Sumo: Sport of Things

I have been researching the great sport of sumo.

Young boys want to become sumo in order to achieve the rank and physique of manatee.



Therefore they dance in poo.



Those who can crush the poo to the satisfaction of the Sanrio Corporation are allowed to live on the moon.



Others must find new careers.



Successful members of the Order of the Manatee must rub their bellies on decadent foreigners.



There are delights, however, as visiting dignitaries often bring snacks to the more successful of the ravening maxisapiens.



The most physically beautiful sumo are bronzed and used to direct traffic.



Others become snacks themselves, an irony which something something something.



They may also engage in physical contests of some sort. These seem unimportant.

The Great Sandwich Battle Solved

Sages have sung about the dangers of having too much time on my hands - yes that was about me so go find your own goddamned masterwork - but in this case I do not wonder that I'm not crazy.

Rather than mock this poor man for his size, let us celebrate it by aligning him with the most noble fighting tradition of the mystical and inscrutable East.

Fixing the Joke

Q. Why did the crow cross the road?

A. Becaws.

You're welcome.

Governor Abe Simpson

What Thers says:

Teh awesome.

Tommy Thompson cited a dead hearing aid and an urgent need to use the bathroom in explaining on Saturday why he said at a GOP presidential debate that an employer should be allowed to fire a gay worker.

Greatest. First paragraph. Of a news story. Ever.

Alas, There Are No Cosplay Doughnut Shops

I Think "Churchillian" Means "Rad"

My Shame

I don't need Firedoglake to explain how lame I am.

Tip #1: Post Fresh Content Every Day, Multiple Times Per Day

No. Too tired. And I'm pretty much a leech on everyone else's ideas. I should stick solely to commenting, yet I don't.

Tip #2: Enlist a Group of Writers

Not friendly enough.

Tip #3: Build a Brand and Exploit a Niche

Just think of me as your corner store: under-supplied with bizarre and unpalatable crap on the shelf, will never expand or innovate and will have to draft children to fill in.

Tip #4: Cultivate Reader Participation

As a child I walked through a bird sanctuary and they had all these labels on various plants. A recurring word was "cultivated" in front of any old plant. What it meant was that a bird had pooped there.

Tip #5: Do Consistently Great Writing

No prob. Look: Frist!!!!

Tip #6: Make Online Friends

Hi!

Tip #7: Know Yourself and Why You Want to Blog

I have time to kill and I am not creative enough to do something useful.

Global Warming Insights

Retiring BCIT principal glad to put long commute to work behind him

By JASON HARRIS
Burlington County Times

WESTAMPTON — After 33 years in education and 16 years as the principal at the Burlington County Institute of Technology here, Daniel Money is retiring at the end of the year.

“I'm finally graduating,” he said Thursday. “Sixteen years, five cars, and gas is $3 a gallon — it's time. It's the perfect time for the new administration to take hold and install their vision. In my opinion, it's long overdue.”

Money has been planning to retire for nearly a decade. He told the class of 2000 that he was going to retire, so students were surprised to find him roaming the halls when school reopened for the 2000-01 school year. His wife retired four years ago, and she's been pushing him to do so ever since.

“I've been promising her every year,” he said. “She says it's time.”

Still, he's going with some reluctance. If not for his four-hour commute, he likely wouldn't be retiring now. On the other hand, considering the number of cars he's run into the ground, he probably should have retired years ago.

“If I didn't have to drive 100 miles each way, I'd stay,” he said. “I'm fortunate to have a great auto shop to keep me going.”

[...]

Buttfucking

From Radar Online:

2. Representative Donald Young (R-AK) The scene: Fairbanks, Alaska, 1994. Congressman Don Young, already in office for 20 years, is on the stump preaching the virtues of Newt Gingrich's Republican revolution to a group of high school students. Just look at all the wasteful things the federal government does with taxpayers' money, he tells them. The National Endowment for the Arts, for example, funds art involving "people doing offensive things ... things that are absolutely ridiculous." One student asks, "Like what?"

"Buttfucking," replies the great scourge of obscenity and instructor of youth.

Unstoppable Objection Meets Immovable Arse

Sports fan opposed to statistics.

