Cry Me a River

His “poor me” schtick is not going down well. But I have to say that at least SOMEONE on their side is saying something about the lipsticked elephant in the room.

@RomeGirl: They’ve been peeling off one by one the past couple of weeks, and everyone left at NRO is starting to sound like Joan Crawford.

You can leave him at the US America/Canada City border, but it is doubtful that anyone from our side will pick him up.

As someone who knows of him and regrets it, he was horribly wrong on pretty much everything in Canada City and no one listened to him. He leaves for greener pastures of US America and does the same thing, but someone actually listens to him and or takes him seriously.

Now we owe you two. Celine and for the Frumlet.

@RomeGirl: Fuck him. If McCain/Palin were 10 points ahead instead of 10 points behind he’d be out-Kristoling Kristol. He is a hypocritical little shitbag who needs to spend the rest of his life in Gitmo experiencing what he helped create.

@ManchuCandidate: What did his mother, the great person that she was, think of his politics? Just curious. (FYI to those who don’t know: His mom, Barbara, was a well-known journalist in Canada City.)

@rptrcub:
I don’t know. Frumlet supposedly takes after his daddy, a Toronto area real estate developer.

His sister isn’t much better except she spent most of her journo time sucking up to the rich and fabulous. Her claim to fame was writing a guide to Canada City Universities (similar to US W and N’s) which was panned as both insulting and wrong to most of the schools involved.

@rptrcub: Speaking of mothers, is Margaret Carlson still alive, or did Tucker eat her?

Hopefully we’ll have a New American Century after Nov. 4. Heh.

He looks like he’s saying “acknowledge my hairpiece.”

@Promnight: Or acknowledge his forehead.

Damn, he looks like the textbook photo for a closet case.

Acknowledge my bad dye job.

@Promnight: Wait! That’s a rug? I thought it was too much hair gel. But, hell, I was shocked to see Sean Connery’s pate, so, yeah.

@JNOV: Quote from Howard Fineman on MSNBC.

I might build a fire tonight. Chilly here.

@JNOV: When was someone going to tell me they’re not related?

@JNOV: More Bulwer-Lytton:

Jan Svenson, having changed his fortune in the annual “Scandinavian King of the Beach” in Santa Cruz with a bottle of black hair coloring and thus standing out in a sea of fair-haired rivals to win the coveted title, realized the ironic truth of the old adage “That in the kingdom of the blonde, the one dyed man is king.”

@JNOV: I was waiting till I got to the bottom of the comments thread to ask you if you were sure about her being Tucker’s mother. She looks to be not much older than Tucker.

@blogenfreude: :-D

@lynnlightfoot: I saw them going head-to-head on some show, and I just assumed that was her wayward child. At least that’s how she treated him. And that was years ago. Go figure.

OMFG, he’s uglier than I imagined. And that toupee! Oy.
If he’s a closet case, he needs to stay there because he’d be a sartorial disgrace to homokind.

Oh, and Levi “Shotgun Wedding” Johnston? He’s chill about the whole I’m a Daddy at 18 thing.

@nabisco:

I have a feeling he never expected to be anything but that.

@nabisco: I seriously fear for his and Bristol’s offspring. Having the child raised by those two in concert with Talibunny means certain doom.

Does young Mr. Johnson understand what kind of hell his life will be once Gov. Barracuda is free to even the score with the dropout punk who knocked up her daughter? I hope he isn’t planning on remaining in Alaska after the election and the entire Palin klan has vanished back into the boonies from whence they came.

Looked at some of the Stinquer’s ages in another thread and I’m surrounded by children. I’ll be turning 56 in a few days.

@Dave H: Happy Early Birthday!

I imagine Levi using bungee cord to lash that infant to a snowshoe, tying the snowshoe to his beltloop and dragging the baby behind him while he goes hunting. (Not a slight against you, RML.)

I had JNOVJr when I was 23, and that was too young in many respects. I enjoyed being a young mother with much more energy than I have now, but I really grew up with my kid, and I think I’d have been a better mom had I been about a decade older. But then he’d be nine. Yikes!

Gaaaaah! He’s on Rachel’s show right now! He’s even more loathsome with sound.

He being rude to her ON HER SHOW. What a douchenozzle.

@JNOV: Forget that, hey, babies happen in the most well-regulated families. Whats getting me is he is dropping out of high school to go work on the north slope, and everyone thinks its all hunky dory, wow, what a commitment to education! John McCain greeted him on the tarmac with a hug, a dude dropping out of high school because he got a chick pregnant in the middle of junior year, and they put him on the stage of the Republican National Convention to show Palins FAMILY FUCKING VALUES?

