The Mattatonic State

We have all heard the stories of odd and gross things people have found in food... rats found in fast food burgers, fingers found in salads... but Foxnews.com has made a discovery that takes the cake (pun intended). The following is a direct copy and paste from the home page of Foxnews.com:


"Archaeologists have uncovered a 4000-year-old 'missing' pyramid in an Egyptian dessert"



Of course I think  the real story here is the ancient stone tablets found in the mashed potatoes.

Into the annals of things that get better with age, Weezer takes its place alongside fine wine, cheese, and Cher's chances of survival in a nuclear holocaust.

With their newest single, Pork and Beans, the house that Rivers built delivers not only one of the bands best songs Weezer has released in years, but also one of the most humorous and culturally relevant videos that has been produced in said years. If you enjoy Weezer, or are a youtube-a-holic, or both, check out and enjoy the video for Weezer's Pork and Beans.

http://youtube.com/weezer

I have to say that I do not watch much late night tv anymore, and if I do it's usually the Daily Show and Colbert Report, but I remember when I was younger being a die hard David Letterman fan, and I have just had my respect for him renewed in droves.

Letterman's production company Worldwide Pants has reached an agreement with the striking writer's union to bring back his writers and produce new shows beginning Jan. 2., with a deal that includes royalties paid to writers for content distributed on the internet. This comes at a time when several other shows- including the aforementioned Daily Show and Colbert Report- are set to return without writers. Letterman's deal is noteworthy also because he paid all of his writers through the end of this year even while the strike went on and no new shows were put on.

Letterman's actions are bold and to be applauded, and he serves as a great example to the rest of those in the television industry hesitant to provide reasonable royalty compensation to the writers who make tv programming possible. Let's hope the rest of the industry follows suit.

I hadn't read a whole lot about the guy (beyond the fact that he was endorsed by Chuck Norris and pro-wrestler Ric Flair), but after reading a brief Associated Press article a few moments ago, I despise him. According to a questionnaire distributed to him by the AP in 1992 when he was running for Senate, Huckabee advocated quarantine for AIDS patients. He wrote, "If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague."

This is disgusting. I know there are probably some who will read this and say "oh, well we didn't know much about AIDS at that time, etc.," but that is completely false. We knew well before 1992 how HIV could and could not be spread. I think we can all agree if someone gets HIV through needle sharing or unprotected sex with a partner of unknown status (assuming it's not a cheating spouse) that there is an element of personal responsibility, but isolation and quarantine of people that carry a virus that cannot be spread through casual contact? This guy was either stupid himself, or putting this out there to appease the ignorance of his constituents. Either way, it's atrocious.

Normally I do not base my like or dislike of candidates on a single issue. I know I can't say "I am not voting for so and so because of issue x" because there are often enough other issues I do agree with him/her on to warrant a vote. But this one is just too big. Advocacy of quarantine of people who have a virus that cannot be spread via any means but unprotected sex and blood to blood contact? That is right up there with saying that we should put people with Iraqi heritage into camps because we're at war. A man who would advocate such a dramatic and alarming action such as that has no place anywhere near the presidency.

NORTH POLE-  It's supposed to be the season for candy canes, egg nog, Christmas trees and Hanukkah bushes, but for one North Pole family, Christmas is going to be a bit gloomier this year.

According to official police documents, Santa Claus was picked up for solicitation of multiple prostitutes in a sting set up by authorities after reports of indecency in and around the North Pole. Officer Anita Life was one of the undercover officers.

"I was standing there with a couple of the other female officers waiting for a fish to bite, and up rode a sleigh drawn by 8 tiny reindeer and driven by a familiar jolly red faced fat man. At first I thought it was Ted Kennedy, but upon close inspection, I realized it was Santa Claus. "

According to Officer Life, Santa propositioned the ladies with offers of presents if they'd "been good girls." A blurb from the official police report states that when asked what he was looking for, Santa replied by "holding his belly, tossing back his head, and exclaming 'Ho ho ho'", at which point the three ladies hopped into his sleigh and rode with him into a dark alley, where arresting officers were waiting. Mr. Claus is being charged with solicitation of multiple prostitutes and driving with an expired reindeer license.

Mrs. Claus was unavailable for comment.

This was his second arrest. Santa has previously been investigated and fined for the hiring of illegal elves and charged with animal cruelty after experimenting with putting headlights into the noses of reindeer.

Hermey the Misfit Elf contributed to this story.

