Mary Matalin's Bitch

Part of my job is to be a personal assistant to my boss and his family, so I got a kick out of Jen Balderama's recounting of the conversations she couldn't help but overhear on a northbound (I'm guessing) NJ Transit train.

Silly Sites o' the Day

RepubliCon fever continues, with some takes on the Swift Boat propagandists - Pleasure Boat Captains for Truth (via Edward at Obsidian Wings) and Galilean Citizens for the Truth (via Michael at Musing's Musings).

Update the First: Frank Paynter points to another parody, the Swift Yacht Vets for Bush.

Update the Second: And via Scaramouche, we now have Cheerleaders for Truth. This is great, someone should keep a list of all the parodies. I volunteer; send me the URLs for the Swift Truth parody sites you've found, and I'll list 'em all on Labor Day.

Attention Anti-RNC Bloggers

Hey, if any of you are in NYC for RepubliCon and want to get the heck out of Manhattan for an evening, you could do worse than to consider the Riverdale Riggs Residence. Only a half hour away by "1" or "9" train, and I'll even pick you up at the Staples or Stop & Shop parking lot on Broadway provided it's after 6 PM. We have take-away menus from all different kinds of restaurants, we have cable and Internet access so you can blog away to your heart's content, and besides, I want to meet some of you! E-mail me if interested. Offer void if prohibited by Robin. :) I'm staying the hell away from Manhattan this week.

Silly Site o' the Day

Lots of people have Bush on the brain this week, what with RepubliCon and all. Good time to clean out my Bush-related Silly Site file. Here's a Bush garden gnome, via Michael at Musing's Musings.

Blogchicks, Part Trois

[Parts One and Two were done a couple years ago.]

Normally, people with over 350 Bloglines subscriptions (and who also try to regularly read other blogs that don't have a working RSS feed) wouldn't be looking to add to that hefty a blogroll, but sometimes I just can't help myself. This past Thursday was Women's Equality Day - even the White House gave it lip service - and a lot of feminist bloggers talked about it but I was in the middle of a particularly difficult work week so I didn't. This left me a bit guilt-ridden so I made it a point to catch up on feminist blogs and seek out new ones, and so I was led to Shaula Evans' blog, tsuredzuregusa, where she had a great post about The Female Loop (as Roxanne is fond of noting, the subject of progressive female bloggers comes up every few months) which led me to some other great blogs. I've therefore blogrolled Andrea Eastman's Shameless Agitator (although that seems to have a feed problem too), Carla and Kevin's Preemptive Karma (note that Carla has also created the Progressive Feminist Web Ring, which I've also joined and placed on my sidebar), Cathie from Canada, Laura Rozen's War and Piece (on the strength of her work on the Washington Monthly article mentioned below), and group blogs C101 and des femmes. Now I have to go through my "Blogs in Waiting" list and see which ones I can move up...

Nogoodniks, Part 2

The best thing so far about this must-read article by Josh Marshall, Laura Rozen and Paul Glastris is the way they take back the word "shadowy" right there, in the first sentence of the second paragraph, to point the finger at the people in power who actually are shadowy (as in, clandestine and secretive and back-channel and probably law-breaking) rather than the people whom the administration is trying to attack using that word (who are fairly above-board for the most part). Looks like the real Reagan legacy is alive and well...

Silly Site o' the Day

Ahh, nothing like the feeling of having finished reading my Bloglines blog subscriptions, all 300+ of you wonderful people! Dang, y'all can write. Discovered and blogrolled a few new feminist bloggers and plan to talk about that more tomorrow, but for now, to bed. In the meantime anyone up during this hour, or reading this once you wake up on the Actual Sunday Morning, can go Build Your Own Bush, in preparation for whatever happens these next few days... [Got that one via TBogg, to whom all due condolences are conveyed.]

Nogoodniks

The Likudniks like to pretend that they represent American Jewry, but they do not. And they like to suggest that objecting to their policies is tantamount to anti-Semitism, which is sort of like suggesting that if you don't like Chile's former dictator Pinochet, you are bigotted against Latinos...
US Likud backers in the Defense Department who had the Iraqi army dissolved as soon as Saddam was overthrown. This step threw Iraq into chaos and led to the deaths of nearly a thousand US servicemen so far, since an Iraq without an army would inevitably depend on the US military. But with the Iraqi army gone, and with Egypt and Jordan neutralized, Syria was left the only country anywhere near Israel that could make active trouble for Sharon if he completely screwed over the Palestinians. And Syria was now weak and isolated. So Sharon has had a free hand in his expansionist aggression. And, because the US public has been preoccupied with Iraq, the Likud could pursue its annexation of West Bank land and its expropriation of even more Palestinians without anyone over here even noticing. It is the best of all possible worlds for the heirs of Ze'ev Jabotinsky.
The Likud policies of reversing Oslo and stealing people's land and making their lives hell has produced enormous amounts of terrorism against Israel, and the Likudniks have cleverly turned that to their political advantage. Aggression and annexation is necessary, they argue, because there is terrorism. Some of them now openly speak of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians, using the same argument...
The drawback for the US in all this is that US government backing for Sharon's odious policies makes it hated in the Muslim world.

All from Juan Cole's must-read post on the FBI's investigation of the OSP (and the equally odious AIPAC) for spying for Israel.

Silly Site o' the Day

Gear up for the upcoming RepubliCon with the Billionaires for Bush! This looks like the most fun group to hang out with since Ladies Against Women...

"There are no fingers to be pointed"

Oh, I can think of a few. It's times like this when I absolutely abhor some American Olympians' sense of entitlement, only egged on by the insipid presenters and fawning media. More and more, the grace of their competition from other countries just shows them up every time. (On the other hand, I was rooting hard for her because her aunt is a former coworker of mine, which is the closest degree of separation I've ever had from an Olympic athlete...)

