Happy "Make-the-unattached-even-more-miserable" Day

pardon the cheesy cellphone datestamp, but here's a photo recipe for a good Valentine's Day. And if you are unattached, take heart from this man's story. He may not be conventionally attractive, but he was married to a famous movie star who most people consider a great beauty (though I think she looks somewhat duck-like) - sometime you have to make a little noise to get noticed. ("Make that a cheeseburger") but the results may surprise you. They certainly surprised me in the best possible way.

Where else would you expect to find a Spider but on the Web?
I am, as the man himself would say, "as happy as a pig in Parliament" to find that Spider Robinson, creator of Callahan's Place (the fictional bar that launched a million online communities) and rancouter extraordinaire has a PODCAST. While a blog by Spider would have been cause for celebration, one can hardly expect somebody who make a living by his pen to start giving it away for free. In fact, the podcast is a better forum for him because Spider is the kind of storyteller who predates the written word. He has a natural flair for spinning a yarn and the timing, expression and voice of a born radio host. Somebody get the brass at CBC onto this, because with the right producers you could have the second coming of Peter Gzowski or Garrison Keillor, or at the very least a seasonal fill-in for Stuart McLean.

And if that weren't enough, finding his podcast lead to his website which lead me in turn to one of the coolest things ever. Way back when, Spider and his wife, dancer and choreographer Jeanne wrote a little book called "Stardance" about inventing zero-gravity dance and using it to communicate with aliens. The book, which spawned a couple of sequels to form the inevitable trilogy, won just about every award there is in science fiction and with good reason. Now, a few decades later, Jeanne is getting a chance to try out the whole idea in real life. Go. Watch. Marvel. The future has arrived.

from the "What will they think of next were they thinking?" Dept.
Somehow I can't see that there would really be that much demand for this, since there is no way in hell a canned cheese burger looks anything like the photo. I've done my share of canoe trips and eaten some pretty exotic campfire fare (Pie, pizza, cornbread or escargot cooked on a campfire anyone? how about a full Thanksgiving turkey dinner cooked in a woodstove? ) but cheeseburger-in-a-can?.....Really?

(and feel free to make gratutious LOLcat jokes in the comments)

"I haz cheezeburger! I need borrow ur can-opener!"

upchuckdate: thanks to the eagle eyes of commenter Steve at the Galloping Beaver, and the cast iron stomach of a man named Honk, we have PICTURES of the foodcrime via (appropriately enough) Something Awful, just scroll down and keep scrolling, if you dare.

Woolworths proves the value of studying literature

Just what every little girl dreams of, a bedroom set named after the most famous pedophila victim in the history of Western literature.

C'mon, even Sting has heard of "that book by Nabakov", but staff at Woolworths U.K. and their suppliers are apparently so culturally illiterate that they haven't seen either of the movies, read the book, or been exposed to the name's widespread use in connection with really skeevy porn.

I suppose it's a lost cause to try to get them to stop selling "Dirty Sanchez Refried Beans"

stairway to yeah yeah yeah

Okay PSA and CC, I'll see your classical Japanese Smoke on the Water (see last post) and raise you this:

Musical madness

Once again I am in awe at the nature of the universe. 

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro
Sportswriter seeks 300 pound Samoan attorney. Must provide own ether. Total coverage, final wisdom.

The obligatory abortion post

The Toronto Star's Antonia Zerbisias - whose Broadsides will be added to the blogroll when I get around to it - is asking Canadian bloggers to blog about reproductive rights on Jan. 28 - a week after the U.S. blogosphere's Blog for Choice Day.
The U.S. day produced a number of excellent posts - I particularly liked Tbogg's take on things and that of the folks at Lawyers, Guns and Money.

I've rewritten this a couple of times now due to the vagueries of blogger and the desire to get it right.

I will not be taking part in blogging about abortion on Monday.

Why?

Because I am not a pregnant woman or a pregnant woman's doctor and therefore abortion is not any of my goddamn business. Or yours. Or anyone else's. To paraphrase: "the state has no business in the bed or wombs of the nation."

Now as to blogging about what Antonia was actually asking us to blog about, why we vote pro-choice--well, see above.

If you think the state has a right to tell women what to do with their bodies or whether they can or cannot or must have children, you are just plain wrong. Now, I know if you oppose abortion for others you probably think you have good ethical moral reasons. I'm sure you point to passages in the Bible and quote your pastor or the pope or someone to try to back up your position, but you're still just plain wrong. As with suicide, eating pork, growing a beard or getting a tattoo -- the only person whose opinion ultimately matters when it comes right down to it is the person doing it.

