From the Age:
Australians are gaining weight even faster than people in the US, a notoriously fat nation.
Why, you vegemite-eating, koala-coddling bastards…
Alright, fair enough. Proceed.
ps - aside from a couple edits - I’m done with school until March! Would it be entirely out of line for me to do a PhD on Transformers? That’s what I’ve been thinking about all day.
Sphere: Related ContentThe AV Club has posted Night Of The Killer Lamp: 23 Ridiculous Horror-Movie Adversaries for Halloween. I suggest watching at least the first clip and the one with the bunnies on the second page. Awesome.
Happy Halloween! You wouldn’t even know it that special day here in Melb. The country has some problems, sure, but American Halloween is the best.
I would like some candy corn. I would not like to continue reading about Conservative branding since the 1980s.
Question: how many copy editing errors do you have to find before you question the reputability of a work?
Sphere: Related ContentAre you a girl? Is it Halloween?
It’s paper time again, so I’m well on my way to spending hours on the internet. What does it have in store for us today?
Without asking why, let’s say I went to a Chinese horoscope compatibility website. Let’s just move straight from that fact to reveling in the glory that is Master Rao’s Compatibility Between the Signs.
You have to enter a sign for the man and a sign for the woman, and - like the Love Calculator before it - it predicts your ability to love and be loved on completely uncontrollable factors.
So what does ancient Chinese wisdom (clearly) have to tell us about relations between the sexes? Well, mostly things like this:
To get her views across, this woman is likely to react in her usual way - by nagging and displaying vehement emotional scenes.
That’s a Monkey (man) and an Ox (woman), but rest assured that all the other combinations I tried yielded roughly the same results for the women.
Rooster women (i.e., me) appear to be particularly unlovable. Here’s Goat (man) and Rooster (woman):
The Goat only loves mysterious and profoundly feminine women. Obviously, the Rooster falls short of this criteria and cannot expect to be fully appreciated as a woman by him.
Obviously. Thank you, Master Rao.
In other combos I am sulky, brooding, stupid and frigid. Surprisingly, given that last one, I am also incredibly randy:
On the sexual plane, the partners are likely to encounter some difficulties as the Rat man will look for quality while the Rooster, superficial and overrestless, will prefer quantity.
Strangely, with others I am jealous and possessive.
But I don’t want to end on that sour note. Let’s instead look at a Horse (man) and a Snake (woman):
Even in the best of conditions this union is unlikely to last, for the partners’ love is so intense that it will burn itself out completely. But they will ever keep bedazzled memories of each other.
I just hope they ever keep that Beadazzler - gonna be worth money someday.
Sphere: Related ContentI was talking to my new/old friend, Meredith, about blog traffic because we are both a bit sad. And also because blogging is the new route through academia.
Meredith’s doing some interesting work about women, pregnancy, celebrity and technology, which can be explored here and via her blog. She was talking about writing for audience - using your stats to see what your audience wants to read about (what they search terms they use to find your blog/which entries are most popular), and throwing a couple posts their way to drive up readership.
It’s a fair point… except that most people link to my blog through some permutation of three terms: “dog” “licking” and “vagina”. Today we also have “public grooming” and “douche telecom” amongst the group, but the general trend stands.
While I’m totally down for people reading about Juniper, the only entry to which those search terms can possibly lead, what the hell? My utility in the blogosphere seems to revolve around one entry I wrote over a year ago about the opera and my dog’s newly-spayed vag. Somehow I don’t think the sixteen people that went to that entry yesterday were expecting it to begin with:
Dowdy mom-types and aging lesbians flocked to the opera tonight.
Yet my bounce rate is down, which means that some of my dog vag visitors are sticking around to read up on such important topics as hilarious advice from my mother in 2005 and Washington State’s anti-gay marriage ruling.
Thanks for reading, new people. As for your dog - it may be a UTI.
Sphere: Related ContentSo my rant just below about the hubbub surrounding the Moveon/Limbaugh thing got picked up by two sites yesterday - The Moderate Voice and a right wing site that thinks Muslims have a 20-year plan to take over America.
To both of them I say: Huh?
While I’m flattered, the only reason why any readers you directed my way yesterday didn’t get a youtube link to John Cusack holding a Peter Gabriel-spewing boombox was because I was too lazy to post last night.
I presume that since I’m generally awake late enough in Oz to read and write about early morning US news, I got bumped early into the technorati queue. I have no other explanation for not one, but two sources noting my writing as of interest. The right wing site had me listed just after ThinkProgress. Okay!
To celebrate my impending blogosphere-wide notoriety, I am going to provide you with what you all missed last night.
This clip comes with a very special note to every heterosexual male on Earth: if she grew up in the 80s, any woman you’ve ever dated wants this to happen at some point in her life.
Finally, to any readers conservative enough to believe that Muslims will take over America, please enjoy this link my previous post about full moon sex dreams.
