Comments or suggestions: Gerard Van der Leun
Monday: Photo Captions from Around the World 6:29-09

refugeewoman2.jpg

"About suffering they were never wrong, 
The Old Masters" -- Auden

Supporters of President Bambang cheered
At a rally in Central Java Monday.

Iraqi security forces showed peace signs
Patrolling Basra Monday.

A boy beat the heat in a cool, cool spray
Out near Chandigarh Monday.

People enjoyed the coolness of the Tuileries
In central Paris Monday.

A Canadian civilian contractor relaxed outside
His tent at Kandahar Monday.
Volunteers sorted rubbish
For recycling at Glastonbury Monday.

A man worked stacking sticks
At a Yingtan timber market Monday.

Cliff diver Alain Kohl dove off
A bridge in Frankfurt Monday.

A priest held confession before an ordination
Ceremony in Switzerland Monday.
An Iraqi police officer kissed the national flag
On his police car in Baghdad Monday.

Agnieszka Radwanska returned a ball to Melanie Oudin
During their Wimbledon tennis match Monday.

Israelis collected vegetables to be thrown
At a demonstration in Jerusalem Monday.

An Israeli police officer spoke on his radio
At a Jerusalem shopping mall Monday.
A boy rode his bicycle on the embankment
Of the Danube River in Budapest Monday.

New priests prostrated themselves
During the ordination Mass Monday.
Spanish marines competed in the Fan-Pin
Military race in San Fernando Monday.

A woman displaced by fighting in Pakistan
Sat with her daughter at a U.N. camp
In the Swabi district
Monday.


Captions with their images can be found at Pictures of the Day

Posted by Vanderleun Jun 30, 2009 10:07 PM | Comments (1)  | QuickLink: Permalink
If you can't stop it, make it go faster.

There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus -- and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it -- that unless you're free the machine will be prevented from working at all! -- American Rhetoric: Mario Savio - Sproul Hall Sit-In Address

speedclip.jpg



Posted by Vanderleun Jun 30, 2009 1:05 PM | QuickLink: Permalink
"Stand by Me" for Iran: Better Than "We Are the World" and More Righteous


"On June 24, Iranian Superstar Andy Madadian went into an LA recording studio with Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora and American record producers Don Was and John Shanks to record a musical message of worldwide solidarity with the people of Iran. This version of the old Ben E. King classic is NOT FOR SALE. It was not meant to be on the Billboard charts or even manufactured as a CD. It's intended to be downloaded and shared by the Iranian people to give voice to the sentiment that all people of the world stand together. The handwritten Farsi sign in the video translates to 'We Are One". If you know someone in Iran - or someone who knows someone in Iran - please share this link."

Share it even if you don't. Reblog it if you can. Push the view count.



Posted by Vanderleun Jun 28, 2009 2:02 PM | Comments (7)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Rules of the Republican Priesthood

priestvir.jpgAcross the street they've nailed the curtains.
They're getting ready for the feast.
The Phantom of the Opera,
A perfect image of a priest.
They're spoon-feeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured.
Then they'll kill him with self-confidence,
After poisoning him with words,

And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls,
"Get Outa Here If You Don't Know
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row"

-- Bob Dylan

The Mark Sanford Media Fornication Festival currently climaxing in day-by-day updates, when not interrupted by ignoring where Michael Jackson parked his detachable penis for decades, instructs us yet again in what our media expects of Republican politicians: pseudo-moral celibacy in thought, word, and deed stretching from the cradle to the grave. Democrats, conversely, are expected and required to use their sex organs in ways that emulate and celebrate either Michael Jackson, Bill Clinton, or Barney Frank.

It is of passing interest that the "profession" of "Journalism" itself requires no moral celibacy on the part of scribes ( pride, envy, wrath, sloth, lust, avarice, and gluttony being required activities for advancement -- Current Champions: Perez Hilton and his life partner Arianna Huffington.) The position of the media/entertainment industry en masse is that none of the seven deadly sins are allowed to be present in a Republican. Conversely, all seven deadly sins must not only be present but be celebrated in a Democrat. But since all this is well known and daily shown, we will let this interest in the media's position pass for the moment. Besides, it is futile since long and continuing research into the activities of our media today has shown, again and again, that you cannot insult whores.

