First the serious stuff: internet blackout tomorrow to protest SOPA. Let's see if I'm able to figure out how to get House of Dioxin to go dark for the day. I'd say it's even money that I can't. I would also note that (no surprise), claims by congressional clown car commander Eric "respect my authoriteh" Cantor to the contrary, whichever GOP dumbass is pushing SOPA is planning to continue trying to move the bill forward. Like I've said before, these clowns were elected because they don't take government seriously. So why should we expect them to listen to their so-called leaders? They don't know what they're talking about. And seem to think there's something wrong with you if you DO know what you're talking about. Blinkered pig-ignorance. It's not a bug, it's a feature. Gingrich 2012!
Enough of that.
Here's a bit o' fun: alternate reality movie posters. I am legitimately in awe. I think my favorite is Fritz Lang's Inception.

Continuing with the Big Xmas theme, here for yr viewing pleasure is the Godzilla Christmas Tree. Outstanding!
Y'know, I don't expect great stores o' wisdom out of reality TV but tonight's Work of Art contained possibly the most egregiously stupid thing I've ever heard on a competitive reality. Quite possibly the stupidest thing I've ever heard anyone say about art. Regular judge Max ("the wrong way, only faster") Power was critiquing one of the pieces and he said that the piece was off-putting at first and that you had to look closely to appreciate its quality. Or something like that (I forgot to write down the exact quote). Now I suppose, in defense of Max (okay, actually Bill Powers, some NYC gallery owning guy), that remark might have been stripped of so much of its context that even though it sounded like a criticism, it actually wasn't and it's actually the producers of the show who are vapid and superficial and not him. Otherwise, it sounds like he's saying it's a problem if you have to think about a piece and look at it closely before you can appreciate it. Dammit, these instant mashed potatoes aren't instant enough. I want to have finished tasting them before I've even opened the box.

Okay, okay, one last Pie Holiday(tm) post. BTW, if y'all get the Cooking Channel keep an eye out and catch For the Love of Pie which includes a segment on Durham's own Scratch Bakery. We took two of their pies up with us for the holiday -- the shaker lemon and chestnut cream pies. Both so good.
Two things from our drive up on Thursday AM. We were on 301 in Maryland and kept passing these big box stores with cars in their parking lots. I wasn't, I'll admit, paying much attention to what stores were open when. I knew (cos a friend of a friend works there) that Target was opening at mignight and I'd seen an ad online that said Toys R Us was opening at 9pm on Thanksgiving. Actually, the week had been so hectic that I wasn't 100% sure if I'd seen an ad or had a dream about stores opening at 9. My point, tho, is that I hadn't been paying attention cos I wasn't planning to shop. Hell, I don't even own any pepper spray. So it wasn't until much later that I realized that the stores with cars in the parking lots at 10am on Thanksgiving morning were not open for business. Those people were there waiting for the stores to open. In 11 or more hours.
The other thing we learned is that there's not too many food options when you're on the road on Thanksgiving morning. Not sure how we've dealt with this in previous years. Brought food with us, probably. But this year we didn't and around the time we started getting hungry we also started to realize that the places we'd been hoping to stop (Panera, Wendy's) were all very closed. It was starting to look like a McDonald's morning but we were saved by the fast food shoppe previously known as the Slowest Bojangles in the World. It was on a previous trip along 301 when we stopped there. And waited and waited and waited. Until we finally walked out without ordering and went on in search of someplace else to eat. But this time they were open and the line wasn't long and (extra bonus) they hadn't even put up any Xmas decorations yet. It was still scarecrows and autumn leaves. Altho they were playing Christmas music (but it was quiet enough that we didn't even notice until we were almost ready to go). So, kudos and huzzah to you, Life-Saving Bojangles!

