The thing is, don’t call this a “cell phone.” That only proves you don’t know what it is. If you knew anything at all, you would have found a word for this doohickey by now. It would have a proper name that Newt Gingrich could sign off on, for what it’s worth, which is everything. But you haven’t, and you can’t, so shut up while the reclusive genius starts a rare lecture about teleology and the Smartphone Moroccan Mongocipher. In soothing plastic, data chips and tingling mysteries, it embodies an epistemological conundrum only he appreciates but will be kind enough to hint at in the simplest terms, for you, because cows are stupid:

But think about it – if it’s taking pictures, it’s not a cell phone. If it has a McDonald’s app to tell you where McDonald’s is, based on your GPS location, that’s not a cell phone. If you can get Wikipedia or go to Google – that’s not a cell phone. If you can watch YouTube, that’s not a cell phone. Or Netflix.

Think about it.

THINK, dammit. But no you won’t because Newt just said ‘Wickee Pedia.’ Damn your petty intellect.

This device is something new and different. I’ve been calling it a handheld computer.

And he currently calls his car an “auto-MO-beele.” Newt might want to tackle the twentieth century before eyeing this one. And you, you wipe the chuckle snot from your face, peasant. Technically Newt is right, the doodad is a handheld computer. And it’s additionally a phone. So how about we call it . . The Compuphone? We good? I’m exhausted.

I revere the good and the well-meaning people of our world. The politicians, and their friends. The editorialists, and their Murdochs. The holy, and the holier. How I love and trust them.

And then but they open their mouths and the bummers collect. And it becomes too much for me to bear. *hick* SOB. Oh cruel shallow world, thy yammering is really killing me.

The ranking Republican member on Washington state’s House Transportation Committee thinks that riding bicycles causes more pollution than driving cars . .

In his message, sent to the owner of a bicycle shop, [Ed] Orcutt wrote: “If I am not mistaken, a cyclists [sic] has an increased heart rate and respiration. That means that the act of riding a bike results in greater emissions of carbon dioxide from the rider. Since CO2 is deemed to be a greenhouse gas and a pollutant, bicyclists are actually polluting when they ride.”

Ed can’t figure which takes more energy to move: A 2000 pound car or a 160 pound person. One produces about 10 times the CO2 of the other, perhaps you could hazard a guess.

Think about it. A bi-sexual marriage would require an absolute minimum of four people . . You couldn’t get by with the same heterosexual partner for both A and B since that would mean Partner C wasn’t really a bi-sexual, but a polygamous heterosexual.

. . But here’s where the real confusion comes in. Suppose (and this seems more likely than not), that Carla and Dorothy don’t love each other (really, what are the odds that they would, since they were picked by Albert and Bob, not each other?), You can’t force them to accept each other as a marriage partner . . So to be fair to Carla and Dorothy (and avoid a nasty anti-discrimination lawsuit), you’d have to let each o them choose their own male bisexual partner. So therefore we need to add Partners E and F. We’re now up to six people in the marriage.

Minister Scott Lively explains the inevitable horrors of bisexuals in love. Reminiscent of the difficulties Scott faces when he dons a peacoat, hat and glasses and slinks into Madame Tunguska’s House of Pain. Where’s a bad li’l boy to begin?

[Lech] Walesa said in a television interview on Friday that he believes gays have no right to sit on the front benches in Parliament and, if represented at all, should sit in the back, “and even behind a wall.”

“They have to know that they are a minority and must adjust to smaller things. And not rise to the greatest heights, the greatest hours, the greatest provocations, spoiling things for the others and taking (what they want) from the majority,” he told the private broadcaster TVN during a discussion of gay rights. “I don’t agree to this and I will never agree to it.”

A 69 year-old rabid Commie-hater a gay-bashing bigot? What!?

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of debt, I fear no bankruptcy, for Obama is my shepherd. He prepareth a table of food stamps before me, and maketh me lie down beside waters He hath cleansed and seas He hath made recede, even though the bad Republicans wisheth the earth to be burnt unto a cinder . .

If I asked you where this bit of hee-haw came from, what would you guess? FunnyorJesus.net? No, it’s an editorial from Malk Helprin of the Wall Street Journal.

But arithmetic notwithstanding, I will dwell in the house of Obama all the days of my life. (Why not four terms, and what about Michelle? For the Constitution liveth.) And, the earth having been purified, surely it will be good when—and where do I apply for—government assistance will be the only thing left.

