Jezebel: evening purge

"It's The Fall Of The American Empire."

Moe — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 21:49:39 EST

OPEC is meeting right now, and I'm pretty much too lazy to write anything about it, and maybe that's why the empire is falling or whatever it is they're saying, I'm too tired to get the precise quote. The word is that the oil monopoly is heeding the words of the new Alan Greenspan Shawn Carter, and abandoning the flagging dollar as the currency with which its barrels are priced. Meanwhile the prison population has risen eight-fold since 1970, Cuba's doctors are getting stretched from all the gigs they've been fielding since Michael Moore blew their cover, the stock market is down and we forgot about Somalia.

And I'm sure I forgot about a lot of stuff, and I feel like a pussy for it, but I'm signing off. Tomorrow we'll start bright and happy with some bullish Obama poll numbers in Iowa and probably some incisive Teen Vogue commentary, so stay tuned. Although, before you start staying tuned, you should probably tune out and have a drink. But I would say that.

Angie And Brad Buy A Luxury Island Representing Ethiopia, And Other Facts Too Good To Check

Moe — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 20:00:27 EST

I strongly doubt this "news" that Angie and Brad bought an island representing Ethiopia in that crazyass new development in Dubai the New Yorker wrote about, because it's obvs kinda tacky, though it would be sort of cool, just as it would have been cool if Elliott Spitzer had convinced enough legislators asswipe named Peterson is suspected of killing his wife, a new O.J. Simpson trial is on the horizon and a bunch of new data suggests American consumers are ; not that that's brought a halt to consumerism or anything: 20% of the students at the alma mater of 50% of the Jezebels — NYU — say they'd give up their right to vote for an iPod Touch. (Anyone smell a POLL??)

Warren Buffett — he's Rachel Zoe's idol, you know! — lamented the income gap in one of those wacky speeches rich people give where they get to say insane things like "we rich people should maybe be taxed more" and other shit no one pays attention to because it's not part of the whole "rational self-interest thing."

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go find alcohol. You should, too! Or your drug of choice; whatevs. Though for those of you who would rather spend your downtime licking hallucinogenic toads — well, I hate to break it to you.

Yeah, Fuck All Of You. (Unrelated: Has Mark Cuban Gotten Cute?)

Moe — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 21:00:48 EST

So maybe you've heard of this Marion Barry-Tim Page scandal: Marion Barry being that perennial DC mayor who got framed by the FBI and his old girlfriend into smoking crack on the surveillance tape that turned the highly eloquent utterance "Bitch Set Me Up" into a memorable catchphrase back before I even knew I was allowed — unlike John McCain! — to say "bitch," and Tim Page, a Pulitzer prizewinning music critic who was the unwilling recipient of a press release about him.

Must we hear about it every time this crack addict attempts to rehabilitate himself with some new - and typically half-witted - political grandstanding?

he replied in an (obviously drunk) email to the sender.

I'd be grateful if you would take me off your mailing list. I cannot think of anything the useless Marion Barry could do that would interest me in the slightest, up to and including overdose.

Now naturally, Tim has since apologized and said he didn't really mean any of that, but hasn't he left us with the bones for a handy form letter for expressing our sentiments re: a few of society's more salient tools? We can't really send it posthumously to Anna Nicole Smith, but what about Britney, and Bill O'Reilly? What about Paris and her made-up drunken elephants?

What about every single person involved in the latest scandal to rock the Giuliani campaign wherein uberagent Judith Regan sues her former employer Rupert Murdoch — whom you'll remember fired her in the wake of her masterminding that book by O.J. Simpson about how he would have masterminded the murder of his wife if the "real killer" hadn't gotten there first — claiming he told her to lie about her gangsta lover Bernie Kerik, to protect Rudy's reputation? (Because, you know, she's about the only woman who wouldn't believably lie about Bernie Kerik to protect her ownreputation.) What about Ann Coulter, and all the academics responsible for "studies" of really mundane shit I'd rather not waste my consciousness thinking any more about? And most importantly, what about me...My god you guys, I am so fucking sick of myself. I can barely summon the energy to pick up the remote and switch the channel to...the only thing more appropriate would be a "Head-On" commercial...

