Sunday, May 27, 2007

The Obama-Clinton Two-Step


I know. As you've noticed we are having formatting problems again.
Why? I don't know. I should know because this isn't exactly rocket science,
but I'm a writer, not a techno-nerd. Back in the day, before blogs, face book,
and myspace, came along and ruined the party, I had a flashy web-site, with
a web master who understood all the technical stuff. Look how pretty it was!

Alas, those days are gone, and my web master was last seen wandering the streets
aimlessly, looking for boot-legged copies of David Hasselhoff CD's, and asking for hair samples from strangers for his "collection".
Anyway, back to the important stuff.
Curious how to the two top dogs in the Democratic presidential show down
were on the stump, promising that they would not cut off funding to the
troops, and then turned around and did just that, voting against their
own party, and showing the height of disregard for the safety of the men and woman in uniform serving in Iraq.
On Jan 17th, Senator Clinton said
"I am not going to cut American troops' funding...they're in harm's way".
But that's exactly what she did.

Senator Obama made similar overtures, only to turn around and vote
no as well.

Both made highly staged, last minute appearances in the senate chamber
to milk as much drama as possible. Their irresponsibility only eclipsed by
their desire for political showmanship, to pander to the extreme left of
the party.

Even as an outside observer, it sounded smart. Swing hard left in time for
the primaries, then pull to the center in the general election...but the move
seems to have backfired. Even Cindy Sheehan, who has become the centrifuge
and spokesperson for opposition to the war, officially announced this morning
that she was breaking ranks with the Democratic party.
And the political cross-fire is not only coming from Republicans. In a statement
today, Democratic Senator, Joe Biden, who supported the funding, criticized both
candidates;

“As long as there are troops who are in a position where, if we don’t fund them they are going
to be hurt, I’m not going to cut off funding,” Biden said during a meeting with Des Moines
Register editors and reporters “That’s what the other candidates said too, but they changed their mind.”
Cordially
Joe

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Drowning the Lady in the Water


What happens when a scrunt tries to attack a Narf? It gets attacked by
a tzurdchyx of course! What's a scrunt? A vicious wolf-like creature
with hair made of slimy grass whose only purpose is to attack the Narfs, silly.
What's a tzurdchyx? You don't know? A vicious monkey like creature, with hair
made of slimy grass whose only purpose is to attack a scrunt, should it try to
attack a Narf, on one very special night.
What special night you ask? Good lord! Are you really that daft? Well, if I must.
You see, once a Narf finds a human receiver called "the vessel", it can return home,
carried off by a giant eagle. If a scrunt messes with a Narf on a night like that...well,
it's real bad news for the scrunt, once the tzurdchyx's get hold of it. Very bad new
indeed.

If you're still confused, you won't find any of the answers in M. Night Shymalan's, latest,
"The Lady in the Water". If anything, if you've been a fan of Mr Shymalan's
talent at slight of hand plot twists, and suspected that a downward spiral was
immanent after the abysmal "The Village", your suspicions will be confirmed,
and you will probably a little saddened if you saw the promise in Mr Shymalan's
first three interesting films.

As I promised in an earlier blog, I abandoned full length movie reviews,
for these little, mini-cinnamon bun reviews, so what you've read already
is 3/4 of the review.
The film opens with a narrator thrusting an improbable fairy tale upon
us, illustrated with animations of what appear to be Kokopelli figures,
telling us of time when "those of the sea, and those and land lived together".
Until, of course, those on land started ignoring those from the sea.
The sea dwellers, (or Narfs), packed up and left, and the land dwellers
stayed back to make war and live in misery because they stopped
listening to the Narfs. (if you can stand to pay attention, you'll probably
understand why they stopped listening. Narf's don't say very much, and
when they do, they rarely make sense.)
...but...the narrator tells us that a special Narf will return to and make contact
with a "Vessell", a special land-lubber who will change the world and make
it a hands across America, place to live. Aside from a few moments, when
the film's protagonist, the formidable Paul Giamatti, has his diary pilfered
through by the nosy little Narf, there is little in the way of character development.
The actors seem to just drop out of the sky and we are simply asked to
accept their quirkiness for no other reason then that this is a fairy tale, and
it's just not that important.

Mr Shymalan seems to want to tell us as much in the form of an allegorical film critic
staying at the hotel who seems to wink and nudge at us, on behalf of
Mr. Shymalan, as if to say "hey, I know this is bad, just roll with it".
This film is silly, sloppy, and poorly plotted. If that weren't enough, Mr. Shymalan,
who, like Stephen King, likes to make neat little cameos in his films, decides
to cast himself in the role of the vessel. A writer who will sacrifice himself
publishing a great work of literature that no one will understand until years later.
Because....you see...no one gets it...you see...it's just to deep...get it?
This film is deep all right. Deep as the pit of an outhouse, and after watching
it, you'll find similar contents the bottom.

Cordially
Joe

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

The Hype is Ripe


As many of my old school readers know, (those who have been reading
The Straight Hype in its various incarnations since 1999), I will do anything
to promote the site. Call me a literary prostitute of sorts, willing to strut the
junk in my trunk on any cyber corner, for those sweet, sweet web hits.

Now when I say "promote", I mean "step right up, little lady", carnival barking,
and not selling out my political beliefs or integrity - though I am guilty of having
said some highly inflammatory things. (those of you may remember the fire storm
I created in Halifax, when I referred to the Andrea Yates, quintuple infanticide as
"Bob for the apple medieval style").

