Saturday with Rosenbaum

Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum talks about Essential Cinema. Sat 9/25, 3 PM, Barnes & Noble, 1441 W. Webster.

This man is so heroic to me that if an eagle was to majestically land on his forearm while he was giving his lecture I wouldn't even miss a beat.

there's a point where it's just rude.

"Corporate lobbyists are writing the rules for the EPA under the Bush administration." When I've made that statement in the past, I've never meant it literally - I've only meant that the EPA are supporting corporations in a way that makes it look like the corporations are telling them what to do.

Well, it turns out I was wrong there. Lobbyists are actually writing for the EPA. On Wednesday the Washington Post found that EPA's report for Mecury regulation was nearly identical to a lobbyist's proposal, the third such instance they have uncovered:

The Aug. 5, 2002, memo from Latham & Watkins, submitted during the public comment period on the rule, said hazardous air pollutants other than mercury did not need to be regulated. ... The EPA used nearly identical language in its rule, changing just eight words. In a separate section, the agency used the same italics Latham lawyers used in their memo, saying the EPA is required to regulate only the pollutants under Section 112 of the Clean Air Act "after considering the results of the study required by this paragraph." The memo uses the word "subparagraph" instead of paragraph but is otherwise identical.

Eight word! They didn't even change the italics! Two of our staff are grad students given to grading undergrad papers, and though I don't do it myself, I could only assume that they are disappointed at the poor levels of plagarism displayed by our appointed officials.

So there you have it. Regulating chromium, lead and arsenic pollution levels in our drinking water is a matter left to the market. Granted it's possible that the lawyers at Latham & Watkins have people's best interests at heart, but just seeing their webpage makes my skin crawl. There's a point where President Bush is just rubbing our face in it. I understand that you've sold out the people's faith in an independently run government agency protecting the environment, but could you not be so, ummm, obvious about it?

AND THE '04 GINANDTACOS AWARD FOR ACHIEVEMENT IN THE FIELD OF DRIVING GOES TO.....

Police in Wabasha, Minnesota issued a motorcyclist a ticket this week for driving 205 miles per hour on an interstate highway. That's 140 miles over, or 2.15 times, the speed limit.

Being a man who feels prepared to engage in intense driving when necessary, I am compelled to lavish such awards as the Ginandtacos Foundation for Highway Safety will allow on this gentleman.

His honorarium will consist of a Tom Collins toast in his honor, a bronze plaque of his speedometer at the velocity in question, and a bound and gilded set of MapQuest maps. Being the type of driver that he clearly is, he will of course discard the latter, understanding that maps are for pussies and rules of the road are for the God-fearing.

THE BUSH LEGACY WILL BE REMEMBERED AS THE SERIES OF AMAZING COINCIDENCES THAT IT IS.

Funny how, in 2000, the absentee ballots of military personnel serving overseas were widely hailed as being important in determining the narrow electoral outcomes of military-heavy states like New Mexico and Florida. Funny how Bush was so adamant about waiting until all those (Republican) ballots got counted before declaring any winners.

Funny how, 4 years later, the absentee balloting of the 160,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan is in chaos and many of them will not end up being able to vote. Funny how no one in the Department of Defense or military seems too terribly concerned that these people - who, after 18 months of getting blown up, shot full of holes, burned, beheaded and reviled, might not be so Republican anymore - won't be casting ballots.

It is truly an amazing coincidence, and you would be a fool and a terrorist to assert otherwise.

Erik's Epics: Fall 2004, The Trip To Maker's Mark

epic - Long narrative poem employing elevated language and telling of the deeds of a legendary or historical hero. Epics often involve complex sequences of adventures as well as an underlying philosophical understanding of human actions, choices, fate, and the course of events.

Every so often, mankind is forced to deal with a set of circumstances so large, so important, so laden with digital pictures that he has no choice but to create a special blog page to contain it all. The word for this is epic, and these things happen to our own Erik Martin every four months or so. As such, he is forced to try and describe these events as only he can, in a new quarterly feature called "Erik's Epics."

Before, in the Spring/Summer of 2004, Erik's Epic was the Competetive Mustache Growth. In case you haven't, go back and read the trials and struggles of men growing facial hair with a level of determination that could only be described as heroic.

Now, Fall 2004, brings you a new level of epicness that will test all the members of the ginandtacos.com staff:

Enjoy!

Sky mike and the World of my weekend.