Three crazy videos

Three crazy video links from Fark, worth watching:

Elephant paints self portrait. It's not fake. There was another video link in the comments section that showed a wider view.

Asian flying fish invade Mississippi river. Bonus: Reporter gets hit repeatedly when they start jumping into the boat.

And lastly, Monkey riding tiny motorcycle. Because who doesn't want to see that?

Follow-up: Obama man-on-the-street video

In one of my first posts, I posted a link to a man-on-the-street interview with a young Obama supporter where the interviewer clearly was expecting to get emotional but factually clueless responses to his questions, and the interviewee knocked all of his questions out of the park. Well, it was officially legit, and it received a writeup in the New York Times:

NY Times Article



It's an interesting article, and it has a link in it to a follow-up video the same guy made after 800,000 people watched the You-Tube clip. Aside from some shameless promotion for the guy's band near the end, it's pretty good, though he makes a more emotional rather than factual/policy-based argument.

Kickers are hilarious

Former Seahawks kicker Josh Brown, now a St. Louis Mouflon, gave a rather hilarious interview wtih KJR, about the process, circumstances, and reasons he declined Seattle's offer (which would have made him the highest paid kicker in football) in favor of the Mouflons' offer (which makes him the highest paid kicker in football). Here's the link:

Josh Brown Interview Transcript

It is particularly funny because I think Brownie (who did a heckuva job for us last season, no doubt) starts out being refreshingly honest about the whole deal:

Q from Mahler: What were they offering you that the 'Hawks were not? Money?

Brown: Oh, yeah.

But then he thinks to himself, "Wow, sounds bad, I better qualify it," so he adds:

Brown: Oh, yeah. It was not necessarily just the money, but it was the breakdown of the money. The breakdown of the money. The way I'm getting it and when it's coming. I felt like I put myself in the situation in the way that I played as to where I couldn't be kind of a prisoner to the businessman and go off what he thought was best for me.

But that still didn't sound quite, what's the word I'm looking for...non-assholish. So later he declares:

Brown: It is important because this isn't necessarily about money. It's about winning. It's about winning plain and simple.

Uh-huh. Brownie left the Seahawks (4 straight NFC West titles, lost in second round of playoffs last season) to go to the Mouflons (3-13 last season) because it's all about winning. And because apparently Seattle has a problem with psychotic prisoner-taking businessmen with a fetish for NFL kickers.

42

I watched The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy again recently, and it occurred to me that someone somewhere needs to do a metal/punk cover of So Long And Thanks For All The Fish.

That is all.

Blatant hypocricies and obvious bullshit

Last September, my preferred Democratic candidate for President was Hillary Clinton. It's now Obama. What happened? Two things: Obama showed me he's a politician to be excited about. And Hillary showed me that she's got a share of those negative characteristics that are commonly found in the worst polticians: A willingness to pander, commit blatant hypocrisies, and look right in the camera and deliver a smiling line of obvious bullshit.

Three examples from this week:

1. Obama says: Release your tax returns. That's something that politicians routinely do. Hillary has so far refused, saying she'll release them in April after the tax deadline, but not now. Why not? Forget that for a moment, because there's probably nothing there to get excited about. Here's the blatant hypocrisy: In her 2000 Senate campaign in New York against Rick Lazio, she demanded for months that Lazio release HIS tax returns, which he was refusing to do at the time. Definition of hypocrisy.

2. In the two weeks prior to the Texas/Ohio primaries, it is undeniable that Clinton began to get very critical (most would say negative) in her campaigning against Obama. There was the red phone ad, the line in a newsconference saying "I (Clinton) and John McCain have foreign policy experience, Barack gave a speech in 2002," etc. She talked more about Obama's shortcomings, even sarcastically mocking his lofty speeches to her own crowds, than she talked about her own strengths, and won 3 of 4 states after doing so. Here's the hypocrisy: In the aftermath of this week's primaries, Obama said he would begin to get more critical of Clinton in response. Hillary's spokesperson promptly responded by comparing Obama to Kenneth Starr because he is now going to "attack" Senator Clinton. Pot, meet kettle.

3. Here's the obvious line of bullshit, being spouted by Clinton and her campaign officials: Michigan's delegates should be seated because Michigan residents have a right to participate in this process and make their voices heard, but hey, there's no need for a make-up election! Just use the early Michigan primary results! Why it's obvious bullshit: Obama's name wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan. If you think the Michigan residents should have a voice in the process (and I agree they should) then OF COURSE you need a make-up election with both candidates' names on the ballot. Otherwise they have not had a chance to vote for Obama. Saying otherwise makes it blatantly obvious that you don't really care about the rights of Michigan residents to make their choice, but that really you just want the delegates from an obviously tainted election.

I really sincerely hope that Hillary knocks this shit off, backs off the panic button and returns to running the intellectually honest campaign she was running late last year, in which she ran on her intelligence, experience, and mastery of the details of policy, rather than a negative campaign focused on tearing down and delegitimizing her Democratic competition. She's said several times that the most important thing is that a Democrat defeats the Repbulicans in this presidential election. It's about time she started acting like she meant it.

ESPN's Farvegasm

Man, ESPN outdid itself with the Brett Favre retirement coverage. No, seriously, they didn't just engage in the regular obsessive man-crush over-coverage. Here's a list of the articles CURRENTLY linked on ESPN's NFL page:

Ready or Not? (Top Story, about Farve and Aaron Rodgers)
Thomspon: Missing No. 4
Sando: Gunslinger mentality defined Favre
Keating: Buying No. 4
Listen: Favre voice mail
Football Outsiders: Measuring Favre's greatness
Wojciechowski: Favre worth the price of admission
Chadiha: Favre's decision doesn't make sense
Yasinskas: Majkowski recalls birth of Favre's legacy
Clayton: Welcome back to the pack, Packers
Clayton: Five questions surrounding Favre
Where does Favre rank?
Price of Favre signed items expected to go up
Wednesday Afternoon Hash: Favre Collector's Edition
ESPN writers who would go gay for Favre

Okay, I made that last one up. The rest are all real and separate articles. Holy crap.

The new Rock-Paper-Scissors

Clinton beats Barack
McCain beats Clinton
Barack beats McCain

If you know your opponent is going to throw Scissors, why WOULDN'T you throw ba-ROCK!

Also, for you fans of the Claw (Claw beats everything), the new Claw is Superdelegates.

The next seven weeks are going to be loooonnnnnnggggg.