| (no subject) |
[Jun. 8th, 2008|01:05 pm] |
"...if similarly hateful racial remarks had been made about Obama, our nation would have turned itself inside out in a paroxysm of soul-searching and shame. Had mainstream commentators in 2000 speculated, say, that Joe Lieberman had a nose for dough, or made funny Shylock references, heads would have rolled – and rightfully so...In a culture that’s reached such a level of ostensible enlightenment as ours, calling a powerful woman “castrating” – however you choose to put it – ought to be seen as just as offensive as rubbing your fingers together to convey a love of gold coinage when you talk about a Jew. It’s nothing other than an expression of woman-hate — and the degree to which such expressions have flourished, in the mainstream media and in the loonier reaches of cyberspace this year, has added up to be a real national shame." - Judith Warner |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 19th, 2007|10:21 pm] |
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After two long and depressing years, someone has finally bothered to defibrillate the Gray Lady's heart. May she live happily ever after. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 26th, 2007|11:47 pm] |
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Not only did the New York Times, the august Paper of Record, deign to publish a spoiler-laden (albeit largely innocuous) front page review of Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows two days before it was available to the public, but also they managed to invoke the term "bildungsroman" in doing so. 5x bonus for the power word, and Michiko Kakutani - taking a break from her day job as Propaganda Minister of Republicans for Voldemort - for the win! Unfortunately for her, first prize is a ticket straight to hell. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 10th, 2007|04:05 am] |
"Facebook kind of asks you to be who you are, which is, ah, good for people who are good at that." eh? Oh dear, sweet Wonkette. If only you could quote sound bytes from your month-old blog entries like Jeff Jarvis does. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 23rd, 2007|05:47 am] |
There can be only one explanation for this. It comes right after the Four Horsemen appear and right before the moon turns to blood. (or is it the other way around? damn you, eschatology!) On the other hand, there's absolutely no way in Megiddo that it will last. I give it 12 hours before Barbara Walters is promising to conduct the interview in granny panties and a Nixon mask.
ETA: apparently the interview is going to Larry King. leave it to Larry to ask the hard-hitting questions like, "How was the food?" It should be riveting. :/ |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 19th, 2007|02:49 am] |
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so here's something funny: I got a shout-out in WaPo. I think this constitutes my fifteen nanoseconds of fame among the readership of Howard Kurtz (population: 3, including me and Howie's mother.) |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 15th, 2007|03:24 am] |
Dear Mr. Bush,
The first time you used "Democrat" as an adjective, which is considered to be a pejorative term to the Grammar Nazi Wing of the Democratic Party, I was willing to believe that you were just coked up during the years they were teaching grammar. Given your extensive use of malapropisms, made-up words, and...uh...creative interpretation of the English language, it did not seem outside the realm of possibility. Heck, I was even willing to believe your explanation - that it is not possible to live in the state of Texas without surrendering at least 50 IQ points (I went ahead and paraphrased that for you. and you're welcome.) I'll admit it - I actually thought the Democrats were being a little snivel-y on this one. "Come on, people," I thought. "It's just two letters, and at this point, we're lucky that he's not delivering the State of the Union through a series of primitive guttural screeches and manic gesticulations. He didn't drool on himself; he managed to remain upright; he didn't try to eat the podium (not to mention Nancy Pelosi); let's not get greedy here."
Here's the thing: my insta-forgiveness came with a teensy weensy itty bitty caveat - that you would exhibit at least the same capacity for learning as Koko the Gorilla. I assumed that, duly chastened, you would choose to humor those militant grammarians by actually adhering to the rules of the English language, if only for the remainder of your term. Oh, what a silly girl am I. Though I would be more than happy to blame this little relapse on the state of your drug- and alcohol-addled brain, I now realize that doing so would only play directly into your master plan of forever hiding behind an impenetrable cloak of (faux) ignorance. Well, Dear Leader (of the Free World, I mean), consider yourself exposed. This Rovian scheme of yours shall escape unnoticed no longer! I'm on to you. and I will be watching.
