My brain hurts!

squally_bunbun @ 2009-10-22T12:09:00

2009-10-22T16:12:24Z

Ari Melber is following me on Twitter! I haven't been this excited since David Shuster followed me on Twitter! Only I'm significantly less "OH FUCK" over this one, because... well, my account's not dedicated to obsessively watching Ari Melber, now, is it? But ARI MELBER! OMG! He's AWESOME!

Also: After a few weeks of no coffee, I stayed up last night until about 3am, so I grabbed some coffee on my way out the door to college, just so I would not fall asleep. All of a sudden, I realized that I had stopped shaking my leg when I was off coffee. And that I doodled significantly less. My Calc teacher caught me doodling and said nothing, and I felt so ashamed of being caught I overcompensated the "participate in class" by cracking jokes almost as bad as his.

In other words, I'm hyper. I'm not sure I like it anymore. Back off the hard stuff tomorrow.

squally_bunbun @ 2009-10-19T21:03:00

2009-10-20T01:09:46Z

Just updated my account to Plus, from Basic (AKA, the account that they got rid of AGES ago). Not because I really needed a Plus account (I'd probably b all right with 6 icons; working fine with four, in fact). Because I'm hoping in vain that this will help me solve my stubborn lj-cut problem.

I'm finally posting fics on fakenews_fanfic. A strange one, but HEEEEEY! So imagine my surprise that I can no longer pull off an lj-cut in a comm. It seems to like to show off my quotation marks. And only one word in the cut. It worked fine when all I really cared about was the Prologue, but now it's just getting old. And I'm only one chapter in.

To fix the problem, I ended up switching between rich text format and HTML to do the lj-cut there. Even then, I ended up with more problems, since I center my chapter divider, which resulted in my entire fic being centered. I'm just so damn lucky I decided to test the post in a private LJ entry, first, instead of posting straight to the comm. And that my magic, disappearing quotation marks between RTF and HTML look like quotation marks on the comm. It looks normal in the comm, but the work involved to wrestle it into submission? Ugh. Enough said.

I very much doubt that upgrading my account will fix that. But I'm keeping my fingers crossed. And hey, new icon space. More fandoms, maybe? (Top Gear? Joe Biden?)

squally_bunbun @ 2009-09-28T15:48:00

2009-09-28T19:53:40Z

oh hai lj. Just playing with my new icon. It's a cap from a Spoony Experiment vid, as I figured I needed to show off more geekinesses of mine than just politics/MSNBC. Also, pirates.

I traded out my Adam Savage icon, so all's I need are two icons. I'm aiming for a Joe Biden and a... something. I'll figure something out.

squally_bunbun @ 2009-09-21T12:36:00

2009-09-21T16:40:11Z

So who's the cat with two thumbs who just watched the motherfuckin' President give a speech at her college?

Oh, yeah. That's this cat right here.

And who's the cat with two thumbs who wasn't an energy exec or a special guest and therefore was not invited to the speech and had to watch the President give a speech on her campus through the local television stations?

... Yep. That's still this cat.

... Yep....

... At least I saw his car! He was in it! And HE RUBBED HIS HEAD! OMGOMGOMG! I SAW THE PRESIDENT RUBBING HIS HEAD!

I'm so totally adding "Rub the President's Head" to my Bucket List, by the way.

squally_bunbun @ 2009-08-27T16:10:00

2009-08-27T20:20:36Z

Oh, Kindle, you are fun. Why did I ever doubt that reading books on a six-ish inch screen would not be sooooo enjoyable?

Oh, public domain, how could I have survived without you? Thank you for allowing me to fill my Kindle with the classics, which are exactly the books that I wanted to shove onto my Kindle.

Oh, New York Times, thank you for having a 14-day free trial for the Kindle. Because $14.95 is a hell of a lot of a monthly subscription, and the novelty of reading a newspaper on a six-ish inch screen will have worn off by then, but in the meantime, I'm totally loving reading you on my Kindle.

Oh, Stanza, thank you for making my illegally-obtained eBooks suitable for the Kindle. You're totally aiding and abetting a crime here, and I can't thank you enough for being a willing accomplice to my enjoyment of A Clockwork Orange.

I may have a new best friend. I named it Bobby Kindal.

I've also posted my first fakenews_fanfic story, the prologue of my Fight Club fic, but I'm kind of putting actually writing out Chapter 1 (currently about 4 pages, and I want about 4 more pages before I consider it finished) on hold so I can squee over my Kindle and fill it up with historical documents and HP Lovecraft stories. (I also put on an Ayn Rand story, so I'm starting to suspect that free books means I'm going to make plenty of poor choices with regards to my Kindle.)

