Broken News: Respected author to churn out some bullshit about vampires

NEWARK—After a literary career that began with 1959’s Goodbye, Columbus and has spanned the decades. Noted author and Pulitzer Prize winner Philip Roth today announced that he was abandoning his more high brow literary pursuits to churn out some old hoary cack about vampires.

“I don’t know, I doesn’t seem like provocative explorations of what it means to be Jewish or of the American identity and blurring the lines between biography and fiction makes a guy a buck anymore,” the author explained in an interview with the New Yorker.

“So I’m just going to churn out some shit I thought up over lunch about vampires, teen romance, and epic battles over love and sit back and watch the money pile up. It’s pretty much what everyone else is doing. Why fight it? I don’t think I’m even going to make it all that different from Twilight.”

He sighed before adding “Ooh! Maybe a vampire school or a boarding school where vampires and humans meet! Has anyone done vampire style Harry Potter knockoff yet?”

Reaction from the literary world was swift with most surprisingly supporting the move.

“Frankly 90% of what I read is some awful re-purposed shit about forbidden love and euro-trash vampires that I’d appreciate reading what someone competent could do with a completely fucked out genre,” said Michael Kimmelman of the New York Review of Books. “Even if he is just nakedly slumming it for cash.”

Others, from the New York Times to McSweeney’s, offered support ranging from “Just don’t make them sparkle” to a fervent hope that Roth would attempt to tie his famed Nathan Zuckerman character into the new series of novels. Either by making Zuckerman a vampire, a vampire hunter, or recounting a romance had with a shiksa vampire in his youth.

“Zuckerman as a teacher at a school for vampires is the idea that has me most excited,” said Times literary critic Janet Maslin when contacted for this story.

When presented with some of these suggestions Roth reportedly yelled that they were all legally his and that he’d sue anyone who infringed on them.

But Roth’s recent foray into naked money grubbing is part of a larger trend in the literary world. Cormac McCarthy recently announced he was about to start work on a trilogy of books about werewolves, while Michael Chabon has reportedly cast his lot in with merpeople, hoping that will be the next genre to take off and set him up with a lucrative series of films.

Alice Sebold has quit writing books to becoming a staff writer on Two and a Half Men, while the estate of Roberto Bolano has unearthed a 1700 page novel entitled Star Wars Jedi War: The Mandalorians Revenge which will be released by Lucas Books and Ballentine by the end of the year.

“There’s just no money in integrity nowadays,” observed Harvard English Professor and Twilight fan-fiction writer Dr. Karen Whitman. “Sure you can try to putter around here and there writing the odd masterpiece of American fiction and getting a Pulitzer every couple of years, but where’s the money in that? Who wants to make a movie out of a heady tome about the immigrant experience in 1930’s San Francisco? Why not just crassly jump on board whatever is popular at the moment and ride that wave to the bank?”

“Like I wrote in my Twilight short story Love’s Bite, after Edward leaves Bella to marry the new, shy, mousy, literary girl Karen: ‘Sometimes you just gotta keep it real.’”

As of now Roth plans to have the first novel out sometime next month with four to follow by the end of the year. He says he hopes that his endeavors will lead to a movie company taking a chance on glomming onto the Twilight bandwagon and churning out a low budget competitor, but that he is, at the very least, hoping that these novels can be turned into a low rated drama for the ABC network.

“Fingers crossed,” Roth said. “Film or TV. I will tailor this bullshit to whatever medium will provide me the riches that being considered one of the greatest living writers has failed to.”

Cheap Blogging Crutch 06.15

Star Wars political cartoons... is that something you might be interested in?

How little have our elected betters learned from our horrific financial apocalypse? Almost nothing. The latest example is the Herculean struggle Al Franken is currently going through to get the Senate to maybe consider the fact that the financial sector getting to choose the agency which rates its products creates rather a large conflict of interest. On the side of randomizing the selection process: people who are smart. On the side of keeping things as is and trusting our financial betters won't game a shoddy system: a probable filibuster proof majority of Senators. Remember to put on your surprised faces when our next financial collapse comes.