With a suspicious eye, Kelley Diane Katsopolis
Note to translation service: Just tell him, "Fool me once, shame on...shame on you. You fool me, you can't get fooled again." He'll understand. |
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| I feel bad about my nose |
[May. 14th, 2007|07:32 pm] |
It wasn’t always like this. As a child, I had no opinion about my nose, or any other aspect of my appearance. I didn’t realize that I was a scrawny, chicken-legged mess of a person until Tara Hobbs pointed it out to me in gym class. I didn’t realize that my hair existed in that awful purgatory between straight and curly, because it was never freed from the confines of its ponytail (the imprisonment continues...) I couldn’t tell you when my nose first became a subject of my undying wrath. The process was probably similar to that Philosophy 101 exercise, in which students are asked to define some vague linguistic designation. How many grains of sand constitute a “pile?” How many fleeting thoughts about my nose constitute a “psychological complex?” What I do know, is that at some point - some awful, eternally torturous, non-reversible point - someone mentioned that my nose has “character.” That was the precise moment in time when I knew that things were much, much worse than I suspected.
For those of you who are currently wallowing in the deep and lonely pits of social ignorance, I have assembled this handy primer for your humble study. Please consider the function of the word “character” in these various contexts: 1)As a descriptor of inanimate objects: In this context, “character” is generally used in defense of an otherwise unspeakably flawed item in your collection. As in: “I would get rid of that ancient, musty chair in the corner that is upholstered in my dead grandmother’s bed sheets, but, I don’t know - it just has such character.” In this instance, you are excusing the piece’s visual (and perhaps olfactory) horror, as well as your clear departure from sanity, by implying that it has lived a gloriously storied existence and is therefore deserving of your undying loyalty. 2)As a descriptor of old people: In this context, “character” is simply a lame attempt to flatter a person you’ve deemed worthy of flattery for no reason other than his or her longevity. As in: “No, I don’t think you should have any work done. Those wrinkles add such character to your face.” In this instance, “character” serves as a code word for “you are very old and will probably die soon and therefore it is not really worth the money. Instead, you should turn your well-earned fortune over to me so that I can wisely invest it in that pony I’ve always wanted.” 3)As a descriptor of young people: As in: :silently minding my own business: "Your nose really has character." In this context, “character” admits that said feature (i.e. MY NOSE) deviates so far from the expected that it deserves particular acknowledgment lest it turn into that oppressive white elephant in the room that suffocates all other forms of social interaction. Saying that my nose has character merely means that its monstrous peaks and valleys are so egregious and distracting as to require your immediate, liberating comment.
This is, in short, precisely why I feel bad about my nose. If you cannot now identify such malicious Descriptor Trojan Horses, then you fully deserve to be slaughtered by Greek conquerors.
P.S. Here is a picture of the pony I will buy with your money. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 27th, 2007|05:12 pm] |
Dick Cheney circa 1992: "I don't think you could have [invaded Baghdad] without significant additional U.S. casualties. And while everybody was tremendously impressed with the low cost of the [1991] conflict, for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it wasn't a cheap war."
"And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq [emphasis added]."
"Once we had rounded him up and gotten rid of his government, then the question is what do you put in its place?* You know, you then have accepted the responsibility for governing Iraq."
_________________________________________________________________________
Dick Cheney circa 2006: Asked by “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert whether the United States would have gone ahead with the invasion anyway if the CIA had reported that Saddam did not, in fact, have such weapons, Cheney said yes.
“He’d done it before,” Cheney said. “He had produced chemical weapons before and used them. He had produced biological weapons. He had a robust nuclear program in ’91 [emphasis added].”
The U.S. invasion “was the right thing to do, and if we had to do it again, we would do exactly the same thing,” he said.
(translation: Forget everything I said in 1992. Forget the fact that in 1991 we willfully ignored the "robust nuclear program," as well as the past production of chemical and biological weapons, because they did not present a significant or realistic threat to America. We'd achieved our objectives. Forget that I said that deposing Saddam was not worth the cost of American lives. Forget all my talk about being bogged down and accepting responsibility for governing a country. Just forget it all.)
