Why I try not to read fantasy novels

Last Thursday, fantasy novelist David Eddings was flushing out the gas tank of his busted Excalibur when he noticed a fluid leaking. "Is the fluid flammable?" he thought. To find out, he lit a piece of paper on fire and threw it into the puddle of fluid. The answer was yes, and Eddings burned his own house down, including the car and the original manuscripts of his 27 novels. At least he hasn't lost his keen powers of observation:

"One word comes to mind," the renowned wordsmith said as he stood in a pajama shirt and slippers. "Dumb."

I will bury you!

Little boys like their toys, and Boy President Bush is no exception. At a visit yesterday to a Catepillar plant in Peoria, he climbed into a D10 bulldozer like the one pictured right, cranked it up, and mockingly pretended to run over the White House press corps, sending them scurrying. When a chimp-brained fratboy like Bush mockingly does something like this, it's a little window into what he really feels, but of course the press corps he wants to kill obligingly pretends it was all just funnin' and barely reports the matter. One of the few who did was Newsweek's Holly Bailey:

"I would suggest moving back," Bush said as he climbed into the cab of a massive D-10 tractor. "I'm about to crank this sucker up." As the engine roared to life, White House staffers tried to steer the press corps to safety, but when the tractor lurched forward, they too were forced to scramble for safety."Get out of the way!" a news photographer yelled. "I think he might run us over!" said another. White House aides tried to herd the reporters the right way without getting run over themselves. Even the Secret Service got involved, as one agent began yelling at reporters to get clear of the tractor. Watching the chaos below, Bush looked out the tractor's window and laughed, steering the massive machine into the spot where most of the press corps had been positioned. The episode lasted about a minute, and Bush was still laughing when he pulled to a stop. He gave reporters a thumbs-up. "If you've never driven a D-10, it's the coolest experience," Bush said afterward. Yeah, almost as much fun as seeing your life flash before your eyes.

Will Be a Right-Wing Shill For Food

Katherine Harris passing out business cards before this week's State of the Union Address.

Smack my bitch up

Essentially worthless

So I'm tooling around the iTunes store, which is a pretty new experience for me since until fairly recently I was dead set against the idea of digitizing my music collection. I came across an ad for something called "iTunes Essentials: '00s Alternative Rock" and foolishly clicked on it.

It's a good thing the world didn't end on the even of the new millennium.

Okay, I'm with you so far.

Had the '00s never happened we wouldn't have watched alternative rock turn from a tidal wave of down-tuned guitars, turntable stabs, and spiteful screams (Limp Bizkit, Papa Roach, Linkin Park)

Hey, wait a minute. Since when are these guys alternative rock? What exactly are they an alternative to? Not sucking?

to a cucumber-cool revival of garage rock grittiness (the Hives, the Strokes, the White Stripes)

Okay, it's getting better. I love me some garage rock.

and steely post-punk (Interpol, Franz Ferdinand).

I have no idea what "steely post-punk" means.

Oh, and who can forget the emergence of Coldplay, one of the most majestic rock bands of the last five years?

First of all, save me this cloying "Oh, and who can forget" crap, as if you were going to pass up the chance to pimp fucking Coldplay again, iTunes. Oh, and who can forget that the one billionth song sold on iTunes was "Speed of Sound". How embarrassing for that guy - who was Alex Ostrovsky of West Bloomfield, MI, by the way. Imagine that street cred he would have gotten if he had downloaded something obscurely cool. The art school girls would have come running. Instead, he's just another loser who downloaded fucking Coldplay.

Second of all, the only people who think fucking Coldplay are "majestic" are the ones who think U2 is a great rock band instead of Bon Jovi with better musicians.

And third, it's fucking Coldplay.

Sweet Christmas! Luke Cage versus Dr. Doom

Freedom is Slavery

This week seems to be the week of Orwell. Via Boing Boing, courtesy of the London Metropolitan Police:

The latest announcement from the Ministry of Truth

What the fuck?

What the fucking fuck fuck is wrong with this country?

Not that we would dare allow such a thing, but that such a thing is not universally derided as beyond the bounds of civil discourse and horribly tainted with the bloody connotations of the purges of fascist and communist states.

The sage punditry warnes us of the profane wasteland of the blogosphere while bile like this goes largely uncondemned and people by the millions continue to watch and read the Sean Hannitys and Glenn Becks and Michelle Malkins. What does it take to get some sanity around here?

The latest announcement from the Ministry of Truth

What the fuck?

What the fucking fuck fuck is wrong with this country?

Not that we would dare allow such a thing, but that such a thing is not universally derided as beyond the bounds of civil discourse and horribly tainted with the bloody connotations of the purges of fascist and communist states.

The sage punditry warnes us of the profane wasteland of the blogosphere while bile like this goes largely uncondemned and people by the millions continue to watch and read the Sean Hannitys and Glenn Becks and Michelle Malkins. What does it take to get some sanity around here?