June 02, 2004
Read My Lips Proudly Presents the 89th Edition of the Carnival of the Vanities
10 things about this Carnival of the Vanities:
- This is the first time I have hosted a Carnival of this type, although I did once host a review of the blogs on the New Blog Showcase over a year ago.
- This is the 89th running of the
Kentucky DerbyCarnival of the Vanities. - The Carnival of the Vanities was begun before I began bloggin'.
- The theme of this Carnival of the Vanities is Host Chose a Picture to Represent Each Submission. I do not remember anyone havin' used that exact theme previously. I am mindful of the fact that I have now left the door open for Pixy Misa to
choosewrite a song to represent each submission in next week's carnival. - The submissions are in the order of the time and date they were sent to me. I thought it was the fairest way, givin' the early birds the top spots and the procrastinators the spots at the bottom. However, some of the procrastinators had some very very fine material that you will miss if you don't scroll all the way down.
- I did extensively search for the picture I thought best represented my feelin's about each post after my readin' and extensive perusal of such. I am proud of most of my selections. I thumbnailed each of them, but linked each picture to the original source. Clickin' on any pic will open a new window, so you won't get lost when you try to come back.
- Just in case you were wonderin', I would personally appreciate commentary on how well you think I did in pickin' pictures to represent these submissions.
- I have an innate tendency to call things as I see 'em. Some people get offended because I have no qualms in expressin' a viewpoint that is contrary to theirs. Just realize that by my doin' so within my description of your submission, it was not my intent to offend any of ya'll.
- From my reading of every submission, I came away with the opinion that each blogger had put a lot of effort into the posts they submitted to this Carnival, and, as such, they do deserve recognition for such. Do click through and read these fine posts. Leave comments to let the blogger know what you thought of their efforts. It is a golden rule thing, folks! You would want the same, right?
- I discovered that I it took a lot of work to properly present this Carnival. My havin' undertakin' this task immediately increased my admiration for those who came before me.
This is where you get started with seein' what all your friends and neighbors brought to show and tell:
a man on the hill gives us an excitin' assessment of Madonna's fall from grace - a most humorous, should I say, tongue-in-cheek assessment.
Michele, stretchin' a title to its limits, did a fantastic job in her effort to defeat my abilities to describe her submission, but we shall just say that between bad food, screamin' kids, noisy folks playin' trivia, and poorly arranged seatin', she watched Dubya's speech. Here post recounts the speech and her night superbly 'cept I came away somewhat confused as to what name her momma used in winnin' NTN's Interactive trivia game.
John Rosenberg analyzes why the Democrats, vis-a-vis, Walter Isaacson, current president of the liberal Aspen Institute, has no understandin' of Ben Franklin's teachin's with regard to the proper use of humility, forgettin', however, to mention that such knife often cuts equally as well in both directions.
Josh Cohen extensively critiques the problems associated with airline seatin' when it comes to comfortably accomodatin' people of a larger than average size. He additionally sheds light on a few other problems he has noted about air service.
Trudy W. Schuett points to another blogger's questionin' of the ethics of the use of templated opinions in doin' massive promotions of certain ideas, then wonders at the ethics of public and private agencies that often create or adopt untruthful mottoes and sound bites.
Stanley Forrester provides a thoroughly in-depth and informative, insider look into military discipline: what it is, what it ain't and what it should be. I searched for a picture of an Ancient Mariner gettin' lashes with a cat o' nine tails, walkin' the plank, or bein' keel hauled. I was unsuccessful in findin such, so ya just gotta settle for what ya got. Hey! Mac ain't too bad to look at, right?
Solomon lambastes the popularly rated movie, Life is Beautiful, as havin' painted a less than accurate picture of the plight of the Jews under the Nazi regime in World War II. In other words, the scenes dealin' with Holocaust in this film were not as caustic as were the actual historic events.
Dean Esmay has punched the buttons, tabulated the numbers, pulled the handle on the addin' machine, and come to the conclusion that the world is not even close to bein' overcrowded. Of course, it is mostly the world's prisons that are overcrowded.
