I have bought a new fedora.

And blogged to such effect, herein!

(Huzzah.)

 

 

You can find more at his website. All equally awesome.

(And, yes, as a comics fan, my first thought was "Cool! The Question!")

And "paranormal" is defined as "stuff that is totally NOT normal"...

"Normalnoia" is defined as "the perfectly rational belief that someone is out to get you".

As in "Ever since that serial killer moved in next door, he's had a real case of normalnoia."

Not to be confused with that old chestnut, "You're not paranoid if they're really out to get you." If they're out to get you, but there's no real reason to suspect it, you're still being paranoid. You're just paranoid and lucky.

You're only being normalnoid if (a) you think they're out to get you, and (b) they're out to get you, and (c) the reasons why they're out to get you are inherently obvious.

Another example: You may be normalnoid if you are a klansman dancing the funky chicken on stage at the NAACP Image Awards.

Mental health experts are still researching the possible existence of normalnoid schizophrenics -- people beset by a mental illness that causes them to hear voices in their head that precisely correspond to the thoughts that people are contemporaneously thinking about about them.

If you should encounter any of these normalnoid schizophrenics (or "X-Men" for short), please invite them to join your special school and train them to fight supervillains and/or intolerance.

And/or chicken-dancing klansmen.

So... Um... Now what?

Look, I'm not any happier than you about where we are right now. We seem to have handed the political debate in this country over to the most hysterical elements of the Regressive Right.

And last I checked, they lost ten months ago.

You can blame the Obama administration all you want, but that won't get us equal rights or energy independence or universal health care.

So let's be practical. Why did Obama win last November:

1. he's awesome
   
2. we worked our butts off for him

We raised money. We organized. We showed up. We were, to borrow a phrase, both fired up and ready to go.

And, yes, we elected a President. Yay, us! But then what did we do? Well, not much.

The big fights are still ahead of us. But a general can't win a war without his army behind him.

So this is what I propose:

Whatever you did during the election, you do it again on health care.

Did you donate some money? Did you attend a rally? Did you go door to door? Did you wear a button or a T-shirt or put up a sign in your front yard?

Did you simply take a loved one aside and tell them, “This one matters”?

Whatever part you played, however big or small, it's time to play it again.

The grass roots movement in support of Barack Obama during the 2008 election was the largest, most successful grass roots movement in human history. We can do it again.

It's time to show the Discordant Barkers of the Right what Sixty-Two Million Part Harmony sounds like.

Remember: Whatever you did, do it again.

Yes, we can.

[Please feel free to link to or repost this message anywhere and everywhere. If you tweet on this, please use the hash tag #yeswecanagain.]

• This wknd office moving uptown; tomorrow I will climb tiny go-nowhere ladder in office hall to ceiling; terrified/excited.
  
• This Saturday National Drew Cleans Apt Day. To participate, exist as I get off butt and clean.
  
• Think @pennjillette wants to tax people living on poverty line at some rate as Bill Gates. WTF?
  
• Mmmmmmmmm, this is good soup!
  
• "So You Think You Can" is a trending topic! Yay! It's my favorite train-based reality comedy too!!!

(Sotomayor's family is Puerto Rican.)

The rhetoric from right-wing Conservatives is that Sotomayor's minority status will bias her rulings. This claim is based largely on a lecture Sotomayor gave in 2001 in which she argued:

"[A] wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

While the full text of her speech puts this claim in a broader context, the best way to understand how Sotomayor's feelings about race might influence her decisions is to look at previous decisions she's rendered from the bench.

Today, we will examine her dissenting opinion in the famous U.S. Court of Appeals Second Circuit case "Jets v. Sharks."

Not to be confused with boycotting ("not buying stuff on principle") or manicotti ("a delicious stuffed pasta").

Used in a sentence: "I will be mancotting AMC's fake IMAX screens from now on, not because I'm upset with their business practices, but because they're a major rip-off."

Mancotting is strictly superior to boycotting, because:

1. it indicates a harsh but essential understanding of the need for moral compromise in this sad, tumultuous world

2. it totally has the word "man" in it

I walk down Prince Street to get there, where I recently discovered the Kidrobot store. (The website verges on pretentious, but the storefront is unapologetically nifty.)

I also discovered a peculiar series of signs labeled "DANGER HOLLOW SIDEWALK." Ha ha ha! Isn't that cute? "DANGER HOLL--" Wait? WHAT???

But everything else? Every other shock, twist, and revelation?

Ka-spoilered.

That said, I'm still really, really excited about this movie. Not because I have any particular attachment to Star Trek, but because I'm a huge, huge, HUGE fan of Mission: Impossible III.

No, seriously.

That said, it is also true that I am a massive geek, and I do have one massive geek bone to pick with JJ Abrams. (That sounded less icky in my head.) Now personally, I don't care about the angle of the ship's nacelles or how many digits should proceed the decimal in a Federation Star Date or even whether the insignia for the Reliant is the same as the insignia for the Enterprise.

(ANSWER KEY: 37º/5/NO!)

What I do care about (in a pretend-funny-outraged way) are the sideburns...

A half hour after sunset, Red Dave shambles through the door with the paper sign that reads “Mort Finkelstein DDS.” He is inconsolable. The lights are out, and because this is not really Dr. Finkelstein’s office, there is no one at the front desk.

Red Dave is pale, thin, dressed in all black, making no effort to conceal his vampire-ness. He finds Dr. Finkelstein--“Call me Mort.”--in Exam 3.

Mort is short, stocky, Jewish, and brownish-green from rot. He may be some kind of a zombie. No one is too sure.

I should say that I have a natural aversion to RFIs (Recurring Forced Interactions), be they with receptionists, security guards, deli clerks, or guys who sell you newspapers. If I have to talk to you every day, it's going to start to wear on me after awhile, because -- even if you're the nicest person in the world (i.e. Jim Gillstein of Blue Ridge, North Dakota) -- there's going to come a day when I don't feel like talking.

You can follow my outbursts via the feed in the left hand nav or directly at http://www.twitter.com/drewmelbourne.com.

If this goes well, I may consider starting a Facebook page. Or buying a VCR.

National Should We Go Back in Time and Kill Hitler as a Baby? Day
 

As you may or may not know, Adolf Hitler was born 120 days ago today. And what better way to acknowledge the birth of one of history's most horrific mass-murderers than with a holiday devoted to considering the ramifications of building a time machine, travelling back in time to the day of Hitler's birth, and suffocating him in his crib?

Consider the moral implications!
Is it ever right to kill a child, even if you know he's destined to one day commit genocide?

Consider the risks!
Is it possible that klling baby Hitler would lead to the rise of an even greater evil?

And for the love of all that's good, consider the paradoxes!
If you killed baby Hitler, adult Hitler would never have existed, so how would you have known to go back and kill him as a baby?

Ah, NSWGBITAKHAAB? Day! The only holiday that asks us to consider whether if, by snuffing out the life of an abhorent proto-dictator, we might inadvertantly tear a whole in the fabric of space-time that could destroy the entire universe*.

Take that, Arbor Day!

Songs, activities, and in-questionable-taste merchandise to follow.

 
(*Still totally worth it.)

Apparently they've made the decision that, because of the volume of piracy current going on in the RPG industry, they will no longer be selling PDFs copies of any of their books.

It saddens me to say this, but as a result of this decision by Wizards of the Coast, I will no longer be buying any more Dungeons & Dragons products.

Zero. Nada. I'm done.