Jesus was my invisible babysitter

From Big Think comes this clip of Ricky Gervais discussing his religious upbringing and how he eventually, inevitably, came to be an atheist.



Go HERE for the rest of Big Think's top ten from last year, which includes entries by Noam Chomsky, Gay Talese, Tal Ben-Shahar, and others.

Things that don't sound good

The why's and how's of how a terrorist was able to pack his Jockey's with exploding groin candy and was only stopped through a combination of incompetence and passengers noting that a man trying to light his sack on fire isn't normal already don't look very good. But as we get deeper and deeper into investigations into what was and wasn't done, well, the specifics don't sound any better. Take for instance this USA Today interview with crotchety old National Security Adviser/Dip-set rapper Jim Jones.

White House national security adviser James Jones says Americans will feel "a certain shock" when they read an account being released Thursday of the missed clues that could have prevented the alleged Christmas Day bomber from ever boarding the plane.

President Obama "is legitimately and correctly alarmed that things that were available, bits of information that were available, patterns of behavior that were available, were not acted on," Jones said in an interview Wednesday with USA TODAY.

"That's two strikes,"

Well, unless it involves some revelation about Michael Jackson's death or an additional dozen mistresses for Tiger Woods, I doubt America will even stifle a disinterested yawn, let alone get "shocked". But it is a tad disturbing when your national security adviser looks at all the facts and decides that should be the reaction the American public and would be... if we had an adult country or a functioning political system.

But what would theoretically shock Americans? I don't know, something like this maybe?

U.S. border security officials learned of the alleged extremist links of the suspect in the Christmas Day jetliner bombing attempt as he was airborne from Amsterdam to Detroit and had decided to question him when he landed, officials disclosed Wednesday.
...
"The people in Detroit were prepared to look at him in secondary inspection," a senior law enforcement official said. "The decision had been made. The [database] had picked up the State Department concern about this guy -- that this guy may have been involved with extremist elements in Yemen."

If the intelligence had been detected sooner, it could have resulted in the interrogation and search of Abdulmutallab at the airport in Amsterdam

Ahh, your information told you that this man should not be allowed to board a plane without first going through an interrogation and search, but not only is this database watch list information not work quickly enough, when you do get the word that he's a terrorist super-freak you decide to let the man complete the flight he shouldn't be allowed on in order to question him at the completion of it. But don't worry, security types in the article will assure you that's wasn't where the mistake was made. No, the mistake was made when the father called the government to warn them about his son and, despite having enough evidence to put him on a 'no fly' list, he was allowed to get on a plane. Well, that does make me feel better.

Actually the scary thing is that we still might not be able to address this stuff because our national security and terrorism policies are more focused around exploiting the politics of the situation instead of fixing things. So it's 50/50 on whether or not we can fix things like "not letting the guy on our watch list get on the plane". Let's just put in the work to make our security lapses go from "shocking" to merely "mildly surprising". Baby steps.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 01.06

Climate Activists Jailed For Saying ‘Coal’s Killing West Virginia’s Communities’
What do you have to do to get arrested in West Virginia? Well we know marrying your cousin, hunting Burt Reynolds and raping Ned Beatty during a canoe trip, bootlegging moonshine, or setting every couch in Morgantown on fire won't do it. But if you point out that coal mining and mountaintop coal mining damages communities, damages the environment, and damages the health of the men doing the work? You get imprisoned and held without charges for an offense that would merit a $100 fine. Stay classy, WV.

Japan Bomb Survivor, Tsutomu Yamaguchi, Lived Through Hiroshima And Nagasaki Atomic Attacks
Did you ever wonder who in human history had the worst week ever recorded? That would be Tsutomu Yamaguchi, a Japanese man who went to Hiroshima for a business meeting for his shipbuilding company, got nuked, suffered serious burns to his body, spent the night in the hospital, went back to his home in Nagasaki, and hot nuked again. I also think he banged his shin off a table somewhere in the intervening period between atomic blasts. That really hurts. Thankfully he lived a long a full life to the age of 93. So next time you think you're really having a bad week, just say to yourself "At least I'm not 'Two Nukes' Yamaguchi."

