I don't know about you, but I've really been getting a kick out of having Conan back on TV

And here's just the most recent of many reasons why.

I don't think I've ever been so depressed to be proven right

Me, this blog, September 24th, this year:

Honestly, I am not worried about the tea party movement. They (and their effect on the GOP) are handing Obama and the Democratic party everything they should need to hold onto or even increase their majorities in the senate and house.

What I'm worried about is that they won't grab onto those teacup-nuts and use 'em to knock down some bodies. What I am worried about is that Obama will react to a mid-term "whacking" as Clinton did.

No, not by having an affair--by all accounts President Obama is deeply and passionately in love with his wife, and devoted to his family. But by resorting to the straddle-every-issue, don't-offend-anyone strategy that Clinton embraced from (at least) 1994-1996.

Howard Fineman, HuffPo, today:

The tax-bill fight is revealing a crucial fact about President Obama's new, post-"shellacking" White House: it is increasingly being run by veterans of the Clinton era.

The significance of this staff shift is beyond the operational. The Clinton-era alums, by outlook and experience, represent a centrist, pragmatic, pro-business "wealth-creation" wing of the Democratic Party that flourished during the Clinton presidency in the 1990s.

Outside the White House per se, the president is getting key support from John Podesta, whose Center for American Progress has placed dozens of staffers in key positions inside the administration.

CAP supports the tax-cut deal, perhaps not surprising given that Podesta was once Bill Clinton's highly regarded chief of staff.

In which my love/hate relationship with Aaron Sorkin continues

Okay. You all know how good a writer I think Aaron Sorkin is, how thankful I am for his work, how much I prize my West Wing and Sports Nights DVDs. Also, I saw The Social Network this week, and thought it was the best film made from one of his scripts since The American President.

Sorkin has a piece on the Huffpo this morning attacking Sarah Palin for, in so many words, torturing and killing and slicing up animals for pleasure.

Now, lord knows I hold no brief for Sarah Palin. I think she makes Pamela Anderson look like a genius, I honestly don't get the whole "It girl" thing, and I hope that on his death bed--far away may that be--John McCain dies knowing exactly what he inflicted upon his country.

And though like Sorkin, I eat meat, I don't want animals tortured (not even John "Jigsaw" Kramer did that). So given all of the foregoing, why do I have any problem with Sorkin's new piece? Two reasons. First, this sentence:

Like 95% of the people I know, I don't have a visceral (look it up) problem eating meat or wearing a belt.

"Look it up?" Geez, Aaron, condescending much?

And second, the whole rest of the piece just isn't as well written as it could've been...or as I've seen such statements made before. For example:

Now, the trick in shooting deer is you gotta get 'em out in the open. And it's tough with deer, 'cause these are clever, cagey animals with an intuitive sense of danger. You know what you have to do to get a deer out in the open? You hold out a Twinkie.

That animal clopped up to me like we were at a party. She seemed to be pretty interested in the Twinkie, so I gave it to her. Looking back, she'd have been better off if I'd given her the damn vest. And Bob kind of screamed at me in whisper, "Move away!" The camera had been re-loaded and it looked like the day wasn't gonna be a washout after all. So I backed away, a couple of steps at a time, and closed my eyes when I heard the shot. Look, I know these are animals, and they don't play bridge and go to the prom, but you can't tell me that the little one didn't know who his mother was.

That's gotta mean something. And later, at the hospital, Bob Shoemaker was telling me about the nobility and tradition of hunting and how it related to the native American Indians. And I nodded and I said that was interesting while I was thinking about what a load of crap it was. Hunting was part of Indian culture. It was food and it was clothes and it was shelter. They sang and danced and offered prayers to the gods for a successful hunt so that they could survive just one more unimaginably brutal winter. The things they had to kill held the highest place of respect for them, and to kill for fun was a sin.

And they knew the gods wouldn't be so generous next time. What we did wasn't food and it wasn't shelter and it sure wasn't sports. It was just mean.

