Tuesday, December 23, 2003

BUSH MATH--41, 43, 44

We at MRJEFF3000 were pointed toward this September 2003 US News webpage by an Atrios comment. Look halfway down for the money paragraph.
His dad, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, calls him "son." His friends call him "P." But President Bush, America's 43rd, and his dad, the 41st president, call George P. Bush something else: "44." Insiders say it's just for fun but also an acceptance that the most political of former President George H.W. Bush's grandkids is itching for a public career, including a distant shot at the White House.

Merry Christmas, y'all.

Monday, December 22, 2003

Long story; short pier.: Stella.

Every so often I like to revisit the lies surrounding the case of Stella Liebeck, just to see how high I can make my blood pressure go. Long story: short pier has a pretty darn complete recap of the facts.

(We'll probably return to this subject in a few months.)

Sunday, December 21, 2003

FARK.com: Comments Thingee (765221)

Quote of the Day (from a Fark thread):

2003-12-21 09:04:02 PM tinrobot

You'd think that at least ONE of these candidates would consider using Clinton's "centrist" tactics.

Yeah, like Bush has been a 'centrist' since he was selected.

Chimpy's driven his administration so far to the right, he's crossed the bike lane and is now killing pedestrians.
emphasis & color added, natch

Listen to this!

Here's a little rundown of the online presence of the stuff MRJEFF is listening to these days:

Saturday, December 20, 2003

"The late Strom Thurmond, who once tried to boycott a washing machine because it let in colored laundry, was revealed as a fraud this week by a child of his who would have, well, stood out in the Thurmond family portrait."

Wednesday, December 17, 2003

New York Post Online Edition: seven

Joy! Miramax Press will publish in 2005 Spy: The Funny Years! (I've already started saving my pennies.)

Friday, December 12, 2003

Your tax dollars at work:
To amend section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, to provide for the punishment of certain profane broadcasts, and for other purposes. (Introduced in House)

HR 3687 IH

108th CONGRESS

1st Session

H. R. 3687

To amend section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, to provide for the punishment of certain profane broadcasts, and for other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES


December 8, 2003

Mr. OSE (for himself and Mr. SMITH of Texas) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

------------------------------------------------------------------------

A BILL

To amend section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, to provide for the punishment of certain profane broadcasts, and for other purposes.


Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, is amended--



(1) by inserting `(a)' before `Whoever'; and



(2) by adding at the end the following:


`(b) As used in this section, the term `profane', used with respect to language, includes the words `shit', `piss', `fuck', `cunt', `asshole', and the phrases `cock sucker', `mother fucker', and `ass hole', compound use (including hyphenated compounds) of such words and phrases with each other or with other words or phrases, and other grammatical forms of such words and phrases (including verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms).'.
(via Atrios)

Of course, as Adam Felber has pointed out, a sufficiently clever writer can work within the system.

Bob's Dinosaurs Attack! HomePage

Dinosaurs Attack!

Thursday, December 11, 2003

Results...

This is what they say. It's almost true.
found via Sarah, of whom I learned via Matt.

avantegarde
You're Avante Garde Indie. You listen to abstract
music like free-jazz and Krautrock. You drink
too much coffee and you scare the fuck out of
the rest of us. We're afraid to call you
pretentious because we know that we all just
don't get it. There are few of you out there,
and most of you will probably die soon.


You Know Yer Indie. Let's Sub-Categorize.
brought to you by Quizilla

Tuesday, December 09, 2003

Spirograph












Created by Anu
Garg.


From wordsmith.org, via linkfilter.

Shave the Moon!

At last it can be told: the true story of the Apollo missions.

Shave the Moon!

Monday, December 08, 2003

Sunday, December 07, 2003

I finally ate the Skittles I bought at O'Hare on Monday.

Best 79¢ I ever spent.

Saturday, December 06, 2003

Plastic: But We've Got A Great Personality

File this away for later (from a recent Plastic.com thread):

"Yeah, it's sad when you're not even cool on the internet."

Well, fuck me.

"I mean, when I voted for the war, I voted for what I thought was best for the country. Did I expect Howard Dean to go off to the left and say, 'I'm against everything'? Sure. Did I expect George Bush to fuck it up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did."

- Senator John Kerry, in this week's Rolling Stone.

Thursday, December 04, 2003

Oh, here it is: the Terich brothers' website, treblezine.com.

