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As far as the picture goes, I don't have a real problem with the meaning.  Bush is an Imperialist, a liar (like most politicians), a thief, and not worthy of the Oval Office.

See, that's more of what I'd like to see in Bush humour. More jokes about him being an Imperialist, a liar, and a thief. It's more honest than "bush=hitler lol".

DC Simpson's "I Drew This" is a prime candidate for this...

For example: http://www.idrewthis.org/2004/bushandgod.html

Amazing how everyone blames everything on the president. It was his crew that decieved him into believing there were weapons of math instruction in Iraq.

So, what you're saying is that it's not his fault, he's just gullible?

As for sending troops there, I think it's better than letting Iraq fall into anarchy, and possibly instigate MORE terror attacks.

Umm, those things happened when he DID send troops into Iraq.

Sure, he's an idiot, but he's better than a lot of other presidents we've had.

Yep, he's better than Nixon and....

Nixon...

err...









Nixon...

Hey, look at that. bush's fuck-up has caused even MORE pointless deaths!
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

Since we're doing "bush=hitler lol"...

Chaplin made fun of Hitler in The Great Dictator and was nominated for three Oscars, even though Hitler was responsible for the deaths of over 9 million jews. Go figure.

In all fairness though, imdb lists these two pieces of trivia for the film:

# Charles Chaplin said that had he known the true extent of Nazi atrocities, he "could not have made fun of their homicidal insanity".

# Some reports refute Charles Chaplin's claims of ignorance as to the true extent of Nazi atrocities, stating that Chaplin was very much aware of the various goings-on, but decided to make the film anyway as an attack on Nazi ideology.

Tasteless or not, the joke's been done to death. A friend of mine described jokes about the comparisons between Bush and Hitler as "shooting dead fish in a barrel with a bazooka". Search the web and you'll find oodles of the same material. Any lazy, generic internet comedian can make a "bush=hitler lol" joke. To really mock Bush requires more effort.

EDIT: In fact, screw that. Why bother mocking Bush? The man doesn't need anyone to mock him. He's a self-mocking man. Have you seen some of the shit he's done over the last 6 months? Harriet Miers for Supreme Court? Hahahahahaha, oh Bush, you jokester! Can't get fooled again, indeed!

See, many people were so bummed out after Bush won re-election. Not me. I have been laughing my arse off watching him fuck up again... and again... and again... and again... Fuck, I'd vote him in for a third term just for another four years of hilarity!

Yo, dawg! Cross them whitebread crackas with ma niggas on da westsiiiide [fo shizzle yo do to da nizzle have da hizzle where Da Man be ownin yo ass] and them crazy wiggas thinkin they got game but they iz really just lame, and then yo ain't be yankin my crank. Respect, aaiiiiight?

If you like that article about OT, you'll dig this article a billion times more.

Welcome back, buddy! I'll tell all of Brisbane's 15 year-old girls of your triumphant return! They will be most pleased and their parents will be most worried!

But oh my, how stupid that thread you linked to is, DG. Oh my! OH MY!!

I love this quote to death:

You don't need permission to post somebody else's content on your website. The entire Internet is public domain.

Yeah, I loved that quote too.

Speaking of which, CJ no longer owns the rights to AGS. We do. That'll teach you, CJ, for putting something on the intrawebs. Lookin' pretty stupid now, aren't ya!

With this:

http://ebaumsworldsucks.com/

Awful Link of the Day

ebaumsworldsucks.com (thanks Altf4) - For a long time ebaumsworld.com has been stealing content and rebranding it from Something Awful and many other sites on the Internet. Everyone is used to having their content moved around on the net, but Eric Bauman obscures any references to the creator in favor of slapping his branding everywhere. And he's gotten rich doing it. Bauman claims to take down any content reported as stolen but the claim is a lie. When Lowtax encouraged people to post on ebaum's forums asking them to take the stolen SA content down Eric Bauman (or his dad) decided to include a redirect on his site that would strain our forum servers.

