Too much ambiguity in news headlines. For example, can you tell which of these headlines refer to Homer, Jessica, O.J. or None of the Above?
Simpson Edited Out of Parton Tribute
Simpson to Put on Acoustic Christmas Concert at Cafe
Simpson Publisher Allegedly Used Slur
Then there is the "New Ripper" story out of NotSoJollyOldEngland, where this Steven Wright must NOT be confused with this Steven Wright (or, for that matter, this one or this one). Should celebrities even be allowed to have common names anymore?
But the most confusing headline of them all, which looked at first like
the only good news coming out of the White House these days...
Bush Saves Skydiver as Parachute Fails
It was a blackberry bush.
I still try to scrupulously avoid political humor, but I'm stunned somebody else hasn't taken the following idea and run with it (into the ground, most likely):
"A Christmas Quagmire", in which Ebenezer W. Bush is visited by the ghost of James Baker Marley, The Spirit of Iran Past (Sadaam), Iran Present (Maliki) and Iran Future (don't ask). He looks in at the Cratchett family: Cheney Crachett, Condi Cratchett and their adopted son Tiny Tim Rumsfeld (there's going to be an empty place at the table). There are so many satire points available in Bush's Past, and the Iran Present scenes (other than the Cratchetts) would be heartbreaking... The only thing I can't visualize is Ebenezer waking up a changed man. :(
The United Nations turned down my request to be declared "Switzerland-neutral" in the War on Christmas, and the absence of any "Year End Best of" lists may result in expulsion from the Technorati bloglist, so I am currently pondering a number of possibilities for last-minute holiday-themed features (and surprisingly, Pinky IS pondering what I'm pondering).
I would appreciate the opinions of my audience of 14 (as of 12/10/06) on the following concepts:
"The Star Wars Prequels Christmas Special, featuring Jar Jar the Red-Nosed Reindeer and How Palpatine Stole Advent"
"The James Bond Christmas Special, or The Little Drummer Boy with a License to Kill"
"Christmas Family Traditions I Hope Your Family Doesn't Have"
including The Search for Batteries for the Electric Carving Knife,
Discovering Rats in the Christmas Present Hiding Closet, Not Reading
the Expiration Date on the Egg Nog Carton, Watching a "Rocky" Movie on
Boxing Day, Saving Energy by Using Motion Sensors on the Outdoor
Christmas Lights and Deciding Whether Your Latest Broken Bone Gets a
Red or Green Colored Cast.
"The Year Santa's Reindeer Took Time Off to Avenge the Death of Bambi's Mother"
"How to Make a Nativity Scene Without Making Anybody in It Look Muslim"
"December Holidays for the Deeply Atheistic"
including Mao's Birthday, Anniversaries of the Discovery of the South
Pole and the First Crossword Puzzle, Hand Washing Awareness Week and
Slovenian Independence Day (these are really all in December... I am
not Dave Barry making this up!)
"This Year in Badly Photoshopped Pictures"
"The 10 Lamest Year End 'Best Of' Lists of 2006 (not including this one)"
"Be Prepared for the New Year! Start Dating All Your Checks "2007" Now!"
cross-posted on MetaFilter and MonkeyFilter.
Fixavote.com Election Consultants "provides unparalleled results by focusing on the outcome rather than the process. Using state-of the-art technology, we overcome the challenges of competition and ensure election results for our clients." (To make it even more evil, it's Flash-based) A food-for-thought satire or something more? When a reporter called the site's 800 number, the person who answered "said that he had been contacted by representatives of about 30 political campaigns to date." (I'm thinking sting operation to catch dishonest idiot politicians. Whad'ya think?)
Having few formal obligations right now, I am obsessively organizing my 'stuff', including my digital files... Having a total of 490 GB of storage space on 2 computers and a free-standing hard drive, that's going to take a while.
But just as I started organizing my mp3s, mp4s and mp37s, the fine fun folks at MonkeyFilter (the only MetaFilter clone site to survive to puberty) set up, via their chat channel #mofirc, a web radio station. And guess who's now playing Disc Jockey. (Whadyamean you can't guess? ME!)
Oddly, considering my roots in pre-Rush talk radio, there is no live verbalizing, and I have been rather unmotivated to prerecord any DJ shtick, so I'm just playing artlessly assemble thematic music sets (taking advantage of my OTHER radio roots with Dr. Demento and 1980's KROQ). There is a small but dedicate troupe there keeping some kind or another of music playing 24/7 for over two weeks already. And some of them do even more interesting sets than I do (just don't tell 'em). Youse guys can tune in via this link, and listen to Wendell Wadio at the following times this weekend:
FRIDAY EVENING 7-9PM PDT, 10PM-Mid EDT, Next Tuesday New Zealand Time:
Wendell's Radio Radio Show featuring all songs with Radio in the title
SATURDAY EVENING 6-9PM PDT, 9-Mid EDT, Last Thursday Uzbekistan Time
Pretentious Rock from the '70s, when I went "wow" at Yes's synthesizers and Tull's flute
SUNDAY EVENING (and probably every Sunday) 6-8PM PDT, 9-11PM EDT, 1968 Republican Time
Wendell Rips Off Dr. Demento Wherever Possible
(in revenge for when someone assoiated with the good Dr. ripped off my idea of using cartoon sound effects to 'bleep' George Carlin's "Seven Words" monologue in 1977. Some grudges never die.)
