Glenn Beck Realizes Haiti is Full of Black People

Ah, like, ah, earthquake, like, ah, we know, ah, you know, kinda, what, like, what happened.

Schlong bomber is, ah, like a systemic failure of database collation, leading to, ah, like an anomalous event that was preventable by populating a critical targeting database from an existing, ah, you know, archival database and, dem, dose, systemic processing failures are not so, like, you know, self evident as, um, the uh, earth shaking buildings to bits.

But you knew that.

Asshole.

Letter to the Editor of the Day, Minneapolis Star Tribune:

Dear Pat Robertson, I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I’m all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I’m no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished. Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth — glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle. Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven’t you seen “Crossroads”? Or “Damn Yankees”? If I had a thing going with Haiti, there’d be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox — that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it — I’m just saying: Not how I roll. You’re doing great work, Pat, and I don’t want to clip your wings — just, come on, you’re making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That’s working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract. Best, Satan

LILY COYLE, MINNEAPOLIS

Lily Coyle is my new shero.

@FlyingChainSaw: Hey, how come you missed MellBell? She was texting me to try to locate you.

@SanFranLefty: Stellar.

@blogenfreude: A little bit of martini came out my nose when I got to the “golden fiddle” line. I want to listen to Charlie Daniels now.

@SanFranLefty: I may be evil incarnate, but I’m no welcher.

That makes two lines I’m passing over today in favor of the eventual winner. Tough competition.

I’m also completely ashamed at going all these years without a response like that in my back pocket.

@nojo: We need to recruit her to become a Stinquer, was my first thought.

ADD: How can you ever beat capt. howdy’s lube comment?

@SanFranLefty: My first thought was that she has single-handedly revived letters to the editor.

As to how the Panel of Judges determine the Daily Tweet, the rule of thumb is not “best”, but “most appropriate”.

As to why I’m following “panel” with “determine”, we’ll have to await another grammar-geek post.

CartmanGlenn Beck: “My mom sez there’s a lot of black people in Haiti.”

But seriously, Glenn probably thought it was “Hatey” that got hit – the perfect vacation spot for xenophobes, white nationalists, teabaggers and just plain haters. He was too bummed out to react until somebody pointed out the mistake.

@nojo: The collective noun I hate most is ‘audience’. What to do with it? The audience enjoy the big blue people. I don’t think so. The audience took its seat/s. Hateful.

@Benedick: If you’re talking about Blue Man Group – no one should be forced to suffer that.

@Benedick: Which reminds me of what I’ll call the Presumed Collective Noun, familiar to British English, which grates on American ears: “The company are awaiting the results.”

@SanFranLefty: Got there a little before 6:30 and scoured the place, both floors and the bar. I think she was so close to a group of guys near the TV, I surmised during a reconstruction of events on the phone later, that I assumed she was part of an after-work group. As it happens, I will be likely in town again this year for a couple of projects that are ripening, so the Stinque.com banner will fly in the swamp yet.

@FlyingChainSaw: Well, if you ever get out to Silicon Valley/Ess Eff way, you know I’ll be around, I may be able to revive Libertarian Tool to help me host you, and I could probably excite enough left coasters to check out Southwest flights to OAK.

@Benedick: Well, an audience is a single thing, but the members of an audience are individuals, and I would avoid saying anything like “the audience took its seats.” When it comes to an active verb, I would say “audience members” and use the plural verb form. You would never say “the audience were,” you would say “the audience was,” if followed by something like “overjoyed,” or “disappointed.” But if you want to say something which implies individual action by members of the audience, then just make that clear by saying “the audience members” or “the people in the audience” did this and that.

Seems to me that whenever its difficult to figure out a grammar problem such as that which you posited, its usually easier to avoid it with a different construction.

@Promnight:

“the audience were disappointed”

Brits do love their Presumed Collective Nouns.

Well, OK, enough grammar, here is a computer thingy problem I have. Someone gave me a CD of MP3s of the Rolling Stone best 500 rock songs of all time.

Nothing I have will play it. MediaPlayer says that the compression codec used to compress the files is not supported.

What to do? I am lost.

@Promnight: What are the extents on the files?

FCS

@FlyingChainSaw: You thinking corrupt (or copy-mangled) CD? Because I can’t think of why the files themselves should be unplayable.

@nojo: Not if it is reporting out it doesn’t like the codec. Corruption of the CD itself would return a different kind of error message. Could be compressed into something that MSFT doesn’t like for one reason or another. Ogg Vorbis is satanically inspired and infringes on 132 MSFT patents, etc.

@Promnight: Prompster, meantime, download this player – http://www.winamp.com/help/Player_Overview – and copy just one song file onto your desktop. Open the file in Winamp and see what happens.

FCS

@SanFranLefty: What is the airport security like since the Schlong Bomber struck? I have work in SF in March. Strasbourg, too. Should see if there are any Stinquers in Alsace.

@FlyingChainSaw: You PC/Linux people and your weird open-source codecs. Apparently one argument over HTML 5 is its blessing of MP4 video, which some consider the commercial spawn of Satan.

@nojo: @FlyingChainSaw: Winamp won’t play it either. It says its playing it, but its over in a second and nothing happens.

@Promnight: What is the file extent? Can you mail me a few of them: likewow neetzero.net

@FlyingChainSaw: I am in Hawaii early March but otherwise am around. Security is as annoying as you can imagine. Bring a book and arrive 3 hours early and you’re okay.

@FlyingChainSaw: FCS, is that email address correct, aol refuses to send it because it says its more than 16 characters.

@FlyingChainSaw: All is well, it was the missing “@”