mykeru.com

mykeru.com

Good stuff.

Lowtax strikes again.

Something Awful - The Internet Makes You Stupid:

"Lifetime of Excess Achievement Award

You're probably wondering why Michael Jackson did not appear on this list. Well, he did now, bitch! I deem Jackson to be an unfair inclusion on the 'Worst Thirteen' list because he would dominate all thirteen levels. Instead I offer Michael the deliciously coveted Lifetime of Excess Achievement Award. His achievements in celebrity excess leave every other celebrity - even the creepy Middle Eastern oil barons - eating his dust. To name a few of his accomplishments:
Has repeatedly gotten away with molesting children
Has also gotten away with defending his child molestation with some sort of crazy bullshit philosophy
People used to joke that he was a black man who turned himself into a white woman. Nowadays people don't even know where the punch line to that joke went. Probably down the blood channel of a plastic surgeon's operating table. Jackson now looks more like a cross between Golem and the Crypt Keeper rubbed down with white grease paint.
He bought the Elephant Man's skeleton. It takes a special kind of celebrity to do that and not seem out of character.
He built an amusement park on his private property. And not a cool one like Cedar Point, we're talking a late 19th century creepy Euro carnival where all of the rides end up with a pop star lich performing oral sex.
Buys random zoo animals that probably die of starvation when he tries to feed them million dollar abstract paintings of naked children.
He made 'Thriller'. A positive, right? Think about this: when combined with everything else Jackson has done the proud legacy of Vincent Price is now forever tainted.
With the help of a little voodoo magic maybe I'll be giving this award to Bob Crane next year. For now Jackson has a lock on it."

From Kaus on a National Intel Director

By Mickey Kaus:

"I still don't understand why it's a good idea to centralize intelligence under a single czar. If the problem with pre-Iraq intelligence was the tendency to tell the Administration what it wanted to hear, won't narrowing the information funnel maximize the chances of that happening again? Won't it be easier to 'politicize' a single 'National Intelligence Director'? What we want is a multiplicity of perspectives and an error-revealing debate, no?"

Good point.

Sports Fans of America Association College Football Playoff Proposals

Sports Fans of America Association College Football Playoff Proposals

Check out proposals one and four for getting rid of the odious BCS in college football.

Medialove

This week's hot stuff:

Henry V (KB's 1989 version.)
Patrick O'Brian (always for now;)
Halo (redux)
Bootsy (soundtrack of the week)
R. Kelly (I'm taking his side of the lawsuit. Not for any good reason, just to have a position)
Covers of Summertime (moment of musical ignorance: I'm over 30 and learned about the tune Summertime from Sublime).
Blue Hymn by Gene Ammons (an all-time favorite)
Riddick comic books (I'm kind of becoming a fanboy)

Mozilla Firefox Start Page << Get Firefox;)

Mozilla Firefox Start Page

Random association: Barack Obama's DNC keynote and Alanis Morissette's One Hand in my Pocket.

Nevermind.

How about GWB's Axis of Evil speech and COC's Vote With a Bullet.

Naw that don't really work either. Hell.

Of course he has a yacht! Why wouldn't he have a yacht?

The New York Times > Washington > Call it Pork or Necessity, but Alaska Comes Out Far Above the Rest in Spending:

"One expenditure buried in the bill is $2 million for the Navy to repurchase the presidential yacht Sequoia. The yacht was built in 1925 and first used by President Herbert Hoover. In the throes of Watergate, President Richard M. Nixon cruised the Potomac at night on the boat and brooded on his fate.

When President Jimmy Carter was trying to rid the White House of an imperial image, he had the yacht sold to a private group for $286,000. Ever since, it has been rented out for private parties."

We're shocked that ABC would use the NFL to peddle sex.

Philadelphia Eagles -- Cheerleader Lingerie Calendar

The Eagles Cheerleaders made national headlines three years ago by being the first squad in all of professional sports to produce a lingerie calendar. The success of the lingerie calendar has contributed to the Eagles Cheerleaders elevated status as one of the NFL's elite squads, having been featured in such national magazines as Maxim, FHM and in an upcoming issue of Muscle and Fitness.

Shocked. Shocked I tell you.

Keith Olbermann's blog

Heck that's as good as you were on Sportscenter.

