Who I sleep with is their business

"Hey, you're really lucky! You got a great room," said the old guy at the front desk, when I checked in to this dumpy former Ramada in central Connecticut about 20 minutes ago. "Someone must have liked you."

"Oh, good. What makes the room special?" I said.

"King-sized bed, the blinds close all the way to block the light. It's real business-class," he said, and then added for emphasis: "There's a guy, a trucker, who stays here often, and he always requests that room."

He meant that as evidence of the room's greatness, but instead, as I walked into my room a few minutes later, it gave me an image of someone who I'll be sharing my bed with tonight. Sure, we know hotel beds are used be different people, but I think we try to forget about that when we actually lie down to sleep. It's easy enough, since we can't really picture the people who stayed there before us. But now, thanks to the front desk guy, I've got an image. He's fairly heavy and wears a bushy beard, and snores heavily. He arrives late at night, having driven straight for hours, eyes weary, CB radio belching static, peeing in bottles and throwing them out the window when need be. But finally, thankfully, he arrives in the room he loves, and slips into that familiar king-sized bed and checks HBO to see if there's any soft porn on. We're here together, and there's nothing either of us can do about it. But please, trucker man, just keep it down. We'll share this bed tonight, but I've got to get up early tomorrow.

Permalink: 04:09 PM | Comments (0)

No-tell motel

Tonight I'll be experiencing a personal first: spending the night in a hotel by myself. I'll explain why at a later date (but no, there's nothing shady going on). In the days leading up to this, I've started wondering what people who travel for business do with their spare time in hotels. Should I go to the gym? There's kareoke in the hotel bar tonight -- but is that any fun without friends? And when I think of hotel bars, I think of worn-out, lonely characters looking to sleep in a room they're not paying for. Then again, it's also the place to strike up a forbidden friendship with Scarlett Johansson. I suppose I couldn't turn that down.

Anyway, I don't know. It'll be an odd experience. But thanks to my blogging addiction, I've written this instead of packing, and now I've got 10 minutes to throw everything in a bag and get the hell out of here to make an appointment directly related to this hotel thing. Damn blog.

Permalink: 11:21 AM | Comments (1)

Tell us, Brownie. What went through your mind?

"Well first, Katrina seemed like this tiny little thing, you know?"

"And then it hit land, and the problem seemed a little bigger. You know, some flooding, abandoned people. Things like that."

"And then we started hearing about these people in shelters, and I thought, 'Man, somebody should do something about this.'"

"Meanwhile, the media starts putting all these awful images on my television screen, and it turns out the damn hurricane was huge! And then I remembered Bush appointed me to one of these federal positions, see? I kind of wanted to be the ambassador to Luxemburg, and sit around drinking beer and speaking German or whatever it is they speak over there, but instead I was stuck in some agency that I was pretty sure had 'emergency' in the title."

"So I checked and, sure enough, I was working for FEMA! And that's when I said to myself, 'Brownie, you work for this federal emergency thing, and this is a freakin' emergency. Round up the boys, and let's go!' And you better believe I took charge, Mr. Senator."

Permalink: 12:19 AM | Comments (4)

Stick 'em in a room where they belong

A few years ago, a band I was in played a show inside a Miami art gallery. It was a fun venue and we tried our hand at crowd banter, and at one point the lead singer made mention that I was the only person he knew who still didn’t have a cell phone. After the show, some swank, well-dressed guy came up to me and asked, “So, you really don’t have a cell phone?”

“No,” I said.

“Wow,” he saw, awe-struck.

I later learned that guy was Julio Iglesias Jr. All together now: WTF?

These days, things are different. I’m no longer in a band, Julio and I aren’t on speaking terms, and I’ve spurned my landline and now only use a cell phone. In doing so, I’ve come around to an argument my friends often made during my anti-cell years. I used to say cell phones are annoying, and they’d say the problem lies with the user, not the phone.

And for that reason, I hope this restaurant’s idea catches on as a national trend. It has a designated cell phone room for people who need to take a call. There's no way we can (or should) ban phones, but at least this way, dining patrons aren’t annoyed by a loud-talking phone user. People at a table don’t have to tolerate the jerk who answers his phone in the middle of a meal. And, of course, if you absolutely must be that jerk, you don't have to run outside into the snow/cold/rain/whatever in order to be polite. It works for everyone.

