I wish.

David Axelrod And Howard Dean To Duke It Out On Meet The Press

Who is Dr. Parnassus?

Most if not all of you know by now how much I love Terry Gilliam movies. I've actually been working on a post for about a week on "My Top 10 Contemporary American Films," where I was confronted with a couple of depressing facts:

Not only was his most recent film, Tideland, ridiculously underrated, but his movies haven't had US financing since the 1990s. Don't even get me started--Twilight and Robert Zemickis' latest trip to Uncanny Valley make 7 million, and Terry Gilliam's films can't get financed?)

But, anyway, CNN has a piece on the making of Gilliam's new film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, with a lovely, emotional interview with the director and writer.

If you follow that link there's a shortened video version of the interview with shots from the film, as well as the longer text. If you love his films as much as I do you have to watch/read them both, but I thought I'd offer you these snippets (not included in the video).

CNN: Who is Dr. Parnassus?

Terry Gilliam: ...he's there to enlighten the world nobody's paying attention to.

Now I have to go around and tell the world to treat my child kindly. Learn to love it.

I'm depressed most of the time. Despair is a whole different animal.

I'm pretty good at making films, and if I wasn't making films, what should I do? I think the film is beautiful and I think it's wonderful.

It's a combination of a lot of people responding to tragedy and not letting the tragedy win.

Like, duh.

Remember a little over a week ago when I posted a quote on the insurance companies--

Did you know that in the Far East, people pay their doctors when they're healthy. When they're sick, they don't have to pay. So basically, they end up paying for what they want, not what they don't want. We've got it all ass-backwards, here. These politicians, they say the same thing, over and over and over again. Healthcare decisions should be made by doctors and their patients, not by the government. Oh, now I know they're not made by doctors and their patients or the government. They're made by the fuckin' insurance companies.

--and asked you if you knew where it was from?

The answer was, of course...


Honestly, I thought one or two of you would've gotten this on sheer probability...

As a special added bonus, here's the scene from which the quote was taken.

(No gore, just a good dose of drama).

Final, clinching proof that Canada has better air and water than we do

Per Think Progress, an Ontario hospital, for reasons I can only assume had something to do with the much-vaunted Canadian sense of humor, had been going to pay $200,000 to Sarah Palin for a fundraising speech.

"Had been" being the operative words. See, when word got out that a hospital evidently in need of funds would be paying (again, $200, 000! In Canadian money!) a mud-slinging, conservative know-nothing...the good residents of Hamilton rose up as one and said, in so many words,

"My ass you will!"

Meanwhile, here in the US, too many newspapers and television continue to take her seriously, and some people seem serious when they opine that she should run for the highest office in the land.

Oh, Canada.

Briefly noted

Actress Leelee Sobieski recently gave birth to a baby girl. Clearly I haven't been tuned to her frequency, as I didn't even know she was pregnant, much less engaged (to the baby's father). But that isn't what I wanted to briefly note.

I thought about making some joke along the lines of "If you thought her breasts were big before (which, for the record, they were)"...but that idea was stopped in its tracks when I saw that at the article linked above, someone ("Joe Snuff") has commented,

she looks like helen hunt

...making "Joe" officially the 165,001st person to make this observation...

All together now: She kissed him?

The brilliant Rachel Maddow was spotted having a chat with awful human being Roger Ailes at a White House Christmas party. However, asked later what the two discussed, the liberal dream girl demurred, saying:

"I've never been to a White House party before, so I'm not sure about protocol," she said, "but I'm guessing it's a breach of that protocol to kiss and tell."

Ewwwwwwwwww.

Forget the seven words, these are...I don't know how many words that we'll never hear on television again

Where are we going and why are we in this handbasket? For the answer, let's go to George Carlin around 1991...



Rest in peace, oh genius.

Joe Joe Joe

Via Think Progress, Joe Biden discusses Joe Lieberman on the Joe Scarborough show:

BIDEN: ...I think Joe [Lieberman]’s judgment is wrong on this. But you’ve seen it across the board. You know Joe [Scarborough], you and I both served in the Congress. Great big bill coming up, everybody figures their maximum point of leverage is right before the deal’s made. So, you’ve got everybody lining up out there saying, “if I just am willing to hold out now, I’ll get everything I want.”

Asked about Lieberman’s flip-flop, Biden quipped that “if we held flip-flops against everybody in Congress, we probably wouldn’t have many people there.” He added that he was “confident” Lieberman would ultimately vote for the bill.

Who gives a fuck, Joe, there's nothing left in the bill.

Times like this, I really don't know why I don't drink more

Rep. Capuano Tells Fellow Dems: 'You're Screwed'

You know how I've been saying that Joe Lieberman is a two-faced boob?

As it turns out, I may have drastically underestimated things. Here are three items from today's news.

1. Via Think Progress:

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) “in a face-to-face meeting” yesterday “that he will vote against a health care bill that includes a public option or a provision that would expand Medicare.” Democrats had “thought they had secured Mr. Lieberman’s agreement to go along” with a compromise, leading a Senate Democratic aide to call Lieberman’s announcement “a total flip-flop.”

