Memorial Day

Enjoy but remember.

Hendrix with the national anthem.

Klassic kittehs. With a sidecar of dog.

Oh, shut up, white boys

Glenn Beck and Matt Drudge, conservative nutbags with megaphones, are atwitter with anger that the first lady wore this dress to a state dinner.

I myself see this as a chance to run a picture of a pretty woman not altered pharmaceutically. Allegedly.

RIP, Dennis Hopper

A cinematic icon, was he.

Here's the sexually deviant oxygen scene with Isabella Rossellini from "Blue Velvet." (NSFW)

And here he is heading out on the highway with Peter Fonda in "Easy Rider."

'Showdown at the GOP corral'

Slate says the West and the South are battling for the soul of the Republican party.

"Southern conservatives care about government's moral stance but don't mind when it spends freely on behalf of their constituents. Western conservatives, by contrast, are soft-libertarians who want government out of people's way on principle. Southern Republicans are guided by the Bible. Western Republicans read the Constitution."

Some gave all

No matter where you are politically (I'm to the left of the Sandinistas myself on some matters), remember America's fallen this weekend.

Memorial Day (or "Decoration Day" as they still call it down South) was established to honor those who died in the Civil War. As you kick off your summer, don't forget our citizens who died in battle on foreign and domestic fields.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead.
Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.

John McCrae

Night kitteh

Beck mocks 11-year-old

Fuck you. You motherfucker.

The price paid for our oil addiction

Pictured: A heron sits dying in the oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill.

More photos here.

The Bechdel test for movies

As you head out to take in "Sex In The City II," remember that Hollywood is ruled by men. Hence this test: Does a particular movie have two or more women in it with names, do they talk to each other, and do they talk to each other about something other than a man?

And for the love of gawd, don't see "Sex In The City III" when it debuts. We have to stop this madness.

Pictured: The "Dykes to watch out for" comic strip that introduced us to the Bechdel test.

The 10 worst things about summer

I love it that this blogger riffs on the freezers that workplaces inexplicably become. In my last office, I had to run a portable space heater so my fingers didn't go numb--between May and September. IN THE SOUTH.

Also. Put away the flip-flops, people, unless you're in the shower at the gym. Or on Key West.

Your morning cry. In a good way.

Video of 8-month-old Jonathan, after a cochlear implant, hearing his mother's voice for the first time.

For that vacationing lady I know

Songs for your Thursday.

It's Five O'Clock Somewhere
Jackson and Buffett

Margaritaville
Buffett and Jackson

Bad postcards

This site is kitsch heaven.

The toll on the Gulf Shores

The oil spill damage is more evident each day.

The Miami Herald on the effect on tourism:

"Grand Isle, a mile wide, hardly eight miles long, offers a brutal model in miniature of what a giant oil spill brings to a tourism economy built around the beach and the sea. The town, with only 1,500 permanent residents, lives off the 300,000 visitors a year who come to fish and swim and play on the beach and bath in the Gulf of Mexico waters. None of that was evident Friday."

The San Francisco Chronicle says we may not be able to cleanse the wetlands of the effect of the spill:

"The gooey oil washing into the maze of marshes along the Gulf Coast could prove impossible to remove, leaving a toxic stew lethal to fish and wildlife, government officials and independent scientists said."

A New York Times columnist calls President Obama a coward for letting BP call the shots so far:

"Steadily increasing numbers of anxiety-ridden coastal residents are watching not just their livelihoods but an entire way of life slip away. Even as BP’s lawyers are consumed with the task of limiting the company’s liability, the administration continues to insist it has little choice but to follow the company’s lead in fighting the spill. That is dangerous nonsense. "

I think the Gulf Oil spill--and his cool, centrist, let's-give-'em-a-chance-to-fix-it bullshit--will define Obama's presidency.

Bye-bye to 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'

Looks like the policy of not allowing gay military personnel to serve openly is on its way out.

