dusang

Interesting -- I would consider TDS & Jon Stewart much closer to righteous indignation than LWT (well, apart from Ollie's Caillou obsession). I see LWT a lot more like, "Hey, did you know about this? Here are some humourously presented and relatively balanced facts about something that you should probably be aware of - please discuss."

I'm embarrassed to admit that I would totally go to a chocolate milk bar. As long as there isn't a line-up. If there's a line-up I'll just go to the convenience store.

I watched Michael Che's debut on SNL -- WU guest "The Girl You Wish You Hadn't Started a Conversation With at a Party" asked him if he had a crush on anyone and he said, "There's this girl Jessica" and I immediately thought, "Jessica Williams?!?" I'm going to hold to that.

I love that Terry Crews is so willing to make himself look stupid -- all of the drills, the lisp.... I just love that dude. And by "stupid" I clearly mean "awesome". "Hey! This is a tight 240, show Adelaide some respect!"

I love how even the most telegraphed jokes make me laugh so hard.

Sorry -- 1/8 + 1/16 = 3/16 Can some explain to me, specifically and using small words, how a news anchor used the phrase "Boobs on the ground" on air and hasn't been fired?

There's a new clip of the season premier posted where Charles and Gina discuss "the incident" and that Charles is going to blab to Jake. I love this clip on many levels, particularly that they flip the gender stereotypes so that Boyle is the one worried about being the "office slut" but it also reminds me how Joe Lo Truglio has some magical ability to make Charles both pathetic and awesome and lovable at the same time.

Now that is interesting.

How do you make a gif your desktop wallpaper?

I read it more as a veiled "We're anti-choice and you better be too." I don't know how to feel about the contestants because they (generally speaking) are pretty high achieving women. It's too bad that they put themselves forward to be reduced to a hot bod.

Agreed, it is just a beauty contest... making its standing as the leading organization providing scholarships to women not just surprising but appalling. Totally random fact: the dude who invented* Vaseline would experiment on himself to demonstrate Vaseline's curative properties, including burning himself in a variety of ways and observing the healing rate with and without Vaseline. He was also convinced that Vaseline was good for your overall health and ate a tablespoon of it daily. He lived to over 90. *By "invented" I mean "observed the usefulness of the petroleum jelly residue that developed on oil rigs and began marketing it outside the oil-rigging community."

Okay, I'm in a bit of a crazed dilemma here. On the one hand, it is archaic and offensive. By valuing women more for their appearance than for the content of their character MAP/O undermines the amazing achievements of their own contestants. It's obscene and ridiculous and I do not support it. On the other hand, as John said, they are the largest organization providing scholarships to women. If they had just stuck to their actual dollars awarded figure that ranking would not be in question, at all. So, although I'm kind of appalled by the whole thing I still feel the need to defend them on the scholarship issue. Yes, they shot themselves in the foot by overstating the total (although, from a fundraising and business development perspective there is an argument to be made to support the "effort to honor every one of our academic partners nationwide who make available cash and in-kind financial opportunities" claim), at the end of the day they put their money where their mouth is. However, as exemplified by the Last Week Tonight Pageant the entire thing is still gross, definitively patriarchal, and vaguely misogynistic.

In the Last Week Tonight Pageant the first contestant summed up the point that, regardless of its scholarship claims, the fact that the contestants are given only 20 seconds to answer the questions only highlights the superficiality of the competition. So the "overly complex question" segment just set up the grand punchline that the entire pageant is an anachronistic exercise in judging women on their appearance and all the claims about the "scholarship" aspect are essentially bullshit. Also, as John pointed out, those questions are so unduly complex and politically loaded that President Obama can barely give a coherent answer with more time and a script, so including them in MAP seems more so that they can point to the "hard questions asked" without giving a flying fadoo as to the quality of the answer. (I was impressed that her answer was reasonable, balanced, and coherent. However, no matter how well informed you are, in 20 seconds you're just going to skim the surface of the issues being raised.)

"No, you're not angry. You're just saying, 'Hey, you, I know you, I know you.'"

I love Dame Judi. She is so dench.

His relative ability to keep a secret isn't the relevant point, nor is his crying on JJ's couch. They were under direct orders, per protocol, to not tell anyone. Full stop. Period. Whether those orders or that protocol is unnecessary is a separate issue. And I'm going to stop writing right now or else I'm going to quote A Few Good Men about following orders or people die and that is a low to which I will not sink.

Imitation Game won the People's Choice award at the Toronto International Film Festival.

I've just started listening to podcasts (I know, I'm soooo cutting edge!) and The Bugle in particular. I decided to start as far back as possible, which was sometime in early 2012 and I just go to the episode where they discussed the agreement to hold this referendum. I'm not sure what's more ridiculous, that I'm two years behind in my satirical news or that said two-year-old satirical news is still so relevant today.

It's hard to say because it changes quite a bit based on the host(s). There are some true classics and I'm sure some elements that have directly influenced TDS (Even Stepvens seems a direct descendant of Point/Counterpoint to my mind). However, I'd have to say no, it is not like TDS/TCR/LWT -- WU punchlines off headlines, it's much closer to a late night monologue than an actual news program. I would say it's the most reliably funny part of any SNL episode, though, and definitely worth watching.

CTV is the worst. Which is a tremendous feat because the Canadian telcom industry is possibly the second worst in the world, populated entirely by terrible conglomerates. So CTV's ascension to the top of a heap of awful is impressive. I'm surprised to hear you say that "anecdotally a lot of people say they prefer Colbert to Stewart." The anecdotes I've heard usually suggest that people outside of the US tend to not quite "get" Colbert because they don't have the same exposure to the O'Reilly's of the world and don't understand the source of the parody. Although that might have changed over the past few years as the US-style punditry has been exported more globally, to the detriment of all.

I've forgotten the details of their interactions now and I've (somehow) never seen the episode where Prentiss returns, but I always felt like Reid was being the unprofessional dick in personally penalizing JJ for not telling him. She was doing her job, following the rules, and protecting Prentiss' life. Also, the double standard in his response to JJ vs. Hotch is vaguely offensive -- they did the exact same thing for the exact same reasons.

I don't know about that. I do have a new respect for Great Big World for keeping a straight face for that.

I know, hence my WHAT?!?!? :)

I thought she must have misspoken because WHAT?!?!?

I love the ability of John and his writers to take the legal threats from his targets and turn it even further against them, such as the Corinthian College letter, which he destroyed while following it to the letter.