No contest. Look, Johnny Fairplay claimed his grandmother had died to garner sympathy on Survivor, but 1, that was hilarious, and 2, he never made any bones that he was a manipulative, deceitful little shit. He proudly wore the black hat.

If you're watching Rock Star: INXS (and it's not very good, so you're probably not), you know that a wannabe frontman for the band, going by the improbable name "J.D. Fortune," is in fact The Biggest Douche In the Reality TV Universe. Not only is he cocky, grandstanding, condescending, manipulative, and an all-around jackass, but he brought in his sister to the audience as a prop, because he knew he couldn't sing the song he had connived to get ("We Are the Champions").

After singing a very bad version of it, he explained that he hadn't seen his sister in two years and was just overcome by the emotion of the planned, staged moment, thus his shaky off-pitch butchery ought to be excused.

"I'm doing all right, bro," he told Dave Navarro. "But I saw my sister, who I haven't seen in two years, and I just lost it." And then lots of fake tears.

Asshole.

I was PRAYING that someone after him would explain their own poor performance by saying, "Sorry, bro, but I saw J.D.'s sister, who I haven't seen in my entire life, and I just lost it." Tear, tear, sniffle, sniffle.

And not only is he Canadian, but I get this very powerful Nazi vibe off of him. He just reminds me of the fascist caricature Bob Geldof becomes near the end of the movie The Wall. I just always see him in a black trenchcoat with an emblem of crossed hammers.

Okay, He's the Biggest Male Douche: Omorosa from The Apprentice still reigns supreme.

Posted by: Ace at 03:02 PM | Comments (18)
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Incredible!

In other related news...

GOOD LORD ALL MIGHTY!!! 9 OUT OF 10 TEENAGED BOYS MASTURBATE, WISH THEY COULD HAVE GENUINE SEX

STAT STUNNER: 8 OUT OF 10 TEENAGERS AGREE THEIR PARENTS "JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND," FRIENDS SOMETIMES "AREN'T REAL FRIENDS," AND THAT "HOMEWORK STINKS"

SHOCK!!! 3 OUT OF 10 TEENAGERS CONFUSE WORLD WAR II WITH LORD OF THE RINGS TRILOGY; BELIEVE HIROSHIMA BOMBING WAS ORDERED BY "PRESIDENT ELROND"

It's not just me, guys. Even Drudge has really f'n' lame days.

Posted by: Ace at 02:02 PM | Comments (8)
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Police speculate that maybe they got to the car too quickly for other bombers to take the devices.

Which doesn't really make sense, because one would expect that all twenty would be detonated at the same time, if they were all in the same car. Obviously the system is going to be shut down for the rest of the day after the first bombing; so why bring them out of the safe-house at all, if not to be used simultaneously with the others?

So, I think it's more likely that 20 psychopathic murder-cultists (hmmm... 20? ring any bells?) agreed to do this but only four showed up on Virgins' Suicide day.

If so... at least it's somewhat comforting to know that, religious lunacy and death-cultism aside, only 20% of hard-core jihadis are willing to actually die for... who knows. Establishing the Universal Caliphate or whatever.

20% Not 25%: Happy now, math-heads?

Geeks.

Posted by: Ace at 01:52 PM | Comments (10)
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Because, in arguing that Bush shouldn't be so willing to compromise over a mushy O'Connor-esque judge, she said "we have the media now."

Of course, what she meant is we have an alternative media -- FoxNews, Limbaugh, blogs, etc. -- capable of at least giving the MSM a fight on its silliest claims, but of course Filet-O-Fish takes this to mean that Brian Williams is now a Grand Dragon Wizard in the Republican Party of the Confederacy Resurrected.

Posted by: Ace at 01:23 PM | Comments (16)
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The chatlog of the actual war, from Jimmy Page: more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:33 AM | Comments (19)
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A bunch of them here.

These are the pick of the litter:

FDR explains there's nothing to fear but KHAAAAAAN!!!

Clinton's going to say this one time: he did not have sexual relations with KHAAAAAN!!!

Tom Jones wants to know what's new, KHAAAAAN!!??

European technofag disco KHAAAAN!!!

Thanks to LK, who notes, sadly, there's not a one with Paul Anka threatening to bring in KHAAAAAAN!!! to ride your asses.

Gettin' Dave Off My Tits Update: More of these sorts of sound-loops, with lots of Darth Vader, and some vagina.

Posted by: Ace at 09:44 AM | Comments (11)
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As long as we're doing random searches, why not? Apparently submoronic randomness is a good thing, so let's extend this party to everything.

Funny stuff. Funny because it's true.

Thanks to Karol, who has a dozen guest bloggers at Alarming News.

Posted by: Ace at 09:39 AM | Comments (7)
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Originally a plug for yesterday's show, but it seems to have become a debate thread about nuking Mecca or Medina. (The debate begins about halfway through the comments.)

I'm not endorsing this, I'm just advertising the fact that this thread has become a debate on the subject.

