Instapundit has up a post to a Democratic Underground thread in which one of the (uncharacteristically sane) posters takes his fellows to task for what they were writing about the Iraqi elections. Here’s one of the Moore-esque comments that drew his ire:

“I had to turn off CNN because they kept focusing on the so-called ‘voters’ and barely mentioned the resistance movements at all.”

What a fucking knucklehead.

The “resistance movement” he speaks of is a group of terrorists who turned a kid with Down’s syndrome into a suicide bomber to murder people waiting in line to vote.

To all those who hold these terrorists up as some sort of pop-revolutionary ideal, I have two words for you: FUCK and YOURSELF.

A patriot is a man like Abd al Amir, who selflessly tackled a suicide bomber, giving his life to save scores of his fellow countrymen.

Forgive me the harsh language.

(AP story on the DS bomber from Second Breakfast)

The web browser I usually use is Firefox, but my office computer at work uses IE6–which is a piece of crap.

At some point last week, a malicious webpage or something or other somehow modifed my registry so that opening a link in a new window makes the resultant window very small and offscreen. Super annoying.

Repairing the hack is easy, and thought it worthy of sharing in case this happens to any of youse.

The STL Post-Dispatch is being bought by Lee Enterprises, which already owns the Decatur Herald & Review, a newspaper whose sports coverage I’ve been thoroughly impressed with over the course of this basketball season. Lee seems like a very well-run company, and the P-D should improve over the next few years.

A cigar is in order:

Congratulations due to wee Eleni Politis’ mom and pop, and wishes for a speedy recovery for all three.

Coverage available at Friends of Democracy.

More at One Hand Clapping, where I also got the above link.

Update: It’s funny ‘cuz it’s true!

I feared for a hangover loss today when the Illini faced lowly Minnesota at home with over 300 former players, coaches, and staff in town to commemorate the 100th year of the Illinois basketball program. Adding to the possibility of a let-up is the big road game against Michigan State on Tuesday that the players might have been looking ahead to. Fortunately, Illinois dominated from the start and won handily, 89-66. Quite a relief.

According to this article in the Post-Dispatch and this one at the official Cubs site, the Cubs are very close to dumping Sosa off on the Baltimore Orioles. It sounds like one of those too-good-to-be-true stories though: Sosa would agree to void the last two years on his contract (which would have been club option years if he isn’t traded) and the Cubs would get Jerry Hairston Junior and upwards of two prospects in return; while the Cubs would pay the majority of Sosa’s contract for next season.

This would be an enormous trade for the Cubs. Especially if they manage to sign Magglio Ordonez to replace him, although he might already be signed with Detroit before the Sosa deal could go through. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that the Players’ Association balks on giving the green light to Sosa’s voiding his contract.

The Birdwatch (bar none, the finest Cards blog out there now that Redbird Nation is no more) has a post today about the possibility that the Cardinals ownership isn’t properly serious about signing Jocketty to a new contract.

Bernie Micklasz must have read it because he interviewed Bill Dewitt to find out if it were so.

“But multiple team sources told the Post-Dispatch that the Cardinals’ offer to Jocketty was higher than three years and $2.1 million.”

And damn right. Jocketty has been The Man for the Cards the past few years and has earned a big league contract. Losing him to another team would be bad, very bad.

Judging by this, at least.

(Via Slings & Arrows)

While Illinois was unanimously ranked as the first place team in the ESPN/Coach’s Poll this week, over in the AP poll everyone voted for Illinois except for one lone wolf voter. And that voter had picked Duke. Surely it’s Dick Vitale one would think, but he says he’d voted for Illinois. On the pregame radio show, someone quipped that Dick V had taken a day off of his job as color commentator for Duke to watch an Illinois game.

Turns out he wasn’t lying, and the lone voter has been outed as Austin Bishop. Assuming the “Clockwork Orange” Illini don’t lay down in front of Minnesota on Saturday, my guess is that Bishop’s opinion will be changed by next Monday evening, with or without a flurry of hostile emails coming out of the land of Orange and Blue.

Update: Way to call it, Bishop… Duke lost to the Terrapins at home, 75-66, tonight.

If your computer is reasonably fast and you’ve got the free Shockwave player, check out the game Snowfight 3D. The later levels are difficult, but it’s a whole lotta fun.

Just like the vast majority of Iraq isn’t Al Anbar, the majority of California isn’t Berkeley.

Arthur Chrenkoff points to very good reporting from the North County Times, a local paper in San Diego, which has two reporters in Iraq with the Marines from Camp Pendleton. Lots of informative stories of a sort you’re hard pressed to find between installments of Arthur’s GNfI columns. One touching example is this story about a 25 year old woman whose legs were destroyed by an errant round from an AC-130‘s 105mm cannon.

Last night’s Illinois @ Wisconsin game was our biggest game of the season and we won 75-65. I’m still too hungover to write anything thoughtful about it, and too stupid to write anything insightful about it, but Big Ten Wonk picks up the slack.

Update: Very funny and majestic multimedia recap of the Holy Cross/American game from the perspective of a third grader, pointed out by Yoni. I can relate to the last sentiment in the presentation–seeing basketball makes me real thirsty too. Ironically, the barstool next to mine during the game last night was occupied by a fourth grader, there drinking sodas and watching the game with his dad. Funny kid, loves basketball, and knows how to throw a knuckleball. Cubs fan, though.

Mark Liberman at Language Log has written a post about the generative constraints on the construction: (well) [do something to me] and call me [some name].