Graphic representation of current American foreign policy

Andrew Sullivan on Bush's new Ed Sec.

www.AndrewSullivan.com - Latest Posts:

Here's how insidery the new Bush cabinet is looking. The new education secretary, Margaret Spellings, began her political career in the mid 1980s, when Karl Rove asked her out on a date. Somehow, he got over the rejection. Two decades of complete political subservience later and Ms Spellings gets a bang-up new job enforcing her boss's federal take-over of American education. She helped run Bush's 1994 campaign for Texas governor and has been working long hours under the radar in the Bush White House for the past four years. Is she a radical? Not exactly. She hasn't pushed for the conservative panacea of school vouchers, and distanced herself as a divorced single mother from the religious right. Is she a toady? Well, that's an unfortunately loaded term. Let's just recall that, outside of the George W. Bush orbit, Spellings has virtually no record and no career. She is his creation. "

I love a good true conservative.

The Onion | 2004 Election Guide | Nation's Poor Win Election For Nation's Rich

The Onion | 2004 Election Guide | Nation's Poor Win Election For Nation's Rich

So true. So true.

The Whiskey Speech

Whiskey Speech - Wikisource

Whiskey Speech by Judge Noah S. "Soggy" Sweat Jr. in 1952

"My friends,

"I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to know that I do not shun controversy. On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be. You have asked me how I feel about whiskey. All right, here is how I feel about whiskey.

"If when you say whiskey you mean the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, and despair, and shame and helplessness, and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it.

"But;

"If when you say whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman's step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life's great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm; to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it.

"This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise."

The Clarion Ledger, Saturday, February 24, 1996, Jackson, MS, p. 3B.

Insightful commentary on GWB's reelection

Something Awful - The Internet Makes You Stupid:

"Four More Years! I had doubts we would survive this long, but now that we have I find myself addicted to the thrill of living on the edge. Let's see how long we can go like this!"

--Livestock from S/A

More bad right to copy legislation

From: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6557652/

The bill also shields "family friendly" services like ClearPlay that strip violent or sexually explicit scenes from movies. Hollywood groups say such services violate their copyrighted works by altering them without permission.

Why is Congress "legalizing" something that is all ready legal. Things that are not explicitly illegal are legal. ClearPlay was legal. Why "shield" it? Why put more strain (as in legalese) on the fair use doctrine? ClearPlay was obviously a fair use of a DVD. Why make it legal if not to further restrict fair play in other ways?

http://nosoftwarepatents.com/

http://nosoftwarepatents.com/

Right.

CNN.com - Chile calls off Bush banquet after security dispute - Nov 21, 2004

CNN.com - Chile calls off Bush banquet after security dispute - Nov 21, 2004:

"Bush was posing for photos with first lady Laura Bush in the Estacion Mapocho Cultural Center when he heard a commotion and saw that one of his plainclothes security agents was being forcefully restrained from entering.

Bush reached into a small crowd, where people were arguing and pushing one another, and pulled the agent through the door of center. (Full story)

Bush then turned around, cocked his head proudly at his maneuver and began to greet his hosts."

And he does this because it's his world and we just live in it.

Redheads

Truly I spent the last many minutes staring at that picture on the cover. Not really thinking not even noticing I was doing it. I don't get the "hard stare" all that often anymore. For "hard stare" is what I named it some 25 years ago when I first became aware of it.

My wild ass theory which I have done no research to support is that it is the involuntary entrance into the state that Buddhists monks look to achieve in meditation. It's a beautiful place free from care, knowledge, even consciousnous (sic) indeed! A place where time cannot penetrate. The blissful ignorant place of joy -- better than any high. Being very very drunk is a pale imitation of being in the grip of the hard stare, for if you feel anything you are not there. If you realize you are there, you are not there. It's beautiful.

I can by no means do this at will, but certain objects or pictures can help me get there. Far and away the most certain of these is a picture of a pretty redhead.

I have some thoughts on meditation, enlightenment, and the 1000 yard stare that battle veterans get, but I don't have them organized yet. Lemme go stare at a redhead.

Shotgun Season

Today is the first day of hunting season, and some of these shotgun blasts are too damn close. I'm about to go put speakers on the back porch and start blasting music to drive the deer away from here. That farker was in my ear. Can't be but 50 yards away in the woods. I hope they know what they're doing.

