9-29-2004

The Day Panglossia Stood Still

Check this snippet from a Variety magazine piece.

NEW YORK -- For the first time in its history, Fox News Channel beat the combined competition in primetime during the third quarter of 2004, with major headlines of the summer including the national political conventions and a brutal string of hurricanes.

According to Nielsen Media Research, Fox News averaged 1.8 million viewers, while CNN, MSNBC, CNBC and Headline News averaged a combined total of 1.7 million. The quarter ended Sunday.

CNN came in a distant second, averaging 882,000 viewers, while MSNBC drew 421,000. Headline News averaged 226,000 in primetime, and CNBC attracted a paltry 133,000.

That oughta get a few of those leftie bed wetters throwing themselves from the tops of very tall buildings. As the leftist's misinformation currently goes: Fox News is biased.

Yeah...and C-BS is fair and balanced, right? Jag-offs!

From the e-mail inbox:

******Mark,

Sup with the constant shots sent Kevin Lynns way? You bash Kerry every chance you get. Why can't he do the same to Bush? You seem thin-skinned when it comes to Bush. I don't listen to the guy so don't go apesh*t on me.*******

Thin-skinned? Nah. Kev has this habit of ignoring the latest news except for some reworked printed banality he can glom onto, fill in the many blanks with anti-Bush leaning speculation and then hack away for hours on end. And if anyone dares to challenge his utter brilliance, that is instant proof that their knuckles are bleeding. In my opinion, he's the Jethro Clampett of WILK.

And when he deciphers the latest reports from Iraq, (which he so often does) he is usually reduced to repeating the same tired talking points that the Dems pound away with.

"No exit strategy." "No plan to win the peace." Blah, f**king blah. Anyone who knows spit about military actions knows that the plan goes out the window as soon as the enemy adapts to the plan. Exit strategy? How 'bout if we exit when we accomplish what it was that we set out to accomplish in the first place? Win the peace? Try killing all of the mof**kers standing in the way of peace. There ya go.

I suspect that Kev and his ilk have been suffering a few 'Nam flashbacks of their own as of late. The protest mentality has them yearning for those heady days of 24/7 protests, free drugs and free chicks, and a lot of soldiers in the field feeling like warm dung when they might happen to catch the latest anti-war rhetoric from back home. This "I support the troops, but not the war" posture will never improve the morale of the folks taking fire, no matter how many times liberals remind us that they support our troops.

They keep telling us that Iraq is now a quagmire, much like Vietnam was a quagmire "during the day." I think they'd actually enjoy seeing Iraq devolve to the point that it was a certifiable quagmire. Then they could all revisit their lost youth, sans the tie-dyes, the flowers in their hair, the roach clips and VD. The '60s generation: The biggest bunch of pampered malcontents ever to fall off the Marxist band wagon.

Not to fret, though. They are mere months away from being incarcerated at a nursing home near you.

Here's another one:

*******Mark,

  Sorry we missed you at the downtown collegetown event. We saw you and Gage driving around on your new contraption. I tried to wave you down to pass on some free CDs and t-shirts but I guess I'm not in shape enough to chase down a grandpa like yourself. The event started off slow due to some competition from other related college parents weekend events but it really picked up towards the end of the evening (too bad the CV didn't stay around to see for themselves). The roving happy hour packed the houses at the otherwise sparsely populated Keenan's and Café Rouge's Coco Lounge. The most memorable part of the night had to be the last hour of the mechanical bull ride..*******

I deleted the latter half of that e-mail to protect the identity of the sender after he or she promised me some rather juicey pics. Hee! Hee! Bring 'em on, gender neutral unit. I'll have the new 'puter gizmo firing away next week.

Free CDs? Free freakin' CDs? What do you mean you couldn't chase me down? Jesus H. Cripes! Don't freakin' tease me, okay? I had a really nice weekend and now I'm left to ponder "What if?" Frig!!!

I hear ya about the media showing up too early to actually see the party they were supposed to be covering. The same darn thing happened at our block party. We were still trying to find and light the sterno cans and the media was here trying to take a few shots that didn't expose the fact that the street was still pretty much empty at that early point.

As far as the college party is concerned, it's a wonderful idea and everyone involved just needs to work on making next year's event even better. And I like the free CDs for Pop Pops bit. You can count me in.

One more from the e-mail inbox:

******* When an elitist writer makes reference to a "Panglossian palaver," are they hoping that their latest efforts will resonate mightily with the average Joes? I think not.

A Panglossian palaver. Hmmm. If memory serves me correctly, that's one of those smallish retro-fitted battle cruisers that managed to destroy Battlestar Gallactica's sister ship. Heyna? Admit it. It was a lucky shot. If the miniscule thermo couplers were protected by hyper-velocity impact shielding as they should have been, the Cylons would have gotten their metallic asses kicked at Alpha Centauri. Talk about luck. If the positive ion storm hadn't wreaked havoc on the cloaking sensors, the palavers would have been dead meat. Don't bother to argue with me. I know what I'm talking about.

