Imagine that! The worst product ever, and it's not something crazy from Japan! No, this comes straight from our good friends in Germany, and is apparently intended to be used to sate your hunger whilst in the midst of a rigorous treks through the Alps or some such. Imagine if the von Trapp family singers had been blessed with a couple cases of these while escaping their evil Nazi overlords! (Via Spluch)
Look, Bill Clinton. You were pretty much a kick-ass President. I voted for you twice, I campaigned for you twice, and I wore myself hoarse defending you when you put certain things where you shouldn't have with that nice intern lady. But, look, you really are behaving like kind of a overbearing me-me-me jerk with all the "OMG don't elect teh Obama!11!!!1!1" stuff lately, and it is wearing thin, and it is kind of making me wish you'd just shut it and go away for a while. Kthxbye.
I used to approach my analysis of the AFC and NFC championship games by looking at both teams in each game, considering how they'd match up against the other, looking at moves their coaches had made all season long in preparing for similar games, and generally just wasted a lot of time reading the analysis of other, more seasoned football fans. In the last couple years, though, I've realized that guessing the teams in the Super Bowl is actually quite simple: the Super Bowl will feature the worst game possible between the four teams in the championship round. This year, I would have been delighted with: Chargers vs. Giants, Chargers vs. Packers, or Patriots vs. Packers. I knew, going in to the game, that I would NOT be happy with a Super Bowl between the Patriots and the Giants, so I suspected that both those teams would win. And, guess what, they did.
So, my prediction now is that the Super Bowl is really going to suck. Again. The Patriots are coached by an egomaniacal wife-stealing hosebag who doesn't care what anybody thinks as long as he wins. The Giants are coached by a Cheney-level control freak who hasn't seen a dynamic offensive scheme since he spent 10 minutes in 1993 watching his son play a game of NBA Jams. This does not bode well for an entertaining game. Add to that the fact that the prestige of the Super Bowl usually convinces teams with dynamic offenses (Colts, Steelers, etc.) to resort instead to a grind-it-out offensive strategy, and I'm afraid we're looking in the eyes of a 17-6 defensive struggle that nobody will remember in a few years. I will be overjoyed if I'm wrong, but these are the two worst possible coaches to have if you want a dynamic game (and, yes, I'm aware that they scored over 70 points the last time they played each other). I will be totally and utterly shocked if there are more touchdowns than field goals in this game, and the probable MVP is either the Patriots' kicker or Asante Samuel, who will get one or two interceptions and make a few tackles. That's all it will take to be named MVP of this one. Sigh.
That's the question I have to ask after reading this story from my hometown of Portland, OR:
A Civilian Medal of Heroism will be awarded Wednesday to Susan Kuhnhausen, the Portland nurse who strangled an intruder hired to kill her in 2006.No question, she displayed courage. But heroic action? She saved herself! This was pure instinct! A guy tried to kill her, so she defended herself and killed him. I'm not trying to take anything away from the "woah!" factor of the event, but I have to really wonder whether this belongs in the same category of somebody who rushes into a burning house to rescue some kids or something.
Kuhnhausen wrestled the hammer-wielding intruder to the ground and choked him to death.
Kuhnhausen's husband, Michael, pleaded guilty last year to conspiring to commit murder. He hired the man kill his wife.
Susan Kuhnhausen is one of 85 civilians and police officers who will be recognized for heroism, lifesaving skills, or distinguished service in the Portland Police Bureau's annual awards.
The committee says the 53-year-old displayed courage and heroic action.
Breaking news! Apparently some young fans and their (highly impressionable, highly idiotic) parents are upset because of some underhanded shenanigans during a recent Hannah Montana concert. E! Online explains thusly:
Giving her fans the best of both worlds is apparently too much for Miley Cyrus to handle on her own.
The singer, who performs both as herself and her Disney Channel alterego on the sold-out tour, was accused in an OK! magazine report this week of using a body double during a brief portion of her show.
...
"Then they covered her with a black sheet and she went through a secret door. Within a second, a new 'Hannah' came out of a different door wearing oversized white glasses. The whole time this was happening Miley's vocals were still playing. The new imposter had her back turned while she danced, trying to hide that fact that she was not Miley Cyrus. At this instant I became very suspicious."
Really, there's no complex though process behind this post, other than to point out that every time I see former senator Phil Gramm, economic advisor to John McCain, on TV, I think that he looks like a box turtle. Here's the evidence. 
Also, I've been trying for some time to think of the animal I'm reminded of every time I see Rudy Giuliani, aka 9udy 11uliani, aka America's Mayor, and it finally hit me: naked mole rat!
This graphic pretty much shows what happened to Fred Thompson's presidential hopes in New Hampshire yesterday.
Yeah, that's right. Dude finished 1,500 votes behind "Total write-ins." Ouch.
I've been contacted by a person who knows Emily Rocheleau, who I accused yesterday of being the stupidest person in New Hampshire, to inform me that her comment to the NY Times, in which she admitted to being torn between Barack Obama and John McCain, was a vast oversimplification of her view of the presidential campaign. Apparently she works for a climate change organization, and thus is aware that of all the GOP candidates, only McCain has been courageous enough to even admit that climate change is a real problem, and that we should actually, you know, do something about it. So, her statement to the Times was intended to convey her respect for McCain's courageous (relative to the rest of his party) stance on global warming.