Iran soccer official resigns over e-mail to Israel
How great is Iran's hatred of Israel and how rigid is their punishment of government officials that recognize Israel as a state? So much so that the head of their soccer federation was fired for including Israel's soccer head in a mass e-mail of banal New Years' greeting he sent out to every soccer federation head in the world. That's sticking to your Jew hating guns. I don't know why they fired him. Isn't being President of Iran's soccer federation enough punishment?

Moon hole might be suitable for colony
Good news for those of us who think we should all have been living on fucking moon bases like a decade ago. Seems that a 312 ft wide 260 ft deep hole in the moon's Marius Hills would provide a perfect temperature controlled, meteorite protected place to put a fucking moon base already. Either the government needs to get on this or Sean and I are using it for the galactic headquarters of Moon Water Inc. I don't want to give away too much of our business model, but lets just say it involves multiple Sam Rockwells and a robot voiced by Kevin Spacey.

The Distant Executioner
Vanity Fair takes an extensive look at our Afghanistan policy of trying to avoid civilian deaths and what that means for combat, particularly in the usage of snipers. It follows around a Texas Army National Guardsman sniper who has dropped a Taliban fighter at 806 meters and believes God is on his side. Worth your time.

Picture of the day

Part of a Time Magazine photo essay on the largest middle finger in human history and the biggest possible "fuck you" that one country could possibly give during a global recession, the newly rechristened Burj Khalifa, named after light hitting mid-eighties Pirates shortstop Sammy Khalifa.

If you're up for reading some more about the Burj, try the La Times article called A Temple to Hubris or this BBC article detailing the inhumane conditions it took to build the Burj and most of Dubai. It just shows what you can do when you dare to dream... and dare to spend way beyond your means... and dare to employ slave labor.

This fucking rules

What's that you were asking? "Can you find me a symphonic metal concept album about ancient kings by a respected classical actor known for his various villain roles... and make sure it's in an embeddable widget?"

Sure I can. Do you want it to be by Christopher Lee, Christopher Plummer, or Max Von Sydow? We'll go with Christopher Lee's album for now.





The album is called Charlemagne and will be out in March.

Chart of the day

From the New York Times. Now I'm sure the wags will all come out and decry the hypocrisy in barring gays from marrying while allowing first cousins to get hitched, but I think they're missing the point: If you live in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont or Jersey you can get gay married to that cousin you're so attracted to. That's progress.

Now if only this country could get some traction on polygamist gay cousin marriages we wouldn't even need rocket boots to claim we were living out humanity's dreams of a highly advanced future.

Incompetent dogs

What with the whole "Joan Rivers is a terrorist"/"that actual terrorist isn't a terrorist" thing, you might think that it's only the humans at the TSA who are incompetent. You would be wrong.

Several TSA security dogs serving at Philadelphia International Airport have been removed from active service due to issues with their training, officials said Tuesday.

The dogs, which are typically used to detect drugs, bombs and other potential security threats, failed their recertification training. They were unable to distinguish the scents of explosive materials, officials said.
...
The affected dogs have been undergoing an intensive rehab training program since the failure, but they remain on-duty to act as visual deterrents, officials said. Philadelphia Police K-9 units are not affected and still being used at the airport.

Great, now we don't even have the most accomplished ass and crotch sniffers in our security apparatus out there searching for weaponized undergarments and high tech groin explosives. Sadly it seems the dogs were subjected to the Philly school system and sports culture and as such were rendered mentally unfit. Thankfully it is Philadelphia, so right now the best deterrent to would be suicide bombers is that they would actually have to go to Philly to blow part of it up and they obviously wouldn't want to do that. It's too dangerous.

So not only is the TSA leaderless and it's employees seemingly unable to perform their jobs, the animals we've hired aren't even able to correctly use their noses to smell stuff. Surely there is something working correctly at the TSA, right? Perhaps a copier that makes good copies, a coffee machine that is ably letting hot water filter through coffee grounds into a pot, perhaps a Roomba that is keeping the office tidy, or a janitor that has properly mopped the floor and competently put up "wet floor" signs? We'll just trust that there is and that a typical TSA office isn't full of Clouseau-esque bumblers getting their hands bitten by dogs or falling down stairs and destroying suits of armor.

But that's probably an accurate description.

