Saturday, April 30, 2005

oil minister NNPC

I can't help myself:  I get a spam comment, and I find myself editing it for both accuracy and grammar:


MR. G. OBASEK
oil minister NNPC
Nigeria
2nd of Decenber 2004

I the former chairman of NNPC,and I am from nigeria -- apparently, the home to 78% of the world's phishing scams.

Through my search in the internet (which my colleagues and I believe may be catching on), I got your email address from my 4 year old daughter, who has been configuring a random IP addres generator all morning. After due verication with my colleagues, all of whom share my affliction of having a very small penis, and which also included ensuring your email address didn't bounce, I decided to forward to you this business proposal by hitting the button marked "foward" on my email program, and then performing an interpretive dance, in anticipation that you may be in position,i.e., near a computer and/or brain dead, to assist/handle this business with me.

Or, perhaps, if you will indulge me in another short interpretive dance.

We want a reliable person, one with the schooling and IQ of lawn furniture, who prefarably doesn't ask too many questions, and who could assist us to buy a crude oil invoiced bills from contracts awarded under the budget allocation for MINISTRY OF petolum. In the alternative, we may also be interested in “petroleum,” which we understand may be even more valuable than “petolum.”

These bills had been approved for payment. my days of work in the office will expire january 2005, which in case you haven’t noticed, was 4 months ago. So this is really a test to find only the dumbest and least observant potential participants.

The contracts had been executed, commissioned and the contractors had been paid their actual contractual so the reaming crude oil which i calculated is about $300.000 we are about to receive now is a kick back from the contractors and Under the protocol division as civil servants, this is why am soliciting your assistance in buying the crude oil this manner. We expect this to have more potential parties than we can facilitate, because who can resist getting involved with overseas kickback arrangements? Its a  growth industry

On our part, all modalities had been worked out in ensuring a smooth  transaction. The only hitch might be that I do not know exactly what a modality actually is, but it certainly sounds impressive enough, so lon as the world keeps manufacturing morons faster than we can consume them.

As soon as you indicate your interest, by demonstrating that you recently suffered from a severe blunt head trauma, further instructions will be passed on to you on the procedure that we will follow in accomplishing this deal.

If this proposal is accepted by you, kindly reach me immediately, furnishing me with your confidential telephone numbers, social security numner, credit card information. This is only for us to verify that you are who you claim to be, as we reached you via random email, and you may not be a person of high enough moral standing to particpate in our kickback scheme.

Looking forward to hearing from you. Also, I am a bottom who enjoys rough anal sex.

Best regards
MR. G. OBASEK
former chaiman NNPC
happy Encyte user

Posted at 10:05 AM in Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Thursday, April 28, 2005

Numa Numa

This is hysterical:

Numa

numa numa inspiration


via rocketboom

And just in case they run out of bandwidth: numanuma_mock.wmv

 

Posted at 03:05 PM in Humor | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Nintendo A Cappella Medley

This is hysterical:

Nintendo_a_capella


via RocketBoom

Posted at 09:52 AM in Humor, Music, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

What's On Jesus' iPod?

Sfgate

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"You know it's the big 60GB model, loaded, flawless and gleaming and radiating a strange liquid ethereal glow and couched in a beautiful custom rainbow-colored biodegradable case made of clouds and eagle feathers and wine . . ."

>
Here's a belated Tuesday Tunes entry. The always interesting and often amusing Mark Morford asks the question thats on so few people's mind:  What's On Jesus' iPod?
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"Jesus, on the other hand, is a monster music fan. You just know it. After all, Jesus was an agitator. Jesus protested. Jesus battled the demons of the status quo and he defied the sad dictatorial norms of his day and as such the Holy iPod is surely home to a huge number of songs of protest and resistance and hope, rebellion and triumph and joy. Just for starters.

Of course this means lots of old Bob Dylan and a little bit of Peter, Paul & Mary and CCR's "Fortunate Son." This means slightly stale but always eternal protest classics like Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" and Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction" and the Youngbloods' "Get Together" and Edwin Starr's "War (What Is it Good For)" and even Eminem's "Mosh," right alongside '70s cheeseball monster hits like "Dust in the Wind" and "Freebird" and "Roundabout," despite how they've been pumped through the airwaves so many times it makes God cringe.

