Hooray for Stephen Harper! He's finally decided to emulate a politician other than himself. Unfortunately, it's Tim Pawlenty.
Never heard of Tim Pawlenty? You're not alone - most Americans haven't either. A former Republican governor of Minnesota, Pawlenty is right-wing, looks like one of those Mormons who proselytizes on the subway, and is stultifyingly tedious. He is currently not setting the campaign trail on fire while running for president.
Harper's choice of role model may initially seem surprising, in that he is already right-wing, subway Mormon-ish, and stultifyingly tedious. However, he's not trying to imitate the OLD Pawlenty; he's trying to imitate NEW Pawlenty.
Pawlenty recently released a non-campaign campaign ad clearly intended to prove he is VITAL, CHARISTMATIC, and PATRIOTIC. If it had been released in the form of text, it would be all red-white-and-blue capital letters. It features noises, and flashes, and quick cuts, and then more loud noises: It is extremely silly. It took Stephen Colbert no time at all to release his own, slightly less earnest version (his response to the original ad is at 4:53, his own ad starts around 6:58 - because I'm in Canada, I can't access the just-the-bit-I'm-talking-about versions available to Americans).It took Stephen Harper only slightly longer to release his own INSPIRING and PATRIOTIC version:
Hooray again for Harper! He has succeeded in reinventing himself as Canada's Tim Pawlenty, in that he is proving himself to be equally as dull and desperate. He's even one-upped the American, in that he's also managed to add derivativeness to the mix.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
After the recent disaster in Japan (referred to puzzlingly as "magnanimous" by an anchor on CNBC), one of my friends posted the following inspirational quotation from Mr. Rogers on Facebook:"When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother's words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers - so many caring people in this world."That's right, I thought. The human spirit can be a resilient and generous one, I reflected. Unfortunately, I then saw another posting from a different friend on Facebook. As far as I can tell, these comments are genuine. I, naturally, tried to find all these people on Facebook, and some of them seem to be real, and the ones who can't be found may well have removed themselves after receiving unwanted wall postings from human beings. Even if they aren't all authentic, the ones I found here certainly are. Lest you think that most appalling responses to the situation in Japan are motivated by Pearl Harbour-inspired vengefulness, I present you with a comment from Larry Kudlow.CNBC host Larry Kudlow (not the aforementioned "magnanimous" one - I'm pretty sure that guy merely got words, rather than priorities, mixed up) managed to find the silver lining in the cloud of devastation, suffering and loss, and shared it with viewers: “The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll, and we can be grateful for that.”So we have violently jingoistic bloodthirstiness and cold, unfeeling soullessness. I'm sure that soon I will once again realize that people can be compassionate, or at least not actively malignant, but for the moment I can only imagine Mr. Rogers saying:"When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say, 'Look for the haters. You will always find people who are hating.' To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother's words, and I am always chilled by realizing that there are so many haters - so many hateful people in this world."
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
It's been a difficult couple of days for me. Which is not surprising as most groupings of days are trying in some way or another.
This week, though, my disillusionment has come from a totally unexpected source: PBS. I love PBS. PBS makes me feel like an elderly ex-Brit who once studied political science (although it's true that Goldie of 1980s Buffalo PBS fundraising fame once made me feel like a homicidal elderly ex-Brit who once studied political science). I would like Jim Leher to be my uncle.
Now, though, PBS has been unexpectedly a) irresponsible, or b) cravenly fearful. Anderson Cooper's new segment The RidicuList (clearly grounded in the same journalistic integrity that inspired his reporting from war-torn nations and the sites of natural disasters) reveals that PBS "edited" Tina Fey's acceptance speech at the Kennedy Center when she received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor (or was it the Yahoo Serious Yuk-Yuk Super Prize extravaganza at the Newark IHOP? So hard to keep things straight).
So PBS made it seem like Tina Fey was being quite gracious about Sarah Palin and upstanding Republican ladies, when in fact she was being devastatingly critical of such ladies. Now, I also love Tina Fey, which is not altogether surprising as I am also a bespectacled young lady who looks a bit like a badger and is passionately fond of cheese and Star Wars. I lack only her talent and charm. So it's kind of like my Doris Kearns Goodwin-dating uncle told my better self to shut up for questioning the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.