Writer's Block: Fantasy Sports

2009-08-04T15:29:13Z

Imagine you manage a coven of baseball-playing vampires. The Cullen family is really strong this year and you want to bring in a ringer. Which currently active MLB baseball player do you sire?

Submitted By seannau

View 502 Answers

I think I'd have staked myself in the heart long before that.

squally_bunbun @ 2009-07-22T16:38:00

2009-07-22T20:43:08Z

So I just watched the Naked Cowboy essentially serenade David Shuster on MSNBC.

... All right, I'm sure that he was serenading Tamron Hall, too, but she left the set, so she doesn't count. I don't think I've seen her that embarrassed since a guest said "blowjob" live on the air.

But, dude. The Naked Cowboy was so totally serenading David Shuster. I don't care that he was singing about why he'd be a good mayor of New York City, you can't sing about how you do more with less and claim that you're not serenading somebody. Trufax.

Oh, yeah, and apparently, the Naked Cowboy wants to run for mayor of New York City.

Did I mention I'm practicing the fine art of burying the lede?

squally_bunbun @ 2009-06-09T16:04:00

2009-06-09T20:07:41Z

Oh, unimportant moral dilemmas.

On the one hand, I loathe Meet the Press with every fiber of my being. David Gregory is awful as a host, and I'm saying this without having watched Tim Russert at work. I'm not nostalgic over what the show used to be. I just know what crap looks like.

On the other hand, I have the biggest crush on Vice President Joe Biden, and he's going to be on the show. It's my civic duty to watch him be amazing and charming and... guh.

Ohhhh... choices. Dare I turn the show on again for the first time in weeks and put up with David Gregory's Sunday Morning Truck O'Fail for the sake of ogling Joe Biden? Or should I just stick with Jason Linkin's liveblog?

In more important news, still looking for a job. Feeling very inadequate, since I haven't gotten one yet and everything, and I've been searching for a few months now.

squally_bunbun @ 2009-06-07T17:57:00

2009-06-07T22:04:28Z

I need to mess around with my icons. I only have, like, two, and they're neither proper reflections of my abilities in Photoshop, nor are they really relevant to my interests. Sure, I love Mythbusters and Monty Python... but enough to keep their icons around? Over the likes of my oh-so-macro-able pundits?

With that in mind, I have a new icon. First animated .gif I've ever made, little technical skill involved, outdated meme... but I lurve it, anyway.

squally_bunbun @ 2009-05-06T21:03:00

2009-05-07T01:09:01Z

David Shuster found the Twitter account where I used to liveblog his show. Then he followed it. Now he knows I exist twice over (he also follows my main account, although I don't think he knows he follows me twice). Oh, lawd. I bet it freaked him out momentarily. And then he probably giggled.

I don't really use the account much anymore (like, at all). So much so that I totally missed it when his old producer (!) @replied me about a month ago, asking what I thought about The Ed Show. So there probably won't be much coming out of this following thing. But I still found it humorous. You know, after I finished OMG-ing all over the place.

squally_bunbun @ 2009-04-12T12:35:00

2009-04-12T16:49:46Z

All right, here's a thought or two.

The Tea Parties being hosted all around the country (meant to "teabag the President," if you will) are largely grassroot. Or, WERE until Fox News decided it was a freaking AWESOME idea and decided to drum up support for the tea parties and throw its TV personalities into the mix. So now, the thing essentially has a corporate sponsorship. Does this mean that the grassroots movement has sold out, or is it something like Nascar, where the more corporate sponsors one gets, the flashier the car looks?

What confuses me is that Fox is still essentially calling this a grassroots movement. All of the work they're doing to promote it goes from "we expect a ton of people to show up!" to "$500 a plate lunches with Glenn Beck! WITH TEA!" to even "I'll bet the OTHER news networks aren't covering this, or are going to cover this in a negative light. NBC, I'M LOOKING AT YOU!" I mean, fair and balanced, right? Declare something a success before it even takes place? And, of course, I wholly expect Fox News to drum up the tea parties, even if nothing is ever made of it, and there aren't that many people there (although I'm expecting a decent number of people there. Who would turn down a $500 a plate lunch in an economic climate such as this?!)

