Non-survival of the dumbest for example.

Drivers and front-seat passengers in Florida may be cited for not wearing seat belts when a new law takes effect on June 30. Known as a “primary” seat belt law, the law allows enforcement officers to pull vehicles over solely for a belt violation

Sounds reasonable enough, right?

Signed into law by Gov. Charlie Crist earlier this week, the legislation makes Florida eligible for up to $35 million in federal grant money created in 2005 as an incentive for states to establish seat belt laws.

Thanks for holding firm to the principals of conservatism there Chuck. It’s my pleasure to pay federal income taxes and see them spent in Florida to incent some dufus to wear his seat belt.

Yes, this protest  is unpatriotic, and it does make you less an American.

Glad we could clear that up.

Reading Minnesota Progressive Project is like going to a Joaquin Phoenix concert; you don’t really care for the stuff, and you don’t want to go for the event’s own sake, but you just know  you’re going to see a train wreck.  (Sort of like Al Franken’s first press conference, if heaven forfend he gets seated in the Senate).

And so I occasionally gulp down a glass of water (on an empty stomach only) and pop open their container in GoogleReader, and see what wonders the new day brings.

Ah.  Yesterday it was Grace “9/11 was an inside job!” Kelly, in a piece that started – mirabile dictu – fairly innocuously, discussing (very briefly) the large number of refugees who’ve come to the Twin Cities over the decades (discussing Somalis and Tibetans but missing the Vietnamese and H’mong, who fled the oppression of the far left to get here – but no matter. I wouldn’t expect Kelly to get  sense of history anytime soon; let it go).

But then:

I think we have to rethink our “terrorism” label. Certainly the American Revolution would have been considered a criminal violent insurgency against the established order of English rule of the colonies. Gasp – the American Revolution advocated violence! Gasp – a criminal violent insurgency today would be called “terrorism”.

I could feel my jaw dropping in dazed wonder. It’s the old “The founding fathers were terrorists” bit.  There are still lefties who use that old bit of self-pleasuring historical illiteracy.

Onward:

So when can people advocate violence and not be labeled terrorists?

For some of us, that’s fairly simple: when terror isn’t the primary, or only, means of achieving a social or political goal.  Saying “this land is ours, go away”, and taking up arms and fighting those who try to take the land back, is not terrorism.  Kidnapping your occupiers and sending body parts back to their families with notes demanding independence is terrorism.

Publishing a declaration of independence,and defending that independence, is not terrorism.  Setting off nail bombs in Boston or New York [*] to indiscriminately kill soldiers, Tories and innocent bystandards and cow the British into leaving – that would have been terrorism.

Is it just a case of my violence is good, your violence is bad? Is the US making the moral violence judgments for whole rest of the world? I would say “yes”. My, how imperialistic of us, particularly in light of principles of American revolution.

One wonders if Grace “9/11 was an inside job” Kelly knows what the “principles of the American Revolution” were.

Defining what liberty was, and how the individual related to government in a free society?  Recognizing inalienable rights?  Establishing a democratic republic? Enshrining free press, worship, assembly, speech, jury trials, due process and enumerated powers?
I’m guessing that’s not what she has ever thought was thinking of.

…another promising career….sacrificed in the name of Hopey Changey^®.

In case you haven’t heard (because its so relevant to the average American) Kal Penn’s character, Dr.  Lawrence Kutner offed himself on last night’s “Can’t! Miss!!!^®” episode of House, M.D., and they are making an insipid attempt to make it “real” with a tribute video and memorial web site.

The next day (he should have waited three, maybe?) he is resurrected.

Actor and longtime Obama supporter Kal Penn is joining the Obama administration, the White House confirmed to CNN Tuesday.

What’s he going to be doing, what with all the qualifications he now possesses, having not been a doctor but playing one on TV?

The actor will be part of the White House Office of Public Liaison, which is run by Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. Penn will be primarily involved in dealing with Asian American and Pacific Islander communities and the arts community.

