed "fucking is very, VERY bad" spokesperson to tell the world how awful fornication is because you can get knocked the fuck up and then have your life showered with "blessings" from JESUS when the cock-gangsta you're boning blasts your box full of his gooey, gross baby-batter! It's just like, so awful and gross and all, but like, so amazing at the same time.

The below clip alone is so chalk full of contradictions and hypocrisies that I truly wouldn't know where to begin if I had time to dissect it, which I don't because I'm running out the door in a sec for a meeting, so you'll have to figure them all out on your own self! But guess what? Remember how Bristol told Greta that abstinence was unrealistic? Well she was taken out of context when she said all that nonsense, naturally.

Can't you just see Bristol at home being beat down by Sarah and Todd? "YOU'RE MAMA WANTS TO BE PRESEEEDENT, SO GET YOUR SLUTY ASS OUT THERE AND REPENT YOUR SINS OF THE FLESH YOUNG LADY!"

And now here we have an eerily robotic Bristol on GMA with Chris Cuomo looking as though she just emerged from weeks in a subterranean bunker where Sean Hannity, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, and, of course, her bat-shit crazy mother, offered their "suggestions" as to how Bristol should proceed going forward...



Later on in the morning, Bristol also appeared on the Today Show with Matt Lauer, this time with creepy-ass Todd Palin by her side! RUH-ROH, Bristol must have been on the verge of saying something she wasn't supposed to!

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I just wish that someone would've asked her this one question..."So Bristol, whose idea was this abstinence tour anyway?"

Quote of the day

There has been almost nothing in the way of punishment of the major figures responsible for this crisis. If there were a real correlation between public anger and government policy, we’d have seen at least something in that area. Maybe there wouldn’t have been public floggings, but there would have been some serious frog-marching of unscrupulous assholes to prison. And this isn’t about vengeance, it’s about policy: if the “consequence” for blowing a $4 trillion hole in the economy is seeing masses of government officials line up to hurl billions of taxpayer dollars at you, that doesn’t provide much of an incentive to fix your behavior. This is one area where there should have been a seamless melding of public outrage and government policy: we should have swooped in, rounded up 200 of the most guilty executives, hauled them before congress in a public trial, and packed them all off to a Supermax in Florence, Colorado to do real time with murderers, rapists and terrorists. Reality shows should have been quickly greenlighted to track their progress in the hole (can you imagine the ratings for a show called Project D-Block starring John Thain, Angelo Mozilo and Dick Fuld?). All joking aside, this would have been an incredibly healthy step for our society to take — just as it would have been healthy (and still might be) for someone to go to jail for torture during the Bush years, or for contracting fraud in Iraq, or for any of the other countless crimes committed this past decade that will almost certainly go unpunished. The social contract has to be considered broken when some dumb schmuck can go to jail for five real years for selling a bag of weed while a guy who went to Harvard and Wharton and had all possible advantages gets nothing but a bailout and a temporarily lowered bonus regime for destroying billions of dollars of public wealth.

-Matt Taibbi

Susan Boyle performing "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar in 1984

Okay, look, I'm about burnt out on this whole Susan Boyle phenomenon, but this thing has surfaced and I can't stop myself from posting it, if only because it reminds me of a thousand weddings I've attended at the VFW in my hometown for some reason...

Picture of the day

This pic of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal made up in clown face comes from this awesome gallery of modern Republican leaders on Flickr some nice person took the time to put together. In fairness it should be noted that there are a shitload of Democrats who are well-deserving of the same treatment. Chris Dodd anyone? Harry Reid perhaps?



If only there was a David Vitter pic in that gallery, it'd be perfect! But the Michele Bachmann almost makes up for it!

Happy National Day to Prevent Teenage Pregnancy Day everybody!

Did you know that today was National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy day? I didn't! Not until I heard who the holiday's new official spokesperson was...



Bristol Palin! From the AP...

Unwed mother Bristol Palin is going to take part in a national campaign to help raise awareness for teen pregnancy prevention.

The 18-year-old daughter of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has been appointed as a Teen Ambassador for The Candie's Foundation.

Bristol Palin will participate in a town hall meeting Wednesday in New York.

New York?!?! Don't they know about all the elitist faggots in that town who fuck each other IN THE BUTTHOLE? Why aren't they holding this sort of event in a shitty slice of Americana where teen pregnancy actually runs rampant like, oh, I don't know, WASILLA, ALASKA?!

Poor Bristol. Am I the only one who has a feeling that she wanted nothing to do with this but was coerced into it by, ugh, SOME CRAZY LADY?