That being said, call it fate, providence, happenstance, or just dumb good look,
the The Straight Hype has been picking up steam. We were briefly listed in Google's
"Blogs of Note", and we were linked by Technorati for our mentions of James Bowman's
new book. We've also received some great links and favorable words from some of the
bigger fish in the blog pond, like Ace Smith over at Idle Ruminations.
What does this all mean? The beginning of the rapture? Well, not quite, but
it does mean that we are slowly, but surely becoming a mid-sized fish in the
pond.

Now, curious as may seem, as I have dissected many of today's salient issues,
such as the liberation of Iraq, the North Korean threat, and George Tenet's new
book, I never thought that a post about a man who slept with a goat would suddenly
make us everyones hot link. First off, it's the only post in the entire blog that I actually
didn't write myself. Second, it's about a guy who partakes in the love that dare
not speak it's name with a farm animal, and is later forced by a court to marry the
goat - a goat who shortly after the alleged incident took place, gives birth to a kidd
(the goat later wandered off into the village and choked to death on a plastic bag).
What does all this mean? If it's true that a society can best be judged by how it
entertains itself, well, then I guess it means that deep down inside, in the places
we don't like to talk about, we like stories about drunk guys who do unspeakable
things to goats in the middle of the night. (shudder)
Don't get used to it. This is an off the cuff, quasi-political/personal journal site. So
if you want more man and beast lovin' - you'll have to google it and have a credit card
ready.
Cordially
Joe

Thursday, May 03, 2007

For the Love of A Goat...A Dead Goat


From Fox News;

Charles Tombe just may be the world's most unique widower.

The Sudanese man's bizarre story first came to light more than a year ago when a newspaper in
his hometown of Juba reported that he had been caught having sexual relations with... a goat.
Tombe was arrested, and later told a Sudanese judge that he was drunk at the time and didn't
realize what he'd done.

The judge, however, relying on tribal law, passed judgment and equated Tombe's crime with
that of a man caught sleeping with an unmarried girl, who would be ordered to marry her
immediately to protect her honor and that of her family.

The judge, therefore ordered Tombe to pay the owner of the goat — named Rose — a dowry
of 15,000 Sudanese dinars (about $50 at the time) — and marry the goat.

Hand-and-hoof, the two returned to Tombe's home.

"The idea was to publicly embarrass the man," says Tom Rhodes, editor of the Juba Post,
which first ran the story.

Shortly after Tombe brought Rose back to his Juba home, the black-and-white goat gave
birth to a male kid.

Villagers, meanwhile, started calling Tombe "The Goat Man," a title he so loathed that he kept
to himself, allowing Rose to roam local streets, where it is believed she ate a plastic bag, choked
and died this week.

Unlike the Anna Nicole Smith custody battle, however, there's no controversy involving the
"couple's" offspring: Tombe gets to keep the kid.


The BBC and more than 1 million Google hits contributed to this report.

Cordially

Joe


Oh Joe, What Hath Thou Done


Did you ever tell your 6 year old not to touch the flashing button on the
VCR, but the little brat does it anyway, despite warnings of a time out,
or a royal flogging. Well, the mess you now find my blog in, is a result of
the same syndrome, after one simple click of a button that promised to
spruce up the site with some good old fashioned, jazz hands, razzle-dazzle.
What I got was an irreparable, post-apocalyptic formatting wreckage. I've tried
everything, even manually editing my old posts, and they still come up looking like
pages from the uni bomber manifesto. I'm trying everything, so be patient, and
hopefully, someone who has permission to use sharp scissors and can leave the house
without a chaperon will be able to save me.

My girlfriend, so I hear, in an attempt to showcase my writing to her sister,
typed in my blog, and was confronted by this visual eye sore. My apologies to
any first time visitors. Please don't leave with the impression that conservatives
can't do technology. We can. It just shouldn't be left in the hands of someone
like me.

Anyway, on deck, I'm planning to take on CNN's Iraq correspondent Peter Ford,
who also doubles as a writer for Christian Science Monitor. As left leaning as
CNN is, I can't understand how they can continue to employ this fellow, and keep
a straight face. He's essentially an anti-war blogger with microphone, who uses
his allotted time to slip in his sniveling anti-American rubbish. But, we'll deal
with our dear friend Peter another time.

Again, have a wonderful weekend.
UPDATE: Since this post, I have managed to fix our formatting problems,
proving once again that I am the Forrest Gump of computing.

Cordially

Joe

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Weekend Update


First off, sorry for the formatting on the Tenet post. I've tried just about
everything, and I can't get it to format correctly. I'm sure there's a way,
but I am mildly retarded, and easily distracted by bright lights - so I hope
you'll forgive the soupy mess, and appreciate the content.

My main concern when I wrote about Tenet, was that the post might come off
as a criticism of the war, the administration, or worse, some sort of defence
of that sniveling little rat, Richard Perle. If you got that impression, my apologies.
Tenet's intelligence reports, and his recent distancing from those reports, were
one of many factors that prompted the United States to liberate Iraq, and though
their validity has come into question, it in no way, delegitimized the war, or the grounds
on which it was launched. Tenet is a baffoon, and a disengenuous carnival barker.

Anyway, I'm going to be away from the hub city for the weekend, so I'm not sure
if I'll be posting.

Just a reminder that my hotmail account is no longer in service and all correspondence
should now be directed to my secondary account - joeleger@columnist.com

Have a good weekend, and remember, bookmark The Straight Hype and send
it to all your friends. Bring it up during conversation, write it on cocktail napkins!
Hell, approach complete strangers in the mall and shout out the URL to them
until they promise to mass email it to all their relatives.

Take care and God bless.
Cordially
Joe