Flagging With The Kardashians

Moe — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 21:10:44 EST

Over the weekend I watched Keeping Up With The Kardashians for the first time, and watching Bruce Jenner's resigned, paralyzed-looking face spliced up against scenes of his nine-year-old skipping around the household stripper pole to observe their elder sisters' trip to the Mexican estate of Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis, I started thinking idly about what Norman Mailer would have to say about it. And about then I decided I didn't want to know. Moving on, so: Hillary Clinton has started pairing her pantsuits with boots, a nun who abused hundreds of students throughout the sixties is finally being brought to justice and the well-liked priest who stalked Conan O'Brien turned himself into a news studio over the weekend. Banks are expected to take up to $400 billion more dollars in writeoffs, which wasn't good for today's market, but the Energy Department projected gas prices will rise another 20 cents a gallon — and the Gulf States have money to burn — ha ha, literally too! — on big-ticket exports, which is why it's a little depressing they're favoring Airbus to manufacture planes for them despite the fact that we're not the ones demanding they pay in Euros.

Benazir Bhutto has joined some guy who sold nuclear weapons secrets to North Korea in house arrest in Pakistan and, um, Howard Dean decreed Jews worthy of admittance to Heaven. (Mazel Tov, guys!) And with just two little months before the campaigning begins, for real...

Well, Obama is handing out glow necklaces in Iowa, while Meghan McCain and Cate Edwards campaign for their dads in New Hamsphire.

Dear Shawn Carter: Our Oil Reserves May Be Irreplaceable, But She Is Not

Moe — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 20:09:47 EST

Sometimes all the substantial informative content I dish out every day leaves me craving a little informational dulce de leche, and I have some thing to go off to, so I'm just going to leave you with a few things I enjoyed today. There was the image of George Clooney coming to blows with Fabio, and Spencer Pratt's sex face. There was a little squabble on Slate as to why Lauren and Jenna Bush are doing God's Work while Chelsea Clinton is doing Wall Street's, and a cute picture of Pax Jolie-Pitt, and a way-too-short story about a guy who used a church phone to dial a phone sex line. But nothing...

Beats this Jay-Z video. He found a kid to play the part of him in high school, and it's hard to find someone as simultaneously ugly and sexy as Jay-Z, so the kid's a little too handsome, but you can just tell he's been imitating Jay-Z's mannerisms for practically his whole life. Also, note Hov's pronunciation of "L'Chaim" and "Mazeltov." It's enough to make me weep, seriously. Dear Hova: Thank you for existing.

Republicans Vote To Impeach Cheney?!? And This Billion Dollar House

Moe — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 19:56:46 EST

Yesterday I wrote about a trillion dollar company and you seemed to like that, so today I'm posting this rendering of a billion dollar house, constructed by a trillion-rupee trillionaire, from the latest Portfolio, in honor of Portfolio parent company Conde Nast's "nesting" magazine House & Garden and the sad end of its zillion year history that is not particularly all that sad, I suppose, when you think about our deadliest year in Iraq yet, or even how much it must suck when you're a Chinese pro-democracy internet personality to think that the Taiwan-born founder of Yahoo! totally sold you out to the Chinese government and now you're in jail. No, actually, I take all that back: I'm posting the diagram of this billion dollar house because it's fucking crazy, sort of like the thought of the Republicans all changing their votes to favor hearing a debate on Kucinich's bill to impeach Dick Cheney.