Personally, I'd like abortion to be very rare. That's because I think all children should be wanted by both their parents and all pregnancies should be planned by both parents and all kids should be raised in a loving, stable, happy family. I'd also like a flying pony, a bottomless tub of chocolate ice cream that makes you skinny and a chance to kick George W. Bush in the 'nads. Since I'm not a complete moron, I know none of this is going to happen, ever. People will have sex without birth control and there will be unplanned pregnancies. Trust me, I know it happens. And what happens next should not be decided by a bunch of screaming, sign waving religious fanatics or moral scolds with 20/20 hindsight.

I'd like chemotherapy to rare too, and for the same reason. I'd like people not to need it. But since I'm not a fundamentalist whackjob who thinks teenagers and other people who may not be well suited to raise children together won't have sex if we all just pray hard enough and scare them sufficiently, it behooves me to have a more realistic position.

As I said, I'd like all kids to be planned, but neither of mine were, and they are no less loved for it. But I recognize how incredibly lucky I am to have impregnated my soulmate before we knew we were soulmates. If the divorce stats are anything to go by, most people are not that lucky.

We had our kids when we were married and earning enough to keep a roof over our heads, not everyone is that lucky. And I don't mean to begrudge single parents the opportunity to raise their kids, lots of single parents raise amazing kids and lots of married parents raise dysfunctional monsters. I don't think marital status has much to do with it, provided the parents or step-parents involved are committed, responsible and loving. I'd rather see a kid raised by a single mom or two daddies or a separated couple who have new partners than a couple who insist on using their kids as pawns in their insane marital chess game or who are abusive or disappear as convenient to their whims or addictions. I have little time for parents who abandon their kids, whatever the circumstances, though I'll concede that kids with abusive parents are probably better off wondering why they left than wondering why they keep getting hit or worse.

Abortion wasn't something that really entered our minds, but I'll be the first to say that others in similar circumstances might have reacted differently and that doing so would not have made them bad people. If you are childless and intend to remain so, use birth control. Not just most of the time, but all the time.

When a pregnancy happens, what happens next will and must be decided by the pregnant woman. She either will or won't have the child. She has always,ultimately, had the power to decide what happens next, it is just that our society has for the moment at least made it easier for her to make her decision without fear. Previously we, as a society, have been obsessed with trying to make that decision for her, either by outlawing certain options or pushing hard toward other options through conditioning, social pressure and shame. Women have always had abortions -- society has at times decided to make it very difficult and therefore very dangerous to do so, but abortions have always been part of human culture. So let's make sure they stay legal and safe and keep working on the rare part.

An abortion is not a haircut, and I don't expect that most women getting one consider to be such, but it certainly isn't murder either. Most women going to a family planning clinic to get information about an abortion or to actually have the procedure performed don't think they are there for a haircut, so even if you wouldn't have one yourself, just shut the fuck up and leave them alone to follow the dictates of their own conscience. No one put a gun to your head to make you have a baby, so why do you want some one else to be force to have kids? And if you are a man who thinks you have a right to voice your opinion in whether someone else has a baby or not, let me be as polite as I can and just suggest that you have a nice hot cup of STFU and cultivate another hobby.

Milton Wolff RIP
Milton Wolff should have been a lot more famous than he was, but he lived a life worth living.
He was the last commander of the American volunteers who fought against the fascists Spain. He served in the SOE and later the OSS arming resistance groups in Europe and Burma during World War Two. He fought for civil rights, sent ambulances to Nicaragua, and stole Ernest Hemmingway's mistress.

Theocrats gone wild

With apologies to Jon Stewart and the Daily Show, here is your International Moment of Zen Theocratic Wingnuttery:

Former Arkansas Governor and clergyman Mike Huckabee speaking to a crowd of the faithful at Jerry Falwell's Liberty "University":

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2007/12/what-huckabee-a.html

About 50 minutes into it, a student asks Huckabee "what do you attribute this surge (in polls) to?"
"There's only one explanation for it, and it's not a human one," Huckabee says. "It's the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people.
"And that's the only way that our campaign could be doing what it's doing. And I'm not being facetious nor am I trying to be trite.
"There literally are thousands of people across this country who are praying that a little will become much. And it has. And it defies all explanation it has confounded the pundits and I'm enjoying every moinute of their trying to figure it out and until they look at it in a" -- here he motions in a God-like heavenly manner -- "just, experience beyond human, they'll never figure it out. That's honestly why it's happening."

Gentlemen, consider yourself warned

Bedtime conversation tonight between me and my five-year-old daughter, whose obsession with princesses often worries my progressive side. I swear to Ghod every word is true.

