Friday, September 21, 2007

22 For 22!
















In "honor" of the 22 spineless Democratic hacks who voted to slap MoveOn on the wrist, I invite you to join me in donating $22 to MoveOn.org.

First, go here to donate.

Then, go here to download the postcard above. There's an MS Word document preformatted for Avery 8386 inkjet postcards, a PDF version of the same, and a PNG graphic if you want to do it yourself.

Print out 22 and send them to the names listed on the front of the card.

Finally, you can order a few packs of these if you like and semd
em t0 the rest of the gutless wonders.

Friday, September 14, 2007

If You Need a Sign for the Big March...

... here are a couple of PDFs of this postcard... one's 11x17, the other 22x34:



Can't vouch for how they'll look when printed - the "spine" graphic will definitely be bit-mappy - but it's the sentiment that counts!

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

"Who Ordered 'Johnny Got His Gun'?"

Way back in the dinosaur age, when I was in grade school, we used to order books in our classes from Scholastic Books (yes, the same company who's made a mint publishing "Harry Potter"). We'd get a four- or six-page newsprint "catalog", check off the books we wanted, bring in our money, and a few weeks later, a big box would arrive and the teacher would hand them out.

In grade school, the books were pretty much what you'd expect for the age group - thin picture books about pets, "girls" stories about horsies and that sort of things, "boys" books about cowboys and space flight. The book I remember most fondly from that period was "The Mad Scientists' Club," about a group of Boy Scouts with just enough scientific knowledge to cause some light-hearted trouble around their small town. I still have no idea why this has never been made into a movie.

Things got a little more interesting, however, in junior high (7th and 8th grade, where I grew up). I ordered "Johnny Got His Gun", for example. Talk about a 7th-grade mind-blower! I also got "Dune" and "Future Shock" through them, and I recall they had a fairly good selection of "popular" titles intended for a more general audience.

When I look back on it, it's really surprising to me that Scholastic didn't get complaints about carrying those books. Even then, "Johnny Got His Gun" was considered a touchstone of anti-war literature (and Trumbo was well-known, of course, as a blacklisted writer in Hollywood). And I recall "Dune" being touted as part of the "ecology" movement at the time (don't remember why, exactly - just that it was).

Maybe they did get complaints, but they just didn't care. The sort of people bitching about that sort of thing back then were pretty much considered to be "cranks" and were generally ignored. However, in the town I was living, they had several big dust-ups about that time involving the presence of "Catcher in the Rye" and "Manchild in the Promised Land" in the high school library. There was also a big controversy because a teacher had let a student play Jethro Tull's "Aqualung" in class, "Aqualung" being a big anti-God screed. Amazingly, in both cases, the very conservative school board, after holding a few meetings, did nothing about the complaints. Something about "free speech" and "learning," apparently.

Apparently, Scholastic still sells books to school students, though now you do the ordering online. Unfortunately, their online site is down for the summer - I'd be interested to see what sort of titles they carry for the "young adult" crowd these days...

Who Will Buy My Overpriced Piece of Crap?

This is somewhat surprising:

Apple Inc. shares fell as much as 5 percent Tuesday after AT&T said it activated 146,000 iPhones during the first few days of the highly-anticipated product's launch, far less than Wall Street's initial sales estimates.

AT&T, the only cell phone operator to carry the iPhone, revealed the iPhone activation figures in its earnings report Tuesday. The telecom giant said that of the 146,000 iPhone customers signed in the first two days of the product's existence, more than 40 percent of them were new subscribers.

But Wall Street analysts had estimated that Apple and AT&T had sold as many as 700,000 iPhones during the first weekend. The iPhone hit stores at 6 p.m. on Friday, June 29. Both AT&T and Apple's quarters ended June 30.


So fewer people wanted to spend $600 for a phone, and then shell out upwards of a hundred bucks for two years (guaranteed!) to use it, then "analysts" expected?

I'll give the "analysts" some free advice from a guy who knows absolutely nothing about "economics": what the vast majority of people want from a cell phone is a PHONE that WORKS and a CHEAP PLAN.

The donation buttons are down below, guys...

Sunday, July 22, 2007

We All Shine On!

The "live" performance from "Top of the Pops":



A big "thank you" to all our contributors. And if you're not one of them, there's still time!











Sunday Afternoon Matinee

As our fundraising telethon continues...













We're proud to offer a great little film from one of the true artistic geniuses of our time, and one that is often overlooked - Jim Henson's "Timepiece". Made before the Muppets were as big a phenom as they later became, this film was nominated for an Oscar as "Best Short Subject" in 1965. Enjoy!

You Don't See THIS Every Day...!

Where else are you going to see Harry Nilsson, Charles Nelson Reilly, and Hope Lange all in the same room?



And remember, kids - if you can, drop a couple of coins into the old tin can...