This is how I decide whether to cross in front of a vehicle, while running.



Add your own.

A Review of LITTLE BROTHER by Cory Doctorow (with spoilers)

Bombs go off in the middle of San Francisco. Are the villains the terrorists? No. It’s the Department of Homeland Security. Yes, thousands of Americans are at the bottom of the bay, but this story is about the aftermath. How the government uses technology to track and harass their own citizenry.

So far, so right up my libertarian, reduce-gov’t-power alley.

Enter the protagonist, Marcus, a techno-savy teen. I’m with you Cory, tell me this story. It. Can’t. Miss. A kid who LARPs, that is to say plays role-playing games—in public—who is willing to fight that fascist Bush, I mean DHS, to preserve all that is sacred (in San Francisco): joining a trade union, trysting in public, punking off police, and hating Republicans. It’s starting to miss, Cory.

Doctorow will have you believe many improbable things. First, Marcus, aka Mary Sue starts a political movement via an online game site, off his tricked out Xbox. Okay. Wherein every reporter in the world loves him, except evil Fox News. Hm. That he draws his inspiration from Yippies (those were hippies with a minor in theatre) and reads Jack Kerouac. Cory, did you just scroll through the wiki for the Sixties and pick at random, or what? Who ends up—by accident—with the most tailor-made incriminating video about right wing misdeeds. Guffaw. And gets laid. Ow, ow, ow. My suspension of disbelief is giving me a wedgie.

Did I forget to tell you about the random kids being waterboarded on an island in San Francisco Bay? Just the way EVIL George W. Bush would have wanted. Because the geniuses at DHS couldn’t figure out people within swimming distance would have a problem with torture. Thankfully, the ACLU is there to protect everyone’s rights. I’m not kidding. Cue the patriotic music set to a techno beat. I’m pretty sure members of the teamsters and SEIU carry our hero out of the court house on their shoulders.

I really wanted to like this novel. Unfortunately, like a lot of bad fiction, politics got in the way of story. And whenever Doctorow strayed from techno-geekery he water boarded his narrative. LITTLE BROTHER exists in a fantasy world where nerds get girls and Nancy Pelosi is a freedom fighter. File this work under Daily KOS porn.

I took one of those “What Kind of Love Personality are You?” quizes with this chick I know. Side by side, on different computers, we clicked our way through questions.

She: What did you say on #4?
He: ‘B’. Why?
She: Me, too.

We ended up sharing all our answers. All the same. Except the last question: M/F?

She clicks ‘female.’ Her result: WILD HEART. Her love can not be tamed. Many will have her, but few will possess her. You rock!

I click ‘male.’ My result? MAN BOY. Men like you are romantic shipwrecks. Man-boys. Do the world of girls a favor and retire from it.

No taxes. They welcome anyone as a citizen as long as they have a job. Bad news on unemployment benefits.



Hmmmm, I smell human flesh

You can shoot freakin’ polar bears. None of this ‘it was coming right at me!’ crap. Thousand pound carnivores are hunting you. Who needs HBO?



And Svalbard looks so much like Hoth, I just might get some use out of my sleeping bag.



And you thought they smelled bad on the outside.

[High] School parents recently got an automated call from the principal warning them that if students say or display the word “_____” at school, they could face suspension.

So what prompted this mass warning, one that is usually reserved for terror attacks or child abductions? A word. What was the word?

The F-word?

S-word?

N-word?

No. It’s the M-word: Meep.


Wanted: Serial Meeper

I’m willing to bet that these students are MEEPING to annoy a certain instructor. And do you know what type of teacher gets picked on by multiple students? Incompetent ones. Man up, you government ninnies. Supervise your drones and teach our kids. Stop making me want to give you a toilet bowl shampoo.

New Hampshire atheist is offering Christians who believe in the Rapture a service to look after their pets when they get taken up into eternity

As a matter of repentance, I’m willing to safeguard their teenage daughters’ chastity while they’re away.

Fort Hood was a gun-free zone.

