Midnight in the CC

Imagine me, please, sitting round at home doing a puzzle, quiet party of 1, with XM channel 808 (bluegrass, country honky tonk) keeping me company with banjo accompanied tales of woe, redemption and infidelity.

Then this song came on.

Culver City kid makes wikipedia.

Who Are We Protesting Today?

No surprise here at what happens when the spoiled college kid crowd meets up with some overzealous martial-law types... nothing to be proud of on any side.

So, who the hell is the G-20 anyway? Here's are the members alphabetically with the first letter revealed--drag over with your mouse to see the answers:

1. Argentina
2. Austrailia
3. Brazil
4. Canada
5. China
6. European Union
7. France
8. Germany
9. India
10. Indonesia
11. Italy
12. Japan
13. Mexico
14. Russia
15. Saudi Arabia
16. South Africa
17. South Korea
18. Turkey
19. United Kingdom
20. United States of America

You Are All Under Arrest

Criminals, every last one of you:

The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day.

As for local and state crimes, fuggedaboutit. I probably commit on average five traffic violations on the way to work every morning, jaywalk at least once a day, and fail to pay use tax on my weekly out-of-state internet purchases.

Oh yeah, and the drugs...

Arguing In Favor: R Kelly

Forget the essay, this should be a debate topic:

WOLFEBORO, N.H. -- An English teacher is being closely monitored at Kingswood Regional High School after administrators said she assigned an inappropriate essay topic to her students.

Jack Robertson, superintendent of the Governor Wentworth Regional School District, said the teacher asked students to respond to the question: "If you knocked your brother down, would you urinate in his mouth?"

I guess my first question is, did I knock him out cold or just down? And my second is, what the hell is wrong with your family that makes you think this up?

Denmark Tourism Film

I'm not kidding. And the kid's name is August.

Keep Fucking That Chicken

OK, I'll do that.

Damn IRS....

This old lawyer actually took this case to court for a publicly available opinion. That's more suprising than anything else. Evidently,"The 77-year-old Brooklyn lawyer owes tens of thousands of dollars in back taxes for wrongly deducting more than $300,000 in prostitutes, porn, sex toys and erotic massages."

From the court's opinion:

"During 2004 and 2005 petitioner frequented prostitutes in New York. Petitioner [the lawyer] did not visit these prostitutes as part of a course of therapy prescribed by his doctor, nor did petitioner ask his doctor to prescribe any sort of sex therapy. Petitioner kept track of these visits in a journal. The journal included the date, the name of the “service provider”, and the amount. Petitioner did not discuss these visits with his doctors afterwards to determine their impact on his health.

During 2004 and 2005 petitioner purchased pornography and books and magazines on sex therapy. Petitioner also recorded the dates and amounts of the purchases in his journal.

[The IRS] argues that petitioner is not entitled to a deduction for amounts paid for books on sex therapy and pornographic material because those amounts were incurred for petitioner's general welfare, not pursuant to a doctor's prescription or for a specific medical condition. "

"You don't expect to hear that someone you know killed a guy with a samurai sword"

I nominate Little E.

"With the 3- to 5-foot-long, razor-sharp weapon in hand, police say, Pontolillo crept toward the noise... struck the intruder no more than twice, police say, nearly severing his left hand and inflicting what police termed a 'spear laceration'."

A "laceration" seems like a swiping motion and a "spear" a stab.

Betting on a Pair Never Before Such a Sure Thing

Gambling and boobs. A pairing so perfect that it's insertion into mainstream society might serve as a sign that 2012 WILL really usher us into an elevated paradigm of consciousness, a new age of reason.

Yesterday, genius corporate franchisees Altium Development Group announced their winning hand by offering card tables at Pacific Northwest-area Hooters. As a longtime Hooters customer (ahem, they play three matches at once during the World Cup), I can attest to wishing I could play a little Hold 'Em on occasion.

