the best show in town

is in Eschaton's comments. Read the ones here or here or here or here or here or here just from yesterday.

I don't feel as if I'm giving out the address of that fabulous undiscovered restaurant that gets ruined when everyone starts flocking to it because I'm positive I'm the last to have noticed.

This digby person is like Yoda. Where'd he come from?

edit: a couple of years late and a few dollars short: she.

Just saying.

mio povero e movato

the Poor Man is has moved, which means you'll need his new address to find new links to the Led Zeppelin testing area (hey, can I segue or, you know, what?)

Questions:

1. The wind stops blowing. How does this affect the poet's travel plans? Can the poet draw any lessons from this?

2. Is there really a castle? How do you get there? Is it spinning?

3. Should stupid people with Rod Stewart's hair take bad drugs, read the Hobbit, wear skin-tight jeans jackets and no shirt and prance around the world singing songs of their own composition?

Defend your answer with quotes from the song.

As longtime readers know, I like to take advantage of memorable occasions as day fades into day in the inexorable march of life by posting snippets of the Led Zeppelin testing area. I think it may be out of my system for now, but there is an election coming up.

also: kittycat picture, rated "oh, cutie wootie wootie" by HM, who knows about these things.

well, dang.

the eminent Mr Meredith gets...

snarky.

It's a beautiful thing. Go look.

Yes, I know I didn't link to a specific post, because after that you have to read the rest of the posts at least down to the Eddie Haskell stuff. It's the one from yesterday. You'll find it. I trust you.

Well, see, there you go.

the late Jim Chapin on taking sides

"What if you gauged the two sides in the Civil War just by looking at the two generals in command at Antietam?" Jim Chapin asked at some point during the 2000 campaign. "McClellan was more pro-slavery than Lee. If that's all you focused on -- not the armies, not the governments, not the states and their politics -- you might conclude there was no difference between the North and the South."

Chapin's point had nothing to do with the Civil War. It was that parties matter, that the then-embattled Al Gore, whatever his flaws, was responsive to a different set of forces than George W. Bush, and that elections are about a choice of parties and social forces at least as much as they are about a choice of men and women.

standing O

Rawbservations on MSN on ending that relationship

I want to break up with this man.

See, even I can do this one.

Subject: We need your help: Stand up, keep fighting

Dear MoveOn member,

In memory of Paul Wellstone, today we're introducing an exciting new way to channel grassroots energy to a principled Senate candidate. Wherever you are in the country, you can help Bill Bradbury -- a Senate challenger who's been outspoken about his opposition to the Iraq war resolution -- win this key race in Oregon. Please let us know by noon EST on Thursday if you can help make a few dozen get-out-the-vote phone calls at:

http://www.moveon.org/keepfighting/standup.html

( More... )

The gostaks did WHAT?!?!?!?!

well, I'm just glad _my_ political party of choice is above distimming doshes because it's always been a major matter of principle for me that I couldn't ever consider, no matter how openminded and accepting I am, supporting any of the policies of a party that would consider anything less than full principled support of the dosh community, and I'm appalled, dammit, appalled to see that the miserable unprincipled PC...

I'd really like to give out a Claude but I may be having some slight temporary reality issues so I'm reluctant.

I'll make a deal with you. Anyone from the party whose leader is spending the first three weeks of the war adding on campaign trips with the help of hundreds of temporarily manumitted party-registered government employees to try and win control of all three branches of government so that he can put judicial activists into office to cement in place his 'populist' policies on the federal level because he can't get the people to support them who is deeply offended by the politicization of Wellstone's funeral *and* who still exists when the migraine medicine and the painkillers wear off gets a Claude Rains Memorial Gambling Awareness Award.

I've also had some really weird dreams about conservative activists going to the matresses against left-wing homophobia.