Vik Rubenfeld wonders why hatred exhibited against political candidates by the supporters of the opposin' party seems to build up to such a degree that there is always a call for impeachment on what he believes are minor incidents. In his opinion, such does very little to actually benefit anyone but does a lot of harm by distracting' the current administration from dealin' with more important matters.
Owen takes a deep hard look at addiction and the harm it causes not only to the addicted person, but to families, friends, and loved ones of said person. From my own readin' between the lines, I came away with the feelin' that someone close to Owen has recently died due to an addiction to some substance and that by postin' 'bout his feelin's on the matter, Owen is not only sharin' his views on a worthwhile subject, but is assistin' himself in personally handlin' the situation. Allow me herein to offer my condolences.
Mark Philip Alger examines feminism, from its roots to the bastardization of the cause by those whose agenda does not accurately represent the crusade for the betterment of the entire female sector of society, or at least that is what I came away with after two readin's and several consultations with both my dictionary and my thesaurus.
Graham Lester attended a speech made by Presidential Candidate John
KennedyKerry in which said Sen. Kerry outlined his multi part plan to improve the lives of every American and those that choose to love them. If I understood Graham's report, in a most magically delicious speech, Kerry promised all Americans that when he is elected, it shall be their lucky day.
Joanie a.k.a. Da Goddess went in for a bikini wax and came out fully prepared to offer nose jobs. Ya'll people with the dirty minds are actually the ones on the right track, this time. She has additionally asked that I assist her herein to promote
the widespread use of whale tamponsher Memorial Day Project. I am glad to do so and just hope that I am not too late. Oh, and Joanie, if I could only twitch my nose like Samantha and make it all go away, I would do so. ;)
Susie's submission has previously been given a superlatively snarky ride on my blog, but the serious problem with destructive
monstersteenage boys must not have gotten the attention that she thought it deserved. She hasbeggedasked me to tell all of you to go check it out, or otherwise, not only will she submit it to Pixy next week, she will force Frank J to French kiss both a hippy and a monkey at the same time. She wields the power to do so, ya know?
Tim Worstall feels like the War on Drugs has escalated to the point where the enforcers are now preyin' 'pon the citizenry like a pack of rabid dogs, seizin' property and puttin' families out of homes through drug forfeiture laws. In his opinion, it is time that we begin to fight back usin' Flower Power.
Kevin Baker may have the worst timin' of this week's participants because he drew a lawyer that failed to buy his argument on his jury. The only apparent thing I discovered 'pon a thorough readin' of his submission, which, by the way, was, for me, somewhat akin to a poorly organized busman's holiday on steroids, is that Kevin post exhibits some unknown degree of disdain for judges, prosecutors and criminal defense attorneys. From followin' the whole discourse that eventually resulted in this summation, it was completely apparent to me that our esteemed Mr. Baker lacks any meanin'ful ability to view an issue from both sides. Of course, that is just my take on it, and I do now 'spect you to go and make up your own mind.
Evan is of the opinion that the baby boomer generation has pulled a Rumplestiltskin act and split itself right down the middle and has been fightin' with itself since the Viet Nam war era. Actually, he might be on to somethin'.
Kiril Kundurazieff challenges everyone to get a bit poetic. I guess I might as well give it a try. I think the followin' qualifies as a haiku:
A blurb I must do
to coax you to view this post
Will you please do so?
Jim Peacock double dips with two entries, the first bein' from his highly acclaimed Zero Intelligence blog which keeps a keen eye on stories dealin' with Zero Tolerance matters in schools. The story he submitted for your review this week involved the investigation of a 7 year old boy who showed a toy gun to one of his classmates. That child's parents then alerted the police, which,
likely in their best storm trooper manner,came to the child's house to search and seize the weapon. I actually had a very difficult time choosin' a pic to go with this one, but it did remind me of the inanity I felt when I first read Grisham's tale, The Client.From Snooze Button Dreams comes a surreal dream or is it a nightmare? It involves parachutes, anvils, terrorists, and somewhere in the end, Jim ends up cursin' some roadrunner or somethin'. At least, it was fairly easy to decide what picture to put with this one, just findin' it turned out to be the difficult part.