Come again? So he’ll be liaising (yes, its now a word) with Obama and his peeps.

Not what you’d call a lateral move.

Guaranteed…had it not been an April Fool’s Joke.

Obama Changes NASCAR by Ordering GM and Chrysler Out

The list (click above) of those outlets that fell for it is pretty interesting…and bi-partisan.

Touche’ Car and Driver!

…then again…who can blame them for falling for it…anything goes in this administration.

Do I have to go the Post Office for warranty repairs on my Suburban now?

Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the fine.

Michael Harold Lynch was ticketed for doing 54 mph in a 35 mph area that was also a construction zone. The fine was $206.

And when you pay it, don’t spray it.

Lynch decided to let his anger flow by placing $206 in a plastic bag, peeing in the bag and sending it in. Upon receiving Lynch’s little care package, the courthouse staff gave it to a police officer and declined to accept the pungent payment to clear the ticket.

Turns out Lynch didn’t break any laws – it’s not necessarily illegal to mail bodily fluids.

Oh? Good to know.

The pee-and-pennies were sent back to Lynch – COD, in fact – with a note that said they couldn’t be taken because “the pile of coins emitted a strong, pungent odor of stale urine.”

Fresh urine: is that an oxymoron?

Lynch responded by sending a check made out to another agency, which was returned, then he sent a check for the wrong amount. Now he’s on the hook for $271 because his payment is late.

Nope, just a moron.

You know who you are.

I’m not a Michele Bachmann “apologist”.

I’m a “supporter”. 

There’s a difference.

That is all.

…and, of course, apropos nothing; when one writes that one has “pwn3ed” someone “again”, it implies that one has “pwn3ed” that person in the first place, ever.

If that’s not in evidence, then the whole statement is rather silly.

Unless I’m falling behind on my just-behind-the-curve pseudo-hipster lingo, and “pwn3ed” now means “made that person think I was a gabbling cretin”.  Then you’d be accurate.

Again, apropos nothing.

That is all.

…I look at it this way; even if the party is a complete flop, there’s no way it could possibly in a billion years sound more depressing than this.

Just…no.

With Nancy Pelosi now firmly esconced in power over these United States, it’s really only a matter of time until Americans will have to confront the notion of civil liberties, European-style; i.e., having them doled out to us by authorities who know best.

Which is bad enough. 

And then you add in “some of those who “know best” really are insane”, and…

…well, you know where I’m going with that.

All by way of introducing a German pol’s novel proposal for raising revenue; building a database of dog doo:

A German lawmaker proposed on Monday a novel and high-tech way of dealing with the menace of dog poo on the streets: DNA testing to identify the canine culprit and fine its owner. Peter Stein, a conservative politician in eastern Germany, told AFP that under his proposal, officials would test the excrement and then match it up to the offending dog using a DNA database of all pooches.German dog owners are fined 30-40 euros (40-50 dollars) if they fail to clean up after their pets, but very few are caught, with only four fines given out in Stein’s hometown of Rostock — human population 200,000 — last year.

“Just saying ‘it wasn’t my dog’ will not wash any more,” Stein said.

On the one hand; I suppose it is one of those things that’d be “reserved to the States” under the Tenth Amendment, technically.  I’ll wait for the SCOTUS case on the subject.

On the other hand – ew.

And on the third hand, five’ll get you ten that maintaining the database will be another of those jobs that “you can’t pay Americans to do”. 

It doesn’t really make any difference to me that Barack Obama won the election.  Oh, it does mean that I gotta get down to business selling an alternative vision for 2010, but that’s just politics.

I’m still an American.

For that matter, had Socialist Gloria La Riva or wackjob Cyn McKinney won, I’d still be an American.  A disappointed and (to say the least) very politically motivated one, but an American nonetheless.