Now you’ve seen pretty much the whole thing, first and last paragraphs. Breibart.com still has enough pride to avoid being this childish, but it’s all of Moby Dick to Rupert Murdoch. Speaking of elusive whales:

Britain’s most senior Roman Catholic cleric, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, acknowledged Sunday that he had been guilty of sexual misconduct, a week after he announced his resignation and said he would not attend the conclave to choose the next pope. The moves followed revelations that three current and one former priest had accused him of inappropriate sexual contact dating back decades . .

“I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal,” Cardinal O’Brien, 74, said in a statement.

We just bagged ourselves a Cardinal. Perverts don’t come much bigger than that. Well, there’s still a bigger one out there, but he just retired with his personal secretary ‘Gorgeous Georg’ in tow. So at least it’s consensual.

Why can’t conservatives understand comedy? No one knows. Yet they continue to make these weird, puzzling political cartoons. It’s mysterious. These things don’t make sense. They are misspelled. They are badly drawn. And still, I get the feeling your typical wingnut sees one of these and blows snot bubbles on himself. Why? The gods know.

As always, the first slot goes to Eric Allie.

His name is Todd Akin. I figure these sprites don’t actually like politics, they just like to draw pictures. Badly.

A political cartoonist’s life, how hard can it be? Take the controversy of the day, slap it with a “racist” sticker. Go to Starbucks, take another nap.

Chuck Asay takes a stand. Big Bird should starve. Or he’s an ethnic, take your pick.

In Chuck’s world, hippies run around and say pot smoking should be “safe, legal and rare.” Or they never do that, but marijuana is as bad as abortion. I don’t know.

A Republican president would jump in Israel’s tide of violence. And look at poor Bibi, drowning while America films a Tampax commercial. Makes you want to start a war, doesn’t it?

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Much as I’d like to, much as we deserve it, I don’t expect to be voting for a presidential candidate that’s a science geek any time soon. Politics and science just don’t mesh well. Politics is frequently the art of public lying. Science is frequently the practice of revealing truth to the public. That’s why politicians, like the lyin’ Bush administration, are frequently allergic to even the lamest of fact-finding efforts, like the 9/11 commission. Suffice it to say that science is not a politician’s favorite past time.

But to know nearly nothing about science is shocking.

“I do believe in basic science. I believe in participating in space. I believe in analysis of new sources of energy. I believe in laboratories, looking at ways to conduct electricity with — with cold fusion, if we can come up with it. It was the University of Utah that solved that. We somehow can’t figure out how to duplicate it.”

Mitt believes in basic science. Thanks, pal. It really needed your faith. He remembers Cold Fusion being “solved” by the University of Utah. But the two scientists who said they had evidence of perhaps the greatest discovery in scientific history haven’t lived in the United States for 20 years. One’s dead, both were disgraced. The term “Cold Fusion” is now synonymous with reckless crackpot science. If it had been real, the breakthrough would have potentially solved the world’s energy problems. Have you been running your Lear jets on deuterium, Mittens? Do you have any idea? Or care?

Guitar player you used to see at 3:13 a.m. on Headbangers Ball a quarter century ago:

“Back in my country, my president [barf sign], he’s trying to pass a gun ban, so he’s staging all of these murders, like the ‘Fast And Furious’ thing down at the border, and Aurora, Colorado, all the people that were killed there. And now the, um, beautiful people at the Sikh temple.”

“God. Was talking to J.D. our promoter here tonight, what a great guy. I was saying, you know, I don’t know where I’m going to live if America keeps going the way it’s going because it looks like it’s turning into Nazi America. And he said ‘Move down here to Singapore.’”

. . Singapore society is highly regulated through the criminalization of many activities which are considered as fairly harmless in other countries. These include failing to flush toilets after use, littering, jaywalking, the possession of pornography, the sale of chewing gum, and sexual activity; such as oral and anal sex between men.

And if you’re caught with an ounce of cocaine, you get the gallows. Just a heads up for a famous foreigner-drug addict who could end up before a magistrate. Try playing to the judge’s sympathies by flashing him the *Mustaine* eyes:

Here’s one way you can fight abortion. You can go back to the womb, back to the seldom-remembered time before you were born, or right after you were born but months before the vagina shuttle dropped you off at the delivery ward, and you can watch Jesus punch your mom in the face because she’d like to take Franklin Roosevelt’s RU486 pills. Then you can tell a harrowing first-hand account of Holocaust zygote survival to your Christian pals and high-five everybody because you just won the all-time yuck episode of Fear Factor.

Delivered from Abortion: Healing a Forgotten Memory
July 31, 2012 By Gordon Dalbey

Late in the fall of 1943, as Nazi submarines terrorized Allied shipping, a young Navy officer and his wife faced a terrible dilemma when he deployed to an aircraft carrier in the North Atlantic.

