fun fact

diana ross's sister is a medical school dean - the first african-american to be appointed as a medical school dean.

it almost sounds like a dr. seuss book title.

up next on the "stop 'tsk tsk'-ing gay people show": conservative jewish movement on the cusp of issuing ruling on openly gay rabbis and same-sex unions. the prognosis looks good.

unintentionally hilarious review of "happy feet."

kids, don't see that animated film about a tap-dancing penguin, because it is scary, leftist, anti-religious, and furthers the homosexual agenda. OMG!

As in so many other recent films, there’s a subtext that appears to plead for endorsement of gay identity. Mumbles (the voice of Elijah Wood) displeases his parents and the leaders of his community because he’s born different, and makes an impassioned plea that he can’t possibly change – and they should accept him as he is.

MY GOD! he's right! this piece of filthy propaganda must be boycotted! sound the alarm!

i ain't an economist, but this is retarded.

an article written in april i ran across, written by an economist who suggested that shantytowns should be built in certain areas of new orleans. sure, okay, mr. junior chess champ of new jersey...

let's see some of his "arguments":

Since so many homes were destroyed, the natural inclination is to build safer or perhaps impregnable structures. But that is the wrong response. No one should or will rebuild or insure expensive homes on vulnerable ground, such as the devastated Ninth Ward. And it is impossible to make homes perfectly safe against every conceivable act of nature.

Instead, the city should help create cheap housing by reducing legal restrictions on building quality, building safety, and required insurance. This means the Ninth Ward need not remain empty. Once the current ruined structures are razed, governmental authorities should make it possible for entrepreneurs to put up less-expensive buildings. Many of these will be serviceable, but not all will be pretty. We could call them structures with expected lives of less than 50 years. Or we could call them shacks.

[snip]

To be sure, the shantytowns could bring socioeconomic costs. Yet crime, lack of safety, and racial tension were all features of New Orleans ex ante. The city has long thrived as more dangerous than average, more multicultural than average, and more precarious than average for the United States.

so, fuck it. safety? who needs it. after all, those non-caucasoids are used to crime. let's just put them in tin boxes with doors that don't lock.

another one of his reasons: poverty breeds creativity and art!

Shantytowns might well be more creative than a dead city core. Some of the best Brazilian music came from the favelas of Salvador and Rio. The slums of Kingston, Jamaica, bred reggae. New Orleans experienced its greatest cultural blossoming in the early 20th century, when it was full of shanties. Low rents make it possible to live on a shoestring, while the population density blends cultural influences.

what backasswards thinking. he's looking at this from the wrong end, i.e. let's make people suffer, because poverty breeds art! when in reality, it's more like this: art thrives even in the worst conditions, because if people didn't have some fun, they'd go batshit crazy - so they make do with what they have. maybe i'm just unenglightened, but i always thought that people should have more opportunities, not less. more tools = greater possibilities.

and he even gives a brief shout-out to favela funk, the music of brazil's shantytowns. running water and heat? who needs that! it's all about the music! electricity? unnecessary! it's all about art, man. read: "imagine how my rekkid collection/iPod library will sound if we keep those people poor!"

incidentally, favela funk that hasn't been filtered through the production of the likes of dj diplo basically sounds like children screaming over primitive booty bass beats - the beats sound primitive because the people are too damn poor to get better equipment. (right click and download diplo's favela on blast here - keep in mind that this is a filtered mix that has been produced by an american dj - imagine what the uncut, unfiltered version sounds like). imagine the music that could be produced if they had timbaland's or the neptunes' equipment. furthermore, i seriously doubt mr. armchair shantytown culture-pusher would willingly go to a real baile in a brazilian favela. methinks he'd be too skurred.

anyway, this is just another fine example of the type of genetic drift of ideas found in non-natural science departments of institutions of higher learning. sorry to go on a tangent, but in the hard sciences, you have to produce a result, or else you're screwed. that's a classic example of natural selection. but in the liberal arts and the sort-of sciences, you get things like founder's effect and bottleneck, where bad ideas can keep being bounced around the ivory tower - without real world forces correcting the proliferation of bad alleles. (all right, let the flames begin...)

so yeah, go and tell the displaced new orleans residents to move into a shantytown for the sake of cultural richness and art. i'm sure they'll be ecstatic.

why are some people obsessed with anderson cooper's sexual orientation?

two words:

wishful.

thinking.

guys! i hate to break it to you, but he's just not into you. (maybe his hot latino friends, but he's definitely not itching to tag some dorky blogger ass, and he's doubly superrifically extremohumungously not going to be itching to tag some dorky blogger ass who keeps trying to lance him, so give it up!)

the lovely sound of the real estate vortex.

what a glorious, glorious sound. it keeps going and going and going!

emily1, do you also hear the sound? it may be possible to own a little box of our own soon!

