50 worst? Really?

I take issue with your list, sir. You're really going to put Yanni ahead of Mick Jagger? Really? I mean, I'm not a huge Stones fan, but still...Yanni???

Frightening

I agree with a surprising amount of this David Brooks op-ed (TimesSelect...sorry).

Scary.

When the hampsters rise up against us, they're going to kick this guy's ass

Some people have way, way, WAY too much time on their hands...

...and today's douchebag is:

Dennis Prager! Go Dennis! What does he win? Well, boys and girls, he wins a shiny new can of "Shut the Fuck Up!" (from the makers of "God, you really are a douchebag, aren't you?").

There's this cute little thing we have in this American culture of ours you think you're protecting. It's called the Constitution. Maybe you've heard of it? If not, allow me to point out article 6:

...The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

That's pretty much as close as the Constitution can reasonable come to contradicting you, Mr. Prager, without explicitly saying, "Prager, you're a douchebag, and you're full of shit, so take your head out of your ass, and go home." The Framers kind of frowned on that kind of language though.

Silly superhero name generator

Henceforth, you may refer to me as Emperor Bootylicious. That or Path Mollusk. Ooh...I also like Commander Grope. And there's something about Penguin Searphim that appeals to me. Also, Alissa said you can refer to her as Platypus Vixen. No, really...she did. I swear. O:-)

Others from my first generating attempt:
Brushon
Charmroach
Cream Flunkie
Disoriented Blast
Drool Commander
Drunkborg
Emperor Bootylicious
Flopspider
Idiotsaur
Lash Whiner
Mistress Yawn
Path Mollusk
Polka Wheezer
Poodle Psychic
Professor Tricycle
Queen Mollusk
Sacred Scooter
Saint Yodel
Sergeant Haribrush
Shockpuffin
Sneezefire
Stitchyell
Veil Yawner
Vixen Gecko
Wig Crusher

Gingrich = douchebag

Yup. Gingrich. Douchebag. Enough said.

Some songs shouldn't exist

Or rather, some covers are a crime against nature.

Massive cahones

Man...good thing he put his money on a color instead of just one number, because betting your entire life savings on just one number on the roulette wheel would be, well, fucking stupid...

Note to self: never go to Colorado

There be idiots there.

See? Women are too thin.

Curvy women = good.
Anorexic, emaciated women passing for models = bad.

The side-by-side pictures are frightening.

Why Microsoft is broken

This gentleman's blog entry provides a very nice example of how horribly, horribly broken Microsoft is.

The closest close-up you'll ever see

Dear, sweet baby Jesus, if there were ever a link that was NSFW, it's this one.

Ever wonder what sex looks like from your genitals' point of view? Yeah, I didn't either, and I think my brain just exploded. Nonetheless: go BBC! :)

Thanksgiving explained in 8 panels

...by Choo-Choo Bear and a chinchilla.

Iraqi insurgency now self-sustaining

So, let me get this straight...the terrorists are more fiscally responsible than the Republicans? Great. Fantastic. This will end well...

Did you get that?

It is amazing to me that someone can speak so many words, each word itself carrying some meaning, and yet when this man strings them together, they become total gibberish. A quintessential example of obscurity passing for profundity.

Heart Attack Grille

Oh yes. The Quadruple Bypass and the Flatliner Fries had to be shared.

Incidentally...

I am immensely amused that Kevin Federline's newest nickname is "Fed-ex."

Inhofe = douchebag

I had to post this if for no other reason than the satisfaction of attaching a "douchebag" tag to it...

Please tell me you saw this coming the instant Republicans started whining about judicial filibusters?

The real China

Most of the time the censors in China do a pretty good job of filtering out the stuff that shows all the bad shit happening in that country, but every so often, bits and pieces filter through.

Libertarians are retarded

I'm pretty sure I don't even need to explain how retarded this essay is. Let me boil down the argument to its essence: because police brutality can happen, that means we shouldn't have police.

Yes, some Libertarians seem to honestly believe this.

What's truly frightening is that this guy is a professor at Auburn. Although maybe that means he's especially innocuous, and we should be grateful that certain corners of academia serve as shiny distractions for people that might otherwise be predisposed to do something dangerous with their idiotic ideas.

RC VR

A very simple but very cool idea. I totally want one. And it's making me want to take flying lessons again. Now that, you know, I _really_ don't have the money for it.

On condescension

Having finally finished the current sprint of algorithms (bleh...I never want to see another dynamic programming problem, although given that what I face next are complexity problems, the former might start looking damn appealing again...), I can go back to focusing on the important things: unsubstantiated opinions vehemently asserted as facts.

You know...blogging.

