In this Chicago Sun Times piece:

A handful of Kerry's 'band of brothers' are traveling around with his campaign. Most of the rest, including a majority of his fellow swift boat commanders and 254 swiftees from Kerry's Coastal Squadron One, are opposed to his candidacy. That is an amazing ratio and, if snot-nosed American media grandees don't think there's a story there, maybe they ought to consider another line of work. To put it in terms they can understand, imagine if Dick Cheney campaigned for the presidency on the basis of his time at Halliburton, and a majority of the Halliburton board and 80 percent of the stockholders declared he was unfit for office. More to the point, on the swift vets' first major allegation -- Christmas in Cambodia -- the Kerry campaign has caved.

Thirty-five years on, having no appealing campaign themes, the senator decides to run for president on his biography. But for the last 20 years he's been a legislative non-entity. Before that, he was accusing his brave band of brothers of mutilation, rape and torture. He spent his early life at Swiss finishing school and his later life living off his wife's inheritance from her first husband. So, biography-wise, that leaves four months in Vietnam, which he talks about non-stop. That 1986 Senate speech is typical: It was supposed to be about Reagan policy in Central America, but like so many Kerry speeches and interviews somehow it winds up with yet another self-aggrandizing trip down memory lane.

Re: Kerry as a "legislative non-entity," allow me to recycle an old post of mine, about Clinton's regard for that great senator from Massachussetts, John Kerry. Bill didn't have much to say, in fact.

Link via Mark at The Scrolldown.

Posted by: annika at 07:27 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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[an experiment in contemporaneous blogging]

. . . i despise Katie Kouric. i really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really despise her . . .

. . . i just turned the thing on. What's up with the glowing pregnant chick? That shit is straight up weirding me out . . .

. . . Kouric's tone of voice is soooo condescending. She talks down to the viewing audience like we're a bunch of fucking babies. God she's annoying. She almost makes me not mind the short guy. What's his name? . . .

. . . Costas . . .

. . . Interesting that Bulgaria sent an all male contingent of athletes this year . . .

. . . i'm sure the German team didn't mind following the French team in the parade of nations. Germans are very used to seeing the backs of Frenchmen . . .

. . . Cool, no boos for the Americans. But what's up with that music? Is that a techno version of Albinoni's Adagio? Couldn't they have picked a happier tune for the parade? . . .

. . . i've heard from Europeans that we Americans walk differently and we're easy to pick out from a crowd because of the way we carry ourselves. It doesn't matter what we wear, either. i can't put my finger on the difference, but i see it when i look at our team. It's almost like an optimism, if it's possible to exude optimism while walking . . .

. . . Best looking guys so far have been on the Bosnia-Herzegovinian and Irish teams . . .

. . . Italy too . . .

. . . i bet that blue haired Cameroonian chick was pissed when she saw the blue haired Italian chick steal her idea . . .

. . . Del Harris?! What the fuck are you doing on the Chinese team? He's the Manchurian coach! i hope no one shows him the queen of diamonds. Damn traitor . . .

. . . Time for another beer . . .

. . . The Iraqi team got a nice reception too. That's very cool . . .

. . . The Cook Island team wins the gold for having the most fun during the parade of nations. i wanna party with those guys . . .

. . . More blue hair. This time on a Mexican chick . . .

. . . That guy carrying the flag of Mauritania looks like the black dude from Gladiator . . .

. . . The Brits are all dressed like they just came from the Village. (not Shyamalan's village . . . McGoohan's) . . .

. . . The Olympic Stadium really was worth waiting for. It is spectacularly beautiful . . .

. . . But is there anything more boring than an Olympic opening ceremony? Maybe an Olympic closing ceremony . . .

. . . Still, it is amazing when you think that the Olympics were invented in that exact place, three thousand years ago . . .

. . . AθHNA . . .

. . . Now here come the runners, passing off what appears to be the largest fattie spliff ever rolled . . .

. . . Holy shit. At first i thought the dude was using that fattie to chain light the world's most gigantic joint. But then, as the torch slowly began to rise, it's true symbolism became obvious. Those perv Greeks built a huge working replica of an erect phallus! . . .

. . . i think i'm blushing . . .

Posted by: annika at 09:04 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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1 The Aussies have the same walk. I didn't notice it on anyone else, but I didn't stay to the end.

Posted by: Erik at August 13, 2004 10:46 PM (eKeht)

2 i don't doubt that at all.