And with that — could you tell? I have to actually leave my house. But in the vein of "crazy" I found something very special for you all on the internet, from a Washington Post online discussion on the writers' strike today, a little nugget that reminds me why I keep coming back to that website even if they don't give a fuck about Marc Jacobs:

Lorton, Va.: Like, why do we care if the writers strike? Hollywood is perpetuating a myth, portraying a false reality, not representing the common man, showcasing all the evils and worst that mankind has to offer and the writers cater to this decay in society. If not for these writers that are currently regurgitating this oozing pile of goo that they call scripts, the world might think the U.S. is a good and decent place and the U.S. might have some good role models again. I'm not a prude by any stretch but Hollywood disgusts me.
William Booth: You, Lorton, are a stealth writer, aren't you? Oozing pile of goo? Can I steal that? But okay. Yours is a fairly intense position. Nothing produced by Hollywood plays in Lorton? Not even Jeopardy? Their writers are on strike. Those Pixar and DreamWorks animated movies about cute rats and bees? They appear relatively harmless. Those Nature documentaries? Those are written by writers. But lets deal with your question. If the writers remain on strike, TV will showcase more reality shows, more news and more sports. Will that be more goo or less goo? That is a question for the audience.

Hear that, audience?

The World's First Trillion Dollar Company Meets The World's Trillionth Naughty Underage Photo Scandal!

Moe — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 21:39:32 EST

I can't act like I really want to do this post today. To be honest, the more I do this job, the more I feel like that crazy guy who recorded his life in 5-minute intervals crossed with a batshit Ron Paul supporter, and just because it turns out there are quite a lot of ardent Ron Paul supporters doesn't always make me feel much better, especially on a day like this, when it's been pitch black outside since, like, 3 p.m., Colbert pussied out of the election due to the Writer's Strike due to bring us MORE FUCKING REALITY TV, as if we need more reality TV when we have high school cheerleading coaches like Victoria Schattauer, and the world's first trillion dollar company was established. and its name is PetroChina. And maybe we should talk about that for a minute, because it's a worthwhile lesson in the Wisdom of Crowds, Lack Thereof Department. PetroChina, the state-owned oil company of China, has been publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange for years now, and investors generally bought and sold its stock at a discount to that of similarly-productive Exxon Mobile — which had previously been the world's most valuable company at $500 billion in market capitalization — due generally to the "decades of state ownership" thing.

But then the company listed its shares on the Shanghai stock exchange, so the proletariat could sink its cash into the company's shares. And overnight, the value of the company more than doubled! Like, half a trillion dollars of pretend "value" just appeared out of nowhere, like the company had won the Powerball times a zillion, and suddenly everything is possible! Anyhow, which is to say the theme I'm trying to go for is how quickly shit can change. Martial law can be declared, a much-beloved fictional character from a popular series of children's books can turn out to be gay, and Dick Cheney can decide that thing he said a few years ago about capturing Saddam Hussein not being worth the casualties was totally false, only to be totally proven he was right the first time WTF??!?!?!!!

And shit, even Hillary Clinton can lose a few points at the polls, Imus and Rosie can return in triumph and Giuliani can do something even stupider than he did yesterday with no discernible consequence.

Day of the Dead: The Dead, Dying and Resurrected

mcarpentier — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 19:45:00 EDT

So, Moe's off to some event tonight and left me in charge of your evening purge and, unfortunately for all involved I've had way too much damn caffeine and drama today for one relatively small person, so I'm anxious and jittery and just a little more ADD than usual but it's all okay because once I finish typing this I can start drinking and scientists aren't too long away from being able to tell me which wines will likely give me headaches, which already makes me very, very happy, but not so much that I want to eat a frozen pizza, even though I do, because the fact that they're recalling 5 million of them is probably bad even though no one has died (yet, that we know of) and I don't even think they're made in China!

Speaking of China, they're resurrecting the space race and all interested in the moon and shit now, as are India and, for some reason, Japan, but it's all peaceful, everyone says, unlike that time we dropped the bomb on Japan and, hey! The guy who dropped it just died, but he didn't want a headstone because he doesn't want people protesting on his grave which, don't people have better things to do than protest on some old guy's grave? Especially now that a fossil is being resurrected and getting back on the air? Speaking of resurrections, I gave a little "squee!" that there's going to be an X-Files sequel next summer, even though the last season sucked I still remember once making a date in college take me immediately home from our dinner date so we could watch the all-new episode and then wondered why he didn't want to go out again.

