Music Soothes the Savage Beast

Well now, I'm not one to go pointing out mistakes that Stephen makes on the show. So here I go.

Stephen, you said beast, but you should have said breast. I can only assume that saying the correct word would make you blush and thus you substituted a different word. Yes, I know. Lots of people make the same mistake. And maybe that's why you said it because people do say it all the time. So technically, Stephen, you were right. People do say that music soothes the savage beast. But if you want to know the history behind it, just check good old Wikipedia and read about the Famous Lines of William Congreve.

Who knows, maybe someday that will be the one tidbit of information you need to win big bucks in some TV game show. Good luck with that.

Industrious and Hard Working

How will I ever get caught up now that I'm finally feeling better? I can't do a marathon writing session. That would take me into the wee hours of the morning, I would be over-tired and probably would eat junk food to stay awake and then I would get sick again. So, I'll just write what I can, when I can and keep it short. So...

Stephen told us not to Google Rusty Colbert. So I won't. There is an easy fix for the Fiscal Cliff problem. We just need to mint a Trillion Dollar Coin. Yeah, right. And then someone gives that coin to their grandson who puts it in a piggy bank and there it sits until that kid goes to college. Nope, that's not going to help.

Papa Bear (Bill O'Reilly) put his foot in his mouth with comments about Asians. Apparently he does not understand what stereotyping means. But he does understand the intricacies of logical thinking. He said Asians are not liberal. He said they are hard working. Therefore, and this is slick on his part, Liberals are not hard working, meaning they are lazy. Score one for Papa Bear.

Of course, Stephen is no saint in this department either. He fell into the same traps as Papa Bear. Good thing there are good, and by good I mean excellent, attorneys working for Comedy Central.

The guest on January 7 was Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia fame. If you have never visited Wikipedia, I would ask what planet you are from. Sorry, that was uncalled for. I apologize. Here, look at this page about elephants if you need a refresher about Wikipedia. Wikipedia has 19 billion page views a month and Jimmy Wales said they want to expand it worldwide to make it available to everyone. Growth in the Developing World is what he said (if I remember correctly).

Quick Get In The Car

There has been a lot of food in the news lately and not always in a food sort of way. (Chicken comes to mind!) Here's more food related stuff. Papa John's Pizza may end up costing us up to 14 cents more because of the improvements in health care as a result of the Affordable Care Act, you know, Obamacare.

And then there's pills that have potato batteries built into them and your skin patch sends a message to your smart phone and then every one of your friends know your pills are working. (I wonder if I got that right. It sounds a bit confusing now that I read it back. hmph.)

Stephen has better products made by Prescott Pharmaceuticals. For example, you can get Facelift Bungee for $25, but for a mere $24, you can get something just as good from Prescott. It's the Vacsa Strap - a prescription strength adhesive celluloid ribbon, undetectable at a range of 50 meters or more. Stephen demonstrated it. For sure he looked different, whether or not he looked younger is a not as certain. One thing I know for sure though, I really wanted to see him take that thing off! Unfortunately, he did it during the commercial break, so only the studio audience got to see.

More food again. Cheerios, that tasty oat cereal made by General Mills. (Ooh, there' recipes at their website. Yum.) It seems they are welcoming and inclusive of folks. This got Michael Leisner mad. He only wants to be accepting of some people, not all people, so his bright idea was to set some Cheerios on fire in front of General Mills in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Good idea. After all, what could possibly go wrong? Here's some info about the video and the man.

And here's the video, at least for now.

As a side note, when I looked at this page with the Michael Leisner video, up in the top left hand corner was a photo of Tim Pawlenty and this link to another story: T-Paw's Wikipedia on lockdown thanks to Colbert. Well, what did Stephen expect? Oh, right, he did expect that.

Liza Mundy was the guest on the show. Her latest book (half of which seems to be on the front cover) is "The Richer Sex, How the New Majority of Female Breadwinners Is Transforming Sex, Love and Family." You can read about the book over at New York Times. Both Liza and Stephen had interesting questions and interesting observations. We will have to wait until the future gets here to decide if this is a good thing.

Hardware Stuff

(Note: I just updated We Mars'd It, so be sure to read the next post also.)

