Twisted Spinster

Or did she not get to the hospital in time after her water broke?

Hey, if a liberal asks that question, it must be okay for anyone, right? (Via.)

McCain, you sly dog, you just sat back and let Obama look like he was stealing all the cool points, and then you up and announce you’ve chosen Alaska governor Sarah Palin as your running mate. (Note: if the link doesn’t work for some reason go here and try from Kathy’s post.) I must admit I’d never heard anything about her, but what I now read about her I like, even though I’m not at all sporty.

The main complaint so far is “but she has so little experience!” As opposed to… Obama’s? At least she got to run Alaska, and running a state is considered good practice for the presidency, and it should be more than adequate for that of Vice President. Anyway, this campaign has finally become a tad interesting. I might even vote.

Next day update: for all of you: VPILF.com. Heh, and below the fold, a very not-safe-for-work video:
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Well, I tried, I really tried, to watch the Democratic National Convention blowout last night. First, I had to find C-Span — my cable company has moved said channel around so many times I never know where it is. Once found, I became distracted by a spectacular thunderstorm outside my apartment, complete with a lightning strike that seemed to be right across the street — for a wonder the power didn’t even flicker, but that’s one reason I didn’t even bother turning on the computer last night. There was also the cat box to clean out, dirty dishes in the sink…

I think you can see where I am going with this. The DNC fandango wasn’t exactly what you’d call “compelling television.” Unless you really like watching smug, white, forty-something “hipster” housewives attempting to dance to the same damn Sixties and Seventies soul-‘n’-rock songs (Aretha U2 Fleetwood That Other Soul Guy) that they play at all these things. Oh, and Sheryl Crow came on to sing four or five of her dreary songs. And when the speechifiers came on, it was as everyone else is saying about the thing: an unending litany of America Sucks, Life In The US Is Hell On Earth, There Is No Justice In America Today — one guy even said (I swear) that America was facing the worst times he’d ever experienced, or something like that. I think that was Bill Richardson (?) the governor or New Mexico or is it Arizona? One of those dry places full of Indians and New Age Hippies, anyway. He was also the guy that seemed to equate agreeing with George Bush on this policy and changing one’s mind (specifically, McCain changing his mind) on various different policies, as “not thinking for yourself.” Anyway, life sucks in the US because of George Bush, so our only hope is to vote Obama into office, and then I guess puppies and rainbows will rain down upon the land (hard on the puppies, I guess) and that little girl whose dad works for the Obama campaign won’t be confused when the man her daddy told her was “the president” doesn’t actually turn out to be “the president” after all.

The theme of last night’s festivities was basically this: if you don’t vote for Obama you will be dissing the memory of the great Martin Luther King! Several of King’s relatives came on to speak. Incidentally, is every prominent black person a “reverend” now? One more thing: I notice, as I always have, that black people take much more care with their appearance than the typically sloppy white people do. White women in the audience were typically wearing the badly-fitting t-shirts and indifferent pants that I see them wearing everywhere in public now. Most of the women who got up on stage were dressed in suits or at least a better fitting pair of jeans (like Nancy Pelosi), but then this girl who had been in the Olympics (I forget her name) hopped up to present something or other, and she was wearing a shirt that bared an inch of midriff, a short little faded jeans skirt, and flip flops. I mean, I know it must have been hot in Denver that day but for God’s sake, you’re on national tv, not at Hooters. Anyway, as I was saying, all the black people, male and female, seemed to have taken a bit more care with their appearance — their hair done, a bit (or more than a bit) of jewelry and makeup, many of the older men wearing jackets and caps — and not all those stupid baseball caps either. If I were black the one thing that would bother me most of all would be the way white people seem to take no pride in their appearance these days, as if the universe was entitled to endure stained t-shirts, baggy gym slacks, women dressed in what seem to be pastel sacks, unkempt hair… and I’m as bad as any of them, I will admit.

There was the constant, wearying drumbeat of “we want Change! We want America to Change! We don’t like the way it is now! We want it all Changed!” that was like being smacked in the face with a board over and over. There is not and never has been any sign that any Republican president is going to do anything serious to derail any of the supposedly threatened “rights” of Americans (including the “right” of American women to “choose” — which means to choose to kill their inconvenient fetuses so their sex lives won’t be interrupted) but these were dragged out again and again by speaker after speaker as examples of what only Obama could protect and only if he were president.

