Frank Rich has made quite a little reputation for himself as one of the shallowest, snidest, and most knee-jerk of leftist commentators at the New York Times. I doubt too many committed liberals even bother reading his trite observations.

Garfield Ridge takes down Frank Rich worse than the Predator took down Carl Weathers. He starts by blowing off his arm and then he gets rather more mean about things.

Hopefully, next up will be Paul Krugman, standing in for Sonny Lantham.

Posted by: Ace at 12:16 PM | Comments (3)
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Well, I jumped out to an early lead, but now that more people are voting, Allah is quickly moving up to pass me.

Let me say that I love Allah. He's been one of the biggest supporters of this stupid moronblog from the start. And, when I was just about to give the blog up back in March or so, he got me to keep blogging, by promoting me, and getting me once again interested in the ever-elusive promise of crazy blog-money. (Actually, I don't know if I'm actually grateful for that or not. But anyway.)

Despite my warm regards for the Wellspring of Wisdom, however, I want to win, damnit. Let's face it, Allah is well-known and well-established, and still gets more hits than me, despite the fact that, you know, he hasn't posted in approximately sixty-six million years.

I think his last post involved a very unflattering photoshop of a trilobyte.

So vote for me, darn you.

Note: I know this is annoying, but this is how Wizbang set it up: you can vote once every 24 hour period.

Posted by: Ace at 08:14 PM | Comments (27)
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As it should be.

No sympathy for this travelling terrorist-moll whatsoever.

Just a quick question:

If the left is forever ripping into America for supposedly exporting violence and warfare to poor peaceful third world countries--

--why are they so damn eager to get this little bomb-making whore out of the hoosegow?

Or is violence acceptable when committed by those with the correct ideology?

Thanks to Stumbo.

Posted by: Ace at 04:40 PM | Comments (9)
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New vote to occur on December 26th.

Just wonderful.

Posted by: Ace at 09:43 AM | Comments (3)
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I don't really want to pick on anybody over something like this, but 1) it's Andrew Sullivan and 2) he doesn't owe very much money, so he'll be okay.

I don't need to consult Johnny Coldcuts to know that, sometime in the not-too-distant future, I will be reading the words "Pledge Drive," "extensive improvements to the site-design," and "ever-escalating bandwidth costs."

H/t to the PunditGuy.

Posted by: Ace at 08:05 AM | Comments (24)
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Frank Villon informs me that the phrase a "stank of protestors" is a "venery" (or hunting) term for a collection of things.

Frank, you gotta be quicker than that to beat me in any game involving insulting people.

Way back when, on March 15, I collected up the lesser-known collective nouns for groups of people:

Since I was a kid, I always enjoyed the humorous and sometimes poetic group-names given to different animals. It was interesting to me that one said a school of fish but a pack of wolves; it was delightful that one said a parliament of owls and an exultation of larks. A shrewdness of apes, a crash of rhinoceroses, an ostentation of peacocks-- just grand poetry.

And of course it was just flat-out cool that one said a murder of crows.

But this practice was also extended to naming groups of people. One could say a skulk of thieves (cool!), a rascal of boys (cute!), and, if one could keep a straight face, a neverthriving of jugglers (goofy!).

More of these are found here; I don't know if I'll ever actually say a superfluidity of nuns, but it's nice to know that I could, if I wanted to.

I threw the crack Ace of Spades HQ Etymology and Semiotics Department at into researching other collective-names. After 1200 billable hours of research, all paid for by the ultra-secretive cryptofascist benefactor I know only as "Mr. Tranh," I've discovered even more collective-nouns for groups of people, these more relevant to the world we live in today. I plan to use these in everyday conversation; I hope you'll find some use for them too.

... from the Home Office in Pocatello, Idaho...

Top Ten Lesser-Known Collective Nouns for Different Groups of People

10. A gesticulation of Italians

9. A corruption of Congressmen

8. A moustache of policemen

7. A tumescence of pornstars

6. A shriek of liberals

5. A waddle of Rosie O'Donnells

4. An armpit of feminists

3. An insignificance of Canadians

2. A malodor of Frenchmen (also acceptable: a quavering of Frenchmen; a surrender of Frenchmen)

...and the Number One Lesser-Known Collective Noun for a Group of People...

1. A crimewave of Kennedys

Honorable Mentions:

A doddering of seniors

A twaddle of Democrats

A condescension of reporters

A kegger of college students

A genocide of Germans

A trust-fund of "peace" marchers

A hypervapidity of Maureen Dowds

Posted by: Ace at 08:00 AM | Comments (23)
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In case you haven't seen it, which you almost certainly have, check it out.

This probably gives my age away, but I was a couple of years too old to get into the Transformers. Hell, I thought even G-Force was kinda dorky, and Space Giants too. Battle of the Planets? Also gay.

Very, very gay.

The last robot I was really into was that belonging to Johnny Socko. Man, did I dream about having a robot like that.

Still do, sometimes, to be perfectly honest with you.

One day. Fingers crossed!

