Here’s the verbatim transcript of a prank call I received at 5:30 AM :

Me : Ummhh…hello?

Caller : Is this Greg Saunders?

Me : Uhhh..yeah…

Caller : I’m calling from Atrios

Me : Huh?

Caller : I’m calling on behalf of the Atrios website. We’ve decided to de-link you.

Me : What?!

Caller : Your site isn’t up to our standards. [Click]

Has anyone else had this happen to them? Also, wouldn’t I need to be linked, before I can be de-linked?? Seriously, the only time Atrios has ever linked to me is yesterday’s drawing of the monster with the fire hands. Not that I wouldn’t mind a permanent link from Atrios (or Calpundit, DailyKOS, Eric Alterman, Whiskey Bar…)

Whoops! It looks like one of the 15 finalists for the “Bush in 30 Seconds” grand prize was disqualified. Apparently the ad “Bring Em’ On” used some copyrighted material. What was the material? They didn’t say, but I’m guessing it was this :

I’m not saying the commercial wasn’t well made, but c’mon. That’s such a ripoff of the “Bush Lied. People Died.” slogan that’s been circulating in the blogosphere for months, that I’d be pretty disappointed if that guy won.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why we used a song that was recorded in 1924….

Goddamn. Why does Matthew Broderick insist on remaking classic movies??

“The Producers” is coming back to the big screen.

A film version of the hit Broadway musical will begin shooting early next year with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick repeating their roles as the rapscallion producer Max Bialystock and his nebbish accomplice Leopold Bloom.

“Filming with start in January 2005, probably in New York,” Simon Halls, a spokesman for the two actors, confirmed Wednesday from Los Angeles.

The stage musical was based on the 1968 movie by Mel Brooks starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder as two producers who set out to swindle investors by creating a musical flop.

Granted, it’s a remake of a popular musical, but I can’t imagine that Broderick could ever fill Gene Wilder’s shoes. His performance in the TV remake of The Music Man was so damn lifeless, Terri Schiavo could have done a better job. If done right, it could be as good as this, but my bet is that it’ll turn out more like this.

Well, it looks like we went to war over a few sketches which could lead to plans which could lead to a program which could lead to Iraq trying to acquire materials which could lead to the creation of weapons of mass destruction. Maybe. (link via Pandagon) :

If they willing to go to war over a few doodles, I hope they never come across some of my drawings. I’d hate to think Bush would try to go war with me because of my plans to build a giant monster with hands made out of fire and laser eyes.

[Edit: Hello readers coming from Atrios's blog or Buzzflash. Make yourself comfortable. While you're here, check out our Bush in 30 Seconds commerical "Brother, Can You Spare A Job?" and don't forget to vote for it. Thanks!]

This is hilarious. Check out this segment from yesterday’s radio only debate :

KUCINICH: It’s interesting to hear Governor Dean’s assertion about how he won’t balance the budget — or how he will try to balance the budget when he refuses to admit that there needs to be cuts in the bloated Pentagon budget.

I don’t see how in the world, when you have something that at this point takes up about 50 percent of the discretionary budget…

CONAN: Congressman Kucinich is holding up a pie chart, which is not truly effective on the radio.

KUCINICH: Well, it’s effective if Howard can see it.

KUCINICH: Fifty percent of the budget’s taken up by defense: How you going to balance the budget if you refuse to cut the bloated Pentagon budget?

CONAN: Governor Dean?

DEAN: Actually, the reason I don’t think we can afford to cut the Pentagon budget is we’re not safe enough. I’m with Dick Gephardt.

KUCINICH: So would you increase it?

DEAN: As I said, I’m — as I was about to say, I’m with Dick Gephardt. I don’t believe we ought to build tactical, battlefield nuclear weapons because they’re not effective against terrorists. I don’t think we should build out Star Wars because it’s failed too many tests.

But our soldiers aren’t getting paid enough. We don’t have adequate intelligence, either human intelligence or cyber- intelligence. We don’t have adequate special ops forces, which is what the forces we really need to attack terrorism is.

So I don’t think that you can say you’re going to cut the defense budget and still defend the United States of America.

I don’t want to build some of the programs that you don’t want to build. But the needs are there, and I don’t think we’re going to have a net cut in the defense budget.

I guess this is Kucinich’s “waving at Stevie Wonder” moment.

A few site updates for you to chew on :

The Movable Type calendar is gone. I was working on another improvement for the site that mostly replaces it. Plus, I agree with Jesse at Pandagon, it’s a pretty worthless feature.

I’ve completely redone the archives. Rather than the unwieldy monthly archives that had every post from the month on the same page, I’ve organized everything into a calendar. Check it out. It’s pretty cool.

I’ve finally gotten rid of the “Fair and Balanced” title and replaced it with a revolving series of titles in Latin. Why Latin? Well, I really liked the suggestion made by joew the comments of this post, plus I just like the way it looks. Some of the titles are poorly translated suggestions from the comments and some are Latin sayings that I found in Google. Since it’s a random selection, I’m always open to more suggestions. Just try to make them easy to translate….

