Mr Belvedere remembers when men were men and life was great and everybody made do and there was one goddamned "right" and no loony moral relativist is gonna tell him otherwise, so take your pursuit of happiness and hit the road, Jack, else his moral clarity will fuck you up! And if gas hits $5 a gallon we'll have to fucking cope with it, cause that's what they pay in Europe and don't fucking even talk about public transportation cause that's for pussies - you'll just have to walk to the store or die trying, just like he had to do and nobody fucking cared! Nobody! And he just payed $51 to fill up his car, and no it wasn't no goddamned SUV, it's a 1973 Delta 88 with plastic on the seats and the original tires, and it's got 645 miles on it because he only drives it on Veterans Day, so fuck you and your greedy indulgent lifestyle. Think you can handle $5/gal ? Can you? Bet you can't, pussy. And GET THE FUCK OFF MY LAWN!

Bye Bye Beetle:

Hello Solara:

The Beetle, though cute and fun to drive, had issues. The doors were constantly squeaking - after a while the WD40 injections stopped working; putting the boot around the convertible top was a hassle; the seats had no lumbar support at all; Mrs Cleek doesn't dig standards; etc..

So, we upgraded to a convertible Solara. It's not quite as trendy and eye-catching as the little beige Beetle, but it's a hell of a lot more car and hopefully more solid.

One thing about the Beetle that I found interesting: probably 75% of the compliments I got on it, from people I didn't know, were from black men. Guys would be walking on the street, standing in a parking lot, driving next to me, and they'd find a way to compliment the car - old, young, in groups, single, whatever; black men dug the tan Beetle convertible. It got a few compliments from white women, a couple black women, and very few white men (can't remember any, honestly). I don't know why that would be, but that's my experience. We'll see what the Toyota brings.

A rush [...] turned into a violent stampede Tuesday, with people getting thrown to the pavement, beaten with a folding chair and nearly driven over. One woman went so far to wet herself rather than surrender her place in line.

...

People threw themselves forward, screaming and pushing each other. A little girl's stroller was crushed in the stampede. Witnesses said an elderly man was thrown to the pavement, and someone in a car tried to drive his way through the crowd.

In line for what ? Used laptops.

Skot describes watching "Bride of Chucky" and mentions that Chucky's voice is done by Brad Dourif. Who? Brad Dourif (no, not Joni Dourif).

He's a character actor, probably best known these days as Grima Wormtounge, the slippery advisor to the spellbound King Theoden, in "The Lord Of The Rings". But, he's been in dozens of other movies and TV shows. He had a big role in "Mississippi Burning" (which my wife and I watched this weekend - good times!) where he plays the deputy sheriff / KKK member who gets some nasty razor burn and a well-deserved pounding from Gene Hackman. He's also done a few Star Treks, an X Files, he's the doctor on Deadwood, and got an Oscar nomination for his role in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest".

Despite a long and active career, he's managed to keep a pretty low profile - like, he doesn't seem to show up on the cover of People very often. And yet, he's got a fan base who likes him well enough to have designed Brad Dourif wallpaper for your computer. He even has a Japanese fan site!

So, here's to Brad Dourif, player of "demented, deranged, or disturbed characters" !

( I suppose we can forgive him if he used to look a bit like Chris Kattan )

Iraq's in trouble? Rumsfeld is the problem! It's not his boss, the guy in charge. No, it's the fault of guy who carries out the orders of the guy in charge. It's the inversion of Intelligent Design; instead of everything being due to the hand of the omnipotent being in charge, in this world, nothing is the fault of the idiot in charge.

60 Seconds from porch to web.

Roger Ebert lets loose on Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo.

'Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo' makes a living cleaning fish tanks and occasionally prostituting himself. How much he charges I'm not sure, but the price is worth it if it keeps him off the streets and out of another movie. 'Deuce Bigalow' is aggressively bad, as if it wants to cause suffering to the audience. The best thing about it is that it runs for only 75 minutes.

Read the rest.

(via Patrick Hayden)

"The way your dad looked at it, this watch was your birthright. He'd be damned if any of the slopes were gonna get their greasy yellow hands on his boy's birthright. So he hid it in the one place he knew he could hide something: his ass. Five long years, he wore this watch up his ass. Then when he died of dysentery, he gave me the watch. I hid this uncomfortable piece of metal up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the watch to you."

Christopher Walken, for President.

Clifford, at Cosmic Variance discusses his hope "to have science education and awareness so much the norm that everybody will casually - and without apology - sprinkle science facts, science reasoning and science humour into their everyday conversations just like they would sport, politics, or popular culture."

Here's my observation:

Time runs faster for the person who has to run to the store for a couple of six packs when the beer runs out ("the store's like three minutes from here! it'll only take a sec'!") than the people back at the party waiting for him to deliver said beer ("how long has he been gone?").

I'm not sure if this is because the people at the party are stationary, compared to the the person sent to get beer, or if there are non-relativistic explanations.