Travesty.

With all the things going on in the country and the world, what do you think my biggest problem is today?

Yes, that's right, Revenge of the Sith was nominated for one stinkin' Oscar. Best Makeup. It's up against Cinderella Man and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, so I'm hoping severe burns and a gazillion aliens win out over boxing gashes and chilly English children.

Visual Effects, meanwhile, will go to the big ape movie, Narnia, or King Kong. Oh look, I'm being bitter and witty. Yes, the great visual effect of War of the Worlds was making Tom Cruise seem less robotic.

I think I could sum up everything wrong in the world by saying voters are stupid, but that really wouldn't explain the People's Choice Award that Revenge of the Sith won. I totally voted for that a bunch of times.

Here's a David Hasslehoff video to take the edge off. This video alone should win thirty Oscars.

Travesty.

新年好!

It's the year of the Dog, and Al Stewart has more albums out than I realized.

(For the non-music geeks that don't get WTH I just wrote: Year of The Cat was the first LP I asked for, at the age of two. I have no memory of why I needed that album, but I have it still, and it's a pretty good album, so I'm not ashamed to say I had taste. Not that I'm ashamed of any of my albums. Maybe that Hanson CD wasn't such a smart buy, but that was much later on in life, when I became dotty.)

新年好!

Sometimes, I am struck wordless.

There should be a note about lifting the lid somewhere underneath that target.


A related item on the same site goes beyond the threat of getting coal if you're bad.




This one just makes baby Rudolph cry.



"He sees you when you're pooping," the original lyrics that came from the depths of Haven Gillespie's nightmares.

Sometimes, I am struck wordless.

Coming soon from Toho.

Inspired by recent events in the Sci-Fi Channel series Battlestar Galactica, those wacky Russkies orbiting the planet (don't make me tell you which planet) have decided to dress up a spacesuit with transmitters and throw it out the nearest airlock.

"SuitSat is a Russian brainstorm," explains Frank Bauer of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "Some of our Russian partners in the ISS program, mainly a group led by Sergey Samburov, had an idea: Maybe we can turn old spacesuits into useful satellites." SuitSat is a first test of that idea. Also, vodka positively rules.

As the reportedly empty suit orbits the Earth, it will terrify amatuer astronomers everywhere who have not recieved the latest NASA newsletter. Is the suit merely a ruse to unload the annoying straight-laced geek astronaunt, portrayed by Michael Biehn (The Terminator, The Abyss), or have the plucky group of cosmonauts and astronauts finally met a threat from beyond the galaxy that they could not eat?

"We hope the suit fully burns up in the atmosphere as quickly as possible," an unnamed, rather nervous source was overheard telling a group of men in black suits.

SuitSat, the first public admission of cosmic littering, can be heard by anyone on the ground. "All you need is an antenna (the bigger, the better. Dental fillings don't count), and a radio receiver that you can tune to 145.990 MHz FM," says Bauer. "A police band scanner or a ham radio would work just fine." He encourages students, scouts, teachers and ham radio operators to tune in, but tells dorks with normal radios not to bother.

Bauer expects SuitSat's batteries to last 2 to 4 days. "Although I also believe the Roaming Gnome speaks and travels around of his own free will," he allows. After that, SuitSat--and its mysterious contents--will begin a slow silent spiral into Earth's atmosphere. Weeks or months later, no one knows exactly when, it will become a brilliant fireball over some farm, where the local children will be devoured by the hideous malformed creation that comes spilling from the shielded shoulder plates.

SuitSat is a trademark of those wacky kids at NASA. The terror begins February 3.

Coming soon from Toho.

The most newsworthy news I have.

I should start out by saying that yes, I have been watching American Idol again, and so far, Paris Bennett will win, but I don't want to get into the deep pit of terror that is American Idol right now.

There's something better than Idol on television, and hypocrite that I am, it's on in the timeslot Arrested Development was in, and still, I watch it.

Skating With Celebrities is a kick-ass show. It's a bunch of skaters who I actually have followed the careers of--and in the case of Tai Babylonia, I was once touched by--and they're paired up with celebrities. Celebrities is a really hard word for me to type right now, but I swear, the show is great. Jenni Meno and Todd Bridges (yes, Bridges, not Sand) were kicked off this week, and while it didn't surprise me because he fell, I have so much respect for Jenni Meno for willingly letting a guy who doesn't go around lifting girls on ice lift her on ice. Man.

