3 weird sisters

Told you so.

They didn’t zoom in enough to see whether or not he’s got big pointy teeth.

h/t to commenter PeakVT at BalloonJuice

Update:  apparently rabbits aren’t the only non-traditional herding animals.  Seems appropriate to demonstrate how their opposite, the tortoise, also engages in herding:

That’s one pissed-off turtle!  And if the youtube is an indication, turtles really hate cats.  Cat-biting seems to be a favorite turtle activity.  They’re some mean little bastards.

I just noticed this today.  This guy is so 1%, he’s even got “money” in his name:

Even his name is vaguely Dickensian

So the results are in from the primary voting for America’s Most Racist Party™ in America’s Most Racist State™, and not surprisingly, the candidate making the most openly racist appeals won.

I got into quite the online discussion last night with someone insisting that we should fear Gingrich more than Romney.  I disagree; while Romney really isn’t liked by most everyone, he’s not loathed the way Gingrich is in most places.  I noted that I wouldn’t be surprised if turnout was up yesterday in South Carolina, given what was offered on the menu – appeals to states’ rights (Paul), appeals to stick-up-the-ass faux religiosity (Santorum), and not-even-veiled appeals to racial bigotry (Gingrich).  You’d expect such a smorgasbord to really draw them out of the woodwork in the most reactionary state in the country, and it turns out this is exactly what happened – turnout was around 602,000, compared with 445,000 in 2008.  But let’s look where those “extra” votes went – Romney improved his 2008 showing by about 100,000 votes, which still put him far back into second place.  Gingrich bested him by about 70,000.  Both scored more votes than winner John McCain did in 2008. 

So what does it all mean?  Well, I don’t think it’s all that complicated, really.  I think what it means is that in the most reactionary state in the country, a lot of voters are motivated not by who they think is most likely to win a head-to-head matchup with the president, but by who they think is most likely to call him “ni**er” to his face, and Newt won that contest walking away.  I’m sure the magic underwear didn’t help Romney any with the snake-handling crowd, either.

Should we be worried about this?  Not particularly, I think.  Turnouts in both Iowa and New Hampshire were about even with the apathetic turnout in 2008, probably because the concentration of crazy in those states simply isn’t nearly as high as in South Carolina.  Sure, Newt may race-bait his way to further victories in primaries in the states of the old Confederacy, but that shit doesn’t play elsewhere.  Add to it the man’s history of shooting himself in the foot at the worst possible moment, and this is definitely the guy we’d prefer to go up against in the general election.  Because while Romney isn’t really liked, he’s not overtly offensive to many in the mushy middle.  Gingrich, on the other hand, seems to think it’s his life mission to be as offensive as possible to as many as possible.  And can you imagine evangelicals turning out in droves to support this guy in the general election?  I mean, we know from experience that they will be instructed from the pulpit to “fall in line” once the nominee is chosen, no matter how unpalatable to the brethren that choice may be.  But I can imagine quite a few of those folks just deciding to quietly sit at home on election day rather than going to the effort to show up and pull the lever for a serial adulterer whose fidelity to any particular church has been no better than his fidelity to his multiple spouses. 

So, while it’s true that the crazy isn’t confined to the south, what’s needed to harness it varies a great deal around the country.  God-botherers in the Midwest aren’t going to be motivated by code phrases like “food stamp president” in the way southern wingnuts will be, and Newt doesn’t have the religious fundamentalist chops to appeal to those folks the way he appeals to the bufords in South Carolina.

Go Newt!  Whether you win the nomination or not, your continuing presence in the race can only help in delivering victory to Obama in November.

If we can get an advance copy of this into Glenn Reynolds’ hands, he may just put it on an endless loop and NEVER BLOG AGAIN:

Actually, this is a documentary short about a guy who’s making a stop-action robot porno.  The full-length feature film won’t be available for some years to come, if ever.  But as one reviewer noted, “A robot horse getting buttf*cked?  That’s relevant to ALL MY INTERESTS!” 

There’s plenty of teh funneh in just the little clip above, too – particularly when he pauses for a moment after picking up one of his creations, then just bluntly states its purpose.

