And, in a repeat of a line he often repeated on the presidential campaign trail here four years ago, McCain joked about Zsa Zsa Gabor’s sex life…..”I feel a bit like Zsa Zsa Gabor’s fifth husband. I know what I’m supposed to do, but I don’t know how to make it interesting.”

A few feet away, Romney let out an awkward giggle.”I thought we only brought one actor and comedian here today,” Romney told McCain when it was his turn at the mic. “Gosh, that was quite a repartee there, senator. That was fabulous.”  [Yahoo!]

of course what mccain said was inane and not amusing, and there are doubtlessly numerous other articles to cover that. however, that is not the point here, repartee is not just a single (tired, awkward, or otherwise) one-liner, fool! it is a witty conversation between two sharp thinkers, such as the great cafe tableaux on the road show podcasts 2011, not a musty soundbite read from a cue card by a dead man.

repartee : n. adroitness and cleverness in reply –definr

~ they cried ‘let’s roll!’ and the call was answered. this way a supergroup forms from the ashes of the work.group and cafe tableaux and takes the stage to rock the month of march, 3100 times. the ball now rolls – hail hundredwordmarch!

~   if the movie ‘kick-ass’ is true at all to the source material, the tween star will be slicing heads in half and shooting people through the taint, but some fucking pussy choad minlfs are worked up about her saying words that the new york times thinks aren’t mainstream: spoiler alert – ‘cunt’ and ‘cock’?

‘cunt’ isn’t mainstream?  one of the most iconic shows in the history of television, ‘the sopranos’, which i know the times has creamed over, did not let a day go by without helping to put ‘cunt’ a household usage, ex: ‘i’m about a cunt hair away from throwing this text-a-day project in the trash’.

what fucking parent would be letting their kids go see–spoiler alert–humans being chopped in half and burned alive, even if the killer was 18+, but ‘blanch’ at the idea of seeing a 13 year old saying ‘fuck’.  we didn’t have red band trailers when we were 13–back in the 1960’s–to teach us about ‘pecker’, ‘snatch’, and ‘cumguzzling’, but we sure as shit talked about it, as does every kid whose mom works at beliefnet – guaranteed.

about the only thing that ‘makes sense’ in this article ironically comes from a corporate studio:

“It”s really important for people to know what kind of movie this is so they can make an appropriate decision about whether or not they want to see it.” – NYTimes.com.

you mean they don’t want some simple asswipe fuckwit walking into the theater, expecting to see mr. fantastic using his stretching abilities for some gosh-darn zany dancing, surprised upon seeing a comic book movie about a guy whose only superpower is beating people in the face with sticks?

~ to the hundreds of people being interviewed or providing commentary on npr – and likely elsewhere – today, the first indonesian president taking the oath to be a president of the united states is a historic, not ‘an historic’ event.

BREAKING NEWS: Mississippi Democratic primary too early to call, NBC projects

BREAKING NEWS: Some Things Have Not Happened Yet, ABC News reports

BREAKING NEWS: There Is Some Shit That We Don’t Know, CNN believes

BREAKING NEWS: We Do Not Have Anything to Report — CBS News

~ we can’t wait until the texas presidential primary is finished, and the only reason is not just to stop hearing from hillary ‘she voted for the war’ clinton until 2012. what annoys us more than that charlatan is the repeated use of the term ‘firewall’ to describe states that some candidate has to win in order to continue campaigning. we heard it first about new hampshire, but we only found it mildly irritating in the sense that it did not sound nearly as ‘plugged in’ as the person who coined it might believe; we also believed that the phrase would never be uttered again, once hillary ‘nafta was a good idea’ clinton was trounced in new hampshire. however, clinton cried on tv and won enough sympathy votes to carry on. now that every time hillary ‘defense of marriage act’ clinton loses a primary, the next set of primaries become the new set of states that she ‘must win’, ‘firewall’ does not die a ‘quiet death’; it has maintained ‘staying power’ as this season’s ‘must have’ turn of phrase for every npr reporter and politico-blogger. ‘firewall’ is this ‘cycle’s‘ ‘parse‘.

~ In a further demonstration that the Kerry campaign is keeping its ear to the angry red planet for cues concerning the language and salience of its arguments, we have one of our points, posted on an external website:

“Here’s something [Karen Hughes] said post-debate that bugged me on the bike ride home: I heard her say that Kerry didn’t have any plans, he just had a “litany of complaints”. Wow, it is reassuring to know that the Bushes just consider those of us who don’t have jobs are health care are just a bunch of complainers.”
-ashleyGA, 14 October 2004

We compare this with comments made by Senator Kerry whilst he spoke in Tampa today:

“And what does the President of the United States have to say about these out-of-control health care costs that are killing job creation and hurting middle-class families? In the debate the other night, he called these problems “a litany of complaints.”