My two cents: I really wouldn't want to see the US become a terrorist power, attacking civilian targets to terrorize a billion people. I would say, though, that our nation wasn't thrilled about the idea of nuking Russian cities, either, and yet that was a possible response to an attack on our cities.

If the worse should happen, and a terrorist power or state obtain a nuclear weapon and threaten to use it on (or actually detonate it in) a US city, we're going to have to threaten something extreme.

But nuking Mecca or Media seems awfully counterproductive (obviously it's immoral). Not only does doing that play into the terrorists' hands -- now they've got 1 billion recruits ready for total war -- but you can't threaten to destroy what you've already destroyed.

It's a vile question without any good answers... if elements of the Islamic war engage in a genocidal nuclear war against US, what the hell do we do? Engage in a genocidal nuclear war against their innocents, too? Or just learn to live with a few less cities than we had grown accustomed to?

Now with 50% more Star Trek content!

Also, Jonah will be forced to answer whether Cosmo the Wonder Dog is now, or has ever been, a member of the Federalist Society.

As usual, the call-in line is 866-884-TALK.

Update: Questions for Jonah. I'm sure a lot of you guys are big fans, so if you want to suggest a question, please do, and write them in the comments. I can't guarantee how many questions I'll get to (I've got my own list), but I will try to ask a couple.

And Allah, stop asking silly questions. This is a classy intellectual sort of show, the successor to Firing Line, except even smarter.

Posted by: Ace at 09:33 AM | Comments (324)
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Not as a form of punishment; just to make all those prisoners healthier.

Guards are banned from smoking too:

The California Department of Corrections (search) has banned cigarette smoking indoors and outdoors for both inmates and employees. The Department of Corrections hopes this move will cut health care costs by hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

"It just helps reduce the risk of secondhand smoking, helps reduce the risk of tobacco illness not just for employees, but for inmates as well," said Lt. Ken Lewis (search), spokesman for the California State Prison, Los Angeles County.

Gee, if they can't control drugs and weapons in prison, won't it be hard to stop smoking?

But the ban may not get rid of all tobacco products in California prisons. A black market for chewing tobacco has already emerged. Tins that normally cost $11 can run as much as $200 on the cellblock.

Oh.

No doubt, smoking is bad for your and a nasty, stinky habit.

But this Fascism of Health and Niceness is getting out of hand.

Thanks to NickS.

Posted by: Ace at 09:00 AM | Comments (27)
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I'd really wanted to talk about this on the show a little, but I ran out of time.

Is it a parody/hoax? It sure reads like one, but the links all seem to work. So it's either real or someone went to a little bit of trouble to provide internet evidence of the "nerdcore" rap phenemenon.

Anyway, it's pretty funny:

Tupac and Biggie, move over. A new hip-hop feud is brewing that glamorizes not guns and 'hos but Java and secure encryption algorithms.

While gangsta rap is seen as celebrating the violence and aggression that claimed two of its brightest stars, "geeksta" rap is a hip-hop genre celebrating coding skills and school grades.

See photosAlso dubbed "nerdcore," this branch of hip-hop is for geeks, by geeks. Geeksta rappers adopt the same combative verbal-assault stylings of their forerunners, but bust rhymes about elite script compiling and dope machine code.

The term was first coined in 2000 by nerdy New York rapper MC Frontalot in a track of the same name. Nerdcore now refers to artists waxing lyrical about topics as disparate as engineering and Lord of the Rings.

In recent months, the field has seen a growing number of releases from computer science labs, where egocentric grad students show off their Ph.D. credentials in tracks like "Have to Code" and "End of File."

"The stigma that was once attached to computer geeks and role-playing nerds is diminishing incredibly fast," said "digital gangster" Bryce Case Jr., aka ytcracker. "It has almost become trendy to have skills on a computer. Rather than guns and 'hos, I speak about DDOS attacks and camgirls."

The self-proclaimed "#1 greatest computer science gangsta rapper ever" is MC Plus+, a geeksta leading light whose moniker comes from the C++ programming language.

The Purdue University, Indiana, Ph.D. candidate and "CS pimp," whose album Algorhythms was recorded with pirated software, calls himself "the Tupac of the computer science world."

MC Plus+ rattles off lines like: "I'm encrypting shit like every single day; sending it across a network in a safe way; protecting messages to make my pay; if you hack me you're guilty under DMCA."

But Plus+'s flow is dissed on the opposite coast by geeksta peers like Dan Maynes-Aminzade, aka Monzy, a 25-year-old Minnesota-born Stanford grad student who recorded a dis track specifically to insult his rap rival.

"Our raps are filled with braggadocio, but instead of boasting about our bitches, blunts, Benzes or Benjamins, maybe we talk about our math skills or the efficiency of our code," Monzy said.

"Drama in the PhD," a nerdcore taunting rap.

Thanks to Jacob.

Posted by: Ace at 08:44 AM | Comments (20)
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