With that in mind, I’m going to depart from my traditional genial civility to say – and I say this with all due respect – every single person on  this website can eat sh*t and die a painful death.

That is all.

 Oh, who am I kidding.  No, it’s not.

I mean, weren’t these the same self-adoring nutslaps who got the vapors everytime they felt someone was “questioning their patriotism?”

I guess I’m not just writing this to be snarky or mean. Sitting as I am on the “out of power” side of things, I’m pondering the road back.  And I listen to stories like this woman, Rachel Zucker, whom I heard on American Public Media’s “The Story”.   The woman – an “artist”, a poet in this case – has lived her entire life in a society that has enough surplus wealth to afford her the opportunity to be an “artist”, rather than a farmer or a filth-shoveler or a prostitute.

And yet she had the gall to go on “The Story” and say that the Bush years “filled me witha profound sense of disenfranchisement”.  Actually, you should listen to the whole piece; the “Listen” button is at the bottom of the page.  It’s clogged with cringe-worthy moment, the kinds of thing I’d hope Ms. Zucker will find embarassing someday, but somehow doubt it’ll happen.

We try to share a country with these crybabies.

UPDATE:  OK, not everyone can undertake what I suggested; there are more than a few hoax signatures.  Including mine. 

…that claims to be led by, and composed of, “smart” people, you have to admire the Liberal movement for making room for so many of the not-so-bright-American community.

Barack Obama’s election hasn’t eased the fever dreams of his most deranged supporters.

Grace Kelly, 9/11 Truther, writing at “The Heartbreak of Spirochaetal Paresis” “Minnesota Progressive Project”, took a moment to publicize a black hole of vacuity.

Oops – I missed it.  Bummer:

Sometimes truth can only be found by looking at history. This Sunday the Critical Thinking Club, St. Paul Chapter, is looking at 9/11. Everyone is invited and the cost is $3 or $10. Here are the details:

Location: Kelly Inn, Rice Street and I-94

Date: February 8, 2009

Gosh.  Go to church and have a day, or spend a gorgeous morning stuck in a room with a bunch of – I normally hesitate to talk this way on this blog, trying as I do to maintain a modicum of comity and respect – gabbling idiots who are drooling over their BDS-spawned fever dreams?

A time for choosing indeed.

“Grace” babbles onward:

Now those of you who still believe that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that we were not lied into the Iraq war. you are probably not emotionally ready to consider that many elements of 9/11 are a lie. For me, it comes down to why the third building WTC 7 collapsed, as fast as a falling rock, very cleanly into its own footprint, when it had been hit by NO plane and had very little damage, especially compared to nearby buildings? For those who like mysteries and mind puzzles, this is one of the best. If you have never questioned what happened at 911, you might start here or do your own research.

Or just do like Kelly does, and mindlessly drone on and on like a hypnotized chimpanzee about the twaddle she’s gotten from her fellow deranged simpletons.

She’s been corrected before, of course, several times.  You be the judge.

The real tragedy?  Her vote counts the same as yours.

Spend the next 22 months remembering that.

It’s a short step from this to, well, Duckspeak:

What’s Dusty Trice been doing since he stopped working for Al Franken’s campaign? Trying to teach his pit bull, Zoey, to say “Obama.”

The scary part?  The dog doesn’t understand much less about Obama’s experience or agenda than an awful lot of the President’s supporters do…

I usually try to keep my criticisms of lefties, and leftism, substantive and fact-based.

Being human, I occasionally resort to sarcasm, humor and snark.  And you know it’s part of the reason you come here, so don’t try and get cute about it.

Sometimes, the best I can manage is a point-by-point fisking.

But in almost seven years of blogging, this is the first time I’ve had to sit back, scratch my eyes, re-read something, and decide that simply presenting the offending material in its full, dim, foul glory is all the criticism that material needs.

And so I present Grace Kelly – local 9/11 Truther and cog in the local DFL machine.  Her particularly wide-eyed, fabulist brand of jackboot-with-a-smile liberalism has turned up on this blog a few times in the past.

