#199 - Link-o-llection. (Again?!)

I was gonna post these yesterday, but I got my ass out of bed way late (4:00pm, natch) because I'd stayed up late talking to kiirobon about Gintama, Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro, and the joys of crotchbleeding (it was for something he was writing - that poor soul). Not long after waking up, I soon had to be dragged off to my cousin's graduation party. We stayed until 3:00am, which effed up a daily sleep schedule that was, for a few precious moments, looking to be a little less vampiric. I mean, I was getting up before noon, before ten o' clock for the love of Mihaele! Yeah, I ended up falling asleep about an hour after technically waking up and waking up in the afternoon, but you gotta start with baby steps.

Anyway, here we go. There's going to be another link-o-llection soon after this one, themed on Barack Obama's veeper, Joe Biden, and related things. I can't promise intelligent or well-informed commentary on my part, but I can link to where such things are taking place.

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lwood writes about a potential security flaw in Gmail accounts and how to fix it. If you've got a Gmail account, you might want to look at this.

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Smart Bitches Trashy Books: Go Topless:

Got plans today? Kathryn gave me a heads up (or something) that today is Go Topless’s protest day around the US, where women will gather without shirts to protest the ridiculous standards which make it socially acceptable for men to go topless, but not women. The New York City gathering place is the Merchant’s Gate of Central Park, aka the Columbus Circle entrance across from the Time Warner center. Other cities hosting topless rallies include Bloomington, Chicago, Miami and Omaha. The Denver rally will be on the 26th to coincide with the start of the DNC (Welcome to Denver! Here are our boobs!)

I think that this "Go Topless" day is probably a better idea of trying to promote the de-mystification of women's breasts than that one fiasco a while back about the "Open Source Boob Project." OSBP took place at a Michigan con (the name of which I can't remember at the moment) where some woefully misguided SF fans attempted to enable public groping (through handing out buttons that said "Yes, you may" to any woman who decided that she was A-OK with getting groped by total strangers) under the excuse of "empowering women".

There was, of course, no male equivalent to this. For reasons ranging from trying to point out the idiocy of the idea to sincerely trying to make this an equal-opportunity situation, various females tried to suggest a similar place on the male body that they could perform the badtouch on, such as the ass or the balls. But the leader of the project, theferrett, basically said OMG NO GROSSS AND SKEEVY. No irony there, no, sir!

(For the rundown - and be warned, there is a <>lot to run down, I didn't even check out most of it - check this post over at Unfunny Business on JournalFen.)

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So we all know by now that Republican presidential candidate John McCain has no fucking clue how many houses he owns. Man, I wish I were so rich that I'd forget how many houses and condos I owned. Oh, no, wait, I don't. Mainly because I already have problems with never remembering where my mechanical pencils or pen erasers went, even though I'm holding the damn things in my hand. It's a nightmare to contemplate how I'd handle remembering houses, which the last time I checked were worth helluva a lot more than a Papermate mechanical pencil.

In situations like these, I prefer to laugh because otherwise I will cry hysterically, so have a list of "John McCain's Got a Lot of Houses" jokes:

Don't blame McCain.  He couldn't resist that "buy six mansions, get one free" sale at Countrywide.

Hey, didja hear?  John McCain has so many houses they're giving him his own monopoly board!

Seven houses?  That's one for every day of the week!  What a coincidence! I've got a 'Friday' house, too. That's because Friday's payday ... and it takes my whole check just to keep it.

Check the comments for some other gems.

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Hallmark assimilates gay marriage into the Jingleborg! Good on them.

On the flip side, this has caused Assholes For America...I mean, American Family Association...to boycott Hallmark. Of course. Because the Gods forbid they taint themselves with TEH GHEY. ysabetwordsmith nailed the hypocrisy of this move here:

Hmm, let's see, a big company is putting out a product that allows more people to celebrate the precise type of family they are forming; and a "family association" is trying to stomp on both the families and the company. "Family-friendly" means promoting all types of families.