Our sermon for today is "What doth it profit a man to gain the office of dogcatcher or above, if he must bid adieu to his sexuality in late childhood?"

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Jun 27, 2009 10:07 AM | Comments (14)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Michael Jackson? Nothing to See Here

tombstonejackson.jpg

The Howard Hughes of pop. But without the dreadful manicure. The reaction to his death? Yet another milestone on the Road of Our Decline.

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Jun 26, 2009 8:46 AM | Comments (9)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Gentlemen, Start Your Michael Jackson Conspiracy Engines

titojacksonwiki.jpg

Velociman @ Velociworld sez Wiki Rocks discovering this EARTH SHATTERING LEAK OF TRUTH 13 minutes after Jackson was reported dead. It has since been ruthlessly suppressed by the stealth fascists of Wikipedia!

TMZ.com spoke with Tito Jackson, who was grief-stricken. Tito said he so regrets not having spoken with Michael Jackson "in a while."

Yeah. Right.

Can somebody give this man Perez Hilton's address while the cord is still warm?



Posted by Vanderleun Jun 25, 2009 4:58 PM | QuickLink: Permalink
Here He Comes to Save the Day! Jib-Jab Unleashed on Obama



Posted by Vanderleun Jun 19, 2009 9:20 PM | Comments (9)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Bad Daddy: This Man Never Met an Apology He Didn't Like
The president also discusses his shortcomings as a parent, writing, “I know I have been an imperfect father. I know I have made mistakes. I have lost count of all the times, over the years, when the demands of work have taken me from the duties of fatherhood. There were many days out on the campaign trail when I felt like my family was a million miles away, and I knew I was missing moments of my daughters’ lives that I’d never get back. It is a loss I will never fully accept.” -- President Obama in a Parade Magazine article


Posted by Vanderleun Jun 19, 2009 4:23 PM | QuickLink: Permalink
All You Need to Know About the New & Improved US/Afghanistan Relationship

afghanpaddle.jpg
"Yosouf, you Afghanis have some pretty subtle ways of getting your smack out of the country. I just would have stuffed it in the diplomatic pouch myself."

"That's the trouble with you Americans, Karl. You take no joy in the romance of smuggling. Pass the bong."

Oh, this is going to end well. U.S. ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry, left, and Afghan Minister of Urban Development Mohammad Yosouf Pashtun "rode in a paddle boat on the Band-e-Amir Lake in Bamiyan Province, Afghanistan, Thursday. In April, Afghanistan declared Band-e-Amir as its first conservation area."

The Sierra Club was well pleased with this vital progress.



Posted by Vanderleun Jun 19, 2009 1:56 PM | QuickLink: Permalink
My New Financial Analyst

Pack up your desk Jim Cramer! Now that you're gelded there's a new rage boy in town! It's Carnageman!

"Recovery? I'll tell you what I think. We're in the eye of the hurricane right now. 'Greenshoot' recovery? Bullshit!"

Not safe for work (if you've got any work), unsafe for computer monitors hung in the shed, unsafe for neon tubes, and very unsafe for credit card companies. Yes, it's a pitch but it's a pitch that's a lot of fun getting to. When this man runs out of things to bust up in his shed and heads for Wall Street look out.

MSNBC should put this guy on against Glenn Beck. Ratings duel in the sun!

Via Cobb: The End of Blackmail who observes that, "When living for hope fails, people get wise. People get pissed."



Posted by Vanderleun Jun 19, 2009 11:29 AM | Comments (4)  | QuickLink: Permalink
New Tricks @ Google Books: Taking Cut&Paste to New Levels

booksearch.jpg

One of the often overlooked transformative projects at Google is "Google Books." Over the past years, with ever-increasing momentum, books new and old have been digitized by Google and made searchable.

Today, the team at Google Books unveiled a number of new enhancements to this service: [Inside Google Book Search: New Features on Google Books] Chief among them is an ability to embed text selections or whole books within other pages with the same level of simplicity as the embedding of a YouTube video.

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Jun 18, 2009 12:30 PM | QuickLink: Permalink
Tehran Demonstratons and Reactions: A Stunning Slide Show

iranstreet.jpg

No matter what may happen, these images make it clear that the Iranians are going to need more and bigger guns sooner rather than later.

