Thursday, June 24, 2010

Least Surprising headline of the Week


Sarah Palin Defense Fund Was
Created Illegally,
According To Ethics Probe
RACHEL D'ORO | 06/24/10 08:47 PM | AP


Sarah Palin did something dishonest? You don't say!

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Sometimes TIVO Tapes The Wrong Channel

Which is why I now know what an odious bit of offal is the show "Cougartown."

http://veryspecialepisode.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/cougar-town-poster1.jpg

Cougartown is an alleged comedy which feels like it was created by comittee or focus group. It's like they had Courtney Cox and couldn't think of what to do with her, so they went to the "Trending Now" section of the Yahoo front page nad said "what are people talking about at this second in history? What subject is the most 'now'?" And someone saw "Cougars" and said "Eureka! Cougars are the hot new trend! Let's base a show on that!"

What is supposed to be so fascinating about the "cougars" is the shocking thought that women who are over 40 might still have an interest in the old bow-chicka-bow-wow, if you know what I mean. And who's over 40? Why, Courtney Cox is, My God! It's all coming together.

So the main point of the show seems to be that Cox is in remarkable physical condition and is therefore able to attract virile young men.


http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/05/20/article-1185046-0505C521000005DC-329_468x470.jpg
Sound intriguing? No, of course it doesn't.

(And the above picture pretty much sums up the ham-fisted approach to, well, everything in this show.)

So Courtney Cox is the lead actress, and she may be the most utterly charmless actress ever to grace the small screen. Altogether devoid of charm, charisma or likability, she mugs and flounces and generally overacts her way through the entire 5 or 6 minutes I was able to sit through. Really, just an awful, embarrassing performance.

Christa Miller, so good in SCRUBS, and Ian Gomez are thoroughly wasted in the supporting roles of a husband and wife who, get this, the husband, okay, he wants to have sex with his wife more often than she wants to have sex with him! Isn't that hilarious?
No, of course it isn't. But that's what they are reduced to.

http://www.zap2it.com/media/photo/2010-02/52431794.jpg

And they were both funny on the Drew Carey Show.

Not that the Drew Carey Show is exactly a huge gold star on the old resume' but, Lord, it was better than "Friends."


Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Two Awesome Kids

While riding down Peachtree Battle Street in Atlanta, Mrs. Chaos and I happened across two young kids with a lemonade stand.
http://visualingual.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/lemonade.jpgThat's not them. These kids were a bit older.

So we stopped to buy lemonade, thinking we were helping out young entrepeneurs, when we discovered that the purpose of the stand was to raise money not for themselves, but for oil-spill relief! I know! When I was that age, it never would have occurred to me to work for money to give to someone else.

Mrs. Chaos asked the little girl if they had a charity lined up to give the money to, and she said "last night on CNN, they had a number to call, and they gave us a place to send it to." (or words to that effect.

"You watch CNN?!?" I asked the girl.

"Well, my brother was watching."

http://uglydemocrats.com/democrats/United-States/CNN/cnn-large.gif

So, I'm already in awe of these kids, neither of whom could be much more than ten, when their mother came out of the house to tell them to start packing it in. She said that the had brought in around $80 that day, and that a few weeks ago, they had done the same to raise money for Haiti.

I know!

So, if you are near the North side of Atlanta, come down to Peachtree Battle Street, between Moore's Mill Rd and Howell Mill St.* and buy some lemonade. They also have iced tea, and they said they'd have smoothies tomorrow. You'll be glad you did, and you'll meet a couple of awesome kids.

*I know, we have funny street names in Atlanta.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Remember When George Will Used to be Not-Insane?

From Crooks and Liars:

TAPPER: George, I want to start with you. I know you don't agree with what Republican Texas Congressman Joe Barton had to say, but does the idea of this $20 billion escrow account make you uncomfortable?

WILL: It does. Look, there is no defense of BP which has an execrable safety record in this country, from the refinery disaster in Texas in '05, the Morris Slope leak in '06, all of that and so no apology from BP. But if you don't want to live in a Northern Hemisphere Venezuela, you ought to be a little queasy about the fact that a president, any president of any party, using raw political power, without recourse to courts that exist for this sort of thing. . .



Oh, the courts! Suddenly, the right is all in favor of people using the courts to have their grievances redressed! You know, Torts? The righties just loooooove torts!

. . . under laws, with due process, essentially confiscates $20 billion from a publicly held corporation, about half of its shares held by Americans, to be dispensed, again, with out judicial supervision, as the political branch sees fit.

Supervision by judges? What if they're activist judges? Since when has the right wing had any respect for the judicial branch?

That is worrisome. Even, they have even said that BP maybe held responsible for the lost wages caused by, not BP, but the administration's own moratorium, six-months moratorium, on deepwater drilling. Which maybe more costly to the economy of the Gulf than the spill itself.

Really? A six-month moratorium on drilling more costly than having the shrimping, fishing, and tourism industries destroyed for at least a generation? Really? That's what you're going with? You're gonna just go ahead and stick with that, then, hmm? Yeah? The six month thing, more costly than the giant catastrophe? Yeah? Really?

WILL: Well, among those asking, upon what meat doeth [sic] our Caesar feed that he has grown so great?, is "The Economist" of London, which I think we have all accept as a mainstream publication. They say, in a section of their lead editorial, called "Vladimir Obama", "The collapse of BP's share prices suggest he has convinced the markets that he is an American version of Vladimir Putin, willing to harry firms into doing his bidding. If the president does not stand up for due process he will frighten investors across the board. The damage to Americans environment is bad enough, the president risks damaging the economy, too." That's not a partisan outfit, "The Economist".



I think that if you title your editorial "Vladimir Obama," you've pretty much given up all claim to being a mainstream non-partisan outfit. And by the way, BP's stock price only ever went down as low as $32 a share, that's hardly a collapse.

And the editorial in the Economist is a pretty blatant attempt to deflect any blame from BP:

Vilifying BP also gets in the way of identifying other culprits, one of which is the government. BP operates in one of the most regulated industries on earth with some of the most perverse rules, subsidies and incentives. Shoddy oversight clearly contributed to the spill, and an energy policy which reduced the demand for oil would do more to avert future environmental horrors than fierce retribution.


See, it's not BP's fault that it cut corners on safety and got shoddy and careless. The government should have stopped them. This is the sort of defense that routinely gets laughed out of the "courtroom" on Judge Judy. It's the sort of thing children come up with. "yeah, I took the car and crashed it, but mom and dad should have hidden the keys better." It's pathetic.

It seems to me that George Will used to be more sensible than this, before he started writing masturbatory odes to the splendor of baseball. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but he's definitely slipped into FOX territory now.

Happy Solstice!

 A picture of a Russian pagan putting on a fiery show at Kupalo, one of the summer solstice 2010 celebrations.