Blogging is so over...

...even Pepys has stopped.  He had a good run, though.

Take Guns Away, But Only From Gun Nuts

Innocent people, artists and musicians, are shot dead in Seattle yesterday at a Cafe Racer, a place I know well; then I made the mistake of glancing at the newspaper comments.  Droves of obsessive gun aficionados responded to intense personal grief with extremist political aggression and delusions of victimhood.

It's profoundly repulsive.  If they have no basic human empathy, they can at least STFU for 24 hours.

Romney Jokes- Mitt Will Do For America What Utah Did For Jazz

1. Mitt Romney sees through rose-colored monocles. 
2. When he was young, Mitt Romney once had to borrow 5000 dollars -because he was out of laundry money.
3. Things Mitt Romney says in private: "That godless harlot looks hot."
4. Romney brilliantly sowed up the nomination by carefully contriving to make Rick Santorum, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich look like extremist nutcases.
5. Is Mitt Romney stiff?  He did dance once at his high school prom. 3 killed; 17 hospitalized. 
6. Mitt Romney needs you to know that there is nothing you shouldn't do for him. 
7. Mitt Romney: "The trees are the right height here, just like on the 4th moon of Altair 7."
8. Romney's the kind of guy who believes homosexuality can be cured by atomic wedgies. 
9. When Mitt Romney wants to relax, he settles down in his favorite chair, plugs in, and watches his old oscilloscope. 
10. I demand proof that Mitt Romney was born or assembled on Earth. 
11. Mitt Romney's real father was Aluminum.
12. Romney: "I hear the middle class.  I want you to know that I realize you have every right to want to be just like me. "
13. Mitt Romney is so wooden, he once had a bit part on Grizzly Adams, as the Cabin.
14. America is like a Banana Split, and Mitt Romney is the Nutra-Sweet Whipped Cream Substitute on top.
15. You've got a friend when Romney's in town- one you should go see for a hug and a good cry, after being creeped-out by meeting Mitt Romney. 
16. Mitt Romney is the Kim Kardashian of Integrity. 
17. Knock Knock.
    Who's There?
    Do you like me?
    Please leave now, Mitt.
18. Mitt Romney: "I believe strongly in things. Lots of very, very meaningful things that mean a lot to me personally in the heart and the soul,  and with conviction and integrity and courage and strength and leadership, and I will fight to ensure these things." 
    Preacher: "And do YOU Ann take Mitt to be your lawfully wedded husband?"
    Ann Romney: "I do."
19. Things Mitt Romney says in Private: "What exactly am supposed to do with this 'Little Debbie' snack cake?"
20. Mitt Romney Status Update #1: "Ann convinced me: now I LOVE poor people!"
21. Mitt Romney Status Update #2: "Wake up and smell the Sanka!"
22. Mitt Romney Status Update #3: "Met Mick Jagger! Will youth never die?"
23. Mitt Romney Status Update #4:  "Just great to see the old mansion just way I left it: as a very profitable sweater factory, filled with adorable orphans working away!"
24. Mitt Romney Status Update #5: "It seems such a shame to have the last of the Hapsburgs forced to water our azaleas."
25. Mitt Romney Status Update #6: "I'm so proud of my children- that genetic engineering really paid off."
26. Mitt Romney Status Update #7: "Barack Obama just doesn't get it. His pitiful human weapons cannot defeat us!"
27. Mitt Romney Status Update #8 "As I travel the country, I see signs everywhere that say 'Dairy Queen.' I hope you will all join me in welcoming her to America!"
28. Mitt Romney Status Update #9:  "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold your horses. This polo match just got a little TOO exciting!"
29. Mitt Romney Status Update #10. "There's nothing wrong with the Rich that capitalism can't fix."
30. Has anyone ever seen Mitt Romney eat?
31. Romney loves orphans. He never met a position he didn't adopt.
32. Mitt Romney is like a lukewarm bowl of nonfat milk.
33. Mitt Romney is the kind of guy who spreadsheets bathroom visits.
34. Mitt is the kind of guy who would give you the shirt off your back.
35. Mitt Romney is so white, he can stop global warming by sunbathing in Greenland.
36. Mitt Romney walks into a bar. He loans the bar owner $500,000. The bar can't make the payments with Romney hanging around, so it goes bankrupt.  Then he buys the bar at half price, fires the bartender, staff and the waitresses, and berates everyone for selling booze. Then he rehires the bartender and the chef at half the wages. Then he makes it a strip club.  Destitute, the waitresses are forced to apply for work as strippers, but Mitt realizes he can get cheaper strippers from Alabama. Then he sells the whole kit and kaboodle to an international strip club corporation at a handsome profit.  There's no joke here, I'm describing his business model.
37. Mitt Romney believes in Mittmocracy.  In a Mittmocracy, your opinion counts, at least when he gets around to having it.
38. People say Mitt Romney can't begin to understand the challenges of being poor or even middle class, or an ethnic or sexual minority, or sacrificing everything for your country instead of personal profit, or working all the time for your kids but falling farther behind, and despairing of life ever being better for them.  But that's only because he's kind of a dick.
39. Mitt Romney hopes for the religious vote, but what if people vote for a Christian, like Barack Obama?
40. Mitt Romney has done more for the advancement of the American Robotics industry than people will ever know.
41. Things Mitt Romney says in private: "I don't remember agreeing to allow you to brush your teeth that way."
42. Mitt Romney sings like an electric screwdriver wearing out its battery. 
43. When ET phoned home, Mitt Romney answered.
44. Mitt Romney: Will Mexico please take him back? 
45. Of course he believes in family values- he had 8 or 9 grandmothers. 
46. I once saw Mitt Romney give a hungry child a one hundred dollar bill, and he was generous enough to give him 6 months to pay it at 27% interest. 
47. Mitt Romney will do for America what Utah did for jazz. 

