“Actually, it’s the BBC controlling us from London.”

Sent to me by way of Raza at High Industrial: Is Bush Wired? Hmmm…I see two major problems with this particular conspiracy theory. For one, given how much Dubya is photographed, an earpiece would be extremely hard to hide. For another, if Dubya were being prompted from afar, one would think he’d be much more articulate than he in fact is most of the time. Update: Salon follows the meme.

Lemony Snicket, Sour Byck.

In today’s movie bin, a post-Eternal Sunshine Jim Carrey returns to hamming it up in the full trailer for Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Sean Penn (with the aid of 21 Grams co-star Naomi Watts and Don Cheadle) resurrects Samuel Byck (also featured in Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins) in the international teaser for The Assassination of Richard Nixon.

NIN v. Ace of Base?

Bored by the pre-debate spin cycle and inspired by Lots of Co’s alt.homecoming mix, I went scouring the Internet yesterday evening for some of the mixes Max mentioned (such as “Without Vader“, a.k.a. Eminem v. John Williams) and found Bass 21, which includes a number of versus versions for perusing and/or downloading to the iPod. Enjoy. (I must admit a particularly guilty fondness for “Go Toxic,” a.k.a. Britney v. Yaz.)

Found Wanting.

“The global test is the measurement of the president’s assertions against the real world, the world you and I can see. This is the test Bush has failed.” Will Saletan dispels the “global test” canard that the GOP has been latching on to since last Thursday.

Operation Iraqi Falsehood.

Yesterday, Paul Bremer — Dubya’s former chief man in Iraq — admitted in remarks intended for a private audience that many more troops were needed on the ground after Saddam’s fall to stave off looting and lawlessness. Today, a report by Charles Duelfer — the chief weapons inspector in Iraq (after the departed David Kay, who’s already quit the WMD party line) — concludes “that Saddam Hussein posed a diminishing threat at the time the United States invaded and did not possess, or have concrete plans to develop, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.” How many more “failures of judgment” in Iraq, to put it charitably, do we need to see from these jokers?