Figure Skating

The reason for watching figure skating has always escaped me.

You might call it the gymnastics of the Winter Games: waifish girls contorting their underdeveloped, malnourished, twelve-year-old bodies into moves as athletic, graceful, and alluring as they are able.

Anyway, scads of you Americans do like it, and since American Idol wasn’t on tonight you saw some figure skating drama between West and East, the USA and Russia, Cohen and Slutskaya.

Surprise! This year both the domineering, fame-hungry parents of Western Celebrity Worship and the state-sponsored trainers of Totalitarian National Prestige Fabrication took a back seat to the nation of Japan, whose Shizuka Arakawa took top honors after lackluster performances by the Cold War powers’ leading lights.

I am not sure which motivational tools Japanese favor. Though, coming from a collectivist society, doubtless the young woman felt a great deal of pressure to not let everyone down, and was perhaps less concerned with individual fulfillment.

Unrelatedly, my right leg is twitching. It has been doing so all week. I do not understand.

I've been everywhere

I have been to:



create your own visited states map

Cheney's Got a Gun

What can be said about the Vice President of the United States shooting a guy? This is the first time the sitting Vice President has shot someone since Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton. In both cases, the man shot was an attorney. The attention of America’s mockerati has been focused on the story all week and I could not say anything funnier than what has already been said. Still, I AM glad to hear the Vice President is standing behind his decision to shoot his buddy; we don’t want any weak-kneed equivocating in our dangerous global climate.

And anyway, the guy he shot just had a heart attack as a result of the attack, so it’s not socially acceptable to make jokes until he’s recovered.

I have recently become aware of another un-mockable situation: The upcoming film “Date Movie”, not content with spoofing contemporary chick flicks, has decided to also spoof that recent BYU-influenced offering, Napoleon Dynamite.

This is utter foolishness, apart from the fact that Napoleon Dynamite is not much of a romantic comedy. As far as I’m concerned, ND is completely and utterly unspoofable. I mean, how can someone make fun of that film or its eponymous lead? I mean really, will you make the Napoleon imitator look like an uncultured, unpopular nerd? Will you assign all manner of human frailties and weaknesses to him? Will you make him prey to cruel pratfalls? People will simply think you are imitating him.

The greatest barbs of the satirist and parodist are always aimed at the self-important and self-serious, those with inflated egos and exaggerated gravity. Their main business is to make the serious unserious. There are few things less serious than Napoleon Dynamite, and he is thus immune to their ink-stained daggers.

SOTU STFU

Everyone already knows about it. Mother Sheehan was arrested in the Capitol Building before the State of the Union Address for disruptive behavior.

Her words. (warning! the zealous community members of that website have filthy mouths! read the 'comments' section at your own peril)

No charges will be filed, and the US Capitol Police have apologized for arresting her.

The online Left is screaming. I am always mystified by the general outrage when someone gets hassled by the Man in a prominent way. She was in that audience for political purposes and those purposes were achieved, albeit indirectly. Rather than just being on camera a few times with her t-shirt, she gets her first amendment rights violated while the nation is watching. Things have turned out for her about as good as possible. She gets free publicity, enhances her martyr status, can engage in a very public and shameful flaunting of her victimhood, and further cement herself in the pantheon of Liberal-Left public figures.

That, and she didn’t have to sit through a scripted, ritualistic, made-for-TV snoozer.

You’d think everyone on dailykos would be cheering. This will energize the base, get out protestors, raise soft money, sell t-shirts, and generally inspire the sorts of things leftists do when they're angry.