jay leno is so bad.

it's been months since i posted anything here. i'll admit, it's been a combination of laziness, disinterest, and overall ennui.

but when i heard the reports that NBC was thinking of booting conan and/or giving leno the tonight show back, i had to spring into action. and thus, i finally joined the evil world of twitter.

please follow me and retweet and whatever else the kids do at http://twitter.com/lenoissobad

highway2healthcare

i don't click on banner ads very often. but how do you not click on a healthcare take on appetite for destruction? i certainly don't know.

turns out this is a clever effort by the AFL-CIO to gain support for reform, even a public option. you got me to sign up, fellas. nice work.

silhouette masterpiece theatre

my friend directed me to this awesome website. enjoy.

no. no. no. no.

argh. nightmares. enough said. part of me doesn't even want to post a picture because it's so disturbing. eeeesh.

if you fight for freedom wherever there's trouble...

... then you need this t-shirt.

shiantology

holy. crap.

and i really mean that.

the website shiantology.com has created religious imagery around the one and only leboeuf. two things i hate put together somehow make something i love. now they're inviting you to submit your own. have fun.

united we serve

the latest in president obama's web savvy, united we serve offers an easy way for citizens to get involved in their local communities.

style your garage

i really love this idea, mostly because i love anything that could potentially upset an HOA.

orly taitz

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Born Identity
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Joke of the Day

i first heard about this woman via the daily show [ because jon stewart is, after all, the most trusted man in america ]. but then i read this article in oc weekly. [ obviously the crazies are concentrated in orange county ]. then the washington post's secular corner ran this.

when is the truth not good enough for us anymore?? i'm reminded of a bit lewis black did, and i'm scouring the internet trying to find it. basically, he talks about how you can't look at a piece of footage [ in this case, it was whether george bush was told about bin laden ] and say that it didn't happen. he then relates it to cat suicide. [ natch ].

but seriously, when did facts and evidence become not good enough? has photoshop made us overly cynical, even when we shouldn't be? do we just want to be upset, to be upset? someone please enlighten me.

best excerpts of the oc weekly piece:

The problem is most of the above facts aren’t true.

For starters, the Pakistan “travel ban” is a complete fabrication based on zero evidence and completely contradicted by State Department records and a 1981 New York Times article. The full transcript from Obama’s grandmother shows that she never said he was born in Kenya—in fact, she repeatedly said he was born in Hawaii. The law allowing foreign-born children to obtain Hawaiian COLBs didn’t exist until 20 years after Obama was born, while Obama’s published COLB says his birth information was recorded four days after his birth in 1961. And those “forensic experts” who say Obama’s document is phony? There have only been three of them: Two haven’t published their real names or any verifiable credentials (one went by the moniker “TechDude”), and the other merely said that she can’t make a determination of a document’s authenticity based solely on a JPEG.

***

“It’s just fascinating,” says Bob Haggard, a frequent poster on Politijab’s Orly Taitz forum. “She runs around the country doing things that amount to absolutely nothing. She tells her followers that she ‘files’ all sorts of documents, but she never files anything. She drops stuff off.”

Patrick McKinnion of Yes to Democracy puts it a different way: “There’s a certain amount of fascination with unbridled insanity, and that’s what you’re seeing with the birthers: a level of hatred that borders, if not absolutely pole-vaults, into insanity.”

hump day

my friend, a violence and injury prevention specialist (whatever that means), shared this link.

according to a new study, suicides are most likely to occur on wednesdays. while those interviewed for the story cautiously offered work stress, at its height in the middle of the week, as a possible reason, here are my guesses:

there's nothing good on tv on wednesdays. consider the law and order franchise. monday is the classic law and order, a good way to start the week. tuesday is SVU, so it only gets better. but then on wednesday, you're stuck with criminal intent. shoot me.

no one goes out on wednesdays. thursdays everyone is raring for happy hour. friday everyone's like wooo, let's start the weekend! but wednesday? no one wants to do shit on wednesday. except maybe hang themselves.

wednesday is the worst day for sushi. a lot of restaurants get their shipments on thursday, in preparation for the weekend rush. this means that by wednesday, you're getting all the leftover week-old fish. if THAT doesn't kill you, you might just off yourself.

wednesday is commonly referred to as "hump day." but if you're not getting humped, you just feel like shit.

the way wednesday is spelled makes no fucking sense. and if you try to make sense of it, you'll just go batshit crazy, and potentially leap from a building.

more theories? post them in comments.

people in pizza slice costumes becoming pizzas

i post this only because, well, first and foremost, it's wacky. but also because back in 1999, when i was at my very first ad agency internship in dc, i, too, donned a pizza costume. specifically "slice," the unofficial papa john's mascot.

smart seafood

speaking of seafood sensation.... via the washington post's smart living section, an easy way to navigate the confusing world of seafood sustainability.

