Teh Medias Score a "Win"

Jan 31, 2008 in snark

(Chris Keane/Reuters)

photo credit: Chris Keane/Reuters

I’m just sad to see him go, but I can’t blame him, since the media never let him have a voice. I think this election will always be tainted by that, in my eyes. John Edwards didn’t lose any primaries. The media just didn’t let anyone know he was there to vote for.

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A-F*@KING-MEN

Sep 03, 2007 in humor, opinion

via Digby, via Perlstein: PUH-RICELESS!

Alex Linder the founder of VNN and the lead organizer of the rally kicked off events by rushing the clowns in a fit of rage, and was promptly arrested by 4 Knoxville police officers who dropped him to the ground when he resisted and dragged him off past the red shiny shoes of the clowns.

And it only gets better from there. My hat’s off to the 100th ARA for their tour de force. Awesome!

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Search Engine Shenanigans IV

Aug 28, 2007 in blogging, humor

Previous Search Engine Shenanigans:

I’m always amused by simple things. In this case, it’s the words being used to find this here little blog thingy. Forthwith:

As has become customary, I am dispensing with the searches on various spellings of Condoleezza Rice, nude or clothed, spelled properly or not. I truly worry about some of you. I am pleased to say, however, that of late, searches on our lovely Madame Secretary from Hell have been down-trending. Searches by photographer name are way up, however, which I always find interesting.

  • assured way to find rockhopper ~ this links SES III, and i am pleased to announce that in a google search, the otherwhirled comes in at an unexpected third. not bad!
  • biguns ~ okay, i quit looking after the fifth page. let’s face it: if you’re on the Intertubes searching for “biguns” and you haven’t had your fill in five or more pages of search results, you seriously need to put down the Mountain Dew and exit your parents’ basement.
  • lovedoll laura soft ~ i thought that said “laura croft” for a minute there, and i was like “SCHWEEET”, but alas….again, however, i feel i should point out that if you’re on the Intertubes searching for “love dolls” and you haven’t had your fill in five or more pages of search results, please immediately shove as many cheetos as possible into every available orifice.
  • sailing takes me away ~ ah, my diabolical plan to hijack one legitimate web search seems to have worked. oooh….and actually, i hijacked three! w00t!
  • Theocratic Law ~ my curiosity petered out after the ninth page, but this obviously goes to my Blog Against Theocracy stuff.
  • diamondbacks logo ~ i’ve never posted one, so that’s kind of weird, but i did long ago snark on a Diamondbacks player, so i assume that’s what comes up for this one….somewhere after the tenth page of search results.
  • perverts are us ~ yeah, well…go figure. they must really be looking for Dr. von Monkerstein. him and those adopted actresses….
  • MANE, SEARCH ENGINES ~ surprisingly, i come up at the top of the second page on this one. better than i would have thought!
  • intelligence is relative ~ w00t! another third-place posting. i wonder if this searcher realizes that relatives are not necessarily intelligent, though?
  • lolcons ~ yeah, i know they annoy some people. they annoy me when overdone as well. that’s why i try not to overdo them. i place fourth here, unless you count the return for the wordpress lolcons tag, at which point i’m numero tres! again!
  • ginzo of tokyo knives ~ oi….vey. fourth? eesh.
  • Men who look crazy ~ Bing! Quit searching for yourself! you know where you are! (you too, Crow!) however, it should be noted that i am apparently number one among men who look crazy! w00-h00!!!
  • ya’ll politics. ~ that’s a good way to put it. third place!
  • ah m ~ i’ll happily take 5th place here behind Dependable Renegade.
  • dementia test, humor ~ i couldn’t find it. whatever.
  • the ironoclast ~ yes, yes our littlest chimperator certainly is! at least i’m on the first page with this one!
  • She was a good ship ~ yeah but could you row her? oddly, i’m numero uno here, too!
  • the other whirled ~ somebody (apparently two people or one person twice) loves me. i’m sure the extra space is just for flavor. naturally, i am number one here, too!

fun, fun, fun. thought i’d throw in the search rankings this time instead of cross-linking posts that i have to go delete all the ping-backs for. so, there you have it: a few things that bring people to the otherwhirled. i don’t know what brings you to the otherwhirled, but thanks for stopping by!

o, by the way, the new domain name has been secured. i would imagine that you can imagine what it’ll be. i’ll hopefully be moving off next week already!

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Bob Allen: The Other White Meat?

Aug 06, 2007 in humor, snark

(Bob Allen: The Other White Meat) Oh, yes I DID go there!


“This was a pretty stocky black guy, and there was nothing but other black guys around in the park,” [Florida State Representative and John McCain presidential campaign co-chairman Bob] Allen, who is white, told police in a taped statement after his arrest. Allen said he feared he “was about to be a statistic” and would have said anything just to get away.

