Capital W.

“I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.” (For some reason, I’m reminded of Homer Simpsons’s cabin fever…”I have powers…political powers!“) To his credit, Dubya gives us fair warning in his press conference today about what to expect from the coming second term. Some choice Dubya quotes, via Value Judgment: “Now that I’ve got the will of the people at my back, I’m going to start enforcing the one-question rule. That was three questions.” or “Again, he violated the one-question rule right off the bat. Obviously you didn’t listen to the will of the people.” Also, by way of Looka: “I will reach out to every one who shares our goals.” The rest of us, it seems, might be in for some trouble.

Homer and the Butterfly.

The trailer for Ray Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder, starring Ed Burns and Ben Kingsley, shows up online, and I’m getting the sense the Treehouse of Horror V version might just be more entertaining. And what’s up with Kingsley’s flat-top? With this, Thunderbirds, and Suspect Zero, he must be making a huge down payment on a house or something.

Space Cadet.

General Wesley Clark stumps for faster-than-light travel in New Hampshire. “I still believe in e=mc², but I can’t believe that in all of human history, we’ll never ever be able to go beyond the speed of light to reach where we want to go. I happen to believe that mankind can do it…It’s my only faith-based initiative.” Well, I guess he’s up on Dubya, who’s still trying to work out evolution. At the same rally, Clark introduced Professor John Frink as his potential National Science Advisor. “Suppose we extend the square beyond the two dimensions of our universe… along the hypothetical Z axis, there…”

Hawking v. Voltron in the Land of Chocolate.

I’m generally pretty quiet about my side hobby of Simpsons-collecting in this space, but, at the risk of coming off even more Comic Book Guy than usual, two points of interest: Season 3 – “best season ever” – is available on DVD today, and the 13th wave of figures includes this great sculpt of Stephen Hawking (per his request), which I expect will have more crossover appeal than most of the recent (obscure) characters.

Gollum sings the blues.

Oh what to do? I am sad and blue. If only that I knew, that he would take The Precious! He had better flee, for I am thin and mean, and my eyes have seen, that he did take The Precious! Because the world demanded it (or somebody did, I guess), 2005 will witness the opening of the Lord of the Rings stage musicial in London (flash-heavy official site here.) Oh my, this sounds grisly. Will Troy McClure be in it?

The D’oh of Homer.


Since we’re discussing philosophy, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention those paragons of postmodernism, The Simpsons. On the eve of Springfield’s 300th episode, EW picks the top twenty-five episodes of all time (Via Listen Missy and this archetypal contrarian-for-the-sake-of-it Slate story.) In the spirit of Comic Book Guy, the fanboy sensei, I have actually amassed a sizable World of Springfield collection. I would put up a picture for you, but that would invite social humiliation [as with Foopster‘s now-lost reaction to this old desk pic posted years ago (6/19/00)], and my life already has too many Ralph Wiggum moments as it is, thank you very much. So I’ll leave it at this: Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie – here’s to another 300.