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Speaking of cop show themes...

Here is Toma, my all time favorite.

Steed with a Sten

The Top Gear men, in their review of the up-gunned Jensen Interceptor, decided to do a title sequence for one of those 1960-70s British detective/spy shows, a la Sabotage.  It's enjoyable, though of course not up the the Beastie Boys' exceptionally high standard.

As sometimes happens, however, an otherwise ordinary affair has a flash of pure genius, in this case the transformation of James May into a boat-blasting, Sten-wielding badass.



If I were James May I would buy a box of those glasses, grow out the 'stache (or have one surgically attached), and put the hair stylist on retainer.  Because, while Hammond and Clarkson in The Interceptors are the same idiots they always are, May is a better man here than he has ever been or ever will be.

I have no doubt he could carry a show as James Steed...  I hope they do a pilot, with a better supporting cast.

Oh, and the funky music is the theme from Department S, a British spy-fi show which, alas, never made it across the pond.

Well there's your problem

Hey!  I just noticed that the Republicans keep comparing America to Rome and Germany.  I think that's their problem, because we're not a militaristic dictatorship intent on world domination.  We're the United States of America, a country with an elected government that offers universal suffrage, basic rights to all and a judicial system largely based on English common law.

But that's the problem - Republicans hate that.  They really want this to be the Empire of America, and given their love affair with historical determinism they've decided that once we've stabbed Julius Caesar (or was that JFK?) the Imperium can progress in accordance with Hegelian determinism, to its thousand years of glory.

WTF is it with you guys?  Hegel, Nietszche, Cato, Cicero...how about trying be to Americans for a change?

Nothing to see here, move along

Guess I just imagined that thing where we passed a law making CEOs and CFOs have to take personal responsibility for the accuracy of corporate financial statements.  

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Dear Blizzard

How have you been? Say I was on my computer the other day.

Awesome old-timey photos

From the early 1870's by Timothy O'Sullivan.

Don't give up on us yet

Americans are still good.

We've been reading a lot of Greek mythology (this is awesome) around the house, and got into a conversation about anger.  We use the term 'anger' for a lot of things.  Achilles thinks he's angry when he holds out on the Greeks, but finds out what real anger, or maybe rage is a better term, is when Patroclus dies.  For Achilles, then, anger really two things:  a frustration that stymies, and a rage that animates.

I wouldn't call either true anger, an anger arising from a sense of human decency.  It's nice to see Americans are still capable of that last one.

We need to do more of this, so they can hear it over the $40,000 a plate guys.

Still Driving

This bassist has no equal, except for perhaps The Laird.

A Recommendation

If you have a sunroof and access to a pleasant enough stretch of road, this may be for you:

Oh snap!

