Kasparov vs. Megalon?

Russian political press conferences are much more interesting than ours.

Please stop it! I'm gagging.

CBS aired - "erred" is probably th better verb - an interview with one of the henchmen responsible for our 7+ years of torture, rape of the environment, pillaging of the treasury, and trashing of the constitution.

I have a new name for this particular sphincter muscle: Antonin Smegma.

New Steve Novick Ad

Steve Novick's ads have been clever and smart. Here is another one.

Cheeses of Nazareth!

This is very funny up to the 1:35 mark. After that, it is painfully dull. But it is a great lead-in.

Have a good time, and keep your eye on the devil!

This video loads VERY sssslllloooowwwwlllllyyyy, so I recommend that you turn off the sound in You-tube, load the movie in entirety, then replay it with sound. Otherwise you'll be thinking "WTF?" a lot.

Someone didn't check with a native speaker...

The "LUMINE" chain of shopping complexes are adding new stores to several Tokyo area locations.


Take a look at these additions to the "LUMINE-ESUTO" shopping mall in Shinjuku (one of the special wards that make up the core of Tokyo).


Oops.

important legal news from japan

"Big breasts win verdict for Japanese pin-up"

The bikini model... was cleared after a court decided she was too well-endowed to squeeze into a room through a hole...

I actually saw this on the news last night while I was at the gym. The cameramen kept panning down to her breasts during the interview.

The Monastery Help Desk

I love this. It's in Norwegian!

Phillies Pitcher in Japan Trade Prank

The Phillies have been having fun during spring training. I was especially amused since the Japanese team the kid was supposedly being sent to is the one I'll be seeing next month when they host Boston.

hmmmmm...

Take a look at this partial tracklisting from a CD of "Nice English Songs".



I don't think they sing track 11 in American schools anymore. To be fair, the Japanese does just say "I like my tiny cat". Still, I think I'll leave this one off the list of songs to be sung next year.

keep it classy, comrades

(part of) A conversation between several gentlemen over at FuckedGaijin, my favorite Japan-based English-speaking message board.

American A: Are you from Alberta?

Canadian B: Naw, my town name rhymes with vagina...yeah, we really do say it that way in Canada.

Canadian C: I had no idea you were from Mussy Lake, Ontario!

The Republican Myth of the Ownership Society

From Calculated Risk:
"The homeownership rate has plunged back to the levels of the summer of 2001."

Nice going, George.

365 Days and counting

Bush's Last Day. The Reign of Error will end in less than a year.

Global Climate De-stabilization

Here is a terrific video introducing the idea of risk management and the response to global warming. Well worth the whole time (9:58!).

S hits the F in 2009

I've just been reading a few posts by Stirling Newbury over at The Agonist

• The Coming Double Dip Recession
  

  ... Unfortunately for the US, it has replaced a personally corrupt evil stupid congress run by Republicans, with merely a corrupt cowardly evil stupid congress.run by Republicans with Bush Dogs as cosigners. It is that they aren't personally corrupt. The catastrophic failure of Democratic leadership will be masked by the good conditions of 2008 for Democrats, but unless dramatically changed, will lead to their losing Congress right back in 2010, especially if there is a Democratic President being hammered for the recession.
  
  This means that instead of Americans taking paper losses on the houses and retirements, they are goint to wake up and find a bi-partisan consensus, meaning Republicans plus Bush Dogs, to shave more off their entitlements. The Republican way to do this may well be double taxation: a national sales tax means that people who paid income taxes earning money, will then have to pay sales taxes spending it. The Democratic way will be nibbling away at benefits and technocratic shell games, as "hedonic adjustments' were used to nibble away at Social Security.
  
  Neither party is stating the obvious, that the various sticky fingers of the financial system, which have deprived Americans of the benefits of lower costs, now add up to over 10% of GDP. Plus the prison-security-military-industrial complex, this comes closer to 20 cents of every dollar boiling away into projects that do not improve the fundamentals of the American economy, but shift money directly from those who work, to those whose job it is to delay the day of reckoning.

  
  
• Dancing On a Volcano

  ...the present expansion, even if it were to continue, would not produce the burst of robust wage growth which would allow Americans to put their financial houses in order, nor for the country as a whole to do so. Now is the worst time to be spending money: prices are high, and the time to recoup those prices is short.
  
