I might sleep through the technology preview


-- by Heather Levy, who is currently showing her work at the Warehouse Gallery's Where's the Peace show.

* Top ten conservative idiots.

"9. Bill O'Reilly and Condoleezza Rice

"If you are a regular reader of the Top Ten Conservative Idiots — or if you are a reader, for that matter — then surely you are already aware of the numerous problems plaguing Iraq. But leave it to Bill O'Reilly and Condoleezza Rice to draw attention to the issues that really matter. On the deadliest day of violence in Iraq since the end of combat operations, O'Reilly and Rice were talking about — wait for it — the scarcity of a good cup of joe in Baghdad. Our friends over at Think Progress have the video.

"O'Reilly: 'The truth of the matter is that our correspondents here at Fox News can't go out for a cup of coffee in Baghdad. ... That's tough. That's tough.'

"Rice: 'No, it's tough. But would they want to go out for a cup of coffee when Saddam Hussein was in power?'

"Who says that Fox News doesn't ask the tough questions? While it's true that this Rice-O'Reilly discussion is utterly ridiculous, I suppose we should take some comfort from the fact that Fox News is broadcasting any bad news at all from Iraq. Now that they have gone so far as to admit on the air that you can't get a good cup of coffee in Baghdad, maybe next they might go a but further and admit, oh, I don't know, that weapons of mass destruction have not actually been found. Or that we actually weren't greeted as liberators, and most regular Iraqis want us to get out of their country. Just a thought."

* The Rude Pundit on Bush taking responsibility:

"There's a fuck of a lot of difference between claiming responsibility and acting responsibly. Bush's solution seems to be tax cuts for businesses, paying workers shit wages to rebuild places they probably won't be able to afford, getting churches involved, and more failed ideas that won't do anything more than provide the magical illusion that Bush is doing something. Because, as we've noted, the speech was about him, not about Louisiana or Mississippi.

"Essentially, the speech last night was an exercise in self-fellation. Bush may as well have placed his lectern on top of a pile of bloated black corpses and said, 'Ya'll watch me while I suck my own dick,' and then, balancing himself delicately on the graying skin of a drowned body, bent over to start blowing himself, looking up every now and then to say things like, 'See how I don't neglect my balls? Ball-suckin' is good stuff.' Yeah, it would have been disturbing to watch a nearly sixty-year old man bob on his own knob and seem to get immense enjoyment out of it. And when he started fingering his own prostate to make sure he had maximum ejaculatory intensity, some might have tuned out, but when he stood up, his teeth and lips glistening with a semen shine, spitting his own spooge on the heap of dead people, saying, 'Goddamn, no one can suck my dick like me,' we'd've had the same reaction as much of America had to the speech itself: 'Well, isn't that nice for you.'

"(And, no, the actual content of the speech doesn't bear any real discussion because, as we've learned time and again, what Bush says and what Bush does are two entirely different animals. As far as what he said about poverty, the failure of the government to prepare for disasters, and racism, as if these are miraculous discoveries, all the Rude Pundit can say is, 'Dude, haven't we all been partying at your place for the last four and a half years?')"

* Tomorrow's tunes today: Check out the pop gem the truth hurts jamie green from the caribbean's Plastic Explosives, which is out Tuesday on Home-Tapes. They are playing at NY's Knitting Factory this Saturday. More details later this week.