Posted by: annika! at August 13, 2004 11:38 PM (XUQP4)

3 I was kind of wondering I've heard that thing about how Americans walk before, and I've always thought that Americans walk just like everybody else... But the only "everybody else" I'm familiar with is Aussies.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at August 14, 2004 01:05 AM (+S1Ft)

4 I am not sure if its fortunate or unfortunate - but yes Americans are known throughout the world - immediately. Spot us from the way we dress - to the way we walk - to our fat. You can walk into a crowded club, restaurant - and you can pick us out immediately. Its not optimism. Its cockiness. The only people cockier than Americans are the British. And then there are the Aussies. All British colonies. Sometimes it makes you proud. Sometimes its embarrassing. Especially Americans abroad for the first time. "You know in America - McDonalds is HUGE..." "You know in America - everything is NEWER..." "Thats so stupid - why do Europeans do it that way... In America - we do it this way - and its BETTER..." Shit, you are not in America. Sigh.

Posted by: gsj at August 14, 2004 08:07 AM (ftDX1)

5 my mom said stuff like that when she visited me in England. And she's Danish!

Posted by: annika at August 14, 2004 09:01 AM (fxEID)

6 Here is a difference I have found between American and European women: When you walk down the street and look an American woman in the eye and smile, most of the time (young or old), she will smile back. If you do the same thing to an European woman, she will look at the ground and not change her expression. European women must feel oppressed.

Posted by: Jake at August 14, 2004 11:54 AM (h4tU8)

7 Maybe if your fly wasn't open....

Posted by: Casca at August 15, 2004 05:51 AM (q+PSF)

8 ROTFL

Posted by: annika! at August 15, 2004 06:33 AM (iUHC/)

9 A friend of mine and his wife went on an overseas trip with a group of Brits, and the Brits were openly hostile to my friends, being Americans. They made the trip really miserable for them, and my friends couldn't figure out why. One of the guys actually had the guts to tell them why: "When we first met you, you guys were laughing and having a good time...you were happy. And that really, is annoying." Then he said "Another reason we don't like you is because we do everything first, but you do it better." I can't believe the guy was so candid, but also, so petty in the first place? They didn't like the Americans because "they were happy"??

Posted by: Neil Uchitel at August 15, 2004 12:47 PM (Q+NnP)

10 Imagine being happy while at the Olympics. God knows how long and how much effort it took to actually qualify. As of this writing, Americans lead in the medal count with 39. Not to be cocky, of course.

Posted by: Mark at August 19, 2004 08:17 PM (Vg0tt)

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i've added a new button to my sidebar. Please check it out; i think it's a great idea.

Books For Soldiers is a soldier support site that ships books, DVDs and supplies to deployed soliders and soldiers in VA hospitals, via our large volunteer network.

If you have old, but usuable paperback books sitting around, collecting dust, why not send them to a solider [sailor, airman or marine] for a big morale boost?

Posted by: annika at 11:33 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Regular listeners to Professor Hewitt's radio show are already aware of this story, but i thought i'd reiterate it with some links.

In the recent Colorado Senate primary, the pre-election buzz was that the GOP candidates, Pete Coors and Bob Schaffer, were in a statistical dead heat. In fact, AP repeated this assumption on the day of the election.

Then, Pete Coors won by a margin of 61% to 39%!

Twenty-two percentage points is a pretty decent margin of victory, and while the press avoided calling it a landslide (the Democratic candidate won his primary with 73% of the vote) i would not hesitate to call it just that.

How did the pre-election polls get it so wrong? Were the pollsters biased? Maybe not, the primary was between two Republicans, after all. Were the polling methods faulty? i don't know the details of that particular Colorado poll, but in my opinion, most polls are screwy and inaccurate by nature.

The only polls i put any stock in are Zogby's exit polls, because they've been shown to be the most accurate after the last two presidential elections.

Another problem with poll accuracy is that people who do vote are increasingly less likely to pick up the phone, thanks to telemarketing abuse. i don't think this problem necessarily favors one party over the other, but it does make the raw data suspect. And that requires the pollster to make assumptions about who is being underestimated when the pollster adjusts the numbers for "accuracy."

The point i want to make is this: i think there's a lot more support for the GOP, and specifically for Bush-Cheney, than the pollsters and the media are willing to recognize or admit. Most of the presidential polling is deliberately skewed in favor of the Democrats, in my opinion. (Dick Morris explains how the media accomplish and justify thier biased polling in his book, Off With Their Heads.) i'm not saying the pollsters are lying. i just think they overestimate the amount of Democratic support when they adjust the raw data.

