A British Resolution for the New Year

Start speaking more sensibly and leave the language cock-ups to the Yanks (via Military.com):

The words "war on terror" will no longer be used by the British government to describe attacks on the public, the country's chief prosecutor said Dec. 27.

Sir Ken Macdonald said terrorist fanatics were not soldiers fighting a war but simply members of an aimless "death cult."

The Director of Public Prosecutions said: 'We resist the language of warfare, and I think the government has moved on this. It no longer uses this sort of language."

London is not a battlefield, he said.

"The people who were murdered on July 7 were not the victims of war. The men who killed them were not soldiers," Macdonald said. "They were fantasists, narcissists, murderers and criminals and need to be responded to in that way."

His remarks signal a change in emphasis across Whitehall, where the "war on terror" language has officially been ditched.

Officials were concerned it could act as a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda, which is determined to manufacture a battle between Islam and the West.

Imagine KC and the Sunshine Band on a killing spree!

The hilarious video game reviews by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw at Zero Punctuation begin and end with brief music clips that he deems appropriate for the review. After re-watching his BioShock review yesterday, I was struck by the ending song which was called "I Can't Decide" and performed by a group called the Scissor Sisters.

They have an uncanny Supertrampish, Bay City Roller Disco sound to them and I wasn't sure whether they were a new group at first or some actual relic of the seventies I had never heard of. Whatever the case, the music is incredibly appealing and the words kind of tip off how the group is indeed modern. Those old happy, shiny disco tunes never had lyrics like this:

It's not easy having yourself a good time
Greasing up those bets and betters
Watching out they don't four-letter
Fuck and kiss you both at the same time
Smells-like something I've forgotten
Curled up died and now it's rotten

I'm not a gangster tonight
Don't want to be a bad guy
I'm just a loner baby
And now you're gotten in my way

I can't decide
Whether you should live or die
Oh, you'll probably go to heaven
Please don't hang your head and cry
No wonder why
My heart feels dead inside
It's cold and hard and petrified
Lock the doors and close the blinds
We're going for a ride

It's a bitch convincing people to like you
If I stop now call me a quitter
If lies were cats you'd be a litter
Pleasing everyone isn't like you
Dancing jigs until I'm crippled
Slug ten drinks I won't get pickled

I've got to hand it to you
You've played by all the same rules
It takes the truth to fool me
And now you've made me angry

I can't decide
Whether you should live or die
Oh, you'll probably go to heaven
Please don't hang your head and cry
No wonder why
My heart feels dead inside
It's cold and hard and petrified
Lock the doors and close the blinds
We're going for a ride

Oh I could throw you in the lake
Or feed you poisoned birthday cake
I wont deny I'm gonna miss you when you're gone
Oh I could bury you alive
But you might crawl out with a knife
And kill me when I'm sleeping
That's why

I can't decide
Whether you should live or die
Oh, you'll probably go to heaven
Please don't hang your head and cry
No wonder why
My heart feels dead inside
It's cold and hard and petrified
Lock the doors and close the blinds
We're going for a ride

Giving Rosie a run for her money

I have yet to watch a single episode of The View, but the notoriety of their ever-fluctuating dingbat co-hosts is a constant source of cringe worthy entertainment. Sherri Shepherd is a case in point, as she has been elected one of the 50 Most Loathsome People in America for 2007:

Charges: Perfectly illustrated the Creationist's level of intellect when she declared her disbelief in evolution, and was immediately stumped about the shape of the earth, explaining her ignorance was due to the fact that she was too busy feeding her children to acquire rudimentary knowledge about... well, about anything, presumably. Further compounded her astonishing lack of basic knowledge when she authoritatively declared that Jesus Christ came before the ancient Greeks, and that she didn't think "anything predated Christians." Judging by these statements, Sherri probably thinks there are dragons on the other side of her desk.

Saudi Arabian history in four minutes

I completed one of Dennis Cozzalio's movie surveys over at his blog earlier this week. Question #27 asked for my favorite opening credit sequence, which I immediately answered Catch Me If You Can. It kicks ass in so many ways.

But I have to give some major props to this one from The Kingdom. I didn't even have any great desire to see this film, but the credits alone have now intrigued me.

December: Bleah!

Let the record show that this was the crappiest Christmas on record.

Mrs. Mosley and I caught some bug over last weekend. Her sickness actually started on Christmas Eve and mine in Christmas Day. Both of us have been quite miserable. Mucus, Ahoy!

We also decided to get new floors installed several weeks ago and ran into several problems with that. We were forced to evacuate the house for five nights while they worked on it. It also meant that there was no time (or room) to set up the Christmas tree, so it's our first year without one. I did string some lights in a triangle shape on a tall lamp, so that will have to do.

I'd show you some photos of the new floor and the cheap-ass tree, but somehow during the installation process, our new $500 digital camera was stolen. Though the company we got the floor from told me they take this matter very seriously, they couldn't do much beyond ask the two separate sub-contractors who worked on our floors (One on tile, One on wood) about it. Both claim to have no knowledge of it and we're still out a camera.

