Worst person in the world

One of the new picks TiVo has been instructed to record at all times is Keith Olbermann's Countdown on MSNBC. Luckily I've been able to see the showdown between Falafel Bill and Olbermann. (The former is evidently annoyed that his ratings are going down at about the same rate that Countdown's are going up, so he's got a petition out to cancel Countdown and bring back Phil Donohue.)

Friday had a 9-minute montage of some of the greatest hits from Countdown's coverage of O'Reilly's mistakes of the last few months. And tonight, Bill won the coveted "Worst Person in the World!" award, his 20th or 30th such victory.

Sorry I've been quiet lately--work has bee kind of crazy lately.

The internet just broke me.

A Fatboy Slim video done entirely in kittens.

Imagine if the Land of Make Believe decided to go all-feline, all to a cover of a song that probably will stick in your head for ages.

Um, thanks? (Found courtesy of CuteOverload.)

Also, I noticed that Andreas Katsulas passed away the other day.

Goodnight, sweet G'Kar, and may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. I will miss him.

Citizen G'Kar: The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.

A Late Night world of love

Dave Letterman, is there nothing you can't teach us?

After giving us Larry "Bud" Melman, bubbling fountains of mail, the viewer mail theme song, velcro walls, jumping in guacamole, and innumerable Top Ten lists, he's now breaking news about Dick Cheney shooting a guy in the face.

Cheney's press conference
The White House's new commercial

Just a big bowl of bad.

Finished Ilium by Dan Simmons, the writer who makes everyone else look bad. Mostly since he's won just about every genre fiction award there is, and he does it by writing some really interesting stuff. OK, sure, Hyperion's second half is padded it out but that was mostly the publisher making him split his novel into two rather than anything else.

This book involves the Gods re-enacting the Trojan War on a newly-terraformed Mars, while Earth is filled with illiterate eloi, Odysseus, and a sleeper from our near future. Jupiter has half-biological androids who read Shakespeare and Proust, and they encounter Little Green Men for whom communication is lethal.

There's a ton going on and it's a satisfying read. I read Odysseus in college, but never got around to the Iliad. I wonder what effect on publishing this book has had, as it's making me want to pick up Proust, too. But maybe not to summarize him.

It always has something to do with the Tri-Force.

It's been a DVD extravaganza at our house recently. Valentine's Day brought in several things, including the Serenity, Wallace and Gromit, and The Vicar of Dibley discs.

OK, who the hell is that supposed to be on the Serenity movie site? River? She's got airbrushed skin and pneumatic breasts, so maybe it's Barbie Dress-Up Psychotic Walking Plot Device. It's certaintly not any character I recognize from the series. Man, for a series with such great production values I am confused as all get-out by this bizarre image. Is that a drop-shadow on her face? Did they bevel it?

As an aside, Kevin pointed me at round II of kids reviewing old video games. (The first installment is also a hoot...)

(Talking about the original vector-graphics Star Wars game)
EGM: What do those TIE Fighters look like?

Anthony: Stars.

Garret: Fireworks.

Bobby: Fireballs.

Parker: Psychadelic snowflakes.

Dillon: It's snowing up.

Rachel: This looks like a game out of Willy Wonka or something.

Bobby: It's like, "I'm Willy Wonka. I've created a new Star Wars."

EGM: Are they scary?

Anthony: No. It feels like they're trying to give me flowers.

Dillon: But flowers that you're allergic to, so you're trying to blow them up.

I pre-ordered the third Rebel Strike game just to get an adaptation of the vector Star Wars game, so this is kind of sad to here. But funny at the same time. This may be my favorite quote, from a discussion of Street Fighter II, which I remember sucking mightily at...

EGM: What do you think of that guy's hairstyle? [Points to Guile]

Parker: I think it's extremely 90s.

Bobby: He's a commando.

Dillon: That's very very, very retro, in his own ugly kind of way.

EGM: If you saw a guy like that at the mall...


Parker: I'd leave the store.

Bobby: I'd run away. I'd be afraid of getting his bad taste.

EGM: What store would he be shopping at?

Dillon: Hot Topic.

Bobby: Commandos R Us.

There may be hope for the future after all.

Avengers Assemble!

... a made-for-DVD animated film.

It looks to be about on the level of the GI Joe vs. Serpentor film from a while back, you know the one where Don Johnson's shotgun fired laser beams.

Oh man, it looks like they're playing Giant-Man for laughs, too. Whee! Guess he's not gonna get into a fight with the Wasp in this one.

Rules of gun safety

Tuns out that Dick didn't just wing a guy by accident, he totally blew the guy away while hunting in a canned hunt.

I grew up in a hunting family, and these "hunts" are not hunting. They're open-air butchering grounds, the equivalent of shooting into cages. Think skeet with living creatures. That the Vice-President patronizes such clubs while others watch from the side of the road is bad enough, but then for him to violate the very basic rules of gun safety? Well, I knew this bunch was a group of fucking incompetent wankers, but they continue to surprise me with how colossally dumb they are. This all assuming, of course, that it was an accident and not Dick "Fuck you, Leahy" Shooting a guy in snarling, drunken anger.

Rule #1 of gun safety: don't point a gun at anything you don't want to remove from the face of the earth. Doesn't matter if it's unloaded. Doesn't matter if you're just joking. Doesn't matter if you think the safety is on. You could fill a small city with the number of American kids killed each year from screwing around with an "empty" gun.

To borrow a phrase from another blog, this administration is the gang that couldn't shoot straight. Literally. The VP shoots a guy (and it was way closer than 30 yards--look at that dispersal pattern) and they cover it up for 18 hours, sorta like how they decided that it was more important to eat cake than it was to help the citizens of New Orleans when the levees broke.

They interviewed the reporter who broke the story for the small Corpus Christi paper that got the call. She's the health and living editor and was working on a weekend. She gets the call? Not the AP? Wow.

I'll miss you most of all, Mr. Bananagrabber.

Fox had this great show which won a ton of awards and had a dedicated cult following. So instead of promoting it at all, they cut their order for more episodes and bury the last four episodes on a Friday night.

I'm speaking, of course, of Arrested Development, which got a really shitty send-off by the Fox powers-that-be last night. They played all four episodes with no fanfare (I only found out because TiVo has my back and I'd read Lyle's blog).

It's been a busy day. Had the car washed, watched a bit of my Strong Bad DVDs, and had a great lunch. Currently watching last night's episode of Battlestar Galactica before heading out to a hotluck. It's like a potluck, only with hot food. Last year I took pepper-pineapple salsa for ice cream--this year I'm making peanut-butter-and-habanero-jelly sandwiches. My test sandwich was excellent, so I'm looking forward to this evening.

I need sleep

Kevin and I were talking about Essential Super-Villain Team-Up.

DougBot - All that Namor and Doom lack is a third comic foil. Paste-Pot Pete, for example. Then they could have a WACKY SITCOM.
Dougbot - DOOM: Join me, Namor!
Dougbot - NAMOR: What part of "I am the Avenging Son" do you not understand?
Dougbot - PETE: I glue things!
BeaucoupKevin - He gets renamed THE TRAPSTER later!

This, along with a Bendis-themed Twinkie ad, has been your Marvel moment for the day.