paris hilton to be on the o.c.? that could be terrible, or genius, or both. i'm guessing she'd be a socialite type? but that's going out on a limb. (via whatevs.org)

Leaked Pentagon report warns climate change may bring famine, war.

nice little excerpt: "Britain will have winters similar to those in current-day Siberia as European temperatures drop off radically by 2020." and "'catastrophic' shortages of potable water and energy will lead to widespread war by 2020."

awesome!

and bush will back an amendment.

update: andrew sullivan says it.

basically, i want to vomit.

this is why, in part, i didn't vote for edwards in the primary:

It bothers and worries me to see how enamored you have become of John Edwards’ candidacy. I live in North Carolina, and having witnessed his rapid rise to national prominence I feel I should hold up a sign that says, “Warning, Turn Back NOW!” Edwards does have skill and charisma, but his primary skill is the ability to convince a jury (and an electorate) that he has substance. There is no evidence that he knows how to govern. He has never done it, at any level.

And remember, Edwards has also never been re-elected to any political office, has never been reaffirmed at the polls by those he represents. There are plenty of Carolinians who are convinced he decided to run for President only because he would be unlikely to be re-elected as Senator based on his performance in office so far. He began running for President less than half way through his first term in Washington, and consequently has done nothing for his constituents, unless one considers his actual constituency to be the trial lawyers lobby and those few who had the opportunity to give him 35% of the proceeds of their litigation.

For all the concern about other politicians’ ties to ‘special interests’, here we have a candidate who is financed by and is running for the trial lawyers, the richest and most entrenched special interest of all. It boggles the mind to realize that someone with no experience in government, no demonstrated understanding of international relations and no meaningful record in domestic affairs is being touted so highly for the most important job in the world, simply because he is a pretty face with the backing of serious money. And because he is not Kerry, Dean, or a Republican.

i agree with kriston about the various critical analyses of sex and the city that have been floating around since the finale, although he expresses himself much more coherently and with much more complex sentence structure than i could. and i haven't seen the finale yet, but i've read enough to get a sense of what went on.

all the articles are just tiring and pointless, to me, and end up probably saying more about the critics who wrote them than the show. people forgot that there are real women out there, doing real things, and maybe they should be looking at that instead of writing lame articles about what was, in the end, just a tv show. i mean, i also think it's important to think about how or why women were influenced by satc, but i really think you can only go so far in analyzing a tv show. really, a ton of these writers were stretching - carrie as a jane austen character? satc ends up punishing each woman? (that was a really terrible article, in my opinion, and completely untrue.) and then everyone is SOOOO MAD that carrie actually ends up with a man instead of embracing the single life and carrying on and proving that a woman doesn't need a man, she just needs herself and her friends and BLAH BLAH. you know what? sometimes a woman needs a man! in fact, i think most of the time a woman needs a man, or a significant other! why is it bad that carrie found real love at the end of it all? the show came out and essentially said, you know what, loneliness sucks. life IS better with love. life IS better with someone who will chase you to paris and say you're the one and then take you home and cook with you and take you to movies and put up with the fact that you're a screechy, self-absorbed, annoying sex-columnist retard diva. it may be arrogant, it may be hard to accept, but i think it's true. and that, in my opinion, was a brave way to end the series. it's not a bad thing to admit that you want love in your life, and it's not a bad thing to hope that prince charming will come along. what wouldn't have been brave was to have carrie end up single, yet happy and satisfied with her friends and the city, because honestly, in a show that was ALWAYS about the search for love and satisfaction, i think that would have been a farce.

the ending WASN'T about how incredibly pathetic it would be to have had these middle-aged women remain single. it WAS about love. love of all sorts: of a place, of friends, of possibilities, of men, of women. and it wasn't like the characters settled; for six years now they've been through divorces, miscarriages, unplanned pregnancies, heartbreaks, cancer, bad sex, good sex, infidelity, death, always searching. and they ending up finding happiness in uncommon places. to me, the finale of the show said not: Being single is sad. it said: Love and hope is good. and that was a perfect ending.

THANK GOD. i'm not alone in thinking the quizno's ads are terrifying:

Never have I gotten so much mail on a single ad. I gather that you seek an explanation. And with great urgency. Many of you sound disturbed—as though your lives will be placed on hold until you've come to terms with these haunting creatures.

I wish I could help. But what can be said? I mean, it's a screeching, levitating prosimian in a bowler hat. You'll find no easy answers here, people.

that said, i do find the vampire rodents endearing and funny in contexts outside of the food i would like to put into my mouth without thinking i was gagging on mouse hair. tommy (and the slate article) pointed me towards www.rathergood.com, where you can see the "hell lemurs" in their own little bizarre environments, as well as a scary little clip with a saucer-eyed cartoon boy surrounded by enormous spiders, while russian-sounding techno music plays. and then britney spears comes and has a dance party. it's kind of awesome, in a nightmarish way.

so anyway, even if the "drug-addled, castrato hamsters" don't really make me want to eat a mouse sub, i do think it's pretty good advertising, as it's immediately recognizable and has gotten a lot of people talking. and though i do find it gross, in all honesty, i think it's much better than the wolf-teat-sucking ad quizno's did before. that was nast.