Mark,

That is exactly why I can't stay away from this addictive site. When you go________you really go. Give up the internet and try your hand at writing a book. You are wasting your talent.

NXX*******

Holy jumpin' tennis teacher farts! Talent? Is that what this is? Trust me, since I first started babbling away on the 'net in December of 2000, I've been called many, many things. But never "talented."

And what the heck would my first book be about? How much fun it was watching dizzied kids stumble and puke after mistakenly putting their faith in my promises to stop spinning the thing when they hailed on me and then climbing aboard the "puke machine" at the corner playground?

What was it like growing up in Derby, Connecticut during the late '60s? Much like it was growing up in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, excepting for the ground frequently opening and swallowing telephone poles. And cars. And train cars. And puppies. And parts of houses. And miners.

Miners. Yeah. Every time I think of miners and the hell they faced, I can't help but to think of Rhea Malone. Where the hell is that friggin' Coal Miners stamp already??? Fueling the industrial revolution counts for absolutely nothing???

The shameless plug for the coal miners stamp will now conclude. I hope she's smiling down at me.

I know. A "how-to" book that demonstrates just how easy it can be to bring down a tyrranical local politician with a mighty, mighty thud; armed only with a keyboard, a cheezy camera and a tired bicycle. Nah. Nobody would believe that far-fetched story.

A weight-loss book titled: "Bust your ass already?" Nope. That instantly lost classic would be totally bereft of any message that anyone would want to hear.

American history and it's numerous revisions since 1965? Wait! Nah. That sort of disturbing content has been officially banned from this embattled landscape.

The Republican who loved Frank Zappa?

Hold on. I may be on to something here. I'm envisioning my book signing tour.

Nah. I seem to be all by my lonesome in a snowed-in corner book store in Fargo. Fargo? Do those folks even know how to read up there? Whatever. Who cares?

How 'bout some prolific tale of how getting more in touch with my feminine side made me a more complete person?

Yeah! I'll go there when the boys in Noxen admit that they tremble at the sight of a single rattlesnake.

Wait! Wait! I freakin' got it. How 'bout some rather captivating science fiction? All of those Arthur C. Clarke novels I absolutely devoured will finally pay off.

The Day Panglossia Stood Still, anyone?

Michael Moore was ill the day Panglossia stood still. But he told us...

Heh, maybe I'll stick to blogging. A literal phenomenom that was finally given a proper name long after I started doing it. Whatever "it" is.

I'm wondering why the...

...first of the three presidential debates is being held in Miami, Florida.

Florida? Why not have all three of the debates held right here in the good ole United States? Why the foreign country?

Normally, I wouldn't be too interested in these quasi debates. I was interested during the last presidential election brouhaha only because the "big" media had painted Bush as the biggest, most complete dummy ever to stumble into the national spotlight. I sat there waiting for Bush to fall on his face, but all that I saw was Al Gore acting like a big f**kin' baby. Something he has continued to do as of late.

I'm not expecting much in the way of fireworks tomorrow night, but then again, Kerry's numbers are slipping in a serious way and when you couple that with the Dems penchant for launching into baseless accusations rather than selling their sorry selves to us, you just never know. Desperation might get the better of Kerry.

Speaking of desperation, a recent Pew Research poll shows that Kerry is carrying 73% of the black vote. That's almost Earth-shattering at this point. 73%? Very scary, for sure. Democrats always garner at least 90% of the black vote. Gore got 90% in 2000.

The black vote is as sure to be 90% Democrat as the Sun is to vote to rise over the landscape each morning. For a Dem to have a Republican cut into the black vote to any degree suggests that said Dem can't even energize a part of his traditional voter base that is considered a gimme every four years.

Kerry's in deep doo-doo.

And that's why I suspect that one, or possibly even all three of these debates have the potential to go critical mass before our very eyes.

We've heard the baseless accusations levied against Bush for the better part of a year now. How can Kerry possibly hope to top all of that borderline hatred that did not resonate with the American voting public at all without upping the political ante live on TV?

We shall see. In all likelihood, tomorrow's event should go down without too many fireworks. But if the post-debate polling bounce doesn't go Kerry's way, hang on to your fargin' Bush/Cheney hats.

This almost shameful time around, the math is not at all fuzzy. John Kerry is sinking faster than Ted Kennedy ever did. So we should expect even loonier baseless accusations than those oft-repeated beauties that we've previously had our collective intelligence insulted by.

Kerry's desperate.

This might be fun afterall.

I gotta go find me a publisher in the yellow pages.

Later, kiddies