I did not know this. Because I didn't read about it. Just skimmed.

Remember that absurd sculpture of a nude Britney Spears giving birth on all fours? Kind of foaling the lad?

Same guy.

So: Yesterday I thought there were two idiot scupltors out there; now there is just one.

It's always a good day when you discover that your previous estimate of the word's population of morons, drooling imbeciles, scoundrels, liars, bastards, and no-talent wastes of space has declined.

[Artist Daniel] Edwards says the bust captures the senator, ""with her head held high, a youthful spirit and a face matured by wisdom. Presented in a low cut gown, her cleavage is on display prominently portraying sexual power which some people still consider too threatening."

The cleavage on display is threatening only because it belongs to porn actress Julie Strain and we're all creeped out by organ theft.

Posted by: Ace at 09:01 AM | Comments (29)
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Instaman has a link to a pork report card on all 435 members of Congress.

Letters work, man. These guys live in a bubble. They really do not know what actual Americans are thinking until actual Americans, get this, tell them what they're thinking.

It doesn't have to be long. It doesn't have to argue the point. It doesn't have to explain the philsophical and economic evils of pork and the Tragedy of the Commons hazard implicit in it. They don't read that anyway. They just want to know two things:

Are you for it or are you against it;

and

Can I get away with voting against your wishes, or will you punish me by voting out of office if I do?

You might want to mention they're not fooling anyone. No one's "bringing home the money to the home district." What everyone is doing is voting to "bring home the money" to all 435 districts. You don't live in 434 of those districts, so you're paying for 434 public park beautification & bike path projects and only getting the benefit of one -- and if you don't like parks or ride a bike, you ain't even gettin' that much.

Posted by: Ace at 08:52 AM | Comments (18)
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You, sir, are a goof.

And you, sir, are an anti-semite and a liar.

An apparent discrepancy in the portrayal of events surrounding the deaths of four unarmed U.N. observers in Lebanon threatens to unravel Secretary-General Annan's initial accusation that Israel "deliberately" targeted the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon.

A Canadian U.N. observer, one of four killed at a UNIFIL position near the southern Lebanese town of Khiyam on Tuesday, sent an e-mail to his former commander, a Canadian retired major-general, Lewis MacKenzie, in which he wrote that Hezbollah fighters were "all over" the U.N. position, Mr. MacKenzie said. Hezbollah troops, not the United Nations, were Israel's target, the deceased observer wrote.

The full email, and of course a lot more, at the link to Michelle's.

Damnit, she is thorough. How the hell does she do it?

PS: It occurs to me that a phrase I've been hearing -- a "UN stabilizing force" -- is a three part contradiction in terms, or, chemically speaking, a trioxymoron.

Posted by: Ace at 08:30 AM | Comments (71)
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Hi all.

I've added a leetle feature to the new comments thingy. Under each comment, you will see the usual line, like:

Posted by: geoff at July 26, 2006 05:02 PM (THOZg)

And two comments with the same fingerprint within a few minutes of each other? Same person.

Enjoy!

Update: Should have mentioned - I borrowed the idea from VekTor and the commenters at Protein Wisdom. It came up in a sock-puppet discussion, and in a few minutes all the major technical problems had been raised and resolved. There's still the joke-spoiling aspect of it, but it can always be turned off except in time of extreme puppetation.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:27 PM | Comments (411)
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People Magazine's cover, as it appeared on the newsstands:

People Magazine's cover, as it was intended to go out, before an 11th hour editorial staff decision:

Other headlines being considered included I'm Shocked --Shocked! -- To Find Any Gayness Going On In Lance Bass and Gee, Ya Think? and He Was The Last To Know.

Someone just sent me that, doesn't want his name used, doesn't want a hat tip.

So, eff it. I did it. That's right, I'm photoshopping now.

PS: I actually didn't know he was gay. I didn't really know anything about him, except he had some goofy idea to be an astronaut and once played a marionette.

But, all the hip, smart people are saying "Oh, of course he was gay," and I'd like to appear hip and smart, so-- "Oh, of course he was gay. I mean -- duhh. He wanted to be an astronaut, people, and we all know all the Apollo astronauts were stone-cold homos. Buzz Aldrin? Please. Gay as a pair of red ruby slippers."

Replay: Amish reminds me that any mention of Buzz Aldrin can and, whenever practicable, should be followed to a link of him punching a guy.

Posted by: Ace at 08:27 PM | Comments (42)
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I don't want to mention either of these things. But whatever.

Dr. Deb is back, emailing Jeff this time, and he's posting them for in his comments. Apparently she thinks if it's in an email, no one will know about it.

Oooh. I am so scared of you King Dumbphuque the Moron.
Good thing you and the Countess didnÂ’t have a girl!

S*atchel.

He.He.He.

"Dumbphuque." And I hope to God she didn't mean what she seems to mean by hoping Jeff "didn't have a girl," given her sexual orientation and the previous interest she's expressed in Jeff's kid's dating life.

Another threat against the kid. The cops really ought to be involved at this point.

What are you talking about? If you piss me off again I’m going to add satchel as a verb to that stupid little online “urban” fictionary your pissant anklebiting motherphuquing a-hole boyfriendz added frisch to. Capice?

Satchel. Verb: to drag your kid into sexually inappropriate fights on your blog. Subset of “yucky, icky, sicko things mommies and daddies (but usually daddies) do to their children.”

They say that revenge is a dish best served cold, so iÂ’m holding off on verbizing your progeny, mofo.