Essentially, Fox News has pumped up this grassroots thing in such a way that it looks almost like the resulting grass will cut itself, keep the neighborhood kids off of it, and will even keep the soil it grew from grub-free. And I'm assuming that if the grassroots thing turns out to be a bust, it will do the equivalent of the company saying that you used the damn grass seed wrong, so the grass could totally cut itself if you planted it WITHOUT THAT OBVIOUS LIBERAL BIAS OMG.

But the bigger point--HOW THE HELL IS ANY OF THIS STILL "GRASSROOTS"?! It's like Dan Gross says, it's more like astroturf than grassroots.

(By the way, The Rachel Maddow Show, RE: Teabagging? The best thing this entire week. Not even David Shuster/Dan Gross snarking about the teabagging thing on Countdown the following day, including David saying that Fox was "fluffing" the movement (-snerk!-), could even come REMOTELY close to Rachel Maddow losing it live, coupled with Ana Marie Cox's brilliant retorts to Rachel's questions. Every single set-up led to a ball being knocked right out of the park. It was classic.)

Also: I'm fairly certain that plenty of conservatives know what they're talking about with the teabagging thing, which is why they keep doing it. Because when I think about protesting against something I don't like, I think of crude sexual references. It totally adds an air of respectability to my protest.

... Oh, and Happy Easter and stuff.

squally_bunbun @ 2009-04-04T20:57:00

2009-04-05T01:03:52Z

So how sad is it that I totally sadfaced over the fact that David Shuster lost his show? To the guesthost, no less? And how sad is it that I'm still kind of sadfacing over it?

... All right, so said guesthost is a popular progressive voice who represents a demographic not often featured on MSNBC and will most likely bring in some decent ratings for a toxic time slot, and this news was announced Wednesday, but I'm still a little bit miffed. I don't know, maybe it'd hurt less if the last episode of 1600 wasn't hosted by Mike "My wife works for Bank of America" Barnicle. What a punch in the mouth.

squally_bunbun @ 2009-02-24T22:59:00

2009-02-25T04:01:13Z

Between Bobby Jindal referencing the (throughly debunked) train to Sin City, talking about Katrina as an example of all of the good that the Republicans have done, and and Jindal taking one of Obama's quotes out of context, I really wish somebody were live-blogging and snarking Jindal. What an awful speech. What a buzzkill. What a weenie.

squally_bunbun @ 2009-02-15T20:18:00

2009-02-16T02:13:12Z

I've had the distinct displeasure of removing one of my high school buddies from my Facebook page. I feel a little bit conflicted about it, but in the end, I'm not entirely sure I'm going to regret it.

I've had a bit of a problem with her for the longest time. She's been the sort of person who more or less assimilates the personality of whoever is around her in order to fit in. On the one hand, hey, she's got buddies, and who am I to judge somebody with friends? On the other hand, it's fairly transparent what she was doing, and it got on my nerves a lot, mostly because of the lengths to which she would go to try to fit in. That's not to say that she's an awful person. She is pretty sweet. Her heart is in the right place, and she's got a good drive about her. She has enthusiasm in spades, which is commendable. And besides, the fact that I don't think she has a personality isn't the reason I unfriended her.

I just think that her enthusiasm has recently been channeled in all of the wrong places. She's become quite the little conservative recently, and I wish this weren't the case, but that was the reason I removed her from my Facebook buddy list.

Let me say this: I do not distrust conservatives. I am not so intolerant of anything that isn't what I believe that anybody who labels himself a conservative or Republican is automatically on an internal shit list. I'd like to think of myself as fairly tolerant when it comes to opposing views. A certain level of disagreement is healthy, after all, and why not jump across the aisle, if only to see what the other side is thinking?

But I do distrust people who come across as intolerant, narrow-minded, and unwilling to see the other side. In other words, I distrust people who I fear of becoming.

This girl who I recently unfriended was somebody who I fear of becoming. Looking at how she operated, however, I can be consoled in the knowledge that I will never be as bad as she's become in less than two years. I didn't unfriend her for being a conservative. I unfriended her for being a Rush Limbaugh-brand conservative. A black-and-white kind of conservative. The kind of person who automatically distrusts anything that doesn't have a clean little place in their own worldview.

