Blogger, Blogger Everywhere But Not a Stop to Link

Is it possible to become bored with the Internet?

I know I didn't post much yesterday, and I've been working all day today, so I wanted to come home and blog for a bit, just to keep things interesting around here. And I'll tell you, folks, it's kind of bleak out there right now.

In the news, there's all this crap about John Bolton's nomination, but it won't really matter anyway, because GWB will just wait for the Senate to recess and provisionally confirm Bolton himself. It's only temporary (after 18 months, Bolton will require Senate confirmation or lose his post), but it won't really change anything. He'll still be the representative of our nation to the world, holding a post once reserved for a guy like Adlai Stevenson.

And doesn't he think we can tell he's gone gray? I mean, he's let his moustache go. Why not let it all hang out, John? Everyone already hates you anyway and makes fun of the way you look.

And that's only on when they're not talking about confused teens who spell the name Natalie wrong going missing in Aruba. I'm sorry...but don't people go missing every day? Whenever you hear statistics on disappearances, it's always something outrageous, like "one person goes missing in America every four seconds." And now they're acting like if we don't find one white girl in the Carribean, our entire way of life will slowly unravel.

I mean, I feel bad for Natttaalleeeeeeee's parents and all, but this is hardly 24 hour, round the clock, update me every minute kind of breaking news. More like human interest "honey, did you see some teenage co-ed's gone AWOL in the tropics?" kind of news. I'm mainly interested in the story because I'm fascinated by the concept of 124 teenagers organizing a high school trip to Aruba. I nearly shit myself with glee when the honors students at my high school got to spend a day at Magic Mountain, and that's less than two hours from where I lived!

Aruba for a high school trip? There's no drinks with 8 kinds of rum at Magic Mountain! The worst thing that can happen to you is nausea caused by following up five funnel cakes with eight consecutive go-arounds on Viper.

And as if that stuff wasn't dull enough, all the serious bloggers and online journalists are going crazy now about the Downing Street Memo, a British record of an American meeting in which it appears that...get ready...George Bush and Co. may have intentionally exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq in an effort to convince Americans to go to war! OH MY GOD! The very idea of it! Can you imagine! Our President, a man sworn to protect our citizenry and uphold our laws, coldly manipulating the public in an effort to start a war against a sovereign nation without just cause! Why, you'd almost think he was a millionaire doofus, a spoiled and craven pawn in the thrall of monied interests, acting with complete disregard for the health and well-being of both troops in the field and hard-working constituents at home.

And that doesn't sound like the Chimpy I know! Just look at that face!



Now, look at that punim and tell me that's the face of a man who was planning the Iraq War before confirming any intelligence about Saddam's weapon systems and terrorist capabilities? Does that look like someone who'd spread dangerous and inaccurate propaganda, leading a nation into a bloody war without end?

So, yeah, the news is fuck-all in terms of blog fodder today. So I checked in with some other sites and blogs...

There's a new Teen Girl Squad cartoon up at Homestar Runner. It's funny, and I like those cartoons, but I'd always prefer a new Strong Bad e-mail myself.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, because you're not going to that site all the time, I've lost a little bit of respect for you. I mean, I'm not going to actually go ahead and use the word burnout, but you're clearly not keeping up the slack in terms of late-night bleary-eyed Flash animation viewing.

I mean, come on, you're missing out on the greatest single Internet cartoon of all time. The first time you watch it, it's just kind of odd and not really all that funny, but give it a little bit of time. It's surreal, it's deadpan, it has an amazingly large catalog of funny original characters, and most amazingly, it's hilarious without ever resorting to foul language or bathroom humor. And you know me...I LOVE bathroom humor.

The Brothers Chap, who do the entire thing in Flash and do most of the voices, are bonafide GENIUSES, and I can't think of any other person I'm willing to grant that title to based on website content alone. I mean, I read Aint It Cool News all the time, but Harry Knowles ain't no genius. He just knows what mutants will be featured in X3 and I got to keep up on that kind of shit. (Looks like Angel, Beast and Gambit are in, while Nightcrawler, Magneto and Pyro are out.)

Over at one of my favorite blogs, the hilarious Immoderation, blogger Lindsey has come up with this really cool innovation of animating her IM conversations with little avatar pictures. It's a neat effect that I would copy, but it would require way way way more effort that I'm willing to exert on the physical appearance of this blog. I've had the exact same layout and color scheme for all 7 months of Inertia history, and I probably won't change it unless Google goes out of business and Blogger shuts down, or if I get really drunk one night and decide that changing my blog's physical appearance is the only way to patch my life back together.

One of those scenarios, by the way, is far more likely than the other. I'll leave it to you to decide which is which.

Another of my favorite blogs, Random Acts of Violence, hasn't been updated in a few days at all, because blogger Cory got a new job that starts today. I'm sure he's stressed out about it and really busy, and who knows? He may abandon blogging altogether now that he has an active life that includes steady employment. Somehow, the blogosphere will have to get along without links to animations of Darth Vader yelling "Noooooooooooooo!"

Even FARK was kind of boring today. I mean, there WAS this one story about a monkey escaping the San Diego Zoo, but the monkey just came back on its own one hour later. How lame is that? The San Diego Zoo monkeys have become institutionalized; they crave the routine established by their zookeeper masters. It's almost like the monkey version of working in a video store.

Oh, and one more story that kind of bugged me...They're starting a game show featuring celebrities playing charades on American Movie Classics. Okay, that's just dumb, but not really bothersome. The thing's being produced by Hilary Swank and her husband Chad Lowe, and here's where it gets really annoying. In this article, they're talking about the concept of a celebrity charades show like it's the most fucking brilliant, original idea in the world, like this is going to revolutionize the game show industry.

"Out of playing, we realized we had this great group of people who were really eclectic and everybody had such a good time, it was kind of a bonding experience," Lowe said during a recent visit to the show's set, a 5,000-square-foot Manhattan loft. "And we thought, there's so much great drama and comedy and conflict that's happening here, this would make a great show."

Check out this "eclectic" group of people featured in the first run of episodes...

Stanley Tucci, Isaac Mizrahi, Julianna Marguiles, Steve Guttenberg, Rosie Perez, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bebe Neuwirth...

They're all actors! How eclectic! Oh, yeah, and Isaac Mizrahi is just a fashion designer who appears in movies, including having his own documentary. Now that's what I call an oddball pairing! What ever did they all have to even talk about?

"It's not that we're doing a show about charades necessarily -- it's that were doing a show for charity and it seemed like the most fun for everyone," said Swank, who was on the set during a break from shooting her upcoming film "The Black Dahlia." "It's active, there's movement. It's a bunch of people who perform so they get to perform, acting things out."

IT'S CHARADES, YOU IDIOT! YOU DIDN'T INVENT THE GAME, NOR DID YOU INVENT THE IDEA OF PUTTING CELEBRITIES ON TV GAME SHOWS!

How self-involved do you have to be to think the world wants to watch you and your friends play charades every week? What's next?

"Well, I mean, everyone has bowel movements, so it's really relatable, and Chad and I just thought that our famous friends having bowel movements live on television would really make a great TV show! I mean, there's so much inherent drama: Will it be loose or hard or of a perfect consistancy? Does Ricki Lake leaf through a magazine, or does she focus only on doing her business? Does Gary Busey prefer Wet Ones or just plain old toilet paper, and does he take a look at the toilet paper when he's done or just immediately flush it down without sneaking a peek? The fun's in making the discovery, taking the journey," said Swank.

I think I'll end it there. Once you have made-up quotes about celebrities pooping, it's time to call it a night.