And here's a space for discussion unrelated to the book thread below. Err...what does Monty usually say here?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:28 AM | Comments (171)
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Dearest pudding-heads, unlike Mr. Reads-Anything Monty, I'm not nearly as likely to forage among genres other than science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and the occasional (ahem) gay novel. Still, I thought an interesting book thread topic would be your favorite books that are out of print. Here are mine, which may be of some interest for science fiction and fantasy fans.

I recently discovered at a library book sale CJ Cherryh's Morgaine novels --- Gate of Ivrel, Well of Shiuan, and Fires of Azeroth --- all of which are out of print. (BTW, it is absurdly satisfying to find a complete trilogy among the scattered boxes of a library book sale. Small victories, right?) Now, I've been a fan of Cherryh forever, having devoured her Fortress series and several of her other novels in high school, but I had never even heard of these novels before. It turns out they, um, predate me and were out of print before I started reading.

If you can find them, I cannot suggest any better out-of-print reads. And, actually, they're now atop my "favorites" list keeping company with Niven and Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer. They're short and unlike some of Cherryh's later works, she writes with a spare style that keeps the pages turning on what is basically an After The End (civilization fallen back to barbarism science fiction disguised as fantasy) novel. You might be able to find them in "collected" editions; three such compendiums were published.

So, what out-of-print books do you like?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:27 AM | Comments (116)
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Verum Serum: Evidence Suggests Weiner Followed Only 91 Other People, And One Of Them Just Happened to Be the Comely Coed He Has "No Ties" To; Following Her Meant They Could Send Each Other Private Messages

It's a lie that looks minor out of context, but in context, it's crucial:

No, Weiner was not Tweeting -- publicly -- before this. He was silent for three and a half hours. Then he sent the dic-pic, and then he started up with a series of cover-his-butt tweets.

Including, importantly I think, the claim that his DVR had erased the hockey game he was supposed to be watching,and therefore why he might not be able to discuss it.

And then he starts up with claims about technology malfunctioning all around him, the cherry on the top being #Hacked!, like it's a joke, or it happens every week, no big deal, you know, you get hacked, you laugh it off, you kid around about other things, like your DVR eating your hockey game.

I'm sorry; Twitter sucked me in, that's why I swore it off. Here are the other updates, in case you're not following there. But I am pretty funny over there.

1. Pretty much everything ever appearing online about the Comely Coed is being deleted systematically. Strange behavior for an aggrieved victim.

2. The media refuse to touch it, generally. Ben Smith at Politico merely reported, without comment or question, Weiner's claim that his accounts were "obviously" hacked.

Yeah I don't think that word "obviously" has the meaning I normally assign to it.

3. Mediate refuses to cover, except the useless liberal jackass Tommy Christopher's claim that Breitbart's sites did bad by reporting the story at all, when Tommy Christopher would preferred it to have been embargoed, apparently, as all his liberal bitch friends are doing.

I have a series of questions that no liberal feels are interesting:

1. Why did Anthony Weiner tweet about the time in Seattle before the dic-pic was sent to, of all places, Seattle?

Was this a coincidence? Or a secret shout-out to a private-message paramour?

2. The Comely Coed called Weiner her "boyfriend" and friends commented that she had a "crush" on him. Are we to believe the hackers knew the one woman in the world who might be interested in a dic-pic from the homely anteater Anthony Weiner?

Were they monitoring several thousand accounts to find the one girl expressing a romantic interest in the bizarre homonculous Anthony Weiner?

3. The Comely Coed, we are to believe, a college girl, received a wholly unsolicited dic-pic from a married sitting Congressman. Why did she react so calmly -- as if she expected such a picture, and desired it? If she had not expected it or desired it, wouldn't it be normal for her to comment, "Hey, a Congressman just sent me a picture of his dork; what's that all about?"

But no, she took it sort of... shockingly well. Why? Did the hackers plan on that too? Did they plan on everything in the future happening just as it did?

This is the perfect focus group to ask this question of: When you send unsolicited dic-pics to random coeds, how do they usually take it? As well as Anthony Weiner's I-swear-your-honor-I-don't-know-this-woman Comely Coed?

Or... less well?

4. Weiner claims his accounts were "hacked," which usually means another user has changed passwords and locked the genuine user out; and yet Weiner gains control of his account just four minutes after the hacking. How?

Is he a hacker, too? With leet counter-hacking skills and counter-hacking program tools at the ready?

Or did he call in an expert to fix matters in four minutes?

I'm told you can't "hack" an account when it's already in use, by the way.