Click THIS LINK and let it play.



Posted by Vanderleun Jun 17, 2009 2:35 PM | Comments (7)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Legend of Obama: Seven at One Blow!

In the meantime the smell of the sweet softball media questions ascended so to the wall, where the flies were sitting in great numbers, that they were attracted to the unctuous spew and descended on it in hosts.

"Yo! Get outta here. Who invited you?" said the little President, and drove the unbidden guests away.

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Jun 17, 2009 1:45 PM | Comments (2)  | QuickLink: Permalink
IOD: Israel Now

bouncecastle.jpg

Children of Israeli settlers play in a bouncy castle next to the ruins of the illegal outpost of Maoz Ester, near Kokhav Ha Shahar settlement, east of Ramallah on June 4, 2009. The wildcat outpost has been dismantled by Israeli authorities several times over the past few months, only to be re-erected within hours by zealous settlers. -Israeli Settlements in the West Bank @ The Big Picture



Posted by Vanderleun Jun 17, 2009 12:40 PM | QuickLink: Permalink
Miracles Grow in Mrs. Obama's Neighborhood: And All the Good Little Children Say "Yes"

16caucus.michelle.480.jpg
Eden on the Potomac

The amazing magical garden of Michelle Obama was harvested with the help of school children yesterday after a miraculous growing season of less than 3 months.

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Jun 17, 2009 10:42 AM | Comments (13)  | QuickLink: Permalink
The Furies of Iran

protestorsiran.jpg
A supporter of defeated presidential candidate Mousavi is beaten by government security men as fellow supporters come to his aid during riots in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, June 14, 2009. (AP Photo) - via The Big Picture - Boston.com

Out of the tsunami of images, videos, rumors and reports that wash over the web during these days of Iranian resistance, this single image of a fleeting moment arrested my attention. Clicking on it will make it larger and allow you to see the expressions of the women closing in on the ayatollah's thugs. And in that flickering instant you will see what all injustice and repression fears from the people it oppresses, the emergence of The Furies.

Always female and dating back to the Age of Myth, the Furies were the agents of Nemesis:

The [Furies] Erinyes often stood for the rightness of things within the standard order.... Predominantly, they were understood as the persecutors of mortal men and women who broke natural laws. In particular, those who broke ties of kinship through murdering a mother (matricide), murdering a father (patricide), murdering a brother (fratricide), or other such familial killings brought special attention from the Furies.
Here three goons beat a man on the ground with long truncheons. A fourth man turns from the beating as he hears the shrieks close on him from the hijab-draped women. We don't know what is being said, but we can infer from the expressions and the gestures that these women have determined not to let this particular fratricide go forward.

The woman directly confronting the turning thug is especially revealing. She wears glasses and is certainly not the sort that one would think capable of bravery or violence. And yet she raises a bare hand high as if to strike this man who outweighs her and is certainly schooled in torture and murder by the regime. Behind this courageous woman come others also determined, also outraged, also, in a word, furious.

What happened after this moment? We cannot know unless the rooftop photographer can be found and we can see the other frames that came after. The goons could have turned on the women and beaten them. The goons, seeing themselves outnumbered and others arriving in the background, could have retreated to beat and kill another days. All we have now is this instant and the history that will ripple outward from it, for better or worse, in Iran over the coming days and months.

What we do know is that once you can see, in an image such as this, the emergence of The Furies in the Mesopotamian realm that gave them birth in the Age of Myth, their harsh mistress Nemesis hovers above them. And while The Furies are vengeful, Nemesis is remorseless.

All Islamic tyrannies fear their women. Here you can see the reason why.



Posted by Vanderleun Jun 16, 2009 11:11 AM | Comments (8)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Surprise! No Steel in Obama's Spine After All

white-feather2.jpg

As the fascist government of Iran begins the massacreof its unarmed citizens today, the world slowly, fitfully wakes to the reality of what it means to have a weakling in Washington.

This report from Britain's Telegraph sounds the first note (The Iranian election: Barack Obama’s cowardly silence :: Nile Gardiner) but it will be far from the last:

The Obama administration's response to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's fraudulent election victory is cowardly, lily-livered and wrong. The White House's refusal to officially question the result or even condemn the brutal suppression of opposition protestors, is undermining America's standing as a global power, and is little more than a face-saving, cynical exercise in appeasement that will all end in tears.

