Jack Black as Jesus? Win.

"Prop 8 - The Musical" starring Jack Black, John C. Reilly, and many more... from FOD Team, Jack Black, Craig Robinson, John C Reilly, and Rashida Jones

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

"Requiem for a Maverick" by Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone.

Taibbi is easily becoming one of my favorite political writers. Here he takes on why the McCain campaign failed, the slow slide of American politics into nonsense, and whether it can forge a new role and national identity.

Excerpts: Requiem for a Maverick : Rolling Stone:

"The ironic thing is that the destruction of the Republican Party was a two-part process. Their president, George W. Bush, did most of the work by making virtually every mistake possible in his two terms, reducing the mightiest economy on Earth to the status of a beggar-debtor nation like Pakistan or Zambia. This was fucking up on a scale known only to a select few groups in history, your Romanovs, your Habsburgs, maybe the Han Dynasty, which pissed away a golden age of Chinese history by letting eunuchs take over the state. But John McCain and Sarah Palin made their own unique contribution to the disaster by running perhaps the most incompetent presidential campaign in modern times. They compounded a millionfold Bush's legacy of incompetence by soiling both possible Republican ideological strategies going forward: They killed off Bush-style neoconservatism as well as the more traditional fiscal conservatism McCain himself was once known for by trying to fuse both approaches into one gorgeously incoherent ticket. It was like trying to follow the recipes for Texas 10-alarm chili and a three-layer Black Forest chocolate cake in the same pan at the same time...

...McCain entered this election season being the worst thing that anyone can be, in the eyes of the Rove-school Republicans: Different. Independent. His own man. He exited the campaign on his knees, all his dignity gone, having handed the White House to the hated liberals after spending the last months of the race with numb-nuts Sarah Palin on his arm and Karl Rove's cock in his mouth. Even if you wanted to vote for him, you didn't know who you were voting for. The old McCain? The new McCain? Neither? Both?

...We've dumbed this process up so much over the years, in fact, that it had lately become hard to imagine an American presidential election being anything but an embarrassment to the very word "democracy." By 2004, that once-cherished ideal of political freedom and self-governance that millions of young men and women gave their lives to protect as recently as WWII had been reduced to the level of absurdist comedy. You had a millionaire Yalie in an army jacket taking on a millionaire Yalie in a cowboy hat, fighting tooth and nail for the right to be named the man "middle America most wants to have a beer with" by a gang of Ivy League journalists — a group of people whose closest previous exposure to "middle America" was typically either an episode of Cops or a Von Dutch trucker hat they'd bought for $23 at Urban Outfitters.

In short, it was an utterly degrading bourgeois/ruling-class media deception that "ordinary Americans," if they had any brains at all, ought to have been disgusted by to the point of rebellion. But ordinary Americans, alas, would have been perfectly happy to spend the rest of eternity mesmerized by the endless and endlessly condescending I'd Like to Have a Beer With You sideshow..."

Better than many, still screwed up.

From my cell I scent the reeking soul of US justice | Conrad Black - Times Online:

"...US federal prosecutors, almost all of whom would be disbarred for their antics if they were in Britain or Canada, win more than 90% of their cases thanks to the withering of the constitutional guarantees of due process – that is, the grand jury as an assurance against capricious prosecution, no seizure of property without just compensation, access to counsel, an impartial jury, speedy justice and reasonable bail.

...The system is based on the plea bargain: the barefaced exchange of incriminating testimony for immunity or a reduced sentence. It is intimidation and suborned or extorted perjury, an outright rape of any plausible definition of justice.

The US is now a carceral state that imprisons eight to 12 times more people (2.5m) per capita than the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany or Japan. US justice has become a command economy based on the avarice of private prison companies, a gigantic prison service industry and politically influential correctional officers’ unions that agitate for an unlimited increase in the number of prosecutions and the length of sentences. The entire “war on drugs”, by contrast, is a classic illustration of supply-side economics: a trillion taxpayers’ dollars squandered and 1m small fry imprisoned at a cost of $50 billion a year; as supply of and demand for illegal drugs have increased, prices have fallen and product quality has improved..."