5. Why did the "hacker" bother to upload the picture to Weiner's real Yfrog picture account? Why bother with such a subtle detail in a silly hack joke? Why go to such efforts to make it appear as if Weiner took it, uploaded it, and sent it himself?

6. Despite the fact that this is a Verified Twitter account, supposedly vetted by Twitter to insure that the named individual is in fact the account's user, we have had no incident report from Twitter on the "hack," or notice of a failure in its security, or cautions as to how to prevent the same "hack" from occurring to us.

7. Shortly after this "hack," the Comely Coed deleted her entire Twitter account. And then traces of her online life, including credits on papers and articles, began disappearing. Was this the same "hack" team that sent the dic-pic? Why are they doing this? Why are they being so thorough?

They just hacked a congressman, now they're being brazen and erasing the net-presence of another innocent party? Why? Do they want to spend 10 years in jail?

8. Anthony Weiner is known for being a camera whore. He is perpetually venting for the cameras. Or, tenting for the camera, bad-dum-dum-tsss. Why has he not called a press conference to protest this outrage? To appear with the FBI to announce an investigation, and vow the culprits will be caught? To assure his constituents -- who do have to fear this! -- that he takes hacking and identity theft seriously?

Why has his reaction been to try to kill the story and deflect it with jokes about how he's gaining Twitter followers on Michelle Bachmann? This is a joking matter? A hacking? Someone sending sexually explicit photographs from your account to a college girl you supposedly don't know?

And he's laughing about that? It's just all a big joke?

Really?

Really?

Really?

Where is the FBI? The IC3 unit will be on this like Anthony Weiner on a coed.

Why are they not involved? Why is there no statement?

Does he intend to just let these brazen hackers -- who go after Congressmen, sending sexually explicit material to young women -- go free?

As what? A goof? A ha-ha college prank?

Really?

Really?

One joke to end with.

You know who the real victim is, here?

Hanes.

Now, I turn over the blog-stage to DrewM.

DrewM.'s Update: Weiner's "I Was Hacked" Defense Makes No Damn Sense.

When confronted with questions about the photo on his on Twitter and yfrog accounts, Congressman Anthony Weiner said his facebook account was hacked.

That's a non sequitur. No one asked him about anything that was posted on his facebook account. The only possible way that would make any sense is if the two accounts were linked, that is when the facebook account is updated, it automatically appears on as a Twitter entry with a link.

Well, it' doesn't seem that Weiner's facebook account is linked to his Twitter account. Here's an update on his facebook account on Wednesday. As you can see from this screen shot of his Twitter feed, no corresponding entry showed up on his Twitter account.

Since the accounts aren't linked, how exactly does "fb [facebook] hacked" answer the question, "How the hell did a picture of a guy in his underwear wind up on your Twitter and yfrog accounts"?

It simply doesn't.

Ace Again: Weiner was following very few people -- only 91.

Guess who was among the lucky ones?

Isn't that strange?

You know why that's interesting? 1, it's not true, as some have reported, that Weiner had "no connection" to her. She was following him and he was following her -- a virtual hug.

2, in order to Direct Message someone -- those are the private dirty-time messages -- you both need to follow each other.

And they were following each other.

Isn't that convenient?

Why, it's almost as if Anthony Weiner was having a sexy chat with this Comely Coed and meant to Direct Message (private message) her a dirty picture and accidentally sent it over his public channel...

No Ties, No Ties, No Ties To You: Quoteth Weiner's spokesman:

"The woman who got the crotch shot has no ties to Weiner and isn't known to be part of his staff, Arnold said."

No ties? None? She was one of less than a hundred people the Congressman honored by following. What was it about her that made him think her worthy?

Her accomplishments? Eh, she was a kid in school. What accomplishments? Wrote a kickass term paper?

Her importance in politics? Again, just a kid starting out.

So what then? What could possibly cause a big macher Congressman decide to follow a kid in college?

Ohhhhhhhh. Oh. Ohhhhh.

Oh, right. The normal things.

Thanks to Dr. Spank for noting that quote.

We Don't Have the Media, But We Have A Crime-Solving Machine: Help is on the way.

Some sitting-around-in-your-underwear-drunk-tweeting-coeds music: more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:13 PM | Comments (339)
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(And ONT)

Added below the fold: A cheerleader

Lotsa' pent up hostility here, as evidenced by last night's submoron-on-submoron mayhem. Now's the time for you short bus riders to settle old scores. And since Ace has thoughtfully reiterated the rules in a post below, I just know you holsters of cock wouldn't even dream of going over the line.

And no, you don't get kittehs tonight. Because I don't like you.

So let the hatin' begin...

Music to hate by below the fold...

more...

