"Food" blogging...

As a public service to make 99.99999% percent of the world feel better about themselves:

Junk Food News

And no, my kitchen did not inspire the following headline on the front page:

Life-Size Butter Sculpture Spreads Holiday Cheer

Interestingly enough, if you scroll to the bottom of the food porn, you'll find that Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation is highlighted...

Today's news, in sonnet.

Pharmacists are domineering:
"Giving birth control is wrong!"
Is it God's voice that they're hearing
or a Monty Python song?

What to do for Mother's Day?
What gifts do loving kids arrange?
Flowers? Lunch where you will pay?
I know! How 'bout a coolant change?

Both sides trust their filibuster
votes will be enough to muster.
Will Repubs lose extra luster?
Or will Dems play General Custer?

And steroids help your daughters grow!
(Just like they do in sports, you know.)

"Snow Dog...is victorious!"

Not exactly victorious, but Alex Lifeson of Rush has accepted a plea agreement in his Florida case where he will not serve jail time. Power Windows has the story, and here's a statement from Alex which proves, without a doubt, that he's in a progressive rock band.

And I, for one, hope that this incident was merely an aberration and not a return to the progressive rock wars of old. We all remember it: the Tolkien/Rand factions, drive-by spell castings, the huge cybernetic armadillos, the wreckage of double-neck guitars and Chapman sticks...

Let this not be a return to those dark days.

Space. The final fron...what, we're broke? Ah, screw it.

An article here about the new NASA director and the budgetary decisions forthcoming. I don't envy his decision, because it's one of those where someone is going to be pissed off, regardless. Nice to hear that there's at least a lot of Voyager outrage...

Might as well fund it. We might only have thirty years left anyway.

Today's news, in sonnet.

Apparently chimney exhaust
means a successful papal vote.
So now the Catholics have a boss.
(Or they've just cleaned the creosote.)

A shocker at the Bolton meeting,
more debate after vacation.
But the smiles may be fleeting.
Will this stop the next invasion?

For those of you with an account
or brokerage with Ameritrade
as ID theft and losses mount,
maybe you should sell lemonade.

And with Time's cover, I must guess
that Scorpius and Pinhead's next.

A public service announcement.

According to my Humane Society wall calendar, this week is Animal Cruelty/Human Violence Awareness week. So clearly we need to acknowledge that animal cruelty is wrong, and violence is likewise wrong...

...except in the case of when they catch the scumbag(s) mutilating pelicans, and while I'm not advocating anything beyond nice legal jail sentences if in the process of arriagning these meatwads one of them catches a good hard elbow to the nutsac, well, that's life, isn't it?

Oh, and violence sanctioned by the NHL and NFL is OK, I guess. As well as the 928 different boxing associations.

And I have to admit that I'm not a vegetarian, and in fact I did one time eat foie gras (pretty good, but nothing that would turn lead into gold), which I guess constitutes animal cruelty, so I'm probably a bit of a hypocrite there.

Shit. I suck at this.

But I promise not to get to mad at my cat when he wakes me at 3 in the morning. He'll just get a squirt from the water pistol I keep by my bed.

Two, tops.

What Bush et. al. see when they close their eyes.

I'm sure of several things...

In the "no kidding, Captain Obvious" category, an article from MSNBC which talks about how credit card companies target the debt-ridden and bankrupt.

I'm sure combatting such predatory lending practices is next on Congress' list.

Just as I'm sure that I'm going to catch the gnome in my refrigerator who turns off the light when you close it.

You know, those little bastards also guard the Lucky Charms when the leprechauns are off having a smoke or a wank break.

Same union.

The sad thing is, this might work...

Well, now that the "Fuck you, pay me" bankruptcy bill has passed, I suggest the following for those in debt and unable to pay:

Say that your debt is due to legal costs incurred while keeping a relative in a persistent vegetative state alive on a feeding tube.

If precedent holds, you'll be getting money and government assistance in no time.

