Cady McClain on Sarah Palin

Because I'm still not over the death of All My Children's Dixie Cooney Chandler Martin Bodine Martin, who died in 2007 after eating poisoned peanut butter pancakes meant for her daughter-in-law, I've been keeping up with the personal weblog where her portrayer Cady McClain journals life after death.

McClain has a rep for being fairly opinionated, as you can see from her post yesterday about Sarah Palin:

... I think Sarah Palin is the worst thing to come to politics in a long time. Overly aggressive, blindly opinionated, savagely ambitious, I would not consider it beyond her to manipulate her way into the presidential seat by arranging McCain's untimely death. She thinks its okay to ban books from a library! She thinks man has nothing to do global warming! She thinks polar bears are not an endangered species! She has these supposed "christian values" but married because she was pregnant and now her underage daughter is doing the same thing? She is a moron and a hypocrite and there is no way in hell I am voting for McCain with her on the ticket. Oh and by the way, she had one of her employees call a blogger who was questioning some of her policies online and tell her "Stop blogging! Stop blogging now!" WTF?! This is what we can look forward to: the end of freedom of speech, more humanitarian policies destroyed by greed, the end of women's rights over their bodies, banned books, and boiling hot summers! They try to tell us, "these are her personal beliefs and she hasn't tried to put these policies into her lawmaking!" I say that's total --------. Do they think we're ------- stupid?

She had me at "worst."

Television · Politics · 2008/09/19 · 23 COMMENTS · Link

New Comment Pages Added to Workbench

I spent a little time this morning improving the comment system on Workbench. There's now a comments page that shows the 50 most recent comments submitted to the weblog.

After you submit a comment here, the site will store your name and home page link in cookies for 180 days so you don't have to type them in again.

I've also added a line to the site's moderation policy: "Comments that have nothing to do with the subject of a post will be deleted." There's too much off-topic noise here. I'm not interested in seeing every single post I write turned into an opportunity to rant against liberals or the policies I follow on the Drudge Retort. If you have a beef about the Retort or the liberal slant of the site, take it up there.

Comments that I delete on this blog are published for a few days on a new deleted comments page. So if you've posted something here that gets got, you can retrieve the text and post it somewhere else.

Programming · 2008/09/18 · 43 COMMENTS · Link

Christian Slater: Threat or Menace?

My friend and fellow boobtube connoisseur Jonathan Bourne has posted his Television Death Pool predictions, split into two parts like a very special episode of Blossom. Here's his list, ordered from most to least likely cancellation:

• ER (NBC)
• Life on Mars (ABC)
• My Own Worst Enemy (NBC)
• Do Not Disturb (Fox)
• The Mentalist (CBS)
• 90210 (CW)
• Opportunity Knocks (ABC)
• Knight Rider (NBC)
• Worst Week Ever (NBC)
• Gary Unmarried (CBS)

I'm kicking myself for not picking Do Not Disturb. I watched the sitcom's pilot last week, and I agree with the assessment of Chicago Tribune TV critic Maureen Ryan: "It made my soul vomit."

Bourne and I disagree on My Own Worst Enemy, the new drama that answers the question "whatever happened to Christian Slater?":

One way to try to get viewers to tune in to a program is to put a star in it. But does Christian Slater count as a star? I think Slater's paycheck is this show's worst enemy. Because if this program doesn't get huge ratings right off the bat, the bean counters are going to look at the bottom line and determine that this show is too expensive because of the money they shelled out for Slater.

I'm having trouble with the show's premise -- Slater plays a dull white collar guy in the 'burbs who doesn't realize he's also a bad-ass international spy. How could you not figure out something like that? Wouldn't you wake up one morning in leopard-skin underwear instead of your tighty-whities, smelling of explosives and gunpowder, and wonder what the hell happened the previous night?

But in spite of that, I can't bet against the star of Heathers, the last dark comedy about school violence that's ever likely to be made.

Television · 2008/09/17 · 5 COMMENTS · Link

Game Designer Rob Heinsoo Meets Roy G. Biv

Until 2006 I was colorblind. Show me a sunset and I saw shades of green. Hand me a pink shirt and I was sure it was grey. Before my first date with Lisa, my future wife, I gave her my address and described my house as the gray house on the corner. The only gray house on a corner anywhere in the neighborhood belonged to the local drug dealers, which she realized when they opened the door and called inside to see if there was a 'Rob' sprawled somewhere in the haze. Lisa said "Uh, sorry, I've got the wrong house," backed up and found me in the blue house on the corner.

