STFU ABOUT MELISSA BLOCK ALREADY

Okay. So times are tough in the news industry. And the business folks who run that show are doing their best to promote their outlets as being the best at what they do cause, fuck, lots of people are loosing their jobs and no one wants that to happen to them.

That’s all totally fair.

BUT. NPR has been going absolutely CNN this past week with the fact that Melissa Block happened to be in–happened, like WALKED RIGHT THE FUCK INTO–Sichuan when that massive earthquake rocked the shit out of China. First there was an onslaught of 10-second Melissa-Block-was-there style spots. Now, that jackass that hosts “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” has made her into one of his lightening-round questions: Blank was there when an earthquake rocked the shit out of China (or words to that affect).

Enough already. One: Yeah, she was there. CAUSE SHE WAS THERE ANYWAY. I mean, she’d gone to help put together a series of reports on the country for an All Things Considered thingy that was scheduled to run next week. IT’S NOT LIKE SHE’S SUCH AN AMAZING REPORTER THAT SHE SNOOPED OUT THE FACT THAT THE QUAKE WAS COMING AND DEMANDED A TICKET TO CHINA. Melissa Block was there…BY ACCIDENT. JESUS. Two: Hello? You’re supposed to be National Public Radio, an institution that–if we believe the image–is more Sgt. Joe Friday than scenery-chewing Anderson Cooper. CMON!

Invading Myanmar With Love

So. Check this out. Says NPR, “France has suggested the United Nations use soldiers to get humanitarian aid into Myanmar, a plan to prevent ‘crimes against humanity’ that would require Security Council acquiescence from intervention-shy China.”

Uh…yo: Who called this shit?

Chewing On Grass at Fort Reno? Turns Out That Wasn’t Such a Good Idea

Hey you out there! You looking for something moderately depressing? The kind of thing that sticks with ya as a nagging sort-of bummer that, sure, doesn’t mean much in the scheme of things, but still totally fucking sucks?

Well, here ya go. According to the Washington Post’s Going Out Gurus, “Fort Reno Park, the site of an annual summer concert series that is one of D.C.’s most beloved and longest-running outdoor events, is closed immediately and indefinitely after United States Geological Survey satellite imaging reports found high levels of arsenic in the soil.”

Ugh.

The worst part about this mess is that, at least as far as the reason for shutting down Fort Reno is concerned, ya can’t pin the blame on typical D.C. government ineptitude. ‘Course the fact that they’ve only just now figured all this out is a little disturbing.

Anyway, if yr interested, the Fort Reno crew is doing its annual fund raising thing, and sort of implying that the shows will go on. Hit ‘em up here.

Enough With This Myanmar/Burma/Whatever Shit Already

Celebrate duders. That’s right, we said celebrate: We here at Um have finally reached a point where the homework/funtimes writing balance has tipped in favor of blogging. Hu-rah!

All chair-dancing Bar/Bat Mitzvahs aside, we’d like to express our concern about the situation in Myanmar (really, you shouldn’t have to click on that link or any of the ones below unless you’ve been, like, focused on earthquake clean-up or something)–you know: Cyclone hits, folks get swamped, lotsa people die, the world offers aid (and a whole lotta rhetoric about how crappy the country’s ruling regime is), the nutty generals who run that country say eff you, we don’t want yr stupid help (and then well…okay, maybe we’ll take just a little), the UN gets pissed (or as pissed as the UN can get) and sends out a statement that reads, in part, “‘Frustrations have been growing that this humanitarian response is being held back because of difficulties of access in different ways,’” [John Holmes, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and UN Emergency Relief Coordinator] said, noting that many visas are still pending.

UGH. Will you shut the fuck up already, John Holmes, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and UN Emergency Relief Coordinator? Look, what happened? It sucks. And it sure would be great if those kooky guys who run things in Myanmar were happy to receive aid from the rest of the world. But, know what? They’re not.

And they’ve probably got some solid reasons for it. Maybe something along the lines of: Hey, recent trends have shown that when some of these folks talk shit about a dictatorship, it serves as a prelude to the fact that they might just do everything in their power to make-up an excuse to invade the country that it rules.

Um. Did we just figure out a way to link the war in Iraq to the Myanmar cyclone? Yes. Yes I believe that we just did.

Maybe? Nah…not yet.

Martin Luther King Jr., Still Too Confrontational For the U.S. Gov’t

Recently, we here at Um have been solidly focused on our schoolwork. This is why you, our loyal readers have been so cruelly deprived of the wit and insight that you come to expect from our editorial staff.

Admit it: When we don’t write, you miss our abuse of the royal first person.

Schoolwork this semester has, for us, meant lots of thinking about revolution–specifically, the one that put these fellas into office. And though it’s deprived you all of such amazing columns as ‘Is It Okay to Call Hillary a Cunt? An Exploration of Why One Shouldn’t Base Their Political Decisions on the Gender of A Candidate,’ which never made it past the idea stage ’cause–you know, the existence of time and crap–it has given us plenty of background knowledge, should the appropriate opportunity present itself.

Well, you lucky ducks, it has.

So ‘member how, way back in the middle part of the 20th Century, a whole bunch of folks got together and decided that, um, institutionally-backed inequality is way sucky? And they decided that the best way to effect some sort of change was to confront the problem and resist its perpetration. ‘Member that? Well the fella who got most of the credit for the successes of that revolution was recently rewarded by his former oppressors with a monument on the National Mall: White duders 4. Non-white duders 1. Yipee, right?

Maybe.

Apparently, the folks in charge of providing the cash for this new monument are miffed ’cause it’s not turning out to be exactly what they’d hoped. Quoth the Washington Post: ” A powerful federal arts commission is urging that the sculpture of Martin Luther King Jr. proposed for a memorial on the Tidal Basin be reworked because it is too ‘confrontational’ and reminiscent of political art in totalitarian states.”

