Don't bring me down, gruuuuuuuuuuuuuus

It seems like we've played this song on the Blog before. Yet here we are.

So here is an unexpected thing

Stanley Hudson is Leslie David Baker.

Two chart Tuesday

1. Orwell vs. Huxley

2. Media consolidation

"Too bad."

Just that kind of day.

sadly, the happiest i'll be all day is looking at this...

Black Friday

The latest Target ads show a woman (comedian Maria Bamford, whom I will refer to simply as ‘the crazy Target lady’, as I’ve seen her called in some comments on YouTube) ‘gearing up’ for the approaching Black Friday sales. There are several commercials portraying ‘the crazy Target lady’, most often dressed in red and exhibiting physical strength which she’ll no doubt need to trample on other people while running maniacally through the aisles of Target, maybe for an XBOX Kinect™ for her husband, a Fisher Price Imaginext Bigfoot the Monster™ for her son, or maybe Disney Princess and Me Dolls™ for her daughter. These commercials seem ‘cute’ and ‘funny’, but the subtext is clear: We, the consumers, are insane—and that’s what corporate America is counting on.

‘The crazy Target lady’ is insane, and this is how Target and Wal*Mart and every other superstore we’ll shop at this holiday season views us—mindless consumers willing to harm ourselves and others for a chance to save miniscule amounts of money on things we don’t need to survive. Target and Wal*Mart and every other superstore think the American people are insane, so this is how they portray us in their commercials. And this is in no small part due to the fact that their commercials have pumped this idea into our brains for so many years that this is exactly how we behave. We are insane.

‘The Crazy Target Lady’, or Why You Might Get Trampled to Death This Holiday Season…

BLACK FRIDAY MEANS BLACK METAL

AND HERE'S WHERE IT'S GONE. MORE HIPSTERY THAN THE THINGS CHARLES LISTENS TO.

BLACK FRIDAY MEANS BLACK METAL

AND HERE'S WHAT IT'S REALLY ALL ABOUT.

BLACK FRIDAY MEANS BLACK METAL

my picks are on time despite the holiday so there

Man, I don't like favorites.

Arkansas (+12) at Louisiana State
Georgia (-6) at Georgia Tech
Tennessee (-7.5) at Kentucky
Alabama (-21) at Auburn
Vanderbilt (-1.5) at Wake Forest
Florida State (-1.5) at Florida
Ole Miss (+17) at Mississippi State
Clemson (+4) at South Carolina

Thanksgiving

It's a 3E tradition.

Week 14 picks kind of early because of Thanksgiving

Last week, I went 3-1 straight up and 2-2 against the line. That puts me at 63-10 straight up and 38-35 against the line. Once again for this week, bold to win, caps to cover the line.

Arkansas (+12) at LSU
Georgia (-6) at Georgia Tech
TENNESSEE (-7.5) at Kentucky
Alabama (-21) at Auburn
Vanderbilt (-1.5) at WAKE FOREST
FLORIDA STATE (-1.5) at Florida
Ole Miss (+17) at MISSISSIPPI STATE
Clemson (+4) at SOUTH CAROLINA

Clothes in The Godfather

Every and each year, I take a day to watch The Godfather trilogy back-to-back-to-back. If I manage to do that more than once a year, I feel even better about myself. I've been deeply in love with these films since I first discovered them so many years ago - and every time someone asks me what's my favorite movie (a question that a film critic hears quite often), I never hesitate before answering "The Godfather - all nine hours of it".

[...]

The last time I watched the films, however, I was struck by Kay's clothes.

(Note: the color of her costumes change somewhat dramatically depending of the media: in VHS/DVD, they're mostly orange; in Blu-ray, the red becomes more evident.)

Yes, it would be impossible not to notice her dress when she visits the Corleone compound while looking for Michael (who's hiding in Sicily) - its intense orange/red color basically screams against the grey and the black usually seen on the clothes of her boyfriend's family. And it's pretty clear the idea behind this choice is to stress how distant Kay is from the dark universe of the Corleones.

But if you pay close attention to how Kay's clothes change during the three films you'll realize how brilliant the visual logic of the trilogy is.

Showing a weakness for orage/red tones on her clothing from her very first scene, Kay is always seen wearing costumes dominated by those colors during the sequences in which she's still a single woman.

The Clothes of Kay Corleone

Dam breach

Explosive Breach of Condit Dam

finally

Kentucky (+30.5) at Georgia
Mississippi State (+13) at Arkansas
Louisiana St. (-30) at Ole Miss
Vanderbilt (-1.5) at Tennessee

People name their childern after sardays like this.

for wester

Week 13: we're almost done

Last week, I went 7-0 straight up and 4-3 against the line. That puts me at 60-9 straight up and 36-33 against the line. Once again for this week, bold to win, caps to cover the line. This might be the worst weekly line-up of SEC games I have ever seen.

