This is fascinating. But even more fascinating is this. And then there's this.

posted by Rob at 11:52 AM |

What a sad day. Post-Bergman era now begins. At least there's this: If anyone left an indelible mark upon cinema, it was Bergman (pronounced "berryman"?--depends on that Norwegian and Swede I met on a train years ago). I hope he tells Orson Welles hello.

Take a gander.

Oh, yeah, and there's something going on with that Attorney General....

posted by Rob at 8:07 AM |

And yet a kiss (like blubber)'d blur and slip,
Without the skull beneath the lip.

-John Frederick Nims

posted by Rob at 3:00 PM |

Almost fainted when I read this:

A federal judge in New Orleans on Friday ruled that residents of areas heavily flooded when Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters were funneled down a New Orleans navigation channel can sue the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

It's narrow, but it's something. I'm sure lots of people in St. Bernard (and probably the Lower 9th) are grinning voraciously right now. I hope they get some red, well-marbled meat. Rest here.

posted by Rob at 9:13 AM |

Hey, while I'm "posting" on a "blog," I may as well mention that the most American song ever written, the most Thomas-Paine-friendly lyrics ever (sorry, conservatives, you like the King, not the Congress, and Mr. Paine, that proto-socialist, you would loathe) is Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the Name of." No, it's not the kind of song the American non-government has loved for sixty years, it's the kind that your janitor will fucking love. Anybody who doesn't agree, unless you've got a more uppity song, go do something offensive with yourself*.

And, no, I don't need any goddamned credit or a better mattress, so STOP CALLING ME. And yes, Hillary, this means you.

*No I don't mean it, but I had to write it.

posted by Rob at 12:27 PM |

Goddamn.

posted by Rob at 9:38 PM |

Just in time for the holidaze....

posted by Rob at 8:47 PM |

This is the history lesson I was taught only the hazy outlines of in high school and college. And Howard Zinn doesn't even go as far as he should--say, including the goading of the nation into war with Japan and Afghanistan. But he goes plenty far enough for anyone who learns the shadowy, largely untaught history of America's undemocratic, sickening foreign policy, esp. in the post-WWII period, to know that the executive branch is never to be believed in matters of foreign policy. No government should ever be believed on that score without reams of documentary evidence and cross-checking. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.

What's sad is that everyone doesn't already know this. I was a history major and learned of plenty of horrors perpetrated by plenty of governments up until around the time of my birth. But until recently I didn't begin to appreciate the depth and breadth of what governments have been and are still doing to the majority of poor miserable bastards on this earth. And among them America is chief. Pray that China and India never develop militaries as powerful as ours, lest they use them as we do to devastating, unconscionable effect.

Really, nobody needs to make things any worse.

Nota Bene: On a completely unrelated note, listen to the cadence of Zinn's speech. It's almost the same as Christopher Walken's. (Their accents are similar but not nearly as similar as their cadences. Zinn is from Brooklyn; Walken is from Queens.)

posted by Rob at 6:13 PM |

Miasmatic days
Fog-filled, living in cotton
Why did she leave me?

posted by Rob at 5:40 PM |

Ah, the stupid! It hurts!

posted by Rob at 5:39 PM |

I read about this over the summer but not in this much convincing detail. Per usual, The Centre for Research on Globalization is way ahead of the curve. Yes, boys and girls, They aren't just considering literally redrawing the borders of countries, they're actually doing it. This was, as pointed out here (esp. in the first bullet point), part of the reason for the Lebanon War last summer. It comes on the heels of what we did in Afghanistan in the eighties and Bosnia in the nineties, in both cases with the help of Al Qaeda, and it may well be (and I hope it's not) one of the several purposes of making Iraq bleed. In this scenario, Iran would be lucky to be bombed, even with nuclear bunker busters, than to undergo the strife of its neighbors. At least they'd get to keep their land--a dubious gift top military planners aren't even granting our ally Turkey.

posted by Rob at 5:45 PM |

Funny.

posted by Rob at 5:40 PM |

Thanks to suckers like Donnie McDaniel, I finally started blogging at the Katrinacrat.com. Now I know that me blogging anywhere is close to pointless but that's what pundits are for. At least the unpaid ones. So last night I finally managed to post on the Katrinacrat and hope to pollute that site with the detritus of my ridiculous imagination in the near future.

Masochists, read the post here.

posted by Rob at 8:29 PM |

I understand everybody's wondering if I'm going to run in '08. To reiterate my position, I'm going to take time over the holidays to talk over the possibilities. There's ample reason for this. For one, my lesbian Massachusetts remarried ex-wife would come under even more scrutiny for her investment in fur-seal factory farming. Two, despite my children being full-grown, I have been repeatedly smeared for their DUIs and child-molestation slip-ups (c'mon, everyone makes mistakes)--acts for which I was not responsible, despite my investment in their adult video venture. Three, no matter how many times I point it out, my two girlfriends and one boyfriend (again, the Hodgkins is not my fault) disavowed those snuff films and they are bisexual, not gay. And as for my goat, it began nuzzling up to me before I ever wore that costume, let alone started giving Bessie mulled wine. Last time I ran, the liberal media tore me apart for no reason at all--aside from the allegations of heroin smuggling and snorting coke off my former hooker receptionist's recently altered breasts.

