With all the terrible news out of Asia this week, at least some folks are looking on the bright side: Finally, we get to meet Jesus in person! Yep, my traffic reports show a spike in Google searches for tsunami AND end times leading the prophetic and insensitive to my 1998 Playboy article about Christian apocalyptic thrillers (a genre since made even bigger by the Left Behind series), in which big water features prominently as a sign of the impending Tribulation. Though for marketing purposes, it's usually California that gets swamped in the books; I mean you can't have a bunch of foreigners as your Christian heroes, can you?

8:13 PM :: Comments (0)

Very light blogging for the next week or so, so you may want to parcel these miscelaneous links out over several days.

• Oh, please let this be true. The problem with most celebrity sex tapes is that the celebrity in question (you know who you are) is almost always some ho who you'd fully expect to get caught on camera doing filthy, naughty things. Which is why I'm all atingle at the rumor that we're about to see a very energetic performance [probably NSFW] from a very well-groomed Paige Davis. The allure of the Trading Spaces cutie (and MoT) is that she exudes wholesome fun, but underneath, you always always kind of hope she's a crazed minx [also probably NSFW] who's no stranger to the old HJ/BJ combination.

• Am I the only one who didn't hate Identity Crisis?

• When 5-year-olds write slash fiction. Via a skeptical Heaneyland!

• Brilliant folk artist and sometime Radosh.net correspondent Sam Smith has revamped his web site, in case you want to buy me a late Hanukkah gift. (Any of these would look great in M&M's room).

• Less-than-brilliant artist: hack who created Bush Monkeys painting gets it blown up to billboard size, all-but confirming my earlier suspicion: those aren't monkeys, you dumbfuck. They're chimps. It's a totally different frickin' animal!

• The Jewish babyslut pop conspiracy continues with 10-year-old rapper Dahv. Sorry, Lambikins and Lynxxx, we're always one step ahead of you. [Via Pieces of Flair]

• Reasons to look forward to going to the movies in 2005: 1, 2, 3.

• New Kids on the Blog: Muss My Hair, Glass Shallot, and (theoretically) Huckapoo Mania.

• Happy Holiday, yes, "Holiday," from those Christmas-hating, anal sex fanatics at Fox News. [Via Atrios]

5:57 PM :: Comments (7)

Fox News reports: Homicide Bomb Suspected in Mosul Attack

"Investigators think a homicide bomber probably caused the blast that killed 22 people, including 13 American soldiers, at a U.S. base in Mosul Tuesday"

What tipped them off, the fact that there was a bomb and people were killed?

Oh wait, it's not just another unintentionally obvious headline like the one below, it's Fox News attempting to make a political point even if it means totally baffling the uninitiated reader. James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal, for crissake, has done his level best to stop this nonsense (scroll to "The Trouble With 'Homicide'") but Fox refuses to admit that its linguistic war is going badly and that even its traditional allies aren't getting on board. Hey, wait a second...

5:54 PM :: Comments (0)

Shocking headline of the day: U.S. Blames Insurgents for Mosul Attack

3:00 PM :: Comments (0)

Fans of talentless yet perversely alluring, not even close to legal pop tarts, hang on to your ever-lovin' hats. Perhaps you'll recall my recent discovery of a yahoo named Badonicus (which is also, coincidentally, the Harry Potter spell for putting something bad on top of something else), who was convinced that Huckapoo is actually a Jewish plot to turn good Christian girls into "racemixing dykes and sluts" (which he apparently thinks is a bad thing).

Since I know you didn't get to the end of that post, you missed the comments section in which the po' wittle wacists actually complain about being the subject of ad hominem attacks from (presumably) Radosh.net readers (thanks, I guess, but really, why bother?). The first comment, though, is from a genuine Bigdickus fan, who writes, "You realize of course what the next step is for the Christian culture reclamation? To make a Christian Huckapoo facsimilie!"

I know what you're thinking: Don't we already have Jump5? But you have to remember that when these dudes say "Christian" they don't mean the wimpy kind of Christians who just worship Christ and try to convince everybody else to worship Christ also — they mean Christian as in, pure-blood, White Power-preaching Aryans. Oh sure, some people might find Vanilla Ninja all the Aryan they can stomach, but everyone else, meet your new sick crush: Prussian Blue.

Reasons Prussian Blue may just be even better than Huckapoo:

1. Younger! These 12-year-old vixens make Groovy Tuesday look like Cher.
2. Identical twins! In six years, hello incest-themed beer commercial!
3. Even more convincing porn star names, actually given to them by their mother! Say sieg heil to Lynx and Lamb!
4. Most importantly, of course, these adorable little moppets are HARDCORE RACISTS!

Continue reading "With Huckapoo, my ghostly father? no; I have forgot that name, and that name's woe." »

12:22 PM :: Comments (46)

I've generally resisted posting links to stuff if I have nothing of my own to add. But like anyone, I do stumble across plenty of interesting and funny items, and I usually enjoy it when other bloggers throw out links without commentary every now and then, so on days when I'm unlikely to be blogging for a while, I'm going to go ahead and post random links about pop, politics, sex and so on. Let me know if you prefer this kind of lazy blogging to silence or vice versa.

