Title: “Known and Unknown: A Memoir”

Author: Donald Rumsfeld

Rank: 4

Blurb: “Features his blunt, firsthand opinions about some of the world’s best-known figures, from Margaret Thatcher to Elvis Presley, from Henry Kissinger to Colin Powell, and about each American president from Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush.”

Review: “I just wish the RUMSTUD had included more details about his days as a competitive wrestler, and some pictures of himself in the locker room at Princeton. I’d much rather think about the RUMSTUD with his sweaty wrestling singlet peeled down to his waist then about Condoleeza Rice in her Ferragamo pumps. I like to fantasize that one afternoon (while my husband is out playing golf with his hedge fund buddies) the RUMSTUD invades our bedroom and puts me in a full nelson while Bill O’Reilly works me over with a falafel. I hope you get the picture!”

Customers Also Bought: “Pieces of Intelligence: The Existential Poetry of Donald H. Rumsfeld”, by Hart Seely

Footnote: Yes. Rumstud. Clearly we weren’t paying attention at the time.

Known and Unknown [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon kickback link]

AOL HuffPo staffer Jason Linkins would like you deadbeat AOL HuffPo bloggers to know he actually works for a living:

Being a paid employee comes with many expectations and responsibilities. Let’s run some of them down, shall we? First of all, there’s this expectation that on a daily basis, you will show up and do work. In an office and everything! There you are subject to things like deadlines — you actually have to produce writing on a regular basis…

Is the State of the Union tonight? You’ll be working during that time. Is there a debate? Got a night of election returns coming? Plan on staying late. Did some madman just put several people in Tucson, Arizona in the hospital on a Saturday? Cancel your plans, because you’ve got to call in and get to work. You are, theoretically, on call, 24-7, to get the work done.

Those are the sorts of responsibilities, that, when they are fulfilled, entitle one to a “salary.”

Obviously, we’re doing it wrong.

Read more »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1vpB6h3ek4

While we’re in a good mood — trust us, this won’t last — please enjoy this Charming Kitty Video. As long as there’s a Happy Cat in the world, Encroaching Darkness is set back at least an hour.

[via Sully’s Minions]

Many lives ago, we planned to write The Great American Satiric Novel, but Excellent Adventures kept distracting us — and still do. But at the heart of our Fantasy Swiftian Achievement was a line that would unlock everything, revealing the Eternal Optimist imprisoned inside our cynical fortress:

“The meaning of life is found in the faces of children, for there the world is discovered anew.”

Whole Foods, purveyor of organic foods and expensive to-go meals, is about to open its newest store.

At the corner of Haight Street and Stanyan Street, in the heart of Ess Eff’s gutter punks /tourist trap/ washed up hippies iconoclastic neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury.

But in the Only in NorCal touch, the walls are made of reclaimed redwood that has been carbon-dated to be older than Baby Jeebus.

And it only took the company six years to get over the screaming NIMBYs. At this rate, there might be a cell phone tower in Ashbury Heights by 2020.

[NBC BayArea: Haight Whole Foods Opens Wednesday]

[SFist: Whole Foods Haight Almost Ready for Business]

Because we probably should have a separate post for this news.

So here’s a nice Fox News headline decribing Illegal immigration as “America’s 3rd War.”

Yeah, that’s right, Murdoch’s propaganda network is equating undocumented workers coming to the US looking for work with armed, violent insurgents in Iraq and the Afghan Taliban.

Stay classy, Fox. And, oh yeah, next time armed, anti-immigrant, border vigilantes murder a 9 year old girl as she pleads for her life, remind us how you had nothing to do with it.