And during the next couple weeks, I'll be doing occasional hours of "All Versions of Stairway to Heaven" with thanks to WFMU's blog. Check this Webcasting schedule for times in your neighborhood (depending on community standards).
I have no reason why I'm doing it, except right now it's easier than blogging, if you can believe that.
Woah! This almost slipped past me, but MSNBC.com has published my "5Top" list of Weird Fast Foods
(I suggested "Freaky Fast Foods", but editors always gotta make their
own titles, y'know?). In spite of my acknowledged tendency to be 'too
nice' on subjects really deserve to be ripped apart*, I think I made
some cogent (and hopefully funny) points about the menu items that put
the junk in Junk Food.
*After I wrote my ambivalent review of the sitcom
"Happy Hour", I lived in fear that FOX would discover I was the only TV
writer in America who had said anything positive about it and
then use quotes from it in their promos. Fortunately, there's an Evil
News Corp company-wide ban on mentioning MSNBC for any
reason.
Dilbertist Scott Adams blogged the following:
Several years ago I was approached by some advisors for people in high places. I can’t give you the details of this story, or even tell you why I can’t give you the details. But the gist of it was that they needed help squelching some bad ideas that had taken hold in the public consciousness. They thought humor might be one part of the solution, and they were Dilbert fans, so they tracked me down. The challenge was that the bad ideas sounded terrific to the uninformed person. You couldn’t kill these particular bad ideas with logic because the arguments against them would be too complicated. You had to go in through the back door.
I suggested a few cleverly designed, hypnosis-inspired phrases that were the linguistic equivalent of Kung Fu. They were simple (that’s my specialty), and once you heard these phrases, they made any competing ideas seem frankly stupid. Think of Johnny Cochran’s famous refrain “If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” In my opinion, O.J. is a free man largely because of that phrase. My phrases worked the same way.
The people in high places tried my phrases. The phrases became world headlines the next day. I could tune the TV to any news channel and hear my words coming out of pundits’ mouths. The phrases smothered the competing ideas and just maybe changed the course of world events. (One can never know for sure.)
I lost a lot of respect for Scott Adams with that confession. I mean, he seems to be proud of his phraseological (is that a word?) accomplishment, but I honestly I can't recall any short, catchy phrases that redefined an issue in the public consciousness in the last 15 years that weren't basicly dishonest and did not change the world for the worse (or at least prevent changing the world for the better). Can you think of any successful political catchphrases that weren't basicly evil? I'd be relieved to hear about them in the Comments.
I just did an exhaustive (I know because I'm exhausted) review of the celebrations for Dick Tracy's 75th Anniversary in the funny papers at ClownsAround.com. It's actually more fun than you'd expect Dick Tracy to be. But not TOO much...
It's time for the most festive event on the Dilbert calendar, the Annual Weasel Awards. And after looking at this year's nominees I had to send an eMail message to Scott "Dilbert" Adams himself.
Dear Mr. Adamsbert:
I don't like to point out errors (no, I lied, I really enjoy it), but something appears wrong in your Weasel Awards for this year. The "United Nations" is listed under both "Weaseliest Organization" and "Weaseliest Nation". Now, technically, the United Nations is an organization and a GROUP of nations. Did you intend the Nation listing to refer to "All the Nations in the United Nations", or did you really intend it to say "United States" (which won overwhelmingly last year) but ended up mislabeled by someone working for you who is either an induhvidual or Acting U.S. Representative to the U.N. John Bolton? Now I could understand retiring the U.S. from Weasel competition after last year, but if you mean 'Everybody in the U.N.' you really should say it more clearly. Thank you for your attentiveness to this weasely message.
I hope you will all do your weasely duty and vote.
Several times if you can, because that's the Weasely Way. The U.N.
duplication is not the only 'interesting' thing among the nominations.
I was rather pleased to see "Weaseliest Profession" dropped in favor of
"Weaseliest Industry". And splitting "Weaseliest Individual" into
Politician, Celebrity, Sports Person and Pundit/Celebrity, although
they seemed to have trouble finding non-right-wing-blowhards for that
last category: Michael Moore hasn't done much this year and "The Staff
of the N.Y. Times" sounds almost generic; and thanks to Judith Miller,
there are almost as many liberals pissed at the Times as conservatives.
But including Nancy Grace was brilliant. I thought this was going to be
Ann Coulter's year, but can she take credit for the suicide of one of
her reporting victimssubjects? And who would have
expected just a couple months ago that one of the top contenders for
"Weaseliest Company" would be HP? (I'd write more about it, but I'm
using an HP computer, and, you know, they might be listening) Still, I
think they included Michael Jackson among "Weaseliest Celebrities" just
to fill out the category. And not including Congress among "Weaseliest
Organization" is an obvious oversight. But if I can mobilize my
audience of several, as long as the U.S. is not on the "Weaseliest
Nation" list, I'd push for Pakistan. I mean, most of the countries on
the list have openly done bad things lately, but Pakistan has been the
most sneaky about what it's up to, and isn't that what Weaseliness is
all about?
