Reading Virag On MOTR Is Like Seeing Into The Future

It's not just Zathras turning the Serotta company around.  It's important shit, too.  Last year, I talked about how much of a disaster a pick like Paul Ryan would be for Mitt Romney.  "Can you imagine Paul Ryan up there on the big stage being savaged by the Obama campaign?"  Heh, indeedy.  Paul Ryan was brutalized and didn't even deliver his home state.  Around the same time, I was also on about regressive taxation and regressive Republican policies harming the working class and benefitting the top 1%.  A year later, the reactionary douchebags are in attack mode, and our friend Paul Krugman is all over it.  Psychic, I'm telling you, I got a fucking gift.

Political Song for Bob Menendez to Sing

Did Sex Tourist Rush Limbaugh Go On The Trip With Bob Menendez?

The dipshits are all aflutter over Bob Menendez, but I can't help but wonder if it was Rush Limbaugh who may have turned various folks like Menendez onto the hot and sweaty Dominican sex tourism?  Limbaugh is a well-known impotent whore monger and fan of underage foreign boys, so it would be imprudent to not consider the homosexual pervert Limbaugh's role in all this.

Mark Weisbrot On Venezuela And Hugo Chavez, Again

Once again, we have Mark Weisbrot shining a little bit of the light of truth onto the reality of the United States' and the West's relationship with Chavez's Venezuela.  There's nothing god's chosen people hate more than leaders of shitty little countries who do their best to help their poorest citizens instead of enriching multinational oil companies.  Poverty and suffering are lower in Venezuela under Chavez.  How's the poverty and suffering situation in the United States?  Catastrophic unemployment, a growing healthcare crisis, and the Dow at an all-time high.  It's easy to see why the establishment hates men like Chavez.

Headlines From The Future: Gayle Trotter Shot To Death In Her Sleep

How will vile guntard Gayle Trotter meet her end?  Given her particular perversions, there's a decent chance she'll be shot in her sleep by one of her kids.  That would suck.  For her.  Or maybe she'll be shot by her spouse.  Or maybe she'll kill herself with one of her guns.  It's all good.  It's how guntards die.

Political Song for Gayle Trotter to Sing

One Year Ago Today

fuck the komen foundation and no more chris king pink

the komen foundation has joined the ranks of the anti-woman, anti-choice movement-conservative assholes, so fuck them and their stupid pink ribbon.  depriving some of the most vulnerable women in the united states, who need the resources of planned parenthood as their main or sole access to preventive health care, of potentially life-saving screenings because the fools at komen have been highjacked by the backward religious nonsense of some of their newly-hired executives shows that they really care nothing about preventing disease and promoting women's health and care completely about enriching the susan g komen foundation and furthering a hateful and deadly anti-woman agenda. 
this also means that no right-thinking, good-hearted american cyclist should ever buy another chris king product, pink or not, until the king company denounces the disgusting komen foundation and discontinues the pretty and strong donations.  king should either stop making the pink stuff or change the program to give the charitable donations to planned parenthood.  that would be making a real difference in women's lives. 

allen west, coward, again

once again, allen west doesn't stand on principle, and runs away instead of holding his ground.  much like he did after he committed war crimes in iraq and then pussied out and accepted a non-judicial punishment, west is now seeking the succor of fellow teabagger asshole lunatics in his quest for re-election.  a coward is coward for life, obviously.

yahoo news is as dumb as a rock

yahoo's political insight and analysis are laughingly useless.  even fox news wouldn't put up with this garbage.  romney is most likely to pick moby dick chris christie as his veep?  really?  a fat, astoundingly unpopular, thin-skinned blowhard who wouldn't even deliver his own state for mittens is going to be his choice?  jesus, that's genius.  so you would have mitt and moby unable to even win the states where they served as the chief executive.  two governors from the northeast?  yeah, that's great.  good job asshole.

david pennock is fucking moron.  mittens is going to pick tom coburn.  coburn is a christian, while romney is not.  he is southern, sorta, and he is a senator.  marco rubio is too young, too much of a liar, and far too ethnic to appeal to the racist wing of the modern republican party, especially since romney himself is already part of a hated minority.  romney needs: white; christian; conservative; southern; experience; senator, since none of the house members have the stick to play in the big leagues of presidential politics.  (can you imagine eric cantor or paul ryan up there on the big stage being savaged by the obama campaign?)  coburn fits these criteria best.

newt gingrich is not going to be the nominee, and none of the candidates would ever pick rubio.

tom coburn is the next veep, or mittens is a guaranteed loser.  yahoo fucking blows.

Deval Patrick: Affirmative Action For Patronage And Incompetence

Today, Governal Deval Patrick struck a blow for teabagger-style stunt appointments and all-American slimy political patronage when he tapped his former Chief of Staff (and one of his biggest ass-kissers) as the junior Senator from Massachusetts.  Much like Nikki Haley, Patrick appointed an African-American to the Senate, and I'm sure that he had the full approval of President Obama.  Very new, very inexperienced, and very short-term Senator Cowan is not exactly a seasoned political figure with an agenda to do anything other than follow orders from the Governor and quite probably the President.  Barney Frank on the other hand, would not have had to follow anyone's orders and certainly had the legislative experience and understanding of Washington business that could have very easily become problematic for President Obama during one of the President's attempts to further the Republican agenda with regards to Social Security or health care.  The last thing Patrick wanted to do was put the best person into the Senate when he could put a useless surrogate there instead.  The President wins because he gets a compliant and ineffectual black Senator to counteract Senator Token from South Carolina and keeps a brilliant, fairly liberal legislator out of the Senate.  Let's hope that those activist, leftish Democrats out there who care about health care and Social Security and poverty remember this bullshit stunt and do their damnedest to make sure that this scumbag Deval Patrick has his future political aspirations wrecked over it.  