Comically oil executives took to the Hill today to explain all the ways in which they were not like BP in their offshore drilling practices. The main differences? Uhhh.... they aren't named BP and none of them has a drilling rig named Deepwater Horizon. One candid moment was when the executives basically admitted they had no way to handle massive offshore spills. Oh really? I think we've noticed that lo these past two months.

People have started to call bullshit and nakedly manipulative bullshit on the timing and PR strategy behind the whole "Afghanistan has trillions in resources! We'll all be rich... RICH!!" story from yesterday. C'mon. How are we supposed to feel good about this war or as if we're getting something out of it if they don't trump up old shit the Soviets were trumping up in 1985... when they we in the midst of an unproductive slog in Afghanistan? Just keep telling yourself "Just a few more years of fighting... then we'll all be rich."

Were you wondering who was cheering for North Korea today during their 2-1 defeat at the hands of Brazil? It certainly wasn't any North Koreans. No, the Chinese government flew in supporters specifically for the purpose of cheering for Kim Jong-Il's future waterslide park invitees/torture victims (depending on how the tournament goes). Commies stick together. Maybe China can fly in some soccer supporters to the US after our team invariably is eliminated before the semis and we lose interest in the sport for another 4 years.

Media Matters has gone to the trouble of picking out choice excerpts from Glenn Beck's new fiction thriller/Randian teabagging circle jerk... The Overton Window. Amongst the gems; "rule number one is, don't tease the panther", various meandering/awful sections of prose, bizarre asides about the flat tax and Bill Clinton, examples where Glenn doesn't seem to remember things his own characters have done, and a Star Wars reference so hackneyed it would make Kevin Smith cringe. Essentially it's a less funny version of his "serious" non-fiction books. Anyway, it doesn't compare to the liberal writing brilliance of Who Blog In Darkness.

In closing, your daily "Oh shit, we're fucked" oil flow estimate is 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day. Up from the 20,000 to 40,000 from last week. It doesn't really matter; at this point it's like having third degree burns over 100% of your body and complaining about the sniffles.

Science for kids

So you've been wondering how to explain to your kids the wonders of science and how a bunch of scientists on the French/Swiss border are going to open up a black hole, ending life as we know it in a vainglorious attempt to kill God. Do you attempt to dumb down some heady scientific text on the Large Hadron Collider? Do you hope that some shred of scientific fact is allowed onto major network TV or cable news? Or do you just wait for the episode where Elmo and the Cookie Monster explain Higgs-Boson particles and superconductors?

Well wait no more. In an attempt to explain the Large Hadron Collider to kids.... and essentially every adult without a physics degree, Emma Sanders and Anton Radevsky have written Voyage to the Heart of Matter, a pop-up book that explains the LHC, it's layout, the various machines, and exactly in what detail science plans to kill our Creator.

And just in case the little monster you've spawned tries to slam your efforts to enlighten their dumb ass with some business about the book not getting the sheer magnitude of the machines right, you just tell that wretched shrieking creature that "The scale of the particle accelerator and various machines within the book is exact, you awful little shit. Now shut up and learn about science or I'll lock you in the cupboard again."

Your daily update of what constitutes education in Texas

Well the madness is over and Texas has finally passed the last of their historical "adjustments" to make sure the children of Texas are readily aware that history has a nefarious liberal secular bias. They didn't get to add in all the parts about Indians turning into Mexicans and copious Dracula references that they wanted, but they have enough for now.

Of interest, one of the women on the Texas Board of Education came out and said that public education was a "tool of perversion" and another man referred to any opposition as coming from "the pagan left". So it's nice that the sane people are exercising control over this process.

So what were they able to sneak in at the last moment?

Elevating Confederate Leader Jefferson Davis To The Level Of Abraham Lincoln.

Requiring That Historical Figures — Except Conservative Ones — Must Be Dead For Students To Study Them.