This is such a great idea, in fact, that it’s enough to make Julio Iglesias Jr. speechless. Then again, that’s not very hard to do.

Permalink: 12:18 AM | Comments (0)

And just outside the frame, the Jolly Green Giant proudly stands

And the Giant is in the perfect pose for it, too. But then again, maybe it's Swamp Thing's thing? Hard to tell.

Anyway, I don't have any idea what that context of that picture is, but boy does it look dirty!

Permalink: 12:27 PM | Comments (0)

"What kind of black-hearted people want to nitpick a man's mother's death?"

There's been a lot of disgusting politicking since Katrina, as some see opportunity and others deflect criticism. There was, for example, the GOP's attempt to blame environmentalists for the wrath of Katrina. Then there's an Alabama senator's attempt to essentially go grave-digging in New Orleans, hoping to find someone whose death can bolster Republicans' argument to repeal the estate tax. But I haven't been more disgusted with a political move than I was yesterday, when I learned that someone -- and it's probably easy to guess who -- had fact-checked and attempted to undermine a sobbing man's story on Meet the Press, in which he told of the horrible way in which his friend's mother died.

It all started three weeks ago, when Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard appeared on Meet the Press to talk about the bungled response to the hurricane. He told a horrible, heart-wrenching story of how his employee's mother was abandoned in a nursing home, and ultimately died there. The crux of the story, which I highly advise watching, was this: "His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, 'Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?' and he said, 'Yeah, Mama, somebody’s coming to get you.' Somebody’s coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Friday… and she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night!Nobody’s coming to get us. Nobody’s coming to get us."

Most people watched this and thought it was devistatingly sad. Someone out there, however, apparently thought, "This needs to be defused." And so, they picked the story apart and determined he got the dates wrong. Then, I'm guessing, they tipped off MSNBC, hoping the confusion will take away from the emotional effect of his story. Yesterday, Aaron Broussard was back on Meet the Press talking about this. He perfectly articulated his disgust and shock that someone would consider his story a political weapon, so I'm going to post a portion of his response here:

Listen, sir, somebody wants to nitpick a man's tragic loss of a mother because she was abandoned in a nursing home? Are you kidding? What kind of sick mind, what kind of black-hearted people want to nitpick a man's mother's death? They just buried Eva last week. I was there at the wake. Are you kidding me? That wasn't a box of Cheerios they buried last week. That was a man's mother whose story, if it is entirely broadcast, will be the epitome of abandonment. It will be the saddest tale you ever heard, a man who was responsible for safekeeping of a half a million people, mother's died in the next parish because she was abandoned there and he can't get to her and he tried to get to her through EOC. He tried to get through the sheriff's office. He tries every way he can to get there. Somebody wants to debate those things? My God, what sick-minded person wants to do that?

What kind of agenda is going on here? Mother Nature doesn't have a political party. Mother Nature can vote a person dead and Mother Nature can vote a community out of existence. But Mother Nature is not playing any political games here. Somebody better wake up. You want to come and live in this community and see the tragedy we're living in? Are you sitting there having your coffee, you're in a place where toilets flush and lights go on and everything's a dream and you pick up your paper and you want to battle ideology and political chess games? Man, get out of my face. Whoever wants to do that, get out of my face.

That says it all.

Permalink: 10:25 AM | Comments (3)

Home sweet angry-note-writing home

A little while ago, I posted some passive-aggressive notes that were written in the laundry room of my apartment building. Notes are pretty common here -- we've had them to complain about the hot water, about dogs taking poops outside of windows, and a few other instances I can't remember. Today there are two notes taped, one on top of the other, on the window next to the front door. The bottom one reads:

There are assigned parking spaces around the building, and apparently someone parked in this guy's spot and he left the note on her car. The woman who accidentally parked in the wrong spot then took the note, wrote a reply, and posted the two of them near the door. The notes, I should point out, were hung with a band-aid. Here's hers:

Ok, whoa. Is it time for a group hug? Welcome to the building, lady.

Permalink: 01:01 PM | Comments (4)

Money for nothin'

Take a look at this spam I got yesterday. I love how it begins by evoking class-by-materialism, trying to sell watches to people who want to show off wealth but can't afford the real thing. Then at the end, when spammers usually include some gibberish to throw off spam filters, the spammer delivers a little anecdote about the disconnect between a person's wealth and worth. What's the message here, spammer? Do I want your watches to declare my worth, or shall I be humble and watchless? I'm just so conflicted.

