Please help me understand this Ghanan music video

By Dan Brooks in Being Cool 6 Comments

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2HSo3yywDU

 Jason McMackin implanted this song in my brain via the demon Facebook, and now I am periodically blurting out “Uncle Obama!” before falling into silent recrimination. It’s subtle, but this song about how a man named Uncle Obama has an enormous banana that Sister Deborah would like to feed to her monkey contains a double entendre. Yet so many questions go unanswered. It can’t be a coincidence that this Ghanan Milton Berle is named “Obama.” And who is Sister Deborah? And how is this song being received in Ghana, which has historically been kind of conservative?

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We should totally start a national death pact

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 6 Comments

The Richmond Bridge in London: funded with a tontine and has not fallen down. Coincidence?

Yesterday I got to reading Bruce Bartlett’s editorial in the Times, wherein he laments House Republicans’ passage of a bill advocating voluntary taxation. It’s not going to turn into anything; we’re talking about Congress, here. If it were a real law, though, HR 6410 would allow taxpayers to designate a contribution in addition to the liability on their returns for the purposes of deficit reduction. The IRS already has a fund for accepting gifts, so practically this bill that won’t become a law will not have changed anything if it does. It is called The Buffett Rule Act of 2012.

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Friday links! Low expectations edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 4 Comments

A sea creature meets some girls on vacation.

The picture above will be forever known as the Alleged Stingray Photobomb, and sadly it is posed. I should have known; something that beautiful doesn’t just happen, at least not to the likes of us. With the internet, as with all things, you’ll be happier if you lower your expectations. Today is Friday, and I’ll probably string together a half-assed narrative from uninteresting links before I show up late to yoga and fart. See how that works? If I can keep that idea firmly implanted in my head, anything short of disaster will feel like a pleasant surprise. The events you anticipate do not exist. There is only the world that happened, and now it is gone. Won’t you wish it a disappointed farewell with me?

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So, what’s in the Pakistani news?

By Dan Brooks in Church People 2 Comments

Yesterday’s All Parties Conference in Islamabad (not pictured: various parties)

Because I am a curious fellow in dire need of supervision, I spent several hours yesterday reading the Express Tribune of Pakistan. Granted, now seems like an especially interesting time in Pakistani news, but man—that place is a den of insanity. The photo above comes from this story about a meeting of the All Parties Conference, which threatened to block NATO supply routes to Afghanistan if the United Nations does not pass an anti-blasphemy law. They also threatened to leave the UN and form a separate, Muslim United Nations, which would pretty much be the best thing ever to happen to American talk radio. It gets better after the jump.

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Behold the terrifying future of journalism

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 2 Comments

Don’t try to understand it. It makes no damn sense at all.

Miracle Mike Sebba sent me a link to this page of “unskewed polls,” which purport to show actual public opinion by correcting poll results for “massive over-sample of Democratic voters.” That phrase comes from the Examiner.com article that comes up when you click on the Reuters/Ipsos poll link. It’s also in the Examiner article you get from the NBC/WSJ link, the Examiner article from the NY Times/CBS News poll, and every other poll link on the page, all of which point to Examiner articles by one Dean Chambers. Mr. Chambers also appears to be the sole writer at QStar News. He’s a whole damn network.

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