Obsidian Wings

Best Cartoon Ever

by publius

Via Ezra Klein:

I Can Haz Open Thread?

by hilzoy

We just haven't had enough LOLCats around here lately. Herewith, an attempt to rectify that deficiency.

Links: 1, 2, 3.)

Also: remember a few days ago, when I asked when we'd see Hillary-cleavage-style stories, only about men? Stories like this?

"Presidential candidates normally take care with their underwear. Get it right and the pride of a candidate's manhood will remain neatly centered, visible, if at all, as a discreet, masculine bulge; get it wrong and his manly appointments will fall into one of his pants legs, giving him a peculiar, lopsided appearance.

Somebody get the word to Mitt Romney."

If you want to see the occasion for just such a story, only with Dick Cheney rather than Mitt Romney, and if you have a very strong stomach and are in a place where involuntary screams of horror and revulsion will not pose difficulties, and if, moreover, you are good at forgetting things you wish you had never seen, click here.

Don't click otherwise. You have been warned. (h/t LGM.)

How Do You Say "Me Gusta"

by publius

Well, it's almost the weekend. So rather than Friday cat blogging, I'm going to go with Friday Jarritos blogging. This is a commercial some friends of mine in a sketch comedy group in LA made for the Mexican soda Jarritos. Enjoy.

The Fairness Doctrine Meets The Blogosphere

by hilzoy

Riffing off a comment in publius' last thread, I suggest an ObWi party game: If blogs were forced to give equal time to opposing views, what truly horrible, yet somehow apt, pairings might result? In addition to the suggestion I left in the last thread, I propose the following:

Glenn Reynolds on Balkinization

Victor Davis Hanson on Pat Lang's Sic Semper Tyrannis

Pam of Atlas Shrugs on Juan Cole's Informed Comment

Ace of Spades on Feministing

JihadWatch on Larry Johnson's No Quarter

Thomas of RedState on Slacktivist ...

Then there are a few that are a bit too obvious: NRO's Planet Gore on Deltoid, Michelle Malkin on Orcinus, Charles Johnson of lgf on Democratic Underground, and so on.

Any further suggestions?

***

Also, because I can, one of the Best Cartoons Ever, courtesy of one of our readers:

dood he died

by hilzoy

Via atrios, a blog that seems to be devoted to recasting the Sunday talk shows as if they had been IM'd by junior high school kids. It's hilarious. Atrios linked this, but I like this interview with John McCain even better. Excerpt:

"Tim: what a bummer you lose to Bush and then lose because you embraced Bush

McCain: i didn't embrace him - i hugged him

Tim: whatever u were his BFF

McCain: life isn't fair whaaaaaa

Tim: yur career is dying

McCain: i consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth

Tim: yur like Lou Gehrig maybe they'll name the disease of political failure after you

McCain: [clenches teeth and laughs] dood immortaility"

Read to the end to put the title of this post in context.

Otherwise: my irises are blooming, I have planted many vegetables in my community garden plot, my grading is done, and as soon as I give a talk tomorrow and finish up the letters of recommendation, life will be sane again. And you? Open thread!

My Trip to the Doctor

by publius

Ok, time to post. Here we go.

I haven’t had a chance to talk about Bush’s State of the Union, but there are several interesting . . . “things”?  No. “Whachamawits”?  Jesus no. Let’s go with “things” . . . things to talk about.  I thought the speech was bad. The speech was bad because it said wrong things. And wrong things are not good.

Good lord, that looks like a paragraph a second-grader would write. Let me try that again.

Although I haven’t written about it yet, I thought Bush’s SOTU speech was not good because it says bad things. I think corn gas is bad because it makes corn cost more and corn gas hurts our earth and hurting our earth is bad and bad is not good. So corn gas is bad.

Okay, pull it together. Don’t panic. Why am I writing like an idiot? Let’s just try a different subject.

One of the interesting things about Laura Secor's NYT Magazine article on Iran is that it shows that Iran is not one Iran but a whole big bunch of Irans and that some Irans are bad and some Irans are good and we should like the good Irans and not like the bad Irans because they are mean and mean is not good . . .

Something’s seriously wrong with me. I’m going to the doctor.

_________________________________________

[Later that afternoon, at Publius’s doctor.]

DOCTOR: Let me make sure I have your symptoms right. You used to be a good writer.

ME: Well, I at least used to write at a high-school level.

DOCTOR: But in the last few days, you’ve regressed to the writing level of a second-grader.

ME: My sentences run together. I can’t think of adjectives beyond good, bad, and mean. I write like a complete imbecile. What does it mean?

DOCTOR: Mmm-Hmm. We’ve been seeing some of this lately. Tell me, have you been reading Dinesh D'Souza’s book?

ME: (cheeks reddening) No! Absolutely not! That man is a joke — accusing “the Left” of causing 9/11. Even conservatives are outraged by it. I’m offended that you would even suggest . . .

DOCTOR: Publius, I’m your doctor. It is essential that you tell me if you have had relations with that man if you expect me to make an informed diagnosis. I'll ask again -- have you been reading his book?