That's right. As the argument went, keeping Davis out was "an attempt to “whitewash” history." Which, given the board's attempts to remove blacks and Latinos from their history books, even rechristen the Atlantic Slave Trade as the Atlantic Triangular Trade, is something the board would know a great deal about. So Davis' speeches are kept in to contrast with Lincoln's speeches. One notable thing about Davis' speeches? They're ones that don't talk about slavery being one of the main reason for secession and the Civil War.

As for the second, yeah, if you're a minority or viewed as a dirty liberal, you can't get into the history books unless you're dead. Even if you're dead, you might not make it in if you've offended these people's imaginary conception of Jesus. Just ask Thomas Jefferson. But if you're white and really conservative? Please, come right into the textbook, if you're having trouble finding room just elbow a founding father or a civil rights pioneer out of the way and have a seat.

But surely not every crackpot idea these goons have gets into these textbooks, right? Shockingly, that's true. Referring to President Barry as Barack Hussein Obama, probably with a couple of Islamic crescents and a black power fist encircling it, was apparently too nakedly political and openly race bait-y for the board. Instead, he's referred to as Barack H. Obama, or, alternately, "The black one that done usurped the White House" and is listed again in the section "12 signs that the rapture is imminent" under the header "Blacks in places blacks shouldn't be."

It's a shame this is over for now. I would have liked to have heard the board opine on European history as well as English Lit requirements. Sadly God doesn't love me enough to have these people take a whack at science requirements. Maybe they did and Bibles have replaced Biology 1010 textbooks. I guess we'll find out. Godspeed, Texas schoolchildren. Just remember, when it comes times to take your SAT's, remember to fill in the bubble for what seems to be the exact opposite of the things you just spent 12 years learning.

Chart of the day

As someone who had to sit in traffic recently I was incensed. How could God do this to me! As it turns out, God doesn't hate me as much as he hates other parts of the country. So, apparently there wasn't some universal force conspiring to screw me over worse than everyone else in the entirety of recorded history. Who knew?

But because they are good citizens and decent Americans, the people at Good magazine decided to graph out this information of how long certain American cities spend sitting in traffic and do it in comparison to how long it would take someone to read War and Peace, listen to Wagner's Ring cycle, or watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I know no one has ever read War and Peace or listened to Der Ring des Nibelungen, but just use them as stand ins for the concept of "unimaginably long shit."

It turns out that if you lived in LA, the traffic would have given you a chance to be incredibly literarily and operatically cultured... if you didn't live in LA and weren't an American. But you would have gotten to see Frodo a hell of a lot of times. Yeaaaah!

As always, click to embiggen.

Glenny wrote a book

I just wanted to post up the plot of the newest Glenn Beck novel he/an unpaid intern wrote. It's a harrowing thriller called the Overton Window and it's probably the funniest thing you'll read all day.

There is a powerful technique called the Overton Window that can shape our lives, our laws and our future. It works by manipulating public perception so that ideas previously thought of as radical begin to seem acceptable over time. Move the Window and you change the debate. Change the debate and you change the country.

For Noah Gardner, a twenty something public relations executive, it's safe to say that political theory is the furthest thing from his mind. Smart, single, handsome and insulated from the world's problems by the wealth and power of his father, Noah is far more concerned about the future of his social life than the future of his country.

But all of that changes when Noah meets Molly Ross, a woman who is consumed by the knowledge that the America we know is about to be lost forever. She and her group of patriots have vowed to remember the past and fight for the future—but Noah, convinced they're just a bunch of freaky conspiracy-theorists, isn't interested in lending his considerable skills to their cause.

And then the world changes.

An unprecedented attack on U.S. soil shakes the country to the core and puts into motion a frightening plan, decades in the making, to transform America and demonize all those who stand in the way. Amidst the chaos, many don't know the difference between conspiracy theory and conspiracy fact—or, more importantly, which side to fight for.

But for Noah, the choice is clear: Exposing the plan, and revealing the conspirators behind it, is the only way to save both the woman he loves and the individual freedoms he once took for granted.

