Image Disclaimer: I have no doubt and have not set out intending to insult Mr. Obama’s intelligence. I am not insinuating that he has caught The Stupid or anything like that. Read on to see the signifigance of the image.

(Read more…)

Dear Reader,

     That’s a fucking creepy logo, right? Is anyone else as creeped out as I am?

Love,

     Tim

I’m taking a break from politics this week to talk about one of the many hot button news issues out there, and this, of course, is the Myspace suicide case. It took long enough, but the mother who orcestrated the entire thing is in federal court. While I hope the jerk gets fifty lashes and all that 1800s era punishment crap, I can see why the case is difficult for prosecuters, as it poses the question of just how responsible one person is for anothers’ actions.

(Read more…)

Now that Hillary is out of the race, the hot topic is to find out why her campaign failed. Which is a pretty god damn stupid thing to ask, so leave it up to CNN to yammer on about it. Clinton’s failure can be summed up in a sentence: She failed because she ran her campaign the way she would run it. What I mean is the management style was that of a crotchety old money-grubbing businesswoman, which is exactly how Clinton would have run the country. Remember, the key word in corporate democrat is corporate. Which is exactly what our new presumptive nominee is.

However, Clinton’s exit speech was nothing short of moving, and with that in mind I cannot completely despise her. I think the idea of a female president is wonderful and would be good for the country, not only for us, but to show the world that we are something more than a bunch of backwards, cheeseburger swilling, overweight, stupid, arrogant, overly-righteous, racist, chauvinist, immature shits. Perhaps she was humbled by failure, or maybe there is a genuinely sincere side to her. Who knows? (Read more…)

I’m not going to spend much time on what is my second-favorite gaff this week (favorite involving space toilets), a whole few days old so it now remains a forgotten remnant of info-tainment news shows. I am, of course, talking about Hillary Clinton reminding us that someone could just shoot Obama and she would win the nomination by default. Imagine you are the captain of a 6th grade soccer team, and your friend Jimmy is the opposing teams captain. Before the match starts, you say, “Good luck out there,” and Jimmy, the smug little bastard, responds, “I hope you die when your house burns down, jerkass.” Besides signaling that little Jimmy has a massive ego and is a possible case of some behavior disorder, saying that is downright unsportsmanlike. Assassination is a rather dark chapter of American history, and given that Obama stands to be the first black man to run for president (others have run in primaries, but were never nominated, so it doesn’t count) in a country that largely hates, and if not hates casually ignores, black people (and the plights thereof), assassination is a very real possibility. All it takes is one pissed off redneck douchebag with little to no inhibition about being executed for treason and murder. (Read more…)

I am going to get shit on for this…

A few weeks ago, an article I wrote about the New Jersey Green Party Convention was quoted on Game Politics:http://gamepolitics.com/2008/04/14/report-green-party-presidential-candidate-blames-school-shootings-on-video-games/

I already posted a response to their less than kind words toward the Green Party, but since it was a whole week old and apparently that is the lifespan of interesting conversation on the internet (what do you expect when your average person has the attention span of a gnat?) I figure I’ll expand on it a little. So, YOU!, Game Politics Dot Com, your ass is on my plate today.

First off, there is enough punctuation in your “quote” to fill War and Peace if, for some reason, the periods and commas became animate and decided to get the hell out of Dodge. As a fellow writer, you should know that quoting (and misquoting) is a subtle art, and simply chucking in the ellipsis for the sake of grammatical correctness does not help your case. It gives away the fact that you are only pulling specific information out of an article that is otherwise unrelated to what you are talking about. That being said… (Read more…)

With the PA primary looming and only two Democratic actively sucking up media attention like sponges in ugly suits, all eyes and crosshairs are on Clinton and Obama. So, of course, I am not going to say a damn thing about them.

