Hot damn!

I can't believe I have to wait until next July for Transformers. Ri-diculous.
It was impossible to get onto the official site but wwtdd.com had the trailer.

Missed Connections

Green Lake Cat-Caller Trio 8pm Weds (Green Lake, by the Aqua-Stadium)

Me: brown hair and eyes, wearing black softball shorts and an 8 year old fraternity t-shirt.
You: boardshorts,vintage t’s,superhipster hair.

You clicked at me the way I click to encourage my horse to pick up some speed and your “hey baby” exposed your poet's soul(s). Your boyish charms are absolutely impossible for me to deny, big daddy(s). I like my men 3 at a time and a decade younger than me.
I don’t know what you’re doing later, or if your parents will let you stay out past ten, but maybe we can get together- play a little Candyland, enjoy a milkshake or juicebox with 4 straws?

All that stuff.

So I keep hearing this line from Superman Returns: "Truth, Justice, and all that stuff."

Are things so bad that Superman can't stand for the American Way anymore? Has our reputation fallen so far that standing for the American Way is no longer appropriate?

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That doesn't sound too bad.

Sure, the country has its problems-- but I don't think that they are indicative of the behavior and desires of just America. The world has problems. Our issues are symptomatic of a greater disease afflicting the entire world and now thanks to the freedom of the press ( I would wager that to be a right Superman would value) we get to hear, see, and read everything bad happening all over the world. Everyone wants to blame the US for invading Iraq, last time I noticed we weren't alone. Boundaries, resources, and justice have caused wars since people first banded together. Acting as though America is uncivilized by overthrowing a terrible warlord, thereby protecting American oil supplies is ridiculous. People are people. So long as humans live they will squabble over resources. I'm not saying everything the government does is right, but I find it hilarious that every time something happens the global community (including our ineffectual left - to which I ashamedly belong) clutches their handbags to their scandalized bosoms and declares "Well I never!"

If you care about your home you mow the lawn, if you care about the planet you recycle, if you care about foreign policy, then get off your ass and do something about it. Write your senator, vote, or donate money to a political campaign. I am tired of smug Hollywood assholes making snide comments in their films and threatening to defect to Canada. (News update- Canada doesn't want you.) Put your money where your mouth is, Hollywood, that is if you can fit anything else up your ass.

I think the premise of America-- the freedoms we enjoy, have always been the things that Superman has fought to protect. If America didn't have troubles, Superman would always be Clark Kent and Clark Kent would have nothing to write about.

9 tons of sausage to replace Angelina Jolie

After Pitt/Jolie, Namibia plans biggest barbecue
Mon Jun 26, 2006 3:57 PM BST

WINDHOEK (Reuters) - Namibia is moving on from Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and now plans to make headlines by staging the world's largest barbecue.
The southwest African country was caught up in a media furore when the Hollywood stars chose to have their first baby there last month.
It is hoping the 9 tonnes of sausages with which it plans to feed some 45,000 people in September at a Windhoek football stadium will keep up the interest.
"The Namibian record will be set with 9 tonnes of boerewors (sausages) which, if stretched, will be 7.5 kilometres (4.6 miles) long," said Uschi Ramakhutla, a spokeswoman for the Meat Company of Namibia, which is organising the event.
Namibian President Hifikepunye Pohamba is expected to be the 44,159th person in the food line -- pushing Namibia ahead of the current Guinness Book of World Records title holder for world's biggest barbecue, Australia, which hosted 44,158 people at a one-day cook-out in 1993.
There was no immediate word on whether Jolie and Pitt would score an invite to the Namibian celebration, despite their honoured status in the country.
The pair last month welcomed the birth of their baby daughter Shiloh at a remote seaside resort -- a choice Namibian officials said could help to put the country on the tourist map.

This would be hilarious, if so many Africans weren't, you know starving.

Waiting with bated breath.

A while ago a close friend of mine’s coworker was mugged in a crummy part of Seattle. She and a girlfriend noticed a man following them. They did not call the cops, they did not enter a store or other establishment, they did not call a cab. They walked faster. Then the man who was clearly following them grabbed her handbag and she didn’t let go. He dragged her half a block along the sidewalk, scraping the hell out of her. Quite frankly this girl is lucky he didn’t shoot her, stab her, or punch her in the face.

I would like to say this:

If someone is following you, go inside a business, call the police and call a cab. If someone grabs your handbag, for the sake of sweet zombie Jesus, LET GO. You can buy a new bag. You can cancel your cards. Unlike Jesus, if you are shot in the face you will not wake up three days later.

Now, this story convinced my dear friend that she would get mugged walking (literally) across the street from the bus-stop to her apartment in the heart of a well-lit residential neighborhood. So she asks me where to get pepper spray (yes, actually I am the repository of all knowledge). I tell her G.I. Joes will have it, but she is much more likely to accidentally spray herself than an attacker. She wisely dropped the topic.

Later that night we decide to make a Target run, and she asks if we can stop in at G.I. Joes. I agreed rolling my eyes.