Now I'm going to sit in the corner and hold my head in my hands for a few hours.

(Note: If you're looking for real info on this, rather than my idiot ramblings, I recommend the Talking Points Memo site.)

"You don't know anything about Christianity!" "I know enough to exploit it."

Just FYI, I'm fairly active in a nice liberal Presbyterian church (they're especially liberal politically, which is fun, because you can get sweet old ladies to mutter pseudoswears under their breath when you mention Lord Voldemort), so I've got nothing against Christ per se.

But could we give all this pop Christianity a break, please? I'm not just talking about the debut of Carnivale for Dummies, there's also this crap which I know will piss off Nevsky, plus anyone else who knows their Boogie Down Productions.

Look, I've got nothing against violent apocalyptic battles. I'm catching Revenge of the Sith. I'm just TV-Christianed out. At least mix it up with some other religions. Maybe they can throw a Buddhist on Trading Spaces, or air the rarely-seen 1994 special It's the Baha'i Faith, Charlie Brown.

BTW, Christianity exploits can't get better than the Buddy Christ, Stryper, or this site.

Today's news, in sonnet.

The Bolton confirmations are proceeding
"bullying" and "angry" have been mentioned
but any signs of failure are misleading
since Repubs rule (despite all good intentions).

Apparently in all our rivers
silver streams of mercury are flowing
but there's a lawsuit here which may deliver.
Now if we could only just stop glowing...

So colleges become discerning
Want more football and less learning
No problems here, it must be said
As long as they still print the spread.

And finally, I have a notion
to up this blog's repulsion quotient.

What, no Gabriel Garcia Marquez audiobooks?

In what is undoubtably a huge marketing coup for Apple, they can now say that the iPod is without a doubt the world easiest MP3 player to use.

Because Dubya has one.

And now, we can all finally know what he's playing while sitting through those unimportant security meetings!

First, Bush's iPod is heavy on traditional country singers like George Jones, Alan Jackson and Kenny Chesney. He has selections by Van Morrison, whose "Brown Eyed Girl" is a Bush favorite, and by John Fogerty, most predictably "Centerfield," which was played at Texas Rangers games when Bush was an owner and is still played at ballparks all over America.

"Brown Eyed Girl", eh? Not my cup of tea, but I was expecting something MUCH more insipid, like Toby Keith or "Ballad of the Green Berets" or John Ashcroft Sings Volume One -- Music To Gouge Out Your Fucking Eardrums With A Rusty Icepick By.

And also to his credit, Bush shows an openness in his artist selection that he doesn't show, well, anywhere else really...

As for an analysis of Bush's playlist, [managing editor Joe] Levy of Rolling Stone started out with this: "One thing that's interesting is that the president likes artists who don't like him."

Too bad this attitude doesn't hold for press conference reporters.

So, here are some additional suggestions for the presidential iPod:

American Idiot. Of course.
War Pigs. Naturally.
Any Rage Against The Machine, Clash, or P-Funk. The first two are obvious, and really, can't everyone use a little more P-Funk?

Oh, and I was going to post to Kos on this, but someone beat me to it. Don't you hate when that happens?

Another innocent childhood icon ruined through overreaction...

You know, sometimes I understand why political correctness is so hated:

Cookie Monster Advocating Eating Healthy

My beloved blue, furry monster — who sang "C is for cookie, that's good enough for me" — is now advocating eating healthy. There's even a new song — "A Cookie Is a Sometimes Food," where Cookie Monster learns there are "anytime" foods and "sometimes" foods.

What's the infection in the soul of this nation that's making the Cookie Monster change his diet? Is an overeating Muppet that responsible for childhood obesity?

Look, monsters don't have diets. And if they do, they're not healthy, they're more often than not whatever victim happens to pass, and then you have to look at the victim's diet, don't you? Doesn't that make sense?

Why yes, I'm single, why do you ask?

