"The storied movie critic responds in kind to a reader’s question, it’s funny as #ell. This is way better than when William Safire tries to tell us how the kids today talk."
buzzfeed
Apparently at least some oversight and rules are going to accompany this bailout. seems Congress and the President agreed earlier today to place limits on the CEO pay and bonuses for the companies that the taxpayers will be buying up.
Hopefully the final product will have some additional thot and care and it won't just be a give-away to the already wealthy but irresponsible CEOs who created this disaster.
"In order to live in New Jersey one must be at least one of the following; Italian, German, Jewish, Irish, Asian, Latino, Black or Catholic - exception: Indians may live in central Jersey only. If you meet none of these standards then you are to be whacked. New Jersey has a curiosity called the Jewtalian - Italian girls who could pass for a Semite and who act Jewish. (Jewtalians are also deathly afraid of bears) When Jewtalians travel to other parts of the United States, they are almost always mistaken for Jews. Many Jewtalians, who average 4.5 feet tall, can be seen arriving at the Short Hills Mall in cream colored Cadillac Escalades. All Jersey residents hate New Yorkers, because they ordered the whacking of Oscar Wilde.
Another little known fact is that all people from New Jersey know where Jimmy Hoffa is, who killed Kennedy, where to get a good meal at three in the morning, and where to get drugs. New Jersey is divided into the north and the south. The North is the land of pollution and crime and the south is farms, Wawas, the shore, and a dumping spot for corpses. All people in New Jersey live in fear of three things; the mafia, the Jersey Devil, and car insurance. South Jersey people also know how Mexicans fit twenty people into the front cab of a truck, because they have done it with them. New Jersey residents also have been to every business shown on the Sopranos. The only way New Jersey residents are able to survive the taxes is through their Mafia connections.
"Proper Use and Care Of Your Irishman
An Irishman's hair should be treated daily in a solution of Kool-Aid and egg dye to preserve colour. Combing their long manes with a little brush, and thinking of ways to smite the British. Although most functioning Irishmen have brown or black hair, a disproportionate number of 'broken' Irish Americans have red hair due to improper solar exposure and a viking tainted genetic background. Skin may be bleached, as there isn't any colour to be washed anyway, and those freckles definitely aren't going anywhere.
Apart from the red haired or 'broken' Irish, all other flavours are in fact solar powered. When in it's natural cloud covered, rain soaked, cold, sodden, damp, dour, grey, briar dragging, bog covered, mud soaked misery of an environment the Irish is somnabulant and despairing, prone to alcohlism, sporadic violence and misery. Stick one in a country with regular exposure to sunlight and they become "great workers", "tanned", "cheery" and rich.
"It is the home of the Philadelphia Iggles, the San Diego Padres and some other sports teams. And due to the horrible diction of its inhabitants, Philadelphia is the only place on Earth where you can enjoy a cheesesteak "wit" fried onions and wash it down with a nice, cold glass of "wooder".
Philadelphia is a city of neighborhoods. This may account for the racial violence that is exhibited from time to time.
Center City is a great place to visit if you like rich snobs, clothing stores, and large buildings. (NB - If you plan to stay longer than 20 minutes be sure sure to carry excessive amounts of cash with you because you will invariably be taxed or fined for something)
Have you ever watched any movies or music videos about gangstas and thought to yourself, "Wow it would be so awesome to be in a gang surrounded by daily violence!" Well then head down to South Philly west of Broad Street. You'll find too much of it. Point Breeze makes North Philly look like a nice suburban neighborhood in comparison.
This area includes the Art Museum. Look around for a bit, it looks a lot like a certain French city. The Parkway which leads all the way up to the Art Museum, is shamelessly ripped off of Paris' Champs-Élysées. Around the area are many other museums as well. Why is the area famous? For starters, Rocky immortalized it by running up the steps of the Art Museum. Also Live 8 was held there. Behind the Art Museum is the Schuylkill River, where people row and ride their bikes. Of course riding your bikes on the bike path next to the river is only recommended if you enjoy other cyclists who don't understand the concept of "family bike path" and how it differs from a "race." Also you may need to have a high tolerance for people who simply don't understand that the term "bike path" actually implies bikes are permitted to be ridden. If you plan to drive to Plymouth Meeting along the Schuylkill River highway, make sure it's not at quitting time on a Friday. Especially if your dad is driving you to a date that was just moved to the Plymouth Meeting Mall at the last second, but that was full so they moved it to the "great" northeast.
The typical North Philadelphia house has distinctive wooden boards over the windows, holes in the roof to let in the breeze in place of air conditioning (and guess what? There's no carbon footprint!), and has not been inhabited since the time when Sylvester Stalone was actually considered cool. And that's just North Philadelphia west of Broad St. You should see the scary neighborhood east of Broad St.