  The present continued inflation volatility, and increasing general level of prices, is an indicator of the extreme financial mismanagement of the economy by the Republicans, and a sign of how morally bankrupt, and simply economically blind, as well as politically inept, the present Democratic Congress is. The public hates this economy, it would be politically, a great time to simply oppose an out of control executive, and take the path of fiscal rectitude. Instead, the Republicans are starting to reclaim that mantle on the cheap by opposing a few projects here and there, while still dropping the GDP of Iraq into Iraq.
  
  Absent this sweet spot, the public is never going to see a recouping moment of wages, and when the recession hits, it will be deeper and wider than the previous recession. The bad news is that there is another, larger, recession coming after this one, as we continue to scale a new inflationary mountain.
  
  Think of this as the 1975 recession: bad, but only the opening act for the destabilization of a massive dollar glut.

It is fairly depressing reading, but well worth twenty minutes of your time. Go read, then think about the things we need to do to get Democrats to act - and vote - like Democrats.

William Kristol: Still Stupid, Still Wrong

If William Kristol were alone in a forest, and he said something correct, would anyone hear it? Wonkette says (This Must Be Embarassing)

Though they backpedaled a bit on their website this morning, this stupid Weekly Standard cover is sitting on a shelf right now at a newsstand near you. It will be there for the rest of the week, in fact. This is exactly the kind of political astuteness that earned editor Bill Kristol a spot in the pages of the New York Times. We can’t read the story because it’s behind a subscriber wall, but we imagine it’s full of the same kind of masturbatory wishful thinking the headline suggests. If you do have access to this thing for whatever reason, please send it to us so that we might mock it further.

Here is what the paper of record has to say.

Borger blows a line

CNN political analyst - so to speak - Gloria Borger, with enough makeup to paint a chorus line, flubs her lines; "hard fought" somehow becomes "hard fart" (aka "shart"). Gawker has it all. No Shit. KEYWORD breaking news.

Why I will never vote for Fuckabee

This fine effort by Max Blumenthal was reported by Steve Clemons here today in The Washington Note. Even though it is nicely anti-Fuckabee, have a bucket to throw up into.

Even More Eye-Catching Phrases From Bowels of The Academy

Last year, we reported on the chatter surrounding upcoming MLA convention, especially one surrounding the talk "Is the Rectum a Text?".

Once again, InsideHigherEd- usually stodgy and completely humorless - has the poop:

Hook-ups at the Modern Language Association meeting are legendary — and, many say, frequently belong in the study of fiction. Whether this Craigslist posting is serious or parody, we don’t know (we haven’t heard back, although clearly the person posting wasn’t seeking a journalistic question about his intentions). But the posting, spotted by a source who asked not to be credited for the find, has prompted some hallway jokes at the meeting. If you want to read a pick-up proposal involving tweed, bondage, Alexander Pope and eBay, the link is worth following.

Here is the Craigslist posting:

I am looking for someone with an interest in 18th C British literature, preferably a recent Ph.D. or assistant professor. Here’s how the scenario goes:

I show up at your hotel room. I remove my tweed blazer and tie, fold them neatly, and place them next to your bed. You are already naked.

I carefully secure your wrists and ankles to the bed frame, using quarter-inch nylon rope. I place a copy of Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock” on the smooth, cool skin of your stomach. I begin to read as I work you with a vibrator.

The soaring rhythm produced by the aural melding of Pope’s heroic couplets with the low thrum of the Hitachi Magic Wand is drowned out as you orgasm loudly and repeatedly.

When you are spent, I very carefully shave off all your pubic hair. I place it in a Ziploc bag.

I wash and moisturize your vagina, untie the rope on your wrists and ankles, and put on my coat and tie.

I leave with your public hair in my pocket. I keep your muff with me for one full week. Each night, I open the bag and smell your hair.

After one full week, I return your public hair to you, by mail. You then put your muff up for sale on E-bay, along with this story.

We split any profits 50/50.

• Location: Chicago
• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

NSFW: Smell your favorite porn star!

Gawker reported this juicy morsel (Germany Is Exporting Its Ladies One Drop At a Time).

Yes, it says what you think it says. I'm not sure who was driving the bus here, German ingenuity or German sense of humor. Here is the site (VERY NSFW).

Peace through Ecstasy is Coming!

The clock is ticking...

What will you be doing at 10:08 PM tonight?
Will you be doing your share?