Sarah: Hey Bristol, will you come here for a second?

Bristol: Yeah ma. What's up?

Sarah: Bristol I've signed you up to be the celebrity spokesperson for National Day to Prevent Teenage Pregnancy. You'll be flying to New York on the 6th of May. You'll be there to extoll the virtues of abstinence.

Bristol: But Mom, remember when I told that creepy Fox News lady that abstinence wasn't a realistic option for preventing pregnancy? I just don't...

Sarah: (Interrupts, reaches down into pantsuit) GODDAMIT BRISTOL DON'T MAKE ME BEAT YOU DOWN WITH MY ENORMOUS COCK!!!

Bristol: Ok mom. I'll go.

But you know what's really ripe about all this? Candies, the company responsible for sponsoring this whole thing, currently has photos of chastity-challenged poptart Britney Spears wearing their clothes plastered all over its website, and promotes it's products with sexually-provocative ads like this one...



The only way this could possibly be any better would if Derek Dye the Abstinence Clown were performing at the event Bristol's scheduled to appear at...



Hell, I might even have to show up if HE'S there!

Morning links 5/6/09

-The fears that many had about Rupert Murdoch dumbing down the Wall Street Journal may be coming to fruition. (Columbia Journalism Review)

-The Obama team may seek to disbar the Bush Justice Department officials who crafted the torture memos rather than seek criminal prosecutions. (New York Times)

-A newspaper takes a look at the effect that allowing comments on the news stories posted to their website has had on their business. (SF Gate)

-HBO has definitively purchased nine episodes of David Simon's New Orleans-based show, Treme. (Nikki Finke)

-It looks like Jon of Jon and Kate Plus Eight fame is indeed having an affair. (Just Jared)

-A bailout plan for the New York MTA looks to be a go, saving residents from overly ridiculous fare increases. (WCBS)

-Conservative talk show host Michael Savage is pissed about being banned in the UK so he's...wait for it...calling for a boycott of all travel to the UK! (SF Gate)

-The gay marriage opposing Miss California has no qualms with posing topless. (The Dirty)

-Remember that low-flying Air Force One flight over NYC for a photo op? The White House doesn't plan on using any of the pics. (New York Post)

-Oprah is giving away free KFC to her viewers, which is kinda like someone with lung cancer giving away Lucky Strikes, isn't it? (Oprah.com)

-Brett Favre is thinking about coming out of retirement again. (Deadspin)

-Have a look at the result of the country's first face transplant operation. (Breitbart)

-That "hipster grifter" broad was finally arrested so maybe this will end the internet frenzy over her. (Gawker)

The NRA's gifting of an "all-white assault weapon" to Sarah Palin is sure to inspire trillions of redneck ejaculations

So Sarah Palin is kinda hot, though in a distinctly suburban America big hair/wears way too much makeup/MILF-y slut kinda way, but still, kinda hot (don't lie...you'd TOTALLY bone her!) She also revels in shooting ferocious Alaskan creatures like bears and wolves and MOOSES for chili-makin', when she's not beating them down with her enormous cock that is, because that's what "real American" maverick-y broads like ole Sarah do.

Sarah Palin, proud member of the simpleton peasantry, exuder of Titanic incompetence as an elected official, hero to millions because she's fuckable with your dick AND happens to enjoy shooting things. God bless America!

This is, of course, the singular reason millions of this nation's finest rootin'-tootin', "real American" dolts marched on down to the polls to vote for her and that creepy old guy in November of 2008. This is also the singular reason why Sarah Palin, rather than fade away quietly into the glorious technicolor sunset of failed American political duncery, just like so many others who dared to dream to reach for the shining stars only to land on the dark side of a shit-filled moon, still exists as a viable candidate to take the Republican nomination in 2012, as evidenced by the seemingly never-ending bukkake party held in her honor by the wingnut faction of the right wing, the so-called "base" of the party...

The National Rifle Association Foundation will present Sen. John McCain's ill-fated running mate with a military-style assault weapon next week. The all-white "Alaskan Hunter" - fashionable until Labor Day - is the civilian version of a modified M-4 rifle carried by U.S. troops overseas.

Alaska's feisty Republican governor, who is weighing a potential 2012 presidential bid, will receive the rifle made by Templar Consulting at a May 14 NRA banquet. It's engraved with Palin's name and adorned with a map of the state on the collapsible stock - made legal after the expiration of the assault weapons ban in 2004. The Big Dipper from the state flag is etched on the magazine well behind a vented barrel guard.