Blergh! Way too much shit going on this week that just (in the words of Abe Simpson) angries up the blood. I'm sure you can figure it out. Or make your own guesses based on whatever's angrying up your blood this week. But, yeah, I don't really wanna get into that. Instead, let me get my rant on about something small and (mostly) harmless that still drives me to hate the world and all the people in it. Which is:
So I'm driving to work this morning and I stop to get a coffee and all the buildings in the shopping center are decorated outside with honking big Xmas wreaths. Just... no. It's frakkin' ELECTION DAY, dammit. It is not the holiday season. Fucking hell, a month from now I'll just barely consider it the holiday season. I thought I was completely numb to ridiculous Xmas creep. Walking into the Halloween section at a store and finding it's morphing into the Xmas section (in the middle of October) doesn't faze me at all. But the wreaths hanging on November 10 kinda set me off.
As you might have noticed.

All last week I kept seeing these stories about how Herman Cain was indestructible, bullet-proof and etc. About how all the polls showed that primary voters simply didn't care about the harassment. And I kept reading them for any sense of what seemed obvious to me -- that the story was moving so fast and that what was known and/or alleged was changing enough on a daily basis that polls were basically useless. When the situation is fluid there's just no way that the poll numbers you read on Thursday are likely to reflect what people are thinking on that Thursday. They're a snapshot of what people were thinking last Thursday (or however long it took them to compile and release). Some of it, I think, was probably driven by wishful thinking from people on the left who are nigh onto salivating at the thought of facing Cain in the general election. But way too much of it just read as shallow, facile, no-analysis-added repeating of whatever numbers showed up on the screen in front of them. Stenography. Ron Burgundy. The sort of drivel that passes for journalism in way too many places these days. Today, surprise surprise, there's polling for deeper into the scandal and suddenly there doesn't seem to be quite so much enthusiasm for the Hermanator. And that was before his terrible, no good, very bad day.

Got up this morning and read this cuts-like-a-razorblade takedown of David Brooks. Charlie Pierce, steppin! Sure, sure, taking shots at Brooksian idiocy has a certain fish in barrel quality but Pierce is taking some crack shots there. I didn't think about it during the day but if you'd asked me, I'm sure I'd have agreed that that was the stupidest thing Brooks would say this week. But I get home to find that, hell no, it is in fact not the stupidest thing David Brooks said this week. I probably shouldn't get ahead of myself and declare this the winner. If the past few years have taught me anything it's that there's always another sub-level of stupid to sink down to.

It's not hugely aspirational, I know, but a useful thing to remember as one moves thru life is: don't be "that guy." This is also not original with me but, again, it's a good baseline approach. At least in terms of what not to do. The first time I can remember articulating this to myself was when I was in a Home Depot and could hear some guy just going off on whoever was unlucky enough to be standing at the customer service desk. I can't even remember what he was so worked up about. Which is sorta the point. There are very few things in this world that are worth getting that worked up about and pretty much none of them are a Home Depot most likely.
Anyway, had another encounter with "that guy" today (obviously not the same "that guy" as this iteration was in another state). Waiting on line at Starbucks. First the guy in front of me asks if the cup they're about to hand him is decaf. Which he clearly Does Not Want and he asks the question in a tone that suggests he thinks the S-bucks employees are either blithering idiots or engaged in a high-level conspiracy to fuck up his day. (Aside: since the coffee carafes are in plain sight and labeled, if he was paying any attention at all, he'd know whether the coffee they were giving him was what he ordered or not) Then he asks them to give him a plastic cup with ice. When tell him that, no, they will not give him a cup of ice but they will sell him one for a dollar. He insists that he's been to hundreds of Starbucks and they ALL do this. Bullshit, I'm sure. And even if true, so what as the employee has told him their understanding of the policy of the store he's actually in at that moment. Trying to bully them with your supposedly superior knowledge of company procedures re: cups is probably not gonna work. If it's really that important to you, ask for a manager. Oh, and get the hell out of the line so the rest of us can order. Mostly though, just pay the dollar and STFU. That plastic cup probably has a higher ingredient cost to the store than the coffee you want to put in it. Hey, this just occurred to me but is iced coffee more expensive than brewed hot coffee at S-bucks? If so, "that guy" is also a cheap bastard.