More DeLay Asshatry

GOP may change rule to aid DeLay / Effort to protect his role in House even if indicted in Texas

A rule Republicans in Congress made for themselves in 1993 will be repealed because the Republicans obviously do not care whether their House leadership is ethical. DeLay has all ready been formally admonished twice for unethical conduct by his peers in Congress.

Day one down

Ok the conference is over for today. Let the drinking begin!

Freefind.com

I did get one decent thing out of the conference. Freefind.com is a free site indexer and search engine that any old newb could get working on their site.

Bored

Bored Bored Bored Bored Bored Bored Bored Bored Bored Bored Bored Bored Bored Bored Bored Bored Bored Bored Bored Bored

It's 1:15 it must be Survey Monkey time.

All work and no blogging make mcsey a dull boy. I'm at a conference today. The speaker is fine, but the material is about seven levels below where it needs to be. Who needs three hours on Acrobat?

Scratch that 6 hours the afternoon session is Acrobat too. Christ. Give me some boxes and wires, would you please?

Ways of doing math are discovered not invented; therefore, software patents should not be granted.

Discuss.

Voting machine glitch changes election

Go to Black Box Voting and find out why turning our elections of to Diebold et al is a Bad Thing.

I've said it for a long time. I'll say it again. Capitalism is an economic system not a political one. Capitalism checked ate Socialism. Capitalism unchecked will eat democracy.

Yahoo! News - U.S. Marines Rally Round Iraq Probe Comrade

Ok so a Marine headshots a downed unarmed Iraqi prisoner on video and the press is asking you about it. The proper response is, "No comment." or possibly "I wasn't there. No comment." Anything else is fodder for the enemy.

Please guys. It's a bad mission. Don't make it worse. Every excuse or justification you give for this is another excuse or justification for the other side to behead a captive. "They shoot 'em. Why shouldn't we?"

"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved,'"
--From John Ashcroft's resignation letter.

I read that as "All you people who voted for Bush because you fear terrorism are suckers. We're safe!" But hell, if fear of terrorism swayed your vote I could of told you you were a sucker anyway.

Susan Crawford blog :: Does the White House know?

That the FCC wants to regulate the Internet? The broadcast flag is the lever.

Columns: The Pharisees line up to cast their stones at gay partners:

By: Howard Troxler

"If we are going to start ranking the 'sins,' marriage between two gay people who love each other and seek a lifelong commitment doesn't even make the Bible's best-known top-10 list.

Sure, homosexuality is called an 'abomination.' The Bible says so, not too far from where the Bible also says it's okay to stone your headstrong son to death, and that you'd better stay away from menstruating women.

And yes, the topic of homosexuality really freaked out St. Paul, no question. But so did a lot of stuff.

On the other hand, you know what IS right smack in the Ten Commandments?

Adultery.

Adultery! Now, that's a threat to the institution of marriage. You bet.

Now that I could support. Let's really defend marriage and make adultery unconstitutional. Adultery has certainly ruined more marriages than homosexuality. Poverty had a big effect on my divorce, so let's make poverty unconstitutional. Then of course there's irreconcilable differences. Those seems to take out a lot of marriages. Let's ban 'em.

Ahnuld for President: A Timeline

12/1/04: Arnold publicly voices support for a Constitutional amendment that allows foreign born citizens who have lived in the USA for at least 30 years and been citizens for 14 years to run for President.

4/06: 22 states pass the amendment in a campaign that vilifies opponents of the amendment as racist xenophobes

11/06: 17 more pass it making it valid

5/07/7: Dick Cheney resigns due to "health trouble" and the fact that he doesn't have snowballs chance in hell of getting the nomination.

5/9/7: GWB appoints Ahnuld as his VP nominee

5/11/7: GOP controlled Senate approves

6/1/7: Ahnuld declares for president.

10/14/07: Haliburtongate causes GWB to abandon his scandal ridden second term and resign.

10/15/07: Ahnuld sworn in. Appoints Bill Gates as vice president.

10/17/07 Pardons GWB.

Easy-peasy, and it wouldn't be the first time.

HoustonChronicle.com - Wal-Mart has staggering hoard of product data

It sounds like Wal-Mart is about to learn what M$ found out a while ago. Archiving is bad when it comes to litigation.

Still more importantly:

A week ahead of landfall, Linda Dillman, Wal-Mart's chief information officer, pressed her staff to come up with forecasts based on what had happened when Hurricane Charley struck weeks earlier.

