According to Michael Rosenkrantz (NHS Class of ‘00), my blog was featured on CNN this afternoon between 3:00 and 3:30 EST (4:00-4:30 EDT). Apparently they were discussing my post about Drudge’s folly and the Swift Report’s faux right-wing outrage.

Assuming Mike is telling the truth and not kidding around (and I have no reason to doubt him), that’s way totally cool! :)

I didn’t see the segment, obviously, since I was taking an exam at the time. But the timimg would put it during Inside Politics with Judy Woodruff, which makes sense given the topic. I’ll be watching for the transcript.

P.S. I’m not getting a perceptible traffic boost; I actually got slightly fewer hits last hour than in the hours preceding (chart). But that’s not surprising — people are far more likely to click a link from another website (like, say, InstaPundit’s) than they are to type in the URL of a website that they see discussed on TV.

With apologies to Bellia’s ConLaw class…

WE’RE ALMOST DONE!!!

School’s out for the summer in 48 hours and 33 minutes… not that I’m counting or anything…

Contracts exam, here I come!

(Get it? Breach?)

Working makes me wish
I could impale myself
with my office pen

My messy house
could make my mother cry
and then, disown me

My anemone
died yesterday and released
poison in my tank

My puppy likes to
sniff my feet with his cold
slimy nose at night

If I had a shot-
gun and a license to kill
Barney would get it

Virtual voyeur
keeps looking at me and I
think it needs a life

Sleeping kittens will
claw the crap out of your leg
if you startle them

A few minutes ago, the Drudge Report briefly linked to an article from The Swift Report entitled, “Conservative Christians Not Laughing at First Lady’s Comedy Act.” Excerpt:

According to an official statement released over the weekend by the Coalition for Traditional Values…Mrs. Bush’s jokes at her husband’s expense amounted to a public emasculation of the President. Pastor Roy DeLong, the statement’s author and chair of the group, warns that the First Lady’s performance comes at a time when the Mr. Bush’s “manliness is already under attack.”

“As a believer, President Bush is no doubt familiar with the passage from Ephesians that says ‘Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands, as unto the Lord,’” says Mr. DeLong. … “One of the Proverbs says that ‘a virtuous woman is a crown to her husband, but she that maketh him ashamed is as rottenness in his bones,” [he adds]. “I bet President Bush is feeling pretty rotten today.”

Upon reading that, I immediately suspected that something was amiss, so I did a few easy Google searches and quickly discovered that the “Coalition for Traditional Values” does not exist, and “Roy DeLong” is actually just a recurring (presumably fictional) character in the Swift Report’s satires of the Religious Right, including such articles as “Bush Blasts Homosexual Energy Agenda” and “SpongeBob Denies Reports that He’s Gay.”

Drudge has since taken the link down, but Andrew Sullivan is still linking to it. He writes:

[T]he virulent homophobia of the religious right sometimes turns comic. The notion that hybrid cars are somehow ‘gay’ is hilarious.

Um, it’s a joke, Sully.

The sad thing is, he’s not alone. The same Google searches that expose the satire also reveal that there are an awful lot of people out there who don’t get the joke: they take Swift Report’s various parodies as true, and condemn them appropriately. Some people, it seems, have so little respect for the intellectual integrity of the Right that they can’t spot completely obvious satire when it smacks them in the face. Memo to the Left (and everyone, really): If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Of course, there is a fair amount of absurdity on the Right. But not this absurd. C’mon, people.

And Drudge? He took down the link almost immediately. He probably hadn’t even read the whole thing when he posted it, but just saw what looked at a glance like a good sensational story/right-wing outrage vehicle of the day, and ran with it. Heh. That’s Drudge for you.

With his new CD out “Devils and Dust” my former favorite artist is in the news again.

His last CD “The Rising” sold over 580 thousand copies in it’s first week. “Devils and Dust” sold 200 thousand copies in it’s first week… it looks like Bruce offended over half of is fan base.

I for one will not purchase the CD. The title track about a soldier in Iraq is an insult to every American soldier past and present.
Bruce manages to twist every possible meaning of a patriotic heart into a heap of (Expletive)!

