From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
Dazed and Confused
For some reason I never saw the movie (tag line: "It was the last day of school in 1976, a time they'd never forget...if only they could remember") until last weekend. Hilarious. Classic. A few choice bits...
Ms. Ginny Stroud: Okay guys, one more thing. This summer when you're being inundated with all this American bicentennial Fourth of July brouhaha, don't forget what you're celebrating, and that's the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic, white males didn't want to pay their taxes.
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Slater: Behind every good man there is a woman, and that woman was Martha Washington, man. And every day George would come home, she would have a big fat bowl waiting for him, man, when he come in the door, man. She was a hip, hip, hip lady, man.
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Cynthia: Don't you ever feel like everything we do and everything we've been taught is just to service the future?
Tony: Yeah, I know, like it's all preparation.
Cynthia: Right. But what are we preparing ourselves for?
Mike: Death.
Tony: Life of the party.
Mike: It's true.
Cynthia: Y'know, but that's valid because if we are all gonna die anyway shouldn't we be enjoying ourselves now? Y'know, I'd like to quit thinking of the present, like right now, as some minor insignificant preamble to something else.
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Mike: I didn't think drugs and alcohol were such a big deal they had to resort to neo-McCarthyism to get rid of it.
Pink: I think they're just worried that some of us are having too good a time.
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Slater: Didja ever look at a dollar bill, man? There's some spooky shit goin' on there.
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Cynthia: Maybe the 80s will be like radical or something. I figure we'll be in our 20s and it can't get worse.
If you're back in school now---or heading back soon---C&J hopes you get straight A's and that you go on to become very rich. Mainly because you'll be paying my Social Security. Go kids!
Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Note: Lately I've been wondering if any Iraq parliament members will return from vacation with gonorrhea and, if so, whether the other members will feel sympathetic and declare a national day of gonorrhea awareness, or just laugh in his face.
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By the Numbers:
Days `til the 2008 General Election: 438
Days `til the Fall Foliage Fat Tire Frolic in Carrabasett Valley: 39
Percent of Afghan homes with flush toilets: 7%
Percent of Afghan homes with TVs: 19%
(Source: The New York Times via The Week)
Number of Americans who studied at foreign universities in 2006: 205,983
Increase in students studying overseas vs. 10 years ago: +150%
(Source: TIME)
Weight of all the information that passed through the internet last year: 0.00004 ounces
(Source: Harper's Index)
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 161 (including 3 Cardigan sweaters and 2 Volvos). Soul Protection Factor 16 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: August 29, 2005: No canine left behind
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CHEERS to the flight of the "Al"batross. This is how I look at the resignation of Alberto Gonzales. Y'know how sometimes your nose gets stuffed up, and you know that if you can just dislodge the booger that you know is clogging up the pipe you'll feel a lot better, so you start picking away at it and after five or ten minutes when it seems like all hope is lost your fingernail catches on a teeny little crusty booger hook, and you slowly pull your finger away and it's like a 4-inch booger and you think, "Holy cow!" and once it's finally out you can breathe a lot easier but you still feel physically and emotionally spent, but in a good way? Like that.
P.S. The final straw that made him pack his bags? Messin' with the Chevy Chase Club's tee time schedule. Unforgivable.
CHEERS to that which will unfortunately fall upon deaf ears. Via Think Progress:
Outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace "is expected to advise President Bush to reduce the U.S. force in Iraq next year by almost half," citing concerns by the Joint Chiefs that "keeping well in excess of 100,000 troops in Iraq through 2008 will severely strain the military."
Which answers the question, "Mommy, why is Preznit making General Pace go bye-bye?"
JEERS to faux pas by someone who should know better. First it was "Five Deferments Dick" who said he was moved by the "crosses" at Arlington National Cemetery. Now Virginia Senator John Warner---a Korean War vet---rearranges the masonry on Meet the Press:
You know, this president, I know him pretty well. It’s a privilege. I remember this Memorial Day, he invited me to go to the ceremonies at Arlington. My wife and I went up. We drove up in the car with him and drove back. And I sensed, as we passed those white crosses after he spoke up there and came back, he feels most sincerely the loss of our forces.
Yeah...all those crosses. Time to retire, Gramps?
