True that.

Received via email from a friend....

And they say they don't make good movies any more...

Atlas Shrugged. Soon you'll be able to sing it in the shower...

I, for one, cannot wait.

Then again...

It is only fitting then that a movie version would follow. Two years earlier, in 2007, rumors began circulating that Angelina Jolie had been cast already as the novel’s heroine, Dagny Taggart. Indeed, Lionsgate Entertainment produced a version of the movie starring Jolie, though it never went into production.

So they "produced" a movie that "never went into production?"

This is Going Galt at a level I cannot even comprehend.

Wait. What?

The February 14 cover-dated issue of Sports Illustrated, now on the stands,page 25, in the  "Faces in the Crowd" feature:

[Micah] Mason, a junior [basketball] guard at Highland High [Natrona Heights, PA], went 40 for 43, scoring a record 63 points...

Best I can figure, he made two three-point shots and 38 of those very rare and difficult one-and-a-half point pointers.

America is a 300 lb, bearded, diabetic man. Accept it.

The Onion breaks down the NFL East.

You can see their analysis of the entire league starting here. The NFL East breakdown is below.

And I think they've nailed the Dallas Cowboys, if nothing else.

• 
  
  

  New York Giants

  
  

  • Strength: Excellent at believing Eli Manning is a Hall of Fame quarterback; cohesive offensive line understands that blocking begins when ball is snapped
  • Weakness: No one but players able to afford entry into new $1.6 billion stadium
  • Player To Watch: After missing most of the 2009 season with a knee injury, Kenny Phillips has looked pretty good in practice, although nobody remembers who he is or what position he plays
  • Biggest Question: How will the Giants handle a very tough schedule that includes games against the Indianapolis Colts, their division rivals, the 1996 All-Madden team, and the '78 Steelers?

  Dallas Cowboys

  
  

  • Strength: Yes, there are positives, but reading them will only make you angry and listing them will only make us angry
  • Weakness: Other than being the most infuriating, knuckle-whitening, I-want-to-throw-a-brick-through-my-television-set-when-I-watch-them team in the league, are a little weak at free safety
  • Intangibles: Fuck the Dallas Cowboys and every fucking thing they stand for; special teams
  • Biggest Question: Can they finally get over the hump and get back to the Super Bowl, and do they know how much that would depress the entire U.S. populace?

  Philadelphia Eagles

  
  

  • Strength: Though they have lost Donovan McNabb's rocket arm, they have gained a highly accurate short-range subsonic cruise missile of an arm in Kevin Kolb
  • Weakness: With the loss of Brian Westbrook, the Eagles have a major hole at starting knee injury and concussion
  • Player To Watch: Michael Vick's athleticism as he walks up and down the sideline, sits down on a bench, and jumps up whenever he thinks his name is called but realizes the coaches are talking to another Michael, is something to marvel at
  • Biggest Question: When will Philadelphia fans finally use their car-battery catapult?

  Washington Redskins

  
  

  • Strength: Acquisition of 33-year-old Donovan McNabb gives them a solid quarterback for maybe four weeks
  • Weakness: Receivers, running backs, offensive line, and defense, but, um, this is the year the Redskins really turn it around
  • Player To Watch: Albert Haynesworth, in that uncomfortable car-accident can't-stop-looking way
  • Biggest Question: By how big a margin will the Redskins beat the Rams, and how many games will that buy Donovan McNabb before fans want him benched?

Why it's good to be old.

Lord help me, I am passing on the contents of a spam email from veteran spammer Richard Ruch. I just can't help myself because the lesson imparted in the last line of this tale is Very Important and one you should all keep in mind when dealing with likes of me....

A father, son and grandson went to the country club for their weekly round of golf. Just as they reached the first tee, a beautiful young blonde woman carrying her bag of clubs approached them.

She explained that the member who brought her to the club for a round of golf had an emergency that called him away and asked the trio whether she could join them.

Naturally, the guys all agreed.

Smiling,the blonde thanked them and said, 'Look, fellows, I work in a topless bar as a dancer, so nothing shocks me anymore. If any of you want to smoke cigars, have a beer, bet, swear, tell off-color stories or do anything that you normally do when playing a round together, go ahead. But, I enjoy playing golf, consider myself pretty good at it, so don't try to coach me on how to play my shots.'

With that the guys agreed to relax and invited her to drive first.

All eyes were fastened on her shapely behind as she bent to place her ball on the tee. She then took her driver and hit the ball 270 yards down the middle, right in front of the green.

The father's mouth was agape. 'That was beautiful,' he said.

The blonde put her driver away and said, 'I really didn't get into it, and I faded it a little.'

