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The Public Blogging of Pomosexuality, Homotextuality, Homophobiaphilia, and Drear Theory (aka Career Theory) [aka Gay4Pay]. We also read the Corner and OpJournal so the right buttock will be punished as well.
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A clip from Japan that answers the question, "whats the difference between a completely straight military and a completely gay one?" And the answer is, of course, there is none. This clip froze a few times while loading, once on a stunning image of one of the sailors faces below the beautifully sun-illuminated gold lettering of his cap. The glowing letters blur gorgeously, it's an effect that's even gayer than the dancing. Like I said, no difference.
Update: Oh yeah, I can kinda see Seaman Ship being a borrowing from English, but Japanese Peace is a cognate too?
Update II: Sean K, our correspondent from approximately 14 hours in the future (we call him MacArthur in the office, we've fired and re-hired him so many times), writes:
Holy fuck. I might have known you'd find out about this somehow. You might actually be interested in what the text below the streaming (as it were) video says:
"Objective: Our objective is to gear this piece toward youths and women to give them a broader understanding of the role and current status of the Maritime SDF."
I guess the role of the Maritime SDF is to scout out attackers on-sea and "Rhythm Nation" 'em to death.
"Broadcast from: Super Lisa Shibuya, at Q FRONT, 109 Forum Vision across the street from the Hachiko Exit of Japan Rail Shibuya Station."
As it happens, I live about three blocks from that corner (rumored to be the busiest pedestrian intersection in the world--I'd believe it, too), and four of my favorite bars are right here in the neighborhood. You have to understand that that intersection is total neon city, with storefront colored lights flashing in patterns, and at least four giant television screens looming over the streets from various angles, usually previewing new singles from J-pops flavor-of-the-month divas or advertising cosmetics. When you see the ad towering above you in its natural habitat, it's camp to the camp power of camp (gaygolplex?). The Shibuya fag contingent is flipping, I tell you. We may never recover.
Easily the dumbest thing I've read this year. Of course it's only March, but still:
I agree that the public doesn't like censorship, but I'm not sure that fines for the sort of thing Stern is in trouble for will seem that way in the public mind.
Oh let's see, Stern faces probable record GOVERNMENT fines for indecent SPEECH (breaking the old record, also held by Howard). These fines might well result in Stern losing his job, but the public mind won't interpret this as censorship. I guess this assumes the public is generally as uninformed and unself-aware as Instapundit on the matter. Well, yes, the public is sometimes an ass, but professors more reliably are. You can count on the public to see the censorship of Stern for what it is, and call it by its common name. Count as well on the professor to redouble his dismay at the public's plain talking good sense. Here, I'll make Mr. Reynold's argument for him: Giordano Bruno was executed for heresy, burned at the stake 400 years ago, while Stern only loses affiliates and maybe his job. I dunno, maybe I'm missing something here. And where were the Greaseman protests?
Stern is the most important voice in contemporary mass media. You either know this or you don't. No shame in not knowing. It would be a hard thing to know in the huge swath of the country that doesn't even get Stern's radio show. The shame is in continually talking out of both sides of your mouth about Stern, when that mouth decorates a head empty of any real knowledge of Stern. And apparently empty of any understanding of the ways and means of censorship under the existing regulatory regime.
*If you feel the vulgarity undercuts my point here, please feel free to substitute my alternate header for this post, Instapunkbitch.
Update: OK, a compromise: Instadumbprick. I think that strikes a balance, sets the tone. Instafuckhead was a crude lashing out. And the syllabic echoes were weak to non-existent. I clearly lost it there for a minute.
If I had a minute for every time I lost it, I'd have been immortal years ago.
I saw Kindred (The Family Soul) sing Far Away From Here on Soul Train a few months back. I'd heard and liked the song before but it really kicked in when I saw this not particularly stylish husband and wife sing it. They are West Philly locals (maybe I've stood behind them in the grocery store, they looked on Soul Train very much like many of the couples I stand behind there), but there is no pop-jingoism in my saying that Far Away From Here should be the song of the Spring. There is nothing Neo, Retro or Conscious in this soul music (though Kindred is usually jammed into a mis-labeled Neo-Soul shipping crate). It's the real, somewhat dopey thing. The dopiness is essential, and you can't fake it. Far Away begins (more or less, I fixed the obvious errors in the only online version I could find) :
I'm tired of broken street glass.
Not gettin' no ass unless the baby's asleep.
But even then it seems like we're tryin' to keep.
Tired of payin' taxes, sending emails and faxes.
Tired of crooked cops.
Tired of black folk complainin' that crime don't stop.
I wanna go to a place where lovers go.
Do the things that lovers do.
No stress.
A sweet caress from me to you.
I wanna do the things we used to do.
Say the things we used to say.
Just like everyday, all day.
Far away from here
The melody is more soothing and softer than my typing could ever convey. The entire record, Surrender to Love, is good, though nothing else takes you to the place where lovers go like Far Away does.
It's on the Hidden Beach label which has the distinction of also having released Brenda Russell's very fine Paris RainCD. (Hidden Beach is distinguished as well by an over-designed and under-functional web site). Paris Rain would be the perfect infinite loop companion to Kindred on the first open window night in April. Or the last open window night in October. And all the nights in between.
I have a suspicion this was a net sensation that missed me on its first world wide web tour in 1998 or so. I was very busy that year. The laugh track almost wrecks it, but the "you used to watch me shave" line is excellent, homojokoerotica for the people--the cause that is, as you must surely know, most precious to me. That and the Junior Symphony League.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP-CP) Rebel leader Guy Philippe today declared himself the new chief of Haiti's military, which was disbanded by ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and said he would arrest Prime Minister Yvon Neptune.
...Shortly before Philippe announced his intentions in a call to an AP reporter, he appeared on the second-floor balcony of the colonnaded former army headquarters as hundreds of cheering onlookers stood outside.
"Arrest Neptune!" the crowd chanted.
In Washington, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Roger Noriega dismissed Philippe's power to do much of anything.
"He is not in control of anything but a ragtag band of people"...
And my ragtag heart.
How much nobler to head a ragtag Haitian band than rise to a secretarial assistancy in the State Department. I will grant Roger his expertise in not having the power to do much of anything, though. Talk about preeminence.
Meanwhile Mr. Noriega keeps broadcasting signals that Guy Philippe's broken down radio doesn't pick up. Gimme tattered rebels over dry-cleaned diplomats every time:
The buildup of the international presence in Haiti will make Philippe's role "less and less central in Haitian life. And I think he will probably want to make himself scarce," Noriega said.
"We have sent that message to him. He obviously hasn't received it," Noriega said.
(I know there are versions of these questions older and yellower than Lenny Bruce's first legal pad, but the premise just got young again.)
Can we expect Peggy Noonan to play Mary Magdalene to me, like she does to Mel, when my also-somewhat-biblical take on The Passion of David and Jonathan goes wide in 2005? No flying flayed flesh in mine. Plenty of flesh, and some other flying matter, though. Will the 'gelicals be lining up and falling down for my two leads after they see them trying, again and again, to surpass the love of women on the multiplex screens of the Midwest? Is the Christian market for historical images of male skin kissed, stroked and licked as strong as the xtian urge to see sacred skin kicked, struck and split? Will the Pope respond to a private preview of my movie on the same Bodhisattva back-channel, "It is as it is, and shall be forever thus as it ever was, one thumb way up and clapping."