Posted by: Genghis at 06:28 PM | Comments (899)
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I used my Twitter tonight to try to reach out to hacker victim @RepWeiner.

I started about an hour ago, at "I'm no columbo."

I am Representative Weiner. We all are.

A little music for traumatized victims.

In Which I Finally Starting Getting Some Damn Respect For My Service To Justice: I didn't read this RedState piece, so I don't know what is says, but I assume they're congratulating me for attempting to get justice for Rep. Weiner.

In Which I Join the "Bonerism" Movement: I meant to post this earlier -- at Daily Kos, a "Bonerist" movement aborning, as they claim photographic analysis proves the boner pic was faked.

In Which I Am Outraged Anew! These contemptible villains have (scrll down) apparently hacked the poor young girl this pornography was sent to, deleting her whole Twitter account.

See? We need to find the people responsible for this. Who knows who's next!

It could be you, it could be me, it could be Representative Anthony Weiner again, it probably will be Anthony Weiner again...

Posted by: Ace at 06:22 PM | Comments (114)
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Is this the recipient of one discount factory-seconds WeinerGram?

I don't know. I continue assuming, as Weiner says, that his Twitter account and his separate-company yfrog picture account were simultaneously hacked, and then someone sent this stuff to a college student in Seattle, and also, for reasons I don't get, he previously posted a helpful "that's about 5:45 in Seattle" tweet when discussing an upcoming appearance on Maddow.

I also assume that, after immediately wrestling control of these accounts from the mischievous malefactors, he deleted the offensive material, rather than preserving the evidence for the police, and the upcoming prosecution of the hackers, who he must surely wish to face the full consequences of law; I assume he did so just because he was so shocked that he wasn't thinking clearly, and in fact was so stunned by this invasion of his boner zone of privacy that he coincidentally began acting like a man caught doing something wrong.

As I say, I'm assuming all of this is legit and on the level, and that this poor man is being hacked by someone with pictures of what looks like it's probably his boner.

How these identity-thieves and boner-bandits managed this high-level COIN operation, I don't know. But Weiner says this is what happened, and he's never lied before, at least that I can tell.

So for right now, I'm just assuming that Anthony Weiner is every bit as honest in his personal life as he is in his professional life, every bit as straight and true in his personal dealings as in his political posturings.

Every. Single. Bit.

Let me give the Magic 8-Ball of Plausibility a shake:

REALLY?! REALLY!? ARE YOU SERIOUS??!!

Oh well. Sometimes the Magic 8-Ball of Plausibility has a technical glitch.

Thanks to Melissa Tweets.

Posted by: Ace at 04:08 PM | Comments (292)
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I always liked Mamet. He was different. Although I usually didn't like straight dramas, I liked him. I guess because he didn't actually write straight dramas. His works were always, of course, of the drama category, but there was also always something else going on in them. To trick you into liking it, even if you were generally anti-emoting-and-shouting type dramas.

I've seen exactly two Broadway shows, and walked out of one (the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels musical, which I agreed to see because I thought it would be like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and guess what, it wasn't. They even changed the characters' names. What? And how do I say this without sounding like an idiot? I guess there is no way, so I'll just say it: There was a lot of singing I could have done without).

The other one I saw was Speed the Plow, with the late great Ron Silver, Joe Mantegna, and, er, Madonna.

A lot of his films lately have fallen into the "compelling almost-great misfire" category for me. Flawed, but easily better than 95% of the dreck Hollywood churns out, just because they're so different.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:49 PM | Comments (342)
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Although things get heated, no one has the right to behave like a creepy internet weirdo, getting unwarrantedly, aggressively sexual with female commenters.

And when a coblogger tells you to chill out, he's speaking for me, effectively. That's a bad time to double-down on weirdness in some jagoff attempt to prove you're "too tough to take an advisory."

That is a good time to take the night off.

If you defy his caution, you just earned strike two, and strike three will depend on my mood when I hear of it.

This site is not, in fact, "Race to the Bottom, and the Lowest Common Denominator Shall Make the Rules for Everyone Else."

I will enforce a certain standard of behavior, without regret.

I have stated this position repeatedly: In real life, we exclude weirdos, assholes, and racists from our daily lives. The Coalition of Assholes, having been excluded from all decent society in real life, continues asserting that in this one place -- the Internet -- they are free to flout social conventions and common courtesy without repercussion.

Because, Free Speech!!! B-b-b-but you can't exclude me, I've been excluded from everywhere else, this is all I have left!

Yes. There's a reason for that, but no, that doesn't mean the rules are different due to some hardship clause.

You also have "free speech" in real life but that doesn't obligate anyone to hang out with you or let you play their reindeer games.