So I didn’t make it to the end — in fact, I turned it off about forty-five minutes before the Great One was due to speak in front of his weird Greek temple mockup. When I turned the tv on this morning they were repeating some of his speech, so I did get to hear a little of it, enough to note that his famous baritone had taken on a metallic note, possibly from overuse, or maybe he really is Robobama.

Heh, did I say I’d write a post today? Well — I lied! Sort of — it’s technically still the same day, though it’s nearly midnight (and way past my bedtime). Anyway, just a couple of thoughts:

I have two new reasons not to vote for Obama, if I needed any more beyond the fact that he’s a cardboard candidate whose platform seems to be “Prove you’re not racist, America: vote for the black guy!” Here are the new reasons:

1. He’s picked Joe Biden as his running mate. Isn’t that the same guy who was slammed in the press (and by both liberal and conservative blogs) for saying something like Obama was “clean” and “articulate”? Way to show you have absolutely no pride and also very little confidence in yourself — “Shoot, I’d better get me an experienced old white dude to be my running mate, so I won’t look so much like Urkel running for prez.” It’s not working — he looks more out-of-touch and inexperienced than ever.

2. He opened his yap about the Olympics over in China but instead of saying something normal like how nicely they put together a big spectacle he praised their “infrastructure” and how it was superior to that of his own country, which someone should remind him is the United States of America, not Canada, or the United Nations, or the United Federation of Planets, or whatever imaginary country he thinks he’s running for president of.

No really, here is the quote in full: “Everybody’s watching what’s going on in Beijing right now with the Olympics. Think about the amount of money that China has spent on infrastructure. Their ports, their train systems, their airports are vastly the superior to us now, which means if you are a corporation deciding where to do business you’re starting to think, ‘Beijing looks like a pretty good option.’”

For Christ’s sake. Yeah, I’ve always been impressed by the way China’s “infrastructure” took care of those demonstrators in Tienanmen Square.

I do think I’ve found a description of the Ultimate Weirdo, described in the comments on Tim Blair’s site:

Jeff Goldstein had yet another troll make really disturbing comments about his kid. Because of a unique handle he used, he guy was fairly easy to track down and it turns out he’s a real whacko: a Furry who’s also into “adult diapers”. One of the comments he left at a Furry forum was this:

I’m an incontinent sheep and proud of it!

Please, Universe, no more…

Today I woke up in the Bearded Spock Universe! I can think of no other explanation for the fact that Our Betters in Congress have made the extraordinary assertion that slavery in America was the worsest, most awful slavery in history — not only that, it was uniquely bad, utterly unlike the institution of slavery as it was known throughout the history of the human race. Never mind that Western nations were the first to realize that maybe the ownership of human beings by other human beings was wrong and not a basic and necessary underpinning to human society as it was regarded throughout history in just about every country in the world. And still is, in many non-Western countries.

Yep, that’s what we’ve got to look forward to under Great Lord President Obama: four to eight years of this sort of contest to see who can come up with the most complete display of self-abasement. Fun!

No, I’m not quitting blogging, like some other people, I’ve just been too exhausted when I get home to do anything but watch half a CSI episode (any CSI, I’m not picky when I’m tired) and drop into bed. Also, just about every day it’s been raining, which in this part of the world also means thunder and lightning, and after the great nic card fritzing event of 2006 I refuse to leave the computer plugged into the modem when it’s like that outside, so that puts a crimp in things. Also I haven’t found much worth blogging about — not even the upcoming presidential election. I will say this — Obama does have a great voice; I saw one of his I’m-gonna-save-the-world campaign ads on tv last night. He’d make a great tv news anchor. Unfortunately he is running for president, and I can’t think of any reason to vote for him other than 1) he’s half-not-white, so you can vote for him and tell all your friends that you’re not a racist, you voted for an Official Black Man; and 2) he sounds so good and you are one of those craven souls that needs to be led by someone with an impressive voice unlike that potato-mouthed Dubya chimp. The sad thing is there seem to be a lot of people like that out there.