Gomer Pyle Makes The Haters Cry

Favorite son of Mayberry and all-American hero Gomer Pyle Jim Nabors made it legal in Seattle, exercising his gods-given human rights and giving asshole bigots another reason to cry.  Congrats to Mr. Nabors and his partner spouse; they just made America a little bit better.

Trotsky Unbuttoned

One Year Ago Today

who owns yeti cycles?

are they truly independent?  i honestly haven't thought of them seriously in nearly a generation, pretty much since the f.r.o. and yeti ultimate days.  i know they got royally fucked by schwinn and then went through even worse shit in the aftermath of the schwinn debacle, but looking at their site now, i see a few things.  first, they make too many different models.  second, it looks like they have a really big staff.  third, they claim to be an independent company.  that seems quite unlikely to me.  how do they sell enough yeti's to support the company, and where do they sell them?  is it some weird situation where everybody in the states thinks they're shit, but they sell them by the bucketload to places like england, austria, malaysia, and australia as some sort of hip, american, bullshit, boutique, high-end, high-price product?  weird.  i  haven't seen a recent yeti since, well, it was one of the aluminum f.r.o.'s many, many years ago, which i think they still make, and before that it was a brand-new and very cool ultimate.  very weird.  the current 29er on their site looks awful with a cheesy plastic carbon fucking rear end.  that's like so 2001.  it also doesn't look like they do customs.  between that, the goofy 29er and the waayyy too many different suspension frames, i don't see how they're making this work.  i guess nobody asked me.

i'd think about a custom or semi-custom arc or arc 29er if they were available, though, assuming they were really made in colorado somewhere, even if that somewhere isn't durango anymore--and assuming you could get the solid turquoise or turquoise and yellow classic paint.

idiots at work: asshole republicans punishing the 99% with regressive taxation

who wins and who loses if you do away with a state income tax and shift the burden to highly regressive consumption taxes?  the high-income earners?  win.  the trust-fund weasels?  big win.  the 1%?  nothing but win.  nope, as usual it is the lowest income earners, the paycheck-to-paycheck families in the bottom half of the income distribution who lose.  evil and stupid have been on the ascendancy in the united states for two generations, and now evil and stupid are in a position to completely destroy their own way of life along with everyone else's, but because they are evil and stupid, they won't even realize it until they're dead, too.

the further your story is from the truth

the more you need propaganda.  panetta is full of shit.  this has been the party line lie from the united states and the israel for 20 years.  this is all just part of our fun little war with iran.  we want to prep our ignorant population for whatever the beneficent masters decide to do to iran, but anybody who buys that shit deserves exactly what they get.  we like to make enemies out of otherwise helpless nations when they happen to sit on top of our god-given oil and stuff.

Sad Puppets' Gods

Andrew Sullivan & Kirsten Powers: A Couple Of Real Rocket Scientists

If Andrew Sullivan shares Kirsten Powers's loathing of something, I would take that as pretty wonderful endorsement of its virtue.  David Brock is right about delegitimizing Fox News, and if Sullivan seriously believes that a sad sack organization like MSNBC is somehow a Fox for the 'left', he's a fuckhead.  But then again, Sullivan is a fuckhead.  At this point, he's pretty much a litmus test for assholes; if you pay any attention to him, you're an asshole.

(via, but I'm not sure why, exactly.)

George W. Obama Sez: Science Hates America

This is some fucked up shit, and unfortunately, it is not an isolated case.  For all his lofty rhetoric and gratuitous speechifying, Obama has zealously embraced much of the most oppressive--and illegal--policies of the Bush/Cheney administration.  Whether it is drones or extrajudicial murder or indefinite detention or criminalizing science, Obama is a big believer in and protector of our glorious American Empire.

This Is One Of The Best Things On The Internets

Being Inhuman: Jan And Rexella

Sweet Jesus, I caught a clip of Jan Brewer on the tee vee earlier, and all I could see was Rexella Van Impe!  How is it that out of hundreds of millions of people, two of the scariest fucking assholes are apparently defective clones of the dumbest human who ever lived.

One Year Ago Today

knolly delirium

there's no way i'm getting to run off with one of these fuckers for 6 weeks.  i'll be lucky to find one in stock anywhere; that one will no doubt be a medium, so i'll never get a decent impression even if i could take it out on a proper test.  i would feel like a douche spending that kind of money sight unseen.  and the fucking intense geometry is a little more tweaked.  dammit that stupid vpp bullshit pisses me off.  should probably shake the tree for the last nos uzzi slx out there...the knolly has the benefit of not having an offensive model name, though.

if we ignore andrew sullivan, he will go away

andrew sullivan is another one of those attention whores who would certainly just dry up and blow away if only we would ignore him.  he's a fucking dope.  who cares what he says?  charles murray?  health care liar betsy maccaughey?  that's a track record of inanity that defies any reasonable attention.  he's not an intellectual.  he's not a philosopher.  he's just some tory queen that is paid to fling shit around by americans clearly much stupider than the limeys who tossed him to the curb.  fuck him.  stop paying attention and he'll just slink home to bareback mountain.

tom brokaw has a sad

tom brokaw, humungous piece of human debris and every bit the disgusting toady cocksucker that david gregory or brian williams or andrea mitchell is, is all bent because romney used some nbc news footage.  but, if that footage was a public news broadcast, then doesn't romney have the right to use it?  brokaw is just being a douchebag. 

david gregory is a piece of shit

you can never laugh enough at puss-filled cockbag david gregory.  he's one of the true bad guys of the vile american establishment media.  all these assholes are bought and paid for as boot-lickers of the 1% and as far away from the hard-working reporter myth as (in)humanly possible.

serial fornicators for gingrich!

newt picked up the endorsement of the year, profligate pussy hound hermentum!  that's the kind of support that newt really needs.  it'll surely deliver the trollop vote!