So, I retract my statement that she's the stupidest person in New Hampshire. She is, according to my emailer, friendly, smart, and a good person, and my emailer seemed credible, so I have no reason to doubt that statement.
With that said, I hereby announce that the stupidest person in New Hampshire is anyone voting for Fred Thompson.
During lunch today I did one of my favorite things: ran on the treadmill while watching the 4 TVs in my employer's gym while NOT wearing headphones so I could laugh at the close captioning. One of the TVs was showing the press conference of legendary Redskins coach Joe Gibbs announcing his resignation/retirement. Now, I like Joe Gibbs, and think he's a very decent guy, and respect his reasons (actual family reasons, not the fake family reasons that some politician who's just been caught in bed with a hooker comes up with) for retirement. However, one of the things that annoyed me was his discussion of how religion factored into his decision. Because the volume was not on and because I was running at the time, I wasn't able to transcribe his statements, but he said something along the lines of how he has to give thanks to God for looking down and allowing someone like him (a guy who took dance in college, for crying out loud!...wait, I did that too....) to become a coach, and how this means we have a benevolent creator or some such.
But wait. The Redskins suffered the tragedy of losing their best player this year when Sean Taylor was murdered in his house. This gets back to my frustration about how people call it a "miracle" when a plane crashes and 218 people die and they pull one guy alive out of the rubble, or when a building collapses and 98 people die but a four month old baby survives. In order to say that the survival of one is an act of God, don't you kind of have to accept that the deaths were an act of God, or that God was, like, too busy to pay attention? Can people really imagine a God who will look down and help one person, but not bother helping others? Is it really savvy for Gibbs to say that God played an active role in his success at the same time that one of his players was flat out murdered? Was God busy that day?
I'm not saying I don't understand what he's trying to say, but this is one of those moments when people tend to nod their head politely when someone thanks God for their success, rather than wondering about the logical implications of that statement.
Something about this AP photo/caption made me laugh:
"Right." Such a simple word, such a tricky situation. The guy in front's body is to the right, but the other guy's head is to the right. Which is it? What are the rules for this kind of thing?
This is, generally, an up-tempo, "feel good" blog, like one of those infectious morning shows with Moose Mike, Rocket Jaw, and Krazy Kat on 100.3, Jammin' FM. But, from time to time, I have to take a break and point out somebody who has chosen, for whatever reason, to put his or her name in the national news and say something so utterly stupid that he or she deserves to be branded as a simpleton for the rest of his or her utterly bewildering life.
And, in this case, that someone is Emily Rocheleau, a 22 year old "independent" voter from New Hampshire. Now, plenty of blogs have devoted acres of print to pointing out the absurd infatuation our media and political world has with "independent" voters. Also known as "undecided voters," they are people who wait until the last possible moment, despite a veritable avalanche of news and information about the candidates, to make up his or her mind about who to support in a given election.
Since the eyes of the political world are now focused upon New Hampshire, where, legend tells us, all the men wear flannel shirts and all the women are seasoned political mavens who could spend hours lecturing you upon the intricacies of quorum calls and cloture resolutions, the press has once again rushed "independent voters" into the spotlight. Yesterday's NY Times featured a photo of Ms. Rocheleau, and said the following about her in the caption
Emily Rocheleau, 22, is trying to choose between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama.Ok, look. It is January, 2008. The presidential candidates have been declared candidates for quite some time now. I simply don't know what to say about someone who is undecided to the point of not knowing whether she will choose between Obama and McCain. That is simply ridiculous. You could not hope to find two candidates whose views on actual issues are more different than Obama and McCain. You could not hope to find two men whose paths to the US Senate are more different. In what they believe, who they represent, and the life experiences they would bring to the Oval Office, you have two men who are very nearly diametrically opposed. So what, pray tell, explains someone who will vote for either one of them?
It's been about twelve years (give or take 11.9 years) since my last blog post, but I hope to be back on my blogging feet in the days ahead, and back to my regular posting. Whew, holiday travel and related festivities are exhausting.
The news today is that Oregon senator Gordon "weathervane" Smith has decided to throw caution and political sensibilities to the wind and defend departing GOP senator Trent Lott's inane comments about Strom Thurmond. You remember that moment from a few year's back, when Lott said that had the rest of the country followed Mississippi's lead in voting for Thurmond for president in 1948, "we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years." (Those problems, presumably, having something to do with uppity members of certain races getting uppity and thinking they deserved certain rights under our Constitution.)