We get into G.I. Joes and I march her to the ammunition counter where we stood for a good three minutes before anyone realized that we actually wanted something from behind the counter. The college aged kid came over and incredulously said, “You girls looking to buy some ammo?” I responded, “Nope, apparently some girls are looking for trouble.” Monica turned beet red. I said, “This is your cockamamie plan- you ask.” She asked the young man for some pepper spay and he removed one of the keychain mounted cans. She then looked at me and queried whether she might need the medium sized can. The counter guy and I looked at each other. “For what- elephant stampede?” I asked.

She then said, “Actually, I need two more.” “Why,” I reasonably asked. Well, apparently she had told two of her little friends that they too were obviously at risk of random violence. So now we are walking towards the register with three cans of pepper spray and a bag of gummy worms. The guy at the register gives us the eyebrow, and I say “Don’t look at me, the gummy worms are mine but the THREE CANS OF PEPPER SPRAY are hers.”

Now this is going to make me sound like a huge jerk, but while all three of these girls are college educated professionals- they cannot be very uhm… sensible if they are buying pepper spray. I’m waiting for the day when…

1. one of them is attacked and they are busy digging around in their handbags, opening the leather case, turning the cap off safety and then spraying themselves in the face

2. they now have a false sense of security and instead of running to safety and dropping their handbag, they turn to face their attacker and are subsequently injured in addition to being robbed

3. one is arrested at the airport for attempting to transport a weapon on an airplane

4. one is dragged across the sidewalk/ raped/ murdered/ generally manhandled while frantically digging through their Coach tote for the pepper spray can in their car

5. they have left the can in the car in 90 degree weather and it explodes

6. or while digging about for a Certs one of them activates the spray in Nordstrom

I don’t know if any of you have caught any pepper spray, but I caught some incidentally twice and it really really blew. A lot. Pepper spray, like Seattle, is not bullshitting. I wouldn’t want to be close enough to a can of pepper spray to actually use it.

Grasping at strings.

Some time ago I got interested in String Theory. A scientific religion, a philosophy, a hypothesis, a little bit of this and that as near as I could tell. Having never really spent much time pondering it, I am finally sitting down to study it in a little more detail. I, of course, am avoiding the mathy bits but as it stands now I am very unsure of what to think. Nobody has come up with a way to test the theory thus it can’t be proved.

Here is how I understand it, in brief:

Newton believed that Gravity was a force that was constantly grabbing. It pulls the apple to the ground, the man to the earth, and the Earth into orbit around the sun. Think of his model as a tether ball encircling the pole to which it is tied. This model is perfectly useful in most technological applications.

The nifty idea that Einstein came up with that radically changed the way we thought of Gravity involved thinking of space/time as though it was a piece of stretchy fabric, the immensely heavy sun in the middle stretches the fabric down. The Earth is like a ball that is rotating in the indentation that the sun makes. This theory hinges on the idea that if the Sun where to suddenly disappear, the Earth wouldn’t fly off into space like a ball cut from the tether- that would require Earth to travel faster than the speed of light- which Einstein believed was impossible. Instead, the Earth would continue orbiting the space the sun had been in as the space/time fabric sprang back the other direction, sending a ripple (like a pebble thrown into a pond) which would send the Earth off into space.

In the 1920s Quantum Mechanics came into vogue and it was a new way to describe the forces exerted in very tiny things. Atoms have 3 forces at play Electromagnetism, Weak, and Strong nuclear forces. (Radioactivity is the weak- the strong force is the force between the nucleons.) However, Quantum Mechanics does not show a place for Gravity- and that is the purpose of String Theory. Unification of all the forces, all the science that we believe to be true all wrapped up in a tidy package.

We know that Electromagnetism is the force that keeps every object from this computer to my fingers as they type in their adorable shape. If Gravity was the strongest force, we would fly through the Earth to its core. So if Gravity is the force of very large objects and Electromagnetism and the Strong and Weak Nuclear Forces are the forces of very small objects- what happens if an object is incredibly heavy and also incredibly small?

Answer: a black hole. If we smashed the sun down, down, down to a tiny point, the power of its forces would suck everything in- even light.

Now right about here is where my understanding gets iffy. The actual ‘string’ part of the theory comes in at the sub-atomic level. String theorists believe that inside an atom’s nucleus are quarks and inside of quarks are tiny energy loops- like rubber bands except infinitesimally smaller. These loops or strings vibrate and move about in different ways providing different energies thus different particle properties.

Somehow, the theory requires that there be alternate dimensions. I am not entirely certain of why that is (I think it has to do with the unpredictable nature of atomic forces- for example it is really unlikely that you could glide Kitty Pride-like through a wall, but if you kept at it for a certain amount of time maybe you could catch all the elements at the right moment- perhaps in an alternate dimension you could, anyway), but suffice it to say there must be no fewer than 6; all of them running like loops side by side in space/time. (I think they have to be loops in order to have the correct dimensions- meaning that if I were shrunk small enough to walk on a donut I could walk around the outer edge or inner edge, round and round through the hole, or swirling around it both through the hole and around the outer and inner edges.)

So we have this incredibly complex universe with processes and objects for which we have spent the entire span of humanity naming and writing rules. In the case of Quantum Mechanics making rules about chaos. Now in order to make all of our ideas upon which we have pinned careers, dreams, and thousands of years of technology we have to make all of these concepts into a unified whole. Map the inner and outer workings of everything in the universe to show that we are masters of the realm. It’s amazing to me that people don’t believe in God in deference to science. It seems to me that a universe this complex but this orderly at the same time has the touch of God’s hands. That we can create a theory with dimensions and strings and sheets of space/time shows the touch of those same hands. Is it harder to believe that there could be ten alternate dimensions, tiny vibrating energy strings, and black holes or that God could create them?