Okay, I've lied. North Philadelphia is not only synonymous with black people. It is also synonymous with Irish people. Kensington Avenue (especially where it meets Alleghany Avenue) is a great place to pick up hookers. Or get shot. Watch out for the angry drunk Irishmen and Puerto Ricans there. Aren't we a great city? Stereotypes, sex and violence. In defense of North Philadelphia, those Center City minivan moms can get pretty violent as well. Along with those Mercedes driving rich guys who nearly hit me that one time because they don't understand the concept of a traffic light.
Originally named for the distinct rotten fish smell that permeates the area, Fishtown is now the "Up and Coming" neighborhood of Philadelphia. It's called that because when you get there, you're "coming up" on Kensington, and it's about time to turn around before you get shot. Fishtown strives to be Northern Liberties, a bustling neighborhood full of artists, bars, and empty blocks. In that respect, it's doing pretty well, except it doesn't have any artists. Until then, Fishtownies can continue to tell everyone how much it's "up and coming", because nobody will know they're lying, since nobody has any good reason to go to Fishtown anyway.
The Little Poland of Philly. You can get some Polish kielbasa and perogies, just avoid Polack jokes...or some crazy huge Polish dude named Czeslaw and his local pub buddies will pummel you.
City Hall and the surrounding areas are a commonplace for everyone. Subways, people, everyone bustling around, it's one of those places where a lot of people end up. A lot of stores are around along with some hotels. The stores are generally Dunkin Donuts, department stores, jewelry stores, or stores which sell brands of clothing such as Rocawear and Sean Jean. Stolen, or fake jewelry is abundant on the street along with real jewelry in the stores. This area is also home to The Gallery, a big urban mall where it's common to hangout. Only instead of it being a hangout for suburban private school students, it's where public school students from all over come to gather. The Gallery, like most malls, drains you of your serotonin level when entered, but it is quickly regained when you realize you won't be around a bunch of annoying white, gothic, suburban, teenage mallrats. It also helps that there's a GameStop. This is also where Love Park is, you know the place where people skateboard. Or used to. The sport was killed by the government and the year 2000.
Many decry the fact that it was the MOVE cult headquarters that was bombed from the air and not the gallery. Current proposals to seal the Gallery an hour after school lets out and flood the entire building with nerve gas are being considered...but the city's already blown its budget for mass murder of its own citizens, so it's a distant shot.
The place where millions of Asians don't get the fuck out of your way.
Right nearby the Gallery and its surroundings is Chinatown. What makes Chinatown so good? Two words: Wing Wang's Peking Duck House (9th and Winter, right near the Vine St Expressway). Well that's five words but most people only refer to it as Sang Kee so you can keep your comments to yourself. Also it's just a cool place to get imported Asian things, Like syphilis. Or opium. Yay opium! Now with a booth in the Reading Terminal Market.
Chinatown is an excellent place to poison yourself because your drunk, incapable of making informed decisions regarding what you're eating and Chinatown has the only places open.
Contrary to popular belief and empirical fact, University City does not actually exist (except on maps, street signs, city government records, and the records of the University City District). The area known as University City successfully seceded from West Philadelphia to establish their own edutopia, led by the University of Pennsylvania and its comic sidekick, Drexel University. There are a bunch of things you might expect to find at a college campus such as food courts, tennis courts, bookstores, and movie theatres. There is also a place where you can buy cereal, only cereal (this is actually true). Now that's clever and alternative enough to attract preppy college kids - oh and lets not forget the stoners who have the munchies and thick wallets!
Unique for having been bombed from the air by the city government in 1985 (this is actually true), West Philadelphia is famous for being the home of the University of Pennsylvania and the birthplace of Will Smith and Wilt Chamberlain. The local diet consists of halal, cheesesteaks, and babies. Visiting is not recommended due to a very high probability of getting shot, raped and murdered.
Recently the area has been infested by a variety of Crust Punks and other lower primates. While friendly, these creatures sadly lack the ability to communicate vocally. Instead, use a stick.
If you don't get shot in the North, then you're sure ass hell to get raped here.
Now, one can only assume that this "neighborhood" was named out of sarcasm. If you go out far enough, this looks like some run down blue collar suburb. But it isn't a blue collar suburb, it's the Northeast. It's a fun place to drive to if you feel like a nice one hour drive to somewhere not even outside of your own city. Otherwise known as the "N'East" by residents or ex-residents. The neighborhood is also known as "N'Easty", a word denoting a propensity for comfort with strip malls, bleak futures, row-homes, and winding, unnavigable roads.
Northeast Philadelphia frequently discusses breaking away from Philadelphia proper, making it the Quebec of Southeastern Pennsylvania.
