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Valentine’s Day, with all its heightened expectations and pressure, ranks just below Mother’s Day on the Waiter Pain Meter. Its amateur night and the tips are for shit.
One of the many reasons I'm happy to be able to say (with full-bore sap and twinkling eyes) that every day with my dear wife is its own Valentine's Day.
TROUBLEMAKERS: What pit bulls can teach us about profiling.
Then which are the pit bulls that get into trouble? “The ones that the legislation is geared toward have aggressive tendencies that are either bred in by the breeder, trained in by the trainer, or reinforced in by the owner,� Herkstroeter says. A mean pit bull is a dog that has been turned mean, by selective breeding, by being cross-bred with a bigger, human-aggressive breed like German shepherds or Rottweilers, or by being conditioned in such a way that it begins to express hostility to human beings. A pit bull is dangerous to people, then, not to the extent that it expresses its essential pit bullness but to the extent that it deviates from it. A pit-bull ban is a generalization about a generalization about a trait that is not, in fact, general. That’s a category problem.
Fantastic article.
Also puts a point on why I've had issues with some of the recent topics of conversation at the Corcorans'.
Board: Principal wrong to ban student's kilt
The controversy sparked an international debate about personal freedom and cultural dress. Thousands of people from around the world signed an Internet petition seeking an apology.
In a written statement, school superintendent Dr. Ron Anderson said school officials had no right to bar the student from wearing a kilt to any school function.
Quote of the article: "Scots are very touchy about their kilts."
If anything, you can bet a high school senior who is interested in wearing a kilt to a dance probably isn't going to cause much ruckus. Unless, of course he's going "regimental" underneath. ;)
Somehow, this is in the Scotsman rather than the Onion... Stalin's half-man, half-ape super-warriors
The Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the creation of Planet of the Apes-style warriors by crossing humans with apes, according to recently uncovered secret documents.
Moscow archives show that in the mid-1920s Russia's top animal breeding scientist, Ilya Ivanov, was ordered to turn his skills from horse and animal work to the quest for a super-warrior.
This sounds like an issue of Hellboy or something... Jesus!
Obviously, Stalin was a stone-cold nutter. I can't believe Lenin was the only one with syphilis rumors surrounding him... (Ah, there are Stalin-Pox ideas after the fact, it seems.)
I wonder if he also had a separate Sleestak breeding program.
Bush on the Constitution: 'It's just a goddamned piece of paper'
I’ve talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution “a goddamned piece of paper.�
Context is given, so there's not much to add, really...
"I thought I was dying - that's how bad it was," said Shea, a mother of two who lives in Dongan Hills. "All my skin was pulled back like a nylon stocking a lady takes off."
So, she's suing Dunkin Donuts because she "suffered second- and third-degree burns after the cardboard tray she was holding in the passenger seat of a friend's car toppled and spilled over her left leg and ankles."
Now, at first this caused me some doubt, because I had always thought third-degree burns meant you had charring of flesh. As it turns out, that's wrong: "A third-degree burn is the most serious because it destroys all the layers of the skin."
So, yeah... That coffee had to be thermo-friggin'-nuclear! How does that even happen?
So, this is... um... scary. I do love that it has people like Loretta Swit on there, though.
I also noted that a couple of my man-crushes (Brad Pitt and Kiefer Sutherland) share an address. No doubt an agent's office.
I've been in nose-to-the-grindstone mode at work lately with a project I classify as superultramegaubercrazy-high priority. It's kind of fun, though, so no complaints there. In the real world, we had one of our Sutton Family Sunday Dinner parties, which rocked the house. About twenty folks came over to partake of brined turkey, lasagna, pork roast, and a veritable cornucopia of delectable delights. I enjoyed a couple glasses of Matt's Versinthe, but both The Wife and coworker Sarah hold suspicions regarding the effects of the tiny tastes they had. Perhaps the thujone conflicts with the female disposition... ;)
So, what's going on in the world? Let's see...
Over White House opposition, the Senate voted 90-9 last month to approve an amendment by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that would ban the use of torture. Vice President Cheney has pushed for an exemption for the CIA.
France was slow to react to the spreading violence set off by the accidental deaths of two youths on Oct. 27, in part because the initial nights of unrest did not seem particularly unusual in a country where an average of more than 80 cars a day were set on fire this year even before the violence.
OK, good. Still the same crazy world.
