Hello Kitty Monstrosity of the Day: WHAT?

Sanrio just made a bombshell of an announcement.  So ... basically I've been living under a delusion for my entire life.

Government Shutdown, Sunday Edition

Seriously?  Ugh.  

Denial Is Not Just A River in Egypt

This speaks for itself, really:  Obama at the UN said that the world is a more stable place than it was 5 years ago.  We're living in the total defiance of reality, people.

How bad is bad?  Even the New York Times said he was "a somewhat diminished American president who faced a skeptical audience."  You don't say!

The Onion's mockery is now online.

Life Imitates Satire: Putin in the New York Times

Wait a minute: Did Putin seriously write an op-ed ...  in the New York Times ... on the anniversary of 9/11 ... mocking American exceptionalism?  Putin who famously runs around shooting tigers and wrestling polar bears and doing all that "look at me" macho-man BS to make himself look exceptional?  (While also persecuting gay people and girl punk bands?)  Is this real life or is this fantasy?  Caught in a landslide ... no escape from reality ... Whaaaaaaaaaaat? 

This is, I think, only the beginning of the fallout from the Syria-Russia fiasco.  I repost the image I made on that day.  Thanks to the Obama Administration's utterly incompetent handling of Syria that has made the president an international laughingstock, I think we'll all be getting a lot more use out of it in days to come.

Troll.

Quote of the Day: Cereal Killer

Why, yes, let's make our already-ludicrous "case" for striking Syria even more ludicrous by infantilizing it with this metaphor:

"A second senior official, who has seen the most recent planning, offered this metaphor to describe such a strike: If Assad is eating Cheerios, we're going to take away his spoon and give him a fork. Will that degrade his ability to eat Cheerios? Yes. Will it deter him? Maybe. But he'll still be able to eat Cheerios."

Cheerios?  Silverware?  I guess the only up side is hoping that metaphorically Assad then stabs himself with the fork.  Or something.  What the hell is wrong with these people?  From the beginning, the Syrian mess has been characterized by folks from the president on down saying the stupidest things imaginable within earshot of ... oh, everybody.  

Let this be a lesson to you, my darlings: THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK. THEN THINK AGAIN.  AND A THIRD TIME BEFORE YOU OPEN YOUR TRAP. Remember that timelessly relevant axiom: "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

Speaking of ... Obama is giving his speech tonight.  

Life Imitates the Onion: Kerry's "Unbelievably Small" Strike

SERIOUSLY?  Geez, I need to stop paying attention to the Unserious Syrian Silliness because our so-called leadership is apparently patently full of officious incompetents.   You'd have to have a heart of stone not to laugh (bitterly).  OK, let the song play in your head but with these new and improved lyrics!

Syria: Thoughts and Quotations

A few quotations instead of an actual personal essay because your humble hostess needs to finish her schoolwork before she can watch football:

Quote of the Day: Linguistic Lunacy

Indeed:

"So farcical have the linguistic games become that we have reached a point at which Congress is being instructed that, Assad having crossed a red line that the executive branch didn’t set, it must accord the executive branch the permission that it doesn’t need to start a war that isn’t a war."

You Didn't Set That Red Line. Somebody Else Made That Happen.

You seriously expect us to buy this?  COME ON.  This is the age of YouTube.  We've all seen the footage of you making the worst ad-libbed statement in recent foreign policy.  Pfffft.   This attempt is cynically obvious about its own pusillanimous intent.

Blurred Lines.

So what to make of this?  Hmmm:

So we're going to go to war to defend the credibility of a comment Obama won't take responsibility for.
— Ramesh Ponnuru (@RameshPonnuru) September 4, 2013

Headline of the Day: "Nazi buddha from space might be fake"

I swear I'm not making this up.

We Humbly Apologize For Your Bad Behavior

We're running apology ads in Pakistan now?  The stupid "Innocence of Muslims" video inspired a mob freak-out, and I'm pretty sure this Obama-Hillary Clinton video is going to make everything OK ... not!  Get ready for more hate, this time spiked with contempt.  The haters will go on hating, because at the end of the day, their problem isn't with a video.  The video's just a catalyst for a far bigger problem.  

