It's a question of Faith

Halloween treats

First, a little something to set the mood...



Now, the 10 best "horror" (as you'll see, I cheated-which is a horrible thing to do) movies I've ever seen:

(in no particular order)

Evil Dead. I know a lot of folks are fonder of the follow-up flicks, but I've always found this one to be finer. If only for the incredibly OTT acting.

Halloween.


"And kids, always remember: When in doubt, blame the druids. Good night, and god bless."

Shaun of the Dead. Brilliant daddy cool. Hot Fuzz has some good lines (the swan's escaped), but this is superior.

Rosemary's Baby. Hey, this movie broke up Frank Sinatra's marriage. How much more disturbing can you get?



Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978 version). I've seen the first three versions of this oft-refilmed tale, and they all have something going for them, even if it's only one or two sexy bodies (1993 version).

But Philip Kaufman's had the best script (by W.D. Richter), and was the only one to really mess with my head...


Young Frankenstein

Mel Brooks' comic mind at its best.

Jaws. This is one of those movies that any time it's on, I have to stop and watch. Even one or two of the worst sequels ever made couldn't tarnish it.

But have you ever wondered what it would look like as re-enacted by bunnies and trimmed to 30 seconds? Of course you have. Now, through the wonders of technology, you can know!

BTW, one day I hope to go scuba diving with the Jaws John Williams theme in my aqua-walkman...

Oh, and this movie did change Hollywood and not necessarily for the better. That's horrible, too.

Aliens. On the other hand, this is one of the best sequels ever made, actually better (IMO) than the one that preceded it. A great screenplay by James Cameron.

The Shining. Those horrible twins. Blood cascading out of an elevator. And

Psycho. If not for the fatal flaw of that deadly dull "This is why Norman did everything" scene at the end, this movie would be perfect. As it is, it's pretty good, with some great lines and a greater performance by Tony Perkins.

The sequels fall somewhere in-between Aliens and Jaws 3-D. If you can get past the fact that it never should have been made, Psycho II is perfectly enjoyable.



As director, Perkins made a good stab at it (ho ho, hee hee, ha ha) with III, but was tripped up by studio interference.

The less said about the made-for-cable IV, the better.

Emmy Rossum sortof kindof inaway standing in front of my favorite color

Ok, I grant it's a reach. I just thought she looked sexy. And that is kind of a greenish tint she's standing in front of, don't you think? Oh, and I'm sorry to say I've made no progress in my campaign to actually see Rossum act in anything...

classically-structured pop songs with new-fangled instruments

My Mann James sent me a Soft Cell Best-Of CD off my Amazon.com wish list a couple of years ago. Although, he assured me, normally it would be against his principles to further the spread of Soft Cell in any way.

I felt like such a failure as an "eighties man" without at least one of their CDs in my collection. But I had also always felt as though I should like Soft Cell more than I did...and then I did a complete 180. I fucking love the album.

One of the reasons is because Marc Almond actually sang. And rarely more brilliantly than in this song.



There is a man in my soul, and he's not buried all that terribly deep, that sometimes wants to act exactly like Almond does in this video.

Somewhere in my youth or childhood I must have done something good

Really, I'm just having an awesome week.

• Viva Laughlin gets cancelled.


• I trade a few emails with an insanely sexy woman.


• I get to watch people falling all over themselves dissembling that their reaction to Dumbledore being gay isn't homophobic at all.


• Giants squeeze past dolphins in London.


• I even found common ground with someone from Knoxville, Tennessee, which I think would have pleased Molly Ivins.


• I found out I'm quoted on the web site of a prominent songwriter and producer.


• Mana pays me the compliment of including this blog on a list of her faves.


• I find another YouTube video seemingly made just for me.


• And a picture of Jennifer Connelly in a leopardskin top.


• The "breasts/for brains" thing.


• And a show I like is doing well enough in the ratings to get picked up.

Now, what more could I ask for? You may well wonder.

Well, how 'bout this?

Britney Spears is pissing off the Catholics.

Kinky photos of a half-naked Britney Spears perched on a priest's lap and leaning seductively against a church confessional sparked outrage among Catholic leaders.

"This is all the puzzle pieces coming together. This girl is crashing," said Bill Donohue, president of the New York-based Catholic League. "She's not even allowed to bring up her own kids because she's not responsible enough. Now we see she can't even entertain."

Ah, Bill Donohue and the Catholic League.

Bill? Britney Spears is entertaining. I'm sure you're not comfortable with that, given the way in which she's entertaining often involves exploiting her own breasts and other sex parts with legs akimbo...but she's entertaining!

Sure, she's a big blow-up sex doll, and she may not be that talented (or smart, or a witty conversationalist)...but damn, she's entertaining!

The new record and video are kindof irresistible, in a slightly guilty pleasure sort of way. But even if they weren't...

Peculiar thing. Bill Donohue is one of those jackasses who if you've pissed him off-you can be fairly certain you've done something right.

I could list any number of reasons why. But my current favorites are his equating of Catholics in America with blacks in Apartheid South Africa, and telling 15-year-old boys that if they're molested it's their own damn fault.

As far as I'm concerned, Britney's standing a lot taller and prouder (pert chest thrust out...sorry) as a result of this.

Something has gone terribly wrong in the grand scheme of things

"Samantha Who?"--a funny, well-written new sitcom which I actually like-has been picked up for a full season and is doing better and better in the ratings. This isn't how things are supposed to be at all.

The ratings for shows I like are supposed to be so bad that I'm in constant danger of "losing" them. I just don't know how to handle this turn of events.

Pride

This blog is currently the number-one choice if you do a search for

come for the breasts stay for the brains

on German Google.

Have I mentioned that I'm a sucker for leopardskin?

