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Testing, testing…
This post is in: Music, Open Threads
This post is in: Cat Blogging, Open Threads
This is a plausible representation of heaven, if you take the cat’s point of view:
It was in the high 20s/low 30s outside as this picture was taken. Tikka responds by finding the sunsplash on top of a radiator.
It doesn’t always have to be complicated…and yes, there are mornings when I envy my cat’s clarity of purpose.
This post is in: Open Threads, Popular Culture
Yeah, we’ve talked about the subject before, but never this particular clip (I hope). Saw Gene Rodenberry on the college-lecture circuit in 1973 or ’74, when we all could still thrill to the naughtiness of “After the pilot, the network suits told me I had to get rid of either the female second-in-command or the alien. So I kept Mr. Spock and married Majel Barrett, because in California it’s illegal to do it the other way around!”
Also, Cher — always a delight, per Rebecca Nicholson in the Guardian:
… This, for instance, is her current Twitter biography:
Stand & B Counted or Sit & B Nothing. Don’t Litter,Chew Gum,Walk Past Homeless PPL w/out Smile.DOESNT MATTER in 5 yrs IT DOESNT MATTER THERE’S ONLY LOVE&FEAR.
Her tweets are a riot of politics, bemusement, CAPS LOCK and emoji symbols… Our chat today involves advice for Miley Cyrus, the perils of Grand Theft Auto and a lengthy story involving Salvador Dalí, an orgy and chocolate clocks…
…[B]ack in 1989, when Cher was straddling a cannon in the Turn Back Time video (“so tame in comparison to now”), the concept of a tween fanbase didn’t exist. Should Miley and Rihanna, for example, care that their 10-year-old fans are watching them perform half-naked? “I don’t think the naked part is the problem,” she insists. “Unfortunately, what happens now is that kids are exposed to everything that’s too old for them. You know, since the internet, since horrible PlayStation, you know, what’s the name of it? Hijack car … that car hijack thing? I think maybe that is worse than seeing Miley Cyrus on a wrecking ball. Also, she’s trying to break the Disney stuff. When you make such an image, you have to hit it with a hammer. Or a sledgehammer!”
At the time of Miley’s MTV performance, Cher was drily scathing: “I don’t think it was her best effort.” But she says now that she’d been doing interviews all day, “then somehow, I started liking the sound of my own voice pontificating. And finally I thought, this is shit, you know? Get off this kid. It was one performance. It turned out to be the greatest stunt of all time ‘cos people are still talking about it. She doesn’t give a shit what I think, anyhow.”…
Cher is at her most angry when talking politics. She thinks what is happening to women in the US is “terrible … we’ve lost all of our rights. They couldn’t do it federally, so they’re taking it away state by state. I don’t recognise my country,” she says, sadly. “That’s not funny to me at all. I don’t know what the fuck happened. These people [the Tea Party, whom she regularly refers to on Twitter as “t-hadists”] hijacked it, and they’re bringing down the prestige, and the dollar, for whatever it’s worth.”…
And speaking of standing up to the Teahadists: Next year Wendy Davis will have a book to sell:
… Ms. Davis, a candidate for governor in Texas, has signed with Blue Rider Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House, to write a book about her personal life and career, the publisher said on Thursday.
“Everyone deserves to have a say in their future,” Ms. Davis said in a statement. “I hope telling the story of how I went from being a single mom to serving in the Texas State Senate to running for governor will remind others that with the right leadership in government, where you start has nothing to do with how far you go.”
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Keeping that idea firmly in mind, what’s on the agenda for the start of the weekend?
Early Morning Open Thread: “Images on Television Permeate the Culture”Post + Comments (104)
by Betty Cracker| 191 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Assholes, General Stupidity
Via The Smoking Gun:
Fraternity Pledge Loses Testicle In Hazing Ritual
Ohio cops probe battering in basement of “Gobbler House”NOVEMBER 7–Ohio cops are investigating a college fraternity hazing incident that left a 19-year-old pledge short one testicle, records show… After having limburger cheese stuffed in their mouths, the pledges were each given a “ball of stuffing” and ordered to “simulate having sexual intercourse with it.” Specifically, the trio was told to “fuck the sheep.”
The pledges were then hit with “towels and shirts that had the ends balled up in knots” or which had “items tied inside them to inflict pain.” Pledge Tyler Lawrence, 19, was struck in the testicles with “a towel fashioned as a weapon,” according to an affidavit sworn by Wilmington Police Department Detective Brian Kratzer.
Lawrence “went to the ground immediately in pain and was clutching himself in the groin.” Frat members eventually got Lawrence to his feet so they could conclude the hazing by stuffing vinegar-soaked bananas into the mouths of the three men (who were told the item was “poop or shit”).
After the initiation, Lawrence complained of significant pain in his testicles. He was transported to a local hospital where he underwent surgery to have a testicle removed as a result of “damage caused to him when he was struck by the towel.”