Scott Hamilton is a better MC than Ryan Seacrest too, so nyah.

It's looking like John Zimmerman and the NFL girl are going to win so far, btw. I am making predictions for every Fox show tonight!

24: Kiefer Sutherland wins.
Prison Break: Gob Bluth shows up to perform illusions at the prison and he konks Wentworth Miller on the head with the jetpack and stabs his dumbass brother (the Prison Break guy, not Buster), then James Lipton shows up and asks everyone what words they like.
Trading Spouses: Marguerite Perrin comes back and swaps with Sharon Osbourne.
Bones: That chick totally finds the bones of Mulder's sister.
The O.C.: Peter Gallagher's eyebrows are shaven off in a tragic, but hilarious, mix-up.
America's Most Wanted: The cop from the Village People gets into trouble for a traffic violation, drug and gun possession, disappears, and accidentally blows his cover by dancing YMCA at a San Mateo baliff's wedding.
That 70's Show: Ashton Kutcher messes with a time machine and cancels himself.

<fangirl>
I totally saw Tai and Randy at the Ice Capades in 1980, and like STOOD near them while people got their autographs. It was so cool.
</fangirl>

The most newsworthy news I have.

From the desk of Diana Williams.

The anchor of the local evening news says some strange things. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and say it's really the person writing the words she says who is completely over-dramatic, but it's Diana Williams who speaks these words, and Diana Williams who I listen to just a little closer than other news anchors for her insights.

We had some bad weather in the Tri-State area. We got away with a few shingles that came from some mysterious place that we can't identify, but other people were not so lucky. A man was killed by a falling tree, and that just plain sucks.

Saying that downed trees transformed the area into a warzone, however, strikes me as excessive. That is what Diana Williams read over a shot of a tree lying prone on a rainy road. The tree was not carrying a weapon, that I saw.

I may be incorrect, but from what I've heard, trees did not walk into the road and detonate themselves. Nor did they gang up on the rooted trees of the Tri-State area, imprison them and take pictures of them with today's paper. There was no tree resistance, where some cooler-headed trees got the hell out of town while they plotted how to get the seriously pissed off and mad trees that wanted to go all kamikaze on people's houses out of power.

We are not living in Isengard...yet.

From the desk of Diana Williams.

Pastimes of the ill and housebound.

It is literally pouring rain. I swear--there's this gutter over the porch that was incorrectly screwed into the porch, and it is known locally as the Mulch Fountain. I charge ten cents for people to stand under it, but I've had no takers yet.

I can't go outside because of the weather, and because I still sound like a cross between Boushh the bounty hunter and Marge Simpson's sister Selma, but there was solace in today's television schedule. Oh yes, something I watch habitually every year since 1992...the U.S. National Figure Skating Championships.

My history as a hater from the word go might make you think I wouldn't be into the magical world of sequins and string arrangements by Metallica cover bands, but there is just so much material in skating coverage. Not so much the skaters, because they do work their asses off to be the best they can--in their heads--and with the exception of twelve medalists, a lot of people bankrupt their families for nothing. But that's not funny.

What's funny is when the ABC coverage starts off playing Release by Sinead O'Connor and the Afro-Celt Sound System. It's a song about a dead guy. Jo Bruce, to be exact. I mean, yes, it's a great song, but as I recall, the ladies weren't all arguing amongst themselves because of the loss of Michelle Kwan. Or was that why ABC played the song? They seemed to be playing a lot of features that made it sound like Michelle Kwan was no longer of this earth, never mind that she'll most likely be given a spot on the Torino Olympic team, but no...Michelle is gone, what will we do?

I know what ABC did. They had the worst coverage ever. If I felt like beating you all over the head with my opinion, I'd be throwing lots of periods and EVAR into that statement. But I swear, the camera work for the first half hour showed me close-ups of parts of Sasha Cohen I really didn't need to see.

Also, because I caught the short program on ESPN only a half-hour earlier, I noticed ABC changed Emily Hughes' music. This wouldn't have mattered at all had the song she really skated to been anything other than Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F. Yes, the one we used to call "Piano Concerto in F...U" back in the day. Oh my, Barney the Dinosaur could skate to that song dressed like Disco Beethoven and I'd love it. ABC replaced Gershwin with the Celtic Death Song. It's not a big deal, but it is the kind of thing that eats at your mind after 7 hours of non-stop skating coverage, much like the damned Ore Ida microwave fries commercial. Share the damn fries with your sister, punk--you've had ten boxes.