But she’s outdone herself this time.  She has summed up the collective id of the Democrat base in this country, in much the same way Rain Man summed up the cards in the casino, and presented it to the world in the form of a poem.

Lead Us President Barack Obama

At a time of darkness, the light appears
– that light is President Barack Obama.

At a time when knowledge, skill and science was disdained, a champion of knowledge, skill and science has stepped forward
– that champion is President Barack Obama.

At a time when it seemed that only corporations and the rich were represented, a representative of people appeared
– that representative is President Barack Obama.

At a time of torture, a leader of morality appears
– that leader is President Barack Obama.

At a time when the world no longer respects us as country, a reason for respect appears
– that reason is President Barack Obama.

At a time of too many wars and too much violence, we look for the wisdom of peace and diplomacy,
– that wisdom is President Barack Obama.

At a time of great economic crisis, a president who leads comes,

lead us President Barack Obama, speak for us,
lay out your plan of action,

And we the people will say
YES. WE. CAN!

I’ve been staring at this for ten minutes.

Have at it, all.  I’ve got everything…and yet nothing.

UPDATE: An emailer sends:

At a time with no flushable toilets

a man invented such a toilet

And that man was Thomas Crapper

UPDATE 2: Another emailer:

At at time when freshness eluded us
a man made freshness attainable.
And that man was Irving Douchebag.

Keep ’em coming!

UPDATE 3: The hits keep coming

At a time when bands’ names were lame, and balloons were merely toys
A man came a long and fixed both.
And that man was Count Von Zeppelin.

More!  More!

I think I’m going to be sick (again).

This just popped (or pooped-right AC?) into my Yahoo mail.

“wake up and unlock your own personal happiness in 2009”

All you gotta do is listen to Oprah on XM.

You first.

…Kathy Griffin wasn’t this dumb:

“I said Israel will attack any boat carrying doctors and medical supplies,” Barr wrote on her blog, adding that, “Israel is a NAZI state. The Jewish Soul is being tortured in Israel.”[Roseanne Barr], who has courted controversy in the past, also condemned Israel’s counter-terror operation against Hamas, asserting that, “The destruction of the Jews in Israel has been assured with this inhuman attack on civilians in Gaza.

Am I the only one that finds it depressing that Roseanne Barr can still get headlines?

(Via Repurblican)

The United States of America is coming to an end in 2010 which presents an enormous opportunity.

MOSCOW — For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument — that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S.

A polite and cheerful man with a buzz cut, Mr. Panarin insists he does not dislike Americans. But he warns that the outlook for them is dire.

Bummer for sure, but 2010 is when I am going to make all of my electronics and furniture purchases and put them all on “Two Years Interest Free” financing. Just as they come due:

Thousands Worldwide Prepare for the Apocalypse, Expected in 2012

You have to understand, there will be nothing, nothing left,” Geryl told ABC News from his home in Antwerp, Belgium. “We will have to start an entire civilization from scratch.”

Just when my stuff comes due.

Perfect.

Mr. Oprahma, the worst President in modern history is on line two and would like a word.

A Past President’s Advice to Obama: Act With Haste

Almost three decades later, Jimmy Carter recalls vividly what it was like trying to get Americans to turn down their thermostats and kick the oil habit.

“It was like gnawing on a rock,” the former president says.

…speaking from experience.

Now President-elect Barack Obama is heading to Washington with a set of energy goals as ambitious as Mr. Carter’s back in 1976. He promises to free the country from “the tyranny of foreign oil” and to save “our planet for our children.”

…so they can live to give…60% of their earnings to fill in the hole that you’ve dug for them.

He’s calling for a “spirit of service and sacrifice,” and promoting hybrid cars and wind and solar power.

Guys, guys. It’s the economy, stupids.

By the way, “That One”,  a “spirit of service and sacrifice?”