Airport security is serious business

The whole underwear bomber has got people understandably a little rattled and more questioning of their safety and security at an airport, despite the fact that air travel is still quite safe. But it's also got airport security on higher alert for shady figures, not wanting to be the one who lets another guy with Semtex in his shorts or perhaps a cable knit cardigan made out of C4 onto a plane. So what does this mean? It means we can't let obvious national security threat Joan Rivers back into this country because she's too fucking suspicious.

Rivers wasn’t allowed on her Newark-bound flight in Costa Rica this past weekend by a “jittery Continental Airlines gate agent” who thought the two names on her passport, which reads “Joan Rosenberg AKA Joan Rivers,” seemed “fishy.”

Yes, because when you want to avoid any suspicion you pick a Jewish name and write it as your alias on your passport. On the other hand, Rivers has had so much facial surgery that at this point anyone in a wig could be wheeled out in front of us and as long as they talked shit on what celebrities were wearing we'd believe it was her. So clearly this could have been any number of terrorists trying to use the name of a famous comedienne to rage destruction on the American mainland. Thankfully, Costa Rican security was thinking laterally and had foreseen this very chain of events.

So, for those of you playing at home, let's recap here. A Nigerian man whose father had warned intelligence agencies that he was being radicalized in the known terrorist breeding ground of Yemen, who had already made it onto watch lists, and bought a one way ticket, in cash, and checked no bags: not suspicious. Comedy legend: very suspicious. I'm just glad that we seem to have our best and brightest on the front lines defending us from former Tonight Show guest hosts. Someone start tailing Gary Shandling and Jay Leno, they could be planning something big.

Good morning, this is why we keep Alabama around

Cheap Blogging Crutch 01.05

Serial Catastrophes in Afghanistan threaten Obama Policy
Juan Cole runs down the problems facing the Obama Administration in Afghanistan. They are not limited to killing schoolchildren a few too many times, enraging the Afghan public, provoking a student protest movement, double agents betraying us, the Afghan army not effectively existing/being dependable/not showing up to anything important/taking potshots at US troops, and the fact that the Afghan government barely functions if at all. But on the bright side, the law of averages states that a sometime somewhere something in that country has to go right and if we stick around long enough the chances are that it'll be a big and important thing. So... fingers crossed.

C.I.A. Is Sharing Data With Climate Scientists
That's right, the CIA is using spy satellites and specialized sensors to collect advanced data and assess "hidden complexities" in climate change in collaboration with scientists and universities. In addition they've been waterboarding polar bears three at a time to get them to spill the beans on glacier melting and they've rendered a few arctic foxes to Egypt for some "enhanced interrogation" about temperature data. Finally we're putting some government hardasses on the climate change front. A few targeted assassinations, a few rigged elections and we might finally get this problem licked.

New scanners break child porn laws
In the aftermath of the flight 253 flaming underwear bombing there have been renewed calls for the use of full body optical scanners to ferret out bombs, knives, and average genitalia size of your bog standard air passenger. But instead of merely whining about personal freedoms, police states, encroaching fascism, or civil liberties, opponents in the UK have opted for a different track: they say if you use it on a kid it's legally defined as child pornography. It seems all the civil liberties people have finally learned how to do battle. When it's security vs. civil liberties, civil liberties always gets handcuffed, beat up, and tased. But security vs. child pornography? That's a whole new ballgame. Who says hippies can't learn?

Hell Freezes Over: Rush Limbaugh Loves Union Hospitals and Socialized Medicine
Among the many thing that were hilarious about Rush Limbaugh's heart almost exploding were the fact that his heart nearly exploded, he was treated in the hospital at the center of the Obama birth certificate conspiracy, and that after months of railing against socialism, unions, and health care, he was subjected to all three and liked them without understanding that the hospital was the evil hotbed of socialism, unions, and Kenyan birth certificate fraud that it was. I know, I know "Rush Limbaugh doesn't understand something, gets facts wrong" isn't as much of a headline as it is a fact of daily existence. But it did give the SEIU a nice chance to tee off on him. Plus, as I've previously mentioned: his heart almost exploded. We're getting closer and closer to the day when the rotten fuck finally shuffles off this mortal coil.