Allen’s talking about having offered a black man (who happens to be a cop) $20 for Allen to give him a blowjob. Because nothing says “Please don’t hurt the grossly overweight whitey” like offering a burly black man $20 and blowjob. Are there any questions as to why the McCain campaign has failed to give anyone but “The Maverick” a hard-on?


from this article by Craig Bailey of the Orlando Sentinel via “Worst. Excuse. Ever” at Crooks and Liars


photo credit: uncited photographer for the Orlando Sentinel

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Reasonable Demands.

Jul 10, 2007 in humor, opinion, politics, snark

(AP Photo/Amy Sancetta) “A bevy of conservative women confronted The Decider In Chief today in Cleveland, demanding that he take immediate control of their uterii and sacrifice their children via additional National Guard deployments to Iraq. ‘And please, Your Worship,’ they pleaded in unison, ‘bomb Iran!’”


…or at least, that’s what he thought they said…

photo credit: AP Photo/Amy Sancetta

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Overwhelming, Temporary, Conditional Remorse

Jun 28, 2007 in humor

(AFP/DDP/Marcus Brandt) “Having recently devoured the foot of an American citizen, this bear was suddenly overcome with an overwhelming sense of of remorse. True to its natural instinct, however, the remorse only lasted as long as the cameras were pointed at him. After the cameras went away, he immediately bit the heads off of three young school children and blamed both Democratic front-runners for starting a rumor about it.”


photo credit: AFP/DDP/Marcus Brandt

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He’s learning!

Jun 18, 2007 in snark

(REUTERS/Yuri Gripas) “In a personal milestone, President Bush remembered to duck his head without being told today as he exited Marine One. His wife Laura was helped off the helicopter immediately afterwards, but still managed to drop a Long Island Iced Tea on the White House lawn.”


photo credit: REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

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Alternative Landing Site Investigated

Jun 17, 2007 in humor, snark

(AFP/Roslan Rahman) “According to military officials, the US Army has not been experimenting with using the sun as an intermediate deployment site. ‘No one ever looks up there, so they’ll never see what we’re doing,’ a military official was not quoted as saying.”


photo credit: AFP/Roslan Rahman

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I always wondered where it came from.

Jun 17, 2007 in humor, opinion, politics, snark

(AFP/Mahmud Hams) “An unidentified worker brings another bag of shit for the Bush administration to shovel out to the media.”


photo credit: AFP/Mahmud Hams

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Oh yeah. It’s an INCREDIBLY LIBERAL MSM. Really.

May 29, 2007 in politics

read this, and tell me it doesn’t make you want to gag. i’ll excerpt a bit below, but go read the whole thing on Crooks and Liars:

I’m going to address this new ruling about the death penalty for pedophiles in another post, but Yahoo News, the AFP and Fanny Carrier need to issue a correction and an apology to Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) immediately. They linked his bio and voting record to a man who has the same name—and is sentenced to death for rape of a minor.

The only man among more than 3,300 prisoners on death row who stands to lose his life under the new law is 42-year-old Patrick Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), who was sentenced to death in Louisiana in 2003 for raping his companion’s eight-year-old daughter.

emphasis is mine, and i didn’t re-cite the links in Amato’s original.

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Photo Misfiled as “Entertainment”

May 17, 2007 in humor, LuvDolls™, snark

(REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi) “This photograph was filed under Yahoo’s ‘Entertainment’ section, but I have yet to find it entertaining. If you find it entertaining, please stop what you’re doing immediately and take a very long vacation.

In related news, sales forecasts for the Rosie O’Donnell Love Doll™ are incredibly bleak.”


photo credit: REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi

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Oh, Thank Goodness!

Apr 16, 2007 in politics, snark

(AFP/File/Yuri Gripas) (AFP/File/Yuri Gripas)


“US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates looks on with surprised pleasure as the main-stream media find yet another excuse to ignore more deaths in Iraq.”

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how sciolism defeats discourse

Apr 07, 2007 in GodNot™

Sit back, grab a beer or a glass of wine, turn the lights down, put on some quiet music, and imagine with me for a moment:

Imagine a world where people of diverse ideas can discuss important topics without burning straw men. . . .a world in which our natural, innate curiosity is shared by adult members of all political and idealogical persuasions. . . .a world in which it is by no means satisfying to glance at a thing—an idea, a principle, a philosophy—and consider it known. . . .a world in which a dismissive attitude towards the things which question one’s sense of normality, emotional security, or even personality, would be a foreign concept.

Imagine a world, in other words, devoid of the vagaries of all those things which have become the hallmarks of neoconservative philosophy: hypocrisy, duplicity, intolerance, sanctimony, deceit, guile, pretense, and sciolism.