My god. The perfect YouTube video.

Here are some things you know about this blog and blogger by now, and some you don't.

• I like the rock musicals of the ’70s and ’80s: Jesus Christ Superstar, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Xanadu, Little Shop Of Horrors...
• I like Susan Sarandon.
• I am "experimental" in my attitudes (if not actual experience-well at least not for years) towards sexuality.
• I like posting pictures of lovely, hot girls.
• But whenever possible I like there to be more to it than that. Especially when:
• Sometimes these girls are dangerously, almost illegally young.
• I've been trying to think of things to post for Halloween, but so far all I found was that photo for the "If this doesn't raise the dead..." joke.
• I also like posting videos by amateur singers, and homemade videos of girls moving to a beat and miming the words to a song.
• Dang, I'm funny.
• Green is my favorite color.
• I like The Powerpuff Girls.

Put all those things together, and what do you have?

A song from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, sung in the movie by Susan Sarandon, here mimed in funny style by three lovely 17-year-old girls in green, with a picture of The Powerpuff Girls in the back.

Well, some of the time they're in green...as you watch, notice that they seem to keep switching tops. And try not to think about what might have gone on between "takes," you pervs.

Baseball the way it was meant to be played

I'm getting bouquets from left and right today

Maybe it's because my phone number is (apparently) very close to that of a local bridal shop. But first Jim Vallance; now in Skepticum, my sometime commenter Mana listed Dictionopolis In Digitopolis as one of her Ten Best Blogs To Notice.

I appreciate the mention!

So you want to see "The Rainbow Connection" played in a sort of a stop-start rendition and sung by a lovely student singer/pianist

I know you'll find this hard to believe, but...we here at Dictionopolis In Digitopolis have anticipated your every need.



I dig the beautifully goofy smile at the end.

And the song, of course, is a classic. Someday we'll find it...

Get me, I'm quoted on Jim Vallance's web site

Vallance is a Canadian songwriter and record producer who has collaborated with artists such as Aerosmith, Heart, 38 Special, Alice Cooper, Bryan Adams, Glass Tiger and Jimmy Barnes. On his web site, he's "compiling a list of all the albums, CDs and singles I'd contributed to between 1977 and the present day."

On the page for 38 Special's Anthology, he used a review I wrote about six years ago, in its entirety, for the comments section.

Here's "Teacher Teacher."

A window to the orient, In a picture frame, I know you are a lady, Nobody knows your name

I like to think Molly would've found this funny if she'd known me

I just posted an Amazon review of the final book upon which Molly Ivins worked prior to her death, Bill Of Wrongs, written with Lou Dubose. As I write this blog post, there is only one other review of the book posted to the Amazon page, and it's at least as positive as mine.

The author of the other review is from...is from...(I can't say it!)...

Emma Watson has a pretty ear

God bless the intelligence and common "horse sense" of the noble masses

An article in the Chicago Tribune argues that since J.K. Rowling never wrote Dumbledore's sexuality into any of the Harry Potter books, she cannot now say that he was gay. Which is wrong, of course.

Many of the more than 150 comments posted on the article so far see that. There are exceptions, but (when they're not doing the "I'm not a homophobe, but..." bit) they do the neat trick of defusing their own points.

One (from Birmingham, AL ) uses the screenname "GayRights EQUALSRacism." Another writes,

She cannot make something up after the boks (sic) have been writen.

Nu, I supose she cnt, cn she?

Do you have any idea how cool this headline would be if only they weren't talking about the NFL?

Giants Squeeze Past Dolphins in London


Like some sort of a grand surrealist opera.

Random Flickr Blogging: 2571

This picture so clearly wants to be some sort of political metaphor, that I'm just not going to give it the satisfaction.

Dreams stay with you

Craig Zadan is the producer of theatrical films including Chicago and Footloose, and the TV biopics The Reagans, Beach Boys, Martin & Lewis and The Three Stooges. He is also openly gay.

He's quoted in an article on gay films (and how the success of Brokeback Mountain hasn't led to many) in the November 2 issue of Entertainment Weekly:

"...if there were projects that were visible and good, people would make them...No one's brought them to us."

I hope to test that theory.

A little fight music, pls, boys...

If that doesn't raise the dead, I don't know what will

I eat about falling in love?

Observations: Once again we see that I just can't get away from the queerbait. "Imagine Me And You" is the name of a (poorly reviewed) lesbian flick. Then a few lines later they're telling me I shouldn't have skipped someone up for the hot guy next door. But how did they know?

Your Score: Category 5

You Are 63 SoulMate Bound!

You are a hopeless romantic. You eat, dream, and think about falling in love. You definitely believe in soulmates, and cry when watching movies about love. You are constantly falling in "love", but watch out, the one you skipped up earlier for the hot guy next door, is the one for you....

Link: The Who Is YOUR Soulmate? Test written by agbc_14 on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

I guess Planet Terror is about as well made as you could expect such an homage to be, but...

(contains a spoiler or two)


I watched Terror, the Robert Rodriguez part of Grindhouse, on DVD. I decided to give it a try because I had read that he intended it as homage to the movies of John Carpenter, which interested me.

But I was always less surprised that the Grindhouse films didn't perform well at the box office than I was that anyone ever expected them to. Whatever made anyone think that an homage to exploitation films of the '70s and '80s would play for a mainstream audience in 2007?

The whole thing, to me, always had a whiff of smug arrogance like the smell-their-own-farts guys in that episode of South Park. I wonder if anyone ever said: Hey, just because our friends like it (especially when they're drunk or stoned)...







Even with appearances by real lookers like Rose McGowan, Marley Shelton, and Stacy Ferguson's breasts (in a bra); no matter how well made the homage is...