Knut Haugland, Sailor on Kon-Tiki, Dies at 92
An obituary worth reading. Know that you will never accomplish anything this great or worthwhile or heroic or manly if you were given two lifetimes. A tip of the cap and raise of the glass to Mr. Knut Haugland.

I'm not sure I like the sound of this

When you've just committed to a policy to escalate the manpower, diplomatic force, aid, and money to Afghanistan in a last ditch effort to salvage something out of an eight year neglected clusterfuck, what's the one thing you don't wan to hear about the intel capabilities of US agencies that are supposed to provide an understanding and framework to help you execute the diplomatic and counter-insurgent plans that the whole effort hinges upon? Is it this?

Flynn’s report — which was prepared for public release by the Center for a New American Security – begins with a stunning admission. “Eight years into the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy,” the report states. “Having focused the overwhelming majority of its collection efforts and analytical brainpower on insurgent groups, the vast intelligence apparatus is unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which U.S. and allied forces operate and the people they seek to persuade.”

I should mention that's the nice paragraph in the article, it actually gets a bit more scathing after that. But what would this Flynn character know anyway? I mean he's only the top intelligence aide to International Security Assistance Force Commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal and a Major General in the US army.

Ah well, I'm sure we'll be able to win their hearts and minds even if we don't know what those hearts and minds want or even where on the Afghan body the heart or mind is located. What's understanding a populace got to do with getting them to do what we want forever? I'm sure this will all work out splendidly.

Broken News: TSA to implement Pervert Screening System

Above: A test run of the new TSA policy at New York's JFK Airport

ARLINGTON--In the wake of the narrowly averted Christmas Day terrorist attack on a Detroit-bound flight, the Transportation Security Administration announced today a planned overhaul of its airport screening procedures.

The revised regulations call for all passengers to be sorted by race, gender, age, and clothing type before being pawed at by an employee possessing whatever paraphilia, or sexual fetish, corresponds roughly with the ticket holder's appearance.

Gale D. Rossides, acting TSA Administrator, cited as inspiration a recent court case in Britain, wherein civil liberties groups argued that the full-body scanners present in many major airports essentially constituted a strip search of each passenger, including children.

"We have been paying close attention to British security procedures and legal challenges and believe that our method will be more effective," said Rossides. "Without spending hundreds of millions of dollars on new technology that fails half the time, the American people get peace of mind while a perverse coterie of fetishists, many of them on parole, will be able to find gainful employment in a harsh economic climate."

As of this writing, the American Journal of Psychiatry has identified 547 distinct sexual fetishes, ranging from the mundane (Sthenolagnia, or a love of muscles) to the more creative (Maiesiophilia, or attraction to pregnant women), to the sincerely fucked up (Ursusagalmatophilia, or a desire to have intercourse with teddy bears).

Continued Rossides, "Granted, the task before us is daunting. While America obviously has no shortage of Symphorophiliacs (witnessing or staging disasters), how many Macrophiliacs (domination by giant women or men) do we have walking around? Two, three?"

In an effort to quickly identify and assign pervert to post, the TSA has requisitioned not only criminal records from all 50 states, but also the rolodexes of John Waters, Roman Polanski, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, and anyone who has ever supervised the Congressional Page Program.

"We need to find a lot of specific freaks, so who better to go to than Hollywood and the GOP?" asked Janet Abasio, the HR director for the TSA who will be heading up the search. "Right now we definitely have the resources to thoroughly check every Asian woman in this country several thousand times over. But what about Polish men with unibrows or one-legged Lithuanian sadists? Areas such as these are where we will be focusing our efforts."

Furthermore, the TSA announced they were giving special hiring preference to any self-identified masochist who wished to work in any job that an airport has to offer. In the job listing posted simultaneously to USAJobs and BondageNet, the TSA describes airport employment as "degradation unlike anyone has known before" and notes that it has positions for both submissives and dominants who specialize in letting any tiny bit of authority go to their heads.

When asked if allowing a subset of perverts to grope passengers as they attempt to enter an airport was really something Americans should have to endure, Abasio seemed dismissive.

"Look, is it the ideal situation? No," she admitted. "But I think this country is used to sacrificing personal freedoms in order to feel more secure."

