This is real.

I’ve finally started to earn a semi-decent living, and I thought maybe the smartest thing to do would be to start buying things. I’m very practical in that way. So my idea was that I should start spending a ton of money on t-shirts. But where to begin? I feel like I know a lot of people who work in web design and graphic design who are super into t-shirts and always have cool looking t-shirts and things. But you can’t ask people where they get their t-shirts, or else you’ll both be wearing the same t-shirt, and as my friend John Zentgraf used to say, “Matching shirts spells geek.”

I had to do some serious investigating in my search for t-shirts. Even so, I feel that I am just on the very cusp of the cool t-shirt world. There is much left to explore, but I will give you a few places to get started, because that is the kind of person I am.

The first site I found was Tcritic.com. Dude posts every day on a new t-shirt. This site led me to etsy.com, where I bought this dope Bill Murray T, and Beautiful Decay, where I picked up a couple of other cool shirts. A few days later I found T Junction, a site listing t-shirt sales. Okay, so that’s not much. Four sites. But hopefully it’s enough to get you started, should you have any interest in following me down the path of conspicuous consumption.

I discovered that I’m pretty picky when it comes to t-shirts. I’ve learned a few difficult lessons. Number one is that t-shirts from Threadless suck. I went on a shopping spree when I first discovered Threadless, and I’m done. All of the shirts I have from Threadless fit weird and have annoying iron-ons on them that look kind of cheap and crappy after awhile. Number two difficult lesson is that shirts that are designed to make people laugh are universally lame. There are an awful lot of t-shirt companies that exist primarily to serve this m.o. like The Tee Party, Cotton Factory, and Vintage Vantage, to name a few that I just found after about 20 seconds of research. I refuse to wear a punchline on my shirt. Unless it’s a giant picture of Bill Murray, of course.

And now you know! Go forth and consume!

I don’t know the first thing about Evil Nine, but I do know that I saw this semi-video and immediately downloaded their entire album from iTunes. That is what someone with good taste should do when encountering this semi-video for the first time. I will report back with my observations.

Ya’ know … it’s become cliche, but I sure can’t understand why someone who supported the war wouldn’t serve. I don’t support it, and I would never in a million years serve. So I’m safe from charges of hypocrisy, I guess.

PS Check out the dude who starts talking with 3:06 left. Priceless.

I’m a little confused about the all-nighter the Senate pulled last night. I sure would appreciate some help from anyone out there who understands how our government works.

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans on Wednesday scuttled a Democratic proposal ordering troop withdrawals from Iraq in a showdown that capped an all-night debate on the war.

The 52-47 vote fell short of the 60 votes needed to cut off debate under Senate rules. It was a sound defeat for Democrats who say the U.S. military campaign, in its fifth year and requiring 158,000 troops, cannot tame the sectarian violence in Iraq.

What does it mean to “scuttle” a proposal? Here’s how I understand it: Democrats wanted to vote on whether or not to end the war. The Republicans did not want the Democrats to hold this vote. So they held an all-night session, which the Republicans filibustered.

A filibuster, in my understanding, is when politicians try to stop a vote from happening by talking until it … until what? Until people get bored of the topic and decide they don’t really care about it anymore?

Okay, so the Democrats decided to hold an all-night session to debate the war bill. But for some mysterious reason, that is not considered a filibuster. The filibuster happened when Republicans decided to participate in the all-night session. Is that correct? If so, then what’s the alternative? And then they tried to have a vote to stop discussing it. The vote was 52-47, with 52 people saying they should stop talking about it and vote on the bill. 60 votes are needed to pass this proposal to stop talking. They didn’t get the votes. So, are they still talking? How has anything been “scuttled?” If they are still talking, when do they stop? It seems to me that the decision that has been made is to not decide anything just yet, and that does not strike me as a loss. Yet this article refers to it as a “sound defeat.” What, exactly, has been defeated?

And regardless of context, how can a majority vote on anything ever be considered a sound defeat?

For awhile, I have had the theory that Fox News would eventually realize the country was not overwhelmingly Republican and turn populist. Namely, when it started to affect their ratings. I now predict that this change is in the air. Observe history in the making:

Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly promised his audience “the truth about Iraq” on Thursday, saying that most Americans now feel the war has not been worth the costs, while “the president’s argument for sustaining the war is largely theoretical.”

O’Reilly turned on his special guest during the segment, White House press secretary Tony Snow, saying, “You can’t win … unless the Iraqi people turn on all the terrorists. And they’re not.”

O’Reilly said he agreed with the president that defeat in Iraq could harm the US but said that “enough is enough.” The populist pundit who, according to his Wikipedia entry hasn’t been a registered Republican since 2000, added that the American people are as exhausted by this war as they ultimately were by Vietnam, and also that “the Iraqi government is incompetent and “the people themselves largely ungrateful.”

Some super classy behavior was on display today in the Senate:

Today was a historic first for religion in America’s civic life: For the very first time, a Hindu delivered the morning invocation in the Senate chamber — only to find the ceremony disrupted by three Christian right activists.

The three protesters, who all belong to the Christian Right anti-abortion group Operation Save America, and who apparently traveled to Washington all the way from North Carolina, interrupted by loudly asking for God’s forgiveness for allowing the false prayer of a Hindu in the Senate chamber.

Hindus … aren’t those the guys who worship elephants with twelve arms and stuff? Well, guess what, pagans … YOU JUST GOT SCHOOLED BY THE POWER OF JESUS. Freedom of religion does not give you the right to believe that elephants have twelve arms. It just means that you can worship Jesus anyway you choose.

My idea of what is and is not badass has just been redefined.

“He travels with two chefs, Oscar winner Marisa Tomei said of her Wild Hogs co-star John Travolta.– one regular chef and one pastry chef. He eats a fresh pie every day.

I kind of assumed that John Travolta was an asshole, but clearly my assumptions were wrong. This revelation makes it quite clear that, in spite of anything you may have heard, Travolta is one cool customer. If I was John Travolta and someone was messing with me, I would just be like, “Ya know what, dickhead? I eat a fresh fucking pie every day.” Argument settled: Travolta wins!

From the AP:

“I wouldn’t ask a mother or a dad — I wouldn’t put their son in harm’s way if I didn’t believe this was necessary for the security of the United States and the peace of the world,” Bush said. “I strongly believe it, and I strongly believe we’ll prevail.”

Oh my gosh. I just … I don’t know what to say. I feel like such an idiot. I’ve made a big, BIG mistake. I’m man enough to admit when I’m wrong, and boy oh boy, was I wrong about this one. See, I didn’t realize that he strongly believes we’ll prevail. All these years, I assumed that Bush thought the war was unnecessary for the security of the United States. Now that he says something, of course, it’s totally obvious. He really, strongly believes we’ll prevail. Why would I ever question that? Oh, sure, there are those who might say that every thing he’s done since setting foot in the White House has been orchestrated to destroy our democracy and hasten the apocalypse, but those people must not be reading the Associated Press, because our president just made it perfectly clear that he believes we will prevail. My ability for logic and reasoning have failed me. I’m going to go enlist.