But it doesn't stop there. Jesus has wide and varying tastes. Jesus is all over the musical map. He is into old Deep Purple. Obscure Zeppelin. (Jesus gets all the good bootlegs.) He has a thing for anthem rock and music that inspires the masses and yet he can just as easily spin around and go for the quiet and the folksy and he loves, for example, old Jim Croce. He has a lot of Nick Drake and Iron & Wine's "Woman King" EP, Ani DiFranco and the Be Good Tanyas and yes, even old Cat Stevens. (Jesus just shrugs that silly religio-political stuff right off. It's just who he is.)

Gospel? Hell yes. Goes without saying. Classical, too. Chopin, for one, makes Jesus' heart ache. Bach makes him sigh. Mozart makes his ringlets bounce. He thinks Wagner is sort of a jerk, but of course, Jesus forgives him. Dvorak's "New World Symphony" inspires the hell out of him when he's out in the backyard studio, painting. And nothing but nothing makes Jesus weep like Gorecki's Third. If you've heard it, you understand."

Now you know . . .

>

Source:
What's On Jesus' iPod?  (And, yes, Jesus does P2P)
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2005/04/27/notes042705.DTL&nl=fix

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Reset

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Feng Shui Mouse

NYT:  "When building the new entrance to Hong Kong Disneyland, Walt Disney executives decided to shift the angle of the front gate by 12 degrees. They did so after consulting a feng shui specialist, who said the change would ensure prosperity for the park. Disney also put a bend in the walkway from the train station to the gate, to make sure the flow of positive energy, or chi, did not slip past the entrance and out to the China Sea.

Heeding the advice of a feng shui consultant is one of many steps Disney executives have taken at the park to reflect the local culture - and to make sure they do not repeat some mistakes of the past."

click for larger graphic

Feng_shui_disney



Wonder what they did instead of Feng Shui in France?


Source:
The Feng Shui Kingdom
By LAURA M. HOLSON
NYT, April 25, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/25/business/worldbusiness/25disney.html

Posted at 10:44 AM in Art & Design | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Eagle Nebula

The Eagle Nebula got its name from the birdlike form that tops this massive pillar of gas and dust, as shown in this Hubble photo. A nursery for stars, the nebula is located 7,000 light-years away and is slowly being eroded by the ultraviolet light thrown off by young but massive stars nearby.


Eagle_nebula_heic0506b_f



Photo: Courtesy of NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)






Source:
Happy 15th Birthday, Hubble 
Amit Asaravala
Wired, 02:00 AM Apr. 25, 2005 PT

http://www.wired.com/news/space/0,2697,67304,00.html

Posted at 08:03 AM in Science | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Monday, April 25, 2005

New Coke vs Time Magazine Marketing Blunders

>

April 23rd 1985:  Coca Cola introduces New Coke, the world's greatest marketing disaster of all time.

April 25, 2005 Vol. 165 No. 17:  Time magazine puts Ann Coulter on the cover of the magazine:


>

Might the Time Magazine Ann Coulter cover be the 2nd greatest marketing disaster of all time?
 

>
 
Quite a few people have been cancelling their Time subscriptions, if we are to go by Altercation's email. It would be ironic if this Time magazine cover issue is looked at in the future as the media equivalent of New Coke -- the world's worst marketing blunder. The introduction of New Coke celebrates its 20th anniversary, just about the very same week of the Time Magazine Coulter cover.

Its ironic that two examples of incredibly bad corporate thinking will share an anniversary.

The poor thought process at Time magazine is very similar to the mistake Coke made: Time can never out-right wing Fox News, The Washington Times, Andrew Sullivan or Drudge. The viewers/readers of those outlets are looking for a very specific flavor, a unique slant. They are less news sources than opinion, philosophy, political cheerleading and energy.

Time magazine, on the other hand, is primarily a weekly news gathering organization. (We will save the issue of problems the internet causes the dead tree set for another time). Time's appeal is to people who want mainstream media news from a centrist perspective. Almost by definition, they pick up the Center Left, people who aren't interested in a blunt right perspective.

But if you are involved in Media, you cannot help buy notice the spectacular rise of Right oriented press. Not neccessarily a vast right wing conspiracy, but rather the surge of a particular type of media outlet appealing (some would say pandering) to a hard right perspective.

Like Coca Cola 20 years ago, Time Magazine blinked. They fell for the hype, alienated a substantial percentage of their audience, and played right into the hands of their competition. Pepsi beat Coke in taste tests, because the sweeter Pepsi tested better in small servings. After a full can, however, the Pepsi Challenge gave a decisive edge to Coke. (Go figure -- the test was rigged!)