The experts mined the data and found that the stores would indeed need certain products — and not just flashlights.

"We didn't know in the past that strawberry Pop-Tarts increase in sales, like seven times their normal sales rate, ahead of a hurricane," Dillman said. "And the pre-hurricane top-selling item was beer."

And I'm proud to live in an America where Wal-Mart will have beer before the storm.

MSNBC - Keith Olbermann's blog:

"All that having been said, the most remarkable read of the day is probably the item buried on page A5 of The Washington Post. (Registration required but free). There, Charles Babington and Brian Faler take the wind out of the primary post-election grist for the yak-fests of radio and television: the overwhelming relevance of “Moral Values” to 2004’s presidential voters.

You will recall that the Exit Polling on November 2nd ranked the most important issues as follows:
Moral Values, 22%
Economy and Jobs, 20%
Terrorism, 19%
Iraq, 15%

The authors point out that those results came when pollsters offered voters a list of which issues factored most into their decision to vote. They note that last week, Pew Research went back and surveyed voters again, and took their temperatures in two ways— with a list (as was offered on election day), and without one (in other words, voters had to remember their issues; it ceased to be multiple choice). Those working off the checklist responded similarly to the election day exit pollees:
Moral Values, 27%
Iraq, 22%
Economy and Jobs, 21%
Terrorism, 14%

But the free-form Pew survey produced entirely different data. Given nothing to work with, simply asked to name the deciding factor in their vote, “moral values” shrunk back to human size:
Other, 31%
Iraq, 25%
Moral Values, 14%
Economy and Jobs, 12%
Terrorism, 9%

Babington and Faler point out that “other” included such gems as not liking Bush, not liking Kerry, honesty, and presumably “I was following instructions from Jon Stewart.”

Oh and by the way: how come the “Kerry’s winning” part of the election night exit polling is presumed to have been wrong, or tampered with, but the “Moral Values” part of the same polling is graded flawless, and marks the dawn of a new American century?"

victory04

victory04
Originally uploaded by mcsey.

VICTORY 2004: President's Acceptance Speech Inviting the 55 Million America-Haters Who Voted Against God to Bend Over and Take It Like a Prison Bitch - WHITEHOUSE.ORG
:

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all. Thank you all for coming. We had a long night – and a great night. (Applause.) And now, just hours later, here I am already addressing a beautiful crowd of paranoid, fist-pumping, soon-to-be tax-exempt gazillionaires. (Applause.) Yes, as I look around I see that there are finally no self-loathing Negroes in front or behind me, which can only mean one thing: the election is OVER! (Applause.)

Earlier today, Senator Kerry called me to admit that he is a pansy-assed loser. He was very gracious. And so was I. Hell, I even held my hand over the receiver so he couldn't hear me cracking up over all the fruity liberal garbage he was spouting about "healing" and "uniting" the people. (Laughter.)

Oh – I didn't say that, did I?

Because... umm... I don't want to be a divider, I want to be a divider. Wait. Damn. I done pooped that up, too. Take two, dudes. I don't want to be a pussy uniter. I want to be a divider. (Applause.) Good Lord Almighty it feels so dang good to finally be able to say that in public. I ain't running again, so I don't have to say anymore of that bullcrap I used to spout to get elected – like, "Jeb, tear up them nigra ballots, boy!" I kid. No, seriously, the only type of uniting I'm going to be doing is when Democrats curl their Jockeys to their ankles and bend on over! YEE-HAW!

Now, don't get me wrong here: sure, I'll follow this dumb tradition of Presidents saying nice stuff about the same lousy fucker who just tried to stab me in the back. Because so what if my entire political career was built on exploiting wedge issues to inflame and polarize our electorate? By giving some lip service to "unity" today, I'll be able to play the victim next year when Democrats balk over my nominating a KKK grand wizard to the Supreme Court. (Applause.)

"So yeah, on the record, Senator JFK Masshole was an admirable, honorable candidate. Off the record, that babbling killjoy tried to sell a story that would put the dead to sleep. I mean, Jesus Christ, where'd that boy study Presidential politics? My marketing whizzes sold the right story, and the little people bought it. That story was 'Once upon a time... George W. Bush killed the Bogey Man, then made everyone rich. The end.'