News from the East!

News arrives from longtime friend and associate of the MRJEFF3000 organization Dan Renkin. We reproduce his correspondence here:
If your circle of friends & family includes younger children--
--or if you consider yourself to still BE a younger child!--

Come see Dan Renkin dance Drosselmeyer for New York Theatre Ballet!

THE NUTCRACKER at Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th Street
Performances at 11:00 am, 1:00 pm, 3:30 pm
Saturday, Dec. 13th & 20th
Sunday, Dec. 14th & 21st

Choreographer: Keith Michael
Music: Peter Tchaikovsky
Costumes: Sylvia Taalsohn Nolan
Sets: Gilllian Bradshaw-Smith

------------------------------------------------------------------------
New York Theatre Ballet's one-hour production of The Nutcracker is
designed especially for children and families. It is based on lithographs from
the English Toy Theatre or "Juvenile Drama" of the early 19th Century.

Hundreds of operas and plays were at that time produced in the form of
paper cut-out books, complete with sets, properties, characters, and costume
changes. Offered in either "penny plain" (black and white line drawings) or
"two-pence coloured" (elegant multi-colored lithographs), a child's toy
theatre helped many an afternoon in the nursery pass with industry and
imagination.

NYTB's Nutcracker premiered at the Riverside Dance Festival in New York
City in 1984 and has since been presented to hundreds of thousands of people
in the New York City region and across the United States.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Dan Renkin's benevolent Drosselmeyer and Elena Zahlmann's Clara were
the standouts...the NYTB "Nutcracker" offers a warm and inviting community
feeling and generous spirit..."
--The Dance Insider

"A perfect welcome to the enchanted worlds of The Nutcracker and the
ballet..."
-- New York Newsday

"Why The Nutcracker? There's joy in the Nutcracker. Ask any of the
4,000 people who packed New York's Winter Garden, to watch a condensed
version performed by New York Theatre Ballet. In the first row a two-year-old
sat on her mother's lap, transfixed. She looked around only once, when the
snow scene began, in the most wonderful moment of the Nutcracker season."
-- Newsweek

" ...the production is charming. The children in the audience--and they
were packed to the rafters--adored the ballet."
-- Village Voice
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Information & Box Office:
212-355-6160

Ticketmaster: 212-307-4100
[From Ticketmaster, specify the one-hour
Nutcracker at Gould Hall of the French Institute]

--

Visit Dan Online!
http://www.danrenkin.com

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

I CAN STILL TASTE IT.

Here is the most important lesson I learned on my recent excursion to the Dutch-settled farmlands of western Michigan: If someone offers you an innocent-seeming little button of Dutch licorice, even if that someone is your own father, do not accept. And if you do take it, just to be polite, FOR GOD'S SAKE DO NOT PUT IT IN YOUR MOUTH.

The Dutch, you see, do very strange things to licorice. They have one brand in particular, Double Zout (DZ). Which, of course, means "double salt".

Now, I knew that the Dutch made salty licorice. I have dim memories of elderly acquaintances with thick accents tricking me into eating some of the stuff. (They lied to me - they called it candy.) But that was well over twenty years ago. How bad could it really be, I thought? Besides, we were in Holland, at a frickin' wooden shoe factory. I was swept up in the moment. I was weak.

So I slipped this little black button into my mouth. Which, as far as I can tell from the taste, contained ALL THE SALT IN THE WORLD. I could feel my entire face puckering as it had never puckered before, into a tiny point where my mouth used to be. I tried to say "Wow, that's strong," but I think a muted wuh! was all that came out.

And it was a hard little bugger, too, like a really stiff eraser. Chewing it was out of the question. All I could do was move it around in my mouth, wincing every time it touched my tongue. (I didn't want to just leave it between cheek and gum, because I was afraid that if the DZ sat in any one place for very long it would start eating a hole in my flesh.) Eventually I found an opportune place to spit it out.

Bad-candy.com has written about Double Zout, but they seem to have gotten one fact wrong. The salt in DZ is not, in fact, table salt (sodium chloride). It is, if I am not mistaken, instead the rather nastier tasting aluminum chloride.

I can still taste it. I think I always will.

Monday, December 01, 2003

Dec.

Back from Thanksgiving in Western Michigan. Family's good, and all, but really - limits must be set.