What to do. Should we abort our future hallucinating baby? Or should we have the Nazis do it? They’re not about to feed and clothe an eight pound homeless person. Oops: SPOILER ALERT. Oh well, Gordon’s mom is pregnant, back to the drama unfolding:

The doctor, however, had a solution to her problem. Handing her a small, dark red vial and scheduling her for an appointment the following week, he explained that he could “fix everything” quickly and easily after she took the pills.

Days later, before the appointment, the young woman shook the pills out of the vial into her hand and closed her fist. Shaking from both cold and anxiety, she poured a glass of water with her other hand. Uneasily, she hesitated and looked out a frost-covered kitchen window. “What if this is the son my husband wants?” she thought. Turning to her fist, she paused, then opened it and lifted the glass of water.

Remarkable lyrical details from the scene supplied by Gordon, especially considering the vantage point. Maybe his womb was brilliantly lit and richly appointed with sight-lines, glass and mirrors. Whether it’s hosting an impromptu Summer fest for the neighbors or a cozy detente in the whisper campaigns among the executive class, the guests frequently ooh and aah at the views from Gordon’s crystal palace. How you ladies manage to lug one of these eyesores around is a mystery. I’d be crankier.

“At the last minute, she just threw the pills away into the trash can.”

This jarring revelation stirred a host of unsettling, lifelong mysteries.

I remembered my recurrent nightmare of swimming frantically underwater and, strangely, breathing while submerged—an amniotic, prenatal “memory”? Once, I told a psychiatrist how I felt “trapped” and panicky in close relationships with women. Fears of death had dogged me, and a pervasive, empty sense of not belonging anywhere.

It’s starting to make sense. The water. The nightmares. The bouncing and the noise whenever the tenement janitor dropped by to say “Toodle-oo Carol. Don’t you look nice today?” The pieces fit.

Lying on the floor, I curled up in a fetal position and imagined the kitchen scene 35 years earlier as my sister had related it: myself tightly bound inside my mother’s womb, her holding the pills and glass of water, pausing over her decision.

As I “saw” my mother lift the pills, I began to shake in terror. “Jesus, help!” I cried out suddenly, desperately. “Save me, Jesus!” As I lay trapped and trembling, in my mind’s eye I saw a figure come into the kitchen and stand by my mother. With a single gesture, he reached and swept the pills out of her hand and into the trash can.

Amazed, I watched as he then turned to me. “You don’t owe your life to your mother,” he declared. “It was I who stayed her hand. You belong to me.”

I tried to say something. But with the silent wave of his hand, strong and thin, he simply replied “No.” Our eyes met, I couldn’t tear myself away. That’s how the most amazing night of my life began BOOOWN-CHIGGA-DOWN-BWAAAOOOOOWWW no I’m kidding. Too easy.

A cool sensation of release swept over me. Sighing deeply, I lay quiet.

Later, I remembered Jesus’ promise to his followers, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32NIV).

Indeed, this watershed experience freed me to face many unhealthy dynamics in my life—most notably, feeling overly responsible for my mother’s happiness and guilty for wanting a life of my own.

That last bit could use highlighting if ever there’s a non-fiction version of this drama. That part’s actually compelling. What? Right, The King stays in the picture, got it.

Today, 68 years later, I remain humbled by this unwieldy yet compelling mystery—and determined to entertain it. I’m neither obligated to believe nor ashamed to be alive.

I’m privileged to testify. The more I do, the more thankful I am to God, and the more determined I am to see others experience that saving power themselves.

So that they, too, may garner the same sort of forensic attention. By the way of visions-and-visits-with-Jesus. Imagine how difficult to believe some of this would be if it weren’t true.

Earlier today, Charles Johnson asked “Is Mitt Romney Buying Twitter Followers?”

Check the number of followers, then watch as it increases by a hundred or so every time you reload the page. If you look at all these followers, they seem to have major trouble with spelling simple English words, have names that sometimes seem to be random assortments of syllables, and have no (or very few) followers themselves.

At the current rate, he’s adding about 10,000 followers every hour.

I thought that was interesting. So I looked at the account, and sure enough it’s full of bogus followers. People with bizarre names like Doubtful Horrendous and Landlocked Acrimony are ‘following’ Mitt. It’s laughable.

What’s funnier, if not nastier, is the African American presence in Mitt’s bogus account. Black women are young, foul-mouthed and incapable of spelling (see the previous post). If Team Romney thought that these were your typical black people, they’re overwrought. And they’re disastrously out of touch with reality. All you have to do is look into who these people additionally follow on Twitter, and it’s obvious these ‘fans’ are manufactured. They all follow the same four or five accounts. It’s a statistical impossibility. A poorly run scheme. A clumsy ruse.

