What's Really on Ben Bernanke's Mind?

Has anyone else noticed some thinly (at best) veiled allusions in this whole attempt to avoid a recession? I wouldn't be at all surprised to see news ledes getting give up the attempt at subtlety:

• Today NASA scientists unveiled a giant vibrator in the shape of a tongue to stimulate the US economy.
  
• While no ground has been made in determining the amount of money that will be provided to Americans, the Senate did pass a resolution to change the terms of the debate, officially changing the name of the legislation from "economic stimulus" to "economic anal-ticklage".

It's Gonna Be A Good Day

The first thing I heard this morning was a reporter noting that Rudy Giuliani is expected to drop out of the race today and endorse John McCain, immediately followed by a musical interlude - Dust in the Wind. Sounds like it's time to donate more money to public radio.

Anyhoo, I'd like to make a couple of points to my many, many fairly progressive friends with libertarian tendencies who think McCain or Ron Paul wouldn't be so bad for 'Merika:

• Yes, McCain is all fancy schmancy pants moderate maverick and whatnot, but what you're not realizing is that he's gonna have to stock his cabinet with a whole bunch of party pricks to prove to the repugniclan base that he's a Real Live Republican. If he gets elected, the war is still gonna go on forEVER and all the money towards the war will go on forever, and not only will my brother be dead but then his kids won't be able to read, either. I guess what I'm really saying is that your vote for McCain is a vote to make more illiterate orphans in America. Nice going, assholes.
• Let's not be lured by the siren song of Ron Paul, either. Having spent some time in northeastern Wisconsin, I can definitely see the appeal of libertarianism despite being the social democrat that I am - we're smart enough that we need minimal supervision to play nicely in the sandlot, so back off and let us spend our money ourselves. Here's the thing though, Ron Paul is not-so-secretly a bigoted nutcase. I'll let The New Republic do the talking.
  
• Since Mitt Romney must dedicate his life as a public servant bolstering the nation's douche-in-bag reserves, the choice comes down to Hillary and Barack. This should help make that choice a little easier.
  

The State of the Union is Soporific

Elie Wiesel once said that the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference, and in today's case, that might be a good thing. Though I'm loathe to admit that the Object and I do anything so domestically mundane, a few weeks ago we were shopping for a new calendar to hang in our kitchen. The Object pointed to a Count-Down-the-Days-'Til-Bush-Is-Outta-Office calendar, and to his surprise, I pooh-poohed the choice. "Bah! That whole administration is just so passé; I just don't even recognize it as legit anymore."

And thusly, I did not watch the State of the Union Address last night. Just let me have my vote for Barack and gimme my check to make my feel better about your taking only 8 years to put the country's economy through a bigger downward moodswing than Britney Spears after a post-child custody hearing coke binge. The only thing that could have excited me about this year's SOTU would have been Bush's urging the Congress to pass legislation requiring a Charlie Brown-parental womp-womp sound effect whenever the legacy of Bush's economic policies were mentioned in historical terms.

Much more heartening - and interesting - is the State of other Unions/Nations:

• The state of Japan appears to be quite well, now that rape whistles for kids are on the market and robots are teaching traditional dance. That would have made that scene in Memoirs of a Geisha much more interesting. (Tip o' the Goo to Lionel)
• Say what you will about China, but the state of their union is soooooper strong. Economists believe this is because of the rise in popularity of BengBeng, the superstar duck. "If you ask him to sing, he quacks rhythmically while shaking his head and body. He quite enjoys it."
• In England, the state of affairs is spotty as the Queen's English turns into the Canine's German.
  
• In Israel, the state of the nation is one of forgiveness, since, "After accomplishing the mission of rehabilitating Israel's problematic image in the world, the Foreign Ministry has now found the time to deal with the real important issue: Extending an official apology to The Beatles, 43 years after the British band was banned from performing in the Jewish state." I'm just gonna let that hang in the air for a minute...
• The state of Estonia is decidedly bleaker, where you have to travel to the Ikea in Helsinki to get a decent bed. Even then, you have to strap the bed on your back to get it on the bus and ferry back to Tallinn: "I have a really strange question for you.. so.. ah.. Do you have anything around here which would help me to carry this [bed] onto a bus and back to Tallinn?'" (Tip o' the Goo to Kimberly)
• The state of the European Union, where nations get screwed every day, involves a sense of coming together.
  
• And finally, in the land down under they're seeing red over the state of affairs in Tasmania.
  

More Addicting Than Scrabulous

Can't talk. Must donate rice to poor peoples through the power of my prodigious vocabulary. Don't care if it's a little too good to be true, since I lack pulchritude and mathematical skills, internet palavering is all I have. You go now; rack up rice in grains.

