Debablogging 11

Kerry’s not saying Vietnam, but he’s making the shadow puppets with those hand gestures and his continual references to combat and that war.

Honoring nobility? It’s not about nobility, or honor, it’s about winning.

He mentioned some sort of cutting, but he changed his mind.

He’s going to hunt and kill the terrorists?

Bush almost calls Kerry on it in the extension, which is that Kerry said who wants to tell someone that their son was the last to die for a mistake, and apparently he would, since the Iraq war was a mistake.

Kerry’s Pottery Barn rule invocation? What’s his point?

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Debablogging 8

What would be a last resort for Kerry? Another smoking ruin? A homeland so irradiated with dirty bombs that all we have left is our aircraft carriers? That’s war as a last resort, Senator, and I hope you never get the opportunity to take America to war as a last result.

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Debablogging 7

Kerry hitting all placards: No alQaeda connection, no WMDs (which are coming across the border every day, that’s not a flip flop-that’s a paradox–Kerry has taken it to the next level!!!), no imminent threat that Bush would have gone into Iraq.

Well, if Iraq had been Morocco, we wouldn’t have invaded either.

We all know. We all know. Crikey, Kerry, never mind.

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Great Moments in Rhetoric

Jay “Not Eliot Spitzer (Yet)” Nixon, Missouri attorney general, speaking about his crackdown on the evil criminal geniuses scalping Cardinals tickets:

This may not be the crime of the century, but this may be the team of the century and, by gosh, people ought to have a right to see them.

Keep trying, though, and you’ll be just like Eliot Spitzer.

Who’s not an office holder in the state of Missouri. That’s one parallel I would enjoy, too.

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That’s a Friendly Error Message

A little helpful note from Blogger:

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, blogger@trakken.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

You know what I did? I used your schnucking product, that’s what I did.

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Campaign Suggestion

Paul Harvey led off with it this morning, and USA Today has written a story about it, so it’s undoubtedly clear that as petroleum prices rise, so will the cost of heating our homes this winter. Unfortunately for those who would use fluctations in any market as campaign fodder, the brunt of the winter will occur after the election, but they can get ahead of the story and frighten voters. Let me explain how:

First, you take a revered older statesman of the party, preferably one with a dynamite Nobel prize to his name.

Then you put him on television, bemoaning the state of the country, and announce that citizens will have to put on sweaters and turn down their thermostats because of the policies of the current administration.

Oh, yeah. That will work.

Please try it, oh please please please.

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Two Of These Things Are Not Like the Others

From Richard Roeper’s column in today’s Chicago Sun-Times, entitled Young, untalented celebs coming out of woodwork:

They’re young and they’re cute, and they’re amazingly unaware of the outside world. They spend their days shopping and lunching and sunbathing topless, and they spend their nights at clubs and private parties. They’re always, always talking on their cell phones. And they wear red-string Kabbalah bracelets, because, like, it shows how, like, spiritual they are.

There’s Lindsay Lohan, who just a few short years ago was starring in “The Parent Trap.” Now Lohan’s a freshly minted 18, and she’s busy clubbing, chain-smoking, feuding with Hilary Duff, hooking up with her boyfriend — Wilmer Valderrama, the 24-year-old fifth banana on “That 70s Show” — and denying rumors that her breasts have been surgically enhanced. It’s a wonder the girl has time to make movies!

There’s Christina Aguilera, a pretty good singer who often looks like she’s posing for Skank Monthly. Aguilera, who’s been pierced more frequently than a porn star at a biker rally, now says she’s going minimalist — keeping just one special piercing.

There’s the little Hilton knockoff sister, Nicky, 20, who married her 33-year-old boyfriend in Vegas. Big sister Paris and fellow party girl Bijou Phillips were in attendance at the classy affair.

There’s Nicole Richie, she of the pierced nippled ring that triggers metal detectors everywhere.

Why, there’s even Barbara and Jenna Bush — fine and decent young women, to be sure, but also way more into the party scene than, say, Chelsea Clinton.

There’s Jessica Simpson, with her giant blond head and her giant bronze chest and her giant capacity for playing the ditz.

There’s the rapidly aging Tara Reid, who looks like the third runner-up in the 1997 Miss Hawaiian Tropic Pageant.

