"Sometimes I wanna get you low..."

Hey, let's appease Muslims while pissing off short Christians!

So what, now people like myself aren't afforded any sort of spiritual guidance without help of a stepstool or ladder? And you wonder why we become agnostics...

Not to mention, the children! Won't someone please think of the children?

(H/T: Jacob, as usual.)

"I had a drink the other day
Opinions were like kittens, I was giving them away"
- Modest Mouse, Out of Gas

"There's nothing you can know that isn't known..."

It amazes me that we actually needed an academic study to figure this out. I mean, honestly, I don't know of any men who are anything less than blatantly obvious about being attracted to a woman, even when they think they are being subtle. FARK put it best: "First sign a man is interested in sex: he is awake." Further, I think we can all agree that women are pretty much impossible to read.

On the other hand, it's good to know we men have evolved at least a little bit.

Anyway, that's your obligatory Maybe Next Year Day post for 2009. Enjoy!

"Only a real man can be a lover
If he had hands to lend us all over
We celebrate our sense of each other
We have a lot to give one another"
- Sufjan Stevens, The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts

"So much for so much more..."

The only piece of remotely decent economic news over the past two weeks, in the wake of an ever-plummeting stock market and the injection of fear-mongering into the economic shitulus package (I also like Jeff's term "scamulus" - say, how many different ways can we explain the utter suckage of the stimulus package in faux-words?), was the pending appointment of Senator Judd Gregg, a fiscal conservative (and it sure seems like we need at least one in this administration), as commerce secretary.

Well, damn.

I don't know much about Gregg beyond his reputation as an economic conservative and free trader. But that was enough for me for a commerce secretary. I also liked the message of actual bipartisanship contained in his appointment.

Oh well.

"Either you tell the truth and leave here
Or I ain't never coming back"
- No Address, Never Coming Back

"The times, they are a-changin'..."

No, wait: they're staying exactly the same.

I've been trying to collect my thoughts about this travesty, but I've decided that Jeff sums it up best. I had a sneaking suspicion Obama would back off some of his foreign policy rhetoric as soon as he got his first intelligence briefing and realized how crazy things really are, but still, this is a bit much.

I know it's only been three weeks, but between an economic stimulus that my great-grandchildren will be paying for and a blatantly broken promise about government transparency, I'd say the new administration is off to a simply smashing start.

I take solace in the fact that John McCain (or Hillary Clinton, for that matter) would have done exactly the same thing. (Bob Barr wouldn't have, but that's neither here nor there.)

In conclusion: fuck! (You may take that as an exclamation or an imperative as you see fit.)

Update: Gene Healy pretty much sums up my feelings about modern presidential power. (H/T: Jacob.)

"So you told me the other day that you wanna change the world
So you told me the other day that you wanna be the president"
- Jimmy B and the Fortune 500, Black and White

"Still crazy after all these years..."

It warms the cockles of my heart (and what the hell is a "cockle" anyway?) to know that, years later, Vanderbilt students are aware of, and still talking about, the "Gee Dead" incident.

Apparently, The Slant printed this memorial article as part of another fake Hustler. How creative. At least this time, they did it with Chris Carroll's permission (something it honestly never occurred to us to do. Now I can't help wondering if he'd have said "yes"). They also had to steal the Hustler templates instead of painstaking creating them from scratch, as we (by which I mean Brad Ploeger) did. (You can see the actual fake Hustler here. I love the inclusion of Thes Lant in the Rites lineup, a throwback to another Slant prank from 2005.)

In keeping with the tradition of fake Hustlers providing false information, there are several inaccuracies in the "Remembering 'Gee Dead'" article. First, it was a Tuesday, not a Monday (apparently, the Hustler prints Mon-Wed-Fri now instead of Tues-Fri, so it's easy to understand the mixup). Second, like I said, the template wasn't "obtained", it was reconstructed by Ploeger's talented eye. Third, we didn't misspell the title as "Huslter" to avoid copyright issues, we did it to make fun of the Hustler's propensity to have typos (though in retrospect if copyright was also an issue, I'm glad we did). The author also left out one of my favorite "errors", the jump to nowhere (which did actually occur in one issue of the Hustler).

Finally, and most egregiously, there's no mention of me. But oh well. (More egregiously, there's no mention of Ploeger, who was the major driving force, but oh well.)

Anyway, I'm glad to know that The Slant hasn't given up pranking the students. And I'm also glad to know the students are still naive enough to fall for it.