Shame on you, PBS! What's next - NPR only letting you think that all things are being considered?
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
I've always had a soft spot for Keith Olberman, despite the fact that he's both cantankerous and self-righteous about being cantankerous. Perhaps it's because I've always admired former sportscasters (where have you gone, equally smarmy Craig Kilborn?!). Perhaps because it's nice for left-wingers to have access to a bright blowhard who's not Michael Moore.
Pardon me while I engage in a tangent that will in the next paragraph (or so) prove to be brilliantly, commendably relevant. It was an established fact of my youth that on a regular basis, three-foot tall, spotty boys would give reasonably attractive girls a complex about not being hot enough. It's just how things were done. In today's world (after using that phrase, it will come as no surprise that I'm busily planning a sixteen-part series about how Facebook may be bringing us closer together virtually, but is in "reality" driving us farther apart), young girls, having seen boys with abdominal muscles in unfairly fanciful films, are beginning to subject their grade nine beaux to a similar kind of scrutiny.
Part of me thinks that's wonderful and hilarious. And part of me, the better and less likable part, thinks that all this means is that more men will learn to be more insecure at a younger age and then grow up to be worse husbands to their tragically insecure wives.
And now for the brilliant tie-in, the moment I relate Keith Olberman to teen dating without leaving myself open to charges of libel. Olberman, although he has spoken out against conflicts of interest and other people being biased and stuff, was recently suspended for contravening NBC rules by donating money to three Democratic candidates for Congress. Liberals everywhere rallied to his defense. "FOX is worse!" they cried. "But it's different when someone I agree with!" they exclaimed. I absolutely agree that Olberman is an individual and not a news organization and that he doesn't in any way or at any time claim to be fair and balanced. I agree that Fox is worse, and that's not just because I suspect all the women on the network are Christian hooker robots. But just because Fox news is REALLY bad doesn't mean that a liberal should get to be kind of bad without being criticized for it by other liberals.
Just to make sure my analogy has been understood: teenage boys (the mean and judgmental ones) = Bill O'Reilly; insecure teenage girls from twenty years ago = painfully upstanding and morally correct liberals; mean and judgmental girls of today = Keith Olberman. There. Analogies can be convoluted things. Mine might have been convoluted, but at least it also had the virtue of being protracted. You're welcome.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
I'm very concerned. I'm frequently very concerned, so that in itself is not overly concerning, but the source of my disquiet is new. When I feel as though the world is being consumed by the iniquity brought into being by musical theatre and communists, I know that I can rely on Fox News to ground and reassure me. Fox News, however, has now shown its true colours, and those colours are distinctly left-leaning. A pale pink? A rich Eastern bloc red? One of those hippie shades.
I thought I could rely on Fox News because it provides a steady stream of anti-mosque interviews, Karl Rove money shots and slim, blonde Republican women. So when I heard that Fox News was reporting that Los Angeles had ordered 10,000 jet packs for its police officers, firemen and paramedics, I was credulous and thrilled. At $100,000 a shot, they're pretty pricey, but what's a billion dollars when the safety of the skies and the fulfillment of the promises made by science fiction films are in question?
