Archive for July, 2008

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Bush Administration Says “Pardon Me?”

[ Comments Off ]Posted on July 27, 2008 by admin in Politics

Sunday, July 27th, 2008

And Bush says: “Okey-Dokey!”

Bush signing documentsWell George, it’s time to buy a new set of pens. You’ll be going through a lot of ink as you sign the blanket pardons for your felonious staff of the past several years. Although Slate has an excellent round up of the offenders available, so far the attempts at citizen’s arrests aren’t going so well. Although Bill Clinton (probably with merit) catches a lot of the flack for his pardons as he left office, both Reagan and Bush senior used up a fair amount of ink on their pardon power as well. They had that little Iran-Contra thing to clean up, after all. According to most sources you’ll review, Jimmy Carter was probably the last president (except for Ford’s pardon of Nixon) to use the power of pardon in a generally ethical way.

More Pitchfork 50 in 25: Arcade Fire, The National, The Tough Alliance

[ 2 Comments ]Posted on July 26, 2008 by admin in Music

Saturday, July 26th, 2008

See the first of these posts for an explanation of these clips & summaries. Arcade Fire – Neon Bible Echo & the Bunnymen merge with the Pixies and set out to create Bruce-Springsteen-like anthems… The National – Boxer The Church doing an Alt-country soundtrack for a Gus Van Sant film. The Tough Alliance -A New [...]

See the first of these posts for an explanation of these clips & summaries.

Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
Echo & the Bunnymen merge with the Pixies and set out to create Bruce-Springsteen-like anthems…

The National – Boxer
The Church doing an Alt-country soundtrack for a Gus Van Sant film.

The Tough Alliance -A New Chance
All those too-queer-blonde-guys in Haircut 100 get old and do a parody of themselves with more synths and samples, except now they’re, um, Swedish.

The Rise of the Millennials

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on July 25, 2008 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture

Friday, July 25th, 2008

What could be worse than the slackers of Generation X? Their successors, the “Millennials”.

As a member of Generation Jones, the rise of the millennials has been more than a little unsettling (partly because it evokes images of precious garden flowers gone awry). I remember in the early 80′s being mortified to hear people roughly my age saying things to their three-year-old children like “where do you want to go for dinner tonight, honey?” and “do you want to go to the grocery store now dear?”. It was evident even then that the weird group of poorly-parented ex-hippies that we call baby boomers were going to raise some seriously weird children. Well, here we are in 2008. Those same kids are now out in the work force, as evident in this hilarious Radar Magazine piece which details how Kevin Colvin, a “Millenial”, got busted via Facebook after telling his boss that he had to miss work for a “family emergency”. Although many are calling them the “Precious Snowflake” generation, I prefer to call them the “Padded Playground Generation”. From a Darwinist point of view, their average intelligence was drastically lowered by the fact that their dumbest weren’t killed on the deathtraps my generation called playgrounds. Their brains are being destroyed by technological distractions, and excessive exposure to Barney has made them autistic . What impact will this generation have on the world as they enter the age of leadership? Who knows. I guess it couldn’t be any worse than what the Bush era leadership has done, but they still scare me. I’m almost embarrassed to admit that this oft-forwarded e-mail sums it up for me: THOSE BORN 1920-1979 – TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930′s, 40′s, 50′s, 60′s and 70′s… Read the rest of this entry »

FaceStat: “Hot or Not”, With Adjectives

[ Comments Off ]Posted on July 25, 2008 by admin in Editorial & Opinion

Friday, July 25th, 2008

Let other vain people you don’t care about judge you by a photo that you upload, and get statistics that are about as useful as a Fox News viewer poll.

Are you a FaceBook user? Tired of making friends with friends you’re already friends with and asking them to plant imaginary plants for you? Maybe you should try FaceStat. It’s sort of like drive-by social networking. You only need an e-mail and a photo, and you’re off. The objective: judge others’ photos and let them judge yours. I made the mistake of using a real photo of myself, and offering honest judgements. Five hours later, all I had learned was that: 1.) I’m Definitely Straight AND Definitely Gay; 2.) I Need a Haircut; and 3.) People are just plain mean when they’re given the chance. I was pretty amused when a couple of women started insisting I looked like Tim Gunn, and that no, really – that’s okay. My “Word Cloud” by now consisted of “creepy”, “RISKY”, “wipped”, and “old”. That was it. All the results still weren’t in (the site said it would take about three hours, and it had been nearly six now) and already, people who’ve never met me were calling me creepy. Meh. Two can play this game. I went after male users first, because I’m intelligent enough to know (in spite of my low FaceStat intelligence rating) that men Read the rest of this entry »

Coldplay – The Hardest Part

[ Comments Off ]Posted on July 24, 2008 by admin in Editorial & Opinion

Thursday, July 24th, 2008

Coldplay gets their big break on 80′s morning show “Attitudes”.

Actually, the hardest part is watching this video all the way through. Harold and Maude, eat your heart out, here come Spencer and Barbara. As a friend of mine said: “This is like watching synchronized swimming, but without the water”. It’s getting harder and harder to separate fact from fiction on the web; this is either a clip from an 80′s show call “Attitudes”, or an elaborate scheme by Coldplay to get some exposure. Decide for yourself…

View full-size video on YouTube here.

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