Someday, looking back on this moment, he's going to regret not turning to the audience in his post-race interview and shouting "Who wants to sex Michael Phelps?"

A few conservative blogs find this story funny or noteworthy: Jonathan Crutchley, CEO of a company that runs Manhunt, described as "a gay hook-up site," has been asked to step down after the board learned that he had given $2300 to John McCain's campaign.

Oh, quit the pearl-clutching. Shocking, I know, that a gay-oriented business might worry that its clients might not like generating revenue for the McCain campaign. But this is part and parcel of my so not getting gay Republicans.

And it's apparently really true. Can we get real, useful federal legislation back on the radar on this issue? Something mandating sensible security standards for computers used in voting and vote tabulation and the final, legally binding ballots to be printed by the voter and kept on paper?

A good thing for a couple to be compatible on is the "oh, fuck it" factor. While laughing and chemistry and matching politics take you a long way, it's important that you both stop caring at roughly the same time, too. Otherwise the one who cares gets frustrated, and the one who has stopped gets weary. And this holds for politics, cleaning, parenting, whatever. It's important to agree, but also to have matching strengths of conviction. It's not enough to be playing the same tune; you need to play it at the same volume, too.

Of course you can't measure equally on the Oh Fuck It factor, on every issue. Because then we could draw a little sparkly heart around the two of you, and seal it with a kiss, and smoke would come out of Emerson's ears. But I bet a lot of points of contention in a relationship boil down to differing Oh Fuck It levels.

Jammies and I aren't perfectly compatible on the Oh Fuck It factors, but we're in the ballpark of balanced, at least. I think. RIGHT SWEETIE?

(And now everyone's going to point out the conventional well-established name for this phenomenon, and I'm going to feel en-dunced. Like inventing shoes, with wheels on the bottom! They have those, Heebie. They're called roller-skates.)

Of course it's on Photobucket.

NSFW.

A friend needs a real estate lawyer.

(a) what's the most reliable way to find someone good?

(b) here's a quick gloss on the situation: she's the executor of an estate. The decedent left some property to a group of people, including her. All but one want to sell it and divide the assets. "But one." How is this handled, usually?

Lawyers, tell me how interesting this is: the Maher Arar case will be reheard by 2nd circuit court of appeals en banc and sua sponte. Via Volokh. That jargon is totally unnecessary but hot.

Anyway, seems like good news. What a shameful case. I typed "embarrassing" first but then I remembered that you feel embarrassed about things you don't really think reflect badly on you, while you feel shame at things that say something important about your character.

An idea for the taking:

1) Determine subject S's political affiliation through self-identification and a survey measuring the strength of his beliefs.

2) Have subject S negotiate the price of three equivalent used cars: one with no bumper stickers, one with a sticker for a candidate of his political party, and one with a sticker for a candidate of the opposing party.

3) Calculate the bumper sticker penalty/premiuim.

Every time I see the new United Airlines commercials, I get angry. I can't believe they have the nerve to revive "Rhapsody in Blue" as their theme song. If there's anything I wouldn't call rhapsodic these days, it's air travel.

See, this is the problem with big evil countries that hate freedom. They poison our athletes.

Via Jammies

Conjecture: being an unsuccessful vice-presidential Democratic nominee turns you into a real pain in the ass. Examples: Ferraro, Lieberman, Edwards. Fascinating.

The whole situation with Georgia has been messed up from the start but this keeps geeting weirder. I don't have any insights but I thought I'd open up the topic in case any of you do.

This is one of those cases where WTF?!?! seems about the only tonally appropriate response:

Spain's basketball squad has attracted scorn with a new advertisement that shows its players making slit-eye gestures behind the image of a Chinese dragon.

The one on the right has a prettier voice, but the one on the left is SO MUCH more adorable. I'd rather look at her. Don't you agree?

Via Jammies

Joe Drymala is heading to Broadway, y'all.

Update from Becks: UNFOGGED ACTION ALERT! OK, if we can bend hotness contests to our will, surely we can find a way to get Joe some publicity and accomplish some major pwnage at the same time by fulfilling my dream of somehow getting this song picked up non-ironically by Lou Dobbs or, even better, someone from the GOP or a major right-wing blog who doesn't realize the source.

(Note: this action alert is not at all endorsed by the creators of White Noise: The Musical. If they want me to shut up/take this down, I will.)

"I don't know if it's going to be the youthful, happening Woodstock they want it to be, but it certainly has the potential," said Corby Kummer, a food columnist, book author and Slow Food board member. "It will be a failure if it is only well-dressed people over 35 from the Bay Area treating it as if it's another Ferry Plaza Farmers Market"

Corby is referring to Slow Food Nation, which this year, in this nation, is taking place in San Francisco. Signs advertising its coming can be found all over the various yupscale foodie outlets housed in the Ferry Building, which already constitutes getting things off to a bad start. Before turning to the national event, which just happens to be located in San Francisco, though, let's take a look at the description of a recently transpired event hosted by the local chapter:

Slow Food and GOOD Magazine--the magazine that gives a damn--have embarked on a partnership to connect and enhance community among conscious, like-minded folks. This email is an invitation on two fronts: we're inviting you to subscribe to GOOD magazine and select Slow Food as the non-profit you'd like to receive 100% of your $20 subscription fee AND, if you do so, we're inviting you to a big, great BLOCK PARTY at 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco on Sunday, July 20 to eat, drink, and celebrate all things GOOD.