I'd like to thank the following folks for enabling my megalomania and understanding how my bloodlust and decorative Christian morals can coexist in a world where truth adapts to my omnipotence – and not visa versy. Thanks first to my wife, who proves every day that Zoloft-laced Smirnoff Ice gimlets can indeed drown out the screams of thousands of Islamiac babies I done pan-fried because they got caught between my divine wrath and Paul Wolfowitz's funny-lookin', but nonetheless lethal little cock.

Thanks also to my twins for bringing in the bimbo, girls-gone-wild, Young Stepford Wife, and 'I've had an abortion but I draw the line at you having one' votes. And thanks to Karl, Karen, Ken, Matthew, and Mark for making Josef Goebbels, Joe McCarthy and Lee Atwater squeal with joy in the bowels of hell. It's too bad history has a pernickety habit of eventually peeling off the duds of the liars, the charlatans, and wolves in Good Samaritan's clothing. Otherwise, you guys would be memorialized with marble statues perched atop pyramids built from the bones of Iraqi civilians and terminally ill oldsters too poor to enjoy the luxury of treating their worthless clogged arteries with bottle of generic aspirin.

But most of all, I'd like to thank every scared shitless, emotionally impotent suburbanite who bought my empty promises of an America based on compassion, Christian mercy, and bashing the shit out of those disgusting faggots! (Applause.)

As I stand before you today, tripping my balls off with power, I promise you three things: I will abolish the income tax, and institute a flat tax that unburdens the rich of paying their fair share and forces white trash to pay an extra 12% for baby formula, Kraft mac and cheese, and Parliament menthols. I promise to privatize Social Security by creating a vast Federal Mutual Fund run by my compadres in regulation-free Houston and filling the financial gap between now and the distant future with leprechaun gold. And finally, I promise to hunt Osama Bin Laden down... and shake his hand.

In closing, before I get down to the hard work of bleeding money from social programs in order to underwrite the McJesus Industry, re-segregating the public school system, gang-banging Mother Earth for short-term profit, convincing blue collar labor monkeys that their tax cuts aren't just Band-Aids on a slit throat, and most of all, feeding the Southern Military Welfare State more tax dollars by inventing more Middle Eastern meat-grinders, I wanted to give a little shout-out to all the 48 percent of Americans who supported Senator Droopy McGook-Killa:

I formally invite all of you to commence unquestioning worship of yours truly. If, on the other hand, you nice sodomites in Jew York, San Fag Crisco, and Mick-cago got diaper rash from my holy mandate (and super-sexy popular vote), please, by all means, move your chickenshit asses to Canada, or France, or some atoll in the South Pacific. Because, let's face it, the Democratic Party is the party of scaredy-cat cowards, and crybabies. A party where the broads shave thrice daily, and the men got cunt lips. So run for the border my friends... the GOP and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Thank you, and God Bless George W. Bush's America!

(Applause.)"

The New York Times > Arts > Frank Rich: On 'Moral Values,' It's Blue in a Landslide:

"There's only one problem with the storyline proclaiming that the country swung to the right on cultural issues in 2004. Like so many other narratives that immediately calcify into our 24/7 media's conventional wisdom, it is fiction. Everything about the election results - and about American culture itself - confirms an inescapable reality: John Kerry's defeat notwithstanding, it's blue America, not red, that is inexorably winning the culture war, and by a landslide. Kerry voters who have been flagellating themselves since Election Day with a vengeance worthy of 'The Passion of the Christ' should wake up and smell the Chardonnay.

The blue ascendancy is nearly as strong among Republicans as it is among Democrats. Those whose 'moral values' are invested in cultural heroes like the accused loofah fetishist Bill O'Reilly and the self-gratifying drug consumer Rush Limbaugh are surely joking when they turn apoplectic over MTV. William Bennett's name is now as synonymous with Las Vegas as silicone. The Democrats' Ashton Kutcher is trumped by the Republicans' Britney Spears. Excess and vulgarity, as always, enjoy a vast, bipartisan constituency, and in a democracy no political party will ever stamp them out.

