I Love This (Plus Bonus Movie)

From an anonymous responder to Radley Balko's Fox News opinion piece from last week:

If George Bush shit out gold bars and handed one to every single hurricane victim, and then he raised the dead and parted the flood waters and turned the power back on and resurrected the Beatles and got them back together and lowered the price of oil to a dollar per barrel and invented a cure for cancer while farting Chopin nocturnes and turning Lake Ponchatrain into chilled Dom Perignon, liberals would STILL find reason to bitch.

Again: There's plenty of blame to go around. Some of it attaches to Bush, some of it to the Governor of Louisiana, some to the Mayor of New Orleans. Hell, some of it attaches to the people who refused to leave ("refused", mind, not "were genuinely unable to"; those who had no choice can't be blamed). I get the feeling that a lot of people's loyalty to Bush has blinded them to the mistakes he (and members of his administration) made, and that a lot of people's hatred of Bush has blinded them to the mistakes made by people unaffiliated with him.

And now that opportunistic vulture, Michael Moore, wants to make one of his "documentaries" about it, I guess in an attempt to prevent George W. Bush from being, um, re-elected...again...

I sincerely hope The Aristocrats wins an Oscar for Best Documentary, just to give Penn Jillette the opportunity to go up on stage at the ceremony and badmouth Moore.

Speaking of which, we did go see that movie this weekend (it just now started playing here). Very good. Don't go see it if you don't like dirty jokes, there's no point, but it really does end up being more than just a bunch of comics telling the same joke over and over. It's a fascinating study of humor, and the creative process, and personality and individual style. As Penn says at one point, "It's the singer, not the song," and it's truly interesting to see that axiom working in a medium where you rarely get to see such differences in style so directly. Plus, it has Gilbert Gottfried saying: "Well, wait, wait, wait, backtrack a little here: Where did the blood come from? You didn't say anything about blood! Well..." Actually, I'd probably better stop there. If you want to know where the blood came from, go see the movie (that, or listen to the clip on the sound board at the official site, above, although for some reason they felt it necessary to censor out the word "daughter" from the bit).

Also: As I believe I've said before, it takes a special movie to drag myself away from my home theater setup and into an actual theater, anymore. While some movies drag me to the theater because I want the full spectacle on a big screen, etc., The Aristocrats was worth going to the theater to be able to see it with a crowd of other people, to see their reactions. It's more of a social experience.

Oh, My Dear, Sweet, Holy Christ

For the love of God, do not click this link.

If you insist on pursuing such Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, you can investigate further here. I particularly recommend their interpretation of "Stand".

Oh, One Other Thing

New Orleans: Yes, the response has been a massive failure of government, at all levels, from all sides: Federal, state, and local, Republican and Democrat. Naturally, the response to this massive failure of government will be a bipartisan demand for more government.

But what I really want to say is that I have a plan for the aftermath and rebuilding: Canals. So, New Orleans is below sea level? Well, so is Venice. Forget trying to rebuild the levees, and just build a new layer of city over the top of the sunken buildings (as Venice has done, more than once in its history, IIRC), and start offering gondola rides.

Random Observations

* Those who were amused by the falling-woman-bubble-thing might want to check out the independently-developed PC game, Rag Doll Kung Fu, which was apparently such a hit at the Game Developers Conference earlier this year that Valve will be distributing it online, and Lionhead Studios, where the guy works as a game artist, has given him carte blanche to "make something cool" for his next game.

Some people have fun jobs.

* However, at least I do now have a job: I'm testing ATM software for NCR. One of the things I'm working on, specifically, is multi-language support, which requires the banks using the software to specify which languages are available (i.e., which languages they've created screens for) in a configuration file, using the ISO 639 codes. I note with some glee that there is an ISO 639 code for Klingon ("TLH").

* This just seems wrong, somehow:

Banana beer.

It was OK. I suppose that since banana bread is yummy, and beer is essentially bread in liquid form, it makes some kind of sense. I still prefer a good raspberry lambic, though. The raspberry flavor seems to go along better with the acidic bite of the lambic. I wouldn't turn one down, but I don't think I'll go out of my way to have another one.

* That one was acquired at Jungle Jim's, easily the most incredible grocery store I have ever set foot in. It's a grocery store that requires a map. Yes, the beer section is quite impressive, as is the selection of cheeses. Brenda drove me down there as a treat for getting a new job. We spent about two hours and a couple hundred dollars...