There is some dillution to the brand, by having distractions like a "dueling piano bar" but Altium snaps the focus back with luridly suggestive menu item, "Hand Wiches" (I'm not making this up), offering players having a rough time at the tables the hope of a happy ending. The logical extension of this is of course, private dining for one in the "Stud" room, with appetizers like the "Double Down" for $100, and for an extra $200 service charge, the "Royal Flush" for dessert.

God bless America.

Fun Nobel Prize Facts

· The Nobel Prize is awarded for achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and for peace (not economics, see below).

· The peace prize is selected by a committee of 5 people appointed by Swedish politicians.

· The other 3 prizes are awarded exclusively by Swedish Academies.

· Its unclear how an all Swedish Committee picks among works or scientific pieces not written in English or whether a single member of the the Swedish Academy for the Nobel Prize in Literature read Imre Kertesz in his original Hungarian (2002), Gao Xingjianin (2000) in his original Chinese or Orhan Pamuk in his original Turkish.

· One Swedish Committee member (all of whom are appointed for life), after receiving a savage review of his book in the New York Times, said that American writers are "too insular," "too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture" and too ignorant to write good books and doesn’t think any American authors can win the prize.

· 3 Swedish committee members were investigated after receiving a luxurous “fact finding” trip to China, paid for by the Chinese government.

· 6 Indians have won Nobel prizes (I’m not including VS Naipul).

· 4 Japanese physicists have won the Physics prize (1949, 1965, and 2 shared in 2008); 4 Japanese have won the Chemistry Prize (1981, 2000, 2001, 2002); 2 Japanese writers have won the literature prize (1968, 1994); a Japanese doctor won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1987).

· A Vietnamese, a Tibetan, a Japanese, a Burmese, 2 Timorese, a South Korean, and a Bangladeshi have all won Nobel Peace Prizes.

· Nobel Prizes for Peace have gone to Rigoberta Menchu Tum (who fabricated her autobiography), Yasser Arafat, Henry Kissenger & Lu Doc Tho. Al Gore won a peace prize, but not for bombing Serbia or Afghanistan and not for doing nothing with Sudan and Rwanda.

· The Nobel prize for literature is pretty much the Oscars- some deserving winners, lots of overlooked classics and plenty of immediately forgotten works- picked by a very small group of Swedes. Politics seems to be very important.

· Can you name a work from these past 15 winners? Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio (2008), Doris Lessing (2007), Orhan Pamuk (2006), Harold Pinter (2005), Elfriede Jelinek (2004), J. M. Coetzee (2003) Imre Kertesz (2002), V. S. Naipaul (2001), Gao Xingjian (2000), Gunter Grass (before he admitted his membership in Nazi organizations)(1999), Jose Saramago (1998), Dario Fo (1997), Wislawa Szymborska (1996), Seamus Heaney (1995), Kenzaburo Oe (1994). (I could only name the works of 1).

· Der Spiegel wrote, “By selecting exotic token choices and veteran compromise candidates, all the selection committee has succeeded in doing is to put literature editors under a lot of pressure to find anyone who knows of or can even remember the winner after the judgments have been announced in Sweden.”

· None of Faulkner’s works were in print in American when he won his nobel prize.

· Past laureates include eugenicists, Nazi party members and a guy who claimed that September 11 attacks were a republiKKKan conspiracy.

· In 1926 the prize for Medicine of Physiology went to the man who discovered that roundworms cause cancer.

· In 1927 the same prize went to a psychiatrist for his treament of syphilitic dementia by injecting patients with malaria.

· The 1949 the same prize went to the neurologist who pioneered the use of lobotomies for treating of schizophrenia.

· There is no Nobel Prize in economics. However, Sweden’s central bank—not the Nobel Committee- established the “The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel”. Four descendants of Alfred Nobel have unsuccessfully tried to de-link the Bank’s prize from Nobel’s name.

· The recipients of the Swedish Central Bank’s prize in memory of Alfred Nobel often take a dim view of their “science”. Hayek’s speech was on the “pretence of knowledge” and Vernon Smith seconded him. Paul Krugman believes the entire profession has been off its rocker since the 1930s. Krugman has no economics based theory on what just occurred or how to prevent it from happening again.