Celeblogs

Two new celebrity blogs worth checking out - Zach Branff's Garden State Blog and Quentin Tarantino's Diary. To tell you the truth I haven't really seen the work of either gentleman (although I know who they are) but that's not how I judge a good celeblog anyway.

Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

Kitty is served!

We don't have a dining room table (or even a dining room, for that matter) so we eat in the living room off standing trays, of which Amy becomes quite fond when she likes the smell of the food. Time to wash that tray again, methinks...

Ad Moc

Just in time for my morning commute, Avedon Carol "reviews" some of the commercials she hears on the streaming feed of Air America Radio to which she listens. I'd be curious to see what she thinks of one of the newer ones for a law firm that couldn't pander to the station's target audience more if it held up a raised fist and screamed "Off the pigs!" (Or have I just dated myself?)

Silly Site o' the Day

Via Zed at MemeMachineGo, since it's shaping up to be a dreary and cloudy day 'round these parts, here are some good Discordian games to lighten things up.

Quote of the Day

Okay, the day was Monday but I'm still behind in my blog reading. Anyway, it's from Mark Kleiman, who pretty much sums up the whole Swift Boat GOP game as far as I'm concerned. Runner-up is this headline from Max Sawicky from yesterday about the Republican defense of Rumsfeld in light of the Abu Ghraib report.

Obligatory Canadian Comics Content

Mark Morford waxes eloquent about his precious Spider-Man comic. As first glance it perpetuates the stereotype of how most non-fans view old comics as first and foremost commodities, but I think he redeems himself quite nicely.

Silly Site o' the Day

Time for some icky female stuff, as Kathy Pearlman leads us to Dittie's Tampon Bowlling game. I'm afraid I'm hooking a little to the left today...

Tale of a Kidnapped Journalist

Gripping stuff as usual from Chris Albritton, currently in Najaf.

Silly Site o' the Day

Via Kevin Hayden in e-mail, it's the cool Flash animation site of Julian Mulvey.

Sudan: Day of Conscience

Via e-mail from eRobin: "The latest Passion of the Present project is to hold a Day of Conscience this Wednesday, August 25. Please talk it up. Link to the Day of Conscience site, where people can get suggestions for activities that range from very simple (donating money to relief groups, wearing a green ribbon and passing out as many as you can to friends) to the more complicated (vigils).Thanks!" eRobin suggests we post about Dafur tomorrow but I'm woefully ignorant of much beyond "it's a genocidal horror" so I'm going to spend as much of the day as I can educating myself. If you have a bit of green cloth to put together a ribbon for tomorrow, and people want to know what it's about, you can make copies of this Word document to hand out. Here's another Word document on actions taking place around the country, courtesy of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, but there are no NY events listed. (Although there has to be something going on around these parts, as the UJA Federation has signed on as well.) And here's the online donation page.

Behold the Power of Cheesy Ideas

Coming to a comic shop near you, sooner or later - Giant Chicken Robot. Don't say I didn't warn you, Glovefox, this is the sort of thing that happens when you ring me from England... (Yes, I know, you can't get into Glovefox's blog unless you know the Secret Password, so if any regular readers leave your e-mail address in the comment section I'll encourage her to pass it along...)

Silly Site o' the Day

Via Rana at Frogs and Ravens, a bunch of sick Italian animators capture the spirit of the Olympics in their own inimitable fashion.

And That's The Way He Saw It

Walter Cronkite penned his final syndicated column yesterday. Here's the site where you can find all of them; it was on my sidebar but I've now retired it.

Silly Site o' the Day

Well, I slacked off yesterday, didn't spend a lot of time on the computer (and none on my ironing), so once again I've fallen behind in blog reading. Wonder how much worse it'll get when all these folks are back from vacation? :) Hanan Levin says "This item [displaying all of George W. Bush's medals] will be picked up tomorrow by 51% of bloggers in America, me predict," so who am I to buck a trend?

2004 Olympics Drinking/Toking Game

Because somebody had to do it. But first, these messages:

Via Augie DeBlieck, the IOC has banned Olympic athletes and their support personnel from blogging during the games, except those prescient enough to have started their blogs beforehand. Also, "To protect lucrative broadcast contracts, athletes and other participants are also prohibited from posting any video, audio or still photos they take themselves, even after the games, unless they get permission ahead of time." No wonder mainstream media coverage is getting shittier and shittier, they're determined to have a lock on what we can and cannot see and hear. Fortunately, some mainstream places still produce interesting tidbits, like the Beeb's report yesterday on doping (I didn't even know 11 atheletes were booted from Sydney four years ago; I think the Athens games are up to 10 so far). And the Olympics aren't the only place where heroic athletes can be found; the same broadcast reported on Bula Chowdhury's amazing feat of becoming the first woman in the world to swim across seven channels and the British fellow who ran 50 miles a day for two months to win the 3,100-mile ultra-marathon.

Now, to the list so far. Feel free to substitute your drug of choice. I'm mostly concentrating on the NBC networks' coverage (including ads) rather than the athletes themselves, but I'm also staying away from obvious ones like "sip/toke every time a commentator says something politically stupid" because they just do it too often and that kind of indulgence might be a bit much. I'll be adding to this as I think of things or get suggestions:

Sip/toke every time a volleyball team does a group hug when they haven't even factored into the play (i.e., when the other team botches the serve).

Gulp/drag deeply every time that horrid Bush campaign ad comes on, which is still playing even over the objections of the Iraqi soccer team and the USOC. You'll need to. "Free nations," my ass; get the hell out of there then tell me whether they're "free." Arrogant SOBs.

Sip/toke every time a (usually US) silver or bronze medalist, the second or third best athlete in the world at that particular moment, is portrayed as though they've lost. Gold medals aren't a de facto US entitlement. Similarly, sip/toke every time a commentator makes a lame excuse for an American not winning the gold; gulp/drag deeply if the excuse has something to do with a judge. Buncha bad-sportsmanship whiners.

