Comments or suggestions: Gerard Van der Leun
YouTube's ready to select a winner



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 31, 2013 8:50 AM | Comments (5)  | QuickLink: Permalink
This Time the Hitler.... He Speaks for Me

Very much an "inside blogball" item, but I like it so I'll put it here for a couple of days.



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 29, 2013 11:19 AM | Comments (7)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Sic Transit Generation Gap

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-- P.J. O'Rourke, Peace Kills



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 29, 2013 9:13 AM | Comments (3)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Final Destinations: 2 Passings and a Plan as Told in the Comments to “The Grudge of the Old.”

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In the last few years two older men whom I had turned to for wisdom and good stories passed, and the difference between their final years was illustrative.

The first, married to my grandmother, I had known since I was a child. As he got older I learned more of his life before their union, and it was not an exemplary one. He had changed dramatically under the influence of his final wife, but he was, in all ways, a real bastard in his youth to early middle age.

As his body failed and death was near, he held on with ever greater ferocity. He lost his body, his mind, and towards the end -- in a quiet moment together -- he slightly bared his soul when he confessed that what he feared wasn't dying, but what lie on the other side; the inevitable penance for the crimes against God and man he had committed in youth.

The other death, just this last week, was of a good friend and mentor, whose life was lived fully and without regrets. He was married to his first and only wife. His children had children of their own. He was always gracious and open with friends and enemies alike. In the end, with death imminent, he worked to ensure none would be put out by his passing, and handled the arrangements himself, right down to the catering.

From what I was told, the end was swift and largely painless as he allowed the drugs to ease the pain and his soul to be released.

In both cases, the men who had taught me a great deal about how to be a man continued to teach me to the very end, As I continue to see and interact with the aged, I can't help but notice that the ones who have peace in their hearts and mind believe and have lived as if a reward is awaiting them, and those who display anger, bitterness, and despair seem to be trying to convince themselves that there is nothing to be afraid of on the other side. -- Posted by: dan at March 27, 2013 4:35 PM

[Elsewhere]

I have the house loaded with explosives. Forty five seconds after I flatline, the whole neighborhood goes up. Posted by: Lorne at March 27, 2013 4:47 PM



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 29, 2013 3:22 AM | Comments (2)  | QuickLink: Permalink
The Grudge of the Old by D.H. Lawrence

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The old ones want to be young, and they aren't young,
and it rankles, they ache when they see the young,
and they can't help wanting to spite it on them
venomously.

The old ones say to themselves: We are not going to be old,
we are not going to make way, we are not going to die,
we are going to stay on and on and on and on and on
and make the young look after us
till they are old. We are stronger than the young.
We have more energy, and our grip on life is harder.
Let us triumph, and let the young be listless
with their puny youth.
We are younger even now than the young, we can put their youth in abeyance.

And it is true.
And they do it.
And so it goes on.



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 27, 2013 2:39 PM | Comments (7)  | QuickLink: Permalink
With Apologies to H. L. Mencken

"Gay" marriage is the theory that gay people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 27, 2013 10:17 AM | QuickLink: Permalink
Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid: North Korea Puts Its War Machine on Display

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Amphibious operations

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Small arms maintenance

Gathered HERE @ In Focus @ The Atlantic are recent KCNA photographs of North Korea's war machine, as the country wishes the world to see it. 33 PHOTOS



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 27, 2013 10:01 AM | Comments (8)  | QuickLink: Permalink
The Dick Dialogues

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The creative contextualization of a play like The Vagina Monologues can bring certain perspectives on important issues into a constructive and fruitful dialogue with the Catholic tradition. This is a good model for the future. Accordingly, I see no reason to prohibit performances of The Vagina Monologues on campus, and do not intend to do so. -- The Dickless Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., President, University of Notre Dame

Like the distinguished, befuddled, and outflanked Father above, I too -- in a spasm of "creative contextualization"-- seek to bring "certain perspectives on important issues into a constructive and fruitful dialogue" here at American Digest. To further that mission, I shall now reveal that a secret evening of drama has been taking place in numerous locations about the nation. We are all aware of the unstoppable chunk of mummery and flummery, flattery and chattery, known as "The Vagina Monologues," but few know -- and few deserve to know -- about the blowback (so to speak) that is "The Dick Dialogues."

"The Dick Dialogues" is usually performed on the down-low in the basements of sports bars, carefully darkened car-repair garages, and the deepest forest amphitheaters of the Bohemian Grove. Attendance is strictly male and strictly invitation-only since in many states the mere thought of giving a performance of "The Dick Dialogues" would constitute a hate-crime.