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I don’t know if any of you have caught moveon.org’s 30 second spot attacking the Presidents judicial nominees, but if you haven’t, go check it out. It’s kind of Monty Python-esque graphically, but there’s just something cute about elephants knocking stuff down. It amused me.

There’s a series of other fun ads here, if you’re bored enough or feel the need to procrastinate.

The Backer says things aren’t what they seem:

Here is a long story short from someone who knows the situation better than I.

There was a Fisher Hall get together, right before the Regatta. The photo of Monk was part of a slide show presentation. What he is doing REALLY IS the Fisher F, and that’s the reason it was included. The two gentleman who photographed Monk are innocent.

Now, their fellow Fisher Hall mates are not so innocent. They uploaded the images to their webspaces, and then it began to circulate quicker than One Night in Paris. But when the buzz grew on the South Bend campus, as well as the virtual Irish campus (including myself), it became apparent people thought Monk was flashing the Shocker.

The two students who took the photo are all but banned from participating in the graduation ceremonies. There is a chance both may be excused since their intentions were opposite of the outcome. It was the Fisher F to them, not the Monk Shocker it became. I hope both are given a break by the admin.

We report, you decide.

P.S. The timeline checks out. The Regatta was on April 16; the photo, according to its EXIF information, was taken on April 12, four days earlier. That allows plenty of time for it to be put in the alleged slideshow… and, if practicaly no one knew about the photo until it was publicly shown on the 16th, that would help explain why it didn’t hit the Internet until the following week.

Also, if you recall, the original Kelly Green post that started this whole firestorm said (I’m paraphrasing/quoting from memory, because the post is no longer online) that “apparently some Fisher boys convinced Monk this is their new logo.” Making allowances for the “telephone” effect as the story got told and re-told and re-told again, that’s quite close to what is now being claimed.

P.P.S. On the other hand, if the boys at Fisher think that hand gesture looks like an F, they might need to take a remedial alphabet course.

I think in this instance, going back to the less advanced, super-loud bullhorn would be a better way to warn the masses of impending doom.

You have a Picture Mail from 8608335833Arrrgh… why am I still awake? I hate Contracts so much right now…

You have a Picture Mail from 8608335833When my brain starts turning to mush and I feel like I can’t possibly study for another moment, I look at the Bulletin Board o’ Boobies, and the naked ladies tell me to keep on truckin’ … :)

Brooke strikes again with her pre-exam poetry. My favorite:

Contracts, oh contracts
I will not let you stress me
Only two credits

Heh. I wish I could say I was adhering to that principle more faithfully… but then, when you only did about a third of the reading the entire semester, and you don’t realize the extent of your delinquency until two days before the exam (because you’ve been too busy panicking about Property to pay any attention to Contracts), it’s hard not to be a wee bit stressed!

Speaking of which, enough moratorium-breaking, back to work. 16 hours and counting…

P.S. I initially made a typo in the title of this post, calling it “Contacts haikus” instead of “Contracts haikus.” This inspired Briandot to write a few haikus of his own in comments, including:

Spelling error in
title leads us to believe
that you need more sleep

When ‘Contracts’ is spelled
without crucial letter ‘r’
we think of eyeballs

Heh. And yeah…

It is quite correct
That I am sadly deprived
Of my beauty sleep

But with two exams
In the next sixty-six hours
There is little hope

You have a Picture Mail from 8608335833There she goes again: Butter, the intrepid screen climber. :)

Having just wasted several hours on this crap, it’s now time for me to sign off and spend the next 36 hours actually, you know, studying (and perhaps sleeping a few hours here and there). Have at it, guestbloggers…

Because of a few recent complaints — and because I’m the world’s worst procrastinator, and would do pretty much anything to avoid studying for Contracts and CivPro — I’ve been tinkering with my blog categories a bit.

Guestbloggers in particular should read what comes after the jump, since this affects your posts, too. :) Also, suggestions are welcome (from guestbloggers and non-guestbloggers alike).

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