There was an earthquake in England recently. Apparently as it wasn’t scripted by Russell T. Davies as having been caused by Captain Jack having sex with aliens the BBC didn’t do a very good job of covering it.
(Via Tim Blair — the last link, that is.)
Update: Scarlet Johansen, Natalie Portman… hey, Brits, welcome to Your Tax Dollars Working For You!
I’m glad I never read his lousy, gossip-mongering website. Thanks for unnecessary “breaking” news that even the rotten, leftist-raddled BBC managed not to divulge. (You’ll have to read all of Kim’s post to understand why Drudge should be kicked in the teeth.)
(Yep — now that I have a computer that actually works, expect a lot more “feisty” posts like this. As soon as I remember how to type on a normal keyboard.)
Or whatever the equivalent is for a website… I’m sorry, the constant whining about Hollywood’s annoying yet unsurprising (because anyone who is older than twenty can remember this being not so much a new problem as a tradition of Tinseltown) behind-the-times clinging to outdated and tired political notions is one thing, but claiming that the Titanic movie (the 90s version that came to us courtesy of James Cameron’s cliché-raddled mind) is “an event, an experience, one for the ages” as well as “what movies are all about”? No. Just– no. Sure, Kate What’s-‘er-name looked nice in her outfits, but everything else was either bloated with hackneyed ideas of what life was “really” like back in the early 20th century (life below decks was more wholesome and lively than the dessicated existences of the rich stiffs above! Wow! Excuse me while I try to recover from that feather-blow!) or else just plain wrong (Florence King pointed out — it’s in one of my books of her columns, I am too lazy to look for it right now — that the slow waltz-type dancing the rich bores were shown doing was wrong for the period), and was hideously acted by almost all the principles with the possible exception of Kathy Bates (the worst was Billy Zane, who must have added considerably to the cost of filming for all the scenery he chewed). And let me add the cherry on the craptastic sundae: it starred as the Heartthrob Love Interest none other than Leonardo Di Caprio, who is to sex appeal what Roseanne Barr is to the push-up bra. People keep telling me he’s supposed to be sexy as hell, but stringy arms, tiny noses, and a general ephebic appearance in males are a buzzkill to me.
So, that’s the end of me taking Libertas at all seriously. Call me when you get your critical faculties back, guys.
So you can take that cookie… Hey, Oliver, here’s news: Hitler didn’t “do it for the money” either. Asshole.
As if the empty-platitudes campaign platform wasn’t enough, apparently a vote for Obama is another signature on his death warrant. I’m sorry, but as a responsible American citizen, I can’t have his impending assassination on my conscience. As for all of you who are planning to vote for him, I wonder how you can sleep at night! Well, actually, I know that you frequently stay awake all night, biting your handkerchiefs and sobbing in fear for your god. The funny thing is, there’s an easy way out of your dilemma! Don’t vote for him! Remember, a vote for anyone else is a vote for keeping Obama alive!
I tried to read through this story of a whiny, guilty white Canadian guy — boring singer and songwriter Dan Hill, who is responsible for this interval of fetid mush (which song is on my special “nuke them from space, just to make sure” list) — and his failed efforts to prove to his son he can get “down with the brothers” better than those racist Americans, but I got bored. Sorry. (Via Kathy Shaidle, who isn’t impressed either.)
PS: thanks for all the donations! I might eventually be able to make up for the arm and kidney I had to give H&R Block today…
Well folks, I am in a hole. Still no job — if the crowds at any place I apply to are any indication, half the city is out of work — and my spare funds have finally been depleted. Here’s the plan: I need to stay in this apartment at least until my lease ends. That will be at the end of April. Hopefully by then I’ll have some kind of employment, because otherwise I won’t be able to move. I plan to move to much cheaper digs — I moved here only because it was convenient to the last job I had — but I’ll need at least part of my security back. If I get tossed I won’t get any of it back and I’ll be in the hole for lease breakage and legal fees.
So anyway, if everyone who reads my site donated a dollar, I could… I don’t know, buy lunch. But every little bit helps.
On the up side, I am getting job offers, of a sort — mostly come-ons for sales positions. In other words, they aren’t job offers. In any case, I refuse to do sales, because I can’t sell; the thought of selling anything to anyone makes me physically nauseous. I can’t seem to even sell myself (when I went to write up my resume and came to the part where I have to write down all the things I can do my mind went blank, as usual). Besides, it’s easy to promise someone a sales position, because you can base their pay on their sales and dump them if they don’t make any, and commission is taxed up the yin yang (I have worked with salespeople so I know the score), and I’d rather dig ditches. It’s steadier work.
Oh yeah — and then there are the emails that lead you to a website that is nothing but a come-on for various “universities” of the sort that used to be advertised on the back of matchbooks (you know, the ones where you could get “degrees at home in your spare time” in things like locksmithing). Yeah, that really made me feel great.
Anyway, I went to yet another placement agency yesterday, where there was a huge crowd of people. I felt slightly reassured by the fact that I was the only one there wearing business casual instead of one-grade-up-from-hobo-wear. I mean, you’re applying for a job and you can’t even bother to comb your hair and put on a pair of slacks? It was baggy jeans city. And there was a woman in jeans shorts. On the other hand, this was a placement agency, not the actual place where you would get interviewed by the actual employer. Yeah, this is how they do things now: you turn in your paperwork, fill out some forms, and they’ll “go through the paperwork” and “call you in a few days.” I’ve been waiting for calls for five months.