I just keep coming back to the question of: Why? (I should say I haven't seen Death Proof)

I can't call myself an expert on Rodriguez films, so I may be completely off-base about this. But from what I've seen (some of which I've liked), a thought occurs to me. The problem is, by limiting himself to the restrictions of pretending he's a low-budget filmmaker in 1980...Rodriguez may have revealed something about his work. Something that would have been better kept hidden.

I suspect it's more about amazing visuals than it is about funny, smart scripts. Because denied one, he shows how impoverished he is when it comes to the latter.

But then, I've never really understood what is supposed to be so stimulating about movies that are about other movies. This also gets in the way of my appreciating the fantastic-ness that is Quentin Tarantino (I still can't sit through either part of Kill Bill).

I listened to Rodriguez's DVD commentary, and a signifigant portion of it is devoted to his saying he got this from that movie, this from that one, and so on.

I have a lot of fond memories of the movies and TV series I watched when I was a pre-teen, too. But I have yet to want to write a story about a Jedi Knight Ghostbusting Time Lord.

I also question just how fine is the line between making an "homage" to the values of exploitation pictures...and just making one, and thus embodying those values, yourself. When Tarantino plays a guy who is creepy to Rose McGowan in Terror, he ends up with a broken piece of wood in the eye (and worse) for his troubles. That fact doesn't erase for me the suspicion that he was getting off being creepy.

It reminds me of the kinds of guys who tell sexist, gross, and homophobic (there's a big example of The Lesbian Cliche in the film, Rodriguez's second in a row to include it) jokes. And then fall back upon a defensive "jeez, man, it was only a joke!" if anyone is offended.

Or the guy who hits just a fraction too hard when "roughhousing."

I just think this is a sexy photo

This calls for a hearty "You GO, girl!"

As you've almost certainly seen elsewhere, Harry Potter author J.K Rowling announced recently that the character of Dumbledore, in her beloved series of books, was intended to be gay. This has kicked up a fuss among conservatives and other people who are obsessed with homosexuality.

I haven't said anything about it here before, largely because I've never read the books (though I do know the character from the movies). So I didn't think I had anything to say that you couldn't probably guess if you've been reading this blog for any period of time.

And then I came across this quote from Rowling responding to critics of her announcement:

"He is my character. He is what he is and I have the right to say what I say about him"

As a "straight, for the rainbow" (I think I just made that up) but also as a writer and maybe especially as a writer who's written about gay people in love...I like that quote. I like that quote a whole, awful lot.

Keitha: Look who's talking about people who are obsessed with homosexuality.

Annabel: Shh!

There was nothing for the Scarlet Pumpernickel to do...but blow his brains out. Which, he did.

Rik-bloody-Ocasek.

He managed to marry an actress/model who not only got sexier as she got older, but can actually write. All that and he made hit music, too.

As you may remember, sometimes I dream about songs. Last night, for instance, I dreamed about this one. I've always really liked it, and the video is simply one of the coolest of all time.

Life is too good to lose

But the way the ratings are going, it looks like I'm going to. So I'm willing to try to appeal to your prurient interests. I mean, what I like about the show is its genuinely offbeat (as opposed to Pushing Daisies, which gives whimsy a bad name) feel and individual character. As well as a lead performance by Damien Lewis which I'm slowly starting to suspect is some kind of great.

But perhaps I've been remiss in not telling you that the casting director really has an eye for lovely women who don't seem quite as "Hollywood" as many that we see on TV (I'm thinking of two or three Desperate Housewives).

Lewis' co-star, of course, is Sarah Shahi, who as I believe I've mentioned is very good-looking. She's also doing really rich work on the show.

An episode or so back the beautiful Meredith "Natty Gann" Salenger popped out of the "where are they now" file and into a supporting role.

BTW, Salenger's IMDb page tells me that she graduated cum laude from Harvard University in 1992 with a degree in Psychology, something they list as "trivia."

I'd say that sounds a little something more than trivial, wouldn't you? To quote the best joke from this week's The Big Bang Theory, come for the breasts, stay for the brains...

Getting back to the ladies of Life, last night's ep featured a guest-star turn by Jessica Paré,

who is a sexy Canadian (two words we don't often see together) actress.

As well as a small role played by an insanely sexy woman with the great name of Jennifer Lee Wiggins (who has a B.S. In Criminal Justice Administration, would you believe). Are you beginning to get an idea of what you're missing?

I'm not proud of the above, but damn it, if shows I like go off the air it's not gonna be because I didn't do everything sane in my power to hold onto them.

So you want to hear the Doctor Who theme mashed up with Eurythmics

We here at Dictionopolis In Digitopolis have anticipated your every need.

Doctor Who is a great TV series, with an all-synthetic score for most of the '80s, and Eurythmics were a great synth act. So this? This is great.

Thanks to birthday boy CK for the link. I couldn't get it to embed.

Happy birthday to Corey Klemow

Performer, Doctor Who fan, pal, fabulous fop, star of Spiders & Angel...

You'd all just roll your eyes if I went for an "eat me" joke, wouldn't you? ...That's what I thought.

Personally, I always loved Kitty Pride, but she's not in the movies much

I still haven't seen this movie.

No no, not I

The bad news is, I'm going to turn into a godlike baddie, the good news is...(or do I mean that the other way around?)

What female superhero are you??? Jean Grey You have a tendency to be the interest of many men. You're beautiful, intelligent, extremely powerful, but also extremely caring. The perfect woman!

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

There's something in this about all women, # 10

Privacy Lost: These Phones Can Find You

Two new questions arise, courtesy of the latest advancement in cellphone technology: Do you want your friends, family, or colleagues to know where you are at any given time? And do you want to know where they are?