Turns out I rejoiced prematurely. Turns out that, while the jet packs do exist and a whole two of them have been constructed by the company in question, Los Angeles has not started hiring Law Enforcement Jet Pack Officers just yet.How did Fox News manage to get this wrong? Well, they relied on the reporting of the left-wing, lamestream media, that's how. Instead of sticking to crafting stories based on the folksy imaginings of registered Republicans, they turned for inspiration to the Weekly World News.While unimpeachably reputable, the Weekly World News is undeniably east-coast elitist. Listen to these headlines: "Kim Kardashian's Butt Explodes". "Harry Reid Joins Male Brothel". "How to Sell Your Soul to the Devil." And, most damningly, "Megan Fox Marries, But She's Still a Man." Clearly this rag is pushing the gay marriage agenda.Fox News should know better than to trust the only publication read by all activist judges. They should leave the Weekly World News to the Ivy Tower set and stick to the only credible news source: Sarah Palin's Facebook postings.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
I don't have the right kind of friends. I know this because not one of them has traveled in a bus through the United States arguing against Obama's socialist takeover of the country or burned Nancy Pelosi in effigy. Or burned Obama in effigy while traveling through Nancy Pelosi in a bus. Not ONE of my over-educated liberal elitist pay-what-you-can-theatre loving, The Wire-watching friends has sent me the hilarious email mentioned by Michael Goodwin in his timely and incisive opinion piece on foxnews.com: "Good News - The 'Move the Mosque' Movement is Growing". Tell me you don't feel your sides splitting because of all the mirth after reading this:
I just applied for a building permit for a new house. It was going to be 100 ft tall and 400 ft wide with 9 turrets at various heights and windows all over the place and a loud outside entertainment sound system. It would have parking for 200 old cars and I was going to paint it snot green with . . . pink trim. The City Council told me to f--- off. So I sent in the application again, but this time I called it a mosque. Work starts on Monday.
Get it? Your average (i.e. Christian, Obama-care hating, and rotund) American wants to build a giant hideous building somewhere and stupid bureaucrats will not let him, but a MUSLIM wants to build a giant hideous building and he's allowed to because bureaucrats love Muslims almost as much as they love screwing over populists. As Michael Goodwin states,
"It's a joke, one of those mass Internet mailings that gets a laugh and captures the spirit of the moment."
What concerns me is something I just quoted. That's right. The "mass Internet mailings" part. I use the internet. I check my email regularly to read the messages amazon.com has sent me confirming my order of the most recent Madeleine Albright memoir or This American Life CD compilation. Not ONCE have I found that humourous mosque email waiting for me in my inbox. I can only conclude that I don't have the right kind of friends.
I do, though, have a plan to remedy this situation. What I'm going to do is the following: convince a black or Middle Eastern-ish man with some ambiguous form of head-covering to walk through a crowd demonstrating against the mosque planned for the neighbourhood of Ground Zero. The first person who starts yelling at him and calling a coward? I'm giving that person my email address. Then Michael Goodwin and I can enjoy a good laugh in "the spirit of the moment" together.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
Dear Catastrophizer:
I am 62 years old and retired. I keep adding up the numbers of my budget to see if I am likely to outlive my money. Until yesterday it seemed safe to assume I would make it through my dotage without having to eat cat food, even once. But yesterday when I added up the same numbers I discovered an error in logic that I'd been making all along. Can you tell me where I can buy discount cat food? Would pellets for rodents deliver the same nutritional punch at a lower cost?
Thanks, in advance, for your advice.
Yours truly, Aging woman.
P.S. I know you're too young to be worrying about this kind of stuff
I've said it before and I'll say it again: you're never too young to worry about penury, infirmity, and death. That said, those fortunate enough to have lived for a while in consecutive years might be in a better position to appreciate how nice money, "firmity" and life are, and to suspect that they are probably not now or ever going to be discovered on Johnny Carson.
Allow me to answer this while also getting to talk about something else that's been thrilling me and to do so by discussing a scene from The Golden Girls. In a scene more bizarre than any shakily-filmed drug-using sequence from a motion picture, the girls host a talent show at which Bob Hope makes repeated jokes about Ronald Reagan. I was, of course, appalled, because no one is permitted to make light of Ronald anymore. He is a conservative icon, even though it turns out that the very conservatives who venerate him today would probably colour him red for commie if he were still around. He was in favour of reducing the number of nuclear weapons kicking about, after all. Hippie.
But let's get to the whether-to-eat-pellets portion of this entry. I mention The Golden Girls because their example could well prove to be instructive. Why did these golden girls ends up rooming together? Not because they wanted to giggle girlishly and pretend they were undergraduates. It was made clear intermittently on the show that Blanche, Dorothy, Sophia, and Rose lived together because they could not afford to live on their own. They were forced into cohabitation by the reality of an empty wallet. One of the earlier episodes features Rose desperately trying to find a job and finding it difficult to do so because she's old and has no work experience.
A side note: when Rue McClanahan started on the show, she was 51. When Kim Cattrall starred in the last Sex and the City movie, she was 54. I know that only because I checked imdb.com and not because I saw the film. Even though the idea of three lovely white ladies going to Abu Dhabi and acting like great big sluts is HILARIOUS.