From: "charlesetta wagner"
To: "Becki Fisher"
Cc: jason (at) happyscrappy (dot) com
Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2005 1:06 AM
Subject: One and all will understand you have "Made it"

Feel the Classiness and Stature of being in possession of the watch industries supreme wristwatches, at a small portion of the usual price tag.

Every person will know you've Arrived when sport one of these beautiful timepieces.

You merit the finest! Right now possess the ultimate.

http://uk.geocities.com/elwyna_lice/?my=p

You seem quite anxious to get rid of money, remarked Rob, carelessly. How much are you worth? Personally? Yes
Nothing at all, young man

Permalink: 12:24 PM | Comments (0)

Table scraps:

♣IS THERE ANYTHING more romantic than a guy who opens his soul to reveal that, deep down, the thing he loves most about his girlfriend is her boobs? "They're her best assets, aren't they?" said some dude who is apparently famous, about his girlfriend who is also apparently famous, although I've never heard of either of them. Pressed for what else he likes, though, he was hard up for details: "Everything. I don't know. I find it hard to say stuff like that. I don't want to get too deep." Oh, I think you got deep enough. (via Thighs)

♣SPEAKING OF BOOBS, here's an article of clothing that sounds terribly uncomfortable: the Brassage, a bra with "massaging bumps." Let's hear it, girls: Is this a good idea, or just something designed by a guy named Norm who wants to live vicariously through his bra?

♣“IF I WIN, the first thing I'll do is demand a recount,” says Kinky Friedman, the best damn candidate for governor Texas -- and perhaps this nation -- has ever seen. Here's a great New Yorker article about his run, and here's his latest campaign ad.

♣FOSTERS MAY CLAIM it's "Australian for beer," but nobody in Australia actually drinks it. Fosters wants to change that.

♣QUOTE OF THE week: "It looked like my dog's poop, but I'm not a dog poop analyst." So says a guy whose dog was kidnapped, and whose dog kidnapper left some poop along with the ransom note.

♣NUDITY IS SO common in Germany that once-popular nudist colonies are no longer special, and have a hard time finding new members.

AND THERE, THERE'S this and this.

Permalink: 12:03 PM | Comments (2)

Something's sure filling his land

Aside from yesterday's B.C. containing the signature Johnny Hart it-would-be-a-political-statement-if-it-made-any-sense, I think this patient has a something more important to worry about: Whenever someone mentions landfills, he developes a glaring erection. I sure hope he doesn't work in waste management; that could get embarassing real quick.

Permalink: 12:59 AM | Comments (0)

It's not just for wiping

So I'm talking to this old guy who has a big gut and a gruff voice, and he holds up a single sheet of toilet paper and says he has a trick to show me. He folds the toilet paper in half twice, and puts a corner against his fingernail. “Ok, so you tell a guy to put it against his finger, and then rip off the corner the size of the fingernail,” he says, and then does it. Then he unfolds the toilet paper, and the ripped-off corner has created a giant hole in the middle of the sheet.

“Tell ‘im that’s the size of his asshole!” he says.

Honestly, I'm not making that up. And boy, I sure hope nobody has an asshole that big.

Permalink: 12:52 AM | Comments (0)

Get ready for "Gretta Does Guantanamo"

The FBI is setting up a new squad to attack one of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's "top priorities" -- but it's not terrorism or corruption. It's porn. And, oh no, not child porn. Just regular ol' legal, by-adults-for-adults porn.

I feel safer already. I mean, who knows when one of these porn stars might come by and kidnap me, and make videos of me in which I'm blindfolded and breasts are held against my head? Who knows when a porn star might get on a bus or subway line, or walk into a crowded nightclub, and then blow everyone in sight? Who knows how many of these porn stars have pilot licenses, and could just spread those wings at any time? This is a risky world we live in, and we have to take every threat seriously.

Permalink: 08:46 AM | Comments (0)

Table scraps:

♣GOOD STAGE GAGS: A mime's sign language and wacky karate.