Yahoo headline of the day:

Eminem's Divorce Proceeds in Secret

And there was much rejoicing!

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"Futurama" Pulls a "Family Guy" ‘
By Gina Serpe
43 minutes ago

Comedy Central is going back to the Futurama.

Three years after the show last aired on prime time, the cable net has signed a deal to resurrect the former Fox animated series for a minimum 13-episode run.


Comedy Central will start airing the new shows in 2008.


"We are thrilled that Matt Groening and 20th Century Fox Television have decided to produce new episodes of Futurama and that Comedy Central will be the first to air them," said David Bernath, the cable net's senior VP.


The new episode order is part of a larger deal Comedy Central made with the production company last year, when they bought the syndicated rights to Futurama's 72-episode library.


"There is a deep and passionate fan base for this intelligent and very funny show that matches perfectly with our audience, and it is great that we can offer them not just the existing library but something they've never seen as well," Bernath told the Hollywood Reporter.


The offbeat show was the brainchild of The Simpsons mastermind Groening and writer David X. Cohen and debuted on Fox in March 1999. The series revolved around Fry, a pizza delivery boy who is accidentally frozen for a thousand years. When he wakes up in the year 3000, he befriends a sassy one-eyed pilot, Leela, and a cranky robot, Bender, who both work for an intergalactic delivery service run by a distant nephew of Fry's.


In August 2003, after five seasons and three Emmys, including the 2002 award for Best Animated Series, Futurama was canceled due to low ratings.


Reruns of the show, however, were picked up by Cartoon Network, and just like cable home did with Family Guy before it, the move paved the way for a Futurama revival.


Both shows aired on the Cartoon Network and quickly built up unexpectedly robust ratings.


In 2004, Stewie & Co. were resuscitated by to Fox thanks to staggering DVD sales--the show ranks as the fourth-biggest TV series seller ever--and its proliferation in reruns.


In January of this year, 20th Century Fox began talks with Comedy Central to revive the long-gone Futurama as well, thanks to its resurgence in popularity courtesy of its second life in reruns and high--though not Family Guy high--DVD sales.


The cable net has already re-signed voice stars Billy West, Katey Sagal and John DiMaggio to reprise their animated roles.


In the meantime, new Futurama plots can already be had in comic book form, with Groening's Bongo Comics releasing the stories.


Now I may just be a snot, but when they brought back Family Guy it seemed less funny. Maybe I'm just a jerk who can't like things unless nobody else does. I always knew that Family Guy is just cliches and 80's references thrown together all akimbo- but it seemed funnier on the first run.
Hopefully Futurama will not suffer the same fate of tragic unfunniness.

Yay! More Futurama. Wait, I totally don't have cable. Boo!

New SAT Section: Japanese Men :: Sex -As- K-Fed :: Talent

Well, there's your problem right there

Thu Jun 22, 6:44 AM ET

TOKYO (Reuters) - More sex.

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That's what one expert says is needed to solve Japan's baby shortage.

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"Japanese people simply aren't having sex," Dr. Kunio Kitamura, director of the Japan Family Planning Association, was quoted as saying by the Japan Times, an English language daily.

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An association survey of 936 people between the ages of 16 and 49 showed 31 percent had

not had sex for more than a month "for no particular reason" -- a condition known as "sexless."

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"As much as subsidies and welfare programs are important, sexlessness is also a critical issue in this problem."

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Japan's fertility rate -- the average number of children a woman bears in her lifetime -- fell to an all-time low of 1.25 last year. Demographers say a rate of 2.1 is needed to keep a population from declining.

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Japan came last among 41 nations in a poll last year by condom manufacturer Durex, with lovers there having sex just 45 times a year compared to a global average of 103 times a year.

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Kitamura said that while many men in workaholic Japan are simply too "stressed out" from their jobs to have enough energy for sex, many other couples simply do not have sex regularly.

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In the association's survey, 44 percent of the people who said they weren't having much sex felt that having a relationship with the opposite sex was "very tiresome" or "tiresome."

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Kitamura's advice? Couples should talk to each other.

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"Ultimately, it's these interactions with the opposite sex that bring out the inevitable animal instinct in us -- to reproduce," he said.

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Wait so you mean that in order to have babies you have to have sex? What an interesting conclusion. I don’t know how much Dr. Kitamura makes a year, but I would be willing to give the Japanese government the same quality of sage advice based upon solid scientific reasoning for a mere 98% of what they pay him. However, unlike Dr. Kitamura and every other man in Japan I will not take my pay in tentacle porn and DDR tokens.

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The fact that the Japanese men’s team has consistently taken the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Metals in the International Wank Olympics didn’t tip anyone off that sex is not being had in the land of the rising sun?

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Now before we get carried away, let me clarify that in a country that sells fake (life-like gummy) vaginas and used ladies underwear in vending machines on the street next to machines that sell soda, beer, and Pocky (ha! Pocky and Pokey) people are not interested in having sex- with other people?