The Coors election shows how wrong the polls can be. The lesson i'm hoping to extrapolate from Colorado is that in this post 9/11 era, polling and voting are two vastly different things. i think people are a lot more serious about their vote when they actually get in the booth. They may support any number of candidates during pre-election polls, but when it's time to pull the lever, i think there's a newfound tendency to lean towards the conservative side.

i'll be very interested to see if my theory holds true in November.

Posted by: annika at 10:46 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Studies Find Rats Can Get Hooked on Drugs

Among the ways to know when a rat's hooked: It keeps trying to get cocaine even when each hit comes with an electric shock.

Intriguingly, 17 percent of the rats met all three measures and thus were considered addicted — while roughly 15 percent of human cocaine users become addicts . . .

Posted by: annika at 09:00 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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MTV.com, a highly respected and perfectly objective news source, thinks that a certain personal lifestyle choice of New Jersey governor James McGreevey's is none of your damn business.

No, i'm not talking about his sexual preference. In fact, i'm sure they're overjoyed that McGreevey has come out of the closet.

But why won't they tell us that he's a Democrat?

Not that there's anything wrong with that . . .

Posted by: annika at 03:56 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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You haven't really enjoyed the song "Margaritaville" until you've heard it sung to the accompaniment of an ukulele.

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In keeping with today's football related theme, i want to share a pretty cool website i discovered. It's called Football Poets, and it deals with that other football, which Americans call soccer, and which i call kickball.

i may sometimes deride soccer fan, but it's an uncomfortable truth that your average hooligan has a lot in common with your stereotypical Raider fan.

Read the following poem, by a poet named simply, Glenn. Tell me if it doesn't remind you of any beloved black hole dwellers you know.

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

He wakes up to the siren of the clock beside his bed,
He rubs his eyes and starts to feel the banging in his head,
It's 8 o'clock on Sunday morn, he's only had five hours,
But he mustn't let his mates down so he summons up his powers.

He drinks a litre of diet coke to ease the dehydration,
Then sets off down to meet his mates at the petrol station,
His lift turns up and they all pile in, squashed and jammed up tight,
The car is filled with smells of beer and curry from last night.

He shouts and swears with all his mates as they change in a cold, damp room,
The boisterousness holds no bounds, it's Sunday in the tomb,
He strides out through the mist that hugs the rutted council pitch,
Up to the centre circle, hand down shorts, attending to the itch.

He tentatively shakes the hand of his foe in black and red,
Then shouts 'tails' as the tarnished coin spins above his head,
He runs, he kicks, he hurts, he spits, his vitriol unchecked,
He courts displeasure of the man, who is in black bedecked.

He leaves the battered field of play, threatening retribution,
Knowing, deep down inside, his worthless contribution,
And afterwards in the bar he's pompous, rude and haughty,
'Cos this is Sunday football and tomorrow he is forty.

He knows his days of mud and blood are nearly at an end,
The paunch that sits upon his belt is now his new best friend,
He'll fill him up with pie and ale until he's fit to burst,
But he will go on drinking to satisfy his thirst.

He staggers off the bus and somehow opens the front door,
He slumps down in the armchair and sleeps three hours or more,
He wakes up to the siren of the ambulance outside
Then cries as he realises, that Sunday football had just died.

Posted by: annika at 04:19 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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i was pleased to see that Cal's football team is ranked in the top 25 on at least six pre-season polls. The latest is a number 22 ranking on Sports Illustrated's poll. SI ranks USC at number one, which is no surprise, but guess which Pac-10 team handed the Trojans their only defeat last year?

That's right, it was the Cal Bears!

Some other rankings are:

• ESPN/USAToday coaches poll: 15th


• Blue Ribbon Yearbook: 11th


• Athlon Sports: 14th


• Phil Steele's College Football Preview: 10th


• Lindy's: 17th


• Congrove Computer Rankings: 18th


• Pac-10 Media poll: 2nd (in conference)

Posted by: annika at 02:02 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Isn't the fact that Kerry pronounced "Genghis Khan" as if it were spelled with two J's enough to disqualify him for sheer annoyingness?

Maybe not. But the full quote, considering the fact that it is a BOLDFACED LIE, is more than enough to disqualify him from getting my vote:

. . . not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. . . .

