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Last week, the New York Post ran an editorial cartoon showing a pair of cops shooting a chimpanzee. The caption on the cartoon was "They'll have to find somebody else to write the next stimulus plan". When challenged about the racist tone of the cartoon, the Post denied any racism and the cartoonist observed that, since it talks about 'writing' the stimulus plan, if it was about any politician, it would have to be about Pelosi. Oh, please. Today it was reported that Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose is under fire for an email he sent with a photo of the White House lawn planted with watermelons and the caption "no Easter Egg hunt this year". Mayor Grose says he was 'unaware' of the racial stereotype of black people liking watermelons. Again, oh please. This one may be even more absurd than the Post. While I can argue that the first name you think of when you hear the word's "Stimulus Plan" is not likely to be Pelosi, the cartoonist ha...

No, this isn't some philosophical post as I transition from one life-state to another. Just that I've seen a bunch of movies in the past month or so with really lame endings, and I felt the need to comment. I've already talked about the unimpressive ending to the equally unimpressive Day the Earth Stood Still remake. Then I saw The One while channel-surfing one night and was left completely non-plussed by the ending of THAT cinematic gem. (Much like DtESS, I was left thinking "that's the best you could come up with?") Last week we watched the X-Files: I Want to Believe . Overall, it wasn't bad… did a nice job of capturing the feel of the show — so good, frankly, that it felt more like an extended TV episode than any "bigger & better" X-Files Movie Event. The good stuff, for the most part, revolved around Scully & Mulder's relationship, a relationship that's nearly as mysterious as the cases they investigate. (Are they married/li...

For the past week or so, I've been hearing a radio spot for Pepsi Max, touting its man-friendly image, letting guys know that there's a new diet drink in town, safe for them to drink in the company of their compadres. I had no idea, prior to this campaign, that diet drinks suffered from such a crisis of confidence. Are we really afraid to drink diet sodas when we're out with the guys? Or is it just Pepsi guys that are ashamed of diet Pepsi? Whatever the case, the tagline on the commercial pretty much says it all: "Now you can drink your diet cola and still look your cojones in the eyes!" That first definition ("a vulgar Spanish word for testicles") pretty much says it all, and is the reason I was in tears the first time I heard the spot. And I HAVE to assume the ad was fully vetted by the folks at Pepsi and, somewhere along the line, someone had to approve it. But there's a part of me that wants to believe that a couple of bored ad copywriters slipp...

Got a little of that "The King is dead, long live the King" thing working here. After yesterday's post, I kinda need a little closure to bring it all full circle. I don't have much to say that hasn't, I'm sure, been said to great length and probably more eloquently elsewhere. I watched the Inauguration this morning; the first time I've ever watched a Presidential Inauguration, I believe. I enjoyed the President's speech, found it gratifying to hear a man with the eloquence to command the English language, to make his points clearly and concisely, to call to action, signal change, and take a stance as the leader of this country. I found his speech moving, inspirational, hopeful. All things you would want at this time. I only hope we can live up to some small part of this hopeful promise, for it was an ambitious speech, and a challenge to us all. For now, it's simply "Welcome, Mr. President. Do a good job. We need the change."

Nothing quite like an inflammatory headline to grab attention, huh? [A quick note on "respect" before I get started. I absolutely agree that the office of the President of the United States is deserving of, and should command respect. But I also, fundamentally, believe that no individual can command respect. No matter who you are and what your office or title, it is your actions and your character that determine the respect you can command. The person inhabiting the office of President may start at an elevated level of respect, perhaps, but then this only shows how far a person can fall when one looks at the Presidency of George W. Bush. Anyone wishing to argue this point with me should ask themselves this question: Can you honestly and truthfully say that you afford the same respect to President Bill Clinton as you do President George W. Bush? I can think of no more polarizing Presidencies in recent history, so unless you can answer "yes" to my above question, I re...