For the umpteenth time recently, I have had a blog/response post never appear, and for the umpteenth time there's no reason for it. From what I have been reading here, it seems like a lot of you are having the same problem.

What's the deal Fox? The beauty of the blog atmosphere is that people can express their concerns, frustrations, and disagreements candidly. It's one thing to edit obscenities and such, but it's starting to look like there's other motives in your edits. If you emailed explaining why blog responses weren't posted with a reference to what you object to, that would be one thing, but you don't. You sweep it under the rug without so much as a word, and it reeks of shady practice. Are we allowed to express our concerns about these issues freely (within reason), or are we supposed to adhere to the beliefs and special interests of Fox 25 and its parent companies?

I have no idea if this will post, but I have my doubts. I would, however, love an explanation as to your motives. I think your faithful viewers and posters are entitled to that much.

We live in a society where schools are struggling to keep their accreditation. Some school systems barely scrape by on the limited funds they have available, and kids fall through the cracks because of it, often dropping out of school at increasingly younger ages. Important extracurricular programs involving music, the arts, and sports are falling by the wayside because schools have to opt for things like books instead.

And THIS is what draws you out to post your outrage? A school deciding not to bring kids to see a play? Not even a high caliber play. It's a play based on one of the cheesiest movies ever written (which may in fact have come from a play, but I don't really care as that isn't the point).

If you want to be mad, and angry, and outraged, how about stepping up and saying/doing something about the things that matter. Your cries and protests here are laughable at best because of the fact that you're willing to turn a blind eye to all of the important problems schools and our children are facing. It's the equivalent of watching Nero fiddle during Rome's burn and only speaking out in protest when he plays "Stairway to Heaven" out of key.

The outpouring of anger of this class trip is preposterous, and you should all be embarrassed at your ill-placed priorities. God knows I am.

So through a series of whimsical postings on another blog, the idea of doctoring a photo of Chip on Britney Spears's body came up, and I had to bite. I thought it a bust at first because he doesn't have any pictures up where his head is big enough to use, but then I remembered his wife... she does.

So without further ado, with the permission of Chip himself, I present to you an image of Chipney Spears, fresh from his scandalous MTV video awards performance.

 

1. We can't reply to your post. New Fox blog accounts are defaulting to not allowing replies, so you need to go to your blog settings and change it.

 2. You should give credit where credit is due. Those are powerful words in your blog, but they are a Pink song, and not your own words. If you don't give credit to her for them when you put them up here, you are plagiarizing.
 

They just need to install these for the students taking the test:

So I was just reading AJ Burnett's blog about his Starbucks ordering mishap experience, and was going to post a response talking about something else that bugs me even more than Starbucks elitism, but I thought I would start a new blog instead of hijacking his, as I figured I would be taking the subject far enough off to warrant its own post.

 As much as I am annoyed by the Starbucks code-of-ordering, I must say it's trumped in my mind by an experience I have had at several places over the years, and just had again the other day at the Au Bon Pain around the corner from my apartment.

I went to order a small slushy iced coffee thingamabob (try ordering THAT at Starbucks), and was told that they only have medium and large. Now call me cuckoo, but doesn't the existence of medium depend on the availability of small and large as well? If there is no small, or no large, then how can there even be a medium?

Even taking away the mere naming convention, is it that hard to deduce that if you only have sizes labeled "medium" and "large", and a customer orders "small" then medium would be the way to go, since it is by default the smaller of the two available options? It's not like they will take the large instead, given a choice between the two.

It's a minor annoyance surely, but I am guessing there are more than a few of you out there who have experienced this, so I would love to hear some theorizing as to why this occurs.
 

A provocative header, no? Well a couple of days ago Edwards appeared on an MTV town hall type forum where he addressed a question about the fact there are so many young black men in prison, and what might he do to address this issue. His response included the following quote:

"We cannot build enough prisons to solve this problem. And the idea that we can keep incarcerating and keep incarcerating — pretty soon we’re not going to have a young African American male population in America. They’re all going to be in prison or dead. One of the two."

Ouch! Good lord John. Did you not know what you were saying? It's sad too, because I think he has a valid point somewhere there, and probably didn't intend this, but what a misspeak... Edwards was already lagging in the polls, and I'd imagine this isn't going to help him anyway.

I'd keep writing more, but I need to keep an eye on my husband, the successful black yuppie software engineer to make sure he doesn't end up dead or incarcerated.

