The author of How Stella Got Her Groove Back has filed for divorce after her younger island-boy husband came out of the closet. That in itself is barely even interesting, but conservative journalist Steve Sailer adds some amusing context.

Love’s a beeatch.

Johnny Munkhammar noterar att någon värdelös svensk byråkrati på det likaledes värdelösa EUs vägnar skottar ut miljoner på värdelösa projekt runt om i riket.

Fosterlandet reducerat till en patetisk bidragstagare. Utan att ens behöva det. Tragiskt.

Jämför med Indien som ratade katstrofbistånd efter tsunamin. Det är nationell stolthet och nationellt ansvarstagande.

The Big Moscow Super Bowl Ring Heist reminds us of two things: Bob Kraft is a great businessman* and Vladimir Putin is a…well, we all know what he is, and as long as there are people like him we shall have no choice but to aim thousands of nuclear warheads at that place, just in case.

* He is also a great fan of the New England Patriots, a great owner of the New England Patriots and a great American, and at the appropriate time a statue should be erected in Boston to honor his memory. But none of that has any bearing on this particular story.

The only R-rated movie at AMC’s Fenway 13 last weekend was Land of the Dead, George A. Romero’s latest and second to worst zombie flick. That’s pretty miserable. I understand that G, PG, and PG-13 movies are more profitable, but surely it’s still possible to rake in good money with good R-movies: A little nekkid females, a little violence, a little foul language, and a story that’s a little bit interesting. A little like Basic Instinct, basically. I’m not asking for artsy stuff (I’m definitely not asking for artsy stuff), I just want movies with appeal other than animated talking animals or ever louder explosions.

What if zombies really aren’t such terrible flesh-eating creatures as they seem to be? What if they are just like you and me, merely looking for somwehere to go (allow me to insert my favorite Old Country sarcasm: Vi har ingen lokal)? If that’s so, then I guess they aren’t slaughtering humans because they…need…brains…but because they need lebensraum for their dar-al-zombislam. And if so, what right do humans have to hold their ground against them? Any? A little?

If you think this post is a train wreck, then you haven’t seen George A. Romero’s latest zombie-movie George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead, directed by George A. Romero and written by George A. Romero, in which George A. Romero takes shots at George W. Bush.

In the movie, humans are taking cover in a triangular city walled off by two rivers and an electric fence. The city’s population is kept alive by the booty collected by a group of mercenaries with motorbikes, cool technicals, and a kick-ass rolling fortress called Dead Reckoning, complete with .50 cal machine gun bays. The group launches its raids from a not overly well-fortified outpost on the other side of the river from the city, connected by an underground tunnel.

The group’s commander is Riley, a honest man but also somewhat of a misanthropic loner whose side kick is the disfigured, slow-witted, sharp-shooter Charlie. Like any good liberal, Riley dreams of going north, to - you guessed it - Canada. The group’s second in command is Cholo, who also serves as Kaufman’s henchman. Kaufman (Dennis Hopper, taking one for the bank account) is an entrepreneur of the zombie-induced apocalypse: He claims to have walled off the city, arranged the security detail and set up the raiding party. His signature contribution is Fiddler’s Green, a luxurious high rise that’s - quite needlessly when you think about - promoted through Robo Cop-style commercials. Fiddler’s Green is the in place for the rich, while the rest of the population is seemingly homeless.

Cholo aspires to get an apartment in the sky rise, but his dream is shattered when Kaufman lets him know in an oddly confrontational manner that the Fiddler’s Green is no place for him.

The pissed off Cholo hijacks Dead Reckoning and threatens to level the Fiddler’s Green unless he gets - five million dollars. Or was it 2? Whatever. Kaufman blurts out that “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” and asks Riley to get the killing machine back before Cholo goes apeshit on the town. Hijinks ensue. Zombies storm the city. Kaufman gets his comeuppance, along with the rest of the fat cats in the Fiddler’s Green. Bodies are torn apart. Riley and his merry multicultural band retake the Reckoning, save what remains of the city and then heads off to Canada while setting off fireworks (really).

