January 19, 2007
Every time I watch Bill O’Reilly I anxiously wait for him to burst into song or dance. He’s a clown, minus the face-paint and goofy nose, and I can’t believe people consider the polarizing ideologue as a legitimate news source. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.
In the end, the Colbert Report and the O’Reilly Factor are outlets of entertainment, ironically with the same humorous appeal. Except, of course, O’Reilly actually takes himself seriously.
October 28, 2006
This is almost a year old, but nevertheless relevant amidst Obamamania:
My thoughts coming in a later post…
October 22, 2006
News from State College, Pennsylvania, where apparently Penn State students picked the right wrong candidate for Student Body President:
The statement released by Bundy after his election:
If the students are stupid enough to vote for someone so inappropriate and retarded as I am, then they deserve a president who is going to give the worst performance to the best of his ability.
Bundy then promised that his future presidency would be a “fucking shitstorm”. To clarify his use of the term “shitstorm, Bundy commented:
Using my appropriate French, I finalized that with the word shitshow. If people were offended by that, I apologize. We’re gonna say sweet nothings on the record all day long. Cut. Quote. Print. That’s sounds a lot better than no comment. It’s all a game.
More on the man himself here.
Yes, I laughed when I initially heard about all of this. I can’t help but appreciate the candor, especially in today’s political world. Maybe it was intended to be a cruel joke, but Bundy’s victory is indicative of our greater political vulnerabilities–namely, the ignorance of the electorate and the appeal of shallow campaigning that banks on popularity or charisma rather than issues. Whether it was meant in jest, this is a candid look into the jaded mentality of my generation, a lost faith in leadership and a reaffirmation in the frivolous nature of politics. And that’s not funny.
September 15, 2006
Yes, I figured out how to embed videos. Oh snap!
August 11, 2006
Oh Steven Colbert, you did it again:
How to Be An Expert on Anything
PICK A FIELD THAT CAN’T BE VERIFIED. Try something like string theory or God’s will: “I speak to God. I’m sorry that you can’t also.” Security experts are in this category: They have security clearances, we don’t. We can’t question the expertise of the NSA because we are not in the NSA.
CHOOSE A SUBJECT THAT’S ACTUALLY SECRET. Dan Brown invented a secret subject for The Da Vinci Code, so now he is forever an expert on this secret subject that no one can challenge. Anybody who attacks the secret subject is, by definition, part of the cabal.
GET YOUR OWN ENTRY IN AN ENCYCLOPEDIA. In the media age, everybody was famous for 15 minutes. In the Wikipedia age, everybody can be an expert in five minutes. Special bonus: You can edit your own entry to make yourself seem even smarter.
USE THE WORD ZEITGEIST AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE. Ideally, you want to find words that sound familiar but people don’t really know their definitions: zeitgeist, bildungsroman, doppelgänger – better yet, anything Latin. But avoid paradigm. It’s so 1994. If you say the word paradigm, everybody knows you’re a poser.
BE SURE TO USE LOTS OF ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS. Someone who says the words operations security may be educated, but the person who uses the military abbreviation Opsec is clearly an expert. If I use the term Gitmo, that means I’ve actually been there. If you say, “We’re going to Defcon 1,” it means you probably have the launch codes. Real experts don’t have time for extra syllables.
SPEAK FROM THE BALLS, NOT FROM THE DIAPHRAGM. In the expert game, you’ve got to have sack. That means speaking with confidence. In America, you’ve got to steer clear of nuance and ambivalence – and don’t even contemplate doubt.
DON’T BE AFRAID TO MAKE THINGS UP. Never fear being exposed as a fraud. Experts make things up all the time. They’re qualified to.
DON’T LIMIT YOURSELF TO CURRENT KNOWLEDGE. If you worry too much about being up-to-date, you miss out on vast territories of obsolete knowledge just waiting to be reclaimed. Think of leech-craft and all the lonely experts in the use of the little creatures, which are now experiencing a renaissance in health care.
GET AN HONORARY PHD. They work wonders. I have a doctorate in fine arts from Knox College in Illinois. All I did was give a speech, and now everybody has to call me Dr. Colbert.
MAKE A HABIT OF NAME-DROPPING. Say things like “I was talking to John Hockenberry yesterday for my story in Wired. Have you seen my cover?” I plan to use this issue of Wired to assert that I now know everything about wires.
August 10, 2006
August 7, 2006
Steven Colbert has done it again, creating another appropriate word to add to our political vernacular.
Wikiality: a portmanteau of “Wikipedia” and “reality”, meaning “truth by consensus” rather than fact, modeled after the approval-by-consensus format of Wikipedia. Embodying the spirit of “truthiness”, wikiality follows that “if enough people believe something”, it must be true.
A thought from codebot.org:
Wikiality could be construed as a modern spin on the aphorism “might makes right” or the old saying “history is written by the victors”. This distortion of reality may blend well on websites such as wikipedia, as evidenced by the wikipedia article on “reality”, where reality itself is disputing by people posting unverified claims.
As an avid reader of Wikipedia, I always considered the major flaw with an online community encyclopedia, but brushed it off in favor of its novelty and entertainment value. Try spending an hour looking up whatever comes to mind on Wikipedia; you’ll be amazed at the things you’ll come up with (and how easy it is to waste time).
Wikiality in the end reminds me of George Costanza’s famous insight, worthy of fortune cookie status: it’s not a lie if you believe it.
August 2, 2006
…by clicking this link, no joke. You can even send sodas and ice cream, too. And the best part: they deliver it for you, even to those hard to reach places that have been devastated by overwhelming Israeli air power. Straight from your good graces to the brave soldiers on the front line in Southern Lebanon, give the gift that keeps on giving: greasy pizza and other junk food!