I've always thought Vinnie Gallo was an odd duck. Consider this bit of drama surrounding his film The Brown Bunny:
Roger Ebert called the film "the worst in the history of Cannes" to which Vincent Gallo responded that Ebert was a "fat pig with the physique of a slave trader". Ebert paraphrased a remark of Winston Churchill and responded that "although I am fat, one day I will be thin, but Mr. Gallo will still have been the director of 'Brown Bunny'". Gallo then put a "hex" on Ebert's colon, to which Ebert responded that "even my colonoscopy was more entertaining than his film".
That's kooky.
Then I saw this: Vincent Gallo's Sperm $1 Million
If the purchaser of the sperm chooses the option of natural insemination, there is an additional charge of $500,000. However, if after being presented detailed photographs of the purchaser, Mr. Gallo may be willing to waive the natural insemination fee and charge only for the sperm itself.
Good to know Vincent has "no cripples" in his family history.
As many of you must know by now, one of my personal watch items is racism and hate groups/crimes - particularly as manifested in the white power movement and its various incarnations. Given that, you can probably guess how I reacted when I saw Matt's link to this article: Young Singers Spread Racist Hate
Known as "Prussian Blue" — a nod to their German heritage and bright blue eyes — the girls from Bakersfield, Calif., have been performing songs about white nationalism before all-white crowds since they were nine.
"We're proud of being white, we want to keep being white," said Lynx. "We want our people to stay white … we don't want to just be, you know, a big muddle. We just want to preserve our race."
Holy shit! Daddy brands his cattle with swastikas, y'all! And of course, they are free to say whatever they want here in the USofA... but WOW!
I see it like this: I consider it animal abuse to train a dog to be aggressive -- eventually that dog is going to cause severe damage to something or someone and have to be destroyed. By training the dog to attack, you are basically killing the dog (nevermind whatever gets mauled by it). On the same side of the same coin, I also consider it dangerous psychological abuse to raise children to hate other people based on superficial judgments. That applies to everyone -- any religious zealots, any nationalist xenophobes, etc. -- not just some swastika swinging cowboy in the California wastelands breeding Aryan pop stars who seem just a likely to end up in a trailer strung out on meth in ten years as to do anything worthwhile with their lives. (So why do I say that? I say it because hate thrives in isolation -- these girls' parents already want to move to an "all-white community in the Pacific Northwest" because Bakersfield, CA isn't white enough. So, yeah, it's easy for me to imagine these girls getting home schooled in a trailer park in the middle of nowhere until they get married off to a couple of prison tattooed crankheads. Am I prejudging them the same way they prejudge people of color? Do they deserve it? Do my preconceived notions have any more factual basis than theirs? Is it right to hate hate?)
Hate ruins people, and there's no excuse for teaching it. I don't care how precious you hold the First Amendment.
Being a big fan of alternative energy sources, I'm excited to hear about the possibility of two offshore wind farms near Long Island and Nantucket.
The two projects, one south of Long Island, in New York, and one in Massachusetts' Nantucket Sound, are currently moving through the complicated process of securing permits from various agencies, and both could be turning out juice in a few years. Offshore wind farms -- row after row of massive wind turbines sprouting from the sea miles from land -- have become a relatively common source of commercial electrical power in Europe, but these would be the first in this country.
But of course, the yachting set on Nantucket have to bring the "not in my backyard" attitude, claiming environmental impact, but ultimately seeming mostly worried about their million dollar views:
She said that about half the fish that commercial fisherman catch in Nantucket Sound come from the area where Cape Wind wants to install windmills. In addition, she said that a commercial wind farm would mar the pristine ocean views, dragging down both tourism and local property values. She cited a study conducted by The Beacon Hill Institute that concluded that total property values in the area would fall by $1.35 billion. "If you have a direct view, the value of your home would go down," she said. The wind farm "would be highly visible. It would change the tranquility of the horizon markedly."
What a crock. The pros of offshore windfarming far outweigh any potential cons in my opinion.
Malcolm Gladwell's article about Ivy League admissions in the New Yorker is a bit of an eye-opener:
In the nineteen-eighties, when Harvard was accused of enforcing a secret quota on Asian admissions, its defense was that once you adjusted for the preferences given to the children of alumni and for the preferences given to athletes, Asians really weren’t being discriminated against. But you could sense Harvard’s exasperation that the issue was being raised at all. If Harvard had too many Asians, it wouldn’t be Harvard, just as Harvard wouldn’t be Harvard with too many Jews or pansies or parlor pinks or shy types or short people with big ears.
Why do people gotta hate?
Protest
Originally uploaded by Jake Sutton.
