Seinfeld

I had a sheltered childhood, spending most of my time outdoors wearing goat leggings, digging large holes and making rabbit skin pouches. 

Now, however, I am trying to relive my mispent TV youth by watching stuff that I missed. So when the opportunity arose to watch season one of Seinfeld, I thought I would give it a go. 

I, as most of you will know, am rather fond of all things Apple. I am, however, not so keen on the Mac vs PC advertising campaign. As a Mac user, I used to find myself defending the Macintosh platform against the PC, to people unfortunate enough not to know any better, or too stubborn to switch to a more stable and beautiful platform. 

So for the last few weeks I have been watching Seinfeld and I am really enjoying it, especially when the set is littered with works of art such as the Mac SE (see below)



Apple and Jerry have been pals for some time it seems. See the end of the old Apple ad below.



So it was a great shock read that Jerry's soul has been has devoured by the Dark Side. That's right - starting in September Jerry will be working alongside Bill Gates to promote Microsoft in a new $300,000,000 deal.

The Joy of Tech sums it up very well and this is why I will continue to watch the rest of Seinfled to the end. ClickHere

Au revoir Jerry!

- Philip x

It's Joe

Just over a year and half after announcing his candidacy, on the steps of the of the Capitol in Springfield Illinois, Barack Obama introduces his Vice Presidential nominee, Joseph Biden.



- Mr. Ed

Has it got sharks in it and that?

For the past 4 days Chucktown has been lashed by the outer bands of Tropical Storm Fay, which has been meandering over Florida this past week. Here are some photos of downtown, near MUSC and my 'hood, at high tide yesterday afternoon:




Wearing my wellies to work,

- Mr. Ed

From the Dept. Unintentionally Great Headlines

Via Josh Marshall, from yesterday's NT Times:

More proof, if you need it, that the mainstream media has gone to shit.

- Mr. Ed

~ Political interlude ~

Do not be alarmed P Clubbers - the light-hearted, clippity-cloppity, breying-'n'-neighing fun will return shorty. We now present:

~ Some dull political commentary ~

In response to a reader's comment:

...the essence of Obama's campaign needs to be "John McCain will do anything to get elected."

-snip-

This is short. And it's easy to remember. And it counters McCain's own branding of himself as a Maverick.

Josh Marshall wonders,

"why this point hasn't been hit harder or hasn't caught on more even irrespective of the campaign. Because here you've got a guy who's literally abandoned everything he supposedly used to believe in, all to be president. There really is nothing he wouldn't do."

As if taking a cue, Andrew Sullivan unleashes a ferociously good take down of McCain on almost exactly that tack. Here are a few choice parts, but you'd do well to read the rest.

"In all the discussion of John McCain's recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar? According to the Bush administration's definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.

- snip-

No war crimes were committed against McCain. And the techniques used are, according to the president, tools to extract accurate information. And so the false confessions that McCain was forced to make were, according to the logic of the Bush administration, as accurate as the "intelligence" we have procured from "interrogating" terror suspects. Feel safer?

-snip-

[T]he actual techniques used on McCain, and the lies they were designed to legitimize, are a matter of historical record. And the government of the United States now practices the very same techniques...

-snip-

Now the kicker: in the Military Commissions Act, McCain acquiesced to the use of these techniques against terror suspects by the CIA. And so the tortured became the enabler of torture. Someone somewhere cried out in pain for the same reasons McCain once did. And McCain let it continue.

These are the prices people pay for power.

So where's the Obama surrogate, or the Ad for that matter, hitting this point?

- Mr. Ed

LOL Pols

The current Russian-Georgain conflict, and the confused, ineffectual role the US has played in it, only serves to remind us that the end of Dubya's tenure in the Whitehouse can't come soon enough.

Or to put it more succinctly in a LOLpol:

Image from Pundit Kitchen

- Mr. Ed

Beat This

Dear Clubbers P. I saw a clip of this on Never Mind The Buzzcocks and knew I recognised it from somewhere - Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

When you think of Midland two-tone ska from the late 70s who comes to mind? The Specials, dare I say UB40? Well it seems The Beat have been overlooked. This is my first new purchase in a while and I'm loving it. May I introduce Mirror In The Bathroom by The Beat (AKA 'The English Beat' in the US).






- Scout

Spider Update

For those of you who doubted me, here are some up-close and personal photos of the offending deadly spider - after a thorough killing, naturally. Her mortal remains now reside in a jar that once was used to vend IPTG from a reputable supplier. Her spirit, one would assume, is... returned to whence it came?




Click on photos to enlarge
And now it's time for a poem:

Anywho,
it occurred to me,
recently,
that kharmically,
I'm buggered.

"Why so pessimistic?" you impetuously ask.

Well, in the last week:

I've put my hands under a table, where beneath dwelt a deadly poisonous spider.

I've left my car keys IN THE DOOR OF THE FRIKKIN CAR for 18 hours without my car being stolen.

AND!!!

I've spilled beer all over my computer without apparent damage.

So, if an earthquake-plague of locusts-hurricane combo should strike Chucktown soon, you'll know why...

- Mr. Ed

Ahhhhhhhh!