In response to all this silly Internet drama our forum users Altf4 and Trapezoid created this fantastic song and Flash movie. It's a real call-to-arms! If for some reason the link goes down you can view it at New Grounds. I'm sure Tom Fulp and his userbase have plenty of experience with their content being stolen by Bauman.

If you dig the catchy tune used in the video you can find out more about the folks responsible by clicking on or around this link.

And the response: http://forum.ebaumsworld.com/showthread.php03807

And it's amazing how quickly a thread turns to the wonders of pornography as soon as I come along.

I'd call it Doormat, cause then it serves a dual purpose.

I'm a practical thinker.

It's called LA. Simply go there with a desire to be a serious actor. You'll be in the land of Porn within three weeks.

Thank you very much for that piece of advice, Mr Lets-tell-DG-these-things-AFTER-his-black-eye!

I'm back and now I have a black eye.

But....what would you do when you eventually marry someone? Isn't it international woman law that Bj's are pre-marriage only?

I'll go consult some of my women lawyer friends.

After 13 years of getting paid out, he's still getting paid out!

Just for the record, I toyed with the idea of seeing Ultimerr with "professional" graphics. It didn't work at all. Ultimerr rules harder than your grandmother BECAUSE of these graphics. Something about the abstraction and low tone increasing the words.

Why not textadventures?

It's interesting that you mention that because I think the creative style of a game is very much influenced by the type of game you're creating. With the graphics for Ultimerr, I was trying to recreate an old school RPG style because I was making a parody of old school RPGs.

I once had another idea for a project ages ago called "Smileytown". It was supposed to be a detective game (a la "Chinatown" with Jack Nicholson) but with emoticons. All the backgrounds, objects and characters were to be designed using characters from the ASCII set. In fact, I was even going to name the lead character "Jake Ascii".

This is what I mean by being creative with your backgrounds. You don't have to be a fantastic drawer to be creative. Just have to show initiative and imagination.

It basically comes down to what type of game you're creating. Like it has been repeated, you can always just make a text adventure if you feel you have zero creative talent with graphics. However graphics can be a worthy extention for the game's expression of an idea, which is why it's often good to consider the choices in creative styles available to you.

There are countless possibilities. Your minds, full of potential, can imagine them.

Think of other ways to make a background. You do not necessarily have to "draw" as such. There are many artforms to use to design backgrounds.

For example, Aaron's Epic Journey used painted backgrounds and looked marvellous.

I had an idea to take the techniques from Dada and make a game built with handmade collages, mainly using coloured paper. I think that technique would work.

You mentioned photographs? How about designing model landscapes with clay and odds'n'sods (a la Wallace and Gromit) and taking photographs of them.

There are endless possibilities if you can image them.

We've seen more poignant questions from bloggers and more and more mainstream news programs echoing online journals.

I totally believe this and it's also something I am believing more and more as each day passes. Ask me two years ago and I would have scoffed at the idea of blogs being reputable news sources. Most blog reporters I've read, despite liberal or conservative biases, really do seem to ask tougher questions than any media organisation. It seems online civic journalism is doing a better job than news organisations.

It's also something I might be doing a Ph.D on next year.

Fundamentally what I'm saying is that they've also avoided taking a bias knowing that it'd cause them to lose audience to other media outlets that were biased more in the area of what the audience wanted to hear. Both sides were reported, and yes one happened to have more dramatic characters because the President speaks with stronger words than did the U.N. representatives. The press weren't responsible for that.

First of all, there was a bias, as you've illustrated. You said the press isn't taking a bias and then you said they reported more on the Bush Administration's side of things. That sounds like a bias to me.

Second, they were responsible for at least asking harder questions than were actually asked. See, my concern wasn't so much that the media was showing the president's side more than the UN. They were, but so what? My concern was that the media wasn't asking things like, "Okay, Mr President, we are skeptical. Care to explain this?" And I think my example of Helen Thomas' comments perfectly illustrate this. And like Thomas said, if they did ask "penetrating questions", they'd be branded as Un-American.

