Eleven-year-old Tulsa kid leads successful campaign to keep Warner Brothers from destroying the classic Looney Tunes characters. www.saveourlooneytunes.com.

Snookums loves Cher, who is retiring after a three-year farewell tour.

Will she stay retired? We'll see . . .

Doing my part to keep culture jamming alive, here's the link to votefortheworst.com, the site which spawned the current rage of voting for the worst American Idol participant.

Go for it, guys, Scott Savol rules! Woo-hoo! An-Ark-EEEEEEE!

Snap Generations-style analysis: Boomers think culture-jamming is "sticking it to the Man,", GenX'ers just think it's funny.

I'm not precisely sure which category this belongs in. But have you noticed how often people are using the phrase "It is what it is?" More and more, I'm hearing this phrase, which is becoming the 21st Century version of "S hit happens". (Weird formatting due to my site's content filter.)

A Google search on "It Is What It Is" finds a number of interesting sites:
Zeke runs a blog so titled.
So does Alaskagirl (sadly somewhat stale).
A set of John Barlow (Grateful Dead) lyrics has that title.
It's rapper Jay-Z's favorite saying.
A movie. Anybody seen it? Know what it's about?
A song by Usher.

More research is obviously required into the origins of "it is what it is" as a cultural meme. Anybody got some grant money laying around? I'm up for it.

OSC is an uncommonly interesting science fiction author.

His latest.

Readers may recall I asked a while ago whether or not the Republicans/conservatives had "jumped the shark" with the Schiavo affair.

Anything with it's origin associated with Fonzie of Happy Days should continue to be propogated.

www.jumptheshark.com.

My oldest and dearest friend commonly says he'd "give his left little finger" for some vaguely favorable outcome. Over the years, saying "so and so--my left little finger!" has come to mean something similar to "like hell," a skeptical commentary on whatever "so and so" was about.

So, with that utterly extraneous intro, I present for your reading pleasure the CNN.com article discussing thirty states which are investigating Blockbuster over their "End of The Late Fee" marketing gimmick. The hell you say!

Orson Scott Card says it better than I can, but . . .
I succumbed to the hype (and Snookums' birthday wishes) and went to see Million Dollar Baby. Ugh. One star out of five. There are some amusing moments, but not nearly enough of them. Overall, I came away from the movie feeling unclean. OK, here's the deal. I go to movies to be entertained. I do not enjoy spending two hours watching suffering, a taste of success, and then have everything come crashing down. That's what this movie is, however. Million Dollar Baby is also glacially slow at most points, to the extent that you're sitting there wondering what Clint is trying to do in a particular scene, rather than being fully engaged in the movie.

And, the ending. Oh, the ending. If you don't want to be spoiled, stop reading here.

Spoiler warning.

Last chance.

OK, here's the "surprise" ending. The boxer girl Maggie has finally reached the World Championship match. The current World Champion is the queen of dirty boxers. After the bell rings for round #2, Maggie turns and goes to her corner, is sucker punched by the champ, falls into the upturned stool, and breaks her neck, leaving her a quadraplegic. OK, I'm still with the movie at this point. I'm asking myself, how is Clint going to make this good? Well, the short answer is, Clint doesn't. After forty-five excruciating minutes (but not for the reason Clint wanted, they were just s l o w), Clint decides to send Maggie to the great beyond. Takes off her breathing tube, then squirts her with a syringe full of adrenaline. Then Clint just vanishes. Goes away. That's it. End of movie. Roll the credits. Collect the awards. Feh.

I'm not that worked up about the whole euthanasia thing, really. It's just that this movie is so slow and ham-handed in how it approaches the final coup de injection that all emotional punch is lost well before the final moment. Sorry, critics, this is just bad movie-making. Bad. Bad, do you hear? BAD!