_________________________________________________________________________
CHENEY!!! You got some 'splainin' to do!!
awww shucks...I'm just kiddin' ya there, punkin'! Not only will the "liberal news media" not confront you, they won't even pick up your story! Ain't that sweet uh them.
*at least some things never change. I'm pretty sure he's still asking himself that question. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 21st, 2007|02:23 pm] |
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The Italian Prime minister resigned today, and what was the lead story on CNN.com? Anna Nicole Smith's mother. I turned the TV to CNN, and what were they talking about? Grey's Anatomy. CNN Headline News? Anna Nicole Smith. Fox? Anna Nicole Smith. MSNBC? Anna Nicole Smith. I've been flipping between the four channels for ten minutes now, and finally CNN has moved on to the British pull-out in Iraq. EVERY OTHER CHANNEL is still on Anna Anna Fabulous Anna, Anna Nicole. This reminds me of the run-up to the 2004 presidential election when the lead story on CNN was the Scott Peterson case. No wonder we re-elected George Bush. No one in this country knows what the hell is going on. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 7th, 2007|03:08 am] |
I don't know if I can live in a state that does not sell beer past midnight. Misery, thy name is Texas.
The author will now pour Sriracha chili sauce on her tongue in a rudimentary attempt to appease its demands. While this method was wholly unsuccessful in curbing Adolf Hitler's appetite for the Sudetenland, one may remain optimist concerning its effects on alcohol consumption. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 12th, 2007|05:49 pm] |
I originally wrote a rather involved, convoluted post on the dichotomy between secular law and personal morality (specifically the brand presented in The Bible) using abortion as a model. This was an obviously ridiculous thing to do, as 1)abortion is arguably the most nuanced issue in contemporary American politics and 2)I am largely incapable of explaining even the most straightforward of perspectives. For that reason, I will exit the world of ambiguity and enter (stage left) into the world of CONTROVERSY! like a moth to the flame burned by the gay marriage debate fire.
anyway.
Christ never addressed our political role (i.e. how we should vote, what our motivation should be in doing so, etc.) as Christians, and he certainly did not suggest that we should codify the principles of The Bible in secular law or impose them on non-believers. On the contrary, Christ acknowledged that law, even the religious law provided by Moses, is separate from personal morality. “Jesus replied, ‘Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery.’” (quoted Matthew 19: 8-9; see also Matthew 5:31-32, Mark 10:4-12) In this passage, we have Christ 1)condemning both divorce and remarriage as adultery, thereby marking them as violations of the Ten Commandments and 2)separating the immorality of actions from the constraints of the law. Allowing Moses to issue certificates of divorce did not make divorce moral. It did not endow divorce with a divine imprimatur. Few, if any, would debate this point on philosophical grounds.
Unfortunately, the gay marriage debate is not about philosophy, religion, or morality (I don't care what James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, et al. tried to tell you.) It's a debate about power politics - more specifically Republican power politics. In the world of conservative Republicans, legalizing an act becomes tantamount to accepting its spiritual legitimacy, which Must Be Opposed. This, by the way, only applies if the act in question is a ::whisper:: gay act, as limiting the rights of your heterosexual power base would be, how do I put this, unwise. So gay marriage is out. But hey, would you like a divorce instead? ok! How 'bout replacing your old wife with this newer specimen? No problem! (Richard Roberts, I'm talking to you.) Libertarianism to govern the straights; authoritarianism to govern the gays; powerpowerpower; Religious Right Unite!
Consistency and reason have no place in a conversation already drowning in double standards. |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 8th, 2006|10:21 am] |
We were not attacked on 9/11 because Bill Clinton "decimated" the military. Please, explain to me how reducing defense spending led young Sunni radicals to hijack four of our aircraft. Did we cut our mind control devices out of the budget? Or perhaps it was our giant impenetrable dome?
Furthermore (even though it's completely irrelevant to that assertion), Clinton had a Republican Congress for all but two years of his presidency. Congress votes on the budget. Translation: Republicans approved his policy recommendations. six times.