The article you've posted isn't very convincing to me because of what has happened in the past when the media picked up stories without "offical" sanction or acknowledgment. A certain high-profile anchorman of several decades destroyed his career by relying on a memo that turned out to be completely fabricated. I can completely understand the medias unwillingness to pick up poorly verified stories about prison abuse, it ruins their reputation as a reliable source of information if they turn out to be wrong.

This runs into my point as well that news organisations don't scrutinise. Yes, the memo was fabricated. Yes, Rather lost credibility. Did he fact check? No. Why did he use the memo then? Because it was big news! It would attract a lot of viewers! It wasn't about bringing down Bush at all. It was sensationalised garbage, which is what the news (particularly TV news) does. Even I think Rather could have examined his evidence better.

See, the article I posted isn't as much about Rathergate instances of "bringing down the government" blah blah blah. More so, the article is more about keeping the government accountable. How? By the media not being a bunch of pussies and asking better questions.

You know what our voting turnouts are, how can you not understand my point in that respect?

I understand your point, but this is not a liberal vs conservative discussion. What we are talking about here is the accountability of the media, despite libral or conservative biases. It's only now that things have settled down that the news is asking so more serious questions. For example, in the instance of the Harriet Miers nomination, even conservative news sources were asking, "WTF?" That's proper journalism. That's what I mean by keeping the government accountable for their actions.

The press were powerless - if you've ever read "The Fountainhead" this is akin to the newsman there trying to defend Howard Roark blowing up a building. For that I place the blame squarely on the president who, knowing that the people would stand behind him in their confusion and fear, twisted those events to his bidding with such sickly efficiency that it boils my blood.

The press aren't powerless. There have been many instances where reporters have brought down powerful people, mainly because they were keeping a watchful eye on things, and despite public frenzy a la Sept 11. There's a film just released called "Good Night, and Good Luck" which deals with newsman Edward R. Murrow bringing down McCarthy during a time when public tensions were high due to fear of communists (a scenario that sounds very familiar to our present situation). Likewise Woodward and Bernstein during Watergate. In my home town during the 70s and 80s, a few reporters managed to bring down a corrupt state government. These are people who do their jobs properly, especially when the public needs them the most. I don't think your example of "The Fountainhead" is a good analogy because architects do not have obligations to act a "watchdog" and the book mainly dealt the the idea of retaining artistic integrity in face of  corporate fascism, which is not the case here. I think the examples I've shown above are better because they specifically relate to journalism, and they show that the media does have power to keep governments "accountable".

You say that the news media has shifted to an entertainment news model and then go on to blame half the US public? You've basically absolved the news media from THEIR lack of responsibility (they are, after all, called The Fourth Estate) and then focused ALL blame on members of the general public.

You are right to suggest that a mainstream news organisation needs an audience to survive. And is there a better way to capture an audience than talk of war? Regardless of whether it has a liberal or conservative bias, news is sensationalist. The more dramatic the news and footage, the better the story.

Sure, you saw a mention of UN hearings but they were exactly that: a mere mention. The TV news organisations were more interested in all the "mushroom cloud" theatrics from the Bush Administration. The Bush Administration basically provided better spin about WMDs than anything from the UN investigators could provide. Hence, they were "Bush's bitch".

To use a shitty metaphor, imagine the news is a  lazy horse. Then imagine the Bush Administration is a farmer with a carrot. Do you see where I'm going with this? Watch the farmer lead the horse to the glue factory!

Don't get me wrong, I also think news audiences need more enlightenment of things that are happening around their world, rather than being interested in dramatic footage or those "mushroom cloud" cliches. But the American public don't have access to what mainstream news organisations have: resources of information, knowledgable people who can provide honest opinion on daily events, and the technolodge to reach (and enlighten) large audiences. Instead, the news media chose the "mushroom cloud" stuff to attract more viewers.

That's not responsible. They should have been more aware of what was happening. But they played right into the hands of the Bush Administration. Horse to the glue factory.