More Trivia

Two leading political parties of

Germany:

Mexico:

Canada:

France:

China:

Brazil:

India:

Moldava:

I'll put the answers in comments.

"Places I've Never Heard Of" for $800

Jeopardy had their tournament of champions a couple weeks ago, and one of the Double Jeopardy rounds was "Tough World Capitals". See if you can name the country without clicking on the link for the answer:

$400- One of the "Stan"s: Tashkent
$800- Island Country in the Indian Ocean: Port Louis
$1200- A former Soviet republic: Chisinau
$1600- In Western Africa: Yamoussoukro
$2000- In the Pacific: Honiara

I should note that all three contestants were absolutely mashing the buttons trying to buzz in to answer.

Mind-Forged Manacles

Inspired by Flye's Pretty Talk tag, here's a stanza from a William Blake poem I read this week:

In every man's every cry
In every child's fearful cry
In every voice, in every ban
The mind-forged manacles I hear

I think its the poem London and I think that's an accurate quote, but if my memory's mussed I'll give you your money back. I've been reading a lot more poetry lately. It appeals to my blog-forged attention span.

Every Dog Loves Food

H Jon Benjamin slays me in everything he does: Dr. Katz, Home Movies, Important Things with Demetri Martin, etc. He's the voiceover-audition guy in this excellent parody of the uber-pretentious NY Times Weekender ads:

Miami Vice, #1 New Show

How did I miss this story from 2006? Obsessed Bin Laden Wanted to Kill Whitney Houston's Husband:

Terror mastermind Osama bin Laden is so obsessed with singer Whitney Houston he thought about killing her husband, Bobby Brown, it was claimed last night.

The suggestion is made by Sudanese poet and novelist Kola Boof, who claims she was bin Laden's sex slave for four months 10 years ago.

"Whitney Houston's name was the one that would be mention constantly.

"How beautiful she was, what a nice smile she has, how truly Islamic she is but is just brainwashed by American culture and by her husband Bobby Brown, whom Osama talked about having killed, as if it were normal to have women's husbands killed."

She also says his favourite television shows were The Wonder Years, Miami Vice and MacGyver.

Osama is rich enough to keep her tits-deep in crack and dildos, so who knows--it might just work out for these crazy kids.

Shit or Get Off The Pot

Put more, er, artfully, by Seneca ("On The Shortness of Life"):

Can anything be sillier than the point of view of certain people—I mean those who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves very busily engaged in order that they may be able to live better; they spend life in making ready to live! They form their purposes with a view to the distant future; yet postponement is the greatest waste of life; it deprives them of each day as it comes, it snatches from them the present by promising something hereafter. The greatest hindrance to living is expectancy, which depends upon the morrow and wastes to-day. You dispose of that which lies in the hands of Fortune, you let go that which lies in your own. Whither do you look? At what goal do you aim? All things that are still to come lie in uncertainty; live straightway! See how the greatest of bards cries out, and, as if inspired with divine utterance, sings the saving strain:

The fairest day in hapless mortals' life
Is ever first to flee.

In my job, I often have to give presentations where I'm exhorting leadership to follow some course of action, and I've always wanted to (but have yet to find the courage) use this quote from Hamlet:

Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do' since I have cause and strength and will and means to do it

Of course, he was talking himself into killing his Uncle, and that didn't exactly work out as he'd hoped. But people don't talk pretty like that these days--the best I can hope for is the eloquence of one VP after one of my pitches: "Are we going to ignore common fucking sense or should we just approve this?"

Jungle Boogie

Wired learns what all successful musicians already know: you give the audience what it wants. Why do you think Madonna lives in a 30-room mansion?

And if that audience is bunch of tamarin monkeys, then leave off the songs from your crappy new album and play some damn monkey music.

Commitment To Excellence

Sign this guy up to coach the Raiders:

Protein shakes are encouraged, and while blood doping and HGH use is frowned upon, there is no testing policy. And at the risk of stating the obvious, blue slushies are for winners.