Dan Hicks Double Shot

LOL: Boing Boing gets pwnd

Wikileaks to target a Big Bank

 Uh-oh. I hope Julian Assange has life insurance and bodyguards. It's one thing to take on the government. But to embarrass the corporate oligarchy? As in BofA? Risky business. 

Early next year, Julian Assange says, a major American bank will suddenly find itself turned inside out. Tens of thousands of its internal documents will be exposed on Wikileaks.org with no polite requests for executives’ response or other forewarnings. The data dump will lay bare the finance firm’s secrets on the Web for every customer, every competitor, every regulator to examine and pass judgment on.

When? Which bank? What documents? Cagey as always, Assange won’t say, so his claim is impossible to verify. But he has always followed through on his threats.

We have a winner!

 The 2010 'Bad Sex in Fiction' award goes to The Shape of Her by Rowan Somerville.

The books that Somerville beat at being the worst are here. More bad sex scenes from The Shape of Her can be savored at The Guardian. 

They also raise a great question over there at the Guardian: Why is there not a good sex in fiction award? Rather than just snickering at embarrassing efforts like this, sexy, literate love scenes should be rewarded, too, no?

Read a very NSFW excerpt from The Shape of Her below the fold.

It's the good advice, that you just didn't take

<via Pittsburgh Review Tribune>

Glenn Beck will promote his book "Broke: Restarting the Engine of America" with a $90.50-a-ticket performance Thursday at the Benedum Center in Pittsburgh's Cultural District, a day after a book signing in Robinson. The show will be simulcast to 537 movie theaters across the country, where tickets cost $20.

So Glenn Beck will be charging the Villagers nearly $100 per to tell them how broke they are.

Last one for November. Live From Daryl's House

Presidential biographer drops the F-bomb on the teevee...calls Americans lazy, obese

It's all about the stupid. <Via Politico - the portal we love to hate>

On CBS's "Face the Nation," host Bob Schieffer, anchoring an authors roundtable discussion with the likes of Bob Woodward and Arianna Huffington, kept engaging the panelists in discussion about how America’s Founding Fathers would have felt about today’s political climate.

 “What would Teddy Roosevelt think of today’s politics, Edmund?” 

 “You keep asking these presentist questions,” said the Kenyan-born, British-accented historian. “As the immortal Marisa Tomei said in 'My Cousin Vinny,' ‘That’s a f----- up question!'” Morris said, relishing over the word as network censors bleeped him out. 

 “You cannot pluck people out of the past and expect them to comment on what’s happening today,” he continued. “I can only say that what he represented in his time is what we hope for in our presidents now, what we look for in our presidents now and what we’re increasingly disappointed by. He understood foreign culture, recognized the dignity of the United States. He was forceful yet dignified. And what I really feel these days is, we’ve become such an insular people.”

 Morris went on to criticize the American people, who he said “are insensitive to foreign sensibilities, who are lazy, obese, complacent and increasingly perplexed as to why we are losing our place in the world to people who are more dynamic than us and more disciplined.”

Ending your week with a belt of truthiness

"A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers."
--H.L. Mencken







Mencken in 1926:

I have alluded somewhat vaguely to the merits of democracy. One of them is quite obvious: it is, perhaps, the most charming form of government ever devised by man. The reason is not far to seek. It is based upon propositions that are palpably not true and what is not true, as everyone knows, is always immensely more fascinating and satisfying to the vast majority of men than what is true. Truth has a harshness that alarms them, and an air of finality that collides with their incurable romanticism. They turn, in all the great emergencies of life, to the ancient promises, transparently false but immensely comforting, and of all those ancient promises there is none more comforting than the one to the effect that the lowly shall inherit the earth. It is at the bottom of the dominant religious system of the modern world, and it is at the bottom of the dominant political system. The latter, which is democracy, gives it an even higher credit and authority than the former, which is Christianity. 

More, democracy gives it a certain appearance of objective and demonstrable truth. The mob man, functioning as citizen, gets a feeling that he is really important to the world - that he is genuinely running things. Out of his maudlin herding after rogues and mountebanks there comes to him a sense of vast and mysterious power—which is what makes archbishops, police sergeants, the grand goblins of the Ku Klux and other such magnificoes happy. 

And out of it there comes, too, a conviction that he is somehow wise, that his views are taken seriously by his betters - which is what makes United States Senators, fortune tellers and Young Intellectuals happy. Finally, there comes out of it a glowing consciousness of a high duty triumphantly done which is what makes hangmen and husbands happy.

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