Finally, I would like to thank Joe Lieberman for helping me staff my exploratory committee. I will accept their decision, no matter how painful, when they finish their month of spelunking in the caverns southern Mexico.

posted by Rob at 8:40 PM |

What conservative wrote this ridiculous headline? Elected House Speaker, Pelosi Suffers First Defeat. Gotta gin up that conflict, eh? How about: "Hoyer Elected Majority Leader" or even "Hoyer Beats Murtha for Majority Leader Post." Such a story should note that Pelosi backed Murtha and why (he was the big force behind her rise in the ranks). But her role in the story is not headline-worthy and there is simply no excuse for constructing a dramatic twist when all that exists are minor competitions. Note to NPR: Hire some real journalists. Hint: Real journalists can more easily be found outside of Washington.

posted by Rob at 5:39 PM |

Poor Nikola Tesla. He practically invented the modern world of electricity--how it's generated, transported and applied. Thomas Edison shit-canned him and stole his work, enabling him to make piles of cash providing power to cities. Then Marconi stole Tesla's discovery that information could be broadcast wirelessly through electromagnetic fields, eventually giving liars like Rush Limbaugh something to do while popping Oxycontin and Dominican girls. Tesla, the genius who seemed born of and to electromagnetism (and who was allegedly born during an electrical storm) spent the latter part of his life trying to broadcast electrical power itself--without wires. Eventually, he went insane and died. But now his vision may be resurrected--at least over short distances.

posted by Rob at 11:15 AM |

As you read through the columns of headlines every day, there's always an odd story or two that stands out, like yesterday's about the invention of a musical shirt. But this one is so far off the map, it's somewhere on that tropical island in Lost: "Man Has Sex with Dead Deer." That alone would suffice, but the story contains several surprises.

A man is accused of having sex with the carcass of a deer that he found lying beside the road – but his lawyer denies that he committed bestiality, on the grounds that a dead deer isn't an animal any more.

20-year-old Bryan James Hathaway of Superior, Wisconsin allegedly had sex with the deer corpse after he found it on the roadside on October 11 this year. Authorities say he told police that he noticed the deer lying in a ditch, and then moved the corpse into the woods.

He is charged with 'sexual gratification with an animal' – but in a magnificent piece of legal footwork, his attorney argues that he can't be guilty of that crime, because a carcass isn't an animal, the Duluth News Tribune reports.

In an act of titanic understatement, the paper's headline reads, "Deer assault case presents unusual issues."

Public defender Fredric Anderson filed a motion last week which claimed: 'The statute does not prohibit one from having sex with a carcass.'

He said that if you try to include corpses in the category of 'animals', then 'you really go down a slippery slope with absurd results.'

As if we haven't gotten lost in that territory already.

The only clear place to draw a line in the definition of what is an animal, and what isn't, was at the point of death, he argued.

He gave the example of a roast turkey – with which it would be illegal to have sex under the braoder interpretation of the law – claiming that it was unreasonable to suggest it should still be classified as an animal for the purposes of law.

And isn't this what makes law more fun than science? In law, anything is possible for those who believe.

In response, prosecutor James Broughner argued that a deer carcass is still an animal – pointing out that in his statement to police, Hathaway called the corpse a 'dead deer,' demonstrating that he still thought of it as an animal.

Ah, but he didn't say "animal," he said "deer." Who knows what "deer" could mean "for purposes of law." Personally, I when I hear "deer," I think "cuisinart."

Judge Michael Lucci noted when hearing the arguments that: 'I'm a little surprised this issue hasn't been tackled before in another case.'

Say whaaa? I'm pretty jaded; I've heard of or seen some really bizarre and unwelcome practices--even outside of John Ashcroft's boudoir. But even in my farthest reaching comic moment, the possibility of people fucking dead animals has never occured to me. Just what sort of legal world does this judge inhabit? Does it overlap with an emergency room? What Rick-Santorum-level of bizarre shit do lonely Minnesotans partake in? Can it be filmed and sold overseas?

If Hathaway is convicted, he could serve up to two years in prison, because of a previous conviction in 2005 for shooting dead a horse called Bambrick. So that he could have sex with it.

Count that as one more thing I hadn't considered. How, exactly, does one come to such a fetish? How do you find out you've got it? Are trudging through the woods one day, on the cusp of puberty, and see a dead dog and get sprung?

posted by Rob at 10:46 AM |

Hey, asshole Karl, you might want to read this before 2008.

posted by Rob at 11:19 AM |