Awesome alternate movie endings

For those of you that haven't seen the proper ending to Star Wars Episode IV yet, I give you this:


Many thanks to Joe for introducing me to this little bit from the show Robot Chicken. I laughed my ass off when I watched it.

And while on the subject, there's actually a website called How It Should Have Ended that's dedicated to this sort of stuff. I definitely recommend the Star Wars (a different Episode IV ending) and Lord of the Rings ones. If I recall correctly, the Superman and Seven ones were also funny.

Thanksgiving -- I feel sick

We had a lot of fun in Pittsburgh, but holy crap did we abuse ourselves! It was an extended weekend of heavy-duty bad eating... four straight nights of drinking in smoke-filled Pittsburgh bars... and then at the very end of this weekend came the bacon buffet:

A little after 12 on Saturday night at Bar Louie, a couple waitresses brought out free platters filled with bacon, eggs, and potatoes and set them up right next to us. So our whole gang started tearing into the bacon. With a Guinness in hand, I probably put down 15+ slices. Absolute gluttony.

I felt so gross all day today. Time to get healthy.

Thanksgiving -- woohoo!

Heading out from work soon to meet Mary and drive up to Pittsburgh. We're going to try an alternate back route, so hopefully traffic will only be moderately aggravating instead of highly infuriating. I can't wait to sleep for 10-12 hours tonight.

Hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving!

Dumbest thing of the week

One more [soon to be failed] attempt on the way to make the one dollar coin work in this country. I've written about this twice before. As proven multiple times already, a one dollar coin is a total waste of time and resources if the government does not actually commit to phasing out the paper one dollar bill.

This whole "let's never drop the paper bill" strategy seems suspicious to me. I just can't think of who would be actively pushing that agenda. But somewhere out there, there must be a very successful lobbying firm that's set on keeping the paper one dollar bill alive.

Our favorite resident at the zoo is heading south

Randle the giraffe is being moved to Florida!

He was definitely my favorite animal at the National Zoo. Most of our visits are when we go for early evening jogs through the park and the zoo. Typically you don't see too many animals while jogging through, but Randle was one we could always count on. We'd always see his friendly face poking around his grass enclosure, reaching up for leaves from overhanging trees as we jogged by.

The story in the Post didn't say anything about his transfer being temporary, however, the story in the Post Express (which I saw someone reading on the Metro this morning) ran under the headline "Zoo's Giraffe Makes a Temporary Fla. Move," so I'm hoping Randle will be back at some point.

Tuesday night Regula blogging



(in honor of Captain Kirk's new game show which debuted tonight on ABC)


VIDEO UPDATE:


scroll ahead to the 55 second mark

What a week!

On Tuesday morning, the Republicans controlled everything. On the Federal level, they held the White House, both houses of Congress, and were a single conservative appointment away from significant control of the Supreme Court. On the state level, they held the majority of governorships and controlled the majority of state legislatures. And then by Wednesday night, it was clear that they had lost it all.

The House... the Senate... the governors' mansions... the state legislatures... any chance of appointing a fifth Scalia-like conservative to the Supreme Court... all gone. The electoral wave broke left just as hard as it did to the right back in 1994. The only thing left standing in its wake? George Bush's failed Presidency, surrounded by a sea of blue for its final two years.

A truly astounding change of fortunes after the Republican party had reached such heights only two years ago. The same party that was able to put a Samuel Alito onto the Supreme Court just ten months ago will now be reduced to begging Joe Lieberman for legislative favors.


As for me, I'm off to Pittsburgh tonight for the weekend. I've got tickets for the Steelers game this weekend, but I'm listing myself as "questionable" for Sunday because of a weather forecast calling for 40s and rain. Normally weather isn't even a consideration for me (I gladly saw a game in the snow last season and a game on a 10 degree night the year before), but I have a nagging cough and cold that has really been kicking my butt for the past week. Hanging out in the chilly rain all day Tuesday for election day stuff certainly proved to be a bad idea, so I'm thinking maybe I should take it easy on Sunday.

Severe Neck Punch Landed to GOP... waiting to determine if we'll be awarded "combo" status

Wow. I went to bed last night thinking there wasn't much of a chance for us to get to 51 in the Senate as we were down late in Virginia and Missouri, but things definitely look better now! Unfortunately, we all saw how drawn out the Virginia recount process was last year with the attorney general's race. The bottom line is that our fingers should be super-duper crossed for both Montana and Virginia!

Regardless, even if we only retook the House, that's SOMETHING. It's been ten years since Clinton won his reelection. In four straight national elections since then, we've had nothing to celebrate. It's just too bad that we had to have the twin spectacles of a bunch of scandalized Republicans and a FUBAR war in Iraq before the American electorate woke up. Not to mention the Federal Katrina response, the NSA spying scandal, Terri Schiavo, the Social Security debacle, the Harriet Miers nomination, etc, etc...   looking back now, I'm almost compelled to think the Republicans and the Bush Administration were actually TRYING to lose this election. I just hope we can do as well in 2008 without so much help from those guys.


And BTW, I just noticed that CNN has Florida-13 (the old Katherine Harris seat) called for Republican Vern Buchanan, but Christine Jennings is actually now within about 370 votes out of 240,000 cast. That's less than two tenths of one percent, so I'm sure that's going to a recount, too.