Huh?

Is that what you call your proposed largest-ever ginormous government economic stimulus program?

Obama would be wise to spend his dwindling political capital on the economy. Four years won’t be long enough to get to what should be ninth or tenth on your “Things to Do If I Become The Messiah” list.

But Mr. Obama must now champion his $150 billion energy plans in the face of a sinking economy and oil prices that have fallen 70% since their record mid-summer high. Forces like these have killed at least four similar presidential efforts in the past. Already, falling energy prices and the credit crisis are laying waste to scores of alternative-energy projects, from huge wind farms in Texas to biodiesel plants in Mr. Carter’s home state of Georgia.

As it should be. Priorities being what they are.

Mr. Carter offers Mr. Obama this advice: Try to inspire Americans to see the virtue in making energy sacrifices, a notoriously tough sell, especially in the face of falling prices. Get energy legislation to Congress quickly, during the presidential honeymoon. And stick with it.

Don’t worry that people are losing jobs, retail is down double digits, the national debt clock in New York City to be pulled down for lack of digits and the auto industry – well never mind about them.

Speaking of sticking it, Mr. Carter…how’d that all work out for you?

“I think he can prevail if he does it early and with a great deal of dedication and enthusiasm — and with tenacity,” Mr. Carter says in an interview.

What out-of-work journalist sought to rejuvenate their career by interviewing Jimmuh?

Mr. Carter says he had a key advantage over Mr. Obama — a national sense that something had to be done: “The energy crisis that I inherited was in many ways much more serious than it is now.”

And yet he also failed. While you’re at it Mr. Former-Crappy-President, any stock tips?

Just two weeks into his presidency, Mr. Carter gave his famous “fireside chat” on energy. Clad in a yellow cardigan that now hangs in his presidential museum

…because no one else wanted it

Please pass the malaise…

Later, in his most politically costly address dubbed by critics the “malaise speech,” Mr. Carter announced a massive program to boost solar power and make synthetic fuel from coal. He vowed the U.S. would never again import more oil than it did in 1977.

…and a two-hour movie would soon fit on a small thin shiny disk. Oh, sorry. That actually did happen.

Mr. Carter concedes that his battles over energy policy cost him political support. “It sapped away a substantial portion of my domestic influence to harp on this unpleasant subject for four solid years,” he says.

Oh, well in that case, Mr. Oprahma should make great haste to  heed this most sage advice of the wise and revered former President.

At 84 years old, Mr. Carter hasn’t lost his fascination for the subject that helped to define his presidency. Eight years ago, he planted 10 acres of paulownia trees on several fields around his house. Native to China, the trees are among the fastest growing in the world. His groves already stand more than 50 feet tall. He sent one of the trees this summer to a lab at the University of Georgia, where it was pulped and turned into ethanol.

…and he sits in a rocker on his porch, donning another yellow cardigan, sipping it.

When I grew up, “Heroes” were people like…:

• Ernest Shackleton: In 1916, Shackleton was on an Antarctic expedition when his ship, HMS Endurance, was trapped, and then crushed, in pack ice.  There was no radio on the Endurance, so the crew of twenty-odd men were as on their own as could be, sort of like Gilligan’s Island, except stuck on an ice floe instead of a tropical paradise.  Shackelton managed to keep his entire crew alive on the ice (and then on a barren plug of rock in the South Atlantic, to which they rowed and sailed in open lifeboats for several days) for two years, living on penguins and seal meat.  And when after those two years the crew was fading fast, he led three other men in a canvas-covered lifeboat with a jury-rigged sail on an 800-mile voyage, across a South Atlantic that makes the Barents Sea in Dangerous Catch look like Lake Calhoun during a summer squall, using simple hand-held navigational instruments, to South Georgia Island, which with its tiny whaling station was the nearest civilization.  An error of so much as a single degree in navigating in the storm in the wet boat with the sextant, chronometer and map would have left the men hopelessly lost – and yet they found South Georgia.  And then climbed a mountain across the middle of the island to get help.  That’s a hero.
• Stanislaus Schmajzner:  A Jewish teenager who’d been arrested by the Nazis, Schmajzner was taken to the Sobibor extermination camp (like Auschwitz, only less famous).  There, he lied about having a trade, falsely claiming to be a cobbler, a lie that saved his life (the German guards at the camp needed a cobbler; Jews without needed trades went to the gas chambers).  The inmates, watching the slaughter around them (over a quarter of a million died at Sobibor) realized that the only hope for any of them to die with dignity, much less survive, was to rise up, try to kill their guards and, if they survived, make a run for the woods.  Schmajzner showed an ingenuity at camouflage and smuggling (among many other of the inmates in on the plot) that was of immense help to the Jews.  Finally, the Jews launched their rebellion, killing enough guards to make it through the gate (as the surviving guards machine-gunned them without mercy).  Perhaps a couple of hundred made it to the woods; maybe thirty, including Schmajzner, survived the war.  Schmajzher emigrated to Brazil, eventually, but spent the rest of his life educating people about the Holocaust.  That’s a hero.
• Donald Ruhl:  Donald Who?  Sadly, that’s right.  Donald Ruhl was a 21 year old Private First Class in the US Marines from Columbus, Montana.  He was a combat veteran – he’d fought in the brutal compaign on Bougainville, earlier in the war.  He landed with the rest of the 28th Marine Regiment (Fifth Marine Division) on Iwo Jima in the winter of 1945.  On the second day of the battle, on the approaches to Mount Suribachi…well, I’ll let his Congressional Medal of Honor citation do the talking:  “[Ruhl] crawled with his platoon guide to the top of a Japanese bunker to bring fire to bear on enemy troops located on the far side of the bunker, suddenly a hostile grenade landed between the two Marines. Instantly Private First Class Ruhl called a warning to his fellow Marine and dived on the deadly missile, absorbing the full impact of the shattering explosion in his own body and protecting all within range from the danger of flying fragments although he might easily have dropped from his position on the edge of the bunker to the ground below.”  That, too, is a hero.

Those, I believe, are heroes.

Grace Kelly – who helped make the old MNBlue such a disgrace that it had to merge with Joe Bodell’s bad-but-not-quite-as-disgraceful Minnesota Campaign Report to form the Minnesota “Progressive” Project blog, writes:

Around this holiday season, I like to say “Thank You” to people who serve unnoticed. The Democratic-Farmer-Labor party has many people who work so hard to create better communities and better government. This is mostly volunteer work with a few underpaid jobs.These are the everyday heroes!

That sure brings “meaning” to the term “everyday heroes”. 

Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci – who, by Grace’s generous definition of “hero” certainly is one, except that he’s not a DFLer – grants these heroes what is, for heroes in our society (at least, the ones that don’t dash into burning buildings to save others, or volunteer to leave their families for a year to defend Code Pink from being rounded up and beheaded) the ultimate recognition; being immortalized in one of those Budweier “Real American Heroes” spots. 

Go read it.  It’s enough to make you want…

…to…

…sing:

DEEP THROATED NARRATOR: Shot In The Dark presents…Real DFL Heroes

OVERWROUGHT MULLETED SINGER: ♫ Real DFL heeeeroooooes ♫

NARRATOR: Today we salute YOU, Mr. Paid Leftyblogger!!

OMS: ♫ Mizz Anonymously-Paid Leftyblogger!!♫

NARRATOR: While the rest of the world goes on with their lives, you devote yourself to the eternal quest; finding an original way to try to photoshop Michele Bachmann…

OMS: ♫ “Ain’t that woman cra-zeee?”♫

NARRATOR: When questioned about your funding, you respond the way  your group always has; “Soros?  Who’s George Soros?”