Condo prices have been in a steeper and more prolonged decline. They fell 5.3 percent in October from a year eralier [sic], the fifth straight decline on that basis. A big chunk of the nation's condos are in markets that were once red hot but have now cooled significantly. The median condo price is now down 7.5 percent from the high reached in June 2005.

[snip]

Still the October sales pace is down 11.5 percent from a year earlier. And the slower sales has led to the glut of homes on the market, with supply rising once again to a record 3.9 million existing homes for sale, up 1.9 percent from September, and 34.4 percent from a year earlier.

maybe it's not a popping sound, but it certainly sounds like air being let out of balloon. sort of like a nice belch and/or fart after a satisfying mexican meal.

and it just keeps coming...

the people behind "borat" are being sued by angry frat boys and pissed off romanian villagers, but now comes the big kahuna: could "borat" be the reason behind pamela anderson and kid rock's divorce?

omg, you homewrecker!!!

Gone, but Not Forgotten

That would be me.

For a long time, I've been asleep at the wheel. Hibernating. Vegging out. Doing nothing, feeling lousy.

I had major surgery in March of this year and the stress on my body seems to have crushed my head along the way - I started having night terrors, panic attacks, increased overall stress; eventually I started feeling sick a lot more, got colds that would take a long time to disappear; my head felt like it was in a fog.

This morning, I woke up and the fog was lifted. I looked at my email for the first time in, oh, weeks. (thousands of emails, by the way. /cry) I marked a few that would lead me to interesting things - the Papercut Zine Library is looking for librarians, I read some polinews blogs (TalkLeft) and their comments; I've been reading a lot the last week.

So I hope I'm back from wherever I went. I am reinterested in the world.

I went through a dark, dark time when I was first ill many years ago when I had a similar haze; it lifted in the same way.

I feel... alive. Healthier, happier and bright-eyed. I want to do things. I want to write again.

So wish me luck; hopefully you'll start seeing my ideas dumped onto w4d again.

what the @#$#@47??!??!

yes, i know this is "so last season" or whatever, but i was working 12 hour days, which produced a pop-culture void during the greater part of this year, so pardon me if i'm a bit tardy.

today, i was listening to my copy of m.i.a.'s "arular" and i wondered when the next album was coming out. i did a search for any upcoming tours, and it appears that she has been barred from entering the u.s. (and i am doubly embarrassed that pretty much every asian media blog had the news, and i missed it. but hey. what can ya do?)

i was aware that her song "sunshowers" has been banned by m.t.v. for making a vague reference to the p.l.o. (and when i mean vague, i mean VAGUE). her lyrics consist of stream of consciousness rhymes for the most part. there is some violent imagery, but considering her background, it's not out of place. (a good percentage of hip hop contains violent imagery, mostly from guys who live in mansions, wear lots of diamonds, and drive range rovers.)

can't stereotype my thing yo
I salt and pepper my mango
shoot spit
out the window
bingo I got em in the thing yo
now what? I'm doing my thing yo

quit bendin All my fingo
quit beating me like you're ringo
you wanna go?
you wanna win a war?
like P.L.O. I don't surrendo

yep. that's pretty much it. THAT's what got her banned. furthermore, she raps in a patois-british accent, so you can't understand 80% of what she says anyway!

now, put that next to eminem's "mosh":

Maybe we can reach Al Quaida through my speech
Let the President answer on high anarchy
Strap him with AK-47, let him go
Fight his own war, let him impress daddy that way
No more blood for oil, we got our own battles to fight on our soil
No more psychological warfare to trick us to think that we ain't loyal
If we don't serve our own country we're patronizing a hero
Look in his eyes, it's all lies, the stars and stripes
They've been swiped, washed out and wiped,
And Replaced with his own face, mosh now or die
If I get sniped tonight you'll know why, because I told you to fight

tell me, which one is more incendiary? and the tinfoil hat wearing dopes in union square say even crazier things, like "911 was an inside job!"

okay, perhaps m.i.a.'s father's ties to the tamil tigers in sri lanka has something to do with the denial of entry to the u.s. (an aside: buddhists and hindus blowing each other up? it's like beatniks and hippies throwing grenades at each other.) it's too bad. kanye west, timbaland, and missy elliott were tripping over themselves to work with her.

but why punish a daughter for her father's affiliation with a questionable organization?

we might as well deny the governor of california entry as well.

anyway, i'm aware that she's a citizen of the u.k., so she doesn't have the same rights as a u.s. citizen, but really... this is stupid. anyone with a functioning brain cell can see how ridiculous this is. i wish these reactionary fucknuts would just read this interview.