The Change We Can Believe In?

Hit & Run > Posse Comitatus Goes Belly Up - Reason Magazine:

"The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.

...I predict that while now couched in terms of the necessity for a ready response to a cataclysmic terrorist attack, within five years there will be calls to use these forces for less urgent matters, such as crowd control at political conventions, natural disaster response, border control, and, inevitably, some components of the drug war (looking for marijuana in the national parks, for example).

Here's hoping Obama scales this back. Or if he doesn't, that, with a Democrat in the White House, the Republicans rediscover the way they once got the heebie-jeebies over this stuff."

Headline of the day - "Reports: Mumbai Attackers Took Coke, LSD, and Steroids; Wore Versace; used GPS and VOIP."

Via the mighty Boing Boing

History doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme.

The Lessons of Prohibition: Repeal Day drives home the folly of the Drug War - Reason Magazine:

"This Friday, Dec. 5, is the 75th anniversary of Repeal Day, the day America repealed its disastrous alcohol prohibition.

Prohibition was the pièce de résistance of the early 20th-century progressives' grand social engineering agenda. It failed, of course. Miserably.

It did reduce overall consumption of alcohol in the U.S., but that reduction came largely among those who consumed alcohol responsibly. The actual harm caused by alcohol abuse was made worse, thanks to the economics of prohibitions.

Black market alcohol was of dubious origin, unregulated by market forces. The price premium that attaches to banned substances made the alcohol that made it to consumers more potent and more dangerous. And, of course, organized crime rose and flourished thanks to the new market created by the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act.

So hospitalizations related to alcohol soared. And so did violent crime. Corruption flourished, as law enforcement officials in charge of enforcing prohibition went on the take, from beat cops all the way up to the office of the United States Attorney General. Even the U.S. Senate had a secret, illegal stash of booze for its members and their staffs.

...There's no question that drug prohibition has been every bit the failure alcohol prohibition was. Nearly 40 years after the CSA passed, we have 400,000 people in prison for nonviolent drug crimes; a domestic police force that often looks and acts like an occupying military force; nearly a trillion dollars spent on enforcement, both here and through aggressive interdiction efforts overseas; and urban areas that can resemble war zones. Yet illicit drugs like cocaine and marijuana are as cheap and abundant as they were in 1970. The street price of both drugs has actually dropped—dramatically—since the government began keeping track in the early 1980s.

...As the drug war has failed, the government merely claims more powers to fight it more aggressively.

Eliot Ness and his colleagues raided supply lines, manufacturing hubs, and warehouses, but alcohol consumption was still legal. You didn't have armed-to-the-teeth cops breaking down the doors of private homes the way they do now for people suspected of consensual drug crimes. During prohibition, doctors could prescribe alcohol as medication. Today, federal SWAT teams storm medical marijuana clinics and terrorize their patients, thanks to the Supreme Court's 2005 decision in Gonzales v. Raich, which allowed the federal government to prevent a dying woman from possessing medical marijuana, solely for her own use, to treat the symptoms of her illnesses, even though the voters of California had determined that she should be left alone.

When he first visited the United States in 1921, Albert Einstein wrote of America's ban on booze: "The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law... For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced."

That's as true today as it was then."

Favorite quote today - "When we let external signals take control of the situation, we make poor choices..."

Ostensibly about fiscal and purchasing choices, I was struck how it applies to everything. Constantly responding to your environment instead of authentically figuring out your insides.

Via The Simple Dollar » Internal and External Signals

Training 233-235/P90X 1-3.

I am totally getting my ass handed to me by a late night informerical workout. I don't feel too bad though, as I think a couple of these workouts would've been tough to keep up with even when I was in shape 10 years ago.

Keep showing up, doing my best, then showing up again.

Nutrition - all 3 days, 2.5L water [need more], 5 meals, assorted coffees/diet sodas

PT - 1 - Chest, back, abs... rough.
2 - Plyo... brutal.
3 - Shoulders and arms, but forgot I was supposed to hit abs as well. Catch up w/that today.