Obvious benefits come to mind. Parents can take advantage of the Global Positioning System chips embedded in many cellphones to track the whereabouts of their phone-toting children.

And for teenagers and 20-somethings, who are fond of sharing their comings and goings on the Internet, youth-oriented services like Loopt and Buddy Beacon are a natural next step.

Sam Altman, the 22-year-old co-founder of Loopt, said he came up with the idea in early 2005 when he walked out of a lecture hall at Stanford.

“Two hundred students all pulled out their cellphones, called someone and said, ‘Where are you?’ ” he said. “People want to connect.”

But such services point to a new truth of modern life: If G.P.S. made it harder to get lost, new cellphone services are now making it harder to hide.

“There are massive changes going on in society, particularly among young people who feel comfortable sharing information in a digital society,” said Kevin Bankston, a staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation based in San Francisco.

“We seem to be getting into a period where people are closely watching each other,” he said. “There are privacy risks we haven’t begun to grapple with.”

But the practical applications outweigh the worries for some converts.

Kyna Fong, a 24-year-old Stanford graduate student, uses Loopt, offered by Sprint Nextel. For $2.99 a month, she can see the location of friends who also have the service, represented by dots on a map on her phone, with labels identifying their names. They can also see where she is.

One night last summer she noticed on Loopt that friends she was meeting for dinner were 40 miles away, and would be late. Instead of waiting, Ms. Fong arranged her schedule to arrive when they did. “People don’t have to ask ‘Where are you?’” she said.

Ms. Fong can control whom she shares the service with, and if at any point she wants privacy, Ms. Fong can block access. Some people are not invited to join — like her mother.

“I don’t know if I’d want my mom knowing where I was all the time,” she said.

Some situations are not so clear-cut. What if a spouse wants some time alone and turns off the service? Why on earth, their better half may ask, are they doing that?

What if a boss asks an employee to use the service?

So far, the market for social-mapping is nascent — users number in the hundreds of thousands, industry experts estimate.

But almost 55 percent of all mobile phones sold today in the United States have the technology that makes such friend-and- family-tracking services possible, according to Current Analysis, which follows trends in technology.

So far, it is most popular, industry executives say, among the college set.

But others have found different uses. Mr. Altman said one customer bought it to keep track of a parent with Alzheimer’s. Helio, a mobile phone service provider that offers Buddy Beacon, said some small-business owners use it to track employees.

Consumers can turn off their service, making them invisible to people in their social-mapping network. Still, the G.P.S. service embedded in the phone means that your whereabouts are not a complete mystery.

“There is a Big Brother component,” said Charles S. Golvin, a wireless analyst at Forrester Research. “The thinking goes that if my friends can find me, the telephone company knows my location all the time, too.”

Phone companies say they are aware of the potential problems such services could cause.

If a friend-finding service is viewed as too intrusive, said Mark Collins, vice president for consumer data at AT&T’s wireless unit, “that is a negative for us.” Loopt and similar services say they do not keep electronic records of people’s whereabouts.

Mr. Altman of Loopt said that to protect better against unwelcome prying by, say, a former friend, Loopt users are sent text messages at random times, asking if they recognize a certain friend. If not, that person’s viewing ability is disabled.

Clay Harris, a 25-year-old freelance marketing executive in Memphis, says he uses Helio’s Buddy Beacon mostly to keep in touch with his friend Gregory Lotz. One night when Mr. Lotz was returning from a trip, Mr. Harris was happy to see his friend show up unannounced at a bar where he and some other friends had gathered.

“He had tried to reach me, but I didn’t hear my phone ring,” Mr. Harris said. “He just showed up and I thought, ‘Wow, this is great.’”

He would never think to block Mr. Lotz. But he would think twice before inviting a girlfriend into his social-mapping network. “Most definitely a girl would ask and wonder why I was blocking her,” he said.


Tags:Phones ,times,service,cellphone ,technology

Behold, the awesome power that I wield

Four days ago, I referred to the new CBS show Viva Laughlin as one of the biggest waste[s] of proven talent I've seen on TV. Today, the series was cancelled by the network after only one more episode had aired.

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

Now, if only I can use this power to keep Life alive, and keep the Friday Night Lights on...

You spin me right round, baby right round like a record, baby

And Gina Phillips thought her characters were cursed

In 2001, Phillips and Justin Long appeared together in the film Jeepers Creepers. Half a decade later, Long is well known from those "I'm a Mac" ads; starred in Dodge Ball & Live Free Or Die Hard.

He is also said to be dating Drew Barrymore.

Half a decade later, last night I saw Phillips in a straight-to-cable "suspense" movie called Ring Around the Rosie. It's your basic young-woman-inherits-old-house-which-has-secrets movie. I admit, I fast-forwarded through much of it (I'd selected it from On Demand because I enjoyed Phillips' work in Jeepers).

But I think it would have been confusing even if I hadn't. Confusing, sloppy films are usually the work of four or five different credited writers (I couldn't believe it either).

But somewhere before it was over I really started to think: If ever there was proof that there aren't enough good roles for women (or if anyone really needed any), the post Jeepers careers of Long and Phillips is it.

A vision of love wearing boxing gloves and singing hearts & flowers

I'm certainly glad he saw through the sham that her entire career is based on

The first review of Britney's new album says

"She comes off like some machine that bleeps and bloops out an airy array of oohs, ahhs and groans," Jim Farber writes in the New York Daily News. "If a blowup sex doll could sing, this is what she'd sound like."

I don't know about you, but I'm simply shocked (even moreso than I was at the Madonna/Christina/Britney kiss) that Mr. Farber is suggesting Britney might be using her sexuality on her records.