Jesus. I’m certain Cole would never put up with that kinda shit from his frat boys, who appear to be upstanding young men who are too intelligent to engage in such absurd and destructive antics.
There was a frat at my college that made pledges snort raw oysters up their noses — in a restaurant with innocent members of the public looking on (or jeering beery encouragement, as we did from my table). What stupid and/or humiliating rituals have you witnessed / participated in?
This post is in: Gun nuts, Open Threads
It’s the only American religion with its own, separate amendment. Per Joe Coscarelli in NYMag:
Guns & Ammo, a popular magazine about firearms, does not welcome a diversity of ideas. In fact, it actively seeks to stamp them out. Contributing editor Dick Metcalf, a veteran of Shooting Times, has been straight-up fired for his December back-page opinion column titled, mildly, “Let’s Talk Limits.” Guns & Ammo does not talk limits.
In the article, Metcalf writes that “way too many gun owners still seem to believe that any regulation of the right to keep and bear arms is an infringement,” noting that “all constitutional rights are regulated, always have been, and need to be.” He adds, “I firmly believe that all U.S. citizens have a right to keep and bear arms, but I do not believe that they have a right to use them irresponsibly.” The nerve of this man!…
Guns & Ammo readers cannot believe it. His take sparked a response that could be accurately described as a mob with semi-automatic pitchforks…
Merely firing the writer (and printing a grovelling apology) having proved insufficient, editor Jim Bequette also ‘advance[d] the schedule’ on his own planned retirement. Check the NYMag link even if you don’t wanna go further up the river — the, uh, curated comments are probably more revealing than their posters intended.
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Apart from confirming the conviction that some of our fellow citizens shouldn’t be trusted with anything more dangerous than library paste, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
by John Cole| 34 Comments
This post is in: Because of wow., Gay Rights are Human Rights
Here is one of whom I consider one of the most despicable people on the planet, Ari Fleischer, sounding remarkably sane and almost human (warning- Politico) while advocating that the House pass ENDA.
This post is in: Open Threads, General Stupidity, Teabagger Stupidity
Via Whiskey Fire, I found a link to a boring old harrumph from boring old Colonel Mustard (see DijonGate) expressing outrage at the prospect of highly educated artsy-fartsy types getting free health insurance under ObamaCare instead of pursuing a soul-crushing professoriate or dying a painful, lonely death from a preventable disease in a rundown artist garret. As God intended.
The Colonel manages to work Nancy Pelosi and struggling rock musicians into his plaint about being forced to subsidize shiftless painters and textile artists — pretty standard “are there no workhouses” fare. But the real fun begins in the comments section, which starts with a complaint about “low achievers” killing the work ethic, until a self-styled member of that demographic pipes up:
Hey now! I’m a low achiever (never had much ambition), but I’m SELF-RELIANT low achiever. I ask no one to support my lifestyle but myself.
The glory of it all, is that I am civil disobedient, not enrolling, even though I would probably qualify even more than those “artists”. I draw comic characters as a hobby, and I drink Lattes. OMG, How many liberal minds just burst from the fact that I’m a tea party conservative?
Dollars to donuts the layabout cartoonist is as independent of government largesse as a fellow tea partier on a Medicare-subsized mobility scooter. And while his words seemed calculated to endear him to Colonel Mustard’s audience, the ruffian blew it by supplying a link to one of his impure doodlings to support his bona fides as an artiste. Well! That prompted a passing preacher to involuntarily become engorged, and the offended shaman dressed the cartoonist down thusly:
I’m not trying to be a jerk, but when you put down a link to something, you may want to let people know that they are about to be linked to illustrations of naked women with erect nipples, simply out of courtesy. I’m a celibate clergyman, and I try very hard not to entertain thoughts or images of naked women, especially if they look like the one that greeted me upon linking. When one tries to quiet the mind for prayer, often the day’s most memorable events, images, sounds, etc., try to pry in and disrupt one’s focus. It also helps to avoid temptation, if such images are not before my eyes and in my head. I know that many other men try to keep their virtue intact, not just clergy. The less we see of naked women, the better.
For those of you who haven’t already scurried over to Casa de Mustard to check out the titillating cartoon for yourselves, allow me to assure you that it’s a pretty harmless Catwoman knock-off. Catwoman with high-beams, mind you, but hardly a buck-nekkid siren to lure the preacher man into the pits of hell. You’ll see more salacious ads at the mall. Duh, stay off the internet, Padre!
Anyhoo, there’s no real point to this post other than pointing and laughing, so feel free to treat it as an open thread. Or take the high road and discuss whether or not destitute PhDs who pursue a career in pottery should receive subsidized medical benefits up front or just go to the hospital as uninsured ER patients and jack up medical costs for us all on the back-end.
[X-posted at Rumproast]Innocence Bludgeoned with a Candlestick in the ConservatoryPost + Comments (82)