Similarly, the cyclical nature of News and Politics oscillates to and fro. What's hot one year fades and is replaced eventually by the nexxt new thing. That the editors may not know that is truly astounding. 

The first rule of business: Know thy customer. Time clearly has forgotten that. Don't be surprised if the penalty ends up being rather severe.

We have looked at the magazine cover indicator in the past as a contrary indicator. Its been a solid tell on politics, technology, currency, even specific stocks (i.e, Apple). And, this is not the first instance of Time Magazine's displaying exemplary  timing. Recall the Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com's founder and CEO) in December 1999 pretty much top ticked both that stock and the entire dotcom bubble.

The right side of  the political ledger ahs been in ascendence for nearly 25 years. It would be both fascinating and ironic if Time Magazine, and their wonderful sense of timing, managed to top tick yet another trend.

Time (not the magazine) will tell . . .

 

Altercation email cancelling Time subscriptions: 

Name: Jim Gerow
Hometown: Jackson Heights, NY

Eric--
Bravo for your pointed rebuttal of John Cloud's rantings against you and other critics of his awful Time cover story on Ann Coulter.  Fortunately there are still some members of the "reality-based community" in journalism who are willing to check the facts.  The SCLM hit a new low this week with the Time piece, so it will be interesting to see how Time deals with its critics in the Letters section next week.  Does anyone doubt that the real issues will be completely ignored in favor of sensational name-calling?

In response to Anonymous who urged a consumer boycott of everything TimeWarner-related, by all means shut off CNN and cancel those subscriptions, but as a classic film lover, please don't ask me to sacrifice Turner Classic Movies, the one thing TimeWarner does right.  For those thinking of switching from cable to satellite TV, Dish Network is far superior to the Murdoch-owned DirecTV.  Don't dump the Time empire only to get in bed with Fox!  My service from Dish has been excellent and there's no minimum contract requirement.

Name: Marie Malicki
Hometown: Glendora, CA

Thank you!  I received that issue of Time magazine and threw it in the trash and canceled my subscription.  That woman has no business on the cover of any respectable news magazine.  She does nothing but spew hatred.

Name: Rick Perlstein
Hometown: Chicago, IL

...sent to Cloud under the subject heading "you must be overwhelmed right now, but..."

------

...please read this.

I've been thinking of nothing else but you, your article, Coulter, and Time the last few days, and I think I have something to well-informed and useful to contribute that might rise above the dreck you must be getting bombarded with.

I have a pretty decent understanding of the right. That's why, I humbly submit, when I wrote my book about Barry Goldwater, it got glowing reviews in every right-wing publication, from the Weekly Standard to a white-supremecist quarterly.

This is the point I want to convey. People who spew hate rhetoric, talk violence, and make things up have nothing to do with Michael Moore, Eric Alterman, and David Brock.

What they have to do with is this. The last time figures like Coulter were being mainstreamed for public consumption in this way was 1994-95. People like Gordon Liddy--who, recall, was "joking" to his listeners to shoot federal agents in the head.

This pushed the limits of the acceptable far to the right, and vulnerable, nutty people felt licensed to blow up buildings because of it.

There will be right-wing violence in the next year. Of that I have no doubt. And people who've served to push the limits of the acceptable far to the right by mainstreaming people who spew hate rhetoric, talk violence, and make things up will bear some measure of responsibility.

You've made a series of very grave lapses in moral, professional, and intellectual judgement. You have no idea what you're dealing with.

Name: Kathy Givner
Hometown: Los Angeles, CA

Hi Eric,
Thanks for another terrific column.  I e-mailed Time yesterday, canceling my subscription. I hope many others did the same.  Keep up the good work!

Name: Sam Hankins
Hometown: Austin, Texas

In case you're keeping track, my wife and I cancelled our subscription to TIME day before yesterday.  I pledged to them that we would never, ever buy another copy of their magazine ever again.

Name: Jesse Corum
Hometown: Portland, OR

After reading about Time magazine's Coulter-love-fest on Tuesday, I liked seeing the Anonymous suggestions about canceling subscriptions.  I quickly checked the list to make sure I wasn't giving them any money.  I don't get Time, I don't get Sunset, I don't get Popular Mechanics or any snowboarding magazines.  I don't own any stock either.

