Why should I congratulate you because Hillary won?

It's not like you did something. She and her massive support staff did.

That having been said, I appear to have sold another car. That's two in just a month. Well, two sold and two blocked. Fun stuff!

A seminar this afternoon that gave me the finishing touches for my next email newsletter.

Something I've said for YEARS

Here's the outrage, but .. where are the pitchforks? Where are the torches?

This may cause some heads to spin

It changed my opinion. SHARPLY changed my opinion.

This will also surprise no one

Your Language Arts Grade: 100%

Way to go! You know not to trust the MS Grammar Check and you know "no" from "know." Now, go forth and spread the good word (or at least, the proper use of apostrophes).

Are You Gooder at Grammar?
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And, I didn't cheat ONCE

You paid attention during 91% of high school!

85-100% You must be an autodidact, because American high schools don't get scores that high! Good show, old chap!

Do you deserve your high school diploma?
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This was fun - again

Your score on this personality test was 82%

 

Others see you as an exciting, highly volatile, rather impulsive personality; a natural lead, who's quick to make decisions, though not always the right ones. They see you as bold and adventuresome, someone who will try anything once; someone who takes chances and enjoys an adventure. They enjoy being in your company because of the excitement you radiate.

Personality Quiz
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Thank God!

You are 100% Smarter than a fifth grader.

 

You are smarter than a fifth grader. no doubt. There is no need for you to retake school. Keep on doing your brain excersise like sudokus and crossword puzzles, and you'll soon be smarter than a sixth grader! Good work!

are you smarter than a fifth grader?
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

That's, 100% smarter than a PERFECT fifth grader, after reflecting on the number of sides for a trapezoid a while.

Baaaaaaaaad news

Some of my friends say that I'm intelligent, but just haven't been willing to enlighten myself to a more conservative viewpoint.

What kind of extremist are you? Your Result: Rational Person   You consider these questions obvious straw men, designed to distract people from a meaningful investigation of facts and a serious discussion of relevant political issues. How boring.
Left-Wing Extremist
Right-Wing Extremist
Moderate Extremist
What kind of extremist are you? See All Our Quizzes

And here we have political me, summed up

What is your political ideology? Your Result: Social Democrat   This quiz has defined you as a Social Democrat (you may or may not be a Democratic Socialist as well). In general you are in the Liberal mindset, but wish to take it a step further. You favour the brodening of various social programs and a progressive income tax system to help alleviate social inequality. You wish to change the current social paradigm, but through gradual means.
Liberal
Communist/Radical Left
Conservative
Fascist/Radical Right
Libertarian
What is your political ideology? Make Your Own Quiz

However, this will surprise no one

You scored 0% which means you are

a hardcore liberal.

You believe in governmental action to achieve equal opportunity and equality for all, and that it is the duty of the State to alleviate social ills and to protect civil liberties and individual and human rights. Believe the role of the government should be to guarantee that no one is in need. Believe that people are basically good.

Conservative or Liberal
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This may surprise you who think I'm Karl Marx's bastard son

You are 23% anti-capitalist!

You have some very minute anti-capitalist tendencies. You may have a small backyard garden, but the majority of your veggies come frozen in bags. You're still very much the consumer.

How Anti-Capitalist are You?

No wonder I'm so frustrated all of the time

89% Mike Gravel
89% Dennis Kucinich
83% Barack Obama
81% John Edwards
80% Chris Dodd
79% Joe Biden
76% Hillary Clinton
76% Bill Richardson
39% Rudy Giuliani
31% Ron Paul
30% John McCain
23% Mitt Romney
22% Mike Huckabee
15% Tom Tancredo
13% Fred Thompson

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

Some things to think about while the media drools

Huckabee: The candidate for people who think George W. Bush has relied too heavily on science and reason.

Iowa Caucus results, circa 1988- Bob Dole (37%), Pat Robertson (25%), George H. W. Bush (19%), Jack Kemp (11%), and Pete DuPont (7%) (George H.W. Bush became the candidate)

1992: February 10, 1992 - Tom Harkin (76%), "Uncommitted" (12%), Paul Tsongas (4%), Bill Clinton (3%), Bob Kerrey (2%), and Jerry Brown (2%) (Bill Clinton became the candidate)

Don't count anyone out today. The front runners in Iowa aren't guaranteed to be the winners of the nomination.

