the following is an unpaid political advertisement

I'd just like to plug Roger Buchanan for state representative here. He's just a nice, good guy, and a smart fellow, who freely admits that he fully expects to get his ass kicked in this relatively conservative district. Maybe we can help narrow that margin a little bit and shoot for the moral victory. Like a I-AA team taking Ohio State to overtime.

Hm. "Crikeyes" (somebody reads this?! I should really edit more carefully...) points out that the Sunsilk voiceover is actually provided by the guy who gets to hang out with Kristin Davis all the time on "Sex and the City," which marks the second time I've mentioned that show here. (As an aside, I believe doctors recommend you perform a testicular self-exam, just to make sure you've still got everything, after three separate SATC posts, so I've still got another one to go.) Anyway, I sincerely apologize to any Jewish New York women I may have offended with my inadequate ear, since it turns out the offender is an Italian New York gay man. But I kind of like his character on the show, so maybe he can be allowed to live, and I'll just cover my ears and sing "La Marseillaise" at the top of my lungs, which I firmly believe is the more pleasant option for any innocent bystanders, when the commercial comes on.

Also, why would Sunsilk pay that guy when they could just get some unknown who sounds like him to do it for a whole lot cheaper?

Also also, does it completely prick the balloon of my faux-outrage if I admit that there is Sunsilk currently residing in my shower caddy? It wasn't my choice, and I didn't buy it, but I do use it. Am I going through hairapy? Do they charge for that?

All I want for Christmas is an infinite supply of free E-strings, or one that won't break, like Fflewddur Fflam's. I'd love to be able to say I'm referencing him from The Mabinogion, because that would sound much cooler, but no, definitely The Book of Three. Okay, it's a weakness, and it's not nice of you to make fun of me for it.

on nails-on-chalkboard advertising...

Two comments on the little five-second ads they run on the Wal-Mart CD scanners before they play the clips from the CDs.

1.) That Sunsilk "Get yourself some hairapy" bit. The voiceover woman sounds to me like she's supposed to be an assertive (read: annoying) Jewish woman from New York, although I may be mishearing my stereotypes. In any event, if you're in a death pool, you should throw her name on your list, because I'm pretty sure she's well under a hundred, and I'm also pretty sure she's going to die a horrible, violent, bloody, bloody, bloody death in a short time. Not that I'll have anything to do with it.

2.) Stayfree Ultra Max (I think): "Dry protection you can actually touch." ...but why would you WANT to?

*shudder*

full of controversy until i retire my jersey

You just can't imagine the joy it gave me seeing basically the only two Cardinals I like - Jeff Suppan and Adam Wainwright - shut down the goddamned Mets. And watching ol' Carlos "Nine Figures" Beltran strike out looking to lose the game... just truly brilliant.

Now, go Tigers.

During the game, there was this commercial for some Herbal Essences color-enhancing product. Having already set back the women's movement a couple decades with that "truly organic experience" commercial a couple years ago, they seem to have decided to take a more race-oriented tack this time around. It starts off with a shot of the back of some blonde's head, so you just see her hair. And the voiceover says something like "Not a natural blonde? Really?" Then, the girl turns around, and - shock! - she's Asian, and as you realize this, a fricking gong sounds. So then the voiceover says something to the effect of "Everyone will believe your parents are Swedish!" and the Asian says "Ja!"

Ooooooooookay.

I was listening to "The Eminem Show" on the way home from work, and as the verse about the FCC not letting poor Shady be came on, I was on Swamp Pike behind a car whose license plate began with FCC. True story.

the king-craft of a meritless crown

This is as good a place as any to make sure I remember Arctic Monkeys, S&M (Metallica, you perverts), Tom Petty, and that FYE doesn't sell Scissor Sisters, those bastards.

I have it on good authority that there is at least one real person in the world, who has my greatest sympathy, with the last name of Assfalk.

Dial-up is slowly eating my soul. This fact has planted in my mind the seed of an interesting, if untested, theory as to how Rick Santorum managed to lose his, and I believe an investigation into his modem history should be commissioned posthaste.

I note that Billy Wagner managed to stop blowing a playoff save halfway through the process tonight, shocking Astros fans worldwide.

If "Astros fans worldwide" is a phrase that made you scoff, I probably don't like you very much.

Speaking of sports, when the heck is Sunil Gulati going to hire a damn coach? I'll do it. I can guarantee that I wouldn't play a single-striker formation in a must-win game - shouldn't that qualify me?

Hi, my name's Zac, and I'm addicted to Gordon Lightfoot.

I'd pay a lot of good money for a windshield that is never anything but perfectly clear. A lot.

Some days I feel I should take a moment to be grateful for Yuengling's relative cheapness here, when it went for about five bucks a glass in Ithaca, if you could even find it. Of course, there's a drastic shortage of Black Forest around here, so I guess it's something of an even trade. (Lindsey would likely point out that my lack of access to Black Forest means I also lack the ability to stain jackets a color that I'll call beer-orange with an ill-timed flick of the wrist, which could be considered a tiebreaker in favor of the Pottsville product).

I've noticed that companies rarely refer to their products and/or services as "cheap"; instead, they are "cost-effective." This is silly.