So, I read this David Brooks piece in the NYT (sorry, it's a TimesSelect thing...I'm a bit too much of a pussy to actually post the text as I fear people do, in fact, go looking for such things), and it was thought-provoking.

I actually kind of like Brooks. He's the closest I can think of to a conservative whose opinion I can actually respect. I have been desperate to find such people as I do think there is a coherent, informed conservative political opinion to be expressed, but it's being drowned out by politicized evangelicals and the idiots that pass for Fox News commentators.

But, I digress. Brooks' point is that we've entered an era of institutionalized condescension. There is a wave of both humor and documentaries lately, he argues, that plays off condescension to, I guess, the non-cosmopolitan segments of our population. Similarly, there is an air of the rest of America becoming simply a sociological specimen for our academic and comic amusement. Think of the interviews on the Daily Show. Think of Jesus Camp. Think of Simon on American Idol. And quintessentially, think of Borat.

To some degree, he has a point. Why didn't Borat make fun of the pretension of coffee aficionados, wine connoisseurs, Starbucks frequenters, and Whole Foods crunchy-granola types? Would it have been too jarring? Would it have jolted us out of our comfortable position of cultural superiority?

And yet, I don't buy it. To me, this is a reaction, not an action. For one thing, this is often less about cultural condescension than it is an assault on pretense. Simon from American Idol doesn't really fall in this mold...he really is a condescending prick, in my opinion, and I never really found it that entertaining. But people like Daily Show, Colbert, and Borat are picking precisely on people who take themselves too seriously. Yes, Borat makes fun of the rednecks at the rodeo, but let's remember he also subjected himself to tumbling around naked with a morbidly obese guy, and in the end, he found true love with a prostitute. Not to be too glib, but I seem to recall Jesus spending most of his times with beggars, whores, and criminals. I don't see the moralizing, supposedly anti-elitist masses that attend rodeos and hold supercilious dinner parties where they attempt to "culture" a supposedly uncivilized brute from Kazakhstan doing very much of that. In fact, I distinctly remember them running away screaming when a prostitute did show up at their door. Is it Borat that is condescending, or is Borat merely focusing a giant microscope on the willfully ignorant middle-American culture snobs?

I see this phenomenon as simply taking the gloves off in a culture war we didn't start. Well, okay, I guess technically we did if you regard the 60s as the beginning, but personally I don't regard returning to a world where we hide our problems and the ugly truths of existence under artifical social structure, illusory decorum, and contrived social protocol as a particularly good idea. The last 6, and arguably 12, and arguably 26 years, we have been subjected to a cultural revolution that sought to simultaneously throw out the window both the notions of meritocracy and social responsibility and replace them with cultural cronyism and egocentrism justified as divine providence. Gone is any notion that someone actually trained for and who studies a discipline might actually be better at it than your "plain spoken" buddy Ed whose only qualification is that you know him. Gone is the notion of social responsibility, replaced by a blind faith, one increasingly institutionalized, that one's material status in the world is directly compensation (or lack thereof) for one's moral worth and behavior.

The paramount achievement of this effort has been putting idiots in charge of the most powerful government on the planet. We literally have idiots running the country in almost every aspect of its operation. And we had to have a perfect-fucking-storm of disastrous results, corruption, and hyper-visible hypocrisy for the idiots to be just _barely_ nudged out of power. Is it any wonder that it has been in these same years that we have begun to see people (comedians, documentarians, etc.) finally willing to stop being polite and say, "Look, these people are ignorant, arrogant morons. And they're running things."

So Brooks will excuse me if I don't get too upset by this phenomenon. When the willfully ignorant with cripplingly narrow fields of vision and experience stop trying to run things they don't understand, then we can talk.

What happens when your computer's battery blows up

Huh. Apparently your computer's battery really could incinerate you.

Rape accountability = lewdness

Why are people so goddamn stupid?

Sack up and quit whining

Oh, fucking get over yourself, you damn loser. You were an asshole, and you let yourself be filmed being an asshole. That's no one's fault but yours.

How Duck Hunt works

For those of you that may have been curious, here's how the Zapper worked.

Take THAT Jesus vision freaks!

I found Jesus, and he's on a dog's ass.

What the hell is wrong with you people?

Ever wonder what kind of fucked up childhood trauma leads to these kind of incoherent, paranoid ramblings?

An entertaining quote

Maybe it's just that it's 3 am, but I found this to be a great quote:

It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
-- Rod Serling

Also liked this:

I can't listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.
-- Woody Allen

Pellets = love

You know your self-esteem is way too low, and you have truly horrible taste in men, when...

The aptly named worst burglar ever

Dude...give up.

What _is_ a ho?

Personally, I think the first answer is better. A rake?! What the fuck is a rake?

I wish the milkman...

"I wish the milkman would de...liver my milk...in the morning..."