The Northeast's primary product is boredom and a crippling inferiority complex regarding its relation to the rest of the city, i.e. the parts someone gives a shit about.
The Northeast is also home to many, many upstanding policemen who were chosen to be among Philly's finest for their aptitude at being white guys from the Northeast.
Mount Airy is famous for being the third most Jewish place on Earth, and created quite a stir a few years back when it actually seceded from the union to join Israel. Famous for having fairly large, nice houses with two kitchen sinks, one for meat, one for dairy products. Home to a few nomadic tribes of black people. Also home to a trolley car diner, which is quite nice if you happen to be a connoisseur of deep-fried rat.
Psssst--There are no Germans here! Yes, they were forced out when North Philadelphia invaded circa 1967. This neighborhood is one of the nicer residential options for black people, as it has a nice big park where people still occasionally come across skeletons and unexploded ordinance left over from the American Revolution. It is also home to those Jews who for whatever reason do not live in neighboring Mount Airy. Home to more Nation of Islam Mosques than Las Vegas is home to Casinos.
The WASP capital this side of Nantucket. Chestnut Hill is home to several crazy old street people, many more wealthy alcoholics, gourmet dog food stores, bead shops, used record places, tiny family-owned grocery stores, coffee shops, and 97 places to cash a check. The rowhouses are all several centuries old, and the other houses are all the size of a small village.
Also spelled Olde City by pretentious mispellers, this is the area of Philadelphia where everything historical seems to have occurred. Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell are located here. There are plenty of small shops, museums and historical sites to visit and a fun day can be had by all, old and young, in this area. Of course that was before the day would be spent waiting in more lines than Disneyland due to newfound security measures in place. Now it's just boring. There are horses though, with carriages. This is amazingly awesome the first time you see it. Then it's just another site, with the added bonus that it produces feces capable of being stepped in. The most famous resident is the legendary guy-who-dresses-up-as-Benjamin Franklin.
At night this mediocre tourist trap for families is transformed into a mediocre nightlife trap for girls from New Jersey with bad hair. Do not approach them. They all have herpes. Every single one.
This is a fairly upper middle class neighborhood near Old City and The Gallery area. Its unnatural darkness at night, illuminated only by yellow street lamps is enough to give someone the creeps and haunt their dreams. Brick is the building material and mugging weapon of choice in this area. At the southern end of this district they have erected a gate ostensibly to keep out the residents of the rest of the city. The Inscription above the gate reads "Here thar be yuppies" in olde yuppish (latin).
What can be said about South Street? It's a place you can walk around and buy stuff. This is one of the only places in the city where you run a pretty low risk of getting shot and bumrushed, since the city's abundant deranged violent crackheads are scared off by local Starbucks, yoga shops, rastas, and all that other sissy stuff. Besides, the emo alternative goths or whatever the fuck are real wusses, despite their "badass" tattoos and collars and the rest of Hot Topic products. This relative safety ("relative" is as good as it gets anywhere in Philly) has resulted in making the place one of the city's most popular tourist destinations. Now your choices on items include tattoos, CDs, sex toys, wiccan paraphernilia, skateboards, alternative clothing, and yogic knick-knacks. At night you can get drunk at the bars, and meet beautiful women. It's Philadelphia's mainstream fauxhemian area. There is also frequent flashers, mooners, and sunners. South Street also has the city's highest concentration of cops, since here they are almost safe from being shot at, slept on, bitten and/or begged for change.
Also known as Two Street. If you call it 2nd street, you're a terrorist. Quite popular with out-of-towners for its convenient existence as I-95."
Baggage searches are SOOOOOO early-21st century. Homeland Security is now testing the next generation of security screening — a body scanner that can read your mind.
...actually 2 months and left just before bootcamp finished. this is nescessary to know because the following story is all about me and the usmc and an errant flip flop...
already - an errant flip flop - it makes me giggle...
{longest blog ever - matt's note}
USMC or DHS please let me know if this post violates ur rules or whatnot...
(update - for a post on modern "final restoration" thought in American protestant theology see this post - http://favoritematt.blogspot.com/2009/03/this-american-life-heretics.html)
Eschatology and final restoration (apokatastasis) {meaning all will be saved - matt's note} in Origen, Gregory of Nyssa and Maximos the Confessor
Andreas Andreopoulos
Penn Humanities Forum
School of Arts and Sciences
University of Pennsylvania
unless she does something ridiculous in the next few weeks before the election this will be my last mention of s.p.
"Sarah Palin is ruining my life
I rant about her; I can't stop thinking about her; I cannot stand to look at her; I'm possessed by her!
By Cary Tennis"
"Leave Palin Alone!!!!!!"
