Author: admin

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Recession… over?

Oh, my God. The recession is over. Could this be a typo? I mean, there’s, well… this recession going on. Who is smoking what when? Ah, I give up.

Back from the dead: WebVan… I mean, Home Grocer.

Oh, cool! 80s commercials.

In other news, I found a place to live in Berkeley: the second floor of a hacienda-like structure a few blocks from the North Berkeley BART stop. That, and my apartment has been rented. Hooah.

Buy my friend Mary’s car!
It’s quite lovely.

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy was perhaps the most fun I’ve had watching television in a long time. Watch it next Tuesday at 10pm PST. That, and BANZAI!

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Point Break LIVE!

With Hillary Clinton selling her millionth copy of “Living History“, Tucker Carlson owed up respectfully to his bet to eat his shoe. The shoe was delivered by Clinton herself on Wednesday’s episode of Crossfire, in the form of a shoe-shaped cake.

You’ve seen the movie, now see POINT BREAK… LIVE!

Point Break LIVE!

Why the question mark? “There will be a different person playing the Keanu Reeves/Johnny Utah character each night. That’s right, 8 different Keanus! Man or woman can win, but each night it’s gonna be somebody else! The contestants will be selected at the Capitol Hill Block Party on Saturday the 12th.”

Worldcom was fined $750 million by the SEC. Bernie Ebbers remains uncharged.

Stephen Hawking says the dance moves of Tiger, a stripper, were wonderful.

Clark Humphrey’s MiscMedia has a great photo of an accessory for the Hummer.

Inspired by Darpa’s Total (now Terrorist) Information Awareness project, someone has created an open-source Government Information Awareness program.

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BANZAI!

Oh. My. God. The Fox network is getting BANZAI. When you click on the site, please avert your eyes at first, as the color scheme is quite wacky.

I’m very much in favor of New York’s recent ban of soft drinks and sweets in the elementary and junior-high schools, especially with our nation’s obesity epidemic. Sure, kids can get sweets really easily anyway, but the road to early-onset diabetes shouldn’t be a federally-mandated program. Now, Kraft Foods, currently under a lawsuit claiming Oreo’s contain a life-threatening ingredient, is limiting the size of its snack foods to do its part towards fighting the obesity epidemic in the United States. Still, avoiding this prepackaged crap altogether does wonders for human health.

The American Traveler International Apology T-shirt makes a great gift for the activist in the family.

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Powerhouse Prostate Tour

I got to walk through a giant colon in San Francisco this weekend!

“Well aware I am that the colorectal cancer cause is noble and good and hence the Colossal Colon Tour was decent and right, sort of, but also not, it’s also just a little weird, as it was, you know, a giant crawl-thru colon, and you don’t exactly see The Voluminous Vagina Tour or the Stupendous Skin Cancer Tour or the Bulbous Breast Tour or the Powerhouse Prostate Tour featuring a giant bulb-like fortress thing kids can romp around in a like one of those inflatable toy castles. But hey, maybe you should.”
Mark Morford, on the giant colon, in his SF Gate “Morning Fix” column

Ralph Nader made an appearance on CNN’s Crossfire today, and James Carville was probably the angriest I’ve every seen him with a guest, insisting that Ralph Nader stole the election from Gore. While that assumption is an easy way out, maybe it has more to do with the way the Florida election was mishandled (see Unprecendented: The 2002 Presidential Election). Even Pat Buchanan admitted that some primarily Jewish counties most likely didn’t vote for him.

Butterfly ballot

The Stranger is reporting this week that Sorry Charlie’s, one of Seattle’s endangered piano bars, might be saved from an outside investor.

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1984/1895

Today Democracy Now celebrated the 100th birthday of George Orwell by broadcasting a reading of the book from a Pacifica Radio archive recorded 25 years ago, and contrasted that with video and audio of Gulf War 2 footage. It’s called The Two Georges, Orwell and Bush: A Dramatic Reading of George Orwell’s Classic Work 1984 Interspersed With Recent News Clips From President Bush and Others.

