Schmaltz und Grieben

BLOGROLL HONOREE: We'd like to welcome Tennessee blogger Lewis Medlock and Deliverance, a witty and well-written blog that's coming from pretty much the same place we are (except further south, auf course). I stumbled upon Deliverance quite by accident and was immediately hooked. The first time in many moons that I've blogrolled somebody on Day One.

Posted by Alois on

ASSHAT OF THE WEEK award goes to Tom Nadeau (from our old pals Left Turn on Bird Street) for this artless screed:

The world’s low opinion of America is well deserved. Not just because of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, or because we insist on destroying the world by over consumption and waste, and not because we won’t listen to reason.

No, it's because we got no class.

[mildly interesting excerpt on Janet Jackson and Google searches... snipped]

And all this from a nation that brags about being the holiest, Christian, god-fearing place on the planet.

You know what? The Nadeaus are the nadirs of our nation (alliteration deliberate). At least people like Danny Drucker and Rachel Arieff had the cojones to leave the country (sorry Rachel) rather than sit around and bitch about how horrible it is for the rest of their lives.

Posted by Alois on

TIME FOR A MEME: Haven't done one of these in a long, long time. (Via Sheila O'Malley)

FOUR JOBS YOU'VE HAD IN YOUR LIFE

1) Typographer
2) Naval nuclear tech
3) IT support guru
4) Magazine editor

FOUR MOVIES YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER

1) 2001: A Space Odyssey
2) Texasville
3) Unforgiven
4) Heartbreak Ridge

FOUR BOOKS YOU COULD READ AGAIN & AGAIN

1) The Big Sky - by A. B. Guthrie, Jr.
2) Rabbit Redux - by John Updike
3) Portnoy's Complaint - by Phillip Roth
4) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - by Mark Twain

FOUR CITIES/PLACES YOU'VE LIVED IN
1) Crestwood, MO
2) New York, NY
3) Spokane, WA
4) Madison, WI

FOUR TV SHOWS YOU LOVE TO WATCH
I liked "Twin Peaks" when it was on, years ago. Haven't watched any TV since then.

FOUR PLACES YOU'VE BEEN ON VACATION
1) New Jersey (no, really...)
2) Vancouver, BC
3) New Orleans
4) South Dakota (frequently!)

FOUR WEBSITES YOU VISIT DAILY

1) Jewlicious (my son Michael is one of the co-bloggers)
2) Shot in the Dark
3) Day by Day
4) Discarded Lies

FOUR OF YOUR FAVORITE FOODS

1) Greek / other Middle Eastern
2) Jamaican
3) Italian
4) La bella cuisina Americana!

FOUR PLACES YOU'D RATHER BE RIGHT NOW

1) JoAnn's apartment
2) Skiing at Tyrol Basin
3) Split Rock Creek State Park
4) Fruitland, Washington

That oughtta hold me for the next few months....

Posted by Alois on

12/29/05:

NARNia: Having recently seen the new C. S. Lewis/Disney motion picture extravaganza... I thought Dan Stover was pretty gosh-darned hilarious here. Why didn't I think of that?

Posted by Alois on

TOO SICK TO BE FUNNY. This story has it all: A manipulative MSM, a moonbat college student caught in a monster lie in the interests of furthering moonbatitude, Chairman Mao... even Teddy Freaking Kennedy coming to the rescue (like he did with Mary Jo Kopechne).

Turns out that a University of Massachusetts student claims he was visited by agents of the Department of Homeland Security after trying to obtain a copy of Mao's "Little Red Book" from the campus library.

Then the plot thickens.

The story caught on like wildfire, making international news and prompting Teddy Kennedy to write a Boston Globe editorial which excoriated the Bush Administration and defended the student. Problem is, though, that nobody involved—not South Coast Today, not the Boston Globe, and certainly not Senator Kennedy—ever bothered to check out the student's story.

Turns out he made the whole thing up. Gee, a lefty making something up to make the Bush administration look bad? Say it ain't so!

But I digress. When our beloved Chappaquiddick Boy was confronted by the evidence against the student's story, his office announced: Laura Capps, a Kennedy spokeswoman, said last night that the senator cited "public reports” in his opinion piece. Even if the assertion was a hoax, she said, it did not detract from Kennedy’s broader point that the Bush administration has gone too far in engaging in surveillance.

Ahem. Didn't a certain news anchor say something similar about President Bush's Guard service?

And they call themselves The Reality-Based Community.

