Saturday Song

The singing starts around 1:07...

Labels: "saturday song"

posted by Fran Langum / Blue Gal @ 12:56 PM * Permalink 0 comments

I hate you, Stephen Colbert!

Here I think I'm having a lovely evening with my first imaginary boyfriend***:



...when it's actually my other imaginary boyfriend tricking me with a mask?



Shame, Stephen. Shame.


***Why yes, that is the Robert Redford/Barbara Streisand "peanut butter on the lens" photoshop filter in use.

posted by Fran Langum / Blue Gal @ 7:28 PM * Permalink 4 comments

Merry Zappadan

Frank Zappa died December 4 (the night now known as BummerNacht), and was born (earlier, they tell me) on December 21, Day Zero of Zappadan.

Too many years ago to count accurately, the blog known as The Aristocrats declared that December 4 through 21 should henceforth be known as Zappadan: the days of the year between death and birth, that ethereal time when there was no Frank, so we must celebrate him to keep his spirit safe until his birthday again.

Or it's just a great excuse for a party that has nothing to do with the greed and debt festival known as Christmas in America. In any event, it's a labor of love with the hope that Frank would be proud.

"Some people say" that the Miracles of Zappadan stuff is a buncha hooey, but I disagree. During the first Zappadan in 2006, John Bolton resigned. Then the year after that, Sandy Underpants went to the registry of motor vehicles during Zappadan and got a new license plate with no lines, no waiting, and free donuts.

This year Zappadan will be hosted at Mark Hoback's resurrected blog Fried Green Al Qaedas. Details at the link. We're also using the twitter account @Zappadan and the hashtag #zappadan to keep up with what those wacky kids use for communication.



You might also be interested in revisiting my "foreign film" version of some Frank Zappa lyrics blessing some poncho movie goodness....

Many blessings to you on BummerNacht and throughout the celebration. And if you're not into Zappa, The Onion has some words for you.

Labels: zappadan

posted by Fran Langum / Blue Gal @ 2:18 PM * Permalink 8 comments

Take the Christmas Readiness Quiz!

An encore post from 2006:

Perhaps the best giftbag ever: image stolen from the always wonderful Is Richmond Burning?

And because I just can't resist the temptation to turn my blog into a cheesy women's magazine feature, here's a bonus quiz! Find out just how much Christmas you can handle!

Give yourself one point for each thing you do during the Christmas season, then see how you score!

1. Hang Christmas lights outside.
2. Order Personalized Christmas Cards
3. Have over 100 family photos printed
4. Compose Annual Christmas Letter.
5. Create laser printer labels, complete with year, for the back of the photos.
6. Buy and wrap all of the presents your family will give this year.
7. Don't forget the kid's teachers, the mailman, your pastor (if any), and your spouse's secretary.
8. Buy two sets of Christmas stamps, religious (see minister above) plus snowflake so your heathen friends won't be offended. By the stamp. On your holiday card.
9. Buy 18 snowflake pencils and sets of three snowman and Santa stickers for goodie bags for your child's school Christmas party.
10. Bake Cookies for the Parent Appreciation (?) Lunch at Cub Scouts.


Now score yourself:

7-10 points - Well, congratu-f-ing-lations, you put Mrs. Claus to shame, ya elfin beeyotch!
4-6 points - Screw the black box warning: you need Prozac, in the limited edition red and green capsules!
1-3 points - Thanks for putting up the outside lights, honey.
Zero points - No offense, but you think you'll keep her, huh? Asshole.

Labels: Blue Gal has come a long way

posted by Fran Langum / Blue Gal @ 11:24 AM * Permalink 8 comments

Just a little sumpin' for Tengrain

Who did have the best comment at my Afghanistan post.




I dubbed Peggington's voice for this one, but I suspect this will become a series, mostly undubbed. PN does have a talent for needing no additional satirical help.

Labels: video mashups

posted by Fran Langum / Blue Gal @ 1:17 PM * Permalink 6 comments

Pay no attention to that Murdoch behind the curtain! (Oz)

I never did trust those Lollypop League mofos:



But the Murdoch behind the curtain?