Next thing you know, they'll be saying that she may not actually be all that smart, or that her vocal talent didn't actually have much to do with her success. Or even that some (not all) of her fans may in fact be, you know, kind of...idiots.

And them's fightin' words.

Criticizing Britney Spears for sounding like a blowup sex doll is like criticizing Leonard Cohen for writing emotionally heavy songs.

Random Flickr Blogging: 4064

Capturing the exact precise instant a woman realizes she's married to a pretentious twit.

Credit

My sexuality, like my taste in music, was defined by the Postpunk years of 1978-1984

Do you have an inclination for BDSM? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Experimental Experimentation is a great place to be. Open-mindedness when it comes to sexuality can open doors and allow you to discover things that you didn't think you would find engaging. Having such a curious attitude can help you learn more about your own sexual nature as well as the nature of others. Experimental 64% Switch 61% Vanilla Sex 39% Exhibitionism and Voyeurism 36% Domination 36% Submission 25% Sadism 14% Degradation 0% Masochism 0% Bondage 0%

They set the bar kind of low at the Trinity College Philosophical Society in Dublin

NAOMI Campbell is going to college - at least for a day. Trinity College in Dublin has invited the hot-tempered model to speak, according to Anderson Antunes of glamurama.com. "The Trinity College Philosophical Society has invited none other than Naomi to speak about philosophy," the online gossip reports. "This is very weird because Trinity College is one of the most respected and famous universities in Europe.

Anne Hathaway stopping traffic

That was two months and 15 days since running an image of Anne Hathaway...whew!

Odd websites to which I'm linked

The "Life After the Oil Crash Forum."

I'm a post-post-modern man...

Bomb Attack Kills Scores in Pakistan as Bhutto Returns

KARACHI, Pakistan, Friday, Oct. 19 — Two bombs exploded Thursday just seconds apart and feet from a truck carrying the returning opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, narrowly missing her but killing scores of people and bloodying her triumphal homecoming after eight years in exile.


According to reports on local news stations late Friday morning, 134 people had been killed and about 400 wounded.

Ms. Bhutto, who had spent eight hours on the open roof of the truck waving to supporters, had climbed inside the armored vehicle 10 minutes before the blasts occurred just before midnight, said Rehman Malik, her security adviser and close associate.

She was immediately taken to Bilawal House, her home in Karachi. The parade through the city had been scheduled to end several miles away at the tomb of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan.

Ms. Bhutto’s arrival at 2 p.m. had drawn huge crowds, perhaps 200,000 or more, who danced on top of buses and surged forward as she inched her way for hours through her home city.

The strong outpouring provided an emotional homecoming for Ms. Bhutto and political vindication of sorts for a woman twice turned out of office as prime minister, after being accused of corruption and mismanagement.

It also demonstrated that she remained a potent political force in Pakistan, even after her long absence, and marked what supporters and opponents alike agreed was a new political chapter for the nation.

The violence that quickly followed showed it to be a treacherous one as well.

The explosions, caught on camera, gave off brilliant white flashes and set two cars ablaze. Survivors stumbled over bodies and debris in a haze of smoke. It was not immediately clear if the explosions were caused by suicide bombers, and there were no claims of responsibility.

“I can only say that I saw heaps of bodies lying over there,” said her adviser, Mr. Malik. He was standing at the front of the truck and was knocked down by the force of the blast, he said. His hair was burned.

“The damage could have been much worse had we not taken our own security arrangements,” he added.

The government had promised before Ms. Bhutto’s arrival to provide security. It had also asked her to delay returning. But Ms. Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party had fielded 2,000 of its own workers to form rings around their returning leader, guarding her with their numbers and preventing any vehicles or people from approaching.

Before the explosions sundered the celebration, thousands of supporters and workers from her party had lined Ms. Bhutto’s route, waving banners and surging forward for a glimpse of the opposition leader. Many danced in the road.

Ms. Bhutto waved as music pumped out from loudspeakers. The crowd was overwhelmingly working class. Many young men said they were unemployed, but had traveled hundreds of miles, paying their own way, and camping out overnight on the road to the airport to await her arrival.

In the crowd, Raja Munir Ahmed, 42, a real estate agent, said he had come from Mirpur in the Pakistani-administered part of Kashmir. “It was a journey of 1,500 kilometers, and all along we saw buses and cars carrying Peoples Party flags,” he said. “People want change. People want to get rid of inflation and unemployment.”

Then he shouted, “Long live Bhutto!” and disappeared into the crowd.

Such supporters were among the majority of those killed and wounded. But about 20 were also police and law enforcement officials, Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao said. Eight police vans were flanking the truck at the time and the explosions occurred on the left and right sides of the road, he said.

He denied that it was a security lapse, saying that the crowds and length of the route made it difficult to ensure security.

Earlier, Ms. Bhutto was clearly emotional as she took her first steps on Pakistani soil, having lived the last eight years in self-imposed exile in London and Dubai. She left Pakistan to escape corruption charges she contends were politically motivated.

She climbed down a metal staircase to reach the tarmac, and paused on the bottom step and prayed as friends held a Koran aloft. As an aide embraced her, Ms. Bhutto wiped tears from her eyes.

“The most important step — to be back on Pakistani soil,” she said, as cameramen swarmed around her.

On the plane from Dubai, supporters broke into repeated cheers and chanting of “Prime Minister Benazir,” standing in the aisles and delaying the flight for nearly an hour. Ms. Bhutto walked through the cabin to greet supporters and the news media.


“Very excited, very happy, very proud, a tremendous sense of responsibility as there are so many people at the airport,” she said when asked how she felt.

In words that later seemed prescient, she spoke strongly about terrorism and the need to save Pakistan from extremism. “The time has come for democracy,” she said. “If we want to save Pakistan, we have to have democracy.”

