"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
by Smitty
Information wants to be free, and anthropomorphised. Via Twitchy comes the reminder that unintended, misanthropic consequences could well result. That sort of unwholesome twitchiness is the kind of thing for which I have insufficient brain bleach to go anywhere near in a blog post. Gaaaah!
MANCHESTER, N.H.
Dan Collins says he was the first person to wear a “SCOAMF” T-shirt to a Tea Party rally:
Dan says Ace of Spades HQ readers will know what this acronym means.
UNION STATION, Washington, D.C.
My son-in-law dropped me off here about 1 a.m. My train leaves at 3:15 a.m. So I’ve got a few minutes to do a quick blog post before I board the train and head off to Worcester and thence to New Hampshire.
We’re trying to get Dan Collins of Piece of Work in Progress, who lives in Vermont, to come over to Manchester, N.H., for Monday’s Tea Party Express Rally with Sarah Palin. Go hit Dan’s tip jar.
Meanwhile, in Iowa, Sarah Palin met Friday with a couple hundred supporters at a restaurant in a Des Moines suburb, and managed to make news:
As former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin walked in the front door of The Machine Shed restaurant in Urbandale, Iowa, this evening, a reporter asked Palin what she thought about the current field of GOP presidential candidates.
“Happy with the field of candidates. I always think that there’s room for more, though, because spirited debate and more competition will allow an even better discourse and a more rigorous discourse that the public deserves,” Palin said.
So, yeah, she’s not ruling anything out. Just keepin’ everybody on their toes. You betcha.
This station is spooky in the wee hours. Dark and quiet. Here’s video:
All aboard! Time to go. Please hit the tip jar.
… for suggesting that I link this shockingly obscene NSFW video. And by “shockingly obscene NSFW,” of course, I mean Continue reading I Blame Dan Collins … →
. . . but yeah, mainly it’s the generous tip-jar contributions Dan needs now. His Piece of Work in Progress co-blogger Enoch Root explains how serious the situation has become.
I’ll explain a bit more of the background — and also explain the Kirstie Alley reference — but first go hit Dan’s tip jar. I did. Continue reading Dan Collins Loves Kirstie Alley and Generous Tip-Jar Contributions … →
One of the basic principles of blogging is, Know Where Your Traffic Is Coming From. How are readers reaching your site? Are they coming from links at other blogs? Are they finding you through search engines? Social networking? Tweets by Alyssa Milano?
If the object of the game is to increase traffic — and doesn’t everybody want more readers? — you’ve got to have some idea of what your current traffic is all about. So I spend a good bit of time looking at SiteMeter statistics, monitoring traffic, and this morning I spotted something unusual.
Someone came here from a site called “F*** Yeah Chubby Girls.”
I screen-capped the visit to preserve a record of it. “F*** Yeah Chubby Girls” is a “body acceptance” site, not an online dating service. (Sorry to disappoint you, guys.) The idea is that plus-sized ladies submit photos of themselves (and brief notes) so as to express pride and confidence in their chubbiness.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
In fact, I’m all in favor of it. (I’m sure “Chubby Chaser” Dan Collins is also in favor of it.) As I’ve explained before, I totally approve of ladies with “more to love” or, as folks say down home, more cushion for the pushin’. Go right ahead and have yourself another plate of biscuits and gravy, sweetheart. It’s all good to me.
Being supportive of the “body acceptance” movement, I think it’s a good idea to share at least one of the “F*** Yeah Chubby Girls” submissions, so that readers can have an opportunity to express their own supportive responses. Continue reading Not Quite Sure What to Make of This →
A researcher who analyzed Internet search data about . . . uh, online erotica reports that guys like women with more to love:
[M]en prefer overweight women to underweight women. There are almost three times as many searches for fat women as there are for skinny women, and lest you think that’s some way we treated the search data, this is also reflected in popularity on adult sites. There are many more video sites devoted to overweight women than underweight women. Now, I should say as a caveat that men prefer healthy weight women overall. But if the choice is between a woman with a few extra pounds or a few less pounds, most guys will choose more pounds.
Science has thereby demonstrated the existence of a phenomenon we know as the Dan Collins Syndrome.
It’s been a while — too long, really — since we’ve made fun of James Wolcott. I stumbled across the picturesque phrasing of Dan Collins at Piece of Work in Progress (quoted in the title), describing the author of this infamous expression of environmentalist misanthropy:
“I root for hurricanes. When, courtesy of the Weather Channel, I see one forming in the ocean off the coast of Africa, I find myself longing for it to become big and strong — Mother Nature’s fist of fury, Gaia’s stern rebuke.”
— James Wolcott, “An Ignoble Confession,” Sept. 2004
A year later, after Katrina hit New Orleans, Wolcott defended that post as the product of “a frivolous vacation mood,” but has subsequently deleted it. Yet with vast swaths of the country now devastated by tornados, Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom decided to remind him of it.
Liberalism: Because People Who
Vote Republican Deserve to Die!