Odds and sods...

* I love the smell of Macworld in the morning! The big rumor this year is that a Mac subnotebook is going to make its debut. Sadly, iPhone 2 with DTT will have to wait...

* Not sure what to think about the "truce" between Clinton and Obama. Sure, it was getting particularly nasty, but my problem with Democrats wasn't that they were brutal and nasty during the primaries, it was that they were brutal and nasty during the primaries against other Democrats and then when it came down to the general election they responded to brutal, nasty Republican attacks like this.

* Tiny, magnetized disease fighters? For a minute I thought it was the latest Japanese collectible card game/TV show...

The balls.

The new year isn't even two weeks old and I've heard enough Republican bullshit to last me through a waking Jaunt trip. And the latest is from everyone's favorite soulless corpulent shitflinger Karl Rove:

[Karl Rove is] calling the Illinois senator "lazy" and "given to misstatements and exaggerations."

Oh, OK, let me read the article, I'm sure there's a blooberfleeg in there. No? Well, maybe there's a footnote...no.

Really, when Republicans are saying that Democrats are lazy liars without mentioning that they are still better than the semiliterate nose-picker, you have to believe that when they're done writing the article they're giving their brass balls back to Alec Baldwin.

Shiny things detract from existential malaise!

Unless everything I know about people is completely wrong, I can't think of any subject that gets more saliva glands a-flowin' than the CES Expo! Well, maybe Macworld, but that's next week. Anyway, here are the things I would get if I had an unlimited bank account and a mass of melancholic bile in place of my heart...

* The curved monitor.

* The insane Wii weapons. I don't even have a Wii...

* The 150-inch TV. And here's a remote to go with it!

Unfortunately, they didn't have a high-tech way to replicate hu-man love, but there's always next year...

"Son, you don't have to fight to be a man."

As Bill Cosby might say, I would like to tell you a story.

I remember one time when I was six or so, I was picking on my brother. I had absolutely no reason to do so, except I was six years old and acting like a douche bag. I was smacking at my brother, and daring him to hit me. "Come on, hit me back! Come on!"

My brother wasn't really into it, and just wanted to be left alone. But I kept provoking him. Over and over and over and over and over*SMACK*

He had had enough, and let me know with a smack in the face.

And I ran away crying like AJ Soprano.

So, what lessons can we learn from this? Well, say, for example, you're a TV pundit with a habit of bullying people and sexually harassing employees. And say you decide to act like an unbelievable douche bag against someone who really doesn't want to fight. Well, sooner or later, you're going to get called on it.

Douche bag.

It's TWO great nerdy tastes in one!

I enjoy origami. I like reading about space exploration. So when I read an article about how origami techniques are being employed to assist deep-space telescope exploration, then I'm going to link to it, by Lucifer's beard.

I'm still hoping for solar sails (especially since that last one crashed and burned), but I'll take what I can get...

PS. While linking to the articles, I found out that the Planetary Society is going to try another solar sail project! All right! Fly, you magnificent bastard...

Blooberfleeg. Let me explain.

I was reading a Glenn Greenwald post describing about how the right-wing code words regarding Obama's win are already flying, and in that, he linked to a Jon Swift post summing up the pundit's theories as to why Obama won. Apparently leftists only voted for Obama for a sense of smug superiority about voting for an African-American, the fact that he may have been the best candidate be damned.

Of course that's what they think, since pundits' worldview is some kind of warped Randian philosophy where everyone is solely governed by self-interest, without the great graphics and gameplay of Bioshock. But what did shock me is that when I did link out to one of the rightwing blogs in the post and read the original the article said that Obama was unqualified to be president.

That's right. Apparently being President requires qualifications. And a quick Google search saw this insult leveled at Obama from the right AND the left.

To quote Dame Judi Dench, have you lost your collective motherfucking mind?

PLAYOFFS??? Sorry, I mean UNQUALIFIED??? In 2008, are we as a nation actually saying that a candidate for President is unqualified? Sorry, writers, we have officially lost that privilege. I know that only a third of us wants to remember who is sitting in the White House right now, but look at him. Really.

THAT'S our President. And someone ELSE is unqualified.

Heh. No.

Barack Obama is most definitely qualified to be President. So are the other Democratic candidates. And compared to He-Who-I-Cannot-Name-Without-Gagging, God help me for saying this, but every single Republican candidate is qualified. Good? Lord, no. But just as qualified.

In fact, the term "qualified" now has lost its meaning without the proper context. If writers are going to use that term, they should proceed it with the following.

While I personally understand that the following statement only has a modicum of truth if you completely ignore the stroke-causing idiocies of the semiliterate and astoundingly corrupt occupant of the White House since January 2001, Candidate X is unqualified to be President.

And since that's a mouthful, let me steal a rhetorical device from Conan O'Brien. In the book Live From New York, Conan talks about that all stories about a writer that people would tell started with "So and so is a wonderful guy, works hard, intelligent, funny, and so on, BUT", so to save time, he invented a word, chipple, which meant the following so people could get to the meat of the story.

In the same vein, I propose:

Blooberfleeg, Candidate X is unqualified to be President.

So pundits, if you're going to talk about a candidate's qualifications, please start your sentence with blooberfleeg. It's the only way to ensure your column will be taken seriously.

A thought about Obama-Huckabee...

Like most leftists, I was thrilled with the Huckabee win in Iowa, and though I'm pulling for Edwards I'm not unhappy about an Obama win and I'd be drooling with delight if Obama and Huckabee ended up going mano-a-mano. It's the 21st century vs. 18th century matchup that this blue-stater would think is a slam dunk.

But let's not kid ourselves, friends and neighbors.

Huckabee could win. Definitely.

And if he does...what tristero said.