Pan's Garden

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Good News?

The whole Kellogg's/Phelps fiasco has spawned new slang.

We're All Pisces, Now!

Screw Christmas and Thanksgiving, we should have a major holiday honoring these newfound "ancestors":

Prehistoric Fish Pioneered Sex
LONDON, Feb 25 (Reuters) - Sex has been a fact of life for at least 380 million years, longer than previously thought.

Sex has been a fact of life for at least 380 million years.Internal fertilisation was widespread among prehistoric fish living on ancient tropical coral reefs in the Devonian period, research published in the journal Nature on Wednesday showed.

The discovery sheds new light on the reproductive history of all jawed vertebrates, including humans.

"It shifts how we think about how reproduction evolved. You're a jawed vertebrate and I'm a jawed vertebrate, so this is our own history," said Zerina Johanson, a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in London.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Throwing Limbaugh Under The Bus

Could we be witnessing the beginning of a new trend? For the good of the country, let's hope so.

Sanford Implies Rush Limbaugh Is An "Idiot"
ThinkProgress flags this line from an interview Real Clear Politics did with Republican Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina in which he calls Rush Limbaugh an idiot, albeit indirectly. Asked for his reaction to the idea that some conservatives, most notably Limbaugh, are hoping that Obama's presidency fails, Sanford replies (bold font is mine):
I don't want him to fail. Anybody who wants him to fail is an idiot, because it means we're all in trouble. But I do think, in that same vein, if you've looked at the pages of history, if you've looked at the pages of economic data that I've looked at over a long period of time -- I've got a masters in business from the University of Virginia, I've worked up in New York in finance -- if you've looked at that kind of stuff and you legitimately think that something ain't going to work, you'd be cheating him and cheating yourself if you didn't lay it out and call an ace an ace in terms of where you're coming from.
Sanford makes the distinction between legitimately believing a plan is not going to work and explaining your reasons why, and just openly rooting for a presidency to fail, as Limbaugh has, no matter what the cost to the nation.

It's too early to tell, of course. But wouldn't it be sweet if Limbaugh went the way of his role model Father Coughlin?

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

For That Porn Star Finish

Stumbled across this page from a men's health site:

Because, you know, we all need a bigger money shot.

Best News Of The Day

Kelloggs is feeling some pain from their inane, venal punishment of Michael Phelps.

Kelloggs Suffers
Good news, everyone! In an admittedly algorithmic-driven survey of positive and negative stories about the company, their handling of the Phelps issue did the brand some damage:
Out of the 5,600 company reputations Vanno monitors, Kellogg ranked ninth before it booted Phelps. Now it's ranked 83. Not even an industry-wide peanut scare inflicted as much damage on the food company's reputation.
The peanut scare was much less toxic for them. One step at a time ...

Anyone else smell an opening for General Foods or Post?

Monday, February 9, 2009

Holy Shit!

I knew this was coming, but still, now that it's here...damn!

1.5 million books in your pocket
One of the great things about an iPhone or Android phone is being able to play Pacman while stuck in line at the post office. Sometimes though, we yearn for something more than just playing games or watching videos.

What if you could also access literature's greatest works, such as Emma and The Jungle Book, right from your phone? Or, some of the more obscure gems such as Mark Twain's hilarious travelogue, Roughing It? Today we are excited to announce the launch of a mobile version of Google Book Search, opening up over 1.5 million … public domain books in the US (and over half a million outside the US) for you to browse while buying your postage.

Wow.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Good Riddance

To bad rubbish. Apparently, someone still cares what our former vice-president has to say about the world. Interview courtesy of Politico.com.

Chioce cut:

Cheney warns of new attacks
Former Vice President Dick Cheney warned that there is a “high probability” that terrorists will attempt a catastrophic nuclear or biological attack in coming years, and said he fears the Obama administration’s policies will make it more likely the attempt will succeed.
…
The choice, he alleged, reflects a naive mindset among the new team in Washington: “The United States needs to be not so much loved as it needs to be respected. Sometimes, that requires us to take actions that generate controversy. I’m not at all sure that that’s what the Obama administration believes.”

Thank god—really thank fucking god, allah, goddess, et al. and all that is right in the universe—that this tool is nowhere near the White House anymore. What a cretinous man.