I'd bet my entire Bomberman manga collection that the AFA folk are also the same kind of people who can't see the logical disconnect that results from essentially whining how they don't have the freedom to suppress other folks' freedoms. ("HELPS! I IS BEING OPRESSEDED BY EXISTENCE OF GODLESS HEATHENS, O NOES!") It's like that one Gospel parable where the king pardons the servant of his debts, only to have that same servant whirl on a fellow servant and demand repayment of his debts or else. There's something distinctly ungrateful and misanthropic about the attitudes of people like these.

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Moving onto less serious business, try catching a couple of humanified Pokemon. The humanified forms of originally non-human characters is generally referred to in anime/manga fandom as "gijinka", but here they're called "Moemon", combining the Otakunese term for describing anything that's cute or endearing and the "mon" from "Pokemon". The site I linked to is in Japanese, but you can pull up the list of Pokemon on Wikipedia and use their Pokedex numbers to look them up in the sidebar on the site. Myself, I was too lazy to do that when I was sent this site last night by a friend, so I just randomly clicked around and amused myself that way. (The Pidgeot chick is bordering on sexy badass, what. So's Mewtwo. No, seriously.)

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There's a new Bomberman game being developed for the Nintendo DS. It is currently called "Bomberman II" and looks to be as creative and imaginative as its title. I'm starting to give up hope on Hudson Soft ever developing a single-player platforming mode along the same lines and caliber as the N64 games, but I suppose that's business, and there's more business to be had by focusing more on Bomberman's multiplayer possibilities at the expense of his single-player adventures. I might still get this game, though, because it looks to be more on the lines of the SNES gameplay than the original Bomberman game for NES, which uses a formula that bores me to death. At this rate, I'll take what I can get, although I still haven't played any of the Bomberman Land Touch sequels.

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Not links, per se, but I've been getting a lot of spam mail lately with interesting titles, such as:

"Paris Hilton's Vagina Bites Penguin"
"Paris Hilton Sold Her Soul to the Devil, Admits It on Larry King"
"Britney Spears has Fanny Magnets Grafted In to Attract Paparazzi"
"Britney Spears' New Hair Extention are Lindsay Lohan's Pubes"
"Brad Pitt and Angelina Are Adopting Britney Spears"

I'd be hard-pressed to pick a favorite. I'm giggling at the thought of Paris Hilton having a set of vagina dentata, and the idea of using pubic hair in hair extensions is hilariously wrong.

-Reileen
it's all right to come undone

#200 - "Barack and Joe" sounds like it could be a weekly comic strip.

From Truthout: Obama Chooses Biden as Running Mate

Washington - Senator Barack Obama has chosen Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware to be his running mate, turning to a leading authority on foreign policy and a longtime Washington hand to fill out the Democratic ticket, Mr. Obama announced in text and e-mail messages early Saturday.

    Mr. Obama's selection ended a two-month search that was conducted almost entirely in secret. It reflected a critical strategic choice by Mr. Obama: To go with a running mate who could reassure voters about gaps in his resume, rather than to pick someone who could deliver a state or reinforce Mr. Obama's message of change.

Yahoo!News has an analysis on what this suggests about Obama and his campaign:

DENVER - The candidate of change went with the status quo.

In picking Sen. Joe Biden to be his running mate, Barack Obama sought to shore up his weakness — inexperience in office and on foreign policy — rather than underscore his strength as a new-generation candidate defying political conventions.

[ . . . ]

The picks say something profound about Obama: For all his self-confidence, the 47-year-old Illinois senator worried that he couldn't beat Republican John McCain without help from a seasoned politician willing to attack. The Biden selection is the next logistical step in an Obama campaign that has become more negative — a strategic decision that may be necessary but threatens to run counter to his image.

Al Giordano discusses some of Biden's weak points, including allegations of plagiarism from Biden's past presidential campaign and some of his racially-insensitive remarks, but concludes that Biden is, nonetheless, an asset to the Obama campaign.

Another article from Truthout brings to light some details from Biden's personal life, suggesting that despite his job in Washington, he is still in touch with the issues of everyday people.