♣IS IT UN-HIP to learn about a new trend by reading it in the Wall Street Journal? Probably, but whatever. A week or so ago, a story ran about vlogging -- video blogging, of course -- and so I've been checking a few out. Rocketboom is apparently one of the most popular ones, and it's a pretty amusing daily three-minute tour-de-stuff (although it's also pretty amusing to see host Amanda Congdon be all goofy on the vlog, and then head over to her online resume and find all these glamour shots she has of herself). Travelvlog has some fun and interesting clips of -- you guessed it -- traveling in faraway places. And then, here's a video of what happens when a nice old lady calls the pharmacy, gets the wrong number, and starts chatting about her shingles.

♣THIS MIGHT BACKFIRE in some (hopefully non-violent) way, but I like the way they're thinking: A Planned Parenthood center is asking supporters to pledge a certain amount of money for every protester that shows up outside the center.

♣IN ONE PARAGRAPH, a talking head gets all my support and then loses it all. In this letter, some blabbermouth on cable TV complains that he's being used: "Please let me make my point. Have the reporter or anchor ask what they please. But don’t force me to engage in an artificial debate just to create 'fireworks.'" Agreed! But then, this: "And if I must debate someone, please make it someone of equal stature to myself. I was once forced to debate the minimum wage with an actual, honest-to-God homeless person." Oh, the horror! Sorry to hear someone of your stature had to share airtime with someone so lowly. I mean, sure, I guess that probably wasn't the most appropriate forum for an educated debate, but you know what? It's television. You chose to go on, and you know what you're getting.

♣FOR NO GOOD reason, I still have a Friendster account that I check maybe once a month. I logged on randomly this weekend and discovered all sorts of new features, along with a new layout and the boastful message, "You spoke, we listened. Now Friendster is better than ever, jam-packed with NEW FEATURES!" Yeah, that's great, Friendster -- to bad you didn't do that two years ago, back when people actually cared. While you were busy figuring out how to stop the site from crashing every day, place like MySpace (which, no, I don't have an account on) came along with innovative ideas and stole all your members. It's kind of sad, but then again, kind of not. For failing to think ahead, Friendster deserves to fall behind.

♣AND YOU THOUGHT Google maps were just good for finding your own home. This guy found the missing remains of an ancient Roman villa. (via Kottke)

♣AND THEN, THERE'S this.

Permalink: 08:11 AM | Comments (1)

Drinky drinky, no more drinky

The New York Times ran a strangely boring story today about a really bizarre Japanese product: Kidsbeer, "which comes in a brown bottle and is advertised with the slogan 'Even kids cannot stand life unless they have a drink,' is lager-colored and foams like beer, but tastes like cola." So basically, it's like candy cigarettes. The purpose eludes me, though. I guess it's a product that kids like because it makes them feel grown up, but I think there's an easier way to cure children's desire for a beer: give them a real one, and they'll spit it out in disgust. That's what I did when I was a little kid and had a sip of someone's beer -- and quite frankly, it's what I continued to do until my early 20's.

This reminded me of a far more twisted beverage I saw a few years ago called DNA, which bills itself as "alcoholic spring water." Of course, we rational consumers must wonder: If a drink is designed to taste like water but contain alcohol, who aside from a date rapist is going to be interested? And the drink's tagline, "Pure water that's lost its innocence," sure doesn't discourage the question.

Anyway, what's the moral here? I don't know. Maybe it's that alcohol companies should stop trying to be clever. Right, Zima?

Permalink: 11:33 AM | Comments (0)

The face of Mother Nature

Have you hugged a tree today? How about giving it a big, wet kiss on the lips? (Gag comes courtesy of a friend's family, whose house I took this picture at this weekend.)

Permalink: 09:32 AM | Comments (0)

Oh, that girl? She's a real disaster.

The New York Times had an amusing piece about the woes of people named Katrina, but imagine if your first name is Katrina and your last name is... Ophelia. Turns out there's one such unlucky person, and she lives in Brookline, Mass. (Above is a screencap from my search for Katrina Ophelias on USsearch.com.) What an unfortunate situation. I wonder how many of Katrina Ophelia's male friends have said, "Katrina, you can blow me anytime!" Actually, I hope none have. That sounded a lot funnier before I wrote it. But who knows -- maybe Katrina Ophelia is cursed with a timely name and lousy male friends. It could be worse, though: Her last name could be Nineeleven.