Virag's Movie Reviews: Prometheus (2012)

Prometheus is the blueprint for a letdown.  Ridley Scott certainly had all the resources he needed to make his movie, so the idiocy of the enterprise can't be blamed on a lack of time or money.  Clearly, Scott had no fucking clue what his movie was supposed to be about.  Hiring a talentless hack tee vee writer, to rewrite a script penned by an even shittier writer, was probably not a good decision in the long run.  Seriously, he had a script by Jon Spaihts and then hired Damon Lindelof to rewrite it.  What kind of asshole does that?  Lindelof has a long and shameful history of addled, moosecock-level suckitude, and since Scott himself had no idea what the fucking story was supposed to be, that meant two blind dipshits were driving their film right into the fucking lake from the very beginning.  What is the excuse?  Besides the fact that both Scott and Lindelof are both way overrated and obviously not that creative or bright, the film was probably doomed when nobody involved could decide whether it really was an Alien prequel or not, so they went ahead without any sense of goal or clarity.  The whole movie is as dumb as a post.  Whether it's Alien or not, it doesn't make any sense.  How far away is this planet they go to?  It only takes what two, three years to get there?  That ship is traveling really fucking fast, impossibly fast.  Where's the fuel?  It's a small ship, so how does it manage the fuel for that trip?  Would such astounding fast space travel be possible in only 50 or 60 years?  The fact that the film doesn't even consider it tells you that the filmmakers haven't thought anything through.  The evolutionary biology also makes no sense.  When did the Engineers do their work?  Before life evolved on Earth?  If so, the whole DNA plot device, the entire concept of the Engineers being the gods of human creation, is totally asinine.  So far, the basic story has fucked up everything.  The movie was too long and draggy, but they still managed to leave out most of the characterization.  Why exactly are the captain and crew suddenly heroic when they've been passively useless up until that point?  Why would you send a crew out into space who seem to be wildly incompetent?  Wouldn't this have been a great opportunity for a scientist on the future Earth in this movie?  The scientists are dummies, almost like they were the only ones stupid enough to join that chickenshit mission.  Buffoonery by the purported scientists is one of the most glaring atrocities in this flick.  The android is also unbelievably advanced, ridiculously so with the film set only a few decades in the future, but he is clearly capable of running the whole mission himself, so why send people at all, especially ones who are so blindingly ignorant?  This movie just sucked.  The casting was uninspired at best; the decent actors were wasted, and the leads mostly invisible.  Why cast Shotgun Ed as an old man and put makeup on him that would be unintentionally funny even if the character was supposed to be 900 years old.  At least the Alien Vs. Predator folks had the good sense to cast Lance Henriksen in their film; if Ridley Scott was blessed with at least that same amount of sense, Prometheus would have been orders of magnitude more watchable.  Shotgun Ed, no; Lance Henriksen, yes--Weyland should have been Lance Henriksen.  Overall, the plot was unintelligible, and the story was inane.  The only thing that you can be sure of after seeing Prometheus is that Ridley Scott didn't understand Blade Runner either, which is why so many versions of that film existed before it was considered a landmark.  He clearly got lucky once, with a compelling look and dystopic atmosphere of the decaying future and inspired work by his cast, especially Rutger Hauer, making Blade Runner a film better than its director.  This time, though, Scott is not so lucky, and his lack of comprehension turns Prometheus into an expensive, annoying failure, while his paucity of vision dooms Prometheus to insignificance, an opportunity lost, like tears in the rain.

Turning Little Liars Into Heroes And The Zero Dark Thirty Backlash

I heartily endorse the growing backlash against the CIA propaganda film, Zero Dark Thirty.  It gives me a special feeling to see that some leftish folks out there are taking on Hollywood's rock-ribbed establishment conservatism with informed critique and film criticism, by calling out some befuddled apologists, and by unpacking the connection between embedded 'journalists' and imperial atrocities.  The military and the CIA are extremely pleased when their completely one-sided narratives are internalized by writers and film directors who either knowingly or unknowingly further the imperial policies.  When torture and murder are presented as heroic, everyone loses.  It's no accident that the filmmakers were given special access to the CIA and CIA sources; the goal of the agency and the government was to normalize criminal activity for the audience.  You are not going to see any decent writers or directors get that special access.  You have to pledge your fealty and be a sufficiently enthusiastic boot-licker in order to get to make a film like Zero Dark Thirty, and it is awesome to see some of our brothers and sisters pushing back.

David Mamet: Performance Art Or Frothing Insanity?

This ravaging inanity by David Mamet has to be read to be believed.  In fact, I almost don't believe it.  If Mamet did not have a long, ignominious history as a raving neocon lunatic, this column would really be unbelievable.  Mamet is a writer of ever-declining skills and relevance, but he should at least have a passing acquaintance with both reading comprehension and basic history.  Like most guntard assholes, Mamet clearly fails at basic reading comprehension, missing the salient points of the Second Amendment, possibly willfully missing them or possibly missing them because he's a fucking idiot.  And his complete lack of historical context borders on hilarious.  Mamet is a joke, a sad, frowsy joke.

