This is one of those images that’s all the more horrifying because you can’t quite pin down what’s going on. Creepy-close family members or jazzercise/swinger group in the midst of undress before an orgy? How can a mustache exude that much of a pedophile vibe without causing a rip in space-time? The ad exhorts us to “stock up for school.” What kind of school are these people attending?

Okay, this is totally awesome:

 Socialite Paris Hilton has made a spoof advertisement in response to a jibe by US presidential hopeful John McCain.

…

Reclining on a chair in a swimming costume and gold stilettos, she said: “Thanks for the endorsement, white-haired dude.

“I want America to know that I’m, like, totally ready to lead.”

At the beginning of the star’s film, an announcer called Mr McCain “the oldest celebrity in the world, like super-old; old enough to remember when dancing was a sin and beer was served in a bucket”.

Hilton’s spoof also intersperses images of Mr McCain and Yoda from Star Wars and the cast of TV show The Golden Girls.

The 27-year-old suggested a hybrid of Mr McCain’s offshore oil-drilling plan and Mr Obama’s incentives for new energy technology.

“Energy crisis solved. I’ll see you at the debates,” she said.

A spokesman for Mr McCain’s campaign, Tucker Bounds, said: “Paris Hilton might not be as big a celebrity as Barack Obama, but she obviously has a better energy plan.” 

This is officially turning into the most hillarious presidential campaign season ever.

Writing about the quickly-retracted idea for a new law requiring adult cyclists to wear helmets, Carla Axtman plays at being a libertarian:

 I use that label to infer the idea of the “leave me alone” ethos that tends to be an intregal part of what we’re about in the west. As a rule, the western U.S. seems to be a region whose citizens have a strong preference for government to remain out of their personal decisions… we tend to cast a jaundiced eye at any law which would give the government power over the way we choose to live our lives.

Alright. So far, so good…

We’re not opposed to government taxation and spending per se. In fact, we’ll be the first to embrace it in many cases. [emphasis added]

Hm. Yeah, I’m not entirely sure she gets it. One of her commenters does, though:

I’m not sure from where this ethos began. Perhaps it was from all of those independent-minded pioneers who ventured from parts east on the continent

I’m guessing the ethos began right at about the time a bunch of bicycle riding Portland liberals came to understand that their ox would now be gored by Prozanzki and the rest of his legislative nannycrat buddies.

Heh.

• Sports Editor Andrew Grief has an interesting article about the rise in applications for concealed carry permits in the wake of budget cuts that have gutted the Lane County Sheriff’s Office:
  

Faced with longer response times and fewer deputies, many of the 93,500 Lane County residents who live outside city limits in the county believe having a concealed handgun is a necessary step. The Sheriff’s Office expects a record of more than 1,250 permits to be issued this year in the county, up from 680 in 2005, 811 in 2006 and 950 last year. 

Huh. It’s almost like people feel like their Second Amendment rights are valuable and necessary when the government cannot provide for their well-being.

• The OC’s own Drew Cattermole and his upcoming radio spot, The Cattermole Minute were mentioned in a story about upcoming ASUO programs. The Commentator, however, is disapponted that Senior News Editor Robert D’Andrea (who got a special birthday shout-out at last week’s roller derby) mistook Drew’s ASUO president bid last year as “not-so-serious”. We can assure Mr. D’Andrea that Drew Cattermole was deadly serious. Deadly.

• A whole page of re-printed Associated Press stories, with a couple more spread around the issue for good measure? Really? I mean, seriously… this shit shows up every day in Firefox’s built-in RSS news feed. It seems like that space could’ve been better used re-printing some of the more colorful posts left on the comments section of Jeffrey Dransfeldt’s infamous piece on wrestling. I mean, there’s 813 of them to choose from, and most of them are more fun to read than a recycled story about Ehud Olmert from a few days ago. Highlights include:
  • “Jeffery, maybe Mommy didn’t love you enough. I don’t know what your problem is, but the anger you carry from your early puberty is going to hamper you throughout life. Taking glee in the demise of people who have sacrificed more than you will ever know is just a sign of the sickness that dwells in your tortured little body and shadow of a soul. Your rantings sound like those of the VT shooter.”
  • “Your arrogance is disgusting.”
  • “With your neck as shown in the picture, you’re lucky you broke your arm.”

• One Chemical Brothers CD, “Dig Your Own Hole”. Condition: Possibly playable.

• Several more issues of “Out” magazine.

So… “lifestyle” magazines and techno music…

In the event of Sudsy’s untimely demise, I propose the Malaysian pen-tailed tree shrew as the Commentator’s new mascot:

A tiny tree-shrew that lives on alcoholic nectar could – pound for pound – drink the average human under the table, scientists have discovered.

…

Frank Wiens, from the University of Bayreuth in Germany, and colleagues confirmed the animals’ high alcohol consumption by analysing their hair.

Chemicals in the hair samples showed that on any given night, a tree-shrew had a 36% chance of being drunk by human standards.

Historically speaking, the Commentator has not been a fan of shrews, most of them seeming a bit humorless and angry, but this one sounds like it’d fight right in up in room 319.

The Russians want to ban “emo”. 