Japan laughs at your weakness.

Overheard in New York | Fast Times at Wednesday One-Liners:

"English teacher: I could be charged with child abuse in some states for teaching grammar in 90-degree weather. (student is silent) I'm not going to hit you.

--Brooklyn Tech"

Political odds and ends...

Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » The New Look of Union Busting:

"In order for the Republicans to get back to their roots so that they may one day get back in power, they are going to have to become “fiscal conservatives” again. Now granted, looking at the history of Republican rule, they have NEVER been fiscal conservatives, as the vast majority of our national debt, to include the largest annual budget deficits, were all brought to you via Republicans. However, there are a lot of idiots like me out there who don’t pay attention, and think Republicans are fiscally responsible. As such, expect the Republicans to spend the next few years simply saying no to any and all spending. What they are hoping is a couple years of them saying no and the Obama administration spending will allow them to rebuild their favorite fantasy- the GOP as prudent defenders of the taxpayer’s money."

Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » Why Obama Won:

"Since there still seems to be some bizarre combination of excuse-making, reality dodging, blame-shifting, and general confusion among the right as to why Obama won, let me lay it out real simple for you:

Two Wars
Dow at 8000 when it was up near 14000 a short bit ago
Our financial industry so screwed up that we are spending trillions to rescue ourselves
At the very least, five trillion in national debt over the last eight years
$500 billion deficit
A deep recession for the last year while all Republicans did was say we are not “officially” in a recession.
Rising unemployment
Stagnant wages
Skyrocketing health care costs
$4 dollar a gallon gasoline

...Republicans lost because they were in charge of the country for the better part of the last decade, and their governance has been an unmitigated disaster. This is not rocket science. You can argue that Democrats should share some of the blame for some of the policies, and you would not get any disagreement from me, but that does not change the fact that the Republicans were in charge, and blew it."

Win.

A good Jean-Claude Van Damme movie?

Apparently. Haven't had one of those since, say, 1996 or so...

JCVD - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

"JCVD is a French meta-action film directed by French-Algerian director Mabrouk El Mechri, and starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as himself, a down-and-out action star whose family and career are crumbling around him as he’s caught in the middle of a bank heist in his hometown of Brussels, Belgium.



The film has garnered El Mechri critical acclaim and was screened at the 2008 Rome Film Festival (L'Altro Cinema) and the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival (Midnight Madness).

...The film establishes Jean-Claude Van Damme, who is playing himself in an alternate reality, as an out of luck actor. He's out of money, his agent can't find him a decent production, and the judge in a custody battle is inclined to give custody of his daughter over to his ex-wife. He returns to his childhood home of Brussels: where he’s still considered a national icon.

When he goes into a post office to arrange a wire transfer to his law firm, he finds himself in the middle of a hostage situation. Due to an unfortunate mistake, the police believe Van Damme is responsible for the crime. As the events are played from different perspectives, Van Damme finds himself acting as a hero to protect the hostages, as well as a negotiator as the presumed perpetrator..."

What I've Read - "The King of Torts" by John Grisham.

Another JET Programme Mid-Year conference bake/book/charity sale pickup. I used to read a buncha the Grisham books, again, usually second hand from my dad. So I picked this one up. [For 100 yen, why not?]

It was... okay, I guess. I'll admit it sucked me in, but honestly I kept reading because it always seemed like it was just on the verge of something really interesting happening. But it never really did. The characters weren't all that likeable, the twists - what there were of them - I kinda saw coming, and I thought the moralizing was kind of heavy handed.

Amazon.com: The King of Torts: John Grisham: Books:

"Set in the cut-throat world of the public defender's office in Washington DC, The King of Torts touches all the usual bases. Grisham's hero this time is an ambitious young lawyer who is handed a case that initially appears to be nothing more than one of the host of crack cocaine killings that plague the capital. But as he digs deeper, the tentacles of a massive conspiracy begin to appear: a conspiracy that has implications for nothing less than the entire justice system itself...(Kirkus UK)"

Man, sucks to be Native American.