Anyway, I guess we'll get to look forward to new songs by the Count ("Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is Not A Joke"), Big Bird ("People Who Hallucinate Have Feelings Too"), and Oscar The Grouch ("Go Fuck Yourself, I Like Being Miserable").

But the crappy TV show bearing its name went on for far too long...

An intrepid Slashdotter caught this one: the Voyager project could very well be cancelled, due to (all together now!) budget cuts in the division.

This definitely is twisting the technorati's collective nipples, because the two spacecraft are on the verge of the heliopause, the solar system's boundary, and scientists are chomping at the bit to get any data they can, since, well, there aren't any other deep-space probes planned. And the Voyagers WILL get there, but if they get there after October 2005 (the proposed end date), there might not be anyone listening.

The final decision will be on April 15th.

For the record, the cost for funding the program each year is $4.2 million dollars...or approximately what it cost for four minutes and forty-six seconds of Batman and Robin.

Putting those Jersey shore summers away...

While talking golf to a co-worker today, the conversation evolved into Jersey shore miniature golf. Ah, the irrepressible joys of youth.

My personal fave was Monterey (which I as a seven-year-old dumbhead pronounced "mon-tree") Miniature Golf in Lavallette. Probably because it was the first one I ever played at, and they had the standard minigolf whizzbangery which impressed the crap out of me (give me a pipe which carries a ball down a few feet and spits it out elsewhere and I was a happy camper). But what was really cool was that they had an early-bird special where you could play two rounds for one fee in the morning. Man, that was a fun place to kill a couple of hours.

Then there was D&G Golf in Ortley Beach, fun because it was a block away from the family beachhouse. It's a laundromat now. Progress.

There was also Smugglers Quay in Seaside Heights. I only played there once, as a teenager. The only reason I'm mentioning it is because before it was Smugglers' Quay it used to be Rainbow Rapids, undoubtably the most dangerous waterslide ever built. This waterslide consisted of concrete channels where you skimmed along on a mangy styrofoam mat. And if you fell off that mat (as you eventually did), all of a sudden your midday watery fun became a symphony of scraping, with cold filthy runoff washing away the remnants of your ass cheeks.

Anyway, they converted once a better waterslide with tube technology ran it out of business.

And then there's Barnacle Bill's, which was a mediocre golf course but had a kick-ass arcade, and I wasted many a quarter there playing Zoo Keeper and Scramble. I read a year or so ago (couldn't find the link) that Barnacle Bill's was a hangout for classic video gamers since they carried a lot of the old coin-ops but don't know if that's the case now. If so, they probably cost more than a quarter. Progress.

So, screw yer highfalutin PSPs; this is the type of old-timey fun that will always make me smile. Especially when I remember all the times when I clanged my ball off that damn metal loop-the-loop thing and threw my club down yelling Yosemite Sam-esque streams of obscenity.

Just saw Sin City...

...and man, that was the weirdest Merchant-Ivory flick I've ever seen.

I've never read the graphic novels it was based on, but I did read Frank Miller's Batman series, and I can't imagine a more faithful rendering of a Miller graphic novel in movie form than what I saw. Not a classic, but certainly kept me enthralled, and comic book or film-noir fans, I'd imagine, will be enthralled as well.

Basically the dialogue was comic-booky, so it's hard to judge the acting, but the heroes were hard-boiled, the ladies were tough and stunning, and the villians were creepy. And Elijah Wood managed to out-creepy the ubercreepy Nick Stahl in this one, which is high praise.

But...people brought their kids to see this. WHY? Was The Ring Two sold out? Saw unavailable at the local Blockbuster? Man...this was as hard an R as you can get.

And over to the left, you can see a Scarran dreadnought giving us the finger...

Saw this morning that they snapped the first picture of an extrasolar planet. See, stuff like this is why I'm a NASA groupie. Sure, you give them a buck, and they'll blow fifty cents and lose the other two quarters, but it's the UNIVERSE, dammit! Let's strap a DirectTV dish on some big-ass rocket and check it out!

Besides, we'll need alien assistance to help us out once we run out of oil...