But then at the bottom, I'm reminded that Time/Warner owns DC comics, and its arty imprint, Vertigo.  I've long since decided that Neil Gaiman's 'Sandman', which practically created the Vertigo imprint, is the best thing written in the last 25 years.  No kidding.  The series, which featured an embodiment of Dreams who looked like a Cure fan (and his older sister, Death, who looked like Crissy Hynde) has been over for nearly 10 years, but  I will greedily snatch up any more side stories that Gaiman gets around to writing.

The point is that this is another crucial problem of media consolidation.  I feel like the Southern Baptist who wanted to boycott Disney except for college basketball on ESPN.  I am unable to vote with my dollars because they own too much of the market.  It's probably the same for a number of snowboarders, home remodelers, amateur chefs, etc. who don't want to give up their specialty magazine because of Time, even if they loathe Coulter and the article.  My favored comics are written by leftist Brits and the quasi-religious elements would earn damnation if they ever appeared on the Right-wing's radar.  But dollars spent on those books goes into the same pool as dollars spent on Time.  I'm scared to even do the research on who owns the publishers of books by Coulter, Limbaugh, Hannity, etc. because I'm afraid there will be even more things I feel guilty about buying.  My passion is cinema, and I don't even want to THINK about refusing to see Warner Brothers films or DVDs.

If Anonymous can pull off his total Time/Warner boycott, more power to him.  Unfortunately, I'm not sure it's practical when dealing with this kind of media Hydra.

April 23, 2005

John Cloud
Time
New York, NY

Dear Mr. Cloud:
In your recent cover story on the fact-challenged and truth-bending contrastive writer Ann Coulter, you called attention to a film about her.

"A recent documentary, Is It True What They Say About Ann?—co-directed by a friend of Coulter’s, journalist Elinor Burkett—has played at film festivals and won some favorable notices," you wrote. (Source.)

Since I never heard of the film and fancy myself a movie-lover, I used Google to fact-check your claims about this documentary on Coulter.

First of all, the makers of the film have a web site to promote and sell it, www.AnnCoulterDoc.com.  The site links to what appears to be all of the film festivals, three total, that screened the work in 2004.  I couldn't find any evidence that the film has been shown this year.

Regarding two of the three festivals, the Liberty and the Renaissance film festivals, are put on by contrastive organizations, proud of their right-wing political bent.  The third one was the Maryland Film Festival.  Not exactly Cannes or Telluride, or mainstream film venues for the latest documentaries focusing on American politics and pundits.  (Sources: 1, 2, 3.)

Second, where are the supposed favorable notices you claim exist for the documentary?  The links to news clippings about the film aren't reviews, but articles about the filmmakers, their controversial subject or the conservative film festivals showing the film. (Sources.)

Does this excerpt from an essay by Bryan Curtis for Slate qualify as a rave in your opinion?

"Stranger still was Is It True What They Say About Ann?, a short film about the conservative provocateur Ann Coulter, who said of Muslim terrorists after 9/11 that we should 'invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.'  The director, Patrick Wright, never attempts to answer the title question, preferring to let the camera gaze lovingly at Ann as she hawks her books and invades university campuses.

"After a protester disrupts one of her speeches, she quips, 'You really develop your analytical skills here at Johns Hopkins.  At Harvard, they had questions.'  When an olive-skinned girl asks her to sign a book later, Coulter asks, 'Are you a Sikh?' No, I'm Hindu, the woman replies. 'Oh, I've got a lot of Sikh friends for some reason,' Coulter says. 'You're my first Hindu.'

"And that's the way the festival unfolded.  The films were pleasantly amateurish and the sermons were, too." (Source.)

If that's a favorable notice, what were the unfavorable ones like?

The closest thumbs-up review I could find, none too surprisingly, appeared in Human Events in December 2004.  As you know, Coulter is the legal correspondent for this publication, but nevertheless, you can read her colleague's review of the movie at [here].

The only other review of the film, again using Google, to come up was an outright slam, written by a film buff living in Maryland.

This is about the kindest thing he had to say. "Unfortunately, the film has no real ambition other than to rehash old clips, interview segments, and dull-as-dishwater book tours in order to present a side of Ann that actually harms her image, despite the fact that this is alleged to be a puff piece.  Having been screened during at least one conservative film festival this past year, Is It True What They Say About Ann? is the Right's answer to Al Franken and Michael Moore, only without the entertainment value, humor, or insight.  And my loathing of Coulter is beside the point: this is simply poor filmmaking, as it randomly cuts and pans without direction or purpose." (Source.)