Matthew Yglesias calls it like he sees it, regarding the JP Morgan board's risk management committee:

These are all eminently respectable board of directors types. But obviously this is the kind of Risk Committee you put together if your organizational goal is to (a) have a risk committee, (b) have it filled with eminently respectable board of directors types, and (c) have it not actually do anything to manage risk. 

Good metaphor, that

From a review by Tom Shippey in The Times Literary Supplement:

The dangerous [metaphor] as regards English, I would suggest, is language as threatened female, whose “purity” is continually being “violated” or “polluted” by vulgarisms, Americanisms, anything one doesn’t happen to like. If one pursued this image, one would have to say that English, far from being a pure maiden, looks like a woman who has appeared out of some distant fen, had more partners than Moll Flanders, learned a lot in the process, and is now running a house of negotiable affection near an international airport. But metaphors can be taken too far.

Modern Democrats

Obama, making his first event appearance in San Jose since running for president five years ago, had a nearly $40,000 a head dinner at the Fairmont San Jose hotel downtown.


Some joggers and business people walking through Plaza de Cesar Chavez park stopped to take pictures of the Secret Service and his huge entourage. But there were no protesters, sign holders or well wishers.
Perhaps it's because his re-election campaign moved the event Wednesday from a Palo Alto hotel to the Fairmont. Plus the event was closed to the public and press, so there was little to no chance anyone could catch a glimpse of Obama.


Inside the elegant hotel, guests checked in, sipped coffee and worked on their laptops next to serious looking Secret Service agents.

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Meanwhile, Clinton wtf?  Oh, it was Prince Albert's fault?  Well ok then.

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Stylistic Distinctions

Tony Soprano explains Romney's Bain capital.

Cheese ascending

I've followed the work of John Cheese for some time, partly out of personal interest after this incredible essay and partly because I had a strong sense he was going to up his game.  Here we can see the transformation well underway, his lungs filling with oxygen, his eyes clearing (poor Gwyneth Paltrow)...

Where a celebrity says or implies that people who work that hard need to slow down and enjoy the small things because they're missing out on life. They can't imagine a world where people work themselves into exhaustion because they have to -- not because they want to. They don't live in a world where someone can show up and take your fucking car because you couldn't make the payments. Where one missed rent check plus one intolerant landlord equals instant homelessness.

Fails purity test

"What could have been more divisive than, when President Obama was inaugurated, for a number of Republicans, friends of mine, and a number of commentators to say, 'We're going to destroy him. We're going to destroy him'?" 


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Grist

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 The truth hurts.


My other favorite.

Pride

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Mitt Runner: We Demand Proof Mitt Romney was Born or Assembled on Earth

Charlie Rose: You're in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down...

Mitt: What one?

Charlie Rose: What?

Mitt: What desert?

Charlie Rose: It doesn't make any difference what desert, it's completely hypothetical.

Mitt: But, how come I'd be there?

Charlie Rose: Maybe you're fed up. Maybe you want to be by yourself. Who knows? You look down and see a tortoise, Mitt. It's crawling toward you...

Mitt: Tortoise? What's that?

Charlie Rose: You know what a turtle is?

Mitt: Of course!
Charlie Rose: Same thing.

Mitt: I've never seen a turtle... But I understand what you mean.

Charlie Rose: You reach down and you flip the tortoise over on its back, Mitt.

Mitt: Do you make up these questions, Mr. Rose? Or do they write 'em down for you?

Charlie Rose: The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping.

Mitt: What do you mean, I'm not helping?

Charlie: I mean: you're not helping! Why is that, Mitt?

[Mitt has become visibly shaken]

For use at an appropriate future time

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Cool as the other side of the pillow

Kitna ftw

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Could go to one syllable words, I suppose

Brad DeLong explains, no one listens.


Regulatory arbitrage, and persuading those who do not understand risks that they should bear them--those are not socially-valuable activities.

But he is right.  A proper government would do something.

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Stapleton Center Showdown...postponed

Thunder 3 - Lakers 1, Spurs 3 4 - Clippers 0...

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Dammit, who am I supposed to be rooting for?

Chelsea, on Bayern's home pitch, equalizes with almost no time left, wins the shootout, takes the Champions League Final.  I have be for Chelsea, right?  Oh, except my team (or at least the team most of my friends like), Tottenham Hotspur, is now screwed.