After five back-to-back #1 New York Times bestsellers, national radio and Fox News television host Glenn Beck has delivered a ripped-from-the-headlines thriller that seamlessly weaves together American history, frightening facts about our present condition, and a heart-stopping plot. The Overton Window.

Christ, it's like the fantasy world that every one of his hardcore viewers likes to believe they're living in when they watch his show. I will say this about the Glennster: he knows how to suck every dime out of his audience by playing to their fears and paranoid fantasies.

In happier Glenn Beck news, the audience for the Overton Window is going to be smaller than it was, oh, say, a few months ago. Why? His show has lost 1/3 of its viewers since January. Glorious. But in this moment of joy all I can think of is the poor aardvarks he's taking this out on in a weeping rage. Those poor creatures.

/tips a bit of O.E. on the ground

To the aardvarks.

Broken in Brief: Rove book ravages fact checking industry

NEW YORK—“Just let me die… just let me die. So… many… lies. There’s so much evil in the world,” were the cries of Media Matters intern Melissa Fargas from her hospital bed after her attempted self-disembowelment. Ms. Fargas had made her way through nearly four paragraphs in the misguided attempt to fact-check former White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Special Advisor Karl Rove’s new book Courage and Consequence.

These lamentations have afflicted many organizations and news outlets devoted to fact checking as scores of naïve young interns and associates come to grips with the true soul-deadening horror of life and the futility of existence as they attempt to wade through what Rove humorously calls "facts."

“We’re down 7 staffers and an associate editor and we’re only three chapters in,” lamented Faiz Shakir, editor of ThinkProgress. “I hear Fact Check.org mysteriously exploded minutes after their shipment of books arrived. And most of the staff of Politifact stripped down to the nude and ran off into the woods, clawing at their own flesh and shunning the entirety of society.”

“I’ve seen some sick shit in my life: most of Hannity’s books, pretty much every tome written by a former White House press secretary, and even the entire Coulter catalogue. But this just resets the bar. Now, if you’ll excuse me…,” Shakir finished by throwing himself out of a nearby window yelling, “You say the White House took care not to overstate the terrorist threat or exaggerate the danger posed by Iraq? My God….the gall. The balls,” before he impacted on the sidewalk below.

Until such a time as the sanity of fact checkers can be assured, most groups are refusing to even open Rove's new summer home book. Some are more adventurous, using three-man teams working with sentence fragments and random words so that the full brunt of Rove’s claims cannot be comprehended.

When asked if this wasn’t too much of a risk to the safety of the fact checkers, John Daniels, Director of CNN’s Political Ticker FactCheck, scoffed “That’s why God created unpaid interns.”

Ringing endorsement

Reuters blogger and financial expert Felix Salmon gives what I'm sure will be the chosen highlighted blurb for any future release of the Philip Delves Broughton financial pulp thriller Dead Bankers:

If you’ve ever fantasized about what would happen if the people who helped create the global financial crisis started getting serially murdered, you should give this book a go.

That's practically all I think about. Perhaps this is the book for me.

Book of the day

Cameron Pierce's Ass Goblins of Auschwitz

In a land where black snow falls in the shape of swastikas, there exists a nightmarish prison camp known as Auschwitz. It is run by a fascist, flatulent race of aliens called the Ass Goblins, who travel in apple-shaped spaceships to abduct children from the neighboring world of Kidland. Prisoners 999 and 1001 are conjoined twin brothers forced to endure the sadistic tortures of these ass-shaped monsters. To survive, they must eat kid skin and work all day constructing bicycles and sex dolls out of dead children.

I believe this was published by Random House and is on the short list for both the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. It was optioned as a film for Sony Pictures Classics. If the rumors on Ain't It Cool News are true, the Ass Goblins movie is slated to star Meryl Streep as the head Ass Goblin, Ralph Fiennes as The White Angel, and Danny McBride as Danny McBride. It's slated for a winter 2011 release and a big Oscar push as one of Sony's prestige pictures.

In 2011, America is about to be Shit Slaughtered!!