She has been outspoken against militants and Al Qaeda and repeated the same comments as she flew in. “The terrorists are trying to take over my country and we have to stop them,” she said.

Ms. Bhutto had made clear repeatedly that she was returning to Pakistan to lead her party in the parliamentary elections scheduled for January. If she can win a change in the law, she will run for prime minister for a third time, something now legally barred.

“The people are telling me the bread-and-butter issues are the most important,” she said. “They are saying that poverty has increased, the gulf between the rich and poor has increased. They say that people want change. They want a government that listens to them, will respect them, and will address the people’s issues.”

Senior members of the party traveling with Ms. Bhutto said the turnout made it clear the people wanted change after eight years of military rule.

“It is unprecedented,” said Aftar Rana, a senior party member from Punjab Province, looking down at the crowd. “I think we will sweep the elections. People have come from everywhere.”

The opposition leader’s return was made possible after months of back-channel negotiations with Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, over a way for the two leaders to share power as Pakistan makes a transition from a military government.

Ms. Bhutto’s party did not join other opposition parties this month in boycotting presidential elections by the national and provincial assemblies. The move allowed General Musharraf to successfully engineer his re-election, though he still faces legal challenges in the Supreme Court over his eligibility.

For his part, General Musharraf issued an amnesty for Ms. Bhutto and others accused of corruption in recent years, and he agreed to resign his post as chief of the army staff and serve his next term as a civilian.

But the bombing upon Ms. Bhutto’s arrival made it clear that, deal or no deal, the country’s politics remained exceedingly tense, and dangerous. The explosions now seem certain to add fresh venom to relations between the Pakistan Peoples Party and the government.

General Musharraf, according to a statement released by state media, condemned the attack “in the strongest possible words,” calling it “a conspiracy against democracy."

The Bush administration, which has backed General Musharraf, noted his condemnation of the attack, as the State Department issued a statement saying, “Those responsible seek only to foster fear and limit freedom.”

Nonetheless, Ms. Bhutto’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who did not make the return to Pakistan with his wife, immediately pointed a finger at the government and said the Pakistan Peoples Party would have to rethink its understanding with the government.

He said the government felt threatened by the power of Ms. Bhutto and suggested that the intelligence agencies were behind the blasts.

“I blame the government,” he said in an interview with Geo, an independent television news channel, from his home in Dubai. “The intelligence agencies are spreading terrorism,” he said. “Those who are sitting in the government feel threatened by us.”

Ms. Bhutto earlier said in the interview atop the truck that she was concerned about her security and that she had told General Musharraf that she suspected people in his administration and the security forces of supporting the militants and terrorism.

“This is not the same Pakistan it was in 1996 when my government was overthrown,” she said. “The militants have risen in power. But I know who these people are, I know the forces behind them, and I have written to General Musharraf about this. And I’ve told him there are certain people I suspect in the administration and security.

“Unless there is some thought given to that, this is what emboldens the militants,” she said. “They’ve got some covert support from sympathizers within the system.”

Tags:security,militants,Pakistan,Bomb Attack ,General

A Laptop That Lets Students Take Notes Two Ways

Parents and students seeking a back-to-school computer may want to consider a tablet PC. These convertible devices, which allow switching from keyboard to pen input, are ideal for note-taking.


The Lifebook T2010 is Fujitsu’s latest entry among tablet PCs. As a laptop, it has all the standard features: a 12.1-inch display, 1 to 4 gigabytes of memory, a hard drive of up to 160 gigabytes, an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity.

On the tablet PC side, the T2010 comes with the Vista version of Microsoft’s tablet PC operating system, which was developed for handwriting recognition and also some voice recognition. Both systems become more accurate the more you use them.

The machine comes with the note-taking program OneNote, but can handle the full version of Microsoft Office.

The T2010, which starts at about $1,600 and is available at fujitsu.com and most major retailers, weighs less than four pounds.

To keep the weight down, there is no built-in CD/DVD drive, though a docking station, which adds the drive and several other ports, can be attached, adding a pound.

Tags:Students,CD/DVD,Intel,Laptop,Core 2 Duo

We are not Laughlin with you, we're Laughlin at you

"Viva Laughlin" may be the biggest waste of proven talent I've seen on TV since "Twins" two years ago.

We've got Hugh Jackman, Melanie Griffith & WMOA Mädchen Amick in front of the camera and behind it, we've got, Jackman again (as producer) and, as co-creator and writer of the pilot...Bob Lowry.

Lowry is the creator of "Huff" and writer of its best episodes, so you can imagine how deep is my sigh before admitting just how laughable (unintentionally as far as I can tell) his new series is.

Where did they go wrong? Well, let's start with the musical performances. Yes, "Viva Laughlin" is sorta kinda a musical. I call it "sorta kinda" because it doesn't use music like a real musical, like "Singin' in the Rain." But it doesn't use it like a modern TV drama either.

In one the performers sing songs, in the other songs are used in the background. In this show, the songs-well-known hit recordings by the likes of the Rolling Stones-play in the background...and the performers sing along. Yes.

At no time do we fully lose the voices of Debbie Harry or Elvis Presley...but we can't fully enjoy them either, because Griffith or alleged lead actor Lloyd Owen is sucking them up.

And oh yes, about Owen...picture Mark Singer plus David Boreanaz minus any charisma whatsoever.

I don't remember when I've been more repulsed by a performance and character (the name doesn't help: "Ripley Holden" is an unspeakably awful name for a character).

Owen is that bad, but Lowry shares the blame, he can come up with quality material...but hasn't here. For any of them.

Why yes, I do read and review a lot of books

The newest is Before I Die, by Jenny Downham.

