The Antisocial Socialist

Adorable kittens have a dream where they don tiny dinosaur and bee outfits and go into space. This is why we have an internet.

Of all the shows that I'm addicted to, Torchwood is by far the worst.

This said, ( spoiler ) And you just don't see that that on TV, usually.

Today's prep work would be finished a lot faster if I hadn't accidentally stumbled upon a cache of Žižek articles for the London Review of Books.

There is a chocolate-flavoured laxative available on the shelves of US stores which is publicised with the paradoxical injunction: Do you have constipation? Eat more of this chocolate! – i.e. eat more of something that itself causes constipation. The structure of the chocolate laxative can be discerned throughout today’s ideological landscape; it is what makes a figure like Soros so objectionable.

(Seriously, that's an awesome article. How did I miss that one?)

This story, about a dissident former KGB agent who was poisoned with a radioactive substance and, on his deathbed, fingered Putin for killing him because of his attempts to uncover the truth about the murder of a crusading journalist, is basically the best news story since the one about the exploding whale.

Discuss.

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For your weekend reading:

• Thanks for nothin. Twisty's American Thanksgiving rant—not quite Burroughs, but awesome nevertheless.

• Teaching schoolkids the real meaning of Thanksgiving:

LONG BEACH, Calif. -- Teacher Bill Morgan walks into his third-grade class wearing a black Pilgrim hat made of construction paper and begins snatching up pencils, backpacks and glue sticks from his pupils. He tells them the items now belong to him because he "discovered" them.

The reaction is exactly what Morgan expects: The kids get angry and want their things back.

All you commies, design geeks, and commie design geeks, check out Unrealized Moscow. Now, if only they had something similar for architectural visions between 1917 and 1930, given that those are the best ones. The Palace of Soviets is particularly good, though, just because I remember studying it in art history class and someone calling out, "My God, it's a giant birthday cake with Stalin on top."

There's something to be said for buildings so ambitious that they can never be built. Meanwhile, construction on that horrific ROM extension continues.

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Hey, Milton Friedman died. In the spirit of unfettered competition, the first person who makes a tasteless joke about it will win a special, yet-to-be-determined prize.

EDIT: rohmie, A WINNER IS YOU! Your slightly used copy of the latest, hot-off-the-press issue of Upping the Anti will be in the mail as soon as I finish reading it. (Hey, I didn't say the prize was any good.)

Anyway, you're all winners, really. Except for Friedman, because he's dead.

...is every bit as awesome as you thought it would be.

And by awesome, I mean awful. Ed Wood awful. There needs to be a drinking game. I need to see it a bazillion times. There was one scene I could have done without (I bet you can guess which one it is, and it's in the trailer so it isn't even a spoiler) but otherwise it was completely cracktastic. The best part is that Samuel L. Jackson is actually acting. It's like watching one human actor playing against a bunch of muppets.

Plus, snake-o-vision.

This will be my only post on the matter, but feel free to discuss to your heart's content.

EDIT: Go forth and reade this: Serpentes on a Shippe! (spoylerez) at Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog.

Then ther was a crashinge grete and terribil, and the sound of the sayles droppinge on to the decke. In the winde the ship did founder. Vp staires, Sir Sean did checke wyth the mariners and finde hem all y-slawe by the snakes, and the snakes had occupyed the wheel of the shippe and the mappe of navigacioun. And Sir Sean cam doun and toold Sir Neville and Sir Neville was passinge wroth and seyde, ‘That ys ynogh. I haue hadde it wyth thes cursed by Seynt George snakes on this cursed by Seynt George shippe!’

In the old days, before the invention of this series of tubes that we call teh intarwebs, communication was far more difficult. For example, I would have said unto you: "Verily, today mine eyes beheld the most wondrous kitten." (And by you, I mean those of you within shouting distance.)

And would you have replied, "O sabotabby, tell me of this fair beastie!"

And then I would have wasted an enormous amount of time describing unto you the kitten's diminutive stature, the magnitude of her yellow eyes, her most delectable pink nose, and her paws upon which were bestowed a most unusual number of toes. By the end of this description I would have still failed to convey the astonishing cuteness of the kitten.

Fortunately, we live in an information age, and I can just ( do this. )

CUTE WARNING!

Below this cut are pictures of kitties, puppies, rainbows, and hippies. Your head may explode from cute.

No, I'm not kidding.

( Don't say I didn't warn you! )

The perfect thing for a shitty day:
Cats who talk. Talking cats. OMG.

Soon, they will develop opposable thumbs and humans will no longer be needed.

I had a job as a body piercer. A client wanted me to pierce her top and bottom lips together with a row of industrial-strength staples, essentially sealing her mouth shut. I might add that she wanted me to do this at a dinner party hosted by my parents. The other catch was that she didn't trust me to do it on her until I'd done it on someone else. The only person that I could think of who was crazy enough to do something like that was me.

So, while my parents made dinner in the next room, I sat with the piercing gun and put rings through my lips. I was interrupted only once, halfway through the procedure, but I was still able to drawl out of the corner of my mouth.

The first ring was excruciatingly painful and brought tears to my eyes. Every ring after that got slightly easier, until the last one, which I barely felt at all.

In waking news:

Toronto people, please come to the Wobbly film night. It will be fun. And if it isn't, there will be booze there.

EDIT: Are any of you good at making animated icons from videos? If so, anyone who makes me an icon of either the panda going down the slide and crashing into the other panda, or the panda sticking its nose directly into the camera gets to be my new hero.