Boo!

Happy Halloween from the Octomom

Yes, there are now Handerpants

http://www.handerpants.com/

The magic of Twitter

So I have to investigate Twitter for work :-(

Here is one of the first things I came across:

#urdoing2muchif your pregnant and in the club... They should charge you for 2 people ((lol

Actually, I now kind of get Twitter.

God is not fair

So let me get this straight: Ted Kennedy had to get the brain tumor?

Al Franken puts the smackdown on conservative truth-twister

It's pretty fun to watch Al Franken use his formidable rhetorical skills and genuine outrage to give these fucking greed mongering right wingers the beatdown they deserve:

Why the public option is a gay rights issue

Some of my gay friends are really, really mad at Obama for not prioritizing gay issues like "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and gay marriage in his first year in office.

While I understand the impatience, I have to say that probably the most important gay issue in this country is our lack of universal health insurance.

If you are straight and married to an employed person, you probably have the option of getting on your spouse's health insurance plan. In some liberal states gays have this option with their partners.

But throughout most of the country, gays and gay families don't have this option. They are basically shit out of luck if they don't have a way to get health insurance for themselves.

I would love to see gays have the right to marry or serve in the military sooner than later.

But with a limited Congressional calendar and only so many laws that can be passed at one time, I would rather see them have access to doctors, dentists and hospitals.

New super retarded GOP site cost $1.4 million

Haha that new Republican website where Michael Steele walks onto your computer screen set the GOP back $1.4 million.

via Gawker:

"How much does it cost to host a site for six months that is visited almost exclusively by stoned Wonkette readers who just want to see Steele walk onto their computer again? It costs $1,039,155. The Democratic National Committee, on the other hand, which gets roughly the same amount of traffic as GOP.com on its site, spent $203,000 on hosting during the same period."

Bad bisexual! Bad bisexual!

Via PopJustice:

These people from New York, unfortunately called Whore's Mascara, are on YouTube giving bisexuals a bad name. For shame:

WNYC pledge drive annoyances

Okay, I know, WNYC needs to raise money periodically and I pledge something most every time. I encourage you to support WNYC.

The thing is, after you pledge you still have to listen to all the endless shilling for cash. And worse, there seems to be a correlation between the annoyingness of an on air-personality and the number and frequency of pledge spots they do. The worst offenders:

1. Jad Abumrad: Oh God, not the science nerd! His show, "Radiolab" is bad enough, what with the wacky, elementary school science class humor and the quirky editing, but hearing him beg for money just reminds me of what I don't like about WNYC. Shut up, Jad.

2. Kurt Andersen: Where do you begin with a Kurt Andersen? He embodies everything irritating about supposedly urbane, witty, evolved Manhattanites, with his show's segments on "The recession's new creative class", the Klingon Language, They Might Be Giants and all things white, over-educated and bothersome. In one of his pledge segments, he compares necessary things and non-necessary things, saying, "a piece of chocololate...not necessary, a piece of really good, European chocolate...well, let's talk." I actually would rather have drinks with a McCain/Palin voter than this poncey douche.

3. Ira Glass: His pledge pitches have turned dark recently, with him calling up people who listen to WNYC but don't pledge and embarrassing them on the air. Why doesn't he just meet them in a dark alley and break their legs? Oh right, because he's Ira Glass.

Why is Joe's Bar closed?

Joe's Bar, the legendarily trashy/tacky/scary place on 6th Street between A & B has been shuttered since last weekend. This is the place that would force the bartenders to stay open till 4am on a Sunday night, just in case someone might stagger in.

I got into a conversation with the owner, an older woman with considerable disgust for pretty much everything, one misguided, drunk morning. I told her to try to look on the bright side but she wasn't having it. I'm a little worried for her, but the folks over at EV Grieve say that some neighbors told them it was some sort of paperwork glitch with the state. Let's hope so.

GOP.com - Facebook fans

Do take a look at the absurd new GOP website. The first bit of attention the redesign got was due to Michael Steele calling his blog "What Up", prompting widespread ridicule in the blogosphere (it's now called "Change the Game" - whatever).

But take a look at the featured Facebook fans:











Is it me, or do these people look more Myspace serial-killer than hip young conservative Facebook?

Okay, this is not good

A sad graphic

The Mustache of Understanding

Periodically I forget what a horrific writer Thomas Friedman is. Happily the internet is there to remind me.

Here are a few classics:

"It’s OK to throw out your steering wheel, as long as you remember you’re driving without one."

"The first rule of holes is when you’re in one, stop digging. When you’re in three, bring a lot of shovels. "

"The next six months in Iraq—which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there—are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time."
(This one was repeated at least 14 times between 2003 and 2006 and led to the creation of The Friedman Unit or F.U. which is defined as a unit of time equal to six months in the future".)

"The Golden Straitjacket is the defining political-economic garment of globalization. […] The tighter you wear it, the more gold it produces."

"The fighting, death and destruction in Gaza is painful to watch. But it’s all too familiar. It’s the latest version of the longest-running play in the modern Middle East, which, if I were to give it a title, would be called: 'Who owns this hotel? Can the Jews have a room? And shouldn’t we blow up the bar and replace it with a mosque?' "
- Actually the producer just called and said he can't fit that name on the marquis. He suggest it be called simply, "Shouldn't a Mosque Replace the Bar (in the Hotel)?".

For obsessives there is The Mustache of Understanding, which painstakingly chronicles the twisted uranium birdcage filled with gazelles that is the writing of Tom Friedman.

UPDATE: I just caught this one from Tuesday's column: "The market is just a second-by-second snapshot of the balance between greed and fear. You can’t spin it or sweet-talk it. And you never know when that balance between greed and fear on the dollar is going to tip over into fear in a nonlinear way."

Yes, when you take a snapshot of an abstract idea, you can't spin it and certainly can't sweet-talk it. You just hope it doesn't tip the wrong way, particularly in a nonlinear fashion.

Suck it bus lane blockers

via The Gothamist:

"During his first day on the job, new MTA CEO Jay Walder announced a plan to install cameras on the front of city buses to take photos of any vehicles obstructing bus lanes. Like the city's red-light cameras, tickets will be issued automatically."

The entitlement of New York City drivers has always really bugged me. Particularly the ones who think nothing of holding up a double length bus full of passengers because they have to drop someone off right here, right now. Get ready for your tickets, fucktards.

Now can we have tire spikes placed on the edges of bike lanes?

Child rape hysteria

Okay, one more point about the Roman Polanski matter:

The main gist of the vitriolic, sanctimonious and frequently violent commentary on the internet regarding Roman Polanski is that the legal nuances as to whether judicial misconduct deprived Polanski of his ability to make rational decisions about his defense are irrelevant: A CHILD WAS RAPED!! DAMN THE LAW AND THE CONSTITUTION!!! Your stupid legal rights mean nothing in the face of a 30-year-old child sex case!

The problem with this is that our legal rights to a fair trial, or in this case, plea bargaining process, are most crucial in highly inflammatory cases. The types of cases that used to be solved by angry mobs.

Yes, this is an outrageous case. It is also an example of how we tolerate the trampling of rights that protect us all when the allegations in the case are intolerable.