Burger Chef

My brother sent me a link to this fan site for the late great Burger Chef fast food chain.

Burger Chef really was a good place, like McDonald's, but with a "fixins" buffet for your sandwich and even a salad bar.

They also had something called a "fun meal" which was a lot more fun than the McDonald's "Happy Meal" which followed it.

Sleeveface

Try doing this with an MP3!

Hat tip to Robert Miller!

Make your own DVD release?

The Following was found on IMDB.com:



Can't Find a DVD? HP Will Make It
Hewlett-Packard has signed a deal with Sony Pictures to turn out DVDs from the studio's library whenever customers request them, the Los Angeles Times reported today (Thursday). The deal will allow consumers to order movies that ordinarily would not be stocked by dealers because they are too obscure or too old. HP indicated that it expects to sign similar deals with other studios. "We're hoping this provides another option to make available products that wouldn't necessarily garner widespread retail shelf space," Jason Spivak, head of strategic development at Sony Home Entertainment, told the Times.Added Doug Warner, head of HP's digital content business, "If studios can sell more catalog than previously, they can generate more money."

This is really intriguing, but it dies pose some questions, such as:

A) Just what does Sony have in its library?
B) How much will it cost per Movie/TV Show/TV episode?
C) How long will it take?
D) Just what kind of shape are the prints in?

Still, the possibility for good outweighs the bad. My belief is the more stuff the public has available, the more titles will turn out to be popular. And then those titles might get some decent treatment. Then all title might get decent treatment because, hey, who knows what will develop a cult following in the next few years?

Heck, maybe home computers and movie fans will get to the point where they can restore movies themselves.

In any case, I'm keeping an eye out.

You Might Be a Conservative If...

...You consider Darwin a fraud in science and an authorty in economics.

Will The Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down

I had very vague
memories of this show from my youth. Actually, I remembered the opening
credits pretty vividly and almost nothing else. The consensus seems to
be that thetheme song and opening credits are good, and that the rest of the show was pretty pedestrian. And "pedestrian" for 1970s Saturday Morning cartoon shows is pretty pedestrian indeed.

BTW, the voice of Jerry was David L. Landers, later to be known as Squiggy on "Laverne and Shirley."

Going Into the Last Inning...

Hey, guess what? While we're all busy watching the primaries, it turns
out we already have a president! One who's a Republican, and whom all
the GOP candidates distance themselves from, while promising to
continue his policies. One who the Democratic candidates are warned
they shouldn't talk too much about. One who is treated like he's
halfway popular when his approval ratings have been tanking for years.

So, how's he doin'?

(Thanks to Think Progress)

Why Rush Limbaugh and the New York Times are Natural Enemies

Caleb Crain's "Twilight of the Books" in the December 22/31 '07 New Yorker is an interesting article about the decline in reading in the United States and elsewhere. As Caleb presents it, there are key differences between readers, who think in "literate" terms, and TV watchers, who thnk in "oral" terms.

But you know what's even more oral than televison? Talk radio. See if the following differences between the "literate" and "oral" types makes you think of anyone:

Whereas literates can rotate concepts in their minds abstractly, orals embed their thoughts in stories. According to Ong, the best way to preserve ideas in the absence of writing is to “think memorable thoughts,” whose zing insures their transmission. In an oral culture, cliché and stereotype are valued, as accumulations of wisdom, and analysis is frowned upon, for putting those accumulations at risk.

There’s no such concept as plagiarism, and redundancy is an asset that helps an audience follow a complex argument. Opponents in struggle are more memorable than calm and abstract investigations, so bards revel in name-calling and in “enthusiastic description of physical violence.”

Since there’s no way to erase a mistake invisibly, as one may in writing, speakers tend not to correct themselves at all. Words have their present meanings but no older ones, and if the past seems to tell a story with values different from current ones, it is either forgotten or silently adjusted.

Bush's Perfect Year

No one in the mass media seems to have noticed it, but Bush managed to get through all of 2007 without getting an approval rating as high as 40% in a major poll.

Courtesy of Pollingpoint.com

Almost everyone seems to be noticing that Bush's numbers are finally flatlining (or as conservatives call it, "rebounding"), and the White House is actually predicting that he'll leave office with a 45% approval rating. Yes, that's how high the Bush admin dreams these days.

