| Congratulations "The Singing Forest." |
[Dec. 19th, 2009|01:03 pm] |
Metacritic has released a list of its its best/worst reviewed films of the decade. This is of interest to me for two reasons. First, the best-reviewed film is Pan's Labyrinth, which is probably the best film I have had the privilege of seeing in a theater. Second, the fiftieth-worst film is Deuces Wild, some Frankie Muniz slop whose review in the New York Daily News contains my favorite sentence, ever, from any newspaper:
Deuces Wild is the worst thing to have happened to Brooklyn since the Ice Age severed it from the mainland.
Every time I read that I think about how great it would be if I were a film critic and could use my platform to troll bad movies with impunity forever.
Also I am reminded that I really want to see Spirited Away and Ratatouille. |
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| College basketball multitasking. |
[Dec. 5th, 2009|04:55 pm] |
On ESPN2 – St. John's at Duke. Duke is winning—no surprise there—but St. John's has started its season strong for the first time since that ugly didn't-really-happen rape scandal back in 2003 or whatever.
Streaming online – American at Georgetown. Hoyas by 11 at the half. More interesting is Georgetown vs. Butler on Tuesday at Madison Square Garden, which I have tickets for. Hooray.
Unrelated postscript pertaining to a sport I don't care about except for this one small matter – As of this moment,
is losing at Alabama. Please lose and then go away forever. |
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| Potty and a nap. |
[Oct. 23rd, 2009|12:16 pm] |
I received in the mail today Vol. 14 No. 2 of The Young Lawyer, the American Bar Association monthly newsletter that discusses topics pertinent to, yes, young lawyers. But judging from this issue's lede, perhaps a bit too young:
Creativity—You're Full of It!
You're full of it! You really are. There's no way that I'm the first person to tell you. You can't deny it. You're full of it up to your eyebrows.
Full of creativity. You were born with it. You are made of wonderful, delicious, colorful, smelly, heaping globs of creativity! |
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| Experiments in international trolling. |
[Oct. 9th, 2009|01:35 pm] |
Congratulations Barack Obama for being the first person in world history to have your day totally ruined by winning a Nobel prize.
As for me, I think I'm going to avoid reading the news for a couple days. |
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| Random celebrity endorsements, continued. |
[Oct. 7th, 2009|07:13 pm] |
Yesterday ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) captainpsyko told me of a bizarre new promotion: 7-11s all over New York are now selling domo-kun merchandise. Today he sent me this photographic proof:
I have gone to 7-11 myself and confirmed this phenomenon. I don't really know what's going on or why. But tomorrow I'm getting a domo-Slurpee. |
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| Random celebrity endorsements. |
[Oct. 7th, 2009|11:02 am] |
Is Tyler Hansbrough officially considered a celebrity now that he's out of college? I don't know. He did get drafted pretty highly and he did lead UNC to a NCAA championship. But I will probably forever think of him as the sophomore who got punked in the Elite Eight by Georgetown.
Anyway, Tyler recently made a subtle appearance in an advertisement for AT&T that, if we can agree is a celebrity endorsement, has to be the most understated one I've ever seen. Kudos to Tyler and to AT&T for putting together a classy commercial that isn't in-your-face about who's selling the product. |
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| Write-in Ron Paul. |
[Oct. 3rd, 2009|09:51 am] |
There's a story in the Times today on how William Thompson is screwed because he doesn't have any money and Mike Bloomberg is going to spend more or less $100 million of his own on his campaign. No one is donating to Thompson because people don't like throwing away money. He's a subpar candidate against an accomplished opponent with limitless resources. He's doomed.
The only thing Thompson has got going for him is that people are unhappy with Bloomberg's essentially unilateral repeal of the city's term limits law. But while discontent has kept Bloomberg from pulling away in the race, it's not strong enough to cost him reelection.
