Rant

Okay, I've been holding my tongue on the escalating war-of-the-words between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, but I gotta break my vow of silence for this one.

Proving beyond any doubt that politics makes strange bedfellows, here's the matchup I never, never, ever would've expected to see...

The insensitive question of the day:

Okay, I got Metroid Prime 3: Corruption for the Nintendo Wii the other day (via Amazon's $30 sale), and I have to ask -- what the frig is up with the game's save points?

Since I have kids and it's cold and flu season, inevitably today I had to hike down to the local pharmacy to pick up some cold and flu medicine.

And inevitably I end up wondering what's the difference in what I get.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a major Pixar junkie -- I follow news of their new releases, I try to catch their new movies in the theater on opening weekends, and I've got boxed-set deluxe editions of the home DVD releases. Granted, my fanboyish devotion has wavered a bit lately due to external distractions, but I'm still enough of a geek to plunk down big bucks for fanboy fodder like this (buy it now, it's awesome!).

While driving in to work today, I happened to catch a bit of Thom Hartmann's radio program. My ears perked up a bit when he started talking about TPM's coverage of the little-noted political scandal around former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.

I've refrained from commenting on the recent Ann Coulter/Elizabeth Edwards dust-up just because I don't believe in giving the skank ho (Ann, not Liz) any further attention. I'm firmly convinced that Coulter's bomb-thrower personna is just an act she doffs whenever she needs to make money on speaking tours or promote an upcoming book.

That said...

The following letter dropped into my mailbox today:

A long time back I read a great article on this site, I believe it was called "Finger pointing in Littleton," about how people were trying to blame everything from video games to rock music to the goth culture for school shootings. With the recent VA Tech tragedy, these asshats are coming out of the woodwork again, and I would like to get a link to that article in order to pass it on for others to read.

Stolen shamelessly from Peter David, Writer of Stuff, because he's very good at, y'know, writing and stuff:

To: Sony Megauberconglomerate Assholes
From: A former Sony customer

Okay, you punks. I enjoyed a good snicker when you guys snuck copy-protection rootkit viruses on your music CDs. I was curious enough to see if your Walkman bean could stand against the iPod juggernaut (it couldn't). I mostly tsk'd in disappointment at your hubris-loaded $600 price tag for the PlayStation 3. I even eventually forgave you for backing Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich's ill-conceived insult to Toho's reknown city-stomping monster.

As an unabashed liberal, tolerant, empathetic kinda geek, it doesn't take much for me to get depressed about man's inhumanity to man -- such as this article from USA Today:

I have refrained from commenting on the recent unrest in the Middle East because, quite honestly, I haven't been following the events too closely -- and I try not to shoot off my mouth (or keyboard) on topics that I'm not moderately well-versed on. All I know is that the latest fighting is an escalation in the never-ending bout of "they attack, we counterattack" that gets tossed around by Israel/Lebanon/Palestine/whoever, which simply makes everyone worse off.

Because Godzilla says it more succinctly than I ever could:

In an odd way, I'm proud to say that I have no idea who Natalee Holloway is. I mean, I've heard the name mentioned in passing a few times, usually as a variation of "some gal who's gone missing," but I haven't spent any time following her disappearance. While I'm sure her family and friends are deeply concerned about her, I just can't grasp why I -- as someone in the 98% of the population who aren't part of her social circle -- should be following this tragedy.

Well, it's official -- Sony has just lost me as a customer for the PlayStation 3. And I'm writing this as a guy who still has a stack of original PlayStation CDs in my bookcase, waiting for a new console to play them on (WipeOut XL, resp'ct!)

Dear Universal Remodeling:

Even if I were currently looking for a contractor to remodel my home, dropping your fliers in the roots of my garden like so much rubbish is not going to endear me to choose your firm's services.

I hadn't mentioned it before, but a few weeks ago I picked up a copy of Crashing the Gate, the new book by noted liberal bloggers Jerome Armstrong (of MyDD) and Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (of Daily Kos).

Pardon my French there, but that's the only appropriate response I can give after having one of the most outrageous things I've ever heard confirmed for its sheer jaw-dropping stupidity and callousness.

Well, it seems like illegal immigration is the Hot Topic par Semaine, at least in American politics. I haven't said anything about the matter before, simply because I needed time to wrap my head around the multiple facets of the issue, but now I feel sufficiently (mis)informed to shoot off my big woofer.

This is just another example of why I've pretty much given up on the mainstream media for delivering the news.

At 9:57am PST, on Sunday, December, 18, 2005, the top story at the USA Today website is...