Sometimes I wonder where I will be and what I will be doing in 30 years time. I would love to keep working in the field I am in, but who knows? For Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart, there was only one thing they could be doing their whole lives, and they succeed with flying colors.  We've all seen "comebacks" and "reunions" of bands we love, and as much as our rose colored glasses try and preserve our memories, rarely does a band or performer live up to our hopes. Heart exceeded mine.

 From the very beginning of the show, the music was loud and pumped (with replacements for the other original members of the band who were great in their own right) but it wasn't until Ann started to sing that magic happened. This woman is 57 years old, and not only does she not look it, but she is beautiful in both appearance and voice. And Nancy, always known for getting way into her role as guitarist, did not disappoint either. At 54, she was still all over the stage, writhing and kicking as she and sis blasted out the kind of rock that I find myself missing more and more in this day where bands like Fall Out Boy and Panic! At The DIsco receive the "rock" classification- a classification that I believe is made more because they are the closest to actual rock of what's out there in the mainstream, rather thank actually being rock.

If I had one complaint about the show, it would be that they did not perform one of their 80s hits that I love, "Never" but that is no more than a mild personal gripe, since they did nearly two hours of their other fantastic work, including a few songs off of Ann's recently released solo album "Hope and Glory"(which is also very good), including "Immigrant Song" which is a great cover of one of Led Zeppelin's numerous hits sung by one of the few people (male or female) who could pull it off with authority. This was followed up by another Zep cover- Black Dog- which was also fantastic.

 The show ended with an encore of an encore (why do performers bother doing the whole encore thing anymore anyway) of Dreamboat Annie, one of Heart's earliest  songs (and a big fan favorite), ending an energetic and exciting night on a very subdued note.

All in all (in case it was not clear by my words) this is an amazing show, and I encourage anyone who is a fan to see them if you ever get the chance. The original queens of rock have still got it, and it doesn't seem like it will be going anywhere anytime soon.

So it seems like every news site I see has some mention of the college student in Florida who was tased (zapped using an electric taser gun) and taken into custody at a John Kerry speaking engagement. At face it sounds terrible, and oppressive, yadda yadda yadda, but it also sounds like there is more here than meets the eye. And there is.

 The boy in question was angrily confronting the senator, and had reportedly exceeded his time on the microphone. When security came to usher him out, as they have the right to do if they feel it is necessary, he resisted... continuously. He resisted being ushered out, he resisted arrest, and now people want to call it an abuse of authority?

Tell me something... at what point does a person who is unhinged enough to resist security guards dangerous enough to warrant use of control measures like a taser? Do they need to lunge at someone's throat, or maybe pull a gun? I don't even care what this kid's political motivations are- I might even agree with some of his points- but he needs to grow up and act civilized if he is to participate in that sort of event. If the cops had shot him, I'd say hey wait a minute, but they used non-lethal force, and frankly in this "age of rage" we live in, I think he's lucky that is the worst that happened to him.

If you disagree with me, and feel that the measures taken were unjustified, I dare you to watch the video, and tell me if you were one of the officers you would not have done the same thing, or at least considered it.

Kid... if you wish to interact with adults, as an adult... then act like an adult.
 

After the debacle that was to be her big comeback performance on the MTV Video Music Awards, I felt compelled to write this open letter to Ms. Spears, and did so to the tune of one of Britney's earliest (and catchiest) hits,  "(Hit Me) Baby One More Time."

Oh Britney Britney

Oh Britney Britney

 

Oh Britney Britney

Why couldn't you even try

To give a good performance

 

Oh Britney Britney

I just keep on asking why

But it's wasted contemplation

 

Dear me

Why you wanna blind me

In your bra and panties

Girl you really need a

Baggy t shirt

 

You're such a mess- I can't believe

Your publicist doesn't up and leave

What's wrong with you, did you lose your mind?

Girl it's a sign

Hit the unemployment line!

 

Oh Britney Britney

It's so sad what's become of you

It's hard to even see it

 

Oh Britney Britney

Whatever did K-Fed do to you?

To send you off this planet

 

Britney

You're so freaking skanky

Those lady lumps are scary

Won't somebody please

Give this girl a blanket?

 

You're such a mess- it's plain to see

This derailed train's mesmerizing me

Best stick a fork in your bare behind

You've lost your mind

Hit the unemployment line!

  

Oh Britney Britney

Why didn't you even try…

Oh Britney Britney

It's time that we say goodbye...

 

I have to say

That you've got a way

With boring a crowd

But alas I can't believe

That you still persist

I say one more time

Hit the unemployment line!