LET M.I.A. IN THE COUNTRY!

retards.

whoever thought this was a satanic symbol should be offered a free vasectomy/hysterectomy. i'll be the first to donate. now, no one has the right to force sterilization on anyone else, but there is no law against strongly suggesting one!

file in...

C:\\documents and settings\culture\religion\sad but true\all my jesus are belong to madonna.txt

update.

in the comments of the last post, kusala mused, whatever became of gerardo? back in the day, you had to wait until VH1 decided to include an artist in a "where are they now?" special. nowadays, all you need to do is go to wikipedia.

it appears that he is now living a cushy life in los angeles and was responsible for signing enrique iglesias to interscope, as well as rotund rapper bubba sparxxx.

now let's switch gears to... posting more ridiculous music videos. yesterday i was sent a link to this:

Description
Once again, the queen of the Tampa Public Access airwaves in the early 90's, Sondra Prill, presents her own, one-of-a-kind version of Janet Jackson's classic. If you're looking for a place to start your journey of discovery into the Sondra's world, this is a good first step. Feel the magic - if you're nasty!

so. wrong. so. so. very. wrong. you. want. to. stop. it. but. your. hand. freezes. and. you. can't. bring. yourself. to. click. on. the. mouse. and. you. find. that. you. are. unable. to. turn. your. neck. to. look. away.

evil!

(hat tip, caseoffirstimpression)

junior high memories.

"i eat 'em raw like sushi!"

no matter how awful the music video, youtube has it. and someone will post it. enjoy.

or not.

note to self: must see this band.

um, play that funky music, white boy? i can't stop watching this.

more me me me's

uh oh. a garden of eden is opening down the street. a w hotel is about to be built six blocks from me. an american apparel opened a couple blocks away.

nyc's de facto sixth borough is undergoing a second "renaissance," which is just a code word for "DANGER DANGER! THE TANKING REAL ESTATE PRICES IN HOBOKEN WILL SOON REBOUND, AND YOU LITTLE BITCHES WILL HAVE TO MOVE TO JERSEY CITY! HOPE YOU LIKE AIR POLLUTION!"

i hope, by the new year, i'll have a real *set* salary, and i can go condo-shopping, because jersey city suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks.* =P

* no offense to anyone who lives in jersey city, but there's nothing to do in jersey city except... jump on the PATH train and go to hoboken or nyc. or go to the newport centre mall.

a case of the me me me's

yadda yadda bla bla bla... cutting interest rates for students loans... yakkety yak...

*SCREECH!*

wait a minute... slicing student loan interest in half is on the democratic agenda? new loans or existing ones?

go, pelosi! go, go pelosi!

it's gettin' drafty in here...

assume this comes into fruition. i wonder how many people will be "coming out of the closet" when it goes into effect.

lovin' it.

from the new york city parking rules:

(iii) Street cleaning rules suspended. (A) Street cleaning parking rules are suspended on the days listed in subparagraph (i) of this paragraph, and on the following holidays: Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, Ash Wednesday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Ascension Thursday, Feast of the Assumption, Feast of All Saints, Feast of the Immaculate Conception, first two days of Succoth, Shemini Atzereth, Simchas Torah, Shavuot, Purim, Orthodox Holy Thursday, Orthodox Good Friday, first two and last two days of Passover, Idul-Fitr, Idul-Adha, Asian Lunar New Year, on all state and national holidays, on the following additional legal holidays: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Birthday, Lincoln's Birthday, President's Day, Columbus Day-observed, Election Day, and Veteran's Day, and on such other days as announced by the Commissioner or his/her designee.

purim: you're drunk. you will run children over. don't get in a car and move it. don't do it.

asian lunar new year: you've eaten too much. you have food coma. you will fall asleep at the wheel and run children over. don't get in a car and move it. don't do it.

yom kippur: you've eaten too little. you are delirious. you will faint while at the wheel and run children over. don't get in a car and move it. don't do it.

yeah, i'm trying to fight a parking ticket. leave me alone...

celebrity blog alert.

tammy lynn michaels has a blog. some may know her as melissa etheridge's wife. L word fans may know her as the actress who played the crazy bitch who stalked shane. people who get home in time to watch prime time t.v. may know her as a cast member of the t.v. series "committed."

best post ever.

wow.

people never cease to amaze me with their fanaticism. for expensive japanese toys.