Here's Something Lighter

Hillary Clinton, wingnut. So says the National Review. Via Altercation.

To right-wingers willing to look beneath what probably sounds to them like the same identical views of the Democratic candidates, it is pretty clear that Hillary Clinton is the most conservative. John Edwards is the most liberal, and Barack Obama is somewhere in between.

[…]

At some point, politically sophisticated conservatives will have to recognize that no Republican can win in 2008 and that their only choice is to support the most conservative Democrat for the nomination. Call me crazy, but I think that person is Hillary Clinton.

Something I Don't Want to Think About

This is truly horrific. People are animals.

Crazy Babbling

Even in context this paragraph clunks like the presidential head when the overhead cabinet doors are open:

As is customary for my columns, the title appears to have little, if anything, to do with my discussion so far; therefore, I will proceed to my ultimate destination. The Vast Left-Wing Culture of Death violates this innate knowledge of Good and evil, that exists in every human who ever lived.

The Limits of Snark

You know things are bad when you can push Josh Marshall into derisive sneering.

(May 05, 2007 -- 09:29 PM EST // link)

Bush hits 28%. Clearly a perilous situation for the Democrats.

-- Josh Marshall

White Trash Coding

I love W3Schools but no blink tag?

Mouths

In my continuing quest to waste time I don't actually have, I have assembled a bunch of ridiculous mouths from a shit comic book I will be unable to delete from my hard drive:

Elitist Snobs I Have Known

Who's the hipster at WBUR using Neu and the bonus tracks from My Life in the Bush of Ghosts for transition music?

Really, Come On Now

Another aspect of the whole "Jesus is God" nonsense is buying that God decides to become a baby for a while. This makes him the Ultimate Adult Baby.

Oh Come On

What Makes Atrios Fun

He's a perceptive guy.

Good Work!

A pic from a Nigerian magazine for medical laboratory scientists. Looks like everything's going well.

Torboto

Man that's bleak.

Batfink

Opera?

Just back from seeing Tosca.

What a baffling and rarefied thing opera is. It takes a billion people and a billion dollars (yours, friend, whether you go or not) to put the stuff together and then there are empty seats.

I've never much liked the artificiality of the operatic voice (although the Cavaradossi was surprisingly warm and engaging) and growing up on cartoons made all sorts of orchestral effects take on the utility of a laugh-track, so whatever opera does to its devotees is lost on me.

Nevertheless, I am glad to have gone and glad that such complicated and weird enterprises are paying gigs for a lucky few. More power to you, snobs.

Google Translate Rules

Ode on the Target of Grecian Formula

O ashen shade! limp attitude! like reeds
Of years of wind and weather overblown,
Like barren spaces ringed by trodden weed;
Thou, flattened mat! dost tease us for our age
As doth small children: Dried Pastures ho!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt infest, in midst of other woe
Than ours, the next in line, to let them taste.
'Ugly is truth, truth ugly,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

Special Catholic Love

Catholic Church buries limbo after centuries

Fri Apr 20, 2007 12:14 PM EDT

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Roman Catholic Church has effectively buried the concept of limbo, the place where centuries of tradition and teaching held that babies who die without baptism went.

...

It says grace has priority over sin, and the exclusion of innocent babies from heaven does not seem to reflect Christ's special love for children...

There's a joke here somewhere.

A Limerick

There once was a man called Gonzales
Who showed everyone just what gall is
He burbled quite madly
Whilst perjuring badly
And saluting with "Bush Über Alles".

Anti-Feminist Bingo

Here, via Feministe.

Goddammit Stop Looking So Evil

Taste and its Automation

Perfect Althouse

One of those perfect blasts of nothing, entitled "I cannot fathom the mind of the turtle".

Three Pennies, Three Wishes

The four-year-old got three more shots at eternal happiness at a fountain near a petting zoo. Coins went towards:

1. I wish I was skating with Sakura.
2. I wish I was skating with Sakura.
3. I wish I was skating with Puffy Ami Yumi.

Also, a monkey's favourite instrument is an oo-cordion.

Fun With Joe Klein

Some soon-to-be-deleted comments I'm sure:

Posted by Righteous Bubba
April 13, 2007

"I'm glad you find me endlessly entertaining, but war isn't entertainment."