Sip/toke every time a commentator complains about rules not being favorable to a US team, as with softball. So what you're saying is, if the Yankees and Boston meet 12 times in the regular season and the Yanks win 11 out of those 12, but Boston wins the wild card spot, and they beat the Yanks in the playoffs, it's not fair? 'Cause that's the same exact deal going here. Teams get into the finals based on their overall record against all competitors, you xenophobic morons, not how many times they're beaten by Us. Gulp/drag deeply if the same commentator completely reverses this opinion once he/she is talking about US chances for a medal despite repeated losses (as with basketball).

Sip/toke every time a short race is replayed repeatedly from multiple camera angles. I think I counted a dozen showings of a women's sprint yesterday.

Sip/toke at every historical inaccuracy passed on as though it were true. Gulp/drag deeply any time an "in depth" report begins with a sentence like, "The theory of evolution is controversial." (This actually happened.)

Per eRobin Stelly in the comments, sip/toke every time a commentator tries to explain away poor attendance, or contradicts what you can clearly see or hear for yourself (i.e., the roar of the mostly-silent crowd or "energy" in a half-filled room).

Sip/toke every time a meaningless stat is intoned as though it had any significance whatsoever. The only low point in the amazing and wonderful coverage of the women's marathon was when one of the commentators started talking about the weight of the running shoes.

Speaking of which, raise your glass/pipe and salute every instance where actual interesting historical stuff about Greece is passed on; same for actual inspiring (not tear-jerking) stories about athletes. Extra sip/toke if those athletes aren't American. Two sips/tokes if a non-American wins and is interviewed by NBC.

More to come. Incidentally, I've decided that women's trampoline is my new favorite sport of the moment. The costumes are lovely, the athletes well-toned, and the athletics superb. Of course, I still believe that beach volleyball should be buried up to its neck.

Maintenance Notes

I've written to Blogger to find out how I can scootch down the template a bit so you can see the top again. I've also added retailer Brian Hibbs and DC senior editor (for collected editions) Bob Greenberger to the Kultcha Guys list. Now that we're at the point where we can actually think about reshelving our 20,000+ comics, I'm trying to get back into that aspect of my blogging life. I just sorted our July/August DC comp box and marked off the comics in the biweekly haul we get from Midtown, so that brings my reading pile back up to two solid boxes, but hey, I'm making progress! My most recent marathon reading has been Jane's World; Paige Braddock kinda has a Doonesbury-ish style (the older strips drawn entirely by Trudeau, not the more recent ones) with an Alison Bechdel sensibility, but it's not really politically-oriented as much as slice-of-life stuff with some cool fantasy elements thrown in. And Robin and I have two social-event New York comic conventions coming up in September, the Big Apple Con (pending acceptance; we're all set for their National Expo in November but I only just asked about the September one) and Ithacon, one of my favorites 'cause I get to drive through the Catskills at the height of fall foliage season and hang out with Roger Stern and Carmela Merlo whom I never see often enough. So come the autumn I expect the obligatory comics content portion of this blog to increase a bit more.

Silly Site o' the Day

Okay, I'm disappointed. I wanted to link to someplace that had a 2004 Olympics drinking/toking game, but nobody seems to have come up with one yet, so I suppose it's up to me. Must get my list together, as I only have about 3 or 4 so far, but look for it later on. Meanwhile, via Trevor, have some fun with Lightness Perception and Lightness Illusions.

Shelving, Round Two - A Pictorial

Because I need something to fill up the space so my sidebar doesn't stretch beyond the content... Okay, I mentioned the paperbacks, DVDs, videos and records were already done:

That's in the part of the living room we face as we sit in our recliners. Today I unpacked the rest of the boxes marked Graphic Novels and shelved them behind the chairs at the opposite end of the living room:

We left some empty space, on purpose, as we still have unopened boxes marked Comics and a few of those may have graphic novels in them as well. We also chose not to shelve any of the stuff still stored in magazine boxes:

That's the only bit in the living room I still don't care for, but we're not sure where we're going to put them yet. (There are some more magazines that still need to be taken out of moving boxes and stored properly in boxes like these, so figure they'll total around 20 in all.) Next step is to tackle the 50+ comics boxes and mounds of loose comics in the library, of which this is a small sampling:

Big job, but I'm done for this weekend; tomorrow is ironing day, if my muscles will let me, in addition to blog-catch-up-day-but-you've-heard-that-before...

Absenteeism Revisited

Here's another one to add to the list of shenanigans surrounding Florida absentee ballots: Andante has been reading The Daily Kos more often than I've had a chance to, and Kos contributor murfmom raised a point about mailing her Dade County ballot: "The clerks at my local post office confirmed my suspicion that extra postage is necessary for delivery. You need $0.49 of postage, not a $0.37 stamp as printed in the official instructions!!!" Talk about nickel-and-diming voters to death! This could mean a whole bunch of ballots will never make it to their destinations. Or maybe just the ones from the elderly black voters' homes and not the ones from the Republicans targeted by the flyers...

Silly Site o' the Day

I said yesterday I was aiming to catch up on blog reading. I shall make no such jinx-inducing prediction today, only note that it's the weekend and I have no specific plans so anything's possible. Meantime, I'm cannibalizing Hanan Levin again for this site, Middle East Gawker, a parody of you-know-where.

Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

Hey, you guys, it's getting time to do the laundry...
Amy loves our new hamper.

On Speaking Too Soon

So much for bloggy plans. I just spent a hellacious 6+ hours mostly tied to the phone trying all sorts of machinations to get reasonably-priced tickets for a one-way international flight with only a 2-day window (meaning none of the discount sites could get me tickets so I had to go directly to the airlines which wouldn't allow me to purchase by phone, etc. etc.) and unable to do much else, even eat. So naturally an errand for my boss' wife fell through the cracks because I couldn't leave my desk to perform it and I didn't send an e-mail at the time to cover my patootie and so she came into the office and yelled at me. Which I didn't need considering the hoops through which I'd been jumping and so my response to her was all wrong and disproportionate because I was so tired and aggravated and I need to learn how to take deep breaths from now on because I know that however hard I work there is always a strong chance, at any given moment, that I will suddenly find myself in this sort of situation where I will lose my temper and then possibly my job. Which in a better economy wouldn't be a bad thing, but we don't have one of those at the moment. Sorry for babbling. God I'm hungry. Maybe someday my coworkers will ask me if I want anything when they all order lunch (on which there's a $10+ minimum for delivery).