America word good

That's right America, for the first time since the invention of the TV, America's dependence on the boob tube declined as its reading levels actually increased with the development of new technologies. Sure, most of what we're reading is instructions on how to properly download porn, captions of cats who think they can has cheezburger, and news stories about the decline on newspapers, but it all still counts. The average American consumed 3.6 billion terabytes of information last year, or 11.8 hours of information consumption per day.

So walk a little taller, America. You may have replaced books and magazines with Twitter and texting, but you can technically be described as reading more. And isn't that the best kind of societal advancement; one divorced from any sort of context but adhering to such a rigid classification that it counts under a stringent interpretation of the rules?

Sorry, you probably didn't understand that last sentence. Can haz read moar? Gud hoo-man, gud read making. Iz samrter now.

But what about eggs?

The Sarah Palin book tour rolls ever on. But just a word of warning, if you want to make a salsa, a gazpacho, or have a nice slice of an heirloom tomato on a giant burger made from a meat-bearing animal, you'd better prepare it a day or so in advance. Tomatoes are not allowed in the presence of Alaskan royalty.

While going through the check-out lane, again with no wait, [Rappaport] told the clerk she forgot to get some grape tomatoes, which she loves, so she would be right back.
...
The clerk told her they had no tomatoes that day.
...
As she was leaving, she noticed a man with a store manager's name tag and asked him why they had no tomatoes. He informed her the store did have tomatoes, but they were taken off the shelves for a few hours.

It turns out that Palin had been pelted with a tomato at an earlier stop on her book tour and the management at the Costco was determined it wouldn't happen here.

Superb. It turns out that a man from the great state of Minnesota, attempting to win the love of both Sean and myself for continually electing Michelle Bachmann, tossed what the French would call a "love apple" at Palin... missing and hitting a cop instead. I'm sure it was something the man and the cop had a good laugh over during the tomato thrower's violent beating in lockup. Trust me, it was catsup coming out of the man's ears.

Thus, tomatoes are fruit/vegetable-non-grata in our megamarkets when our next President rolls into town on a snowmobile pulled by a gaggle of moose to promote her book. But I think this all teaches us an important lesson: when one wishes to pelt elected and newly resigned politicians with food, it's best to shop at the local farmer's market and support the area agriculture community. When smashing a governor with fruit, you really want to know that it had a low carbon footprint, was organic, and was sustainable.

Broken News: Maine town finally included in Stephen King story

LINNEUS—Celebration rang out in the streets today, as the small town of Linneus, Maine learned that it’s decades-long literary exodus had come to an end. In a note posted on his website, author Stephen King announced he had decided to set a short story in Linneus, officially making it the final town in Maine to be featured in one of King’s tales.

“I am proud to announce that today, Linneus will be the last area of Maine to be menaced by my particular brand of contemporary horror fiction,” the writer announced via his website.

“I’m sure the 892 residents spread out over the town’s 45.8 square miles will scarcely believe what I have in store for their little hamlet. But I am certain they’ll enjoy my latest tale of Gothic terror scraped together from concepts I had long ago discarded as unworthy of the printed word, but have since revived in an effort to avoid my wife through writing. I’m sure the good people of Linneus will appreciate what a writing legend will be able to do with facts gleaned from their town’s meager Wikipedia page.”

Adding, “A 0.67% Hispanic population? You won’t believe how that fits in. The rest will be standard New England pastoral generic small town bullshit filler but, hey, at least you're on the map!”

Noting that he would name-check the town’s Hodgdon Mill Road and Red Roof Road, King noted that he hoped this level of detail would gain him somewhere in the neighborhood of 892 new readers. King took the time to remind people that in this economy, and given the putrid state of the publishing industry, “every extra person counts”, before lamenting that he had overused Bangor in earlier stories and was regretting that it wasn’t a reliable sales generator anymore.

The news was of great relief to many within Linneaus, who had long suffered the indignity and mockery of surrounding towns as being the only place in the state unworthy of being mentioned in yet another King story the author had set in Maine.