And we all know what I think about that.

Governor Schwarzenegger drops the F-bomb on California State Assembly.



About. Time.

You become whatever you feed your mind with.

It’s been a while since we checked in on Carrie Underwood and her man-hating musical stylings. Wonder what she’s been up to?

This. The following italicized words are to her new song, Cowboy Casanova.

He’s like a curse, he’s like a drug
You get addicted to his love
You wanna get out but he’s holding you down
‘Cause you can’t live without one more touch

Way to capture the ‘take no personal responsibility’ chick demographic.

He’s the devil in disguise
A snake with blue eyes

Mine are green. Focus, Carrie, focus.

I see that look on your face
You ain’t hearing what I say

Nope.

He’ll tell you anything you want to hear
He’ll break your heart
It’s just a matter of time
But just remember

Kinda makes you want to destroy his two headlights and carve your initials in his leather seats. Don’t it?

Run run away
Don’t let him mess with your mind

Is this your ‘move’, Carrie? Bad mouthing successful males? Because going negative never gets the girls, believe me. From one cowboy casanova to another.

“Why does that chocolate chip cookie have such power over me?” Dr. Kessler [former FDA administrator and food tax proponent] asked in an interview. “Is it the cookie, the representation of the cookie in my brain? I spent seven years trying to figure out the answer.”.

While dunking a bunch of Oreos in milk, I bet.

“The book, a New York Times best seller, includes Dr. Kessler’s own candid admission that he struggles with overeating.”

And here I thought the author photo did that job for him?

“One of his main messages is that overeating is not due to an absence of willpower, but a biological challenge made more difficult by the overstimulating food environment that surrounds us.”

They make the cookie jump right into his mouth.

“Food companies “design food for irresistibility,” Dr. Kessler noted. “It’s been part of their business plans.””

So did my grandma. And if I had blamed her for my getting fat, after she stopped crying, she would have slapped that Toll House right out of my hand. Come here, Dr. Kessler. Let me teach you the meaning of self control. Put down the cookie. Walk away, and nobody gets fat.

I catch her going through my clothes, breathing me in—when she thinks I’m not looking. Sleeps on my pillow just because it reminds her of me.

It’s embarrassing how much that cat loves me.

feminism (at least in its naive, popular form) that the two sexes are identical in every respect have led many women to assume that their value in the sexual marketplace will never diminish and that young men will perceive them as something other than all-too-willing receptacles for easy, no-strings recreational sex.

Men and women aren’t the same. Don’t confuse equality with interchangeability. Our brains are different, hormones, glands, bones, etc. Of course this will impact on behavior! This ideological insistence that society invents gender is preposterous. These fantasies are in blogs, novels, TV shows—everywhere but real life. Just ask all the guys who refused to show up at the cougar mixer this article references.

Apparently young men prefer younger women, and middle-aged feminists read too much chick lit. News at eleven.

I must confess: I’ve never seen Glenn Beck’s TV show or heard him on radio. That’s my way of saying I have no opinion of him. So when I read this post title at Salon: When the Fox News host pushes a crackpot theory, it doesn’t take long for the GOP to run with it. I was hoping for some fun conservative bashing.

Instead I get treated to an opening paragraph about how Beck used the ‘boiling frog’ metaphor on one of his shows, and dammit, didn’t a GOP senator use it the very. next. day. I’m pretty sure this substitute for a ‘slippery slope’ has been used every day in the Senate since hippies first smelled. But that wouldn’t fit in with the authors’ premise: Beck says it, the GOP repeats it. And by it, I mean a crackpot theory.

For instance, the article cites Beck’s tirade against the administration’s use of ‘czars’ in government positions. The writers titter into their hands about how ignorant he must be of Russian history. Czar’s weren’t communists! Yeah, you’re right. They were monarchs. The totalitarian label has been put in the right category. Happy now? As if nobody before Beck would have had a problem with a record number of high-ranking personnel in a democracy being called the equivalent of ‘emperor’. The majority confirmed without congressional oversight. How did I ever twitter about this without Beck’s talking points?

