A Typical Diary Entry at The Daily Kos-I-Said-So

Dear Diary,
Obama is awesome. He gave a great speech today that made me feel alive. I wish everyone could share in my joy, but there are so many HaTErZ. Hillary is such a youknowwhat. The other day one of those Hillary supporters tried drilling me on some of Obama's policy positions. I told him: Obama has the best policy out there on Hope, Change, and YesWeCan. Don't hate! He tried questioning me for "specifics" or something and I was like, "Stop saying bad things about Obama, you racist! Na-na-na, I can't hear you. Na-na-na. Hope! Change! Yes We Can! Na-na-na."

Let's have a poll, Kossacks. Obama looks better with a blue tie, a red tie, or a striped Van Heusen tie. Which one?

Go OBAMA!
ObamaGirl4Ever

Obama Diarrhea-istsTake Over The Kos Treehouse, Have No One To Yell At But Themselves

And now that the Clinton bloggers have been effectively shouted out of the hallowed sweatshop that is the Daily Kos, the ObamaKosians can enjoy their self-congratulatory circle-jerks in peace. I mean, life is so much easier without dissent.

Don't get me wrong: I'm no fan of Hills. I appreciate the ideals of the blog. But the second these "diary entries" decay into personality contest and faceless commenter's out-hating each other, then it's basically schoolyard stuff.

Silly, anyway. People yelling about who has more authentic liberal, progressive roots, Hills or Barry?? Really? That's like a Brittany Spears vs. Jessica Simpson debate over who is the better vocalist. (Correct answer: They both stink up the joint in equal measure.)

Any attempt to have a passionate dialogue about who's the more progressive candidate should amuse the hell out of you. The question is who's more compromised? Who is the most centrist? Who is more beholden to the corporate strings pulling on them?

If you visit the Kos diaries now, it's a community of people who all agree with each other. Kinda sad. I'm sure they secretly miss the Hill-bots, for the simple fact that they can no longer use the word c$@t and feel as if they're ruining a fellow commenter's day.

Performance Artists Lose Themselves In Roles as Embodiment of Evil

They really are getting back at us for what we did to them back in high school.

Also, why is there no picture on the Internets of Cheney and Rove in the same room at the same time?

If it wasn't for you I'd never have known that I'm a self-hating macaca...

Thank you George Allen for almost -- but not quite -- giving me a term I could consider my very own offensive slang word. I was hoping macaca would catch on. And then some day I'd co-opt it as my own cry of self-empowerment. Alas, it never happened. Nice try. (As a voting block we may be too affluent to really want it.)

After two days of encouraging my Anglo- friends to disparage me with macaca this and macaca that, there wasn't the same sense of socioeconomic degradation implicit with the other word (ya' know, the one yo' gren-deddy coined). We'll reluctantly stick with 'Paki' (I guess).

(Jim Webb sends his regards, as does John McCain).

Write me. Tell me what you're up to these days, Cracker.

LOL! And he used his real name!!!!

Above is Mitch Albom. Below him are pages of paper bound together with glue.

Vanilla Spielberg: "His story was about an Alien. Mine was about an Extraterrestrial. It's not the same!"

You are Steven Spielberg. Your movies are critic-proof. You are considered a genius and the best at what you do.

But what movie is Spielberg most famous for? You know which one. The one starring that cute-as-a button alien, Drew Barrymore. E.T., of course. But there's a disappointing part to the E.T. backstory and I'm going to call The 'Berg on it because it makes him a bit of a jerk. From the Wikipedia bio of Satyajit Ray:

In 1967, Ray wrote a script for a film to be called The Alien, based on his short story Bankubabur Bandhu ("Banku Babu's Friend") which he wrote in 1962 for Sandesh, the Ray family magazine. The Alien had Columbia Pictures as producer for this planned U.S.-India co-production, and Peter Sellers and Marlon Brando as the leading actors. However, Ray was surprised to find that the script he had written had already been copyrighted and the fee appropriated by Mike Wilson. Wilson had initially approached Ray as an acquaintance of a mutual friend, Arthur C. Clarke, to represent him in Hollywood. The script Wilson had copyrighted was credited as Mike Wilson & Satyajit Ray, despite the fact that he only contributed a single word in it. Ray later stated that he never received a penny for the script.^[27] Brando later dropped out of the project, and though an attempt was made to replace him with James Coburn, Ray became disillusioned and returned to Calcutta.^[28][29] Columbia expressed interest in reviving the project several times in the 1970s and 1980s, but nothing came of it. When E.T. was released in 1982, Clarke and Ray saw similarities in the film to the earlier Alien script—Ray discussed the collapse of the project in a 1980 Sight & Sound feature, with further details revealed by Ray's biographer Andrew Robinson (in The Inner Eye, 1989). Ray believed that Spielberg's film would not have been possible without his script of The Alien being available throughout America in mimeographed copies (a charge Spielberg denies).^[30]

The problem for me isn't the plagiarism and stealing. That happens all the time. It's the intent behind it. Spielberg stole an idea from a different culture, passed it off as his own, and smugly knew something would get lost in translation and he'd never get called on it. Because it's the same thing the West has been doing for thousands of years. Co-opting someone else's stuff, pawning it off as their's with some sprinkles, bleeding it dry, and collecting their royalties. And while I applaud the free-market principles involved, I'm not above declaring you an Oaf on my blog.

