3E (unanimously) approves

Autcomplete you?

Autocomplete Me

See if this makes you smarter

Here.

I don't feel any smarter, but I haven't tried very hard.

Iron Bowl

3E wishes you a happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all. Here at the 3E house, we'll be having our holiday specialty.

Reality TV

Nearly everyone conforms to crude, cartoon stereotype (bitch, gold digger, flamboyant gay, recovering addict, sofa spud, anal perfectionist, rageaholic), making as many pinched faces as the Botox will permit, a small-caliber barrage of reaction shots that can be cut from any random stretch of footage and pasted in later to punctuate an exchange. (Someone says something unconstructive—“That outfit makes her look like a load”—and ping! comes the reaction shot, indicating the poison dart has struck home.) Younger reality stars may have more mobile faces, though in time they too will acquire the Noh masks of the celebrity undead. Their range of verbal expression runs mostly from chirpy to duh, as if their primpy little mouths were texting. The chatty, petty ricochet of Reality TV—the he-said-that-you-said-that-she-said-that-I-said-that-she-said-that-your-fat-ass-can-no-longer-fit-through-the-door—eventually provokes a contrived climax, a “shock ending” that is tipped off in promos for the show, teasers replayed so frequently that it’s as if the TV screen had the hiccups. The explosive payoff to the escalating sniper fire on The Real Housewives of New Jersey was a raging tantrum by Teresa Giudice, who flipped over a restaurant table in a She-Hulk fit of wrathful fury and called co-star Danielle Staub a “prostitution whore” (an interesting redundancy), all of which helped make for a unique dining experience and quite a season finale. Good manners and decorum are anathema to Reality TV, where impulsivity swings for the fences.

The usually insufferable James Wolcott on Reality TV

comics I like

PBF doesn't update anymore, which is sad, because it's great. There's still the archives.

frankly, i'd want my cable bill back for the month.

What a bunch of stand-up guys.

The Prisoner

The original one is on AMC's website. Pretty awesome, especially for me since I have not seen the series all the way through. The video has been a little choppy for me, but that's probably more a function of my service provider, which is a comcastrophe, rather than AMC.

Excerpts from Tha Captainz Exploration Journal

...and after that the big cats learned it was better - for their own sake - to leave Tha Captain alone.

Climbing again now. Always higher. Maybe it's the lack of oxygen but it absolutely and completely takes my breath away just to make a feeble attempt to try to maybe half-understand the majesty and the all-encompassing grandeur of the wonder that is these high moors.

An elk. A rare treat. I'm reminded subtly of my tryst in the great Canadian wilderness. I'm downwind of him and his musk is absolutely intoxicating. When I dream it is almost as rare a treat to be able to ride upon the back of such a beast. A twig snaps under my foot as I approach my would-be steed. He wants to run but he can't bring himself to do so. Closer. Closer. I can smell his breath. My pulse quickens. My blood feels as thick as napalm and twice as hot. I reach out. His fur bristles like a million tiny erections. I see a tear form in his steely eye. He knows his death is near but he knows it will not come in vain. I climb atop him. Onward, proud warrior, onward...

Skulled.

Arguing

A public service announcement.

1. A List of Fallacious Arguments

2. 38 Ways to Win an Argument

Nothing to do, nowhere to go-o-o-o

Finish your week right.

Awesome

Saudi women

But unlike most other cultures, daughters also have to contend with constant supervision of their every move. A job that some brothers feel falls on their shoulders. No matter what age a woman is, many families believe that as long as she is single, she is a liability. This translates into horrific intrusions of privacy and personal freedom. In one extreme case, a family I know has no locks on any of the doors including the bathroom doors, so that to insure the daughters cannot seclude themselves and do anything inappropriate; pre-approval of clothing, whether at home or when leaving the house, is common.

A friend of mine once told me she had to sit for over two hours in an uncomfortable position because she had pajama pants on and was afraid her father, who had come early from work, would see them. And this is not only with teenage girls, but also adult women… even divorced mothers. So what’s a girl to do in this situation? Many go by the Arabic saying that translates into “a woman has only three places in this world: her family’s home, her husband’s home or her grave”.

So the majority wait patiently for their knight to rescue them, others commit suicide and a few run away.

The Ideology of Control

Big Ben on Twitter

BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG

It is finished.

klick 2 embiggen!

Literally

Summer learning loss is one of Duncan’s major arguments for reworking the standard school year.

Children, he said, “get to a certain point academically in June and over the summer, they lose that.”

By September, he said, “it’s literally taking a step backward.”

Literally, A Web Log

Redesigned NFL helmets

Here. The ones he does for the Redskins and especially the Patriots are stupid, but the one for the Bucs is pretty sweet:

Different strokes for different folks