UPDATE: Right after I posted this, I noticed that David Barzelay posted several of my above corrections on the article itself. I'm particularly amused that he used the same phrase, "painstakingly created", as I did. I swear that's just an amusing coincidence.

"But I would not be convicted by a jury of my peers
Still crazy after all these years"
- Paul Simon, Still Crazy After All These Years

Peyton Manning's latest fail

Apparently angry at his 6 career playoff one-and-dones, Peyton Manning decided to throw Jay Cutler's blood sugar monitor into a pool. Latent Volunteer-Commodore rivalry? Perhaps. But a hilarious FAIL nonetheless.

"I put your favorite records on and sit around
It spins around and you're around again...
All's well in hell and here's hoping"
- the Wrens, She Sends Kisses

Phelps phollow-up

Kathleen Parker, who I always thought was a conservative but whatever, has an opinion piece in today's Washington Post about the inherent ridiculousness and hypocrisy in the national reaction to the recent Michael Phelps scandal. Not nearly as hilarious as Radley Balko's rant, but probably more likely to appeal to people who haven't already figured out that our marijuana laws, and the enforcement thereof, are antiquated and should be repealed.

Favorite quote:

Once a kid realizes that pot doesn't make him insane -- or likely to become a burrito taster, as the ad further asserts -- he might figure other drug information is equally false. That's how marijuana becomes a gateway drug.

Still not convinced? How about this tale of a marijuana bust gone horribly wrong? Warning: it's quite emotionally draining. It probably took me a good hour to recover from reading it. Though it may be easier for cat people.

America, please: it's time to put an end to this national travesty. Hell, tack on a rider that abolishes all anti-marijuana (or hell, even anti-possession) legislation, and I'd even support the economic stimulus package currently before the Senate. (You know, the one that has no chance of providing actual economic stimulus, and makes the bailout look like sound fiscal policy because at least it stands a chance of recovering some if not all of the government's expenditure? Yeah, that one.)

Legalization: now that's change I could believe in.

"Time after time, it's the same old wrong
You change and you change, it's the same old song"
- Virgos Merlot, Gain

The day the music died?

Unless you haven't visited a single news website today, you're probably aware that today is the 50th anniversary of the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper. As tragic as "the day the music died" was, I argue that music is still alive and well. Which is a good thing.

Anyway, not much to say, but I wanted to throw up a link to an in-depth examination of Don McLean's American Pie. It includes some alternate interpretations I hadn't previously considered. Man, just when you think you've got something all figured out...

"Do you believe in rock 'n roll?
Can music save your mortal soul?"
- Don McLean, American Pie

Movie quote corollary to today's song lyric:
"'Rock 'n' roll can save the world'? 'The chicks are great'? I sound like a dick!"
- Almost Famous

On a lighter note...

Radley Balko over at the Agitator has a spectacular eff you to everyone criticizing Michael Phelps over this "trangression". There's not much if anything I disagree with in his post, so I'll let it stand for itself. Except to note one thing: I can't believe it's only 40 percent.

"This is all I wanted to bring home..."

Yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday, so I was remiss in marking an important anniversary, as well as its cousin anniversary a few days prior. I wanted to take a brief moment to remedy that:

6 years ago yesterday, my phone rang at 8 am. It was a Saturday morning and I was in college, so naturally I had only gone to sleep about 4 hours prior and my head was still swimming with the previous night's alcohol consumption. But the call was sobering.

It was my mother. NASA had lost the Space Shuttle Columbia on re-entry.

I don't really have much to say about it. Unfortunately, as we push the limits of human potential, tragedy inevitably lurks. And while it is important to never let it deter us from our aspirations, it is equally important to remember those who give their lives in pursuit of something greater.

So I thought I might request a brief moment of blogosphere silence for the brave men and women of the Space Shuttle Columbia, the Challenger, Apollo I, and their countless predecessors whose wings were melted by the sun as they strove to "slip the surly bonds of Earth and touch the face of God."

...

Today's song lyric, in this humble occasional blogger's opinion, is from the most poignant song written about the Columbia, because it's not only about the disaster, but also about mortality in general. If you haven't heard it, I strongly advise you to remedy the situation.

"The radio is on and Houston knows the score
Can you feel it? We're almost home
Yeah yeah yeah yeah
The crew compartment's breaking up"
- the Long Winters, The Commander Thinks Aloud