Probably one of the most bizarre things you'll ever see (yes, I realize this is the internet we're talking about). I can't fucking get it out of my head.

This article sucks

Okay, how can you write this article and not tell me what the fuck they were arguing about for six goddamn years?!

One never knows when a homosexual is about

Beware!!!

Kiwi

This may be the cutest and yet most depressing thing I've ever seen.

What the hell is "Web 2.0"

Tim O'Reilly's attempt to answer the question of what "Web 2.0" is.

Amazing how much of it is starry-eyed horse shit.

Dissent in the mainstream media???

Dear god...there's actually someone in the mainstream media not equivocating about how fucked up the Bush policies are? Wow.

Buzzkill

Stupid Khamenei. He and al Qaeda are really killing my "Fuck the Republicans!" post-election buzz...

Are you tone deaf?

Take the test!

I got 80.6% after not sleeping for 24 hours. I think I'm ok with that.

Nerd 911

Oh, Reno 911!...I really should watch you more.

The banana: sworn enemy of the atheist

Well, that's it. I was wrong. Clearly, the banana proves the existence of a divine creator.

Pretty space pictures

Damn impressive, you gotta admit...

Nick's 2006 Seattle voter guide

I know you've been waiting for it with bated breath. So without further adieu, going from more local to less local (all predictions made without looking at the poll numbers):

SEATTLE (CITY)
Referendum 1 - Adult Entertainment: NO.
This is pure puritan bullshit. Strippers are part of what makes this country great. Whoever sponsored this referendum needs to fuck off.

Prediction: NO. I don't think Seattle is that uptight. At least I hope not.

Initiative 91 - No Below Value Leases to Sports Teams: YES.
Meh. Fuck sports. The city needs the revenue, and even on the off-chance that it does drive away sports teams (which I doubt), the economic benefit of having them here is dubious anyway.

Prediction: NO. I think people are probably jittery about the Sonics leaving, and that will translate into a no vote on 91.

Proposition 1 - Transportation Funding: YES.
Yes, this money should come out of the general fund and not come from a levy, but the legislators aren't fucking funding this shit, so the money has to come from somewhere. Also, yay Robin Hood tax. :)

Prediction: YES. People likey their roads, and bikers likey their bike paths.


KING (COUNTY)
Proposition 1 - Sale of harbor property: Umm...yes?
This is a fantastic example of why voter propositions are dumb. I have no idea whether this is a good idea or not. It kind of smells like a real estate developer managed to get the ear of some councilperson, and the county will end up selling the land for too little, but who knows. Personally, I don't see why the county shouldn't just hang onto the land and continue to lease it as it will probably provide more money in the long term, but fuck...I don't know. King County should do whatever it thinks is best on this one.

Prediction: Aroo?

Proposition 2 - Public Transportation Sales and Use Tax: YES.
Yay public transportation.

Prediction: NO. I think people in this state are generally too libertarian to vote for something this progressive when it so directly affects their pocketbooks.

WASHINGTON (state)
Initiative 920 - Repeal of Estate Tax: NO.
Fucking Republicans.

Prediction: YES. I think Washington state is still too mired in the myth of the American Dream to vote this down. They'll view it as a tax on success.

Initiative 933 - Regulation of Private Property: NO.
Fucking land developers. Any time I read a rebuttal of the statement against and find the phrase, "I-933’s opponents will say anything to maintain big government control of private property," I know the people making that statement are full of shit.

Prediction: YES. I think people are shaky enough about the coverage of the Supreme Court case on eminent domain to vote for this as an obstacle to the gub'mint taking their land. That of course assumes they have memories that long...

Initiative 937 - Energy Conservation and Renewable Energy: YES.
Environmental no-brainer. If the fed isn't going to do this shit, guess the states have to...

Prediction: YES. Too easy to look at the gas prices on any street corner.

Joint Resolution 4223 - Personal Property Tax Exemption Increase: NO.
Honestly, I'm mostly being perverse. This is exactly the kind of shit that shouldn't be on a ballot. This is a budgetary issue that should be decided by the legislature. In principle, the state's hurting for money, and I don't feel like a tax repeal on property is the way to fix that right now, especially given the skyrocketing price of real estate.

Prediction: YES. Especially since there is no argument against published in the voter guide.


FEDERAL:
All Democrats. I don't see how anyone in their right mind could vote for a Republican this election. Honestly, can _you_ think of something they haven't screwed up?

Prediction: Democrats take the House, Republicans keep the Senate. Much as I dream that Republicans get their asses handed to them in both sides of Congress...

Doogie's gay!!!

Dude. Doogie's gay.

Best video game levels

Ah, this brings back some memories...

Best. Halloween. Costume. Ever.

Really, how can you beat a full functional Transformer costume??