I say we pull out of Joe Klein as soon as possible.

Posted by NTodd
April 13, 2007

"I say we pull out of Joe Klein as soon as possible."

We must fight them in Joe's anus so they won't follow us here...

Tbogg Has Been Bad

I can't say I go for the "brown sugar" thing: seems like an obvious racist slur to me.

I have said worse things and laughed at worse things - worse meaning both more offensive and more worthy of delivering apologies for - and I can hope it's an error. We boys tend to defend every fucking thing we do instead of just backing off them once in a while.

Now: how is my disapproval here different from the "fat" and "cunt" verbiage?

Holy Shit: Diabetes Cured?

Via Boing Boing:

Geek Daughter Chronicles

This evening my daughter said something that her mom, deeply touched, interpreted as "I need a hug." What was actually said was "In Tagalog?" although, mercifully, she can't hyperlink spoken English yet. Perhaps when she's five.

Also:

Q. What's a ghost's favourite character on Dora the Explorer?
A. BOOny. (Meaning Benny.)

I am always impressed with a successful pun from a four-year old, however the better answer is BOOts.

Do Tell

Dinesh D'Souza:

Anti-Americanism comes in different varieties.

What variety might you be peddling today, good sir?

Girls Don't Do That

Out with mom and my four-year-old daughter at a restaurant. I'm doing what I do, which is fidget with table implements like I've just discovered them and I wind up making a little arch by jamming a knife-blade between a fork's tines and standing it up on their squarish ends. "It's sculpture!" I announce to my daughter, who in turn starts fiddling with whatever she can find.

"I'm making sculpture!" she says.

"Girls don't do that," says mom.

I owe a lot to my mom, apart from thousands of dollars, but despite the fact that she clawed her way to the top of the pyramid by ignoring a bunch of crap about what men said she couldn't do, she doesn't seem too interested in questioning the assumptions that made her success a struggle.

Our True Fear: Cabbies

When I Was a Boy I Wanted to Be...

Here's a phrase for you:

The world's expert on lust, violence and cannibalism among prairie dogs

Ten Plagues

It seems to me that plagues were not a very constructive way for an omnipotent God to deal with the whole hostage crisis, but then we wouldn't have these cute finger-puppets. Someone should come up with a set of modern plagues, a cruise-missile, say, or a dour man with a ledger labelled SANCTIONS.












UPDATE: I should have put a link up so people could find these. Here.

I'm hostile to religion, so no endorsement is implied, but shit, I bought them so I'm a big hypocrite that nobody should take seriously. Or something. I did not, however, pay $16.95. I got 'em wholesale.

Also, if you get on Peter Popoff's mailing list you'll get amusing trinkets. His Miracle Spring Water is now in larger packets!!!

Licking the Global Jihad

Here's a funny post from everyone's favourite goggle-eyed babbler.

Pam types-pastes-vomits 2500 words in asserting a jihadi link to the Pet Food Crisis because some flakes were from Mississauga and so's the company in question and MUSLIMS HATE DOGS AND CATS!

Turns out Muslims can like kitties if they want (and really, lots like dogs too), a revelation which inspires Pam to INVESTIGATE THE COMMENTER!CONSPIRATOR!

Said commenter quite gently shows up again and explains, mentioning that Mississauga is a long way from China in any case. Presumably the Mississauga jihadis were busy figuring out how to poison Sea Monkeys.

A very short thread, and one that you'd imagine would be embarrassing to someone who wasn't out of their fucking mind.

Thanks to Krankor who left the link at Sadly, No!, um, period.

I Like the Blossom Dearie Version of This

To Keep My Love Alive

From A Connecticut Yankee Revival
Lyrics by Lorenz Hart, music by Richard Rodgers

I've been married and married,
And often I've sighed,
I'm never a bridesmaid,
I'm always the bride.
I never divorced them-
I hadn't the heart.
Yet remember these sweet words
"Till death do us part."

REFRAIN 1

I married many men,
A ton of them,
And yet I was untrue to none of them
because I bumped off ev'ry one of them
to keep my love alive

Sir Paul was a frail;
he looked a wreck to me.
At night he was a horse's neck to me
So I performed an appendectomy
To keep my love alive.

