Skippy of the Day: George Bush Sr.

One side effect of #41 getting all the recent press was that he has more opportunity to stick his foot in his mouth. Here are a pair of pearls concerning the Internet from the former POTUS. Number One:

Last night on Fox News, former President George H.W. Bush said the current political climate has "gotten so adversarial that it's ugly." Asked to offer an explanation for why there is this "incivility," Bush pinned the blame on bloggers. "It's probably a little worse now given electronic media and the bloggers and all these kinds of things," he said.

Yes, George. Because it's all to do with intelligent political commentators like Daily Kos and nothing to do with nation wide broadcasters like Anne Coulter, Rush Limbaugh or any number of people on the conservative news network that's interviewing you. Dipstick.

And Number Two:

Also, Bush revealed that he enjoys using "the email" but lamented that his son, President George W. Bush, cannot for fear that the emails would get subpoenaed. Bush worried that presidents who used email would be forced to prove "that you were telling the truth and all this stuff."

Yes, heaven knows what will happen to the highest office in the land if Dubya was forced to tell the truth.

"The apple doesn't fall very far" and all that.

They both start with "P" ... aaaand that's about it.

So last week I got a FedEx from the website DVD File in Los Angeles. After I looked through my email, I was reminded that I had enetered their October contest to win a copy of the new Pride & Prejudice anniversery DVD set.



Unfortunately, I did not win this grand prize, but one of the consolation prizes instead. What was it, you ask? Ahem ...



I don't wish to look a gift horse in the mouth and all that, but could these guys have picked consolation prizes that were somewhat similar to the grand prize?

Quick break for post-election goodness

Yes, the election went very well, and at the time of this post the Senate was still up for grabs. But amidst all the big races, I looked through MSNBC's coverage and found this item:

MINNEAPOLIS - Voters elected a black Democrat as the first Muslim in Congress on Tuesday after a race in which he advocated quick U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and made little mention of his faith.

Keith Ellison, a 43-year-old defense attorney and state representative, was projected to defeat two rivals to succeed retiring Democrat Martin Sabo in a seat that has been held by Democrats since 1963.

Ellison, who converted to Islam as a 19-year-old college student in his native Detroit, won with the help of Muslims among a coalition of liberal, anti-war voters. "We were able to bring in Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists," he said. "We brought in everybody."

Congratulations, Mr. Ellison. Even more so than soon-to-be-appointed Speaker Nancy Pelosi, you bring some much needed variety to the haggard old WASP's that currently dominate American politics. I salute you.

Hypocrites to the left of me, Criminals to the right of me

Novel writing (not Live from Wessex) continues apace. I had to pop back on to blog about the gay-bashing, evolution-denying evangelicals exploding all over the place. The first one you've probably already heard about:

Rev. Ted Haggard said yesterday he bought methamphetamine and received a massage from a male prostitute. But the influential Christian evangelist insisted he threw the drugs away and never had sex with the man.

Haggard, who as president of the National Association of Evangelicals wielded influence on Capitol Hill and condemned both gay marriage and homosexuality, resigned Thursday after a Denver man named Mike Jones claimed he had had many drug-fuelled trysts with Haggard.

But the second one has not been as well publicized:

Kent "Dr. Dino" Hovind, founder of Creation Science Evangelism and the Dinosaur Adventure Land creationist theme park in Florida ("where Dinosaurs and the Bible meet!"), and his wife face more than 200 years in jail for tax fraud. ... Yesterday, Dr. Dino was found guilty on 58 counts, including not paying an $845,000 employee-related tax bill.

You can read more of that second story here.

LEGO Filler

And so, as is my habit, I leave you with a trio of superb LEGO creations (not mine) to leave you entertained and enthralled while I try to pound out a novel in thirty days. Wish me luck.

Forest Whitaker Quote of the Month: November 2006

With all due respect to Maki, I have to say that i didn't believe Sin City to be all that and a packet of crisps. That said, I will say that I enjoyed the first segment the most, which focuses on the character of Marv as played by up Mickey Rourke. Rourke did a pretty damn good job with it, and he was able to do it under a heavy make-up job. Oddly enough, it's not the first time that Rourke has played a touching criminal under layers of facial prosthetics.

Which is my awkward segue to the film Johnny Handsome. Rourke plays the title character, who has some physical features similar to the Elephant Man, but is also a smart crook. When he is left for dead by a couple of double-crossers, he's put in a prison hospital and given the opportunity to undergo experimental surgery to fix his face and also start a new life. The doctor, natch, is played by our good friend Forest Whitaker (with a heavy bai-yoo accent). The following exchange is right after he details to Johnny the surgery he wants to perform.

Dr. Steven Fisher: "Anyway, this is not an abstraction for you. You can come out of this with a normal life."

Johnny Handsome: "This experiment is all bulls*&t. I'm still going to be Johnny Handsome."

Dr. Steven Fisher: "I will give you a new name. I will give you a new face. I will give you new identification and a chance at a new life. They do that for witnesses. I can do that for you."