Thats pure Rove. Create reality, brag about your worst shortcoming and claim it as a virtue. Attack your opponents greatest strength, label it a deadly shortcoming. I’ve seen it in court too many times, you only have to brainwash one judge or 12 jurors, but Rove has taken it to the big stage. Perception, is reality, unfortunately. Its the Britney Spears phenomenon, she is the Palin of entertainment, talentless, unattractive, yet proclaimed an artist and a sex symbol. Hi, Madonna.

By the way, anyone see the report that at a New York City concert, Madonna lost her shit and started shrieking at a yawning audience member to be more enthusiuastic, said “I’m working my ass off up here,” and then went on to berate the whole audence. Reminds me of Hunter.

@Dave H: I’ll be 66 on the 25th of October.

@Promnight: SNORT!

@lynnlightfoot: And a Happy Early Birthday to you, too!

Phills and the Dodgers are tied…

Belay my last. Dodgers 3, Phills 2.

@Promnight: How to Make Your Website More Professional (First in a Series): Regular Updates.

Well, I guess we’re opening kimonos a bit, so: I’m 57.

Did Frum buy that hair at Danny Thomas’ estate sale?

@Ewalda: Heheh.

Game is tied again…

Ugh. I’m not announcing the score anymore. I’m jinxing my team.

@nojo: Where? teach me, master. Did I miss something? I know nothing of html, I am a troglodyte, and my perspective changes without warning, I know, what, how, how do I make my website more professional?

Ohh, “regular updates,” boy am I thick.

All the recent rehashing of the past got the better of my common sense and I took a peek at BrandW today.

Layne is having one of his “vote to ban commnters” threads again. Amidst the pathetic whining and groveling, one comment stands out:
“… can you make flyingchainsaw come back? Please, oh please can you try?”

Na Ga Happen. We gots the Chainsaw, bitches!

@Promnight: Naw. You’re just excited about your blog. I don’t have the patience to make risotto. Love it when it’s done, but all that stirring. Ugh.

@Ewalda: Priceless.

@Promnight: No, no, not your blog. With a name like “Acknowledge My Hippo,” your posts could consist of the cat dancing on your keyboard and it would be a success.

@Ewalda: We’re not trading him for Flores. Dude had his chance.

/TJ
Not all the nutcases are on the right. Two morans were arraigned in Portland today for trying to burn a McCain lawn sign with a Molotov cocktail. The sign was not seriously damaged.

I hate when shit goes entirely over my head.

@Promnight: Welcome to my world.

@Mistress Cynica: JESUS! Dangerous dumbasses!

I also see that someone over there is using the moniker “Neon Trotsky”. What’s worse, they have commented absolute drivel in all caps. I want to kick that person’s ass.
Well, that’s my report. Hope I’ll never be tempted to take another look over there.

@Ewalda: Nothing short of a plea for FCS would compel me to register and post a comment at Brand W.

Well, that plus an excuse to include the address in my response.

@nojo: Even Sharon Osbourne’s got blog, I think hers is called Acknowledge my Lipo.

(Luv u Sharon!)

i asked yesterday: where is Original Andrew? he is among the lost flock?

@Mistress Cynica: Ayers put them up to it, you heard it from me first.

@Ewalda: Gad, we really did skim the cream, didn’t we? With commenters like theirs, I’d run the type as small as possible too.

@baked: Damn, Andrew’s missing. I’ll have to figure out who else still hasn’t caught up with us.

Holy shit! Either we could make a living as writers for The Daily Show or someone’s been reading our shit from the Daily Show.

@nojo: There are 3 or 4 who never made the jump but could have added unique perspectives to our discussions, but overall I’m very happy to share my rants, foibles and prejudices with the gang we got.

@nojo: Funny, someone today on brand W did post a plea for the return of FCS, and someone else responded that he left with a bunch of “thin skinned” posters upset at the firing of Megan. Yes, I lurk. Its sad now, without us there, no depth. Two line snark, nothing but.

@Ewalda: Flores/Serolf is the one I miss most, since he was one of the top-shelf regulars. I’m sure a few more would come to mind if I cared to squint at their list.

manchu, i said this the other day! we are being mined! i hear things on the show word for word from our comments, you didn’t see that post i wrote? i can’t remember the examples now. except they stole ‘kill bill’ from nojo, and it got a huge laugh.
it’s very eerie and happens often. but then again, great minds……….

@Promnight: And, um, someone just posted responses to both. Not that anyone’s going to pay attention to a 250-comment thread at this hour.