Today, however, Gordon Smith got up on the Senate floor and said the following about his good buddy Trent's racist comments:
"I watched over international news as his words were misconstrued, words which we had heard him utter many times in his big warm-heartedness trying to make one of our colleagues, Strom Thurmond, feel good at 100 years old. We knew what he meant. But the wolfpack of the press circled around him, sensed blood in the water, and the exigencies of politics caused a great injustice..."The only problem here is that Gordo's got himself a teeny tiny memory, forgetting that his initial response back in 2002 was not so generous:
"However they were intended, Senator Lott's words were offensive and I was deeply dismayed to hear of them," Smith said in a brief statement. "His statement goes against everything I and the people of Oregon believe in."Oh yeah, and then three days later, when Lott stepped down as majority leader, Smith said he was glad that he had resigned. Sigh. It's become quite the pattern for Smith. Say one thing one day, get a bucket of praise from The Oregonian and other naiive media outlets, and then turn around and say/do the opposite. Let's see if someone in the local media actually has the guts to call him on it this time.
It's a risky gambit, but if anyone has the chops to distract the public from an incrimination steroid report by featuring an absurd yes-I'm-a-45-year-old-man-with-a-receeding-hairline-but-I-can-
still-get-frosted-tips hairstyle, it's Roger Clemens. 
This is the room of people who were surprised to hear that Roger Clemens has been taking buttloads of steroids.
There's been some unsettling talk in recent days that Oregon might be heading for something of a recession--leading economic indicators (payrolls, etc.) are down, and a group of economists from the University of Oregon apparently think there is a substantial risk to the state's economy. So, naturally, into the breach storms one of my least favorite dispensers of the local news, KGW.com, who asks its viewers to answer this highly relevant poll question:
Now, here's what I don't get: why the specificity? Why the "yes, my job would probably be at risk"? Isn't it possible to be worried about the economy even if one's job isn't at risk? I mean, I *think* my job could probably survive a not-too-nasty recession, but I still don't really relish the thought of having one. That is to say, my job would survive, but other things--the jobs of my friends, restaurants in my neighborhoods, the budget for local schools--could take a substantial hit. Why not simply write "yes, I'm concerned about the impact of a recession"?
Actually, the reason is pretty simple: the "no" answer--"I feel secure"--is much more general, and it could very well be that they wrote the poll in such a way as to generate a happy news story--more people are optimistic than pessimistic. The current results have the "no's" in the lead by about 10 points, so I could be on to something.
The disturbing implication, of course, is that they understand that people are unable to think about national politics in a way that does not intimately involve them. According to this view, the only reason you'd be concerned about a recession is if your job was threatened.
Or, it could be that I'm simply overanalyzing something that an intern wrote in about two minutes. ¡Viva blogging!
Sports Illustrated reports today that a famous Japanese baseball player plans to follow the lead of guys like Ichiro and Matsui and play ball in the United States. Where Ichiro and Matsui lack that "ha ha, you have a funny name!11!!!!" quality, however, this guy has it in spades:
NAGOYA, Japan (AP) -- Japanese outfielder Kosuke Fukudome told the Chunichi Dragons he will not return next season, saying he wants to make a move to the major leagues.Fukudome? Oh, good lord.
It's easy to pick on poor Mike Huckabee: sure, he used to be fat and still walks like a fat guy, and he thinks he's pretty nifty for having a toupee'd fool like Chuck Norris as his biggest celebrity endorsement, and he's got one of the most redneck last names in American political history. However, just when you feel like maybe the guy's a little bit more than a wisecracking redneck southern governor with zero foreign policy experience and a domestic policy team made up of three high school interns and his illegal-weapon packing son, he goes and says something stupid. Witness this luncacy:
Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee refused to retract a statement he made in 1992 calling for the isolation of AIDS patients.First of all, OF COURSE he said this to Fox News. Second of all, he acts as though the only rational course of action in the 1980s was to segregate people with AIDS. I remember way back when (certainly earlier than 1992, when Huckabee said this) that people were saying that you could not get AIDS from casual, incidental contact with someone who had AIDS. His comment may not have been radical in 1983, but by 1992 there was substantial evidence to the contrary.
Responding to an Associated Press questionnaire, Huckabee said steps should be taken to "isolate the carriers of this plague" during his failed run for a U.S. Senate seat from Arkansas 15 years ago.
He said he probably would not make the same statement today because of what is known about how HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is transmitted.
"I had simply made the point -- and I still believe this today -- that in the late '80s and early '90s, when we didn't know as much as we do now about AIDS, we were acting more out of political correctness than we were about the normal public health protocols that we would have acted," Huckabee told Fox News on Sunday.
Sigh. You know you're getting older when you actually contemplate ASKING FOR socks for Christmas rather than running from the room in horror upon unwrapping a package of them. Yikes. What has happened to me? Whatever happened to that kid who was so thrilled to get Laser Tag and assorted wacky toys of the 80s? He grew up, I guess, and became a lame sock lover.
Ok, a questions: if you were issuing a news story talking about the release of a sketch of a guy who is alleged to have attacked a local college student, what is the ONE piece of information you'd want to include with the story? Exactly--a copy of the sketch. One additional question: take a guess at what single piece of information was NOT included in KGW.com's story about the attacker? Exactly--a copy of the sketch. Sheesh.
I know the whole gradually-moving-stories-to-the-internet thing is tricky and complicated, but is it too much to ask local news stations to provide graphics in stories like this one? KGW is notoriously bad in this respect (KATU has the sketch, for example); I think they must have some sort of automated system that just puts copy on the website without bothering to ensure that all the relevant information is included. 