I'm wrong on so many things so often that I usually take extreme pleasure in being right on the few things I do forecast. But I take no pleasure in this observation from last October:

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Jun 15, 2009 1:23 PM | Comments (28)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Twitter/Iran Hack

Attention twitter users. Overwhelmed with material via #iranelections, which currently flows at well over 15,000 tweets per hour. Want tweets from twitter accounts near the epicenter of demonstrations in Iran? Enter the following string in search box @ twitter: near:Tehran within:15mi



Posted by Vanderleun Jun 15, 2009 1:14 PM | Comments (17)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Signage in Seattle

signageinseattle.jpg
Decide!



Posted by Vanderleun Jun 15, 2009 12:02 PM | Comments (9)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Toronto Reaches Out for Diversity Tourists

replacmentfamily.jpg
File under "Unintended Subtexts of Photoshop"

The images above show the source image and published cover of the Toronto Fun Guide. Can you spot the difference? -- Toronto Fun Guide @ The Inquisitr



Posted by Vanderleun Jun 13, 2009 11:24 AM | Comments (10)  | QuickLink: Permalink
The Obama Stimulus: Predictions vs. Reality

One minute and 35 seconds of real reality.

"In this video, I take a look at the economic predictions that President Obama made in February regarding the stimulus plan and how those predictions are corresponding to reality. The answer is: Not well." - The Obama Stimulus: Predictions vs. Reality @ Political Math


Posted by Vanderleun Jun 12, 2009 5:33 PM | Comments (3)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Smart Bombs and Duds from Around the Web

puffycheeks.jpg

New favorite stupid blog: Asian Poses - The Definitive Guide to Asian Poses Hours of cuteness on rails.

Summer in Seattle: "We are out in droves here, now. Pasty shut-ins, stale from some seven months cloistered festering, somehow unashamed to flash our jellied skins in social meccas like Alki, Pike Place, Shilshole Bay, and the pestilent Capitol Hill." -- The Dipso Chronicles

Okay... Great Point, Often Overlooked | Coyote Blog "While Obama and his young policy wonks may be smarter (or at least think they are smarter) than other folks individually, they cannot possibly be smarter than the sum of 300 million well educated, realtively affluent Americans making decisions for themselves." ... BUT... They don't have to be smarter than 300 million. They just have to be smarter than their base and the slobbering media. No problem.

Lede of the Day: "Paul Krugman is so adorable when he's delusional." -- The Daily Gut

News in Cuba: "....here it wouldn’t be written up in the papers because for thirty-five years nothing bad or disturbing has been acceptable news. Everything has to be fine. No criminals or unpleasantness can exist in a model society…"

Gilding Turds @ General Motors: Inside GM: Mystery of Crap Interiors Solved

They don't make toys like this anymore.... if a kid was walking around with a Johnny Seven these days, they would call in a SWAT team.

Great news for architecture: Frank Gehry Being Fired from Atlantic Yards Project

Getting to YES! (with mind control).50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive @ alex.moskalyuk

O don't know much about history (and O don't care). President Gets No Better Than 'PC' In History

Extraordinary Clouds and The Cloud Collector's Handbook - Telegraph....
golden-swirl-davie_1411901i.jpg



Posted by Vanderleun Jun 12, 2009 4:48 PM | Comments (1)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Imago

Photo Journal : Pictures of the Day

A girl ran into water pouring from a stadium’s upper balcony during a rain delay in the MLB game between the Texas Rangers and Toronto Blue Jays in Arlington, Texas, Wednesday. The game was eventually postponed until Sept. 1. (Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters)

The Lobster telephone, a painted plaster sculpture from 1936, will be showcased at the opening of the “Liquid Desire” Salvador Dali exhibit in Melbourne, Australia, Wednesday. The exhibit will showcase more than 200 works by Spanish artists. (Mark Dadswell/Getty Images)



Posted by Vanderleun Jun 12, 2009 9:50 AM | QuickLink: Permalink
Grand Rounds for Readers

lincolnfool.jpg
You can fool all of the people some of the time;
you can fool some of the people all of the time;
and that should be enough for most purposes.