Modeled on the successful NPR series "Car Talk," a typical episode of "The Dick Dialogues" consists of two men, traditionally named "Plick" and "Plack," slumped in Lay-Z-Boys in a Rec Room. Here they field calls on a speaker phone from a series of male and female and neuter voices. The actors, clad in the traditional garb of jeans, t-shirts, baseball caps and army boots, respond to the questions on the spot during an extended half-time at a fantasy football league's Super Bowl. The cost of admission is a donation that is suggested to be equal to one month of the attendee's child support payments.

Spontaneous, unrehearsed, and always faintly pissed-off, the "Dialogues" continue to gather fans and acolytes in the secret Royal Order of Meese (Named after the Sainted Ed Meese, blessed be his Attorney General's Commission on Pornography.) in cities here and abroad wherever non-gelded males still are to be found -- either in captivity or free-ranging.

I recently attended a performance of "The Dick Dialogues" in the greater Seattle area. At first it was to be performed at a fishing net warehouse down near the locks at Lake Union, but the proximity of the locks to the University of Washington and its vast stocks of neutered males made this a security risk. So it was moved to a secret location in the model rooms at a Renton superstore code named "AEKI."

While waiting for the show to start, early arrivals were entertained with classic skits such as "If You Really Loved Me, You'd Buy Me a House," "Darling, You'll Never Guess How Much I Saved Shopping Today," "Please Pay Off My Credit Cards Again," and "What the Frikin' Hell Are 'Window Treatments' Anyway?"

The performance began at midnight with sacred de-estrogenation rituals involving the burning of large numbers of cigars, the consumption of local malt beverages, and ten choruses of Kumbaya topped off with a coordinated group belch.

I am forbidden to disclose the full text of that evening's Dick Dialogues, but one particular exchange does stick in the mind.

Halfway through the evening, the phone rang in the "Rec Room" and a reedy, frustrated female voice asked:

I've recently returned my vintage Dick to the general Dick pool, but find I still need one from time to time for the small chores and larger tensions of my life. I'm reluctant to buy a new Dick outright in this market? Do you know where I can rent one? Or would leasing one be a better deal?

The evening's official Dick Dialoguers rolled their eyes, did a Jagermeister shot, popped open a Bud, took a big hit off Ghengis Bong and answered as follows:

Continued...

Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 27, 2013 1:41 AM | Comments (2)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Something Wonderful: Balance

"What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals." -- Hamlet



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 26, 2013 11:26 AM | Comments (2)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Spam Storm: A Comment on Comments

Starting last Friday there has been a continuing attempt by spam comment creators (Blotted be their names from the Book of Life, and may a thousand weasels nest in their pants for eternity!) to overwhelm the Spam filters. Some inevitably get through and I have to weed those out by hand.

Total spam comments usually run to a total of a few hundred a day for both the main column and SideLine. Irritating but manageable. The recent onslaught, however, is running up to five or six thousand a day. This tends to overwhelm the site with read /write / filter operations which slows down legitimate comments as well as the site in general. There are fixes for this that I'm working on, but for now it is going to a slow going.

Oh yes, the filter is set to hold comments that contain a URL / link until I can approve it by hand. Sorry about that but if it were otherwise I'd be weeding out around 500 comments a day by hand. I'd have blisters on my fingers.



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 25, 2013 5:19 PM | Comments (11)  | QuickLink: Permalink
"Live and Be Free:" Raymond Borzelli Is Not Waiting Around For The Death Panels

Get your week off to a great start with 8 minutes of this man.

Meet Raymond Borzelli

- 85 year old pensioner with a passion for music. At home, Raymond struggles to pay his bills and put food on the table. But out on the streets of Sydney, he dances to a different tune, living out his dreams as the superstar he was meant to be.

"I am shamed into a better humor by a man who dances like everyone is watching." -- | Primordial Slack

Me too.

Life is good, it is good, to, me
And it was meant, for you, to live and be free, to live and be free...

--Live And Be Free Tim McMorris



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 25, 2013 12:03 PM | Comments (11)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Easter Rituals Unlikely to Be Imported to the USA Anytime Soon

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Penitents light their candles as they take part in the "Humildad" (Humility) brotherhood Palm Sunday procession in Malaga on March 24, 2013. -- Pride, penitence and Antonio Banderas: Spaniards mark Holy Week with colorful processions



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 25, 2013 10:59 AM | Comments (5)  | QuickLink: Permalink
An Israeli Soldier's song to the world for Passover



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 25, 2013 2:05 AM | Comments (4)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Why I Hate Guns!