But this brings me to the sad fact that Western Civilization is dead. How do I know that? It’s not that men are pigs — that would indicate a level of self-awareness not to mention knowledge of a recognized rule of civilized behavior that was being broken. No, men aren’t pigs anymore, they are simply unaware of the fact that when a woman walks into the room and there are no chairs, then the first young, strong, able male that sees her should stand up and offer her his chair. But there they sat, like piles of washing (which is what those baggy clothes make everyone look like), while I just stood there feeling like an idiot. And then it happened. Another young, baggy-clothes-wearing man came in. (If I’d been sitting down I’d have offered him my chair. I am polite.) Then suddenly the strains of a song burst into the room: “I like big butts and I cannot lie…”
That sound you hear isn’t just a cell phone ringtone, it’s the theme song of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Barak Obama must be really good in bed. I can’t think of any other reason why a woman would be utter the following sycophantic rants about her own husband:
“For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country, because it feels like hope is making a comeback.” (Via.)
And:
“Barack Obama is the only person in this who understands that. That before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation.” (Via.)
An alternate explanation could be that Michelle Obama is a psychopath — in which case I hope he only allows spoons at the dinner table. People who want to vote for Jesus — I mean, Obama, might want to reflect what it will be like having a nutso First Lady. I can see her now, taking a shiv to the first reporter to be less than hagiographic in his questioning… the extra security guards… the ever-changing list of medications… Since it’s looking more and more like our need to be loved by the world’s soaks and grifters will make his election a shoe-in, I think I’d better stock up on pop corn.
(Update: fixed the stupid error in the second “via” link. Sorry!)
I’m not going to say anything, except that I agree with Steve H. Well, I will say this: I don’t think that any Western country outside of Israel (which is a Western country despite its location) will break free of the dreamworld notion of a “violence free” academic environment any time soon, so I’m not holding my breath waiting for gun bans to be dropped from more than a handful of institutions. We simply have too much cultural baggage invested in the idea that university is a place where people focus on scholarly and spiritual pursuits — a.k.a. “the life of the mind” — safe from the mundane problems of the crass and grubby “real world.” I used to believe in that fantasy myself, despite also knowing for some time that colleges and universities have become (if they haven’t always been so) nothing more than holding tanks for people who aren’t ready to leave high school (this includes most of the instructors).
That amazing, magical, incredible computer monitor. My favorite one is the user who insisted that her non-color-showing monitor was just “out of ink” and probably needed a new cartridge. I found the above via this page on TV Tropes whereon among other mistakes they complain about one scene in the new Doctor Who that drives me crazy — the part where, in the “Smith and Jones” episode, the Doctor starts looking for a “backup” drive by poking his sonic screwdriver thingie at the back of the monitor; and in fact, any episode that needs the computer to be controlled by his magic wand — I mean sonic screwdriver — will show him pointing it in the direction of the monitor, never at the actual CPU (which never seems to be attached anyway — the show follows common tv computer display rules by having every PC that isn’t a laptop seem to consist of a monitor and a keyboard, though once they showed the Martha character’s mother actually attaching her mouse to her computer, which however was a laptop and therefore should not actually need a mouse*). Anyway, I know this is only a television show full of impossible pretend “science” and such, but that’s no reason for the show’s creators to treat a scientific invention that has become a common and even mundane household tool with the same breeziness with which they treat concepts like time travel. Especially when they have the main character brag on every other episode about what a genius he is. (And especially when they have him say on the very next episode, “Gridlock,” that he is “brilliant with computers.”) I can handle little things like giant car-and-people-eating crabs, hauling an entire hospital of people to the moon, the poetry of Shakespeare being used by evil alien witches to destroy the Earth, etc., but the mundane mistakes pull me up short.
Oh, and speaking of that hospital, two things: 1) How did the electricity stay on? I can accept the forcefield holding in the air supply, but there was no explanation as to how all the lights stayed working — not to mention the MRI machine — after the connections to the Earth-side electrical grid were severed. And 2) there was no change in gravity after they were transported to the moon. Russell Davies (the show’s current guy in charge) is my age — he’s old enough to remember the moon landings and has probably seen the same footage of the astronauts jumping around like fluffballs in the moon’s much lighter gravity as I have. But when the hospital in this episode is rather violently transported to the moon, objects fall as swiftly to the floor, and people walk and run with just as much effort, as they do on Earth. Couldn’t they have written this in somehow? Then again, the Doctor’s standard handgrab-and-“run!” command to the girl wouldn’t have as much dramatic kick if followed by the rather comical slo-mo moonwalk that people in real life have to do on the moon. Not to mention the force needed to run on the moon in actuality would end up with the characters braining themselves on the ceiling. See, it’s bad to let me watch tv — I start thinking of things.
*Full Disclosure Update: my only working computer is a laptop, and I do happen to have a mouse attached to it. I find the little toggle thing on this IBM Thinkpad to be a bitch to maneuver, so I bought a little travel mouse. Which by the way fits my hand better than a normal mouse. But anyway, it’s just funny that the one time a tv show has a character use a mouse attached to a computer it happens to be the one model of computer that really doesn’t need a mouse.