The rifle is chambered in .50-caliber "Beowulf." It's the same caliber used by heavy machine guns, which can take down big game, and in war zones "can disable both motor vehicles and assailants with body armor," according to ammo manufacturer Alexander Arms' Web site.

My favorite part of this story has to be the fact that the gun is "all-white." The article offers no real explanation as to what that's all about, and my only guess is that there's some sort of symbolism going on here, but I'll leave it up to all of you to draw your own conclusions as to what exactly that is.

(UPDATE: A couple of folks have suggested that the all-white rifle might have something to do with all the snow in Alaska. Whatever.)

Quote of the day III

The brilliance of The Girlfriend Experience — and I think, as slapdash as it is, it might be brilliant — is that is set during the exact time this whole delicate ecosystem was turned on its head: Right after the economic collapse last fall. Suddenly, no one wants to talk to Chelsea — and they always, always want to talk to Chelsea — about their wives or their work stresses or their fear of abandonment. They want to talk about their money, and how little of it is left. Their entire worlds, their whole value systems, have been blown apart, and their sessions with Chelsea are more like therapy for post traumatic stress syndrome. (As you’re probably guessing, this isn’t exactly the sexiest movie ever made.) The parallel story with Chelsea’s trainer boyfriend is the same thing: A client invites him on a private plane to Las Vegas for a Boy’s Weekend Out, but they spend most of the time debating the economy and the election, realizing that this sort of life cannot last much longer. Vegas is not a playland here: It is an oasis about to fade. This is a film about our time, right now: We’ve based the whole structure of everything we do on transaction and profit, and that has all been obliterated. This movie takes place before the dust has settled, when we’re hanging on to what we have while we can. It’s a period piece from six months ago. Sure Chelsea’s clients can cling to her now … but how much longer will they be able to afford her? How much longer will she able to afford them?

-My buddy Will Leitch, he of the cookie sheet incident, has written an excellent review of the new Steven Soderbergh film, The Girlfriend Experience, which stars hipster porn Goddess Sasha Grey, she of the "eat more pineapple if you want girls to swallow your cum" fame. Prior to reading this, I'd no real desire to see this film, but now I want to see it. You can see the trailer for the film here.

"WWOZ" by Better Than Ezra

Since I've been listening to this song on a loop all day, I suppose this is as good a time as any to mention that my friends from back home who comprise the band Better Than Ezra are releasing a new album, Paper Empire, next week, May 12th to be precise. They are also touring again! And I promise that if you've never seen these guys live you're truly missing something. They're a fun live band to see perform. Check dates and locales on their Myspace page or their website.

Kinda sadly, longtime drummer Travis McNabb left the band to be the fulltime drummer for the country group Sugarland. But alas, the world spins madly on.

Anyway, this song is one of my favorites that it seems few people outside of the band's core fanbase have ever heard. WWOZ is blues/jazz station that broadcasts out of New Orleans, and this song just sort of evokes that lazy comfort so palpable in life down there, a life spent swinging on the porch on a hot summer afternnons, drinking beers, bullshitting with friends, and frequently kissing the pretty girl you've got your arm around. You know, the good life...



WWOZ is on in stereo
A string of flowers haloed around your head
Candle light
Ceiling fan
Curtains blow away and back again
Back again
Don't wake me, I think I'm in a dream

Quote of the day II

You know that sinking feeling you get when you open your e-mail and discover hundreds of messages you need to respond to—that realization that e-mail has become another merciless chore in your day? That's how I began to feel about my reader. RSS readers encourage you to oversubscribe to news. Every time you encounter an interesting new blog post, you've got an incentive to sign up to all the posts from that blog—after all, you don't want to miss anything. Eventually you find yourself subscribed to hundreds of blogs, many of which, you later notice, are completely useless. It's like having an inbox stuffed with e-mail from overactive listservs you no longer care to read.

A year or so ago, I dumped RSS and began to look for a new way of reading stuff online. Eventually I found a system that works much better for me: bookmarks, browser tabs, and the middle mouse button. My technique allows me to scour the Web for great stuff far more efficiently—and with less guilt and more fun—than I could from the dull outpost of my RSS reader.

-Salon's Farhad Manjoo grew tired of his RSS feed and developed his own system.