OMS: ♫ Never heaaard of him!♫

NARRATOR: But at the end of the day, you’re the one who Twin Cities lefties can count on to break the monopoly of the conservative Star/Tribune, and tell the truth!

OMS: ♫ Pawlenty lied and people died! ♫

NARRATOR: So pop open a Corona, Mister Anonymously-Paid Leftyblogger! Because at the end of the day, when Media Matters says “Jump”, someone has to answer “Off What?”

OMS: ♫ Mister Anonymously-Paid Leftyblogger♫

NARRATOR: Shot In The Dark, Saint Paul, Minnesota.

[Hee Haw on] Saaaa-LUTE![/Hee Haw off].

Not a dry eye in the place, I tells ya.

I’m not sure now who has the bigger ego. Oprah Winfrey or Barack Oprahma?

BEVERLY HILLS (AP) — Although Oprah Winfrey worked hard on Barack Obama’s presidential election campaign, she never considered going to work for the president-elect’s administration, the talk show host said Friday.

“I have a few full-time jobs already and a few full-time commitments, you know — contractual commitments that say I have to be where I am,” Winfrey told AP Television. “So, it never ever occurred to me, not even occurred to me.”

Winfrey said she would stay put, even if the president-elect came calling.

And he hasn’t.

The article didn’t once mention that Obama in fact had her in mind or that there was even speculation. There’s a lot of real news out there boys. Why don’t you get out there and get it.

…thy name is also Oprah.

Oprah filming in DC for inauguration week

“There are not even words to talk about what this night means,” Oprah told Access Hollywood that night. “Everybody keeps using the word historic — there’s never been a night like this on the planet earth… Nothing can compare to this.”

The morning Caveman discovered fire?

How about the day World War II ended?

The night Jesus was born?

2008 Grants Recipients Artist Initiative

Media arts

Number of grants: 12
Total dollars granted: $59,000

Mauricio Arango, Saint Paul
$5,000 — to produce a video essay dealing with the lives of the inhabitants of the town of San Jose de Apartado in northern Colombia…so I don’t have to get a job.

Peter B. Becker Nelson, Minneapolis
$6,000 — to purchase video equipment and create a new video work that explores themes of relationships, empathy, sexuality, and gender…so I don’t have to get a job.

Paul R. Danhauser, Minneapolis
$5,200 — for a two-dimensional animated short film called “Bitter and Crabby” that deals with cute cartoon characters who are confronted by real-world morality…so I don’t have to get a job.

Amber Ellison Walker, Minneapolis
$2,000 — to increase the post-production quality of her video work and the overall quality of her publicity materials, and to have her work seen by a broader audience…so she doesn’t have to get a job.

Timothy A. Fort, Inver Grove Heights
$6,000 — for the creation of a professional broadcast-quality video of his kinetic art for Internet and television distribution…so he doesn’t have to get a job.

Nathaniel H. Freeman, Minneapolis
$6,000 — for a sixteen-stage video installation that shows the opening scene of sixteen imagined narratives, all informed by the people and events of his northeast Minneapolis neighborhood…so they don’t have to get a job.

Heather R. Johnson, Minneapolis
$5,000 — for a documentary film, titled, “No Ugly Trees,” that explores women’s body and self-esteem issues…so I don’t have to get a job.

Daniel J. Lundquist, Bloomington
$5,000 — for creative time to finish hand coloring “Boris,” an animation about overcoming difficult circumstances to live a happy life…so I don’t have to get a job.

Kevin S. McKeever, Saint Paul
$800 — to produce duplicates of his documentary that examines one man’s success in helping inner-city youths rise above crime and violence, prepare and produce related publicity packets, and submit the film to festivals…so he doesn’t have to get a job.

Pamela Nice, Saint Paul
$6,000 — for funds to help film interviews in Twin Cities coffeehouses for her next documentary, “Desert in the Coffeehouse,” a film that asks what Minnesotans know about Arab and Muslim lives…so I don’t have to get a job in a coffeehouse.