Martin Lindeskog graces my hostin' of the Carnival this week by goin' back to a post he created on May 7 to celebrate the second anniversary of his blog, and, gives us great examples why his blog is amply named. He has a logo drawn by none other than those popular political cartoonists, Cox and Forkum, and seems to have a good friendship with them. He updates everyone about all the changes he had made durin' the last year and how much different his stats were at the end of this year than last year, Yes, he has a very nice blog, but when ya hit the link, keep your fingers crossed, because he is on blog*spot and it took me three tries before I hit the right post. It appears that if you are not already familiar with this blogger, this is a good time to get to know him.
northstar
proposes that the Texas bloggers begin supportin' each other like the Bear Flag League and the Rocky Top Brigade and have a bash at Scott's place sometime in the near futureresponds to a recent TownHall.com article penned by one Michelle Malkin in which the Washingtonienne has been compare to Monika Lewinski. He comes readily to her defense, feelin' that she must really be too exhausted from her daily ordeal of tryin' to make enough money to support herself to do such on her own. Kudos for comin' to the lady's defense. ;)[Ed note: I actually had chosen Wonkette's picture before I noticed one of the links on the submitted post went to Wonkette's site because when it comes to women usin' their sexual favors to quickly climb up the career ladder, her name always comes to mind first. Strange that, huh?]
Ian Hamet, in a post most possibly not for the squeamish, gives a minute by minute report about a surgery matter from the discovery of the problem until the recovery. The biggest problem was that the surgery was done by someone who was likely not trained as well as possible before bein' allowed to operate.
John Ray, not wishin' to be outdone by either Joanie or Jim Peacock, submitted an entry from 3 of his blogs. The foremost of these, in my opinion, was his long, well researched, diatribe in which he explained why candidates ideologies are less important that their stances on certain issues central to voter support.
On his Greenie Watch blog, we find a story about the politicization of a mythical scientific matter that is causin' some major problems in the energy business.
O' course, the people deplorin' the way the energy is bein' produced are likely not ridin' horses to these rallies or readin' the works of Marx and Lenin by candlelight, I bet.And lastly, on Political Correctness Watch we are told that government agendas attemptin' to attack the obesity problem are without any practical scientific basis. In fact, accordin' to all pertinent data, people are still healthier and livin' longer than ever before. As we are reminded, is not the biggest problem humanity currently faces the increasin' number of extremely old people?
bussorah has come up with some quite doozy [yes, Virginia, I did say doozy] questions to see if you are on your toes or if maybe you aren't really as smart as you thought you were. I have to admit, I was a thinkin' we were talkin' about the younger version of the herd on question number 2.
Libby Spencer correlates the data to show that the Office of National Drug Control Policy is shootin' itself in the foot as far as its target audience is concerned with all the anti-marijuana ads. I must, however, disagree with the point she attempted to make in her last statement that the government's view of the data is inconsistent with the reality of drug enforcement in the schools. Decreased use is not no use: the goal of zero tolerance fanatics.
weasel watcher warns us to not to get too caught up into the scenario behind the recently released movie The Day After Tomorrow, as it is based upon junk science
[hmmm, have we not already gotten that message from the post on Greenie blog?], but then goes and gives a scenario which might be more likely to happen at sometime in the future.
David Patterson reports that techno geniuses, who always seem to be just a bit ahead of the their time, have come to realize that some people get a bit under the collar sometimes dealin' with answerin' machines, voice mail boxes and such, and are developin' software to detect which ones are about to blow their top so they can actually be transferred to a real human.
Hopefully it won't be some manager who has his/her head up her ass, but the odds say otherwise.