Well, this is quickly becoming a regular feature. The way things look now, I'll be posting so many Wet Dreams that it may finally dawn on me that it's not a dream at all and that I'm actually having sex. (And, right there for all to see, is the moment when a metaphor gets stretched to its breaking point and twangs in the writer's face.)

Anyway...here's a very good analysis of the rise of the modern conservative era post-WWII and its concomitant 21st-century demise. It's a good, long read. Grab your cuppa and enjoy.

Choice cut:

Conservatism Is Dead
An intellectual autopsy of the movement.
In the tumultuous history of postwar American conservatism, defeats have often contained the seeds of future victory. In 1954, the movement's first national tribune, Senator Joseph McCarthy, was checkmated by the Eisenhower administration and then "condemned" by his Senate colleagues. But the episode, and the passions it aroused, led to the founding of National Review, the movement's first serious political journal. Ten years later, the right's next leader, Barry Goldwater, suffered one of the most lopsided losses in election history. Yet the "draft Goldwater" campaign secured control of the GOP for movement conservatives. In 1976, the insurgent challenge by Goldwater's heir, Ronald Reagan, to incumbent president Gerald Ford was thwarted. But Reagan's crusade positioned him to win the presidency four years later and initiate the conservative "revolution" that remade our politics over the next quarter-century. In each instance, crushing defeat gave the movement new strength and pushed it further along the route to ultimate victory.

Today, the situation is much bleaker. After George W. Bush's two terms, conservatives must reckon with the consequences of a presidency that failed, in large part, because of its fervent commitment to movement ideology: the aggressively unilateralist foreign policy; the blind faith in a deregulated, Wall Street-centric market; the harshly punitive "culture war" waged against liberal "elites." That these precepts should have found their final, hapless defender in John McCain, who had resisted them for most of his long career, only confirms that movement doctrine retains an inflexible and suffocating grip on the GOP.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Wet Dream, X

The Wet Dream continues:

Poll: Republicans Want Party To Be Like Palin
A new Rasmussen poll further demonstrates that the GOP could be in for a long stretch in the wilderness: A majority of GOP voters now say that the party should be more like Sarah Palin.

The numbers: 55% of Republicans say the party should be like Palin, compared to 24% who say they should be like John McCain.

As I've previously noted, poll data like this could indicate that the Republican Party is getting ready to relive the classic cycle of ruling parties who get turned out of power in a landslide: With the party base itself shrunk down, the people who are still around are the most hard-line members, and are really the least fit people to fix the situation.

May they spend countless generations in the wilderness.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Uncut Travesty

Despite his better judgement, some jackass writing in The Daily Beast accedes to circumsizing his newborn son…because his wife is grossed out by uncut cocks. Then he's stupid enough to write about it.

When my wife insisted we circumcise our son, I wondered why the little guy couldn’t just look like me. Then I began to re-evaluate our entire relationship with half the self-esteem and twice the paranoia.

I am an uncircumcised man.

This has never bothered my wife, Nicole. Or so I thought. “It’s like your penis is wearing a turtleneck,” she’d sometimes say, seemingly benignly.
As such, there was never any doubt in my mind that, should my wife and I ever produce a miniature me, he would also go uncircumcised. We would leave his little thing alone. No snip-snip, just like daddy.

Until, that is, the late-September day when we brought our newborn son home from the hospital. It was chilly, and the tightly wrapped baked potato of a boy felt warm in the crook of my arm.

“We’re getting Dalton circumcised,” my wife said as she fastened the potato into his car seat.

“What?” I said. “Since when does he need that?”

“Ever since uncircumcised penises are weird.”

She paused before adding, a little backpedally, “Except yours, of course. Yours is OK.”

This is how I learned my wife’s true feelings about the type of penis I have—by comparing it to our infant son’s. She thinks—has always thought—“OK.” I knew what “OK” meant, of course. “OK” meant weird, just like she’d said.

The author continues to paint a picture of two exceedingly superficial dolts who really had no business breeding. Sadly, their boy has already paid his price for entry into their house.

I tell you, in my perfect world, that couple would be frog marched down to the local mohel for a taste of their own medicine. Both of them.