Lauren Graham has beautiful hair...among other things

Observed after watching her on the "Craig Ferguson" show

Young actress Jena Malone is the result of cloning stem cells from Winona Ryder, Mary Stuart Masterson, and a bobble-head doll.

This is awesome!

A talented DJ called DJ Earworm put together a "Mash-up" of about 22 different songs from artists including Ace Of Base, Mammas and the Papas, Britney Spears, Beyonce, Donna Summer, Maroon5, Eminem, The Who, Madison Avenue, Eurythmics, Peter Gabriel, Irene Cara, Kanye West, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Jason Mraz and Phil Collins.

It works brilliantly.



The video was made by a YouTuber named Kyle Klein.

Silicon Valley Start-Ups Awash in Dollars, Again

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 16 — Silicon Valley’s math is getting fuzzy again.


Internet companies with funny names, little revenue and few customers are commanding high prices. And investors, having seemingly forgotten the pain of the first dot-com bust, are displaying symptoms of the disorder known as irrational exuberance.

Consider Facebook, the popular but financially unproven social network, which is reportedly being valued by investors at up to $15 billion. That is nearly half the value of Yahoo, a company with 38 times the number of employees and, based on estimates of Facebook’s income, 32 times the revenue.

Google, which recently surged past $600 a share, is now worth more than I.B.M., a company with eight times the revenue.

More broadly, Internet start-ups are drawing investment based on their ability to build an audience, not bring in revenue — the very alchemy that many say led to the inflation and bursting of the dot-com bubble.

The surge in the perceived value of some start-ups has even surprised some entrepreneurs who are benefiting from it.

A year ago, Yahoo invested in Right Media, a New York-based company developing an online advertising network. Yahoo’s investment valued the firm at $200 million. Six months later, when Yahoo acquired Right Media outright, the purchase price had swelled to $850 million.

What changed? According to Right Media’s chief technology officer, Brian O’Kelley, very little, except that Yahoo’s rivals, Microsoft and Google, were writing billion-dollar checks to buy online advertising networks, and Yahoo thought it needed to pay any price to keep up.

“I have to say I giggled,” Mr. O’Kelley, 30, said of the deal that earned him millions. He has since left Right Media and is starting another company. “There is no way we quadrupled the value of the company in six months.”

The trend is described as a return to madness (by skeptics) or as a rational approach to unlimited opportunities presented by the Internet (by true believers). Greed, fear and a desperate rush to pick the next big winner are all adding fuel to the fire that is Silicon Valley’s resurgence.

“There’s definitely a lot of betting going on, and it’s not rational,” said Tim O’Reilly, a technology conference promoter and book publisher.

Mr. O’Reilly is credited with coining the phrase “Web 2.0,” which refers to a new generation of Web sites that encourage users to contribute material. His Web 2.0 conference, which begins Wednesday in San Francisco, has become a nexus for the optimism around the latest set of society-changing online tools. But that has not stopped Mr. O’Reilly from worrying that the industry is minting too many copycat companies, half-baked business plans and overpriced buyouts.

When the bubble inevitably pops, he said, “there are going to be a lot of people out of work again.”

Putting a value on start-ups has always been a mix of science and speculation. But as in the first dot-com boom and the recent surge in housing, seasoned financial professionals are seeming to indulge in some strange instinct to turn away from the science and lean instead on the speculation.

This time around, people indulging in that optimistic thinking are not mom-and-pop investors or day traders but venture capitalists whose coffers are overflowing with money from university endowments and hedge funds. Many of those financial professionals say that this time, everything is different.

More than 1.3 billion people around the world use the Internet, many with speedy broadband connections and a willingness to immerse themselves in digital culture. The flood of advertising dollars to the Web has become an indomitable trend and a proven way for these start-ups to make money, while the revenue models of the dot-coms of yesteryear were often little more than sleight of hand.

“The environmental factors are much different than they were eight years ago,” said Roelof Botha, a partner at Sequoia Capital and an early backer of YouTube. “The cost of doing business has declined dramatically, and traditional media companies have also woken up to the opportunities of the Web.

“That does open up the aperture for a different outcome this time,” he said.

Some trace the start of the new bubble to eBay’s $3.1 billion acquisition of the Internet telephone start-up Skype in 2005. EBay’s chief executive, Meg Whitman, reportedly outbid Google for the company. This month, eBay conceded it had grossly overpaid for Skype by about $1.43 billion, and announced that Niklas Zennstrom, a Skype co-founder, had left the company.

Google’s acquisition of YouTube last year for $1.65 billion, under similarly competitive bidding, might have accelerated the transition to loftier values. Google executives and many analysts argued that YouTube was well worth the price tag if it became the next entertainment juggernaut.

It still might. More than 205 million people visit YouTube each month, according to the research firm comScore. Still, Citigroup estimated that YouTube would bring in $135 million in revenue next year. At that rate, YouTube would have to grow considerably to account for just 5 percent of Google’s annual revenue of nearly $12 billion.

“We are almost going back to year 2000 types of errors,” said Aaron Kessler, an Internet analyst at Piper Jaffray. Internet companies “are buying users instead of revenue and profitability,” he said.

The Skype and YouTube windfalls helped to give the newest batch of Internet entrepreneurs dreams of improbable wealth. They also brought back practices that had seemingly been discredited during the first boom. For example, in the first dot-com gold rush, Internet companies did not have to make money to acquire serious investments dollars. Now that once again is true.

Twitter, a company in San Francisco that lets users alert friends to what they are doing at any given moment over their mobile phones, recently raised an undisclosed amount of financing. Its co-founder and creative director, Biz Stone, says that the company was not currently focused on making money and that no one in the company was even working on how to do so.