Silly Site o' the Day

Good morning! My boss is in Boston, the COO is taking a vacation day, it's too darn hot and humid to go anywhere, and I'm looking forward to a day of actually catching up on my blog reading! Yes, I know I've said that before, but y'all write a lot. :) Via Hanan Levin, and because it's Friday, the Cat's in the Kettle - hope I didn't spoil your breakfast! Me, I've already eaten.

Silly Site o' the Day

Ah, I was wondering why I couldn't delete the "-->" from the top of my page; it indicated Blogger was about to put a nifty search engine atop my template. Great! I never could figure out the hang of putting the Google thing on my sidebar and making it work correctly. Now I just have to figure out how to lower the top of the template a bit so it doesn't get cut off... Oh, by the way, "(Sir) Paul is Dead" still proves a giggle-worthy conspiracy theory after all these years.

Buttonholed

Via Tom Tomorrow, the for-profit tourist organization NYC & Company will be distributing Peaceful Political Activist buttons that will entitle the wearer to all sorts of nifty discounts during the RepubliCon, and make it ever so much easier for the cops (or the FBI, thanks Brooke!) to spot dissenters! Hey, can I get a yellow Jewish star armband and a t-shirt with a big ol' target painted on to go with that?

Under the Table

Hey cool, I didn't even realize I was on the list of 2004 Underbloggers (aka bloggers that Darren Rowse at Livingroom - who's also running an Olympics blog - and others thought were deserving of wider recognition) . Darren's got a good collection of tips on how to increase one's readership, but too many of them seem to be related to ads and making money, which I think is kinda silly for anyone who considers blogging a hobby rather than a business, but maybe for him it's more the latter. My tried-and-true tip is, if you're interesting enough and you post often enough (i.e., new content daily) folks will come 'round, and even with my truncated summer posting I'm still getting almost as many daily hits as I had hexaweekly INSIDE JOKE readers, all without spending one single cent (I'd lose at least $200 every six weeks publishing and mailing IJ in the '80s!). It's all dependent on one's definition of success and one's personal goals; mine were pretty much met within the first six months or so of starting this blog, which makes blogging-for-fun-and-hobby even more rewarding!

Silly Site o' the Day

Now that I'm almost caught up again in my blog-reading, I expect to start writing a little more myself (although there are no plans to resurrect Blogway Blabby, not that TAS seems to miss her) provided Blogger will let me publish. (I've noticed it's been on-and-off this week.) Meanwhile, via Budgie, how about some harmonizing horsies? (Click on 'em to make 'em "sing"...)

Too, Too Funny

Okay, it's not that the guy's wearing a tutu and clown shoes that cracks me up. It's that he's wearing a tutu and clown shoes and "stayed in the pool for several minutes Monday before officials realized he was not supposed to be there and pulled him out of the water." One hopes they're a little swifter on the uptake when it comes to, oh, I dunno, judging the athletes? Apparently the stunt was all for the love of... capitalism (and it's not the first time the online casino has done this).

One More Example...

...of why I'm going straight to Hell. Express elevator. I just heard a commercial on Air America about a very serious matter, thyroid cancer, and the rock star who survived it talking about how he fortunately had it detected early enough to save his voice. And all I could think was, are you sure? 'Cause your voice has always sounded scratchy and horrid to me...

Budgie Birthday

Happy birthday to Lee "Budgie" Barnett, one of my three favorite British Jews. Congrats on hitting the Big Four-Oh, Budgie! In your honor, I direct folks to John Lennon's "The Fat Budgie" (which unfortunately isn't broken out into proper stanzas the way it is in the book).

Silly Site o' the Day

Via Hanan Levin, Joel Veitch has a new animation out on Rather Good. Sounds like the list of side effects you hear on just about every pharmaceutical commercial nowadays.

Monday Barry Blogging

Just came back from a delightful evening spent with Barry Deutsch, aka Ampersand, proprietor of Alas, A Blog and acquaintance of some years past, when all we had was e-mail and rac*. Barry was in town visiting friends and appearing on Air America's Majority Report program, debating Megan McArdle about the wage gap (here's Barry's wage gap series on Alas). As he hadn't called at the appointed time, we weren't sure we'd meet up when we hopped the express bus down to the City, but we figured we'd wait until about 8 or so when the MR segment was over, and if we still hadn't gotten a peep we'd find a sushi restaurant in the vicinity of of Toity-Toid and Toid, where the stop was for the return trip.

We were just about to head into Ooka when my cell phone rang; Barry hadn't been able to get away until just then. I said, "You're in luck, we're only a couple blocks away and we haven't eaten yet." On our way to meet him I grabbed a menu from Grand Sichuan NY in the hopes that Chinese cuisine would be okay, which it was, and we had a lovely dinner, with Barry and Robin talking shop (insert mandatory plug for both Hereville, Barry's delightful comic strip, and Bloodhound, Robin's current inking assignment) and just general reminiscing.

Barry walked us back to the bus stop, where Robin snapped a picture with our cute new digital camera (yes, that's the Empire State Building in the background):

Mayhap I shouldn't have had the extremely spicy garlic sauce with my steamed chicken, beef, pork and tofu dish, then my hair wouldn't have been so matted down.

Then another relaxing ride back home via Third Avenue and whizzing up the Harlem River Drive, gorgeous at night (particularly passing the lights of Yankee Stadium across the river), and here you find me, happy and well-fed and grinning ear-to-ear at having gotten together with a good friend and fellow blogger. Now that's what I call a social life!