(via)

One Year Ago Today

2012 intense uzzi

i wish i had 6 weeks to test this sled; the vpp thing is so not my bag, but intense has the geometry wicked dialed for me.

virag's movie reviews: hall pass (2011)

why, exactly?  as shown in hall pass, the farrelly brothers formula appears to be about nine minutes of comedy per 100 minutes of movie.  this movie was not outrageous, it was just lame.  there were a few funny bits and some excellent work from the great richard jenkins.  the farrelly brothers are not much without matt dillon, chris elliot, jonathan richman and brett faverah.  the troupe of tee vee actors in this film are pretty much weightless on screen; jason sudeikis has proven now that he's the weak link where ever he bobs up.  the problem with film was not the ugly, it was the stupid.  like bad teacher, the requisite nasty worldview required to make this concept funny was totally missing from the film.

grease bomb

why would the greek government or the greek people put up with this bullshit?  squeezing the greek people to fluff up goldman sachs and a bunch of other european bankers is insane.  greece should tell the krauts and the rest of those fuckers to buzz off and go back to the monetary and tax policy that works best for greece.  

weigle road

a sleek weigle racer would be a nice ride in 2012.  this frame is a beauty, from 1997 apparently. 

Natural Lush

Rivendell All-Rounder

This is a nice Rivendell All-Rounder frame as seen on the Reno Rambler blog.  The All-Rounder frame, along with the later production Atlantis frame, was the best thing Rivendell ever did.  The design was/is pretty  much perfect, far above the XO-1 from Bridgestone, and of course the construction and materials blew away any Japanese production bike.  Unlike the Rivendell road frames, which fell short of being pure, classic road racing style frames, the way the RB-1 was, the All-Rounder and Atlantis designs were probably the best ever for their intended uses.  This particular All-Rounder is nicely done, with a classic color and component choices. 

One Year Ago Today

della santa nervex

too nice. della santa and genuine nervex lugs.  pearl white with red is always welcome.

biddy the clap

so, newt's all over; his diabolical plan for clapping and cheering at the debates didn't work out so well for him last night.  next tuesday should be it for newt and santorum, with ron paul going his own way waiting to see how hard the republican party is gonna kiss his ass.  gingrich was never going to get the nomination, but he thought he might have the mojo to inflate his giant head to macy's parade proportions and rake in even more money from idiots.  newt wasn't worried about ruining romney's campaign or destroying the current republican party establishment, he was only ever gaming the electorate to maximize the revenue stream.  his power was depleted last night when romney skull-fucked him on the stage, so with any luck this will be the last we hear from this scuzzbag for quite a while.

another sherlock moment

ron paul knew?  he knew??  no!  really?  shocking!  since it was a money-making scheme, those ron paul newsletters published whatever horseshit the marks wanted to read.  ignorant racist nonsense?  why not?  i'm sure kindly old doctor paul would have published public-domain italian poetry if he thought his cracker audience would pay.

Virag's Movie Reviews: Total Recall (2012)

Not really a remake, and not really a movie properly based on the original short story, with a screenplay co-written by the writer (and director) of one of the one of the worst movies ever made, Total Recall is an inane, joyless mess that makes the 1990 film look like Dr. Strangelove in comparison.  With a cast chock full of two-dimensional actors--Kate Beckinsale is especially atrocious here, and if possible, worse than usual--saddled with a zero-dimensional script, the film does nothing other than annoy the viewer by forcing them to fondly recall the genius that Ronny Cox, Rachel Ticotin, and the always-watchable Michael Ironside displayed in the original.  Why the fuck would you take the Mars part out?  That was the best thing about the original story.  Nobody associated with this production had the slightest idea what they were doing or what the movie was supposed to be about.  The film has the Canadian-cheapy look to it, like an episode of Stargate SG-1 or Copper.  Except of course, those tee vee shows are at least somewhat entertaining.  Terrible, shitty, loathsome.  Nothing in the film is good: the direction is incompetent; the script is idiotic; the casting's a crime; and the acting is unbearable.  PG-Fucking-13.  For what it's worth, the original film, with an actual actor in the lead, and a refined, PKDian script, could be really awesome.

Planet Palin

Fox News has better idiots to waste Murdoch's money on.  When they decided she wasn't worth a million a year, she decided to go back to Planet Palin, the land of meth heads and hockey bastards. 

Wild Bettie

One Year Ago Today

fisking iran

we need a shitload more robert fisk all over the media in the united states.  as a matter of fact, he'd be better than brian williams on nbc news or that jerkoff on cbs.  perhaps olbermann should give fisk a satellite show on current tv.

fisk makes a useful point not often ever discussed in the united states media that the story of iran, its foreign policy and its nuclear weapons program, is not at all what is commonly portrayed in the popular western establishment media.  if any country deserves to have nulcear weapons--and needs to--it is iran.  the best thing ever for the world, the palestinians, the americans, the israelis, and especially the iranians would be a gaggle of fresh, shiny nukes in tehran that would inoculate them forever against terror attacks and invasion.  nuclear weapons are horrible things; they are terribly polluting and suck up way too much money that should be spent on other things, but if you are a shitty little country under threat from the evil empire because you happen to live on top of the stuff jesus put there for americans, nukes are always a prudent investment.