But it gets better. The African American ‘men’ that follow Mitt Romney are especially bizarre. Whoever is running the scheme either has a sense of humor, or is unfamiliar with what’s a typical name for an American male. Perhaps Romney is outsourcing his scams as well. Would it surprise anyone? Let’s take Marybeth Owen, for instance.

She’s a simple girl from Ireland. With an aggressive pituitary tumor. She follows Mitt.










As does Heloise. She likes Mittens.









islandbowy22, or Emilee, does as well.









Apparently, scores of America’s sexiest momen love Mitt Romney.

It’s true! Look:

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Mitt Romney is a liar. That’s what we’ve learned this presidential election. Mitt will say anything. Mitt will do anything. The man has no conscience.

That’s politics, you might think. But the bullshit’s gotten a little extreme, don’t you think? Accusing Obama of apologizing for America, that’s pretty bad. Charging the president with outsourcing jobs, preposterous. Saying the Affordable Care Act will worsen the debt, an outright falsehood. It’s all in a day’s work for Romney.

But how about this? Mitt Romney’s Twitter account is bogus. I was reading Charles Johnson’s site this morning when I came across this post: Is Mitt Romney Buying Twitter Followers?

Check the number of followers, then watch as it increases by a hundred or so every time you reload the page. If you look at all these followers, they seem to have major trouble with spelling simple English words, have names that sometimes seem to be random assortments of syllables, and have no (or very few) followers themselves.

At the current rate, he’s adding about 10,000 followers every hour.

Charles is right, it’s made up. We’ve seen this before – Newt Gingrich bought his account. His fragile ego couldn’t stand having less than a million followers, so he made a few hundred thousand up.

I guess Mitt’s got the same problem. Team Romney are pouring thousands of bogus followers into the candidate’s account. How can you tell? You check who Mitt’s ‘followers’ are following. You’d need a far more sophisticated program than the Romney people are capable of producing or buying to generate a web of followers that aren’t laughably synthesized. The names aren’t even plausible. They’re barely English. Covalent Purposive, Automat Souffle, Shaven Colloidal, Sediment Corroborate, Niagra Influent, Anaheim Sandman, Fifteen Alfresco, Declaim Deluxe, Synoptic Servicemen, and Hardware Wheeze all follow the former governor. Yes, the Romney group are that stupid.

It gets worse. Mitt’s supposed followers are conspicuously young, black and foul-mouthed. The young women are especially free-wheeling and sassy. A sampling of 250 of Romney’s Twitter fans will get you about 10 ‘fuck’s and 7 ‘nigga’s in followers’ self-descriptions. An equivalent sampling of Obama’s followers will get you maybe one of each. We are to believe that the people who need to read Romney’s Twitter feed are 10 times more ‘urban’ than Obama’s.

It’s too obvious what’s going on. Mitt Romney is a big hit with African Americans. This must be the case as those folk, you may well know, struggle with talking, typing or tweeting in sentences. This is patently insulting and hilarious good news for the Republican. One hundred ‘ethnic’ followers later, I have yet to find one that doesn’t appear to be manufactured. For your perusal, a few of Mittens’ fans:

Note the other Twitter accounts ‘Ginevra’ is following:

Look up a second young woman, and a pattern emerges.

The charade goes on and on . .

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Just how bad is the Romney campaign? It’s hard to say. How do you gauge a trail of warmwater puke? By distance or volume?

These campaigns all have their strengths and weaknesses. The remarkable thing about Romney’s is its 360-degree Achilles heel. The candidate is a terrible speaker, he’s unlikable in person, he doesn’t interest the base, he refuses to address any issue that voters are interested in, and he’s paranoid and secretive about himself. Throw in he’s richer than most porn barons and he gets his politics the same way the rest of us get cologne samples: from bogus magazines. And you, Republicans, have got yourself one stinking candidate.

You would think these alarming facts would rally the believers to his side. You’d think it would make the GOP faithful defend him with every bone in their bodies. Everybody all in, do or die, with fangs bared and instincts razor sharp-ed. Instead, something entirely different has happened. They’ve gone hapless, limp. They’re stupor-stricken. They’ve been Mittified.

“I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes,” [Eric] Fehrnstrom responded. “It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up, and we start all over again.”

Eric really isn’t this stupid. He’s just that sick. He’s spent too much time up close and personal with the Typhoid Mary of Manageitis. The candidate is a continental weather front of business entity. A middle-of-the-menu marathon of oatmeal and 1% milk. A Beacon of Industry (god rest his soul). And Eric is now desperately ill. Ask that sparkplug Dilbert, he knows of what I speak.