It's all right to have supported John McCain in the election. It's not all right to say that Barack Obama is un-American and does not support the troops, just because he doesn't want them in Iraq. It's all right to be conservative. It's not all right to assume that liberals are everything that's wrong with America. It's all right to poke fun at people in power (hell, I do it all the time). It's not all right to make a photo album dedicated to all of the Democrat-bashing pictures you find on the Internet, many of which that are neither topical nor accurate, and plenty of which are offensive, and then feign shame when people call you out on how appalling some of the pictures are. It's all right to think that Barack Obama hasn't done a great job so far. It's not all right to endorse an event that took place on the inauguration and encouraged smacking anybody who voted for Barack Obama simply because they voted for Obama (I mean, come on! At least wait until he's in office before you write him off as the worst thing to happen to America!).

At least, not in my book. My book that is perhaps a little bit too liberally-inclined.

So let me put it a different way. You can do whatever the hell you want with your net space. Just don't expect me to put up with it after it borders on offensive. I will put up with views contrary to my own. I will not put up with people telling me that everything I believe is wrong, everybody I support and admire is misguided, and that I should feel any amount of shame for being a liberal.

Maybe I'm being overly sensitive. Maybe I'm being stupid. Maybe I'm being too srs business over something so trivial. But I cannot, in good faith, keep somebody on my Facebook friend's page who gives me the impression that they find everything I think is utterly contemptible. So that's why I kicked her off of my Facebook friends list.

In other news, I fail at Singles Awareness Day. However, I rock at being awesome for my feller at Valentine's Day. Hell yeah, putting too much effort into cake!

squally_bunbun @ 2009-02-02T19:51:00

2009-02-03T00:55:00Z

After catching only the tail end of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue tonight, I am pretty much convinced of two things:

1) We need some science in the hizzouse! Seriously, comedians can get away with "It's really, really cold, so is now a good time for Al Gore to be talking about global warming?", but when pundits, bloggers, and even the Muckraker of the Day try to use that as the excuse that global warming is stupid and a complete lie, it's just plain lazy. Do some real research! Snark does not qualify as headline news! Both sides are doing this, even! A blogger on HuffPo said Al Gore should apologize. Apologize, what? On science's behalf?!

2) Former Governor George Pataki is still a weenie.

Edit: Strangest thing. Twitter ate my last couple of updates about 1600. My updates bemoaning the lack of science in Muckraker and calling George Pataki a weenie. Oh, well. At least I still have Livejournal.

squally_bunbun @ 2009-01-20T11:49:00

2009-01-20T17:00:47Z

I mentioned that it was unacceptable when Obama was booed by McCain supporters. There's no reason for me not to mention it was equally unacceptable when Bush was booed by the crowd at inauguration, and when they sang, "Hey Hey, Goodbye" as he walked onstage. This is a time for amicability, not for hostility, and to hear that was shameful.

Maybe I'm alone in thinking it, but I expected better of the crowds.

Sarah Palin thinks Keith Olbermann is EVIL!

2009-01-08T19:00:00Z

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHA

HAHA

heh

Edit: My amusement. Let me show you it by means of a hastily put-together Photoshop job that's only 1/3 fitting to the aforementioned link.

squally_bunbun @ 2009-01-07T12:39:00

2009-01-07T17:59:04Z

So, when I got a BlackBerry, I splurged and got myself two accounts on Twitter: InspectorDim and ShustieFan. The former is for my typical updates ("omg im so drunk rite now lol", give or take some inherent intelligence to the updates). Fairly typical, fairly harmless. The latter's a gimmick: I watch 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and comment as the show progresses.

And because I'm completely over people I don't know following me on Twitter, I'm just going to quote Joe Scarborough from his radio show. I know, he's a moron, but he's got a few gems. Just now, I heard this during a conversation with Arianna Huffington.

Mika Brzezinski: I know Joe likes to revise history....
Joe Scarborough: It's a hobby.

Not quite as awesome in retrospect, but I thought it was funny.

squally_bunbun @ 2009-01-05T23:38:00

2009-01-06T04:38:35Z

Colbert & Colmes is the greatest damn thing I have ever seen. Sorry, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with David Shuster. You've been rejected.

squally_bunbun @ 2009-01-05T22:09:00

2009-01-06T03:14:02Z

My MSNBC pundits are back from vacation! =D

... And I had to babysit from 5:00 to 9:30, hence missing their returns from vacation. D=

Thank God for reruns and DVR. (Very pissed that 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue does not rerun. And I never thought I would be saying that at any point in my life!)

But I still insist that I was stiffed. $45 for four and a half hours of the SIX hellspawn, when I had to put them all to bed and deal with three of them not feeling too well, one to the point at which I couldn't change her diaper without her kicking and screaming? When they're normally terrible to begin with, even when I have full daylight to babysit them in, and bedtime is nowhere in sight? When right in the beginning of the night, I have to pop 2 Excedrin Migraine in order to make it through the goddamn night? When I babysat the brats for 2 hours last week and got $30 out of the deal?

