clue free

Yes. Barack Obama needs to show off how many (virtual) friends he has by having conversations with dozens of them in public — cyber-yells across the ether. What we would get would be his raw nuggets of wisdom, unfiltered by the Washington machine. What could go wrong? All that filtering and word-crafting is a waste of time when you’re just talking to your Twitter friends. You can trust them. Your enemies are only scrutinizing the old media.

And look, he obviously needs the publicity. It’s not like he’s well-known in… uhhh… well… countries with less than five television sets? Frankly, the mainstream media has done a rotten job creating a cult of personality around the Obamas. There is a danger in going too far with the paper-mâché, though.

Speaking as an honest-to-goodness latte-sipping New York liberal: I am not a big fan of the NY Times, but this may be the most horrible article they have ever published. If this article were posted on any half-decent ‘hobbyist’ message board (one dedicated to cars, or video games, or even cooking), the responses would take only three forms:

• “LOL”
• “nice troll”
• “Never post again.”

Come to think of it, the article may have ended up in the Tech/Lifestyle section because the editors considered it “too embarassing” to include on the Op-Ed page.

P.S. Meditate on the phrase “needs to tweet”. It’s fun. So fun. Needs to tweet.

A modest proposal from Volcano Monitors in response to Bobby Jindal’s incredulity at their inclusion in the stimulus package:

The best solution for the problem is not to try and keep people working, but to let the people who still have money keep it. Then it will be easier for the starving and homeless people to know who to rob. Then the poor can be shot in self-defense, quickly eliminating the problem entirely with a bare minimum of economic depression and loss of life.

Them volcanoes are hardly a problem, though, yah? Other than that one time in Indonesia when one of them popped, generating the loudest sound in recorded history, 100-foot-high tsunamis (which hurled some boats 50 miles inland), blood red skies in Norway (7,000 miles away), and a shockwave that rounded the earth at least 7 times (measured on equipment in use 125 years ago.)

Nah, there’s no sense in getting prepared, especially since we hardly see natural disasters anymore.

We are takin’ back America, he said, as he popped out the ignition lock
on a new blue Mercedes
in an underground parking lot.
Rich people got the money, we got nothin’ but these big swingin’ balls between our legs.
Gonna take back America, gonna take our share
No we ain’t gonna beg.

— Drywall, ‘New Blue Mercedes’

Post-election links having (almost) nothing to do with politics:

• This Fucking Election captures all the catchphrases of these last two brutal years.
• Tim Schafer’s bizarro life presents him with a semi piled high with cement caskets, and he has the good sense to blog it.
• We Bleed Design: Very clever interplay between foreground and background imagery; scroll down for the win.
• Writer’s strike? No problem; Annie Hall with all dialogue stripped out is still a super-hilarious picture.  And while the study of any one Woody Allen credit roll would suffice, The Art of the Title Sequence appreciates a broader style.  Several are better than their films deserve.
• There’s an ultra delicious burger waiting for me at Hodad’s in Ocean Beach, CA. I must possess it…
• Chilling on-the-ground images of the town near Chernobyl, which still has a couple hundred residents. Slogging through page after page of empty-shell communist apartment buildings makes the last page of the gallery all the more poignant, as you see snapshots of the town before the disaster–full of happy children.  It’s like a Jerry Bruckheimer opening sequence in reverse!
• Japan continues to amaze as they deliver Kewpie Mayonnaise, which comes in a plastic bottle (okay) in a plastic bag (WTF?!?)  Frivolous packaging FTL.  And it has MSG.  BTW.  Also, please enjoy hilarious and inventive bento at Wackyfun Food Art Time.

The Obama/Biden win will be remembered as a great moment in history for one more reason: it kept Sarah Palin at bay for a few more years. As America’s international policy stumbled in the dark, and we looked for leadership that could right it, we almost elected someone who, until literally two months ago, didn’t know Africa was a continent.

Other people in the campaign knew about this, and, obviously, did nothing of consequence.  What the hell is inside someone’s mind at that point?  You’re clearly dealing with a moron–a power-hungry moron–and even so, you resolve to do whatever it takes to [potentially] put her in charge of everything.

It feels like we’re all at a drunken party and a lot of people need to have their car keys taken away.

Favorites from the List of eponymous laws:

• Poe’s Law — Without a blatant indicator such as a smiley, it is impossible to tell the difference between religious Fundamentalism and a parody thereof.
• Rothbard’s law — everyone specializes in his own area of weakness.
• Wirth’s law — Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster.
• Zawinski’s law — Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.  [jwz was one of the original Netscape employees. His blog comes highly recommended, because he complains a lot, and he has good musical taste. Mmmmm. Sweet, buttery music.]

Shall we propose Palin’s Law?  Behind every maverick who, only 8 years ago, most moderates were fairly supportive of, is a party of religious-nut Good Old Boys who’ll do their durndest to keep dragging him back to pander to people just like themselves, at the expense of, oh, the rest of the country. Yee haw, git-r-done.

Looks like McCain honestly had no idea. Also: 56 blinks in 28 seconds. Congratulations, President Obama.

Whatever you think of John McCain’s choice of running mate, I think we all agree: he has shown a consistency of thinking with his dick that Barack Obama has so far failed to demonstrate.