just a reminder

from: http://unpretentiouslitcrit.blogspot.com/2009/01/january-20th-2009-redux.html


what today feels like:

zoinks.

how embarrassed is this guy these days?

stephen outdoes jon

the colbert report out-dailyshow's the daily show with this hilarious/fascinating retrospective of bush and the press. i didn't even KNOW about most of these clips! what a personality this president has!

so wait

i just thought of this, but does the election of barack obama mean we'll never see a vietnam veteran in the white house? if so, hella weird, right? that was the war that defined 40 years of american history and, more importantly, much of american presidential politics—but no one who served in it has been elected, and now they're all too old anyway.

my new post story: small but significant!

"Silver Slaps FDIC"

haha, it was originally a good deal longer, but they only had room for the first two paragraphs. but hey—the point was that i now have my first SOLO byline in an ACTUAL major metropolitan newspaper! and the editors said they really liked it and want me to write more, as opposed to just getting information and phoning it into someone back at the offices! huzzah!

blunder-scale

thank god for jason sudeikis—he's all SNL's really got, now that mccain and palin are out of the picture. i mean i love fred armisen with all my heart, but even he knows that he can't do a good obama.



i look forward to bits like this, and to actual real-life joe biden mistakes!

also: found on the internet

not made by me. but appreciated by me.

seriously, a guy named barack hussein obama II.

did anyone else choke up at...

...the sight of jesse jackson with tears streaming down his face and his fingers in his mouth, like a child?

not to mention the scene at NBC election central afterward, when tom brokaw, ann curry, AND chuck todd all had to fight back tears of emotion. only brian williams stayed calm, but that's because he's brian fucking williams.

seriously—tom brokaw.

basically.

"I live in New York. Everyone around me agrees with me."

—J. Stewart, 2008

another post story

i know it's not my regular job anymore (i start at NY1 on friday), but i might still do the occasional new york post story. here's one i did yesterday!

"Mike and Chris Made Threats Over Term Limits: Foes"

enjoy!

hahaha i can NOT make this stuff up

front page of the drudge report as of 11:49pm EDT, october 7, 2008:




also, did anyone else notice that obama was the one who (a) used 9/11 as a talking point, (b) quoted the bible, and (c) said "holocaust" before his opponent did? are we in the bizarro universe??

stories 39 - 44: corruption, tragedy, torture, and abu dhabi

sorry that these posts are getting so infrequent. circumstances make it difficult to make regular posts.

okay, first the big stories:

"New Yorkers Claim Mistreatment at Hands of Chinese" (the pic above is from that story)

"Police Department Will Send Liaison Officer to Abu Dhabi"

"Judge Rejects Dismissing Indictment Against Senator" (a poorly-written headline, not my fault; should read something like "Judge Rejects Effort to Dismiss Indictment Against Senator")

"Pace Student's Death Being Probed as a Homicide" (really tragic; hard to write as a result)


and now, the briefs:

"Window Contractor Falls 12 Stories, Dies"

"Man Arrested in Cab Drivers Robberies"


and that's it for now.

sort of speaks for itself, doesn't it?

politico.com's top 5 stories as of 12:51 p.m. EDT:

story 38: a bigger chinatown story, this time with sheldon silver!

"Chinatown's 'Glorious Flute' Facing an Unusual Primary Challenge"

new york magazine picked it up, too!

spent a lot of time on this one, and they let it run at a big word-count, which is nice. probably my last long-form feature at the sun (i finish up my gig there on thursday). sad!

stories 24 - 28: the whirlwind

so i'm the crime / emergency reporter now, all of a sudden. it's been exhausting, but pretty fruitful. the stories aren't long, but they're intense to do—you're running against the clock and the other papers!

so, here's what i did this week:

"Fumes Shut Down Subway Station"

"Two Injured as More Glass Falls at Bryant Park"

"Shots Fired Into Judge's Home"

"Developer Bruce Ratner Is Honored at Gala" (not technically part of crime / emergency beat, but i did it in addition to all that)

"Fumes Cause Evacuation of West Side Duane Reade"

sheesh! will this city just slow the hell down??

actually, even better context

thanks to this post from user "k8t" over at metafilter.

Georgia and Russia fight over South Ossetia. The Caucasus never seem to settle down. Georgia, a "beacon of democracy" since its Rose Revolution in 2002 (which has seemed to turn into a benevolent dictatorship since), and its northern neighbor, Russia are fighting over South Ossetia. South Ossetia declared itself independent in 1991 although in Soviet times it had been part of Georgia. After an 18-month war that killed 1,000 (of a population of 60,000) between 1990 and 1992, South Ossetia is now propped up by Russia. Its citizens have Russian citizenship as well. In the past week, violence has escalated. Reports vary as to what exactly is going on, but it is certain that people have died and bombing is happening on both sides. Many argue that the timing is intentional, with August being prime holiday time in the Former Soviet Union and the Olympics beginning.