So here's my advice: find a woman who's sex-loving, a woman who's dizzy-headed, a woman who's sharp-tongued, and another woman who's sharp-tongued AND extraordinarily tall and move in with them. With all of you splitting costs, it should be possible to survive not by eating pellets of any kind, but by sharing beans from cans.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
If you, as I am, are preternaturally attuned to the publication of not-entirely-substantiated stories involving unpleasant reality-tv stars with whom you're not entirely familiar and once-were lady politicians who compare themselves with Shakespeare, then you probably already know the following: it seems Kate Gosselin (the one with the large head and many children) will be taking her adorable television children camping in Alaska with the large-headed and equally adorable former governor Sarah Palin.There are many obvious things that could be said here about the blurring of the line between the apparently entertaining and the putatively political, about crass and conspicuous opportunism, about this being the final sign of the imminence of Armageddon. I'd rather throw more bodies in the camper-van. Here are the other people I think would profit from going on an outdoor adventure with Kate Gosselin and Sarah Palin:1) Tony Hayward: He's no longer at BP, so he's got more time on his hands. He could use an image boost, as everyone tends to hate him. But one glimpse of Tony surreptitiously trying to drill for oil while dealing with the madcap escapades of 8 adorable child hooligans would surely be enough to catapult him back into our good graces.2) Rod Blagojevich: I just think he should be everywhere, at all times. 3) Mel Gibson: If he wants to restore his image (back to what it was before this time AND the time before when he was upset at women and Jews), he should start by showing a softer side by surrounding himself with delightful tots, dim-witted/opportunistic women and the great outdoors. And Danny Glover should be there, too. 4) Justin Bieber: He can't let himself get lazy. Or soft. He has to continue to challenge himself by trying to escape from teenage girls on a segway across different types of terrain. Also, the teenage girls willing to follow him to Alaska would be the really crazy ones. And Kate Gosselin would totally fight them. It would be awesome.5) Shirley Sherrod: She's hot right now. Really hot. And while she seems like a nice, sensible person, they could always edit her scenes later to make her look like a total racist.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, whom many up to this point thought of as a reasonably reasonable individual, has declared that the Black Bloc hooligans who broke windows at the recent G20 Summit in Toronto were "terrorists."This thrills me. Not because I welcome the threat to my imaginary storefront, but because this may be a sign that Toronto, previously a modest and restrained metropolis, should be awarded the highest civic honour with which I am familiar: a sister city in Northern New York. Unfortunately (for me, and, I'm sure, for two or three other people) newscasts produced by local Northern New York television stations are not readily available on the internet. If they were, I would be able to introduce you in a far more dramatic and credible fashion to...the Rock Sniper.Over the course of three weeks in 2002, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, better known as the "Beltway Snipers", shot and killed ten people. When, soon after this occurred, windows in Watertown (I'm pretty sure it was Watertown - as I said, the case has, inexcusably, not been well documented on the internet) were targeted and broken by rocks, the rhetorical temptation was unavoidable. They were dealing with the "Rock Sniper". They interviewed residents who'd borne (or rather whose windows had borne) the brunt of the Rock Sniper's rage. They solemnly intoned the phrase: "The Rock Sniper has struck again." They provided anxious viewers with Rock Sniper updates. Just as people on the east coast of the U.S. were gripped by the fear that they would randomly be shot, so too were the people of Watertown gripped by the fear that their windows would randomly be broken. Which of the two groups suffered more grievously from fear? Who can tell? The word "sniper" has the remarkable ability to reveal the essential resemblance between situations which, to the untutored eye, might seem a tad different.And now Chief Blair has revealed the same remarkable ability in the word "terrorist." Denizens of Toronto should immediately proceed to sympathize volubly with New Yorkers, Israelis, Palestinians..etc...etc... we can now shake our heads slowly and sadly and reflect on the terrible toll that terrorism takes on civil society. When someone speaks to a Torontonian of a "death toll", he or she can respond with harrowing tales of the "window toll." A final note: it wasn't just Chief Blair who used inspired and entirely defensible rhetorical flourishes in discussing the G20. Judy Rebick, a well-known local hippie ne-er-do-well, also insistently drew an ingenious and tenable parallel between totally comparable things when she referred to just about everything as being "like a concentration camp." Bravo to everyone involved! I was quite depressed when the journalist and television host Steve Paikin avoided any such illuminating phrases while describing his experience of seeing a journalist roughed-up by police. THEN, thankfully, he began his defense of the reasonableness and docility of a crowd of protestors by describing it as "middle-class" and I could rejoice once more.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.