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You mean between free porn on non-cable tv 24 hours a day and basically legal prostitution, men are not copulating with their non-existent wives? Why should a dude who works all the time, has never been properly socialized towards women, who could purchase a fake snoush and come home on a Sunday morning and catch some porn on network TV possibly have a girlfriend? Kitamura's advice is to talk. The reason these men are having sex with the equivilent of a jello mold is to avoid talking with women. I tell you, once they get better VR technology our species will entirely die off between lazy men and the women who don’t want to have sex with men who are having sex with vending machine purchases while watching school girls with abnormally large socks be anally violated by various fairy tale creatures.

Massachusetts, you elect morons.

Fluffernutter sandwich angers Mass. senator

By STEVE LeBLANC, Associated Press Writer

Tue Jun 20, 10:00 PM ET

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BOSTON - It's creamy, it's sweet and it's become a staple of lunch boxes for generations of New England school children.

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Now, the beloved Fluffernutter sandwich — the irresistible combination of Marshmallow Fluff and peanut butter, preferably on white bread with a glass of milk handy — finds itself at the center of a sticky political debate.

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Sen. Jarrett Barrios was outraged that his son Nathaniel, a third-grader, was given a Fluffernutter sandwich at the King Open School in Cambridge. He said he plans to file legislation that would ban schools from offering the local delicacy more than once a week as the main meal of the day.

The Democrat said that his amendment to a bill on junk food in schools may seem "a little silly" — but that school nutrition is serious.

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His proposal seemed anything but silly to Rep. Kathi-Anne Reinstein, a Democrat whose district in Revere is near the company that has produced the marshmallow concoction for more than 80 years, Durkee-Mower Inc.

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She responded with a proposal to designate the Fluffernutter the "official sandwich of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts."I'm going to fight to the death for Fluff," Reinstein said.

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An aide to Barrios insisted the senator is not anti-Fluff and even plans to co-sponsor Reinstein's bill, although he still believes schools should cut back on Fluffernutters.

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"He loves Fluff as much as the next legislator," aide Colin Durrant said.

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Fluff has a long history in Massachusetts. The treat was popularized by H. Allen Durkee and Fred L. Mower, who cooked up the concoction in their kitchen at night and sold it door to door during the day.

Durkee and Mower purchased the recipe for Fluff for $500 from another Massachusetts man, Archibald Query, and also sold it door to door before wartime shortages shut down his operations. Query lived in Somerville, which is part of Barrios' district.

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The company didn't immediately return a call for comment Tuesday.

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Since its invention, legions of New England kids have grown up on Fluffernutters. Parents have used the sandwich as a food of last resort for finicky eaters, sometimes adding banana slices to complement the protein of the peanut butter.

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He’s not “anti-fluff”- you have got to be shitting me. These congressional aids, who would normally be writing papers on oh say, Social Security and brokering deals for Gun Control are now writing statements regarding semi-solid marshmallow product. This is what is dividing the Democrats? Jesus Christ, I hope John McCain runs.

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I think my favorite part of this story is that the only people who don’t have an opinion on Fluffgate, are the manufacturers. The Fluff Manufacturers are above this sort of vicious in-fighting.

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Furthermore, I’m sorry, but is that not the most disgusting thing you have ever heard? I almost came through the window of the Dairy Queen in BC that put marshmallow sauce on my brownie sundae. That bastard is just lucky I couldn’t get my seatbelt off in time!

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We are in the middle of an obesity epidemic and Massachusetts is feeding their kids a marshmallow and peanut butter sandwich on white bread? Why don’t they just give them a Twix? Christ, at least Fig Newtons are fruit and cake.

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I can’t believe that asking for better nutrition in schools has changed into an argument about marshmallow product. You know what counts as a veggie in our schools? Salsa and ketchup. You wonder why poor kids are fat? The only meals a day they may get are comprised of bread, cheese, and sausage for breakfast and “nachos” for lunch. If they get a third meal, you can bet it is fast food, because most folks can’t afford proper food anymore.

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Kids make shitty decisions; that’s why they can’t vote, smoke, or sleep with Rob Lowe. If we don’t slap some green beans on their plates, they certainly won’t ask for them.

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The government wants better schools and to that end they’re raising standards for teachers, texts, and testing. What the hell, I’m sure it’d be no trouble for them to set higher nutritional standards for school meal service—since these are all unfunded mandates anyway.

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At any rate, I guess I can rest easy with the knowledge that Massachusetts will soon have a state sandwich. I had been so worried about Massachusetts’s official lunch preferences.

Our tax dollars at work.

2 dead in Fla. detention center shooting

By BRENT KALLESTAD, Associated Press Writer

22 minutes ago

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - A guard at a federal detention center opened fire as investigators came to arrest him and five other guards Wednesday, starting a gunfight that killed two people and wounded another, the FBI said.

The six guards were indicted Tuesday on corruption charges alleging they brought alcohol and other contraband into the part of the prison where female inmates were held and sold it or exchanged it for sex with the inmates or the inmates' silence.

When FBI agents and Justice Department investigators arrived at the center Wednesday morning to arrest the six men, one of the indicted guards shot at a federal correctional institution officer, said FBI spokesman John Girgenti. He said the officer fired back while trying to escape the shooting.

