antimeria

Because Eamonn asked about podcasts he should check out, here are five I listen to:

1. Stuff You Should Know. A podcast about random cool things, like ninja and crazy government experiments.
2. Uhh Yeah Dude. A news and comedy podcast by two guys in LA. Jonathan is a vegan and recovering rasta, and Seth has some neatness issues and watches a lot of TV. It reminds me vaguely of Car Talk, if Click and Clack talked about jerking off.
3. Fresh Produce. Essentially a radio show, with a mix of deep cuts and current hits and remixes. Pain in the ass to find on iTunes, though.
4. Savage Love. A lot of people probably know this one already, but other people’s sex questions are funny.
5. This American Life. Pretty sure everyone knows about this show, but it’s still worth mentioning.

Anything else I should be listening to?

You can’t make this stuff up:

While explaining his opposition to allowing same-sex couples to adopt children, [Utah Senator Chris Buttars] told the press… “I don’t mind gays. But I don’t want ‘em stuffing it down my throat all the time. Certainly not in my kid’s face.”
[...]
In the past, Buttars has said that gay men and women are “the greatest threat to America going down.”

That said, I want to give him credit for backing the Mormon Church’s surprising push to bar employers and landlords from discriminating on the basis of sexuality, even if the thought makes him gag. So kudos to two overlapping groups of people (the Mormon Church, old white men) that I don’t often mention favorably in this space.

* “2M4M” was the ironic acronym used for National Organization for Marriage’s gay-marriage-bashing campaign.

Is there anything funnier than watching Republicans trying to figure out Twitter?

Yes, there sure is: watching Republicans trying to build a website. The new GOP.com was…let’s say undercooked upon its launch.

• RNC Chairman Michael Steele pops up in a format typically associated with dancing hamsters and offers to consolidate your bills/get a fake Internet degree/get a new mortgage. He also has a blog called “What Up.” (The blog has been renamed “Change the Game.” I’m 99% sure they didn’t catch the irony). His opening sentence? “The internet has been around for a while, now.”
• The “Future Leaders” section of the website was empty. (It’s now been updated, in a Time-style cop-out, to “You.”)
• The Republican Party hosted a kick-off conference call to announce its grand new venture (it’s “become a personal thing” to Steele!), the website was down. The first question during the conference call was a Hispanic woman who asked why there was no Spanish-language version of the site.
• The site’s admin information was posted for the public to see.
• Gawker noted that Jackie Robinson was posted as one of the GOP’s “Heroes.” You know, the guy who left the party and said this about the 1964 Republican Convention:”A new breed of Republicans had taken over the GOP. As I watched this steamroller operation in San Francisco, I had a better understanding of how it must have felt to be a Jew in Hitler’s Germany.”

Let’s put it succinctly:

I’ve been looking at my analytics, and because I love you (and I love making fun of people), here are some of the “better” searches from this fine year of ‘09:

• “what overreacting mean?”
  It is what I do when you use bad grammar.
• “sharah palin nuked”
  That’s a much more pleasant thought than the more-popular variants of “Sarah Palin naked.”
• “electroma was boring”
  Yes, it fucking was.
• “what does frenching it up mean”
  I’d bet my post was entirely unhelpful in your quest, too.
• “where’s my retainer”
  Does anyone really believe Google can help with this?
• “BAtman make me a sammich]”
  …

I can’t believe I haven’t used “misanthropy” or “schadenfreude” as tags yet. One down.

“I hear that the Republican Party plans next week to rename the Democratic Party the ‘Democratic Socialists’… And to rename themselves the ‘National Socialists.’” – Brad DeLong

Apologies for the lack of postage. Clara comes home this weekend!