Thanks, Obama. Took you long enough.

Evidence that the American South is, um, different, cont'd

A Georgia teacher lets students parade around in KKK hoods for an assignment.

Things went awry. Imagine that.
"Rider said that several students wearing hoods taunted his cousin, who is also a student at the school.'Students approached him and asked if they can re-enact the lynching of him for their class project,' said Rider."

'Why Rand Paul is right and wrong'

A fellow libertarian is brutally honest about the Republican nominee for Senate.

"Jim Crow laws were imposed precisely because racists feared the South's rigid caste system would collapse if business owners were free to integrate, as historian Charles Wynes noted in his 1961 study Race Relations in Virginia."

"We libertarians, never burdened with an excess of governing power, have always had a utopian streak, a penchant for imagining what rich organic order would bubble up from the choices of free and equal citizens governed by a lean state enforcing a few simple rules."

"Rules for utopia can deal with individual crimes—the mugger and the killer and the vandal—but they stumble in the face of societywide injustice. They tell us the state shouldn't sanction the brutal enslavement or humiliating legal subordination of a people; they have less to say about what to do once we have. They tell us to respect the sanctity of the property rights that would arise as free people tamed the wilderness in John Locke's state of nature. They have less to say about the sanctity of property built on generations of slave sweat and blood."

Rare afternoon LOLanimals

Chubsters, be gone

A publisher is putting out a snarky weight-loss guide for hipsters.

It reportedly will focus on a regimen of "street-cart tacos, Old Granddad, and cigarettes."

'I know about the holograms'

Congress is old. Senator Ben Nelson doesn't grasp the need to limit ATM fees. Why would he? He's never used on of them new-fangled machines.

A re-run of a classic LOLcat

Disaster in the Gulf

The impact and implication of the oil spill now lapping at the shores of America's Gulf Coast is almost incomprehensible. This thing is simply huge and growing.

Some are noting that the nation's response is, "yawn."

And that, says a NY Times columnist, is one scary-ass scenario with ramifications beyond the Redneck Riviera.
"This is the bitter reality of the American present, a period in which big business has cemented an unholy alliance with big government against the interests of ordinary Americans, who, of course, are the great majority of Americans. The great majority of Americans no longer matter."

More on the moranic marauders

Ten lies the tea-bag party believes.

Tea Party smackdown

Those eggheads at the New York Times lay on some logic about the anti-intellectuals among us.

"The new Jacobins have two classic American traits that have grown much more pronounced in recent decades: blanket distrust of institutions and an astonishing—and unwarranted—confidence in the self. They are apocalyptic pessimists about public life and childlike optimists swaddled in self-esteem when it comes to their own powers."

"Now an angry group of Americans wants to be freer still—free from government agencies that protect their health, wealth, and well-being; free from problems and policies too difficult to understand; free from parties and coalitions; free from experts who think they know better than they do; free from politicians who don’t talk or look like they do (and Barack Obama certainly doesn’t). They want to say what they have to say without fear of contradiction, and then hear someone on television tell them they’re right. They don’t want the rule of the people, though that’s what they say. They want to be people without rules—and, who knows, they may succeed."

Oklahoma! Where the wind--and baseball-sized hail--comes sweeping down the plains

Before pansy-ass complaining about the weather in your hometown, watch this video of an Oklahoma City hailstorm. It gets really good around the 1:40 mark.

Axl Rose--crazy man. Crazy, man.

I guess it's official. Maybe in the '80s, those leather britches cut off circulation to his brain, which is quite obviously housed in his pee-pee.

I mean, the man tried to carry off cornrows a few years back.

Still, that band 0f his could bust a sound.

Sweet Child O' Mine

Paradise City
Stadium dick rock at its acme.

Patience

Pearl jam

I love how her Texas accent pops out at 2:05 on "Me and Bobbie McGee."