...is a powerful Wiz, if ever a Wiz there was.

Labels: photoshops

posted by Fran Langum / Blue Gal @ 11:07 AM * Permalink 0 comments

Shake and Bake, and ah helped!

I did the "commissioned artwork" over at tonight's open thread.

posted by Fran Langum / Blue Gal @ 10:35 PM * Permalink 2 comments

Use SNL (back when it was funny) to sell a war?

I just keep thinking Obama's going to go before all those West Pointy's and say...

It's an escalation...and a peace plan!

And if he can speak cohesively about that, it's a win. Sigh.

As I said at Salon last night, anyone who feels betrayed by 35,000 troops to Afghanistan wasn't listening during the campaign. Obama said he was committed to this one. He's not turning back on any promises.

And I voted for him knowing this. But the alternatives? Hillary would have invaded Iran by now. And McCain would be dead, and any of you self-respecting hippies think we'd be better off with Bill Kristol running our foreign policy backstage while Sarah Palin gave the speeches?



We liberals are stuck between a floor wax and a dessert topping on this one. Being roughly the same age as Obama (exactly the same as Michelle), the first presidential candidate I remember my parents voting for is George McGovern. For us DFH's, being a peacenik and distrusting the Pentagon are in our genetic code. We paint Viet Nam, Cambodia, Iraq, Grenada, The Balkans, Afghanistan, and the mother fukkin' Falkland Islands with exactly the same wide brush. Don't get me wrong, I'm proud, very proud, to be a pacifist.



But my parents also had interracially married friends, and they taught me that part of the good fight, a big part, was to push for equal rights for everybody. We stand behind this President in that he is Not Bush, and we stand in front of him and scream bloody hell to anyone who would make his race an issue, and there are plenty of Americans who are, every day. For the Fox News minions calling Obama a "racist"? Honey the Fox viewer hears "race" and that's it, that's the new N-word.

It's very cool to be disgusted with Obama at this point, especially in Liberal Blog Circles. I love the infighting, too: bloggers who've bragged about how they have the left ear of the President, or even being some insider circle of high-end blogs that will shape policy (as if), are now all of a sudden the enemy of those they sought to lead or exclude. I never saw my pixel level drop even once while the A(hole)-list blogger cabal was forming, but maybe that's me. And E-list bloggers taking on some mantle of exposing the betrayal of single-payer by a self-appointed A-list cabal. And let's fight the 2008 primaries all over again while we're at it. PUMA obviously now stands for "People Underestimate My Arrogance."


Sayre's Law, my friends. Sayre's Law.

May I work for peace, resist this President when he deserves it, and make sure that whatever I do as a blogger or activist, it is not about me. The strongest weapons in our arsenal, I think, are patience and humility.

And thank goodness we have something about which to be outraged. I'd hate to have to blog about that dead Miss Venezuela and her botched butt operation.

posted by Fran Langum / Blue Gal @ 10:12 AM * Permalink 10 comments

Sarah Palin on the Dinosaur Train?

I try best I can to get the kids to watch PBS, especially in the morning. And right before it's time to go the show "Dinosaur Train" comes on. The first time I saw the opening to this show I actually cried:

Dinosaur eggs are hatching, but there's a "different" child from a strange egg. In a nest full of winged Pteranodon chicklets is hatched an orange T-Rex.

Mrs. Pteranodon shakes her head to her "different" child: "This is your family, and I'm your mom."



The parent's guide to the show pretends that the family dynamic is about adoption. Yeah, right. Part of every show I've seen resolves in the opening minutes, the problem of how to get little "Buddy" (their T-Rex differently-chromosomed child) from one place to another given that he can't fly. Anyone who has ever strapped a child into a wheelchair...these moments are about us. (I should mention there is a Mr. Pteranodon who coaches and helps the kids with their science experiments, even though he's absent from their hatching.)