When 187 is a victory

After another tough night sleeping, I was anxious about my BG reading this morning - it was 187, which was nearly 100 points lower than the last four mornings.

Two of the closing ads from today's Iowa caucuses -

Hillary Clinton



John Edwards (this one got me a little choked up)



Speaking of John Edwards, here's an outstanding and heartfelt statement about what Plaintiff's lawyers REALLY do.

Steve informs that he got sick last night, and won't be coming until tomorrow. More as that develops.

I just have to repost this

From today's Hullabaloo, written by tristero

Wednesday, January 02, 2008


Click And Munch Time

by tristero


Yesterday, I saw Denzel Washington's excellent new film, The Great Debaters, the inspiring story of a debating team from a tiny black college in Texas in 1935. There is much to say about this film - including the portrayal of an emerging African-American middle-class, something that Hollywood rarely deigns to address. But I had an odd thought, after seeing it, connected to my previous post.

While watching "The Great Debaters," I was struck by how everyone is actively, intensely involved in the cultural and political concerns of the film. Of course, such a response to the racism portrayed makes disengagement by anyone, including we viewers, impossible. But the same intensity of participation is equally apparent in the scenes shot in Texas juke-joints, even in the incidental banter at a party.

The world in which "The Great Debaters" takes place is a world that has no place for slackerism. No one, not a single student, parent, sheriff, lyncher, shrugs a shoulder, and "whatevers" the situation.

And that got me imagining what a movie about the current strange American cultural moment would look like. Think about it for a second. The tube's on, they're flashing picture after picture of torture and even murder from Abu Ghraib. We cut from the tv screen to reaction shots of the couple watching the news, jaws hanging slack, absently munching from his 'n hers matching canisters of freshly-wrought Pringles.

The husband blinks twice, points the remote at the camera, we hear a click, then the sound of Jack Bauer's voice threatening some baddie who Doesn't Look Like One Of Us. But it's only for a moment, as the music swells, denoting a 6 or 7 minute break from simulated torture in order to tout the subtle advantages accrued to the viewer if she deploys a particular brand of vaginal douche on her nether regions. Another click, and the grooviest computer graphics imaginable are superimposed over grainy footage of a guy in a gorilla costume while a narrator intones, "As the computer analysis makes clear, it is impossible to tell from the gait whether the creature shown here is human or some species not known to science."

Another click and we're back to the newscast. The correspondent for the Abu Ghraib story signs off, a pensive look marring the studied vapidity of his boytoy face and we dissolve back to the newsroom, carefully decorated to create the appearance of competent reportering. "In other news, the primary race heats up. And it all comes down to haircuts. When we come back, two professional barbers will speak with our senior correspondent in Iowa on what it takes to snip and cut when the leadership of the Free World depends upon the placement of every follicle."

Click. Munch. Click. Munch, munch. Click.

It seems that there are some new players in the old "Oil for Food" scandal over which the fundies and rockabillies have been screaming their heads off. Will they be screaming now?

Probably not.

More interesting stuff - it seems that the factual basis behind "climate change" is getting weaker, but that we're going to be hearing about it even more.

More interesting stuff - BMW is bringing their well-proven diesel to the US in 2008; now, I want one. 45 mpg highway? 27 mpg city? BRING IT!

After having read that article, I HAD to go to the BMW website and check out their gas powered 535 - holy SMOKES they have some interior fabrics/colors that are awesome.





These pictures copyright BMW USA from their website.

That's the "Cream Dakota Beige" leather and "Bamboo Anthracite" wood trim.

WOW.

The diesel won't be out until late 2008, so plenty of time to think about it.

The Manhattan Science of Mind Center

Christ! It's all kinds of information about ..

Christ?

Here is a great article that goes into the "Taking the Christ out of Christmas" thing. It quotes a few references, including this discussion of whether Jesus was a real person, this discussion on the same subject, and this article discussing the "discovery" of the first church in which Christmas was celebrated on December 25.

Saturday somnabulance

Saturday link sausage -

The 50 most loathsome people in the United States - no one left out!

A sensible, indirect funded plan to make the US almost completely energy independent by 2050, with a huge reduction in pollution.

It's nearly 11:00 a.m., and although I've fed myself and read ALL of the internet so far, I haven't gone outside and pulled down the Christmas lights yet.