"PlayStation 3 shopper shot outside Wal-Mart"

PUTNAM, Connecticut (AP) -- Two armed thugs tried to rob a line of people waiting for the new Playstation 3 game system to go on sale early Friday and shot a man who refused to give up his money, authorities said.

[snip]

In Palmdale, California, authorities shut down a Super Wal-Mart after some shoppers got rowdy late Wednesday. In West Bend, Wisconsin, a 19-year-old man was injured when he ran into a pole racing with 50 others for one of 10 spots outside a Wal-Mart.

In Lexington, Kentucky, someone fired BB pellets from a passing vehicle at people waiting outside a Best Buy store, according to television station WKYT, whose own reporter said she was among four people grazed while she interviewed buyers in line.

FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS!

more at gizmodo.

my humps.

hypothetical.

disclaimer: i am not actually wishing death upon the president and the vice president, so if you're one of those fed snoopers, go pick on a 14 year old or something. kthx.

hyppopotamus: our president and vice president are walking around in a forest. say our president chokes on a pretzel, and the sight of it gives our vice president a heart attack. let's say both are sprint pcs subscribers, so of course, their calls to 911 are dropped. upon expiration, they fall to the ground simultaneously, either with a thump or no thump, depending on whether or not you believe that something that falls to the ground in a forest when no one is around makes a sound. say this happens in january.

then we'd be able to greet the president as madame president.

ah ladies: so close, yet so far...

the quintessential 20 to 30-something time waster for new yorkers.

1896: we had La Boheme.

1996: we had RENT, an earnest musical about nyc bohemians.

2006: we have the burg, a sort of, dare i say it... post-modern RENT. the nostalgic world known as "bohemia" is dead, replaced by bankrolled post-college slackers who obsess over their hair and interior decor and wanna-be actresses who max out their credit cards all while purportedly eschewing consumerism. drowning in their own navel-gazing and irony. but wasn't it ALWAYS that way?

disclosure: i always DID hate the filmmaker and the "performance artist" in RENT, and i thought benny got a bad rep.

i've only made it through episode 4, but it's strangely addictive.

if the episodes themselves don't make you throw up just a little bit in your mouth, the comments will (starting around comment #23, the dialogue just becomes comical). okay, but seriously, funny stuff.

don't change, ryan! don't change!!!

huked on fonics pt. 2

check out the complaint drafted by the attorneys for the frat guys who appeared in "borat" - you know, the ones who said that slavery should still be a institution.

paragraph 1:

"Sasha Baron Cohen is a prankster."

who's "sasha"? is she hot?

"His M.O. consists of creating likeable yet outrageous characters and then unleashing said characters into selected individuals for public viewing."

well i guess sticking one's nose into your hairy male assistant's monstrous buttcheeks could be interpreted as unleashing oneself into someone.

paragraph 2:

"What is most impressive about Mr. Cohen is his uncanny ability to fool interviewees into his traps - including a Presidential candidate and Congressman from both sides of the isles."

uh, both sides of galveston and the other texas barrier islands?

paragraph 3: "One of the characters made famous on Ali G is Borat, a Kazak news reporter."

the silent "h" feels left out. i think it's gonna sue now.

note: the lawyer is the guy who won the reality show "the firm." on said show, he lost his temper and yelled at a judge. reality tv is the only place where you can yell at a judge and come out a winner.

huked on fonics.

yesterday i was flipping channels when i saw an ad on mtv imploring the 10-16 crowd "not to read books" because it harms the environment. instead, the advertisement suggests "listening to books on your mp3 player."

i kid you not.

let's just wave the white flag now. why bother waiting for the fall of the empire.

borat: funny or frightening?

finally saw the film. what a trip. spoilers below.

in one scene, borat enters a pentecostal church in mississippi, and one of the speakers, the chief justice of the mississippi supreme court james w. smith, jr. shouts from the pulpit that america was once a "christian nation" and that it will once again become a "christian nation," to the hearty applause of the sizeable congregation. later in the service, men in suits are seen breaking down, speaking in tongues, and dancing around like headless chickens. borat walks to the stage to "be saved," grabs the mic and asks the congregation if "jesus will heal the pain in his heart" (pain caused by discovering that his crush pamela anderson was not a virgin - which was acted out in an equally disturbing scene where drunken frat boys from south carolina lament the end of slavery and wish that women were subservient). the congregation shouts "YES!" and as several influential political and religious leaders hold their hands over his head, borat starts convulsing and pretends to speak in tongues.