“Make sure your miniature golf course has a distinctive appearance. My close personal friend Salvador Dali put his unique stamp on the Heritages course. The melting clock on the fifth hole is unforgettable. And I’m particularly proud of Guernica – the tenth hole – and Salvador’s personal tribute to Pablo Picasso. Nicklaus flipped for it.”
Bud E. Luv, on creative tax shelters, from his book “You Oughta Be Me”

Apparently this 8th grade exam is for teachers, not students – but it’s from 1895.

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On the Fremont Parade, fashion and nudity

The world’s most frightening SUV? Probably.

“There’s big money in fashion, for both men and women — even though the best most of us can do with clothes is hide how funny we look naked.”
60 Minutes’ Andy Rooney on fashion

There were more nude bicyclists in this year’s Fremont Parade than I’ve ever remembered. I’ll have another one-minute movie up tomorrow about it.

Must… keep… credit cards… at… bay.

Howard Dean formally announced his candidacy yesterday. I missed the event in Seattle, but the excitement around his campaign reminds me of the grassroots Nader support for the 2000 election. Kucinich has a similar groundswell. He’s not as liberal as conservatives make him out to be, which leads me to believe a Dean-Kerry or Kerry-Dean ticket may be a very realistic option.

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Democratic Presidential debates and The Human Scab™

Today the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition hosted eight of the nine Democratic Presidential candidates in a forum hosted on C-SPAN today. I loved Howard Dean’s straight-talk, Dennis Kucinich’s fiery speech (which will probably make him unelectable) giving me chills, and John Kerry’s record. My prediction is the primary will likely result in a Kerry-Dean outcome. Bob Graham was a no-show, and Dick Gephardt and Joe Lieberman put me to sleep. Al Sharpton was powerful and hilarious at times, in sharp contrast to the subdued Carol Moseley Braun. Some notable quotes:

“We have too many elephants running around in donkey jackets.”
Al Sharpton on the Democratic Party

“Homelessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Joblessness is a weapon of mass destruction.”
Dennis Kucinich on the Bush administration

I covered Gephardt and other candidates for my high school newspaper in 1987.

Howard Dean (who announces his formal candidacy tomorrow at 10am) appeared on Meet the Press this morning, and endured an hour of tough questions posed by Tim Russert. He handled Tim rather well, and gave a decent, honest reply to his son’s recent trouble with the law involving the theft of alcohol from a country club, noting “he’s more than grounded — he has to face our government’s judicial system”.

Today while walking on Broadway, I saw the person referred to as “The Human Scab” in The Stranger. I came quite close to losing my lunch, and it’s going to take a while to remove that image from my mind. He needs serious medical attention.

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Boeing, Store Wars, The Messengers

On Thursday, Northwest Cable News had a one-hour special on Boeing, its new 7E7 plane, and the likelihood that the airline company will have the plane built somewhere other than Seattle. Governor Locke plans to reward Boeing’s behavior and its frequent layoffs with a $3.2 billion tax break over 20 years.

“It’s like Elvis… there’s [been] a lot of sightings all over the place.”
King Abdullah of Jordan on Saddam Hussein’s whereabouts

Get PBS to run Store Wars in your town. It’s about a West Virginia town that fights an incoming WalMart plan.

Nightline had a special called The Messengers, about a preaching competition held at the infamous Bob Jones University. A compelling story, but a bit creepy, as most of the contestants, around 18 or 19, looked very 1950s in appearance.

Bush waters down an EPA report, watering down references to global warming.

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Giant colon, Bullfighter, God

Yay! A giant colon is coming to Seattle! Keep the weekend of July 8th free — after the July 4th barbecues, come see what’s probably going on in your inner tubes. I’m much more excited about this than I should be, but then, I’m easily amused.

Giant colon

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu has created Bullfighter, a software program that converts awful corporate buzzwords into plain English. The tagline for Bullfighter is ‘Stripping the Bull Out of Business’. After 12 years in the corporate arena (I shouldn’t even say the word ‘arena’ — I mean, honestly, it provides no ‘value-added expectations’), it’s about time companies wrote in plain English. Of course, perhaps the wordiness was just a ploy to mask a lack of a business plan?

God has an online journal!