There's no shame in finishing fourth in the Premier League. It's how Spurs finished fourth, though, that has left fans bitter and stunned. A top-three finish was Tottenham's to lose just three months ago, and lose it they did in spectacular fashion. Spurs were even given new life during the first weekend of May when Arsenal stumbled at the Emirates. Tottenham couldn't beat lowly Aston Villa in a "win and we'll be in" match, though, and their fate was no longer in their hands. While Chelsea were a team of destiny, Spurs were more style than substance, more headlines than actual results. What will forever be the season of what might have been could also be the beginning of the dismantling of a squad that was untouchable just this past fall.

Well, at least we'll suffer with the The Damned United.

But why suffer?  Why not celebrate with the Manchester City faithful, who just had the Best Thing Ever happen to them, winning the Premier League...in injury stoppage time...over Manchester United...on a goal differential...

 

If you can't dig that, look into a heart transplant.

Cheese dares

...and is disappointed.

Perspective

xkcd has it.

Constructive

Today in Krugman

In a post on his blog:

When future historians write about the fall of the American Republic, they will of course lay primary blame on the extremists of the right, who set out deliberately to destroy it. But they will also lay heavy blame on all the “centrists” and Serious People who not only refused to admit what was happening, but ostracized and silenced anyone who tried to point it out.

"University", part 2

A university in Georgia is bleeding faculty after adding a new section to employee contracts last October. The "Personal Lifestyle Statement" requires employees to reject homosexuality, premarital sex, adultery, drug use and public drinking near campus. It also mandates that staff be active in a local church.


In an anonymous survey in April, only 12 percent of faculty and staff said that they planned to stay...


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I don't care 'cause I'm a *grown-up*

Fiddle-de-dum, fiddle-dee-dee,
Diablo 3's servers
Took an arrow to the knee.

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Middle ground fallacy

Americans Elect cancels plans to run a presidential candidate due to complete lack of interest. Krugman writes the epitaph for a stupid idea.

Now I'm sad

He died leaving the largest charitable foundation ever by an American entertainer — $150 million.

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As a man of faith I have a question

Why are we consulting the tribal customs of prehistoric goatherds as an authoritative basis for our civil government?

L.A. Wins Game 7...

...twice.

"It's suddenly fashionable to be a Clippers fan," Los Angeles Times columnist Chris Erskine wrote in February, "while Lakers fans lick their wounds or, as is often the case with Lakers fans, hire someone to lick their wounds for them."



The Clippers did it the hard way.


The Clippers on Sunday won a Game 7 for the first time in franchise history, defeating the Memphis Grizzlies, 82-72, at the FedEx Forum — prevailing in a winner-take-all game on the road, a situation in which few gave them much chance of success...


NBA history was against the Clippers — visiting teams had won only 19.5% of Game 7s.


Clippers history was against them too — this is a franchise that was 0-2 in Game 7s, and has made the playoffs only five times since Donald Sterling purchased the team 31 years ago, and eight times overall.


And this is a Clippers team with nine new players on the roster, a team that twice had failed to close out Memphis after building a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series.


But now they can say they are a Clippers team that will play in the Western Conference semifinals.




A spectre is haunting the Lakers - they may no longer be the best team in the NBA...or the Staples Center.  If the Lakers and Clippers each achieve their objective and win the next series - they will face one another for the right to play in the NBA Finals.  And it is just possible that we will learn that the Clippers are not Icarus...but Nemesis. 

About time, I say

D.S.M.-5 promises to be a disaster — even after the changes approved this week, it will introduce many new and unproven diagnoses that will medicalize normality...


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It goes around, it comes around

Some Alabama farmers say they are planting less produce rather than risk having crops rot in the fields a second straight year because of labor shortages linked to the state's crackdown on illegal immigration.

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If only there were some way to compel idle labor to help with agricultural production...

Is Thomas Friedman Really That Stupid?

Severe cognitive dissonance here.

Look, I don't like it either.  Jimmy James explains it all for you.

This is advertising, too, the kind I wish we saw more of.  A shame none of those Democrat billionaires pays to put it in front of people any more.

Or maybe Mr. Friedman would like to come to our community for free to discuss his topic.  I'm not holding my breath.

Get on the bandwagon now. NOW!

You read it here first. Russell Wilson is gonna be The Man in Seattle. Maybe not this year. Maybe not next year. But it's gonna happen.