James M. Vogel, Minneapolis
$6,000 — for funds to film an observational documentary about drug abuse…so I don’t have to get a job and actually pass a drug test.

Rosemary T. Williams, Saint Paul
$6,000 — to film the documentary “Futures,” which will document open call trading at the last few North American exchanges that have not switched to digital trading…so I don’t have to get an analog job in a digital world.

…and so irrelevant.
…and so going out of business.

In a review of AC/DC, Chris Riemenschneider of the Star Tribune is confused.

Pining for a real job in journalism, he must think weaving politics into a music review will lead to getting “discovered.”

“War Machine.” The best song on the new CD, it starts with a slow, lumbering, tank-attack beat and quickly builds to atom-bomb intensity, with Angus shredding his guitar as if it was the U.S. Constitution during the Iraq War.

Well, he did get a mention in the Wall Street Journal.

…too bad it’s for all the wrong reasons.

I hope you have other “skills” Chris.

There is so much stuff I’m thankful for, honestly

One of them is that my world isn’t so utterly, pathetically, hatefully small that I get off on the kinds of things Steve “Spotty” Timmer seems to. Steve is upset because, after years of being able to slime people (including his neighbors) from the cover of his precious anonymity, my friend Swiftee outed him in the comment section of this blog last week. 

As a part of his job (about which more below), Mr. Timmer has the ability to find, and misuse, all sorts of information.  And he’s pretty sure he has a bunch of it.

Oh all right. Tings like criminal operation of a motor vehicle, and za probation violation. And ja judgments for unpaid bills! Tings like multiple drunken driving convictions. Tings like driving mit out za license. Za blogging on company time; za trash house chronicles and za failure to support za pups.

Timmer refers to “glass houses” in his piece, apparently oblivious to the cheap irony; I’ve always used my real name, with all that that’s entailed in terms of “public risk”. He’s the one who’s always felt he had stuff to hide.  (More cheap irony; I met him earlier this year at Flash’s place.  We actually hit it off pretty well.  As I noted at the time, when I meet bloggers I disagree with, it’s usually much easier for me to treat them as humans rather than cheap stereotypes; Timmer apparently didn’t feel that way, taking some really cheap shots at me shortly thereafter.  I made noises about “outing” “him” at the time – and got a panicky-sounding email from him, all but begging me not to “out” his precious identity; he  really really preferred to remain anonyous.  The cheapest irony of all?  I hadn’t actually heard his name at Flash’s, and had at that point no idea who he was).

Since I’ve always blogged under my real name, every wart on my public record is pretty much available for the asking – so kudos to Steve’s awesome investigative chops!  And yep – I’ve had a wart or two.  Maybe we’ll touch on a couple of ’em in the next day or two, if Timmer really is as nekulturnii as he says “he’ll” be.

But I can say I’m proud about a couple of things, and do it with a straight face.

Here’s a big one – while I’ve mixed it up the “opposition” pretty gleefully (and for the most part they, like Timmer, deserve the “irony quotes”), I’ve upheld one standard; I’ve left other peoples’ families and livelihoods out of my blog.  Nobody – nobody, even gutless trolls like Timmer or Diane “Minnesota Observer” Gerth, deserves to have their families or their livelihoods attacked over what is, at the end of the day, a hobby.  I’ve upheld the Golden Rule, treating others the way I’d hope to be treated; I have no problem with people mixing it up with my politics, my choice in guitars, my taste in baseball – I am more than a match for anyone on any of those topics.  And on the other hand, I’ve kept my hands off of other peoples’ families, private lives, jobs and outside-of-blogging lives pretty religiously.

And I’ll continue to.

Because I am better than that.

And by “that”, I mean “I’m a better writer and a better man than Steve “Spotty” Timmer”.

 And that’ll be true no matter what Timmer and his little pack of gutless anonymous trolls think they can pull out.