yep, america is a silly place.

my fiancee didn't like it very much, calling the film more sad than funny. and the humor "dumb." i have a feeling that sacha baron cohen had trouble finding truly rotten specimens, as about half of his "victims" were friendly and patient, and some had to be pushed to the edge for a response. note: anyone faced with a bag of shit at the dinner table would opt to kick the presenter of shit out of her house! that's a given. nothing clever there.

and the interview with alan keyes could have produced some choice nuggets of mr. keyes' intensely homophobic views, but his response to borat's faux narrative about being accosted by homosexuals was cut short.

and the over-the-top portrayals by borat on the topic of anti-semitism could have been sharper by juxtaposing those scenes (such as the one in the bed and breakfast where borat believes the elderly jewish couple has magical "shape shifting" abilities and is trying to poison him) immediately after eliciting ridiculously paranoid remarks by interviewing random anti-semitic psychos. see, e.g., a scene from the ali g show baron cohen does as "bruno" (skip to the "pro-american rally" section):



instead, borat's wild and unchecked portrayal of anti-semitism seems forced and out of place.

often, the film descends into gratuitous jackass-style humor, such as the naked romp through the hotel with his hairy and portly "assistant." another attempt at physical humor, such as the "accidental" trashing of the confederate civil war memorabilia shop could be considered somewhat pointed and subversive simply because the store sold confederate memorabilia (and the storeowner mentioned earlier that the confederate flags were part of his fine "heritage"), but come on... besides the vague feeling of schadenfreude of seeing confederate memorabilia destroyed, ho hum.

in short, fresh outlook and valiant attempt. the ratings of the film are a bit generous (92% at rottentomatoes.com), but i would still recommend it.

3.5/5

ah, twatdom...

only a harvard student could be jolted into a violent existential crisis by walking into a chain store. good times... good times...

let's say it again... "FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS"!!! (hat hip, caseoffirstimpression)

feminism is dead.

shar jackson, the woman kevin federline left barefoot and pregnant to become mr. britney spears, refers to him as "such a nice guy." *sigh*

girl, now that's some straight up tammy wynette shit...

ladies, haven't we learned wisdom from TLC and destiny's child?

on that note, i do believe i have been inspired to write a series called, "chavs: the product of american cultural imperialism."

gotta love the internet.

anonymity + internet + underemployed and unemployed attorneys + painful and embarrassing affliction + no health insurance = hilarity

oh, the circle is completed...

this is a better description of the hipster/yuppie (non)divide. same people, different costumes. end of story.

more here. the comments are, of course, full of lively bickering.

frankly, i still think park slope kicks williamsburg's derrida derriere. park slope, is, after all, where new york city's "L"-word type lesbians settle down and raise their families. come on... an army of gym-toned lesbians armed with $500 urban-style strollers vs. an army of pencil-necked indie boys armed with $500 worth of rare 7 inch records - who'd win in a fight?

okay, let's make this more clear:

"bright eyes"/conor oberst

vs.

daniela sea of the L word (okay, maybe not the best representative in this analogy, but they killed dana off, and bette and tina's "park slope-esque life" has been forever doomed by bette's kidnapping her own kid and hightailing it, so the actress who plays moira/max will have to do. plus, daniela sea has muscles. see the muscles? that's the point.)

someone offers you $10,000 to pick the winner of the fight. if you pick incorrectly, you die. who would you bet on?

and, no... "i'd pick conor, because he'd emote until your ears bleed a sea of blood" is not the right answer. (she survived after appearing in his video, after all.)

full disclosure: if there is anything "yipster" it's hoboken. suits by day, maxwell's at night. and a brand new american apparel that just opened right off the main street.

one city. two tabloids.

the actual covers of the new york post and the new york daily news for today, respectively:

more break-ups.

dobson dumps haggard.

sounds like, "i'm sorry, but i just don't have time for a relationship right now. it's not you, it's me."

song of the 2006 election.

(un)intentionally(?) hilarious new york post cover.

and the lead story is...?

Soundtrack of our lives.

Here's the latest celebrity breakup: "Rum" and "coke" have split.



Do I hear a song coming on? Could that be the President singing?

Oh baby baby, oh baby baby...

Oh baby baby, how was I supposed to know
That something wasn't right here
Oh baby baby, I should have let you go
And now you're out of sight, yeah
Show me how you want it to be
Tell me baby cuz I need to know now, oh because

SING ALONG, PEOPLE! THE PRESIDENT NEEDS YOUR SUPPORT!