Permalink: 08:36 AM | Comments (1)

One wry grin in a crowd of smiling faces

That's Chris Glover, who I saw open for Mike Doughty in Boston last night. Throughout Glover's set, some guy in the back kept screaming, "Stand on your seat!" It seemed like a kind of dopey attempt at heckling -- the musician was sitting down, and the drunk guy in the crowd was making fun of it. Glover responded weakly, saying things like "ok, ok, calm down" and "I'll do it later." And indeed, he did it later: He didn't stand on his seat, but he played a song called "Stand on Your Seat." Apparently the heckler was actually a fan. (The picture, I’ll have you know, was taken when he was playing that song. The hand you see, I’ll also have you know, was attached to a sweaty guy with fairly strong B.O. who stood next to me the entire show.)

This struck me as a good idea, even if Glover didn’t plan it this way. Wouldn't it be fun if more bands had song titles that are easy to misinterpret when shouted in a crowd? A few suggestions:

1. Get off the stage
2. Who farted?
3. Take off your pants
4. Play your last song already
5. I have genital warts

On a semi-similar note, I saw Cake play over the weekend and was unfortunate enough to catch the opening act, Finch. The crowd seemed to feel the same way I did about this band, but we suffered silently -- well, except for one guy near me, who screamed insults between every song. He was too far for the band to hear, but the people around him seemed amused. That is, until he let this one loose: "Let's put it this way," he screamed. "This is Africa, you're AIDS. You're ruining it!" Some people chuckled nervously, not really knowing how to react, and others just sort of stared in disbelief. It was his last heckle of the night.

Permalink: 12:46 AM | Comments (4)

I am man, hear me fuel

There’s a commercial for Domino's new “Steak Fanatic Pizza” running now, and it begins with the following events: Dude answers door, female delivery girl hands him a new Steak Fanatic Pizza, and dude describes it as “man-fuel.” Got that? Man-fuel. Aside from the situation not making any sense -- why is he taking the pizza and then telling the delivery girl, “This is the food I eat because I am a man” -- the phrase itself make me want to gag. Man-fuel. It’s just plain icky, like a phrase used in the type of pornography that’s too over-the-top for pornography lovers. Man-fuel. “Oh, John, let me taste your man-fuel!” It’s right up there with “baby batter.” Ick.

Even if I ate steak, the phrase “man-fuel” would make me never buy this pizza. In fact, the phrase "man-fuel" makes me ashamed to be a man. Did anybody do a consumer survey on this phrase before it aired nationally during the first week of the NFL? I don’t know, but Domino's is clearly standing behind it. Here’s a little clip from a press release it sent out on the new pizza:

The new Steak Fanatic Pizza is the product of consumer demand. This pizza is truly 'man-fuel' -- (although women like it too!) -- It's perfect for guys' night in, when cooking is out of the question but you're craving the flavor of steak.

Ugh. I'll stick with the cheese pizza, thanks.

Permalink: 12:29 AM | Comments (6)

You'll shoot your eye out?

This sign is posted on the recycling machines at my local supermarket -- you know, the ones in which you put a bottle or can in and receive five cents -- but I'm having a hard time figuring out what exactly it's trying to prevent. Why would anybody put full bottles or cans in? And if they did, would the force of entry be so great that the container would rupture, shooting liquid out at an injury-causing velocity? This seems unlikely.

A high school-aged employee walked by me while I was contemplating this, so I asked him about the signs and proposed my liquid-velocity theory. He paused for a moment and then said, "I may or may not have put full ones in there just to see what would happen. It just gets really messy."

Permalink: 09:44 AM | Comments (3)

Table scraps:

♣BECAUSE CATS ARE often so disinterested in the people around them, there is only one logical course of action: People need to put stuff on cats. Anything will do. Then take a picture of it. Stuff on cats! I don't particularly like cats, but I'll tell you what: I do like stuff on cats. (via Allura)

♣YOU DO NOT like James Potter. You do not like James Potter. You do not like James Potter.

♣PERHAPS SOMEONE HAS mistaken me for a beautiful, nude woman? I'm not sure how else to explain a link to my site on this mysterious Swedish blog. I'm listed in a grouping titled "Läckra bloggar" -- läckra, according to this site, means "delicious" -- and all the other sites linked in that category are named things like "Indie Nudes" and "Sensual Liberation Army," and contain nothing but nude women. Well, hey, I guess there's worse company to keep. Thanks, mysterious Swedish blogger. You're läckra!

♣FAIRFAX NEWSPAPERS DISCOVERED Ed O'Loughlin roaming free in the Belgian Congo and gradually domesticated him. And so starts the strangest bio I've ever seen for a professional reporter working at a major metropolitan newspaper.

