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Month: May 2005

Posted by Kevin Smith – 5/21/05

I guess my big problem with this article is the subtitle:

The Muslim holy book isn’t just a “bible.” It’s far more sacred than that.

What’s Woodward saying about the Bible? Hopefully that lowercase ‘b’ has some intention behind it…

I prefer this guy’s opinions instead. In his piece, there’s this:

The Saudi government does not even spare the Quran from desecration. On Oct. 14, 2004, dozens of Saudi men and women carried copies of the Quran as they protested in support of reformers in the capital, Riyadh. Although they carried the Qurans in part to protect themselves from assault by police, they were charged by hundreds of riot police, who stepped on the books with their shoes, according to one of the protesters.

Toilets, shoes, whatever. You don’t see the whole Muslim world getting pissy about that event. Could it be that those rioters used the alleged U.S. desecration of the Quran as an excuse? Gasp!

Border Watchers move in for local action

Posted by Kevin Smith – 5/20/05

I heard on the news today that the border watchers (you know, those violent vigilantes down in Arizona that are out to get Mexicans) are planning an outing here in the hills of East Tennessee. Their plan is to crack down on companies that hire illegal immigrants. Good for them, I say. What’s the official US position on these guys?

The US Boarder Patrol says they’ve never endorsed the activities of the Minutemen in Arizona, stressing that it’s the Border Patrol’s job to catch illegal immigrants.

Ha, ha! Did everyone catch that last part? Why, give ‘em a raise then! Sounds like everyone’s doing a bang-up job down there!

FAIR estimates there are between 10-12 million illegal aliens residing in the country in 2005. According to the Census Bureau, there were an estimated 8.7 million illegal aliens living in the United States in 2000. According to the Migration Policy Institute, roughly 500,000 illegal aliens are added to that population every year.

Catering to an entire population that’s broken the law probably doesn’t help deter, either. And though the effect of turning down illegals for bank accounts was unanticipated, seems like a lucky side effect to me.

Of course, I’m sure if this blog were popular enough I’d get nasty comments about those legitimate Mexicans sending money back to Mexico. I’m not talking about those 12 people; I’m talking about all the fence-jumpers. And frankly, we can’t do anything effective if we’re just sitting around trying to decide how to avoid offending criminals. I don’t care how nice they are, they’re breaking the law. There’s reasons we require documentation of people in this country, and when you’re without it, it causes problems. What’s the problem with documenting yourself, anyway? If you love America so much, become a citizen! What’s that? Taxes? Yeah, those are a bitch. They pay for things like health care, which you are apparently quite familiar with. (Anyone else hear that big sucking sound?)

It probably doesn’t help that the Mexican government has published the Border Crossing for Dummies brochure. (English version)

It all comes down to politicians wanting the Hispanic vote. I guess if the constituency were large enough, anything would be okay.

Clueless in the blogosphere

Posted by Kevin Smith – 5/19/05

Wow… how did I not notice that Glenn linked to me? Well, here’s a belated thanks for the instalaunch!

ABC Rewrites History… twice

Posted by Kevin Smith – 5/19/05

I guess ABC thought they could quickly remove the historically inaccurate tag from this story, but thanks to the technology of Google, even when they rewrite their own history it can be caught. I found the Google cache of the original story (click for an actual-size image):

ABC Goof Screenshot 1

And here’s the poorly corrected version:

ABC Goof Screenshot 2

Notice the lack of any sort of editing notation? Transterrestrial Musings has more…

The cat's right out of the bag…

Posted by Kevin Smith – 5/18/05

Alright, these are the only easter eggs I’ve found on the Seinfeld Season 4 DVD set.

1) On the first disc under the ‘extras’ menu, highlight ‘Regis & Kathie Lee Parody’ and then move the cursor up one. A birthday cake will appear, and it’s basically the cast singing “Happy Birthday” to someone.

3) To reiterate, on the third disk, in the ‘extras’ menu when ‘episodes’ is highlighted, move the cursor up one position so that the piece of trash is highlighted in orange. The featurette is called “Much Ado About Nothing”, and it recalls the fuss Julia Louis-Dreyfus had with Tom Arnold and Roseanne over a parking space on the set.

4) On the fourth disk, click on ‘episodes’ and then highlight ‘extras’. From there, move up once to show the oil gauge with a circle and a line through it. It’s apparently an out-take with Bob Balaban (the “President” of NBC), and writers Larry David and Larry Charles.

EDIT: I just found that stanthecaddy already had me beat.

Easter Egg on Seinfeld DVD!

Posted by Kevin Smith – 5/18/05

I think I may have found the first easter egg on the Seinfeld Season 4 DVD set. It’s under special features on the 3rd disk. When ‘episodes’ is highlighted, move the cursor up one position so that the piece of trash is highlighted in orange. The featurette is called “Much Ado About Nothing”, and it recalls the fuss Julia Louis-Dreyfus had with Tom Arnold and Roseanne over a parking space on the set.

Posted by Kevin Smith – 5/16/05

And hat tip to my sister for reminding me that high schoolers do, in fact, operate on a level of unprecedented superficiality. Oh well, we were all there once. Actually, I’ve got friends who still think they’ve met ‘the one’ every time a cute girl passes by. What’s her name? Oh, that’s insignificant.

…we gonna let it all hang ooooout

Posted by Kevin Smith – 5/16/05

The plan right now is to be at Walmart at 12:01am to pick it up. They’ll let me get it then, right?

Posted by Kevin Smith – 5/15/05

Hat tip to Craigums for this juicy little bit of irony.

Posted by Kevin Smith – 5/15/05

I know he was just quoting, but Glenn might want to take a look at the Cannes Film Festival site’s information on Kilomètre Zéro. It seems the director sees the film as apolitical and the lead actor is anti-war.