Heads Up! There’s a senate debate in a half an hour on NPR. If you want to check it out, find a stream at PublicRadioFan.com or NPR.org.

Well, the finalists in “Bush in 30 Seconds” were announced today. We didn’t make the top 15, which is disappointing, but understandable. Our ad was a lot different than most of the other ads. In the end, I think our ad was a little too subtle and lacked the “big ending” that the voters seemed to prefer. Maybe if they have another contest, we’ll colorize it, put in a rap soundtrack, and have the main character scream “Bush is a liar!” at the camera for 30 seconds.

Sour grapes aside, there were some really good ads that made it to the finals. Two of my favorites (which I linked previously), Child’s Pay and Imagine, both made the cut. In addition to those, I also really like Army of One and In My Country. Hopefully one of those four will win, because a few of the others are really bad.

There is a silver lining to this storm cloud however. It seems that the MoveOn.org folks have decided to have a runoff contest to fill the Funniest Ad, Best Youth Ad, and Best Animation categories. From what I’ve seen, the only real competition for us in the “Best Animation” category is an uninspired Crocodile Hunter parody.

Like everything else with this contest though, the organizers haven’t given out much info. Apparently you have to register again or something to vote for the new categories (You can do that by clicking here). Voting begins on Thursday. As far as how long the voting goes, how often you’ll be allowed to vote, and whether or not our ad is even part of the Best Animation category, your guess is as good as mine.

Thanks in again for all of your support. Regardless of the outcome of this or any future contests, all of your positive comments have made this experience extremely rewarding for both me and Tom.

I didn’t catch the debate yesterday, but this transcript from the part of the debate where the candidates ask each other questions perfectly contrasts the Dean and Kucinich candidacies :

ANGER: To Congressman Kucinich, your question please.

KUCINICH: A question to Dr. Dean.

You’re aware you and I have a difference of opinion on the health care issue, where I favor universal single-payer, and you favor keeping the health care system within the context of the present system, but you want to make sure more people are insured.

When you told the New York Times that if someone wants fundamental change in the system, they’re not your man, or you’re not their man, did you mean by that to suggest that you aren’t prepared to challenge the health insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies, which are holding health care in this country captive?

DEAN: Dennis, if somebody’s issue out there — and their biggest issue and most important issue is that they want a single-payer health care plan, they ought to vote for you or Carol.

KUCINICH: Thank you. I…

DEAN: Get some applause from your friends…

KUCINICH: I’ll accept that.

DEAN: The reason that I have taken the position that I have, I have tried twice to have huge health care reforms in Vermont. We didn’t get it. We did get health insurance for all children. We did get prescription benefits for a third of our seniors and disabled people. We do have health insurance for everybody under 150 percent of poverty, whether they’re eligible for Medicaid or not.

But we didn’t get it. And I do not want another reform effort where we fail, for whatever reason, and leave 43 million people uninsured.

I wrote my health care plan so that it would pass Congress, and we could get everybody insured.

KUCINICH: Is there a follow-up?

ANGER: Yes.

KUCINICH: The question is, you know, you’re hoping to be the president of the United States. Now, wouldn’t you anticipate that you could have the kind of power, even as a nominee of the party, to rally the American people in the cause of health care?

I mean, why won’t you say that you will do that? Why won’t you at least try? Then you could have a fall-back position, if necessary. Why won’t you at least try to do that?

DEAN: Jimmy Carter tried to reform the health care system. Bill Clinton tried to reform the health care system. Every time, we couldn’t get that stuff through Congress. And I was involved in the second one and very, very peripherally in the first one.

This is the third time. This time we’re going to do it.

I’m not interested in reforming the system first. I want everybody in the system first. I’m tired of people being uncovered. I’m tired of people paying almost as much for their health care payments every month as they do for their home mortgage.

I want everybody in the system. Then we can have a big fight about how to reform the system. But let’s get everybody in it first.

And this is ultimately why I don’t support Kucinich. I completely agree that we should have a single-payer system, but I find Kucinich’s combination of hopeless naivet? and lack of hindsight very troubling. He may be saying most of the things I want to hear, but that doesn’t mean he’ll be able to do any of the things he says he can. If he can’t even get more than 5% of Democrats to support him, how the hell does he think he can get this stuff through a Republican congress?

…and a few hundred million bucks. Here it is, a 3-D panoramic view of Mars :

For a guy who’s spent most of his life as a big dork, I’ve always been unmoved with the space program. There’s a romantic notion about space exploration that’s been kinda lost on me. I did like the one episode of “From Earth to the Moon” that I saw, but I still have a hard time getting excited about America’s sci-fi manifest destiny.

To me, it’s always seemed like a big waste of money to research other planets when we have so many problems going unsolved down here on Earth. It’s not as big a waste as something like an unprovoked war or a tax giveaway to the super-rich, so it’s not an issue I’ve really lost much sleep worrying about.

As far as Mars is concerned, so far it seems pretty boring. If NASA is going to go through the trouble of releasing a 3D photo, the least they could have done is Photoshopped in some guy playing with a yo-yo or maybe some aliens throwing spears directly at the camera.