Let me quote from an article by Jonathan Mermin:

The media's independence problem
by Jonathan Mermin

The word occupation ... was never mentioned in the run-up to the war. It was liberation. This was [talked about in Washington as] a war of liberation, not a war of occupation. So as a consequence, those of us in journalism never even looked at the issue of occupation.

   --Jim Lehrer

In other words, if the government isn't talking about it, we don't report it. This somewhat jarring declaration, one of many recent admissions by journalists that their reporting failed to prepare the public for the calamitous occupation that has followed the "liberation" of Iraq, reveals just how far the actual practice of American journalism has deviated from the First Amendment ideal of a press that is independent of the government.

A fundamental tenet of our First Amendment tradition is that journalists do not simply recount what government officials say, but function instead as the people's "watchdog" over their government, subjecting its words and deeds to independent critical scrutiny. As Washington Post columnist David Ignatius explains, however, these expectations are often frustrated, because journalists have "rules of our game" that "make it hard for us to tee up an issue ... without a news peg." This means that "if Senator so and so hasn't criticized post-war planning for Iraq, then it's hard for a reporter to write a story about that." Instead, reporters say to themselves, "I have to wait for somebody [in Washington] to make a statement, and then I'll report on the statement." Ignatius describes the inability of the major media to focus on an issue unless "Senator so and so" has "teed it up" for them as "a professional rule that we really ought to examine." (1)

The same phenomenon is described by Pulitzer Prize--winning Associated Press reporter Charles J. Hanley, whose fall 2003 story on the torture of Iraqis in American prisons--before a U.S. Army report and photographs documenting the abuse surfaced--was ignored by major American newspapers. Hanley ascribes the lack of interest to there having been "no official structure to the story. It was not an officially sanctioned story that begins with a handout from an official source." There is "a very strong prejudice," Hanley explains, "toward investing U.S. official statements with credibility while disregarding statements from almost any other source," such as (in Hanley's story) Iraqis recounting their own personal experience at Abu Ghraib. (2)

While Ignatius and Hanley are concerned about the media's subservience to official sources, Judith Miller of the New York Times--the author of several stories on the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) issue about which the Times has now expressed misgivings--is not. Responding to the suggestion that she could have been more critical of U.S. claims that Iraq possessed vast WMD stockpiles, Miller declared: "My job isn't to assess the government's information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of the New York Times what the government thought about Iraq's arsenal." (3) Of course, Iraqi journalists under Saddam Hussein could have said much the same of their relationship with the government of Iraq, their job having been to tell readers what Saddam Hussein thought about the United States.

http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/articles/wpj04-3/mermin.htm

You'll notice the quote from Judith Miller. You'll most likely know who she is since you're in a greater proximity to her than I am (and she's been in the US news a lot lately in regards to the Plame investigation). But she is an example of what I'm talking about when I say "the news is Bush's bitch". Miller is one of those journalists who has a lot of access to top-ranking government officals, mainly because she presents favourable stories about them. Is there any actual scrutiny in her stories? No. Try reading a few of her stories and tell me she asks tough, critical questions.

So I think as an Aussie I can say that, regardless of accuracy, there is a lack of scrutiny. And I think my comments are justified with Mermin's article and the example of Judith Miller. Likewise, I think I'm justified when some of your comments closely echo my previous sentiments that the media reported more of Bush and less of the UN. However, you seem to place the full blame on "half the American people" and absolve your own country's media of any wrongdoing. In my opinion, and not just an Aussie but a journalist too, I don't think such a view is responsible. If you do not hold the news accountable for their actions, isn't your apathy just as bad as the apathy of the "half the American people" you blame?

EDIT: I just saw a clip from Real Time with Bill Maher where he interviewed Helen Thomas. She said in regards to her colleagues: "I think that they rolled over at a time when they should have been really reacting and asking the questions in the run-up to the war. The silence was deafening. But there were reasons. With 9/11, you'd be called unpatriotic if you asked penetrating questions. And then it segue-wayed into the war and you were jeopardizing the troops. So I think the reporters were intimidated. But they're coming alive again." When the "First Lady of The Press" says her colleagues rolled over, it's a pretty good indication the media was Bush's bitch.