The only thing constant is change

You can thank our team of web interns for our new-and-improved “True Blue” look. They stayed up for six weeks mainlining Hot Pocket juice and Mountain Dew Code Red as they learned CSS at gunpoint. Some even gave their lives. And for that, we thank them each time we buy Hot Pockets.

Also added/subtracted names from the blogroll, though we steadfastly refuse to get rid of the March-2008-vintage Bad Cartoonist. We’re convinced he is not retired, but rather simply waiting in the shadows.

Also with the new theme comes something that WordPress calls “widgets.” On the left sidebar are two widgets that you will find eminently handy. One allows you to follow me on Twitter. The other allows you to stick this blog on an RSS feed (such as Google Reader), which is probably the best way to go about reading it given my irregular updating schedule.

Now let me take a trip down memory lane

Recent events have reminded your host of two old favorites.

On yet another push for the U.S. to meddle in Iranian politics:

January 23, 2006

On yet another push to deny Americans access to affordable health care:

June 14, 2007

This shit writes itself, mainly because it’s the same shit written over and over and over again.

Take the Picture Off

On the heels of this…

…we get this.

Above are two poorly-used images that aren’t really that hard to use. Every viewer approaches the image with a preconceived notion of the Buddha or (to a lesser extent) the red fist — the original purpose of each, after all, was to “stand” for something. But in each instance the artist managed to destroy any chance of the reader being able to quickly absorb the meaning by using the icon completely out of context. If Sotomayor weren’t Hispanic, the cover would have worked (although she wouldn’t have spoken those 38 fateful words). And if anti-tax zealots were genuine about their desire to promote the interests of the middle class, then the poster would have worked.

But neither of those being the case, what we see is a movement whose essence has been boiled down and extracted, like fine, raw San Pedro cactus, to a potent and odd-tasting brew that is palatable to none but the truest of believers.

When your bullshit division starts sputtering, you know you’re in trouble.

The revolution will be conspicuously consumed

OK, I think I’ve figured out how this stuff works.

1) Invade a country, overthrow its democratically-elected leader and install a dictator.

2) Scratch your head as the Western-installed leader is overthrown in a popular revolution thirty years later.

3) Insist that your leader of choice be installed once again thirty years after that.

Look, baby girl, let me be real wit chu for one second. (The author turns his chair around, sits in it backwards in his serious pose) You had no idea who Mousavi was a week ago. Shit, you probably didn’t even know Iran was holding elections a week ago.

The white man’s burden does not include rooting for the Greens, as one might root for the Jets or the Nuggets or the ugly British chick who sang on TV that one time. So let us worry about the brown people we’re already torturing liberating, rather than those on whom the bright light of freedom and democracy and pixie dust has not yet been shone.

See also alicublog, which always does it big.

Afflicting the comfortable, part 1,685

“To be in the hallway when the president walks by with a handful of M&Ms, popping them in his mouth as he goes to visit his chief of staff — it was unbelievable.” Brian Williams, anchor of NBC Nightly News