Remember my post about the racist tshirt furor? Well, it turns out that that was a hoax. (Hat tip to abydosangel) The shirts are real, but the attack was fabricated by the tshirt artist to publicize his work. The New York Metro editor who ran the story was fired.
OK, maybe you heard that by now. But I wanted to be clear.
If you feel cheated of the chance for some righteous outrage, here's a wrongheaded court decision in a Boston housing case: "Every person of color paid $500 more than every white person . . ."

cutest thing evah Mark Wahlberg feeds a rescued baby sea lion at Sea World in San Diego, July 2008

Usually he only looks all nurturing and sweet like that with his kids. And apparently baby animals. He so needs to do a 2009 calendar with babies and puppies.

I first read about this on the blog of the Angry Black Woman, as a postscript to her post about the New Yorker cover.

Black teenagers attack a woman in Union Square who is wearing a $69 t-shirt that says "Obama Is My Slave."
Woman subsequently intends to sue t-shirt designer.
NY Metro story here -- More details at FashionIndie

I am just pointing and gasping at the many many levels of wrongness. Everyone in this story is hateful.

ETA: Now revealed as a hoax

I've been pretty mindlessly watching things. I seem unable to focus on anything serious.
I have been enjoying Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I'm slowly netflixing the entire series. I'm on Season 2 now. I missed this when it was on regular TV, because it coincided with my multi-year dissertation-writing/drinking-in-dive-bars project, and I couldn't juggle everything. It is such a joy to watch the series now; I am reminded how Star Trek has always made me happy, since I was about 8 years old. (We used to watch the original series in reruns every night during supper, on a 12" b&w tv, and then we would tuck our pants into our snowboots so have more of a Star Trek look.) I know that Leonard Nimoy mocked those who would despair over the lack of current Trek on TV, but if there was a new series, I would be there. (Exception: I could not watch Enterprise; I tried several times; it was too horrible. I didn't like that it went backward. Possibly I'll revise that position when there is nothing else left for me to watch, but I'm still putting it off.)
Anyway, tonight's episode was about a Cardassian war orphan raised by Bajorans who now hated himself for being an oppressor by birth. And furthermore, soon I am gong to have to delve further into the Bashir/Garak (sp?) slash that I vaguely recall is out there. Rec me if you know good ones. Bonus: Capt. Sisko in sultry pajamas, answering the phone at 3 am.

I briefly "tivo'ed" [only it's not a proper Tivo; it's the substandard cable company digital recording thing] the soap opera Guiding Light, which was the soap opera I watched from junior high until halfway through grad school. It has not lost its GL zany meta qualities. At the moment, there is angst about the filming of a movie of the long ago passion of Reva and Josh, now both with other people who are upset about the movie. Reva has sold their love story to Hollywood, like in the plot of that Brit comedy As Time Goes By. I love that the scenes of the movie are ten degrees cornier than the scenes from the actual show -- it's downright recursive. And I also know that if I hung in there and watched, eventually Reva will make her move and Josh will be hers again, no matter how many years have passed. Oh, also, she roughed up an Irish hoodlum and planted drugs on him and then narced him out. Reva is Teh Awesome. Oh and Alan Spaulding is still evil, as he ever was. I think poor evil Roger Thorpe died; he was always the hottest, even though he was actually evil.

But on the other hand, watching GL reminds me too much of an earlier time in my life. I mostly watched the show with either my grandmother, who has since passed away, or a very close girlfriend, who has for some unknown reason stopped talking to me. (Not just me; I didn't do anything to her. She doesn't talk to any of her old friends anymore. Though we did get Xmas cards last year, and exclaimed to one another over them.) And I find that, unlike Star Trek, which is sufficient unto itself, Guiding Light is not enjoyable to me without a community in which to discuss it. I did look at the CBS messageboards, but of course those are very upbeat about the show, and part of the fun of watching it was always to mock and snark and also contemplate the consumer items: home furnishings and outfits, etc.

Of course there's also a Star Trek community where I feel welcome to post, even though I am not personally engaged with people there. But I have been in Trek fandom for so long that I feel free to enter conversations because I know the Trek discussion parameters. It is all about Trek, and I don't need to feel close to the other viewers to enjoy a discussion with them. But the soap opera was much more about the personal viewing experience to me. I don't know if this is just me or if it is because soap operas were designed to be consumed in the home or what.

Christie's is auctioning a 1950s school field trip report written by a young Robert DeNiro. It's dated 1954, so he would have been 11 years old. Bidding starts at $800 and while I think it's amusing to look at, I can't believe anyone would spend money on it.

I'm sorry that it is so small but it's from a flash display and I couldn't enlarge it. I'm also sorry for the directional artifacts which were part of the flash display. Go to the Christie's site if you need to examine it in more detail.

