Category: words mean things (Page 6 of 223)

“There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have celebrations too. Bad people have parties too.”

-U.S. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, casting around for a way to spin the latest PR problem in Iraq

In other news: GWB’s approval rating is at 41 percent. Wow. And 65 percent of those polled said the country is going in the wrong direction. That’s the same percentage as just before the 1994 elections, when voters gave control of both houses of Congress to the Republicans. Ouch.

An entertaining and thought-provoking documentary from Morgan Spurlock, who put his health at risk by eating McDonald’s food three meals a day for a month.

But as usual with documentaries, and movies in general, some of the most interesting stuff comes in the margins. The central stunt has an understandably dire effect on Spurlock’s health – he gained 25 pounds and put serious stress on his liver and heart. What’s more compelling are sequences like the one showing an alternative high school in Appleton that contracted with a natural foods company to provide healthy, unprocessed foods for the at-risk students there – and the wonderful effects that has on both the students’ behavior and learning.

This movie isn’t up to the Michael Moore standard of entertaining documentaries (a lot of people would consider that a good thing). But it has some important things to say about how corporate greed and American laziness and pleasure-seeking feed on each other. And it does it in good spirits.

Recommended.

The discussion over at Peppermint Tea for some reason reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from “Cheers.” Harvey played Rebecca Howe’s high school boyfriend, who came back to the bar and came out to a shocked Rebecca (Kirstie Alley). Which led to this exchange:

Rebecca: I always assume people are straight until I find out they’re not.

Harvey: That’s funny. I always assume people are gay until I find out they’re not.

I know The Lifetime Movie Title Generator has been around for ages, but it’s damn funny.

Another bit of much-needed humor comes to me courtesy of the estimable Miss Anthropy, who sent along a link to these banners, which would be perfect if they were narrow enough to fit into my page design.

There’s a lot of stuff I could be writing about these days. I could be writing about our forces killing 40 people at an Iraqi wedding. I could be writing about a pattern of abuse that was set in motion from Rumsfeld on down. I could be writing about how a guest on Bill O’Reilly’s show last night called for the U.S. to formally declare war on “The Nation of Terrorism,” which I think would be slightly difficult to find on a map. I could be writing about right-wing nostalgia for the days of Japanese internment camps. I could be writing about the latest anti-gay rhetoric on right-wing sites, spurred by the Massachusetts marriages, that goes something like “If we could only figure out what made them gay in the first place, we could switch them back and everything would be peachy-keen. Plus, no new ones!”

But I find I have a lot of anger these days. And when I try to write about this stuff, I can’t even form my usual sentences. Kim “the rags are fucked” du Toit talks about the “red curtain of blood,” and I must say in this case I think I understand what he’s talking about. Where I used to feel depressed, now mainly I just feel angry.

I know this is not healthy. Maybe I need a stuffed GWB and a wiffle bat. Or at least some better movies to review.

Does anyone out there have an invitation to a Google Gmail account they could spare? If you do, you’d instantly become my new best friend. I’d really like to check Gmail out. Many thanks.

“It’s not you, it’s me. I just think I could do better.”

-Reese’s now-ex-girlfriend, on “Malcolm in the Middle”

“The sacred institution of marriage should not be redefined by a few activist judges,” said President Bush, renewing his support for a proposed constitutional ban that has been introduced in Congress.
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“Fifty years ago today, nine judges announced that they had looked at the Constitution and saw no justification for the segregation and humiliation of an entire race,” Bush said at the opening of a national historic site at Monroe Elementary, a former all-black school in the heartland of the school desegregation effort.

I sincerely hope that quotes like the first one, and all the vitriol that’s been spread about same-sex marriage, are archived and trotted out to amazed eyes in another 50 years, when the idea of denying gay people basic rights is just as unthinkable as denying black people’s rights is today.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the fat man will have the last laugh.

I want to see this film so bad.

Atrios hits on something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately: the willingness of the right to twist itself into rhetorical knots to cover all possible eventualities. They’ll defend anything, if the administration or its allies are doing it; and also defend the opposite, just in case.

While I was on hiatus, reading much more of right-wing rant weblogs than is good for my health, I started collecting these contortions for future posting. Here are some common ones:

“Iraq had lots of ties to al Qaeda, but even if they didn’t, it doesn’t matter.”

“Nick Berg’s murder is the media’s fault. Wait, it’s those evil Arabs – they don’t need an excuse to kill us. But the press are still traitorous bastards.”

It must get tiring.