Q: If a blog falls into ruin on the webs and no one is there to care, does it make a sound?
A: Yes. It is the same sound as when doves cry.
A: Yes. It is the same sound as when doves cry.
posted by Dean Simakis @
4:50 AM
2
comments
tagged: alone in a world that's so cold, animals strike curious poses, maybe i'm just too demanding
A: FREE TIBET! That should do it.
posted by Dean Simakis @
8:33 AM
1 comments
A: A poorly timed ad from that Internet company that magically IQ tested all living celebrities.
Just kidding, by the way. I would never assault anything less than a Mensa member.
POSTSCRIPT: It has been suggested by Radosh, who has a nose for dubiosity, that this might be doctored. It's possible some Internet trickster decided this just wasn't quite funny enough. The font does look a little fishy. Anyway, I will have our fact-checking bureau conduct an exhaustive review immediately.
posted by Dean Simakis @
9:22 AM
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tagged: advertising, rihanna
A: Joe Scarborough (@joenbc):
"Free markets didn't fail us. Fannie and Freddie failed us. Wall Street failed us. Free markets were twisted by greed."Sooo...I guess what you're saying is the free markets failed us?
posted by Dean Simakis @
4:31 PM
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tagged: economists, george w. bush, money, msnbc
A: The Monitor's Jack Siler:
Americans said they wanted more hope and optimism, and by nearly all accounts they got it Tuesday night from President Obama. [...] Still, some of our correspondents raised questions about what the president said and didn’t say. [...]Ann Dupee is right! Let's all stay poor forever!
In Clermont, Fla., our aging "Emptying Nest" community, there was some outright skepticism, particularly about the president’s proposal to raise taxes on the wealthy.
Patchwork Nation blogger Ann Dupee wrote in her blog: "What went through my mind when President Obama spotlighted the young girl [from South Carolina], that she could rise above a difficult situation now and be anything she wanted to be –- a doctor, lawyer, engineer –- was that when she achieved this goal after years of intensive and expensive schooling, her reward will be that she better not make more than $250,000 a year because our government is going to tax her more and take her money because she is now ‘rich.’ Where is the incentive?"
posted by Dean Simakis @
11:43 AM
2
comments
tagged: barack obama, florida is fucked up, poverty, the elderly
A: That's my impression of a House Republican.
Spaghetti and meatballs.
posted by Dean Simakis @
9:28 AM
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tagged: assholes, barack obama, republicans
A: Kiwi double amputee Nadya Vessey got a mermaid tail, from Narnia or something. The moral of the story is that being a double amputee is awesome.
posted by Dean Simakis @
8:44 AM
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A: I was just on the phone with Dimitri out in L.A., and we were asking just that. Then I hung up and saw this. Sweet!
posted by Dean Simakis @
5:58 PM
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tagged: andy richter, boob tube, comedy, conan o'brien
A: Late Friday, TechCrunch reported that Last.fm had spilled its guts to the recording industry, identifying everyone who'd been illicitly spinning the recently leaked U2 album. Because of the timing of the story's release, many may have missed the subsequent updates, wherein the story turned out to be bullshit. I note it here out of love for Last.fm, and also as further evidence of TechCrunch's burgeoning irrelevance.
(Seriously, Michael Arrington, the only idea more terrible than the Microsoft Store is hiring tech bloggers who think the Microsoft Store is not a terrible idea).
Anyway, the fact that Last.fm still moves in mysterious ways should come as a great relief to anyone worried about being publicly exposed for still caring about new U2 albums. Wow, that would have been embarrassing!
EARLIER: The RIAA's stuck in a moment and it can't get out of it.
posted by Dean Simakis @
1:21 PM
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tagged: microsoft, music, riaa, the blogosphere, the internet
A: As the U.S. banking system creeps towards nationalization, the FDIC is running our biggest (i.e., most worthless) banks through "stress tests". I find this deeply troubling -- the last time I took a free stress test, I ended up giving three million dollars to Giovanni Ribisi.