But, it'll only be a temporary resurrection for the Democrat's Children's Health Insurance bill, because neither the House or the Senate passed it with a veto-proof majority and is everyone really just posturing these days instead of trying to do anything because I thought that's what happened in an election year and that's not until 2008, right? In other election news, the South Carolina Democratic Party, which either has no sense of humor or takes itself far too seriously, killed Colbert's ballot application because he's not a serious candidate- which, how does Gravel or even Kucinich qualify as a "serious" candidate these days anyway?

The Dow is sliding toward potential oblivion despite the Fed rate cuts because everyone is starting to believe our economy is fucked and nobody is buying anything, least of all the 11,000 people at Chrysler that are set to lose their jobs, but Chrysler is going to start making 2 hyrbrids and Exxon profits failed to meet expectations so maybe our environment isn't going to hell as fast as we were thinking? That, at least would be some good news today.

Hugo Chavez Receives Diplomatic Mission From Naomi Campbell And Her Rogue Mobile Phone

Moe — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 21:18:06 EDT

Happy Halloween! Yesterday sucked so bad I forgot about those days where the news is so weird you can only think, "who needs scripted television?" Ha ha ha ha, please don't go on strike people responsible for 30 Rock. But Kucinich told us about his UFO sighting on national TV, Naomi Campbell donned her best community service stilettos to visit Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, the Republicans produced a special costumed holiday edition man-on-man butt sex scandal, and a new poll corroborated the conventional wisdom that flubs and flip-flopping aside, a Hillary Clinton presidency is inevitable. Wesley Clark is the predicted running mate, and um the poll was conducted on the witch population.

A bunch of rabid anti-war protesters who turned out to be even rabider anti-gay church members got sued by this guy whose dead soldier son's funeral they chanted at and the dad won a bunch of money today, and New Zealand is trying to get men to grow long Burt Reynolds moustaches in the name of people who need fake hair. Like I do, right now? And speaking of costumes our quote of the day goes to comedian-who-maybe-used-to-be-a-pimp Katt Williams, who just appeared on 'The Situation Room' to say: "So the concern is that, maybe I have offended myself?"

Slow. News. Day.

Moe — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 21:08:53 EDT

Before you get all in my grill about how huge it was that the Attorney General nominee was "vague" about "waterboarding" or Britney Spears was ordered to childproof her house and the erudite Mitt Romney likened Hillary Clinton to an "intern," let me just admit first that now that, upon surveying the day's boring headlines on a variety of news sites I'm pretty sure no one is going to dispute me when I say it was a fucking tedious day on the internet, folks. The things I didn't get to today were, like...

Something Radar about celebrities with so many endorsement deals they should quit their day jobs, and a quote from Adrian Grenier about how he wants to wear all organic clothing in the future. No, seriously. Someone in the Lame Fuck's Justice Department got in trouble for something involving black people that was actually pretty benign (I think?) and someone else painted a 9 x 9 portrait of Julia Allison's boyfriend. Seriously, that's all I got for you folks. I hope the debate on now produces something marginally more interesting, but I'm not expecting anything more interesting than my India Pale Ale and this sadly-apt comic from the Washington Post.

"Queen Of Botox" Wins Argentinean Election

Moe — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 21:53:42 EDT

The first lady of Argentina just won the country's presidential election, and the reaction from this country's mainstream media can basically be summed up as, "Just like Hillary! Except OMG so hot!!!" Depending on how keen your sight is, the "Queen of Botox could almost be considered as hot as that smoking-hot Ukrainian with the braids, and probably on par with the sixtysomething Burmese leader-in-exile whose face they're all wearing for Halloween. But the obvious parallel is to Evita, who incidentally, has long been likened to Hillary, but with Cristina Fernández de Kirchner the "spiritual leader of the country" Evita that Argentina knows and Hillary as the "woman who couldn't have been that likeable if they fucking cast Madonna to play her in the movie" Evita (and by the way do they still make popular Broadway musicals about international history anymore?) Anyway, there's a new meme going around that Hillary Clinton owes her deep well of support to the fact that so many women put up with sex-addicted absentee husbands, which brings me back, as ever, to my problem with the notion that tolerating repeated abuse at the hands of the person who knows you best is, like, a huge selling point as long as you can smile and tell the country it was "worth it." Oh, christ.