♣LOOKIN' FOR LOVE in all the wrong places? Perhaps, at least for the author of this missed connection: "I just wanted to touch base with ya since it would be bad timing to say anything around the yellow tape."

♣IF YOU FOLD a piece of paper 17 times, its thickness will be taller than the average house. I'm not sure how that's possible, but someone did the math. (via Botsmack)

♣IN CASE YOU'VE missed this wonderful gem, check out Cheney being heckled on CNN.

Permalink: 04:48 PM | Comments (2)

And maybe later, we can play "hide and go seek the virgin Mary"

Given the FCC's notable conservative bent in the last few years, is it just a funny coincidence that the agency's website has a tic-tac-toe game for kids that features a guy up on a wooden cross? (And no, I'm not stretching for symbolism: The site itself challenges kids to "See if you can beat the computer by placing three crosses in a row.")

Permalink: 10:34 AM | Comments (5)

Talking heads, drowning heads

Please examine these three portrait drawings from today's Wall Street Journal. Pictures one and two are of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Hiwa Postmaster Chikashi Teramoto -- both included in a front-page story about rural Japan -- and it's worth noting the valuable detail put into their suits. We don't see much, but we see quite enough to know these are well-dressed men of importance. Now look at Roy Mullet, the guy on the right. Any detail below the face? None. In fact, it looks a whole lot like he's sticking his head out of water -- and that's pretty unfortunate considering it ran in a story headlined "Anatomy of a Flood: 3 Deadly Waves," and he's an auto mechanic who lost his home in New Orleans. Oops.

Permalink: 08:17 PM | Comments (1)

A life more or less ordinary

Toward the end of high school and beginning of college, I had the perfect job: I had to come up with plans that would never be used, and I’d get a regular paycheck for my trouble. Really, truly excellent. I got the job through a friend, because some guys he knew were starting an online greeting card company and were looking for writers. I wrote, and was then promoted to manage the writing department. Soon, though, they hired someone else for that and gave me a new job. I was to come up with ideas for special projects, which they’d one day get around to launching. I came up with a few immediately, and they said, “Great, we’ll tell you when we’re ready.”

They were never ready. In fact, the whole damn operation fell apart about a year later. But until then, as I waited, the paychecks kept coming. Oh, it was beautiful.

I can’t remember most of the ideas, but there was one that I remember being legitimately excited about. I wanted to find a couple that had met and dated exclusively online, but had never actually met in person. The company would pay to bring them together, and in return, they’d allow us to put their lives on the web: We’d interview their families and friends about what they think of online-only dating, post IM conversations the couple had, and then, of course, film their first meeting and subsequent dates, and broadcast it all (perhaps live) on the web. I figured it would kill: It had the drama and voyeurism of reality TV (years before the genre became popular, I might add), and explored what I thought was a genuinely weird and fascinating phenomenon.

But now I’ve sort of changed my mind. I just discovered that Yahoo is trying something slightly similar -- although sadly, not with online-only daters -- and it’s one of the most uninspired, boring piece of crap I’ve seen online.

Permalink: 12:38 AM | Comments (0)

Is it an ambush if you know it's coming?

Alan Dershowitz has a great essay on the Huffington Post about the late Chief Justice Rehnquist's history of blatant and repulsive anti-Semitism, and about how it's been ignored in the wake of his death. At the end, he writes about what happened when he brought this up on Fox News's Hannity & Colmes:

After making several of these points to Alan Colmes (who was supposed to be interviewing me), Sean Hannity intruded, and when he didn’t like my answers, he cut me off and terminated the interview. Only after I was off the air and could not respond did the attack against me begin, which is typical of Hannity’s bullying ambush style. He is afraid to attack when there’s someone there to respond. Since the interview, I’ve received dozens of e-mail hate messages, some of which are overtly anti-Semitic. One writer called me “a jew prick that takes it in the a** from ruth ginzburg [sic].” Another said I am “an ignorant socialist left-wing political hack …. You’re like a little Heinrich Himmler! (even the resemblance is uncanny!).” Yet another informed me that I “personally make us all lament the defeat of the Nazis!” A more restrained viewer found me to be “a disgrace to the Law, to Harvard, and to humanity.”

