Golly!
Behold, the Golliwog.
There’s this mixed Brits-and-Americans forum on which I out-hang (I don’t know why; it’s a terrible place full of leftards and hippies). On inauguration day, there was an outbreak of no-YOU-guys-are-big-fat-racists, and somebody brought up the Golliwog. An indignant Brit sputtered that it’s called a “Golly” now, and anyway you can’t buy them in Britain any more.
So I had to stop and take a picture when I passed this shop window today.
I’m not entirely sure why the Golly is considered offensive. He’s got the jaunty little suit and tie and everything. I mean, nobody gets the vapors over Raggedy Ann, and she’s a ginger. And raggedy.
January 21, 2009 — 8:41 pm
Comments: 21
Anything happen in the States today?
Huh. That’s funny. Here neither.
January 20, 2009 — 8:16 pm
Comments: 26
Politics, for a moment
We interrupt the today’s regularly scheduled birdwatching and Brit baiting…did anybody else get this email from John “Frutty as a Nootcake” McCain today?
…So to continue the movement, I have decided to launch a new grassroots organization called Country First.
Today, I’m asking you as a friend and supporter to renew your commitment to our common goals by becoming a Charter Member of Country First with an online contribution.
Emphasis his. Dang. You reckon somebody borrowed his name to start a PAC, or do you think he means it? Three quarters of his party couldn’t stand him BEFORE he blew the election with squishiness and sanctimony.
Together, we can make government more responsive to today’s problems and more answerable to the people.
Yes, let’s wad up our caps in our grubby fists and beg government, “please, Sir…can we have some more?” Or, you know, government could just fuck off out of the way and let us deal with “today’s problems” our own damn selves.
And so begins the Political Battle of Twenty Twelve, between those who believe conservative principles are not beliefs but observations as immutable as the laws of physics, and the squish RINO party hacks who don’t stand for much beyond endless compromise and cocktail parties.
And if that ain’t enough to kink your drawers, hey guess what? Madame Tussauds is letting Americans in for free on Inauguration Day to see the pretty waxwork we just elected POTUS. If you thought the American Obamatrons were cultish, you would not BELIEVE the ass-licking he’s getting over here.
I understand the American president has a big footprint, but the amount of attention the BBC pays US politics (in general) and Obama (in particular) is…Princess Di-like in its extreme creepitude.
January 7, 2009 — 8:16 pm
Comments: 29
Step away. From the news. NOW.
Absolutely no analysis you read or hear in the immediate aftermath of this election will be accurate. Except this one, of course. Duh.
I live in the most reliably blue state in the country. All my friends are lefties (art school! What a great idea!). I’ve been in this place many times. It is not a nice place, but every political junkie gets a turn in the box now and then.
We ran a dreadful candidate with a dreadful campaign at a dreadful time and we got good and beaten. But we didn’t get drubbed. And that is very, very interesting. We’ll think about that. Later.
But now is the Time of the Gloating , and you really don’t need a dose of that. So just…don’t do it to yourself. Don’t go there. Nothing to be gained. Stay off the news sites. Have you seen how much great radio is being streamed these days? How many books available on Project Gutenberg have you always meant to read? How about now?
A jet fuel truck rolled over on I-95 this morning, and my boss won’t be in for hours. There’s always something good, if you aren’t the guy driving the truck.
November 6, 2008 — 8:47 am
Comments: 82
Because not everyone has the gift of plumb…
Yeah, it’s not nearly as euphonious as the original. But I felt left out. Finally, populist sloganeering for artards and gay guys!
Happy Friday, everyone! Feel free to continue talking about the economy or fragging zombie vampire kittehs, or whatever we were talking about…
October 24, 2008 — 5:04 pm
Comments: 46
Junk!
Ohhhhhh. Ohhhhhh, yeah. That’s the schadenfreude. The New York Times is bleeding so hard, Standard & Poor cut them down to junk bond status yesterday. (You can play with the graphs yourself here. Slu was on this one, too).
