From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
Let's play a game
All you have to do is figure out which of the following was said by a straight married couple, and which was said by a gay married couple. Ready? Go!
"Quit hogging the remote."
"It's your turn to take the dog out to pee."
"Hurry up or we'll be late for church."
"Be right back---I gotta pick the kids up from soccer practice."
"Happy anniversary."
"You're not wearing that to Jacob's Bar Mitzvah. Are you? Really?"
"I promise I'll be nice to your mother. For at least the first 15 minutes."
"You never, you always, why can't you, why don't you, why didn't you, how could you, why couldn’t you, why haven't you, why aren’t you...?"
"Our pastor married us. It was a great ceremony."
"We're not religious so we went to a justice of the peace."
"She voted for McCain, I voted for Obama. Let's leave it at that."
"Turn right, turn left, no the other left, now you've gone too far, gimme the map, you're speeding again..."
"I'm gonna cry at Rusty's graduation like a busted garden hose. You've been warned. Deal with it."
"Not tonight, I have a headache."
"Oh look! The underwear fairy made another deposit on the bedroom floor. How special!"
"I love you."
Good luck! And be sure to send the C&J Marriage Game to your conservative friends and see if they can figure it out.
Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, June 4, 2009
Note: Today is Give A Norwegian A Snotty Look Day. I have no idea why, but I'm not about to argue with the special-events committee. Prepare to glare.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the Washington, D.C. benefit for the Netroots Nation convention, with special guests Sen. Russ Feingold and Rep. Earl Blumenauer: 12
Days `til the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago: 43
Portion of U.S. home mortgage holders who were behind in their payments in the 1st quarter of 2009: 1-in-8
The last time the number was that high: 1972
(Source: Mortgage Bankers Association)
Estimated reduction in trash being sent to U.S. landfills because of the economy: -30%
(Source: Washington Post via The Week)
Percent of Americans who support comprehensive immigration reform: 64%
(Source: Kos)
Multiple increase in ticket sales for Joe Turner's Come and Gone since the President and First Lady saw it last weekend in New York City: 3x
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
I have a correspondent named Irwin Wingo in Weatherford, Texas. Irwin and some of the leading men of the town are in the habit of meeting about ten every morning at the Chat 'n Chew Café to drink coffee and discuss the state of the world. One of their number is a dittohead, a Limbaugh listener. He came in one day, plopped himself down, and said, "I think Rush is right. Racism in this country is dead. I don’t know what the niggers will find to gripe about now."
I wouldn’t say that dittoheads, as a group, lack the ability to reason. It's just that whenever I run across one, he seems to be at a low ebb in reasoning skills.
---May, 1995
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Puppy Pic of the Day: World's worst corporate spy
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CHEERS to pressing the 'Reset' button. [Yawn] Another day, another grand slam. President Obama, speaking in Egypt, threaded a needle this morning and gave the Middle East (not to mention folks here at home) plenty of food for thought. He spoke of respect for religious diversity, women's rights, peaceful co-existence, political freedom, nuclear disarmament, and fighting terrorism. He pledged to support these efforts without acting like a bull in a china shop, but said change would only come with fresh thinking on everybody's part. But even more than that, he accomplished one thing that historians will marvel at as a high point in the first year of his presidency: he knocked Joe Scarborough off the teevee for an entire hour. On behalf of a grateful nation---thank you, sir.
JEERS to Dungeonmaster Dick. Oh, what webs he wove... Here's a CliffsNotes summary by Emptywheel of yesterday's big-time (but hardly surprising) revelations in the Washington Post:
Cheney was working with the CIA to keep his little torture program, and neither the CIA nor the Republicans he was arm-twisting want to talk about it. ... [Why] did the CIA hide Cheney's role in these briefings (not to mention the date of their briefing with McCain)? It reveals not only a desire to hide the degree to which these "briefings" under [CIA chief] Porter Goss became active lobbying in support of torture, but also the degree to which the CIA is working actively, with a former Administration official (Cheney) to hide their collaboration. ...
If anyone needed yet more proof that torture was Cheney's baby, his active lobbying of Congress---hidden as "CIA briefings"---ought to do the trick.
The only way this could get any more damning is if we discover that Cheney did the actual torturing himself. Frankly, I expect that news to slither out any day now. (Our guess for the office pool: he had a fondness for wiring detainees' genitals to his pacemaker.)
CHEERS to the sound of equality. It goes something like this: "These bills are now law in the state of New Hampshire." Those words from Governor John Lynch moments after he signed the revised and freshly-passed (and, of course, neatly-pressed) marriage-equality bill into law. So, let's check the tote board: Six states---MA, IA, NH, VT, CT and ME (assuming we vanquish a veto referendum in November, which is a dangerous assumption)---plus D.C. and temporarily-sidelined California get the official Seal of Approval for being the gay marriage trailblazers. Meanwhile I'm softening up our next target:
"Hey, whatza mattah, New Yawk? Are ya too chicken to pass a little gay mahrriage? Bwok Bwok Bwok!!! Come out from unduh ya muthuh's dress and strap on a pair, you lazy suns 'o bitches. A three-day-old cannoli could move faster'n you. What a goddam disappointment you're turning out to be. Don’t get me stahted."
I believe they call it tough love.
JEERS to annoying chores. Ninety three years ago today, the newly-invented washer/dryer combo went on sale for the first time. Followed by the next day by first husbands and kids to totally ignore it.