“At the moment, we’re focused on growing our network and our user experience,” he said. “When you have a lot of traffic, there’s always a clear business model.”

That is not necessarily illogical in the current climate. A European competitor, Jaiku, which is similarly devoid of a mature business model, was acquired last week by Google for an undisclosed sum. With the competitive logic that prevails at the major Internet companies, the deal might have further raised Twitter’s appeal to Google’s rivals.

The high value placed on many start-ups and minimal requirements for financial performance are raising expectations of other entrepreneurs. Sharon Wienbar, managing director of Scale Ventures Partners, an investment firm, cited the $100 million valuation that investors gave to the Internet genealogy site Geni.com, founded last year in Los Angeles by a veteran of PayPal.

“Now every entrepreneur thinks he should get that,” Ms. Wienbar said. “I have a feeling a lot of entrepreneurs are secretly meeting for beers on the Peninsula, saying, ‘Hey, look what I got.’”

Mr. O’Kelley, formerly of Right Media, said other entrepreneurs had begun to think that the financing game is best played by avoiding actual revenues — since that only limits the imagination of investors. “It’s a screwed-up incentive structure, just like you had in the first bubble,” he said.

Another company benefiting from the exuberance is Ning, which allows users to create their own MySpace-style ad-supported social networks. It was recently valued by investors at more than $200 million, mainly because its main backer and founder, Marc Andreessen, has a successful history with the Internet hits Netscape and Opsware.

Mr. Andreessen argues on his blog that there is no bubble and that the high prices represent a rational desire to stake a claim in the potentially huge markets of the future. But he acknowledges that a seemingly inexhaustible flood of capital into Silicon Valley is helping to power the boom. Venture capitalists are flush with cash from institutional investors, eager for Internet-style returns on their money.

“The upward valuations pressure is the result of decisions being made by people wearing suits in cities like New York and Boston who would never ever meet with start-ups,” Mr. Andreessen said in an interview. “If that ever goes away, it will have consequences. But it doesn’t look like they will change their minds.”


Tags:Silicon Valley,Internet,Netscape,capitalists,PayPal

The best natural cookies

If you he is one of those naturalists who love the integral products Natural All Cookies are most flavorful of the world always that I can I I eat these wonderful and very gostosos cookies.

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Tags:Christmas Cookies,All Natural Cookies,Holiday Cookies

I'm a miserable failure as an '80s man

YOU WERE 61% ACCURATE IN YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF 80'S BANDS!

NOT BAD...BUT NOT GOOD EITHER...YOU GOT HALF THE DAMN TEST WRONG!! You FLUNKED!
I think you should refresh your memory of 80's bands and come back and retake the test..hmmmm, I bet you failed your Driver's test as well on the first try didn't you??

How Well Do You Know your 80's Bands?
Create MySpace Quizzes

I must admit, he was fantastic on "The Colbert Report"

My second time taking a (different) "select a candidate" quiz tells me again that the candidate whose positions are most in harmony with my own remains Dennis Kucinich. But it moves Chris Dodd up from seventh to second place.

John Edwards remains in third, but Bill Richardson moves up from eighth to fourth. Mike Gravel slides down from two to five, Hillary Clinton takes a dive from four to six, Barack Obama hits seventh, followed again by Joe Biden.

Rudy Giuliani scored highest for me on this quiz amomg Republican candidates, which ought to tell me something about the sheer unlikelyness of my ever voting for a Republican candidate. I think he's kind of despicable, so if he's the best they can offer me...

He's followed by Ron Paul, who beat him out on the other quiz, and then Mitt Romney.

And the rest (in order):

Jim Gilmore, Sam Brownback, John McCain, Duncan Hunter, Mike Huckabee.

I've run out of funny ways to say this

Holly Hunter is so sexy she makes me tingle.

A funny sitcom. Who knew?

I got a real kick out of Samantha Who?, the new sitcom starring WMOA Christina Applegate, back on TV after way too many movies in which she played the supporting, "best friend" roles.

Here she plays an amnesiac that discovers the woman she was turns out to have been a cheating, alcoholic bitch.

In an age when sitcom success and comic acting ability don't always go together (Charlie Sheen?) Applegate is a breath of fresh air: Someone who actually is what most women sitcom stars want to be but are not.

She's beautiful, yes, but with great comedy timing, both in what she says and what she does.



Ok, so you've gotten the impression that I like Applegate...but that didn't make me a fan of Jessie. And I know she won an Emmy for one of her Friends appearances as Rachel's sister, but I don't think any of them touched her work as a Bundy.


Yes, Applegate is good, but the writing (show creators are Donald Todd and Cecelia Ahern) on Samantha Who? gives her a place to be good.

The first episode used her qualities to better effect than I have seen since the great days of Married...with Children. And although this is definitely a star vehicle, the other actors aren't left standing around.

In fact, one of the best jokes in the pilot goes to Jean Smart and Kevin Dunn as Samantha's parents. Cluelessly trying to bond with them (though we learn they hadn't spoken in years prior to the accident that caused her coma and subsequent memory loss), Samantha says, "You made me who I am."

And her mother, insulted, replies, "That is a terrible thing to say!"
"Apologize to your mother," her father adds.

The bottom line is Samantha Who? is funny. As in, I actually laughed. Out loud. And more than I have at any two other comedies I've seen this season.

Good night to go on Media Matters

Hey guys, seen this? Good old CBS. They never let me down when it comes to screwing up. Now it looks like they're actually taking dictation from the right-wing page WorldNetDaily.

ETA: To be fair, CBS News does also employ Lara Logan, who continues to make me so hard both as a reporter and as a woman...

Sigh...

For the record, looks like Friday Night Lights are dimming again.

Random Flickr Blogging: 0567

Cuteness overload!

(original source)