I’m also debating whether to blow $150 on an ad there at some point. No worries, I’m freelance. It’s deductible.

@baked: Kill Bill was CB’s, but I’ll happily steal his credit if there’s something in it for me.

Re: Frum. I can see him shuffling around in a threadbare terry-cloth robe, and bunny slippers, insisting you need a cuppa, hey, please try my day-old scones.

Frumpy.

@baked: Sshhhh….don’t jinx it!

@baked:
Good call! What about MW String Bikini Theory?

@nojo:
I think I’m the only Stinquer still with commenter privileges on W. Some (ahem) think we’re cliquish? Holy shit. Seems there is a group that only wants to comment on their “friends” comments and leave the rest of us out in the cold. Also, they aren’t that quick. I’ve seen good comments (not mine) full of wit and snark go unanswered because people don’t read before they post (I try to.)

There’s a few who still have it (Lionel Hutz and Serolf Divad) but a lot of it is pretty weak compared to before.

One of the former Paultards shit on me (not directly) because he’s too fucking lazy to use the PgDn key. I know my songs don’t always strike the right notes but hey. Banning me because I write filks? I didn’t take serious enough umbrage to reply.

There is still some lingering hard feelings among some of them over the “split.” One called us thin skinned (I think.) His problem not mine.

I have to admit that I try to save my “best” stuff here.

@nojo: Nice.

@baked:
I couldn’t remember who, but yes you are correct, my lady.

@ManchuCandidate: I was just thinking about MW. I suspect he is really serious about the divided government thing, and maybe the Cynics got too partisan on him. Or maybe he just got distracted with Life. Anyway, I miss his wit.

I was an on-off lurker for years at Brand W, too intimidated by y’alls’ monstrous brains to apply for the privilege of farting all over their internets. Thank you Cynics/Stinquers for tolerating my gases. I know they are stinquey sometimes.

@Pedonator:
tolerate? why pedo, you are a pillar of the commenters!

@Pedonator: Purges are on hold until I can reserve a ballroom for the show trials.

@ Pedonator: Pedo, you cannot be serious, you have the monstrous wit, and wit does not come without brains. You my dog. Don’t ever change. Word. I am such a geek. Someone help me, save me from geeekdom.

@Pedonator: I think MW’s hanging back until after the election, for fear we’ll stone him.

But really, we’ve just seen a contemporary example tonight of Atlas Shrugged: All the smart people left Wonkette, and look what remains.

@Pedonator:
You under estimate yourself as a core commenter.

@nojo:
Is that what happened in Atlas? I couldn’t get that far into it. It was so painful to read and at that moment I understood why Ayn is the biggest section (next to porn) at the generic used book store.

@baked, @nojo, @Promnight: Also, fishing for compliments here is much more productive. I love you guyz and galz, you know that, right? Really, my friends (throwing my arm across your shoulders and hugging you uncomfortably close until you smell my fetid wine-breath, slapping your backs a little too forcefully, holding the hug for a creepy-long time), you’re the best!

@nojo: Now, if we can somehow find a way to make you (lifting my eyebrow, pinky finger to lips) hundreds of dollars from the revolution!

nojo, I promise to keep my mouth shut about Ayn Rand just this once. I do need to inoculate the conversation I won’t participate in by just mentioning that Atlas Shrugged is the disease and Sewer, Gas, and Electric is the cure.

I do go look at Wonkette regularly, theres lots of shit thrown up there, apparently paying on the basis of views motivates lots of posts, and there’s still lots of good stuff posted, but back in the day I went there for the comments as much as the posts, and nowadays, the comments are like for suck, as I have said, two line wisecracks, no insight.

I also look at CP every day, and I am not bitter and don’t wish them evil, but man, its like a ghost town, with tumbleweeds rolling down the streets. Where are those hordes of lurkers, who would have posted had not this scary , off-topic, ungrammatical clique intimidated them? If not for those among us who go and charitably throw them a bone or two, there would be utter silence. Oh, yeah, all those lurkers must still be lurking, I am sure. That strategy of theirs is just going gangbusters over there.

@ManchuCandidate: You do need a perverse interest in the subject to make it all the way through. Kind of like the Bible.

Short version: All the smart people in America abdicate, leaving for the Valley of the Dollar Sign, where they can build a new society unmolested by those who feed off their work. The quaint part is when the railroad bridge collapses, because as we know, without the railroad nobody could get from one place to another.

@Ewalda: If you have nothing good to say about Rand, you can come sit by me anytime. If you have lots of vicious invective you want to scream about Rand, you can come over to my house and we’ll make a party out of it. And don’t get me started on Mensa, present mensans excepted.