The "Bush Legacy Tour" (as MSNBC has been referring to Bush's appearances since the elections) has been working really hard at the "we never tortured anyone" rhetoric. "We don't torture, we don't condone torture, waterboarding isn't torture…" we've heard all of it for years, but it's a more concentrated message in these waning days of the Bush Administration. (That and "you may not agree with us, but…" and "we're safer now then we were" and "no new terrorist attacks since 9/11!". All of these statements equally debatable — at best — if not outright fallacies.) The Tour got a kick to the groin on Wednesday when the Washington Post ran this story: Detainee Tortured, Says U.S. Official The real kicker here, of course, is who this US official is: The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial… So this wasn't one of those damn 'lefty...

Gee, I wonder what's inspiring him? A time will come when a politician who has wilfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not stake their own. —H.G. Wells, writer (1866-1946) [From today's Wordsmith.org A Word A Day email]

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. —John Kenneth Galbraith, economist (1908-2006) [From today's Wordsmith.org A Word A Day email]  

Last week on MSNBC we heard the head of the Senate "Bailout Oversight Committee" (or whatever they're called) talking about the questions they're only now getting a chance to ask (such as, how's the money being spent, for instance), and expressing some concern that we may have rushed to get this bailout approved without fully vetting the whole plan. (At least, that's my take on what she was saying… to which I can only reply "gee, you think?"). Later in the week we learned that, due to a cute little loophole in the whole bailout plan, none of the banks and financial institutions that received money are subject to the restrictions Congress attempted to put on outrageous CEO compensation and other potential abuses. Turns out that the only institutions subject to such restrictions are ones that were bought at auction, as this was the original plan for distributing those funds. Instead, the banks were simply handed their bailout money and, apparently, tol...

About the 90 minute mark or so, I was thinking to myself that at least some of the negative/mixed reviews for The Day the Earth Stood Still must stem as much from an (arguably understandable) overly-reverential appreciation for the original as it did from any faults of the new movie. 1951's The Day the Earth Stood Still is, of course a classic piece of 50's sci-fi. But it's not Citizen Kane , so a contemporary update doesn't seem out of the question. This is not to say I hadn't already recognized issues with the remake. The military 'shoot first and ask questions later' single/simple-mindedness for instance, while true to the original, is an antique SF trope that I would love to see retired. (All the while acknowledging that the past 8 years of our current foreign policy and military stance doesn't exactly fill me with confidence that we've really any more evolved than that 1950's mentality would indicate.) And don't even get me started o...

Let me get this straight… We're okay with writing a blank check for $700 billion dollars to bail out Wall Street, no strings attached (no prohibitions on ludicrous bonuses, no salary caps on multi-million dollar CEOs — who certainly seem to be earning those salaries and bonuses — not even a 'maybe you shouldn't have those executive retreats this year' suggestion). But when it comes to bailing out the Auto industry, keeping those three corporations from going under and taking millions of jobs with them (along with those workers making significantly less than those Wall Street CEOs), well $15 billion is just TOO MUCH TO ASK! Especially with that damn United Auto Workers gunking up the works. Let's face it, nobody's had anything good to say about this Congress, and I'm sure we're almost as ready for a new session of Congress to begin as we are for Obama to take office. (Well, those of us that aren't still freaking out that Obama won, of course). But Sen...

We moved out of Hollywood several years ago when it came time to buy a house. Short of winning Lotto, selling that screenplay that's been moldering on my hard drive for years, or getting discovered doing waiver Shakespeare, there was no way we were buying in our neighborhood at that time. When we moved, we expected we'd miss a lot of things. The cool neighborhood we lived in, the coffeeshops, bars and restaurants all within walking distance, the 'life' of the city… turns out that not having to worry about finding a parking space after 6 PM alleviated that need to be able to walk to the cool stuff, and that most of the things we thought we were going to miss we really didn't notice. And not having to deal with the afore-mentioned parking issues, and the daily nightmare that IS driving in LA, tended to outweigh a lot of those lingering doubts. But every once in a while, I get slapped in the face with how 'suburban' it can get here. Take today. I've got a v...