I’ve been savoring this situation since I read this NewsBusters post from P.J. Gladnick a few weeks ago. It’s sweeter than it looks. It’s sweeter than Scott Tenorman‘s tears. Much as we’d all like to think the Times is dying due to egregious liberal bias, that’s only a part of the dynamic. Behold — Clusterfuck, the Bullet List:
■The Ochs/Sulzberger family is in its fifth generation. Twenty-seven people hold the controlling interest and live off the proceeds of the Times.
■’Pinch’ Sulzberger, editor and heir, has made many grievously bad business decisions. Good old-fashioned bad business decisions, like real estate and investments. This is a horrible time for print media anyway, so his incompetence is just a big fat cherry on top of the shit sundae.
■To keep the family happy, Sulzberger has been raising the dividend paid to family members even as profits have slid.
■BAM. Junk bonds. Now he’s sinking in debt and he can’t raise money. But he can’t lower the dividend or all hell will break loose.
Why is this so very, very tasty? Because the Ochs/Sulzberger family has a collective terminal case of WeAreSoVeryFuckingImportant-itis and it’s totally funded by the Times.
“Sulzberger has said that his clan starts going to family meetings when they’re 10 years old and by 15 they understand their roles as caretakers of the New York Times. There’s also a one-day orientation session for kids turning 18 or 21—or people marrying into the family—to learn about the legacy of the Ochs-Sulzbergers.”
[…]
“Younger members of the family are also inculcated in the beliefs of the Sulzbergers on private annual retreats to places like Hawaii. One Timesman compares the indoctrination to Skull and Bones, but it seems more the stuff of summer camp. They sing songs together like “We Are Family” and keep abreast of each other’s lives through a newsletter called The Lookout.”
What have these golden people done with their subsidized lives? Zoo keeping. Novel writing. Protecting lighthouses and the rights of native Americans. Folk music. Folk music.
Dave Golden couldn’t stay at the paper mill forever. It was too tied to the family business, too laden with expectations. So he set off to find himself “in the tango halls of Argentina, on the snow-covered Berkshire border of Vermont and Massachusetts, in the halls of Oxford, in the jungles of Guatemala and even in Asia on a Fulbright,” according to his Website. In the Berkshires, he studied mountain music, and in 2004, the 26-year-old released a well-received folk record, with songs drawing from life experiences, as in “All I Never Wanted”: “I coulda been a CEO, they told me / If I could just stop holdin’ on to this ol’ dream.”
Oh. OH. My violence gland is throbbing like a buffalo-skin tom-tom from a native drum circle of the Great Plains. I suppose it’s too much to hope that individual branches of the family have been so incompetent that they will be left with nothing when the Times goes under. I doubt any of them will have to get a real job or anything. They’ll probably even walk away with a tidy sum after the fire sale.
But it’s going to hurt. And on that happy day, I want you to stop, think of this grinning douchenozzle with his frayed straw hat and his ol’ dream and share a warm schadenfreudean virtual hug with me. Sometimes, it is good to be a weasel.
— 10:09 am
Comments: 96
Shut up with the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ scary monsters already
You know, I don’t like it when our side talks shit any more than when the other side does it. The ‘Fairness Doctrine’ is a busted flush, and everybody playing Scary Monsters with it should just shut up already.
You want the whole history of the Fairness Doctrine, go to Wikipedia. The Cliff’s Notes version: the Fairness Doctrine was a law that forced broadcasters to air both sides of any controversial issue. The effect was, broadcasters wouldn’t go anywhere near controversial issues. Reagan, in a series of maneuvers and vetoes, killed the Fairness Doctrine and the result (so the story goes) was Rush Limbaugh. Bring it back (so the other, bullshit story goes) and Rush Limbaugh goes away again.
The was law was ruled not to violate the First Amendment because it only applied to broadcast media. See, there are only so many broadcast frequencies, so it seemed okay to exercise a little government control over what they could say.
