Bottomfeeders!

Every time someone buys one of my songs, someone in hell kicks Mussolini in the nuts. http://bit.ly/fnExEr

Hero For the Day: Wisconsin St. Rep. Gordon Hintz

Every second of this is worth watching.

Killing Peaceful Protestors in Bahrain

You don't have to watch this—I actually don't recommend it—but news of it has to be seen all over the world. Just suicide-inducing awful.

Joe Klein Thinks "Freedom of Assembly" is Anti-Democratic

Good god, what an idiot:

I mean, Isn't it, well, a bit ironic that the protesters in Madison, blocking the state senate chamber, are chanting "Freedom, Democracy, Union" while trying to prevent a vote?

No, it's not ironic, you clown. It's democracy. It's protest. It's in the constitution for god's sake. And it's protest of a lying governor.

Honestly, Joe Klein has been wriiting about politics for decades. How can he be this dense?

Obama Administration Does Good Thing

Political Carnival:

The Obama administration rescinded most of a federal regulation Friday designed to protect health workers who refuse to provide care they find objectionable on personal or religious grounds.

The Health and Human Services Department eliminated nearly the entire rule put into effect by the administration of President George W. Bush during his final days in office that was widely interpreted as allowing such workers to opt out of a broad range of medical services, such as providing the emergency contraceptive Plan B, treating gay men and lesbians and prescribing birth control to single women.

Milwaukee Archbishop: "Respect the Legitimate Rights of Workers"

Hell yes, Archbishop Listecki:

Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki on Wednesday said in a letter to lawmakers that workers should not be "marginalized," in a reference to Gov. Scott Walker's efforts to limit the rights of public employee unions.

He said in the letter there is a "moral obligation each of us has to respect the legitimate rights of workers.”

Go Wisconson workers.

My First Blue Bottle Jellyfish Sting

And info on the colony of creatures that is a blue bottle jellyfish.

The Changing Middle East -> U.S.

Via that other blog:

It just occurred to me: If a good chunk of the Middle East makes a dramatic move toward democracy over the next few months or years, the U.S. is going to have to change dramatically, too.

Just saying.

"ROONEYYYY!"

Good god in heaven just listen to the sound of this first. Close your eyes and listen to the first seven seconds. Listen to the announcer shout the name, and go speechless, and listen to what they mean when they say a crowd "explodes." This is a moment that explains why there is such a thing as "sport."

UK court: You're Too Dumb to Have Sex

BRITney Spears inconsolable.

My Personal Quest for a New Australian Word

From my American-Aussie blog, Little Australia:

So I'm in a local mall the other day when I asked Christine if we were going to the "newsie," short for newsagent—a shop that sells newspapers, magazines, candies, fishing licenses (so I found out) and assorted sundries.

She looked at me like I had just said something really stupid. In Bulgarian.

"It's a newsagent, it's not a "newsie." She said it just like that, all snotty.

I was sure I'd heard her call it a newsie, and told her so. She insisted I had not.

We go into the not-newsie, and the clerk says the woman who just left had left something behind. I went and found a woman who I thought I'd seen in the shop and asked her, "Were you just in the newsie?" It just slipped out.

She looked at me like I was stupid, and Bulgarian, and said, "Do you mean the newsagent?"

Christine has told anyone who will listen about this minor event, every time while pointing and laughing at yours truly.

Now here's the thing: Australians shorten everything, either by adding an "ie," a "y," or an "o." A fisherman is a "fisho." Chewing gum is "chewie." A mosquito is a "mozzie." A present is a "prezzy." A car registration is a "rego" (soft g, just like in registration). If something is expensive it's "exy." A freaking fireman is a "firie," for god's sake. They shorten, in short, everything.

But not "newsagent." The one Australian word I decide to use on my own, that I take out for a little linguistic test run—no no no no no. Not that one. Wrong.

"If it was going too be shortened," said Christine's sister, Shannon, "it'd be news-o, not news-ie." Everyone agreed with her.

There's a rule, apparently, in Australia, regarding the shortening of words, and whether you shorten it with an "o" or "ie." Everyone, apparently, knows this rule. And so I have been informed that not only did I shorten a word that is one of the only words in the entire English language that is not under any circumstances to be shortened, I shortened it in a way that it would not be done if it were to be done at all. I was wrong, and I was wrong wrongly.

Well, enough is enough.

I will henceforth be using the word "newsie" whenever I approach, enter, mill about in, leave, or just think about a newsagent. I will speak about "newsies" to my friends, to relatives overseas, to strangers that I meet on the street. "Do you know where the nearest newsie is? Is that a good newsie? Does the newsie have chewie? Is the chewie exy at the newsie? Have you ever been spanked in a newsie? I have. Delicious good fun, being spanked in a newsie..."

I will shout "newsie!" into the windows of sleeping children, so as to infiltrate their dreams with this brand new word.

I will hire small airplanes to drag banners through the sky saying, "Get the latest news—at the newsie—you bastards!"

I will write letters to the editor of every newspaper in the country, and I will mention "newsies" in said letters at least fifteen times each, even if it makes no sense at all to do so. I will newsie the freaking newsie out of all the newsiest newsies in newsie-dom.

I will use the word "newsie" so often that Australians will start using the word themselves, thinking that it's a perfectly natural word, that they've been using it all their lives, never knowing that it was me, it was me that planted that word in their minds, in their language, in their country.

This is my personal quest for one simple and perfectly sensible short word: "newsie."