A few months back I did something similar to what Manjoo describes in his piece. As a voracious consumer of online content, I often found myself daunted and a bit overwhelmed by my RSS feed after I'd been away from it for a few hours, and reading blogs posts through Google reader just didn't have the same feel. Something felt missing about it, and I guess it was at that point that I came to fully realize that there's something to be said for the atmospheric element of reading a blog post on the actual site it's posted on. It's kind of like drinking bourbon in your living room as opposed to a country bar with a pool table and a juke box. Sure, it's the same bourbon from the same bottle from the same distillery in Kentucky, but the bourbon just seems to taste better in the country bar with the pool table and the rad juke box than it does in the living room, doesn't it? You feel me?

So anyway, yeah, I use tabs and bookmarks more often now, though I do still read my RSS on my Blackberry from time to time.

Charlie Rose interviews J.J. Abrams

As a kid I, like many, was a ridiculously huge Star Trek fan. The original Star Trek that is, the one with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy...the real Star Trek. I used to run around in Star Trek pajamas pretending to be Spock executing Vulcan nerve pinches on any and everyone I could find to execute one on. I was a total Star Trek fanboy, though I never came close to being a full-blown, chronically masturbating "Trekkie."

Subsequently, I never really got into, nor did I even try, any of the spinoffs of the show that followed over the years. I did see the films featuring the original cast (Wrath of Khan was the balls, wasn't it?!) and LOVED them, as they always seemed to tap into something from my childhood, some lost feeling of innocence and wonder, but up until last night I didn't really have much of a burning desire to see the new Star Trek film opening this weekend that everyone, especially people on the internet, is having a circle jerk over.

And then I saw director J.J. Abrams, creator/writer/producer of Lost and Fringe and Alias and just about everything else on television these days, discuss the film on The Charlie Rose Show last night. Now, I've never gotten into any of Abrams' television shows, but I admire the fuck out of the guy's prolificness, not to mention his ridiculous success, and watching interview and listening to him discuss the making of the film got me excited about seeing the new Star Trek. Count me in among the millions who'll flock to the theaters to see it in the next couple of weeks...

Quote of the day

Nobody thinks the Dutch health care system is perfect. Many people complain that the new insurance costs more than the old. “That’s true, but that’s because the old system just didn’t charge enough, so society ended up paying for it in other ways,” said Anais Rubingh, who works as a general practitioner in Amsterdam. The complaint I hear from some expat Americans is that while the Dutch system covers everyone, and does a good job with broken bones and ruptured appendixes, it falls behind American care when it comes to conditions that involve complicated procedures. Hans Hoogervorst, the former minister of public health, acknowledged this — to a point. “There is no doubt the U.S. has the best medical care in the world — for those who can pay the top prices,” he said. “I’m sure the top 5 percent of hospitals there are better than the top 5 percent here. But with that exception, I would say overall quality is the same in the two countries.”

Indeed, my nonscientific analysis — culled from my own experience and that of other expats whom I’ve badgered — translates into a clear endorsement. My friend Colin Campbell, an American writer, has been in the Netherlands for four years with his wife and their two children. “Over the course of four years, four human beings end up going to a lot of different doctors,” he said. “The amazing thing is that virtually every experience has been more pleasant than in the U.S. There you have the bureaucracy, the endless forms, the fear of malpractice suits. Here you just go in and see your doctor. It shows that it doesn’t have to be complicated. I wish every single U.S. congressman could come to Amsterdam and live here for a while and see what happens medically.”

I’ve found that many differences between the American and Dutch systems are more cultural than anything else. The Dutch system has a more old-fashioned, personal feel. Nearly all G.P.’s in the country make house calls to infirm or elderly patients. My G.P., like many others, devotes one hour per day to walk-in visits. But as an American who has been freelance most of his career, I find that the outrageously significant difference between the two systems is the cost. In the United States, for a family of four, I paid about $1,400 a month for a policy that didn’t include dental care and was so filled with co-pays, deductibles and exceptions that I routinely found myself replaying in my mind the Monty Python skit in which the man complains about his insurance claim and the agent says, “In your policy it states quite clearly that no claim you make will be paid.” A similar Dutch policy, by contrast, cost 300 euros a month (about $390), with no co-pays, and included dental coverage; about 90 percent of the cost of my daughter’s braces was covered.

-Excerpted from Russell Shorto's thought-provoking piece in Sunday's New York Times Magazine titled, "Going Dutch," a look at one American's experiences living in a "socialist" European country.

You can find furniture for black people and white people at the Red House Furniture store

I really don't know what to make of this commercial. It's trippy, kind of like the Donnie Darko of furniture store commercials. I kept waiting for a giant fucking rabbit to appear, but sadly, that never happened. Maybe I need to re-watch it whacked out on acid or something to truly "get it"...