Really, all I need here is a link… Clean Coal Carolers from an Industry Run By Morons : TreeHugger 'nuff said.  

Merrill Lynch CEO Thain eyes $10M bonus I don't care what his argument, if your company lost $10 billion dollars this year, and is only surviving thanks to a massive government bailout and last minute bank merger, telling the world you think you deserve a $10 million dollar bonus because "at least you're still in business" puts the "ch" in chutzpah . (That's the choking sound you have to make to correctly pronounce chutzpah, in case you were wondering about that 'ch' reference.) Fortunately, cooler heads seem to have prevailed .  

Originally , I was amused by the name Quantum of Solace. (Admittedly, I was hardly alone in this.) Then I heard that there was a new villainous organization in this new Bond film, that it had actually been hinted at in Casino Royale, and that the title reflected the name of this new organization. And I thought "well, that could work… SMERSH, SPECTRE, SOLACE. Kinda has a 'Bondian' ring to it. (And, if I stretch my brain far enough, I can find a way to make "Quantum of Solace" make sense, if the bad guys are now SOLACE.) However, a few months ago I read in a preview article that the new organization is actually "QUANTUM", and that the producers have no idea what the name means. (I guess it just sounded cool at the time.) Of course, now we're back to square one, where the title of the movie is, if possible, even MORE meaningless than when it was announced. After all, a quantum of the organization SOLACE could, I suppose, mean something. But if the bad ...

On this past week's episode of Chuck ( Chuck vs. the Fat Lady ), one of the characters, in describing her ex-boss's paranoia, says that "the log-on for his computer was a randomly selected word from a piece of Vogon poetry ." I'm pretty sure that may be the geekiest moment in TV this season. (Which, when you consider you've got both Chuck AND The Big Bang Theory competing in this arena, is really saying something.)  

I've been batting the phrase " paradigm-shift " around for a while now. With all the changes we've experienced in the past 20 years, with the changes imminent on the horizon — both for good and ill — the concepts, problems, ideas and beliefs that simply didn't exist 15, 10, even 5 years ago (when did you first hear the word Google?), could we be in the midst of a paradigm shift? (I am HARDLY alone in this thought, as you can see here .) Watching Tuesday's historic election, and listening to the discussions after Obama's victory was declared, I saw another sign of a paradigm shift. A lot can be made of Obama's victory, and it will take time to see if any of it rings true years from now. But I realized that, for all the overblown rhetoric, all the exaggerated emotion, there's a fundamental change that took place last night. Barack Obama is 47 years old. When he was born, there were parts of this country where his father could not have ridden in the f...

Repudiation was something of a minor buzz-word for a couple of weeks after the last Obama/McCain Presidential Debate. McCain took Obama to task for not repudiating inflammatory remarks made by a Democratic senator, then MSNBC took McCain to task every chance they could for his not stepping up and repudiating similar remarks aimed at Obama during campaign stops and other Republican events. As with most campaign moments, this burned itself out fairly rapidly. Watching the election results last night and listening to the commentators speculating as to what this could mean for the Republican party (which, to listen to the reports circulating today, is eating its own tail trying to figure out who to blame and how to bounce back), I found myself coming back to that concept of repudiation. I felt as if the country had stood up and repudiated the past 8 years of Bush/Republican/Conservative control of this country. Eight years of failed economic policy that's led to the worst stock market ...

Well, not so much, really… No candy for Obama fans | Otago Daily Times Online You've almost got to respect that kind of crazy. Or maybe just be afraid of it.  

Is it too much to ask that the woman running for Vice President understand what the job really entails? Palin Claims The Vice President Is ‘In Charge Of The U.S. Senate’ Apparently she's mistaken "President of the Senate" as meaning she gets to be the boss. (Or maybe it's a more ominous example of her latent megalomania coming to the fore.) Whatever the case, I really wish she'd do a little more reading: The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided. You know, I've got a little pocket copy of the Constitution I got at a bookstore a while ago. I could send it her way, just in case she hasn't got one. Yeah, that's a donation I could get behind.