Girgenti declined to comment on who the victims were or whether the shooter was among them. Tallahassee police said earlier that the shooter was in custody.

The condition of the survivor and identities of the victims were not immediately released.

"The community is safe. The institution is in lockdown status," federal Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Carla Wilson said.

The detention center houses mostly men and is part of the Tallahassee Federal Correctional Institution. A low security prison for female inmates is next to the detention center. Together the men's and women's units total 1,445 inmates.

Now call me an asshole if you will, but wouldn’t it have been smarter to arrest these dudes, separately, at home—you know where they weren’t carrying around their federally issued firearms? I’m just saying that these guys are basically rapists and I think that perhaps that implies they aren’t to be trusted. But what the hell do I know?

Thanks FBI, for another ridiculous blunder job well done.

Breaking News: Keanu Reeves Doesn't Sound Brilliant

Short excerpt from a movie review of Lake House:
A remake of the Korean film "Il Mare," "The Lake House" manages to defy any form of convention plot synopsis. As little sense as it makes in context, it makes even less on the page. Alex (Reeves) is a Chicago architect, Kate (Bullock) a Chicago doctor. Alex and Kate are corresponding with each other through a very romantic series of letters left in the mailbox of a lake house. They may be falling in love, but there's a bit of a complication (a minor one) -- They're living two years apart. For Alex, it's 2004, while Kate's in 2006. The only way they can communicate is through that magical mailbox, which is darned frustrating, though not nearly as frustrating as listening to one love letter after another narrated by Keanu Reaves, who reads aloud with all of the confidence of a precocious pre-schooler.
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Magical mailbox you say? This movie sounds AWESOME.

A Scanner Dorkly

The midnight show for the Seattle International Film Festival last Saturday was an adaptation of the Philip K. Dick novel, A Scanner Darkly. As we strolled up to the theater there was the whole geek crew from the comic book store. It does appear that dorks of a feather flock together, even when they're not trying.

The movie was quite good. The adaptation of the novel was really quite good, though I feel it could have been a tad longer and played up the central drama a little bit more. I love Philip K. Dick, and when a new adaptation of one of his novels comes out I am always quite excited. Of course I found out today that Nicholas Cage is in the next one. The man is movie poison and I wish he didn't share so many of my interests. He is such a dork.

The movie was filmed in live action, then animated, but I still felt like everyone had a great performance- most notably Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr. Of course since this is the ONLY type of part (spacey drug addict) Keanu Reeves ever plays, he was just fine. I still hold that Keanu Reeve's best movie performances involve kidnapping Socrates and playing twister with the Grim Reaper.

Interestingly A Scanner Darkly had two taglines:
What Does A Scanner See?
Everything Is Not Going To Be OK
Obviously, one is brilliant and the other utter crap. "Everything Is Not Going To Be OK" is the perfect tagline, it intrigues and is completely relevant to the movie.

A Scanner Darkly-- go see it.

A good enough reason to watch West Wing:

"AstroNewts"

If loving Aaron Sorkin is wrong, I don't want to be right.


Actually and while I'm on the topic of West Wing: Rob Lowe.

Rob Lowe got totally er... screwed.

So Rob Lowe is at the bars the night before the Democratic Convention. There he meets two women with whom he has sex on tape.
Later it comes about that one of the women is underage.
Rob defended himself by saying that if you meet a woman in a bar, it is a fairly safe bet that she is of age. Why would he even ask?
Now even if he knew she was too young, that is the most legit excuse I've ever heard.
Come on everyone, let's let Rob Lowe off the hook.

If videotaping a threesome with willing strangers that you meet in a bar is wrong....

Kidding.

No, but seriously, that went down in '88. Give the guy a rest.

Gayer than a pink leather piñata.

Spiderman outs himself to the press
Wed Jun 14, 4:10 PM ET
NEW YORK (AFP) - For a comic book hero, it's the ultimate taboo.
In the latest edition of the Marvel comic "Civil War" on sale, Spiderman does the unthinkable and removes his Spidey mask to publicly reveal his hidden identity.
"I'm proud of who I am, and I'm here right now to prove it," the legendary webslinger tells a press conference called in New York's Times Square, before pulling off his mask and standing before the massed ranks of reporters as newspaper photographer Peter Parker.
"Any questions?" Parker asks in the final panel of the issue, amid a barrage of camera flashes.
In a statement, Marvel trumpeted the revelation as "arguably the most shocking event in comic book history."
The seven-issue "Civil War" series, launched in May, sees Marvel's writers taking on the topical issue of civil liberties.
Following a showdown between a group of superheroes and supervillains in which hundreds of innocent civilians are killed, the government passes the Super-Hero Registration Act, requiring all superheroes to reveal their identities and register as "living weapons of mass destruction."
Marvel's roster of invincible crime fighters is split into two bitterly opposed factions, with one camp -- championed by the likes of Spiderman -- in favor of the new law and the other, including Captain America and his ilk, refusing to relinquish anonymity.
"It's about which side you are on and why you think you are right," said Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Joe Quesada.

I should mention as far as full disclosure goes, I am not reading Civil War. I actually only read 2 Marvel titles with any regularity- Runaways and Ultimate FF. Maybe I'll pick up the Civil War in Trade Paperback.