Overheard in New York | Moral Of the Story: Next Time Offer Beads:

"Ghetto bum to Asian: Yo man, let me get yo seat.
Asian guy (calmly): Do I look Native American to you? You can't just come and take shit from me.
Bum: Oh, sorry about that! (he asks person next to him and gets a seat)

--2 Train

Overheard by: Seizure"

...and that's the difference between men and women.

When you've got a point, you've got a point.

Overheard Everywhere | When, Really, They Go Together Like a Wink and Smile:

"Loud 40-something: The government wants to cut down on unplanned pregnancy and decrease abortions, but a dozen condoms is as much as a 12-pack of beer? Hello, middle America is not choosing condoms over beer!

Burlington, Vermont"

Sandy?

Overheard in the Office | Bob in Accounting Is Still Limping from the Incident with the Halloween Cookies:

"Cubicle chick #1: They have free sandwiches today? I will be throwing elbows to be the first for that action.
Cubicle chick #2: You really are a delicate flower.

Eden Prairie, Minnesota

Overheard by: nic_bitch"

I'd do this.

Overheard in New York | Then What's That Kit-Kat Jingle About?:

"Child (walking up stairs out of subway station): Can I take a break? Let's take a break here.
Mother: No.
Child: But my legs hurt, I need to take a break.
Mother: There are no breaks in life.

--Lorimer St. L Station"

Of course-"I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo."

Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » Things I Did Not Know:

"The intelligence coup that led to killing abu Musab al-Zarqawi did not come from the torture-based methods that had become almost universal at that time. Instead a renegade unit tried handling suspects with respect, a novel approach recommended by the notable terrorist lovers in Israeli intelligence...

"We turned several hard cases, including some foreign fighters, by using our new techniques. A few of them never abandoned the jihadist cause but still gave up critical information. One actually told me, “I thought you would torture me, and when you didn’t, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That’s why I decided to cooperate.”

[...] I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners..."

Now that's funny.

And the second one makes a good point.

Via riotclitshave and riotclitshave: by eschewv.

On your list of things you don't particularly want to hear...

Overheard in New York | That Was the Night I Became a Man:

"Guy #1: Getting old is not cool, man. I walked in on my mom in the shower once, it was gross...her boobs go down to her fucking knees.
Guy #2: No, they don't.
Guy #1: Yeah, what the fuck do you know?
(pause)
Guy #2: So, remember that party where she got drunk and smoked that salvia?

--14th St"

"...and now you know, the rest of the story."

see more pwn and owned pictures

Training 232/P90X [T-1.]

Week off is officially done tonight/tomorrow AM. Took the P90X Fit Test today to make sure I passed the basic mins to kick off the program tomorrow... and I did. When I finish up the 90 days I'll post up the before/after stats.

This week off has been... odd. Not paying attention to what I ate and drank felt weird. Not working out left me feeling restless. I thought eating whatever I was craving would be cathartic, but honestly, even when I indulged, the food didn't really taste as good as I anticipated/remembered. I think watching what I was eating for the last 3 months reset my taste buds a little bit. None of it really tasted good enough to make me want to keep eating that way past this week. And not prepping my meals meant I found myself hungry at odd times and running to the konbini to pick up lunch. Not watching my water intake led me to drink entirely too much coffee instead of water, and left me feeling tired and dehydrated. [Plus I caught a little bit of a cold this past week as well, which didn't help.]

So really, bottom line, I'm glad this "free" week is over, and I'm glad to be getting back to the routine tomorrow.

P90X wkouts [tomorrow - chest, back and abs.] 5 meals a day. 3L water. Hit it as hard as I can for 90 days, and see what happens.

Tiki Bar TV Trailer - "Forbidden cocktails in a swank pad." Plus, perhaps, the greatest drinking game ever.

I've only shared it with the internets once before [not that it need me]... so here we go again.

Tiki Bar TV is awesome.