Now, take a sip of whatever that is you chose to drink for this, and bear with me, because I’m about to address something that most, if not all, of us participating in this Blog Against Theocracy have been tap-dancing around, to our collective detriment. For in our attempt to be respectful and considerate, we have left this relatively indefensible word, “theocracy”, dangling out there, ripe for the picking. After all, there is, to all perception, no overt movement to set aside the First Amendment, so when we use this word “theocracy”, it is easily dismissible by those invested with a solopsism so self-definitive that they truly do not understand the relevance of differing opinion. And as a result, our mission is undermined at the outset, victim to the sciolistic tendencies of evangelicals, who honestly believe that in cursorily perusing a few posts relating to this endeavor, they understand not only our mission, but our impetus and our history.

And I’m very sorry, but there’s really only one religion in America which attempts to suborn the separation of Church and State instead of confronting it directly. I don’t need to name it. Theirs is a facile stance for argument, you understand, because it inherently makes all counter-arguments reactionary, and our being reactionary is something the more juvenile among them take great pride in pointing out.

Another sip, if you will, because I must beg your patient indulgence in explaining this.

I know that I was very clear, when I announced on Clean Cut Kid, that I would be participating in this endeavor. I said:


I believe that this is an important endeavor to support, and please note the careful wording of the intention behind this movement. We are not anti-religious, or even necessarily predisposed against any particular relgion. [sic, sorry]


So, shortly thereafter, one of South Dakota’s most extreme voices signs on with this as rebuttal. Go ahead, click the link and read the whole thing; it’ll open in another window for you. An excerpt follows.


Oh, they included a description of what it is they’re against. It isn’t any stuff that constitutes a theocracy, but they’re apparently so repulsed even a whiff of Christian beliefs being expressed publicly or informing public policy that they’re calling it “theocracy”:

* religious discrimination (not sure what this means–disparaging those who worship government?)
* end-of-life care (i.e. kill the disabled and infirm at will)
* reproductive health decisions without legal restraint (i.e. kill your baby if it interferes with your sexual fulfillment)
* academic integrity (i.e. vehemently reject anything the Bible says, no matter how much scientific sense it makes, in favor of anything that fits an atheistic worldview, no matter how little sense it makes)
* sound science (i.e. embrace naturalism)
* respect for all families (i.e. whether they’re a family or not, let them call themselves one, because feeling good trumps all facts or truths)
* the right to worship, or not (a right guaranteed and enjoyed by all Americans, unless you are a Christian who wants to express your faith in public)


Did you catch all that in the full post? The dismissiveness, obviously barren of any investigation (let alone concern) whatsoever into whatever it is we’re talking about as “theocracy”? The deliberate rendering of an anti-theocratic stance as anti-Christian. The placating tone of one who not only firmly believes what he believes, but who is palpably unappreciative of the fact that SOMETHING might be going on in the world that could at the very least be construed as sowing the seeds of religious hegemony? And why should he be appreciative of it? If a theocratic state is eventually founded on his principles, then the right thing would obviously have been done. There are many points on which his post could be rebutted, and not the least important of those would be the fact that many of those participating in this endeavor are religious individuals. He’s got digg on his blog, so you can agree or disagree with him on your own accord.

But my point here is not what or how Bob thinks. Far from it, for Bob and everyone else are quite welcome to their own thoughts. Bob is merely an example of how certain people think, or fail to think. I don’t even care that he is a devout Christian, for even more fundamental than that, Bob is a sciolist. That is, one who indulges himself in superficial knowledgability, both to his own detriment, and to ours. A rational discussion on this subject cannot actually be held with sciolists, for they do little but utter rhetoric while pretending such utterance invests them not only with holiness, but with the right to expect all others to subscribe to their belief in what is holy. Sciolists will skim over a dissenting writing, or worse yet, just hear about it, and presume that not only can they rationally refute it, but that they can also argue the dissenting point and play “devil’s advocate”.

It is in this way that our discussion of the imminent theocracy in America is immediately curtailed, for when we talk, or write, or post, we are precluded from effective communication by the very act of intentional, willful, directed ignorance—sciolism, in more succinct terms. And as long as Bob and people like him indulge themselves in this sanctimonious pretense of understanding things which they dismissively ignore and impugn, we will continue to have to operate on the same level as political extremists. And what is most aggravating about that is the fact that working to protect the First Amendment is at least philosophically as centrist as one can be.

Oh, by all means. You need another drink? No worries. I’ll wait for you. Like I said, this will take a while.

Next: the roots of sciolism ~ {these posts are all mirrored at Mock, Paper, Scissors, by the way}

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