That speech, as if you're not already all way ahead of me, is from a television episode called "The Hungry and the Hunted," of the TV series Sports Night, and was written by...Aaron Sorkin.

Those fuckers.

Ok, I'm sorry to those of you who thought you were done seeing me rant about Saw...but it was just announced that the Saw 3D DVD will only be released in the theatrical cut on the DVD. If one were to want to see an unrated cut--which is the last hope some of us had for a Saw VII we could live with--one would have to get the Blu-Ray.

(And in my case, a Blu-Ray player.)

So, fuck them.

Saw 3D was a letter to Saw fans like me (the ones who cared about stronger writing and characterization)...a letter that was just two words long. And this is the exclaimation point.

(and to add further insult to injury, or just to add that extra dollop of cheese, they're calling it Saw: The Final Chapter on DVD.)

I feel so dirty.

Dear England: Make up the spare bedroom, we're coming back. Much love, the colonies

Tea Party Nation Founder: 'A Wise Idea' To Only Let Property Owners Vote

Judson Phillips, the founder of the group Tea Party Nation, has defended his comments that the Founding Fathers' original plan to only allow property owners to vote "makes a lot of sense" because "property owners have a little bit more of a vested interest in the community than non-property owners."

Oh, those wacky Canadlians

A teacher has been suspended after she gave her Grade 8 students a sexually-explicit multiple-choice test that included questions about anal sex, lesbian encounters and penis sizes.

Several parents filed complaints after students at Andre-Laurendeau High School, on Montreal’s south shore, were asked whether or not “blacks have bigger penises” or if they agreed that “all sexual positions are comfortable.”

Two sexologists contacted by QMI were split about the value of the test.

As in so many other things, George Carlin was right

For myself, I have solved this political dilemma in a very direct way. On Election Day, I stay home. Two reasons: first of all, voting is meaningless; this country was bought and paid for a long time ago. That empty shit they shuffle around and repackage every four years doesn't mean a thing.

Second, I don't vote, because I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. I know some people like to twist that around and say, "If you don't vote, you have no right to complain." But where's the logic in that? Think it through: If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they screw things up, then you're responsible for what they've done. You voted them in. You caused the problem. You have no right to complain.

I, on the other hand, who did not vote—who, in fact, did not even leave the house on Election Day—am in no way responsible for what these politicians have done and have every right to complain about the mess you created. Which I had nothing to do with.

I think I just figured out why John McCain and Joe Lieberman are each other's BFF

They're both two-faced boobs.

Yes!

This makes me so happy, I think I am now officially over how much Saw 3D sucked. What does? This does:

Joe Rehyansky: Allow Lesbians To Serve In Order To Give 'Straight Male GIs A Fair Shot At Converting' Them

I know what you're thinking: Who is Joe Rehyansky, and how did he take his finger out of his nose long enough to type the above? I'm glad you asked, because the answer gets to the heart of just why that statement fills me with such joy. You see...

Joe Rehyansky, a former official at the Chattanooga, Tennessee [emphasis mine, natch-BV], District Attorney's office, recently penned an op-ed opposed to allowing gays in the military, in which he argued that lesbians should be allowed to serve in the armed forces, in part because it would give straight male soldiers a chance to "convert" them.

Tennessee. Nothing good comes of being there.

A wookie roar of mourning, please...

...for Irvin Kershner, who directed the single best "Star Wars" film ever: The Empire Strikes Back.It's the most entertaining, the sheerest pleasure to watch, the most inspirational, that rare sequel to improve on the original.

It's also the one George Lucas had the least to do with the filming of. I don't think that's a coincidence.

(This probably goes without saying, but as ever when talking about the original "Star Wars" trilogy, I'm talking about it before Lucas changed them.)

Get me, I'm a Wiko Source

This blog is listed as a source for something called "Wiko News."

I'd say Fox has become a parody of itself, but, what self?

FoxNation.com Reposts Anti-Obama Article From The Onion, Doesn't Mention It's A Joke

Honestly...