[BONUS FACTOID #1: South Coast Today refused to provide the name of the student, even after his lie was found out, in order to "protect" him. Under which journalistic statute are criminals protected?]

[BONUS FACTOID #2: Brian Glyn Williams, a UMass history professor, avers that "Mao Tse-Tung is completely harmless." Who licensed this guy to teach history?]

[BONUS FACTOID #3: A search of the Boston Globe Online's archives mysteriously fails to locate Senator Kennedy's recent editorial. I found it through a link from Opinion Journal. Very interesting.]

[BONUS FACTOID #4: And here I'm going to quote that wishes-to-remain-anonymous student who started the whole thing: "When I came back, like wow, there's this circus coming on. I saw my cell phone, and I see like, wow, I have something like 75 messages and like something like 87 missed calls," he said. "Wow, I was popular. I usually get one or probably two a week and that's about it, and I usually pick them up." Jerry lives, man.]

Posted by Alois on

12/28/05:

THROW AWAY THE KEY! Or shoot zem, mit der Lugers. Ha! Ha!

We take a kinda hard line on white-collar crime. How many decent working people ultimately lost their jobs because of assclowns like these?

Posted by Alois on

ON THE BEACH: We're not. Here's hoping that you are...

Model Sarah O'Hare courtesy Sports Illustrated

Posted by Alois on

12/27/05:

TODAY'S TRAVELOGUE: Posting will be light because I'm in Milwaukee, where it's cold and foggy.

On the other hand, my son just returned from the Golan Heights, where it was... er... cold and foggy.

Michael? I could swear you told me you'd never travel to anyplace cold ever, ever again. Especially not wearing sandals.

Image credit: Jewlicious

Posted by Alois on

DAILY GAAAAAAZ-O-LEEEEEEN! AWARD:

If your town has an equal number of bars and churches, you might live in Wisconsin.

If you have had a lengthy telephone conversation with someone who dialed a wrong number, you might live in Wisconsin.

If you know how to say Oconomowoc, Waukesha, Menomonie and Manitowoc, you might live in Wisconsin.

If you think that ketchup is a little too spicy, you might live in Wisconsin.

If you consider it a sport to gather your food by drilling through 38 inches of ice and sitting there all day hoping that the food will swim by, you might live in Wisconsin.

YOU ALSO MIGHT BE FROM WISCONSIN IF:

Your idea of a traffic jam is ten cars waiting to pass a tractor on the highway.

"Vacation" means going up nort' past Hwy 8 for the weekend.

You measure distance in hours.

You know several people who have hit deer more than once.

You often switch from "heat" to "A/C" in the same day and back again.

Your whole family wears Packer Green to church on Sunday.

You can drive 65 mph through 2 feet of snow during a raging blizzard, without flinching.

You see people wearing camouflage at social events (including weddings and funerals ).

You install security lights on your house and garage and leave both unlocked.

You think of the major food groups as beer, fish, and venison.

You carry jumper cables in your car and your wife or girlfriend knows how to use them.

There are 7 empty cars running in the parking lot at Mill's Fleet Farm at any given time.

You design your kid's Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit.

Driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow.

You refer to the Packers as "we."

You know all 4 seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter and road construction.

You can identify a southern or eastern accent.

You have no problem pronouncing Lac Du Flambeau.

You consider Minneapolis exotic.

Your idea of creative landscaping is a statue of a deer next to your blue spruce.

You were unaware that there is a legal drinking age.

Down South to you means Illinois.

A brat is something you eat.

Your neighbor throws a party to celebrate his new pole shed.

You go out to a fish fry every Friday.

Your 4th of July picnic was moved indoors due to frost.

You have more miles on your snow blower than your car.

You actually understand these jokes.

— Jeff Foxworthy

Posted by Alois on

HOW LOW THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN: This is beyond pathetic.

Recently-retired dictator Saddam, he who once delighted in personally torturing thousands of his countrymen/women/children while his staff shot video for Saddam to enjoy in his bedchambers later, he who called himself the Lion of Mesopotamia and compared himself to Saladin, he who waged war on his neighbors and tried to assassinate an American president...

First they pulled him from that illustrious "spider hole"—whereupon he immediately proceeded to impress American and Iraqi troops and interpreters with what a cowardly punk and blowhard he was—and then they sent him to prison, where our lordly tough boy spent his time gardening, writing poetry, and rediscovering religion.

And now he's whining that the big bad American bullies beat him up.

Po' baby! Shit.

Posted by Alois on