Yes, yes, we know: An insult to lizards. And ants.

[via Kottke]

Being of a Certain Age — and, more importantly, not of a Less Certain, Younger Age — we’ve long since given up tracking What The Kids Are Up To. It’s a condition that sets in when you pass 40: The moment you realize There are now grown adults who don’t share my hip Gilligan’s Island references.

At that point, you can be Bob Denver, a sad relic of an earlier time, or you can just give up and fucking deal with it.

(Note: The retro-hip Adam West option is not available to you.)

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Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Al Jaffee.

[via Comics Alliance]

“Devastating!” shrieks the Center for Public Integrity. “Both barrels!” crows TPM. “Absolutely brutal!” raves WaPo’s Greg Sargent.

What is it? Why, it’s the new Mittens SuperPAC ad they didn’t want you to see, at least not minutes after it was posted and quickly taken down. As you can tell from the samizdat version somebody else uploaded, It unleashes the Dogs of Hell upon Newt Gingrich and mercilessly shits him out the other end.

Unless, of course, it just recites a few commonly known facts.

Look, folks: We’re as invested as the next Lefty blogger in wanton Eleventh Commandment violations, but have some restraint. “Team Romney attacks Gingrich in new campaign ad” is about all this one merits. Save the hyperbole for the good stuff.

Our guest columnist is not running for Preznit of These United States.

The boy in the greenhouse was flawlessly adolescent and shockingly beautiful, and in his innocent way, he’d made her come resoundingly — Apollo with his modest marble membrum virile, otherwise known, in her village, as a skin flute. This memory sparkled as Ed intently suckled. They were both on their left sides now, Ed behind, where he’d pried her right shoulder back while deeply inserted and twisted his head so he could suckle away madly. He freed himself from her nipple after a long attachment so as to kiss her on the mouth at length — as if seeking to set the world record for kiss duration — and she smelled her breast on his breath, which was otherwise piquant with saliva, a little tart, a little bitter, and humid with the churning underworld — the raw metabolism and generative heat — beneath the flawless exterior. Read more »

Our guest columnist is Theodore Roosevelt, speaking in 1910 at the dedication of a John Brown memorial in Osawatomie, Kansas. The speech, substantially written by Gifford Pinchot, was decried in some corners as “Communistic”, “Socialistic”, and “Anarchistic”. In a sign of how far Our Exceptional Nation has fallen, Roosevelt’s face has yet to be blasted off Mount Rushmore.

In every wise struggle for human betterment one of the main objects, and often the only object, has been to achieve in large measure equality of opportunity. In the struggle for this great end, nations rise from barbarism to civilization, and through it people press forward from one stage of enlightenment to the next. One of the chief factors in progress is the destruction of special privilege. The essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been, and must always be, to take from some one man or class of men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been earned by service to his or their fellows. That is what you fought for in the Civil War, and that is what we strive for now.

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Newt Gingrich, launching his campaign to put Dickens back in Christmas, used a curious phrase to express his demand that poor kids clean toilets: They need to learn the “dignity of work”.

Which led us to wonder: Has Newt ever worked?

And by “work”, we mean — well, the metaphorical equivalent of cleaning toilets. You know: A job. Like most people have. And most people hate.

By the standard most folks understand, Newt certainly hasn’t worked since November 1998, when he quit Congress after blowing the midterm election. He’s certainly been scheming, but he hasn’t been working.

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