I suppose this isn't really news -- certainly not in politics, where people have been ranting for years about how the press seems to have turned into an army of stenographers. But I've run into it a couple of times recently in sports land. I don't remember all the specific examples (I'm pretty sure one of them was the stuff in Boston about the Red Sox and Terry Francona but there were some other stories as well) but I do know that most of the disappointing stenographic stuff I was hearing was coming from the Worldwide Leader (tm). It's not like I expect a huge amount of critical thinking or meta-analysis from ESPN. But a little bit o' thinking might be nice. Some of the time at least. As opposed to just (essentially) reading the press release and believing everything it says. I guess that's why there's sites like Deadspin now.
Very unrelated but here's some more interesting thoughts on faster-than-light neutrinos from Uncertain Principles. I gotta love any blog post that contains the sentence "Huzzah, Einstein!"
Even more unrelated to both of the previous, but it's one of the more hilarious #OWS-related things I've seen. FTR, the single most hilarious thing related to #OWS that I've seen is that some super-genius on the right has decided that the twitter hashtag (apparently somewhat en vogue as a symbol among #OWS types) is actually a fascist symbol.
I'll let you let that sink in.
Hilarity ensues and/or we're all doomed.
Either way, here's some more hilarity: comic book rich guys stand up for what they believe in.

Final hurricane wrap-up: seems like most everyone I know who was in the path made it thru relatively unscathed. Which says nothing about the overall destructiveness of Irene, just about the subset of "people I know." Of course, that's obvious to you or anyone with a fucking clue. Which is to say it's no surprise to hear media asshats like Howie Kurtz bloviating on about how the hurricane was "over-hyped" or some such nonsense. In a just world, people who lost their homes would descend on Kurtz and beat him senseless (okay, more senseless).
As even a cursory glance thru the archives of this blog would demonstrate, I'm way more interested in futbol than in football. But I do love a righteous rant and Matt Taibbi really sinks his teeth into this one on college football's latest scandal. The sanctimonious gnashing of teeth that comes standard with any comment on college football rule violations is, like he says, anywhere from ridiculous to nauseating.
And, no, I have no idea how to fix things. I've heard persuasive arguments against schools paying players: is there a legitimate way to separate revenue-generating from non-revenue-generating sports?; are there Title IX concerns?; some schools clearly have plenty o' money but many others do not. And there are clearly problems with allowing payers to earn income from sources other than the schools. That's mostly an option for the top-tier of star players which still leaves a lot of uncompensated labor.
But the way most sports media types react to these stories is ridiculous. Taibbi's exactly right that way too much of the reaction is as if a crime was being committed. Getting paid to play football is the goal of probably every single football player ever in the history of football (note: I don't have any research to back this up). Yes, there are NCAA rules against this but those rules are arbitrary and, frankly, stupid.

So if you're keeping score at home, John Galliano, Mike Huckabee, Charlie Sheen and (possibly) Julian Assange are apparently all batshit insane. For all they say about the depraved values of Hollywood or the fashion world, I note that it's Galliano and (possibly) Sheen who have lost their jobs for running their mouths about the insane evil bullshit they believe. Last time I checked, upstanding Xian dude Mike Huckabee is still drawing a paycheck from Fox So-Called News. But of course they pay good money to keep Glenn Beck on the air so clearly they have no problem w/ batshit insane people. Hey, maybe they can get Galliano to design them some spiffy new outfits. He's free. And, hey, it worked for Hugo Boss.
To be fair to Assange, there's only been an accusation that he claimed there was a Jewish conspiracy to destroy Wikileaks. The inevitable tape has not surfaced yet. Perhaps it won't. Perhaps he didn't say that and the reports are wrong or distorted. But here's what I wonder. In this time of virtually ubiquitous cameras and recorders, why do people insist on getting out in front with denials when they clearly don't know. I can understand Patricia Field wanting to stand up for a friend. Altho at a certain point I think you gotta invoke the TMBG rule. But I wonder about all the fashion press that started piping up to defend Galliano, esp. the ones claiming that there were witnesses who said nothing happened. Or at least nothing like what the charges claimed. Were the witnesses lying. Or were the papers and/or reporters just making up witnesses that didn't exist. Either way, given the frequency with which film or tape shows up to either prove or corroborate stories these days, it seems like it would make sense to wait a day or two before beginning the ringing defense of whatever miscreant du jour you're dealing with.