The "Bareback Mountain" joke was so obvious that even I avoided it, but, you know, when you use it for a movie about a man's "special friendship" with his horse, it's golden.

Again: Not Safe For Work. The fake-trailer parodizes Brokeback Mountain's "frank depiction" of forbidden love. Only this time, you know, with an Appalloosa.*

Thanks to V the K.

* Or however you spell it. You've got to let some of these go, man!

Posted by: Ace at 10:08 AM | Comments (15)
Post contains 89 words, total size 1 kb.

The funny thing is, this lefty douchenozzle thought this panel would infuriate conservatives.

We're not infuriated. We're delighted that 16th Level Sith Lord Dick Cheney is finally getting the props for his turkey-torturing duties.

Well, not "duties" per se. It's more of a hobby.

Of course, in reality, Cheney wouldn't be threatening the bird with an axe.

Thanks to Slublog.

Posted by: Ace at 10:02 AM | Comments (16)
Post contains 80 words, total size 1 kb.

Mike's Message
July 9, 2004 -- four months before the 2004 election

Hi, gang. Michael Moore here. I had an interesting encounter in a diner and I thought I'd share it.

So me and Joe Palooka are sitting around at Mavis's diner talking. Joe looks at me. His eyes are wet with anger. I push a large joint of mutton down my enormous feeding orifice. The bones crack and pop like July fireworks as my massive tusks rend the meat and work the bone into a thick paste.

"How could they do this?!?" Joe wants to know. His hands tremble, as if palsied. "How could these rotten bastards push Saddam Hussein out of office?!"

It's a good question, no doubt. I wish I could answer it. I wish I could answer another question-- How can I eat this cheesesteak, this Monte Cristo, and that four-gallon tank of pork lard simultaneously, when I have only two hands?

"Saddam Hussein was just an innocent genocidal madman," Joe sniffs. "He never did any arm to anyone. Or, at least, not to anyone I know." Joe's a sensible man. That's a rare quality these days-- sense.

I'd like to tell him I respect his common sense, but I can't speak, as I currently have my entire ginormous freakhead stuffed into the rib-cage of dangling cow-carcass. I make animalsitic noises and rend with my powerful, overdeveloped jawmuscles, bulging and rippling like those of a sabre-tooth tiger, as I ponder my friend Joe.

I slice through bone and tendon and tough cartilege with my wickedly angled, sharklike incisors, sending bone-bits and glistening black puddings of coagulated intestinal blood sailing across the diner with each feral bite.

A pack of Guatemalan-Indian boys come into the diner, speaking Spanish. Or gibberish. Who can tell the difference?

They walk over to me and ask me to lift my t-shirt.

"What's this about?" Joe wants to know.

I lift my shirt and the boys begin scraping along the insides of my luxurious rolls of corpulent fat with old playing cards. One boy gently lifts my massive man-titty and collects a big dollop of a yellowish substance that resembles spoiled soft cheese.

"Oh, I'm just doing my bit to help a downtrodden minority," I explain to Joe. "The Indians have discovered that the pungent, semi-toxic munge that collects on my unwashed body is a powerful psychedelic drug of some sort. Ingesting my creamy sweat brings them to death's door, but it assists them in reaching the proper mental state for dream-quests."

"Sort of like peyote," Joe offers.

"My munge-cheese kicks peyote's ass to hell and back," I say with some degree of pride. "They call it La Mantequilla del Diablo-- The Devil's Butter."

The boys end up filling an emptied grout-bucket with my powerful psychotropic man-filth. They thank me profusely, and then leave. They'll be having some powerful dream-quests tonight -- I can smell that I'm especially rancid today.

"It's the least I can do in George W. Bush's Amerikkka," I modestly explain to Joe.

"I don't even recognize America anymore," Joe sniffs.

I wipe a turkey drumstick from the corner of my eye. "It's all right, Joe," I say, or rather that's what I attempt to say. My words are interrupted by the squawkings of a live chicken which somehow manages to escape my all-consuming maw.

"There will be an election in November," I console Joe. I have now sprung to my feet in order to seize the escaped chicken. The fat ripples along my elephantine haunches as I coil to leap, lethal energy gathered to spring in a frozen moment, like the cocked hammer of a gun. A really fat gun.

"Never give up hope," I advise Joe as I leap over the assembled humanity in the cramped diner, my claws sprung out and shiny-deadly, my lard-dimpled jowls flapping in the indifferent April breeze.

The chicken dodges a slash from one of my mammoth fore-limbs. It dives beneath the seat of a six year old boy, a ruddy-cheeked, haystack-haired, gap-toothed reminder of what this nation is all about.

The boy is inconveniently providing cover for the miscreant fowl, so I snatch him up with one sweat-drooling meat-paddle and I drop him, alive and screaming in abject terror, down into my waiting throat.

My roiling gastric acids will take care of the kid. I've got no time to chew him.

The chicken runs.

"I'm hoping Wesley Clarke joins the ticket," I tell Joe as I bite out the throat of the boy's mother, who has, as you might well imagine, sprung to her feet to protest my devouring of her sparkled-eyed tyke. I slurp her still-pulsating gizzards down my slavering maw. "That would give us two candidates with combat experience, which our Idiot King Dumbya of course does not."

