My Condi

So there's this time-wasting site out there where you can construct your own South Park character. I tried to make Condoleezza Rice, but I believe I failed. I blame the crude tools that I had to work with, but who am I to say? Perhaps I'm just inept at conveying subtle characteristics through this medium.

Violence

The FBI just published its crime statistics for 2005. Apparently, violent crime is up slightly for the first time in a little while. Time for finding a scapegoat. What do you want to blame it on? Here’s a list of suggestions:

Immigrants
Meth
Terrorists
The Republican majority
Rap music
Criminals
Sex on tv
Jews (I know, this is one that can be hard to pin on them, but I’m sure some enterprising bigot can find a way)
Lack of Christian Values
Gun laws (you can go pro or con with this one)
Scott Peterson

George Clooney Loves Africa, but not as much as other people do

George Clooney went to the U.N. last week, and while he was probably disappointed that it wasn’t like the U.N. in the movies (although John Bolton would make a great villain), he was stil able to get on up there and talk about the Sudan. I guess, if I’m going to have to hear about, I’d like to get the bad news from somebody handsome, and so would the U.N. Anyway, I tried to see how George does in the press compared to Angelina Jolie or Bono, his do-gooding celebrity counterparts. In Google Trends, Angelina(in red, above) destroys both Bono (yellow) and George Clooney (blue). However she has a much more interesting personal life, and is a hot woman, which might get her more hits than being a hot man would. If you redo the search in LexisNexis, searching all major newspapers in the past year for the terms “Angelina Jolie and Africa”, “George Clooney and Sudan”, and “Bono and Africa” you get 305 articles, 35 articles, and 271 articles respectively. When I expanded the search to “George Clooney and Africa”, I got 65. And then I got bored. But the lesson is, George, you’ve got work to do.

Happy 9/12!

Thank God, it's the day after. No more September 11th for another year. I'm getting kind of excited for fifty years from now, when 9/11 will be like Pearl Harbor in that most people won't know what day it was (shit!, should have named it something different!) and Jerry Bruckheimer types are responsible for the moviemaking instead of Oliver Stone types. Man, that Oliver Stone movie looks rough. Like watching the CNN reruns of 9/11, and picturing your mother with cancer, and picturing her in the World Trade Center the whole time. With a puppy.

And then there's the ABC/Disney movie that people (especially Dailykos people) are up in arms about. Apparently, the movie bends the truth in a way that makes the Clinton administration look less than awesome. I say who cares? Does anybody really think that that some network TV movie is going to alter the political landscape enough to matter? On finding out it was Clinton's fault from a TV show, are American citizens going to instill all of their faith in George W. Bush again? And if so, haven't we hit a level of stupidity only superseded by Paris Hilton fans? At some point, you just have to realize that most TV is junk and let it go.

On the other side, there are some better, pettier complaints that I find ammusing. The libertarians think that the jiggly-box style of filming needs to go. Me, I think that the jerky television screen is a product of market forces, and thus must be the most efficent form of fake-documentary entertainment.

Oh, and the movie was filmed in Toronto, which some people think is Anti-american. I think the producers just didn't want to be responsible for exploding the shit out of New York City for the second time in five years. But what do I know? I haven't seen it. I'm not going to either. Some people say I threw up on the real Sepember 11 because of alcohol consumption, but I think it was the psychosomatic response to the prospect of years and years of boring fake documentaries, downer movies, and bad politics.

They hate us for our K-Fed?

The September 11th issue of the New Yorker has Hendrik Hertzberg talking about the goodwill many countries held for America following 9/11, and it’s erosion, due mostly to the actions of the President. I don’t really communicate with people from other countries (I’m kind of provincial that way), but he had some pretty good poll data to back him up. Although our presidet has made his errors, I think there are other factors creating the erosion of goodwill toward the U.S. Just look at the existence of Kevin Federline. Actually, that’s all I can think of. The rest of the world hates us, not for our freedom, but for the existence of Britney Spears’ husband. And because we don’t get enough vacation time. Ok, I hate us because of the vacation time thing. I don’t think the Europeans have anything to do with it.

Special American Idol

The AP has an article about Clay Aiken's potential posting on the President's Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities. While Clay's web site doesn't deem the prospective Committee membership important enough to mention, it does provide a nifty countdown clock that tells you when Clay's new album comes out (11 days, 2 hours, 59 minutes, and 14 seconds at my last check!).

Apparently, all it takes is a stint on American Idol to make it into the world of policy. Soon, we'll be seeing Rufus Studdard heading up the NAACP. Hell, with her talent, Kelly Clarkson could be Secretary of State.

Bush Puts Retards on Panel (Wonkette)

Liberals, namby-pambys, and monsters

The Comics Curmudgeon has this to say about the current Mary Worth cartoon:

"This is just typical of the touchy-feely logic of this strip’s southern California locale: they think they can talk Stalky McStalker out of his stalking ways. Well, some mustachioed monsters can’t be reasoned with, you liberal namby-pambies."

I don't know if the Curmudgeon came up with this line, but what strikes me is how multipurpose it is. It could have been used by Neocons in the leadup to the Iraq war, or Churchill in regard to Chamberlain's pre-WWII appeasement policy, or by Curtis Lemay to criticize Adlai Stevenson during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Anyway, I'm just saying, multipurpose.

last month. . .

Ok, I’ve been severely out of the loop for the past month. I’ve been fighting bears, wrestling brides, and generally wasting a lot of time. Because of this, I feel like I’ve been away from the world for a while now. Lucky for me, nothing much has gone on in the past few weeks. I blame it on the month of August, when summer tv is old and stale, fall tv is not yet here, and when American politicians begin to think that the French way isn’t so bad after all. Let’s face it, they’ve got to rest up for election season, where they will be working hard, but not on their jobs.
So, what happened while I was gone? I’m trying to keep up. . .

JonBenet: still dead, still unsolved, I guess. Looks like they did manage to find a sufficiently creepy looking guy to pin it on though. He looked creepy enough for people to believe it wasn’t a family member. To bad they blew it.

I’ve been by her house before. It was very unexceptional. I would have thought there would at least be a plaque, or an “Unsolved Mysteries”-style dramatic reenactment I could pay to see.

The Middle East; still awesomely fucked up to the point where it bores me. Good thing we’ve got better newsertainment stories, like the one above, and the (who didn’t see this coming?) death of Croc Hunter.

Donald Rumsfeld: some people still don’t like this guy.

Senator George Allen: called someone a bad word.

Oh, and some planes almost got hijacked by a bunch of terrorists with MacGyver-like skills. But they didn’t. Result: no more flasks on planes.