-- MINIM 14

How Princes Should Keep Faith.

It is not essential, then, that a Prince should have all the good qualities which I have enumerated above, but it is most essential that he should seem to have them; I will even venture to affirm that if he has and invariably practises them all, they are hurtful, whereas the appearance of having them is useful. Thus, it is well to seem merciful, faithful, humane, religious, and upright, and also to be so; but the mind should remain so balanced that were it needful not to be so, you should be able and know how to change to the contrary.
And you are to understand that a Prince, and most of all a new Prince, cannot observe all those rules of conduct in respect whereof men are accounted good, being often forced, in order to preserve his Princedom, to act in opposition to good faith, charity, humanity, and religion. He must therefore keep his mind ready to shift as the winds and tides of Fortune turn, and, as I have already said, he ought not to quit good courses if he can help it, but should know how to follow evil courses if he must. -- Machiavelli, The Prince

krebsmaynard.jpg maynardgobama.jpg
Then & Now

Maynard G. Krebs is alive and thrives in the economic implosion. Doctor Joy Bliss relates Heard in the clinic @ Maggie's Farm Via a colleague from a patient in his 40s this afternoon:
"With my unemployment now with 23 weeks, plus the State's 12 weeks, andthe federal 18-week extension, I figure I can begin looking for a job in November. Since my wife got laid off later, she can wait until December or January. We're both burned out and need a break from work. She's been getting job offers, but there's no way she would take one now. And keeping our income down will help my youngest get a scholarship."
Maynard G. Krebs was second banana to Dobie Gillis on a TV show of the early 60s. Cast as a beatnik, Krebs had a deep aversion to work on principle. Here we see the update of the selfish years. No work because, well, they can afford it. As long as they suck on the teat of the state. And that teat is getting bigger. But lots of things can make a teat bigger... such as a tumor on the body politic.

Love's perfect losing moments: Sippican Cottage: The Fireflies Take Their Vigorish

It was a perfect moment there. The sun was just an ornament hung on the Christmas tree of my life. The reeds murmur assent; the muck beats anything a doctor could conjure. She was a flawless diamond hung on a chain of luck around the neck of a muse. I saw it, and knew, that I must lose, right there, if I was to play.
I know how he feels. If you don't, go out and get some.

Cobb updates instructions:

Instead of 'Best used if squeezed from bottom', we might have the following fine print:
The main theme of of this empowering essay on dialectic discourse is not situationism as such, but neosituationism. Therefore, if postsemiotic patriarchialist theory holds, the application of liberating anterior pressures is the subtext of choosing between prematerialist feminism and the capitalist paradigm of renewed oral reality. “Society is impossible,” says Sartre. So It could be said that Bailey would favor a Rousseauian cum-Hobbisan pan-liberation of all pressures simultaenously resulting in the most empowering externalities.
-- Cobb: Seinfeldian Observations on Indefinite Articles

pressbuttonshutdown.jpg

You are your data and you live in a cold room in Tukwilla, Washington with, maybe, 6.5 trillion photographs. Data Center Overload by Tom Vanderbilt

After submitting to biometric hand scans in the lobby and passing through a sensor-laden multidoor man trap, Manos and I entered a bright, white room filled with librarylike rows of hulking, black racks of servers — the dedicated hardware that drives the Internet. The Tukwila data center happens to be one of the global homes of Microsoft’s Xbox Live: within those humming machines exists my imagined city of ether.

David Warren points out that the real high poetry of the moon landing

had been delivered less self-consciously, a little earlier, as the vehicle containing Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down. Paradoxically, that line gained all its poetry from being spoken, not in poetical language, but in mission jargon. It was: "Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed."
I've always thought as much myself. Not the arch and over thought "One small step..." statement, but the mission jargon ("Aldrin: 40 feet, down 2 1/2. Picking up some dust.") held the key for that long ago and now long lost moment. We'll go back, I suppose, some time. We'll go back once we shake off the compulsion to live smaller and more restrained lives. It's not for us, the life of limits. We're made for the stars, no matter how many small souls try to anchor us in the mud. We'll go back. And on.

lettermancartoon.jpg
Day by Day Cartoon by Chris Muir
Roger @ Maggie's Farm nails it down:

Men like Letterman always end up groping the help. All the Beta males do this. Look at John Edwards, Bill Clinton, Bob Packwood, Newt Gingrich... this will grow monotonous. They're lame, and know it, and so they try to get themselves in a position of power over the men they used to resent, and the women they never had a shot at. But the men are all dorks of one sort or another, and the women they never had a shot at are still out of their range. They can lord it over whatever women are handy, but eventually find that they are in the thrall of someone as defective as they are.