"Plus," Rossides added. "When was the last time government implemented a security program that made you feel sexy? Not only are you going to be searched by people who find you to be unbelievably desirable, but most of these perverts will actually achieve sexual gratification from confirming you are not smuggling a bomb or weapon on your person. It's not as though this is the first time Americans will be taking it up the ass for a little security."

She then blurted out "That reminds me..." before reminding her assistant to place an ad for people that specialize in "taking it in the ass" for a consult on rectal PETN bomb smuggling, thought to be the next type of attack al Qaeda's will attempt.

The agency hopes to have the program up and running by the beginning of the summer travel season and advises that you dress a little more sexily the next time you visit the airport, to "make it a little bit more fun."

Picture of the day

From Wired Science and our finest space satellites and bored astronauts, comes a look at the planet's many vast expanses of wind altered sand. Sand dunes... from space.

Get a good look, this it what most of the planet will look like in a few decades. Well, the parts that aren't covered by water.

I don't feel that my fear is being exploited enough

What with a terrifying and groin singing attack so recently in our minds, we need the calming voice of authority to sooth our jangled nerves with rash, shortsighted action. Thankfully today it looks like we're getting the start of that as the President has returned from vacation, our security and intelligence heads have been gathered, and we have been deemed to be sufficiently past the New Year and Christmas to be relied upon to pay attention. What are we getting? A big important meeting, promises from both Congress and the White House to look into what happened, and... not a lot in the way of new rules or onerous assaults on our personal freedoms.

The Transportation Security Administration already has directed airlines, effective Monday, to give full-body, pat-down searches to U.S.-bound travelers from Yemen, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and 11 other countries.

White House officials, while eager to portray Obama as aggressive on the issue, also sought to minimize expectations for the president's remarks. He planned no big airline security announcement, officials said.

Since the attempted attack, the government has added dozens of names to its lists of suspected terrorists and those barred from flights bound for the United States.

So... brown people pat down theater and updating a list that should be constantly updated? We're not even going to frisk white people and pull grannies out of line to make it look like security is getting serious? This isn't pseudo fascist police state I was led to believe we lived in. They're barely putting any effort into making air travel more miserable.

If all they want to do is one semi-meaningless thing and one thing they should have been doing all along, I have a few other suggestions for them: mandatory flip-flop wearing for all passengers, airports are officially "going commando" underwear free zones, one-up Lt. General Tom McInerney and not allow any Muslims anywhere to use any flying contraption, and Joan Rivers is not allowed to use any form of transportation. That's just a start, but I think you get the picture.

I'm worried that if we don't take enough petty, reactionary measures and mainly stick to behind the scenes tweaks and inter-agency co-operation we're in danger of damaging our national character. Tell us about vague unspecified threats that may kill us! Marshall our fear into a bad war or two! Do something crazy! Not this "gathering important figures together and have them talk" shit. We're in danger of losing our national governmental identity as a collection of bed wetting, vapors getting reactionaries if this course continues. Invent a color coded system and then raise it arbitrarily! C'mon. Frisking foreigners? That's so 2001. Get creative. The nation is depending on it.

Big important meeting of big important individuals

Today the President is meeting with 20 of his top advisers to discuss both the failures leading up to the Flight 253 attempted underwear bombing to solutions they have going forward.

Among the things expected to happen at the meeting are:

• Obama banging Janet Napolitano's head off the conference room table while yelling "You couldn't think of anything better to say than 'the system worked'?"
• Obama incredulously asking "He's a foreigner from a country we recognize as dangerous, whose father warned us about his increasing radicalization in a terrorist country, he paid for a one way ticket in cash, checked no bags... and we still couldn't piece this shit together?" punctuating the speech with a "fuuuuuuuuuuuuck"
• Obama angrily asking "and where was the TSA on this?" before gesturing to a chair that he turns around to find out is empty and not likely to be filled soon. He punctuates that revelation with a slap to his forehead and a groaning "fuuuuuuuuuuuuck"
• The President casually mentioning that this is the first meeting he's had where Tim Geithner and Larry Summers weren't telling him something awful about the economy
• Obama will casually remind everyone that their fuckups ruined both his families' vacation and his families' Christmas and that he would be holding a grudge and planning revenge. Note that Sasha seemed most upset and referred to Homeland Security adviser John Brennan as a "big doodyhead" and a "rotten son of a bitch"
  