I actually enjoy when comics take on issues that I find important. Marvel has taken on a lot of interesting topics of late, but taking on the issues of the day is just the nature of comics. Comics are quite progressive really. They also feature giant aerodynamic bosoms. (A huge selling point for me.)

I really like to see division amongst the ranks comic heroes in terms of trusting the government. Of course I used to worry about the US government as Big Brother- some kind of monolithic all-powerful secretive regime. Now I realize that it is a bumbling group of private college idiots all out for personal monetary gain. Much less scary. Kind of.

You've finally done it!

I'm offended on behalf of all gays, world wide.

Oh Onion, you wanna be starting somethin'?

The Onion, how dare you put my boyfrie... I mean Wesley Crusher on your top 13 Memorably Unpopular Characters from Popular TV?!
You put him in a list with Scrappy Doo and Urkle? Go to hell!
Everyone knows that Alexander Rozhenko is when ST:TNG jumped the shark! Remember when future Alexander came to teach Alexander the value of his Klingon heritage just before his bar mitzvah... I mean ceremony of Ascension (or whatever).


Damned Lies... I mean Onion Article Excerpt:

Wesley Crusher, Star Trek: The Next Generation


Pretty much the epitome of the obnoxious precocious-kid character, Wesley Crusher stumbled into a prominent crew position early in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and then spent the next four years generally knowing more than anyone else about everything, and frequently saving the day at the last minute. By the time he left the show, he was well on his way toward godhood, having transcended time and space, at least according to the alien who ran off with him. Fortunately, the actor playing him somehow managed to ascend from universally butt of fan jokes to universally loved Internet presence and occasional A.V. Club contributor. Apparently even the worst characters sometimes get happy endings.

What's funnier than a dead baby joke?

This is:

Woman attacks dog breeder with dead Chihuahua
Thu Jun 8, 1:23 PM ET
CHICAGO, United States (AFP) - A Missouri woman has been arrested for breaking into a dog breeder's home and beating her repeatedly over the head with a dead Chihuahua.
The woman was upset because the puppy had died, police told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper.
The woman, whose name was being withheld pending charges, said a veterinarian had told her the puppy she'd bought was just four weeks old and needed to be returned to its mother.
It died before she had a chance to do so and the woman went to the breeder's home in St. Peters, Missouri about 5:45 am Wednesday.
She pushed her way into the house and tried to get to the basement to get another puppy. But after some hair-pulling, the breeder managed to wrestle the woman out of her house.
When she got outside she started hitting the breeder on the head with the dead puppy, drawing the attention of a neighbor who called police.
The woman then went back to her car but waved the dead puppy out of the car's sunroof while yelling threats at the breeder, who did not seek medical attention, police said.
The weight of the puppy was unknown, but Chihuahuas weight between two and six pounds when fully grown.
The dog owner could face felony burglary and misdemeanor assault charges police said.

Might I add that the woman who tried to sell a dangerously young puppy deserves to be pelted with more than one dead puppy. I would be hard pressed to come up with a definitive number, but clearly more than one puppy would be best.

I am what I am.

The wurst way to go?

Fri Jun 9, 6:38 AM ET
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German police have arrested a man on suspicion of murdering a woman with a sausage.
Prosecutors and police said the 50-year-old was arrested after the woman's body was discovered in an apartment in Zwickau, eastern Germany. They said she had choked on a Bockwurst, a popular large German sausage.
The prosecutors said the man had given a patchy account of events, acknowledging that he may have "administered" a Bockwurst to the woman. They are now working to establish exactly what happened in the run up to her death.

I did honestly try to think of something funny that wasn't dirty to say about this article, but he choked her with a large German sausage! What do you expect from me?

Literacy

Last Saturday as Melody and I were out and about on our "Super Shopping I Like to Move It Move It Fun Day," we passed a forlorn couch stranded in the center treelined divider on the corner of Ravenna and Woodlawn. Attached to it was the following sign:
FREE COOCH.

Where in the world is...

Namibia?

Steve and I only know about Namibia since Angelina Jolie went there, but neither of us are geography dunces. In fact, Africa was one of my learning phases (right now it is WWII) not too long ago. Let me add that Steve and I carefully checked my world-map shower curtain last weekend, and as it was not on there- thus, I feel safe in saying:
Angelina Jolie has made up an entire African nation and nobody has noticed.

Here, wikipedia claims that this country exists. Clearly some tricksters, or more likely, members of Jolie's entourage have used wikipedia to support their baseless claims that Jolie didn't have her child at Cedars-Sinai like every other celeb.



Universal Studios Backlot. Clearly.

and whiskers on kittens...

Rabid kitten halts some PetSmart adoptions

Wed Jun 7, 11:45 AM ET
GREENBELT, Md. - A kitten adopted at a PetSmart Inc. store was ill with rabies, prompting the pet-supplies chain to suspend animal adoptions in the mid-Atlantic.
The kitten's owner and the director of the animal rescue group that supplied the kitten are being treated for the disease as a precaution, though it is not yet known if either person was infected.
The Prince George County health department is asking people to contact the agency if they came into contact with kittens at the Greenbelt store's adoption center.
The six kittens were in the PetSmart store May 14 to 19, said John Marsiglia, manager of the Greenbelt location. The suspension of pet adoptions involves 22 stores in Maryland and Virginia.
The store learned of the infection last week after the owner returned the kitten because it was lurching and unsteady, said Cindy Sharpley, director of Last Chance Animal Rescue. The kitten bit Sharpley on her hand when she tried to handle it.
The infected kitten and its five littermates were euthanized, she said. Even though pets are vaccinated before they are adopted, rabies has an incubation period in which it isn't detectable.
"It is a tragic incident, and there was nothing that anyone could have done to prevent this from happening," she said.
PetSmart has arranged more than 3 million adoptions in its 17-year history, and has only had one other rabies case, said Paul Amirault, district manager for PetSmart.