(via Can't Stop The Bleeding)

Morning links 5/5/09

-The Mexican government has declared that things will be "back to normal" with 48 hours. (Reuters)

-Rudy Giuliani refused to attend the weeding of the gay couple who took him in after his ex-wife dumped him. (New York Post)

-New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is one of the least popular politicians in the history of American politics. (New York Times)

-The Onion is killing its print editions in San Fran and Los Angeles (Gawker)

-Eleanor Clift wishes there were more Republicans like Jack Kemp. (Newsweek)

-The Hoff is in rehab again. (dlisted)

-Glenn Beck now has a book deal to unleash even more of himself upon the doltish masses. (Crain's)

-Obama may announce his nominee to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court later in the week. (Politico)

-Politico profiles Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points Memo. (Politico)

-Obama announced that he will try to end offshore tax shelters for corporations. (WSJ)

-Rush Limbaugh says that Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney "hate" and "despise" Sarah Palin because they have presidential "perspirations." (RCP)

-The Catholic church wants its followers to use Twitter and text messaging to send prayers to people. (Ad Age)

-Comedian/Larry David sidekick Jeff Garlin is on Twitter. (Jeff Garlin's Twitter)

"Daniel" by Bat for Lashes

I caught this much-buzzed about band on Letterman Friday night and, well, kind of fell in love. I love their sound, which I find extremely dark and sexy, and I really, REALLY dig this song...



A side note...when I first saw the lead singer of this group I remember thinking to myself, "hmmm...she looks kind of familiar...where have I seen her before?" Uber-internet person Rex Sorgatz has a theory that might explain that feeling, and I think he may be right.

And let us now pause to remember how we all almost DIED LIKE ASSHOLES in the great swine flu epidemic of '09

Now that the Mexican government has declared the swine flu to be less of a threat to human life than regular flu and basically said that the whole retarded shitshow was coming to a close, let us take a moment now to remember the tens who died in this horrible, horrible scourge against humanity. For this occasion, I have written a short letter to Jesus...

Dear Jesus,

Thank you for sparing all of us still living human people the indecency of having died at the hands of a virus caused by some Pedro's inability to control his urge to impale a sow with his creamy cocksicle. I will never forget the almost two dozen who have perished at the hands of this insidious plague, no matter what other tragedies may befall me, whether slicing my ballsack open in a botched attempt at "manscaping," getting violently ejected from someone's life over a slice of French Toast, or being rejected by my dream lady on the streets of New York, I shall always remember that I could, in fact, be DEAD from the pig AIDS instead! I will never forget the urgent calls to slather our hands, eyeballs, and assholes with Purex, and cover our breathing passages with swaths of cotton, lest this hideous micro-monster infiltrate our orifices and kill us all dead by making rivers of pig's blood stream from our pathetic cocks and twats, which we would then all drown in. I will never forget the incessant hyperventilating by the media about how WE WERE ALL GOING TO DIE if we didn't tune into their news shows and buy their magazines and newspapers. I will never forget the dozen or so hysterical emails I received from readers who were appalled by my "staggering, flippant ignorance" in regards to this epidemic for having the audacity to call bullshit on the hype when it was in its infancy stages. They are probably dead now, these people, for I'm sure I would have heard from them by now telling me how I was right and they were wrong, all along, but alas, may you and God have mercy on their horribly misguided, tainted souls.

I. Will. Never. Forget.

Peace be with you. The body of Christ. Hosanna in the highest. Amen.

Cajun Boy

Quote of the day II

Interviewing (Gay) Talese is, among other things, an exercise in acquiescence. He seems to have a whole schedule mapped out for our conversations, every one of which begins with a stiff drink. As we finish our first cocktail, Talese suggests that the townhouse ought to be a character in the story and takes me on a tour, starting in “the bunker”—a plush cave under the streets of Manhattan where Talese writes.

There is no phone, no e-mail, no view, no sound. Along the walls there are shelves filled with brown file boxes that Talese has covered in collage. On one of the boxes labeled THY NEIGHBOR’S WIFE, he has taped a black-and-white photograph of the pinup Diane Webber lying on her stomach naked, legs spread just shy of beaver shot. Talese pulls one of the boxes down and begins to flip through the folders, all of them color-coded and fastidiously labeled. “This is the outline for the whole book on one page,” he says, handing me a piece of cardboard shirt-packaging. It’s a drawing, really, a bit like the rough sketch of a cartoon that a wordy artist like R. Crumb might conjure. Talese spends years reducing his research until at long last it all fits on a single piece of shirt board. And then he draws it. And then he starts writing.