CHEERS to Bob Geiger. The venerable blogger and archivist-in-chief of the week's political cartoons is taking a break. With his permission and a million bucks in "seed money," C&J will continue updating Bob's Osama Clock every week. As of today it's been 2,172 days since the president said he would get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." And so, with great disdain, we ask Mr. Bush on behalf of Mr. Geiger: "Where's Osama?"
JEERS to flappin' yer gums. Fifty years ago today, South Carolina "Dixiecrat" Senator Strom Thurmond ended an over 24-hour filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Good news: the bill passed and Eisenhower signed it. Bad news: Thurmond got his voice back.
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Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda... GONG!!!
This is another edition of The One Word Answer Man. Susie Bright asks: Is There a Republican Senator Who's NOT Having Bathroom Sex?
Dole?
Now back to Cheers and Jeers...
Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda... GONG!!!
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JEERS to soul-crushing moments. And here I was, all set to join Ted Nugent and his merry band of machine gun-toting rebels. Now I find out that he avoided military service by deliberately wetting his pants and pooping in his drawers. Please don't let me down, Fred Thompson...you're the only hero I've got left.
CHEERS to Ben's new threads. The U.S. Treasury is giving the one hundred dollar bill---which is the most widely counterfeited U.S. currency---a high-tech makeover:
It combines micro-printing with tiny lenses — 650,000 for a single $100 bill. The lenses magnify the micro-printing in a truly remarkable way. Move the bill side to side and the image appears to move up and down. Move the bill up and down and the image appears to move from side to side.
And if it stands perfectly still? Find a designated driver.
CHEERS to the Democratic party. I'm getting sick of hearing the beltway pundit argument that goes something like this: "Well, there have only been two Democratic presidents elected in the last 40 years, which means they suck." Oh really? Well let's zoom out a bit, shall we? If you go back 75 years to 1932, Democrats have either been elected or re-elected ten times, verses nine for Republicans, and one of those times the reins were wrongly handed to the GOP by the Supreme Court. So in terms of being elected fair and square it's ten to eight in our favor. Next year we'll take back the White House and get re-elected in 2012, and that'll make it twelve to eight. Who sucks now, Cocktailweeniebreath?
JEERS to Day 1. On August 29, 2005, as George Bush displayed a lovely birthday cake he'd baked for John McCain, a giant category-3 fetus was terrorizing abortion clinics in New Orleans. FEMA head Michael Brown, drawing on his vast experience in disaster management as former head of the Arabian Horse Association legal department, responded swiftly and surely:
On August 29, the day of the storm, Brown exchanged e-mails about his attire with [FEMA's deputy director of public affairs Cindy] Taylor, [Rep. Charlie] Melancon said. She told him, "You look fabulous," and Brown replied, "I got it at Nordstroms. ... Are you proud of me?" An hour later, Brown added: "If you'll look at my lovely FEMA attire, you'll really vomit. I am a fashion god."
Given the events to follow, it would soon come to be known by historians as "the good day."
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Three Years Ago in C&J: August 29, 2004...
JEERS to Rudy: Lapdog of the GOP. Despite softballs from Tim Russert, Giuliani is forced to admit on Meet the Press that he disagrees with Bush on almost everything: guns, gays, stem cell research, abortion, and anti-terror funding. All he could play was the "Vote Bush or we're gonna die!" card. If he's as clumsy the next four days [of the GOP National Convention in New York] as he was yesterday, this could be fun.
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And just one more...
CHEERS to late bloomers. At age 88, Lorraine Barr---who never once played footsies with anyone in a bathroom at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport---just came out of the closet and explains why in an eloquent Newsweek essay:
Why am I now able to speak the unspoken? A friend at the retirement community where I live recently came out in the local and national newspapers. When I saw her do that, I thought, for heaven's sake, nobody can fire me, I'm 88 years old, my parents are gone. Still, I was frightened. It took me several days to put this essay in the mailbox. I owe a lot of credit to people who are comfortable enough in their own skins to say, "This is who I am."
Shall I be haunted for trying to tell my story now, when many might still not wish to address it, or shall I, perhaps, be congratulated?
Pshaw, lady. Your toaster oven's already in the mail.
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Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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