Absenteeism

So, has anyone yet made the connection that this may be happening because of this? After all, if you send out notices encouraging people to vote by absentee ballot because they shouldn't oughta trust those machines winky winky, you have to make sure only the right people vote that way.

Random Olympic Observations

Beach volleyball is dumb, okay? Not just 'cause you already have a perfectly good Olympic sport in "indoor volleyball" but because the women have to wear bikinis to play (and thus leave themselves open to injuries which might be prevented by wearing more clothing) while the men play in baggy tops and loose shorts. If we want to ogle bodies in addition to skill and performance, that's what the swimming and gymnastics competitions are for. (Although I wish the cameras wouldn't slow-pan up the girls' bodies during the latter, it's sort of soft-porn creepy. And again, something I didn't see done with the male athletes.)

I had no idea that NBC owned USA and Bravo. But hey, at least with stuff being shown on five channels that I actually receive (6 including Telemundo) I can watch sports other than basketball - and occasionally competitions that don't even involve Americans!

Speaking of which, judging by the superficial and banal TV coverage, Americans are sore winners and sore losers. When "we" win, it's in-your-face destiny; when we lose, there's something amiss with the rules or there's some excuse why we didn't come in first. And honestly, even if we're second and third we still medal, I'd really prefer to hear a whole lot more of "it's amazing just to make the Olympic team, and there's no shame in not bringing home the gold" and a lot less of "oh no, now he can't break Mark Spitz's record of umpteen golds!" (Although some telecasters are getting better at saying things like "everyone here is so good, lots of different people can medal," they usually only do that when it's become clear an American isn't going to win the particular race they're calling.)

The most egregious example of American whining was the gymnastics yesterday; apparently a judge changed some rule right before the competition, "forcing" two American guys to alter high bar routines they'd been practicing for months because (I think) they wouldn't give them the degree of difficulty they wanted in order to "in your face" the competition. So they screwed up on their new routines, and of course how could that be their fault? But when one of the Chinese girls changed her uneven parallels routine on the spot and performed perfectly, "how could she do that?" It had to be impossible because "we" couldn't do it!

Hey, did you know the Aussies give their famous swimmers funny nicknames? Something we apparently never do in this country.

More as I think of it.

Update: Via Skippy, the Athens Daily blog follows the Olympics from the POV of folks in the city itself. Thanks to blogger Cameron for correcting my misperception in our comments section about the ticket prices.

Silly Site o' the Day

Geez, almost noon already! Where has the time gone today? I'm still here, I'm just busy catching up on other blogs and doing stuff for my boss and his wife, so not a lot of free time to blog (although I'll be doing a few Olympics-related posts this week, no doubt). Via Budgie, what's your cyborg name? Mine's "E.L.A.Y.N.E.: Electronic Lifeform Assembled for Yelling and Nocturnal Exploration," although I don't yell so much as whine loudly, and last night's explorations involved looking for somewhat elusive sleep...

Recommended Reading

Via Firesign chat friend Brian Converse, A War in Nine Stanzas by Calvin Trillin.

Silly Site o' the Day

Still AFK a lot, watching the Olympics and gradually unpacking our graphic novels for shelving and catching up on my local paper. Looks like Charley completely bypassed this area, but the oppressive humidity and cloudiness got to us anyway; I can't seem to shake the sleep out this morning. I'm even more behind in blog reading, but I can't summon up the strength to care so, armed with the knowledge that I'll eventually catch up like I always do, I go back to watching Greece, "where burning Sappho stroked the Wine-Dark sea, in the temple by the moonlight, wa-de-do-dah..." and I'll leave you, via Augie DeBlieck, with this timeline of past Olympic mascots.

Silly Site o' the Day

There's no call for bagpipes! Oh no wait, there is. In fact, there are two piping competitions going on simultaneously today. Just kill me now.

Somewhat-Real-Time Olympic Opening Ceremony Blogging

No choice in this country but to watch it via Katie and MattBob. They said something about stylized heads during the opening drama (which I loooved, it was so graceful and languid!) and I thought they were talking about themselves.

The fire-turning-into-Olympic-rings was neato. Check it out, from the Athens 2004 page:

The parade of plastic people was also very cool. Why wasn't ATHOC president Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki among them? (Sorry, cheap shot, she's an otherwise attractive woman and I admire anyone whose surname is harder to handle than Wechsler-Chaput, but I think she'd project her warmth much better without such a tightened face.)

Best outfits: Brazil, Germany and Tajikistan; runners-up Kazakstan, Kenya, Morocco, Mexico, Poland and Togo.

Best accessory: The French delegation's two-sided flags, with the French flag on one side and the Greek on the other.

How faked was that applause during the US delegation's entrance? As Robin put it, "they pumped up the Macy's." On the other hand, the (much louder) cheers with which the crowd greeted the Iraqis sounded genuine. Spain, Cuba and Palestine all received terrific hands when they entered. I think the Greeks were more polite to the Turks than to Israel, which I thought got a tepid reception - moments after the Stylized Heads chirruped about how all the countries were getting the same warm welcome.

(Kinda hypocritical considering NBC certainly didn't give equivalent time to every country. Hey folks, we know these ceremonies actually happened hours ago and are on tape, why not see if you can actually fit all the countries in? I know you have to truncate a bit, but the way you've chosen to do it seems rather dismissive and, I dunno, provincial.)

Israel's entrance also allowed the SH's to pontificate again about security (did you know Israel gets extra?), which I thought they'd laid to rest after bringing it up twice, once each during the first two Arab countries' entrances.

Seeing the Korean athletes marching together always chokes me up.

Hey, it's Castro's birthday today, who knew? The SH's actually paired that with the Friday-the-13th thing to try to cement the association in our minds of, I dunno, Fidel with bad luck. They don't seem to get that not everyone in the world has the Friday-the-13th superstition.