They told the stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam . . .
[emphasis added]

Whether or not he was in Cambodia or whether he deserved his medals or whatever else he's being pilloried for nowadays, it's the "Winter Soldier" statement that i personally can't forgive him for.

More: Kerry is such a pompous ass, i'm surprised he didn't say "reminiscent of Temujin."

Posted by: annika at 04:50 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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1 He gave as his source for these atrocities a list of “soldiers” that he had talked to. Not one of those “soldiers” had been in Vietnam and most of them had never been in the military. It was all made up. This week Kerry said he got carried away and misspoke. He says this even though there are tapes of him reading his prepared speech to the Senate Committee.

Posted by: jake at August 10, 2004 05:00 PM (h4tU8)

2 What a good sign that your species is going to be so easy to conquer that some of you actually think this Kerry guy would be a good leader. Mwuhahahaha! Dum - dum - dum - dummmmm!

Posted by: Zongo the Ruthless at August 10, 2004 05:45 PM (G5PGV)

3 Here is an example of a bold-faced lie: John Kerry is a great guy. Kerry's lie about Genghis Khan, by contrast, was a bald-faced lie.

Posted by: Xrlq at August 10, 2004 05:59 PM (3AgfD)

4 "But the full quote, considering the fact that it is a BOLDFACED LIE, is more than enough to disqualify him from getting my vote..." Damn Miss Annika, I wonder if Kerry realizes how close you were to throwing your support behind him & how he blew it? I think he'd regret it if he knew you were on the fence till that quote came to your attention.

Posted by: Publicola at August 10, 2004 07:29 PM (Aao25)

5 As a fan of Bush and not Kerry, I have to admit that Bush's butchering of the English language is just as annoying. I can't believe noone on his staff has said "psst, Mr. President, its pronouced nu-clear ... not nuke-cular"

Posted by: Peter at August 10, 2004 08:16 PM (7435K)

6 Peter, why did no one ask Jimmy Carter the same thing? As much as I can't stand him, could it, perhaps, do you think, have anything to do with the fact that he was an engineer on a nuclear submarine, and still pronounced it that way? That's the way the word is pronounced in the South; get over it.

Posted by: Dave J at August 11, 2004 07:08 AM (VThvo)

7 Publicola, are you getting me back for that 2% joke i made? ; ) Dave J is right, Peter. i myself have heard Carter pronounce it "nucular." Like i said about Teddy Kennedy's butchering of the language, Carter gets a pass from the media because he's a democrat.

Posted by: annika at August 11, 2004 08:25 AM (zAOEU)

8 on the first day of nuclear physics ('for the informed citizen,' let's not pretend i'm a smarty) our prof spent forever making sure nobody left that room saying nucular. it's a pet peeve for me too. anyway. annika, i feel the same way. kerry's repeated lies are no misspeak. and he's not denying any of it, or even owning up to his past like bush did over his mistakes. the white house won't take him to task for it because bush didn't serve in vietnam at all and they don't want that to be an issue in the campaign. but the rest of us should not be afraid to condemn such blatant dishonesty. the medals thing is because one purple heart was self inflicted and another was from a rice grain, they were all insignificant and his means of getting out early (after four and a half months). he saved jim rassman when the guy fell from his boat because john kerry was quickly running away from fire instead of sticking it out with the other boats. he's so phony it hurts, and it's not even worth keeping track of all his lies. but his testimony is by far the lowest act.

Posted by: candace at August 11, 2004 09:47 AM (bkDNd)

9 annika, go find the Simpsons clip where the spoiled nephew (?) of Mayor Quimby forces a French waiter to repronounce the word "chowder" over and over. "It's Chow-der, Frenchie, not Chaud-er. . . "

Posted by: jcrue at August 11, 2004 05:20 PM (G9kk0)

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My copy of Hugh Hewitt's book, If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on It, just arrived in today's mail. i ordered it from Amazon because it's been so hard to find in the bookstores.

i went to update my AllConsuming.com account, so that a picture of the book would appear on my sidebar, but lo and behold, i could not seem to access the information for that particular book, despite the fact that 89 other weblogs have mentioned it.

Is it a problem with AllConsuming.com's server, as they claim, or is it something more sinister?

Update: Ha ha, spoke too soon, i can access it now.

Posted by: annika at 01:43 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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When is it going to rain? It's supposed to be over a hundred all week here. i miss the weather in San Francisco. It's sweater weather all year round. i'd love to be there right now.