• 45 minute improv session where advisers try to come up with best underwear, security, and explosives related jokes, one-liners, and skits they can think of. Best will be performed at the January 23rd Security Follies show at the Kennedy Center.
• Again note how great it is to not see Tim Geithner in this meeting with a hangdog expression and using the phrase "I need to tell you something awful about the money"
• Ask the security experts to place a provision in the law that makes sure that the President is sent the best photos from the body scanners that are being installed. Noting that he wants to see "big boobs", "big wangers", ""famous celebrities", and "the most pear shaped humans America has to offer"

Sounds like a serious discussion by serious individuals. I can only hope that they're able to solve some of this county's more serious security issues

The new good idea you aren't allowed to have

As new financial regulations bills make their way through the long and torturous process of the Senate, there is one surprising thing about most of them: they contain a surprising number of good ideas. Hell, even John McCain came up with a pretty good set of proposals, namely reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act. But one of the really good ideas that has really gained traction among Democrats is the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, an independent organization with independent authority to craft, set, and enforce a set of rules on the finance and banking industries in order to protect the American public.

This, of course, is a dangerous idea. As such, Republicans have vowed to gut it. I'm not sure they're making the right argument though.

"From the Republican point of view, the idea of a separate agency is still anathema," said Sen. Robert Bennett of Utah, a senior Republican on the banking committee. An independent agency, he said, can go too far in the direction of tight regulation without taking into account the effect of the rules it creates on business and the economy. He said he's seen it happen before.

"Can you say EPA?" he asked, lifting his eyebrows. The Republican Party has regretted for years that President Richard Nixon made the EPA independent.

There's been some movement: Republicans who once pushed for total elimination of the CFPA are now ready to back a compromise solution that would make the CFPA subservient to a larger financial regulatory agency, whose leadership could modify or eliminate any protections deemed hurtful to business.

A new EPA? I'm sure that's meant to sound ominous, but I rather like the sound of that. Maybe make it tougher and more independent than the EPA so that an administration can't turn over control of the agency to the industry it's supposed to cover... like Bush did with the EPA.

Still, it's nice to see the old familiar battle cry of "it's harmful to business" carted out for it's ten millionth consecutive appearance in a debate surrounding business. What's that make it... every single law or regulation ever proposed that would subject anything to any iota increase in regulation or scrutiny is harmful to business? What are the odds?

Glad to see that a compromise option is still on the table. That compromise being the same compromise that is always floated: keep the name of the oversight agency you want to create, but completely mangle the idea to the point where it isn't recognizable and all the things it was supposed to do are removed or neutered to the point of ineffectiveness.

So let's see, we have the creation of an agency whose goals make sense, is popular among the masses and the elites, sounds like a good idea, is meant to protect the American people, puts the sectors that destroyed our economy under more scrutiny, and has the support of a large number of progressive Democrats. I think we know where this is headed: Joe Lieberman or Ben Nelson getting it taken out at the last moment. That's a shame, it sounded like a great idea. Ah well, it's all for the best. I hear that CFPA would have been exactly like the EPA and would have harmed business.

Good morning, Creed shreds

Broken in Brief: ESPN promo man desperately trying to resist using "Poker Face" in upcoming ads

BRISTOL—Today during a morning ESPN staff meeting that was set to discuss final plans for the promotion and broadcasting of upcoming World Poker Tour events, veteran promo man and video editor Tom Sullivan announced to the room that he was having trouble creating any ad that didn’t strongly feature the Lady Gaga hit “Poker Face”.

“’Pa-pa-pa-poker face, pa-pa-poker face’, that’s all I can fucking hear inside my head now. I can’t think of anything else,” he was heard to exclaim in the meeting. “Shots of Phil Hellmuth and Doyle Brunson flipping over cards and grabbing larges tacks of chips while that woman sings about muffin bluffing and how you can’t ‘read-a her poker face’. I’m fucking losing my mind here.”

As the distraught man stood in the room, broken by this fact, programming director Mark Halpin asked, “What about 'The Gambler’ by Kenny Rogers?” before taking shelter as Sullivan heaved a chair at him.

