Early Leger vs. current Leger: You decide which is better

Update to my entry of a few days ago, as I finally dug up the old lyrics I wrote back in 1988 for my filk of "Don't Ask" about the writer's strike of that year. Check out the old song and its newer sequel side by side and see how gawdawful my work was back then —err, I mean how my work has matured.

Where's Cancer Man when you really need him?

Iran's motor-mouthed president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad (pronounced, "I'm-a-need-a-jihad") has just opened up his piehole again, bragging that his country's nuclear-energy (and, some believe, nuclear-weaponry) program is "irreversible." (See Reuters report here.)

Such a pity The X-Files was only fiction; that shadowy cabal headed up by William B. Davis' old character, the Cigarette Smoking Man, could actually be of some use now. I can just hear him saying, "That lunatic asshole running Iran has shot his mouth off once too often. Send a squad to Tehran to take care of him; I want to be reading about his funeral in the Washington Post by the weekend."

You simply HAVE to see this...

...especially if you are, have been or know (and even more especially if you've dated/married) a fangirl:
88 Lines About 44 Fangirls (TTTO "88 Lines About 44 Women" by The Nails, not to be confused with Nine Inch Nails)
I'm awed, ridiculously amused and insanely jealous all at the same time. (Link courtesy of poltr1.)

happyfunpaul says he's gonna cover it. You do know that means you have to sing this at GAFilk, right, Paul? :-) 'Cos if you don't, I sure as hell will, and it will NOT be at all pretty...!

Any fangirls or other females out there wanna take up the challenge of writing "88 Lines About 44 Fanboys" to go with it?

If this isn't a cue for a certain Harry Chapin song, I don't know what is

Thousands of Bananas Wash Up On Dutch Island Shores

Mr. 9/11 wins over one of the Religious Reich's biggest guns

In a sure sign that either (a) the biblically-foretold End Times truly are near or (b) Satan has just instructed his minions to put in a bulk order for ice scrapers and thermal underwear, the Rev. Pat Robertson has just endorsed former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani (R), of whom it is widely viewed that the GOP Presidential nomination next year is his to lose. (See story here.) You may recall that Pastor God-Will-Smite-Orlando had met with other Christian conservative leaders recently and joined them in a very public threat to bolt the party and back an independent or third-party candidate if Rudy were the GOP ticket-topper, due largely to his prior support for GLBT equality and abortion rights when he was mayor.

Does this mean Jim Dobson, Gary Bauer and Paul Weyrich et al. will abandon their insistence on a pro-life, anti-gay nominee and fall in line behind Pat? Dunno. Kinda doubt it, given their history. But it is interesting (in a schadenfreude-cocktail kind of way) to watch the Reich's united front begin to crack and splinter.

And what could possibly make the Old Dominion's resident Christian Ayatollah set aside his long-documented, deeply-held principles and break ranks with his bluenose buddies? Here's a hint from the article: "He [Robertson] denied that he was picking Giuliani solely because he thought he had the best chance of beating Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton, but acknowledged the importance of having a Republican who can do so -- a key Giuliani argument to sway wavering conservatives."

As Bill Cosby used to recount Noah saying in his famous bit about the Ark: "Riiiight." There's no way in Hell, Heaven or on Earth you'll ever convince me this isn't really and totally Pat saying, "Even having a faggot-loving baby-killer in the Oval Office is better than letting Billary get back in there. (Yeah, I know, they're both FLBKs too, but Rudy at least we can lean on.)"

ADDENDA, 3:15 PM: More fragmentation in the Christ-con camp: Speaking of Weyrich, The Huffington Post quotes the right's direct-mail guru thusly on Rudy's chief rival for the fundie vote, Mitt Romney, in an article here: "I believe that he [Romney] has flip-flopped in our direction, if you will - the direction of the values voters - and I think he will stay there," Weyrich said in a telephone interview, the first since he endorsed Romney. "I think he has a good deal of presence and ability to explain things, and so I think he's the candidate this year."

And Nicole Belle of CrooksAndLiars.com gets off a good one on the Robertson endorsement: "So, apparently the “values” of the “Values Voter” include infidelity, divorce, tolerance of homosexuality, cross-dressing, mob ties and bearing false witness. Cool." (Full article here.)