John McCain, however, having been crowed winner of the Republican primary by Fox News, has not been getting the kind of coverage the Democrats have. And why would he, after all? There is no bitter competition or debates moderated by that god-awful Anderson Cooper where old-hat Republicans can have a “My hard-on for Reagen is bigger than yours!” contest in front of Air Force One, the Reagen widow and Arnold Fucking Schwartzennneeeggeeaafaahahhafffrggggg. I’m sorry, I seem to have momentarily gone into some sort of seizure there. (Read more…)

So much for weekly writing… Anyway.

Saturday, March 29th was the date of the annual Green Party of New Jersey (GPNJ) Convention. I was there. Chances are you weren’t.

In fact only about thirty people showed up, representing a little over half the counties. As it is nationwide, the Green Party suffers from a general lack of participation and funds, but in spite of that, has become a large state presence and is considered to be the largest “opposition” party. That is, not Democrat or Republican. (Read more…)

If you’re into fantasy or gothic novels, and don’t mind books that run to 1020 pages, then you might like this odd “cult classic” by the British author (and painter) Mervyn Peake.

It’s usually considered, alongside Lord of the Rings, one of the great fantasy epics, but it is actually completely unlike LOTR, as its fantasy elements are subtle; rather than orcs, elves, hobbits or wraiths and/or bouts of rabid magic and mass killing, the world described here is fringed with a mystical glow — lots of centuries-old ritual, snotty aristocrats sparring off with “primitive” peoples, descriptions of castles and animals that seem to know what you’re saying, etc. It’s also quite funny, and might, in the end, be closer to Alice in Wonderland or Harry Potter than LOTR (though, again, with no magic).

The basic story concerns the Seventy-Seventh Earl of Gormenghast, Titus Groan, and the timeless world that he has been born into. We meet his incredibly depressed father, Sepulchrave, his flighty and also melancholic sister, Fuchsia, a very strange doctor named Prunesquallor and his annoying sister with the pointy nose, Irma, and Flay (played by Christopher Lee in the BBC version), the loyal but cantankerous servant to Sepulchrave.

(Read more…)

Yeah, that’s right, I saw it, you didn’t.

For some reason, the new flick by Michel Gondry (director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep, which he also wrote) reached the Ritz Bourse here in Philadelphia before making it to the more mainstream places. I guess that makes me lucky — especially so, since I can be the first to tell you that… it… no, doesn’t suck, but was a bit of a letdown.

Ok, New Jerseyans, it takes place in Passaic (where I was born). My standard line is that they could have invited Kevin Smith in for dialogue help and maybe speech coaching — but realism was hardly the point (though slacker-style comedy might have been).

You probably know the story: the Jack Black character somehow becomes magnetized and accidentally erases the entire stock of VHS tapes that is the bread and butter of Mos Def’s store (owned by Danny Glover). (No, they don’t use their real names in this — I just have no memory.) So Jack and Mos, while the owner is away, are forced to remake nearly every film in the store to satisfy customers who might just let Danny know that Mos is incompetent. (Danny’s a bit slow himself… he had to take a walk across town to discover something called the DVD.) 

(Read more…)

Shoebox Review

Catch-22

Joseph Heller

When I first starting reading Joseph Heller’s 1955 classic Catch-22, I had no idea what I was getting into. I had no preconceptions about the novel or even an idea of what it was about. My main source of information about the book was the blurb on the back cover and the vague notion that it was a classic. I simply picked it up and decided, on a whim, to give it a chance. In the end, it turned out to be one of the best literary decisions I’ve ever made.

The plot is simple: Yossarian is a frantic bombardier stationed on a fictional Mediterranean island during the height of World War II whose only goal is to be dismissed from duty by reason of insanity. Despite his best efforts, however; he is constantly thwarted by the notorious “catch-22”: a military law that proves his sanity by the fact that he is acting insane. The story follows him throughout his numerous attempts to prove his insanity and survive the war. The humor of Yossarian’s behavior in context of the war gives the reader images of a world that has gone mad and the repetitive futility of combat.

Since I first read it during my freshman year of high school, it’s been one of my most highly recommended books to friends and family members. It’s a fantastic novel for many, many reasons.

So why should you read it?
…..Read on