"Ryan wanted to order new Comcast service but balked at their request for a Social Security number. When he asked why they needed it, the Comcast chat rep said "The Patriot Act" required it. That doesn't sound right to us, or to Ryan. His story and full screenshot of the chat, inside..."
of course the tshirt is borderline learning-disabled, but i'm vehemently pro free speech so i would say it's a FAIL for the school - not the kid....
http://www.myfoxcolorado.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=7490636&version=6&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.2.1
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/times_online_tv/?vxSiteId=d8fa78dc-d7ad-4d5a-8886-e420d4bc4200&vxChannel=Times%20Online%20News&vxClipId=1152_timesonline1312&vxBitrate=300
"A Finnish student who killed ten people in a college massacre today had been questioned by police only yesterday about a YouTube video showing him firing a pistol on a shooting range.
The student, identified as Matti Saari, a 22-year-old trainee chef, walked into the catering and tourism college in the remote western town of Kauhajoki at about 11am (0800GMT) and started firing at both fellow students and staff.
Some 90 minutes later he turned the gun on himself, but survived and died of his injuries five hours later in a hospital bed"
Corporate India is in shock after a mob of sacked workers bludgeoned to death the chief executive who had dismissed them from a factory in a suburb of Delhi.
Lalit Kishore Choudhary, 47, the head of the Indian operations of Graziano Transmissioni, an Italian-headquartered manufacturer of car parts, died of severe head wounds on Monday afternoon after being attacked by scores of laid-off employees, police said.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article4810644.ece
http://www.bloggingtips.com/2008/09/01/breaking-the-mold-12-remarkable-blogger-designs/
example one:
also:
The Top 10 Blogger Template Resource Sites
and:
Here is a complete list of all the tutorials posted on Blogger Buster, organized by category.
Update 1: Think the $700 billion in the bailout plan is based on actual need? Think again. A Treasury spokeswoman tells Forbes.com: “It’s not based on any particular data point. We just wanted to choose a really large number.”
Update 2: My post on the Bush Bailout speech
Update 3: My 2nd post re: McCain's request for a time-out and letterman's response to that
"President Bush wants Congress to give his Treasury Secretary (Henry Paulson, a former Wall Street executive) $700 billion to bail out wall street with no congressional or court oversight. That amounts to $2,000 for every single American.
Would it help families struggling to keep their homes? NO. Do taxpayers get any share of the firms we're bailing out, so we can benefit from any eventual profit? NO. Would the firms we're bailing out be required to stop paying their executives multimillion-dollar salaries? NO.3 This is a pure giveaway of epic proportions.
Even some Republicans are admitting this is crazy. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) asked, "Just how long can the poor beleaguered taxpayer be expected to bear all the losses and bear all the risk?"4 Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-Ohio) said, "I'm getting a lot of calls from my district, with people saying, why are you bailing out the big guys and not us?"
Main Street before Wall Street petition can be signed here
This will be the largest intervention in the U.S. economy by the government since the great depression. They are hoping to have the legislation passed within the next few days.
"Decisions By The Secretary...Are Non-Reviewable...And May Not Be Reviewed By Any Court Of Law Or Any Administrative Agency"
Outrage Over $2.5 Billion Bonus For Lehman Brothers' New York Staff - Lehman Brother's is one of the Companies who are going to be bailed out.
Good ol' Ron Paul's take.
If you are in New Jersey you can call our members of congress:
Here's where to call:
Senator Frank Lautenberg
Phone: 202-224-3224
Senator Robert Menendez
Phone: 202-224-4744
Congressman Robert Andrews
Phone: 202-225-6501
Actual Audio - Paulson on the bailout - including the U.S. bailing out
foreign banks:
"The Daily Show's" Generic Off: The Candidates Responses To The Financial Crisis:
Casper Star-Tribune Online - Obituaries
"Jim, who had tired of reading obituaries noting other's courageous battles with this or that disease, wanted it known that he lost his battle. It was primarily as a result of being stubborn and not following doctor's orders or maybe for just living life a little too hard for better than five decades...
...He was sadly deprived of his final wish, which was to be run over by a beer truck on the way to the liquor store to buy booze for a date. True to his personal style, he spent his final hours joking with medical personnel, cussing and begging for narcotics and bargaining with God to look over his loving dog, Biscuit, and his family...
...In lieu of flowers, he asks that you make a sizeable purchase at your favorite watering hole, get rip roaring drunk and tell the stories he no longer can...
...Gorman Funeral Homes - Converse Chapel of Douglas is in charge of the arrangements. "
from my sitemeter traffic records:
dhs.gov 8:21am 1 pageview 0:50 minutes
whatever it was they were interested in they didn't seem to stay very long.
Click anywhere on the cartoon or the link below for the larger original