“I thought this day would never come,” a relieved Mayor John Swithen said. “After he set Duma Key in Florida of all places, I wondered if we’d ever get our shot.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Swithen shouted, beaming with pride. “I’ve taken shit at the Maine Mayor’s Conference for the last time! No longer am I going to have to sit around as other mayors leaf through King’s books, point to their town’s name and knowingly nod at each other. No more having to listen to ‘I can’t find Linneus in my book, is it in yours?’ comments. Next year, I’ll be able to slap down a book, point to my town and yell ‘There! It’s right fucking there!’”

Some are worried that King’s placement of the town within his pages will rob the small borough of its unique status and the requisite tourist dollars Linneus previously generated among King fans as the one place in the state that Mr. King had yet to hit on the giant dartboard of Maine he keeps in his office.

But city officials assured those who are wary that the municipality can function without the $150 dollars it raised last year from an eBay auction after one King fan left their iPod behind during a brief stopover on the way to Derry.

With the future publication of this story a certainty, focus now shifts to the nearby Juniper Knee Pond which, unless it also merits a mention in the as yet untitled story, will be the only remaining Maine landmark or structure yet to be immortalized in King’s work. But those who live nearby are hopeful that the author can find it in his heart to grace the small body of water with at least one supernaturally dismembered corpse or perhaps even a psychic struggle between a shy boy and an ancient evil.

In any event, King is glad to finally complete his longstanding goal of cataloging the entirety of the Pine Tree State through offhand references in his horror novels.

As for what’s next, King isn’t sure, but he noted that he is curious to see “what kind of flavor the state of New Hampshire brings to his stories.”

For your edification

IF we are about one thing here at These Bastards, it is education. We're also about laughing at the misery of others, lamenting the state of affairs, wishing ill to our social/financial/elected betters, and dick jokes, but we're mostly about education.

Take the tea party movement. For months we've been laboring under the assumption that they were a fringe offshoot of right wingers, as well as being too crazy for words. We were wrong. Rasmussen polling told us so.

Running under the Tea Party brand may be better in congressional races than being a Republican.

In a three-way Generic Ballot test, the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds Democrats attracting 36% of the vote. The Tea Party candidate picks up 23%, and Republicans finish third at 18%. Another 22% are undecided.

That's right, the people in the “Project 912 Glenn Beck Tea Party” video below, which includes immortal discussion on “infiltration by the Communist Party” in government and the rallying cry “Burn the books!...The ones in college, those, those brainwashing books.... Like, the evolution crap”, are more popular than the Republican Party.



So we're sorry teabaggers and teapartiers, you aren't a fringe offshoot of the GOP, the GOP is a fringe offshoot of you.

It' a shame though, Sean and I are going to go broke helping support you and groups like you. Ah well, that's the price of purposes of unending amusement & disdainful blog fodder

Pictures of the day

From a new book from National Geographic entitled "National Geographic: The Image Collection", which takes 450 photos, many never before released, and puts them together for your enlightenment. Among the many great things about the book are the the early century looks at some of the exotic locales of the world, as shown below. You can take a gander at the website they've put together here.

Antarctica 1922. The ship Terra Nova framed by an ice grotto by Herbert Ponting

Peru 1913. Macchu Picchu by Hiram Bingham

France 1890's. Early mountaineering in the Alps

Afghanistan 1931...or is it 2009? You can't tell the difference. by Maynard Owen Williams

Fake quote of the day

One of the runners up from Slate's write like Sarah Palin contest, which was looking for the best combination of Palin's "pastoral lyricism" and "unlikely metaphors". I guess they'll have to have another contest for quotes that sum up the childish blame shirking and petty grudge holding.

"The snow machine pummeled through the white-dusted plain like a jubilant beaver; snow spewing out from both sides, building its dam of snow like a beaver builds one of wood as Todd rode gallantly upon it."

My God, it's a plausible outtake. Slate has 12 examples, including the phrase "harvest our meat-bearing animals" that I now want to work into every conversation. Read them, laugh, and then imagine 400+ pages of shit like that, then weep, then laugh, then weep again while laughing.