The chicken scampers over the well-worn hospital-green tiles of the ancient diner. It ducks through the doorway and exits to the street as a truck-driver enters the place.

Angry at the clumsiness of the truck driver, I snap at his head with my yawning pink vortex of saliva-drooling death, severing his head and neck at the clavicle. His body spews a riotously crimson fountain of blood at the ceiling, like he were some liquid roman candle.

The hot blood splatters on the diner's windows and steams.

"But November is such a long way away," Joe calls after me, but I'm on the street now, waddling like an enormous Sumo wrestler with a wedgie, my dainty-tiny feet pounding into the cool asphalt like fleshy jackhammers.

I hear the telltale whine of jet-engines-- F-15's, I'm sure. I've heard them before. I hear them everytime I go out on a citywide rampage.

I'll hear the rumbling of National Guard troop carriers soon enough as well-- a platoon of "mercenaries" out to chill my right to dissent. And my right to feed on human flesh.

"November is virtually tomorrow," I call back to Joe as I stoop to the ground to bite the mid-body out of a policeman's horse. Intestines ooze and slither out of the gaping wound like wet, grisly Slinkees. "It's just tomorrow. Just plan, and organize, and don't stop thinking about tomorrow!"

The F-15's scream down from the sky as they begin their attack run. My brunch with Joe will have to wait.

leap into the cool, slimy waters of the East River as the air-to-ground missiles slam into the cityscape behind me

The filthy river greets me like an old lover. A murky, green lover that smells of cabbage, burnt engine oil, and feet. It smells like... freedom.

The chicken has escaped.

But George Bush will not.

Washington DC is only a few days' swim from New York.

And I am hungry.

Reposted for "Jane Hamster." Original Post follows.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:59 AM | Comments (347)
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Goodness, it was all just about the gas prices.

I understand that higher gas prices take money out of people's pockets, but honestly, is our nation so sensitive to such predictable and inevitable rises in the cost of gas that it trumps all the terrific news about the economy? Apparently so.

- Consumer confidence surged in December as declining gasoline prices and improving job opportunities buoyed spirits, boding well for spending in the new year.

The Conference Board said Wednesday that its Consumer Confidence Index advanced to 103.6 this month after recovering to 98.3 in November. That was better than the 103.0 reading analysts had expected for December.

DecemberÂ’s rise put the index at its highest level since Hurricane Katrina struck on Aug. 29, devastating Gulf Coast states and disrupting fuel and trade for much of the nation. Last August, before the storm, the index registered 105.5.

Rasmussen confirms that people are more optimistic about their employment prospects:

Looking ahead to the new year, 47% of workers expect their job prospects will be better in 2006 than in 2005. A national Hudson survey also found that 3-out-of-5 workers expect to earn more next year than they did this past year. That includes 21 percent who expect to earn significantly more and 42% who say they hope to earn a little more.

...

“While 2005 was a challenging year on many fronts, U.S. workers continued to show their resilience and optimism heading into the new year,” said Steve Wolfe, executive vice president, Hudson, North America. “We anticipate that 2006 will be a stronger year for worker confidence and for workers’ leverage as they seek to improve their skills and investigate new opportunities.”

And I can't find the poll at the moment (it may be available only to premium members at this point), but Rasmussen just reported that investor confidence is also at a local high.

Posted by: Ace at 09:52 AM | Comments (7)
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Scan down in the sidebar until after the comments.

I realize that sidebar is getting hella-long, but when I put up the two-sidebar templates the content will be more evenly divided between them. I'll have comments near the top of one and top headlines near the top of the other.

Just one headline so far. I'll add more.

Like I've said, the headline-based format of this blog means that I can't really just put up a naked link. I have to say something myeself if I put up a headline (I make exceptions for stories of such interest where I know commenters will want a place to comment, but I don't really have anything to add myself). This has resulted in me not posting 60% of the interesting stories I run accross, whether from tips or my own reading (yes, I do read the news), and keeping 50+ windows open on my computer containing stories I think are interesting but for which haven't yet thought of a take or comment or gag.

Just having the Top Headlines feature will allow me to at least post these stories. I don't have to say anything about them; I just have to provide the link for those who may be interested.

I've wanted this for over a year, since I first saw it on American Digest. I'm so happy that blog-daddy Pixy Misa allowed me to do this, and web-head extraordinaire Emily Starr implemented the code.

One drawback to this format is that there won't be comment space for individual stories. I'll get into the habit of opening a Top Headlines post every day, for those who may wish to comment on stories for which there is no specific blog entry. If there's a whole lot of interest in one particular story, I'll change the post so that it's dedicated particularly to the hot debate, and then start another Top Headlines thread for everything else.

Posted by: Ace at 09:22 AM | Comments (14)
Post contains 330 words, total size 2 kb.

Guys, give us a break. Without the export of violence our trade deficit would be even worse.

They don't say we're exporting actual criminals. Apparently it's just a murderous frisson emanating up to Canada from her thuggish gun-lovin' neighbor to the South. Well, that and a lot of guns flowing north.