If you want to take partial credit for the budget surplus, you must also take partial credit for the contents of the budget that provided that surplus. Take some pills for that selective memory of yours and stop trying to play the blame game. You'll never win when you're playing against the Truth.
:cackle:
Also, I feel like today is Christmas. or rather, I feel like today is Christmas if Christmas were not a day that I hate. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 2nd, 2006|05:57 pm] |
Kapowski Family Vacation #1: Tulsa to Charleston
I demanded a stop at the Clinton Presidential Library (O Captain! My Captain!) in Little Rock, despite the fact that it was bound to be an emotionally disastrous adventure and, having dutifully waded through the twin tomes of Clinton autobiographical history, offered very little in the way of educational enrichment. I very nearly wept during the retrospective, and as expected, the experience left me suffering from a desperate, grasping nostalgia, from which there will be no chance of respite for at least the next 840 days.
In an effort to caricature the South as much as possible, I took it upon myself to be the Official Recorder of every Confederate flag spotting from Mississippi to South Carolina. I grew bored with the exercise somewhere between Birmingham and number six.
and now I will rant. I don't understand public displays of the Confederate flag, nor do I understand why everyone we encountered insisted upon referring to the Civil War as either the War of Northern Aggression ("There was nothing civil about it.") or the War for Southern Independence. I found it quaint (perhaps condescendingly so, but nonetheless) the first couple of times. Look at the cute little southerners with their precious little euphemisms! After that, it became a minor annoyance, which eventually simmered to a quiet, steady rage. Was this alternate lexicon adopted for the benefit of tourists - perhaps as a generous attempt to make our collective experience more authentically Southern than our mere presence at historical monuments would allow (How very thoughtful!) - or do people really go about their daily lives bristling at that damned northern audacity?*
Revisionist history was also alive and well at the plantation we visited, where the slave cabins were delivered from their...unpleasant historical associations by the magnificently sentimental term "antebellum cabin." We were actually schooled in the benefits of slave life ("They enjoyed a relatively leisure existence.") and the charity of the former slave owner ("The slaves were even allowed to marry and raise families."), whose past misdeeds (I'm sorry, cultural indulgences) are presumably still turning a profit for his ancestors.
Charleston was not all sound and fury, however. It was a beautiful city with a great vibe. I spent hours upon hours bodysurfing at Folly Beach, had a delicious dinner at the unfortunately-named Hyman's Seafood Restaurant (I was dismayed to note that our table had once been occupied by the members of Hootie and the Blowfish.), and spent the 4th with my brother, drinking beer poolside and railing against our country's current political leadership. Sweet land of liberty!
The final stop of the trip, as well as the sole reason we took a cross-country road trip (we did not know then that we would lose our flight benefits 3 weeks later), was a result of my dad's devotion to the Grand Ole Opry. My brother and I decided that attending such a spectacle would require large amounts of alcohol, which eventually led to my brief but glorious hoedown with Fake Minnie Pearl (in my defense, she totally started it.) The evening was a mural of sequins, leather, and Aquanet hairspray, painted in twang. But, as always, we survived.
*rhetorical |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 14th, 2006|12:38 am] |
If you are wearing a Mensa shirt in public, and someone questions your qualifications for being in the organization, you have no right to take offense because 1) whatever your standardized IQ is, your social IQ is clearly deficient and 2) you are a pretentious prick. An alternative analysis of option 2 suggests that you are a prepubescent college student with an alarmingly low self-esteem. If this happens to be the case, kindly ditch the shirt and go stand in front of a mirror with some helpful phrases of self-affirmation.