You know, I hear St. Petersburg is nice this time of year…

Jim Geraghty over at NRO has a challenge for you:

Pop quiz, hot shot. Pick out the “We Are The World” lyrics vs. Obama speech lines.

A: “We can’t go on pretending day by day that someone, somewhere will soon make a change.”

B: “This is the moment we must help answer the call.”

C: “But if you just believe there’s no way we can fall.”

D. “The world will watch and remember what we do.”

E. “Let us realize that a change can only come when we stand together as one.”

F. “We cannot afford to be divided.”

G. “These now are the walls we must tear down.”

H. “This is the moment when we must come together.”

I. “They’ll know that someone cares, and their lives will be stronger and free.”

That’s right. According to some early studies, tobacco might help fight certain forms of lymphoma. Clearly, supporters of the smoking ban hate lymphoma patients.

The Olympic Trials are nearly upon Eugene. For many, this means flying in from other parts of the country and renting a hotel room or apartment for a few days and enjoying this spectacle of world-class athleticism.

Indeed, Eugene has gone to great lengths to make the city a fun and welcoming place for people to come and enjoy during the trials. Also practically upon us is the (in)famous Oregon Country Fair, which begins on July 11, a mere 5 days after the Olympic Trials wrap up.

The upshot of all of this is that Eugene’s already-sizeable transient population is set to increase dramatically for the next month or so. In the interest of helping sports-minded hobos find their way around the city during the Olympic Trials and hopefully minimizing the confusion and possible bumfights over stoops and alleyways that might occur when the homeless Country Fair crowd arrives, I thought it might be helpful to post a link to this guide to hobo signs.

Hobo signs can be useful for a transient new to the area who might be wondering where he can get “work for food,” where he can “fake illness” for a place to sleep, which houses are “easy marks” or where “anything goes.” They’re also helpful for warning the wary drifter away from houses where judges live, “men with guns”, or dangerous “brutal” men.

While I do realize the inherent irony in writing on a blog about hobo signs for transients, it is my sincere hope that at least one bum will stop abusing his body while looking at pornography at the Knight Library long enough to find this post. After all, if we can help just one tramp avoid a “bad tempered owner”, then we’ve made the world a better place.

I was browsing the Eugene Weekly blog when I ran across a link to this lovely “open letter” to women supporters of Hillary Clinton that reads like it might’ve been penned by Nate Gulley:

Your whiteness is showing.

…

…[O]n the first part of the above equation–the part where you insist voting against Obama is about gender solidarity–you are, for lack of a better way to put it, completely full of crap. And what’s worse is that at some level I suspect you know it. Voting against Senator Obama is not about gender solidarity. It is an act of white racial bonding, and it is grotesque.

If it were gender solidarity you sought, you would by definition join with your black and brown sisters come November, and do what you know good and well they are going to do, in overwhelming numbers, which is vote for Barack Obama. But no. You are threatening to vote not like other women–you know, the ones who aren’t white like you and most of your friends–but rather, like white men!

…

And how are we to understand that refusal–this sudden line in the proverbial sand–other than as a racist slap at a black man? You will vote for white men year after year after year–and are threatening to vote for another one just to make a point–but can’t bring yourself to vote for a black man, whose political views come much closer to your own, in all likelihood, than do the views of any of the white men you’ve supported before. How, other than as an act of racism, or perhaps as evidence of political insanity, is one to interpret such a thing?

Have an angry day.

(more…)

I was perusing an old back-issue today in the office, and I came across an article by Jeremy Jones describing some of the bizarre sites that can be found on the U of O servers. Seeing as how it’s the end of the school year and how it’s a real drag coming up with original ideas, I did a little digging and found a few gems of my own. Without further ado, I present the following sites for your viewing pleasure:

• An epic 40-part webcomic about D&D
• Star Wars: The Magic of Myth
• Cute Things That Spencer Did – a laundry list of cute things that the author’s kid (Spencer, I presume) did. The scary part is that the author updated the site for five years before Spencer’s antics were no longer newsworthy.
• The Official OC Archive Update
• And finally my personal favorite: http://www.uoregon.edu/~jvansise/asshole/asshole.htm

The double feature you’ve been waiting for all year is finally here. 32 pages of Hate + 16 pages of Hack Attack = the apocalypse – if not that, at least one uproarious read. Enjoy.

Shockingly enough, Che Guevara’s kids are tired of seeing their father’s face used to sell products:

Two of Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s children said Thursday they were tired of seeing their father’s image used to sell everything from T-shirts to vodka, calling the growth of the revolutionary as a global super-brand “embarrassing.”

Aleida Guevara, the eldest of Guevara’s four children by his second wife, Cuban revolutionary Aleida March, said the commercialization of her father’s image contributed to tension between rich and poor in some countries.

“Something that bothers me now is the appropriation of the figure of Che that has been used to make enemies from different classes. It’s embarrassing,” she wrote during an Internet forum sponsored by Cuba’s government ahead of what would have been her father’s 80th birthday on June 14.

So it’s official: no one likes “revolutionary” posers wearing Che shirts, not even actual revolutionary communists.

In case you ever wondered how bad life can get, all you have to do is read this.