There's a lot of talk coming out of the Jennings camp about shady undervoted ballots where people voted for everything else but the Congressional race. But after making DCCC phone calls last month to that district for the Jennings campaign, the undervoting actually doesn't come as a surprise to me. Apparently that race was particularly filthy. We'd get people saying things like "They're both disgusting, I can't vote for either one of them!"


UPDATE -- I totally forgot to mention Pennsylvania. After a combined five straight senatorial wins for the Republican party in the state, incumbent Rick Santorum was absolutely destroyed last night.   59 to 41!   The guy got nuked!

Nice work Pennsylvania.

Going Out To Deliver Some Ass-Whoopings Tomorrow

It's time to bring the beatdown to the Republicans. I'll be spending a 15 hour day out in Prince George's County, Maryland doing election protection work for the Maryland Democratic party. Based on past experience doing this, I'm not expecting too much trouble from the election officials or my Republican counterparts... but on the other hand, based on Maryland's recent electoral debacle and the even more recent reports of the Maryland Republican Party's voter suppression efforts for tomorrow, I'm also trying to mentally prepare myself for anything.

The bottom line:   If some GOP fools get in my way, I'll have to go ninja on their asses!

Well, that, or call in to the regional lead attorney to decide what we should do.

Painful Monday in Steelers Nation, Part III

From my post last week:

From my post last week:

So after pissing away another game they had no business losing, the defending champs are on the ropes at 2-4. Should we lose to the lowly Raiders this week, our season would essentially be over before Halloween. They still look like a mostly good team, so I don't expect that to happen. But after six games, I also don't know what to expect.

So after pissing away another game they had no business losing, the defending champs have slumped over the ropes at 2-5. We lost to the lowly Raiders this week, essentially ending our season before Halloween. They still look like a mostly good team, so I can't explain what's happening.

So after pissing away another game they had no business losing, the defending champs have fallen over the ropes and out of the ring at 2-6. We lost a conference game at home to Denver to totally end our season. And yet, somehow they still look like a mostly good team, so it's tough to explain what happened. They're in the top eight in the league in both offense and defense, but none of that matters when you also lead the league with a whopping 24 turnovers through only eight games.

John Kerry Definitely Owes an Apology

... to the Democratic Party

If foot-in-mouth were an element on the periodic table, John Kerry might qualify at the moment as the purest form of the material known to science.

Even if we take him at his word that he simply botched a joke (which I believe), it was still quite foolish. Cracking a joke about Iraq at a public appearance a week before elections is definitely playing with fire. I would liken it to performing experimental brain surgery: you get kudos galore when you do it right, but the slightest screw-up could be disastrous. In other words, leave the high stakes Iraq jokes to the professionals, a.k.a. comedians.

As for the "outrage" from Republican leaders and demands for his apology to our troops in Iraq. Paa-lease. Give me a break! There is simply no way John Kerry meant what he said to be an attack on the intelligence of the troops in Iraq.

First of all, NOBODY in their right mind -- or even their wrong mind -- would pre-plan remarks like that. And even if John Kerry was the raving anti-patriot that some on the right pretend he is, there's still the little problem of his joke being completely illogical if told with the meaning the right wingers are claiming he intended. There hasn't been a military draft in over 30 years, so the students he spoke to are not in danger of becoming draft-eligible should they slack on their studies and flunk out.

If anyone wants to be outraged by a bad joke, I implore you to look no further than the President's own ridiculous stunt at the 2004 Radio and Television Correspondents' dinner and what was quite clearly the worst Iraq joke ever played out in public by a politician. That gag was at least seven zillion times less funny and more inappropriate than what slipped out of Kerry's mouth yesterday.

And talking about outrage, go read Ed Kilgore's excellent post from earlier today. Seriously. It's not long. Give it a read.

Webb for Senate

I hate politics. Everyone who knows me knows I hate politics. But, I have to say that the political ads on tv are VERY effective. It's just a shame that I don't live in Virginia, because I would totally vote for Jim Webb. After all, he said that the Naval Academy is a "horny woman's dream." That's the best line I have ever heard.

Dick Cheney and the Republicans think the Iraqi insurgency has stepped up their attacks specifically to affect our elections...

And I say "So what?"

Sure, it is completely possible that it's true. And some would even say likely. But really, so the hell what? It's as if right wing is poo-pooing these soldiers' deaths and saying "No! They don't count like the regular fatalities. The insurgents aren't playing fair... they're cheating!"

Dick Cheney and the rest are missing the point. What matters isn't whether the insurgents are trying to make headlines. Nobody should care about their motives. The real point is simply that they are still CAPABLE of making headlines with 105 American military deaths in October 2006, making for the fourth deadliest month yet in this three-and-a-half year old war.

I'm not saying this to argue that we need to pull out right now. I don't pretend to know enough about the situation on the ground to have a qualified position. What I am saying is that mere fact that the insurgents are capable of wreaking this sort of havoc and destruction at this seemingly late point in the war is proof in itself that the folks running the war got us into an epic mess which they have all-around, royally fucked up in handling. They're wasting thousands of soldiers' lives, hundreds of billions of our tax dollars, and our country's once-good name.

The Republicans blew it. It's time for the Congressional enablers and supporters of the Bush Administration to go. We need someone else to start turning this thing around.