Canadian officials, seeking to make sense of another fatal shooting in what has been a record year for gun-related deaths, said Tuesday that along with a host of social ills, part of the problem stemmed from what they said was the United States exporting its violence.
...

While many Canadians take pride in Canadian cities being less violent than their American counterparts, Toronto has seen 78 murders this year, including a record 52 gun-related deaths -- almost twice as many as last year.

...

"It's a sign that the lack of gun laws in the U.S. is allowing guns to flood across the border that are literally being used to kill people in the streets of Toronto," Miller said.

Miller said Toronto, a city of nearly three million, is still very safe compared to most American cities, but the illegal flow of weapons from the United States is causing the noticeable rise in gun violence.

"The U.S. is exporting its problem of violence to the streets of Toronto," he said.

Hold on. At most we're exporting guns. Which isn't the same as "violence." I hate to get all NRA here, but a gun doesn't just fire itself, unless maybe it's owned by a Hemmingway or a William Burroughs.

Miller said that while almost every other crime in Toronto is down, the supply of guns has increased and half of them come from the United States.

Half of the increase in gun supply? I think that's probably what he/the reporter means. It could be that gun supplies have gone up 10% or so, and the US is blamed for half of that uptick. Or 5%.

In any event, isn't Canada fairly well-stocked with guns as it is? The only thing I took away from Bowling for Columbine (apart from how sad it is to watch an obese man trying to be funny) is that Canada had a lot of guns and was, at least in the past, pretty responsible with them.

Miller said the availability of stolen Canadian guns is another problem, and that poverty in certain Toronto neighborhoods is a root cause.

"There are neighborhoods in Toronto where young people face barriers of poverty, discrimination and don't have real hope and opportunity. The kind of programs that we once took for granted in Canada that would reach out to young people have systematically disappeared over the past decade and I think that gun violence is a symptom of a much bigger problem," Miller said.

Ahhhh... so it turns out the "root cause" is actually what it always is-- young people with litle hope or economic prospects but a bit of .38 caliber ambition.

I wonder if we'll be blamed for that part. America invented urban dispair around 1880, and our corporate-crime complex has been marketing it around the world since then.

Posted by: Ace at 09:09 AM | Comments (21)
Post contains 548 words, total size 3 kb.

Apparently you'll get a horrible disease if you don't.

D is the new C.

But concerns about the faddish quality of "health news" aside, I'm taking some as soon as I can.

Posted by: Ace at 08:35 AM | Comments (11)
Post contains 38 words, total size 1 kb.

But don't believe them, because the MSM are all right-wing tools for the Republicans:

On Nov. 20, the Tribune began an inquest: We set out to assess the Bush administration's arguments for war in Iraq. We have weighed each of those nine arguments against the findings of subsequent official investigations by the 9/11 Commission, the Senate Intelligence Committee and others....

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE SAID

Intelligence agencies warned the Clinton and Bush administrations that Hussein was reconstituting his once-impressive program to create nuclear weapons. In part that intel reflected embarrassment over U.S. failure before the Persian Gulf war to grasp how close Iraq was to building nukes.

WHAT WE KNOW TODAY

Four intel studies from 1997-2000 concurred that "If Iraq acquired a significant quantity of fissile material through foreign assistance, it could have a crude nuclear weapon within a year." Claims that Iraq sought uranium and special tubes for processing nuclear material appear discredited.

THE VERDICT

If the White House manipulated or exaggerated the nuclear intelligence before the war in order to paint a more menacing portrait of Hussein, it's difficult to imagine why. For five years, the official and oft-delivered alarms from the U.S. intelligence community had been menacing enough.

On all nine arguments for war, the Chicago Tribune finds the White House's statements about war either accurate or wrong but relying in good faith upon erroneous intelligence.

I suppose that settles that.

I suppose a lot of things. I'm a moron.

Posted by: Ace at 08:27 AM | Comments (7)
Post contains 253 words, total size 2 kb.

Yeah, yeah, full-scale miniatures is an oxymoron, you say. I reply: You're the oxymoron.

Kinda cool stuff to make out of old tires, though. Somewhere out there, bbeck just had a hot flash.

Thanks to steve_in_hb.

Posted by: Ace at 11:03 PM | Comments (4)
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Matt sends this cool video and asks "How the hell is it I never heard of this guy?"

I never heard of him either.

So, in 1960, this cat ascends to 30km above the earth in a balloon and.... jumps. He accelerates to 900 mph (I guess terminal velocity's a lot higher when the air is thin). He actually broke the sound barrier, without a vehicle.

He was testing to see if high-g acceleration would kill him, by the way. It didn't, but he didn't know that when he agreed to try it.

In related space news, Dick Cheney has offered his schlong as the space-elevator Instapundit and Arthur C. Clarke are always going on about (and on, and on, and on about).

His dork is made up entirely of "composite-carbon nano-tubes thirty times stronger than titanium," enabling it to reach 100 miles into the atmosphere without buckling under its own stupendous weight. NASA engineers call it "a breakthrough."

Lynne Cheney just calls it "a damnable nightmare."

Posted by: Ace at 10:41 PM | Comments (30)
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