Matt Walsh explains his perfectly rational position and brings out the facts behind the myths. Get educated.

HT: Small Dead Animals



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 23, 2013 11:15 AM | Comments (8)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Elisabetta Will... Rock. Your. World.

It's the singer, not the song.


Found at the today cuter than neater - Neatorama



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 23, 2013 10:17 AM | Comments (4)  | QuickLink: Permalink
We Have Met the RINO and He Is Us

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"McCain & the RINO losers are a symptom of "Passive-Every-Other-November-Voterosis." If Boehner and McConnell agreed to carpet bomb elementary schools in the country Talk Radio would be on fire... with talk. The blogs would erupt... in more talk. One Conservative after another would explain to every other Conservative why bombing elementary schools would be inconvenient, wasteful of resources, unfair, "maybe not as polite as we would all like to be," but it would all amount... to talk.

"Gerald Ford, GHW Bush, Bob Dole, McCain, Romney, and the next several unmotivaed chumps didn't grab hostages and take over the Party. We sat on our rears and explained why would prefer other candidates or other policies, but we did zilch to make that happen.

"When politics has become trying to dodge the sh*t-storm of this or that group and one remaining group threatens, at their most angry, to bus to DC and stand well away from government offices after hours or on a weekend, who do you think will be sold out? If you fear a beating from union thugs or an agnry email and you can't make everyone happy, which one of those will you make sure doesn't happen?

"STOP PLAYING NICE. You don't have to beat up people, but you had sure better make them think that's the price they will pay for p*ssing you off. Being nice means you will be taken advantage of.

"Stop explaining to nice people the benefits of being nice.

"Stop trying to justify yourself to liberals and their media.

"Our options are to engage in routine civil disobedience, surrender, or wait for the violence to begin.

"The Left & RINOs will not stop molesting you because you and your friends agree they shouldn't do it. They will stop when The Left & RINOs fear molesting you. Retreating to ideological, political, or physical gated-communities is just surrender. You have no right to surrender on behalf of the rest of us." -- Posted by Scott M as a comment to Eviscerate Gut the GOP!



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 21, 2013 9:41 AM | Comments (15)  | QuickLink: Permalink
The Taxi Tour

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Found at: 90 Miles From Tyranny : An End And A Beginning...



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 21, 2013 2:44 AM | Comments (5)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Someone Wonderful: It's Mr Rogers' 85th Birthday

As Miss Cellania @ Neatorama notes

If TV host Fred Rogers hadn't died ten years ago, he would have been 85 today. In honor of the occasion, mental_floss presents 35 Facts About Mr. Fred Rogers. I honestly did not think I could sit through so many facts, because a) I never watched the show and b) I've read lists of facts about him many times. However, this is full of stories about Mr. Rogers that you probably haven't heard before.

As for myself, I'm praying that this will make God forgive me for the video just below this one, but as Mr. Rogers always said, "God loves you just the way you are."



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 20, 2013 7:53 PM | Comments (4)  | QuickLink: Permalink
An Intense Video You'll Watch Again And Again

"Wow, talk about “First Person Shooter” POV. This looks like a Jason Statham movie as seen through his eyes. “Language and violence warning” should be all the incentive you need to spend 5 minutes watching this clip. -- - Blur Brain

N.B. “Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR per G.G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE”
― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huck Finn

[You will miss much just the first time through. Especially the finer points of these:]
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Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 20, 2013 12:34 PM | Comments (8)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Great Effin' Rant of the Week So Far: "If they can take the money from Cyprus, they can do it anywhere - do you get that in your nut?"


"They're just stealing the money They're getting billions and billions and billions and billions and billions, billions, billions, billions, billions, billions, billions, billions, billions, billions, billions, billions, and billions and it ain't fuckin' enough! These bankers, they are like pedophiles. They won't stop until they're locked up!"

Vast Effin' Warning: A London Cabbie Explains The Great EU Bank Robbery And Much Much More

"You will lose your f##king money in your bank," is how this English gentleman cabbie begins his caustic diatribe against all that is wrong with European (and in fact) the world of bankers and elites. The so-called 'artist taxi driver' has a spit-flying hand-smashing epic rant while sitting in his taxi. "They did a stress test on the banks in Cyprus 18 months ago and said it's f##king great" and now this; "this is some f##king crooked shit." "They're off their f##king nuts mate," he explains as he asks rhetorically of the bankers getting the bailouts, "how many f##king ponies do their daughters' need?"
Hey, he's an East Ender and "effin'" is just his way to taking a breath.