His examples are things like: Roll me up and call me curly and Dress me up and call me Sally.

Nick V had a deep repertoire of these sorts of expressions, and possessed the creative talent to summon hilarious ones from thin air. Some I remember were Well cut off my legs and call me Stumpy, Well dig me a hole and call me Phil, and Well cover me in snot and call me Hank.

Another usage was to pick on your friend’s girlfriends with things like: Well paint me with ugly and call me Samantha.

Kids can be so cruel.

In other news, Kerry has quite a theory that I’m willing and certainly capable of helping her test.

Illiniwonk will be liveblogging the Illinois v. Wisconsin game tonight. You may remember when I liveblogged Game 1 of the World Series. It was really pretty fun. I was fairly well lit up towards the end. Since blogspot queues blogs in the “Next Blog” function in (some partially randomized order) from most recently updated to not recently updated, you tend to get a lot of random pageviews when you’re updating so frequently. I won’t be following along, however, as I’ll be enjoying the game at Tumble Inn.

Update: Noticed Dr. Liberman poses a question: “Now I have another question: are there real-life versions of this pattern with some alternative phrasing for “call me” — say “refer to me as”? Or are there related patterns that don’t involve naming at all, like [change my state] and make me [do something appropriate to the new state]?”

There are expressions like, “don’t piss on my head and tell me it’s raining,” but I don’t think that’s what he’s after.

A question that ought to have remained rhetorical: “Really, who would dare to come out and protest in favor of terror?”

Berkleyites, that’s who… (Berklezoids? Berklenauts?)

Unfortunately, things like that happen here at the U of I, too. (Although not to that extent of depravity… I’ve never seen children carrying around signs like that.) Every May for over 40 years, the Hillel Foundation commemorates the Israeli Independence Day on the Quad with a nice picnic and peaceful gathering. And every year I’ve been here, their festivities have been disrupted by Pro-PLO protesters who circle the quad, wearing hoods, chanting hostile slogans, and waving hateful, defamatory banners. One of their most vile was in May 2002 (story and photograph here). Note the militant-style clothing and the blood-spattered Israeli flag. I stepped out for a smoke and noticed a lot of cops keeping an eye on things. I burned a few cigarettes, watching to make sure things didn’t get violent. It remained disgusting and uncivil for a long while, but never turned criminal. One of these years, I’ll infiltrate them with some Protest Warrior signs.

The new rankings are out: ESPN/USAtoday Coach’s Poll; AP Poll. Illinois is now the unanimous number one team. Kansas dropped from 2 to 7 and 6 in those respective polls, somewhat drastic, I’d think. Syracuse leaped to #4 in both polls and, bedazzled by the jump, almost blew it against a determined Rutgers team tonight, squeaking by 86-84. My prediction that Iowa would move up in the rankings failed, although they remained at 24 and 23 in the coach’s and AP polls, respectively. Michigan State and Wisconsin both moved up though. Tomorrow’s game will be quite huge. I’m stoked.

The National Anthem was sung by a ten year old before the Falcons/Eagles NFC Championship game on Sunday. I wondered what his story was, and meant to research it. I wasn’t the only one who had the idea, but fortunately someone else remembered to actually follow through on it. Here’s some background on Timmy Kelly. HT: Donald Sensing.

Took the Death Test and discovered that I’ll be dead by 2059, having succumbed to cancer at the ripe old age of 81.8. The probability that it’ll be cancer that finally takes this bastard down is 56%. There’s also a 2% chance of my demise coming by way of “wounds.”

Most depressingly, according to their calculations, “[I] have 19942.6 days left on this earth. [I]‘ve already lived 33% of [my] life.”

Alternative titles for this post:

Living on Reds, Vitamin C, and Cocaine

First Third a Turd

For some fairly amusing reading, this webpage reviews many bars in Champaign-Urbana, and overall provides a good assessment of the options out there. The Boltini review is quite funny, what with the whole “Dragon Shirt Hypothesis” and the clash between the Goth decor and yuppie clientele. My favorite watering hole in town is The Embassy, whose patrons are described as “the derelict and deadbeat crowd.” I’d put myself more into the derelict than deadbeat category, but others may disagree. I’ve never seen any theater crowd in there, but the Independent Media crew hangs out there on Wednesdays, he may have been thinking of that. In Champaign, Mike and Molly’s is by far my favorite place, especially in the summer when their large patio is open and not snowed over. They’ve been good about stocking the Berliner Weisse, a strange and wondrous brew indeed. No review yet for Blind Pig II, a fine place that recently opened. They’ve got an old bar that was recovered from an abandoned hotel nearby, and most importantly–a large and frequently changing selection of draft beers. The Allagash White is gone, alas, but has been replaced by a a super-smooth and mild Kinsale Irish Lager.

But in the summer time, the best place to go for a cold one at least once in a while is TK Wendl’s, where you can enjoy a frosty while taking swings in the batting cages or watching a softball or sand volleyball game. We’re about two months away from spring now, and I’m all ready for it.

A few more nits to pick: Ice House is a much better place than he lets on. The bartenders are accomodating and there’s a good sense of humor about the joint. Last time I was there, they had a beer can hanging from the window with a pine twig sticking out of it, and a sign reading “Beer Garden.” Ha. Also, Tumble Inn is a fine place to spend cash. The beer’s cheap, cold, and quickly replaced; the table seating has chairs reclaimed from Busch Stadium; and they get the Cardinals games on Fox Midwest off satellite.