Can't we fucking do like the French and admit to each other that no matter how famous and powerful you are love totally sucks?

In other news President Lame Fuck told a bunch of students last year that he'd failed to close the numerous loopholes that eventually gave those Blackwater guys license to kill whomever they wanted because "that's how I work"and a college is forcing prego female athletes) to choose between keeping their babies and keeping their scholarships, and Oprah is in trouble over a sex scandal at her school in Africa, and try as I might I have not been able to fit any more of this crap together. (It might have something to do with the super-compelling The Hills rerun on right now!) Till next time, womyn...

Was It Arson? Also: Laura Bush Is Not In The Country

Moe — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:30:49 EDT

The fact that Laura Bush was in Abu Dhabi talking about breast cancer today was probably the 1023rd most important thing that happened today, but what a picture. The FBI is investigating the possibility that the wildfires at all caused by a band of suicide arsonists — ecoterrorists reenacting the post-Gulf War oil fires? is that the idea? — and Joe Francis's new self-promotional website quotes Socrates saying "an unexamined life is not worth living," and clearly all the people keeping this story on the most-viewed list of the largest newspaper serving Southern California for the third day going agree.

I don't know how to tie any of this together before I leave the house ten minutes ago, but maybe you can help, and maybe I'll post later. Hang in there, guys.

Holy Shit.

Moe — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:31:08 EDT

Literal and figurative purge tonight. Nearly one million people have been driven from Southern California homes that stretch across an area 150 times larger than that fire they're still talking about in Chicago. A good friend of Anna's lost his house, which means a good friend of mine who lives in the neighborhood probably did too, and odds are, with a million and counting driven from their homes by a billion and counting dollars worth of damage, that you too know someone affected by a disaster officials are now saying is "days away at the earliest." It's hard not to be awed at the magnitude of it, or that there have thus far been so few human casualties, or that, not that I feel like getting meta- on you at a time like this or quite frankly ever again, Michael Brown is offering himself up to be interviewed as to how to begin to answer these questions.

"It was nuclear winter. It was like Armageddon. It looked like the end of the world... I lost count" of how many homes burned, one firefighter said, while an evacuee remarked about her husband's not-exactly-attractive trailer: "I'll never complain about this trailer again."

Not that means shit about shit, but I never thought I had to worry about Southern California. They always seemed to have it all: dirt cheap wine, Trader Joe's, beaches, weather free of rain and humidity and cold and really anything else that might cause a citizen stress or discomfort; cheap rents compared with what I'm paying; In-N-Out; awesome drives. When I moved east from LA I would spend a few nights a week lying fully-clothed in a tanning bed all winter long just to keep from falling into crippling depression; that's the sort of motivation and irrepressible positivity I was missing out on just waking up there every morning and maybe that's why it's harder to fathom the tragedy capable of occurring there.

The research is telling us we'd better get used to it, and Michael Brown would probably say the same thing, because they said the same thing about Katrina, but Jesus Christ it's hard to know how to react to that except to say, "Shut up, fuckshit, there's nothing for you to say right now just sit back and don't be afraid to be service-y for once in your life...

Inside Qualcomm Stadium [Wonkette]
Bush will show up despite all that ish Dana Perino said, don't have it in me to make fun of him right now guys [Washington Post]
LA Times columnist Steve Lopez wonders why the military isn't helping out right now to relieve the burden of the firefighters and various other things as he moves around the area dumbfounded [LA Times}
Weather is still the biggest variable [LA Times]
A USA Today commenter smells "terrorism" [USA Today]
The WSJ's Interactive Map
The San Diego Union-Tribune's Interactive Map
The LA Times' Interactive Map
Oh and by the way Condi Rice wants Blackwater guys to start taking cultural awareness classes [MSNBC]
And Rudy Giuliani hired a pedophile priest [Wonkette]
And I bet you were wondering what the second most-viewed article on the LA Times website was throughout all of this [LA Times]