The most straightforward thing you can do is avoid eating any species that has been consistently overfished. According to a recent report from the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization, 28 percent of global fish stocks were overexploited, depleted or recovering from depletion in 2007. Another 52 percent were fully exploited, meaning that catch levels had either been reached or were close to their maximum sustainable limits. (For more on the world's overfishing problems, watch the new documentary "The End of the Line," billed as "An Inconvenient Truth" for the seafood industry.)

To find out how your favorite fish is doing, check out the Monterey Bay Aquarium's popular Seafood Watch program, which rates both wild-caught and farm-raised seafood as "best choice," "good alternative" or "avoid." For wild-caught fish, the program looks at stock levels but also takes fishing techniques into account, because some types of gear result in greater damage to the marine environment or higher levels of collateral damage to nontarget species. For farmed fish, which are often raised in net-pens in the open ocean, Seafood Watch looks at the potential for pollution and disease transference to the ecosystem. (Wild-caught Alaskan salmon, canned albacore tuna and farmed rainbow trout all get high marks under this program.) In the supermarket, look for the Marine Stewardship Council's eco-label, a blue oval with a fish and a checkmark. That certifies that products come from sustainable fisheries.

i visited the monterey bay site, and discovered they also offer a handy iphone app, so you can make better choices when you're in a store or restaurant. while the post article points out there's not much info about carbon footprints, that info isn't very widely available. and even if we can make our choices a little more smart, that's better than an altogether dumb one.

jesus dress-up

paper dolls and jesus: two things that are sort of intrinsically funny. put them together, and... well... this happens.

NYT banners

i remarked on my facebook* today how dismayed i was by a scientology.org banner on the new york times's website. but that damned gawker beat me to it.

it also brings up this shingles ad which is prominently displayed today, and that is just completely nasty. whatever happened to escapism during hard times? sheesh.

i will say in my defense, however: i am on west coast time. check mate.

* also, note: i'm not sure what compelled me to link to my facebook. maybe because i have a vanity URL now. but i don't want to be your friend. i mean, really. yes, even you.

malcolm gladwell and the moral hazard myth

as debate over national health care rolls on in congress, i am reminded of one of the most poignant and memorable articles i have ever read. it was published in a 2005 issue of the new yorker but is still [ if not more ] relevant today.

i thought about bullet-pointing the striking parts of the article for those who don't wish to read it, but i truly feel it would be doing gladwell [ and the uninsured ] a huge disservice. if you don't believe in "socialized medicine" and don't think we need reform, you need to take a look. and even if you do, some of the facets you learn in this article are too critical to pass up.

** if you're curious as to what prompted this entry, it was the drudge report's cover story labeled "TAX THEM!" with this picture:

my parents joined facebook.

no. no. thankfully not MY parents. but some people's parents. you know who they are. but just in case you don't, look here and be afraid.

lessons from he-man

while we're on the topic, why not. he-man was my favorite cartoon growing up.

lessons from GI JOE

i went to a midnight showing of harry potter last night. first off, it was incredible. i was very, very pleased, to say the least.

but since everyone is going to be talking about THAT, i decided to talk about this: the upcoming GI JOE movie. now, i have no faith in michael bay, so i doubt this is going to be any kind of cinematic masterpiece. but it does make me nostalgic for the good ol' life lessons that could be summed up in a matter of seconds, and tied up with the neatest bow, "knowing is half the battle."

if you visit this website, you can see the complete catalog of joe lessons (unfortunately, no video, but if i find a video repository, i will post it too)

this is by far my favorite piece of advice:

Scarlett- You can learn to water ski if you keep trying.

haha. also, let's not forget about this joe. click on his picture to re-remember his unfortunate name.

LATFH blog

this is one of the funniest things i've seen in a very long time. this, and STFU, PARENTS, make me wonder if i should make the switch to tumblr. thoughts?

racist camera

via buzzfeed, a camera that is helpful to everyone but most of the people on the planet. haha.