ME: (long pause). I’ve read the blurbs. And I did read his op-ed in the Post today. But not the book, yet.

DOCTOR: Mmm-Hmm. I thought so. Fortunately your exposure was limited, so your writing should fully recover.

ME: What’s wrong with me?

DOCTOR: In his new book, Dinesh D'Souza has reached a transcendental level of stupidity. It approaches the Platonic — nay, Kristolic — ideal of stupid. Astrophysicists have determined that his stupidity is so dense — so massive — that it has started absorbing light.

ME: Like a black hole?

DOCTOR: Precisely. But it’s a little different in that it absorbs intelligent thought, particularly writing ability and rational analysis. Opening the cover of his book is essentially crossing the event horizon.

ME: And what happens after that?

DOCTOR: (with echo effects) No one can know.

ME: Are there long-term effects?

DOCTOR: Fortunately for you, you only read his op-ed. While the stupidity contained in the op-ed was dense enough to exert a gravitational force, it was not enough to permanently deprive you of writing ability. I expect you will recover in a few days. But drink a lot of water and stay away from Liz Cheney op-eds.

From The Department Of Unfortunate Coincidences ...

by hilzoy

Via praktike Blake Hounshell, this actual news story:

"It wasn't funny being a real TV reporter from Kazakhstan trying to cover Ohio's recent elections - at a time when the nation's top box-office comedy featured a fake Kazakh TV reporter humiliating Americans.

A TV crew from Kazakhstan's Channel 31 was in Columbus on Nov. 6 and 7 to make a real documentary on the U.S. political system, but the crew got a wary reception from press secretaries who feared public skewering by comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, star of the mockumentary "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan."

It didn't help that the Kazakh cameraman's first name was "Bolat," a name similar to Cohen's alias. In Cohen's movie, his character Borat goads subjects into making outrageous racist and sexist statements for a fake documentary about the United States.

When the real central Asian TV crew showed up in Ohio, press secretaries for the state's Republican and Democratic parties were suspicious enough to verify their credentials with the U.S. State Department.

"They were really adamant that they were not Borat," said Ohio Democratic Party press secretary Randy Borntrager, adding that the film crew told him that "Borat" "is giving Kazakhstan a bad name."

State Department officials who supervised the TV crew's two-week multistate trip say they got apprehensive phone calls wherever the real Kazakhs went. Even the FBI called them to make sure the crew was legitimate.

"The timing of this was not good for the TV crew, because a lot of people thought they weren't for real. But the feeling in Kazakhstan right now seems to be that they are happy with anything that brings attention to their country," said George Santulli, the State Department official who oversaw their trip."

The cameraman's name was Bolat?? Poor guy. And poor Kazakhstan, if they're really "happy with anything that brings attention to their country." Sort of like being glad people beat you up, since at least they aren't ignoring you.

Just For Giggles

by hilzoy

My one-sided correspondence with Bill Clinton, below the fold, for auld lang syne.

(Yes, I actually sent them; no, of course he didn't reply; no, I didn't expect him to.)

Minor Celebrity!

by hilzoy

Look what Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon did:

"I was so amused by the fact that Muir showed up at Hilzoy’s place in an attempt to defend himself and failed miserably that I decided to recaption mine so that the dialogue is all from that thread. Muir is played by the gray-haired fellow and Hilzoy by the red-headed lady."

Suddenly, I feel I've really arrived as a blogger. Now I just need to work on getting my back to talk.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

by Charles

The 2006 winner of worst opening sentence goes to Jim Guigli, who penned this little gem:

Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.

Kind of takes your breath away.  Sort of on the same topic, my teenage son pointed me to a fact sheet on Chuck Norris, which proved quite informative.  Here are some of the facts about Chuck Norris that I learned:

• Guns don't kill people.  Chuck Norris kills people.
• There is no theory of evolution.  Just a list of animals Chuck Norris allows to live.
• The chief export of Chuck Norris is Pain.
• The leading causes of death in the United States are:  1. Heart disease, 2. Chuck Norris, 3. Cancer.
• Crop circles are Chuck Norris' way of telling the world that sometimes corn needs to lie down.
• Most people have 23 pairs of chromosomes. Chuck Norris has 72... and they're all poisonous.
• Chuck Norris is not hung like a horse... horses are hung like Chuck Norris.
• Chuck Norris once challenged Lance Armstrong in a "Who has more testicles?" contest. Chuck Norris won by 5.
• Chuck Norris sheds his skin twice a year.
• Chuck Norris once ate a whole cake before his friends could tell him there was a stripper in it.
• It takes Chuck Norris 20 minutes to watch 60 Minutes.
• Chuck Norris eats beef jerky and craps gunpowder. Then, he uses that gunpowder to make a bullet, which he uses to kill a cow and make more beef jerky. Some people refer to this as the "Circle of Life."
• If Chuck Norris were a calendar, every month would be named Chucktober, and every day he'd kick your ass.

Such is the humor of 15-year old males.