On the other side of the room there are five boxes labeled MARRIAGE, one corresponding to every decade he and Nan have been together. Each of these boxes will eventually become a section of the book, which he plans to begin in 1980, the year Thy Neighbor’s Wife came out. The eighties box is open, and there are pictures spilling out. Talese has been going through every letter Nan ever wrote to him. “If it’s a letter of complaint, of which there are numerous letters of complaint, I write my own version of the incident,” he says. “I try to explain it, as if I’m trying to establish for a historian what this was all about.” There are also black spiral notebooks filled with transcripts of Nan being interviewed by reporters, whom Talese hired because he “wanted to read it like an outsider.” He picks up a photograph of his wife looking directly into the camera with big green eyes. “There’s Nan,” he says with a dark chuckle. “Smiling through the apocalypse.”

-Excerpted from Jonathan Van Meter's wonderful profile on the brutally messy literary marriage shared by Gay and Nan Talese in the new issue of New York magazine.

Whore-mongering diaper-fetishist David Vitter is blocking Obama's ridiculously qualified nominee to head FEMA, Craig Fugate

With the official start of hurricane season only a month away, Louisiana's staggering dildo of a "family values" conservative Senator, David Vitter, is crying and whining that Obama's nominee to head FEMA hasn't filled out his little stupid questionnaire, probably because it's laden with dipshity questions about his stance on Jesus and abortion and gay marriage and WHORES and all sorts of other right-wing horseshit that has absolutely nothing to do with emergency management, so he's doing everything in his power to singlehandedly block the nomination...

(Craig) Fugate had sailed through his nomination hearing and Monday cleared the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee by a unanimous voice vote. Republican Sen. David Vitter said, however, that he'd blocked Fugate because of concerns he has with FEMA.

The hold — which comes a month before the start of hurricane season — was reported in CQ Today, a Capitol Hill newspaper, which noted that Vitter's home state "bore the brunt of the botched agency response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005."

At that time, FEMA was led by Michael Brown, who had little emergency management experience. Fugate, however, garnered widespread praise for deft handling of back-to-back hurricanes in Florida and won bipartisan support at his confirmation hearing and was expected to be confirmed swiftly.

So, two and a half years after an imbecilic Republican appointee to head FEMA, one whose main resume highlight going into the job was a stint as the head of the Arabian Horse Association, performed a fucking abortion on the Gulf Coast through his Herculean incompetence, here we have a man, a Democrat who served under two Republican governors with an extensive and successful resume in emergency management in one of the nation's largest and most hurricane-stricken states, a man who has won the support of everyone else in the US Senate, including Louisiana's other Senator, Mary Landrieu, and Vitter is holding up the nomination because Fugate hasn't addressed all of his precious concerns.

You know, one could make the argument that Vitter is just trying to best serve the people of his state by being thorough, but when you get right down to the heart of the matter, this guy is just doing everything he can to obstruct anything Obama does just to get his name in the newspapers back home as being anti-Obama. It's nothing more than a desperate attempt to get back into the good graces of the wingnuts and Jesus freaks who comprise his constituency, the same ones he alienated with his penchant for trollop-boning.

Incidentally, this week is the official kickoff of porn star Stormy Daniels' campaign for Vitter's seat in 2010. Sure, the whole thing is obviously a joke and PR ploy, but I'd bet my last dollar that if Daniels were in the US Senate she'd at least have the good sense not to hold up this nomination so the guy could get to work doing his fucking job before the start of another hurricane season!

Here is the only known recording of the voice of legendary journalist/satirist H.L. Mencken

As a HUGE admirer of the great Mr. Mencken, I was absolutely delighted to hear this recording. I just love his perspective here on college and its utter uselessness...


(via John Carney)

Picture of the day

In case you've never seen live crawfish before, they're not supposed to be blue...



According to this article in the Thibodaux Daily Comet, this is actually not a rare abnormality, though I have to say that I've handled lots of crawfish in my life, and can't recall ever seeing anything like this.

Thanks to Ruth for sending this over!

As if you needed even MORE reasons to pack your bags and head to Cleveland

Hey, remember that amazing Cleveland tourism video I posted here last week? Of course you do because you're probably planning your summer vacation in Cleveland right now because of it! Well, as if you needed MORE reasons to visit/move to Cleveland, the same guys who made the last video have unleashed another on the web. Get ready for your already-hard-for-Cleveland dongs to throb with delight over this one...


(via Kissing Suzy Kolber)

Quote of the day

I have a story about following dreams. Or maybe more accurately, it's a story about finding a path to make those dreams real.