It's not even the camera work and music that pissed me off the most, though. Rena Inoue and John Baldwin, although they may not be even passably good--I wouldn't know, I didn't see them--made history. Rena Inoue spun around a whole bunch o'times when John Baldwin threw her, and for some reason, ABC didn't think it was worthy of two seconds of air time. Instead, Katarina Witt and Kurt Browning discussed whether Michelle Kwan should go to the Olympics, and then they analyzed the pitch of the screams coming from an Ice Dancer whose routine was not shown on the broadcast. I shit you not. Why was she screaming? I don't know! She got high marks for something...I don't know what, ABC didn't show me.

Early on in the broadcast, Nan started checking out the football match between her two fleece blankets, the New England Patriots and the Denver Broncos. Phantom of the Opera was also on, and it even surprises me that I like that movie, and I enjoyed it better than heckling skating for a few minutes. The weather had different ideas, however, and knocked the satellite out, leaving us with the skating just long enough that we got transfixed by it again.

I don't generally root for anyone in sports, because that causes them to lose horribly, and I'm expecting Russians to win all of the Olympic skating events this year, but I hope Johnny Weir and Sasha Cohen do well, because they are so pretty. Michelle Kwan (also pretty, but as pretty as Johnny Weir? We may never know) has been put on the team to go to Torino, so the Olympics will give me more of a headache than this competition did. I will, for the third time, say that Michelle must win, or I am never watching skating again. Not that I mind who wins anymore, really. It's like when I found out the Broncos won tonight, I was cool with it, not because I just don't follow football, but because both of Nan's blankets are fluffy.

Pastimes of the ill and housebound.

An insight to the madness.

Four minutes into Battlestar Galactica I had thought, "Not the kittens!" at least thirty times. Oh my. That rotten Admiral Cain.

Off to see Adama get his men, and the kittens.

An insight to the madness.

From the banished shores of Lake Superior....

I saw something on the news in the fog of holiday revelry called the Lake Superior State University 2006 List of Banished Words. It interested me, because the news said the word "banned" instead of banished, and I thought that meant if people on radio say any of these words, they'll have to scramble to the dump button, or people would have to pay fines if one of these words slip out. But no, it's banished, which is better, because the words are now all sent off to a magical land with the bad wizards and villains from Krypton and stuff like that. Banishment is fun, in my mind.

Of these words--only three are really words, the others are all compound nouns and stuff--I think I used only two last year, and in a very sarcastic manner. FEMA, I took in vain several times, but I've done that since The X-Files movie came out, so I was ahead of everyone else. Except other fans of The X-Files, I guess.

The two terms I now apologize for having used last year are "Breaking News," and "Dawg," even if I was, in fact, reporting FBI raids up the street and heckling Randy Jackson at the time. There's no excuse for it, and I regret it most heartily. I will, from now on, use more words and say, "This just in," when something happens, like the old time news guys. I do love that kind of lifestyle, after all. I was always stuffing scrawled notes under my door, so I'd find them and mystery would ensue. But I digress.

What I fear this post is going to end with is me wondering whether or not to watch American Idol again this year. After the complete mental episode of last April, I'm not sure I could face another season of watching bad singers I've become attached to get voted off while other bad singers I don't like as much not only stay on, but get to sing better songs in the following weeks.

The post will not end there, no...it ends with me finding the archives of Banished Words going all the way back to 1976. Awesome, I say, because even if the one-year moratorium on awesome was lifted twenty years ago, I am guilty of even more crimes against language than I was aware, and I'm just going to go on from here, a little wiser, and a little more snobby.

From the banished shores of Lake Superior....

Doing what I do best.

Hey, hey, hey!

Wait, that intro's taken too, isn't it? Anyway, I am currently what those in the medical profession like to call "sick." It's a long tale, interesting to me only because I was around it for most of the time last night, but I plan to not be as sick tomorrow, and will have something to post. We'll see how that goes.

Meanwhile, please enjoy some Bee Gees Rhythm.

Doing what I do best.

New year, new link.

The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny will make you wish an ultimate showdown would happen in your city.

Hope everyone is having a good year so far. I still haven't recovered.

New year, new link.