Since you omitted any adjectives when describing the film festivals, readers may have been left with the false impression the venues were politically neutral or of high cinematic caliber.

Then again, there are much larger issues overall in your profile on Coulter for Time, and you've been taken to task for what many media critics see as sloppy reporting.  To your credit, you answered some of the criticism leveled against you in an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review's daily blog.

As you admitted to the review, your "job in this story was not to be a fact-checker." (Source.)

Truer words could not have been spoken by you.

Sincerely,
Michael Petrelis
San Francisco, CA

April 23, 2005

John Cloud
Time
New York, NY

Dear Mr. Cloud:
In my earlier letter to you I erred when I said there was no evidence the documentary on Ann Coulter, which you alleged has "won some favorable notices," had not been screened publicly this year.

The direct-to-video film was shown earlier this month in Massachusetts by the College Republicans at Brandeis University as part of a political conference, according the release that follows.

(Here.)

The conference was not a film festival.

Michael Petrelis
San Francisco, CA

Name: J. Dougherty
Hometown: Ann Arbor, MI
Add me to the list of those who have cancelled Time subscriptions because of the Coulter issue.  I think a boycott of Time-Warner properties over Time's decision to stop pretending at journalism is overbroad, though.  On the other hand, such a boycott does not burden me--Time was the only part of the empire getting any of my money.

Name: Mike
Hometown: Minneapolis, MN

Hey Eric, not to jump on the bandwagon but my subscription to Time is done for.  A complete boycott is most likely unachievable and probably unnecessary, but if everyone who reads here just makes sure that they and everyone they know cancels their Time subscription it could make a noticeable dent.  I mean seriously....that was one of the shi**iest articles I have ever read .

Name: Jane Leffler
Hometown: Sanborn, NY

As a long-time reader of but first-time poster to your column I just wanted to add my voice to the cancel-Time-subscription choir.

I have read Time magazine since I was a kid reading my parents' subscription (more years ago than I care to say), but the Coulter issue really was the straw that broke the camel's back. The magazine arrived in Tuesday's mail and our subscription was cancelled that afternoon.

My only regret is that having cancelled, I may not have the opportunity to read any of the flood of letters the magazine must be receiving as a result of this issue.  I would also be interested to see some statistics regarding the number of subscriptions cancelled.  Think Time will run an article about that?

Name: Don Paule
Hometown: York, Pennsylvania

Dear Eric:
Here is a letter I sent to Time Magazine.  I hope it helps the effort a little bit.

Sirs:

I have been a subscriber to Time Magazine since 1971, uninterrupted for some thirty-four years.  Countless times I have eagerly anticipated the next issue of Time, to read its coverage of current events, with its unique prose and perspective.

It is therefore with great sadness that I ask that you cancel my subscription to Time.  Your recent issue, with Ann Coulter on the cover, was so far afield from what I have come to expect from your magazine that I can no longer in good conscience support its publication, and worse, believe its reporting any longer.

Miss Coulter is a hate monger.  She traffics in meanness, arrogance and deceit.  Her sweeping pronouncements are unsupported by fact, history or common sense.  Why Time Magazine, TIME MAGAZINE, would give legitimacy to this minor provocateur with a cover story is incomprehensible to me.

The conservative movement has many decent, capable and thoughtful representatives to articulate and advance its positions.  To suggest that Miss Coulter is one of its leading spokespersons is both bizarre and untrue.

Genuine public discourse demands some level of accountability.  Ann Coulter long ago abandoned any responsibility to be accurate or reasoned or fair.  Last week, Time Magazine did so as well.

Don Paule
York, Pennsylvania

Posted at 09:15 AM in Finance, Media, Politics | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Sunday, April 24, 2005

I Fucked Ann Coulter in the Ass, Hard

In_the_ass_hard

I Fucked Ann Coulter in the Ass, Hard
Sunday, April 24, 2005

The Farmer’s Market on Fairfax and 3rd is a Los Angeles landmark, attracting tourists and everyday Angelinos alike, as well as many famous faces. Among the celebrities I have seen there are Muhammad Ali, Terri Garr, Tyra Banks, Laura Linney, Keenan Ivory Wayans, the guitarist for The Cult, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, and Weird Al Yankovic.

But Ann Coulter is the only celebrity I’ve ever spotted at Farmer’s Market that I wound up fucking in the ass, hard.

