My contribution to today’s geeky online defense of free speech, for reasons I discussed here, here, and here:

I finally got around to listening to a Ricochet podcast, which I’ve been seeing recommended around the webs for a month or so. Episode 5, recorded on Friday 02/26, features Rob Long, Peter Robinson, Mark Steyn, and Andrew Breitbart. They discuss – among other things – last week’s health summit, and humorless institutionalized leftism.

Ricochet’s a great listen if you’re into that sort of thing. It’s the perfect accompaniment to a game of Filler 2 on Kongregate.com! Or to a commute, if you have one of those Empee-three Players and a car that knows how to talk to it…

Note to self: next time you’re on I-75 and the traffic is terrible (when isn’t it?), be thankful you’re not behind this…

Yet another thing sucks about Michigan – gas tankers exploding on the highway for unkown reasons!

Because it looks like the Iranian mullahs will continue doing as they damn well please, because the Obama administration is infuriating beyond words in its dealings with terrorists, and because I can…

It’s time foooorr: Fun With the Ayatollah! Play dress-up with everyone’s favorite totalitarian representative of a violent political system masquerading as a religion!

The ayatollah as:
Disney devotee
Francophile
Fatwa waiting to happen
Philosophizer
(Groucho) Marxist
Piratollah
Cross-town rival

Happy Independence Day!

After tonight’s finale of Reaper I remembered to check whether the show had been renewed for a third season. Season two of Reaper was a pleasant surprise – I figured things would get boring, but great new cast members and continued hilarity from the writers and actors learned me for figurin’.

I was bummed to see that CW is dropping Reaper to focus on their skank-targeted programming. In that vein, let’s play “90210 Mad Libs” – because 90210 commercials during Reaper were so inane that I considered buying a DVR. Write your own episode of 90210!

“Omigosh, did you, like, hear? Roxanne got __________!”

Suggested words/phrases: Pregnant; Hit by a Mercedes; Soooo wasted; Seven kinds of herpes.

“I’d love to get naked – I don’t care that you’re my __________”

Suggested words/phrases: Mother’s boyfriend; High school principal; Probation officer; Mother’s boyfriend and my high school principal.

“I’m feeling naughty. We should __________.”

There is only one way this sentence ends. You can jumble the words around, but the result is always dirty, random sex. Other 90210 lines that end this way include, “I’ve wanted you for, like, days. Let’s __________,” “You’re looking hot – we’re going to __________,” and “It’s Tuesday. __________.”

90210 makes me want to kick someone in the brain. Judging by the commercials, it could do little harm.

From the AP story on last night’s foiled terrorist attack in New York:

Four men arrested after planting what they thought were explosives near a synagogue and community center and plotting to shoot down a military plane were bent on carrying out a jihad against America, authorities said Thursday.

Those wacky jihadists — George W. Bush left office months ago!

“They stated that they wanted to commit Jihad,” Kelly said. “They were disturbed about what happened in Afghanistan and Pakistan, that Muslims were being killed.”

“What happened in Afghanistan and Pakistan…” think we can safely say it’s not the Taliban’s ongoing barbarity that has these fruits bombing Jewish centers in New York. Plus, would-be terrorists really need to listen more closely to President Obama! It’s the Iraq war that’s transforming Muslims into mad bombers, not Afghanistan and Pah-kee-stahn.

An official told The Associated Press that three of the men are converts to Islam. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss details of the investigation. Three of the defendants are U.S. citizens and one is of Haitian descent, officials said.

That explains it. If these dudes were born Muslims, they’d realize “jihad” is a peaceful internal struggle for world domination.

Bloomberg warned against stereotypes, emphasizing that the temple is open to people of all faiths, including a Muslim girl who sometimes prays there.

What kind of stereotype could Mayor Bloomberg be referring to? Like the jailed jihadists, he should pay better attention: Muslim terrorists have no problem with killing other Muslims. Heck, if you die as collateral damage in an attack on Jews, you probably get a free ticket to Virginville!

Just a quick happy Mother’s Day to all of the mothers reading (which I could only assume is a very small number). Enjoy your day!

Turn on the TV! Quick! You’ve already missed more than ten minutes of President Barack Obama reminding us of how amazingly spectacular he is!

I would say it’s ridiculous how often President Obama is on TV. I’d say it’s still more evidence of his narcissism, and has provided no logical support for all the standard hippie crap he’s hocking. But in his defense, he’s competing with a vicious press corps that wants nothing more than to make him look bad.

It makes me want to murder someone.

To this point, the season 2 finale of Chuck is great. Googling for answers about season 3 I found a Chicago Tribune interview with Captain Awesome. And apparently there were rumors on Twitter over the weekend that season 3 had been confirmed: not so, says GiveMeMyRemote.

While the medium is hardly to blame, let me take this opportunity to say Twitter is retarded.

So what are they going to do with the final few minutes? No terrible cliffhangers yet. I won’t lie, if the episode ends with ambiguity I will assume:

1. Sarah and Chuck live happily ever after.
2. Whoever may or may not have died in tragic fashion will pull through.
3. John Casey spends the rest of his days gleefully assassinating terrorists of various shapes and sizes.

[Update: Such a good finale!! Producer Josh Schwartz was clearly bluffing when he said this would make for an unsatisfying end to the series. They avoided both things I was afraid of - this season ended well, and the twists could easily be developed into 13 great season 3 episodes!]

From the Edmunds Inside Line on Thursday, a rumor that Pontiac is getting the axe:

According to a source at General Motors, the company will announce next Monday its new “faster, deeper” reorganization plan, which will likely include a death sentence for the Pontiac brand.

I’m sure friends and family tired of my grumbling each time a Pontiac commercial came on during March Madness. I’ve been saying for months that GM would have to be insane to drop Saturn and keep Pontiac. Rebadge the Solstice, G6, and G8 as Chevys, and call it a day. Is there anything else remotely interesting in the Pontiac line that isn’t already sold as a Chevrolet?

Seriously though, not a rhetorical question; I tried to check Chevrolet.com to refresh my memory and the site is throwing a “Generic failure in middleware” error. Maybe when GM gets that fixed they can come to their senses and instead of killing Saturn stop selling GMC as anything but fleet vehicles. I’ve never understood the GM “strategy” of so many identical models under multiple brands.

I feel obliged to mention that  the first car I bought was a ’99 Grand Am GT coupe. Black. Sunroof. Felt like climbing into an F-14 compared to the ’84 Tempo I had driven in high school. I bought it with around 30,000 miles on it, and loved it for the ~30,000 miles before things started breaking right and left.

That’s what we should put on GM’s tombstone if the billions upon billions in taxpayer bailouts aren’t enough to save the company: “We loved it, before things started breaking right and left.”