The A's are still number one. The Giants are struggling to get back on top, and they might just do it since the Dodger's latest acquisition blew a fuse. The Raiders will suck again this year, as will the 49ers. But the Bay Area will be entering autumn soon, and it's a closely held secret that their best weather comes in fall.

Posted by: annika at 12:25 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Happy birthday to James Lileks. Everybody go over there and wish the king of bloggers a happy day!

Oh that's right. He doesn't have comments. In fact, he doesn't even want to be called a blogger. Oh well, happy happy anyway, James.

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This weekend, i finally saw two movies i've been anxious to see for a while. One was awesome, and the other was interesting, but flawed.

The Bourne Identity was the awesome one. i had to pick up the DVD at Best Buy, so that i will be ready to see The Bourne Supremacy next. i'm detemined not to make the same mistake i made with the Lethal Weapon series, when i failed to see number 2 before seeing number three. Seriously, you can't see those movies out of sequence because the existence of Joe Pesci and Chris Rock are not explained and do not make sense in the third one. i was totally confused throughout.

Anyways, i liked The Bourne Supremacy very much. Lots of action, well edited and shot, and Matt Damon is such a cutie. He's so much better than Ben Afflack as an actor. i don't know how they're going to sustain the first movie's interest in the sequel, because a lot of what made Identity good is that the audience knew more than the hero. We knew Bourne's identity, and it was fun to watch him trying to figure it out. Now that he knows it too, i wonder whether Supremacy will be as interesting.

i've heard that the sequel will be about Bourne's getting even. Another revenge movie, like that hasn't been done to death. Now the second movie i saw this weekend, in an actual theater no less, was The Village, by M. Night Shyamalan (or as i like to say: M. Knight Shamalamadingdong). i'd been avoiding all conversation about this movie for some time because i didn't want anyone to spoil it for me. If you haven't seen it, don't read any further because i intend to talk about the secret.

As i watched the Village, i kept wondering what the allegory was. i was totally taken in by the fairy tale quality of the story. Then they had to go and ruin it by injecting reality at the end. They turned a quite charming story into a one punch-line joke. To no good effect, i thought.

In Shyamalan's earlier movie, which i liked a lot better, the one about the kid that sees dead people, he also strung the audience along for the whole movie only to spring the joke on them at the very end. However, in that case, the joke was totally unexpected and caused me to re-think the whole plot for hours after it was over. After seeing The Village, all i did was criticize how it didn't make sense. Plus, i kind of guessed that the village was some sort of "Colonial House," so i wasn't really surprised by the twist.

Posted by: annika at 08:21 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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1 I won't go into details since you ahven't seen it yet, but I didn't think Supremacy was nearly as good. It just doesn't hold together as well.

Posted by: Dave J at August 09, 2004 12:34 PM (VThvo)

2 I agree w/ Dave. I really wanted to like this movie. Lots of reviewers give it a thumbs-up, and it could have been, but the director killed this movie. Hope you like Cinema Verite. Fight scenes filmed three feet away from the actors with a handheld camera. It's nauseating. Picture the scene being filmed inside an airplane bathroom and you'll have an idea of what I'm talking about. Damon was good, though a bit stiff. This may well have been intentional. The best (and by that I mean the most accurate and honest) review was found here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7648-2004Jul22.html Unfortunately I didn't see the review until after the movie. Wait for the DVD.

Posted by: Andy at August 10, 2004 07:15 AM (bpH79)

3 Saw it a couple of weeks ago with my wife. We were well-entertained. The above-referenced "cinema verite" was not overdone, IMNSHO. Whatever you do, be sure to read the original books by Ludlum. The movies stand well by themselves, despite some really significant departures from their sources, but the novels are engrossing reads. Just what you need as a 1L ;-)

Posted by: John Lanius at August 10, 2004 08:33 AM (Hs4rn)

4 I liked Supremacy a lot, and I didn't see the first one. But I also liked the Village, mostly because I didn't have much in the way of nightmares, like I usually do. the dead people movie had me crying to sleep in fear for something like three days. not so great.