I know this shouldn't be funny-- but it seems so funny.

Raindrops on roses...

Schultze Gets the Blues
Cookies that turn out just right
Things that embarrass Martha Stewart
Hostess Cherry Fruit Pies
Fuzzy Baby Ducks
Thank you notes
Fanciful utilitarian objects- i.e. my pasta scooper in the shape of a dinosaur
Spam musubi
Monkeys
Dr. Mario
Lunch with my Grammy
Strawberry shortcake
Good British Mysteries (Foyle’s War and Prime Suspect)
New Nail-polish
The Station Agent
The Stills
Costume parties
Raspberry jam
Oprah getting fat/er
Puns
Cream Puffs
Avocado sushi
A good hike
Ripe pears
Battlestar Galactica
Greenlake sunsets
Baby feet
New Comic Day (Hooray!!) (That's Wednesday-- just in case you're ignorant)
Flip-flops
Holiday Specials
Spanish Lessons Guy
World Cup
Schott's Original Miscellany
WWTDD.com
Hippopotami
Irregular Plurals
Anthropomorphic food
Finding the perfect parking spot
Rain starting just AFTER your evening walk

Excellent reasons to walk around with a stupid smile on my face.

Cheeky

Alternate title: Things that would put me off my dinner.

No Sex please, we're British butlers

By Paul Majendie Tue Jun 6, 8:26 AM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - Forget the quintessential image of the British butler as the epitome of discreet decorum.

"Butlers in the Buff" has proved such a business success as half-naked waiters in Britain that the firm is now off round the world to market the ultimate "male order" service.
The company, whose waiters wear only a bow tie, collar, cuffs and a bottom-revealing apron, is the brainchild of former Royal Marine Jason Didcott who turned entrepreneur after serving in the Gulf and Bosnia.
Determined to find a tasteful alternative to strippers and pole dancers, he lays down strict rules -- each waiter undergoes a scrupulous police check and drink-fuelled clients are firmly told to keep their hands to themselves.
"What we are looking for is James Bond in a butler outfit. We want them to be cheeky but clean," he told Reuters.
"At the end of the party they can have their photo taken with the butler but that is as far as it goes. If they have too much wine and try to undo the apron, he says No Touching."
"We want nice, charming, gentlemanly types. At the interview we just check their upper body. We take their bums on trust."
The waiters readily admit to first night nerves -- but they soon conquer them.
Butler Dan Atkins said: "I love the job. I couldn't think of a better way to earn money. At first you're nervous but you soon forget your bum is on display and you get on with serving drinks and mingling."
Didcott, and his company partners Will Jones and Stacey Lynn, has 75 part-time butlers on his books to staff hen parties, corporate functions and the fast growing market of gay wedding receptions.
The butlers range from actors, dancers and students to personal trainers and even a hypnotherapist. "We are desperate to find more. We never have enough," he said.
Didcott is now ready to expand the horizons of Butlers in the Buff.
"We have a business model we want to franchise out. We have had so many people passing through London who have rung us and said they would like to do it. I'm thinking of North America, Australia and South Africa as first stops."
But Didcott, who when launching the firm did his first party for free as a half-naked butler, draws the line at any more parading of himself.
"At 37 I am over the hill in butler terms. My bottom retired three years ago."

Get over yourself.

Today a woman called and told me she didn’t want to write her date of birth on a human resources form. I told her that the reason they have included that is so that if some other person shows up with their name the forms will be filed correctly. I told her if she wasn’t concerned about that issue, I couldn’t possibly care less.

Which is not true; actually, I do care.

It is beyond me that a person could possibly care that someone in human resources who is processing their form, may notice that some stranger was born in *gasp* 1963. I couldn’t possibly give a shit about how old this woman is- why would she possibly care if some random person knows her age?

Furthermore, if you are 30 or 40 or 50- that is how old you are.

Everyone gets old. Not everyone gets fat or herpes or something. It’s not like the form is asking how many people she has slept with, or how much money she makes.

I’ve seen this lady once, and she didn’t look like she was in her twenties, so who cares if people find out that she’s 50?

Maybe my song will change when I turn 30- but I doubt it. I am going to Europe to celebrate 30 years without stupidly getting myself killed. That’s 4 years more knowledge than I have today- really that’s quite exciting!

Burrrrrrrrr.