no shit, sherlock

american tech companies use chinese slave and prison and otherwise exploited labor to maintain huge margins on their products?  really?  who fucking knew?  until today, everybody probably believed that they paid unionized german and swiss craftsmen to build ipads.  i mean, why wouldn't they?  jesus.

of course these companies are fucking scumbags, but it is mostly the fault of the american government and its trade and labor polices.  the question from obama about how we get ipads and macbooks made in america is a good one, but ultimately obama and the government are the only ones who can answer that question.  if obama wants that shit made here, he would need to pursue policies that punished imports from slave-labor sources and rewarded production in the united states and other high-wage, high-quality countries.  taxes, tariffs and other government incentives are very powerful tools.  as it stands now, all of the benefits of government policies go to companies that utilize third-world labor and ship jobs overseas because these companies essentially are the government and rig the welfare state for their own benefit, so it once again obama was full of shit and grandstanding for a cheap soundbite. 

virag's movie reviews: rise of the planet of the apes (2011)

this film was not horrible.  it was completely pointless, and it lacked any drama or surprise, so it was simply a machine to generate money for the studio.  still, it was okay, even if it did play like a mashup of brain candy and the live-action curious george at times.  freida pinto is quite lovely, always a plus in movies.  the biggest thing that rise has going for it is the abysmal tim burton apes film with marky mark and paul giamatti.  talk about a recipe for a spontaneous abortion in an elevator: tim burton, marky mark, paul giamatti, and planet of the apes.  easily one of the worst big-budget studio films ever made, and also tim burton's worst film.  that's saying something.  his only decent film was a peewee herman vehicle.  so, in comparison, rise looks like touch of evil. 

what's the only thing different about obama?

corporatist tool?  yep.  warmonger asshole?  sure.  firmly established happy servant of the 1%?  absolutely.  so what is it that is sooooo different about barack hussein obama that makes the hard-right teabagger assholes hate him so much?  his policies and actions in office are as regressive and dangerous as every president since nixon, so i just can't figure out why they would be so freaked out by his being the president of the united states.  it's fucked up.  why do they treat him with such disrespect and loathing?  we may never know the answer to this question, but tune in again next time for another exciting episode of bullshit or not?

D.C. Circuit And Harry Reid Are On The Same Team

Charles Pierce loses the story when he gets all bent over the reactionary douchebags on the D.C. Circuit Court and their asinine ruling over recess appointments.  Pierce goes all turbo-fluffer to disparage any perfectly reasonable sort who mentions that their isn't all that much difference between the parties in Washington.  I understand his desire and his contention, but a day after the Senate aristocrat Harry Reid--purportedly the most partisan Democrat out there--revealed his true motivations and political proclivities in siding with Republicans over the filibuster, it is especially ludicrous to pretend that Democrats are so very, very importantly different than the reactionary fucktard Republican.  Yes, the D.C. Circuit's ruling was laughable, and the three judges on the panel were especially flagrant idiots appointed by the two worst Presidents in American history, but Democrats in Washington have had opportunity after opportunity to oppose substantively the radical Republican agenda for two generations and have chosen not to do so each time.  Why is that, exactly?

Dipshit Of The Day

Yes, I know it is not nice to make fun of fucking retards, but this ignorant anti-science retard is probably only just as stupid as some of the dopes writing comments on the thing.  I mean, jesus, it is the 21st fucking century, and we are still backward ass shit-flinging monkeys.

One Year Ago Today

over oversized lugs and a sax max max zank

zut alors!  thanks to a tip from jeff, i saw this amazing over-oversized tubed bike on the velocipede salon.  it's a zanconato with the sax max lugs and a straight-bladed max fork!  some folks might not dig that fork, but i think it is just perfect on this frame.  this is a wicked fucking cool bike.  max fork and oos tubes.  awesome.

virag's movie reviews: horrible bosses (2011)

good movie, so much better than any judd apatow-derived piece of shit.  horrible bosses benefited from a nasty, cynical, and subversive outlook so missing from something like bad teacher.  the characters were anti-heroic clowns, and the actors worked well together.  jason bateman has the phlegmatic jerk portrayal down pat; the guy from the tee vee show with danny devito was excellent as well.  you know a movie is at least good if it can overcome the inclusion of both the inexcusable colin farrell and the noxious jennifer aniston.  horrible bosses was not great, but compared to what passes for comedy in american cinema, it was a black-hearted revelation.

custom carbon-ti is hard to do, too, obviously

somewhere along the lines independent fabrication went way off the rails as far as my taste is concerned.  their attempt at a custom carbon road frame looked awful to me, cheap and ill-considered.  now this thing is their newest hot product, a carbon-ti frame that is inelegant at best.  that carbon tube is in exactly the wrong place, and i can already imagine the worst-case failure scenario.  mixed material frames are stupid regardless, but at least a holland exogrid looks cool and not like a piece of garbage.  i'd never buy a mixed material frame; the full ti and full carbon frames are much better in every way, and i don't wanna pick on indyfab.  they were a cool brand once, and for a while there the indyfab hardtail was among the nicest run of the mill handmade frames out there.  i always preferred the more dynamic designs like the eastern woods research, but the indyfab hardtail was everything this abortion is not: simple, straightforward, elegant.  i understand that independent fabrications is no longer that honest, worker-owned company that started in 1995, but i don't know how they think this is a winner.  

Labor Organizing In Canada

This is something else the gods-damned Canadians do better than Americans do.  First, they kick our ass on health care, and standard of living, all that other shit, and now someone has to go and point out that they kick our ass on labor rights, too.  Fuckers.  Blame Canada.