If anyone is laughing all the way to the bank this election year, it must be the undisputed king of the red cultural elite, Rupert Murdoch. Fox News is a rising profit center within his News Corporation, and each red-state dollar that it makes can be plowed back into the rest of Fox's very blue entertainment portfolio. The Murdoch cultural stable includes recent books like Jenna Jameson's 'How to Make Love Like a Porn Star' and the Vivid Girls' 'How to Have a XXX Sex Life,' which have both been synergistically, even joyously, promoted on Fox News by willing hosts like Rita Cosby and, needless to say, Mr. O'Reilly. There are 'real fun parts and exciting parts,' said Ms. Cosby to Ms. Jameson on Fox News's 'Big Story Weekend,' an encounter broadcast on Saturday at 9 p.m., assuring its maximum exposure to unsupervised kids.

Almost unnoticed in the final weeks of the campaign was the record government indecency fine levied against another prime-time Fox television product, 'Married by America.' The $1.2 million bill, a mere bagatelle to Murdoch stockholders, was more than twice the punishment inflicted on Viacom for Janet Jackson's 'wardrobe malfunction.' According to the F.C.C. complaint, one episode in this heterosexual marriage-promoting reality show included scenes in which 'partygoers lick whipped cream from strippers' bodies,' and two female strippers 'playfully spank' a man on all fours in his underwear. 'Married by America' is gone now, but Fox remains the go-to network for Paris Hilton ('The Simple Life') and wife-swapping ('Trading Spouses: Meet Your New Mommy')."

T.E. Lawrence on the British Occupation of Iraq

"“The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiqués are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster. Our unfortunate troops, Indian and British, under hard conditions of climate and supply are policing an immense area, paying dearly every day in lives for the willfully wrong policy of the civil administration in Baghdad but the responsibility, in this case, is not on the army which has acted only upon the request of the civil authorities.”


T.E. Lawrence, The Sunday Times, August 1920"

Sounds uhm... familiar.

Fallujah 101: A history lesson about the town we are currently destroying. -- In These Times

Some history on Fallujah and its resistance to English occupation.

edit: oh yeah... spoilers

I finally /watched/ Kill Bill this weekend. I've seen it before, but I hadn't watched it until this weekend. Tour de fo(a)rce all around. It also has the longest credit sequence of all time. 17% of all human names in every language are used in the credits. This is gonna be the first movie ever to put out a special edition that is simply a DVD full of credits.

Three scenes really caught my eye. First, the Bride and Hatori Hansu -- Sonny Chiba is and always was the man. This is the first scene in the movie that brings home the fait accompli. She will have her revenge because she asks for it. The swift change from laughably farcical to deadly serious starts here. The whole interplay between the "emperor" and the "general" with the tea is teh funny, and then that which cannot be spoken is said. The dish breaks. The swords are shown, and Bill enters the picture.

"I do this because philosophically I am in agreement with you."

We must kill Bill. His death is a forgone conclusion from this point on. Philosophically he must die. (And so he does).

I have to stop here and compliment the music. Without using known tracks (as he's done so often) QT makes his best use of music ever. Watch the Bride looking at the swords without music. Now do it with. Big difference eh? That soaring aria makes the scene. Without it, you've got a pretty girl looking at swords. With it you've got a superhero who will cut God when she meets him.

The second great scene is the Cruel Tutelage of Pei Mai. Gordon Liu (aka Johnny Mo aka Pei Mai) plays his second great role in the saga. This scene is straight over the top Kung Fu spaghetti. You've seen this scene in every movie from Rocky to Bloodsport. The talented but raw recruit goes from good to great. Two things I noted from this scene are the tinyness of Gordon Liu (think of him on top of the "hitting board" smacking the Bride on the head with his staff) and the final phase of her training. The Bride is not ready when she can break oak from three inches. The Bride is ready when she can break oak from three inches and still eat like a human. Great power is not enough. Great power wielded with wisdom is.

The third scene is the most obviously great in the movie. Once again QT has coaxed a superb performance out of Michael Madsen. "That woman deserves her revenge, (wait for it) and we deserve to die... but hell so does she." Great line, and watching Bill and Budd act is pure joy. "So she cut her way through 88 bodyguards..." "Well, there weren't really 88 of them" "Why do they..." "I guess they thought it sounds cool". Brothers with too much history. Easy in each other's company and scared as hell of one another. Budd scared of Bill, and Bill scared of Budd because he needs his help.