Just in time for Thanksgiving!

Take heart, friends. That stupid, pious hypocrite Tom Delay has been convicted.

He faces five years to life in prison.

I hear the birds singing...

By all rights, seems like this should've taken place in Tennessee

Former priest accused of trying to hire hit man

...

In a murder-for-hire case worthy of a Dan Brown novel, a Roman Catholic priest has been arrested on charges that he solicited a hit man to kill a teenager who had accused him of sexual abuse.

If you're anything at all like me...

...this will make you cheer and laugh.

Dragonboy from Dragon Boy on Vimeo.

It reminds me of Wall-E, inasmuch as it's a romantic story told without dialogue (less even than Wall-E), yet fantastically clear.

PS: I must thank Roger Ebert for putting this in his Journal.

If The Unworthy Swine (mk II) is responsible...

... for this, Miss Anne, just say the word and I'll have him wishing he were swimming through broken glass.

Anne Hathaway stormed out of her birthday dinner with her parents and boyfriend, Adam Shulman, Friday when the conversation took a turn for the worse at restaurant Tocqueville on East 15th Street. One witness told us, "It sort of came on pretty suddenly. Everyone got pretty quiet. She left crying, and then her boyfriend followed her, but her parents remained." A second witness said, "She told the server, 'We just need a few minutes,' and then she walked out and didn't return." A third witness said, "Her father said, 'Let's not talk about it tonight; it's her birthday.' " A rep for Hathaway, who turned 28, acknowledged she was at Tocqueville but said the drama "never happened . . . The only time Anne left the table was to take a phone call. She did not leave the table upset."

They've had months, years, to make this "world" of what it could be.

Sentences that offend me both morally and from a linguistic POV.

"We have to deal with the world as we find it,"

From:

Top White House Senior advisor, David Axelrod, on why Democrats are going to cave on extending the tax cuts for the wealthy.

Why it offends me morally:

If I have to explain this, you must not have been reading this blog very long.

Why it offends me from a linguistic POV:

"As we find it" makes it sound like they, to use the common phrase, "were born yesterday." Sorry, no. Mr. Axelrod, we--the people who voted to put you (via your bosses) in the White House--we are dealing with the world as we find it.

Every single day, we wake up in that world and we do as best as can to play the only cards we're dealt. You and the President, Mr. Axelrod, are dealing with the world as you have (at the very least, through benign neglect) made it. There's a slight difference.

Do not go asking for our sympathy, get off the fucking cross and do the jobs we hired you (we thought) to do. You have two years until your next worker review, and we want to see a sharp improvement in your performance. Or we will get ourselves another guy.

This has been a warning.

This isn't even worthy of Tucker Carlson

Conservative pundit and Daily Caller editor Tucker Carlson perpetrated a hoax last weekend by posing as Keith Olbermann in a series of emails to a Philadelphia columnist.

On Tuesday afternoon, a set of emails surfaced on the Philadelphia news site Phawker. Phawker said that the emails showed the "100% for real" correspondence between Olbermann and Philadelphia Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky over the weekend. In the emails, "Olbermann" talks about his boss, MSNBC President Phil Griffin, in hyperbolic, insulting terms.

On Tuesday night, Yahoo's Michael Calderone reached Carlson by phone. Carlson confirmed that he had, in fact, sent the emails posing as Olbermann.

"Could you resist?" Carlson said. "It was just too funny. The flesh is weak."

Look, we've long known that Carlson is an awful human being; a suckup little creep. But by his standards, this qualifies as just barely, even...twatlike. Making up emails and sending them as though they were by another person? Fancy!

Tsk, Tucker. What happened to you?

One of those "I think I agree with 99% of this" post links

Lincoln Mitchell: From the Audacity of Hope to Timid and Kvetchy

It is strange that a candidate who was able to read voters so well has become a president who seems to think citizens simply want legislation. Voters don't care about legislation; they care about outcomes.

Adam Sandler: The new Woody Allen

...but only in this context.