[Chuck] TODD: He agrees with the president that it is not [a tax], and he believes that you shouldn’t call the tax penalty a tax, you should call it a penalty or a fee or a fine?

FEHRNSTROM: That’s correct.

Brains. Romney politely went everywhere the next day to label the ACA mandate a ‘tax.’ This electrified the campaign in the only way a talking mackerel can. You really should tell your guy what you want, Mitt, before you throw him out there. Do you know what you want? Do fish have feelings?

“There may have been a thought at the time that [Romney] could be part-time. It was not part-time. The Olympics was in a shambles,” [Ed] Gillespie told Candy Crowley on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“He took a leave of absence and in fact, Candy, ended up not going back at all and retired retroactively to February 1999 as a result,” Gillespie said.

Ed said this more than once. So it’s spreading. Either the CEO can’t manage his people, or he’s contagious. If you’re keeping them around to harvest their suitable organs, Mitt, forget it. It’s too late.

Asked why he chose not to go with Romney, McCain said: “Oh come on, because we thought that Sarah Palin was the better candidate. Why did we not take Pawlenty, why did we not take any of the other 10 other people. Why didn’t I? Because we had a better candidate, the same way with all the others. … Come on, why? That’s a stupid question.”

Even McCain? Good lord. Well he’s pretty old, and I don’t figure his immune system for much by now. Btw, if a major Republican personality had paid McCain this same compliment in 2008, John would have popped up on the bastard’s doorstep and beat him into a hamburger patty. Mitt will have Eric call and relay the campaign’s thanks.

Sad story. 27 year-old Brazilian actor Tiago Klimeck dies.

How? Playing Judas in a passion play. When he ‘hanged’ himself, the vest slipped and cut off his breathing. No one knew he was dying while he dangled there on stage.

The 27-year-old was taken to Santa Casa de Itapeva hospital and diagnosed with cerebral hypoxia. He lingered in a coma for two weeks before doctors declared him dead and withdrew life support on Sunday . .

The play was being performed in the town of Itarare, about 214 miles from Sau Paulo. Kilmeck and the cast had borrowed equipment from local firefighters, as they had in previous years. Klimeck was unsupervised in the preparation of the safety gear, said fire officials, because he had used it safely before.

This settles it. There is no God. The religious nuts swear His existence is borne out by how He forever plays favorites. He likes them over you, or Oklahoma City over faggot New Orleans. But The Almighty can’t loosen the vest of a young man while he’s blowing Jesus? Please.

Oh dear. The Hunger Games movie blockbuster/cultural tsunami, too? It now gets tarnished with the so-called racism as well.

Rue, they tell me, is a small but agile Games character who forms an alliance with our hero, Katniss.

The athletic but ultimately doomed Rue tugs at the heartstrings of readers. What a spirited but vulnerable character.

And most hauntingly, a twelve-year-old girl from District 11. She has dark brown skin and eyes, but other than that’s she’s very like Prim in size and demeanor . .

All sorts of fans read right through the book’s description of her. In their minds, Rue was something better: White.

There’s a whole Tumblr dedicated to Hunger Games fans who have been tweeting their disappointment after seeing the movie. Their favorite characters end up being black.

And people swear there must be something more to the Trayvon Martin killing.

Slow news day.

The French like to piss in public. Did you know? I had no idea. No surprise, Google Street View has documented the act a couple of times. If you look closely at this shot, you can see a couple guys behind a tree, near the side of the road in the middle of a highway:

''Three Frenchmen urinate on the side of the Autoroute in France''

[h/t SFist]

Street View caught another man standing in his front yard, peeing more nonchalantly than I thought possible. In spite of his normal demeanor, and newfound fame, he’s not very happy. He’s suing:

Although Google blurred his face, the man claims he became the “laughing stock” of his small town and brought the suit for infringement of privacy to a court in Angiers. He wants his photo taken off and 10,000 euros (around $13,000). A Google lawyer has dismissed the suit as “implausible.”

The magic moment:

[h/t Gizmodo]

Oui. She is public. She is prive. Quell mystere…

In related news, outdoor peeing in France seems to be some sort of cultural phenomenon and pride, at least according to a 2009 article in EuroKulture. To wit: “Public urination in France is more than just a problem. It’s an adrenaline rush. It’s convenient. It’s a true test of friendship for partners in crime. Urinating in the street has been added to the Ô Chateau-Parisian Wine Tasting blog, ‘Stuff Parisian People Like.’”