OMG THE IPHONE'S ON VERIZON THIS IS THE HAPPIEST DAY OF MY LIFE OMGOMGOMGOMG

Ugh.

Quote from this: "Fans of the iPhone are practically foaming at the mouth at the idea of being able to use the popular Apple device on Verizon's network..."

Foaming at the mouth? Really? I mean, I'm no iPhone fan, but I'm not certain the ability to buy a Mac product ever gave anyone rabies.

But maybe not.  Maybe the media's actually right this time that if we don't all rush out and buy the new iPhone, we'll all suffocate and die from lack of cool.  Accordingly, Mac should change up its marketing strategy:

 

Yes.  That is a picture of Cindy Crawford.  I have no idea why I looked her up.  But there you go.

Also.  iPhone sucks.

Okay.

On a lighter note, I've made a determination.

If I get a story published, I'm getting a twitter.  It will be official recognition that my life is interesting enough to be encompassed in daily 140-character blurbs.

Ball's in your court, publishing industry.

People who should (at least) be locked up for January

This is early! I know! So exciting! But it's mainly because I realized there's very little chance there's going to be someone who's more of a waste of space this month.  She's always been a close contender, but the assassination attempt this weekend catapulted her to the absolute top of the should definitely be in prison list.

That's right.  It's your favorite:

Yeah.  I know it's a fake picture.  But goddamn, it's so appropriate.

Sarah Palin isn't new to doing things that make her deserve some amount of prison time.  During her run as a primary reason not to vote for McCain, there was an investigation into whether Palin dismissed a law enforcement official because he didn't fire her sister's husband.  The findings were that Palin had abused power, giving us a little taste of the respect for authority typical of Ms. Palin.

The real problem with Sarah Palin isn't what she says, it's just a weird slurry of patriotic exhortations, like if you put Reagan in a blender.  The problem is who she says it TO.  Case in point, this is a typical Palin supporter:

*shudder* Anyone who voluntarily wears a shirt like that doesn't deserve the vote.  But Palin's supporters also include people like this:

Yes, that's the guy that had a gun at the Obama rally back in 2008.  And another Palin supporter.  And another.  And Sarah Palin, knowing that she has a pretty strong appeal to people with lots of guns and itchy fingers, published this on her website:

(The arrow is my addition.  Better version of this here.)

Now, whether or not the shooter was a supporter of Palin is unclear.  But the fact is Palin had a map with CROSSHAIRS on it targeting someone who, a little while later, was shot.  Not to mention pretty soon after this map was put up, Giffords office had been vandalized.

Of course, Palin sent her condolences, took down the map and scrubbed mentions of Giffords from the site.  But that doesn't make up for how irresponsible Palin has been and how the media has let her get away with what is, at best, lies, at worst, inciting violence.  Now people are dead, and I have a hard time believing that the GOP's runaway rhetoric had nothing to do with it.

Even the GOP's recognized the issue.  Though, to be fair, the Senator calling for a toning down the rhetoric refused to be named.  I mean, after all, he has his career to think about.  Who knows whether he'll need the racist lunatic vote.

So in the end: Ms. Palin, you are a nobody.  You are a housewife beauty queen dimwit from Idaho.  Your stupidity only hurt the small town you quit when the going got tough, but now you are a national figure.  If you are incapable of taking some responsibility for what you say and do, maybe you should just shut up.  And if you don't have the sense to do that, hopefully we'll someday find you in prison.

Condolences to the families of the victims in Tucson and best wishes for Representative Giffords' recovery.  Hopefully there's a lesson about the human impact of rhetoric in all this.

UPDATE:

So Sarah Palin's idiot hole opened again.  A few choice bits from her statement (You don't have to read it, it's a lot of the same shit she always says mixed with a few outlandishly ridiculous and somewhat dangerous statements).

1. "But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn"

Blood libel, by the way, is the lie that some religious minority (usually Jews) murders children to use their blood in ceremonies.  Obviously, Palin has no idea what the word means.  I want someone to ask her if she knows what the Holocaust was.

2.  "Founding Fathers knew they weren't designing a system for perfect men and women. If men and women were angels, there would be no need for government."

You know what I love? When someone in the wrong uses human nature to defend their wrongness.  Yes, I cheated on my wife, ran over a priest and torched a busload of orphans, but, y'know, humans are flawed.  Screw you, Palin.  The only flaw in this situation is YOU.

3.  "Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them, not...with maps of swing districts used by both sides of the aisle..."

What kind of idiot things that criminals spring out of no where for no reason? I'll give you a hint.  It's the same kind of idiot that thinks BOTH sides of the isle used a map with CROSSHAIRS ON IT to indicate people that should be taken out of power.  It's also the same kind of idiot that thinks her half-wit housewife opinions are worthwhile.

This is why the expression "womp womp" was invented.

Really?

REALLY?!

A Monopoly and a Battleship movie.

Are we really that low on ideas that we need to make movies out of BOARDGAMES now? What's next? A Risk historical drama?

A Capri Sun thriller?

Dunkin Donuts action/adventure?

Operation drama?

Boggle romantic comedy?

Too clever not to steal.  H/t to this

The director of the Monopoly movie talks about how the movie's going to be set in a Monopoly world and pits the main character against the evil Parker Brothers.  And that it's going to talk about the real estate market and greed.

Really.  You're going to use a game based on rolling dice and running around a board to make a point about the pitfalls of modern capitalism.  Well, just because it sounds like a stupid idea doesn't mean you shouldn't put millions of dollars into doing it.

Oh wait.  That's exactly what it means.

Err...Science, Possibly. Extremely Scientific Poppycock. Execrablely Stupid Psuedoscience.

I'm trying to think of more.  This is hard.