There you have it folks. George Bush’s answer to our health care problems is to tell the American people: stop whining.”
-John Kerry, 18 October 2004

we would have taken it to the point of using the term ‘whining’ as well, but we did not think that the vast majority of our readers would have appreciated a Coy Howard/George W Bush double entrendre.

~ we have dropped the service provider for this site in favour of the umbrella which hosts sisyphean, from the ground, and a couple of other great sites. we are not about to publicly damn our old host by name, but if you ever thought ‘damn, the service at the angry red planet is crummy; i wonder why?’, and you are about to move into a new host, feel free to ask us, lest you get caught in the same mess. if you want to join the sisyphean [w] umbrella, and you have reason that would compel the work.group to host you, go ahead and petition them for a site; it would help your case immeasurably if you have ever been hosted by the godless red/born 2 lose house.

~ a couple of more terms to add to the list of those that annoy us:

• ‘game on’ – this might have been cute once, at the beginning of the cycle, but it becomes senseless after arbitrary reuse, mainly because ‘game on’ can only occur once. examples: “kerry owned the first debate…game on!”; “act has $125 million to spend on getting out the vote…game on!”; “bush has been busted wearing a wire during the debates…game on!”
• ‘cycle’ – this is too vaguely used in reference to random scenarios that either are already represented by descriptions of length, such as ‘month’, or are so open-ended that they do not cycle. examples: “election cycle”; “contribution cycle”; “news cycle”
• ‘meme’ – we are very interested in the concept of the meme, but we are tired of the enthusiasm with which people repeat the word as a demonstration of the fact that they are keeping up with election tactics. example: “push bush’s impetuousness at the debates to plant the meme that he is an angry jackass.”

~ for those who were unable to peep out the finale of the vote for change tour finale last night, read the following then follow it with a blistering rendition of ‘born to run’

“We remain a land of great promise, but I think we need to move America towards the fulfillment of promises she has made to her citizens; economic justice, civil rights, protection of the environment, a living wage, respect for others and humility in exercising our power at home and around the world.

These are not impossible ideals, they are achievable goals, with strong leadership and the will of a vigilant and informed American people. These core issues of America’s identity are what’s at stake when we vote on November 2nd . And I believe, that Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards understand these important issues and are prepared to help our country move forward. I think they understand America is not always right, that’s a fairy tale for children. As John Edwards said, struggle and heartbreak will always be with us.

But one thing America should be is true, and it’s in seeking her truth, both the good and the bad that we find a deeper patriotism, that we find a more authentic experience as citizens. And we find the power that is embedded only in the truth to change our world for the better. And that’s how our soul as a nation as a people will be revealed and it is what we are fighting for on November 2nd.

The country we carry in our hearts is waiting” – bruce springsteen

~ bush flop [w]

~ we all like to talk about how stupid bush is, but is it really fair? what if the man is suffering from a degenerative disease? obviously, his drug use and alcoholism might be to blame for his mental decline. regardless, it doesn’t change the fact that he is not qualified to serve as president or drive a car, but we wouldn’t want to make fun one someone whose incompetence arises from a disease or handicap, would we? see his acuity disappear in quicktime [mov]!

~ is it really necessary to petition the new york times to confess that its obituary of derrida [w] is unkind? firstly, we all know that the paper has lost its credibility in the past couple of years. secondly, if you are getting a 2200 word obituary in a dandy paper like the new york times, can you really complain? if we get that much press when we are killed, it ain’t likely that we’ll bitch about the particulars of being called ‘frauds’ or ‘talentless hacks’. that’s better than a 3 word epitaph, such as ‘they lived here’.
update: if you want a lesson in the best way to be disrespectfully deferential, see the london times [w] “is derrida dead?…We know only two things. We do not know. And M Derrida is in no position to enlighten us.”

~ reporter: “how do we resolve conflicts between tribes and federal and state governments?”

“Tribal sovereignty means that. It’s sovereign. You’re a … you’re a … you’ve been given sovereignty and you’re viewed as a sovereign entity…….and therefore the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between s…sovereign entities.” -GWBush

hear it for yourself: mp3 or ogg.

~ from the most-humiliating-thing-since-NATO-flew-AWACS -over-USA-after-9/11 department:

“For the first time, a group of experts from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) will travel to the US to observe the presidential election.”

~ from the we-said-so department [+]: back when the public was informed that torture is the policy of the USA, luminaries such president bush and Joe Lieberman were telling us that it is not in the nature of Americans to torture prisoners. even though Americans were torturing presidents; they probably had in mind that our nature is better exhibited by cretins who beat people to death for an x-box. [w]

~ only two days after our suggestion [+] that the decompression of language be applied to trite headlines, george w bush takes the idea to its logical conclusion for the ‘war on terror’:

“The struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies and who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world”

this would almost be a perfect success of the lessons of the angry red planet; however, we believe that gwbush spoke the term ‘conscious’, instead of ‘conscience’.