FREERICE.COM

When It's Appropriate to Snort on Live T.V.

The full call is here.

Fountain of Utes

"Preliminary results from a survey of married couples suggest that disputing husbands and wives who hold in their anger die earlier than expressive couples."

YAY! The Object and I will never ever ever die!

In Case You Thought It Was a Joke

Seriously, TSA protects us from neither gun-toting passengers nor kittens. Next thing you know, we'll all be held hostage by kittens with guns.

It's worth noting that both of these stories come out of Florida, where noted dog-killer Rudy Giuliani hopes to sway voters. it's all coming together now.

Straw Man Poll

The Last Shall Be First... To Go, That Is.

Let's all wear our faces of shock and/or awe.

[Psst, Rudy, hint hint!]

Baby Steps

I thought it would hurt me a lot more that it does to type these words today. Not in any figurative/metaphorical sense of "oh, it hurts that it's Tuesday and that racial inequality still exists despite the legacy of MLK; Kenya is still burning; Roe v. Wade is in grave danger, and the fabric of the world economy that has been so disastrously frayed by the irresponsibility of the Bush administration is finally falling apart at the very seams", but more in the literal sense of, "ouch, each key I press hurts my fingers". I should be really, really sore today. That's because yesterday,

I WENT CLIMBING.

Yep!

It's been two and a half years after the initial climbing accident where I took a that snapped my tailbone right off and a year and two months after the peripheral injury that broke my hip, subsequently learning the full extent of the nerve damage in my spine. After months of ostensibly world-class doctors scratching their heads and telling me maybe I'd made it up or maybe it was lupus, months and months of tedious physical therapy exercises replacing my social life, and even months of chronic pain that made me a very cranky shell of my former self, I wasn't sure I'd walk properly ever again, much less get back up on a climbing wall. So please forgive me if it sounds like I'm tooting my own train whistle after having gotten up a measly 5.8, but I'm so fucking stoked.

Yeah, there's still a long road ahead to recovery, and I'll never be the same as I was before that fall, and I'll probably never run again. But today, I'm savoring this.

Of course, the Object belayed and recorded the whole experience for posterity:

Speaking of Never Having Kids...

Thanks for nothing, Slate. No matter what good, larger, save-the-world, be-a-hero-to-one-woman point you make about vasectomies, no guy is ever going to get past the following sentences:

• "I have a friend who had it done and he couldn't feel his dick for 10 months," a guy at a dinner party told me, knowledgably. "After that I said, 'No way.' "
• There was a needle in my scrotum. Scrotums were not designed with needles in mind.
• ...what would happen if you applied 170 pounds of pressure on a single male testicle.

It's Gloppling Out

The Object and I have fundamental differences when it comes to vocabulary. For example, last night, a woman with the name "Brie" was featured on some t.v. show. I asked the Object who in her right mind would name a child after cheese. It's like saying all this child will have to offer the world will be to taste especially delicious with jalapeño jam and puff pastry.

"I love that name!" he exclaimed.

Blink. Blink. Mouth agape. "You're serious?"

"Yeah, Brie, Brianna? It's so pretty!" He then countered, "You're not one to talk; you have the worst taste in girls' names in the world. This is why we can never have children."

That's fair. It deeply saddens me that there are a host of names out there that would be lovely girls' names, but instead are afflictions - and in a cruel twist of ironic fate, often affe women. Consider just a few of my favorites:

• Angina
• Thalassemia
• Chlamydia
• Gonorrhea
  
• Aubergine^1.
  

And that's just the start of our lexicographical differences. But today, the Object has created a word I can countenance. Today in DC we're having a rare bout of wintry weather. For a little while this morning, snow - or what the locals refer to as "white flakes of death" - were falling from the sky. But it's settled into a dismal spew of what weather.com refers to as a "wintry mix". Not snow, rain, hail, slush, or sleet, it's a category unto itself. The Object would like to make a move to officially refer to this kind of precipitation as "glopple". It's perfect, like the word was always there and he just discovered it, like finding the pyramids or something. It's such a lovely word it might even make a very distinguished name for a little boy.

1. True, not a disease, but would be such a pretty name.

Scrabble Rabble

If you think I've been a little obsessive over the presidential race lately, that's NOTHING compared to my Scrabulous addiction.

And now they're trying to take it away from me.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO[breath]OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Not without a goddamn fight. You think peoples where pissed with the whole creepy MySpace Kill-a-Neighbor game? Just imagine the wrath that will come down from people who actually know how to use vowels.
OVERLORDS OF HASBRO:I know this Scrabulous thing could be deliciously lucrative for you, and that you haven't made money on Scrabble since 1986 since now everyone just inherits a board or buys one for 20 cents at a garage sale. I see homeless dudes with them all the time. But pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease do not take away or change in any manner the Scrabulous platform. Unless it is to give 4 points for the letter E, because I'm in the middle of five different games where at least three of my seven letters are the letter E, and there's some pretty sweet double word spots that I could work to my maximum advantage.

Revisionist Historian

The only way John Edwards can remain in this li'l presidential race is to invent a time machine and go back in time to last night's debate so that today's newalysis reads differently. Something more like this:

Question in the debate in Nevada between the democratic candidates

The policy differences among the remaining candidates is so slight that we appear to be choosing on the basis of personality and life story. That being said, why should I, as a progressive woman, not resent being forced to choose between the first viable female candidate and the first viable African American candidate?

Response from John Edwards:

I'm glad you asked that question. I respect and admire the two people onstage with me tonight, and their accomplishments in advancing women and minorities. Growing up in a family of mill workers, I know what it's like to be poor. You also might not know that I'm a minority too. I'm 1/32 Cherokee Indian, have a schtikle of Jewish blood, and just yesterday, I found out that I'm also 3/64 Chinaman. Also, I'm handicapped, having lost the little toe on my left foot in a tragic lawn darts accident back in '72. Good thing that atrocity of a Sunday past time is now banned!

Eh, it probably would have backfired when Obama would have then scored a point with his youth base by quipping in his rebuttal, "Dude, Chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please."

Assorted Hillar-i-ty

What I appreciate most about the Hillary campaign, much like the Hucka-wheeee campaign, is the how it's opened the floodgates to allow the waves of ridiculosity to gush forth.

First, there's the photos. Hillary gazes out from the cover of this week's Newsweek with awfully glassy eyes, proclaiming, "I found my voice." Given the tenor of the picture, one would think she lost it in the first place only because she was sitting backstage at the debate sucking on helium balloons. She channels Ariel with those big doe-y Disney eyes; you expect her to announce that now that she's found her voice, she's divorcing Bill to pursue a relationship with Prince Eric.

Funnier even than Hillary is Gloria Steinem, who is inserting herself anywhere and everywhere into this campaign in a last-ditch attempt to prove that she's still relevant.

"Gender," writes Gloria Steinem on the op-ed page of the Jan. 8 New York Times, "is probably the most restricting force in American life." That is incorrect. Poverty is the most restricting force in American life. It's become somewhat unfashionable to point this out, but I don't see how it could be otherwise. Given the choice between being born poor and being born female, which would you choose? --Timothy Noah in Slate

It's true, you know; (specious) evidence can show that a bro can become a little less po' if he dresses like a ho.

So there you go.

I'd Forget I Was a Lobbyist, Too

The Object: Barack is gonna win Nevada and South Carolina because of me. Michigan, too; I don't care if he's not on the ballot.

The Goo: How do you figure?

The Object: Because John Kerry sent me an email telling me to donate, and it had a button to click, so I did, and now Barack will win the nomination because of my $25.

The Goo: Well, you should feel mighty proud of yourself; you've done a good and great work.

A little while later...

The Goo: Wait a minute!! Aren't you a registered lobbyist? Are you sure you can donate? And if you're not registered, how can you lobby?

The Object: Uh-oh, I guess I am a registered lobbyist. I don't even consider myself one, so I missed the fine print that says "I swear I'm not a federal lobbyist."

The Goo: How very Mitt Romney of you.

The Object: Look, if Barack wants to send my money back, he's more than welcome to. It was 25 bucks from a 26 year-old kid who works for [a bunch of treehuggers trying to save the polar bears from drowning]. Not exactly the sort of lobbyist that most Americans think of as having a stranglehold on American politics. How much influence does $25 buy nowadays, anyways?

The Goo: I'm just saying, if Barack loses because of you, you're in big trouble, McAbramoff.

The Object: By law, I'm only allowed to spend 20% of my time lobbying, so technically, only 5 dollars of the donation is dirty money.

The Goo: You're gonna get us both killed. Wolf Blitzer will find out, and he will personally come and throw Molotov cocktails through our apartment windows because he will be so upset that you sullied the good name of his precious and perfect candidate.

The Object: Does this mean I can't volunteer to work on the campaign, either?

The Goo: Probably not. But I hear there's a Senator in Alaska who wants you to buy him a bridge.

Orange You Glad You're Complicit?

“There is only one thing that arouses animals more than pleasure, and that is pain. Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions. Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but toward hell. Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him.”

--Umberto Eco

Six years of a illegal prison with specious motives is six years too many.

Day Three Without Cable or Internet

Goo: This issue of The New Yorker is really disappointing. That article about Google didn't have much more than vaguely ominous overtones that it never really substantiated, and said nothing that The Economist didn't say better and with more brevity a few months ago. This article on Scientology and architecture is just plain tedious- how can you make a religion that involves celebrities and science fiction sound so boring? Even the Andy Borowitz failed to amuse me on the level it normally does.

The Object: Yeah, but just wait until you get to the article about the scrap metal industry.

Sigh.

Biting the Hand

Let it be known to loyal readers of this blog that the terms "odd" and/or "trollish" are not meant in any pejorative sense of the word, and you know what, let's just use different phraseology altogether, perhaps mischievous and delightfully misanthropic would be more appropriate.

And it is never our intent, nor our policy here at the Goo to offend the peoples we find fascinating.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, well then mind your own beeswax and wait for the real post that is forthcoming.

All That Is New Is, By That Fact, Automatically Traditional

An avid francophile, my dad used to try and imbue my life with French culture when I wasn't paying attention. Not long after my last brother moved out of the house, leaving me the only sibling out of the six of us living with my parents, my dad brought home the movie Bande A Part. I'm sure I was wearing some ridiculous outfit in an attempt to be outsider-y cool- stripey tights and one of my brothers' outgrown boy scout shirts or something of that ilk. My dad looked me up and down, handed me the video and said, "If you want to learn a little what cool's all about, check this out." I fell in love with the movie and watched the dance scene obsessively, trying to figure out how a cast of characters so naive could pull off such savior-faire sans souci.

I don't know how I forgot about the film, but earlier this week, my reverse arts patron, an odd, trollish little man who guides my musical and cinematic cultivation insisted my life wasn't complete without having seen a movie called A Band of Outsiders. As soon as the first credit flashed across the screen, it was like seeing an old friend after many years.

My story ends here like a dime novel. Without further ado, for your viewing pleasure, I present the heppest scene in cinema, La Danse Madison:

The Hill-a-rye Cry - Better Than the Dean Scream

Before all the rest of you go vote for Hillary, my friend Alex would like to point out that if she wins, she will be the most powerful woman to have cried her way into a job.

(It actually does make me want to vote for her a bit.)

There's No Such Thing As Free Cable

I HATE COMCAST.

Because on the eve of the New Hampshire primary and the same day that the Daily Show came back on the air, they decided to do an "audit" of all of the cable and internet use in my apartment building, taking away BOTH the internet (paid for) and cable t.v. (paid for not as much).

I feel like the bastard son of Claire Huxtable.

'Ware the Wily Panthers

Today's video is in honor of my friends, who leave this week on their honeymoon to Belize to go visit the panthers (by panthers, I mean jaguars), and have bestowed me the honor of taking care of their brand new Wii cat and plants. I hope kitty likes Guitar Hero...

A Few More Thoughts On Last Night's Debates

1. I would vote for Fred Thompson (remember him? He's still running!), but only if he swears to make Jack McCoy his running mate. I think we can all agree that Lenny Briscoe would have been superior, though.

2. I cannot tell you how much I want Mike Huckabee to win the Republican nomination, just to watch the evangelical minister crucify himself. His choice to wear a polka-dotted tie reinforced him as my choice of candidate for best hilarity factor.

3. Mitt Romney should be Time Magazine's Douchebag of the Year. Not since Howard Dean disgraced our airwaves have I so fervently wanted to kick a man directly in his gonads.

Shifty

I'm not usually allowed to watch the Sunday morning talk shows, because I'm that person who talks to the t.v. But during the election season, the Object takes pity on me and kindly lets me into the room, so here I am, watching Mitt Romney.

Seeing him on the screen, a host of emotions well forth in me - sometimes I'm baffled by the constant shift of his positions, other times outraged at his onstage thuggery, and others still dismayed at how good he is at shirking responsibility but can still justify his unbridled ambition at any cost - he approved an ad without having seen it? And that's how he wants to run a country?

But the question that plagues me the most - is he wearing the garment?

Ace in the Hole

Barack! Iowa!

Let's just pause for a second here. I know we're all hepped up on Huckabee and whatnot, but before we move on to South Carolina, New Hampshire, and the rest, let's just sit back and revel for a sec.

While the South reigns as the area of the country known for good old-fashioned hate spewing racism, the civil rights movement met its match in Chicago and the surrounding environs (i.e., Iowa). Daley and his impenetrable machine were an insidious force MLK couldn't have foreseen or reckoned with, and the movement stalemated as black leaders divided into a battle for who was right in how to strategically move forward. Meanwhile, insular and homogeneous midwestern communities wanted to keep them that way, and were wary of any outsiders; de facto segregation and a subtle, less blatant racism settled somewhat uncomfortably into the culture of the Midwest.