Lance Deserves Another Shot In Space Like You Deserve Another Shot Of Bourbon

Moe — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:30:26 EDT

Fires have engulfed Southern California including the Promises Rehab center, floods have seized Louisiana, 135 people are still dead in Pakistan and tomorrow in Florida NASA is launching a shuttle in hopes of getting some lady astronauts to do some housework in space, which reminds me that all I want to talk about is Lance Bass. He never made it there, in part because we ridiculed him, as if he hadn't had it tough enough growing up gay in a boy band with a sick bloated pedophile on one hand and Justin Timberlake on the other. But seriously, who am I that I care about Lance? Who are we that the universe cares that a fictional supporting character in a children's book series is gay, or that Ryan Gosling got fired from a movie for showing up fat?

Whatever the answer, Angie and Brad are trying to produce an HBO series that will be The Hills of the humanitarian aid biz, Lance's comeback could buy him a second chance in space and I am about to have a beer. Yeah, and if that's not shocking enough for you: no one stopped buying Chinese stuff on account of that lead. See you tomorrow, folks.

Hundreds Dead In Pakistan; Superbugs; Proactiv...

Moe — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 21:00:47 EDT

All day you guys have been accusing me of being drunk and you were probably technically right, a good friend lost his job last night and I think I actually at one point ingested Southern Comfort, but also I was hallucinating because for some reason my landlord decided it was a good idea to set our thermostat at approximately "boiling," which made me think of torture and the doctrine of preemption and other fundamentally dumb ideas directed mostly at perpetuating the Military Industrial Complex, sort of like Proactiv is a dumb idea directed at extracting as much oil reserves from your pores as physically possible for ever and ever until your face is a whored-out minefield of tiny little conflicts just raring to escalate into full fledged facial atrocities at the slightest irritation, which is, of course, the whole superbug narrative. This is why I recently decided to remove myself from the cycle and stop washing my face altogether - more on this tomorrow! — and also why I more recently decided to leave my house and tap into the climate control/communication resources of the bar across the street. See, I am one of the lucky ones.

I can accept defeat and seek less hostile environs as long as the zit cream-peddling economy provides me some refuge from the abject poverty the other 95% get to deal with. Like Benazir Bhutto, I can move freely about and observe my heathenous traditions in peace. The problem, I think, is the vast majority of people who not only do not have this luxury, they have never known it. Instead they have known: exploitation, death death death, vengefulness, hunger, the sense of freedom that comes from imposing more restrictions on already-restricted lives and/or ending said lives altogether. What am I talking about? What do you do? Fuck if I know; seriously anything I say at this point is going to sound colossally stupid and I'm not even sober, a freedom for which I feel so tremendously lucky right now I think I'm going to drink some more.

Alica, Baby Jessica And Birth Control: A Bunch Of Crap Today That Caught Us Off-Guard...

Moe — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 21:00:01 EDT

Before tonight I never knew about Alicia Kozakiewicz, who was locked in a Herndon computer programmer's basement he was deluded enough to call a "dungeon" and raped at age 13 in a traumatic crime that pretty much makes her the most disarmingly hot victim of anything I've ever seen, except maybe Valerie Plame, whose book I didn't realize was coming out Monday. I was also surprised today to learn a normal state like Maine would provide kids access to birth control pills three years before the age at which I got my first period when the number of sexually-active middle schoolers in Maine cannot possibly justify the inordinate amounts of shit the state, and all social liberals in this country, are going to get for this... unless it can??? Also eliciting the proverbial "hmmm" today: "Baby Jessica" is 21 years old and soon rich.... John McCain's mom is still alive and capable of standing... This Mukasey guy who's replacing Attorney General Gonzales seems kind of cool.... Congress's approval rating is worse than Bush's.... Bush is "relevant"

Also wasn't aware things were quite so bad at the one newspaper capable of selling itself to advertisers like a glossy "aspirational" magazine, or that it was possible, as in the case of Lindsay's new boyfriend, to look more attractive in a mug shot than real life. But I'm pretty sure that's it... you already knew the Cheneys were no fans of Hillary, Iran and Russia were no fans of ours and pretty much everyone except China likes the Dalai Lama along with the idea that all nukes are just environmentally-friendly sources of power. So why can't we all just.....etc. etc. See youse tomorrow folks!