It would be fair to observe that my feeling obligated to present the list of celebrities above in roughly Black-White-Black-White order is indicative of my own carefully Liberal sensibilities. And that this sort of conscientiousness is more than a little ridiculous, on examination. But what I notice about myself only on reflection, Ann Coulter seemed to recognize and respond to in an instant, like a puma recognizes an injured giselle. For Ann Coulter is a predator. A predator with a hungry asshole.

I first spotted her sitting at a table in front of The Gumbo Pot with another woman who looked not unlike her, but a generation older (I neglected to ask her at any point subsequently whether this had in fact been her mother). I vaguely recognized her—there’s always a lag time placing faces you know from cable when unconfined to a telescreen—and began to notice, stealing furtive glances up from the copy of Steinbeck I was reading, that she was eyeing me with unsettling scrutiny.

The next thing I knew, her companion (mother?) had left and Coulter was standing over me, looking skeptically at my reading material.

‘The Grapes of Wrath, huh?’

‘Yes’ I said, faking composure. ‘It’s fantastic.’

‘It’s a fantastic primer for vacuous proto-Communists everywhere,’ she said dismissively.

‘I don’t know about that..’

She sighed. ‘I don’t have enough ink in my pen to keep a running list of what you don’t know. May I?’

She motioned to the empty chair next to me.

‘Of course.’ It would be fair to say my voice trembled a little.

She sat and said nothing. Ann Coulter evidently takes an unappreciative view of small talk. That she was eager to continue antagonizing me became evident when I re-opened my recently-insulted book to resume reading. A young man passed in a t-shirt proclaiming ‘Iraq Nam’. She stopped him.

‘1. Haircut. 2. Shower. 3. Get a job, you sniveling hippy,’ she glowered. ‘You’re probably too high to remember that, so write it down--if you can write.’

He looked at her with dismay and scampered away like a kicked cat. She turned to me with bloodlust.

‘What do you think of the war: complete success, or very nearly complete success?’ she asked.

‘Well, in no time—barring the strong possibility of Civil War--we’ll have a democratically-elected anti-US Islamicist government in charge of the world’s second-largest oil reserves, so I’d have to say only very-nearly, on the complete success scale, at a hysterically distorted best.’

She showed her teeth. ‘It sounds to me like you don’t support our troops.’

‘I think that ‘Support Our Troops’ business is the most crass, craven cowardice ever to go unquestioned by the allegedly Liberal media.’

‘Yes? Yes?’ There was oddly growing excitement in her voice.

‘It allows the Administration to absolve itself of responsibility for its own flawed policy. It’s no different than if you sent a classroom of 2nd graders into a burning building, and when anyone objects you throw in their face that they "don’t support our 2nd graders"’

‘Where do you live?’

‘A few blocks away.’

‘Take me there.’

When we got to my apartment, she looked around glumly.

‘I was thinking you’d have half-burned American flags up on the wall,’ she said, disappointed.

‘That’s ridiculous. I love my country.’

‘Whatever you think that means,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘Don’t you have anything nasty to say about the President?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like he’s an imbecile, or corrupt, or a corrupt imbecile—the usual sore-loser bitter chatter.’

‘To be honest, I didn’t like the nasty things that were said about Clinton, and I’ve decided to have respect for the Office, no matter who holds it. I don’t think President Bush is corrupt or an imbecile anyway. Would you like something to drink?’

‘I think maybe this was a mistake,’ she said, starting to go.

‘That’s not to say I don’t disagree strongly with many of his policies and objectives.’

She seemed to reconsider. ‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. Name one.’

‘Get me a drink first.’

With every point I expressed that ran counter to a view she held, she removed one article of clothing. Soon she sat on my couch naked, gently pulling at her untrimmed pubic hair, staring intently but not quite invitingly at me. The growing hard lump in my throat was just outpaced by the one in my pants. I was a little nervous because we had agreed on the last two points—the need to reconsider the option of nuclear energy, and drilling in the Arctic—and I noticed her oversized nipples were no longer hard.

Luckily, she was, by this point, determined.

‘What do you think,’ she began provocatively, ‘of the President’s plan to privatize Social Security?’

I sighed with relief; this was as sure a promise to seal the deal as her asking if I had a condom.

‘I think it’s a payoff to the Americans the President has always been most intent on pleasing: the richest 1%.’

‘What do you mean?’ she cooed. I noticed her nipples hardening once more. She dropped to her knees in front of me. She pushed me backwards and positioned my legs up in the air.