Just How Badly Will A New Star Wars Movie Suck?

Worse than you can probably imagine.  He killed Star Trek and now JJ Abrams will be the worst director to make a Star Wars movie.  At least George Lucas will look much better in comparison, and The Phantom Menace will probably be retconned into a classic.  I guess the best we can hope for is Paul Giamatti in it so it might actually be the worst movie of all time.

Harry Reid And Your One-Party State In Action

Harry Reid did not reform the filibuster.  He failed to change the Senate in order to disrupt right-wing obstruction.  Why?  Because he didn't want to.  Reid was never in favor of diminishing Republican power in the Senate.  Reid is an aristocrat, and his class is more important than the work of government.  It was not Reid and the Democrats against the vile Republican teabaggers, but instead was the Ruling Class and their servants in the Senate against 99% of the American people. 

Very Useful David Sirota On The Bastardization Of American Political Discourse

This is an excellent little rant from David Sirota, very usefully pointing out how the political discourse in the United States has been destroyed by propaganda and ignorance.  If, if, more Americans understood this process, along with the right-wing rhetoric involved, we would be so much better off.

(via.)

Bill O'Reilly: Draft Dodger & Sexist Pig

Watching sexually-abusing creepster and coward Bill O'Reilly wind himself into high dudgeon over women serving in combat is one of the funnier things you can witness on the tee vee.  I mean, O'Reilly couldn't even win a fight against Andrea Mackris, the woman he fantasized about raping in a shower with a middle-eastern sandwich thing, so why does he think women aren't suited to other forms of combat? 

One Year Ago Today

this is not a single speed carbon 29er: knolly free radical

this is a bike so badass they don't even really make it apparently.  the simplicity is alluring, and it makes all that noname chinese plastic garbage cry.

birth control for everyone!

it fine, just fine that the obama folks want to tweak the nutjobs over a non-issue like birth control, and if it gives some of his base a boehner, well that's fine, just fine, too.  a better bet would be to stand up for health care and family planning and women's rights as a matter of principle instead of as cute election year stunt.

state of the union tedium

barack obama, election year, and state of the union is a toxic slurry.  yeah, obama will throw out some faux-populist shit to torment john's boehner and his troglodyte pissboys, and future vice president-elect tom coburn will go on with the tee vee with his idiot compatriot dylan ratigan to talk about how much the 1% are persecuted and how much barack obama is killing america with his hard-right wing philosophy, and misshapen, evil troll hobbit gollum mitch daniels will deliver his glorious visions of a life fully jammed up the colon of the koch brothers and the coors family as an official rebuttal to obama's speech.  all of it is just a bit tiring at this point, though, when we should be blessed with better entertainment from our miserable lying and otherwise useless political class.

fluffers gotta fluff: we don't deserve him

pathetic.  the rock-ribbed idiot class that reinforces the democratic party establishment is a sad fucking sack.  this is the class of people who think they are paying attention, not the willfully ignorant medicare scooter-riding racist teabagger retards, and they are not at all capable of any sort of honest assessment of a president or policy or anything simply because their guy is in the whitehouse.  read the comments on that linked post.  these relentless obama fluffers are a phalanx of idiot warriors blocking the most basic human progress.

virag's movie reviews: bridesmaids (2011)

judd apatow is the jj abrams of comedy.  everything he touches turns to shit.  bridesmaids was simply not funny.  putting fart jokes on the screen with women is just as boring as it is with men.  apatow has never made, or been associated with, a funny movie; apparently he made his name off a lame tee vee rip-off of my so-called life.   only sookie melissa mccarthy had any idea of what comedy was supposed to be about; she took the shit and at least made an honest effort.  rose byrne was her usual self, but the script was as useless for her as for the rest.  the problem with any of the awful sketch 'actors' is that they have no idea how plot or storytelling flows.  they get used to giving assholes like lorne michaels a boehner in 2-minute spurts.  they have no business writing scripts or playing the leads in films, even if they're women.  that's not equality; it's spreading the garbage spewed by adam sandler and will ferrell to the other half of the untalented population. 

virag's movie reviews: the housemaid (2010, south korea)

the housemaid sat itself down on my dvr, and i gave it a shot knowing it would probably be a nice change of pace from lame canadian melodrama.  it is a wonderful, superbly-crafted absurdist black comedy.  the plot is fairly disjointed, but the extremely subtle acting and comic tone make the film fun.  given that it is a sub-titled film, the translation may be a bit less than ideal at times, so you count on the set-pieces to illuminate some of the comedy.  the portrayal of the family is hilarious, and the dialog is almost over the top at times.  even if the motivations are not always well-considered, the last scene is so gloriously funny that it makes you want to watch the film again and again.  plus, the two lead actresses are extraordinarily beautiful, and that's always a benefit as well.  great movie, lots of fun, very funny and keeps you interested to the last laugh.

Chris Kvale 650B Hen's Tooth

Not your average bear, a 650B Chris Kvale conversion.

Hillary Kicks Some Clowns & Will She Run?

Secretary Clinton had some fun fucking with the dummies today when she testified before Congress.  The important question is whether she's going to run in 2016, and I firmly believe that she will only run if something tragic happens with her husband.  I think Bubba was a shitty president, and that is probably enough for me to never support Hillary, but I do think he occasionally makes for dizzying, high-calorie entertainment when he goes after the rock-ribbed teabagger types, so I am in the I-hope-that-weasel-bastard-lives-forever crowd.  He does have the world's finest healthcare (unlike most Americans), and he is vain enough to have himself downloaded into a blow-up sex robot if need be due to failing abilities.  Bill, Former President, Clinton will be hell for candidate Hillary Clinton, though, and if former Pres. Clinton is out and about and doing his thing, I don't think Mrs. Clinton will run because her husband will make her candidacy astoundingly problematic.  If she is the suffering widow of the now-sainted late Mr. Clinton, however, that will change the dynamic, and she may decide that Hillary unbound can run and win. 

