Dear Iowans,
Thank you for showing us what life is all about.
Your pal,
New Yorkers
“I left God’s country,” said Leon Mosley of Waterloo, Iowa, co-chairman of his state party. “They could use a bunch of people from Iowa to come here to show New Yorkers what life is all about, what being patriotic is all about, and what country is all about. I’m as confident about Bush being re-elected as I am that eggs are going to be in New York tomorrow morning.”
I should be asleep, but this one’s too good to pass up. After the last post, I started poking around that website with the Daily Show clips. I found another one on the current administration’s efforts to gain the authority to suspend the election. Watch it. Jon Stewart et al are brilliant. Thanks to Lisa Rein for keeping an eye on it for when we’re too busy working on important stuff to catch the show.
We don’t usually like to write about Politics so much here at blog.chirls.com. But there’s so darn much going on lately, and the stakes are pretty high these days. I’m looking forward to the time when i can go back to sleeping through it all.
First thing is a letter from former Ambassador Joseph Wilson to the Senate Intelligence Committe. I’ve liked this guy ever since I saw him on the Daily Show way back in July 2003. He gives great interview. And now I’m totally a member of the Joe Wilson Fan Club. The biggest surprise about the letter is that it’s actually a decent read. It’s nice to see that at least one of these guys is actually a good enough writer to make something like this interesting.
Next on the list is a story at Salon about comic book guy Alan Moore, of “Watchmen,” “From Hell” and something about Extraordinary Gentlemen. Sadly, I’ve yet to read those. I occasionally swing by Forbidden Planet, but I run like hell the other way so I don’t end up buying every graphic novel and action figure in the store. Anyway, read the freakin’ story.
Mark Glassman and some other guy wrote a story about some guy they call Sandy who is not actually named Sandy but may or may not have crammed classified documents down his undies.
Chirls rock band pals, Han Shot First, finally got some audio files up on the ol’ inter-thingy. Check out “My America.” I know, I know. More politics. But it’s actually a pretty good song, so it’s cool. These guys gig around town pretty often, and they sound great. Check ‘em out.
“This is an election year, I want people to get their head up out of their mashed potatoes and learn something about the issues and go and vote…I’m not telling them how to vote. I’m saying, get information about the issues.”
- Linda Ronstadt to the Los Angeles Times, via Salon (clickthrough ad required)
On occasion, I find that life slows down a bit. On those sad, slow days when there’s no movie premiere party, the Simpsons rerun showing is a clip show and pre-production on my next film has halted ’cause I’m waiting to hear back from a co-writer, I can come dangerously close to experiencing boredom, or worse, full-blown ennui. In these rare cases, the last resort to avoid heat death of the universe that is my brain is that most desparate, contemptible activity: reading. Newspapers, magazines, even sometimes weblogs. And once, I read a book. I’ll be honest with you, dear loyal readers, it’s come to that.
In my usual, attention-grasping style, I’m going to share something silly that I read. I found it in that silliest of publications, The New York Times. Michael Jernofsky and Sarah Kershaw write:
Shawn O’Hara, national chairman of the Reform Party, which was founded by Ross Perot, sought to play down differences with Mr. Nader. He insisted that Mr. Nader’s views were not entirely out of synch with the party as currently constructed, at least on some issues, like their mutual opposition to world trade agreements and the United States military role in Iraq.
“We’ve moved to the center,” Mr. O’Hara said, while conceding that he once favored the execution of doctors and nurses who performed abortions but now embraced abortion rights as provided by federal law, as Mr. Nader does.
For those of you who are in the pitiable position of being bored enough to care about politics, the full article is available at the Times website. There. I feel much, much better now.
Ok, this is pretty hilarious. Our beloved President has posted a fun little video ad on his campaign website. It’s a series of clips of a bunch of Democrats saying nasty things about Bush, ending with something about how we should be optimistic instead of getting all pissy. They even managed to get Hitler in there somehow. I think it was from that moveon thing from way back. But that wasn’t made by anyone in the Kerry camp, and they denounced that anyway. [more from Salon]
I can see where that message might appeal to some people, but is it really worth giving the Dems an opportunity to make their point right on the main page of georgebush.com? Are these guys being ballsy, desperate or just plain obtuse? I mean, Hitler? Honestly. The Kerry campaign doesn’t seem to find this as funny as I do. Check out this blog entry . Bush has a blog too. I have no plans to waste my time with either of them.
Speaking of entertaining politics, both the New York Times and The New Yorker have profiles of Governor Schwarzenegger this week. Both very well written, interesting and informative. They both portray him as quite charismatic and give a deeper, more nuanced impression of him than most media coverage he’s received so far. I still think he’s a schmuck.
Coincidentally or not, Terminator 3 was on tonight. As I’m staying home to do laundry, I watched it. All of it, actually. It’s surprisingly not awful. Two aspects that bother me about it are the handful of gaping holes in logic and the dumbed-down, exposition-heavy dialogue. Funny and maybe a bit ironic how these guys over-explain everything, giving too much information in movies and give way too little in politics. I would have thought it should be the other way around. However, there are some similarities. Like much politics today, Terminator 3 is basically a parody of the last one from a decade ago but dumber and with a lot more unnecessary destruction.
This is a very recent update to a very old issue, brought to our attention by our old friend, BCSS (the update, not the issue). Silly, silly, silly. Naturally, it’d have to be my first entry on the House of Representatives that puts me over the top on those elementary school Internet filters. If this isn’t entertainment enough, there’s so much more out there. Check it.
To amend section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, to provide for the punishment of certain profane broadcasts, and for other purposes. (Introduced in House)
108th CONGRESS
1st Session
H.R. 3687
To amend section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, to provide for the punishment of certain profane broadcasts, and for other purposes.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
December 8, 2003
Mr. OSE (for himself and Mr. SMITH of Texas) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary
A BILL
To amend section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, to provide for the punishment of certain profane broadcasts, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, is amended–
(1) by inserting `(a)’ before `Whoever’; and
(2) by adding at the end the following:
`(b) As used in this section, the term `profane’, used with respect to language, includes the words `shit’, `piss’, `fuck’, `cunt’, `asshole’, and the phrases `cock sucker’, `mother fucker’, and `ass hole’, compound use (including hyphenated compounds) of such words and phrases with each other or with other words or phrases, and other grammatical forms of such words and phrases (including verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms).’.
I have nothing to say about this.
http://www.japander.com/japander/schwarz.htm
The RIAA is suing a 12-year old girl. This is not getting ridiculous yet. Is it?