After the three guys hit their drives and their second shots, the blonde took out an eight iron and lofted the ball within five feet of the hole. (She was closest to the pin.)

The son said, 'Damn, lady, you played that perfectly.'

The blonde frowned and said, 'It was a little weak, but even an easy seven would have been too much club. I've left a tricky little putt.' She then tapped in the five-footer for a birdie.

Having the honors, she drove first on the second hole, knocked the heck out of the ball, and it landed nearly 300 yards away smack in the middle of the fairway.

For the rest of the round the statuesque blonde continued to amaze the guys, quietly and methodically shooting for par or less on every hole.

When they arrived at the 18th green, the blonde was three under par, and had a very nasty 12-foot putt on an undulating green for a par.

She turned to the three guys and said, 'I really want to thank you all for not acting like a bunch of chauvinists and telling me what club to use or how to play a shot, but I need this putt for a 69 and I'd really like to break 70 on this course.

If any one of you can tell me how to make par on this hole I'll take him back to my apartment, pour some 35-year-old Single Malt Strath Mill Scotch in him, fix him a steak dinner and then show him a very good time the rest of the night.'

The yuppie son jumped at the thought! He strolled across the green, carefully eyeing the line of the putt and finally said, 'Honey, aim about 6 inches to the right of the hole and hit it firm. It will get over that little hump and break right into the cup.'

The father knelt down and sighted the putt using his putter as a plumb. 'Don't listen to the kid, darlin', you want to hit it softly 10 inches to the right and let it run left down that little hogback, so it falls into the cup.'

The old gray-haired grandfather walked over to the blonde's ball, picked it up and handed it to her and said, 'That's a gimme, sweetheart.'

The blonde smiled and said, 'Your car or mine?'

OLD AGE AND TREACHERY WILL OVERCOME YOUTH AND SKILL EVERY TIME

When Carl met Buddy.

At no thought of expense, our crack support staff has created the video below. It is a dramatization of what happened when my friend Carl P came a-visiting recently and tried every which-way to bond with the dog thing.

Starring Buddy as played by a small Collie and Carl P as himself. Enjoy.

Tina from Upper Darby.

Tina Fey is a local gal and for that and other reasons (she's just good), I've followed her career for a long time. Way back before her name became nationally recognized (so far back I can't even find a draft of it on the hard drive), I was working on a short story called "The Man Who Loved Tina Fey," which was about a crazy guy lusting after her on Saturday Night Live each weekend and what finally drove him over the edge.

Fey has just been named the winner of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor from the Kennedy Center of the Performing Arts. She's the youngest winner to date. The award is clearly based on her work as head writer for SNL and as the creator and star of the excellent but overlooked by too many viewers 30 Rock.

I understand she did a very funny take-down of a minor political flash in the pan over the last year or so which got a lot of attention, but I can't imagine that it could be any funnier than the real thing.

The most awesome attach on very evil Liberal Media ever.

This is the first online comment to a story by sportswriter Dick Jerardi about last night's NCAA title game in this morning's Philadelphia Daily News:

Officiating was critical in this game because it was so close and the Big East Official lived up to his reputation as a poor official who appeared to be intimidated by coach K and the Liberal Media and I hope that is all. I've seen him in action all year and for the NCAA to pick him for the final game was terrible! The poor officiating was very evident by one of the final calls, that foul by Thomas, of Duke, that was definitely intentional and not called such. Obviously the officials were concerned about what the Liberal Media and what Clark Kellog might say!!!!!! Clark was pretty fair but not on that one!! Butler you didn't loose you were --------!

Seriously, it is impossible to even begin to make this stuff up.

Eric Cantor is a wimp and a fool. [Update]

Long ago, in another life, I owned a bookstore with a large plate glass front window. One night there came a call from the local police around 3AM. "Somebody shot a hole through your window."

When I got to the store, there was a small, perfect bullethole through the top of the window, with cracks extending outward. Bad, but not so much that the whole thing would shatter before I could get somebody to do something about it. A search inside uncovered a spent bullet lying next to a book rack, a very faint, almost invisible mark where it had string the rack's side.

Have any enemies, they asked? Not the kind that would shoot me, I hope.

Not to worry, was the answer. Given the hour and the downward trajectory of the bullet and the fact that it had no impetus when it hit, this was clearly the work of some idiot firing his gun into the air and it fell he knew not where.

This was obviously an accident, not an attack.

Update: How about that?

For comics/SF nerds only....

...because the link was sent to me by one of your number.

This is not good news for the McCain Campaign (although Politico will spin it somehow).

Ali Farokhmanesh leads Northern Iowa over #1 Kansas. Why can't everybody who's on TV have an American name so that the Teabaggers can sleep at night?

