Big Friday Blog Dump

First, the important news: There's a new Star Trek film in the works and it's going to be directed by JJ Abrams of Lost/Alias fame! I don't know about his directing abilities, but I like that he's involved. I'm less excited about the fact that it's supposedly focused on the youth of original cast, but I guess it could be interesting. You *know* that they're going to show Kirk cheat his way through the Kobayashi Maru, right? Oh, snap! Fanboy gushing!

I know it's plenty hip to hate on the Country music, but while I'm not exactly a fan, I can listen to it without rolling my eyes and have even found a few tunes that kind of grew on me. Twang or no, a catchy tune is a catchy tune, and before their fall from grace a while back I heard quite a bit of the Dixie Chicks through my sister and they certainly fit that category. Modern Country may not really be "Country" by some standards, but The Dixie Chicks seemed even less so. Anyway, I'm nowhere near qualified on Country music generally or The Dixie Chicks specifically to say much without exposing my ignorance, but they've got a new album out and you can listen to the first single for free here. Even if you're not into Country it's worth a listen.

I've got a couple Crooks and Liars links for ya next: here and here. The first shows a Fox News Poll with Bush's approval at 33%. Criticize polling all you want, that's a damn impressive number. The second link is an awesome clip from The Daily Show about Donald Rumsfeld. Sometimes it's like these people set the jokes up themselves.

I think Big Media Matt's War-Avoidance Plan with Iran was best articulated by Agent J in the venerable foreign policy documentary Men In Black: "What I don't understand is, why you gotta come down here and bring all this ruckus? My opinion is, 'Don't start none, won't *be* none'."

Read this editorial on how it was so awesome when people could beat up gay people for sport. This got published, in print. No, seriously.

Bitch, Ph.D isn't a site that I read with great regularity, but evidently she gave a keynote address recently and it's an interesting, if a bit long, read. Now, Noumena can probably correct me if this is wrong, but it seems to me like a good place to start if you're interested in reading the site or just thinking about femenism generally.

Joel Dykstra of South Dakota thinks "rape" and "incest" are undefinable buzzwords. In other news, does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care? Also be sure to check out Bill Napoli's rape exception. I think he's a crazy person.

Danniel Henniger is worried that the web is making everyone into disinhibited, foul mouthed crazy people. Of course, I don't think it was blogs that led to Cheney's famous phrase from the Senate floor, nor do I think the lack of blogs made the Old West any more "civilized". Pieces like this remind me of the Krikkit Wars from Life, The Universe and Everything. A solar system surrounded by a vast cloud of space dust which obscured any view of the stars led to the inhabitants on one of the system's worlds to believe that their little solar system was all that existed in the universe. When a space ship crash landed on the planet, the shock and trauma of learning that their entire conception of the universe had been wrong from the start led the people of Krikkit to the only reasonable conclusion: The rest of the universe needed to be destroyed. I don't know Henniger's political beliefs, but I think this is true for most Movement Conservatives. Oh, and I'm not going to scan back to make sure, but I'm pretty sure I got through writing this big ol' blog without uttering a single swear. Of course, if someone points out that I did, I'll just edit it. Ha ha, the beauties of the internet!