Historic Richmond Town is a living history museum on Staten Island that was only established in the late 1950s, so this class was really on the cutting edge of city history explorations. :)

I especially like that all the open books have scribble words on their pages. And all the tiny little quills on the featherpen.

I know that Homeland Security has done much worse than this, but it is still horribly annoying that Boy George has been denied a visa to enter the US.
I for one am perfectly happy to swap with the UK: they can take Martha Stewart and we'll take Boy George.
(All the gay men at lunch yesterday were OUTRAGED on Martha's behalf.)

Also, Boy George has written an Obama-inspired and Obama-sampling song, which you can hear at Papermag.

Robert De Niro interview in the Sunday Times.

“Difficult? Me? I don’t think I am difficult compared to other people. It is hard to make a movie at the best of times, so you don’t want to give people a hard time. People all have their own agendas. But it is not worth acting out something from your own history to make a point on a film set. If you have a problem with, say, your father or some other father figure, why give the director a tough time?”

I took this image from this Ebay auction. Bidding starts at $10,000, if you're interested; the money is purportedly going to music scholarships.
It's a handwritten letter on adorable purple Queen letterhead from Freddie Mercury to some record executive he was schmoozing in the early 1970s. It says:

Dear Jack,
Just thought I'd drop you a line to say we're all absolutely bowled over at the reaction with which Queen are happening in the States.
I'd like to thank you, personally, for your genuine interest from the very start.
Both Brian and John have recently excelled themselves in their performance and presentation, and you'll be pleased to know that they don't make it look so easy anymore.
I hope you like 'Queen II.' We've worked like demons on it, with a lot of sweat and blood gone into it, but it's been worthwhile. Brian, John and Roger send you their fondest.
Looking forward to seeing you again soon.
Love,
Freddie Mercury

Click several times on the image to see it bigger.

1973 letter to Jac Holzman of Elektra Records image taken from eBay auction of letter in June 2008

According to the Washington Times:

The government is testing drugs with severe side effects like psychosis and suicidal behavior on hundreds of military veterans, using small cash payments to attract patients into medical experiments that often target distressed soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, a Washington Times/ABC News investigation has found.

In one such experiment involving the controversial anti-smoking drug Chantix, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) took three months to alert its patients about severe mental side effects. The warning did not arrive until after one of the veterans taking the drug had suffered a psychotic episode that ended in a near lethal confrontation with police.

Senator Obama has already demanded an investigation.

via Think Progress


x-posted to freespeechzone


Am I the only one annoyed that there's no mood icon for "horrified" or "outraged"? I should submit a suggestion.

Just watched last night's appearance of Mark Wahlberg on Conan.
What has drained all the fun out of Marky Mark?
The children, the impending marriage, that scary priest he travels with?
Sure, he's getting older, he was Oscar-nominated, he wants to be taken seriously, he wants to gush about his kids.
But ten minutes on the kids can't have sugar cuz they go nuts? It was like listening to my brother-in-law in a bad mood. He's a movie star and he's got nothing better to talk about than that? Oh, no, wait, there was also hockey.
I am gonna have to watch him with the sound down.

Brian May supports Obama!
Obama, yay! :)

I try not to post too much from CuteOverload, but the BBC has baby leopard video! So worth the click, people.

is here: http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Trailer-De-Niro-And-Pacino-Team-Up-For-Righteous-Kill-8920.html

The cliched use of "Sympathy for the Devil" on the soundtrack fills me with misgivings. If they couldn't come up with fresher music than that, what hopes can we have for the film? Though possibly that is just the trailer music. Still, this whole project looks like a waste of fine actors in a tired plot. But maybe I'm too cynical. And maybe the plot won't matter. Maybe it will turn out to be campy and fun in a self-parodic way, deliberately or not.

not just a few dolls and the odd teamug.

6 minute video of someone's Queen room:



ETA: of course if I did have a Queen room, I could shut the door and keep the kitties out of it, so nothing would get broken.

I bought one of these. I could not resist the harlequin suit. It's cute, though not a perfect likeness, and it needs to be assembled. (It needs the microphone arm glued on with the microphone assemblage, and then needs gluing to the base, and then the base put inside the wooden stand. Complex.) I am holding off because I need to find a safe, kitten-proof place to put it, because it's the type of thing that could smash to bits.

Nuala O'Faolain died. I loved her memoir, Are You Somebody? Her voice is so straightforward about hard emotional truths, without losing balance or humor. I enjoyed one of her novels, too. I feel sad for losing her now.

She gave a distraught interview a few weeks before she died, specifically about her impending death. She called it a "bookend" to her memoirs:

I thought there would be me and the world, but the world turned its back on me, the world said to me that's enough of you now and what's more we're not going to give you any little treats at the end.

My cousin sent me this video and it is both amusing and creepy. Maybe you have already seen it