Flynn sent me to the Alsacorp home page. They’re a company that makes freaky metallic finishes and shiny paint for just about anything. The showcase of candy-colored paint jobs is amazing, although I feel bad for whoever misspelled “adrenaline” on their custom-painted Ducati.
Also, at the Fringe Festival, a dwarf got his penis caught in a vacuum cleaner.
Family Security Matters, which, according to SourceWatch, is actually run by the Center For Security Policy, has pulled an embarrassing article from their website.
What does it say? That Bush should be president for life, that we should have nuked Iraq, that democracy is the enemy of greatness, that kind of thing. Typical right-wing craziness, really, although perhaps a little less subtle than usual. Still, it didn’t strike me as anything Michelle Malkin wouldn’t agree with. On the other hand, it also sounded like a parody, or something written by a disgruntled intern bent on embarrassing them, or something you might see in The Onion. It’s hard to tell. After all, the acronym FSM is oddly familiar. But on the other hand, maybe it’s just the same old “blame-America-first attitude I see in the right wing so much these days. I just don’t know.
Regardless, the article has disappeared from the Family Security website. Google cached versions of the page are making the rounds of the usual political websites.
Salon explains the current finance crisis, with a Super Bowl analogy. Via Unfogged, which wants to know what financial instrument plays the role of Janet Jackson’s breast…
Craigslist ad: $2500 zales wedding/engagement ring trade for non shitty dirtbike 125cc or higher.
That’s the entire text of the ad.
Just… wow.
TSG has the complete text of the new Barry Bonds lawsuit, alleging psychic damage, dog theft, and a conspiracy involving selling steroids to nuns. (Serious angle: the man filing the suit is already in prison, but should probably be in a mental institution instead. The incarceration nation rolls on.)
The Onion talks about a 2nd-grade production of “Equus.” Pretty good. Not as funny as the Girls Gone Wilde bit from Cat & Girl, though.
The NYT pans High School Musical 2 with much hilarity. In a particularly classy touch, they mock the fake-tanned actors while alluding to Olivier. See also Zac Efron, Please Stop Tanning, a blog dedicated to the tween heart-throb and his growing addiction to tanning.
This video of a Japanese waterpark is going around like mono.
Yes, I found this on the Bad Tattoos blog.
From Salon’s review of two books on meth:
Each era gets the drug it deserves — or seems to, after the fact, when viewed through the smeary lens of pop history. Hence Coleridge and the other 18th century Romantics with their laudanum visions; Rimbaud and Verlaine sipping absinthe in 19th century Paris; the acid-tinged 1960s; coke-amped 1980s and the 1990s’ sunken-eyed, vampiric heroin chic.
Methamphetamine, a drug that embodies a Platonic ideal of paranoia, perfectly suits out national mood, when sleep-deprived employees are afraid to get off the treadmill of work for fear they’ll fall even deeper into debt, and sexual titillation seems both omnipresent and joyless. The erotic vampires who populated pop culture in the late 1990s and early naughts have given way to zombies stumbling or wanking or fucking their way through the detritus of the early 21st century in recent films like “28 Days Later” and “Shaun of the Dead.”
I’m not sure I agree, but I’m having a hard time articulating why.
Updated, preface: yes, this is, as my brother says, “some self-righteous shit.” I know. I know my money-guilt is crazy.
NYT on buying new boobs on credit: “She said she pays $178.01 monthly to the finance company and does not know how long it will take her to pay off the debt on her credit card.” “I financed my car. Why shouldn’t I finance my face?”
Well, the answer is that you really shouldn’t have financed either, unless they’re going to bring in more money than you spend on them. If it’s on credit, it should be an investment. In other words, unless you’re a stripper, cosmetic surgery is out. Unless a car is the only way for you to get a job, you shouldn’t finance a car. Unless you’re a limo driver, using a loan to buy something nice instead of paying cash for a beater is a big mistake.
“I deserve it” and “I want it” and “I can get a loan for it” are not valid reasons to buy something on credit. If you can only afford it by going into debt, you can’t afford it.
(In my mental landscape, frankly, they’re not valid reasons to buy something at all, even if you have a giant wad of cash burning a hole in your pocket. I’d feel far more comfortable if I was able to buy only what I could prove was absolutely necessary for myself, and then use the rest to buy things that are absolutely necessary for people who don’t have them. I don’t do that. I can’t seem to make it stick, but I feel torn about every expenditure that is above the level of bare necessity. You might think that my internal financial thoughts are full of misery and gloom and guilt, and you’d be right.)
Especially “I deserve it.” I hate it when people say that. First off, no, you don’t deserve to have a perfect nose. There are all kinds of things people do deserve, but a cute button nose is not one of them. Second, when you say you “deserve” something stupid, it cheapens the things people really deserve, but don’t get. Freedom of speech. Health care. Clean air and water. Education in non-segregated, well-funded schools. Third, whether or not people deserve something is almost entirely unrelated to whether they get it.
You get things if you are lucky and/or diligent, or in the case of credit card debt, foolish. Mostly it’s down to luck.
Welcome to reality, kids. Life isn’t fair. How did you manage to grow old enough to get a credit card and use it to purchase shiny new toys without noticing that you lived in the real world and not in kindergarten?
I’m no longer eligible for the draft.
Sucks to be young!
Secretly Ironic 