If you were a movie or television show, which one would you be? Would you be: The Seventh Seal (not to be confused with the searingly honest Demi Moore / Michael Biehn vehicle The Seventh Sign); Ally McBeal (dated reference that might no longer have any purchase with today’s youth); High School Musical (compensating for the previous example with bracing contemporaneity); or, the first three-quarters of Hannah and Her Sisters?
Why not find out by taking the Catastrophizer’s Are You Bergman, Efron, Woody or McBeal quiz? I know “Woody” stands out because it is the first name rather the last, but I was worried you’d think I meant the Alexander Viets Griswold Allen.
1. What do you think when you hold a friend's newborn baby?
a) Oh my God, I'm going to drop it. Or sicken it. Or otherwise ruin it.
b) This child is beautiful, as is life, which alas is doomed to end in death.
c) This child will soon be a toddler, and then a teenager, and before you know it, it will be as annoying as its parents.
d) I love babies. They're ADORABLE.
2. How do you respond when you've gotten a new job?
a) Have I forgotten my security pass on my first day? Did I lose my day-planner? Are these nude nylons form-flattering?
b) However long this job lasts, it cannot last forever, as nothing lasts forever. We are all doomed to die.
c) It might start off well, but soon I'll be disappointing my coworkers, and then my bosses, and then they'll fire me, and soon this whole nauseating cycle will begin all over again.
d) This is awesome! I'm going to dress appropriately and make new friends!
3. What's your attitude towards a new romantic relationship?
a) Why didn't I wash my sexier underwear? Are my nails dirty? Should they be dirty? Does that mole look worrisome?
b) It doesn't matter if this relationship succeeds, because ultimately we'll both die.
c) If tonight I say something that he/she finds irritating, the rot will begin to set in, because inevitably I'll do it again, and then it will seem like a pattern, and he/she will break up with me. I won't mourn forever, thank God, because ultimately I'll die.
d) He/she is so hot! I love love. It's awesome, just like my friends' babies.
4. How do you feel about your personal appearance?
a) Is one of my breasts and/or testicles larger than the other? Is that normal? Will my boyfriend and/or girlfriend think that's normal? Why is my torso so unusually long?
b) I will never be more attractive than I am right now, because each minute that passes, I age and sag. Ultimately, I will die.
c) I don't mind the way I look, but there's no guarantee that anyone else will ever find me attractive, or that even if they say they do, they can be believed.
d) I'm super-hot, not like my friends who have babies.
Answer Key: A: You're A Nervie! If you tended to choose A’s, you are dangerously neurotic and resemble Ally McBeal. She has, however, ended up with Han Solo, so maybe there’s a rakish space-pirate with a hidden heart of gold in your future. B: You A Bergman!If you were drawn to the B’s, you are dangerously morbid and fond of the films of Swedish tear-mongerer Ingmar Bergman (not to be confused with Ingrid, who was not quite as hot). His real first name was “Ernst”, but “Ingmar” is clearly hotter. C: You're A CATASTROPHYTE ! If you consistently selected the C’s, you love the first three-quarters of Hannah and Her Sisters (Mickey: A week ago I bought a rifle, I went to the store - I bought a rifle! I was gonna, you know, if they told me I had a tumor, I was gonna kill myself. The only thing that might’ve stopped me - MIGHT’VE - is that my parents would be devastated. I would have to shoot them also, first. And then I have an aunt and uncle - you know - it would’ve been a blood bath), but think it goes downhill at the end by embracing hope and the promise of new life. D: You're An Upbeat!If you are a “D” person, why are you reading this? Go out and play some ultimate frisbee. POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.
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