Laughin' Wolf has submitted a most excellent multi-post study of the Traditional Media, beginnin' with a study of the control of the flow of information from before the invention of the printing press to the present, the historical background for our belief in Freedom of the Press, and concludes with explainin' why the Traditional Media is slantin' the news to make it look bad for the current administration. Begin with the initial post penned on May 12, and follow the links to the end. You will gain more understandin' of the media circus and why the heck the media moguls are so damned afraid of bloggers. I'd have provided all those links for ya here, but I was runnin' a bit short of space, bein' as how I gotta always make sure I got room for the Dr. Pepper logo up there at the top for which ain't no one payin' me.
Guy a.k.a. OldCatman is makin' his first ever appearance in the Carnival. He likely would not be appearin' herein 'cept he is a friend of mine and he requested that I include a post of his in it. He has, despite havin' been bloggin' for awhile, no concept of permalinks or of the need to actually use standard text in posts from time to time. Let me say that if you are unaware of the OldCatman, you have been missin' somethin'. Ever'thin' is done with graphics, almost always dealin' with major political figures and always slap dab hilarious. He is on blog*spot and probably still is not aware the reason he found himself recently to be unable to continue to use his former blog*spot blog was because he used up all the allotted server space by fillin' it with graphically created posts. But who cares? I am tellin' ya, even if the permalink don't work, you will still find whatever you find to be so hilarious, you won't mind scrollin' up and down searchin' for the post as dated below. Heck, this is the only entry in this Carnival for which I used a picture I took from the blog 'pon which I was commentin'.
Michael Kantor has done a bit of investigatin' 'bout the investigatin' of former Drug Czar Bill Bennett who seems to be in the midst of sex scandal situation. No smokin' gun has appeared, and as the supposed tryst involves a dominatrix, it is likely there ain't no Deep Throat involved either, at least on a very personal level, that is. My own personal take, unless he is compelled under oath to answer questions and lies about it, he ain't the heir apparent to the title "Slick Willie."
MJPechar discloses an interestin' story about the demise of the annual Western Washington University Pornfest,
believed by many to be due to the complaints of the area perverts who were tired of findin' all the XXX Video stores picked clean durin' the eventand the migration of the university's sexually repressed studentsand those that were wantin' to sleep with 'emacross campus to the Women's Study Program where such topics as Puppy Love is not a Bad Thing and What is Good Enough for Kim Jong-Il is Good Enough for Me. Well, actually it was somethin' akin to such, but probably more academically inclined or somethin'. Go, read! Don't take my word on this one.
Bill Adams ain't none too happy 'bout some academic conference centered around Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the TV show, not the campy movie it was somewhat based upon, mostly 'cause he figures they will muck up sumthin' like they are wont to do: usin' big words, comparin' this to that, analyzin' minutiae -- in other words, they are all actin' like academics. I, however, am of the opinion it is more likely they are just a bunch of sexual repressed nerds who want to jump into Buffy's
bedworld.
Pietro thinks John Kerry is tryin' to pull a fast one on the American public with all his talk 'bout how he will deal harshly with terrorists. Now how can that be? Kerry stands strong behind the issues, every one of them -- on all sides, right? Surely, with a slippery position like that, he surely is slick enough to represent ever'one. Oh wait, this was about you goin' to see what Pietro said. Go do it!
Dale Franks excepts portions of his book: Slackernomics: Basic Economics For People Who Think Economics is Boring and hopes that multitudes of ya'll readers will buy it and assist his economic status. I ain't read the book, so cannot give ya a review, so here is a bit of what Dale says is written on the book jacket:
If you think economics is boring, then maybe you’ve been learning about it in the wrong places. The humorous, informal style of Slackernomics makes it easy to learn a wealth of information that you will find useful in business, politics, or regular daily life. From the basics of economics to current political controversies, Slackernomics cuts through the dull, boring economic arguments you’re used to hearing, and presents them in a lively, interesting fashion.
Bryan McAnally did not completely disclose the reason for his trip to another country, but thankfully it seems he was able to travel there without any problems. Of course, he found those Canadians are tricky enough to trap visitors by puttin' up speakin' cardboard people who engage ya in one-sided conversation and before ya know it, you have been lured into the Duty-Free store. Ya know, I guess I had watched Northern Exposure too many times to have gotten trapped to go in one of those Duty Free shops, and after readin' this post, I am so pleased of such. Here is your chance to visit one vicariously, and I am sure you will be glad you did so.