This medication is good shit. You people should shatter some bones and try it. Two thumbs up (unless I squint).

edit: some background here.

wow. how cool is this.

a letter from a very sweet concerned reader has confirmed the joyful fact that except for my brother, Procrustes (because he's the procrustiest) and possibly my cousin Stefan, I am _the biggest geek who reads my page_

I lift my glasses to you in profound humility, the electrical tape gleaming like a sword in the sun.

the Gostaks distimmed the doshes is a semantically null phrase which was used by an author named Miles J Breuer, MD in a story called the Gostaks and the Doshes (more information here) as the battle cry used to justify a war, even though it doesn't actually mean, technically, anything. It means, in context, that the people on the other side are _bad_ and they do _bad stuff_.

I've been hearing dim echoes of it a lot this past few weeks.

Geek on, my children.

edit: someone in comments has added this, which rocks, to the conversation

My morning fix

on the Boy Scout thing

== Bloody Sticky Divine Bitch Goddess Merit Badge ==

Eagle Scout Darrell Lambert has earned 37 merit badges, worked more than 1,000 hours of community service and helps lead a Boy Scout troop in his hometown. But the 19-year-old has another distinction that may lead to his removal from the Boy Scouts: He's an atheist. Last week, Lambert was given roughly a week by the Boy Scouts' regional executive to declare belief in a supreme being and comply with Boy Scout policy, or quit the Scouts, isn't that just the cutest thing, I mean, a policy mandating not only that you not be gay and that you not be the slightest bit different in any way because that really scares the white sexually repressed dads, but that you believe in some higher power, any higher power will do, they say, even Mother Nature, and were the world just and right the virtuous upstanding probably still-a-virgin atheist Lambert would say all right, fine, screw this, here you go you self-righteous dinkwads, I hereby fully believe in the nasty divine creator/destroyer goddess Ashtoreth, aka Astarte, aka Ishtar, precursor to Yahweh and your puny little biblical myth for about 20,000 years you adorably homophobic knot-tying tentpole-strokers. I gotcher higher power right here, boys. I'm off to get my nipples pierced. Bye now.

on Wellstone's funeral

== Death Licks Dick Cheney's Skull, Cringes ==

The family of Sen. Paul Wellstone asked the wan deathly flower-wilting visage of Vice President Dick Cheney to stay away from Tuesday night's memorial for the late senator, in part to spare mourners from excessive security screenings, but also mostly because Cheney is a sniveling sickly GOP snake who most likely openly hated the very liberal and outspoken Wellstone and hence Cheney's presence within a 500 mile radius of the gravesite would undoubtedly cause the senator's frustrated ghost much dis-ease and would undoubtedly cause the surrounding hollow corpses and malevolent spirits if not the spectre of Death itself to sense the presence of one of their own and want to reach up out of the wormy soil and grab Cheney's thick pale veiny alien ankles as he stood there snickering like a constipated hyena by the gravesite and try to drag him back down to the steaming reeking hellpit from whence he and Lynney spawned, which would have undoubtedly totally disrupted the Wellstone funeral proceedings and really annoyed the caterers.

= DISCLAIMER ==

Boisterous off-key singing in the car is a sign of enlightenment. Nothing the slightest bit wrong with sticking a nice purple Post-it note on your forehead to remind yourself to please see things differently this time. Bring it on baby bring it c'mon you know you want to just like that yeah yeah yeah mmm oh my god yes. If this is not what you expected, please alter your expectations. No such thing as random coincidence. No such thing as too much lubricant.

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The Notes col appears every Weds and Friday. Almost everything below the Story Pick changes every Monday. Juicy and non-toilet-humor link suggestions for the Oh My God section are always welcome. Occasional typos make life interesting. Broken links in the ascii version are usually caused by text wrapping; get the HTML version via the newsletters page, it's much better. The best places to buy a Hitachi Magic Wand online are probably either goodvibes.com or blowfish.com. Of course I read all my email. Fortunately or unfortunately, I am not gay. The SF Factoids get repeated about once every two years. The "too much lubricant" line comes from a very famous and happy and wise porn star.