Bibi Gets Squeezed

Somebody got Bibi's balls in a salad shooter in yesterday's Israeli election.  Unfortunately, the fascist little creep will still be the PM, but if Netanyahu has to form a coalition with the Centrist party, then perhaps the ultra-religious, loony welfare kings will finally have to actually work if they want to eat.  That would be a fucking hilarious outcome for the scumbag Bibi who has worked with those nutty fundamentalist dirtballs to keep himself in power.  The sooner Israel collapses into civil war, the better for us and the world.  After the idiots are done savaging each other, we can finally have a viable democracy for all the good people in Israel and Palestine.

Good Sheep, Good Shepherd

One Year Ago Today

puke central at the nbc debate

could you ever find three more disgusting village-idiot cocksuckers to puke up on your tee vee channel than david gregory, chuck todd and mrs. alan greenspan andrea mitchell?  as if the vacuous and torpid brian williams was not criminal enough. 

it would have been totally cool with a drone

i'm sure this was obama praying hard to not have this thing be a fucking election-year issue with the lunatic teabagger racist assholes: at the behest of well-known anti-american commie pussy kenyan muslim socialist coward--black!!--barack hussein obama, the marines are stringing up a brave defender of freedom for the mass murder of some disgusting fucking dirt people.  much like a choice for the medal of honor as a prize for some random act of purported heroism in a far larger war, this horrible event was merely a subjective choice for prosecution out of a wide-ranging, illegal war.  with all the torture, murder, drone strikes, invasions, occupations, atrocities, we could prosecute for the next 10.000 years and still not punish every villain in our wars--but start with cheney and bush!  this case was a bad one: american soldiers caught out in a no-win situation where they never should have been who panic and murder a bunch of people.  killing it off with a plea for almost no jail time screams that everybody just wants to make it go away.  that's not really justice, but on the other hand, if he'd been piloting a drone and had fucked up a huge wedding party with a hellfire missile at the orders of the cia, he'd never have been charged with anything.

paul craig roberts is shrill

former dogmatic republican paul craig roberts is losing his shit over the collapse of the last ron paul presidential candidacy ever.  his points are certainly valid.  a strict constitutional constructionist, even a wackjob crank like ron paul, would do loads to undo some of the ongoing damage to the american republic that the has only accelerated under the likes of clinton, bush and obama.  the truth is that from now on, paul and his ideas, good and bad, honorable and reprehensible, will be invisible in the campaign.  he fucked up in iowa, his best chance for a sea-change electoral result, and will most likely be nowhere in the upcoming states with no coverage and no acknowledgement of his campaign or his positions; he will get none of the love in the debates from the moderators who will be hoping for hot newt on mittens action.  it's a two-man clown-car crackup now, mittens and newt.  roberts and his libertarian hopes are pretty much toast now.
update: paul was nothing at the nbc debate.  his very sensible answer about cuba sank like a stone.  it's the mittens and newt show now.  the paul candidacy is, outside of the non-republican libertarians and pot-smoking kids, over. 

(some of) the scum of the earth come out for joe pa

disgusting.  these are the upper middle class twits who give the 99% a bad name.  the only thing that should be said about joe pa is that his best friend was a boy-raper, and the good catholic boy joe pa protected him for 40 fucking years.  nobody gives a flying fuck about football or that shitty school that he ran like his personal fiefdom.  they should burn the pennsyltucky vatican to the ground and take everyone associated with the serial child rape down to the pond and drown them in a burlap bag with the unwanted kittens.  and it's not just places like the serotta forum; watching some of those despicable fuckers get all weepy over that hellbound piece of shit on that cursed campus is enough to make you pray for some divine justice.

Obama's Second Inaugural: Who Cares?

Obama's particular brand of bullshit was never my bag, so I really don't give a flying fuck what he said in his second inaugural speech.  I mean, it's pretty funny that the conservatards took it as a huge 'Fuck You' from the President.  They deserve it; every other phrase out of Obama's mouth should be to tell the conservatives and the Republicans to eat shit.  And it's fine, just fine that he gave a shout out to civil rights and marriage rights.  That's good stuff, and if the Republicans and teabaggers hate it, then it's even better.  But still, whatever the President says, whether in this inaugural speech or any other time, none of it matters very much.  Obama's record of results vs. rhetoric has been dismal; as a sohshalist Mooslim usurper, he has been ineffectual at best.  It's fine, just fine that he gave a speech that gave lots of people a woody, and it's kinda cute that the assholes out there hated it, but Obama has done nothing so far that would lead anyone paying attention to believe that he intends to abandon his rock-ribbed, if somewhat traditional, Conservative agenda in his second term, regardless of how much the teabaggers and whackjobs and guntards bitch and whine.

