I think this is the first time that reading a book has made me want to watch a tv show.

I’ve read books and wanted to see them made into movies, but I don’t normally watch a lot of television. Still, I might have to make an exception for Justified, the show based around Raylan Givens. Givens appears in Riding the Rap, Pronto and Raylan.

Raylan Givens is a former coal miner, now a U.S. Marshal. You get the distinct impression that Givens is not quickly climbing the career ladder at the Marshal service — he seems a bit too out-spoken and he has a tendency to go off in his own direction, rather than following directions he’s been given. He gets good results, especially since he’s assigned to his old stomping grounds:

“The troopers got a kick out of this marshal, at one time a coal miner from Harlan County but sounded like a lawman, his attitude about his job. This morning, they watched him enter a fugitive felon’s motel room without drawing his gun.” [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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One of the things that binds loose collectives of malcontented malevolent dissidents, anarchists and engineers and intellectual dilettantes like blog writers is our general aversion to the impact of the totalitarian mind on life, language and discourse. Particularly when afraid — when they’re afraid, they come unglued with weird explanations of events…Orwell could have had fun with that realization because it is when under pressure from the unknown that the basic spiritual bankruptcy and ontological void that is the totalitarian way becomes most obvious. Case in point, China.

Now, China has the potential to explode at any time. [Read more →]

Tags: black helicopter watch by Mike Farrell
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As the vast majority of Americans have never been polled, so the vast majority of Americans have never made their viewing or listening habits public knowledge through the ratings systems. In radio there is Arbitron and in TV, the Nielsens. The politicians and their staffs live and die by the polls as the professional talkers go on air and off by the ratings, just ask Keith Olberman (if you can find him). The dealers in brouhaha, have a moist, delicious controversy on their plates. The most coveted delicacy, a Rush of Limbaugh seems to be within reach of their forks, knives and fingers. Who could expect them not to tuck in? The implements for cracking the shell and exposing the delicious Limbaugh underneath are many but one is foremost. The ratings and for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks and Mitt Romney is hurtling towards Washington; it’s where the money is.

A Cenk Uygur is on the case. Heck, they all are, but this character who could not reveal his Easter Island head in public if we didn’t know where Mohammed Atta is, shows up foremost on Bing. Statistically you are unlikely to know the name as this Delta smelt of media barely registered in the ratings system when he was on MSNBC of which you may also be blissfully ignorant. The Young Turk has landed on his feet after being replaced by Al Sharpton. He has, like Olberman and Algore, carved out a place for himself on the internets at CurrenTV, from which perch he assails Limbaugh’s much vaunted audience claims as phony-baloney, plastic banana, good-time rock ‘n roller codswallop. Since this is an attempt at media nose-punching we should weigh in the contenders. Uygur asserts that he and Limbaugh may well be in the same class. He refers us to his youtube channel where, at my viewing, nearly all the vids have almost exactly 300 pageviews with one exception. His manly challenge to Rush has ten thousand. [Read more →]

Tags: money, trusted media & news by Ken Watson
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Professional football is a violent game. No matter what rules the league puts in place, that basic fact will remain. The NFL can, should, and will continue to legislate the game to attempt to reduce injury, particularly the long-term variety, but in the end, a game that involves huge men tackling each other is going to be dangerous. When a team actually rewards its players for injuring opposing players, then, you can be sure that things will get ugly quickly. This week, the NFL revealed details of a “bounty” program that was in effect for the New Orleans Saints during their Super Bowl season of 2009, as well as the rest of the tenure of former defensive coordinator Gregg Williams. Players were given off-the-books bonuses for hits that knocked opposing players out of the game. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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10. When you call in sick, it doesn’t involve nearly as much playacting

9. You can get drunk on NyQuil even if you’re underage

8. When members of the opposite sex avoid you like the plague, you can blame the flu

7. You can catch up on your daytime soaps

6. The show “Working It” almost seems kinda funny when you’re delirious with a fever

5. When you’re rude and obnoxious, you have a good excuse

4. You like it when people say you’re hot, even if they’re only feeling your forehead

3. When you call into work, it’s nice to tell the truth for a change

2. You get such a kick, secretly licking the dinner plate of people you hate

1. You can lay around in your jammies all day and not look like a lazy slob
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, health & medical by Bob Sullivan
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In the 2008 election my bedrock, must satisfy requirement was fulfilled; not John Edwards. In like fashion it seems low expectations have paid off, my one absolute necessity, that Mitt Romney NOT stroll to the nomination like a frat boy into the Student Body Presidency has also been fulfilled, or will be so if a Super Tuesday triumph can be denied him. Triumph or even Victory have proven to be terms as slippery to the Romney camp as is was to Bill Clinton. Iowa was a crowning, crushing Triumph! until it was a narrow defeat… a tie, really, if you look at the stats. New Hampshire was a solid win but the trumpets blew briefly. Somehow Romney’s resident gunslingers had talked around the fact that Primary wins where you are expected to win, had better be crushing or they are losses just as narrow losses where you are expected to lose also have a point-spread. Team Romney never thought they would have to engage in such PR gymnastics. As modest an achievement as it may prove to be, still it has been worth it to muss up the princeling’s hair while we may do so.

It is not quite time for fatalism. Even casual observers have had Romney’s inevitability driven into their psyches by the blathering jack-o-lanterns. Nearly all of Mitt’s street-level support seems to be based on this assumption masquerading as a truism; He can win! Electoral Determinism is the frontrunner’s friend though it seems to be no one else’s. On the theory, possibly mistaken, that no one can predict the future, I resolve to take the tiniest bit of electoral action, subsuming my judgement, my apprehension and my gag reflex beneath a mantle of desperate tactical calculation as cold as a bone chisel. I propose to vote for Newt Gingrich in the upcoming Georgia Primary. [Read more →]

Tags: money, politics & government by Ken Watson
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These are thoughts I’ve addressed before … but somehow they gained a new relevance for me, a new perspective after Rick Perry – our state’s governor – tossed his hat into the ring, seeking the Republican party’s nomination for President of the United States. And while that candidacy has long since come and gone, some of its impact still resonates within me. More than once Governor Perry used the states’ rights (some would say ‘secessionist’) rhetoric that has endeared him to so many here in the Lone Star State, encouraging that ‘Austin versus Washington’ or ‘Texas versus the rest of you guys’ attitude that still has its staunch defenders.
[Read more →]

Tags: diatribes, politics & government by Jeff McDonald
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Tags: politics & government, trusted media & news by Alexander Thorburn Hoffman
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