There’s Ally Hilfiger and Jaime Gleicher, the spoiled-brat princesses featured on MTV’s “Rich Girls.”

There’s Mischa Barton. Seems like only yesterday she was the little ghost girl under the bed in “The Sixth Sense.” Now she’s all about string bikinis and the oil heir boyfriend and Fashion Week.

I call foul. Speaking of evil, there’s Ed Gein, Jeffrey Dahmer, Pol Pot, Richard Roeper, Adolf Hitler, Ghengis Khan….

I hereby deem Roeper a Juxtaposeur.

Funny, he fails to mention any Kerry children who are prone to showing up at film premieres with see-through dresses and whatnot. I guess they slipped Roeper’s one track mind, or maybe he doesn’t want to blow his chances with them the next time he sees all of them at a film premiere.

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Tales from Psuedobabblerhood II

The night’s second Gary Cooper film, 1931’s Fighting Caravans, depicted a young (and by young, I mean a year younger than my present age) Gary Cooper as a young ne’er-do-well scout on the trail from Independence, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, as part of a large wagon train beset by Indians.

Not too many comments, but:

  • Lili Damita is way hotter than Helen Hayes, and I can even forgive the French accent since she wisened up and moved to America. Also, at 5′ 3″, she seems to have a couple of inches on Ms. Hayes, using the relative Cooper scale for comparison.
  • Like the cantankerous scout Bill Jackson, I too have grown quite fond of a Kickapoo girl.

Still, as I delve more into these older films, I have to admit I prefer color films to black and white, unless they’ve been lovingly restored by gentle, adulating acolyte hands. But that’s a matter of taste.

Also, I hope that I am like Gary Cooper. Although I am a stunning example of manhood in my thirties, I hope to get sexier as I near the midcentury mark and beyond. I’m still hoping to dodge the whole lung cancer thing, though.

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When Coloradoans Attack!

Well, well, well. Seems that my post tut-tutting the concept of Colorado as part of the heartland has touched a nerve. First, Jared at Exultate Justi comments, and then one of his readers sends me this enlightened e-mail:

You ignorant person…

Dear Brian,
Read your post “Colorado is not the heartland” (linked from Exultate
Justi). I would suggest that you watch too much television if you think
rather small, insignificant places like Aspen and Vail as typical of my
state. Boulder? Show me a major college town that is not infested by
leftist wierdoes. Athens? Lawrence? Chapel Hill? Not!

Skiing? Actually, that ‘sport’ was developed by us as a tourist trap to
sucker Texans and Chicagoans into spending their money. They also often
spend time in our hospitals after this activity, further spending money.
Sadly, many of these people stayed.

Not the heartland, indeed! I am sick of all of you lowlanders thinking
that this is some kind of snow-covered wonderland (we really ought to
re-name sme of our sports franchises that reflect this misconception).

Denver? typical nasty yuppie-infested big city. Colorado Springs?
Imagine Birmingham, Alabama without the humidity. We are just as normal
as any other place in the USA.

In the interest of reaching out to our poor Colorado brothers and elevating the discourse, I’d like to point out:

Coors beer isn’t very good either.

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Tales from Psuedobabblerhood

So tonight’s first movie is the 1932 rendition of A Farewell to Arms starring Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes. Here are my thoughts:

  • Man, Helen Hayes was kinda cute, but she’s like, what, 4 foot tall?
  • Good to see Gary Cooper was as cross-eyed as I am.
  • You want to know a secret about the quality of DVDs you get when you buy a classic double feature for $10? Man, it’s authentic. I got every pop and his in the soundtrack in surround sound, baby. If only I had HDTV, undoubtedly it would be as pixelated as playing Doom on an Atari 2600. Which I think was called Gunfight, by the way, but that’s neither here nor there.
  • Some people, particularly academics (especially those attending Colorado universities) would say that one could not truncate or chop up a Hemingway novel, but this movie indicates that you can. It’s not a bad movie, but it’s just a shell of what the book was.

    Of course, some would continue to cast aspersions on Hemingway’s novels, instead preferring the continental confuance of James Joyce. When I encounter these people, I prefer to engage them in a rigorous drunken brawl. I know that’s what Papa would have wanted.

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