Okay. A couple of things. First: Hello, geniuses? If you were looking for something subtle, you probably shouldn’t have snagged a Chinese “sculptor known for his monumental works of figures such as Mao Zedong” as your chief designer. And, more importantly, what the fuck is wrong with a portrayal of King that represents him as a larger-than-life, stoic figure? Too confrontational? What the fuck is that?

Hello again, geniuses? Um, that thing that he was a part of (’member that?)? It was all about going where you weren’t wanted, taking on unfair practices, and challenging the popular thinking of the time. It was, in short, about being–ready?–CONFRONTATIONAL.

Jesus effin’ Christ: Build the man his monument. Render his ass in two-and-a-half stories worth of stone. Make it so that future generations can go, look up, and see a symbolic representation of the fact that he would not be moved.

TOO CONFRONTATIONAL? B.U.N.K.

Fucking Seal

We here at Um would like to bet that maybe you thought that we were about to tear into Heidi Klum’s husband. Or maybe you were under the impression that we were going to make light of a certain much besieged practice popular in the northern portions of this hemisphere.

Well yr wrong. Like, HA!

Instead, we’re gonna talk to you about this guy. For those of you not inclined to click (and who, thus, missed out on some AMAZING hilarity about two links back), that is an Antarctic Fur Seal who’s become quite attached to a King Penguin. Don’t believe me? Peep the BBC story here. For you non-surfers, here are the highlights:

“The bizarre event took place on a beach on Marion Island, a sub-Antarctic island that is home to both fur seals and king penguins.

Why the seal attempted to have sex with the penguin is unclear. But the scientists who photographed the event speculate that it was the behaviour of a frustrated, sexually inexperienced young male seal.”

Oh boy. And it gets better:

“‘At first glimpse, we thought the seal was killing the penguin,’ says Nico de Bruyn, of the Mammal Research Institute at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.”

Yikes! Stop Seal-on-Penguin violence?

Sap? You Want Sap? I’ll Give You Sap!

It’s been a while. And so we here at Um have decided to ease ourselves back in to the game. What’s this mean for you? A SENTIMENTAL SPORTS COLUMN!

Over the last two decades of this past century, certain members of the sports media took full advantage of a supposed curse that kept the Boston Red Sox from winning baseball’s World Series. Larry Barnett blows a call? Blame the Babe. Bucky F. Dent hits a well-timed (and rare) homerun? Blame the Babe. A crippled Bill Buckner lets the ball go through his legs (after his team truly, collectively conspired to turn the game of baseball into a circus)? Blame the Babe. Aaron Boone smacks a homerun off, gasp, a knuckleball pitcher? Blame the Babe.

And now the man who Carl Everett named the Curly-haired boyfriend is a gagillionaire. Ugh.

After 2004, this was all supposed to be old news: Series won, curse vanquished, right? Well, sort of. Despite their eventual, convincing dispatch of the St. Louis Cardinals, the members of that Red Sox team seemed to be enjoying little more than a novelty. One Series win in 86 years? Pshaw.

Then came last year. And another calm lift from the jaws of elimination and another totally dominating performance in the final round of baseball’s playoffs went a long way to putting the worst of all sports distractions deep underground.

But I wasn’t truly convinced until this past weekend. That’s when, while at the wedding of a couple of friends, I heard a very young man call himself a Red Sox fan with no real geographic reason to do so. Maybe this fella found his interest pulled by something that had nothing whatsoever to do with that franchise’s recent success. But I doubt it.

More likely is the possibility that now, nearly a century after the last time a loyal BoSoxer could claim allegiance to a (knock wood) budding dynasty, a different sort of curse–that of perpetual hopelessness–has finally been lifted. And the rest of the so-interested sporting world can feel it.

Are You Fucking Kidding?

This. This, according to the New York Times, is news. And not just any kind of news–Breaking News. Jesus Fucking Christ.

We are in some serious shit.

Madamage

Until this past week, the crimes of the alleged (and so-dubbed) D.C. Madam were fairly victimless: Some pretty rich folks paid a bunch of money to secure the privilege of being able to do it with ladies who seemed okay with the exchange. Duders got laid. Ladies got money. Life carried on.

Sure, when the whole mess got outed, there were a few public apologies and probably some pretty pissed-off significant others–but whatevers; it’s not exactly the stuff of RICO.

Oh wait. That’s right: Prostitution is illegal in this country. And so, in the words of the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, prosecutors can press forward with a “small potatoes…federal racketeering and money-laundering case that could ruin the lives of 132 women.”

At the helm of this debacle is Catherine Connelly, who, thanks to current legal structures, can reveal the names of, according to Milbank, “most, if not all, of the Madam’s escorts”–at least one of whom will likely loose her Naval position thanks to the time that she’s already spent on the witness stand. Other government targets include the oh-so-threatening “63-year-old retired PhD” who was “forced to testify about inducing orgasms in her client” and what would happen if she happened to be working while she was on the proverbial rag.

We shit you not.

Jesus fucking Christ, Catherine Connelly, wanna let-up a bit?

Then again, maybe the best chance for everyone to, uh,  get off is for Connelly to be SO vicious that her jury gets all pissy and acquits Madam Palfrey out of sheer distaste for the prosecution.

Maybe?

Anyway (cue Bunk). Eff this.

Slacker Me

Hi there.

We owe you all a new post. And you’ll get it. Sometime.

But for now, you’ll have to subsist on the archives cause we’re STUPID busy.

Apologies,

The Editorial Staff Here at Um