I wish the Bob-blehead would stop the pithy "this country is associated with this cultural thing we figure Americans know about" commentary. Morocco comes on, you have to mention the movie Casablanca. Malta, there's the "joke" about the Falcon. What's with the Bogie fixation? And while I can understand telling Americans about which countries some familiar atheletes hail from, my jaw dropped at his comment about mentioning Mariano Rivera when the Panamanians came out because it sounded better than talking about Noriega. Guess he forgot about the Canal, or has that become too culturally obscure for us now?

Why did the jackets on the Romanian women's costumes have the design of half a target on each side? Lantzman, is there something I should know? And those white Russian hats? Look good on some, not so good on others. Relieved to see that so far I've noticed only the US and Canadian delegations shilling for Roots, and the clothing is really blah too.

Bob actually got a lot of truth out about Saudi Arabia during their delegation's entrance. I'm glad he's making something of a note about how many women are and aren't in some of these countries' delegations. Zero in the Saudis', big surprise. And you know what? It's something of an achievement to have women marching in these Olympic delegations; it'll be even more of one when they can do things like vote, drive, move about unescorted...

A little creepy how Katie made sure to emphasize the word Arab when discussing the genocide in Sudan, strengthening that "Arab = evil" association even though I can think of a lot of non-Arab peoples who have also practiced genocide in recent decades.

The Greek guys kissing the cameras - cute or just way too goofy? Jury's still out on that one...

As we head into the home stretch, here's your Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum):

It's all Greek to Datsa.

Reminder to Robin

It's Friday. Fridays are Mulberry days. Looks like we've got about five episodes of Series 2 to go. Except, never mind, we're not getting an episode this week because the PBS station that shows it is in Pledge Drive Hell. No word on the link about the strange Dick York-Dick Sargent thing they had going with Mary Healey-to-Lill Roughly, but don't read the last paragraph of this page if you don't want to know how it ends, because you will be severely disappointed.

Passings

RIP Julia Child. She gave this amateur cook many hours of viewing pleasure; bon appétit in the afterlife... And speaking of passings, it's well worth your time to read a stirring and poignant tribute by Arianna Huffington to her friend and mentor Bernard Levin.

Silly Site o' the Day

Paraskevidekatriaphobia or friggatriskaidekaphobia. Silly words all by themselves! "Superstition about Friday the 13th may well be the number one superstition in America today." Here's more about how this phobia works. Links via Google, which has a really cool graphic up today:

Let's hope they're lucky in Athens tonight! Today is also Budgie's second blogiversary; did you know he's doing a new column up at the Pulse entitled "Going Cheep"? Well, he does; happy blogiversary, Lee!

Another Reason Randi is My Goddess

I'm so helplessly behind in blog reading, I'm more grateful than ever that I can tune into Randi Rhodes and get scoops like the resignation of NJ gov Jim McGreevey; she carried his speech live, I believe (I tuned in a few minutes into it), and the revelation that he was gay seemed to be something of a surprise, but I think he resigned more because he had an extramarital affair and was closeted for so long (and thus felt he was being less than honest with both his family and his constituents) than because he's gay per se. The other thing I just found via Randi's show, so here are some fun and sensitive quotes for you:

"I believe I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side and lives up to American values in history." - John Kerry

"America has been in too many wars for any of our wishes, but not a one of them was won by being sensitive." - Dick Cheney

"Precisely because America is powerful, we must be sensitive about expressing our power and influence." - George W. Bush

The last two quotes were taken from the White House press release website. Guess the left hand didn't tell the right hand didn't tell its puppet what it was doing...

8/13 Update: Naturally, the Daily Show goes one better on this, running not only the footage with the first two quotes but running another "sensitive" quote from Bush made the day after Kerry's speech, to the same group. Now that's showbiz!

Silly Site o' the Day

Between my boss being back in the office (he actually brought me back a lovely present, a pair of Majorca pearl earrings, supposedly the finest imitation pearls in the world) and the next couple evenings dedicated to unpacking and shelving our graphic novels, blogging continues to be light. Hey, could be worse, I could be on vacation like half the blogosphere... Still maddeningly behind in blog reading, so my modest goal for today is to catch up with Avedon "No RSS Feed Yet" Carol, who found this little gem; seems the Son Also Rises...

National Scaredy-Cat Month

Great post by Bob Harris on This Modern World about the administration's amazingly cynical ploy to make this September "National Preparedness Month." Time to prepare for more lies capped off with another stolen election, no doubt.

Now, I think this crap deserves as much mockery as we can summon up for it. And it occurs to me that what we really need here is a NPM Theme Song. So I'd like to officially and herewith call for appropriate song parodies, to the tune of Tom Lehrer's "National Brotherhood Week," to be e-mailed to me, and I promise to post whatever I get.

Ozophilia

I filled my bedroom bookcase over last weekend, and as we have company coming this weekend I imagine I'll spend much of the next few evenings unpacking and stocking the living room cases. Anyway, I put all of our hardcovers on the lower two shelves of this little black beauty, which I've had for about 20 years now, and I thought it was appropriate to also put my "bedtime story" reading (fairy tales and myths, folk tales, other so-called "children's books") near where I sleep. Here are portions of the top two shelves:

Laura probably thinks I'm an amateur compared to her and Eric, and she's probably right. (By the way, that's my first posted picture taken with my new digital camera. I'm told the original is about 16 times as large...) Not shown: my Harry Potter books on the right side of the top shelf (the British paperback versions of course and I still need #5), and you can just barely make out the Lang multicolored Fairy Books on the second shelf.

Ooh, Scary, Boys and Girls!...

My boss' plane is due to touch down at JFK in less than half an hour. About ten minutes ago the skies grew pitch-dark then the heavens opened up, rain sheeting down. Then came the lightning and thunder. Who can read blogs at a time like this? It's a tremendous light show from my small office's huge windows. The Controller (whose office faces east) and I (southern-facing) keep trading "ooh"s and "ahhs" every time we see a lightning strike. So far I've seen two jagged streaks less than a mile away; one looked like it was right across the street from here. I just hope it calms down by the time I have to drive home...