Surprise! Racism works!

This racialism will continue. Why? Because Obama discovered long ago than racial identification brings as many dividends as does the content of one's character or achievement. It is a force multiplier and foolishly left untapped. I fear more, not less, of this, as the tab for Obama's charge-it economy comes due at about the same time dubious players abroad conclude that serial apologies amount to a green light for adventurism. When his popularity dives, I think critics will be seen as biased and prejudicial. -Victor Hanson on David Letterman, Rev. Wright, and Thoughts on a Creepy Culture



Posted by Vanderleun Jun 11, 2009 5:48 PM | Comments (1)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Happy Birthday to Me

[Video goes here but Youtube seems to be unreachable. Friday. 12:23 PM] Back.

I know what you're thinking. "Did he blog for six years or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum webpage, the most powerful handblogged page in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

American Digest Stats
First post: June 9, 2003
Entries: This will be entry 6,900.
Visits: 4,686,425 (But who's counting?)

Through some sort of odd harmonic convergence, the stories and items on the page below represent a pretty fair cross-section of American Digest so far.

Thanks to all my readers for coming by and coming back.



Posted by Vanderleun Jun 11, 2009 11:26 AM | Comments (24)  | QuickLink: Permalink
David and Reggina: Letterman's Husband Uses Dress to Ooze Past Gay Marriage Prohibition in Montana

letterman_lasko320.jpg
Letterman and barely-legal husband Reggina (Gums) Lesko
in a moment of prenuptial orgasmic happiness.

Now it can be told. In an earthshaking article People magazine has revealed how David Letterman and his long time partner Reginald (Gums) Lasko took Montana's throbbing gay marriage issue into their own hands last month. Together, this loving couple decided to make their own private Brokeback Mountain out of their love's molehole in a ceremony that left the bible-toting, gun clinging yokels of Montana gasping for breath after a hail of laughter.

"Consarn it if that pimply-face twink in a skirt switcheroo he pulled ain't the funniest thing Letterman's done since his open heart operation," said T. Boone Peekings of Choteau, Montana's post office and sex-toy emporium The Love Connection. "Us simple folks out here on the range was feelin' a mite confused about who's the heifer and who's the bull over on the Letterman spread ever since Dave got that Paul Shaffer feller lubed up and used him as a dildo on a rodeo clown at the fairgrounds last summer."

"Yup," said Peeking's pardner (and Montana's number one and only female impersonator) Dina Martini, "the Montana gay pride parade committee of Choteau was plumb spun around on our saddle horns when we found out about those three-ways out at the Letterman Museum of Late Night Top Ten Lists and Prairie Grass. Didn't hardly seem fair, seein' as they coulda invited the entire gay pride parade of Choteau and only made it into a five-way."

Needless to say, when the details of the Letter/Lesko/ nuptials came to light in Secrets of David Letterman's Surprise Wedding Revealed @ People.com the rest of the likker-guzzlin' homofeelish population of Choteau, Montana breathed a sigh of relief.

"We wuz worried bout the young'un" said Daisy Mae Butt, the town librarian. "After all, havin' a five-year-old boy hangin' around a sin-pit of counternatural fornication jes' stuck in our craw. T'warnt right no how. But seein' as they'd both done got hitched now and that both are wearin' dresses, I kin go ahead and order Harry's Got Two Mommies and One Silver Daddy for our five foot shelf library. We ain't got but one twenty dollar gold piece fur book purchasin'."

The fact that gay marriage is still illegal in Montana did not to the marriage of these two hunky minds breed impediment. Reggie (Gums) Lesko and her wife Da-vide merely swapped roles for an hour in order to hornswoggle town drunk and "Justice of the Peace Pete Howard, who officiated the wedding."