Continued...

Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 18, 2013 7:52 PM | Comments (16)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Something Wonderful: "You can do anything when you're wearing sunglasses."

Take Five - Unorganized Hancock - YouTube

Continued...

Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 18, 2013 3:56 PM | Comments (4)  | QuickLink: Permalink
California Undreaming

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Net Migration Between California and Other States: 1955-1960 and 1995-2000

This graphic shows the 10 largest state-to-state migration flows in and out of California for the period 1955-1960 compared to that of 1995-2000. In the late 1950s, the largest flows involving California were all inflows to the state, generally from states in the Midwest or Northeast. This pattern contrasted with the flows in the late 1990s, where nearly all of the largest migration streams involving California represented out-migration to other states.
Of course if it showed another arrow, fat and gold, poking in from Mexico, all might be revealed. But that would be too much truth, wouldn't it?

HT: Philip Ngai @ Facebook



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 15, 2013 10:34 AM | Comments (15)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Cut It. Out.

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Day in and day out -- and now moving into a 24/7/365 news cycle -- that annoying mosquito whine in your political ear is the argument over cutting.

Cutting back. Cutting the budget. Cutting the government down to size.

Reducing the size. Of the budget. Of the spending. Of the entitlements.

Cutting this department here. Cutting that entitlement there. Cutting out the White House tours. Cutting out the duffer's awful golf games. Cutting the Pentagon. Cutting the Food Stamps.

Cutting them off. Cutting in line. Cutting line by line. Prime cuts. Always and forever the argument over the "cuts" blathers on from Rand Paul to Ayn Rand; from Obama to Yo Momma.

It's all just arrant nonsense, drooling blather, and a stone waste of time. Any fool with two eyes that have not had their pupils poked out with red hot needles can see that the only way this particular government is ever going to be cut is when somebody or something cuts its throat.

Absent that final cut, cut it out.

Continued...

Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 14, 2013 3:50 PM | Comments (9)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Where the Jobs Are: North Dakota's Oil Boom

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Roughneck Brian Waldner

Underlying northwestern North Dakota is a massive rock formation, referred to as the Bakken shale,

which holds an estimated 18 billion barrels of crude oil. When this resource was first discovered in 1951, recovering it was financially unfeasible because the oil was embedded in the stone. Then, around 2008, everything changed, and North Dakota boomed. New drilling technology called hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," became widespread, and oil production took off. As of 2013, there are more than 200 active oil rigs in North Dakota, producing about 20 million barrels of oil every month -- nearly 60 percent of it shipped by rail, rather than pipeline. -- In Focus - The Atlantic [30 photos]

Continued...

Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 13, 2013 11:02 AM | Comments (9)  | QuickLink: Permalink
World's Greatest Obituary: Harry Weathersby Stamps December 19, 1932 -- March 9, 2013

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"Harry Weathersby Stamps, ladies' man, foodie, natty dresser, and accomplished traveler, died on Saturday, March 9, 2013.

Harry was locally sourcing his food years before chefs in California starting using cilantro and arugula (both of which he hated). For his signature bacon and tomato sandwich, he procured 100% all white Bunny Bread from Georgia, Blue Plate mayonnaise from New Orleans, Sauer's black pepper from Virginia, home grown tomatoes from outside Oxford, and Tennessee's Benton bacon from his bacon-of-the-month subscription. As a point of pride, he purported to remember every meal he had eaten in his 80 years of life."
.... He excelled at growing camellias, rebuilding houses after hurricanes, rocking, eradicating mole crickets from his front yard, composting pine needles, living within his means, outsmarting squirrels, never losing a game of competitive sickness, and reading any history book he could get his hands on. He loved to use his oversized "old man" remote control, which thankfully survived Hurricane Katrina, to flip between watching The Barefoot Contessa and anything on The History Channel.
.... He particularly hated Day Light Saving Time, which he referred to as The Devil's Time. It is not lost on his family that he died the very day that he would have had to spring his clock forward. This can only be viewed as his final protest.
View Harry Stamps's Full Obituary by The Sun Herald HERE



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 13, 2013 10:44 AM | Comments (1)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Maintenance Costs In Hell-with-Good-Restaurants

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Lauren Greenfield photographed these New York professionals and found out how much they spend each month on their personal grooming. Does spending more mean looking better? (Left to right) Laura (25), $145 per month, Suzanne (36), $1720 per month and Claudine (29), $80 per month.

