July 30, 2018

Two and a Half Men poll

I'm a Charlie guy, all the way.
Ashton just doesn't Kut it for me.
You?

Yes, the reruns are one of my guilty pleasures.

July 30, 2018

Roy Moore and the Pedophile Detector

What a maroon.


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July 29, 2018

I Dated Monica Lewinsky - Jake Tapper

Interesting read from 1998

Behind the tawdriest of headlines, there's a woman I wouldn't mind bringing home to mom.
Jake Tapper
Jan 30, 1998 12 AM


"It's still etched on my December calendar: the Saturday night of Joe and Danielle's going-away party at Stetson's on U Street NW. I walked in, checked out the crowd, and immediately headed for Doug, the owner. I chatted and drank with him, and, in an effort to make myself as unapproachable as possible, I started shooting pool with him. Soon enough, Doug was called back to his duties, and I had to start feeding the table quarters. Between my former colleague Maloni and me, we could only scrape together three of the requisite four quarters. I took that particular need and blended it with another one, stepping up to a group of three women who had been hovering near the table.

"Do any of you have a quarter?" I asked, and one of them, the one with the smile that seemed to be about nothing in particular, dug into her purse and handed me one. I thanked her, introduced myself, and resumed hunting my target stripes.

"Am I drunk, or is she cute?" I asked Maloni.
"Which one?" he said.
"Monica," I said. "The one in the black."
"You're drunk," said Maloni, a rugby pretty boy. I overruled him. She was cute, if a little zaftig. And friendly. And nice.

I hovered around the coral reef of the pool table for hours that night, never coming up for air. It was fine, paddling in my little eddy of indifference, waiting for others to approach me. Which Monica did. I was lining up a side shot when she stepped up and dropped three quarters onto the table, the smile now seemingly offered more specifically for my benefit.

"For the game?" I asked. "You got next?"
"No, for you," she said. "Just some extra I had."
So, ignoring the usual coy mating rituals, Monica felt free to actually be nice. Just to be nice. Maybe she wanted to meet me or someone like me. Regardless, it was refreshing. A warm patch of water in an otherwise chilly ocean. The simple act of gifting me with a few quarters after knowing me but a few minutes disarmed me.

I was intrigued enough to approach Joe, who was the raison d'être for the going-away party. Upon gentle inquiry, Joe told me that Monica was bad news, that she had left the White House because she had kept wandering into the Oval Office and inappropriately striking up conversations with the commander in chief.
much more: https://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/news/article/13014731/i-dated-monica-lewinsky

July 11, 2018

For John Cleese fans:

A great interview.
http://www.vulture.com/2017/09/john-cleese-monty-python-in-conversation.html

July 4, 2018

Fintan O'Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

Babies in cages were no ‘mistake’ by Trump but test-marketing for barbarism
- Fintan O'Toole, The Irish Times

To grasp what is going on in the world right now, we need to reflect on two things. One is that we are in a phase of trial runs. The other is that what is being trialled is fascism – a word that should be used carefully but not shirked when it is so clearly on the horizon. Forget “post-fascist” – what we are living with is pre-fascism.

It is easy to dismiss Donald Trump as an ignoramus, not least because he is. But he has an acute understanding of one thing: test marketing. He created himself in the gossip pages of the New York tabloids, where celebrity is manufactured by planting outrageous stories that you can later confirm or deny depending on how they go down. And he recreated himself in reality TV where the storylines can be adjusted according to the ratings. Put something out there, pull it back, adjust, go again.

Fascism doesn’t arise suddenly in an existing democracy. It is not easy to get people to give up their ideas of freedom and civility. You have to do trial runs that, if they are done well, serve two purposes. They get people used to something they may initially recoil from; and they allow you to refine and calibrate. This is what is happening now and we would be fools not to see it.

Read on:
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-trial-runs-for-fascism-are-in-full-flow-1.3543375