Look at Me

Two truisms about bad publicity:

1. There's no such thing as bad publicity. The Anti-Defamation League has consistently refused to learn this lesson, most recently with respect to Mel Gibson's Passion movie.
   
   
   
   By way of recap, 9 months ago, Mel Gibson had a privately financed movie about an Italian Christ with no distribution, no dialogue in a language spoken by living people, and no subtitles. Now, fueled by months of controversy (e.g. members of the ADL passing themselves off as members of a fictious church in order to see an advanced screening) the movie has enormous support from a wide cross-section of christian congregations, a predicted opening weekend of $25M, and, of course, subtitles.
   
   
   
   More than any other group or marketing strategy, the ADL has kept this movie in the news and made it a cause celebre for evangelicals. Congrats!


2. The publicity's bad if it's not about you. Why are the sponsors of the Super Bowl so pissed about the Boob. Obviously, it can't be the case that Anheuser Busch is legitimately concerned that the recent boob viewage has forever damaged the moral health of America. These are the people who had a whole campaign based around bikini models romancin' a dog in sunglasses.
   
   
   As the Guardian points out, the sponsors are pissed because no one was talking about how great the ads were after this year's Super Bowl. The big to-do over the hoo-ha is not because American families were subjected to boobie; it's because boobie distracted them from the annual dose of mega-advertizing. In this respect, the Boob is a threat to the most basic of American values: commercialism.

Fun with my answering machine (pt. 2)

In which Eugene performs the mating song of the wild gobbler.


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Why couldn't this all of happened in October?

The fallout from the Meet the Press interview continues. With both Bill O'Reilly and Peggy Noonan coming down on Bush, this is the most optimistic I've felt about a presidential election since 1996.(via dgcopter)

What are you talking about Willis?

"Blather is words, bunches of words, strewn about in a twisty tangly web ..."



Redefining meta-weblog since 1998.

Fun with my answering machine (pt. 1)

In which Eugene shows my dork-cred the back of his hand.


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Truth in Politics

President Bush: "I'm a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign-policy matters with war on my mind."



Yeah, we've noticed.

When they came for the Kazaa users, I did nothing. For I was not a Kazaa user.

Kazaa's headquarters down under got raided today after an Australian judge issued a "search and seize order".



To begin with, I had always heard that the Kazaa headquarters was like the Shadow's secret lair. When you tried to find it, you ended up having your mind be-clouded and your plans be-fuddled. Apparently not.



Second of all, it wasn't the Aussie police who conducted the raid. Instead it was the "Music Industry Piracy Investigations, a branch of the Australian Recording Industry Association."



So I'm to understand the the recording industry has its own stormtroopers? Who are empowered to conduct court sanctioned search and seizures. I mean this is Australia, where as far as I can tell, you have to murder someone to get a tank of gas. But still!



Are there other industry consortiums that have their own paramilitary wings? The Mechanized Infantry of the Plumbing and Heating Industry Alliance, perhaps?



"We gotta roll up to the vill' and investigate an illegal channel lock possession ... lock n' load!"



Update: Apparently, "The raid was conducted under a rarely used law, known as Anton Pillar, which allows litigants in civil copyright cases to gather evidence." Which is a messed up law with a goofy ass name.

Let's get together and feel alright

I recently played the arcade game Ninja Baseball Batman on the MAME machine we have here at work. As a wacky synthesis of japanese and american culture, it knows no equal. The powerups alternate between french fries and bbq eel donburri.



You are a robot baseball player out to save ... something. You have your choice of heroes - the fat yellow robot with donuts on his bat, the skinny blue stickball robot with the longball swing, etc. Your enemies consist primarily of anthropomorphic robot baseball equipment. There are nasty yellow baseballs with metallic mohawks. There are evil umpires who will throw their face guards at you. I think the ultimate baddie might be a pitching rubber.



The game's primarily a side scroller in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles style but the level design is a chaotic mindfuck. One level starts off on the Golden Gate Bridge which collapses and drops you onto a passing cruise ship which takes you to the docks where you have to fight a 4x4 miniboss driven by baseballs. And, as these screenshots show, the design philosophy seems to have been 'wild monkey colorgasm.'



In this respect, the game is a complete success.

More than meets the eye

Matt Bruns writes the Janet Jackson boob analysis to trump them all.

In which America goes retarded

Boob. Boob. Boob.



The level of rhetoric around the Janet Jackson boobie incident is simply unbelievable. FCC Chairman Michael Powell: "Like millions of Americans, my family and I gathered around the television for a celebration. Instead, that celebration was tainted by a classless, crass and deplorable stunt. Our nation's children, parents and citizens deserve better."



Good use of the Rule of Threes, here ... "classless, crass and deplorable" and "children, parents and citizens."



Speaking of celebrations, a 21 year-old who had swarmed the streets in Boston to celebrate the Patriots win was run over and killed by a guy in an SUV. Who fled the scene. And, of course, was determined to be drunk.



At this hour, it is not yet known how many people died as a result of seeing Ms. Jackson's boobie.