But the good news is that we have nice new floors. Also, Mrs. Mosley gave me a mighty fine Christmas gift this year: Eight passes to the Florida Film Festival in April. I'll be making the trip down to Orlando for that week and taking in all the good stuff (which I'll blog, of course).

So, overall, I guess things have been pretty nice. Excuse me, I have to go cough up more phlegm.

"This guy's sweatshirt must be made of Elven Mithril."

Get your geek on for the holidays.



Merry Christmas, everyone!

If only Christ had died on an ampersand.

OK, so CNN has a "story" about how Huckabee put a subliminal cross in the background of his latest campaign commercial. Though I wouldn't put it past him, I think that CNN is just groping for a story here. Sometimes a bookshelf is just a bookshelf.

But it does kind of remind me of the annoyance I feel when somebody sees something like this...



...in the ruins of the World Trade Center and proclaims it to be a message from God. They will stare at it like Richard Dreyfuss gaping at his mashed potatoes and proclaim in awed tones, "This means something. This is important."

Listen, folks. I don't discount people's experiences with God and their stories of being touched by the divine. But in terms of meaningful signs, this is a bit of a stretch.

I mean it's a CROSS, people! It's probably one of the most common symbols in the world. If you look hard enough, you can find it anywhere. Hell, I can find a dozen just sitting in my office here. That doesn't mean that my cubicle walls have been blessed by the Lord.

I once had this sex-obsessed friend who, no matter what film we watched, would proclaim every single friggin tree and lamppost to be a phallic symbol. If you're determined to find something, then you'll make sure you do.

But if they are right and these are all symbols directed by God, I just wish He would rain a little Manna over Rawanda once in a while instead of posting yet another cross. A little practicality and usefullness in your miracles is no sin.

Out of steam

This post from Kos makes me smile:

Meanwhile, one wingnut blogger after another is proclaiming that they'd rather vote for Hillary or Edwards or Obama than a Huckster nominee. Over at the NY Times, Adam Nagourney (who I like, really) has finally stopped writing his tiresome "Democrats are divided" stories to focus on something more topical -- how Republicans hate their candidates:

But what is worrying Republicans these days is that this tepid rank-and-file reception to the best the party has to offer suggests that the Republican Party is hitting a wall after dominating American politics for most of the last 35 years. Republican voters are reacting to — or rather, not reacting to — a field of presidential candidates who have defined their candidacies with familiar, even musty, Republican promises, slogans and policies.

“Our party generally has grown stale in its message and we’re not as tuned in as we once were,” said Senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican who sought his party’s presidential nomination in 1996 and 2000. “We’re repeating words and phrases that were from the 1980s, rather than looking ahead to 2008. We haven’t been as original and fresh in our presentation as we ought to be. We have been applying our old principles to new circumstances. The world is new.”

Richard Lowry, the editor of the conservative magazine National Review, said the field “has been less than the sum of its parts.”

“The debate among these guys has been so unedifying and so backward looking,” he said. “It’s all, ‘who did what wrong seven years ago.’ They are also not talking about the future, which is a sign of a deeper Republican malaise. The Republican Party has run out of intellectual steam and good ideas.”

There's no bigger sign of this lack of intellectual steam and good ideas than the almost exclusive reliance on fear-mongering to try and scare up votes, whether it's terrorism, Iran, scary brown people, San Francisco, or gays. And in that intellectual void, the party's religious base -- long used, abused, and taken for granted -- have sensed an opening and are pushing that advantage.

Huckabee isn't a corporate con -- he isn't even a millionaire! -- and he certainly isn't a neocon. His foreign policy would actually be predicated on liberal ideals of respect, trust and cooperation -- poison to those who get their foreign policy from Soldier of Fortune magazine T-shirt ads: "kill 'em all and let god sort them out".

He's a theocon, the very people who empowered the corporate cons and neocons the past two decades by their tireless on-the-ground activism while the others kept their fingernails clean in their Wall Street and think tank corner offices. Now that the theocons are threatening to take ther turn at the helm of the GOP, it's amusing how the rest of the -cons in the GOP are suddenly less than thrilled and willing to play ball.

Seventeen

(Via Metafilter):

17

Random thoughts on some upcoming releases

Speed Racer - If ever there was a film that fell into the "It will either work or it won't" category, this is it.

There Will Be Blood - It appears this will be the third film of an unofficial trilogy concerning dark and quite meditative thrillers (after No Country For Old Men and I Am Legend). I couldn't be more pleased about it, but I have to feel sorry for the out-of-work soundtrack folks.

Valkyrie - I watched the trailer, Tom, and it just doesn't wash. Watching you play a German next to all those superb Brits just looks ridiculous (and the eye patch certainly isn't helping matters). Please go back to being a dock worker in Jersey.

Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay and X Files 2 - You can almost hear Kal Penn and David Duchovny speaking simultaneously: "Uh, no, that's OK. I got a steady TV gig now. Not really interested in doing the sequel. Thanks, though."

Cloverfield - I don't mean to sound mean, but after watching the full trailer, the entire movie can be summed up with these five words: Blair Witch with a budget.

10,000 B.C. - Boy. If you thought the Christian Conservatives were pissed off at The Golden Compass, then the very title of this one should set them off for sure.

