Bill O'Reilly- Douchebag

I'll quote the important parts of the article, but you can find it here.

Breaking ranks with management, Bill O'Reilly and Geraldo Rivera have spoken out harshly against the planned Fox's two-part special hyping O.J. Simpson's "If I Did It" book currently scheduled for release end of November. O'Reilly minces no words and vows to boycott any company that advertises on Fox's televised interview. O'Reilly declared: "If every American walked away from the O.J. garbage, it wouldn't happen." "I'm not going to watch the Simpson show or even look at the book," he added. "If any company sponsors the TV program, I will not buy anything that company sells - ever."

Good work Bill O'Reilly! Keep boycotting those companies! Don't spend any of your money that comes from the network hosting the special on products from those evil companies that would dare advertise on it! You're making a difference!

If Bill O'Reilly was lost in a desert with just a machine that turned principles into water, I'm pretty sure he would die of dehydration.

To the contrary, You'll find my rims quite stationary

"The things you own end up owning you" -Tyler Durden

If that's true, then I'm now officially owned by a 2007 Honda Civic Ex Coupe, and I don't even care. I haven't had to fill it up yet, but I'm pretty sure the salesman told me it runs on molten lava, that's how tough it is. Here are some pictures- Enjoy! (The dull, heavy gray permeating the backgrounds is not just my car making its surroundings seem dull by comparison, Ohio actually looks like that) Captions courtesy of Justin Timberlake.

I'm bringing sexy back.

Them other boys watch while I attack.

If that's your girl you better watch your backCause she'll burn it up for me and that's a fact.

Lastly, let me just say- No, I don't know what those lyrics mean either. I'd say they aren't quite as bad as anything by Gwen Stefani, but my brain still hurts just reading them.

More Democrat Oil Bullshit

I can't say I've been anywhere close to happy with the former Republican majority, but at least they restricted their hijinks to sending sexually explicit text messages, and empty posturing. Not so much with the newly elected Democratic majority. A large part of my day is spent scanning business news, and the Democrats are already talking about penalizing Big Oil for the recent record profits.

Holding a slim majority, Democrats will instead attempt to eliminate tax breaks for energy companies and raise royalty payments for oil and gas drilled on federal land, according to a spokesman for House speaker-to-be Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

Now, the biggest question remaining is how to reconcile this plan of action with statements like this:

"Oil companies are swimming in windfall profits and American consumers are sinking," -Sen. Dick Durbin

I'm confused. The problem seems to be that oil companies are making money, and ye olde taxpayers aren't, so the Democratic solution is... more taxes? How does this help consumers? By not giving them any money back and giving the oil companies more reason to raise prices to maintain profit levels? I may not be that smart of an individual, but I'd like to think I can recognize idiocy when it's river-dancing on my 17-inch LCD monitor. This. is. idiocy.

What the Democrats have also failed to consider is that this record profiting by the oil industry has caused substantial appreciation in the stock value of said companies, and these companies are owned by mutual funds, and your 401k is determined by mutual fund performance. So, what the Democrats are going to do to solve high energy prices is A) not give you any money B) make it so you're probably paying more at the pump and C) make sure that your 401k posts weaker returns while also mismanaging private pension fund money and letting Social Security go the way of Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America."

Republican majorities! Brilliant!*

*Only when compared to much less brilliant Democratic ones.

John Derbyshire on Religion

I think I finally figured out why I like John Derbyshire so much. While the correlation isn't perfect, I'm on board with at least a few of the things he says over here, and more so with what he says here, which I'll quote since it's much, much shorter.

There’s an extreme position on religion, as both a personal and a social phenomenon, which I often find myself slipping towards, but which I can think of counter-arguments to. This is the position that religion makes nothing happen. In other words, that an individual person, or a human society, would be pretty much what it is, with or without its faith, or lack of faith — that religion is just, so to speak, a thin coat of paint over something whose salient features are caused by other factors.

One of the English lady novelists — Elizabeth Bowen, I think, or possibly Rose Macaulay — has a character say that trying to change what you basically are is like “walking north on the deck of a south-bound ship.”