"T'warnt no big thang," said Howard in a burst of the finest frontier gibberish. "He'n wuz a she'n and she'n wuz a he'n. Once Regginald, er.. Reginna... got that ball-gag outta Da-vide's mouth, them thar vows rolled offen their tongues slicker than greased Shaffers. I polished 'em off with a 'You may kiss the brides,' which set 'em back on their heels a tad. I had to clear that up with a hearty 'Git 'er done!' Which was when all hell broke loose. Gol-dang it if'in we aren't still scrubbin' out the chapel a month later."



Posted by Vanderleun Jun 10, 2009 5:26 PM | Comments (3)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Let's Review: The American Form of Goverment

Via: A Republic -- if you can keep it @ the fascinating WESTSOUND MODERN



Posted by Vanderleun Jun 10, 2009 4:32 PM | Comments (1)  | QuickLink: Permalink
The Brand Extension Blight


One of the many blights on classic American culture that the cult of "brand extension" hath wrought.

A friend that edits a magazine writes, to his personal email list of cranks, loonies, and general malcontents:

To all: For an upcoming article celebrating curmudgeons, we're planning a list of "50 things that aren't as good as they used to be" and we invite your contributions. Thanks a bunch. Creativity counts. Crankiness too. Here are two, to give you an idea: Not as good as they used to be: TV News Anchors -- Buncha movie star pretty boys. Chet Huntley had a dog face, but you could trust him. Traveling Carnivals: They've shut down the freak shows and moved them to FOX.
My just-off-the-top-of-my-head response reads as follows.

OREOS -- This was, without a doubt, America's greatest store bought cookie ever. And it dominated the market. But was that good enough for the sleazoid 90s "marketing" department? No. They wanted more and even more. As a result they have 'New-Coked' this cookie into oblivion with endless variations on the theme. The heresy began with "Double Stuffed" Oreos. This simple-minded d-oh moment came when somebody thought, hey, let's double the stuffing! It did not matter to them that the perfect proportion of white cream stuffing had already been achieved. Nope, this

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Jun 2, 2009 8:03 PM | Comments (29)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Family Matters

100thbirthdaysmoke.jpg

My uncle has seen fit to have his 100th birthday this week. I'll be escorting my mother to the celebrations. As a result, posting will be light and/or archival.



Posted by Vanderleun Jun 2, 2009 10:29 AM | Comments (5)  | QuickLink: Permalink
There's a blonde joke here...

and I'm sure I'll think of it as soon as I escape from Fantasy Island....

[Humm...Seattle Riga airfare, $1,300. Hotels: $2,000. Gifts and dinners and drinks and flowers and fur coats: $56,859.65. Running with the Blondes: Priceless -- and besides you still have 2 kidneys and you really only need one. ]

holdheblondejokes.jpg
"Blondes walked though the streets of Riga, Latvia, Sunday for Blonde Weekend."



Posted by Vanderleun Jun 1, 2009 8:08 PM | Comments (4)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Obama and Intellectual Insanity

The pot that is the seething cranium of the American left runneth over daily in the Obama installation. The latest, but not nearly the last, out of this experimental government is:


Wrong venue for Obama's Muslim speech By Spengler

Why should the president of the United States address the "Muslim world", as Barack Obama will do in Egypt this Thursday? What would happen if the leader of a big country addressed the "Christian world"? Half the world would giggle and the other half would sulk.

To speak to the "Muslim world", is to speak not to a fact, but rather to an aspiration, and that is the aspiration that Islam shall be a global state religion as its founders intended. To address this aspiration is to breathe life into it. For an American president to validate such an aspiration is madness. America is not at war with Islam, unless, that is, Islam were to take a political form that threatens America's global interests. These interests include friendly relationships with nation-states that have a Muslim majority, such as Egypt, Turkey and Jordan. To address "the Muslim world" is to conjure up a prospective enemy, for global political Islam only can exist as the enemy of the nation-states with which America has allied.



Posted by Vanderleun Jun 1, 2009 12:12 PM | QuickLink: Permalink
G2E Media GmbH

MONTHLY ARCHIVES


SIDELINES

FIND


BACKMATTER

RECENT ITEMS