Silly Site o' the Day

Via our own comments section, Joshua Salik directs us to his site, Salik Games; lots of stuff to explore there, but the games appear to be downloadable instead of online ones, so take the usual precautions.

Silly Site o' the Day

Maybe it's the time of year, maybe it's the time of man... wait a minute? didn't I say that on the other side of the record? Well, in any case, our DSL was down this morning at home, and I've been pretty busy at work what with my boss' imminent return, so I'm not even close to getting caught up on my blog reading, much less my blog writing. LBA (Light Blogging Ahead), as they say. It's enough to make you go "Argh!" like a pirate! Via Terri at Frogblog, here's a Pirate Name Generator quiz. Mine is Calico Anne Rackham; if I were more into pirates I might know what this means.

Silly Site o' the Day

The other week Robin found these cool Dismount games.

Silly Site o' the Day

Still AFK most of the weekend, and loving it. It's a gorgeous weekend here in NYC and lower Westchester County, and our windows have been open and the AC off the entire time. After finally getting my new car inspected yesterday (it was purchased in NJ so I needed the $10 NY "you're okay but next year it'll cost you $37" sticker), we drove up to Strip Mall Central - aka Central Park Avenue in Yonkers - and bought very needed garbage bins, drying rack and hamper (and of course visited another sushi place). I finished unpacking the paperbacks this morning, with a dawning realization that my chances of getting to the graphic novels today are slim to none. The hardcovers are pretty much all arranged on my bedroom bookcase now, underneath all my fairy tale, mythology and so-called children's books (the top shelf is more or less all Oz stuff). I plan to spend the rest of the day catching up on my local weekly paper (I'm up to the February 19 edition) and sorting the paperbacks into the two bookshelves near the TV. (No Blogway Blabby today; I'm not even sure when I'll catch up on my blog reading, and after last week's Usenet troll and considering I still have zero participation aside from Kevin Hayden, right at this moment I feel the column is more trouble than it's worth.) After the carpet's clear of paperbacks, Robin needs to get up the strength to bring the rest of the graphic novel boxes (about 10) out of the studio and start stacking them in the living room as well. So in honor of the fact that we're just going with the flow by the point, here's a silly site called Flowgo. Apologies to whichever blogger I got this from, I didn't note their name; feel free to take credit in the comments section!

Silly Site o' the Day

I've chosen to busy myself unpacking boxes, both at work (my boss' files are organized at last) and at home - this weekend we restack the living room bookcases, finally! - so blogging takes a back seat for the moment, but on the heels of the latest presidential gaffe I wanted to bring your attention, via South Knox Bubba, to the Bush Soundboard, in case you're feeling particularly creative. Have fun!

Silly Site o' the Day

Via Hanan Levin, naturally, let's all do the Pickle Dance!

Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

One of the cats' favorite games is to for Amy to get on a chair as Datsa struts back and forth beneath, allowing her to bat at his tail:

This is probably the last catblogging picture I'll be takining with the "old" digital camera, as my new one arrived yesterday and I hope to start experimenting with it over the weekend.

I Train 'Em Well

Very nice post at Ms. Musings mentioning a couple articles about women and comics, and Christine Cupaiuolo even threw in the by-now-obligatory plugs for Sequential Tart and Friends of Lulu! Yay Christine!!

Silly Site o' the Day

Via Leonard Kirk, who shall not easily be forgiven, it's Happy Tree Friends. Not for the squeamish, or those easily upset by bad things happening to ultra-cute characters, so you've been warned.

Lantz(wo)man!

Via Hanan Levin, I've just discovered the website of Jewish Women Watching, which "aims to rouse the public to challenge and change the sexist and other discriminatory practices in the American Jewish community." Not many people realize it nowadays, but American Judaism has a long history of progressive activism, despite the fact that conservative politics have come to dominate the discourse of late (particularly where Israel is concerned). So any new liberal-lefty Jewish group is welcome as far as I'm concerned! JWW has just announced its first annual Greasy Latke Awards, giving out raspberries ([Homer] Mmmm, raspberry latkes... [/Homer]) for some of the more egregious behavior in the Jewish community. Nicely done, gals!

On the Air America

As my commute has changed from public to private transit, so have my media habits. I can use the time I save by driving to and from work to read magazines and newspapers when I'm home, but in the car it's Air America all the way. I've gotten the hang of turning the sound way down during the ubiquitous ads, if I don't feel like making fun of them outright ("should you be culturally punished for having a back yard?" Yes, absolutely! You're rich or lucky enough to live in a house in the suburbs with a back yard, stop whining that you can't see independent films at the local downtown googleplex, that's what cable/satellite TV and IFC are for!). Randi Rhodes has become my personal goddess. I know when I get to the "Presidential Palm Pilot" segment on Morning Sedition, I should be just about turning onto the street where my office is. When I'm listening to Unfiltered or Franken at work, I have to remember to keep my printer off to reduce the radio buzzing (my RealPlayer doesn't work correctly here). It's become a comforting routine, and it's high time I added some Air America blogs to the sidebar. Now if only Eric could do something about getting Franken's blog a proper RSS feed... Update: Also added to the sidebar is Liz's new Chicken Little Scorecard, underneath the Terror Alert level (which I believe is currently Ernie in NYC and Bert elsewhere).

Silly Site o' the Day

Busy day ahead (again). I was ambushed as soon as I arrived, even before my breakfast and official 9 AM start time, by material that apparently only I, of all our employees, am able to successfully stuff into envelopes. Combine that with more invoicing to come, not to mention three moving boxes' worth of filing (shh! I told you not to mention that!) it looks like my day's set already. At least I have the evenings to read through leases, although given my druthers I'd rather read through the George W. Bush Re-election Site, brought to you by the fine folks at Whitehouse.org! So I'm guessing Chickenhead Productions is legally allowed to nail down "org" domain names? I thought you needed to be a non-profit to use that. I love their Psychedelic Republicans trading cards, but those seem to be for-profit...