• Who'd have thunk Yahoo would beat Google to video search? Via Sensible Erection which sensibly reminds you to turn off safe search for the best results.

• On the theory that the only way to defeat the annoying is to out annoy them, Coudal and Draplin launch the Society for HandHeld Hushing. Pass out these violation notices (PDF) if you dare.

• Todd Seavey sends word that the screen adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials is being rewritten after the studio "expressed worry about the possibility of perceived anti-religiosity." We love your idea, Mr. Lucas! Does it have to be in space? Seriously, if you can so blithely cut the central point, what about these books made you want to make a film out of them in the first place? Well, I'm sure the Narnia movies will be stripped of pro-religiosity for balance. Oh, wait. No. (Not, mind you, that I think they should be).

Weirdest porn since Sexy Trek: Girl Knights! Your Dirty Mind has free galleries. Not safe for work, obvs... Wait -- here's one safe yet exciting shot: foreplay Girl Knight style.

9:37 AM :: Comments (4)

"Suddenly, books by bloggers will be a trend, a cultural phenomenon. You will probably read about it in the Sunday Times. And when that happens the person to thank—or blame—will be Kate Lee, who is currently a twenty-seven-year-old assistant at International Creative Management." —The New Yorker, May 31, 2004

"[A]s these blogs gained a wider audience some publishers started paying attention to them. Sometimes publishers are interested in publishing elements of the blogs in book form; mostly they simply enjoy the blogger's writing and want to publish a novel or nonfiction book by the blogger, usually on a topic unrelated to the blog... Kate Lee, an assistant at International Creative Management talent agency in New York, has become a kind of one-woman blog boutique, surfing for the best writers online and suggesting they work with her to develop and sell a book. — The (Wednesday) Times, November 15, 2004

1:49 PM :: Comments (6)

Please explain, Pandagon. Why is Ezra opposed to capturing burglars?

[news story via the skeptical Eric Berlin]

12:04 PM :: Comments (0)

You may have seen the headlines: Blockbuster to end late fees.

While I have no doubt that this is how the chain announced its new policy, it's amazing that so many news organizations accepted that spin without question.

From what I saw, only the Chicago Tribune read its own story closely enough to write a more accurate headline: Blockbuster Relaxes Policy on Late Fees.

Continue reading "When the truth becomes a press release, print the press release" »

9:56 AM :: Comments (6)

First I was going to blog this article about not-so-super superheroes, and point out that anyone who thinks The Sandman was inherently lame because "He didn't have any powers -- just a gas gun he used to put criminals to sleep with," obviously never read Sandman Mystery Theater.

Then I decided instead to blog the Fark discussion of the article, which is far geekier than anything I could come up with and includes hilarious and much more accurate nominations for the lamest superheroes ever imagined.

But what I'm really going to blog is the Farker who has been scanning and posting pages from the 1978 DC Super Dictionary, such as the "monkey" entry above. Others worth looking at:

basket
frown
dust
rock

11:51 AM :: Comments (3)

At first I was impressed that the Louisiana Governor's Program on Abstinence Education wanted to distance itself from the fringe elements of the abstinence movement by posting my article on Judith Reisman.

Then I realized that the proprietors of the site -- an official government page, mind you -- obviously saw the article as a favorable airing of Reisman's views, and are linking to it as an endorsement of her...

12:18 PM :: Comments (3)

Oh. My. God. If you think my posts about Huckapoo are funny, you must check out the hilarity from Badonicus, a true fanatic. And I don't mean in the sense of "really, really likes the band," but more in the traditional sense of "frothing at the mouth White Power antisemite."

Tikkun Olam. It’s the Jewish term for “healing the world", or turning this once Christian land into a Jewish pig sty. It’s the reason the Jew can’t look at something beautiful without the overpowering urge to drop his pants and take a dump all over it. And their favorite targets are our little girls, which they do their best to turn into racemixing dykes and sluts. It’s a continuous process, and the latest addition is Huckapoo.

Honestly, this blog entry is so, so beautiful that I can't resist the urge to take a dump all over it.

Continue reading "It's a Huckajew world" »

11:06 AM :: Comments (13)

Six months after chastising itself for blind hawkishness, The New York Times is at it again. Jonathan (no relation) Miller demands accountability.

1:05 PM :: Comments (5)

"If you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up," Rumsfeld said. "And you can have an up-armored Humvee and it can be blown up."

"And if you keep asking impertinent questions, you can find yourself assigned to that tank or Humvee," he added.

8:50 PM :: Comments (3)

Happy Hanukkah, any old way you like it.

Worldwide style.

Humanistic style.

Cynical lefty style.

Wingnut style.

Go ahead, gorge yourself!

9:55 AM :: Comments (1)

I know lots of people out there hate humorist Joel Stein and his solipsistic shtick. I've always enjoyed it. But in his new L.A. Times column, Stein is trying to break some actual news, and I'm not quite sure he's up to the task.

His premise is not unsound (or unknown): reality TV is largely fake. I'm willing to accept most of his claims: that segments of The Simple Life are scripted, that voiceovers and relationships on dating shows are all phony (I've read elsewhere of actors jumping from one dating show to the next), that the Osbournes has sound effects edited in to boost the humor. Fine.

