In a post about Nick Gillespie appearing on Pajamas TV, Reason’s Hit & Run blog included a screenshot of Nick that showed the editor looking an awful lot like one of my favorite kiwis. Or am I crazy?
The Alien has switched his endorsement from Obama to McCain! The details are salacious!
Uncovered photos suggest that in a last ditch effort to help her husband’s failing campaign, Cindy McCain seduced and then blackmailed the Alien for his endorsement.
At a recent McCain rally, inside sources say Cindy McCain disappeared with the Alien after sharing several champagnes with the notorious intergalactic lightweight. Ms. McCain’s alien-like good looks and natural blood temperature of 54 degrees Fahrenheit may have proved too much for him to resist as she reportedly put her cyborg husband into sleep mode and worked her charms.
The Onion has also been keeping a close eye on Cindy McCain.
[via X-Ray Spex]
First Amendment defenders always bring up pornography as something loathsome that they must defend on principle. As an advocate of remix culture, I feel similarly about this:
I really have no problem with the appropriation of a famous riff for a new song, but when mainstream acts do it, they usually lack any clever twist. I am buoyed by the knowledge that many years ago, unclever cretins similarly appropriated Rick James’s “Superfreak” and Queen’s “Under Pressure” and in the ensuing years only strengthened their source material’s impact by contrasting it to their own vapid efforts.
Which brings up another point: in twenty plus years, mainstream music doesn’t have any better ideas than this? Hilary Duff isn’t doing anything more interesting than Vanilla Ice did in 1990? Goodbye, mainstream music business. You’re done.
I realize this could have been pulled out of context but it always sends a shiver down my spine when a politico says something that pretty much confirms what I figured they were thinking. Usually, they’re so shielded with spin and marketing and effective PR that you don’t hear them say, “You’re stupid and I’m smart.”
Then there’s this quote from Elizabeth Edwards, who is a health care advisor to Barack Obama, expressing her dislike of McCain’s health care plan:
[she] said McCain’s plan fails in all important areas by leaving the decision-making process up to individuals, who can frequently “make stupid economics decisions.”
So true. The government never makes stupid economic decisions.
At this point, politics is really meta-politics:
I’m probably going to vote for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) this year, and my reason is particularly indefensible. It’s a straightforward case of reverse racism…
And the candidate himself comes quite close to being a complete disaster. Obama has taken positions and even—with the slight peevishness of a man who knows he’s been singled out by destiny and doesn’t see much point in going through the usual channels—documented and supported them. To the extent we can piece together a portrait of the candidate, it’s awful. He’s a strident anti-trader and industrial-era dead-ender, persuaded that protecting decades-gone jobs in the Midwest is a national responsibility. He will try to enact some version of universal health care. On most issues where he’s not worse than Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)—foreign policy, wiretapping, finance—he’s just as bad. He may or may not be friendly with too many anti-American jackholes, but he’s definitely too friendly with jackholes in general. His budget projections are fanciful. Worst of all, for at least the next two years he will almost certainly have the support of the majority party in Congress.
And yet in a dream, in a Nixon-era fog of progressive uplift, I’m ready to vote for him. And I’m pretty sure my reasons for voting for Obama are no dumber than your reasons for voting for whomever you’re voting for.
Yeesh. I know I’m a huckleberry but I’m voting for the guy who best represents my principles.
I was searching for the J. Geils Band’s “Come Back” video on YouTube and found this:
which I think is beautiful and a really interesting concept for a video/audio project. Turns out the creator of the video, gregbarrett9, has several videos like this showing his hacked jukebox simply playing records. It seems totally fun until you read this in his info:
Sorry but I can’t take any requests. Recently there have been copyright issues affecting other people who post records playing and I may find myself retricted to what I can upload in the future.
For Christ’s sake, this artful and free project isn’t hampering any artist’s ability to make money with his or her music and it is most likely exposing tons of new people to the music. (After all, had you heard J. Geils Band’s “Come Back” before playing that video?) It’s such a shame that creators like gregbarrett9 have to worry about this kind of issue.
