brooksmarlin

I brought some happiness to the hearts of white supremacists

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:34:19 GMT

I was largely apathetic to Chicago getting the 2016 Olympics. On one hand, I knew it would just be another opportunity for Mayor Daley, the alderman, and all their cronies to loot the taxpayers for more money, plus all the construction would fuck up the city for years. On the other hand, maybe we would have gotten some decent infrastructure improvements and cool buildings. Plus I love the Olympics (way more than I should), and it would have been 2 weeks of everyone talking about how great Chicago is on TV, which would have satisfied my extremely local jingoistic tendencies.

Anyway, I was shocked when we lost in the first round, and admittedly a little sad. More sad than I thought I would have been. magdalene1 was over and in the news whirlwind that followed we joked about making a Downfall parody of everything because A) we find them hilarious and B) they had caused us to watch the actual movie the night before. So we did.

After messing with it a little while, I deemed it "good enough" and threw it up on the internets, and linked it on the Facebook and the Twitters. I have to say the popularity has been way more than I thought would happen - creeping up on 10,000(!) views and was linked to on Chicagoist. Everyone says it's great and hysterical...

...including a bunch of racists, gun nuts, and right-wingers. I have been enthralled looking at the data that Google gives you on the videos and seeing where the viewers are coming from and finding what they're saying about it. It's mostly been from people re-linking it on Facebook and emailing it to each other (lots of Yahoo mail, for some reason). But a significant amount of traffic has been from straight-up hate sites. Places where Barack Obama is called a nigger and Michelle is called a gorilla. Where assault rifles are fetishised as the only tools that will protect them from the coming invasion of the "mud people." They are reveling in the loss, as though it is some sort of major failure on his part, and apparently my video (even though it only makes a single, neutral, fleeting mention of Obama) falls under the penumbra of his supposed embarrassment. I sure showed that uppity bastard! High five!

It's making me feel all weird.

Part of me wants to into these places and say "Listen assfaces, I made this and I'm not one of you. It's a fucking joke about Hitler looking goofy and what a corrupt, loud-mouth provincial jackass the Mayor of Chicago is. Not a celebration of a "failure" by an evil socialist Kenyan-born usurper. Please, take Hiter-as-Daley's advice and go fuck yourselves."

Assholes. Making me think all serious about my stupid internet joke.

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:24:13 GMT

Things I have wondered today:

Is Pat Morita dead?¹

Was Danny Kaye gay?²

¹ Yes.
² He was married for 47 years, but I remain unconvinced.

Every day I love Onion Sports more and more

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 17:06:49 GMT

Cory Matthews, Mr. Feeny Share Joyous Moment Following Phillies World Series Victory

Vote like a baby stoat

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:38:13 GMT

I drove into work today and passed by two polling places, both of which had lines out the door and wrapped around the building already at 8 a.m. I didn't think things would be THAT crazy around here, given that Illinois is a foregone conclusion, but I guess people can't pass up a chance to vote for the hometown favorite.

Let's see if Obama can beat the 81% he got in Cook County when he went against Alan Keyes. I'm thinking he will.

Because my father and I have to gamble on everything, we have a bet going. I set the over/under on Obama electoral votes at 340, and my dad ended up taking the under. I'm still a little nervous about that number and I think I set it too hgh, but all the turnout reports from everywhere have me feeling more confident.

Hope dies last

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:27:40 GMT

RIP Studs. This city has lost some color it will never get back.

All that money wasted on the Strategic Kitten Initiative

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:59:17 GMT

10:32 AM But if Obama gets in with bulletproof majorities in the House and Senate, he's gotta pull some FDR first hundred days shit.

That window won't be open for long.

10:34 AM me: whatever he does is going to get attacked, even if it's the Snowball Is A Good Dog, Yes He Is! Omibus Bill 2009.

I just hope they're ready

10:35 AM Rob: Katie would lead the charge against that measure, by the way

I, on the other hand, firmly agree with Obama's pro-Snowball stance

10:36 AM me: I'm not saying the bill doesn't have flaws as currently written

10:37 AM Rob: Matt's dog Dewey will be included in the conference committee

me: It will eventually be laden with pro-feline pork projects

10:38 AM Rob: Cat lobby = huge

The I CAN HAS INFLUENCE Bill of 2002 really tipped things in the cats' favorMonorail cats to nowhere, etc.