Rich Marotti is either whinin' 'cause Glenn Reynold's won't link him or let him sleep on his couch. I couldn't really tell. Mostly, I think this is about gettin' a lot of publicity on his move across the country so he can save as much on motel rooms as possible by gettin' a bunch of bloggers to let him crash on their couch. If I read his email right, this same post will be playin' at the Bonfire, as well. Hmmmm.
Eric Scheie counters Al Gore and many others' continued assertions that there were never any links between Iraq and al Qaida with irrefutable evidence, well, maybe not irrefutable, because some of the liberal moanin' moonbats seem fully able to refute the very nose on their own face if doin' so will make the Bush regime look bad, don't they? [Note, the pic is actually linked to the server of our own bloggin' pal, Steve of Pig on Ice, formerly Little Tiny Lies.]
Brian J. Noggle shared a story about some helpful citizens who thought they had spotted some possible terrorist suspects, but upon callin' the local FBI office were informed that, accordin' to the descriptions that were presented of the supposed suspects, such did not fit the profile of the subjects the office was investigatin' or some such nonsense.
Sean Hackbarth delves deeply into a tragic situation in Milwaukee where two young black girls disappeared in a rushin' river and are believed to be dead, but for some reason, race is beginnin' to raise its ugly head.
I guess we will close this thing out with this post of mine, though it is likely not that far away from where you are readin', it definitely is not gettin' the attention I want it to get.
Upcoming Carnival of the Vanities stops:
June 9th: Ambient Irony
June 16th: Jessica's Well
June 23rd: A Single Guy In The South
June 30th: quasi in rem
July 7th democrats give conservatives indigestion
July 14th d-42.com
July 21st Soundfury
July 28th Jeff Doolittle
August 4th - Seldom Sober
August 11th - The Smallest Minority
August 18th - Fringe
August 25th - Ego
September 1st - Blogo Slovo
September 8th - Food Basics
September 22nd - The Eleven Day Empire
Superlative job, notGeorge!! The pictures are great!
Posted by: Susie at June 2, 2004 10:15 AMTook me a second to figure out what my picture was, but damn if it doesn't fit perfectly.
Posted by: J at June 2, 2004 10:37 AMThanks, T! I'll be back..................
Did I fix the bloody permalinks thing?
Posted by: OLDCATMAN at June 2, 2004 11:09 AMGood job there.
Posted by: Da Goddess at June 2, 2004 01:11 PMGreat job, and love the pictures!
Posted by: Laughing Wolf at June 2, 2004 03:50 PMGreat job!
Love my picture, and the submissions are all fantastic.
Posted by: amanonthehill at June 2, 2004 04:08 PMGreat job!.
Nice Haiku. :-)
Now try the Tanka, and Cinquain. :-)
Posted by: Kiril at June 2, 2004 11:48 PMabout the fat related articles, the real problem is that too much fat is most often a function of overeating and laziness, plus fat people are not very attractive to most people
Posted by: Eric at June 3, 2004 09:14 AMBugger, my submission got lost in the ether...oh well. Nice layout this week.
Posted by: Andrew Ian Dodge at June 3, 2004 10:22 AMI'm on a long road trip and just got a chance to check it out. Love the theme and you certainly nailed it with my picture. I've been mad for reefer all of my life. Thanks for hosting.
Libby
Posted by: Libby Spencer at June 4, 2004 05:44 PMWow! A lot of great work went into this. Very nice job. And to think this is the week I didn't submit anything -- I would have liked to have seen what picture you would have attached to my entry. Alas, life is full of missed opportunities, isn't it?
Posted by: Suzy at June 4, 2004 10:06 PMGreat job! (standing ovation)
Posted by: Jason at June 5, 2004 04:58 AMI might have come late to the party, but it doesn't mean I can still admire it. Dang, son, you did a beautiful job!
Posted by: LeeAnn at June 8, 2004 10:22 PM