My cubical neighbor won the "Most Interesting Weekend Story Contest" this week with the following:
Diane and her husband had traveled to Moses Lake for some fishing and good clean family fun and having carefully weighed the most expeditious route, by which to return to Seattle, they hit the road. As they coasted around a corner on the pass they spied an odd sight- a naked man hitch-hiking. He was crouched at the edge of the road simultaneously trying to hide his junk and hold out his thumb. Given that it is the pass, it is very very cold. We’re talking frozen water in powder-form on the ground type cold.
Diane is very very very nice and her husband is a firefighter (he’s seen worse) so they pull over and reverse back to where he was crouching. They didn’t have much to give him in the way of clothes, but they gave him a bath sheet and got the state patrol on the line.
He was very average looking, clean cut, and in his early twenties. He told them and the state patrol that he had been returning home when he was kidnapped by men he knew at gunpoint. The kidnappers had driven him out into the middle of the pass in the middle of the night and told him they were going to kill him. Eventually the weather turned for the worse and they decided to strip him and throw him out of the car and down a ravine. He was clearly beat up and showed very clear evidence of having slid down a densely wooded gravel ravine, so they believed the story.
Paramedicas arrived and Diane and her husband finally got back on the road and arrived at their house 1.5 hours later than they should have, having failed to take into account the danger of nude hitch-hikers.
Undoubtedly, this guy was involved in some no-good type activity, but getting tossed out of a moving vehicle naked, into a gravelly ravine in the spring in a mountain pass is pretty rough. Poor thing.
He's just lucky someone stopped. I have three afghans and a spare hoodie and sweats set in my trunk and I wouldn’t have stopped unless I had a gun and Chuck Norris in their too.

The votes are in!

I don't care what any of you guys have to say about X3. I think it blew. Yesterday as an exercise my cousin Sean and I watched X1 and X2 and at the end he said"You know, X3 just wasn't very good."

I'm over the many comic book issues (every comic book movie has these) and just straight into the fact that the movie was not a good movie. Pacing, character development, the fact that all the good action scenes were in the trailers, and that almost every "gotcha" line fell flat. Not to mention the lack of continuity in every sense from the previous two. Blarg.

The most vindicating comment on X3 did not come from distressed fanboys or unimpressed critics, it came when my 11 year cousin said, "X3 lacked impact."

Booya, Bitches.

Granted, it wasn't Fantastic Four bad, but sucking is sucking, my friends.

On the other other hand, the only thing that could make a comic book movie worse than FF would be having Nicky Cage in it. Oh nuts.

Whether or not you call it terrorism, we are negotiating with assholes.

Here is a new and exciting thought. Maybe the race for nuclear materials isn’t about the bomb. Doesn’t it seem more likely that developing nuclear weaponry is about winning concessions from stronger nations?

I can’t believe we are jumping in to bargain with Iran. It makes me so irritated. “Alright Iran, if you don’t annihilate the species, we’ll lift some random embargo, that we likely put on you for some silly human rights violations or something. No worries. “

This is like a kid with a stick who, for the minor fee of your lunch money will just chase you around yelling, “I’m gonna pick up that stick and get you” instead of hitting you with it.

Except our kid wants millions of dollars and wields one hell of a stick.

I don’t even feel like bringing up the issue that we are negotiating with a man who denies that the holocaust occurred and is convinced of a global Zionist conspiracy.

Ask a silly question....

Today a 5th grade teacher called me with a question of great pedagogical importance:

“Is Sabertooth Nightcrawler's dad?”

Well, Mystique is his mom; which technically makes Rogue his adoptive sister.

Now, as I’m sure you all know, Nightcrawler’s father was actually some sort of Demon-like creature whose race was vanquished by some kind of Angel-like creature. And, interestingly Nocturne, Nightcrawler’s daughter is his child with the Scarlet Witch, who, everyone knows, is Magneto’s daughter. Furthermore, Scarlet Witch actually married Vision who was android-ish person created using parts the original Human Torch and Wonder Man’s brainwaves. (Which obviously makes him Sue Richard’s brother.) Which is particularly interesting because Franklin Richards (Sue and Reed’s son – Fanstastic Four) broke apart Scarlet Witch and Vision’s twins, his cousins, Thomas and Billy (who interestingly, is gay) only to find that they were actually the soul fragments of the demon Mephisto. Mephisto, I’m sure you recall, is the one that imprisoned Victor von Doom’s mother.

Where was I?

Oh yes, Sabertooth and Mystique had a child named Graydon Creed, who had no powers and turned out to be a rather bad egg- no doubt in part due to being abandoned as a child. Creed grew up to be a rather Nazi-like politician who actually ran for president on an anti-mutant platform. Interestingly, Mystique shot him- apparently in retaliation for his part in the murder of Destiny’s grandson. Destiny was Mystique’s lesbian lover. Destiny was killed by Legion, who is Charles Xavier’s son. (Which makes Charles Xavier’s brother, Juggernaut, his uncle.)

Now, intriguingly (as noted by Steve at the movies last week) Juggernaut isn’t a mutant but instead gets his powers from the Ruby of Cyttorak, which he and Charles discovered as soldiers in the Korean War. Now, Juggernaut actually lost some of his Juggernaut-ness when he battled Cyttorak, but later joined the X-Men after reconciling with Charles after years of feuding. Juggernaut and Nocturne infiltrated the Brotherhood of Mutants sometime thereafter, and were sent to Mojoworld, but escaped. Nocturne, like her father, Nightcrawler, can write with her toes. But hell, I can do that.

So in short, no.

Fat middle-aged dinosaurs prefer...

Pimp My Snack.