Roe v. Wade, Still A Big Fucking Deal

40 years later, Roe v. Wade is still a big fucking deal.  Not only is it a big deal for civil rights and not only is a big deal for women's reproductive rights and women's health care, it is a big fucking deal for politics.  The right to health care and the right to access to abortion are big winners all across the country and should be a national issue for all the big D Democrats running for anything in 2014.  This shit is important, to men, to women, to everyone else.  Roe v. Wade has never been weaker than it is today and needs to be bolstered.  And yes, the politics matters; win with women and win big.  Win big and make the laws better for every American.  That's the way it should work; unfortunately, the political will is often absent, and the reactionary idiots are allowed to frame the debate. 

Political Song for Dr. Alan Guttmacher to Sing

Today In The Guntard Shooting Gallery: Texas

If this shit happened in America, it would be a fucking tragedy; in Texas, it's sorta normal guntard dipshit behavior.  What's nuts is that it doesn't even count a mass shooting because of too few victims.  Only in America could you have a minimum on the mass shooting index.  Fuck yeah!  Too stupid, even for Texas.  We are a diseased and disgusting society, and we deserve the all the horrors visited upon us by our own stupidity. 

Harry Reid Is Screwing The Filibuster Pooch

Reid has no desire to really fix the filibuster; he simply wants to do something to appease the Democratic base.  A real filibuster reform would be a bridge too far for almost any Senator, and Harry Reid is not just any Senator.  He's the Majority Leader and as such is far more invested in the aristocracy of the Senate than your average bear Senator.  Reid was never on the right side of this issue, so the American people will continue to be victimized by a dysfunctional government. 

I Spoke To A Girl From Scotland, Who Was Pregnant And Didn't Want To Be

One Year Ago Today

kara thrace and her special destiny

the bbc america reruns of battlestar galactica worm their way onto my dvr, and watching the show two or three at time late at night when i should be doing something more important, i am struck at just how goofy and badly-constructed the whole thing was.  they had some cool episodes during the first couple of seasons, and the military/submarine fetish was fun for a while, but since they started with no fucking idea what they were doing and their leader ronald d. moore was an empty-headed tool, the wheels came off the cart pretty quickly.  the third and fourth seasons were awful, like they had nothing to do with the first two; the final-five cylon plot was easily one of the dumbest ideas ever on cable--and i include sean hannity and eric bolling.  killing the characters of tigh and the chief by making them cylons--an idea so fucking asinine that you have to wonder who exactly decided to let moore and his band of merry jerkoffs anywhere near a basic-cable tv show--pretty much destroyed a show that had gained so much from the excellent work from actors whose only previous jobs had been on canadian soap operas.  it is true that they had painted themselves--in reality were lead by moore and his toadies--into a corner of stupidity by all of the inanities heaped up week after week by moore, and the rest of the staff probably did their best twist themselves silly to clean up his stupid shit, but it was more than hopeless.  they had no idea what to do with many of the main characters, especially lee adama, and none of the interesting ideas were ever fleshed out.  by the time starbuck disappeared and came back without any sort of explanation that made any sense at all, well, they were fucked.  the rest of the series was a sleep-walk and some amazing, joyful scenery-chewing by dean stockwell as the cavils--seriously, why would the 'final five' make a cylon older than they were as a son?  so fucking stupid.  anyway, there was a hope in blood and chrome for some bsg-fun without ronald d. moore and his ideas so vapid and insulting that even tim tebow would say they're dumb, but we will not be saved.  we will be tormented by the insultingly stupid bsg forever, or at least until bryan singer fucks it up on the silver screen. 

over oversized lugs and max on the sax

is this the only free-range sax max-lugged frame out there?  if so, it is a rare beast for many disparate reasons; the internets don't spew up much besides this one.  it's pretty neato though.  a clearcoat thing mighta worked well on this one; the construction on the raw frame is sano, and the orange is great for a late-90's vibe.  i'm not a huge fan of the plastic enve fork on a steel frame, even if some of the illuminati preach that a proper custom steel fork would be overkill in this application.  it looks okay painted on the big frame.  i dig the dropouts, too, even though i usually prefer 1010b's.  i'd like to see some of these frames with the proprietary sachs fork crown and blades.  will these over oversized tubes become the new lugged standard?  bullshit or not? and whatnot.

i bet newt gingrich doen't know one thing about saul alinsky

i want to see one of the tee vee douchebags ask newt gingrich about saul alinsky.  does newt know one thing about him?  two?  who was alinsky?  what did he do in his life?  gingrich says alinsky was unamerican?  why exactly?  provide some details, newt.  was alinsky's life's work unamerican or quintessentially american, newt?  there's no way he could sensibly respond.  i doubt gingrich can even spell alinsky.  it's simply a dog-whistle for assholes as ignorant as he is.  if one of these village idiot blowhards had the brains to actually ask a decent question, the gingrich balloon would pop right then and there. 

your 2012 not quite a saab 9-3

it must drive the saab fanboys nuts that general motors is marketing an opel-derived and parts-sourced not quite 2012 saab 9-3 after letting saab blow up last year.  the regal gs is a decent car, with a couple of very obvious good saab ideas in the powertrain and all the looks of poorly designed and cheaply constructed 9-3.  a couple of rewrites from someone who's not a complete fucking dickwad along with the saab-haldex awd for the right price could make this thing a nice alternative to the nasty kraut cars.

jo pa's last exit strategy

cancer was joe pa's final exit strategy.  watching the tee vee buffoons trying their hardest to polish the shit off the pennsyltucky vatican, you can see the hope that the first lines of history about joe pa will be 'penn state football' and not 'serial child rape enabler'.  fuck them.  paterno was a rock-ribbed traditional conservative and a vile coward of the highest order, and today the only thing we know for sure is that paterno's last terrified thought was a panicky desire that there is not really a hell.