Posted by: candace at August 10, 2004 10:51 AM (ysNel)

5 You are too funny. My boyfriend also says "Shamylamadingdong."

Posted by: Amy at August 10, 2004 11:40 AM (RpVKX)

6 It's tangential but I find it amusing, so speaking of Ludlum, I couldn't help but remember the following quote from this piece in the Weekly Standard by Christopher Hitchens: I used to play two subliterary games with Salman Rushdie. The first, not that you asked, was to re-title Shakespeare plays as if they had been written by Robert Ludlum. (Rushdie, who invented the game, came up with The Elsinore Vacillation, The Dunsinane Reforestation, The Kerchief Implication, and The Rialto Sanction.)

Posted by: Dave J at August 10, 2004 02:18 PM (VThvo)

7 Hey, I call him Shamylammadingdong, too! (And I'm not Amy's boyfriend.) I didn't mind the reality intruding on the end. But I minded that he's made the "trick ending" such a device of his that you end up focusing on it. I had it figured out before the movie, then I thought, "nahhhh, it can't be that easy," then I was really getting into the movie itself, but every once in a while, I'd be like 'naaaaaahhhh, it can't be that easy." Then it was. Then I threw down my popcorn and said, "Damn you, Shamydong. Damn you to hell!"

Posted by: ken at August 10, 2004 08:32 PM (TbHM4)

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Kenneth Timmerman's The French Betrayal of America is not on my personal reading list, so i'm grateful to Neil Uchitel for doing the reading and the reviewing so i don't have to.

. . . Timmerman shows how this inability of Europe, and especially the French, to wield power has made them pursue 'morally superior' means of checking AmericaÂ’s uncontested power. This is why Dominique de Villepin gave his speech before the U.N. stating that under no circumstances would France support AmericaÂ’s push for war. Not only did France have billions of dollars to lose from their oil contracts with Iraq . . . but it could simultaneously cover this hypocrisy and its inability to keep any rogue power in check (like their failure with the Serbs), but also keep itself among the power elite by morally upstaging America.

i'm anxious to see if the Timmerman book addresses whether Europe and the French government's coddling of extremist Islam is also part of a strategy to counter-balance America's military and economic advantage.

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i have one week left before law school orientation week begins.

Excitement!

Posted by: annika at 08:48 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Just a blurb on the nightly news to most of us? Twenty seconds of footage and then on to the next story? Hell, i'm just as guilty of it as anybody -- taking for granted what our guys are going through over there. Back here on the home front, we're so easily distracted by the election follies. We're bored. We have short attention spans.

Ironically, the mainstream media, often criticized for sensasionalizing the news, is partly to blame. Stories like this seem so sterile, mundane. Oh no, more fighting, we think. A soldier died. Damn, we were going good there for a few days. Maybe we say a prayer. Maybe we don't. Either way our ass is still on that comfy couch while it's someone else's in a sweat soaked DCU.

But then a blog like CBFTW's will jolt me back to reality.

I'm not going to lie, I didn't want to go back. Fuck that shit, I don't want to get killed. That was the last place on earth I wanted to be. I was scared to death. But we had to go back, and we did.

And thank the United States Army and Marines.

Via Blackfive, who else?

Update: The story is much more personal for Sarah.

Posted by: annika at 03:34 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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That line works much better with the visual aids.

Picture nabbed from INDC Journal. Read about Kerry's football faux pas there.

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Who is this guy Bronco Bomber everybody is talking about? Sounds like a wrestler to me.

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i've been critical of Paris Hilton in the past, but no woman should be hit, if indeed that's what happened to her.

The longer Paris Hilton remains silent on the cause of her two black eyes and that cut lip, the worse it's getting for boy band singer Nick Carter.

While Carter and his attorney continue to strongly deny the singer had anything to do with the reality show star's injuries, the rumors of an ugly altercation between the couple -- perhaps when the hotel heiress dumped Carter -- continue to circulate in Hollywood and New York.

Carter, well known for having an extremely short fuse and anger-management problems, is said to be close to a breakdown, brought on by the negative publicity splashing him across the front pages of every supermarket tabloid in the country. Music industry sources also say Carter's career -- which has been built on a "good guy image" -- could be hurt unless this story is quickly buried.

*A new report from the syndicated TV show "Extra" claims Hilton's injuries were caused during a catfight in a Los Angeles nightclub with 'a renowned Hollywood party girl.' Hilton's publicists have denied that story outright.

i have no way of knowing whether they've been photoshopped. On the one hand, i can't understand why Paris would leave the house and be seen in public with marks like that on her face and arms, assuming the pictures haven't been embellished. But on the other hand, maybe she wants everyone to see what a certain bastard did to her.

Posted by: annika at 09:37 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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