@ManchuCandidate: You are too kind. I must confess Atlas Shrugged was my favorite book when I was fifteen years old. It was so epic, and the male characters were so…manly and forceful, such go-getters.

I never took a critical look at my bible of Objectivist thought until years later, when, bored on a long layover in the DFW airport, I picked up some Harold Robbins. At that point I just had to decamp to the nearest toilet stall to tap my feet and, you know, stroke that Rand right out of my pair.

@Pedonator: Not to worry — we’re at $10.28 and climbing. I’ll be leveraging that into a six-pack for the next debate.

@nojo: without the railroad nobody could get from one place to another

In some respects, that was eerily prescient.

@Pedonator: I’m not voting for Prop 1A unless those high-speed railroads have club cars.

@nojo: What’s $10 Billion, here or there? That’s chump change these days. We could fund the whole thing with Henry Paulson’s crocodile tears.

@Promnight: As a former prospective Mensa member, I’m happy to report that a common Mexican slang term for “idiot” or “clueless” is mensa.

@Pedonator: Which brings to mind one of the classic marketing tales, when Chevy tried to introduce a new model in South America: the Nova.

Turns out nobody at GM spoke Spanish.

@Pedonator: I qualified, but they weren’t nerdy enough for me.
Well, actually, the nerdiness part isn’t true. I went to a few functions at the urgings of a then-girlfriend member and was bored. “Clueless” pretty much sums it up.

@Ewalda: I started to go there, but I was an unruly teen, and when I asked Marilyn vos Savant to “go with me” and she told me I was gay I said, “fuck that shit”, downed a few kir royals and got the fuck outta there. I took me years to understand her empathic brilliance.

@Pedonator:
Marilyn vos Savant!?!!
Holy Shite!

@Pedonator: I am so unworthy.
Even sleeping with Roger (“Kind of the Road”, “Dang Me”) Miller’s teenaged chippy doesn’t come near the obscure weirdness of having hit on Marilyn vos Savant.
I bow before your obvious superior mastery.

@baked: Didn’t my boyfriend Keif O. steal my “Alien v. Predator” line on cases that Talibunny could quote?

@Ewalda: And I before yours.

@nojo: It was a simpler, more natural, time.

@SanFranLefty:
YES HE DID! forgot about that. i guess we should be flattered.
“imitation is the highest form of flattery”
stolen right from your post, lefty! sometimes it’s co-incidence, but alien v predator? plagerism!!

@Ewalda: Darling, I was at least half-pulling your, um, leg. Marilyn was barely tolerant of my puppy-humping against her sheer-clad gams. Yes, she wore an incredibly sexy shift of some kind that clung to her like static, but she took little notice of me, other than barking out “Down, doggerel!” in the most melodious yet disdainful tone. Later, she cornered me in the cloakroom and I think we truly communed when she forced me to go down on her magnificent silky cock. Then she pegged me, yes, and it made me feel, for the first time, like a man.

@Pedonator: You are teh magnificent. I shall now go to bed, thence to whimper like the beaten cur that I am.

@Pedonator: god, I love this place.

@Pedonator:
When I read her columns in Parade magazine as a teen (thus revealing my total geek-itude to you), I always wondered if Marilyn’s last name was some sort of elaborate made-up joke; for real, would a Mensa member/borderline female Aspergers savant really have the last name of vos Savant? Coincidence? I think not.

@baked: K.O. can steal all my lines. I’m waiting for my girlfriend Rachel Maddow to use one of my lines. Your boyfriend Jon Stewart borrowed my “My Friends” count from the other night, which believe me, I flatter myself to think is borrowed, more likely, that great minds think alike.

@Nobody in particular: Apologies for the plethora of commas in the above posts. It must be late as I’m pausing for breath in my run-on sentences. Oh, and re: MW – He knows where we are – he’s just keeping low until after Nov. 4.

@SanFranLefty: You may not declare your candidacy for the Faulknerian Commenter Award until nominations have been formally opened.

@SanFranLefty: In all the years I took the physical paper my secret fetish was Parade magazine. Still I always suspected that Marilyn, Dear Ann, and James Brady were the same person (perhaps Ted Koppel in disguise?), someone not unlike David Frum in a threadbare terry-cloth robe and bunny slippers, conducting business via telephone, IBM Selectric and fax, with messengers running back and forth between her/his Topanga Canyon cottage and the ominous modernist skyscraper that housed Parade Magazine’s headquarters in the glorious metropolis of Hollywood.

@ManchuCandidate: Okay, it went by me — what’s tonight’s Daily Show theft?

