Internal Monologue

Crooks and Liars thinks so: Well, no one wants to say it but you will be reading this shortly: The Golden Globes and the Academy Awards will be cancelled. On Monday December 17th, the WGA turned down requests for waivers by the Oscars and the Golden Globes to put those telecasts on air without the Guild’s writers. With the rejection of the waivers for the Academy Awards (ABC), set for Sunday February 24th, and the much faster approaching Golden Globes (NBC), set for January 13th, the WGA has essentially cancelled both awards shows by its actions.

...but I bet you didn't know R2-D2 could do this as well (HT: Mad Latinist via email). If the speaker in Jimmy Buffet's "Margaritaville" ever finds his lost shaker of salt, maybe he could get one of these to go with it. Of course, Internal Monologue readers know that "Margaritaville" is actually about something else entirely .

Picture of wall outside Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, Iraq, April 26 2003 Image stolen from VIEWIMAGES , who foolishly believe that by disabling right-click on their site they can prevent me from stealing their intellectual property. Yo, ever heard of the Print Scrn button? It takes a snapshot of the current window and copies it to the clipboard. Open up Windows Paint, paste the image, crop it down to the picture I want, and presto! Via rubber hose , we have this from the Washington Post : Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the U.S. military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them, and see the departure of "occupying forces" as the key to national reconciliation, according to focus groups conducted for the U.S. military last month. That is good news, according to a military analysis of the results. At the very least, analysts optimistically concluded, the findings indicate that Iraqis hold some "shared beliefs" that m

I don't normally link to Reason magazine , but this quote (via Sullivan ) is pretty good: Tom Tancredo has dropped out of the presidential race. He will be replaced by Montezuma Aztlán Calderón, an undocumented worker from Oaxaca who will denounce the Brown Peril for just $3 an hour plus room and board. Given how desperate Republicans are for a candidate, I suspect that Mr. Calderón has as good a shot as anyone at getting the nomination. I'm glad that Tancredo, the most xenophobic candidate, has dropped out. I'm glad that his message didn't get him anywhere. I'm still saddened that sane immigration reform is impossible due to brown peril scare-mongering. Immigrants, legal and illegal, generally commit fewer crimes than native born folks. And the reason the American working class is getting shafted is because of Republican policies that tilt the scales of power away from labor and towards crony capitalism. (And because Democrats aren't fighting hard eno

Japan : The Ukita family of Kodaira City Food expenditure for one week : 37,699 Yen or $317.25 Favorite foods : sashimi, fruit, cake, potato chips If you haven't seen it already, check out this series of photographs showing what families around the world eat in 1 week , and how much it costs. People seem to drink a lot of Coke. United States : The Revis family of North Carolina Food expenditure for one week : $341.98 Favorite foods : spaghetti, potatoes, sesame chicken

A Christian perspective on the wackos who think that Interstate 35 is the road referred to in the Book of Isaiah: My own church youth group never laid siege to a gay bar, but I still wince when I recall some of our forays into "radical" evangelism. We did "boardwalk evangelism" down the shore. I personally handed a gospel tract to Madame Marie herself. Unlike the many mission trips our youth group also did, that wasn't something I enjoyed at the time or felt proud about afterward. This is the dynamic at work in so much of what fundamentalist and evangelical churches think of as "youth ministry." Tell a bunch of good church kids what God expects of them and they will do their best to comply. Tell them God wants them to pass out tracts to strangers and they'll go along. Tell them God wants them to lay siege to a nightclub and they'll get on the van. They will go along because their conscience will be telling them that if this is what God woul

If you're wanting to sneer at your fellow humans for their foolishness, you could do worse than to peruse Fortune magazine's " 101 Dumbest Moments in Business ". Some highlights for me: 13. Disneyland It's a fat world, after all Disneyland announces plans to close the "It's a Small World" attraction to deepen its water channel after the ride's boats start getting stuck under loads of heavy passengers. Employees ask larger passengers to disembark - and compensate them with coupons for free food. 15. Bindeez But officer, it was the Toy of the Year! Australia's Toy of the Year, a bead toy called Bindeez made by Moose Enterprise, is pulled from stores after scientists discover that the beads contain a chemical that converts