Free speech is a right, but there is another equally important right that the Free Speech whiners never want to talk about: The right to Free Association, and to set the rules for one's clubs, and exclude those who do not fit the club or do not abide by the rules.

Stop telling me about your rights of "Free Speech" and start observing that other people have a right to Free Association.

And if you're going to be a dick, don't expect to be invited into the gang.

Let Me Explain This: We hate this.

No one likes these confrontations. No one likes having to play Den Mother or School Principle or Blog Nag.

We hate that. No one likes doing this. That's why some borderline stuff is ignored -- because we'd like to pretend it didn't happen, for the sake of avoiding confrontation, scolding, and drama.

So when someone is roused enough to overcome their reluctance to step in, that means a commenter has done something special.

And that means that the coblogger (including me) giving the warning is already upset to be forced into this unwanted position. To be forced to have to start talking about rules and common courtesy and the history of racist caricatures and the rest of it.

That means that what is usually ignored has become too aggressively anti-social to be ignored further, and the person issuing the warning is already pretty damn put-out that he has to lecture an adult as if that adult were a child.

And that is really a bad time to double-down on cutesy "can I touch the line this much?" games and catcalls and the rest of it.

A warning is a warning. Take it as such. It's not something anyone likes doing. If a warning has been issued, try to look past ego and consider "Maybe that was out of line and unnecessary. Maybe I've had a little too much to drink. Maybe I'm letting a little too much private-life anger stink up everyone else's day."

Please stop with the reflexive list of rights believed to be possessed and consider duties and responsibilities, and the counterbalancing rights of others.

Posted by: Ace at 12:21 PM | Comments (198)
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I honestly didn't know what you guys were talking about when you kept saying "Anthony Weiner." Okay, so he's a real hard-on, so what?

If I only knew. DrewM. just told me. He asked me if I'd like to post on it.

Wood I? Wood I ever!

Subtitled, Joker Pulls Boner of the Year.

I'm about eight hours behind so I'll just direct you to Weasel Zippers, where you don't see the congressional staff, or to Patterico, where you also don't see the overnight poling, or to Big Government, where you do in fact see the legislative briefs.

Make your choice. But choose well. For, as they say, there are some things which may not be unseen.

Oh, oh, oh, right: I'm supposed to also tell you that Weiner claims his Twitter account was "hacked."

And here's when I tell you that when I posted that Busty Lesbian Pron, my computer, fingers, and brain also got "hacked."

Who did it? No idea. I suspect Average Joe.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh No. Oh No. Oh No. DrewM. is just pulling rabbits out of his ass now.

A NYT Q&A with Meghan McCain prints today. Interview happened, obviously, before.

Meghan McCain names her favorite Democrat.

Guess who?

I'm not going to make you read this crap. So I'll just confirm it.

FAVORITE DEMOCRAT: I like Anthony Weiner, the congressman from New York. He has YouTube moments I find entertaining, and heÂ’s married to Huma Abedin, who works for Secretary of State Clinton. I have to tip my hat to him for landing such a hot woman.

Yeah, that marriage is pretty solid. Good call on that one, Mags. Maybe this, more than Sarah Palin, explains your "dating Babylon."

Completely unrelated, but I may ditch my beard. It's itchy and unmanageable.

Other Jokes: I did some different jokes on Twitter. They're in reverse-order, so scan down to "Well I'm late" and read up.

Posted by: Ace at 11:13 AM | Comments (149)
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This weekend is when cable channels dig into their library and see what war movies they have in there.

That got some of us thinking about our favorite movies. Here in no particular order are what some of the co-bloggers came up with:

Dave:
Patton
A Bridge Too Far
Tora Tora Tora

Andy:
Bridge On the River Kwai
Apocalypse Now
We Were Soldiers

Drew:
The Longest Day
Glory
The Best Years of Our Lives (close enough)

rdbrewer:
Apocalypse Now
The Hurt Locker
Full Metal Jacket

Laura:
Ah, let's just say she tried her best but chicks and war flicks generally don't go together.

In fact, I think you can generally tell how good a war movie is by how many women have speaking roles. Generally, the more female characters, the worse it is as a war movie. Exceptions that come to mind are also three of my favorite and under appreciated...In Harm's Way, They Were Expendable and The Horse Soldiers. Interestingly, all are John Wayne flicks.

We also kicked around war comedies as a separate category and came up with a few...Kelly's Heroes, Dr. Strangelove and one I just saw, Imitation General.

Anyway, we figured we throw it open for discussion. This is a great opportunity if any lurkers want a chance to ease into the commenting thing.

So, what do you guys have?

Posted by: DrewM at 09:42 AM | Comments (414)
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