Specifically, let's take a moment to brainstorm methods of enhancing community among folks who aren't conscious. Maybe you could, I don't know, put them next to each other and play, like, soothing tunes? Then we can branch out and question the assumption that whatever it is that minds who would subscribe to a magazine called "good" are like are also like the minds of gastronomes. I don't know what the former sorts of minds are like but I imagine either they consider themselves old (this would have worked better if English had a single word that included both "mind" and "soul") or are in other respects people I wouldn't get along with (noting probably self-satisfaction and complacency isn't enough, because there are ways to have those traits), even though I do like food. I confess that I would be amused if a bunch of reactionary, Chettish assholes who nevertheless enjoy what I believe such people would call "the finer things in life", such as expensive cured meats and tailors and shit, had descended on this meeting and lauded Bush as one of the things that are GOOD. Maybe they could be war profiteers.

I also don't think "among" is the happiest preposition there; there's something subtly off about it, though I'm having trouble articulating the problem.

The national organization is not free from these tendencies; they invite us to "Listen to the people who feed us. Their stories root us in the earth.", as if fellating a Black Forest peasant were a vital preface to every meal. Moreover, were I a person who fed you, I would feel pretty fucking condescended to by that statement, as if the real service farmers provide is selling Noble Simplicity by the ounce—that said I'd go see David Grene on farming, except the only thing he's farming lately is daisies, ha ha ha.

Regarding the standards for success or failure mentioned above, my heart has gone out of finding particular things on the webbage to point out or mock or whatnot (I invite you to, though), but the thing seems dead set for failure. The farmer's market to which entry is presumably free is supplanting the one that normally takes place on Sunday at Civic Center anyway, but the replacement will surely be more expensive (I also find the fact that some of the "local ingredients" I can purchase at that market include beans from Ventura and tomatoes from Santa Barbara baffling. Could they not find anyone who grows those things closer than 325 miles away?); the "taste pavilions" and "taste workshops" all cost nontrivial sums to get into, and the copy on the website (do a shot every time you see "artisan" or "artisanal"!) sure isn't designed to attract any other crowd than the well dressed super-35s, and the prices exclude, and the probable company deters, poorly dressed 26-year-olds.

Let me note, then, two things:

1. "The Coevolution Institute's (CoE) mission is to catalyze stewardship of biodiversity." I'm pretty sure this is nonsense.

2. I swear to god, I will delete any comments containing any of the strings "swpl" or "swipple". This policy will be applied case-insensitively and quite literally: string-containment alone will be the criterion, and niceties of use and mention, not to mention the purposes for which one might use or mention anything, will be ignored. I reserve the right to enforce this policy capriciously and arbitrarily.

* Remember, kids, "don't blame the messenger" (Anderson, Cope, & O'Malley. 2003. "My wall". Astrophysical Review O White (1): track 1).

I know it's not a big deal, but this combines two of my favorite things, namely, hating on McCain and laughing at people who plagiarize from Wiki:

Given the closeness of the words and sentence structure, most would consider parts of McCain's speech to be derived directly from Wikipedia.

Oh man. John McCain, I've sent your file to the Dean, who will be in touch shortly.

This isn't quite a puzzler, because it's a real phenomenon with a satisfying explanation. And I'm sure many of you have heard it before, but it's still a fun thing to wrap your mind around. How about we all just pool our explanations that make it click for us? We'll be all cooperative and shit.

The puzzler: When looking at a mirror, why does text appear reversed from left to right, but not up to down?

The way things are going, I'm starting to wonder when one of these swimmers is going to lap a world record.

Sad news that Isaac Hayes has died. What a tremendous artist.

You'd better be talking about Old King Cole if you say that. In a way this creeps me out as much as the fact that Edwards had an affair in the first place.

She told me that she had met Edwards at a bar, at the Regency Hotel in New York. She thought he was giving off a special "energy." I didn't pursue the topic, and when I filed my story, I made no mention of Rielle. But I was, to say the least, curious. I tried, unsuccessfully, to track her down in the weeks that followed. I thought she would make a good source [awwww yeeaaaahhh]. She clearly knew I was a reporter, yet she spoke freely and openly about her own life and the Edwards campaign.

...I would soon learn that there was no such thing as small talk with Rielle Hunter. She told me that she'd felt a connection to me when we'd first met, that she could tell I was a very old soul. This meant a lot to Rielle. Her speech was peppered with New Age jargon--human beings were dragged down by "blockages" to their actual potential; history was the story of souls entering and escaping our field of consciousness. A seminal book for her had been Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now." Her purpose on this Earth, she said, was to help raise awareness about all this, to help the unenlightened become better reflections of their true, repressed selves.

Cringe.