Extremely Silly Possibility.  Even Scientists Poop.

So, this barrage of hilarity comes from this article.  Apparently some well-known social psychologist got his study into a pretty highly-esteemed journal.  What was his study? Well, according to him, you should already know.  Because ESP exists.  Definitively.  Even though it's been disproved time and time again.

The article is interesting in that it doesn't take sides and does a good job of maintaining journalistic neutrality.  It gives a perspective that maybe this Dr. Bem is just publishing this as an "elaborate joke".  This is honestly a possibility, as history is littered with stories of how respected people in the field can flummox everyone.  Examples: The Swiss Spaghetti Hoax, the Hotheaded Naked Ice Borer, the San Serriffe hoax.

But honestly, joke or not, a psuedo-science article making its way into a respected journal is a tiny bit ridiculous.  I mean, it's bad enough that these homeopathic crazies get the legitimacy they do, do we really need to be opening up another door to the snake-oilers?

I mean, what did the Simpsons say about that?

Let one of these crazies in, and you're basically making science a free-for-all.

Not to mention that someone actually got paid real money to do this research.  It's kind of like giving someone money to masturbate all day to see if they grow hair on their hands.  Aren't we in too hard a company to pay scientists to bullshit?

Things Republicans can never talk about ever again

UPDATE:
I forgot healthcare.  Recently the GOP voted to keep their own personal health insurance a secret.  But, they're still pretty keen on taking healthcare away from everyone else.  There should be a word for this.  Hyperhypocrisy.  High Hypocrisy.  Dickheadedness.


So I haven't babbled about something political in a while, I think it's time we changed that.

There's been a number of incidents lately that have proved that the Republicans have adopted a stable political platform based on complete hypocrisy.  Rather than adopt a stance on issues and then fight to maintain their position, they've decided it's easier to adopt the stance then do whatever the fuck they want.

This is a problem.  My solution is that we pass laws banning Republicans from ever talking about these issues.  Punishable, of course, by prison terms.  Or firing squads.  Like the Democrats, I'm willing to compromise.  So here's some of the issues Republicans are now barred from talking about.

1.  9/11
Jon Stewart did this pretty well.  Briefly, what happened here was that the Senate Republicans blocked the Zadroga Bill, which provided funds supporting the healthcare of 9/11 first responders.  This was done mainly as a blockade against doing anything useful until they got what they wanted.  In other words, this:

Now, some people might doubt the logic behind taking an indefensible position against an extremely appealing piece of legislation.  Well, then you're probably not a Republican.  Republicans defend their logic like this.  That's Dr. Tom Coburn.  Yep.  He's a doctor against an incredibly popular piece of healthcare legislation.  I hope he's got good savings, because he's gonna need a new career! Wait, I got one!

2. Veterans
This might be hard to do, seeing as 75% of what Republicans talk about has to do in some way to shooting at things, but Republicans have proven that they don't really give a damn about veterans.  It's been a long-time issue that scam-artists and loan companies (aka, legitimized scam-artists) have been preying on veterans and their families.  What's interesting is that a certain Senator Sam Brownback and his Republican ilk have argued to allow these loan companies to continue.

Completely unrelated, I'm sure, but Brownback's top contributor is the National Auto Dealers Association. 

Not to mention the Republicans particularly don't like veterans who are homeless.  They blocked a measure to provide additional benefits for this population, estimated to be around 107,000 strong.

Fun fact: This measure was blocked on behalf of Dr. Coburn by Senator Mitch McConnell.  I've adjusted my picture:

3. Elitism\Racism
 Now, you'd think that any group full of old white men with southern accents would tread carefully when talking about privilege or racism.  But you'd also think a major political party would have some coherent political positions.  The Republicans buck both these logical trends, along with a number of others, when they accuse their opposition of being elitist or racist.

With the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, I was assuming that they'd avoid mentioning her race in the interest of not looking like a bunch of white aristocrats beating on a minority.  Surprise.

Obama has had the rare opportunity of being called both an elitist and a racist.  And a socialist (not gonna even put a link on that one, it's like the top Google search).  The elitist comment comes from Rand Paul, who celebrated his win this past election in an exclusive country club with a history of excluding people based on melanin.  The Racist comment comes from Newt Gingrich, who also expressed concern that bilingualism will bring about the end of our nation.  And who is now learning spanish.  So:

In conclusion, Republicans are bad.

2011 forward

My new years resolution for 2011 is to not get overly sentimental about it being 2011.  That said, there's a fair amount of things going to happen this year.  I'm going to either go to grad school or not.  I'm going to either leave the country or not.  I'm going to either be on a slam team or not.  If you think of your life as a series of one's and zero's, it's easy to get really excited and really disheartened.

But if you don't view your life in absolutes, then it's honestly just another new year.  2010 seemed to kind of end with a whimper.  I was looking for some statistics on it, but the best I could find was this.  Just anecdotal, it's my experience that a lot of people just stayed in or did something small this year.  As depressing as it sounds, I feel like there's less to celebrate.  Political and economic times are shitty, maybe it's that people are starting to get a bit anxious.

But then again, maybe not.  I did see two guys carrying a drunk girl dressed like a cheetah new years day.  So maybe nothing's changed.

NYC, by the way, is officially my favorite city (of the places I've been to).  I'm not sure what it is, but NYC has this "Yeah, I know I'm cool, so what?" kind of air to it.  Like it's too busy to act cool.  Not to mention it is about a thousand cities crammed into one.  You get the fancy historical crap that is all of Boston, the prestigious self-importance of DC and the meaningless style of Miami.  I'm honestly not sure there's a better city in the world.

That said, I'm back in DC.  And honestly, I missed it. 

You know times are tough when I miss a city like this one.