Tiki Bar TV Trailer


I'm stone sober and can't keep up with the rules here.

The ultimate drinking game. Tiki Bar TV - Bunnies


Complete rules here - http://leagueofbunnies.blogspot.com/

[I have got to try this game.]

Yeah, you are.

This, otoh, doesn't strike me as too strange, which means I may have stayed in Japan too long. [Teachers marrying former students not really that uncommon here.]



Via PostSecret: Sunday Secrets

Any WHAM! reference will do, really.

Overheard Everywhere | A Valid Alternate Plan.:

"Mother: What time do you need to get up tomorrow?
Teen daughter: 8.30.
Mother: Well, I'm going to be leaving a little before that.
Teen daughter, offhandedly: 'Wake me up/before you go-go.'
Mother: I will kill you.

Aurora, Colorado"

's funny, as I first remember WHAM! from a 6th or 7th grade P.E. class. In hindsight, I think maybe the P.E. teacher fit the stereotype. [You know, of female P.E. teachers?] I remember her being really cool tho'.

Random JET Programme Mid-Year Conference Ruminations...

This past week I had to go to a two day seminar for folks in the Fukuoka/Kitakyushu area on the JET Programme.

Random:

- 2 days at this thing is far too long, with too much padding, too much dead time, and no efficiency whatsoever. The conference is about 2-3 hours of worthwhile material stretched out over 2 days. And yes, I actually did fill out the post-seminar feedback eval, and pretty much said the same thing. So I'm not just whinging. With better planning, it could easily be knocked out in day. Especially if you cut out the workshops by JETs who were clearly coerced into doing a presentation about something they really didn't care about and didn't know that much about.

- while, otoh, I can admire and respect those ALTs filled with both enthusiasm and optimism for improving and changing some things about the ways English is taught in Japan, there gets to be a point where it strikes me as hubristic arrogance. Of, almost, the culturally imperialistic kind. It's that fine line between "Let me help to make this better" and "Let me show you what you're doing wrong in the two years I'm here in your country. Then I'll return to my nation, having fixed yours."

That might be a slight overstatement, but at one point, walking around during lunchtime, I heard this winner of a quote - "Well, if they really understood what education is for, then they'd change things."

And see, in theory, I agree with a lot of the criticisms of the Japanese educational model. It is overly rigid, overly structured, and too reliant on by-the-book memorization and testing skills. And actually learning to speak the English language is hamstrung by a lot of the teaching methodology.

But.

See, the thing is... it's their country. And their system. You are just visiting. You, in your role, are never going to be able to effectively institute systemic educational changes in your role as an ALT. Your place, for lack of a better term, is culturally defined to prevent that.

Again, do I think that's a good thing? No, not really. But it is what it is. And to try and change that, is, like pissing into the wind.

But a lot of that perspective is something I've probably come to over my own 3 and a 1/2 years here. And I've felt for a while that the most effective thing you can do as an ALT is try to make genuine, individual connections with as many students and teachers as you can. That's how you actually make any kind of change, person by person, individual by individual...

But what do I know?

And in the very cool Japan category, coming home from the conference on the 2nd day, the JR train station had put up their Xmas tree, and a bunch of yochien [kindergarten] students were singing Xmas carols in Japanese. Too unbelievably cute for words, and I wish I'd had my camera. Plus they had a Santa Claus give out presents, and some of the yochien kids were apparently the younger sisters and brothers of my elementary school kids, as I saw/played with a bunch of them while waiting on my ride.

But hands down, the best thing of the two day seminar was having to take the train out to Sasaguri both mornings. Why, you ask? Because both going to and coming from, I ran into a bunch of my former JR HS kids, on their way to [and coming home from] high school. And to a person they were all tickled and delighted that not only did I remember them, but that I'd come over and say "hi."

Even with my paltry Japanese, I can't even express how gratifying it was to hear one girl talk with her friend [in Japanese] after I'd briefly visited with them - "Hey, he really remembered us! That was cool! Yeah!"

