Dr. Sanity talks shit

Since this blog lacks any focus on stools, we'll forward you.

Zappa to Tea Parties: We've Got to Stick Together

The labor movement's got the Mafia curse

Just One F-Bomb to Qualify

This clip is just pure dude humor, but it has THAT WORD, making this about the only appropriate place to post it.

Your next vacation site

Anorak has the story about just the right Austrian town.

How to Get Disqualified fromthe Rule 5 BikiniFest Week Contest

As was clearly stated in the contest rules, "No minors." Perhaps there should have been an asterisk also disqualifying adult models posed in "naughty schoolgirl" costumes, you sick freaks.

This afternoon, Smitty called to check in and I mentioned my little jest at Donald Douglas's expense about the Florida guy who lost his job because he married a woman who, in her professional career, is a porn star known as Jazella Moore. This led to a discussion of Donald's "Erin Andrews nude" Google-bomb stunt and the outraged reactions of such lady folk as Cassandra:

Don't get me wrong. I understand the impulse to look. We all have impulses -- often powerful ones -- that conflict with our values. What I don't understand is the cynical decision to repeatedly exploit someone else's misfortune . . .

Well, the impulse to enhance one's blog traffic is surely powerful. It is generally agreed that Donald should not have linked this criminal peephole video. However, as I have tried to point out, if Donald is "repeatedly exploit[ing] someone else's misfortune," is he more guilty than CNN and Howard Kurtz?

This is not to engage in moral relativism, but rather to indicate a serious question: Why can the MSM "respectably" exploit tragedy -- e.g., the death of Princess Di -- and overcrowd the airwaves with ads for Cialis and Levitra and all manner of lurid programming, without any real criticism? And yet if an individual like Donald tries to grab a small slice of this commercialized concupiscence, he is condemned as a vile sub-human pervert. Do the stockholders and executives who earn money from CNN and other MSM behemoths ever have to face the kind of condemnation that Donald Douglas has recently endured?

Understand that I don't mean to defend what the professor did. I merely point out that he is being condemned primarily because he said, "Hey, look, I'm exploiting the prurient interest of porn-Googlers!" rather than adopting the kind of bogus "respectability" porture that leads to Greta Van Susteren standing on a tropical beach telling us about the tragic circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the innocent teenage blonde who was (it is insinuated, though never explicitly stated) viciously raped and forcibly sodomized before being brutally murdered and fed to the sharks.

"Nothing grabs an editor's eye like a good rape."
-- Hunter S. Thompson, Hell's Angels

To condemn only those who engage in exploitation that is purposefully transparent and self-conscious, you see, is to let off the hook all the respectable peddlers of what Thompson condemned as "hired bullshit."

February is "sweeps months" in TV ratings, and a couple years ago, I saw an hour-long Fox News SPECIAL REPORT about the dangers encountered by college student during Spring Break in Daytona Beach, Cabo San Lucas and other resort locations.

Yes, indeed! Until I saw this SPECIAL REPORT, I had no idea what evil could befall beautiful coeds as they run around the beaches and bars, get sloppy drunk, in bikinis, in wet T-shirts and -- sometimes, as extensively documented by this fine team of investigative journalists from Fox News -- in nothing all.

Nice work, if you can get it, eh? While I don't pay much attention to journalism awards -- if the Pulitzer committee insists on overlooking me, I'll return the favor -- I would argue that this Fox News SPECIAL REPORT was one of the most brilliantly conceived projects in the history of television. Imagine the scene as the producer went to his boss to pitch his idea:

BOSS: You want to do what?
PRODUCER: Fly down to Daytona Beach with a camera crew during Spring Break and get a week's worth of footage of 19-year-old girls in bikinis guzzling draft beer and flashing their breasts.
BOSS: And you want me to pay you to do this?

Say what you will about the ethics of this project, but that producer certainly deserves some kind of award for moxie.

Well, this background was not discussed with Smitty. Rather, we discussed Cassandra's thighs -- no, actually, what happened was that mention was made of that classic pinup of the lady whose garter-clad thigh lends a touch of enticing glamour to Villainous Company. Guys dig the stockings-and-garter theme, Cass -- don't go changing.

