It's been a hard day's night Not everyone enjoyed the band as much as I did

I saw this band at a Xmas party in our Tokyo suburb. It was a spot-on Beatle tribute band made up of four local government employees. They had the whole thing down cold -- the same matching suits, the same instruments, even the same boots as the Beatles. They even managed the same vocal harmonies, no easy feat! I was quite enjoying them until about their fourth or fifth number, the chorus of which went like this: "Rub, rub me do. You know I rub you. I always be two, so pea-e-e-e-e-e-ease, rub me do. "

I couldn't really concentrate too well after that, what with the wine coming out of my nose and my sides aching. It was all I could do not to start requesting Rutles songs.

h/t to Steve Resume

Naked pictures
Someone, somewhere must have a box full of photographs of the head of Doubleday books having carnal relations of an exceeding degrading nature with a variety of farm animals or possibly K-load. That is the only possible explanation I can come up with for the publication of Jonah Goldberg's (aka Doughy Pantload aka Doughbob Loadpants etc etc) magnum opus "Liberal Fascism." Not only is it nearly 500 pages of complete, ill-considered, unresearched, dim-witted twaddle that would not pass muster in a remedial high school history course, but he was two years late delivering the manuscript to the publishers. If there were any justice in the world at all, the closest this shovelful would have come to publication would have been the Pantload trying to hawk home-mimeographed copies of his hand-printed screed at conspiracy nut conventions and through classified ads in the back of KKK newsletters.
David "Orcinus" Neiwert has the formal takedown at The American Prospect and Jon Swift, prior to publication of the Pantload's fantasy alternative history, had this spot-on summary of the "book".

Sunday night round up
So much to blog about and so little time, so here are some of the recent highs and lows I've seen on the interweb toobz

SS restrains Falafel Boy
Never content to play by the rules of civil society, FOX News douchebag Bill O'Reilly got a warning from the Secret Service the other day for shoving a member of Barrack Obama's staff while trying to get the candidate's attention at an event.

Blogosphere buries another of the fallen
Maj. Andy Olmsted blogged for the Rocky Mountain News and at Obsidian Wings (under the pen name G'Kar after the Army cracked down on soldiers blogging). By all reports, he was the best sort of soldier and certainly came across as a profoundly decent man in all he wrote. He died in an ambush in Iraq on Jan. 3rd. His "in the event of my death " post can, and should, be read here and his stuff at the Rocky Mountain News can be read here. His old blog, discontinued a year ago, is here. Our condolences to his wife Amanda, his family and his brothers-in-arms. I disagreed with him on an awful lot of things, but he was a thoughtful and honorable person and he will be missed.

Gotta love Karma and the CBC
Stuart McLean and Vinyl Cafe have been mentioned here before and probably will be again. McLean likes to give out the "Arthur Awards" on an irregular basis for the little, decent things that people do for one another. Back in the fall he gave one to Jaime Hawkins

Jaime Hawkins was one of our Vinyl Cafe Arthur Awards winners this year. Jaime was not, by his own admission, a good high school student and he continued to struggle after high school. He turned his life around at the age of 27 and got into university as a mature student. He is now a finance student at St Mary's University and he is carrying a $45,000 student loan.
One day last year Jaime went to the ATM at his school cafeteria to withdraw some money. There, by the ATM, he found $10,000 in cash. Jaime didn't keep the money, he turned it in and we thought that was pretty great.
We decided that as we moved across the country this year on the Vinyl Cafe tour bus that we would invite people at our concerts to contribute to a little fund for Jaime Hawkins...just small donations...only loonies and twoonies. Well, we collected donations over the past couple of months and we presented Jaime with the donations this week on the Vinyl Cafe.
To hear the interview with Jaime Hawkins you can listen to the Vinyl Cafe this Tuesday, January 1st, 2008 at 11 pm on CBC Radio One. You can also hear the entire show on our podcast.
You can download the latest podcast or subscribe to the Vinyl Cafe podcast at (link to our podcast). You don't need an iPod to download or listen to a podcast. All you need is a computer. We will also re-air the Jaime Hawkins interview on the radio in a couple of weeks. You can hear that show on the radio: Saturday January 12th, 10 am Radio Two Sunday January 13th, 12 pm Radio One Tuesday January 15th, 11 pm Radio One

They presented Jaimie with over $15,000. Damn, I love the Vinyl Cafe, the CBC, Canada and all who sail in her.

Don't believe everything you see on TV
A group of award-winning radical Czech artists might go to jail for hacking the evening news and faking a nuclear attack on television. Watch the video!


Onward Christian airmen
It is starting to sound like Rev. Dobson and his merry gang of wild-eyed Christian Supremacists are doing their best to start their own armed forces (coughBlackwatercough) and take over the USAF officer corps. Given that it is the USAF that controls most of the United States nuclear arsenal, and given that fundementalist Christians are supposed to welcome Armageddeon, I think this might be cause for concern.