My loneliness is killin me (and I)
I must confess I still believe (still believe)
When I'm not with you I lose my mind
Give me a sign, hit me baby one more time!

Oh baby baby, the reason I breathe is you
Boy you've got me blinded
Oh pretty baby, theres nothin' that I wouldn't do
Thats not the way I planned it

Show me how you want it to be
Tell me baby cuz I need to know now, oh because

Oh baby baby, how was I supposed to know
Oh pretty baby, I should have let you go
I must confess that my loneliness
Is killin' me now
Don't you know I still believe
That you will be here
And give me a sign, hit me baby one more time

LOUDER! LET YOUR VOICES RESONATE TO THE SPACIOUS SKIES AND ACROSS THE AMBER WAVES OF GRAIN!

I must confess (my loneliness) that my loneliness
(is killing me) is killing me now
(I must confess) don't you (I still believe) know I still believe
That you will be here (I lose my mind)
And give me a sign...
Hit me baby one more time!

Now can I get an Amen?

AMEN!

(And in Missouri, a bitch hears disco again. On this day in November, the wave of thumpa-thumpa takes root and spreads across the nation.)

Sniff Sniff

smell that? it's the waft of subpoena power. accountability, bitches!

the house is burning!

the "disenfranchised majority"* has spoken. (*hat tip sam)

the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire!

nancy pelosi is speaker. who woulda thunk?

ladies and gentlemen... populism cannot be manufactured. "snakes on a plane" couldn't cut it. neither can the republicans.

and the house that karl rove built turns to ash.

says the great yellow "breaking news" bar on cnn.com:

"CNN projects Democratic incumbent Bob Menendez will win the New Jersey Senate race, defeating Republican challenger Tom Kean Jr."

so, listen, rest of the united states... if the dems don't come out with a majority, it's not new jersey's fault!

meanwhile, in new york, hillary clinton is running against a hibernating box turtle on which the republicans have spray-painted an "R" and is (surprise) projected to win, despite the fact that, if she wins, them illegal mexicans will abduct your daughter and force her to marry someone of the same sex in a ceremony conducted... in spanish! MIERDA!!!

update: the mixture of lube and butt juice that is a stain on pennsylvania has been mopped up!

and as of 9:32pm eastern:

VA SEN [80.84% IN]
ALLEN 898,328 49.68%
WEBB 889,136 49.15%

will dems be shaking their macacas, i mean maracas?

omgomgomg

like, i know there is this election going on and all, but britney spears filed for divorce!

update: sacre bleu! i failed to make the connection! britney spears, the ultimate november surprise!

one more thing:

if you're in new jersey, and your name is not on the list at your polling location, ask the poll worker to call your local division of elections to confirm you are registered. then you don't need to vote using a provisional ballot.

i just called 1-866-OUR-VOTE, and this is what they told me.

voting trouble.

either election workers are being trained improperly or not at all, or they truly are bastards.

LESSON 1: YOU DO NOT NEED TWO FORMS OF ID TO VOTE. (and if i'm correct, you don't even need one. there is no national requirement to have an ID.)

some poll worker tried to pull that one on me this morning when i presented my new york driver's license (and i only did so, because people have a tendency to spell my last name incorrectly).

"i'm sorry, but you don't have a new jersey driver's license. please go and get proof of your address. you're not on the rolls. if you prove you live where you live, i'll give you a provisional ballot."

(bullshit i'm not on the rolls. i just called last week, and they told me i was registered!)

LESSON 2: now, let's make something very clear. you don't need a permanent address to vote. the dude who crashes on your couch, never pays rent, and drinks all of your beer while you work can vote. homeless people can vote.

with that being said, i'm left with a choice. go home and waste my time getting a second ID when i'm voting on a provisional ballot anyway (because they can't find my name), or duke it out.

i chose the latter. duh. (would you expect anything less?)

"i don't need to go home and get another form of ID," i say.

now my fiancee, whom i dearly love, decided to butt in and say something completely ignorant. "go home and get it. you can't vote unless you prove you live here."

excuse me?

LESSON 3: no, they're supposed to give me a provisional ballot, and then it's up to city hall to sort it out. the election workers are just supposed to direct traffic.

so now, i'm in a minor public spat with my fiancee at 6:30am on a tuesday morning somewhere in the middle of hoboken, nj.

"go get it!"

"no, they can't tell me to show another ID. it's not a requirement."

"yes it is a requirement!"

"NO IT'S NOT. i'm a lawyer. in fact, i helped organize election activists to monitor just this type of thing in law school." (okay, maybe my "help" was just forwarding an e-mail from the organizer of election monitoring at cardozo to some members of GALLSA, but at this point, a bit of exaggeration wasn't going to hurt.)