Kentucky (+30.5) at GEORGIA
Mississippi State (+13) at ARKANSAS
LSU (-30) at Ole Miss
VANDERBILT (-1.5) at Tennessee

Auburn, Alabama, Florida, and South Carolina all play lower-division competition this weekend.

I don't think I've remembered to mention it before, but I get these lines from College Football Locks.

Forever Lazy commercial

This commercial is pretty sad, in a "dumbing of America/Idiocracy is coming true/this is for adults?" kind of way. I'm more interested in it as a reflection of cultural norms and, more specifically, gender construction and heteronormativity. Watching not terribly carefully, I see one woman in gray and another in navy blue, plus the magic transition at the end of the commercial. All the rest (notably every woman younger than about forty) wear pink. No man in the commercial wears a pink one. There is a place out there for an American Studies or Gender Studies dissertation, or at least a seminar paper, regarding how gender roles are construed in mass market, direct-order TV advertising.



Also, if I saw someone wearing one of these in public I would assume that person was retarded, not in a pejorative sense but unable to get it together enough to wear anything else.

Ole Miss futility football

Surely this can't be correct ... can it?

As I watched the Rebels lose by twenty points to Louisiana Tech, I began looking for any reason to stick around in Vaught-Hemingway Stadium just before halftime, as I'm not one to leave games early. After quickly scanning the field and then the stands, and realizing that I would have nothing more interesting to do, I casually glanced at the sign somone on our sideline was holding up at the moment to signal what I would presume was a play call to our players. At that moment, we had the ball on offense, and the signaler happened to hold up a sign that read "T.S."

I joked with the people unfortunate enough to still be in the stadium at that moment that I would bet that wideout Tobias Singleton would be getting the ball.

"Ha," I thought. "Wouldn't that be hilarious?"

Then..... he did. On a speed sweep. No big deal, I thought. I just sorta lucked into that one, right? Then.... we watched the playcalling signs for the rest of the game.

somebody's poorly drawn comic Monday

frankly, i've always had a taste for livin.

METAL MONDAY HAS NEVER BEEN SO METAL

ALSO THIS JUST IN

FUCK MILLSAPS

this just in again

Georgia fans are the worst.

Yelping with Cormac

This is fun: Yelping with Cormac.

Forever 21

Union Square - San Francisco, CA

Cormac M. | Author | Lost in the chaparral, NM

Two stars.

The first woman I been with was a gal named Mabel Rae down in Plano. She was the second prettiest woman I ever did see. I was eighteen years of age at the time and she was twenty one. She was a whore down on Gas Street. I suppose that may shock some folks. Layin down with a whore like I did. But I see these young things on the street everday wearing clothes would of made Mabel Rae blush. Dont seem like progress to me.

Ever time I rode through Plano I stopped by Gas Street to see Mabel Rae. Now dont misunderstand me. The nature of our acquaintance changed when I met Alice. These were social calls. Mabel Rae always wore the same dress and the same hair but the rest of her aged. Plano was a tough town and she took her licks like everbody else. Werent nothin glamorous about it.

When she was about 35 years of age she took to drink pretty good. Started just fallin apart. I aint proud to say I stopped callin. I caint tell you what happened to her. I’m not sure anybody knows.

I like to think of Mabel Rae when she was twenty one years of age. I reckon she’ll always be that age to me.

I TOO WENT 5 - 1 LAST WEEK NOW AM 56 - 12

HEY IT'S LIKE A NUDE BEACH NOBODY COVERS LOL

Florida (+3.5) at South Carolina
Kentucky (+13.5) at Vanderbilt
Auburn (+12.5) at Georgia
Tennessee (+14) at Arkansas
Western Kentucky (+41.5) at Louisiana St
La Tech (-2) at Ole Miss
Alabama (-17.5) at Mississippi State

Week 12 corrected score picks

Thanks to tha Cap'n for clearing this up: I had a score of 53-9 straight up and 32-30 against the line going into last week. Then I went 5-1 and 4-2 last week. That brings me up, I think, to 58-10 overall and 36-32 against the spread.

So, with that out of the way, here are the current picks. This week has some more unusual lines: Vandy is a 13.5 point favorite in an SEC game and an SEC team is an underdog to Louisiana Tech. Once again for this week, bold to win, caps to cover the line.

Florida (+3.5) at SOUTH CAROLINA
Kentucky (+13.5) at Vanderbilt
Auburn (+12.5) at Georgia
Tennessee (+14) at ARKANSAS
Western Kentucky (+41.5) at Lsu
LA TECH (-2) at Ole Miss
ALABAMA (-17.5) at Mississippi State

Georgia Week: Admittedly adorable but that won't save you

SCENES FROM THE MILLSUCKS TALENT SHOW

Top Comment: Imagine if this was the obstacle course for Legends of the Hidden Temple

Universities

Yet American universities also attract ferocious criticism, much of it from professors and from journalists who know them well, and that’s entirely reasonable too. Every coin has its other side, every virtue its corresponding vice—and practically every university its festering sores. At the most prestigious medical schools, professors publish the work of paid flacks for pharmaceutical companies under their own names. At many state universities and more than a few private ones, head football and basketball coaches earn millions and their assistants hundreds of thousands for running semiprofessional teams. Few of these teams earn much money for the universities that sponsor them, and some brutally exploit their players.