‘A stock’s value is even now only partially tied to the actual value of any publicly traded company.
But who’s going to profit from inflated valuations when stock prices swell irrationally from the forced, artificial injection of capital?

Her breath was hot on my ‘taint as she lifted my scrotum. ‘Yes? Yes?’

‘You might as well shoehorn billions of dollars into the Baseball Card market. The price of a Derek Jeter rookie will be driven up to hundreds of thousands of dollars—before the bubble bursts and the whole market crashes massively.’ It was getting hard to stay on point as she tongue-fucked my shitter vigorously.

‘Don’t..Stop!!’ her contorted mouth pled from my butthole.

‘The top 1% will sell stocks at the inflated valuations to the novice investors-by-necessity, the market will swell and crash, and the same 1% will come back and re-purchase their holdings at pennies on the dollar. Meanwhile, Social Security will go bankrupt and all the novice investors will be eating catfood for the duration of their "golden years,'’ barring a massive Federal bailout several hundred times in excess of what the Savings & Loan scandal cost us.’

She sprung up on the couch on all fours and looked over her shoulder at me. She pointed to her twitching, puckered anus. ‘See this?’

I nodded eagerly.

‘I want you to wreck it.’

I spit on my skeezer-pleaser and, prying her ass cheeks apart like a hot dinner roll, drove it home, into the biggest browneye I had ever seen. She gurgled contentedly. Every thrust of my babymaker was met with a wrenched squeal as I grabbed her by the hips and began really leaning into it.

‘Harder!’ she begged, ‘Harder!! Tell me what you think of Chomsky!’

‘I..think..he’s..brill..iant..but..I..don’t really agree with much of his stance on Israel, and--’

‘You’re slowing down!’ she snapped. ‘DON’T SLOW DOWN!’

I went back to punishing her asshole, giving no thought whatsoever to compassionate conservatism as her chocolate socket gnawed on my pork pipe. She was babbling now, as out of a delirious reverie.

‘Feed it,' Ann Coulter rasped. 'Feed my hungry asshole!'

I buried her face in a throw pillow and she swiveled her hips back on my fuckstick with obvious appreciation. My pace quickened as my man-magma built towards eruption.

‘Wait!’ she gasped, sensing the fuse on my yogurt cannon was burning quick. ‘I want to take you ass-to-mouth!’

I withdrew from her puckerhole with an audible ‘pop’ and she scrambled around, gulping at my wang-dang-doodle as though the lives of all her loved ones hinged on her marks for enthusiasm. Her eyes rolled up pleadingly as she threw her head down again and again on my magic johnson. I knew what she wanted.

‘There is a specter haunting Europe,’ I began, and she started to convulse spasmodically with her own thrashing orgasm, her head now dribbling in a blur against my groin. I repeated every Karl Marx quote I could think of until I reached my own ‘historic inevitability’ and launched surge after surge from my hairy boda bag. I ejaculated with what seemed like enough force to blow out the back of her head--but her head was made of stronger stuff. She sputtered, gobbled and gulped what I’d have to call a very liberal, even radically so, quantity of hot splooey.

Once she caught her breath, she wiped her mouth, stood, and took me by the hand.

‘Let’s go to the bathroom.’

‘Why?’

She seemed surprised I had to ask. Her tone was that of someone reminding another of something too obvious to need mention.

‘Uh, so I can get in the tub and you can piss all over me?’

I sat in a robe and watched her as she dressed.

‘Will I see you again?’ I asked tentatively.

‘Sure,’ she said, pointing to the TV. ‘On that.’

Some moments passed. I tried to dispel the awkward silence.

‘Well, nice meeting you,’ I offered.

‘You’ve really got a gift for tedious small talk,’ she shot back.

I was a little hurt and, recognizing this, she softened just a shade as she reached for her purse to leave.

‘Hey.’

‘Yes?’ I asked.

‘Thanks for not staring at my adam’s apple.’

‘No problem.’

She let herself out without another word, and I sat in the late afternoon silence alone. I considered how it felt to be a disposable instrument in someone’s personal debasement fantasy.

All in all, it didn’t feel too bad.

Posted at 09:38 AM in Humor, Politics | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Saturday, April 23, 2005

Passover in Chinatown!

Damn, I'm gonna miss this one:  Only a $1 per plate:

click for larger graphic

Tasteofchinatownr



via kottke

Posted at 12:09 PM in Food and Drink | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack