Time to dust off my old friend...



Yep, I actually went back and fired up the ol' Wii Fit Balance Board, because while I find New Year's Day to be an arbitrary bullshit signifier with no real meaning, the fact that I can't see my cock when I look down in the shower anymore isn't.

And after greeting me kindly and saying it looked forward to a Happy New Year (why, thank you!) I was informed that it was 634 days since my last visit (ewwwwwwww) and that I gained back the fifteen pounds I lost since then (double ewwwwwwww). Fortunately, Wii Fit is perfect for losing ten-fifteen or so; all I need to do is what I've always known I've needed to do, start exercising again (want to), eat a little better (need to) and chill with the late night snacks (HOW TO?????).

That last one's the killer, I really fuck myself bad with those 9 pm snacks, usually a bowl of cereal with a milk/half-and-half mixtureI KNOW I KNOW IT'S HORRIBLE OK? DON'T YOU THINK I WANNA STOP IT?

I've set my goal, back down to a fighting weight of 149 (-12 pounds) in three months...sigh, I know blogging is inherently a navel-gazing activity but I wish it wasn't so literal here.

Good luck, VA-5...

This is the guy that wasn't good enough for you.



I agree with Mark Warner's assessment, though, if Mr. Perriello decides to stay in politics, it won't be the last we see of him.

And having spent twelve years with Virgil Goode as our rep, I'm very thankful for two years of non-embarrassment.

At least those snowplows won't be helping him out of the bathroom...

I don't think Chris Christie has been a great governor of my former state, to say the least. He's been a fucking embarrassment, to be more accurate.

All the same, I don't necessarily blame him for taking a vacation even though he knew the snowstorm was coming. What I find amazingly weird is why the Lt. Governor would be on vacation the same week. Isn't that the point of the damn job?

It just reminds me of what P. J. O'Rourke said about twenty-five years ago: "The Republican Party is the party that says government doesn't work, then they get elected and prove it."

8 Bits O' Nevsky - In Space, No One Can Hear You Shit Your Pants Edition

Just played through the Dead Space 2 demo for the PS3 and I'm glad I did. Long story short, it's very good at what it does but I've clearly been spoiled by Resident Evil 4 (hey, who hasn't) and, oddly enough, Dead Space Extraction.

You probably noticed that both of those are for the Wii, and I really miss those controls. Maybe the right thumbstick for aiming isn't that big a deal for all you FPSers out there but I have a little trouble with that and that's a recipe for disaster in this game.

I also am a not a super-huge fan of the game's tendency to throw enemies at you from all sides without giving you some sort of radar tool to know that they're coming. You're supposed to detect them through the surround sound, and believe you me, when all you hear are footsteps from a corner then you're ready to wet your power suit. But when the game spams enemies at you (particularly one scene) it's hard to get a bead on them when they're getting cheap shots at your back.

Having said that, the demo was 30 minutes of mostly fun (save a tiresome stasis puzzle), but I can definitely wait for a few months until the price drops to $30...

Our new congressman, everybody...

Hate to say "I told you so"...wait a minute, I don't hate that at all.

U.S. Rep.-elect Robert Hurt, who last week was named to the House Financial Services Committee, has received more than $127,000 in campaign contributions from the financial industry that the committee oversees.

And the apologists are already flooding the comment box with comments about Reid, Pelosi, and "everyone does it", clearly ignoring the last sentence in the article.

Perriello did not accept donations from federally registered lobbyists or corporate political action committees.

It might be nice if you just freely admitted you voted for the corporate shill because of the (R) next to his name. Let's just not pretend that things like "doing a good job" and "free from corporate interests" were important in November's elections...

"And the lynchings weren't too bad, either. Oh, sure, sometimes I'd get blisters from holding the rope...

I'm glad Barbour is getting his deserved derision. Because sometimes, we, as a nation, need not to puff ourselves up with outrage, but simply take a deep breath and say, in unison...

I am a bit surprised that there are still things a candidate can say that can knock them out of the running for the Republican presidential nomination...

Today's news, in sonnet.

Siding blindly with the Russkies
used to get the traitor's noose.
With the Repubs, no big whoop-ski
if it cooks the black guy's goose.

Amazing epic Iggles comeback
leaves all Giants fans to say
"Biggest punch straight to our nutsacks
'cept for all the games they've played."

Pundits all pontificate
on what Sarah's words could mean.
With Google English I can translate
"Duh duh duh duh durr durr deen."

Clean or stinky, large or small,
Happy holidays to all!

Watch out, Tom Coburn...

McCain's trying to take your "Most Angry Insane Jerkoff" badge.

I'm mostly in the "he was never that great to begin with" camp, but I do remember a McCain interview with Jon Stewart a few years back when he was talking about the importance of green energy to combat air pollution and thinking he came off as intelligent and decent.

It truly is a shame that he's clearly been neither in more recent debates. Not liking a guy and wishing he would forego petty grievances to preserve some sort of legacy are not mutually exclusive things.

Damn, I'm sad. So long, Captain...

Fuck.

You were fucking awesome...

Fucking fuck you, Time, you fucking asshole.

My teeny tiny baby girl turned four today. She's so grown-up and happy, but I remember when she was just a li'l warm bundle...it's only a matter of time before she goes on into the world and my old ass is just wavin' goodbye.

It's the sort of poignant moment that can only be addressed by multiple Alex Lifesons and Geddy Lees around a floating Aimee Mann.

This would almost be worth never, ever, getting laid. Ever.

Via Topless Robot is the most awesome thing that ever was, all 11 Doctors in figurine form.



I mean, my first thought is, jesus fuck, what self-respecting nerd wouldn't want this? Then my second thought is JESUS FUCK! COLIN BAKER'S SUIT IS BURNING OUT MY EYEBALLS!

I'll include the Amazon link; if enough nerds click through, I'll be able to get a set.

And bro, you can have one...who's your favorite Doc again, McGann?

Pussies of the world unite...


Your new leader, joining with the other members of the board...




Fucking fuck Orangeman's fake fucking tears. I don't understand how someone so clearly ballness has the nuts to go on national TV and talk about how the big black guy hurt his fee-fees. Especially when did his goddamn best to make sure the unemployed ran out of benefits because the tax cut for millionaires wasn't big enough. Where were his tears when his colleagues in the Senate were filibustering health care for 9/11 workers? It makes me want to take up smoking just in case the opportunity to put my cigarette out on his Sunkist-shaded skin arises.

It is rare when I get to apply all the Russian lit crit I read in real life, but this reminded me about something Nabokov talked about...

We must distinguish between “sentimental” and “sensitive”. A sentimentalist may be a perfect brute in his free time. A sensitive person is never a cruel person. Sentimentalist Rousseau, who could weep over a progressive idea, distributed his many natural children through various poorhouses and workhouses and never gave a hoot for them. A sentimentalist old maid may pamper her parrot and poison her niece. The sentimentalist politician may remember Mother’s Day and ruthlessly destroy a rival. Stalin loved babies. Lenin sobbed at the opera…

And this guy is the new standard bearer of the opposition. God help us...

Edited: Because Blogger upload and HTML aren't my friends. Good thing I'm not Boehner or the tragedy would have caused me to stick my thumb up my ass and start blubbering big ol' crocodile tears...

Holy shit, is this fucking horrible.

I understand that the Black Eyed Peas have become pretty much a joke among the internet hipsters, but I really hadn't listened to anything post-Fergie, and the one song I did hear was inoffensive and forgettable. Sure, they weren't great, but they didn't inspire any emotion greater than mild boredom.

And then I looked at this via Kotaku, and holy fucking shit. Words cannot describe the banality, the barest hint of a hook, lyrics a three-year-old could come up with (actually, that's not fair, my kid would have had lines like "the bear's going to poop on you!"), this song made me want to punch each Black Eyed Pea in the balls. Including Fergie.

Even when better bloggers aren't better, their commentors rock.

Yes, it's a Balloon Juice link, but it's a link to this comment:

--
The GOP is achieving their goals, because their goal is to attack anything that Obama wants. That’s it. The south could literally be on fire and if Obama wanted to put it out, the GOP would oppose that. The GOP and the Dems are playing entirely different games here – the Dems playing the one they were elected to do.

But what do people want the Dems to do? They want good policy, except when they don’t ‘fight hard enough’ for that policy, and then they want good policy + 1. So when the Dems are beating the GOP, the policy is never good enough and when the policy is good enough, the Dems aren’t humiliating the GOP enough. And when the Dems aren’t beating the GOP, then any victories they had over the last 22 months are null and void and only the toughest, most loyal Democrats can point out that the party sucks shit all the time, and if they would just believe more, they would be able to bend the spoon and be victorious.
--

I'll just save this on cut n' paste next time I hear the word "caving"...

Traitors.

Because even though everyone's getting a tax cut, it's not a big enough tax cut for the rich.

And the Repubs are siding with the Russians over Americans, and letting jobless benefits run out, and Obama is left with the choice of letting national security and the unemployed suffer to prove a point or "caving". And it doesn't matter because Repubs have shown time and time again they're more than happy letting the country go down the drain if they can stick it to the black guy.

It's just a shame that they never get called on their sociopathy.

I'm sure this is Obama's fault too, somehow...

We didn't get the World Cup, losing to Qatar and Russia. Ok, Qatar I can understand, it's got that cool "Q" at the beginning. You can make a lot of nifty slogans with that soccer ball...

But Russia? As much as it pains me to say it, as someone who has traveled and lived in Russia extensively during the 90s but hasn't been there in nine years, I don't see how they're going to be able to pull this off. That is, pull it off without extensive infrastructure and internal violence issues. I see that I'm not the only one.

So I'm wondering if the voters were swayed by the whiff of polonium in the air...

Shocked, shocked I am, that the Repubs would act this way...

Putting petty politics above the needs of Americans? Knock me over with a feather.

I mean, after the START treaty crappo, can we start calling this bullshit treason?

Update: Fuck it, I'm calling it treason.