(Now, Bollywood has been lifting off of Hollywood for decades. But Bollywood is crap with a 'K' anyway. And Satyajit Ray was never Bollywood. He was a Bengali filmmaker, which constitutes hell and heaven difference from its ugly Bolly cousin.)

The plot of Ray's The Alien from Wikipedia:

The plot revolved around a spaceship that landed in a pond in rural Bengal. The villagers began worshiping it as a temple risen from the depths of the earth. The alien established contact with a young village boy named Haba (Moron) through dreams and also played a number of pranks on the village community in course of its short stay on Planet Earth. The plot contained the ebullient presence of an Indian businessman, a journalist from Calcutta and an American engineer.

On a personal note: I loved Duel. That's kind of the only movie of his I enjoyed. (The way our disheveled middle-class hero, Dennis Weaver, was able to outflank the oppressive Trucker was a thing of $50 a gallon beauty.) But, to be honest, I didn't even care for Schindler's List. Oooooh, the girl in red is so drenched with meaning...

Woods: "I See Unathletic, Obese People"

Your name is Tiger Woods. And you play golf.

For a living.

Everyone considers Woods to be one of the great Athletes of our time. But do you know the story of Atul Behmani? Atul "Hands of God" Behmani is the greatest Patty Cake champion who ever lived. If you combined Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan, and Pele one would only begin to scratch the surface of her dominance in the professional Patty Cake tour.

She was a child prodigy from Laos, besting local Cakers from the age of five. Her parents immigrated to Brooklyn where, as an amateur, she won several U.S. sectional championships. In 1972 she entered the U.S. Patty Cake invitational and stormed through the field on her way to a "Golden Hand", the term for a perfect 27-0 score (meaning she never lost a hand of cake during five rounds of competition).

Atul Behmani, age 3, at an exhibition in Laos, toying with an NGO worker.

Behmani easily defeated the best Cakers of her time. The Russian, Vladimir "Iron Hands" Rubenstein and Florence "Key Lime Pie" Jackson. From 1973-1995 she compiled a record of 1,456-3-0, including an astounding 876 match winning streak. She won 58 grand slam tournaments, including 15 seasons where she swept all four major tournaments (African, French, British, U.S. Open) in the same calendar year. She was the number one Caker in the world for 23 consecutive years before retiring from the sport at the tender age of 29. Her last tournament was the '95 U.S. Open in a legendary match up against the bad-boy of Cake, the American, Heddy "Hairy Palms" Ecklund. Behmani by that point, slowed by osteoarthritis and callouses, was far from her prime. But in a stirring performance that lasted seven hours, she outdueled Ecklund to pull out a gutty win, 21-20 in the final frame. A match that experts regard as one of the great Patty matches in the sports' history.

She revolutionized the sport itself and developed a hand speed so quick she set the Guinness World Record with 976 handclaps in 60 seconds. In 1982 after suffering a freak paper cut accident she developed the devastating One Arm Patty Clap technique, which inspired the dramatic closing scene of The Matrix.









The great tragedy is the lack of recognition she received for her sport. Unlike Woods, she was never considered an athlete even though the typical Patty Caker burns as many calories flinging her hands for several hours as Ernie Els does over 18 holes. The skills required of the professional Caker are as intricate as those of the golf swing, requiring flexibility, dexterity, and strength of the elbows, wrists, and hands.

Across three decades Behmani dominated all of her chief rivals. But her competition has never been regarded with the same degree of seriousness as the best of Tiger Woods' challengers. Professional athletes like John Daly (pictured below), Phil Mickleson, or VJ Singh.

John Daly (top), professional drunkard, golfer and, let's be honest, Tiger Woods' only talented rival after two shots and a lil' Captain. Craig Stadler (bottom) knows how to find the best all-you-can-eat buffet in every U.S. city with his one functional nasal passage tied behind his sphincter.

Many debate the merit of golf. Whether it is a real sport or simply a game. But golf is a sport. A sport, like Patty Caking, where small pre-teen girls can beat much older male competitors and a blind woman can slap a hole in one.

So while Woods receives accolades for ruling his game, let us not forget the Lady from Laos who dominated the Patty Cake universe like no other.