Pff! Broadcast media! Remember them? The rabbit ear dealie on the back of the tv with the aluminum foil enhancement? The coathanger jammed in where your car aerial ought to be? Broadcast TV and radio only. Oh, and teletext (ZOMG, they’re trying to take away our beloved teletext!)
Cable, satellite and the Internet? Untouchable.
Okay, okay…most of us still rely on broadcast media at least a little — particularly radio in the car. So let’s call the new Fairness Doctrine the Finally Making Satellite Radio An Imporant Accessory Doctrine. Or the More Political Podcasts Available on iTunes Law.
The last guy on earth this would affect is Rush Limbaugh, who signed a contract for a sum sufficient to bail out Fannie Mae. Broadcasters’ll damn sure find a way to protect their investment and keep that bad boy on the air, you betcha. The small fry will just have to blaze a path to new media a little faster.
What the hell? Go for it!
October 21, 2008 — 9:36 am
Comments: 111
Can one of you fiscal sooper geniuses explain something to me, please?
Twenty six years ago, before I was a corporate little Eichmann, I worked part time, minimum-wage-type jobs while I tried to establish myself as a freelance illustrator. My total income, including illustration work, was under $8,000 each of those years (yeah, wow, did I suck, or what?).
I got a little money back at tax time, but certainly not everything that had been withheld. In other words, I paid income taxes. Teeny, tiny taxes in proportion to my teeny, tiny income, but it still hurt.
So, ummm…what gives? Does almost half the population really not pay taxes at all now? Or are they counting benefits against taxes and calling it a wash? Or has everything changed since I were a lass?
Money make weasel doesn’t understand good.
October 20, 2008 — 4:40 pm
Comments: 38
Ya, you betcha!
In the Summer before the 2004 presidential election, Jon Stewart interviewed John Kerry and asked him ”Is it true that every time I use ketchup your wife gets a nickel?” Do you remember this? Remember his answer?
“Would that it were, would that it were” Kerry intoned, squeezing the four syllables out his nose in a lugubrious patrician drawl. Any normal person would have chirped, “I wish!” but no…John Kerry had to go all Thurston Howell III up in there.
I still have a bug up my ass about this. Christopher Buckley. Heather McDonald. Peggy Noonan. These avowed conservatives have embraced Obama and/or rejected Palin simply because he’s a “would that it were” kind of guy and she’s a definite “I wish!” kind of gal.
And the problem with that is that “would that it were” is stupid. It isn’t clever. It’s not le mot just. It conveys the exact same sentiment as “I wish!” but not as crisply. It’s the kind of empty gasbaggery that regularly leaks out of a second-rate intellect that has been dragged through a first-class education.
It’s dumb. And YOU’RE dumb if you get so hung up on accent you miss the underlying ideas.
Every day of the week, chatty Joe Biden utters a thing so shockingly stupid it makes milk come out of Dan Quayle’s nose. Barack Obama says “pie” fifteen times in 104 seconds and it’s like he just yanked Excalibur out of a rock. The governor of Alaska says “doggone it” and she’s a moron. The verdict of dimwits.
You know what I really hate about our elites? YOU GUYS ARE NOT ELITE. You’re ruthlessly average. You’re second-raters who went to good schools, and you know it. You’re desperately insecure about your gifts and social position or you wouldn’t use big words when little ones suffice or yowl like scalded cats when a lady with a Western twang gets a seat at the head of your table.
Feh. I went to prep school too, my fellow assholes. Alma mater is no guarantor of smarts or ability. Or success.
Would that it were, would that it were.
October 17, 2008 — 10:30 am
Comments: 75
Math isn’t exactly my strong suit, but…
Let’s say you owned a single McDonald’s franchise open 360 days a year (round number make Weasel happy)…that that would imply a gross daily intake of under $700. Ridiculous! If you ran a shift of five people for eighteen hours at seven bucks an hour, that’s $630 right there, just in wages. Plus materials, utilities, rent, advertising…
So what the fuckity fuck are they talking about?
October 16, 2008 — 12:24 pm
Comments: 43