2. Oh, and by the way, the Democratic rank-and-file (as opposed to those spineless wimps in the White House) have noticed:

More than 80 percent of Democrats say they believe Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn) should be stripped of his powerful chairmanship in the Senate if he ends up supporting a Republican filibuster of health care reform, according to a new poll.

Dear Mr. President: You want your approval rating (currently at 44%) to go back up? Gee, if only there was something you could do that would be immidiately popular within your party. Something like, oh I don't know, cutting Joe Lieberman off at the knees.

And finally, 3. The New Republic argues that the way to understand Joe Lieberman is to come to realize two things.

One, he's a boob.

I think one answer here is that Lieberman isn't actually all that smart.

Two, the only reason anybody thinks that he's not a boob:

I suspect that Lieberman is the beneficiary, or possibly the victim, of a cultural stereotype that Jews are smart and good with numbers.

Personally, I'm Gentile, smart and bad with numbers, but even I can tell the difference between more than 80 percent and 44...

And On the 11th day of Christmas, Corey K. sent to me:

The Ninth Doctor*, nicely:








*If you don't count McGann, which I don't.

She made me some kind of laughing stock, because I dance to disco and I don't like rock...

Another one of those mixes I like...

So, to recap: When the president said...

...that he was a "strong advocate" for gay folk, he didn't mean that he thought they should be able to get married or serve in the military or anything uncomfortable like that. However, he is willing to go out on limb and say that he doesn't think they should actually be killed for being gay.

If that's a strong advocate, I shudder to think what a weak-ass one might've been like.

I seem to need to post this song about once a year*

But I try to vary it up by posting different versions.



*Why? Because it's fucking awesome, that's why. You got a problem with that?

Oh, dear.

I'm close, are you close?

Sometimes I can't get my mind around things

For example: I've written before about how I just couldn't figure out what Disney was thinking sending Anne Hathaway to promote Princess Diaries 2 on the filthy (in the best way) Graham Norton show.

I can't really complain about that one too hard, of course, as this was where I got my first good, long look at Miss Hathaway, whom I subsequently decided to stalk and marry (it's been five years. The best-laid plans...).

More recently: Let's say that you had written one of those books that say that homosexuality is unnatural and gay people can be "rehabilitated" like drug addicts.

Why, unless you were severely fucked in the head, would you agree to go on the television show of a brilliant lesbian?

At the very least, read that article, but I heartily encourage you to watch the embedded video therein as well.

I mean, how could he not have known she was going to nail him to the wall using his own words as proof that he's really stupid?

Oh right, because he's really stupid...

Source this quote

So I'm reading again about how, apparently to placate two-faced boobs like Joe Lieberman, the Senate has "compromised" the public option down to the point where:

...an insurance industry insider who has been deeply involved in the health care fight emails to declare victory.

"We WIN," the insider writes. "Administered by private insurance companies...

I think about how this thing, instead of starting out great and ending up good, now seems to have started out good and ended up...absolutely nowhere.

It makes me think of a quote that suddenly seems all the more sane, sensible, and far-seeing...and I think that none of you reading this will be able to tell me where it comes from.

Let's see if I'm right.

Here's the quote.

Did you know that in the Far East, people pay their doctors when they're healthy. When they're sick, they don't have to pay. So basically, they end up paying for what they want, not what they don't want. We've got it all ass-backwards, here. These politicians, they say the same thing, over and over and over again. Healthcare decisions should be made by doctors and their patients, not by the government. Oh, now I know they're not made by doctors and their patients or the government. They're made by the fuckin' insurance companies.

Well?

To support this proposal, please observe the following

Proposed: Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) is of questionable sanity, and unquestionably an asshole.

Support: Here is a segment from liberal dream girl Rachel Maddow's show last week all about Sen. Inhofe:



Inhofe not only admits that everything said about him in the piece is true, he's proud to the point of smug condescension about it.

What's more, he thinks (or maybe I should say believes) that

"...The things she says she doesn’t like are contrary to the beliefs of 90 percent of the people in America.”

...which of course, if read by someone who actually cares about things like sentence structure and good grammar, would mean...

Sure is good to be in the majority, isn't it?

The Senate would appear to have made a deal to get rid of the Public Option.

It's not often I think that I missed much being born two years after the end of the 1960s. One thing, though, I think I get when I watch television programs/movies, read books, or listen to music from or about the time:

There were, like, a couple of years there where people seem to have thought it really was the dawning of the age of Aquarius, that they could take a sad song and make it better.

Those days are gone forever...that is, if they ever really existed.

I think I know why John Lennon withdrew in the latter half of the '70s.

I've said it for years: More often than not (certainly more often than I'd like), the difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans are evil; Democrats are incompetent (Bush the miracle baby was both).

Remember that jackass mayor from Tennessee last week?

The one who said President Obama deliberately planned his speech to block the Peanuts Christmas special on account of he is a Muslim? Well, that mayor would like us to believe, whoops I mean know, he's sorry, and he was just trying to be funny.