Me:Okay Miss Lucy, time to get your pyjamas on, it's bed-time.

Her: (imperiously) I'm not a "Miss."

Me: You're a girl, right? I didn't get you mixed up with the other kid did I?

Her: (giggling) I'm a girl, but I'm not a "Miss."

Me: You look a bit young to be a Mrs., did you get married and forget to invite me? What do you mean you're not a "Miss?"

Her: (triumphantly) I'm a "Ms."

Me: (somewhat stunned at the sophistication of the five-year-old mind) What do you mean? Why are you a "Ms." and not a "Miss"?

Her: (with much eye-rolling and a patronizing tone I suspect I better get used to) Daaa-aaad! "Ms." is better than "Miss"! It just sounds better.

Maybe I'm projecting a bit, but maybe I'm doing a better job than I thought.  I couldn't be prouder of my daughter. The princess thing had me a little worried at first, but to her being a princess means A) you're the boss and B) fabulous clothes and pets (On watching Aladdin: "Dad, Princess Jasmine has a tiger. Why can't we have a tiger?") - the idea of waiting for some goofy prince to come and save you doesn't seem to even have ever occurred to her, she's more likely to be the one doing the rescuing.

Because America needs more flabby, middle-aged, wealthy, white, nativist reactionaries in power
What with the writers strike and the need for surefire material their hosts can riff on endlessly, I can only guess that the producers of The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, The Tonight Show and The Late Show are behind this. A movement has begun to draft Lou Dobbs for President of the United States

"You can't bring the Constitution in here, this is the National Archives"

It may come as a surprise to some that the Constitution of the United States now no longer applies within government buildings or to government employees or to those in close proximity to government employees.

"Impeach Bush" t-shirt wearers forced to leave National
Archives Constitution Display in DC"

(snip)

"It was when I got to the Constitution that a security woman said to me, 'Miss, you need to go see that man over there.' I asked why. She said it was because of my t-shirt. I asked, 'Why my t-shirt?' She simply responded that I couldn't wear it in the building. At this point the big, burly security guard that she wanted me to go to, approached me.
"I said, 'What happened to the First Amendment?' The security woman told me to lower my voice. I raised my voice. Susan from Code Pink came over and offered me a jacket to cover my shirt, and I stayed."
Suzanne Haviland reported that a guard told her, "The reason I'm stopping you is that you are wearing something that criticizes the President. I'm a federal employee, and I'm not allowed to criticize the President."

(snip)

Even with a 180 degree change of direction in governement philosophy in the United States, it is going to take decades to get the shit stains out of the Constitution. It isn't like you can just send a 200 year old document out to be dry cleaned.

George Bush proves the nonexistance of God

Because if there was a God, he/she/it/they would be chucking the thunderbolts, raining down fire and brimstone and unleashing a plague of locusts on George W. Bush's pasty hypocritical ass right now in a way that would make the Old Testament God look like a flat-out pussy and his treatment of Job on par with inflicting a minor hangover



Emphasis and links all mine:

Bush warns world must rally to confront danger of Iran

The Associated Press
By ANNE GEARAN – January 13, 2008

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — President Bush said Sunday that Iran is threatening the security of the world, and that the United States and Arab allies must join together to confront the danger "before it's too late."

Bush said Iran funds terrorist extremists, undermines stability in Lebanon, sends arms to the hardline Taliban regime (coughbullshitcough) intimidates its neighbors with alarming rhetoric and defies the United Nations by refusing to be open about its nuclear program.

"Iran is the world's leading state sponsor of terror," Bush said in a speech about democracy that he delivered about midway through his eight-day Mideast trip, which began with a renewed push for an Israeli-Palestinian peace pact — an accord he said whose "time has come."

Chiding U.S. allies who have withheld civil liberties, Bush said governments will never build trust by harassing or imprisoning candidates and protesters. But his rebuke was general, and he did not single out any U.S. partner in the region for oppressive practices.

"You cannot expect people to believe in the promise of a better future when they are jailed for peacefully petitioning their government," Bush said. "And you cannot stand up a modern, confident nation when you do not allow people to voice their legitimate criticisms."

Bush's speech, reprising the call for democracy in the Middle East that he made in his second inaugural address, was delivered in one of the few countries in the region — the Emirates — where democracy has not been a vital issue. In other countries in the region, especially Egypt, the fight between democracy activists and autocratic governments has been much more pointed and controversial.

The president lauded some democratic reforms among Arab nations. He urged the Arab leaders to show support for the fragile Iraqi government, open their societies and provide backing, and possible funding, to help make an Israeli-Palestinian agreement stick.