Forty years have passed since Daley and King tussled, and with each passing year, the hope for change in the political machine has grown dimmer and dimmer. With Obama's victory last night in Iowa, that hope was rekindled. More than just a political victory, when the people of Iowa chose Obama as their representative, they have ignited a spark in the minds of progressive Americans that maybe this election won't be the same old shit- a choice between the white guy and the other white guy who really aren't all that different, and might actually be cousins.

At the end of the day, that's why Obama's got my vote. Hillary's health care plan is better, and Edwards' plan for the environment is the only one that really carries any weight among the top three candidates. But in this election, a candidate must be more than the sum of his (or her, its so nice to be able to say that!) stances. Most critically, a candidate must restore the U.S. as an international player. For the past several years, we've been the bratty kid who lost a move in the game o' globalism. So we smacked the game off the table and yelled out to the international community, "I HATE this game and I HATE you! I'm going home to play with my own noocuelar toys! Anyone who doesn't completely suck and is not brown or poor can come over to my house. Also, my mom makes better snacks." Didn't you always kinda hate that kid for hijacking the game? No one ever really followed him except the sycophants, losers, and the kids who had something to be afraid of. As a political strategy, it sounds a lot more like Homeland Insecurity.

There's alway gonna be people you don't want to play with- the nutter who whips out his peepee in the middle of the game, the jerk who hordes all the pieces, the deluded kid who says his country got rid of homosexuality. But remember how there was usually one really cool kid who was secure in who he was that everyone loved him - nice to everyone, cajoled the assholes into letting everyone play, and shrewd as fuck in maintaining the equilibrium? Wouldn't it be sah-weet to have that guy leading our country? In terms of the overall message to the international community, Obama represents that the United States is ready and willing to be a partner and an ally in this global game, and that we're secure enough to let everyone- even our own citizens- play.

So Iowa- thanks.

Wreak The Vote!

Only one candidate has managed to corner the apathetic youth vote. The kids love Ron Paul and what he stands for, namely a 17-year old boy's right to smoke pot and play video games in his parent's basement. It's brought the smelly boys out in droves to campaign for Ron Paul's vision of America. Good God, it'll be beautiful stinky:

"A lot of guys in a small area," says Jeff Frazee, the Paul campaign's youth coordinator. "Doesn't smell the best." During spare moments, which are rare, the Paul boys watch guy movies such as "Transformers" and wish there were more girls around.

While a Ron Paul presidency would leave America considerably stinkier and somewhat illiterate, his election would be a cautionary tale for generations to come: Parents, see what happens when you don't try hard enough to get your teenager a Wii for Christmas during election season when the Iowa caucus mere days away? They may have short attention spans, but not that short.

2008: Off to a Robbly Start

Happy New Year and all that jazz. They say that how you are in the first days of the new year set the tone for the entire year, which means I'm fucked.

I'm going to spend 2008 looking like the Hamburglar.

It's an unfortunate confluence of events that have brought me to this state. Pre-Christmas season, I decided to start going through a horizontal stripedy clothing phase. It was pretty cute until the holidays came around. Too much junk food morphed my body from that of a wiry 10 year old boy to that of a pudgy 15 year old boy. Far too many mornings of "last night was a rough one" has turned the dark circles under my eyes into a bona fide mask. Between schmoozy work events, schmoozing with the Object's family, and schmoozing with houseguest and the ensuing parties/social events for aforementioned houseguest, I ran out of interesting small talk some time ago. No worries! My angry liver and bowels are happy to fill in where my vocabulary fails, so that all that comes out of my mouth anymore sounds like "Robble, robble!"

I'm just waiting for the McCravings to kick in. It's all downhill from there.

Next thing you know, I'll fall in with those chulos from the Happy Meal Gang, and what began as a life of petty burger vandalism will turn into a series of escalatings acts of thuggery, until I find myself wrapped up in a drive-by with Grimace, and all that's left of Birdie the Early Bird will be a horrible, ketchupy mess of McNuggets.

Mayor McCheese is going to come to work and detain me. My only defense will be my vegetarianism, and I'm not sure that'll hold up in court - next thing you know, I'll be on the witness stand, and Jack McCoy will get all up in my grill and I'll crack like an egg into a McMuffin. I'll break down, sobbing, "I did this for YOU!" in the general direction of the Object, the lover I will have taken, or my mother. Probably all three.

I've also been watching a lot of Law and Order.