Confidential to Spree - I deleted your comment because I initially thought it was spam. While I think you missed the point of my post (among other things), in the interest of free speech, I’ll approve it if you re-submit.
Sphere: Related ContentI thought it would take a couple days for me to get back to full ‘YEAHH!’ strength (and that reference is here), but thanks to one man, I’m in a fabulous mood.
Alan Keyes has announced he’s running for president.
For those of you not familiar with the Mr Keyes, he was Obama’s opponent in the 2004 IL Senate campaign, and he is absolutely, 100% hilariously nuts. You know, once you get past the raging homophobia.
Here’s how great the 2004 Senate campaign was: Signs supporting candidates are pretty popular in Chicago (though it’s no Minnesota). I was driving around one day, close to the election, and saw a Keyes sign. I had to look more than once to identify what it actually was - because I had never seen one before. It was literally only one I ever saw, and it was so unusual that I know exactly where it was: west side of Damen Avenue, about four houses north of George Street.
Cut to the actual election: I was pollwatching that day and the three precincts I closed all gave Obama well over 70% of the vote. We thought that would change once more conservative, southern voters weighed in. Nope. The final breakdown was 70% to 27%. Keyes didn’t even commandeer 1/3 of the vote statewide. And Cook County (Chicago) gave Obama 81% of the vote.
Then John Kerry lost, so that kind of sucked.
But things got a bit better three months later, when Keyes’ daughter came out of the closet. Now, I don’t much like the thought of sexual orientation as a cudgel, and I can’t imagine what it’s like to be Maya Keyes, but if someone ever deserved to have his core shaken, it’s Alan Keyes. She’s an activist now - it’s great.
And this man - who called homosexuality ’selfish hedonism’, who accused Mary Cheney of being one such hedonist, who kicked his gay daughter out of the house and refuses to pay for her college (but still has her picture on his website) - this man is running for president.
Because what the Republican Party needed was one more batshit crazy candidate.
Keyes will be at the Republican ‘Values Voters’ debate (US) tomorrow. Below is only a small taste of what you can expect. God, the thought of another Obama/Keyes debate makes my eyes nearly swim with joy.
Links:
Alan Keyes Announces for President! [Reneamerica.us - Keyes' website]
Renew America Homepage [look for the link where you can 'hear Terri laugh']
2004 IL Senate Election Results [CNN]
Alan Keyes’ Daughter Coming Out [CBS News]
h/t to Dan Savage for the YouTube clip, and the best news I’ve heard all week - besides this.
Scared for my life. [Redacted] run by Moonies. GHETTO TYPE ATMOSPHERE.
No, that’s not actually a quote from a Mac student (or a MelbUni student for that matter) - it’s the musings of an anonymous first year at University of Bridgeport, CN.
Radar Online compiled a list of the worst colleges in America, and poor UBridgeport came in first (or last). Why is that? Well:
At orientation, all incoming students are given a “personal alarm locator [sic]” that will send swarms of campus policemen racing to their rescue whenever they press a panic button.
OKAY!
Other notables include Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. Falwell’s football team, and I am not making this up, is called ‘The Flames’. They are just asking for a Bob Allen/Larry Craig moment.*
[Via MeFi]
*In vaguely unrelated news - Wonkette commenter SayItWithWookies had maybe the best comment ever today regarding the newly/frequently-released story about intolerant-as-hell-but-unsurprisingly-gay-sex-having Republican Senator Larry Craig (R-ID):
Sphere: Related ContentFor a party with such a small tent, they have an awfully big closet.
Bush’s eulogy for Alberto Gonzales’ career reads like satire:
As Attorney General and before that, as White House counsel, Al Gonzales has played a role in shaping our policies in the war on terror, and has worked tirelessly to make this country safer. The Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act and other important laws bear his imprint.
Things that also include his imprint: stripping Guantanamo detainees of their Geneva Convention rights!
Bush continued:
Under his leadership, the Justice Department has made a priority of protecting children from Internet predators, and made enforcement of civil rights laws a top priority.
But the NYT reported in June [behind their pay wall, but the abstract is free]:
[The] Justice Department has significantly altered government’s civil rights mission by aggressively pursuing religious discrimination cases while reducing its involvement in cases involving race;… agency has transferred or demoted some experienced civil rights litigators while increasing hires from religious-affiliated institutions of Justice Dept hires from selection of law schools.
The best line of Bush’s speech, however, follows the civil rights bit:
He aggressively and successfully pursued public corruption…
The President is right; Mr. Gonzales aggressively pursued corruption and, I believe most would say, was ultimately successful in realizing it to the fullest.
Sphere: Related ContentMy favorite Aussie PSA (public service announcements) about driving (”Drink Driving? You Bloody Idiot”) has been replaced.
Only in Australia can you have an old woman making a ‘pencil dick’ hand motion as part of a public awareness campaign on speeding.
Here’s the link (no embedding, sorry).
Sphere: Related Content