Buddy's differently-abled-ness not only includes lack of wings, he's also preternaturally obsessed with making scientific hypotheses and proving them. Don't get me started.

It's a cute and lovely family dynamic, but anyone with even a cursory knowledge of evolutionary biology knows that a real Pteranodon would kick a strange egg out of her nest, let it crash and break on the rocks below, and eat the contents before any little Buddy could be adopted and taken on science field trips. I keep silence when my daughters watch this show, that as soon as sullen teen Buddy has a growth spurt, he is going to kill and eat his own mother.

All of which brings me to the 80 percent of pregnancies in America that are "unplanned," and the 90 percent of parents who, discovering they are carrying a Down's Syndrome Baby, decide to terminate the pregnancy.

And of course Sarah Palin was trapped into making a different choice with her unplanned Down's Syndrome child, not just because of her religion, but because of her fame and desire for more of it.

She actually considered aborting her unplanned pregnancy out of town, while speaking at an Oil and Gas conference?

"There, just for a fleeting moment, I thought, I knew, nobody knows me here. Nobody would ever know. I thought, wow, it is easy. It could be easy to think maybe of trying to change the circumstances. No one would know. No one would ever know."

No wonder the really fringe anti-abortion loons don't think she's one of them. She actually figured out on her own that since the morning after pill does nothing if you're already pregnant, it can't be an abortion pill.

I also wonder with a real liberal sneer on my face whether Sarah Palin's pre-Stupak private health insurance covered an out-of-state secret abortion to "change the circumstances." "It is easy" she says...

Sure Sarah, and life is a shit sandwich.

And hey, if the out-of-state clinic doesn't take Blue Cross, Sarah Palin and bread-rich women like her can charge the "changing the circumstances" to their Oil and Gas Conference per diem. No one will ever know.

Still, I feel sorry for Sarah Palin on so many levels, not the least of which because she is blind, or at least feels the need to be publicly blind, to the needs of women who are Not Her.

posted by Fran Langum / Blue Gal @ 9:02 AM * Permalink 11 comments

But wait, there's more Katie Couric Photoshoppy Goodness!

See the contributions at

Tildology

and

The Millikan Daily.

I love it when the party at the art studio attracts more artists. So much creativity in the intertubes. These folks are on the blogroll now, also too. Gotcha. xx

posted by Fran Langum / Blue Gal @ 3:55 PM * Permalink 2 comments

"Please, no wagering."

It's an exhibition, not a competition, but I emailed to my favorite photoshoppers the Gawker pictures of Katie Couric dancing, and boy did they meet the challenge. Do go visit

Darkblack,

Driftglass,

Mark Hoback of Fried Green Al Quedas,

Tengrain of Mock, Paper Scissors, (D-Cap posted his at MPS, too) and

Doctor Zaius of Zaius Nation.

We love party crashers and so far Lockwood DeWitt has gotten through the outer perimeter and MAY get a reality teevee show someday!

What, I gotta do one, too? Well, no one could have predicted that one of the CBS cameras had x-ray film.


Gotcha.


REMINDER: It's de-lurking weekend so if you visit a blog and like what you see, please leave a comment for the hard-working artist/writer who made you laugh or think or just read to the end. And thank you.

Labels: photoshops

posted by Fran Langum / Blue Gal @ 10:26 AM * Permalink 12 comments

Work.

Geez Magazine, a hip Canadian imprint on religion and culture,
has a call for submissions for its next issue, "Work That Enslaves, Work that Liberates". I'm submitting this. (Click on the image for larger.)

Original screenshot from Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927).

Labels: photoshops

posted by Fran Langum / Blue Gal @ 11:33 AM * Permalink 1 comments

Happy Thanksgiving

Watch your turkeys. h/t Petulant Rumblings.

To my readers: thanks for all your support this year. The Blue Gal younguns and I are deeply grateful. xoxo

Labels: photoshops, Sarah Palin, thank you

posted by Fran Langum / Blue Gal @ 7:56 AM * Permalink 5 comments