arse poetica

Come, Armageddon, Come

Is Murkan culture is sustainable? It perpetuates the lone (male) hero myth, normalizes adolescent obsessions, and at least representationally subjugates all who do not fit in prior categories. Can it possibly bear out in our collective experience that the only honorable brave intelligent dedicated folks among us are lone white guys? It's so tired. I'm done.

"In a new subplot added by the filmmakers, the mayor of Whoville has 96 daughters. He has one son. Guess who gets all his attention? Guess who saves the day? Go ahead, think about it, I'll wait ... Boys get to save the world, and girls get to stand there and say, I knew you could do it. How did they know he could do it? Maybe because they watched every other movie ever made?"

--Peter Sagal, father of three daughters and host of National Public Radio’s “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me,” in a commentary on NPR about the new big-screen adaptation of “Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!”

Peter Sagal is my new BFF of all time.

[via Broadsheet]

It's Just Not Fair

The world could be run by decent people of conscience. It could, right?

He's got my vote (until such time as the Dem nominee--obviously not this man--is chosen when I, again seized w/ disgust and dismay, will vote for said namby-pamby nominee in hopes that RoveCo has not already stolen the "election").

Sob.

I Would Like to Live in a Country Where...

Glenn Beck could only appear on the NYT bestseller list if every other writer on earth took the year, maybe two, off.

Glenn Beck #1 on NYT List.

For the love of God, how is this possible?? That vacuous pretend bully yes man w/ the chip on his shoulder whose fanhood is obviously being questioned (every morning in the mirror, awww)? That guy?? Unbelievable.

That's it, nation. Pistols at dawn.

[photo credit]

The Bush Madministration Hates Itself or Murka or Something

Why is the Bush madministration siding with dirty hippie libruls, I'd like to know.

Press Briefing by Dana Perino.

Q Is it ever reasonable to restrict constitutional freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism?

MS. PERINO: In our opinion, no.

Wow. Really? What's all this then?

U-S-A! U-S-A!

I mean, W-T-F??

Student Arrested, Tasered at Kerry Event.

Ya Think?

I'm sure people have been sexually active in the 80s, 90s, and Oughts, too. What does this headline mean?

Many Found Sexually Active Into the 70s.

Into their 70s, maybe?

Pollution Has Vitamins!

Dogbert sounds suspiciously like Romney and McCain and Guiliani and Thompson ... hmm.

[click to enlarge, then laugh, laugh, laugh]

5-Second Rules

What seems like a childish game is actually a complicated theory governed by many, many important subrules.

That Dropped Doughnut: How Soon, and How Often, Will It Come Back Up?

The beauty of the five-second rule is that it is utterly pliable and that it is not about food so much as it is about yearning and disgust and gastronomic history and evolutionary wiring and the implicit social contract we make when we break (and drop) bread with other human beings.

Following the rule requires understanding its intricacies. "I would never eat a pickle," says Anaiah Grissom, 9, "not even after one second." She also would not eat a hot dog, a burger or a piece of broccoli, because those get dirty really fast. A Chips Ahoy, according to Anaiah, can last up to 15 seconds, and Pop-Tarts, like, never get dirty.

Indoor floors are better than outdoors, but grass is better than carpet.

The tastier the treat, the longer it can be left on the floor. Cake tastes better than cookies, though, and gets germy before cookies. You can almost never use the five-second rule on cake. Parents will, however, employ it on any foodstuff with a high per-pound price. You pick that up and eat it! You know how much that cost?

If you spend your last dollar on something, the germs will give you a break and leave it alone for an extra 10 seconds, or until you can pick it back up.

Ew. I would NEVER eat anything that fell on a public floor. In my germ-averse life, the 5-second rule is downgraded to three seconds. That extra 2 seconds may as well equal rolling one's food in a vacuum cleaner bag that's just been used to hoover up a barn floor.

To while away the hours at the bus stop, my sister and I used to engage in gross-out fantasies wherein we upped the ante on licking various vile substances off a sidewalk. The points of negotiation centered on duration of tongue-to-substance vs. ingestion of said substance and access to Coke and/or an ambulance. Coke loomed large in these negotiations as it's a well-known fact that Coke will remove all traces of anything on Earth. Ambulances? Eh. 911's a Joke.

[Photo: Meret Oppenheim's Surrealist misstresspiece "Object."]

It's Articles Like This That Make Me Want to Jump Off a Cliff

I know! We could do an entire article in the paper of record about how no one can hear your message if everyone's talking about your clothes/hair/cleavage, which just aren't important but they really, really are, because secretly they tell us if you're gay or you're butch, because that is apparently the most important indicator of leadership potential, so we revel in these ever-changing codes and distractions and play at pooh-poohing these LCD "concerns" while perpetuating high drama at the expense of our ever-floundering democracy.Yeah!

Yes, we really need to jawbone this to death, because it is so relevant and meaningful, and adds so much to the discourse. Thank God it takes up valuable column inches in the New.York.Times.

Campaign Chic: Not Too Cool, Never Ever Hot.

“You neither want to be seen as somebody who cares too much about appearance or too little,” said Jay Fielden, the editor of Men’s Vogue. His magazine’s July-August cover shows John Edwards looking model-handsome and yet sufficiently populist. He wears, as Mr. Fielden pointed out, a Carhartt field coat from his own closet, presumably in an attempt to deflect scrutiny away from his wealth, his North Carolina McMansion and his costly grooming habits and toward the antipoverty agenda he pursued last week on a sweep through the South.

Please, baby Jeebus, please. I can't take any more! What, pray tell, is "looking sufficiently populist"? And how, pray tell, does one ensure that a Carhartt coat deflects from one's wealth, and why, pray tell, does that have anything to do w/ anything??

“There’s a strict code that’s kind of understood, but that you know these guys can’t talk about,” said Mr. Fielden, referring to sartorial guidelines whose very existence is subject to Beltway omerta. “If you get into a situation like McCain did, it ends up seeming like you’re being dressed by your mother. It’s not very macho.”

What "situation" did McCain get in? The completely manufactured one about "gay sweaters"?

Please, baby Jeebus, please, the Repugnicans have ruined our country. They've lied us into wars, looted the treasury, rendered entire words meaningless, lied, cheated, and stealed in every possible aspect of governing, engaged in an unprecedented and anti-Constitutional powergrab, and created a foreign policy based on torturing anyone who gets in our way. Why in heaven's name would "macho" be a positive consideration?

So, when a candidate appears to be dressed by others, immediately that candidate is interpreted “as gay or effeminate or not butch enough to be president,” Professor Miller said.

::ae falls in a heap weeping::

There's more (and worse), but I just don't have it in me to go on.

Censure is Not Enough

Censure? Censure?? I love ya, Russ, but is this the best that you Dem assholes can muster, because it is not near enough.

Sen. Feingold Proposes Censuring Bush.

Liberal Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold said Sunday he wants Congress to censure President Bush for his management of the Iraq war and his "assault" against the Constitution.

But Feingold's own party leader in the Senate showed little interest in the idea. An attempt in 2006 by Feingold to censure Bush over the warrantless spying program attracted only three co-sponsors.

Not censure, IMPEACH.

Short of that, why not apply the newly gentler-kindler CIA "interrogation" tactics to these criminals?