I’ve been reading lots of stories on the assassination of “Lebanese lawmaker Gebran Tueni, a fierce critic of Syria,” and hope to have some sort of commentary up soon.
In the meantime, my daughter sent the following to me:
The game AOL has listed as the #1 online game:
“J.Lo. Fur Bully From the Block. Free the Fur Ho.” Try out the game. (The photo alone is worth the click.)
That’s about the most un-PC name possible. But, she is an egregious, greedy user of dead animals — she even wears mink fur fake eyelashes — so … OPEN THREAD, with a stocking stuffer below the fold …
The bonus stocking stuffer:
December 12, 2005 — GIVING new meaning to the term “yellow journalism,” the pranksters at PETA are vowing to slap stickers with Anna Wintour’s face on them in the urinals of the Vogue editrix’s favorite hotspots. The stickers — with an unflattering picture of Wintour accompanied by the caption, “#1 Fur Hag” — will supposedly surface in the men’s rooms of La Esquina (site of tonight’s Vogue holiday party), Da Silvano and The Four Seasons, where Wintour was once served a dead raccoon by an animal rights activist. “PETA has attempted to educate Wintour for years about atrocities in the fur industry, but fur peddlers’ presents have left her with deaf ears and a cold heart,” a PETA spokesman told PAGE SIX.
Speaking of un-PC, Atrios has just written a commentary on the MSNBC blog ad that we’ve also got running on our site (and many other liberal blog sites):
Oh no! The link to the JLo game isn’t working…and I can tell the CabinBoys would like to check it out after school today!
Duh. I forgot to paste in the link! I corrected that, and here it is again.
Let me know what the boys think of it!
at the orange place, they’re claiming that the SusanG’s new front page status is part of the plot of Susans to take over all blogs. Do you deny being part of the conspiracy?
Please see my question in the comment below!
I don’t know how old SusanG is, but there was a huge crop of baby boomer Susans, and I always chalked it up to Susan Hayward being a huge star around that time.
In my tiny town, there were three Susans in my class. To lessen the confusion, we became Susan, Sue, and Suzie.
I don’t think hardly anyone names their daughters Susan anymore. (Although I think that some film stars should consider the name. Sure beats Apple or Hazel.)
Sorry, best pun I could think of. I was better when I drank coffee…
My son’s class has two boys named “Atticus,” and one girl a grade younger. They call her “Addy,” I’m told. No Susans that I know of. I think the best chapter of the book Frakeanomics was the one where he outlined the “market” for baby names and how it follows certain patterns. Boring apostolic names like mine (Matthew) are always popular…
I was born in 1960 and there were a few Susans in my class. But my highschool class had 77 girls and I think we once figured out that 14 of them were named Mary. Fortunately many of them went by nicknames.
I agree… but i do sort of LIKE Hazel. ..But witch Hazel put a damper on the name, I guess.
but then.. i like witches too 🙂
belong to us. Surrender now.
Yep, like SusanHu said, I’m a baby boomer (born 1958). Tons of Susans in my classes growing up and then it just … stopped. I feel so hugely dated now, it’s pathetic.
You deserve it. I have to say I like all Kos’ choices for new front-page bloggers a lot.
Susan G, congratulations! We’re so tickled for you!
How are you feeling about it? Really?
is excited, apprehensive, underconfident … exhilirated, exhausted (and I haven’t even begun). I’m hoping for a more focused year and less flame wars and ill feeling.
Plus, it’s absolutely terrifying to be following in the footsteps of billmon and Meteor Blades and more lately, Hunter. Lots of jumbled stuff I’m feeling, actually. I wish I could just wake up two months from now and automatically have ten weeks of experience under my belt. I’m sure I’ll settle in eventually, and I certainly love the opportunity, PLUS the terrific other choices of writers. I’m really honored to be in such company and I hope I can live up to them, and to the giants of the past.
Susan and I have lots of stories about performance anxiety if you ever need a boost or a laugh. Congrats, we’re jealous…that we don’t have you here. It looks like dKos is moving in a positive direction.
Congratulations. I am sure you will have a lot of fun on the front page. 🙂
And I’m hoping I can hang out here more during down time. I really do love this site … and I think the other Susan is the tops.
“during down time”
Something tells me that comment is worthy of a “hee” ;^)
Best wishes in your well-deserved promotion! (All Susan conspiracies and concerns aside)
I know we have some WOW players around here, and I hoping they’ll chime in with the answer to my question…(ubikkibu?)
My younger guy wants it for Christmas, but I am under the impression that it’s really more adult-oriented than I’m willing to accept for a 10-year-old. Am I wrong?
to buy World of Warcraft. It’s very addictive.
Having said that, my 9-year-old son and I play it. Or we did, until he finally got bored with it, or realized that to take a character all the way to level 60 would require more persistance than he had. But in the spectrum of video games, this one held his interest (and still holds mine) far longer than anything I’ve ever played.
It’s like many games: you kill stuff. It’s not gory, but the bulk of game time is about finding beasts, monsters, or opposing characters, and battling them. So if you don’t like the idea of him hunting for two more giraffes or kobolds or slime molds to destroy in order to finish the quest that gets you the magic boots, then don’t get it.
The only other danger that I see for kids in particular is that this is a MMORPG: a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. So you’re chatting with lots of random people in real time. I’ve never run into anyone who was unreasonable, but you will see profanity sometimes (which can be filtered by changing a preference), and the potential exists for inappropriate conversations or the like, just as it does in any chat room. I play with him, so the worst I’ve ever seen is that he gets in a group of older players who have conversations that go over his head, but usually about the game. Even in that situation, everyone was polite to him.
It takes a fairly powerful PC to play, with a video card having at least 64MB of texture memory, and of course a good internet connection is required even to log on. If your PC is two years old or so, it may have problems.