I watched that scene maybe 20 times. It's the best. The way Budd goes to work and gets broken down by a man he could kill with his little finger... "Clean the shitty floor, get your balls broke by a stripper, take off the fucking hat. Aren't you the man? I'm the boss of you. Some deadly viper you are." Then just when you actually feel sorry for him. Just when you care about a man that massacred nine people on a cold blooded whim, BAM rock salt to the tits -- bet that stings.

"I'm gonna bury you alive, with or without eyes, I'm gonna bury you alive. You going in the ground tonight." Q&U do such a wonderful job of evoking terror in this scene I found it hard to watch. I found it especially hard to watch because I enjoyed it. I could be that guy. "No real hatred for ya darling, but I'm putting ya in the ground." (and I'm gonna enjoy doing it).

And this brings me to my real point. QT must have had a hard-on the entire time he was making this movie.

Day 17: "Filmed hot bitches fighting. Knifed Vivica in the head."

Day 34: "Oh today man, you gotta love it, I got to film Daryl Hannah getting a swirlie!"

Day 58: "Got to film that hot lawyer bitch getting her arm chopped off today!"

Day 117: "Wow Uma Thurman sure can take a shot to the crotch."

Day 134: "Buried Uma alive today."

The film is a mysoginist's dream. Russ Meyer would be and probably was proud. A good part of this movie is hot bitches beating the shit out of each other. That's always appreciated.

I'm not saying I liked it in spite of the violence. I'm saying I liked it because of the violence. I'm saying I liked it because philosophically I agreed with its purpose. Revenge served cold with a can of whoop-ass on the side. Every character a human and deserve ain't got nothing to do with it. All of you are going in the ground tonight.

Do you know why I tell you this? Because Bill would want me to.

Informed Comment :
From a guest editorial on juancole.com by Mark Levine

"Three years ago, as the pungent odor of what was left of the World Trade Center slowly pervaded my neighborhood, I wrote a piece called “We’re all Israelis Now.” I didn’t invent the idea; in the hours since the attacks I had heard several commentators say essentially the same thing, although our meanings were in fact diametrically opposed. For them, the September 11 attacks had constituted a tragic wake up call to America about the mortal threat posed by Muslim terrorism, which Israel had been living through for decades and whose methods the US would now have to copy if it wanted to “win the war on terror.”

For me, however, the attacks suggested a more troubling scenario: That like Israelis, Americans would never face the causes of the extreme violence perpetrated against us by those whose oppression we have supported and even enforced, and engage in the honest introspection of what our role has been in generating the kind of hatred that turns commuter jets into cruise missiles. Instead, my gut told me that we’d acquiesce to President Bush’s use of the war to realize the long-held imperial, even apocalyptic visions of the neoliberal Right, ones that find great sympathy with its Israeli counterpart.

As I watch George W. Bush celebrate his reelection I realize I never could have imagined just how much like Israelis we would become. Think about it: in Israel, the majority of Jewish citizens support the policies of Ariel Sharon despite the large-scale, systematic (and according to international law, criminal) violence his government deploys against Palestinian society, despite the worsening economic situation for the lower middle class religious voters who constitute his main base of support, despite rising international opprobrium and isolation. Sound familiar?

As for the country’s “liberal” opposition, it’s in a shambles, politically and morally bankrupt because in fact it was a willing participant in creating and preserving the system that is now eating away at the heart of Israeli society. Aside from occasional plaintive oped pieces by members of its progressive wing, the Labor Party can and will do nothing fundamentally to challenge Sharon’s policies. Why? Because they reflect an impulse, nurtured by the Labor movement during its decades in power, that is buried deep in the heart of Zionism: to build an exclusively Jewish society on as much of the ancient homeland as possible, with little regard for the fate of the country’s native inhabitants.

Bank Robber Reports Bizarre Claim - Local - News - CBS 6 Albany

"An Albany bank robber who tried to come clean about his crime claims police told him to come back later."

With video.

I'm sick and scared. I'm sick, probably with grief, at the horrid outcome of this election. I'm scare of four more years progress towards the apocolypse. Four more years where I wake up everyday wondering which one of Bush's misguided policies will get us all killed. Will it be his gift of the environment to megacorps? Will he get us far enough drawn into his holy war to off the planet? Will his destructive economic policies throw us into a class war that the rich must inevitably win by destroying the poor?

I'm not sure but on the best of days it keeps me up and night. To think that Americans want a divider as a leader has me sick today. When the end comes we'll deserve it even if deserve's got nothin to do with it.