The article froths forward: Beck said Cass Sunstein will, “establish legal ‘rights’ for...animals to file lawsuits in American courts.” Well, will he? Authors never say. ’‘The administration is using the NEA as a political tool!’ Well, are they? ‘Van Jones is a Communist!’ Well, is he? Nothing but crickets from the fourth estate. Like it’s beneath their dignity to refute, but okay to slur. Again and again, the writers serve up instances of Beck making accusations that later go mainstream. But never whether what he said was true. Wouldn’t that be essential for a story about a crackpot? If accusations alone made one a tinfoil helmet wearer, then the New York Times headline, “Bernie Madoff is a thief” is proof of their whackjobbery.

Glenn Beck might be the biggest crank going—I don’t know. But this article proved only one thing: Beck is influential. Certainly enough for a certain leftist news source to go on and on about him. Yet whether Beck’s the leader of the band, however, or just the loudest one singing the tune was not established. Boiling frog, indeed.

Not proving that the Fox host is a purveyor of foolish ideas, however, makes the people at Salon the crackpots.

An Etsy site for poor taste: what would you call it? What they did, Regretsy. Not safe for work, not safe for home. Not safe for Children, either.

Click, you know you want to.

*Via my Twitter buddy, Radley Balko

I want to believe in global warming; really, I do. But when scientists pick their data like ripe peaches from a rotten barrel, and claim they forgot where they put their information when asked—like it’s a spare set of keys to a Volvo that no longer starts—then I start to get suspicious.

I love whoopie pies. Love. Them. Did you know they’re also called bob? Or gob, or black and whites? But they’re so darn expensive. A dollar each! I’m up to a ‘two buck a day’ habit myself. That’s $730 a year. Don’t make me have to choose between whoopie pies and health care. That would be immoral.

So here is my proposal: I will define ‘fair and affordable’ as $.50 a pie, but only if you make more than 50k a year. Everyone else is too poor and should get them for free. Yes, I’m saying there should be a public pie option. Now, I know that means pies for more than half of all Americans, 150 million people. That’s a lot of frosting. I can already hear the complaints: What about the whoopie pie makers? Yummy filling costs money, you know, and their expert bakers have families—how do they get compensated?

Easy: we’ll have universal whoopie pie coverage. If everyone pays, prices go down, right? Like taxes. Of course, if UWP (Universal Whoopie Pie) is run like Medicaid, the government will only compensate for cost, which leaves....carry the one.... Don’t doctors and hospitals increase prices to private customers to make up the difference? Whatev.

Perhaps it’s worth comparing to Massachusetts’ universal plan? There they give out free services instead of free pies. Budgeted for 100 million dollars, it costs a whooping 700 million this year. *whips out the calculator *I guess that means...

$7 whoopie pies. Hm.

But don’t worry, I have an idea: we’ll ration them. You’ll get a bite for a dollar. What a bargain! And in the long lines you can share your favorite whoopie pie innuendo. Come on, people, step up: There are pie-less folks, right now, in your neighborhood, who do not know the stomach-stretching goodness of a chocolate cake sandwich. Don’t be a pastry hater.

The government is like a genie in a bottle: grants you wishes, but you’re always the one who ends up stoppered.

When I was a kid, I play tested games for Infocom, makers of text-based games like Zork, Hitchhiker’s guide, et al. The last one was called, Blood Pressure. The game opens with a door-to-door salesman trying to sell you Moa feed. You know, for the extinct bird? Just answering the door causes your blood pressure to go up. He then puts his foot in the jab so you can’t close the door. Up goes the pressure. Buying the feed isn’t an option (thus getting rid of him) because he only accepts Etruscan money pots. Up goes the pressure. Punch him in the face? Cops come for you.

Soon, you flatline. Game over.

My day makes me think fondly of that Moa feed salesman.

Calling my blog, “Spackling the Holes in my Soul with Young Girls’ Hearts” might be getting in the way of my opinions being taken seriously.