Sullivan further noted that while he felt a deep sense of shame, cliché, and unoriginality over this revelation, unless they wanted weeks upon weeks worth of poker ads featuring “Poker Face” that someone “had better name another fucking song quickly” because the Lady Gaga track had finally worn down his will and he was hours away from basing an entire ad campaign around it.

When those in the room replied that because he had both mentioned the song and sung its chorus that it too was all they could think of, Sullivan was said to have visibly died inside as a single tear rolled down his cheek.

As of press time, no one had been able to think of an alternative song.

For your grammatical edification

Watching a British show and just don't understand the slang? Want to expand your cursing and swearing vocabulary beyond fucker, fuckface, fucking fuck, and mother fucker? Perhaps you're just curious if you're more of a yardie, yobbo, piss-artist, or just a barmy numpty who wanks his bell end. Then perhaps might we suggest the Septic's Companion: an online compendium of British slang, replete with definitions and audio pronunciation.

Now jog on.

Chart of the day

The Washington Post brings us this little nugget of post decade statistical reflection. The past decade was the worst for jobs... in the last seven decades. Take heart in the fact that the only reason that they aren't willing to say "worst job growth in the history of the United States of Freemerica" is because the Great Depression existed. That's a kind of good news... isn't it?

Anyway, just think of all the stories of hardship you'll be able to tell your grandkids. Instead of tales about walking up a hill to go to school (both ways) you'll be able to show them charts and complex statistical comparisons proving that point. Kids love stats and graphs, right?

Video of the day

From Matt Zoller Seitz and L Magazine comes a retrospective on the films of the first decade of the 21st century. Along with the video component comes a writing component in which various writers select a year in film and do their level best to do it justice. 2000-2004 and 2005-2009.

It's a deal, it's a steal

You know it is our duty here at These Bastards to bring you news of any financial opportunities that cross our paths. So we would be remiss if we didn't tell you about the above ship, named the MacArthur, that Yachtworld is currently selling for the bargain basement price of $3.7 million. Don't take my word for it, look at the specs:

The "McArthur" is totally self-contained, makes her own water, and has satellite communications systems that provide for continuous broadband service and satellite telephone. The vessel has a two bed hospital and carries adequate stores of food and supplies to support her crew and 30 additional personnel for 45 days without re-supply. She has the ability to land and fuel small and medium size helicopters and store, launch and retrieve 3 small craft up to 15 tons and 36 ft. in length. She has temporary sheltering for over 100 survivors from disasters.

With those capabilities and at that price, I don't think it'll last long, so if you wan it you'd better move on it. Need any more incentive? Well, it was the boat Blackwater outfitted in order to take up the private-sector pirate-hunting business. But then those Somali guys stopped taking so many hostages, the 3rd Pirates of the Caribbean movie was a bloated mess, and Blackwater's name became toxic, so there just wasn't a market for them to exploit.

$3.7 million. I can guarantee it was never used to temporarily shelter 100 survivors in a humanitarian crisis. No wear and tear. Maybe you can start your own extra-legal navy or just hold monkey-knife fights in international waters. Do whatever you want. Think about it.

Oh and don't get all teary eyed for Blackwater. They may have had a setback on their plans to buckle swashes and sail several seas, but on the other hand, they did get a big thumbs up on indiscriminately murdering 17 Iraqi civilians in a gun "battle". So they do have that going for them. Frankly this yacht sale just saves them the negative publicity that would have stemmed from their inevitable sinking an Iraqi fishing boat with 17 people on it.

Your new "security"

In a bit of good news, today the US finally lifted it's longstanding travel ban on anyone with HIV or AIDS from entering this country. For those of you counting at home, that's one more list we're off of where our only companions are extremely repressive and regressive regimes. Funny how often we find ourselves on them.

Hey, wouldn't it be hilarious if the day that we were patting ourselves on the back for tolerance on one type of passenger we announced that we were also going to declare anyone darker than an albino Irishman was to be considered suspicious? Funny I should mention that...

Citizens of 14 nations, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, who are flying to the United States will be subjected indefinitely to the intense screening at airports worldwide that was imposed after the Christmas Day bombing plot, Obama administration officials announced Sunday.
...
Passengers holding passports from those nations, or taking flights that originated or passed through any of them, will be required to undergo full-body pat downs and will face extra scrutiny of their carry-on bags before they can board planes to the United States.
...
The changes will mean that any citizen of Pakistan or Saudi Arabia will for the first time be patted down automatically before boarding any flight to the United States.