I have said this is an extreme position, and of course it is. To a devout person who thinks that all of history is shaped by God’s hand, it must look very extreme. I think it’s tenable, though, just about. Suppose, for example, that Christian doctrine had settled down not with a Trinity, but a Quaternity. Would the history of Western civilization actually have been any different? Why? More broadly: Does religion actually make anything happen? Or would the same stuff, or pretty similar stuff, have happened anyway? And then the meta-question, which is much more interesting: Could we ever know the answer to the foregoing? How?

Coincidentally, the last two new South Park episodes were mainly concerned with what would happen if Richard Dawkins was successful in destroying religion totally. After Cartman freezes himself in an avalanche (attempting to just freeze himself until the launch of Nintendo Wii), he is unfrozen five hundred years later to find everyone saying "Praise Science" and that the major atheist groups are all at war with each other. It's hilarious, and relevant, in that I think if religion didn't exist we'd find something else to fight over. Anyway, rip this to shreds. Please!

The Island

"Cartman gets his own amusement park, and Michael Bay gets to keep making movies. It's true. There is no God." - South Park

Since my new mom works for Time-Warner Cable, I've been lucky enough to have access to tons of movie channels, with the added bonus of HBO On-Demand, Showtime On-Demand, and Starz On-Demand. All together, I probably have access to over a hundred movies at any given time, which translates into about six movies worth watching. Since I have nothing to do on weekends, I've already watched most of the good movies like The Machinist, Crash, Batman Begins, Life Aquatic, Cinderella Man, etc... so now I'm working my way through the not so good movies- like The Island.
First, let me preface this by saying that The Island was not a disappointment. In fact, it probably was much better than I expected considering the fact that it's a Michael Bay movie, meaning that I expected less than nothing. Why do I hate Michael Bay movies? I'm not sure if I can explain it, but I'll show you. Here is what would happen if Michael Bay directed my life:

Normal Day: I get up at 5:15am (yeah, gross, I know), eat breakfast, drive to work, work, drive home, eat dinner, watch TV, go to sleep.

If Michael Bay directed my life: I wake up to my alarm clock blowing up. I eat breakfast, the camera zooms into my face as I try to look really serious, my spoon blows up. I run outside to my truck, dodging bullets from some motorcycle gangs having a shootout with assault rifles on the street. The camera prominantly displays the brand of my truck, the insignia on my shoes, and my exposed underwear band with the letters "FTL". My underwear band blows up. I drive to work, swerving from lane to lane as boats/cars/giant iron dumbells are being rolled off the trailer in front of me. I dodge them, but the other cars don't, and crash spectacularly, flipping over repeatedly, flying through the air, and coming to rest in slow-motion as smoking heaps of metal. My I-Pod (the camera zooms in to make sure you see the Apple logo) seems to be filled with techno filmscore music, which builds in intensity as the drive to work progresses. Finally, I throw it out the window at the helicopter firing rockets at me, they both explode. I walk into work, and start making out with our hot secretary. She offers to do the scene topless, but Michael Bay won't let her, I walk to my desk, she blows up in the background.

Understand? Good. Now, a few specific issues I have with The Island.

• Why do clones get $80 sneakers? Seems like the facility could save a lot of money with generic sneakers, and the clones wouldn't know the difference.
  
• Why did they put in the scene where they talk about how he has memory? That doesn't explain why Lincoln Six Echo questions his surroundings, or the meaning of his life. That's a fairly standard human trait. The better question is- why don't the others do the same thing?
• How do the clones go from absolute zero in terms of sexuality to being professionals in the span of two minutes? I know at least from a male perspective that you can't just get there without going through the whole awkward erection at a high school dance phase (Do I back up? or just trap it up against her?). This was probably the worst scene of the whole movie, probably because I kept thinking, "Wow, she's going to be really disappointed about thirty seconds from now."
• There was absolutely no need for the redemption of the guy from Gladiator. He could have just grabbed his money, walked out of the movie, and it still could have ended the same. Michael Bay- stop trying to force emotional depth in your movies! You aren't John Woo!
  

Hamas

Not sure how I feel about this. No, wait, I know exactly how I feel about this.

and I'll post something better later. I'll give you a hint, Michael Bay is prominantly involved.