(snip)

Bush spoke at the Emirates Palace, at an opulent, gold-trimmed hotel where a suite goes for $2,450 a night. Built at a cost of $3 billion, the hotel is a kilometer long from end to end and has a 1.3 kilometer white sand beach — every grain of it imported from Algeria, according to Steven Pike, a spokesman at the U.S. Embassy here.

Half the audience was dressed in western attire and the other half in Arabic clothes — white robes and headdresses for men and black abayas, many with jeweled edges, for women.

In renewing his "Freedom Agenda" — Bush's grand ambition to seed democracy around the globe — the president declared: "We know from experience that democracy is the only system of government that yields lasting peace and stability."

Yet he was speaking about democracy in a deeply undemocratic country, the Emirates, where an elite of royal rulers makes virtually all the decisions. Large numbers of foreign resident workers have few legal or human rights, including no right to citizenship and no right to protest working conditions.

Some human rights groups have accused the Emirates of tolerating virtual indentured servitude, where workers from poor countries like Sri Lanka are forced to work to pay off debts to employers, and have their passports seized so they can't leave.

Shortly after landing during a steady rain on the southeastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, Bush met at a ceremonial palace with Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who was appointed president of the United Arab Emirates in 2004 following the death of his father, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan. The UAE president presented Bush with a ceremonial sash that looked like a thick golden necklace about two feet long. A portrait of the late president hung on the wall behind them.

After the speech, Bush ventured to a sprawling horse farm for a traditional desert dinner, outside of a tent set up in the sand. Large carpets with colorful red and white pillows were set up for the meal.

Before eating, Bush was shown several prized falcons, and even took a turn holding one. When the bird moved suddenly, Bush jumped back a bit, but quickly recovered. "You're making him nervous," Bush told the assembled media. "He never had a press conference before."

An earlier version of the same story quoted Bush as saying: "This new era is being built with the understanding that power is a trust that must be exercised with the consent of the governed."

Where is your mighty vengence now, oh great omnipotent, omniscient sky-wizard?

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.

Dare to be stupid
Via Roy Edroso at Alicublog with are treated to the utterly unironic call to arms for conservatives not to be intimidated by smarter, more educated people than themselves. This tendency toward Forrest Gumpism is hardly surprising given that the current crop of nativist conservatives are the direct intellectual descendants of the "Know-nothings" and the current administration's motto, despite Bush's intention to be the "edumacation president", is the most hostile to science, reason and fancy book-learning since, well...possibly Andrew Jackson, but at least Old Hickory, for all his faults, recognized the danger posed by corporations.

From Alicublog, first quoting then analyzing Lee Harris' original paean to thickheadedness:

In a world that absurdly overrates the advantage of sheer brain power, no one wants to be seen as a member in good standing of the stupid party. Yet stupidity has been and will always remain the best defense mechanism against the ordinary conman and the intellectual dreamer, just as Odysseus found that stuffing cotton in his ears was his best defense against beguiling but fatal song of the sirens.

That's the close; the rest doesn't illuminate it much. Smart people will attempt to "pull the wool over the eyes of the rest of us," and though "the intellectual conservative of our day excels in good arguments," he must not use them to defend propositions such as (to use Harris' own example) resistance to gay marriage, because he might get out-argued by the smart alecks.

When the leading candidates for the party's presidential nomination all publicly state that they don't believe in evolution, can there really be any doubt that John Stuart Mill was right in calling conservatives the Stupid Party?

A belated Xmas post
Another member of the International Santa Conspiracy is heard from in Ponoka. We are everywhere.

I cannot bear Mitt Romney
And neither can the Mike Huckabee, who in typical Republican Mayberry Machivelli style held a press conference where he told the assembled stenographers that while the campaign was going to attack Mitt Romney with negative ads, Holy Roller Huckabee just felt he could not stoop that low. And to prove it he showed the negative ad he had decided not to use to press, who immediately broadcast the ad on every major news program as part of the "story" thus saving the Huckster's campaign the expense of paying to air it. This has all the subtlty and earmarks of success of the "hey, look behind you" gambit so often attempted by third graders hoping to escape the class bully.
This campaign ad, courtesy of Jesus' General, is definitely not safe for work, especially if you work at a bear sanctuary or zoo or even if you just really, really like bears. As someone who was there in that very French cafe on that fateful night, I can attest to the fact that the bear consented--in fact it asked Mitt to call the next day so the two could "do brunch and then maybe hang out down at the dump or push over a honeytree." And you thought Mitt's magic underpants and Mexican roots were shocking.