July 2, 2006
Great Clip, check it out
June 30, 2006
Today’s topic: fratire.
What’s fratire, you ask? Well, why doesn’t the man himself explain, as he so eloquently did on the Huffington Post:
Fratire is, at its essence, nothing more than men writing about being men in an honest and authentic way.
Fratire is not about misogyny. Fratire is not about drinking. Fratire is not about acting immature, or animosity towards women or fraternity life, or anything of these other things it is accused of being.
What does it mean to be a man?
Honestly, I don’t know the answer to that question. I definitely like to think of myself as a man, but I do not think that I am the model or definition of manhood that everyone should aspire to. Even though I cannot define manhood, I do know that we will never define it if we cannot discuss it openly and freely, without fear of being castigated or vilified for exploring the boundaries of these issues.
Just like Third Wave feminism arose to enable women to explore and define the different meanings femininity can have to different people, so has fratire spawned from the recesses of the internet to allow men to do the same thing with masculinity. At it’s core, fratire is just that: A literary genre that unapologetically lets men be men…whatever it is that means.
Surprisingly, Tucker (for some reason I feel more comfortable referring to him by his first name, and something tells me he would prefer it that way) explains his rationale with historical support of the feminist movement. Not bad for a guy who soiled himself in a hotel lobby.
Is fratire the masculine response to feminist prose in the Manichean world of gender studies? Perhaps, but if that’s the case, then Tucker Max is fratire’s Jane Pauley, lobbying for men’s right to be delightfully tacky, one party at a time.
June 27, 2006
Apparently there are children’s books for conservative families to help ward off “the moral disease” liberalism:
The opening premise of Help! Mom! is straightforward enough: Two grade-school brothers set out to earn money for a new swing set by opening a lemonade stand. But, when the aspiring entrepreneurs dream one night about “a very strange place called Liberaland,” the story shifts into satire-saturated adult fare, as a series of “dastardly Liberals” pop up to meddle in the venture. A Ted Kennedy look-alike (“Mayor Leach”) demands half the boys’ take in taxes, a Hillary Clinton-inspired “Congresswoman Clunkton” makes them cut the sugar in their product and give out broccoli with each glass, and an “lclu” lawyer replaces their picture of Jesus with that of a big toe.
If you’re interested, read more here.
While I would like to think that this is satirical literary fare intended for the right wing mothers and fathers of America, I shudder to think what could possibly be read in Rush Limbaugh’s nursery. Here’s a story pitch: a new tale about the aforementioned brothers grudgingly giving up half of their lemonade earnings to help pill-popping heroin junkie Humpty Dumpty, who just fell off the wall during a drug-induced daze and now will take advantage of all the king’s men (who should be instead serving the greater interest of the kingdom abroad) and leech off of the system in a nice metropolitan hospital, obviously at the expense of the honest working, morally sound children who are just trying to purchase that swing set.
June 21, 2006
This could be the most ridiculous thing I have seen in a long time.
Apparently Kevin Federline wants to change his image from wife-beater and trucker hat sporting white trash/negligent dad/ douche-bag extraordinaire to penny crusader. And his Obi-Wan Kenobi? None other than Richard Branson, of Virgin Atlantic and eccentric billionaire fame. Who put these two together? Some very clever publicists…and maybe MTV.
I cannot make this up:
“[T]o prove the value of the penny in face of its possible legislative elimination,” the press release brags, “Branson, Federline and Eggers show their enthusiasm for the nostalgic coin by highlighting the value of the penny and being the first to sign the ‘Save the Penny’ petition to be presented to lawmakers in Washington D.C.”
The rest is here.
For those of you in the Big Apple, there is a rally at 1:30 in Times Square.
Who put this motley crew together to crusade for our change? Pennies in my life are more a nuisance than anything; in fact, often time I accidentally throw pennies away with trash and other things I accumulate throughout my day.
Remember that episode of Seinfeld when Kramer saves all of his loose pennies and tries to buy a calzone, but it quickly rejected by the restaurant owner, citing that pennies are not acceptable forms of currency? Yes, I laughed too, and I am laughing right now.
Well I guess we all to have our MO's: Britney Spears has a mental breakdown on 20/20, and K-Fed fights for the endangered species known as the penny. I guess I have heard of more ridiculous things, but then again, this almost makes "cents".
June 19, 2006
Lets check in on how my boy Stevie Colbert is doing, this time pursuing his shenanigans with Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, who apparently is not very good at his job:
Colbert: You have not introduced a single piece of legislation since you entered Congress.
Westmoreland: That's correct.
Colbert: This has been called a do nothing Congress. Is it safe to say you're the do nothingest?
Westmoreland: I, I, ..Well there's one other do nothiner. I don't know who that is, but they're a Democrat.
Colbert: What can we get rid of to balance the budget?
Westmoreland: The Dept. of Education.
Colbert: What are the Ten Commandments?
Westmoreland: You mean all of them?–Um… Don't murder. Don't lie. Don't steal Um… I can't name them all.
You can watch the entire clip here, take a break from work and enjoy
June 15, 2006
Truthiness is the quality by which a person purports to know something emotionally or instinctively, without regard to evidence or to what the person might conclude from intellectual examination. Coined by Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report, it has gained popular notoriety as a critique of the Bush Administration's seemingly groundless appeal to emotion in their policy making.
A good example of Truthiness:
On Monday, the Bush administration told a judge in Detroit that the president's warrantless domestic spying is legal and constitutional, but refused to say why. The judge should just take his word for it, the lawyer said, because merely talking about it would endanger America.
As childish as Colbert might seem, he might just be onto something. How do I know?
Well, I can't really explain it…it just is, take my word for it and let it be.
June 14, 2006
Now would this be considered dirty south hip hop? Maybe its more of that midwestern rap, a la Nelly.
