arse poetica

Hot Library Smut

Hot Library Smut!

Seriously, my heart is beating fast. And I'm drooling. And I'm amending my Life To Do List.

[via]

Keith Olbermann Needs to Have My Babies

Friends, seriously, watch this, and think how degraded the state of Murkan democracy (and journalism!) that one man is compelled to vent his disgust during the final 5 minutes of his news show. It's amazing.

Crooks and Liars » Keith Olbermann Delivers One Hell Of a Commentary on Rumsfeld.

Edward R. Murrow is dead! Long live Edward R. Murrow!

Ek-e-lek-tik

Oh, dear Jesus, who voted for this idiot?

"I read three Shakespeares."

Quoi? Translation, please, for those of us who've only read Shakespeare.

You know, for those who may not know me, I don't find sport in making fun of people who haven't read Shakespeare, and I wouldn't. I'm aware of my privilege and grateful for my education. What I cannot get over, however, is that this unparalleled moron is the supposed president of this country and that there are ENTIRE TEAMS OF PEOPLE dedicated to promoting the fiction that he is 1) not an unparalleled moron and 2) that he is in charge, and 3) he reads.

I call bullshit.

Think of it! Ours is a country in which one of the least informed, least curious persons in its borders is its president and to make us feel better about his incomparable dumbassery and ineptitude his propaganda team (in concert w/ a compliant press) plies us w/ lullabies about his summer reading list as if he were a petulant 5th grader whose reading esteem needed to be boosted. And people wonder why I can't get over it.

I cannot get over it! The very fact of his existence is an insult to everyone who has not had every privilege and opportunity handed to them only to waste them utterly and strut around like Mr. Pugnacious full of insipid (and unearned) arrogance. I mean, who does this joker think he is??

Feh x the indignance of a million downgraded Plutos.

Dancing With Myself

Dig it. Broken Social Scene's "Superconnected," which follows the elegantly titled "Handjobs for the Holidays" on their eponymously titled record. But I am right this moment rawkin' out to "It's All Gonna Break," which, like all good songs that move me, would've been a teenage fave. Just takes a little something to make me soar.

Quantifying musical fabulosity is like holding mercury in your palm -- no, not poisonous! Elusive. Musical taste is the one thing I am convinced I have. Ha. Where my girl Elkit at? She'll have an opinion on this. And you, too, pinky, w/ your awesome lyrical post starters that make me realize I'm way (aged) out of any hipster demographic. What say y'all on this subject?

A friend said at the cookout last night while we were discussing bands we had in common, "Explain Radiohead to me. I don't get it. To me it was fingernails on a chalkboard." I canna 'splain it. You're either down or you're a clown! I jest! I don't believe that at all, because it's all in the ear of the belistener and because I'm all over the map myself. Hell, I started this iTunes excursion w/ Alison Krauss's "New Favorite." Just because I had to hear it.

Ouch!

Michiko Kakutani *hates* Jonathan Franzen's memoir. Yeeeow.

In his new memoir, “The Discomfort Zone,” Mr. Franzen turns his unforgiving eye on himself and succeeds in giving us an odious self-portrait of the artist as a young jackass: petulant, pompous, obsessive, selfish and overwhelmingly self-absorbed. He tells us that as a child he was “a small glutton for attention, forever turning conversations to the subject of myself.” He tells us that he felt put upon by public entreaties to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. (“Why should I pony up for this particular disaster?”) And he tells us that he used to find it difficult to enjoy nature’s beauty: a hike up to a spectacular summit was never enough; instead he would imagine himself “in a movie with this vista in the background and various girls I’d known in high school and college watching the movie and being impressed with me.”

Oh, ugh. This sucks. He's a really good writer. The Corrections was a damn documentary, yo.

But wait. A really unsparing look at one's own bratty insecurity could be really poignant and revealing. But --

While some readers will want to give Mr. Franzen points for being so revealing about himself, there is something oddly preening about his self-inventory of sins, as though he actually reveled in being so disagreeable. And while it doubtless takes a degree of self-absorption for anyone to write a memoir, in the case of this book the author’s self-involvement not only makes for an incredibly annoying portrait, but also funnels the narrative into a dismayingly narrow channel.

I might have to pick this up in a bookstore and give it a quick peruse. He's a wonderful writer, but no one likes a  jackass. Here is fact #2 about your humble correspondent ae: I simply cannot abide people who are disagreeable for the sake of being disagreeable. There is enough strife in the world; please take your drama elsewhere or, preferably, nowhere.

Priorities

God take pity on a clueless and/or craven species. 10 million articles! Imagine me holding up a metaphorical "The End is Near" sign.

Karr Cleared in JonBenet Case -- After 10 Million Articles.

After two weeks of frenzied and often jump-to-conclusions media coverage, Colorado prosecutors on Monday dropped their case against John Mark Karr over the 1996 murder of JonBenet Ramsey.