Romero fumbles most everything in the movie. His city resembles Latin America far more than America, in spite of its inhabitants being overwhelmingly anglo-white (including an Irish anti-Kaufman resistance leader). For a guy who somehow managed to save a city from the zombie hordes, Kaufman is surprisingly clumsy in his dealings with those who get their hands dirty for him. That’s not very dubyaish at all. What should have been an awsome zombie ransacking of the city become a series of lacklusterly edited gore scenes without much rhyme or reason. After all, a good deal of the fun with zombie movies is pondering that age-old question what you gonna do, what you gonna do when the dead come for you? Sitting at an upscale bar sipping parasol drinks until the very last second is a very unsatisfactory answer. Why the city-dwellers don’t spend a good of their time strengthening and expanding the city walls is never explained. Since Kaufman owns the place, you’d think he’d be very mindful of protecting it.

But then again, you’d think George A. Romero would be intrested in protecting his legacy. Apparently he isn’t.

UPDATE: If you want to look for similarities between the city in the movie and the real world, try Sarajevo during the Bosnian Civil War in the mid-1990’s. There the whole crooked-criminal-running-the-show thing works much better. The constant threat of death and societal collapse were probably far greater there than they are in post-9/11 America. You might argue that the city is simply a metaphor, and that is obviously the case, it’s just that the metaphor works so much better on Sarajevo under siege than on America at war.

The Boston Globe rightly disagrees with the United States Supreme Court’s bizarre ruling in Kelo vs. New London, but can’t bring itself to mention or even hint at who made up the majority: The Court’s liberals and moderates (minus Sandra Day O’Connor, who surprisingly sided with the Constitution-reading faction of the Court).

If you see a bunch blond people hopping around in a circle this weekend, don’t be alarmed. It’s a tribe, not a cult.

We come in peace. Actually, we come to bring you Cotton Eye Joe, but other than that, we come in peace.

So…

Spola kröken. Slida kniven. Ta på flytvästen. Använd kondom.

“Is the recent talk radio listenership dropoff continuing?” aks The Radio Equalizer and looks at the early Spring 2005 Arbitron numbers for WLIB and WABC. He also notices a union sponsored bail out of a Liberal station in Alaska - and gets a nonsensical comment from the president of Chinook Concert Broadcasters.

Read it all here

I like Mitt Romney, but his health care proposal, as outlined by himself in an op-ed in today’s Boston Herald, is garbage built on the transparent lie that it will pay for itself. What a joke. The plan, if enacted, will become an enormously expensive and politically untouchable boondoggle that won’t even do much, if anything, to improve people’s health.

Subsidized coverage? Sliding scales? Income-based premiums? No deductible? Limited co-pays? Did I just die and wake in up in Old Country hell? This plan will create a new class of worthless bureaucrats, and it will give every Mass. politician an easy instrument to promise voters more for less: Why not scrap co-pays altogether? Why not expand the plan to include all Mass. residents? Abortions for some, miniature American flags for the rest, as a great - though fictional - political strategist once said.

I can’t imagine that social moderates in the Republican party, who might well have looked favorably upon Romney, will support such fiscal and policy lunacy.

I see that all the upbeat buzz about the New And Fabulously Improved Kenmore Square has created some ill will among Fenway/Kenmore bloggers. Allow me to break a lance for the New Square.

It’s not that I’m rah-rah about the New Kenmore Square, but I think us Kenmorians have to take one for the team here: Making Kenmore Square ridiculously attractive to parents of prospective BU students is just about the best-use one can imagine for K-Square, from a city perspective. You miss the grittiness of the Rat? Take the T to Allsgone/Crimeghton. It should further be noted that BU didn’t toss Deli Haus out of the Square, it took itself out of the game, all on its own (the way it left has, according to word on the street, made it difficult to fill the space again). The Pierre Robert Bistro is better than its predecessor, and way more popular to boot. An upscale but still liquor store has replaced the old one in the block that is now Hotel Commonwealth. I personally prefer the new Cornwall’s over the old one. The Dunkin Donuts has been replaced by a Dunkin Donuts. The IHOP was, as I have stated elsewhere, awful. What we Kenmorians have lost, and probably for good, are the laundromat and the barber shop - both unreplaced - but I can’t imagine that anybody in Fenway relied on their services.

Yes, it is hyperbolic - really snagged out of thin air - to claim that our neighborhood used to be “down-on-its-heels,” but I can’t really say I remember the Old Square as something worthy of historical preservation. If anything, it seems to me that the square has always been in a sort of transitionary phase, judging from accounts of its past. I’m not all that convinced that the New square will be the smashing success its marketers envision, but I must say I find the effort worthwhile and laudable.

Now, dear BU, make that check payable to…

(Via everybody’s favorite Universal Hub)