Hell no, motherfucker.

squally_bunbun @ 2009-01-01T00:11:00

2009-01-01T05:12:56Z

Happy New Year, friend's list! Here's to the past, the good and the bad, and the promise for a better future! May your new year be everything your hope it will be and more (unless you think it will be a bad year; then may your year prove you wrong)!

squally_bunbun @ 2008-12-28T23:54:00

2008-12-29T05:01:47Z

Fifteen minutes. That seems to be my limit to bad movies.

Fifteen minutes into An American Carol, and I already want to punch everybody involved in the face. Yes, Leslie Nielson, too. I just had no idea that somebody could think in the most extreme shades of black and white when it came to this kind of stuff. I really should have learned my lesson after the 2008 Elections.

I also had no idea a comedy could be this unfunny, even without the jabs at the far left, but I guess I didn't learn my lesson after Epic Movie.

In related news, I found a fun new drink to play with. It's called a Mini-Guinness. It's coffee liqueur and irish creme. You fill a shot glass mostly with coffee liqueur, and then you pour the Irish creme along the walls of the gass so it's layered on top of the coffee liqueur, so it's like the foam of the Guinness. It's gooooooood. And I've had two since the movie began.

Well, one and a half. The second one slopped all over my face and hair when I tried to pound it down. Now my hair smells like coffee. I really fail at taking shots.

But... yeah. An American Carol. I almost wish I could spin a Special Comment like Keith Olbermann could, because this movie kind of merits one.

squally_bunbun @ 2008-12-16T16:07:00

2008-12-16T21:11:23Z

Holy God. If pictures of Joe Biden with his new puppy weren't enough to turn me into a squeeing mess this week, now MSNBC has officially passed 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (the show, not the locale) on to David Shuster. His ~~ridiculously over-airbrushed~~ picture is up in place of David Gregory's, he's listed as the host, and the show's logo even says "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with David Shuster."

I should be studying for finals. I should be finishing the programming assignments that I still have to hand in. But I'm grinning like an idiot, and I'm officially apathetic about my schoolwork right about now. Puppies and new shows for Shuster. Oh man. Soexcited.

Edit: And now David Shuster is talking about Joe Biden's puppies on his new show! I may be squeeing through the new year! (Had to record Shuster's show, but... oh man, SO glad I did!)

I was surprised Shuster didn't go after the obvious (PeTA's seriously getting on Biden's case for getting a breeder-bred puppy? PeTA doesn't support ANY kinds of pets! They say it's demeaning!), but the alternative was so much better. His family has a pug! A pug named Webster! My family has two pugs named Wesley and Willie! Webster will fit right in!

So Shuster has his own show, talks about Joe Biden's new puppy, and apparently has a pug. Sorry, Keith and Rachel. You may have some competition in my heart for "Best Host, Like, Ever."

squally_bunbun @ 2008-12-02T12:01:00

2008-12-02T17:08:24Z

David Gregory to host Meet the Press?

I... I was kind of hoping for Chuck Todd. Damn.

I can't say too much about the choice, since I don't really watch his show ~~Race for the White House~~ 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (but it has a nice opening thinger). He has a nice smile, and he looks a lot smaller when he's alone than when he's surrounded by a bunch of other talking heads. Then he looks big.

I guess he did okay hosting election coverage for MSNBC. But I'm naturally inclined to distrust people with two first names. (Example: George Lucas.) Either way, it should be interesting seeing him in the hosting seat for MtP. It will certainly be interesting waking up with my boyfriend on Sunday mornings and not being able to make fun of Tom Brokaw when Gregory takes over.

squally_bunbun @ 2008-11-18T20:00:00

2008-11-19T01:10:47Z

I'm not supposed to sound this happy over the fact that Keith Olbermann hasn't been doing his show for the past few days. Maybe I ought to stop throwing my arms up into the air and shouting "YAY! DAVID SHUSTER!" every time a slightly more nasally voice says, "Which of these stories will you be talking about tomorrow?" during the opening bit.

Haha, I like the dude who got suspended over saying that Chelsea was being pimped out on the campaign trail. What's wrong with me? (Maybe it's the fighting-with-Joe-Scarborough-and-then-hugging-it-out thing? I want to fight with Joe Scarborough and then hug it out!)