WELL, WHAT'S A GIRL TO DO when hookups, advancement and position still depend on Very Personal Grooming? She spends and spends and spends... and it would seem spends even more as the years add up. In this photo essay you can see some of the rituals, rites, and supplies that women -- even in this enlightened age -- still feel compelled to pile on themselves in their search for dates, mates, and advancement.

Beauty has become a pricey commodity; spending on Botox, spa treatments, designer makeup, cosmetic surgery, fitness and dieting total up to $160 billion dollars each year.  Some women spend $1700 monthly on beauty, more than many women pay for rent.
Sounds like a lot, but think of it as an investment in a rent-free future.



Posted by Vanderleun Mar 11, 2013 10:38 AM | Comments (7)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Something Wonderfully Destructive: Liberal Agenda Versus Entrepreneurial Spirit

Because... it's time. [And because here at American Digest we believe, we really believe, in recycling.]

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Mar 11, 2013 6:06 AM | Comments (14)  | QuickLink: Permalink
The Godlike Beauty of the Early Stars: Gary Cooper, 1928

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True, they are not at rest yet,
but now they are indeed
apart, winnowed from failures,
they withdraw to an orbit
and turn with disinterested
hard energy, like the stars.

-- My Sad Captains by Thom Gunn

Nobody, but nobody, looks this good anymore.

"Gary Cooper played a man in love who turned pirate – for Fay Wray. “The First Kiss” was a silent film released in 1928, there is no extant footage, many early prints of this era on nitrate went the way of dust and flame."

From GARY COOPER – STYLE | BEGUILING HOLLYWOOD



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 8, 2013 2:39 PM | Comments (10)  | QuickLink: Permalink
The Girls On Fox News: They Report. We Decide. [Bumped]

Updated and bumped with sage commentary from Mike James on AMERICAN DIGEST: Comment on The Girls On Fox News: They Report. We Decide.

Fletcher, there are two or three lawyers, to include a former county judge, Monica Crowley has a PhD in something, and it would be my guess an assortment of various degrees of the sort that women usually get, but I doubt there's even one ethnic grievance degree, not one Women's or Gayandlesbianandtransgenderandwhycan'tIscrewboysandgirls Studies major.

But that's all just credentialism. I think they hold up against the joyless petting zoo on the other networks, once you filter out the code words and implicit assumptions of whatever it is they read from a teleprompter. There's something else as important, and that's credibility and integrity.

Fox has bothered themselves to report on some fairly serious things like the invasion of our Libyan Consulate, or the government deliberately overseeing the transfer of firearms to the sorts of drug running lowlife who behead innocents, massacre whole birthday parties, and the like. Oh, they get around to it, but only if Fox has already been reporting on something for a few weeks and makes it impossible to ignore, damn their eyes.

To be fair, I've seen them try. Not long ago one Fox competitor sent a head turning blonde to cover, alone or she might as well have been, rioting Cairenes, with the customary ugly, predictable results. The MSNBC and CNN viewers told the Fox viewers that this proved that Fox viewers are stupid.

Not that I discount things like covering speakers drinking a little water while they speak, or holding cameras on the President while he boards a huge aircraft to go to some course he hasn't played yet, while some of the girls of CNN or MSNBC describe in glowing terms the outfit his frightening wife is wearing as she boards a completely different huge aircraft because she was taking her holiday someplace else. Those things are important to find out about, too. As well the intimate, personal, one on one, maybe-I'll-get-my-friend-to-join-us interviews. I can go back to this stuff online, it seems that he wears nice suits, his wife looks good in anything, and there's nothing to worry about except for the mean people who are making it very hard for him to do things to make us all happy. This makes him sad.

Ha ha, just joking around with you, I don't take them seriously. Why should I?

And nobody, ever, is going to write a song called the "The Girls of MSNBC", or "The Girls of CNN", not a perfectly serviceable toe tapping one that I could imagine the band playing in a windowless joint somewhere when the fistfight breaks out. Wait, I take that back. I could see them getting Sarah MacLachlan to take a stab at it; MSNBC and CNN are used to people changing the channel out of revulsion by now, anyway. We are at least as well informed, better on some stories, and what could easily be a swimsuit calender; they get the likes of Chris Mathews, Al Sharpton, Ed Schultz, or that fat bag of dough named Urk, or Turk, his name evades me right now. Cenk? Ctenk? I'll remember it after I click publish, as usual, darn it.

