Category: words mean things (Page 34 of 223)

Roses are red…

So no one seems to care that the Leader of the Free World can’t find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. (“That’s what speechwriters are for! He’s much better in person! Really!”) I give up on that one – although the people who are pushing for declaring English as America’s national language might want to teach it to the President first.

In the Orwellian world we find ourselves living in, apparently we have to pretend that the President is a combination fighter pilot, cowboy, and orator. But do we also have to pretend he’s a poet? (via MetaFilter) The Missouri Review’s answer is, thankfully, no.

I’m quite proud to say that I’ve been linked by my new favorite political site, “Sweet Jesus, I Hate Bill O’Reilly.” In addition to having one of those “so great I wish I’d thought of it” weblog titles, there’s some extremely entertaining debunking of the always-needs-debunking O’Reilly. Go there now! (tm Miguel)

Kill Bill, Vol. 1

Quentin Tarantino’s movies have always been about style over substance. I think “Pulp Fiction” is brilliant, but it’s a sugar rush, not a character study.

And if “Pulp Fiction” is like eating a package of Twinkies, “Kill Bill” is like pouring 40 Pixie Stix straight down your throat. It’s gorgeous, the music is fun, the action is non-stop, Uma Thurman kicks serious ass – but it doesn’t leave a lot behind. You stumble out of the theater with a smile on your face, but a little unsure how it got there.

That’s not to say I’m not looking forward to Vol. 2. I am. I love elephant ears at the county fair; that doesn’t mean I want to eat them every day.

Related story…
Every year around this time, I get a terrible craving for candy corn. I run into Shopko or wherever, my hands practically shaking with anticipation, and leave with the prize. Then I open the bag and greedily eat a couple handfuls.

Immediately, I feel queasy and can’t even *look* at candy corn, until the next year when it happens again.

Award “Kill Bill” should win at the next Oscars:

Best Use of “Kaboom” Cereal in a Motion Picture

Was it just me, or did anyone else sense a possible Weiss/Sydney romance brewing on “Alias” tonight? If so, I applaud hard. She can do better than that hatchet-faced pseudo-pretty-boy Vaughn, if you ask me.

Legitimacy

Read an interesting defense on Dean Esmay’s site of why liberal celebrities talking about politics are shooting their mouths off, but conservative celebrities running for office with no qualifications but their celebrity is A-OK.

Apparently, it’s because when they run for office, that gives them “legitimacy.”

Yeah. That’s the ticket.

Pop culture quote of the week

“I’ve always thought of Siegfried and Roy as sort of like Akbar and Jeff. Are they friends? Are they brothers? Are they lovers? Or all three?”

-Lisa D.

In reading about Gov. Arnold today, I’ve seen again and again variations on “At least he’s not a career politician.” I love how if you don’t like someone, he’s a “career politician.” But if you happened to like someone who’d spent a long time in politics, you’d say he “spent his life in public service.”

Words mean things.

Shameless

Grover Norquist, an anti-tax right wing lobbyist thought to be the architect of President Bush’s giant tax cuts, compared the estate tax (or the “death tax” in rightie parlance) to the Holocaust.

The transcript is truly chilling. These people have no shame.

Sounds great to me

“I envision a day when all elected officials have electrodes implanted in their chests, and if every morning, a majority of registered voters don’t press the large green ‘LIVE’ button on the dashboard of their cars, that officeholder’s heart will explode.”

-Stephen Colbert on “The Daily Show,” with some cogent thoughts on the future of democracy in the wake of Gov. Schwarzenegger’s election

Memo to Florida

Congratulations! You’re no longer the laughingstock of the country. Those wacky Californians just elected a sexual predator movie star as governor – in a landslide! The heat is off, for now. Enjoy it. Just don’t go and do something like elect a shiny metal toaster as your governor, and you should be able to coast into the elections next year without people snickering when your name is brought up.

This reminds me of when I first moved to Muskegon, Michigan. It was right around the time of the infamous Money Magazine article Michael Moore talks about in “Roger and Me,” where Flint was ranked 300th out of 300 American cities. What didn’t get as much press as Flint’s ranking was Muskegon’s, at 299. Being a new resident and a smartass, I suggested to my colleagues in the newsroom that Muskegon’s new slogan should be, “Muskegon: At Least We’re Better Than Flint.”

That didn’t go over well.