Down On Me

Try

Piece Of My Heart

Drunk people explain history

My favorite is the woman holding forth on Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. Nikola Tesla and his alternating current work gets the spotlight too.

Glenn Beck might be smoking his Nikes.

What the ever-loving fuck is this man talking about?

Facecrook

Social networking sites are the anti-Christ. The Wall Street Journal notes that "Facebook, MySpace and several other social-networking sites have been sending data to advertising companies that could be used to find consumers' names and other personal details, despite promises they don't share such information without consent."

Yeah, I'm on Facebook. But I figure that soon enough they'll figure out that most of my disposable income is spent on Big Macs and Mountain Dew. I'm not worth the trouble.

Kerfuffle, thy name is Rand

This is the big leagues, candidate Paul.

Since winning the Republican nomination for US Senate from the commonwealth of Kentucky, Rand Paul has:

• Said the Civil Rights Act shouldn't have applied to private businesses (ignorant of the fact apparently that in many parts of the Jim Crow South, it was illegal for businesses to serve blacks even if they wanted to).

• Dissed the Americans with Disabilities Act.

•Excused BP of any culpability in the Gulf Oil disaster ("accidents happen").

• Reacted to the resulting media firestorm with a "gosh-darn-it, why-are-people-so-mean-to-a-patriot" act.

Slate articulates my mother's "dream on, dreamer" snark in explaining why libertarians are smug twits.
"This is the belief system of people who have been the unwitting recipients of massive government backing for their entire lives. To borrow a phrase, they were born on third base, and think they hit a triple. We could fill a library with the details of the state underwriting enjoyed by American business -- hell, we could fill a fair chunk of the Internet, if we weren't using it all on Rand Paul already."

Night kittehs

Dream on, dreamers

The header is a line from my mother, BTW.

I think it aptly describes libertarianism.

Trusting that folks are gonna do the right thing ain't gonna cut it. Many of them will do what's rght. But some of them won't. And therein lies the devil.

Rand Paul says the 1964 Civil Rights Act should have been left up to local--not federal--authorities.

One wonders if he's ever been to Columbus, Mississippi. Or Birmingham, Alabama. Or northern Atlanta, Georgia.

Humans are capable of heinous acts. The United States government ALWAYS has a role in curbing that.

Coastal Alabama hunkers down

Once we fuck up these little unique spots, they stay fucked up for a looooong time.

"In this small south Baldwin community, oil could harm one of Mobile Bay's most sensitive and important ecosystems and efforts are under way to prevent such damage."

Meanwhile, the slick comes ashore in Louisiana wetlands.

'Top 10 mammals with odd defenses'

Not just the skunk.

'Weeds' adds Linda Hamilton to its cast

Every lesbian over 40 remembers almost fainting when Sarah Connor worked that pump shotgun with one hand in "Terminator 2."

Hamilton joins the "Weeds" cast as--get this--a lesbian who moves to the neighborhood with her partner. Here's hoping the couple has a threesome with Mary-Louise Parker's character.

For Pazit

Bicycles!

America's most corrupt states

What?!? My native state tops the list.

I can't pretend to be too shocked. I did witness some shenanigans during 11 years of working for the Great State of Tennessee.

Meanwhile, to note the fact that more than half the states on this list are in the South, here's some CDB.

Jersey ain't got nothing on folks below that Mason-Dixon line.

Woody Allen defends Roman Polanski

How very nice. Perhaps they will form a cinematic club for pedophiles.

Alabama teacher illustrates geometry with lesson on shooting president

For those who might defend this dimwit, one question: Would you rationalize what he did if the current president were a white Republican?

I wouldn't have stood for this shit if the president were still George W., a leader I loathed.

Despising a fellow citizen and snickering at a "joke" about murdering the president of the United States are two different things. Entirely.

Fire this asshole. I'm sure he'll be hired by one of the many private schools in the South established during integration so that white children didn't have to sit in class with black children.