Milestone Note

A very happy birthday to Kim Davis, she he of the Alternative Hippopotamus!

Silly Site o' the Day

No longer sick but still hella crazed at the office, what with billing and check processing and trying to put my boss' files away prior to his return from vacation next week, so posting will be light for awhile (as if it hasn't been already). When I do get a bit of leisure time I appreciate cute games like Hook, Line and Sinker, via Jeff at the Gamer's Nook. But no such luck today; ah well, at least I'm keeping up with blog-reading in between all my other chores...

Silly Site o' the Day

Lots of folks are talking about this, but I got it first from Neil Gaiman: No sooner did HM Government create a website telling folks how to prepare for emergencies than this parody site emerged. Full of British in-jokes, naturally, but amusing nonetheless.

Liberal Coalition Blogaround

Well, my latest and possibly last Blogway Blabby post is up, so on to my very patient fellow Liberal Coalition members:

My goodness, 33 items (that's what Bloglines calls posts) from Alex Greenwood alone! Apparently Alex doesn't like Mo Rocca (who I agree is an acquired taste) hamming it up for CNN. I concur, these news-lightening efforts don't work very well in a medium that has so shamelessly and completely turned itself into infotainment in the first place.

Amy's pissed about Nomar. I'll miss him as well, and I don't even follow the Red Sox since the days when Steve and I were married.

Andante reports that the Miss America contest will no longer be televising the "talent" competition.

Bryant Gries presents the parable of Suzi Registered Voter.

Charles2 notes that the Bush administration really, really doesn't like lawyers who advocate on behalf of consumers and not corporations.

Chris Brown promises to tell us all about San Diego, real soon now.

Clonecone reproes Barack Obama's speech en toto, which is weird 'cause wouldn't a link to any of the official sites have it too and circumvent possible copyright violation?

Oy, 60 unread posts from Corrente since last I checked in with them! Highlights: Tom reports on the threat level being changed to orange in Washington DC, and that Tom "I need a better paying job" Ridge also says Newark is in trouble. Lambert details the strange adventure of Frank Luntz. And Xan passes along a poem parodying the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Echidne (back from vacation, hoorah!) may be a minor Greek goddess but she sure knows how to do the Vatican rag. Of course, if they're going to taunt us like that they can't really blame us for mocking them...

Scout at And Then... takes a look at oil company profits.

Guy Andrew Hall has the skinny on airline pensions in trouble.

Jeff at Speedkill questions a weird MTV get-out-the-vote ad.

Over at The Gotham City 13, Tas has some pretty unconventional pictures from Boston, whilst Jesse has more fun with Photoshop.

John McKay has concluded what many of us have suspected all along, that Florida is a bad TV movie.

I'm not sure, but I think Jude Camwell is voting for the marmot.

I'm hoping that when Keith returns from vacation he'll get an RSS feed.

Maru Soze (my Dell hopes your Dell gets better soon, Maru!) always has so much great stuff it's hard to know where to begin, but be sure to check out today's picture - Michael Moore and Bill Maher on their knees begging Ralph Nader not to run for the presidency in '04. She has a good bit on Republicans for Kerry, and Triumph versus Colmes.

MercuryX23 gives us an imagined John Madden play-by-play on a convention speech. And congrats on the house, Mercury!

Michael Spires at Musing's Musings passes along the latest horrific news about burning churches in Baghdad and Mosul. Earlier in the week he posted a couple of lovely travelogues.

Mike Stabile still hasn't turned on his RSS feed (hey Mike, it's "Settings," then "Site Feed," then toggling to "Yes" under "Publish Site Feed?") but has a couple tasty techie posts anyway, one on image analysis of eyes and the other inviting folks to take Sprint's wireless phone courtesy test. (I scored an 81, but I don't really use my cell phone in crowds all that often, usually just when I'm alone.)

Moi has some good news about scientific discoveries concerning autism.

Mustang Bobby reveals that Florida election officials knew about their database problems for months. Bobby's mom has also been a hell of a DemoCon correspondent. (Yes Bobby, please send me that PDF!)

Natalie Davis has a nice quote from Václav Havel and recommends Ted Casablanca's column for some unexpected Bush-zinging. Congrats to Natalie on her gig presenting a workshop on Blogging for Women and Girls this November!

Norbizness presents a list of his favorite Pinky AYPWIP responses, and also ponders all the Americas out there.

NTodd Pritsky talks about the Warsaw uprising; I watched a bit about it on EuroNews yesterday and learned more in five minutes than I would have watching, oh, I dunno, a year of typical American news channels. He's also sent his contribution to A Picture's Worth (happy anniversary, David!) but I don't know which one it is...

Over at Kick the Leftist, Peter warns that some stubborn right-wing Jews could cost Kerry the election. Someone should tell them he's practically a landsman.

Rivka at Respectful of Otters reviews Beyond Fear.

Scott at the Gamer's Nook is a Deadhead; who knew?!

Steve Bates remembers his dad and updates us on other personal stuff.

Wow, 33 Steve Gilliard posts on which to catch up! Today he seems to have little patience for Greg Palast and gives us the skinny on Nader's PA office shutting down.

Trish Wilson does some lovely Friday Cat Blogging of Lucky, reminds us that most women do not feel regret or distress after undergoing a common medical procedure, and reports on the discovery of an ancient Peruvian brewery.

Lastly, upyernoz reviews the Manchurian Candidate remake.

Whew, time for dinner already! That only took about seven on-and-off hours. Now y'all know why I don't do LC blogarounds more often. :)

Silly Site o' the Day

White Rabbits! Which, as you know, is a British good-luck greeting at the beginning of every month, so (via Hanan Levin) how about some Googles from Goo? I believe that's just south of Staffordshire. Now on to writing this week's Blogway Blabby and, if I have enough energy, a Liberal Coalition blogaround later today (only 460 RSS-fed posts to get through there)...