Totally ran into a celebrity when I was working in IL this week. He assured me that Crackle’s solo career won’t break up the group.

Doh!  My geek membership is going to be revoked, I missed the Family Guy season premiere which was an homage to Star Wars!  God Bless the Internet, the folks at Milk & Cookies especially.  They posted links to the entire episode for those of us who missed it.  Click Here for your entertainment pleasure.

Speaking of ‘toons, you might want to check this link too.  This is the first new Simpsons intro since the movie.  It was pretty cool, if you saw the movie.

Dig this documentary trailer.  It’s a film about Jacques Vergès, a French lawyer known for taking some controversial clients.   Apparently he has defended Klaus Barbie, Carlos the Jackal and supported and represented guerrillas in the Algerian War.

I thought it looked pretty interesting, but what really caught my attention was the end of the trailer; Vergès says, “I was asked, ‘Would you defend Hitler?’  I said, ‘I’d even defend Bush!’  But only if he agrees to plead guilty.”

While traveling from one job to the next, I caught a few minutes of a story on Talk of the Nation that appealed to the hippy in me, so I thought I would share.  The link to the audio and story is here.  You can skip the story and read what little I know below and just look at the pictures if you like.

Apparently, in January of this year the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum received a donation of a photo album.  The album belonged to Karl Höcker, an officer at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp.  This photo album is filled with those sort of mundane photos that your mom has somewhere.  There are pictures of picnics, his dog and others of training and marches, visiting military and sipping some wine.  

The photo album is full of dates and the Holocaust Memorial website even gives you a chance to look at other photos of the horrible things happening at the camp around the same time.  The importance of the album should be obvious, we have to remember that those inflicting the torture were human also.  A natural image that pops into your head when you think Nazi, is some sort of red-eyed demon with no remorse.  I am in no way justifying what happened, but it is important to have the whole history.

We have to remember that what happened can easily happen again.  To know that before those office girls were sitting on the fence eating blueberries, they were in the office typing up orders that put people to death is mind numbing.  How could anyone do that?  Yet, we spend half of our time persecuting minorities, like Muslims or African Americans.  Not all Muslims are terrorists, it is a very small majority.  Imagine if a fundamentalist group of Christians took out an entire hospital in India to kill a doctor who performed abortions.   The backlash against Christianity would echo throughout the world and millions of non-fundamental Christians would angrily come to the defense of their religion.

Humanity over hate, kids.

Peace, my friends.

Hilary is going to get us “Universal Health Care.” Isn’t that a kick in the pants? Remember when she was going to do that, oh, so many years ago? Well, it is just that sort of attitude that is going to make her play for keeps this time.

She’s got some help this time too. According to Sicko, Moore’s film, Hilary has the more contributions from health insurance and prescription drug makers than any other candidate. Sorry, there are a number of folks out there who despise Michael Moore, his baseball caps, everything that he films, comes out of his mouth and his blasted incisors. So, if you don’t want to hear that, then simply look at the plan itself. Search for it online. Her idea for “Universal Health Care,” is to make it mandatory. That is the gist of it. So, the millions of us that don’t have heath care because WE CAN’T AFFORD IT, will be required to have it???

I was searching for the commentary I heard on NPR Monday, but it has eluded me. If you look at the highlights she has some ideas of how to keep costs down, but its really just some damn campaigning for presidency, and offers no real solution.

I can’t wait until I am arrested and beaten for resisting arrest, is that irony? Not being able to pay my medical bills that I incurred while being arrested for not having health insurance?

This is another one of my favorites. I saw this one in an animation class. Run Wrake, the creator, has one a ton of awards for this piece.

youtube:

Sequel-Hungry Nation Demands Production of Click II

LOS ANGELES—"The people of this country want to know what kind of crazy cameo Rob Schneider will make, and they want to know now," activist Holly Sparks said.

I love The Onion, the sarcasm and the humor are just the right mix; it’s like complaining in a positive style. Of course too much humor, like The Daily Show, seems to just end up as pure entertainment. There I go complaining.

Anyway, the article above is hilarious. Enjoy. I especially liked the paragraph listing all the summer sequels. Silly.