Call the FBI. Call your lawyer. BRING IT ON JEFFY BOY!!!!

Shee it. Did I ever misoverestimate you and your pissants.

ItÂ’s week 3 of my fifteen minutes of fame, you moron. Shut up.

P.S. You gotta admit, the count without the O joke is pretty good.

Yeah, it was really good. Hysterical.

Fifteen minutes of fame. Deb, this ain't fame, and if you can't recognize that, you're further gone than I thought.

The key to a good threat is to say something that threatens someone -- like stating you're going to turn a kid's name into a verb, suggesting that maybe you mean a verb having to do with violence -- and then coyly offering up a less-threatening "what I meant" cop-out to show in court.

Jeff, three letters: T. R. O. You can get one, and if she violates, she's hopelessly entangled with law enforcement. A few warnings at first, yes, but after that, they get more serious.

The woman needs to be in the system. For her own good as well. She needs to be checked up on regularly by both police and mental health professionals.

Oh-- and really, don't bother going to her site anymore. She's loving that, loving the chance to share her political views and poetry with the world.

Enough people send tips about her site and I'll post good stuff here, so you won't have to go there. So you won't miss out on it if she does something really weird, stupid, crazy.

And what are the odds of that happening, anyway, when you think about it?

Over at the Volokh Mega-Conspiracy, Jim Lindgren rounds up the Jason Leopold affair. Which, yeah, you've probably read three different ways by now. But he goes back into Leopold's past, errr, "troubles." And there are a lot of them.

Remember when Salon published that story about former Enron Official Thomas White (and, I think, also a former high-ranking officer in the Army serving under Bush)? Prominently cited by Paul Krugman of proof of the Bush Administrations' complicity in the Enron disaster? And then it was found to contain an "incriminating email" from White that was then suspected to have been entirely fabricated? And then even left-wing Salon had to retract the whole story as unreliable?

Remember that? Big brouhaha couple years back.

Yep. That was our boy Jason Leopold, too.

He's Steven Glass, but without all that "wit" and "charm" baggage.

This is what I keep telling the supposed "Reich-Ving Jason Leopold Enemies" calling him a "JEW BAG" on this site. See, you really don't have to resort to an anti-semitic epithet that casts much, much more shame on the speaker than on the target. There is a wealth of shady, criminal, dishonest, larcenous, drug-related, mental-health-realted, erratic, threatening, and just downright creepy behavior in Leopold's past you can use to malign him, all of which is 100% verifiably true, and much more shameful, I assure you, than the simple happenstance that he has a Jewish mother.

So, again: Why not use that ammo?

Jason?

Why not use that ammo to impugn your own name?

Sounds more effective, doesn't it, Jason?

You, sir, are a goof.

Threadjacking By The Bloghost: In the comments, I try to explain to a gay dude that the standard gay-camp-schtick isn't funny and isn't original and really ought to have been abandoned in the early 1950's.

I'm a crusader. I want to help gays. Seriously. I want to help them to abandon this ridiculous and tedious camp schtick that isn't funny to anyone, including themselves, although they pretend it is because it has become part of the social fabic in many subgenres of gay culture.

See? I'm pro-gay. I'm trying to help gays addicted to this standard-issue camp personality they've adopted shed it and be their real selves. And stop being so annoying.

In a way, I'm kind of like a Gay Mother Theresa. Well, not actually gay, I mean, you know, helping the gays. Like Mother Theresa.

If she were helping gays.

On a blog.

Posted by: Ace at 08:14 PM | Comments (114)
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Click here to see if you're right, which you're probably not, at least not in all the details, unless you've already seen this, which, in all likelihood, you probably have.

Thanks to DDG's new sock puppet "John Elliston McEllisager."

Posted by: Ace at 05:03 PM | Comments (87)
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Click on pic for links.

The only mystery is if a which liberal Democrat snuck the woman in.

Posted by: Ace at 04:24 PM | Comments (20)
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It's about time someone had the stones to do something about the so-called "Ursines of Peace (TM)."

This article just reads funny.

Bears must stick to rules - or be shot

...

The "Bear Strategy", published on Tuesday, maintains that bears and humans can co-exist peacefully but enables regional authorities to shoot-to-kill if public safety is threatened.

...

Bears will now fall into three categories: "unobtrusive", "problematic" and "high-risk". A bear can be killed once it becomes "high-risk": if it is no longer scared of humans despite efforts to scare it off and if it has become aggressive towards them.

A "problematic" bear is defined as one that is not afraid of humans, starts foraging for food in residential areas or kills large numbers of livestock.

"In the case of a problematic bear we would capture it, fit it with a tracking device and try to educate it to stay away from humans and livestock. To do this, we would shoot pellets, use dogs and loud noise to try to drive the animal away when it gets close to inhabited areas," Reinhard Schnidrig, head of the hunting and game division at the Federal Environment Office, told swissinfo.

"But if the bear doesn't learn, then it becomes a risk – and as a last resort we would have to shoot it. If ever a bear became aggressive towards humans, it would immediately be shot."

A bear "moderate" calls for fellow bears to
"lay off the pic-a-nic baskets."

Posted by: Ace at 03:43 PM | Comments (24)
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The original 1920's silent film the new Sam Jackson is a remake of.

I have to warn you it starts off cute and then drraaaaags but then when the snakes come it gets kinda funny.

Premise: 10; execution: 5. But still worth it. Just be prepared for some dragging in the beginning.

But chuckleworthy.

Via The Skinner Sphere.

Posted by: Ace at 02:20 PM | Comments (6)
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