At competitive private colleges and universities, admissions directors reserve places in each class for the children of alumni and potential donors; for athletes, many of whom will make less use of their academic opportunities than their classmates do; and simply for those who can pay. And at universities that boast of their commitment to undergraduate teaching, too many professors gabble through PowerPoint slides twice a week and entrust the face-to-face teaching of actual students to underpaid graduate students and Ph.D.s on short-term contracts, who do their best to impart basic skills in writing and quantitative analysis while earning only a few thousand dollars a course.

It’s not hard to see why colleges and universities resist simple evaluations. There are now almost five thousand universities and colleges—both two-year and four-year—in the US. Millions attend them, including around 40 percent of eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-old Americans and a great many older students. Postsecondary education stretches from the tree-shaded Olympuses of the Ivy-plus private group and the imposing quadrangles of the great public universities to urban community colleges that run twelve hours a day, surrounded only by vast parking lots that are never big enough to accommodate everyone. It’s private and public, mass and elite, ancient and ivy-covered, contemporary and cutting-edge. No generalization could do justice to this vast and varied scene.

Our Universities: Why Are They Failing?

HATE WEEK.

THERE REALLY AREN'T ANY OTHER VIDEOS OF MILLSUCKS.

Georgia Week: Not sure how I feel about the "wa ah ah ah" music

hey i know him

Friday links

1. Tebow Tebow comments

2. Annoying sound

3. Doodle Or Die is so fun

Mike Tyson song

bc a guy died

a guy who isn't in this video. but a guy nonetheless.



UPDATE: BETTER!

SEC PICK THEMS POST

by my haphazard and (DARE I SAY) slapdash calculation I'm at 51 - 11 strait up which is xtrakrzy because that's a different total than Charlos's 54 - 9. It doesn't matter. I'm certainly not trying to figger out my ATS reck.

UPDATE: Since Charles won't count I'm going to assume I missed a win.

52 - 11.

UPDATE: Just noticed that Charles's strait up and ATS records don't total to the same thing. Maybe I AM a mere 51 - 11.

UPDATE: 62 games have been picked. I'm going to be the better man and admit that my original 51 - 11 was correct and that other asshole is cooking the books ONE WAY OR THE OTHER.

UPDATE: you've only got 9 losses, bro. EVERYONE, CHARLES IS ONLY 53 - 9.

PICK UMZ

Vanderbilt (+14) at Florida
New Mexico State (+33.5) at Georgia
Ole Miss (-2) at Kentucky
Middle Tennessee State (+20.5) at Tennessee
South Carolina (+5) at ARKANSAS
Louisiana St. (+4.5) at ALABAMA

Week 10 pickums

Last week I went 4-1 straight-up and 3-2 against the line. That puts me at 54-9 and 32-30, respectively, for the season overall. Once again for this week, bold to win, caps to cover the line.

Unlike some weeks, when it feels like the line would be free money (especially for Alabama games), to me this looks like the toughest week yet. If I were putting real money down, this week I would not bet on any games except Ole Miss. Maybe Arkansas.

Vanderbilt (+14) at Florida
New Mexico State (+33.5) at Georgia
OLE MISS (-2) at Kentucky
Middle Tennessee State (+20.5) at TENNESSEE
South Carolina (+5) at ARKANSAS
LSU (+4.5) at Alabama

Mississippi State is playing an FCS opponent.

acc football presents: this just in

Wealth inequality

In lieu of the rule of law — the equal application of rules to everyone — what we have now is a two-tiered justice system in which the powerful are immunized while the powerless are punished with increasing mercilessness. As a guarantor of outcomes, the law has, by now, been so completely perverted that it is an incomparably potent weapon for entrenching inequality further, controlling the powerless, and ensuring corrupted outcomes.

The tide that was supposed to lift all ships has, in fact, left startling numbers of Americans underwater. In the process, we lost any sense that a common set of rules applies to everyone, and so there is no longer a legitimizing anchor for the vast income and wealth inequalities that plague the nation.

That is what has changed, and a growing recognition of what it means is fueling rising citizen anger and protest. The inequality under which so many suffer is not only vast, but illegitimate, rooted as it is in lawlessness and corruption. Obscuring that fact has long been the linchpin for inducing Americans to accept vast and growing inequalities. That fact is now too glaring to obscure any longer.

Immunity and Impunity in Elite America