It's being reported that the McCain campaign is giving up on Colorado. Apparently the new plan is to pour all their resources into flipping Pennsylvania red, in which case they can lose Colorado + 1 other state and still have a road to 270 electoral votes. Given the current state of the race, there are likely 8 swing states.

(Uncolored states are within (a generous definition of) 6 points, and have been polled a lot. This map actually gives McCain some extra credit, because Georgia and North Dakota have very recently also moved into "swing" territory.)

Obama needs to pull 1 of the uncolored states to win the election, McCain needs to run the table in order to win. But now McCain is giving up on CO (a state with lots of evangelical Christians where Obama is up +5) and trying to pull down PA, a state where Obama has polled +12-15 for the last month. I guess they've taken to heart that old James Carville quote that "Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, with Alabama in between." My succinct thoughts on this plan?

God, I can't wait for all the huge tell-all books about this election.

Joe The Plumber is a busy guy

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 05:17:01 GMT

http://daytona.craigslist.org/m4m/742436967.html

On "Chicago politics"

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 21:22:51 GMT

goo-goo (gu-gu) n. a member or advocate of a political reform movement. From the phrase "good government." (the implication of also being a naive baby seems to be just a happy accident)

I've been meaning to write something about this for the last couple days, but OJ beat me to the punch on it. It's obvious that this ACORN thing is just laying the groundwork for the "We wuz robbed" post-election narrative for the ring-wing base. I've only seen it covered in the wingnutosphere and on Fox News, with almost nothing in the regular media. The second prong of this has been the increase of the references to "Chicago politics" in attacking Obama, especially in this ad. Everybody knows that Chicago = corruption and vote fraud.

Of course, anyone who knows anything about Chicago politics knows that these comparisons are totally laughable. Obama lives in and was elected to the Illinois State Senate coming out of Hyde Park, and Hyde Park is where the goo-goos come from. The "egghead" reformers out of Hyde Park, and the "limousine liberals" along the lakefront were pretty much the only Democratic opposition to the old Daley Machine. Nowdays the lakefronters have sold out to Daley The Younger for some nice parks and wrought-iron fencing, but the Hyde Park goo-goos are still going.

All of Obama's campaigns in Chicago have come as an outsider. In 2000 he ran against 4-term incumbent Bobby Rush for the U.S. House, and got his ass kicked 70-30, largely because he was considered "not black enough" vs. his ex-Black Panther opponent. When he ran for the Senate in 2004, Obama had to get by Blair Hull, an options trader who spent $24 million of his own money, and longtime state comptroller Dan Hynes. He beat them both because it was eventually revealed that Blair Hull beat his ex-wife, and because Dan Hynes is boring as fuck. Obama was not the top choice of Illinois Democrats in either of these elections.

Like many Chicagoans, I take a perverse pride in my city's reputation for being corrupt and crooked. Unfortunately, this is one area where I can't give Barack Obama any credit.

Sarah Palin Can't Name a Newspaper She Reads

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:21:17 GMT

Are you fucking shitting me? She can't even make something up!

Playing fake guitar

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:30:39 GMT

What's the better name for my Rock Band 2 band?

Ninja Mind Masters
Sulu's Gay Marriage
Sarah Palin and The Rape Kits
Other?

E2 was right again.

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:11:40 GMT

I guess making Rage Against The Machine Guitar noises with your mouth is the best form of political protest after all.

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:46:31 GMT

This blog is pretty interesting. I have to admit that I find Glenn Campbell's candor somewhat refreshing.

The frogurt is also cursed

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:50:06 GMT

The last panel of this comic had me laughing my ass off.

Hatin' on the elderly

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:20:32 GMT

Tl;dr version: My aunt is a mean old bat, but now we managed to finally get her into a nursing home. Here are some pics of her freaky-ass house!

My Great Aunt Bea is one of the most horrible, sad, and useless people I have ever known.