No foreigners

The Sarah Palin "I wroted a word book" tour goes ever on. This time stopping at America's own monument to consumer culture: the Mall of America. If you'd like to see Sarah in person and maybe even report on it, they just have one request: no foreigners.

But the mall also was banning foreign reporters, permtting "only English speaking press." That's not a common requirement.

Mall officials, calling the proposed guidelines a mistake, apologized to Palin today for "an internal miscommunication" that was "inadvertently distributed."
...
"That should never have been in any kind of press release," said Tina Andreadis, a publicist for HarperCollins, publisher of Palin's hot-selling memoir. "That's not the message the governor wants to send out.''

Actually, judging from her various speeches on immigration and foreign policy, "no foreigners" is exactly the message she wants to get out. But the apology for accidentally exposing her expressed wishes was nice.

It's just a shame that they're banning the only people that could possibly appreciate the Palin signing and come away mentally unscathed: those who experience it through a nearly intractable language barrier, secure in the knowledge that she can't do anything to ruin the country they're actually from.

Get out your crayons

Sarah Palin is out there flogging her new book, Going Rogue, reminding us all just how incredibly petty and quick to blame others she is, driving Andrew Sullivan insane, and showing us how she'll pretty much just lie about anything no matter how small. It's something we're all going to have to endure for the next week or two....or 104.

Now of course a bound collection of paper with words and sentences written on it in ink is probably too much of an intellectual hurdle for most of the Palin '12 crowd. Oh, I know most of them will buy it, not read it, and then take Sarah's word that accurately quoting the book and then attempting to compare her claims to reality is some sort of vicious slander. But, where will they be able to receive Sarah's written message in a venue more suited to their reading "talents"?

Enter Julie Sigwart & Micheal Stinson, authors of Going Rouge: The Sarah Palin Rogue Coloring and Activity Book




It's like listening to her, but with things to color in.

Quote of the Day

Today we are enlightened by Sarah Palin, from one of the many brilliant excerpts from her book Going Rogue. This time, America's dumb rural aunt is opining on evolution.

The New York Times reports in its review:
Elsewhere in this volume she talks about creationism, saying she "didn't believe in the theory that human beings -- thinking, loving beings -- originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea" or from "monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees."

In another section she recounts a debate John McCain's campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, on the issue:
"But your dad's a science teacher," Schmidt objected. "Yes." "Then you know that science proves evolution," added Schmidt. "Parts of evolution," I said. "But I believe that God created us and also that He can create an evolutionary process that allows species to change and adapt." Schmidt winced and raised his eyebrows. In the dim light, his sunglasses shifted atop his hear. I had just dared to mention the C-word: creationism. But I felt I was on solid factual ground.

Baby Jesus, can you tell her to write a second book? Not just one where her petty vendetta to blame everyone else for the problems she caused and her litany of lies are put out there to be easily debunked by any organization with Google. No, a series where she writes her beliefs on scientific theories on how the world works. Palin on gravity, Palin on climate science, Palin on string theory, Palin on quantum mechanics; a sort of "...for Dummies" version of science for the Palin supporter. I'd buy 'em.

In other news, we're sad to report that Steve Schmidt had to be hospitalized after he had a re-occurrence of the "wincing and raising eyebrows" repetitive stress disorder that manifested in the '08 campaign after Palin was added to the ticket. We can only hope that he recovers and that no one reads him further excerpts from the book.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 10.20

Stumping With Mayor, Giuliani Stirs Old Fears
While earlier we were marveling at Glenn Beck's ability to weave conspiracy out of nothing, sometimes you have to show a little respect for the masters of the old arts. Like engendering fear of anyone with darker skin than the Irish. So please, a little respect for Nounverb9/11 Giuliani, who hit the stage for NY Mayor Bloomberg to remind people of the fear they used to fear walking the streets at night, pausing then intoning You know exactly what I’m talking about.” He then paused again, scanned the room and said "You know....BLACKS!!!" He then left to go dig up the corpse of a 9/11 victim so he could rummage through the pockets for any loose change or paper money.