It also requires a $15 / month subscription to play, and is meticulously tailored to keep you playing while trickling out rewards and advancement just often enough to keep you from quitting. But it’s just fabulous if you like games, or D&D, or fantasy in general. The social aspect is what makes it. I get together with coworkers once a week to play as a group and it’s a riot.
(Another really good MMORPG, not as rich or complex, but with great appeal to kids, is City of Heroes. Make your own superhero from a ridiculous array of customization options, then go save the City from evil. It didn’t have the longevity of WoW for us, but that might be a good thing…)
Sorry for the long post.
Thank you for the long response!
I’m probably most concerned about the addictive nature of the game…because it can get hard to get everybody out of the house on weekends if they really want to sit aroud and play games! I know a few adults who are TOTALLY into it, and that’s what makes me worry a little. (Blog addictions, are of course totally acceptable, don’t you think? 🙂 )
Last question: is it also available for mac? Maybe I can use that as part of my rationale for why I think something else would be a better idea.
Darcy and I got addicted to some online games in the early 1990s until AOL bought the company and screwed it all up. But, that was a blessing in a way because we became more, um, interactive in real life! 🙂
We got Rollercoaster in 2000, and I loved playing that … making my own amusement park. And I have Age of Empires – the Middle Ages. it always scares me when I select a “random” game, and come up as William Wallace! 🙂
although I think most good games are. One thing that’s a bit unique about WoW is that there are certain quests that pretty much require you to join some friends and work together for an hour or more to get to the end. A few of these are in “instance dungeons,” which means if you have to quit, you go back to square one. That’s problematic if my son gets into one of these close to bedtime, because he worked hard to get his team together and begin a big effort. Since it’s a living virtual world, there is no “save” or “pause” either. I applaud teamwork and persistence, but bedtime is bedtime, in our house.
It does run on Macintosh quite well:
Recommended Specifications
Mac® OS X 10.3.9 or newer:
* 1024 MB RAM or higher; DDR RAM recommended
* ATI or NVIDIA® video hardware with 64 MB VRAM or more
* Broadband Internet connection
Windows® System 2000/XP OS:
* Intel Pentium® IV 1.5 GHz or AMD XP 1500+ MHz
* 1024 MB RAM
* 64 MB 3D graphics card with Hardware Transform and Lighting, such as NVIDIA® GeForce<sup>TM</sup> FX 5700 class card or above
* Broadband Internet connection
* Two-button scroll-wheel mouse
#1)Cannot stand anything about JLo…she cannot act or sing, imho. The slaughter of animals and the wearing of that fur shows what type of person she is.
#2)I am not one to be disturbed by the MSNBC ad but I agree with Susan that it would serve attracting the liberal blogoshere better if they had run a pic of my main squeeze Keith instead. I would hit the ad over and over again…lol!
I’m fairly liberal about such things as the MSNBC ad too. I just find it peculiar. Since KeithO is the object of so many older women’s dreams :):)
AND YOUNGER ONES!
Damndest series of events: I wrote a note to Keith and to his show, telling them that my daughter (age 23) and her best friend (age 30) are crazy about Keith and think that he’s funnier than Jon Stewart.
The very next week, MSNBC began running ads for Keith’s show claiming that he’s as funny as the Daily Show.
My daughter is convinced that they used what I wrote to Keith. Who knows … 🙂
It never fails that when I play hookey from work the lawn guys show up to either cut the grass or trim the bushes or do something loud. Right now they are outside blowing leaves around. So much for my afternoon nap…
Isn’t that a bummer. Have had the same experience.
But, by far, the worst noise is a electric saw. Unbearable.
On Saturday night, Larry King was going to have a show with Heather McCartney and Alec Baldwin on the widespread use of cat and dog fur from China in all kinds of products — the pet toys we buy, fur trim on cheap clothing items, etc.
(I’ve watched shows on this…. years ago, HBO aired an undercover documentary that showed kittens being skinned alive and boiled alive for haute cuisine lunches in China. And besides the skinning alive of millions of cats and dogs in China, they also are using an odd animal called a raccoon dog. And their favorite meat comes from huge factory farms of St. Bernards. I frankly can’t stand to read much of this because it hurts so much, but I admire the heck out of the activists who are tackling it…. we can directly help by NOT buying any product with ANY fur because we can’t be sure that it didn’t come from a cat or dog in China.))
Since McCartney has hosted Larry’s show on her own before, perhaps that was the format, with Alec Baldwin was her guest.
Anyway, it was preempted by a repeat of Larry’s old interviews of Richard Pryor, which was also wonderful.
But I hope that CNN will show McCartney and Baldwin soon. I’m sure Heather won’t let them not…. she looks like a fighter.
Looks as if we can say good bye to US development assistance in the traditional sense.
Bush plans overhaul of US foreign aid system
This is terribly bad news – making the development budget into another huge slush fund for Bush’ propaganda efforts.
Check out Jane Hamsher’s post this morning about Crooks & Liars.
EAT YOUR HEARTS OUT, girls!
John Amato is a hunk.
Ohhhhhhhhhhh … he’ll love that.
And the sounds he makes with that sax of his.
This is bizarre — Daou Report.
Off-line for an entire week?
and giving some holiday time off, perhaps…
Please don’t tell me I’m going to have to go to IMDb or TV Without Pity.
Can’t I find a single fellow “Sleeper Cell” addict here? I need a buddy.
Tonight’s the sixth episode. Last night’s had me gasping and utterly engrossed.
Governor Schwartzenegger has denied clemency for Stanley “Tookie” Williams; execution will be carried out as scheduled at 12:01am Tuesday morning…
is on a roll. Really pissed. CSPAN2.