The other day my mate Erik stayed on my futon, a common enough occurrence apres les bars. When he woke up, he noticed a rather large spider had made it's home under the table, next to the futon. That's why Erik noticed it, he woke up pretty much nose to nose with it. He pointed the spider out to me, and rather casually said, "it's ok though, I don't think it's a Black Widow or anything". Well, it turns out Erik isn't an much of an entomologist, and it most assuredly IS a Black Widow. Here are some rather crap* photos of it.



click on images for a larger view

What's really AWESOME is that I discovered it around half past 12 this evening, so I'll have to wait until morning before I can go to the shops and buy gallons of the strongest insecticides known to humanity. It will die, it will die!

- Mr. Ed


* It was a difficult angle, and yes, I was less than keen on getting very close to the blighter. I'd like to see how close you'd get to a deadly poisonous spider, just to take a photo of it. Well, quite.

Tourjours tunetastique

It's been a while since we've had a P Club tunetastic tune, so here's Devendra Banhart with "Carmensita". As an added bonus, the video features Dev's current squeeze - the ever-gorgeous Natalie Portman.



- Mr. Ed

Bible stories #1

Here's some more from the man who brought you the George Washington song. Brad Neely takes on the old testament and retells the story of Soddom and Gomorrah:

Great stuff, though definitely not very safe for work.

- Mr. Ed

Meanwhile, back at the Daily Planet

Another setback* in the war on drugs. Still you have to admit, if Clark Kent lived in Hove, he'd certainly perch his mild mannered buttocks in the offices of the Argus by day....
"Oh, gee-whilikers, that's headline-writing, Lois..."
"I know Clark, but your swoop-away PonyClub's spotted it before!"

-Bluecupboard, Beigey, and Peggysus


*Of course it is entirely possible that this could refer to actual, real cracking in brickwork, concrete, or even, dare I say it, masonry. Still, an easy and salacious story is what your gallop-about P-Club has always been about. Even as I type this, I'm trying to think of ways to get exotic dancers, the mayor, and a gold-plated elephant bought with taxpayers money, oh the shame of it all into one world exclusive shokka...

Counting: old vs. new

Via Matt Yglesias, here's Feist on Sesame Street:



Not bad, but it's not a patch on the classic:




- Mr. Ed

Quatorze Julliet!

Otherwise known as Bastille Day, to you and me, my pony friends, and in keeping with the P-Club's recent National Holidays Series (see 4th of July- free binder with Part 1) it seems appropriate to roll out that movie moment that can even make us horses wish they were French (and between you and me, that's not without its complications)...



Yes indeed, Rick's bar in ol' Casablanca, and one of the finest moments cinema has to offer...

-l'armoire bleu...

wrong, wrong, wrong,

I think we've all had that experience when the contents of pre-packaged food fail to live up to the golden images presented on the outside of the box, can or carton in the shimmering "serving suggestion". Oh yes, many's the time that your dear correspondant has literally kicked the stable walls with rage after finding that the prepackaged food I had been duped into purchasing failed utterly to come up to the standard of that which was promised on the tin. But no more my dear ponies- now a German website has provided the joy of direct comparison- and frankly my dears many of these things don't look like what they claim... A few things come off all right, but frankly, this ain't right, which ever way you slice it.*

by way of The Guardian

-Bluecupboard

*This may well be the first documented examle of the "Herring Cup", which was something I thought I'd invented, but apparently someone has give the Salmon Cup an even more nautical angle. As I've said before, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong with vinegar on it...

The Fourth!

Looking back through the archives, I see that the 4th went unremarked at the P Club last year. While the double post the previous year (here and here) goes some way to filling our PPQ (Patriotic Post Quotient) it seems apropos to seize this opportunity to celebrate the good old US of A. To that end, why not read the Declaration of Independence - surely one of the most eloquently written invitations to have a war you'll ever read - or at the very least consider the irony of this little snippet:

"A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people."

My first 4th of July in the US (that I remember, anyway) was wayback in 1998. I went to the Esplanade in on the banks of the Charles River to see the Boston Pops. It was a little like the video below, except we were half a mile away from the stage, and they have definitely upped the fireworks/confetti budget since then.



Today, I'm off to West Trashley to grill out ('have a barbie' to all you Limeys) by the pool. So, to wrap up this post, here are some some suitably All-American photos I took at Liberty State Park, during my recent visit to Jersey City/NYC.







DONT TREAD ON ME,

- Mr. Ed

Meebox

Well it's currently minute 47 and Spain are a goal up. I hope you are reading this in a world where they have deservedly finally won a major competition and Germany didn't once again undeservedly win. Oh dear, is Kloser hurt?

Whatever the result I recommend you check out this show. Its where the Songs Of Praise with subtitles clip came from and features Famous Guy & Baddad gives us his take on the Punk Rock revolution. It's by Adam from Adam & Joe (who's podcast I have been enjoying) and is called Meebox.

- Scout

I take it all back...

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama appeared together yesterday in Unity, New Hampshire:



In other news - Come on Spain!


- Mr. Ed

Effing Italy

Honestly, I can't put into words the visceral loathing I have for the Italian football team. It makes me want to hit an italian, very hard, in the face - with a hammer. I know this is irrational; I love Italy, I'm friends with many italians, and it's when I think of hitting them in the face (with a hammer) that I realise how absurd my feelings about their football team are. Nonetheless, all it takes is watching la forza azzurra - in all their greasy-haired, diving ignominy - for half an hour and I'm ready to pull an Atilla the Hun Alaric the Visigoth.

- Mr. Ed

Release the hounds.............

So that you can catch 'Fleet Foxes'. They make beautiful pony music (However they have a little to learn about videos)



Colin