One of these arrived in the mail last week.  Pay special attention at around 0:14 of the clip:

Eartha Kitty, of course, is a wuss, so her reaction was to cower under the bed while I was flying it.  Then I had to find a place to hide it, because she doesn’t forget the toys that have frightened her when they’re running. If she finds one sitting around after it’s turned off, she abuses it. 

I’m not sure yet who I will eventually end up gifting with this treasure.

You can get your own Flying Fuck at ThinkGeek.

Given that we’re a week into the new year already, I figured it was time to put up something on the ol’ blog.

I spent New Year’s as usual, with the other 2 weird sisters in Atlanta.  This year the feat of the annual New Year’s Day mass feeding was even more miraculous than usual, given that Beth still doesn’t have a kitchen.  Something like 40 people were fed out of a room lacking a sink, stove, oven or dishwasher.  As our friend Kyle said, “talk about your loaves and fishes!”  Since Kyle has helpfully posted on the event here, and unlike me is not too lazy to take photos, I’ll not re-do his work.

My trip included the obligatory treks to Ikea and Trader Joe’s, things we don’t get to do here in the benighted hinterlands because, as the folks at Trader Joe’s told me when I called and begged them to open a store in Little Rock, “Arkansas isn’t in our two-year plan.”  Well, no shit – we’re not in anyone’s two-year plan, and apparently not in the five-year plan either, since that conversation took place 3 years ago and still - no Trader Joe’s.

But the best part, as usual, was seeing out the old year and ringing in the new with a group of people, most of whom I have known for 30 years or longer now.  Old times, both those that bear remembering and those that we’d rather not, were discussed.  I learned to my shock and embarrassment that more people I know in real life than I thought read the horrible things I post here, something I’ll have to try to forget or I’ll never write anything else again.

There have been some great new people added into the mix over the years as well – friends’ children and the parents of those children’s friends, neighbors, and others.  It’s always a good time and over the years has become my favorite holiday tradition.

One of the topics of conversation that came up over the three day visit was Portlandia.  Allison brought it up and we talked about the feminist bookstore; Beth had never seen it.  Then the topic of Portlandia came up over at Sadly, No! just yesterday.  So to close out a post that really isn’t going anywhere, other than to wish you and yours a happy 2012, here it is:

There are several other feminist bookstore clips on the youtube, but if you’ve never seen the show, this is a good intro.

Most of you have probably already seen the terrifying photo of Newt with his current trophy wife, Callista, that has been showing up all over the internets.  Tbogg in particular has a thing for this picture, and there have been a lot of theories advanced as to what it most resembles.  I had noted the other day that I was reminded of a bird of prey, then went further and said that if you clapped a felt hat on her head and put her in a pair of lederhosen, you’d have the new poster child for re-launching the “give a hoot, don’t pollute” campaign. 

But last night it hit me; this is what that picture of Callista really brings to mind:

Full credit goes to the mad photoshop skillz of Mr. Jeffraham Prestonian; I had the idea and found the images and even got them sized correctly, but lacked the ability/tools to do freeform cut and pasting.  Kudos to JP for stepping up and doing this thing which really had to be done.

First, the good.  I’ve always loved this one because…Eartha Kitt, what’s not to love?  She went on to play Cat Woman and I have a pet named after her.  This one is kind of the ultimate Christmas gold digger’s anthem and plenty sexually suggestive without being all whiny soul about it, but it retains its charm almost 60 years later:

The following is bad as in “not nice”, but it’s one of my favorite Christmas recordings, one that you don’t hear on the radio these days, probably because we’re all getting old and YOU DAMN KIDS GET OFFA MY LAWN!!!  Anyway, since it’s not a regular radio feature anymore, I looked it up on the youtube, so here it is:

This next one isn’t ugly itself but the song it covers is.  It’s ripping on the worst Christmas song of all time, which I covered in some great detail last year.  I didn’t know this bit existed then, so it’s a relief to know that others hate that song every bit as much as I do:

Trivia about the topic of that last video – they actually made that shitty song into a made-for-TV-movie (I posted a clip of it last year – !Rob Lowe!) and it was the second-highest-rated TV movie of 2002, proving that A Very Brady Christmas‘ ratings coup in 1988 was no fluke and that we are indeed a decadent and dying culture.

Merry Christmas!