"Has any one of them two brain cells to rub together?" Cheap shots, Fletcher? That's not how you usually play things. Grace and self-restraint, on the Internet, of all places.

That goddamned song's been playing in my head since yesterday. It doesn't stop. I want it to stop. It has to stop. I thought it would help it stop to watch MSNBC or CNN, but it hasn't stopped.

Posted by Mike James at March 6, 2013 4:58 PM



Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 6, 2013 6:35 PM | Comments (13)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Something Very, Very Wonderful: My Parents' First Car - 1948 Plymouth convertible

Herewith the best 8 minutes of your week online. No kidding. Break out the Kleenex. Via the always great The Borderline Sociopathic Blog For Boys: The Borderline Sociopathic Boy Looks Out For His Parents

Continued...

Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 5, 2013 12:45 PM | Comments (9)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Dream Team, 2016? Obama/Obama!

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Twenty-second Amendment: "Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice...."

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Yes, I know, I know .... but it would almost be worth it just to watch the Cintons' heads explode.

[Or as someone once said (and I appropriated): "I try to become more cynical every day, but lately I just can't keep up."]

Of course nitpicking Constitutional scholars might hold that something called the 12th Amendment stands in the way, but these are the Obamas for goodness sake and a Constitutional quibble has never stopped them before. [Details]

Continued...

Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 4, 2013 2:15 PM | Comments (17)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Great Americans: Rod Serling and His Pitch for The Twilight Zone

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"So gentlemen, please sit back and enjoy your first trip into The Twilight Zone.... [Serling vanishes] ... See what I mean? And this is nothing compared to the way jars of Instant Sanka will be disappearing off of grocery shelves come this fall."

Watch The Twilight Zone‘s 1959 Pilot Episode, Pitched by Rod Serling Himself for the first eight minutes.

“You gentlemen, of course, know how to push a product. My presence here is for much the same purpose: simply to push a product. To acquaint you with an entertainment product which we hope, and which we rather expect, would make your product-pushing that much easier. What you’re about to see, gentlemen, is a series called The Twilight Zone. We think it’s a rather special kind of series.”

Sidenote: Check the wide pan shot at 15:23 for an early appearance of Courthouse Square as seen in the Back to the Future series.

Continued...

Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 4, 2013 11:55 AM | Comments (5)  | QuickLink: Permalink
American Dreams: Grace Kelly by the Pool in "High Society"

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Continued...

Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 3, 2013 12:48 PM | Comments (10)  | QuickLink: Permalink
American Nightmares: The Poetry of the Young Barry Obama

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Because the child is father to the man. Or, in this case, the man might have been the....

POP*

Sitting in his seat, a seat broad and broken

In, sprinkled with ashes

Pop switches channels, takes another

Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asks

What to do with me, a green young man

Who fails to consider the
Flim and flam of the world, since

Things have been easy for me; 

I stare hard at his face, a stare

That deflects off his brow; 

I’m sure he’s unaware of his

Dark, watery eyes, that

Glance in different directions,

And his slow, unwelcome twitches,

Fail to pass.
I listen, nod,

Listen, open, till I cling to his pale, 

Beige T-shirt, yelling,

Yelling in his ears, that hang

With heavy lobes, but he’s still telling
His joke, so I ask why
He’s so unhappy, to which he replies...

But I don’t care anymore, cause

He took too damn long, and from

Under my seat, I pull out the

Mirror I’ve been saving; I’m laughing, 

Laughing loud, the blood rushing from his face

To mine, as he grows small,

A spot in my brain, something

That may be squeezed out, like a 

Watermelon seed between

Two fingers.

Pop takes another shot, neat,

Points out the same amber

Stain on his shorts that I’ve got on mine, and

Makes me smell his smell, coming

From me; he switches channels, recites an old poem

He wrote before his mother died,

Stands, shouts, and asks

For a hug, as I shrink, my 

Arms barely reaching around

His thick, oily neck, and his broad back; ’cause

I see my face, framed within
Pop’s black-framed glasses

And know he’s laughing too.


*A poem by Barack Obama published in the Spring 1981 issue of “Feast,” a 51-page student literary journal that described itself as "a semi-annual journal of short poetry and fiction collected from the Occidental College community.” The journal is no longer published, according to a college spokesman.

From 2008-09-24



Posted by Vanderleun Mar 3, 2013 10:09 AM | Comments (8)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Great Americans Among Us: Carl Edgar Blake II
Continued...

Posted by gerardvanderleun Mar 1, 2013 11:30 AM | Comments (9)  | QuickLink: Permalink
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