Just spending a few moments to say "Hi. Long time no see! What high school are you at? Do you like it? Is it hard? How have you been?" and letting them know that YES, OF COURSE I remember you. And you mattered to me. And it was really good to have known you. THAT's the JET Programme, I think. Really. Not the whole English teaching part. [Though that's good too.]

"Naval Academy- This is Home."

Must be feeling kind of nostalgic this morning, as this was pretty cool.

montage of Navy photos set to switchfoot's "this is home"


The irony, of course, and not lost on me at all, is that while I was the Academy, it felt pretty far from "home." But then, most places did. And while "where you're from" doesn't change, I did stop thinking of Jacksonville - where I grew up - as "home" pretty much from the time I left for college. The added bit, obviously, is that the military mindset/culture treats "where you're stationed" as far different than "your home." It took me a few years to come to my own conclusion that "home," like most things, is only a state of mind, and that "home" really is wherever it is you're at. If you can't be at home wherever you are, what you feel for some other place is just a finely tuned sense of longing and nostalgia for someplace and something that probably never was quite what you think it may have been.

Still, good video. Tugs at all the right heart strings.

"...who, in one fell swoop, cast serious doubt on the practice of field drug testing, expose the lies of commercial soap producers..." [And more!]

Too funny.

Conscious Choice: Dr. Bronner’s Magic Media Soap Opera:

"Another film — this one hitting the small screen...

Entitled Soap, Drugs & Rock and Roll the seven-minute short is an original and effective use of the media as a PR tool — with our heroes the unassuming soap makers who, in one fell swoop, cast serious doubt on the practice of field drug testing, expose the lies of commercial soap producers, advocate for organic products and educate the viewer on yet another layer of our culture’s dependency on oil.

The circumstances laying the grounds for the story have already become the stuff of legend:

On the night of April 4, Don Bolles, eccentric 51-year-old drummer for punk outfit The Germs, was driving through über-conservative Newport Beach, Calif. on his way to an AA meeting when his tricked-out van was pulled over, allegedly for a broken taillight. Bolles gave consent to search the van, and the presiding officer found a bag of legal medical marijuana sitting next to a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s soap. For some reason (perhaps because the bottle was clearly labeled as hemp soap) the officer decided to apply a NarcoPouch® 928 field test to the soap to assess it for drug content. The test came back positive for GHB, and Bolles was arrested and taken into custody.

Upon hearing this, the Dr. Bronner’s company immediately paid Bolles’ bail and legal fees, and stepped up to defend their brand publicly. David Bronner appeared before California media denouncing the charges as “totally absurd,” and suggesting that Bolles was pulled over for the offense of “driving while weird.” They then ordered the same NarcoPouch® 928 test and began testing their soap products. What they found was astounding

“It was a gift that fell out of the sky,” Bronner says with a measure of incredulity. “We saw a golden opportunity to address greenwashing in our industry head on.”

The “gift” to which Bronner is referring was the discovery that his — and in fact any natural organic soap — will always test positive for GHB using the NarcoPouch® 928 or other similar field drug tests, which makes the false-positive a good indicator of real organic vegetable oil-based “castile” soap. What the Bronners then learned, in another seemingly pre-ordained twist, was that commercial “liquid soap” products made by companies like Dial, Softsoap, Kiss My Face, EO and Nature’s Gate, all tested negative for GHB, indicating that they contained no real soap in the recipe. In voiceover, David Bronner then explains that the “soap” in these products is really a collection of petrochemical detergents.

Thus, the NarcoPouch® 928 is outted as a lousy drug test, but a really great soap test.



“It’s not the most glamorous battle we’re fighting, but it’s our backyard,” adds the tall, quiet and unassuming David Bronner. “Our grandfather was a radical, and we’re just trying to keep pace with the standards he set. He used to quote Hillel: If not now, when ? Well, we have enough strength and visibility to speak to these issues and change them in the long run. We just call things as we see it, and in this case, we saw injustice, and we came in to clean it up (no pun intended).”

“Yeah, you can use our soaps for pretty much everything,” Mike Bronner adds, “except getting high.”"