(Also: watch that 8-Mile clip below because you're going to need to  have it running through your head until November's election.)

"Eff Cranbrook"

Eminem has some tips for Obama on re-framing a debate.

FSL Bait

Here's an essay about major artistic accomplishments by Charles Murray, or, as I call him, The Prince of False Causes.

Version 2: Quite Enough!

Terrible Beauty, cont'd

The Los Angeles Clippers, formerly the San Diego Clippers and the Buffalo Braves, have amassed 1,247 wins over the past 42 years.  Unfortunately they have also amassed 2,149 losses, giving them a .367 winning percentage.  In those 42 years they have finished above .500 just seven times, and above .600 just once.

That one time they got above .600 - that one glorious year - was this year.  And now, for only the second time since the team arrived in California in 1978, this perennial doormat, this icon of mediocrity, this wretched paragon of professional basketball futility - is about to advance to the NBA playoff semifinals.  The team is giving this appropriate attention on their website.

But we can't get too excited.  Yes, they are young, deep, and good - but they are not playing the best basketball in the NBA, and they surely cannot win the championship with the current roster, although with Billups healthy it might have been a different story.

But they are playing the best basketball in the history of the franchise, and the best basketball in Los Angeles, and they are the most fun-to-watch NBA team in years, the new Playground All-Stars.  It's wonderful, the way basketball should be.

• Blake Griffin highlight reel here.  (How to make a Blake Griffin face here.)
• Chris Paul's highlight reel here.
• DeAndre Jordan highlight reel here.

Packing Bags for the Academy

Those nice men at the Border Patrol have graciously invited me to attend their "Citizens Academy". I hope they teach us to round up illegals like they did for the Boy Scouts.

Works for me

Standard Phrase, 2012

"Long since our needs were met for the red-necked fuckwittery of these pernicious Johnny-Raws."

Fuckwittery at Lehman Even Greater Than Previously Imagined

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It snows a lot in Alaska

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Silent, swift, deadly

This is my new bike, a nostalgic attempt to combine the Raleigh aesthetics and Motebecane riding attributes of the bikes I liked as a teenager. It was originally a simple house-brand one-speed stealth cruiser built at a local shop on a light, stiff chrome-moly frame. I up-gunned it with a Shimano Alfine 8-speed internal hub on a custom rear wheel.  It is very fast, and totally silent.

Only two questions remaining:  1)  Lasers or rocket launchers?  2)  Should I add a little black bell?

Bill Swensen achieves total consciousness

Farewell you magnificent bastard:

Wabash Cannonball

• Roy Acuff (I)
• Roy Acuff (II)
• Oswald on his own
• Flatt and Scruggs
• Hank Snow
• Chet Atkins
• Ernest Tubb
• Doc Watson
• Lonnie Donegan
• Jerry Reed
• Claire Lynch

Did he say that out loud?

For in the end, Spain and others do have an alternative to endless austerity, one that may be forced on them by events: exit the euro, with all the financial and political fallout that follows. And on the current course, that’s what’s coming.


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Or Mormons...

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Well, there you go again

“I’ve never attacked him just for nothing in particular. I’ve gone after his arithmetic and said it doesn’t add up at all. And he has never offered a response to that. All he does is make scary noises about the deficit, with mood music, with organ music in the background about how ominous it is, and then propose a plan that would in fact increase the deficit.”


“So if he wants to joke about it, that’s fine, that’s his right. But he has not actually offered any response at all to my criticisms,” added Krugman, a relentless critic of both Ryan and the journalists who lionize him as a deficit hawk.


A spokesman for Ryan declined to comment.

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It was kind of entertaining when Reagan did it.  But maybe it's time to get a new act, hmm?

I have no interest in Diablo 3

So now, after all this time they expect us to be interested in Diablo 3, which will be released on May 15th.  Well I'm not interested at all.  Couldn't care less.

Probably nothing new anyway.

I mean look at this, same old crap.  Nice art though, that is a very cool ax.

Oh, a new wizard class, that would get me excited if I was like, 12...although, the curved electrocution looks pretty awesome.  And a new witch doctor class, and a demon hunter class...  And a monk class?  Really...hmmm.

So, um, anyway, nothing to see here, obviously a disappointment, I doubt it's worth anyone's time to get this stupid game.  On May 15th. 

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