Posted by: Ace at 10:59 PM | Comments (11)
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Yeah, I ignore this, pretty much.

Here's why:

Everyone else blathers about it. I will not pretend that I have additional blather which would make for compelling reading.

I could sit here and pretend that I have some special insight into the legal theories of Albert Gonzales. But I could not pretend well enough that you would believe me. (Except, of course, that you're all idiots, so who knows? Maybe it would work.)

I also think this is more of an inside-the-beltway/inside-baseball thing than something likely to impact actual policy. Where a change affects policy, I care. Where it may or may not, I don't.

Far as I know, Bush is still the President, and Dick Cheney is still his boss. Ergo, I could give a fig about who our current Secretary of Agriculture may be. You could tell me Bush just nominated Frank Gorshin, "The Riddler" from the old Batman show, and I would just say, "I hope he does a good job. Whatever, you know, his job is supposed to be. I imagine it involves alfalfa."

And I suspect that most people writing about this feel the same way. But they're paid to have opinions about nothing; whereas I, most emphatically, am not.

So, until there's some interesting appointment that actually has a fair chance of impacting politics or policy, I will take Bill Murray's position on the Best Supporting Actor and Actress Oscar categories: I don't think anybody knows who the hell any of these people are.

I've been watching politics long enough to know that what we're in right now is a slow news phase, at least as regards political news, and the media yappers have to invent or contrive controversy just to fill column-inches or airtime blocks.

But I think of the period after an election much like the awkward moments immediately after sex: now that the big event is over, there's not much left to do except quibble over ordering sesame noodles versus pork chow fun.

Yeah, maybe I do have a slight preference on the issue, but really, I'm just killing time until Seinfeld.

Well, the hell with that. When someone starts paying me big jack to do this crap, I'll play along. Until then, I'll write about the samizdat messages in Twisted Sister songs.

And let's just get this out of the way now: I could not possibly care less about Bush's Inaugural Address. We'll have weeks of speculation and leaks about what "themes" he'll stress, but really, who cares? We all know pretty much what he's going to do and what he's not going to do. It doesn't matter what he says.

You can count up the number of times he says "healing" and "strength" and it doesn't matter one whit the following Monday.

And if he quotes Maya Fucking Angelou, that doesn't mean he's reaching out to disaffected black Democrats; it just means he wants the newscasts to report he quoted Maya Fucking Angelou, just to make the sort of person impressed by quotes from Maya Fucking Angelou think he's a cool guy.

Newsflash: Maya Fucking Angelou sucks, and Bush knows it, and don't believe any differently if he starts quoting some excrementitious doggerell about rocks and trees and waters and peoples coming together to thresh wheat.

The only way I could possibly gin up any interest in the Inaugural Address would be if Bush delivered DeNiro's "baseball" speech from The Untouchables ("A man becomes pre-eminent, and he's expected to have certain enthusiasms. Enthusiasms.") and then brains Arlen Specter with a Louisville Slugger.

That I'll watch. That I'll blog about. But a bunch of airy rhetoric about coming together and uniting in common purpose and that sort of crap-- if I want a rejuvenation of my sense of community and optimism about the future, I'll just watch Hoosiers again and give the speech a miss.

Posted by: Ace at 10:18 PM | Comments (12)
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Turns out the "1954 Popular Mechanics" photo is a hoax.

Oh, well. As I was reading it-- especially with the "easy to use" language at the end -- my bullshit detectors went off, but then, I'm a blogger.

I don't employ complex and thorough systems of fact-checking like, say, Dan Rather. Or Peter Arnett. Or The New Republic. Or The Washington Post.

Thanks to Garfield Ridge for alerting me to the Snopes debunking of the photo.

Posted by: Ace at 09:33 PM | Comments (5)
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Bill From INDC puts on his pith helmet and cranks the theme from National Geographic as he studies the rituals and rites of moonbats in the wild.

Well, on the Great Lawn in DC. Which is one of their only three known habitats. Another habitat is Wall Street, fucking up traffic. The last habitat is of course a Rage Against the Machine concert (with special guest Phish).

There are some real you-are-there danger moments, too:

The chittering is deafening, their howling ... and the smell ... overwhelming, pungent, both their natural odor and the exogenously applied patchouli. Their gooey drapings and clothing are rubbing moistly against bare patches of my skin as I'm buffeted in their midst ... the various frequencies of their giggles and yowls make for a confused, oh, wait ... wait ... I'm being challenged, must communicate and blend in ...

"ah yes, yes, uh, uh ... yee! yee! ooohh ooohh! Chimpy bushitler fuckenalliburton! Right, right, goodfellow! Give 'em whatfor, the fucking fascists! Hitler!"

See, dude, you fucked up. You should have brought a tambourine. These people love tambourines. The moment one of them begins hooting and going into threat-displays against you, you start tapping out the percussion line of Sunshine Superman and lower your head into a submissive posture, and then they welcome you into their group (or "stank," as in "a stank of protestors").

Hell, a lot of times you can even get laid.

Posted by: Ace at 08:30 PM | Comments (6)
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