That's right, if you want to come to the land of milk and honey, we get to cup your balls first. Just to be sure. But only if you're in violation of Homeland Security's new color alert system. Right now it's at 'Eggshell White', meaning everyone gets searching in order to make everyone feel better. Soon it'll be reduced to 'Khaki' and then 'British Tan', so just us white people can feel better when we see pat downs and increased security for those "dangerous types". You know the ones I'm talking about. Ethnics.

Now I know what you're saying: "Aren't passports easy to fake? Aren't terrorists smart enough to get around this? Has any terrorist ever actually hopped on a Saudi Arabia-to-US direct flight with C4 in his boxer briefs? Wouldn't it be better to pump money into getting uniform shared databases so that information can be shared and pieces could be connected, like what didn't happen in the Detroit case? Why don't we take things seriously for once? Isn't this just more of that 'illusion of security' shit we've been going through since 9/11? Stuff that just makes us feel better but doesn't actually protect us?"

Yes, yes it is. I have an interesting response to that: Shut up. Sure, none of this will make a difference. Sure, it's kind of racist and probably harms our relations with Muslims more than it protects us from them. Sure, this is all empty theater. But it looks good and makes us feel good, so we'll take that in lieu of real safety measures. Thankfully our leaders are content to follow our lead and only deal with security and terrorism in terms of empty gestures, rhetoric, politics, and tough guy posturing.

At least they didn't decide to make us all take our underwear off at the scanners as well. There's at least that.

Unhappy new year

Ahhh, it's a new year and a new decade and things feel wonderful. That sense of new possibilities and opportunities permeating the air. What makes it great is... oh, what's that? Every economist in America, did you have something to add?

Speaking at American Economic Association's mammoth yearly gathering, experts from a range of political leanings were in surprising agreement when it came to the chances for a robust and sustained expansion:

They are slim.

Many predicted U.S. gross domestic product would expand less than 2 percent per year over the next 10 years. That stands in sharp contrast to the immediate aftermath of other steep economic downturns, which have usually elicited a growth surge in their wake.

Well fuck you too.

Sure the article quotes Martin Feldstein, Joseph Stiglitz, and Kenneth Rogoff, but who are they any way? Other than the former head of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Nobel laureate, and a former IMF economist/Fed Board member respectively? Just a bunch of gainsayers who can't let us get four days into a new year and decade without yelling about how shitty it's going to be, just because American's primary source of wealth, their homes, has been severely weakened, consumer debt is staggeringly high, there's nothing in place to replace the housing boom and consumer spending that previously drove growth, the banks are reliant on Fed funding and Treasury backing, and finance companies are artificially padding their bottom lines with zero cost government loans.

But what about America's undying sense of optimism, freedom, and, uh... wishing none of this had happened? Apparently none of these things count.

Even the relentlessly cheery, gumdrops and sunshine musings of the affable optimist Paul Krugman are filled with ill omens he's reading after consulting the bones and the increased swelling he's feeling in his pessimism gland. He says he's getting that 1937 feeling, where government and the Fed declared the Great Depression fixed and all over, cut spending, tightened monetary policy... and dove back into a depression. He sees the same signs and notes the fact that the Fed is already taking steps to tighten monetary policy.

So... happy new year. I know you were hoping for some fresh start, but the best and brightest economists in the country say no. Don't get mad at me. I wanted you to have a good economy, but they said no. Something about "the facts saying otherwise". The bright side? Well... I guess if you were an economist you could make a lot of money making economic predictions. For the rest of us though, it looks like a meandering decade of stagnant growth followed by a slow descent into the long awaited hobo economy. Sorry. I was going to let you bask in the optimism of a new year for a few more days, but the American Economic Association wanted to do it their way. I guess it's for the best.

Just a reminder...

So help you God if you say "Two thousand and ten". I now return to your day of clutching your head and regretting everything about last night.

P.S. It's 2010... WHERE THE FUCK IS MY FLYING CAR?!? WHERE THE FUCK ARE MY HOVERBOOTS?!?