@Pedonator: 10 Billion is Chump Change?.

Don’t let our media hear you say that. They are in shock and awe of the Govt’s 10.5 Billion dollar (1 Australian dollar= 65 or something US cents) stimulus package.

Strangely enough it’s going to Aged Pensioners, Disabled Pensioners, Carers for the disabled, Families with kids, and such. You know, the people who will spend it and stimulate the economy. Our Govt. must be doing it wrong.

@Promnight: And speaking of lurkers…

It’s very early, but looks like we’re averaging 150-200 “unique visitors” a day (562 last Saturday). This is different from “visits” or “pageviews” you might see elsewhere — it’s Google’s best guess about actual warm bodies, although there’s some inevitable double-counting if you visit the site with different computers on a given day.

Also bear in mind that some people peek in the door and quickly leave — you can’t presume that all “visitors” are reading.

But I think it’s fair to say that the number of “silent” readers far exceeds the active commenters. And, alluding to earlier conversations, I don’t see what the problem is with that. That’s how things work. We all visit sites where we read but don’t participate. Some of us enjoy the lecture and discussion, but still sit in the back of the class and don’t raise our hands.

The danger is in drawing the wrong conclusions from this. The audience that exists — participants and lurkers — exists for the site as is, and as I’ve said all along, the show includes the comments as much as the posts. (More so, really.) I was part of the last wave of “invitation-only” commenters at Defamer/Wonkette/Gawker, and I had been enjoying the conversations long before I was allowed to participate in them.

You can redesign a site to make it more “lurker-friendly” — but if you don’t understand why the lurkers lurk, you may design away the core appeal of the site to them. (Case in point: Gawker Media’s new comment design.)

But to understand these things, you need to be part of the audience itself. And that’s the door I walked in.

@CheapBoy: I’m sure it’s your government that’s doing it right. Ever since January of 2001 it’s been an excellent rule of thumb that you can hardly go wrong if you watch carefully to see what the Bush Administration [sic (to indicate misnomer)] is doing and then do the opposite.

I just read your comment about Sherpa. Please accept my heartfelt condolences. Sherpa sounds from your description as if his approach to living was very like that of our Swanson. We were lucky to have him with us for 14 years. I’m sorry your Sherpa died young.

@nojo: Where is Chainsaw? Saving up for the final push to Judgement Day, I hope.

@nojo:
They gave out survivalist advice similar to what we talked about last week. On guns and Food.

@Ewalda: Roger Miller’s chippy? I quoted Roger Miller just last week, and this did not jar this piece of information loose? Oy. Well, I once canoodled with Jerry Reed’s daughter, you know, The Streak, and some Burt Reynolds redneck movie theme, which made him quite famous at the time.

@Prommie: “King of the Road” Roger Miller? And the late, great Jerry Reed (“Guitar Man”, “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot” and “She Got the Goldmine and I Got the Shaft?”? Not to mention a Scooby-Doo episode.

Per wikipedia, where I went to refresh my recollection:

“Reed has appeared as a guest on the fishing television series Bill Dance Outdoors. In one memorable appearance, Reed caught a particularly big largemouth bass and planned to have it preserved and mounted by a taxidermist. Host Bill Dance objected to this plan, and freed the fish when Jerry wasn’t looking. Reed became enraged when he discovered what had happened, and chased Dance off the boat and to shore. This incident was also mentioned in one of Jeff Foxworthy’s standup comedy routines.”

Awesome.

A lot of holier than thou flyfishers drive around here with “catch and release only” bumper stickers on the back of their fish cars or trucks. My crowd favors the slogan “Don’t tell me how to fish.”

Frum as “Fluke Man” from the “X-Files” (“The Host”).

@redmanlaw: Lessons for those seeking immortality…

Casey Kasem does a legendary weekly radio show for decades, but he’ll be best remembered for voicing a cartoon stoner.

Jack Sheldon is an able West Coast trumpeter, a proto-Paul to Merv Griffin, a featured performer during Benny Goodman’s 40th anniversary Carnegie Hall concert. Who? Oh, right, the guy who sings “I’m Just a Bill.”

William Conrad enjoys a solid career in radio and television, but that’s easily forgotten compared to voicing the narrator for Rocky & Bullwinkle.

Lenin was right. You wanna take over the world, target the kids.

@nojo: They have the election edition of Schoolhouse Rock at wal-mart for about $11.

@Prommie: @redmanlaw: Yes, that Roger Miller. I only mentioned it last night because the wine had gone to my head, and Ped had me completely flummoxed with the vos Savant thing.