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Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda... GONG!!!
This is another edition of The One Word Answer Man. Atrios asks: Just which of the bosses at GEMSNBC thinks it's important for Pat Buchanan to have his views aired?
Dopey.
Now back to Cheers and Jeers.
Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda... GONG!!!
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JEERS to really, really bad judgment. Dr. George Tiller gets killed by a domestic terrorist and some genius at PETA---yes, PETA!---gets the brilliant idea to use his murder as an opportunity to promote vegetarianism. Yes, I did say...vegetarianism:
One version of the billboard says, "Pro-Life? Go Vegetarian." The other says, "Pro-Choice? Choose Vegetarian." Both feature a photo of three baby chicks. Lindsay Rajt, campaign manager for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said the billboards were prompted by the recent shooting death of abortion doctor George Tiller, who was killed Sunday at his church.
There's gotta be a special circle in advertising hell for that. (I envision disgraced marketers watching an eternal loop of ShamWow, Head-On and Enzyte commercials while swirling in a Hawaii chair.) But if there's a bright side to this story---and I had to rack my brain to find one---at least they decided against using the tagline, "Rest in Peas."
CHEERS to My Preeecious. Thirty two years ago, on June 4, 1977, one of the first mass-produced personal computers---the Apple II---went on sale. I'm guessing that, in today's dollars, it would probably cost around $8,000. Their original ads seem quaint today. Our favorite one stars meta-blogger Ben Franklin. The copy is priceless:
What kind of man owns his own computer?
Rather revolutionary, the whole idea of owning your own computer? Not if you're a diplomat, printer, scientist...or a kite designer. Today there's Apple Computer. It's designed to be a personal computer. To uncomplicated your life. And make you more effective. ...
Apple is a real computer, right to the core. So just like big computers, it manages data, crunches numbers, keeps records, processes your information And prints reports. You concentrate on what you do best. And let Apple do the rest. Apple makes that easy with three programming languages---including Pascal---that let you be your own software expert.
Time waiting for access to your company's big mainframe is time wasted. What you need in your department---on your desk---is a computer that answers only to you...Apple Computer. It's less expensive than time sharing. More dependable than distributed processing. Far more flexible than centralized EDP. And, at less than $2,500, downright affordable.
Funny. My PC just gave me a pop-message that reads, "Oh, Apple Apple Apple Apple Apple!!! What does Apple got that I ain't got?!" Um...a lack of worms and viruses and trojan horses? Um...a variety of cool colors instead of just black and beige? Awww, now it's shorting out...I made it cry.
JEERS to the wrongest way to roast coffee beans. What is it about puritanical nutballs that makes them so much more likely to pull a trigger, detonate a bomb or, in this case, light a match to make something they don’t like go away? This is (chock full 'o) nuts. In the little town of Vassalboro, Maine, a coffee shop owner decided to spice things up by hiring female employees to go topless. Oooh, a topless coffee shop! A little titillation with your Taster's Choice! Scandalous! So...what do you do if the existence of a topless coffee shop makes your blood boil and your fingers ball up like a little baby's in righteous indignation? Of course...you burn the fucking place down. Brilliant! But just in case you forgot, Mr. Arsonist (if it turns out to be a woman I'll correct the record, but the odds are a million to one it was a dude), female boobies---and by boobies I mean hooters, knockers, juggs, titties, melons, ta-tas, bazooms, gazongas and love apples---were created by God in her image. You have meddled with the primal forces of nature and freshly-ground French roast, sir. And you...will...ATONE!
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Five years ago in C&J: June 4, 2004
CHEERS to Tenet's exit. CIA chief gets---as Bob Woodward would say---"Slayam Dunked." He says he's leaving for 'personal reasons.' Yeah...recovery time after he gets all those political daggers surgically removed from his back.
JEERS to delusions of grandeur. Condi Rice says: One day my husb...I mean, President Bush, will rank alongside Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Only insofar as he'll also be rotting in a coffin, ma'am.
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And just one more...
CHEERS to a different way of serving up loaves and fishes. With all the church closings going on nationally, I've often wondered what'll become of the more ornate ones that are bona fide landmarks. Some become community centers and meeting places. But many, like Portland's Chestnut Street Methodist Church---which is wedged between Portland High School and City Hall---fall into disrepair and neglect. Fortunately, a couple of entrepreneurs (husband and wife) have people's jaws dropping over what they've done with the church---namely, sunk $2 million into it and turned it into a restaurant called "Grace":
There's a stunning 35-seat circular bar designed especially for the restaurant, which takes up a good portion of the nave. There's an open kitchen splayed across the former altar and set off by decorative organ "pipes," an appropriate setting for Portland foodies who can now literally worship their daily bread. The mid-20th-century pulpit? It's now a hostess stand.
There are 27 stained-glass windows, including a 150-year-old rose window thought to originate from Florence. There are period fixtures, including immense chandeliers with oblong lights suspended from the ceiling, and two brick-lined turrets that look as if Quasimodo could be hiding in them.
Check out some pics of the place here. That's just gorgeous. (And maybe a site for a future New England Kossack meetup?) I expect to try it when it opens this month. With a bar like that, the spirits will have no problem moving me.
Have a nice Thursday, you cheeky devil. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Recent studies show that Cheers and Jeers tends to decrease babies' likelihood of learning new words, talking, playing and otherwise interacting with others.
---Time
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