I never wrote down anything about Germany, and I had intended to. There was a great bit about a huge, hairy German man who I was sitting next to on the Amsterdam-to-Dusseldorf flight, and for most of the flight he just sort of bulked, but toward the end he decided he had to take pictures of the (apparently?) picturesque landscape, by which I mean runway, so he leaned over me in a hairy German fashion and snapped away. I was nearly absorbed. And there was the couple from San Antonio on the way back - likely Spurs fans, which could be the origin of their evil. The wife reminded me, literarily, of Dolores Umbridge; or, more obscurely but more accurately, Mrs. Palk from Over Sea, Under Stone. At first glance you might have thought she was just a sweet mature lady, but then she was downright evil. But it was so long ago that I don't remember how.

What reminded me of that was that there was an American guy on the plane (the one with the hairy German) who was hitting on this German woman, and told her that Yuengling was brewed in Pittsburgh, which is just wrong, but I didn't correct him, because I was rooting for him.

I was so bad at buses in Germany. One time I think I jumped the gun putting my fare in the slot, or something, and the driver apparently thought I was a dumb German instead of a dumb American, because he said something to me in his native tongue, to which I nodded understandingly and replied "Ja." Then I sat down and tried to figure out what he had said. Didn't work. Later, this same driver yelled out the window at a woman who was jaywalking, and I'd swear on a stack of Bibles that he said "DAS IS ROAD!" to her, but I'm sure I'd be wrong, because, you know, German.

And on the train, when Jordan and I took our ill-fated excursion to Dortmund on the second-to-last day that ended up just being essentially a couple of hour-long train rides, there was this group of three or four boys, and it was funny because one of them was so obviously the ringleader. He radiated presence. Kid was probably 11, at best, but he was essentially the Benny "The Jet" Rodriguez of this group. I swear his friends were taking their disputes to him for mediation, looking to him for approval of their jokes, the whole nine meters. Some day he's going to get sidetracked by a girl, and those other dudes are going to have no idea what to do with themselves.

The first night I went for a walk while Jordan was crashing, and this guy drove by with the windows down and the system up, bumping some Britney Spears.

Whenever we walked by Sweden fans, I'd yell "SCHWEDEN!" because that's how they were listed on the schedule I had, and I'd generally get a bemused smile in return, and it just never occured to me that I should be yelling "Sverige!" instead. I'll get 'em in South Africa.

Those little Pepperidge Farm mini Nantucket cookies are really quite good. Crumby, but excellent.

i flirt with every flighty thing that falls my way

Anyone have any idea why Limerick is full of insane drivers who want to kill me? No? Just thought I'd ask.

hey, if that's what you want to do, then suture self

I thought of another good bad-and-good-lyrics-in-the-same-song example - "Your Past" by Home Grown.

Bad:

I'm stupid
And dumb in the brain
And I shouldn't have shouldn't have shouldn't have shouldn't have
Pushed you away

"Dumb in the brain"? Come on.

Good:

I'm biting my tongue
With my foot in my mouth
Kickin' myself
Kickin' myself in the ass

Haha! Clever.

possibly the worst thing about this mark foley scandal?

Dude cannot spell at all. I've never "spirted" in my LIFE. (Transcript here: www.slate.com/id/2150769/ )

I hope he doesn't write his own legislation. "Bee it hearbye resalved that I luve sixtene-year-old boyz."

no other crush could taste so sweet

There's a great line in "Bambi" that I'd totally forgotten about. It's winter, and Bambi and Thumper are skating around on that pond, and then they scurry over to Flower's little snowed-in den type of thing, where Flower's sleeping. And Thumper thumps and yells at him to wake up. So he does, and blinks a couple times, and looks up, and Thumper says:

"Whatcha doin'? Hibernatin'?"

It's out freaking standing.

shakira's hips are a lot like cocaine

Can you guess how?

**

There were some quotes tonight that were fairly without price. A couple examples, neither of which I can take credit for:

1. "Here's the thing about my dick."

2. Setup: "I completely forgot I have Charlie Frye on the bench. Obviously you start the guy who's playing the Raiders instead of a guy who's playing the Bears or the Eagles."
Response: "You know that alphabet thing when you're eating out a girl? That doesn't work at all."

**

Let's talk about songs that manage to have really good and really bad lyrics in them. One example is "Heavy Fuel" by Dire Straits. Here're some awful lyrics, for example:

My chick loves a man who's strong
The things she'll do to turn me on
I love the babes, don't get me wrong
Hey, that's why I wrote this song

I mean, that's just terrible. Now, same song:

Don't care if my liver is hangin' by a thread
Don't care if my doctor says I ought to be dead
When my ugly big car won't climb this hill
I'll write a suicide note on a hundred-dollar bill

That's awesome. How, Mr. Knopfler, can you subject the greatness of the latter stanza to the misery that is the former? How?

I'll get back to you as soon as I can think of another example.

**

I accidentally listened to a little bit of Hannity or something like that today - whatever's on AM radio at 4:00 - and some guy called in and said that this thing with the Mark Foley (R-Fla.) guy who sent sex e-mails to a teenage boy was just another illustration of the pestilent cesspool that passes for Democrats' moral values.

Huh?

Right.

I didn't get it either.