Are you there, Xenu? It's me, Ben Bernanke.
posted by Dean Simakis @
11:50 AM
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tagged: disasters, economists, religion, scientology
A: Crazyface Mel Gibson has emerged from his hideyhole to debut an entertaining trailer for his latest war epic. In case you missed it on the post-Oscars Jimmy Kimmel Live!, or the million blogs that already ran it...
This thing would have Oscar gold written all over it, except I'm pretty sure it'll mostly end up being about how the Civil War was caused by the Jews.
I continue to be disturbed by Mel Gibson pretending to be an American. Of course, he'd still have a career today if he'd focused less on dropping his Australian accent and more on dropping the quintessentially Aussie habit of drunkenly raving in the back seat of police cars.
posted by Dean Simakis @
11:17 AM
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tagged: australians, colonel sanders, mel gibson, motion pictures, video killed the bloggio star
A: Cheap Blonde Pumpkins of Wayne. Or Tinted Windows, whatever.
Whatever happened to all this season's losers of the year?
posted by Dean Simakis @
11:06 PM
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tagged: cheap trick, fountains of wayne, music
posted by Dean Simakis @
11:02 PM
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tagged: boob tube, jeffrey tambor, movies
A: Okay, so I haven't seen it. But it is almost certainly the worst Best Picture nominee in the history of the Tomatometer.
Harvey Weinstein loves my Hitler 2.0 plan, because aside from saving the economy it would give him lots of new material for movies he guilts/blackmails/waterboards everyone into nominating.
When the movie about the plight of poor Muslims is deservedly named Best Picture tonight (and of course it will be), just remember that the terrorists have won. (Harvey wishes he'd thought of that.)
posted by Dean Simakis @
7:48 PM
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tagged: hollywood, jews, oscars, predictions, terrorism
A: Just curious. Did Lou Dobbs devote today's show to scathing personal attacks on me? Please let it be that.
posted by Dean Simakis @
5:48 PM
1 comments
tagged: meta-surprise
A: No -- but their cousins did!
MARAJ, Lebanon — For 25 years, Ali al-Jarrah managed to live on both sides of the bitterest divide running through this region. To friends and neighbors, he was an earnest supporter of the Palestinian cause, an affable, white-haired family man who worked as an administrator at a nearby school.This may seem suspicious, but the Lebanese are like the Greeks. The guy has 4,000 cousins. Me, I can barely keep track of how many of my cousins carried out 9/11.
To Israel, he appears to have been a valued spy, sending reports and taking clandestine photographs of Palestinian groups and Hezbollah since 1983.[...]
It is not the family’s first brush with notoriety. One of Mr. Jarrah’s cousins, Ziad al-Jarrah, was among the 19 hijackers who carried out the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, though the men were 20 years apart in age and do not appear to have known each other well.
posted by Dean Simakis @
10:28 AM
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tagged: conspiracy theories, jews, terrorism
A: Thirty-seven. And eight AAA batteries.
Wednesday's lead story on Lou Dobbs Tonight was devoted to predatory lending. I found this to be somewhat unusual, because it broke from the Dobbsian tradition of having the lead story every night be illegal aliens. Apparently this led to quite a dispute in the Dobbs War Room, which is exactly like the TMZ offices except everyone is an angry 90-year-old white man. According to my sources, it was the most horrific, nauseating, subhuman battle ever in the history of Aliens vs. Predators.
posted by Dean Simakis @
7:59 AM
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A: None. He just leaves the old one there, because Lou Dobbs is terrified of change.
posted by Dean Simakis @
7:56 AM
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tagged: CNN, the elderly
A: None. The job was stolen by goddamned Mexicans!
posted by Dean Simakis @
7:55 AM
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A: Google Maps' ever-spreading "Street view" feature has added a technology for automatically blurring out the faces of the people it photographs walking out of porn shops or whatever. It works really well -- sometimes too well:
View Larger Map
If I were selling that slop, I'd want my face blurred too.
posted by Dean Simakis @
6:51 PM
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tagged: colonel sanders, maps, my girlfriend google, technology
A: Yesterday when I posted that German flower mutants video, I was going to make a joke about it being Andrew Sullivan's most disturbing find since the sashaying horse. Then he goes and ups the ante today with this terrifying high-speed snail gangbang:
Boww chikka bow wow.