You know what it's like to wake up in the middle of the night with a vivid dream? And you know how, if you don't have a pencil and pad by the bed to write it down, it will be completely gone the next morning?

Well, I had one of those dreams when I was 23. When I suddenly woke up, I was thinking: what if we could download the whole web, and just keep the links and... I grabbed a pen and started writing! Sometimes it is important to wake up and stop dreaming. I spent the middle of that night scribbling out the details and convincing myself it would work. Soon after, I told my advisor, Terry Winograd, it would take a couple of weeks to download the web -- he nodded knowingly, fully aware it would take much longer but wise enough to not tell me. The optimism of youth is often underrated! Amazingly, I had no thought of building a search engine. The idea wasn't even on the radar. But, much later we happened upon a better way of ranking webpages to make a really great search engine, and Google was born. When a really great dream shows up, grab it!

I think it is often easier to make progress on mega-ambitious dreams. I know that sounds completely nuts. But, since no one else is crazy enough to do it, you have little competition. There are so few people this crazy that I feel like I know them all by first name. They all travel as if they are pack dogs and stick to each other like glue. The best people want to work the big challenges. That is what happened with Google. Our mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. How can that not get you excited? But we almost didn't start Google because my co-founder Sergey and I were too worried about dropping out of our Ph.D. program. You are probably on the right track if you feel like a sidewalk worm during a rainstorm! That is about how we felt after we maxed out three credit cards buying hard disks off the back of a truck. That was the first hardware for Google. Parents and friends: more credit cards always help. What is the one sentence summary of how you change the world? Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting!

-Google co-founder Larry Page delivered the commencement address at the University of Michigan over the weekend. The whole thing is, in my opinion, well worth reading.

Morning links 5/4/09

-A candidate for governor in Georgia who once fucked a mule (this was before he found JESUS!) said that he'd kill his own son if it would help his state secede from the union. (Wonkette)

-The Feds are investigating whether or not well-coiffed twat John Edwards used campaign funds to carry out an affair with that nutty old broad he knocked up. (AP)

-In a story that reads like an episode of The Shield, two New York City cops have been indicted for faking a 911 call so they could rape a drunk girl in East Village. (New York Post)

-NBC is turning SNL's Weekend Update into a prime time, half hour weekly TV show that's sure to spawn a million and one "it's no Daily Show" quips. (New York Times)

-Sooner or later people will learn to just bet on the Cajun jockeys in the Kentucky Derby! (ESPN)

-Could this new software change the internet forever AND put Google out of business? (UK Independent)

-Craigslist founder Craig Newmark is quite broken up over the fact that some use his site for malicious purposes. (Yahoo News)

-New Yorker editor David Remnick is not exactly a man's man, even by elitist standards. (Daily Intel)

-Some right-wingers believe that people shouldn't go to college and just listen to Rush Limbaugh instead. (Crooks and Liars)

-A man learned how to deliver his son watching YouTube videos. (Evening Standard)

-The New York Times profiled two pitchers on the LSU-Eunice baseball team over the weekend. (New York Times)

-The US Army Corp of Engineers is building three new pump stations at New Orleans outfall canals. (Nola.com)

-Two Saints players were arrested in New Orleans over the weekend for "lewd conduct." (Nola.com)

-Balls-out funny British comedian Russell Brand is on Twitter (Russell Brand's Twitter)

"Stand by Me" performed by street musicians all over the world

Ok, so I feel like the last person in the world to have seen this, but it's too good not to post, especially at the end of a week in which we've all had the fact that our deaths were imminent because of pig AIDS rammed down our throats by every media outlet under the sun.

A few people have sent this my way over recent days and for whatever reason, I just got around to watching it. It's good. Like, it should win some sort of award, what exactly I'm not sure, but it should be an award-winning piece of filmmaking. To summarize, these guys traveled the globe and recorded street musicians performing Ben E. King's classic, "Stand By Me." It starts off with one guy singing and playing an instrument and just builds and builds and builds as other voices and instruments are infused into the song. And New Orleans, naturally, is represented. Anyway, enjoy...

Quote of the day II

There are many great things about sports, but here's one of the best: You never know when two teams will click. I used a boxing analogy in my column after Game 2, and it still stands. Styles make fights and styles make playoff series. Has to be a constant tug between young and old, unstoppable and stoppable, physical and finesse, experience and inexperience, fast and slow, big and small, stupid and smart. You need guys continually rising to the occasion and pushing themselves to a level they didn't know they had. You need two teams (or fighters) hugging each other afterward and thinking to themselves, "Thank you. You brought out the best of me. Thank you."