Likewise, if you are a gorgeous girl insistent upon prancing around in the shirt of your modeling agency, do not be surprised when I point out the fact that your now gloriously deep caramel skin will look like a dying leatherback sea turtle's within a mere 10 years (not to mention the fact that, at that point, you will likely appear more Madam than Model. and yes, I did mean that kind of madam...)
the real moral of the story: anyone who takes a standardized test seriously (whatever the content may be) is an effing moron. I have no interest in knowing such people.
corollary moral of the story: nor do I have any interest in knowing braggarts of any kind.
good day. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 23rd, 2006|01:57 am] |
| [ | music |
| | reba mcentire - fancy | ] |
I don’t understand why June Bugs are such suicidal insects. They’re constantly hurling themselves against the nearest surface, which inevitably results in them spending the next two minutes furiously buzzing and flapping their wings in an attempt to right themselves. When they do, they immediately repeat the process. Is this some sort of bizarre masochistic mating ritual? Is that the way June Bugs like it? Tonight, one flung itself at my feet. I was tempted to squash it, but given the already pathetic nature of their existence, this just seemed unacceptably cruel. on the other hand, I did delight in the fact that it is now possible to empirically verify that I am not the lamest creature on the planet. Schadenfreude? Yes, please! |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 21st, 2006|02:32 am] |
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so today, after countless passings, I noticed that the "Welcome to Texas" sign on I-35 is placed a good quarter mile after DW's XXX Adult Video Store, which is already a good half miles across the Oklahoma/Texas border. Such an act can only be viewed as a clever campaign to subconsciously convince drivers that the purveyors of smut belong to Ye Olde Puritanical State, which, for the record, would sooner collectively stage a Jim Jones Kool-Aid-Drinking Extravaganza than carry Hustler. anyway, Texas, if you're willing to declare yourself the "Proud Home of President George W. Bush," then maybe you should claim DW's as well. You have nowhere to go but up. |
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| inspired by a certain message board |
[Apr. 19th, 2006|03:48 am] |
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Who decided that "regime change" was the best phrase for framing the act of overthrowing a government? Do these people have any ability to comprehend the violent, militant subtleties contained within such a phrase? Are their memories so short-termed that they fail to recognize our country's (wholly unsuccessful) past endeavors at "regime change" in South/Central America? What about the phrase "humanitarian intervention?" it'll be a cold day in hell before we turn to that one. (I mean, it's totally cool to depose an oil-bearing tyrant in the name of regime change, but by no means will we interfere with your desire to slaughter tens of thousands of innocent Africans in the name of humanitarian intervention! good day, Genocide!) we refuse to recuse ourselves in matters of conflicted interest, but we stand firm in our inaction when no conflict of interest exists. in short, we've developed a more callous, less effective political framework, because it allows us to hide our blatant hypocrisy. the propaganda machine is folding in upon itself, and we stand silenty by...watching the flaming bits and pieces engulf what little we have left. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 18th, 2006|03:57 am] |
| [ | music |
| | pearl jam - world wide suicide | ] |
I am not an economist. If you asked me to explain the Laffer Curve, I would probably mumble something about "tax rates" and "very complicated," which is to say, I would make something up.* I am not a mathematician. The last time I tried to integrate sin/cos² was a good seven years ago, and it did not go well. I am also not a moron. therefore, I do know one thing: if you want to wage war like a neo-con, you'd better be prepared to tax like a liberal (this being only a slight bastardization of the classic phrase, "If you want to live like a Republican, you've got to vote like a Democrat."), and no one knows that lesson better than George "Read My Lips: No New Taxes" Bush (not coincidentally, also known as George "One Term President" Bush.) Now why, pray tell, has this man's first-born child, the blessed fruit of his loins, failed to get such a basic principle through his thick, Harvard-educated skull?
Our country is currently over $8.4 trillion in debt (to refresh everyone's memory, we were $5.7 trillion in debt when Clinton left office, we recorded budget surpluses three years in a row [for the first time since 1949], and we were paying down the debt, rather than adding trillions to it - seems like ancient history, doesn't it?) Why was the economic landscape so vastly different under Clinton? Because the man. believed. in fiscal. responsibility. and compromise. It's as simple as that. Yesterday's Republican deficit hawks have become today's Republican deficit spending apologists, and the American people are the ones footing the bill for that transformation. Face the facts, Republican Party: You're the new face of fiscal irresponsibility and runaway spending. Congratulations.
*not really. |
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kapowski's journal