We can all breathe again now

Space Shuttle Orbiter Discovery has landed safely at Kennedy Space Center in Florida (thanks to faxpaladin for the tip), following the first shuttle landing approach over ground (as opposed to water) since Columbia broke into flaming pieces, high in a clear blue Texas sky, four years ago...along with all our hearts. The crew are all fine and being debriefed as we speak.

Thanks be to God under all Her many names...and nice work, astronauts and all the rest of you NASA guys 'n' gals.

Am I too easily amused?

Found the userpic above this morning and am still laughing various body parts off at it. I'm not sure why; it's one of those things I spend five minutes laughing—not just chuckling, but belly-laughing, gasping-for-oxygen laughing—and then hear a scornful voice in my brain saying, "Jeeze, come on, it's not that funny!" followed by another voice retorting, "Sure it is!" and laughing some more. (An old and dear friend once told me, "It's okay to talk to yourself, and even to answer yourself...as long as neither one of you says, 'Huh?'")

My ex-GF Anne (now darrenzieger's wife) and I have many running jokes left over from our brief but tumultuous romance; one of them is that, when I'd have one of these humor-gasms, she'd come back five minutes later and ask, "Now what's so funny?" and I'd reply, "Same thing!" Now all I have to do is say those last two words in order to crack her up. (Somehow my current partner and I don't seem to have developed such a back catalog of shared jokes, even after six years; not sure why—it's not as if she lacks a sense of humor, by any means.) (As evidenced by the fact that she's put up with your sorry, bony ass for six years?) (Shaddap you mouf.)

Am I just too immature to know when to stop laughing at something? Is anyone else able to get so much mileage out of one joke or funny incident?

An especially potent dose of Teh Keith

Keith Olbermann rips Junior Bush yet another new one in last night's scorching Special Comment from MSNBC's Countdown. Money quote: "The presidency of George W. Bush has now devolved into a criminal conspiracy to cover the ass of George W. Bush." Not for the faint of heart or right of wing. Transcript included so you can follow along, courtesy of the nice folks at CrooksAndLiars.com.

(no subject)

So I was considering whether to do as technoshaman suggests and divest myself of any further association with the unholy trinity of the Intarwebs—Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, henceforth referred to by the nifty term TS came up with, YaGooSoft—in protest against their being willing corporate handmaidens to China's attempts to censor the Net and jail anybody within their borders who complains about it. I'm not terribly thrilled about having to face my iGoogle and YouTube addictions down, but I'm having trouble thinking of any other meaningful way to whack YaGooSoft on the nose with a clue-by-four—i.e., make them see this is evil (in direct contravention of Google's stated "don't be evil" credo), grow a set and start standing up to Beijing.

One big part of this strategy, obviously, would have to be getting rid of the WinBlows installation on my Dell laptop and replacing it with some other GUI. (I already use Firefox as a replacement for Internet Exploder except for sites that simply will not play nice with any other browser but IE, and my copy of M$ Office can quite easily be replaced with OpenOffice or some such.) I thought the go-to package for this would surely be Ubuntu, the Linux-based GUI that's become all the rage among those who want Penguiny goodness on their desktops/laptops without having to use/learn command-line code. (Popular T-shirt/button slogan for the clued in this area: "Two hours of broadband to FTP the Linux package: $ .15; CDs to burn the files: $1; the knowledge that nothing on your computer is from Microsoft: priceless. There are some operating systems that money can't buy; for everyone else, there's Windows.")

But then I started hearing about this progenitor (or competitor, depending on who's talking) to Ubuntu called Debian. (Another popular slogan I came upon recently: "'Ubuntu' is an ancient Zulu word meaning 'I can't configure Debian.'" I just adore techie snark, even when I don't have the background to really get it in full.) A search on "Ubuntu vs. Debian" turned up only some long, verbose and highly technical rants opinions I couldn't follow for long. And the one visual attempt I found at explaining the differences between the two didn't help much either.

So, can anyone among the techies that I know infest my friends list give me a simple (meaning understandable by a non-programming, non-Slashdot-reading, Mac and Windows-raised user) explanation of the relationship of Ubuntu to Debian, which is better for the average GUI user and why? Kthxbye.