W Is A Stupidhead

You didn’t think I’d let 2002 end without getting in one more jab at W, didja? Well, someone has done the work for me, although W just makes it so easy. DubyaSpeak.com is a comprehensive archive of W’s unique brand of idiocy. Here’s a selection:

TOP 10 AS SELECTED BY THE EDITOR

10. I’ve been to war. I’ve raised twins. If I had a choice, I’d rather go to war.

9. I am mindful not only of preserving executive powers for myself, but for predecessors as well.

8. You teach a child to read and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.

7. No, I know all the war rhetoric, but it’s all aimed at achieving peace.

6. My mom often used to say, “The trouble with W” – although she didn’t put that to words.

5. In 1994, there were 67 schools in Texas that were rated “exemplorary” according to our own tests.

4. I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe – I believe what I believe is right.

3. Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease.

2. I understand small business growth. I was one.

1. Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.

You know, I make fun of W a lot, and for good reason, but when it comes down to it, somehow he actually got elected. All jokes aside about him looking like a cute little monkey, mispronouncing and creating new words, and wreaking havoc upon both domestic and foreign policy: how the fuck did this moron get elected? It’s been about two years, and I just can’t believe that W is the President of the United States. I didn’t believe it when it happened in 2001, and I guess I still have trouble fathoming the depth of voter ignorance, apathy, or just plain stupidity that allowed him to become the leader of our country. I can only hope that in 2004 the voters will come to their senses and that in the meantime he doesn’t set us on a ruinous path from which we can’t recover.

There, that was cathartic. Too bad nobody actually visits this site to accept the flamebait… 🙂

Knight Rider – The Game

Michael KnightJust when you thought you’d seen the last of David Hasselhoff, he’s back. Knight Rider is being released for the PC and PS2, and it actually looks and sounds pretty cool. It appears that the climax of the game is a “spectacular battle against K.A.R.R. in a real arena,” and the other scenes and pictures shown on the site look pretty well done. Right now it’s only available overseas, but hopefully it’ll make it here soon. If you just can’t wait, you’ll find the PC version at Amazon UK here and the PS2 version here.

Midge, Barbie’s Pregnant Pal

I’m not making this up. “Midge is sold as part of the ‘Happy Family’ set, wearing a tiny wedding ring and a detachable stomach with a curled-up baby inside. Her husband, Alan, and 3-year-old child Ryan are sold separately.” Wal-Mart is pulling the doll from its shelves, although it was supposedly due to customer complaints rather than any store policy. I don’t understand the problem here, although I suppose if it was a detachable wedding ring I can see why Wal-Mart’s typically conservative management would get in a huff.

Herb Ritts

Herb Ritts' MadonnaCelebrity photographer Herb Ritts died last Friday at the age of 50. He was best known for his poignant black and white photography of people, from “pop culture icons to world leaders.” The Museum Of Fine Arts in Boston is currently exhibiting his work, and the MetaFilter discussion or a Google search on his work yield numerous online galleries and links. Ritts saw his photography as art transcending the subject matter; I tend to agree with his assessment and legacy:

Fifty or 60 years from now, if someone sees a portrait of Madonna, they really won’t care that it was Madonna or they won’t know who the hell she was. But it’ll hold up as a portrait of an interesting woman you want to know. You feel her. There’s something coming from it.

Ad-Aware In Limbo Until February

This entry in the Spyware Weekly Newsletter comments on the fact that Ad-Aware has not been updated for some time. I regularly use LavaSoft Ad-Aware to purge my system of spy-/ad-ware, but I had also noticed that there were no updates since late September and found it hard to believe that no new spyware had cropped up since then. This was confirmed to be true after reading the SpyWare Weekly article, although the Ad-Aware forum explains that a new version is due in February. Still, this is too long to be without updates or a new version, so at the suggestion of the article, I downloaded SpyBot Search And Destroy, a free utility similar to Ad-Aware that not only removes spyware, but also gives you the ability to remove keyloggers, dialers, usage tracks, trojans, and hijackers. It’s not as easy to use as Ad-Aware, unfortunately, at least not at first, but it seems to be at least as powerful and is definitely being updated often. I highly recommend running some utility of this kind to clean your system of the programs and add-ons that are installed without your knowledge, even if you only rarely install new programs, and especially if you use P2P clients like Kazaa etc.