One Way to Describe the Democratic Race

Clinton is smart and tough, and Obama, while effective, is more of a crowd-pleaser. I don't know how many of you have played Final Fantasy X, but:

Clinton: Auron
Obama: Wakka

Gold!

Can we just get rid of the Ron Paul shit, please?

...Paul's campaign wants to depict its candidate as a naïve, absentee overseer, with minimal knowledge of what his underlings were doing on his behalf. This portrayal might be more believable if extremist views had cropped up in the newsletters only sporadically--or if the newsletters had just been published for a short time. But it is difficult to imagine how Paul could allow material consistently saturated in racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and conspiracy-mongering to be printed under his name for so long if he did not share these views. In that respect, whether or not Paul personally wrote the most offensive passages is almost beside the point. If he disagreed with what was being written under his name, you would think that at some point--over the course of decades--he would have done something about it.

I don't know if his politics are right vis: smaller government, Federal Reserve, etc. (I tend to think they're untenable). What I don't like is the promulgation of the myth that he's some sort of force of freedom. He's a lunatic.

That said, I don't have a blimp, so who am I to judge? Learn to love, Joe. Learn to love.

This is Funny in A Way that Makes The Icy Spectre of Suicide and I Have A Flirtatious Cup of Tea in the Arboreteum

From Gawker's new Sci-Fi site, io9.

The Feminists

I would say we've come far, but there's still a lot of anti-woman rhetoric out there. God No! A woman could never be President! She'll either destroy all men or be too weak for the job! That ball-busting bitch/wimpy woman!

Yeesh.

A Quick Thought

So last night I was watching Waiting..., and I had a thought. I know that I might be wrong for thinking this, as I've cobbled this theory together mostly by hearsay, but:

Dane Cook might be palatable if he quits standup and becomes a character actor. He doesn't suck at that.

I dunno.

Barack Obama is a Good Public Speaker

He lilts nearly effortlessly between a sort of charismatic preacher pitter-patter to a hard-edged, "presidential" tone. He's damn good.

Now if we can get the Kuciniches and Ron Pauls and Bill Richardsons and Huckabees, Romneys, Giulianis, McCains, etc, out of the race, we'll have some real fun.

Sorry, I'm On My Mediocre-Phone

So, first, the good things about Juno:

What a compelling story! And the acting! Man, I wish Allison Janney were in more movies. Also, Jennifer Garner gave the best performance her tiny little brain would allow. Also, Ellen Page has the potential to really kick ass if she doesn't become her generations quirk girl...

*And now, we wade into the shit*

...Which, unless she spends the next film she's in reciting her lines on a unicycle, is impossible. Seriously, could a script be more dishonest and stupid?

Do you know how playing Dance Dance Revolution is like dancing, but not really dancing? The dialogue was so impossibly mannered that screenwriter Diablo Cody* must have written by playing Script Script Revolution. I mean, the characters were speaking, technically, but only in the strictest denotational sense of the word.

And I understand the need for flourishes and fun dialogue and wierdness. Not every film needs to be completely naturalistic. That'd be boring. But for Christ's sake, I can only take so much preciousness.

Becky wants to see it, so I might take another go at Juno. Tons of people I respect really loved it, so I wonder if my natural curmudgeonly-ness is coloring my opinion too much.

PS: Why didn't she get an abortion? Why does no one get an abortion in these pregnancy movies? They're legal! Please will someone get an abortion? Also, the clinic where she got an abortion--you know what? Fuck it. I'm writing a ten-minute movie that ends with the teenager getting an abortion and going on with her life.

*Fucking hell, that name.

The Boy in the Moon

Metafilter showed me this article about this journalist and his son, who has a rare condition. I'm not sure if this is exploitative, but I like it. It also has a very stylish video accompanying it. It's also part of a series, so I'll probably keep my eye on it.