LESSON 4: now, funny how the word "lawyer" tends to make people move just a little bit faster. if you are a lawyer, i recommend dropping the "L" bomb if you're being jerked around. (i never even knew it worked!) three years, $120,000, and a bar license later, and now i realize that all that work doesn't necessarily lead to a steady or high paying job, but it sure makes sketchy people stop bluffing. (unless the person who is messing with you is also a lawyer, and then you're in for a nasty fight. so pick your battles carefully!)

so now, upon hearing the magic word, the election worker gets on the phone with the board of elections, who then instructs her to give me a provisional ballot.

so i go off in a corner, check off "menendez" and "sires" like a dutiful gay, stick the ballot into the packet, and hand it to the worker.

fiancee and i leave. but is this the end of it?

oh, how could it be... like the black eyed peas, "let's get it started!" (or "let's get retarded" - take your pick)

fiancee starts scolding me for making a scene. "you know they were suspecting you had committed election fraud? i heard them talking!"

i guess that she didn't like my response (laughter), so then she really starts in on me. at 6:45am in public somewhere in the middle of hoboken, nj.

"uh-huh. i'd like to see them try to pin that one on me."

"you want to go to jail?! why didn't you just go home and get another ID?"

"because it's not needed, and i don't have a form of ID with my address on it anyway!"

"you could have brought a bill, stupid."

"they're all in your name, genius!"

"we'll you were too lazy to get a new jersey license."

"i don't drive anyway! and that still doesn't take away from the fact that the poll workers shouldn't have asked for my identification in the first place!"

finally, i just lose it and hurl my keys at a stop sign, because i needed to throw something.

that was the end of it.

but later this morning, i'm feeling a little paranoid. election fraud is some serious bidnass. ann coulter might be following in martha stewart's footsteps because of a possible election snafu. and the irrational thought of being ann coulter's cellmate spurred me into calling the authorities.

so i call the superintendent of elections in hudson county just to make sure that i'm "on the list."

i was. *whew!*

so then i tell the lady what happened this morning just to find out if i was truly right, and she surprised me by apologizing profusely. she told me that this type of "harassment" (her words, not mine) tends to happen in hoboken. "they have this type of mentality there." what? yuppie hatred doesn't just exist in williamsburg? hoboken is the last place i would expect to encounter voter intimidation. newark, maybe. but hoboken? the mere concept requires flexing one's imagination.

"hey, vito. it's another yuppie scumbag. tell him he needs to bring his frat pledge pin to vote. what? he gave it to his ex-girlfriend? SEND HIM HOME! he has no valid ID!"

"hey, bennie. tell her that there is a dress code to vote, and ann taylor is not appropriate attire. no suits allowed."

"hey, gina. unless that is a fake north face parka, ask her for two forms of ID. but if she's wearing hoop earrings, we can forgive her for wearing a real parka, and just let her vote without an ID."

i don't know. maybe the old school hoboken crowd a la frank sinatra before he became effete just hates "libruhl" manhattan expats like me crossing over the hudson to live and vote in their precinct.

or maybe, god forbid, they were racist twats who just got PWN3D.

or maybe they just weren't told what to do. after all, this is new jersey. at some point earlier this year, thanks to corzine, we didn't even have a government!

LESSON 5: not all election workers who give you grief are thugs. some are probably just being automatons and doing what they think they should be doing or were misinformed. but either way, don't doubt yourself or acquiesce. intimidation is a state of mind. voting is your right. remember that.

the s.o. veeeeeee!

seriously. how can anyone be hatin'? she puts 99% of american MCs to shame. (look past the age, whiteness, and cuteness. jay-z sure did when he signed her to his label!)

plus, the beats are inventive and fresh, at least to the u.s. market. (i don't know very much about the UK grime scene, except that it also produced dizzee rascal, whose track "fix up, look sharp" you should download if you haven't. oh and m.i.a. - download "bucky done gun" - i'll be checking up on that genre for sure now.) this video is for the single "random", originally released on the "vertically challenged" ep last year. anyway, her current single "love me or hate me" isn't as tight as "random", but it definitely has the "catchy" factor to hook the iTunes and MTV crowd. hopefully, the buzz will also hook clear channel into playing her stuff on the radio.

hyphy is the new crunk, and grime is the new hyphy!

unintentionally hilarious flier distributed by the new york state republican party.

huh?

what could this possibly be saying?

