Insomnia bites.
free winamp nokia 6681See also the Insomniacs' 4 a.m. Rule.
John Derbyshire looks at news reports from an alternate reality in which the War on Terrorism was actually being prosecuted as an actual war:
Berlin, Germany; Sept. 20. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has formally protested the Defense Department's "scorched earth" policy in evacuating U.S. bases from German soil. The evacuations were, the chancellor asserted, carried out "in too much haste," adversely affecting the economies of local communities. He also claimed that the dismantling of the bases had been "too thorough," and "destructive." The chancellor especially objected to the policy of plowing over the sites of the bases and sowing the ground with salt. Asked for a response to Chancellor Schroeder's remarks, Defense Secretary Colonel David Hunt said: "Bite me, Adolf."Heh.
There's plenty more. Read the whole thing.
Matt Margolis thinks not, and proceeds to dissect Dean.
Did I say "dissect"? Sorry - he vivisects Dean.
With a chainsaw.
About a month ago, I wrote
whoever put the DVD version of Zulu on the market needs an assegai stuck squarely into his chest.I wasn't kidding.
Zulu, for the uninitiated, is the story of the Battle of Rorke's Drift. Told with the usual in-filling of artistic license, the film nevertheless conveys a pretty good picture of the battle, 22-23 January 1879, in which some 150 British soldiers held off about 4,000 Zulu warriors, forcing them to withdraw with heavy casualties. Redcoats of the 24th Foot, a mostly Welsh regiment, were awarded 11 Victoria Crosses for the action.
[By way of comparison, only four men received the Medal of Honor for the D-Day landings at Normandy. And yes, the British are notoriously stingy with the V.C. - in 1879, there was no allowance for posthumous awards, for instance.]
The DVD release of Zulu which I had was put out by some outfit called Diamond Entertainment. I bought it because it was the only DVD release available in 2000.
It profoundly sucked.
In every way a DVD could be awful, this one was. My heavily-worn VHS copy from 1988 was better than that craptastic DVD. Extra features: nonexistant. The video quality was appallingly bad, as though someone had videotaped it off a screen in a theater - complete with "pan and scan". The sound was equally bad - a particularly awful flaw for a movie so heavily reliant on singing.