I realize this sounds harsh about a poor old lady, but it is true. She is a mean (and realize that a Reda calling somebody mean is truly a feat), complaining old hag who pretends to be helpless in order to get attention. In her 80+ years on this planet, she has acquired no friends, no children, and no family members who have ever truly cared about her happiness or well-being. She has managed to alienate every person she has ever known, and for the last 20+ years has depended completely on the kindness of my parents to take care of her and make sure she is OK.

She has lived alone that entire time, and my parents have handled everything in her life. From paying her bills, to handling her banking, buying groceries, and driving her to her myriad of doctors appointments. My mother (who is not even related to Aunt Bea!), through the power of Catholic guilt and rigid gender roles, has done it all.

And I am convinced that most of her problems are purely for show. She pretends to be almost deaf so that whenever you speak to her she will ignore you or exclaim “hah? Hah? What? HAH?” until you are almost screaming in her face. Yet there are times when my father has called her, say, “a fucking pain in the ass” muttered under his breath from 15 feet away, she would begin crying and plead, “Why are you so mean to me, Junior?” Yes, she still refers to my Dad, a 56-year-old man, as “Junior.”

Or when my Mom would go over to pay her bills, because her eyes are so bad she can’t read them. Except Bea would eventually make a comment about how the company was “trying to take advantage of a poor old lady” and lo and behold my Mom would find a specific charge on the bill (printed in like 9pt font) that Bea had taken issue with and underlined.

That is not to say she didn’t actually have problems, she was old and eventually people break down. But the fact that her diet consisted almost entirely of Hungry Man dinners, Okie-Doke cheez popcorn, and Diet Coke probably didn't help. I remember being dragged along on the monthly shopping trips for Bea as a kid (this was before the magic of Peapod) and cleaning out the rack of popcorn, or loading up the cart with like 6 or 7 24-packs of soda. Please note that despite my (and my brothers) presence at shopping/holidays/family gatherings/etc. she never consistently learned any of our names correctly. In fact the only time I recall her using my brother John’s name for the right kid was when she once called my mother to declare that John had stolen something from her the last time he dropped off her groceries.

Which leads into that she is also a raging paranoid and hypochondriac. A week would not go by where she wouldn’t call us warning about how Mexican gangs were roaming the streets killing everybody, or how she was afraid that a thunderstorm would become a tornado and kill her. An offhand remark about a cough she currently had would lead to a long soliloquy about how it was actually the “death rattle” and she was going to die very soon.

3 recent Bea stories:

My Mom still does a portion of Bea’s shopping. Bea called to complain that the summer sausage that she had bought was far too greasy, it had gotten all over Bea’s hands and made her slip and fall down.

My Mom bought Bea a pair of sweatpants. Bea called to complain that the pockets on the back of the pants “made her rear-end look too big.” (Dad: “I think it might be her fucking fat ass that’s the problem.”). Bea demanded that she return the pants and get new ones. My Mom held onto the pants for a few days, and then brought them back to Bea saying they were new. Problem solved!

My Mom was over at Bea’s house paying her bills, when Bea fell down the stairs and bashed her head on an end table. While there was no blood, my mom called 911 and an ambulance came and took her to the hospital. My dad rushed there from work to find Bea propped up in a hospital bed; he went over to the bed and leaned over to speak to her:

“I heard you fell down Aunt Bea”

“What? Who’s there?!? I can’t see!”

“It’s Eddie, Aunt Bea”

“Who?!? I can’t see you!”

“*sigh* It’s Junior.”

“Hah?”

“IT'S JUNIOR!”

My Dad then sat at the foot of the bed. One of the EMTs who had brought Bea in walked by. He quietly waved at my Dad and my Dad waved back.

“WHO DO KNOW HERE JUNIOR?!?”

“What?”

“I saw you wave at that man! Who is that? Why did you wave at him?”

After years of pushing and pushing, Bea finally moved into a nursing home this week, and from what I hear it’s quite nice. This means the house that she has lived in since 1946 has to be cleaned out and sold. It’s on the far western edge of Chicago, and my dad says he remembers driving there as a kid, to him it was so far out that he considered it “going out to the country.” There was even a horse farm next door back then.

Jennifer has become enamored with my family’s Aunt Bea stories, so last Sunday I took her to Bea’s abandoned home to check it out. We brought a camera along to document the crazy.