EDIT: This may or may not actually be some sort of snail torture porn. Sullivan has replaced it with, what else, another Pet Shop Boys video. I will leave it up, because either way, at least Dick Cheney will find it arousing.
EDIT, PART 2: According to a YouTube commenter, these snails are not, in fact, being salted to death:
"these snails are not dying, i have slug infestation in my home and they die in less than 30 seconds if you salt them. these snails are hibernating, the foam they make dries to leave a watertight seal and snails can survive inside their shells without food for months. these snails have realised there is no food about so have entered "stasis". the bit i found gross was the snail orgy you appear to have filmed. i think theres a touch of salt to stop them from leaving but not enough to kill."I report, you decide.
posted by Dean Simakis @
6:10 PM
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tagged: aminal pwanet, andrew sullivan, video killed the bloggio star
A: God help us, not even Nate Silver knows.
What ever happened to beer being the cause of and solution to all society's problems? No wonder we're having a crisis of confidence.
posted by Dean Simakis @
1:30 PM
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tagged: beverages, economists
A: Feeling down in the dumps over the terrible economy? Well, Paul Krugman is here to cheer you up. Or, wait, no, make you feel much worse. Bottom line, Kruggers?
The bottom line is that there has been basically no wealth creation at all since the turn of the millennium: the net worth of the average American household, adjusted for inflation, is lower now than it was in 2001.Good times. Good. Times. Fear not, though, there's still hope. For one thing, the Cheney household is doing better than ever. Plus:
If you want to see what it really takes to boot the economy out of a debt trap, look at the large public works program, otherwise known as World War II, that ended the Great Depression. The war didn’t just lead to full employment. It also led to rapidly rising incomes and substantial inflation, all with virtually no borrowing by the private sector. By 1945 the government’s debt had soared, but the ratio of private-sector debt to G.D.P. was only half what it had been in 1940. And this low level of private debt helped set the stage for the great postwar boom.Hurray! Now all we have to do is go to war with Germany, beat them, appease them, wait for them to create a new Hitler, and then beat them again, with a little bit of Japan nuking for good measure.
Just be sure not to read Krugman's conclusion and everything will be sunshine and lollipops forever.
posted by Dean Simakis @
9:25 PM
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tagged: economists, germany is so fucked up, history, the new york times, video killed the bloggio star
A: Watch last night's Frontline -- or as Videogum calls it, "That Amazing Frontline Everyone's Talking About".
You better go watch it before everyone makes fun of you.
posted by Dean Simakis @
6:47 PM
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tagged: economists, life is horrible, pbs, tv news, video killed the bloggio star
A: Yes and no. Especially no.
See, this is how rumors get started. A post last week on the WaPo's Under God blog reported that Arkansas state Rep. Richard Carroll (the Green Party's highest-ranking elected official) had introduced a resolution to repeal Article 19, Section 1 of the state's 1974 Constitution, whereby: "No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any court." As Under God's David Waters writes:
Arkansas is one of half a dozen states that still exclude non-believers from public office. [...]Waters goes on to say that Carroll might face opposition from the wahoos who run Arkansas, but the point stands: It's a "symbolic" gesture meant to clean an outdated provision off the books. But when the U.S. News' Bonnie Erbe reblogged the story, she left the bit about symbolism out:
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled all such state provisions unconstitutional and unenforceable in a 1961 ruling in a Maryland case: "We repeat and again reaffirm that neither a State nor the Federal Government can constitutionally force a person 'to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion.'"
Carroll is merely trying to do some symbolic constitutional housecleaning...
Can it be constitutional to exclude from public service or service as a witness in a state court any and all atheists? Such a practice is so throw-back in nature, that it reminds one of the Spanish Inquisition. And yet, when I read the first part of this Washington Post piece, I was flabbergasted to find that Arkansas is one of a half-dozen states that does so.I don't know that it reminds me of the Spanish Inquisition so much as, oh, say, 19th Century Utah.
Richard Dawkins: Future mayor of Little Rock.
posted by Dean Simakis @
1:41 PM
1 comments
tagged: arkansas, crime and punishment, ohio, reddit