"Write ye not a new tale if’t can at all be helped."

We chatted a bit about rules for writers back here; crime writer Declan Burke goes the extra mile on the topic with his marvelous William Shakespeare’s 10 Rules O’ Writing.

Your Liberal Media Elite will save America with its wisdom.

Karen Tumulty, over at Swampland, the Time magazine blog, has put up two post in the last 24 hours about how Michelle Obama and Joe Biden were both "classy" in not criticizing Sarah Palin in interviews with ancient and often confused Larry King on CNN recently.

These two comments which followed the Biden story have a more astute take on why "classy" is smart politics as well given the media's predilection to buy into every right wing meme out there:

       Like Joe, Michelle or Barrack actually have a choice when it comes to criticizing anyone on the right. They have to be extremely careful because the talking heads would accused them of attacking real Americans. Being partisan and petty. However, there is no media uproar when they criticize their own base, the angry left, for wanting promises kept. The talking heads see that as having courage.
gysgt213

*****

      Yep. And it's not just people. The right gets away with trashing large portions of the country, too.

      Massachusetts is practically used as a swear word (even by former governor Romney). NYC is sneered at (when it's not being used for their own ends) and the term "Chicago politics" is thrown around like it's still the heyday of the first Daley. "East Coast" might as well be a synonym for "communist." Palin talked about "real America" like the rest of us were Canadians. And the punditocracy sneered at Obama vacationing in his home state of Hawaii as if it were wildly exotic. (Nothing said, of course, now that the RNC met there.)

      But, oh, God forbid anyone ever say anything about my native South, the part of the country that's so American it secede from the country and went to war with it.
Kevin

And speaking of "ancient and confused," David Broder, the astonishingly out-of-touch dean of the Washington press corps, writes a mind-boggling love note to Gov. Quitter in today's Washington Post, started with the headline (which, okay, he didn't write but which his column inspired):

Sarah Palin displays her pitch-perfect populism

Let us pause a moment and reflect on that pitchey perfecty thing while pondering how Broder might have reacted had a Democrat of any sort given such a mean, content-less and pandering speech to a small group of true believers...

Okay, stop. That will only make your head hurt.

Here are the opening paragraphs of Broder's column, which flies in the face of reality to a degree that is almost admirable in its cluelessness:

The snows that obliterated Washington in the past week interfered with many scheduled meetings, but they did not prevent the delivery of one important political message: Take Sarah Palin seriously.

Her lengthy Saturday night keynote address to the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville and her debut on the Sunday morning talk show circuit with Fox News' Chris Wallace showed off a public figure at the top of her game -- a politician who knows who she is and how to sell herself, even with notes on her palm.

This was not the first time that Palin has impressed me. I gave her high marks for her vice presidential acceptance speech in St. Paul. But then, and always throughout that campaign, she was laboring to do more than establish her own place. She was selling a ticket headed by John McCain against formidable Democratic opposition and burdened by the legacy of the Bush administration.

Blessed with an enthusiastic audience of conservative activists, Palin used the Tea Party gathering and coverage on the cable networks to display the full repertoire she possesses, touching on national security, economics, fiscal and social policy, and every other area where she could draw a contrast with Barack Obama and point up what Republicans see as vulnerabilities in Washington.

Best line on TV today, hands down.

From a commenter at Steve Benen's website, Political Animal (home of "This Week in God," reason enough to own a computer all but itself), in a discussion about Gov. Quitter's speech to the afflicated last night and the irrefutable evidence that she need crib notes to get through it, even the questions from he adoring audience(!):

So first they are into teabagging and now a hand job.

And, yes, I know I've obsessing over this foolishness all day and will stop now.

You don't know where than hand has been.

Killing moose? Check. Grasping money? Check. Soothing Old Man McCain's fevered brow? Probably not.

And last night it was on TV, playing a teleprompter for a boob.

Rahm apologizes.

Anent the last post, Rahm Emanuel, ever the gentleman, went on TV last night to apologize to his Democratic colleagues and Caribou Barbie herself for his intemperate language. The venue was Saturday Night Live...

Now it is perfectly clear, you betcha.

Without even glancing at the notes on her hand, Sarah Palin gave a "common sense" conservative explanation on Fox this morning of why Rahm Emanuel should be drawn and quartered for using the word "retarded" criticizing his opponents but Rush Limbaugh is a saintly figure for using the same word criticizing his:

"[I] did not hear Rush Limbaugh call a group of people he did not agree with 'effing retards,' but it was reported Rahm Emanuel said it."

She didn't hear Rush say it but she...um...also didn't hear Rahm say it?

Got it.