Acrentropolis

I have created a city ... er ... cabin.

"I am filled with Christ's love!"

The difference between regular Christians and Conservative Christians is this: The former seeks fulfilment in living a Christian life. The later seeks fulfillment by being completely rude and obnoxious to everyone and everything concerning their Christianity.

And this is why Bill O'Reilly started his "War on Christmas".

Incidentally, he recently declared the war to be over and won (by him). And after reading this story (via Daily Kos), I guess he may have won at that:

A Muslim man jumped to the aid of three Jewish subway riders after they were attacked by a group of young people who objected to one of the Jews saying "Happy Hanukkah," a spokeswoman for the three said Wednesday.

Friday's altercation on the Q train began when somebody yelled out "Merry Christmas," to which rider Walter Adler responded, "Happy Hanukkah," said Toba Hellerstein.

"Almost immediately, you see the look in this guy's face like I've called his mother something," Adler told CNN affiliate WABC.

Two women who were with a group of 10 rowdy people then began to verbally assault Adler's companions with anti-Semitic language, Hellerstein said.

One member of the group allegedly yelled, "Oh, Hanukkah. That's the day that the Jews killed Jesus," she said.

When Adler tried to intercede, a male member of the group punched him, she said.

Another passenger, Hassan Askari -- a Muslim student from Bangladesh -- came to Adler's aid, and the group began physically and verbally assaulting him, Hellerstein said.

"A Muslim-American saved us when our own people were on the train and didn't do anything," Adler said.

Adler pulled the emergency brake and the train stopped at DeKalb Avenue station, where police came on board.

The 10 suspects, ages 19 to 20, were taken into custody, said Brooklyn district attorney spokesman Sandy Silverstein.

Way to go, Bill. You've convinced people that the Season is not about being charitable and spreading goodwill, but about beating the crap out of people to make them understand that your being charitable and spreading goodwill.

Running out of room? Go buy an overpriced 3-piece livingroom group!

Back in March, I wrote a post on how I got a spam comment on an older post I did about ... spam.

Well, I got another spam comment to one of my older posts today. This time, it was to the post I did last month on clearing out all the excess crap in my house. Want to take a guess as to the subject of the spam blog the comment directed me to?

The Badcock Home Furniture chain.

So, George: How does your dog feel about waterboarding?

Check out the last story on Yahoo News:

Now why couldn't these be the tapes that were destroyed?

Wow. Two posts in less than thirty minutes. Why, Alonzo, you wouldn't happen to be stuck at home for the next three days supervising your new floors being installed, would you?

Why yes. Yes I am.

"NOT YET."

There's some sad news to report today. Terry Pratchett, one of the sharpist wits in literature today, has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's.

Fortunately for Pratchett (and the rest of us), Alzheimer's is not a death sentence. You-Know-Who will just have to wait.

Ahhh, Japan.

If this film is legit, then it has the capability of making Army of Darkness look like a Bergman film (found via YesButNoButYes):

The Internet was built Brick by Brick

In case you had any doubt that the Internet is Geek powered, here is some compelling evidence.

I did a Google search for the LEGO set I just bought by simply entering the four digit model number (7783) and nothing else.

The first and third hits were LEGO sites.

LEGO VILL RULE ZE VURLD!

Tuesday Morning says "Merry Christmas" to LEGO fans everywhere

On a whim, I stopped by Tuesday Morning earlier today and found that the LEGO folks are finally looking to unload their Batman line. Four different sets that retailed for $90 to $100 were all priced at $29.99. I got the Penguin/Mr. Freeze set below.

Happy days, folks. Get 'em while you can!

"It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage."

We were watching our DVD of "The Empire Strikes Back" last night and at one point I turned to Mrs. Mosley and said "There will never be another like Harrison Ford".

I remain firm in that conviction, yet I'll state without hesitation that I have been incredibly unenthusiastic about the prospect of a fourth Indiana Jones film. Despite having so many talented people on board (not least of which is Spielberg himself), I didn't know if seeing the geriatric Ford perform all his Indiana Jones daring-do would be exciting or just very, very sad.

Then I came across some advance photos courtesy of IMDb:

Well, I have to admit: he's looking pretty good here. I know alot of this impression is a combination of the clothes and the hiring of a superb makeup artist, yet with film being a visual medium, these things cannot be tossed aside as superficial. If he doesn't look the part, then half the battle of pulling it off is lost. So, though I'm still not counting the days until it's released, I can say that it has at least piqued my interest now.



And as a side note, it's nice to see Karen Allen back on board the franchise. She and Harrison had some great chemistry in that first film that was never really replicated in the second and third.

Welcome back, Marion Ravenwood. We missed you.

Delroy Lindo Quote of the Month: December 2007

Since we started the year with a Spike Lee movie, it seems appropriate that we end it with one. Three years after Spike and Delroy finished Malcolm X, they came together again to make Clockers. As with their previous film, Delroy plays a crime boss in this film as well and does an incredible job at it. Delroy's line is possibly one of the most famous from the film, and a fitting way to close out the year:

Rodney: [sigh] If God created anything better than crack cocaine he kept that shit for hisself.