Sir Thomas had insomnia
he couldn't sleep at night.
I bought a little arsenic
he's sleeping now all right.

Sir Philip played the harp;
I cussed the thing.
I crowned with his harp
to bust the thing.
And now he plays where harps are
just the thing,
To keep my love alive,
To keep my love alive.


REFRAIN 2
I thought Sir George had possibilities,
but his flirtations made me ill at ease,
and when I'm ill at ease
I kill at ease
To keep my love alive.

Sir Charles came from a sanatorium
and yelled for drinks in my emporium
I mixed one drink
He's in memorium
To keep my love alive.

Sir Francis was a singing bird
A nightingale. That's why
I tossed him off my balcony
To see if he could fly
Sir Athelstane indulged in fratricide;
He killed his dad and that was patricide
One night I stabbed him at my mattress side
To keep my love alive,
To keep my love alive.

Meet the New Meme

Imagine the merit badges!

Limericks from a Boring Meeting

Clean, alas, as you don't want the boss looking over your shoulder while you're describing some anal atrocity. Anyway.

There once was a blogger called Ann
Who got clunked in the head with a pan.
It rattled her brain,
But she got up again,
And she's still the same blogger called Ann.



When firing Attorneys US
It's best to avoid a big mess
And just fire them all
So when newspapers call
You say "We treated them equally, yes."


A comedy blogger called Gavin
Displayed all the fun he was havin'
At the blog Sadly, No!
But the server won't go
So fewer and fewer are laffin'.

Won't Somebody Please Think of the Children?

In his first sentence, he's making the Charles Barkley argument: I am not a role model. I think that both Sir Charles and Atrios are mistaken. None of us--even the famous and influential--get to define what we mean to others, or how others view our roles. Just as Barkley's denial that he was a role model didn't make him any less of one, so Atrios's protest that his role in the universe isn't what others perceive it to be doesn't make it true.

Posted by: James F. Trumm | March 23, 2007 at 10:39 AM

Hilarious.

The knock on Charles Barkley - for those who were interested in knocking - was that he wasn't being a role-model to KIDS.

Charles Gocher is Dead

I'm very late to this, but Charles Gocher died. He played with the Sun City Girls who were kind enough to allow my stupid band into their presence on a number of occasions. They were our heroes, and it was a pretty lucky thing for us: who gets to share a stage with their idols? Well, me. Thanks to Charlie and Rick and Alan who if they have any taste won't remember my playing at all.

The Pleasures of Romanian Tabloid Photography

From here.

Phil Spector's Hair

That is all.

The Slathering of Eggos

This whole "Gathering of Eagles" thing reminds me of a seminar I went to on Bigfoot (which was hilarious in itself, but anyway...). There was a guy there who did his presentation about the UFO connection to Bigfoot and an encounter he'd had in Montana that involved both along with some remarkable ectoplasm running down a mountainside. Anyway, what he wanted to do to further his theory was mount an expedition back to deepest Montana to go over the evidence again and for that he needed investors.

Seriously.

The Stupid Mutant Weighs In

God help me, I'm the kind of guy who re-reads Herodotus for fun and I can't stop downloading stupid comics.

Lemmings

David Kurtz depresses me:

Gonzales is getting what he deserves, to be sure, but among his opponents there were far fewer profiles in courage before he was mortally wounded.

Jesus Fucking Christ

My cat is now a puking machine. One year shots were today and he's under the weather. I've locked the poor thing in the bathroom because the floor is easily cleanable. Yes, I'm awful.

I have to say though, that galumphing noise that telegraphs the imminent arrival of a pile of hideous goo from kitty's tummy is both handy and funny.

Update:

Q. How you feeling, pukey?
A. Mewp.

It's Not All About Me

A while ago a bunch of people impersonated Althouse on a very amusing thread. She was less happy about such impersonations and had previously painted a big target on her head with a complaint of her own.

On her thread I left the following:



Anyway, I find I've been retroactively anonymized. What purpose this may serve the Althouse empire remains inscrutable, especially when the comment remains in place.

More Art

I asked one of my daughter's friends to draw a machine that does two things. She drew this:



It vacuums and also dispenses candy from the top.