Thing is, even if he does flatline (forget the rebound) Bush will still have his worst year ever (for the sixth year in a row), because his polls now are a little lower than they were last year.

O'Reilly Sabotages O'Reilly

O'Reilly forgets to bring a dog or pony to his own dog and pony show.

Courtesy of Newshounds.

Essentials - George Harrison

George Harrison still hasn't gotten his "Essentials" collection on ITunes. Maybe Harrison's estate doesn't want it. Maybe they're waiting for more of his catalog to arrive. (several albums are still missing, and 331/3 keeps popping on and off the list). Maybe they just forgot. But hey, Ringo got one, right?

So here's what I'd pick. I decided to select from his whole catalog


"Basics"
The Hits
This one's simple. George's fifteen top 40 hits in the U.S. and UK. I decided to include the ones that aren't yet on ITunes.

My Sweet Lord
Got My Mind Set on You
Give Me Love
All Those Years Ago
What Is Life
Bangla-Desh
Dark Horse
Blow Away
Crackerbox Palace
You
Handle With Care (Traveling Wilburies)
When We Was Fab
This Song
Any Road
Ding Dong, Ding Dong


"Next Steps"
Favorites
For this one, I looked up George's most popular ITunes selections not covered by the avove list. I allowed only five "All Things Must Pass" songs (otherwise they'd swamp the list), and didn't include any of his covers of his solo songs, which might not have been so popular if the Beatles catalog was available on ITunes.

All Things Must Pass
Beware of Darkness
Cheer Down
Cloud Nine
Devil's Radio
Dream Away
End of the Line (Traveling Wilburies)
Faster
If Not For You
Isn't It a Pity
Living in the Material World
Love Comes to Everyone
Not Guilty
This is Love
Wah-Wah


"Deep Cust"
Cult Faves
This one's mine. All the GH songs I like not covered by the above lists.

Art of Dying
Awaiting on You All (Live-Concert For Bangla-Desh)
Beautiful Girl
Behind the Locked Door
Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea
Deep Blue
Don't Let Me Wait Too Long
Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby (live-Carl Perkins & Friends)
Flying Hour (cut from "Somewhere in England')
Heading for the Light (Traveling Wilburies)
I Don't Want to Do It ("Porky's III" Soundtrack)
Life Itself
P2 Vatican Blues (Last Saturday Night)
Run of the Mill
Tired of Midnight Blue

When You're Here, You're Stereotypes

This Post Was Written By My Cat...

566666666666666666666664

"Fox did not exclude Ron Paul" Meme - RIP

Well, it's been obvious for at least four days that GOP Presidential candidate Ron Paul is definitely being excluded from the January 6 Fox News event. On some right wing blogs, it's been obvious for maybe a day or so. And on other right wing blogs, it will never be obvious ever.

What really gets me about this whole controversy is that the pro-Fox News/anti-Paul rightwingers spread a dubious claim that Fox News had never excluded Ron Paul, and that the whole story was a hoax. That "fact" came from a dubious blog post that made a lot of false assumptions. (Like, If there's a debate on January 5, there couldn't possibly be anything happening on January 6, and certainly not with Fox News' involvement.) Here's the link - this blogger at least kept revising his argument as the facts came in, and quickly revised his original claim. Of course, many rightwingers on the net kept pushing this angle anyway. A wingnut even tried to shut me up by linking to the still-uncorrected Newsbusters post.

In case I haven't made it clear by now, I think Paul's awful, a crackpot with illogical, impractical ideas about government, and who seems to ditch his libertarian values over issues like abortion and race.

But if Paul says the Earth revolves around the sun, I'm backing him up.


Ohm and here's a memorable bit from the second Newshounds post about the Ron Paul uninvitation:

I wrote, "...I'm anything but a Ron Paul supporter. He is, however, an anti-establishment candidate with a real following..."

To which I got the following reply: "I most certainly AM a Ron Paul supporter.
I do not classify him as anti-establishment, except for the fact that he views the current establishment as bloated, wasteful and unconstitutional."