Virtuous Hackers Hijack Heidi, Various Coulters; Cheney Is Darth Vader To Barack Obama's Skywalker

Moe — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 20:59:57 EDT

Today rogue hackers appeared to have broken into the content management systems of the websites of controversial blondes Heidi Montag and Ann Coulter, but can we blame the hackers for the fact that Orlando Bloom just happened to have injured Ann's second cousin, or that Dick Cheney just outed Barack Obama as his eighth cousin? Turkey invading Iraq while Russia defends Iran, is any of that a hack? That email that showed up from Mitch McConnell's office orchestrating the smear campaign on the 12-year-old boy — could be a hack, too! I'll tell you one thing: Larry Craig protesting his innocence to Matt Lauer right now — someone hacked that guy's brain.

Maybe in their next life the hackers can help out the world's persecuted Buddhists, and anyone else who might be reduced to praying for peace.

Seal And Heidi Klum: But They Make It Look So Easy...

Moe — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 22:00:40 EDT

"All politics is marriage." No one actually said that except me, and that was when I was drunk, so I don't know why I wrote that in quotes and it is not as if I am asking to be quoted in some entirely different context saying that in some fancy magazine, but I stand by the original drunk train of thought. All politics is couples who no longer have sex, and if there is one pair of non sex-having companions that can stand up to the coming Martian attacks I think we know who they are. Marriage is getting harder everywhere, as General Ricardo Sanchez inadvertently pointed out when he skewered the administration's (lack of an) Iraq strategy — families in Kabul have resorted to selling their daughters into arranged marraiges starting at age three because everyone's so fucking desperate for cash, while marriage to a post-traumatic veteran turns out to be not much less desperate. Then there's the White House itself, where "on the rare occasions when [Bush] slips into self-pity" over the mess he and Condi and Dick have made of it all, relies on Laura to "snap him out of it." (Yeah, I know, right: Rare? Self-? Sigh.)

But Laura can only be thinking, "Well I could be married to Larry Craig." And Suzanne Craig can only be thinking, "Well I guess I could be married to Judi Giuliani. (In some states anyway!) But Hillary has been through the worst, marriage-wise at least, and worked very very hard, to suppress all of it for the good of our country.

In a similar vein, I am now about to order my fourth drink.

That's Heidi Klum and Seal today, somewhere, thanks to X17.

We've got another staff meeting I'm already...

Moe — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 19:45:22 EDT

We've got another staff meeting I'm already late to but here's what you need to know: retail sales are down and America is being forced to shop at Wal-Mart again, the war is still on and the military is being forced to raise its signing bonuses to 35 grand and its "staying-on" bonuses to six figures and racism is alive and well. (Very well.) And, oh yeah, the people trying to unite everyone etc. in the midst of all this are alive and in exile. See you tomorrow; we'll be here trying to solve the world's big problems as usual. (Oh! And I think I'm going to ask my mom about orgasms or something.) Till then.

Madonna Leaves Gym, Record Label; Another Tragic School Shooting

Moe — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 21:00:35 EDT

Madonna left her record deal for a new, kind of crazy wide-ranging $120 million deal with Live Nation, which I'm pretty sure used to be called Clear Channel; apparently the deal is "unprecedented." In more precedented news: she wore an ugly shapeless tracksuit to the gym, an auto workers strike was averted and a kid in a trench coat shot a bunch of his classmates before turning the gun on himself; this time it was a magnet school in Cleveland, and the kid, who was 14, had been suspended.

Also: a new plane model got delayed, and a big shitstorm broke out over symbolic bullshit and other bullshit. The end.