This is a very difficult situation for Georgia as S.O. isn't the only breakaway republic is is dealing with. There is also Abkhazia along the Black Sea coast. Russia has been meddling in these republics for years, and it's not likely Georgia would be inclined to grant them independence, as that would only allow Russia to move its sphere of influence even closer. Georgia's aspirations toward EC and especially NATO membership were also items with which Moscow has not been happy. Finally, the completion of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline has meant that oil can now move from the Caspian oil fields of Azerbaijan without going through Russia. So, it is not entirely surprising that Russia has bombed the Georgian oil port of Poti and also near the pipeline. Any disruptions in this supply chain will only increase the price of oil and enrich Russia even more - another example of how increasing worldwide demand for oil subverts democracy.

I was in Georgia last weekend and everything seemed perfectly fine. It is amazing how quickly things can change.

Background reading:
An excellent Slate piece on South Ossetia from earlier in 2008
Eurasianet coverage
Radio Free Europe coverage
Civil.ge (English language Georgian website - on and offline)
Global Voices Online

things are really, really bad

like, really bad.

don't underestimate the significance of what's going on in the caucasus right now. read the NYT coverage of it after you read that link, to get the context, but basically, here's what you need to know: the kremlin just ordered an invasion of a foreign country. the last time they did that, they invaded afghanistan. and we all know how well that turned out for everyone. not a perfect analogue, of course, but still.

and bernie mac's dead. and john edwards announced his affair. at least no one blew up the olympics yet.

DOLLY CALLS OUT THE HATERS

wow. this report from a dolly parton concert just saved my whole week.

"Poor little Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan," Parton said at her concert
last night at L.A.'s Greek Theatre. "Ain't it awful? If those little girls slept
with as many men as they say in the tabloids, why their little butts would have
more fingerprints than the FBI!"

AND

"People are always asking me in interviews, 'What do you think of foreign
affairs?' I just say, 'I've had a few.' "And the boob jokes were aplenty. "They
say, 'What do you think about global warming?' " Parton said. "I say, 'If my
globes get too warm, I just take my sweater off.' "

AND

She performed a honky-tonked cover of the Fine Young Cannibals' "She
Drives Me Crazy"

as my pal kristina (who found the thing) put it: "all this depressing news all the time, and then dolly parton puts a great spin on it."

the new crop of "those shirts" are in!

as i've said, this blog will not endorse a candidate, nor will it play partisan politics. that said, what the hell is going on at everyone's favorite "screw you, i want you to hate me" apparel superstore, ThoseShirts.com?

i'm not criticizing them for being "conservative" or hating "liberals" (whatever those terms mean in this election cycle). i'm just literally confused as to what some of their newer shirts are going for.

see, back in the day, you had easy ones, like this old chestnut:


okay, makes sense—guns are good, the sixties were bad. message conveyed. mission accomplished.

and you had the more openly partisan ones, like this classic:


now we're talking! sure, it's partisan, but more importantly, it's totally over the top. solid-gold ThoseShirts.com greatness.

but these days, we're getting into kind of a weird area.

first off, you've got these weird, delusional shirts that don't really mean anything. there's not one, but two shirts that endorse reagan for president in '08. here's one:


wait... what? is that supposed to be an attack on the democrats? how would that even work? if anything, the garment comes across as an attack on the republicans, for straying from their roots! since when has there been such nuance at ThoseShirts.com?

then we get into the obama ones, which just don't really make much sense.

first off, we have one that is childish, but not in the tried-and-true ThoseShirts.com brand of childishness. see for yourself:

yeah! fuck B.O.! body odor sucks so fucking hard! oh wait, you meant barack obama. okay. so, uh, fuck him! yeah! he represents... the FBI? or you work for the FBI, and you hate obama? what? where's the "hillary is a communist" rhetoric? you're just going to say "fuck him"? hell, this shirt doesn't even call barack a liberal! and in the brief time it takes for a passer-by to see you and judge your choice of shirt, he or she will be left baffled, thinking you have a mis-printed "FEMALE BODY INSPECTOR" tee. sub-par, at best, ThoseShirts.com.

but this one... uh... well:

um... what? i'm literally in the dark about this one. can someone explain it to me? he's a wimp, just like mickey mouse? i'm sure there's some political reference point here that i'm missing. i'm literally asking for your help. point it out to me.

and, moving away from the election, we get a shirt that is deceptively classical in its form:

okay, so on first glance, you think "alright, a vintage ThoseShirts.com winner! it takes something that liberals hate, something that's totally violent, and says that it's a good thing!" but would you really rather be torturing someone? i mean, brandishing a gun, sure, that's something people will respect you for, and they'll say "you are doing your patriotic duty" (i'm serious). but just saying "i would like to torture someone"—does that really convey a message that you want to send? there's nothing inherently manly or conservative about torture, is there? it has its defenders and detractors, but who says "it's awesome! i want to do it!" and is respected by anyone?

then again, i guess i should expect that last one from the people who brought you this old-school beauty, which still brings a swelling to my bosom:

god bless something.

story nineteen: small contributors

"Number of Small Campaign Contributors Soars"

just a brief on a report that the campaign finance board issued. thought you should know.