Area Codes in Which Ludacris Claims to Have Ho's

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 17:12:42 GMT

Hillary Clinton needs to drop out

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 17:50:40 GMT

In the interests of full disclosure, I hate Hillary Clinton's guts. I want to punch her in the face every time I see her. For some reasons why I hate her, see here, here and here. You don't pull that shit in a primary campaign unless you care about nobody but yourself.

Despite what the Clinton campaign is saying about the results last night, nothing has changed from where things were before Tuesday, which is disappointing given that I hoped Obama would have put her away. When all the Texas caucus delegates get allotted he's still gonna have the same lead he did before. Hillary has gained no ground even after the huge firewall states she was counting on have voted.

This race can't go to all the way to Pennsylvania next month. The campaigning will be weeks of a brutal slog, especially since Clinton has decided to go negative, and Obama can't help but retaliate (I hope...). All it will end up doing is weaken the eventual nominee. So DNC Chairman Howard Dean and the superdelegates have to step in and throw all their support to Obama. He has won more states. He leads in the popular vote (even including Michigan and Florida!). And most importantly, he has built an insurmountable pledged delegate lead. Let me show you some things:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pyeiG55fWSbrLGW9p6mNORQ&hl=en
After Super Tuesday, somebody from the Obama campaign "leaked" an internal spreadsheet outlining what they thought the results would be of all the rest of the primaries, and showing that Obama would enter the convention with a delegate lead. This sheet has proven to be remarkably accurate, in fact it has even consistently underrated his chances. I've been keeping it updated with the real delegate counts from all those races as they happened (columns H, I, J), and as you can see, Obama is 43 delegates ahead of his own early estimates (the OH and TX numbers are preliminary, of course). So this here is a roadmap of how things will likely go. Hillary is not going to catch up.

http://www.slate.com/features/delegatecounter/
In fact, it is essentially impossible for her to catch up, even if she runs the table. Go ahead, plug in last night's numbers on Slate, then have Hillary get 55%'s for the rest of the states. Hell, give her 60% in Penn. and Puerto Rico. She still can't do it. She can't even do it if she wins every state with 60%.

Dean and the SD's have to make a choice. They can choose Barack Obama, or they can chose the candidate who has less delegates, less votes, raised less money, has less support among independents and wavering Republicans, and whom 40% of the country has said they will never vote for - Hillary Clinton.

Selecting Hillary Clinton would be a disaster, it would stink of a backroom deal that overrode (overrided?) the will of the voters. It would suck the oxygen out of the Democrats, depress voter turnout in November, and very likely lead to a McCain victory. It would instill (even more) in the minds of Americans that the Dems are a party of dumbass chickens who couldn't find their dick with two hands and a map. Her continued insistence on moving the goal posts and remaining in this race is not for the good of her party or the American people, but merely to serve her own bloated ego.

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 02:10:40 GMT

I feel like this also applies to all Notre Dame fans.

Latin Gay In Jeans Undressing truncheons

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:47:49 GMT

Greetings, white man! :)
Sexy Teen In Latex Cat Outfit plagiarisms Posing In Stockings

Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.
http://gmt123.infinites.net
Mature Blonde Babe oligomers Fucking Anal In Jacuzzi

Friendship is constant in all other things, Save in the office and affairs of love.
Get access to all perverted hedonics photos HERE!

When you get to fifty-two food becomes more important than sex.

Did you hear he studied at a madrassa?

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 21:36:31 GMT

This is interesting.

Being both an internet dork and a political junkie, there's currently two websites out there right now that I've been wondering if they'll ever go live. We have both BarackOsama2008.org and Osama2008.org just sitting there waiting. Both currently redirect to Google.

If you do a WHOIS lookup for the domains, you can see that they're registered to 1&1 Internet AG, which is a German company known for their anonymous domain registration.