Went to dinner, car shopping and EJ's with David last night. Dinner was the usual, and then we high tailed it over to Allen Samuels to check out the 2008 Chevy Malibu, which was VERY impressive. Did I mention that it's VERY impressive? WOW. Then, we trotted down to Gillman Honda to look at the new 2008 Accord.

Don't worry, David's looking, I'm just attending.

The new Accord is quite unattractive in person, especially so in lighter colors where the knobs, posts and dimples of the Quasi-Tank design come out to be seen. Both of the Accords that were out in front of the showroom had over $2100 in window tint, paint stripes, floor mats, window etching (both VIN number and a big ACCORD logo) fabric protector and so on. The little salesman was talking a mile a minute, and when David asked me my opinion about the car, I remarked that it was interesting, but that the required 10% markup with crap no rational person would want made it unattractive, and that the uncertain future value of the Malibu was perhaps a better trade off than this.

The tap dancing then began with great earnestness.

Two friends earlier in the week went to visit a friend of theirs who sells at a Honda store (which shall remain nameless, but which can be visited here) to look at the new Honda Fit. They were quoted $18,400 on a car that maxes out price-wise at $16,070 on that dealer's own website. That's an 18% price increase for .. what? A can of Scotchguard, two tape stripes, and floor mats?

EIGHTEEN PERCENT? Now, the analyst inside my head says that the new Fit is going to start depreciating at the MSRP, not the inflated price, so you're paying for .. what, exactly? 803 gallons of gas? A trip to London for the weekend with hotel and theater tickets? To drive a tiny, but well made little car that you made a poor dealer decision about?

Here's the thing that staggers me - the salesman that quoted them this absurd figure was their GOOD FRIEND. I am reminded of when Jeffrey the weird lived with me up in Inwood Forest in 1988 and was working for David McDavid Honda and would come home at night pumped up from his day, talking about "we FUCKED them on that trade in."

Uh .. okay.

So, if you're thinking of shopping for a new Honda (or any car, for that matter,) you may want to call me and ask for a referral and some advice before you go out and your brain glazes over at the pretty, shiny iPod connector and all you hear is a monthly payment amount that's 25% more than you had in mind, but you can convince yourself you can afford.

I'll save you a bunch of money.

Now, we then traipsed up to EJ's Bar & Grill, to which I had not been in attendance since late August before the smoking ban went into effect.

Jarred was there, looking very Jarred-ey. The bar wasn't at all crowded, and it was very amusing to watch the goings-on. Two YOUNG and swishy boys from Colorado sat down adjacent us, one looking like so much unbaked biscuit dough. On the other side of them was a fabulous man with HUGE biceps who was fairly deep into his cups, clearly educated and VERY funny. He and I did some cutting up (he also called Jarred his best friend, not the first .. well, not the fifth homo I've heard say that, and I have to ask myself - uh, what is your standard for best friend aside from someone who mixes a great drink and looks fabulous behind the bar?) and we turned the wit stream on the two doughboys. The inevitable "Gay Republicans are about as dumb a concept as Jewish members of the Hitler Youth" comment came to the fore, and the unbaked biscuit dough (who had a dreadful smell about him - something rotting. I guess if you don't bake rising yeast dough, it starts to spoil) was most offended. I looked at him, and belted out "don't give me that fiscal conservatism bullshit - there's not a one of them that's a fiscal conservative." He says "well, not NOW" and I cut him off with "not since 1980!"

Then, the bicep drunk man starts in with "I voted for W the first time," and I about threw in the towel. He says "well, he ran an oil company!" "Into the GROUND" says I. He retorts "I knew he wasn't good with the money" and I shout "and you voted for him ANYWAY!"

Lord.

Then, more drinks were arriving (for the doughboys and the daft bicep man) and I turned away from them to focus on talking to David.

It was somewhat amusing. It was good to see Jarred. He told me that Jason/Tristan had been unfortunately incarcerated for some time for credit card fraud. Now, I can't remember his last name to save my damned LIFE ('cause if I could, I'd look him up on Public Data.)



Jarred thought he was about to get out of the joint. Said that the last he (Jarred) had heard, Jason looked a twig from all the crack he's been doing. Very interesting.

Oh, my this is so much fun