On February 8, 2006, I sat at home typing Dreamblade notes on my laptop computer while Lisa went to hear a National Geographic lecture with her mom. As usual, I had Windows Media Player humming along playing music. I liked having the Alchemy visualizer twirling colors around at the side of the screen while I worked. Suddenly ...

The story makes possible this great oh snap! insult from one of Heinsoo's readers: "If you were still colorblind, you'd have an excuse for using this format for your pages. The color scheme makes me wish I were colorblind."

Gaming · 2008/09/17 · 1 COMMENT · Link

Ron Paul Absent from Financial Crisis Coverage

I found myself wondering today why Ron Paul has been completely absent from media coverage of the Merrill Lynch sale and Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. Paul, more than any other candidate for president this year, made an issue of the government's management of the economy and how he believes we're being led off a cliff. He would no doubt have a lot to say, given his remarks in May against proposed House bills to bail out mortgage lenders:

It is neither morally right nor fiscally wise to socialize private losses in this way.

The solution is for government to stop micromanaging the economy and let the market adjust, as painful as that will be for some. We should not force taxpayers, including renters and more frugal homeowners, to switch places with the speculators and take on those same risks that bankrupted them. It is a terrible idea to spread the financial crisis any wider or deeper than it already is, and to prolong the agony years into the future. Socializing the losses now will only create more unintended consequences that will give new excuses for further government interventions in the future. This is how government grows - by claiming to correct the mistakes it earlier created, all the while constantly shaking down the taxpayer. The market needs a chance to correct itself, and Congress needs to avoid making the situation worse by pretending to ride to the rescue.

In a search of Google News, I could find no evidence that Paul has been interviewed about the current financial crisis. I did find a speech he made on the floor of the House of Representatives in March.

The text of his speech also is online.

Politics · Journalism · 2008/09/16 · Comment · Link

Hurricane Ike Poised to Strike Galveston

Hurricane Ike is going to kill a lot of people who don't evacuate Galveston and the surrounding Texas coast before it strikes tonight. I just heard a disturbing report on MSNBC that disabled residents have yet to be evacuated and can't reach emergency authorities on the phone. Weather Underground Jeff Masters offers this grim assessment:

Hurricane Ike is closing in on Texas, and stands poised to become one of the most damaging hurricanes of all time. Despite Ike's rated Category 2 strength, the hurricane is much larger and more powerful than Category 5 Katrina or Category 5 Rita. The storm surge from Ike could rival Katrina's, inundating a 200-mile stretch of coast from Galveston to Cameron, Louisiana with waters over 15 feet high. ... Ike continues to grow larger and has intensified slightly since yesterday, and the hurricane's Integrated Kinetic Energy has increased from 134 to 149 Terajoules. This is 30% higher than Katrina's total energy at landfall. All this extra energy has gone into piling up a vast storm surge that will probably be higher than anything in recorded history along the Texas coast. Storm surge heights of 20-25 feet are possible from Galveston northwards to the Louisiana border.

We helped talk some relatives into evacuating Houston. The last massive storm to strike Galveston, the 1900 hurricane, killed from 6,000 to 12,000 residents -- one third of the town's population -- and rewrote Texas history. Before the storm, Galveston was the largest cotton port in the U.S. and one of the state's largest economic centers, home to 18 different newspapers. Afterward, Houston took its place.

Weather · Texas · 2008/09/12 · 5 COMMENTS · Link

Feelin' Glum? Cheer Up with Beech-Nut Gum

An old black-and-white hepcat commercial for Beech-Nut Gum made me curious if the gum -- available in five flavors including Chlorophyll "for the breath" -- is still being sold anywhere.

Hometown Favorites, an online store that sells 2,000 well-known old-time products that are difficult to find today in stores, claims that Beech-Nut Spearmint and Wintergreen Gum is no longer being made. Beechies are available in spearmint and peppermint.

Shopping · 2008/09/11 · 11 COMMENTS · Link

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