I really can’t top this:

He then wiped his sweat from his gleaming mocha brow and a droplet of the precious liquid alighted on my cheek. For the first time in my life, I experienced orgasm. And something akin to a connection with God. A dirty, sweaty sexy connection.

(Via.) Guess who that paragraph refers to. Just guess. As for me, I’m running back to the refuge that is sweet, sweet tv…

Update: and that’s why I shouldn’t post when I’ve got a massive sinus headache — alert reader Nigel gently chides me for posting the part of the article that was actually a parody of said article (and was clearly stated so underneath the rest of the quote). Quite frankly, I blame Global Warming. Anyway, I encourage you all to read the whole thing — the actual real text is much, much funnier than anything even Ace could come up with.

Heck, they could slice a few inches off each others’ rumps and not even have to go down a dress size (from the look of things that would take a few feet). You know what, news reporters? When you find real starving people in America — and I mean Depression Dustbowl starving, not “I’m hungry ‘cos I can’t afford to go to Dunkin’ Donuts every day anymore” — then try to make me cry with stories of people having to “scrimp” on food. I’ll tell you what: I’m a size 18 but that’s normal size not “W” (aka “fat woman”) size, and I stay that way by not eating at McDonald’s every goddamn day. But I see people that huge everywhere, and I don’t know how they stand it. I can remember when people weren’t that gigantic except for an odd glandular freak here and there. (And they usually had nicknames like “Tiny.”) In fact, when my mother and I went to Europe in 1981, we were constantly being told that “American women are too skinny.” I gained about ten pounds over three weeks of European multi-course meals. Those were the days.

Mark Shea has the same problem with the BBC’s Robin Hood series that I do. The only difference is he seems to actually watch the show, and I bugged out after being presented with a scene of modest medieval maiden Maid Marian traipsing through a village market wearing a short-sleeved shirt and capri pants, both of diaphanous material that in a real girl of the period would have been confined to a scarf or headdress. I don’t care that it stars that cute guy from that Doctor Who episode (“42”) either. I’m not a stickler for complete historic verisimilitude (I love the film Gladiator, for one thing), but this is more than I’m preparing to put up with. I’ll stick with the New-Agey pagan nonsense of the 80s “Hooded Man” version starring Michael Praed.

Oh yeah — and what he said about our culture being degraded compared to that of our so-called primitive ancestors is something that I’ve been thinking for quite some time. What is always funny to me is the way people start bleating on about “dentistry” whenever someone brings up the strange fact that people in the supposed “Dark Ages” seem to live in an atmosphere steeped in enough rapturous poeticism to give a million goth kids orgasms, but when faced with the actual fact of having to go to the dentist reveal just how skin deep is their love of our sophisticated medical tech. (Full disclosure: I hate going to the dentist, and have a mouthful — well, less than that, actually — to prove it.)

(Via Kathy Shaidle.)

Next day update: a thought did occur to me, though, that made me question Mark Shea’s Absolute Fandom response to the music and poetry of ancient culture. And that thought was: just how do we really know that our ancestors were more completely steeped in excellent song and story — just because our culture seems to find those fragments which are all we have left of the long ago to be somehow better than what we produce today? It just might be that we think everyone in, say, old Babylon wandered about their society doing nothing but singing and dancing and so on, but how do we know that what they sang and danced was what we found on the clay tablets? What if “Gilgamesh” was just some “official version” of a hero story, sponsored by the local rulers of the time, which the actual bulk of the populace had little interest in, and we only have the tale because the songs and poems people really liked were only passed on orally, no one bothered to write them down. Oh, and all those popular songs and poems were about the rich bitch down the street having sex with her uncle’s goats, songs about drinking and farting, and fair similar in content (or, well, lack thereof) to the more sophisticatedly presented junk we get on the E! channel.

Another thing is life in the good old days was really hard except for the very rich, who could afford to sit around all day listening to beautiful poems about Ra. Most people didn’t have time for singing and dancing, and would have looked at you funny if you asked them about weird modern concepts such as “art.” “What do you mean do I think the songs in praise of the gods are artistically pleasing? I’m not singing just to impress folk — if I didn’t praise the gods I’d end up in the underworld having my heart eaten by a jackal!”