But Stein leads with what he calls, "the entertainment equivalent of the Pentagon Papers," a 19-page outline for a Queer Eye episode (helpfully posted as a pdf), in which, "every moment is planned in advance, including a few specific lines for the straight guy to deliver."

My very limited experience with reality TV makes me doubt this for two reasons: 1) non-actors who try to deliver scripted lines, no matter how simple, are always terrible; no producer would want to risk that. 2) writing a makeover show in advance is a lot more work than simply shooting it and assembling the storyline in the editing room.

Indeed, what I suspect Stein actually has here is an editing script. Something put together by writers after watching the raw footage. Curiously the response he gets from Bravo doesn't seem to indicate that he actually asked them directly about the outline. Why not?

Defamer, get to the bottom of this!

9:50 PM :: Comments (10)

Last month I went on a little rant about a New York Times article that claimed there is a new trend of college students eating cereal. Today Brian Lehrer did a segment about this on his NPR show (to his credit, he recast it as the "persistence" of cereal's popularity, not something new) that contained a very telling moment.

One of my pet peeves about trend stories is how easy it is to find quotes supporting any trend you want to invent. Here's one from the Times article.

While NPD Foodworld does not specifically break out college-age consumers, anecdotal evidence of cereal's popularity on campuses abounds.

College officials who oversee food services say they are constantly restocking sweet, kid-friendly cereals. Nick Mennillo, the senior director of dining services for the State University of New York at Purchase, said he offered a few sugary options, as well as two ''health cereals'' like granola or Raisin Bran.

''The most popular one is Cap'n Crunch, by far,'' he said. ''And if you put Cocoa Puffs and Fruity Pebbles out, they fly through the stuff.''

But here's Mennillo on Leher's show.

Continue reading "New York Times Bullshit Flakes — Now with 100% more bullshit!" »

2:06 PM :: Comments (2)

3,230 Google News results for Brokaw. 21 for Po'ouli. Gersh is on to something.

11:35 AM :: Comments (2)

Now Kuchma has gone too far! It's one thing to poison Viktor Yushchenko, but I watched 60 Minutes last night, and the son of a bitch has gotten to Bob Dylan.

3:08 PM :: Comments (2)

Old Skool Web guy Bob Sassone invited me to contribute a list of my five "favorite web sites" to the new issue of Professor Barnhardt's Journal.

I made what I think was the daring decision to make only safe decisions. No wait -- what I mean is, I took the challenge at its word and attempted to answer honestly. I'm not calling Joel Stein and the other fine contributors to this issue liars exactly, but I think most of them probably qualified the question in their own minds. Favorite sites that aren't completely obvious. Favorite sites that make me look cool, or at least not lame. Favorite sites by creative individuals. Favorite sites today.

I'm not saying that Exploding Dog isn't very cool and worth knowing about... but better than Google?

Continue reading "Another reason to hate other people's lists" »

9:59 AM :: Comments (2)

Saddest post of the week (from Pornstar Blog NSFW): "Posted May 5, 2004 by Ralph: Does anyone here know if any pornstars will be on tour this summer doing personal appearances, etc., anywhere around Plattsburgh NY (near Montreal)?"

9:44 PM :: Comments (3)

Anchors aweigh: Rather, Brokaw — is Jennings next?

Um, unless Brian Williams is planning an awfully short career, he'd pretty much have to be, right?

8:07 PM :: Comments (0)

I'm deeply appreciative of the blogosphere response to my article about Judith Reisman. A number of big shots have weighed in, but my favorite response so far is from Live Journalist Eruthros.

Okay, now, I remember being recruited by the Marine Corps, and I can tell you one thing for sure: I never had my own personal homosexual recruiter who called my home and chatted with me about the amazing opportunities available to gay people.

No one sent fancy brochures to my house explaining the wonderful historic and courageous tradition of gay people, with a little sidebar about how I, too, could take part in history.

No one ever told me they'd pay for my college education for just four years of commitment as a practicing gay person and ten years of inactive duty with possible recall to gayness should the situation warrant.

Continue reading "But godammit, doesn't anyone care about Huckapoo ‽" »

6:20 PM :: Comments (6)

James Wolcott digs up a great quote (is there any other kind) from H.L. Mencken on the deference owed to religion in the public sphere. "There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get."

This is similar to a point Randy Cohen often makes, and one well worth making. But I think there are a few distinctions that should be addressed.

Wolcott starts off this portion of his post with the words, "I'm really getting fed up with all the pious hogwash we're supposed to accept now about faith and belief and the need for God in our lives." Cohen's argument is that one should not excuse bigoted or otherwise stupid statements or actions merely because they stem from religious convictions. To some extent I think that's what Wolcott and Mencken are saying too. And I'm in agreement. But Wolcott is casting his net wider, and goes off the rails a bit (ugh! terrible mixed metaphor). After all, faith, belief, and need for God are really religious feelings that have very little to do with religious opinion in the way I would use that word.

Continue reading "Somebody get that Mencken guy a blog" »

11:12 AM :: Comments (2)