Which isn't to say I'm going to vote for him. I've discussed with a couple people recently that I am tormented over how to cast this vote. Bloomberg would undoubtedly be the better mayor, but voting for him would require condoning an undemocratic power grab. Thompson would be a far weaker mayor—the other day he had difficulty articulating even one thing he's accomplished as Comptroller—but he hasn't done anything oppressive. |
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| Him again. |
[Sep. 30th, 2009|04:32 pm] |
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I just want to let you guys know that I voted yesterday. In a runoff of a primary. Which I also voted in. Basically I love to vote, especially for anyone who is not Mark Green, every time the opportunity arises. |
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| Hostis stulti generis. |
[Sep. 29th, 2009|02:03 pm] |
If for some reason you are the sort of big huge liberal nerd who reads websites like the Huffington Post or Wonkette, you will already know that some esteemed Member of Congress from Arizona went to a conference somewhere the other day and called the President of the United States an enemy of humanity. Okay. Pretty much garden-variety crazy.
But is it?
No! For this Member of Congress (Trent Franks, AZ-02, fourth term) has just unilaterally, and perhaps inadvertently, amended one of the world's oldest and greatest legal classifications: the Enemy of All Mankind. There is such a thing! It's an ancient Roman doctrine, still alive today, stating that some kinds of people are just so completely awful that any country, anywhere, is allowed to hold them accountable for their crimes, even if they never did anything to the country in question.
This is one of the world's most exclusive clubs. If you want to qualify, you've got to be bad. And not just the regular kind of bad, like "serial killer" bad, that you might expect would be enough. I mean, like, a really really bad kind of bad.
By the way, I said Franks's amendment was maybe inadvertent. Probably yes if he isn't a lawyer. I can't figure out if he is. No biography of Franks that I can find says anything about his personal life prior to taking public office. I therefore assume he's really an android grown in a tube who was released just in time to be elected to Congress. It happened in Transmetropolitan.
Back to the point. Here is the new and updated list of Enemies of All Mankind, in case you should ever come across any and need to initiate immediate prosecution.
Pirates!
Slave traders
also Barack Obama |
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| Scalped in thirty seconds. |
[Sep. 18th, 2009|10:09 am] |
Time Pavement reunion tour internet pre-sale tickets went online this morning at Ticketmaster: 10:00:00 AM
Time I tried to buy Pavement reunion tour internet pre-sale tickets from Ticketmaster: 10:00:30 AM
Status: Fail |
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| Shadow pizza. |
[Sep. 13th, 2009|12:55 pm] |
There is a girl in a Papa John's commercial who says, "Your pizza completes my life. It's the story of my life." Imagine what would happen if she ever tried real pizza.
Oh by the way, my friends page is empty. Somebody post something! Anything will do. |
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| Let's play money making game. |
[Aug. 18th, 2009|10:17 am] |
Oh hey, another story on how the New York State Legislature is corrupt. This time it's for ripping off the state treasury by collecting a pension and a paycheck for the same job at the same time.
It's not unusual for people to keep working after retirement. But not at the same job they're getting a pension from. Working a job while also receiving a pension from it puts a bit of a strain on the definition of "retire."
Fortunately the Legislature realizes a working pension is dirty. Which is why only members elected before 1996 can collect one. They do this in selfless service to the body's younger legislators, who by seeing the error of their elders' ways will righteously reject them. |
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| Good riddance. |
[Aug. 14th, 2009|10:20 pm] |
Ha ha, Dick Armey got fired from DLA Piper for basically being awful. His bio is already gone from the Piper website, but it lives on in the Google cache.
At DLA Piper, Congressman Armey plans to continue to pursue his particular interest in policy issues such as tax legislation to achieve a fairer, flatter tax structure; retirement security; and the high tech sector of the economy, including such issues as privacy, digital signatures and broad band communications. . . .
Congressman Dick Armey, who is not a lawyer, is special policy advisor to DLA Piper and co-chair of DLA Piper's Homeland Security Task Force. Poor Dick Armey and poor DLA Piper for having to drop its premier revolving-door lawmaker-lobbyist. (Armey joined then-Piper Rudnick within five days of leaving office.) What ever will they do now. |
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| Cash for clunkers. |
[Aug. 13th, 2009|09:23 pm] |
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I kind of regret joining all these bar associations because all they're doing is trying to sell me stuff. But on the upside I can now rent a car from virtually anyone on earth with some kind of a discount. |
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