That's horrible, yes, and I'm sure Fox News is extremely proud to have cultivated such an ignorant viewership. But at the same time, what did Dershowitz expect? I can't understand why intelligent people like him agree to show up on shows like Hannity's. You're not going to get a fair shake, you'll most likely be ripped apart after you're off the air, and you're appearing on a show whose audience already considers you the enemy and isn't looking for an informative argument. It just doesn't make sense why they'd subject themselves to that -- and, for that matter, dignify a show such as that with their presence. People like Dershowitz should stick to one of two approaches: either go on Fox News because you get a kick out of being the bad guy, or stay off the channel, save your dignity and stop giving them more fodder. The Fox News schtick is no secret, so nobody -- Harvard professor or not -- has an excuse for not knowing what's coming.

Permalink: 12:23 AM | Comments (1)

Viva las comments!

Those of you who have been gracious enough to leave comments on this page will notice two changes today: The comment box now has a easier-to-read design, and you have to type in a randomly generated number in order to leave a message. I know that’s kind of annoying, but trust me, it’s not nearly as annoying as spending 10 minutes every day deleting all the comment spam that gets left on this site -- and that’s with a filter to supposedly block the spam. Last weekend, I got hammered with 400 spam comments, which is far more than I care to deal with. So, my intrepid webpage host has now installed this new little feature to hopefully prevent further misery.

So thanks for tolerating it, and for leaving comments. And if you aren’t a regular commenter, hey, maybe now’s a good time to start. It’s fun, it’s easy, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I obsessively check the site during the day to see if any new ones have been left.

Permalink: 08:01 PM | Comments (3)

Table scraps:

♣I'M NOT NORMALLY interested in reading blog posts about people's personal lives, but boy oh boy, check out this list of fuck-yous. Intense. (via Cityrag) Other personal posts of note: A girl keep getting calls from a mysterious woman who asks, ""How do you know my husband?", and some guy turns his computer problem into a two-act play.

♣"EVERYBODY UNIVERSALLY ON the planet likes to watch men dance and especially like men that don't dance for a living. And there's, like, a sort of buffoonlike quality to it, but it's not completely buffoon; it's actually pretty good, but there's just something kind of wrong with it. People love that. That's Trish Sie talking on NPR about her brother's band, OK Go, and the absolutely wonderful dance she choreographed for them. I can't explain it any better than she did. Go here and watch the "A Million Ways" dance. You will not be sorry.

♣TODAY'S NYT CONTAINS a good and much-needed piece about the outrage over why nobody prepared to help the poor, black communities in New Orleans, and how they're now the ones stuck in the city. But curiously, check out the bottom of the page: Between the bylined author and the writers listed there, 14 people contributed to this story -- and yet there are only ten quoted sources in the story. What the hell did all 14 of these writers do?

♣SILLY GERMAN WOMAN! This lady tried killing spiders in her home with a can of hairspray and a cigarette lighter, but ended up burning down her house in the process. This is one of the many reasons my preferred method of spider (and any other bug) disposal is with the vacuum cleaner. No chasing, no squishing. Just fwoop, gone.

♣HELLO, SKETCHIEST ROOMMATE listing ever: "Oh yeah, if u down to PLAY sometimes I'm game. It'd actually be cool to have someone here instead of going out to look for it. ROOMIE WITH BENEFITS...what more could a guy ask for...lol"

♣AND THEN, THERE'S this.

Permalink: 12:15 AM | Comments (1)

"You're lookin' fine, feline."

You know what cat lovers really love? Forget all this cutsey-wootsey yarn-chasing stuff. Cat lovers want to see cat lovin’. They want to see them roll around and do a little meow-moan. At least, that’s what the Minnesota Valley Humane Society seems to think. Get a load of its new fund-raiser: “Heat” is a “love story of two house cats” named Lily and Newman -- or, well, a movie that looks a whole lot like kitty porn marketed to humans. Check out the trailer. And that banner up above? They made that, not me. Is that a jealous suitor I see in the distance? No heat for you, kitty!

What could be the plotline? Love is in the air -- but what happens when Newman accidentally coughs up a hairball in Lily's litterbox? Does she accept him for who he is, or just go back to her squeaky toy? Actually, maybe that’s too much of a plot. These things are usually more to the point. OK: Love is in the air -- with extreme close-ups! Yeah, that’s more like it.

Permalink: 10:53 AM | Comments (1)