Difficult Simple

Check out this video of Obama talking in Iowa about issues that affect us all. Let’s all pray he wins on Thursday.

Harry Shearer now claims some special insight into the character of Benazir Bhutto and the Pakistan situation because once met Bhutto at a dinner party. He also calls himself a political satirist. Both claims are laughable.

My contempt for National Novel-Writing Month is almost total; there’s something inherently insulting to those of who do this kind of work professionally when someone cobbles together 50,000 words of crap — because crap is not only acceptable, but encouraged by NaNoWriMo — calls it a novel and themselves a novelist.

The only thing NaNoWriMo gets right is the understanding that writing is inherently superior to not writing. It’s impossible to become a novelist without being able to stop planning to write, making excuses why one can’t write and so forth. Writers write. Wannabes call themselves writers and do little else.

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A town in Serbia has decided it’s inspirational to mount statues of Rocky, Bruce Lee and… Tarzan(!) in their public spaces.

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I’m just a guy with a blog, so anyone who takes my word for nearly anything without thinking for him- or herself is an idiot. Let’s get that out of the way right now, because I’m going to talk seriously about people who’ll believe virtually whatever crosses their field of vision, no matter how insane.

It all starts with Benazir Bhutto, shot to death by a suicide bomber or hit with a fragment of the exploding device or victim of a lethal headblow or who knows the fuck what. Only two things for certain have come out of the nasty mess percolating in Pakistan: Bhutto’s dead and the country is liable to have a total meltdown at any moment. Toss nuclear weapons into the mix and you have a WWIII kind of situation brewing.

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