"if you vote democrat, people who don't believe in values like clipping their cuticles and keeping their nailbeds tidy WILL GRAB YOU IN THE STREET AND PREVENT YOU FROM ENTERING A NAIL SALON!"

oh my!

(yes, i KNOW they're trying to instill a vague sense of xenophobia with this ad, but i'm tired of taking these things seriously, especially when they don't warrant a serious response. so let's just keep it light... put your own caption to this ad in the comments if you feel the urge.)

Remember, remember

Please to remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot.

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, 'twas his intent
to blow up the King and the Parliament.
Three score barrels of powder below,
Poor old England to overthrow:
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.

Holloa boys, holloa boys, make the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
Hip hip hoorah!

lying sacks of shit.

stupid taxi driver tried to charge me $40 (plus toll added on top of that) to drive ten minutes. he claimed that rides to hoboken (a town that borders manhattan) were $40 plus toll. so i sat and refused to pay. and i called 311 to complain while i was in the taxi. then he said "hold on! hold on! let me prove it to you! i have book that has flat fee rates. it's right here." so i say, "show it to me." he hems. he haws. then, when he realizes i'm serious, he hands it to me.

$30 FLAT FEE. (this includes to toll already)

so i say "$30 flat fee. want me to show it to you?" then he says "that's an old book! it doesn't have the updated rates!" (no, rates haven't changed in years, you dope, and the book was brand new. pristine.) so i tell him i'm going to take a picture of the page with my cell phone and take him to court.

he relents.

kiddies, don't be tricked. use common sense.

that is all.

beating. dying. horse.

haggard found guilty of "sexually immoral conduct." well, gee golly. i guess he did have "sexual relations" with that man... (and i bet while inhaling too! double the pleasure! double the fun!)

Skip, trip, stumble...

And the shit JUST. DON'T. STOP.

Reverend Tweaker gets outed, and Ann Coulter may go to prison? Time to call Martha Stewart up, so you can learn how to make crab apple jelly!

I don't think I can take any more November "surprises"!

Ha ha, just kidding. Keep bringin' 'em on! It's certainly more entertaining than reading about Paris Hilton's drunken blunders.

Wait, haven't we heard something like this before?

"I did not have a homosexual relationship with a man in Denver."

Sounds like...


"I did not have sexual relations with that woman."

And we know how that turned out.

Is there going to be a mention of a cigar too? Somehow I doubt the words "tastes good" would appear in this context. Tee hee. :-X

Update: Oh, this is just too easy...

He's admitting he bought methamphetamine from the gay escort, but he added...

"I bought it for myself but never used it," he said. "I was tempted, but I never used it."

So, you, um, "never inhaled."

Another bad one: He blew it.

and more la la la

these people grow up to be good "conservative" "family men"...

come on, people. drop the act. if cnn hasn't exposed you as depraved lunatics in some form or another, borat sure will... ;)

(incidentally, universal has picked the next sacha baron cohen feature film for over $40mm.)

(and a random "la la": now THIS is funny.)

november surprise?

could it be that it's not individual anti-semites, homophobes and uber-patriots "borat" is lampooning but instead the ingrained ugliness in american culture? and then these same americans pay money and flock to theaters and laugh at the crude antics of "borat", when they really should walk away embarrassed or possibly slightly more educated?

subversive indeed.

i wonder if people from other countries would get the joke. whereas a lot of folks here would say "wow, that guy 'borat' says pretty offensive stuff. he just doesn't give a shit! that's so cool! i love it that this film is so politically incorrect!"... i wonder if brits and europeans would say, "wow, americans are quite a sorry lot," as american after american exposes himself as a complete moron or a bigot. "who are they to exert moral superiority? hrmph!"

it's funny that the underlying concept of this film has flown under the right wing radar.

so, come tonight, we'll see if americans realize that they've been punk'd by a british guy wearing nothing but a silly mustache and an ill-fitted suit as a disguise. :)

la la la

pfft. no surprise there...

late night itunes

if you haven't discovered lady sovereign, do so. if eminem and sporty spice had a love child... haha.

watch out, missy elliot, the british invasion is here!

"it's officially the biggest midget in the game!"

update: okay apparently she's already been on heavy rotation on MYV, but i don't watch mtv, ok? cut me some slack! :P

update 2: an aside... funny how, the u.s., it's all white girl, white girl! but in the u.k., it's all chav, chav! are the brits as obsessed with class as the americans are obsessed with race?

non-political statement about a story that could be politicized

all i want to say is that i am impressed by the clean lines of this guy's eyebrows. his eyebrows are nicer than mine.