Prosecutors threw out the case after DNA tests failed to place Karr at the crime scene despite reports he had confessed to killing the six-year-old.

A Google search for "John Mark Karr," who was unknown until this month, came up with 10,800,000 results at the time of latest twist. "John Mark Karr Ramsey" produced 6.7 million returns.

An Associated Press article late Monday referred to how "a hyperactive press went into overdrive, eager to pronounce guilt." It also noted that the AP and other news organizations "placed teams of journalists on Karr's flight from Bangkok to the United States and chronicled his dining experience" of champagne, fried king prawns and roast duck.

This is a child's brutal short-lived life and even more horrible death and these hucksters are talking about king prawns and roast duck. It boggles the mind. Barbarous.

Republicans, What Say You?

Will a non-nutjob Republican please stand up?

ABC News: Harris Clarifies Comments on Religion.

U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris told a religious journal that separation of church and state is "a lie" and God and the nation's founding fathers did not intend the country be "a nation of secular laws." The Republican candidate for U.S. Senate also said that if Christians are not elected, politicians will "legislate sin," including abortion and gay marriage.

Harris made the comments which she clarified Saturday in the Florida Baptist Witness, the weekly journal of the Florida Baptist State Convention, which interviewed political candidates and asked them about religion and their positions on issues.

Separation of church and state is "a lie we have been told," Harris said in the interview, published Thursday, saying separating religion and politics is "wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers."

My favorite trope: God as micromanager!

Supposedly there are some moderate (hmmph) Republicans around. Well, you'd never know it. Could they please wrestle the mic away from the nutjobs for a half-second? Pray tell, where are these many moderate Repugs? Maybe God can help us find them, if he's not too busy winning a JV basketball game somewhere or hexing some nosy biddy per the fevered exhortations of one of his faithful.

Le Sigh.

Shouldn't That Be "Best News Show"?

Woohoo!

Jon Stewart and “The Daily Show” won the Emmy for best variety, music or comedy series. Photo: Mike Blake/Reuters

I HATE Him! Hate.Him.

Oh, well, as long as the Secretary of Defensiveness sees no reason for the soldiers and their families to be mad at him, I guess we'll all just move along, nothing to see here. Sorry to trouble you, sir. It's just our children's lives at stake. It's just a war you lied us into and perpetuated w/ malice of forethought. It's just your craven inability to express the merest sincere or honest sentiment.

 Rumsfeld: 'I'd love to be Santa Claus. I'm not.'

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday praised the work of an Army brigade whose one-year tour in Iraq was extended just as they prepared to return home, and said he saw no reason for the soldiers or their families to be angry at him.

"I don't put it in that context," he said. "These people are all volunteers. They all signed up. They all are there doing what they're doing because they want to do it. They're proud of what they do. They do it very, very well."

The Pentagon chief was meeting privately later yesterday with 172nd Stryker Brigade families at Fort Wainwright in Alaska, the unit's home base. Rumsfeld's aides said they expected as many as 600 people to attend and to have a chance to ask questions.

Reporters who traveled with Rumsfeld from Washington, D.C., were to be excluded from the session.

[snip]

The brigade's tour was extended by up to 120 days, bringing them close to a Christmas return date. Rumsfeld said he would make no promises that the full brigade would be back home by the holidays.

"I'd love to be Santa Claus. I'm not," he said in an interview with reporters during a flight to Fairbanks.

Well, gosh, I'd love for this asshole to be a decent human being, but he's not; I'd love for him not to be an obtuse prick, but he's not; I'd sincerely love for him to stop being a craven prevaricator, but he's not. Shall we go on about the breadth and depth of all which this glib criminal is not? It's a good thing Pluto was just down-graded to dwarf planet status because that leaves more room in our gaping black void of nothingness for this man's multiple failings to fit into.

If it turned out that by December, U.S. commanders in Iraq felt they needed an unscheduled infusion of troops, "our first choice obviously would be to have them be someone other than the people we just extended," Rumsfeld said. "But I'm not going to get into the promises business. That isn't my style."

He's not going to get into the promises business unless, of course, he's telling us exactly where the WMD are -- north, west, east, and south of Tikrit and Baghdad. Lies are his style.

Oh. My. God. Is there ANYONE in this madministration who knows how to speak w/ humility, tact, sensitivity, or respect for his/her audience?

I Blame the Republicans*

Think Progress has an amazing/devastating Katrina Timeline up.

So much negligence and corruption from this madministration. I don't recall having to force myself to look away from so much. I'm not sure one can get over grandmothers dying in wheelchairs on the street, hooded persons w/ electrodes attached to hidden regions forced to stand for hours on boxes, open air pens like dog kennels for humans in Guantanamo, looting of public monies and souring against the public good, lying a world into many wars, leaving a trail of carnage, rubble, and fear behind, somebody else's mess. God. Damn. The worst. The absolute worst that humanity has to offer -- crass, craven, manipulation and destruction w/o conscience.

[*and some Dumbocrats.]