It seems rather an odd assertion of feminine privilege, however, to say that only ladybloggers can employ pinup glamour as a decorative motif, while guys who display a bit of stocking-clad cheesecake on their blogs are guilty of some horrible evil.

To gain mastery over one's impulses is certainly a worthy goal, especially -- as Smitty and I discussed -- considering the dire warnings from porn expert Ross Douthat:

"Today, the Internet and DirecTV are normalizing everything, from group sex to bestiality to darker things that decency forbids mentioning. And as for pedophilia -- why, any erotic website worth its salt promises links to images of the 'barely legal,' 'young teen sluts,' and all the rest. Today, Nabokov's Humbert would need not be a tragic figure; instead, he could have spent his years ensconced in front of a glowing computer screen, with a thousand Lolitas for his delectation."

We are grateful for Douthat's years of being so "ensconced." Certainly, it took intense research for a college student to develop such a sophisticated understanding of this baleful phenomenon. And as we discussed the attacks on Donald Douglas, the rationale of Rule 5 was defended by reference to Douthat's findings. This discussion I paraphrase from memory:

"What the fiddlesticks? It's just cheesecake. And it's the gosh-darned Internet, for crying out loud! Everybody's just one click away from all the dadgum porn they could ever want."

Indeed, this is the shocking discovery made by Douthat -- and he went to Harvard, you know. Far be it from a mere blogger to attempt such research. But Cassandra is right about those powerful impulses. Some guys can't resist a redhead. Some guys can't resist a chick in black stockings.

Me? I can't resist a joke. So, while this post is certainly disqualified from competition in the Rule 5 BikiniFest, I'm thinking that if Ross Douthat is the sort of person who has a Google Alert for his own name, he's definitely ensconced now. Or he soon will be. Research, Ross, research!

Oh, Smitty has picked the Monday winner! (We're sure Cassandra will approve.)

Operation Renaissance

Just got off the phone with a Democratic source that I'm trying to develop for the IG-Gate story. I've talked about the source I call "Deep Cleavage." This one I'm calling "Renaissance," for reasons that could be explained, but won't.

What I need, my dear friends, is some prayer. Yeah, I know, Effing Conservatives is a strange kind of venue to be asking for prayer, but I didn't want to put this on one of my more common blogging places. Stuff gets around, the Internet is a hard place to keep secrets, and Renaissance doesn't realize how important it is for me to have a trustworthy, confidential source on the Democratic side of this investigation.

"Investigative reporting" is kind of a misnomer, as if it involved something other than regular old-fashioned journalism. Basically, "investigative reporting" involves stuff that important officials don't want publicly known, secretly disclosed to the press by people who know about the stuff.

Nothing is more important to this kind of reporting than trust: The source has to know that the reporter will not (a) report anything that isn't ready to be reported yet, or (b) accidentally identify the source, who might be fired if his identity were discovered.

Sometimes, the source is leaking with permission of his boss, but it's still important to conceal specifically where it's coming from, in order to avoid unwanted consequences. It's easy enough for a conservative reporter to develop Republican sources, but developing a Democratic source . . . like I said, pray.

The reason I'm writing this is kind of as a memo to myself. If Operation Renaissance works out like I hope it will work out, it's going to be beautiful. However, budgetary considerations require that I ask my friends to hit the tip jar. Renaissance wants to go to lunch, and . . . well, in such a situation, a gentleman doesn't want to appear to be a cheapskate.

Charm can be a valuable resource, so if you're reading between the lines, hit the tip jar. And pray.

To quote a line from Toy Story 2: "I'm a married spud! I'm a married spud!"

Phallus of malice

To paraphrase Carlin:

Our thrust is to prick holes in the stiff front erected by the debt dealers. We must keep mounting an offensive to penetrate any crack in their defenses. Let’s get on them. Let’s ram through a stiff tax law so it will be hard for them to get it up. It’ll be hard on us, but we can’t lick it by being soft!

What an effing suppository.
h/t Bluegrass Pundit