How to spend a pleasant Saturday afternoon in LA: Go to a national anti-Bush march and then take a walk through Olivera Street to browse the lovely Mexican wares.
Moonbat anti-evolutionist: Deepak Chopra This is beautiful. Deepak Chopra seems to be even more of a looney tune than I thought he was, and this article is a wonderful deconstruction of his "Intelligent Design" arguments.
Wow.
Highlight (one of many):
Larry King actually asked this question:
KING: All right, hold on. Dr. Forrest, your concept of how can you out-and-out turn down creationism, since if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?
Uh, right. And my ancestors came from Sweden, so why the heck are there still Swedes?
Nice.
---
Oh, then there's this.
Bacall: Cruise is sick [How very tabloid.]
'It's inappropriate and vulgar and absolutely unacceptable to use your private life to sell anything commercially. I think it's kind of a sickness.'
Miss Bacall, who was married to Humphrey Bogart and appeared with him in several films, added insult to injury by saying 42-year-old Cruise was not much of an actor.
God, that's good. Lauren Bacall is one tough lady, and she has never pulled her punches. Gotta love it.
Jackasses, all of 'em! (Except the rooster.)
Hawaii Fights Noisy Frog Infestation
It's hard to imagine a tiny, 2-inch frog could cause so much harm. Beloved in its native Puerto Rico, the coqui frog has become a menace in Hawaii, where it suddenly appeared in the 1990s. With no natural predators, such as snakes, to keep their numbers under control, the frogs and their loud "ko-KEE" mating calls have multiplied exponentially — causing headaches for homeowners.
So yeah, invasive species are bad, mmmmmkay? But really, as far as I can tell from this article the only impact these frogs are having is noise pollution. Aparantly the "plucky" island dwellers can't handle a little froggy chirp, though.
In fact, state Rep. Clifton Tsuji calls the frogs "a species of mass destruction." ... Erm... So, the frogs are so noisy that people don't want to buy houses in infested areas and that equals "mass destruction", eh? Right.
Salon is doing a "four-part series chronicling the suddenly higher profile of the Church of Scientology", and of course the first installment highlights none other than Mr. Crazy Cruise: Missionary man (Get a day pass, it's worth it.)
Regarding the romance -- who can explain love? It's a mystery, particularly in Hollywood, and we're unlikely to ever get the particulars about Cruise and Holmes. But the buzz in some Scientology circles is that Cruise may have reached one of the highest echelons of the Church of Scientology. While not a lot is known about this level, known cryptically as OT-VII, Scientology observers say that attaining it could explain Cruise's behavior in recent months.
I'm still boggled by the fact that Scientology is actually considered a genuine "religion". I mean, read this and tell me if that's the sort of thing sane people base their lives on:
According to experts and the church's own literature, OT-VII ("OT" stands for Operating Thetan, "thetan" being the Scientology term for soul) is the penultimate tier in the church's spiritual hierarchy -- the exact details of which are fiercely guarded and forbidden to be discussed even among top members. It is where a Scientologist learns how to become free of the mortal confines of the body and is let into the last of the mysteries of the cosmology developed by the church's longtime leader, science fiction novelist and "Dianetics" author L. Ron Hubbard. This cosmology also famously holds that humans bear the noxious traces of an annihilated alien civilization that was brought to Earth by an intergalactic warlord millions of years ago.
That's Heaven's Gate material, if you ask me. Not the foundation of a culturally powerful religion. At least Germany still agrees:
Germany refuses to recognise Scientology as a legitimate church, claiming it is a fake religion based on making money from its followers.
While you're in the mood, check out CultNews.com for more (from an obviously biased source). If you really want to dig into Scientology, be sure not to miss Operation Clambake. Wow.
Because The Wife is (justifiably, since she works in the psychiatric field) obsessed with the rapidly-approaching-Howard-Hughes-type-crazy Tom Cruise:Cruise is waving off critics
Jumping on Oprah's couch? Sure it was unorthodox behavior for a celebrity, but he laughs at it, too. "I will forever with this woman be jumping on couches, dancing on tables and hanging from chandeliers."
Criticizing doctors for prescribing drugs to depressed patients? That's much more controversial than footprints on the furniture, but Cruise professes disdain for psychiatric drugs. "All I can do is say, 'Look. Don't listen, look.' " He encourages people to research the drugs.
Ah... I experience such wonderful schadenfreude at watching a Scientology Grand Dragon implode... The man is obviously in need of a little "Nazi science" himself.