You know, I'm reminded of John Wayne as Captain Nathan Brittles in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon:  "Never apologize.  It's a sign of weakness."

I Can't Believe This Is Happening

What fresh hell is this?  Or this?  I confess to using language unbecoming a lady.

Law enforcement knocks on your door at midnight and hauls you away in handcuffs not because you committed an actual crime, but because you made a video.  

This happened in AMERICA.

UPDATE: The responses of two law professors - Glenn Reynolds and Ann Althouse.  On a related note, law prof Eugene Volokh argues that stuff like this will only lead to more violence.

LOL: the "You Didn't Build That" Tumblr

First there was that weird-sounding Obama speech that a lot of people didn't like.  Oh, but the best way to respond is with humor.  Check out this hilarious blog. Here's my favorite image from it, by the way:

Holy Moly! Disney Really Does Have An Army of Killer Cats?!

Alessandra and I were just a teensy bit flabbergasted when we read this little write-up today about 10 Secrets from the Wonderful World of Disney.  Just look at #2, will ya?

Each night at Disneyland, after the sunburned families and exhausted cast members have made their way home, the park fills up again - this time, with hundreds of feral cats. Park officials love the felines because they help control the mouse population. (After all, a park full of cartoon mice is more enticing than a park full of real ones.) But these cats aren’t a new addition to the Disney family. They first showed up at Disneyland soon after it opened in 1955, and rather than spending time chasing them away, park officials decided to put the cats to work. Today, there are plenty of benefits to being a Disney-employed mouser. When they’re not prowling the ground, these corporate fat cats spend their days lounging at one of the park’s five permanent feeding stations. Of course, Disney also goes to great lengths to manage its feline population. Wranglers at the park work to spay and neuter adult cats, and any time kittens are found, they’re put up for adoption.

OK.  We had first heard about this feline army in a hilarious exchange between Conan O'Brien and a certain charming Canadian, and I frankly didn't think much about the cat story.  I kind of assumed it was mostly a shooting-the-breeze kind of half-joking story.  But apparently it's for real.  This thing about Disney's army of commando kitties is for serious.  Good Lord! ... Ryan, I'll never doubt you again.

Wait, WHAT?

Wait, WHAT?  I'm away from my computer for one day, and I get this weird news waiting for me when I get back from classes.  President Bites Dog?

UPDATE: #ObamaDogRecipes on Twitter.

Good Grief, People

A former student of mine just tried to argue that 9/11 was really just "a cry for help" by the terrorists who felt "excluded" by the West.  REALLY?  I thought the cries for help came from the thousands of innocent people they purposefully and deliberately incinerated.  I think I need to lie down before I have a gorram aneurysm.  I am not making this up.  My God.

Geek Fun: File-Sharing Officially Recognized as Religion in Sweden

I swear I'm not making this up!

Movie Madness: JJ Abrams and "Star Trek 2"

WHAT?

Idiocy of the Day: the AP on the Kim Dynasty

AP stands not for "Associated Press" but for "Asinine Puffery."  Look at this:

Kim Jong Il inherited power after his father, revered North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, died in 1994.

There is nothing to revere about the founder of that brutal totalitarian slave state.  Whoever wrote that word gets the "dipstick du jour" tag.  Disgusting.  Or maybe, just maybe, it's an autocorrect error and that word is really supposed to be "reviled"?

String Theory: Violins and Mad Cow Disease

I don't even know what to say to this:

Musicians have warned that the works of Purcell, Handel, Vivaldi and Bach may never again be heard as their composers intended – because of EU rules to stop people catching "mad cow disease" from their instruments. 

Regulations which tightly control the use of certain types of animal tissue are unwittingly threatening the centuries-old technique of making musical instrument strings out of beef gut. 

The craft is covered by the same strict controls on raw materials from cows, even though campaigners say that to catch Creutzfeldt – Jakob disease, (CJD) – the human form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy – from violin or cello strings from an infected animal you would need to eat several metres of them.

I do think the word "unwittingly" is all too accurate.  Anyway, have you ever heard of anyone trying to eat violin strings? I mean, I know there's that romantic stereotype of "the starving artist," but this is ridiculous.