We love sports for the simple reason that we never know when this will happen. It rarely does. We watch a lot of crummy games. We watch sporting events that had potential to be great and weren't. We watch sporting events that almost made it, but one dumb thing happened to screw it up: A foul at the wrong time, a penalty, a two-base error, whatever. We keep watching. We keep hoping. And when everything clicks, it's blissful. I am hearing from people who haven't e-mailed me in years. Readers are sending me 700-word e-mails. The thing that keeps jumping out: Even fans without rooting interests have gotten swept up in this series. How can you not?

Think of all the crap we deal with as fans. "Bulls-Celtics 2009" explains why we put up with every story about Clemens and Bonds and Michael Vick and Terrell Owens and everyone else who conspires to make sports less fun. On the same day of Game 6, a story broke that Alex Rodriguez allegedly seen with human growth hormone. The story was digested and consumed in the same predictably brief cycle: Mainstream Web sites and blogs and message boards and sports radio first, then "PTI" and "Around the Horn," then "SportsCenter," then newspapers and magazines. You can either throw yourself into that cycle or look the other way. I am getting older. I just want to watch sports. I have trained myself to look the other way. This stuff clutters my brain, and not in a good way. I just want to watch sports. I just want to watch sports.

-Bill Simmons

Few things in life are better than game seven of a professional sports playoff series. I'm looking forward to tomorrow night's game seven of the Bulls/Celtics series more than I think I've looked forward to any first round NBA playoff game in almost three decades as a fan. This playoff series might just be the best one ever played, and I'll be sad to see it come to an end.

Sarah Palin kills bears with her ENORMOUS COCK

I betcha didn't know that Sarah Palin had a cock, did ya? Nope? Well, it's true. And it's ENORMOUS. Sometimes Sarah will just walk into a room full of gay communists while they're debating funding for health care and whatnot and she'll just whip that bad boy out and lay it right on the table, which soon cracks under the unrelenting pressure of having to support such an elephantine phallus, but you'd expect that, and they just scream like the little faggots they are because they're so afraid of what might become of their assholes should they manage to piss Sarah off and force her to ram that big cock of hers into their little puckered sphincters as retribution for having the audacity to unplease her.

Yep, ole Sarah's got a cock like the trunk of a wholly mammoth. She even kills shit with it, shit like Godless, man-eating bears. How? Well, sometimes she'll just cock-club them to death. Other times, when she doesn't feel like putting out too much of an effort, she just shoots them in the eyes with the lasers that she can make shoot out of her big fat cock. Oh yeah, her cock shoots lasers! Betcha didn't know that either, did ya?

Yep, Sarah Palin is a man, the swinging dick to end all swinging dicks, as evidenced by her appearance on American Choppers last night with a DEAD FUCKING BEAR draped over her shoulders, one she no doubt slaughtered with her cock after it had the audacity to shit in her precious Alaskan woods, so she, naturally, stuffed it and placed it in her office (dead bears really do tie a room together, you know!) to impress the fuck out of the other hard-ass dudes in the room, and to show America how she's going to use her big, bear-slaying cock to impale the ass of that negro pansy-ass Obama in 2012 to become our president and install Jesus as Secretary of Defense/War!

So yeah...

Quote of the day

We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 A.M. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.

-Joan Didion

Amen sister.

Jesus has FINALLY managed to kill Satan (well it's about freakin' time!)

Best. Commercial. For. A. Church. Ever.


(via Videogum)

Morning links 5/1/09

-Supreme Court Justice David Souter announced his retirement. Get ready for the wingnuts to implode. (New York Times)

-Mexico has basically shut down their entire country because of the pig AIDS. (Reuters)

-Workers at Auschwitz have found a message in a bottle written by a prisoner during the Holocaust hidden inside one of the prison camp's walls. (ABC)

-The National Magazine Awards were last night. Here is the complete list of winners. (Magazine.org)

-A vacant 5-story building in NYC collapsed on Thursday. (AP)

-So I finally read that massive New Yorker article on Adderall and Ritalin and it's kinda fascinating. (New Yorker)

-Poor Elizabeth Edwards finally spoke publicly about her prick husband. (Gawker)

-Some dipshit conservatives aren't aware that the Colbert Report is laughing at them, not with them. (HuffPo)

-Keith Olbermann is not letting Sean Hannity off the hook for saying that he'd allow himself to be waterboarded for charity. (USA Today)

-The Saints signed a number of rookie free agents over the last few days to round out their roster going into camp or whatever. (Nola.com)