In his continuing Stephen Colbefrajilympic Expealacoverage '012, Stephen saluted the Olympic spirit and paid tribute to our patriotic team members. Stand proud, team members, stand proud.

And on to politics. We got to follow along in that reporter(s) followed along while Mitt Romney did some everyday, normal Joe, run of the mill shopping errands. He went to the Hardware store and bought hardware stuff. He went to the grocery store and bought, well probably grocery stuff. This of course naturally leads to a discussion of possible Vice President picks. The way to know who it will be is Wikipedia. Just see which candidate had the most updates on Wikipedia and that will be the VP pick. We know this is true because back when John McCain went all mavericky and picked Sarah Palin, her Wikipedia page had been updated about 68 times the previous day.

Can you guess what comes next? Of course. Stephen encouraged everyone to update the Wikipedia page of their favorite candidate for Mitt Romney's running mate. He demonstrated with the Wikipedia page of friend of the show Tim "T Paw" Pawlenty of Minnesota. The updates were quite interesting, however, I looked at the Wikipedia page for Tim Pawlenty and I did not see the changes. Either Wikipedia already scrubbed the updates that Stephen did, or Stephen did not press the correct Wiki Wiki button after he made the changes. But anyway, go update your favorite potential candidate, whether it be Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, Marc Rubio, Rob Portman, or Rafalca. I guess, in a way, members of the Colbert Nation just might be the ones to pick Mitt Romney's running mate. I can hardly wait!

Animal rights issues are important to almost everyone, but not to Congressman Steve King of Iowa. We got to hear examples of Congressman Steve King talking about what dogs should and should not do.

We also got to hear Congressman King talk about this possible scenario: A sexual predator impregnates a 13 year-old girl, picks her up at the playground of her middle school, hauls her across state line to have an abortion and brings her back to the swing set. According to him, that's not against the law in the United States of America.

Luckily, Stephen Colbert has people off stage who talk to him during the show. "What? What? I'm being told that all of that is against the law." Stephen then explained situations that illustrate his understanding of what Congressman Steve King said. Stephen has such a way with words.

Stephen's guest was Mark A. Shriver, who talked about his dad Sargent Shriver, and the book he wrote about his dad. "A Good Man, Rediscovering My Father, Sargent Shriver" is the book. Sargent Shriver had quite the resume. Peace Corps, Head Start, Job Corp, VISTA, and Legal Services.

With Pete Seeger on Monday, and Sargent Shriver's son Mark on, it is starting to seem like Liberal Week over at the Colbert Report. But, since Stephen is a Conservative, that just shows that he is fair and willing to listen to both sides.

Wikipedia Gone?

Readers may know that I often link to Wikipedia. Often, it is one of the first results when I Google something, so obviously other people also like Wikipedia.

Therefore, I was saddened to read that on January 18, Wikipedia will be blacked out. So, my links here to Wikipedia will probably be useless tomorrow. More importantly than that though, is the reason why this will happen.

SOPA and PIPA. That's why. SOPA is proposed legislation in the U.S. House - Stop Online Piracy Act. PIPA is the PROTECT IP Act in the Senate.

If you like the internet, you should be concerned. So, go read about it now, before January 18 if possible.

English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout.

Random String of Words

There's lots of people in the news lately. I won't mention all of them. But let me just say that tonight Stephen announced he has made the moral choice to let himself go. For someone who just spent about a week on a small boat in the ocean, that is indeed a brave choice.

But perhaps the most important event in the news now is Sarah Palin's historical perspective on Paul Revere's ride. If you watch TV or look at the internet, you most likely have seen her interpretation on that important night in our history. And if you are paying attention you will know that many people have said she mangled history. Of course someone is defending her and that someone is, well, it's Sarah Palin defending herself. She knows her history she tells us.

I think the problem is that poem. That one by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, you know, "Paul Revere's Ride". It's so long. Stephen had a better idea based on what Sarah Palin had said:

One if by land
Bells if by two
Hey British you're warned
Sail the Ocean Blue.