However, if you do a tracert for BarackOsama2008.org, why look what you find:

Tracing route to BarackOsama2008.org [72.32.103.48] over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.8 2 5 ms 6 ms 1 ms 68.72.71.0 3 5 ms 5 ms 1 ms 10.254.1.8 4 13 ms 2 ms 3 ms 68.22.74.113 5 6 ms 3 ms 4 ms bb2-g1-0-2.emhril.ameritech.net [151.164.240.198] 6 19 ms 5 ms 6 ms ex2-p5-0.eqchil.sbcglobal.net [151.164.42.139] 7 4 ms 3 ms 2 ms gar8.cgcil.ip.att.net [12.122.79.85] 8 27 ms 27 ms 27 ms tbr2.cgcil.ip.att.net [12.122.85.106] 9 33 ms 31 ms 32 ms cr2.cgcil.ip.att.net [12.122.17.213] 10 35 ms 35 ms 31 ms cr2.sl9mo.ip.att.net [12.122.2.22] 11 36 ms 36 ms 35 ms tbr2.sl9mo.ip.att.net [12.122.18.86] 12 36 ms 31 ms 36 ms tbr1.sl9mo.ip.att.net [12.122.9.141] 13 31 ms 30 ms 33 ms tbr2.dlstx.ip.att.net [12.122.10.90] 14 35 ms 37 ms 37 ms 12.122.100.109 15 35 ms 39 ms 33 ms 12.87.41.178 16 31 ms 31 ms 32 ms vlan903.core3.dfw1.rackspace.com [72.3.128.53] 17 33 ms 36 ms 35 ms aggr121a.dfw1.rackspace.net [72.3.129.133] 18 40 ms 35 ms 32 ms origin.www.hillaryclinton.com [72.32.103.48]

Trace complete.

That's right, those sites are hosted at 72.32.103.48....and guess who else is set up at that IP?

I wonder if these sites will come alive and start trying to anonymously smear Obama if a certain person ends up losing the Iowa Caucuses.

The most entertaining thing I've seen today.

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 22:25:12 GMT

http://forums.phishhook.com/viewtopic.php?t=664613

Although the "Bitches ain't shit but ho's and tricks" Venn diagram is incorrect, in that the bitches should be completely encompassed within the hos and tricks.

Success!

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 20:53:53 GMT

So my illness, which has been simmering since I got back from Columbus last weekend (some sort of comeuppance for calling in fake-sick to work on Thursday and Friday perhaps?), finally blew up over the last three days. Whole body aches, headache, wheezing, and of course, a completely stuffed respiratory system. So most of my Thanksgiving break has been spent sleeping and coughing up green stuff.

Although the break does mean that I finally had time to finish building and testing of my Hackintosh

I've been working on it for about two weeks, but parts issues/trips/sickness has made it take way longer than it should have. I've been wanting to play around with Macs and learn the OS better for awhile now, but I've always been turned off by the overpriced hardware. So I was really excited to try this as both a software and a hardware project, plus Jennifer can use it for Final Cut Pro (which until now she has been very very unfortunately stuck with her G4 Powerbook).

It's got pretty much the same internals as a $1600 iMac, but the hardware only cost me half that. I get an overall xBench score in the 140s on it. Everything works great, other than the stock audio chipset on the board, which means I'm probably going to have to get some sort of external USB sound card.

As excited as I am, I'm gonna go take more NyQuil and go to sleep now.

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 19:03:10 GMT

Is it possible to feel both pride and revulsion at the same time?

fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 16:36:57 GMT

Today's exercise is to think of songs that would be completely hilarious if sung by a kids in a grade school music class at their little talent show for the parents.

My vote? "Psycho Killer"

ooh ooh and "Bicycle Race"!

"By refusing to end the war in Iraq, President Bush is giving the terrorists what they really want"

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 16:58:11 GMT

I'm not gay, but I am totally bi for Barak

http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2007/08/obama-if-mushar.html

What's that, DLC pundits? A Democrat with balls? Pay no attention to that man!

He's totally unserious!
His middle name is hussein!
it sounds like osama!
9/11!!!!

SQUEE!

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 18:49:52 GMT

Jennifer and I went out yesterday afternoon and she got a new cat.

Introducing Ms. Beadie Russell Peepas

Beadie was super-excited and ran around the apartment rubbing up against things and playing for like six hours straight. We also learned that her favorite move is to climb up on your chest and mash her face up against yours.

So I pretty much spent all afternoon yesterday being smothered in cute