Barnes & Noble’s Kindle Killing, Dual Screen ‘Nook’ E-Reader Leaked
Hey, can you hear that sound? It's Amazon shitting its pants over a new e-reader that is not only designed well, but is going to be linked to a Barnes & Noble operation that will sell e-books cheaper, be able to use books from the Google books project, and will let you lend e-books to friends. Lend them. That's it, game over Amazon, game over. If this thing can show porn, they can lure the lucrative 18-54 high tech pervert market. Which is to say, Sean and myself. He's been hankering for a well designed way to watch hardcore porn on the subway for years. Those nuns he sits next to won't know what hit them.

Wall St. Giants Reluctant to Donate to Democrats
Awww, and after they've done so much for the Wall Street community. Actually, this states that they aren't so much as reluctant to donate to Democrats, but to donate to them in public. Which shows they've learned something. Shame they haven't learned anything about banking, financial markets, or sanity. Still only half a dozen Goldman-Sachs execs are going to be at a Democratic Party fundraiser with President Obama. That sounds low, but you have to remember that most Goldman execs already have jobs working in the administration.

Secret Service strained as leaders face more threats
I guess we expected this when we elected a black guy, but it's always nice to see your predictions that American racist extremists would show themselves in great numbers come horrifyingly true. In fact the Secret Service is so strained at investigating racists that there's talk of them abandoning their counterfeiting and financial crimes work to concentrate on the freaks. That's always good to hear that a protective agency is so overworked from an overwhelming number of crazies. America! America! God shed his grace on thee. And crown thy good with brotherhood. From sea to shining sea!

Defense Department Opposed Franken's Anti-Rape Amendment
Charming. As if it wasn't enough that 30 white conservative men thought that allowing people to prosecute rape and sexual abuse as, you know, crimes, was too onerous a burden to the field of contract law, we need the Defense Department to second that motion. Oh, they swear they're totally against rape, it's just that enforcing Franken's law would be totally hard. Well then, if that's the case let's just keep contractor rape legal. We wouldn't want to inconvenience anyone.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 10.16

Dem officials set stage for corporate-backed health care campaign
In case you were wondering how it came to be that Democrats handed out a multitude of concessions to health and insurance related companies in return for their "support" that included a bunch of terrible ads that ran a couple of times and a report that attempted to sandbag the process last week, the Politico is there to spell it out in all of its predictable detail. But hey, those ads were worth the tepid incremental reform, right? Right?

Sweden Turning Stray Rabbits Into Biofuel
You want to know how to get Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny to stop eating the carrots an cabbages of Mr. McGregor? Why you just exterminate everone he knows, deep freeze them, and then turn them into biofuel to heat homes in order to make an example of Peter's anti-farm food terrorism. Socialism, expansive health care, beautiful blond women, hockey, public transportation, and now rabbit heated homes. Is there anything Sweden doesn't have? I'm moving there.

U.S. Credit Conditions
Thanks to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and their research, now you can have a comprehensive county by county map of the US and the rate at which your fellow Americans have defaulted on their auto loans, bank cards, student loans, and mortgages over the last quarter. Well what do you know, every place in American has had a large increase in mortgage defaults over the past few months. Surprising.

Christmas myth dogs Obama
Just in case you were curious as to the next bizarre myth or conspiracy about Obama that is going to pop up is, here's a hint: Christmas. No, he didn't kill Santa or put extra funding into the war on Christmas. No, it's has to do with the fact that he's a Muslim and declared that this country isn't a Christian nation. That's right, he's going to abolish the White House Christmas tree. It isn't true, but you are going to receive several chain e-mails about it. The thing about the Obama's decorating the tree with bronzed aborted fetuses? That is true.

Edge of Solar System Is Not What We Expected
Science has once again been surprised by the cold dark recesses of space. This time the structure and energy spectra at the edge of the solar system are confounding our science overlords. If they're this surprised over what's going on at the edge of the solar system, I shudder to think what that means for their theories for what's at the edge of the universe. If there isn't a restaurant there, I'm going to lose it.