It seems that Stephen is in her corner also because he admires her skill at speaking on camera. "I could not have said a random string of words better," Stephen said after hearing her review of Revere. But still there are those who are upset by her inaccuracies. That could change though because her fans apparently have gone to the Wikipedia page about Paul Revere in order to change it to reflect what Sarah Palin had said.

So now everyone is confused. What did Paul Revere do that night back in 1775? Did he warn the Americans? Did he warn the British? Was he able to load and shoot and ring all at the same time? There's only one way to know for sure. Historical Re-enactment.

Stephen demonstrated clearly just how the ride of Paul Revere went down. Umm, I'm not sure that he had it right either. But at least he had the guts to try. That makes him a great American hero also.

One last thing from tonight's show - Stephen discussed the replacement for the Food Pyramid. Now it will be the Food Plate. That makes sense to me. You can read about it at ChooseMyPlate.gov.

Khan Academy

I'll be brief tonight. Stephen had one of his most interesting guests on tonight - Salman Khan (not the actor, but the educator). Khan started out doing short tutoring videos on YouTube to help out his cousins and that grew into the Khan Academy. He has had over 57 million views. And the best part, it's all free and it's online right now. Stop reading this blog and go look at Khan Academy.

Khan admitted that while he is quite comfortable with lots of the math concepts, he did read up a bit about the French Revolution at Wikipedia. But he also read the footnotes, so he has good information. At this point, Stephen commented that he was responsible for some of the stuff over at Wikipedia.

So in a weird twist of events, Stephen perhaps has added to the vast knowledge of Salman Khan.

Teabaggers, Fleabaggers and Carpetbaggers * *

So, yes I watched The Colbert Report last night and it was superb as usual, but I have no commentary other than to say that modern day stretch fabrics are often used in the manufacture of clothing.

Moving on.

I caught just a few minutes of The View this morning. (Interesting isn't it that the good shows always start with "The" in their title?) Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough were the guests when I was viewing The View. (You can see a clip of Stephen Colbert here when he was on The View). In the few minutes that I watched they were talking about the Political Stalemate situation in Madison, Wisconsin. When a comment was made, I think by Joy Behar, that the purpose was to bust the Unions and in doing so, diminish the Democratic vote, Elisabeth Hasselbeck compared the Wisconsin Democrats to Fleabaggers.

Fleabaggers? Um, did she mean Carpetbaggers? Even so, I'm pretty sure she would have the comparison quite jumbled. Maybe she meant Teabaggers, but that doesn't make sense either. Maybe she thinks they are staying at Fleabag Resorts and Motels while they are away from Madison. Whatever. I don't think she is a history buff. When I look at the Wikipedia entry for Elisabeth Hasselbeck, I find that she was born Elisabeth DelPadre Filarski and her credentials for being one of the co-hosts on The View include being a contestant on Survivor: The Australian Outback in 2001, graduating with a degree in Fine Arts and working for Puma shoes. So, yeah, she's probably not much of a history buff.

Also in the Wikipedia entry I find this interesting tidbit:

"She has stated that the term 'conservative' does not define her as a person. On October 26, 2008, Hasselbeck appeared at Republican rallies in Florida, introducing Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin."

Not a conservative? Introducing Sarah Palin? Oxymoron?

Anyway, maybe it's time for Stephen to invite Elisabeth Hasselbeck to go from The View to The Colbert Report so that they can together solve this gridlock in Madison, Wisconsin.

On Wisconsin!

* * Note: Image of Bucky Badger just after the title of this post in no way indicates that Bucky Badger is to be considered a Teabagger, Fleabagger or Carpetbagger. Bucky Badger is a beloved icon and mascot and worthy of as much admiration and respect as we give to Stephen Colbert.

Give Stephen an iPad

What is the problem? Stephen wants an iPad. He has said "Gimme." Therefore he should get one. Never mind that he can afford to buy one himself. If he wants, he should get. I'm sure that is in the Bible somewhere. Or Stephen would like it to be in the Bible. Go to the Wikipedia page on Bible and put that in.

Benefits are many.
1.) Stephen would have an iPad.
2.) He would promote it and make everyone want one.
3.) Everyone would buy one.

Another brilliant idea is to give him two iPads. Then he should send one to me.