Daily Kos has two posts regarding Biden's work with pushing legislation to criminalize violence against women, something that Biden has called "the single, most important legislative accomplishment in [his] 32-year-old career in the Senate."

The smart folk at Making Light are tossing around the implications of VP!Biden and what this may mean in the future. One of my favorite comments from this blog post, interestingly enough, has nothing to do with Biden:

Neil in Chicago @ 112: "That said, can we move on the the imporant question? The economy is in the toilet. The war is in the toilet. The budget is in the toilet. etc. So why is Obama polling a lead in the low single digits??"

I have a theory that it's a clever ploy by the Obama campaign to dispel the Arrogant Celebrity Frontrunner/Plucky Gen-yoo-ine Underdog narrative that had been building recently. Obama's lead had been so huge, it was inevitable that it would narrow at some point. Once that happened, McCain's fans in the media would all be breathlessly wondering if McCain could pull off an amazing comeback. Nothing energizes a constituency like rooting for an underdog--it might have turned out the right-wing base like nothing else could. At the same time, a huge lead might lull Obama's supporters into a false sense of security, especially unreliable voters like college-aged kids and other new voters. A massive turnout has always been key to Obama's electoral strategy.

Instead, the Obama campaign goes silent--Obama goes on vacation, and the campaign directs their energies into GOTV training and infrastructure building, not trying to get media attention. McCain gets the spotlight for a couple of weeks, letting the voters to get to know him a little better, warts and all. Especially the warts. Rumors begin to spread: Is Obama falling apart? Liberals freak out and redouble their efforts. The gap narrows, McCain's unfavorable ratings shoot up, and Obama has piles of cash and a ground operation to die for. He blazes back into the spotlight, hitting whatever weaknesses McCain's recent media glare has revealed, and rides rising polls right into November.

...or so I hope.

Shifting the focus back to Barackman for a bit...bradhicks linked to this fascinating article from the New York Times regarding Obama's economic policies:

When Obama gives a speech about his economic plan, there is often a moment when you can sense him shift from poetry to prose. He can be inspiring when talking about how the country ended up being the envy of the world. But when he comes to the part about what he wants to do next, how he wants to keep America the envy of the world, it can sound a little like a State of the Union laundry list.

His advisers are divided about how much of a problem this is. Some of them told me that he did have a unifying theme — the middle-class squeeze — and that it would become clearer to voters as they began paying closer attention to the race. Others said they didn’t think Obama had yet come up with a simple way to explain how he would alleviate that squeeze. Obama himself seems well aware of the stakes. In 2005, on a call-in public-radio show, he told a listener that Democrats hadn’t been as effective in telling a story about the country as Republicans. In the end, he said, people voted not for a hodgepodge of position papers but for someone who could explain to them where the country should be going.

So I asked Obama whether he thought he had been able to tell an effective story about the economy during this campaign. Specifically, I wondered, did he think he had a message that compared with Reagan’s simple call for less government and lower taxes.

He paused for a few seconds and then said this:

“I think I can tell a pretty simple story. Ronald Reagan ushered in an era that reasserted the marketplace and freedom. He made people aware of the cost involved of government regulation or at least a command-and-control-style regulation regime. Bill Clinton to some extent continued that pattern, although he may have smoothed out the edges of it. And George Bush took Ronald Reagan’s insight and ran it over a cliff. And so I think the simple way of telling the story is that when Bill Clinton said the era of big government is over, he wasn’t arguing for an era of no government. So what we need to bring about is the end of the era of unresponsive and inefficient government and short-term thinking in government, so that the government is laying the groundwork, the framework, the foundation for the market to operate effectively and for every single individual to be able to be connected with that market and to succeed in that market. And it’s now a global marketplace.

“Now, that’s the story. Now, telling it elegantly — ‘low taxes, smaller government’ — the way the Republicans have, I think is more of a challenge.”

Okay, phew, I think that's enough links for now.

-Reileen
you were killed at twenty-one on a minor battlefield