In a word: fantastic.

I will go so far as to say that Dark Knight is the best superhero movie yet made, even better than Iron Man, which was my previous pick for best superhero movie ever.

I will also go so far as to say that Heath Ledger's performance was worthy of an Oscar. His Joker was much more visceral and disturbing than any portrayal I've seen in any other medium, much less any other movie. Closest the comics have come to it is Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns, but even that was too cerebral to convince me. (The word I've heard is that Ledger won't get a posthumous Oscar, because dead people aren't eligible for nomination. I'd be surprised if there weren't some kind of tribute, however.)

Dark Knight was a surprise; I went in expecting it to be entertaining, and it was, but it was more than that. It was dense and layered. It was well-paced. It was believable, which is a tough thing to do in a superhero movie. And it was dark (if that's not a redundancy). This is not a kiddie movie. It doesn't have a happy ending.

My only criticism, and I can't even really call it that, is that it very blatantly left the ending open for another sequel -- but then, it's Batman, so a sequel is pretty much a given if it does well, so they can be forgiven for that. In a way, closing it off to further storytelling would be even worse; it's just not what you do with superhero stories. But it still felt as if they should have put a "TO BE CONTINUED" caption up before the credits ran.

One of the sites I check on a regular basis is Encyclopedia Dramatica. The mission of this particular wiki is to be as offencive as possible to everything and everybody all in pursuit of lulz. It accomplishes the first quite well, and the second most of the time. There is lead article that changes on occasion-the 'Article of the Now'. Actually, the current 'Article of the Now' is really two weeks old, but it's kind of interesting.

ED has many obsessions: one is pedophiles; and the feature article currently is about some guy getting busted for possession and distribution of child pornography. Nothing out of the ordinary, there, except this particular person's excuse for doing this was obstensibly to prove how easy it was to obtain child pornography via P2P. It was so easy, the guy managed to download 200 images.

Just as our hero was doing this, the staties in his local DA's office were on a fishing expedition: they had uploaded a confirmed child pornography file onto the P2P service; and were checking the IP addresses of those who uploaded the file-one of which belonged to our hero. The browsed his shares folder and found more files 'consistent with child pornography'; wrote up a warrant, and the Party Van made a visit to haul our hero away to Security Prison.

Now I'm not going to go on about the dubious legality of this move-even though the files were readily available for upload via the server and could be traced back-that's basically a warrantless search. Hey, if it's good enough for the boys in DC....Not that that in any way justifies our hero's actions, but it strikes me as doing a crime to catch a possible criminal. Morally dubious at best.

Be that as it may; I'm here to marvel at this guy's incredible stupidity. What the hell possessed him to download CP in the first place? What was he trying to prove, if that was indeed the case? He obviously fails at P2P, not realising that the files that he is downloading are accessible to everyone on the share network, including the plods who troll the network for fools.

But our hero is not the only one who fails here. Pedo busts make the plods look good in the papers; and the local DA gave the details of how the bust was accomplished in a press release. Nothing like giving the enemy intelligence, now is there? It's not just the traffickers in this rubbish that the coppers tip off to their little fishing expeditions, other parties who may have malicious intent may find this intelligence useful. There are a lot of people out there that don't realise how computers work, and that can be quite detrimental to their interests.

Ryland's teaser from his latest mini-blog post reads thusly:

I wish this was an Onion link, but sadly, it isn't.

I, on the other hand, being the Heavy Heavy Monster Sound and Noise with a Beat, have long ago abandoned the concept-I'm pretty cynical, which is prolly why some folks don't like my bloggin'. So be it. I call em as I see em. I'm not remotely surprised by this. If anything has been made crystal clear over the last 8 years with George '"W"MD' Bush, it's his total and complete contempt for the concept, people, laws and image of this country. George Bush hates America and all it stands for.

People protest his war. He ignores them. War Protesters literally drove LBJ from office. People make disparaging remarks about him. He ignores them. Richard Nixon was driven nearly mad by his characterisation as 'Tricky Dick'. A major American city drowns, he 'plays' guitar and eats cake with John McCain. He thinks it quite the boffo laugh to sing about Dick Cheney withholding documents at the Gridiron Dinner. And now this. No, it's not a surprise, and that's a hard, cold reality to have to wrap your brain around.

I've said this before: George Bush was likely picked for his job because of his willingness and ability to run point just like he did today-attracting attention and outage to himself. A single gaffe is a spin control nightmare for normal politicians. Bush pulls this crap all the time and just blithely bubbles along like it's no big deal; and after it's all said and done, it really isn't. Because it's his job, and he's stunningly good at it. You are supposed to hate Bush, and he makes damn sure that you do.

I speculate that he's cognizant of his lack of legitimacy as a leader. Somewhere in the alcohol and cocaine fog, he knows he was slid into office by the sleight of hand of others. As he is illegitimate, he's not obliged to act the part, so he doesn't. And he's perfectly comfortable telling people to piss off. He's not real. He's a caricature of a President-a Cartoon President. Now, some of you may think this line of thought stunningly cynical on my part, but I believe that history backs it up. The thing you have to always remember is that George Bush is a symptom, not the disease. He's the impacted hair in the pilonidal cyst that the modern republican party is on the buttocks of the body politic. There's a great buildup of septic pus behind him. A good 60+ years worth.

From the New Deal, to the Great Society, The Civil Rights Movement, the drubbing of Goldwater in 1964 to the Shaming of Nixon in 1974-the first 3 quarters of the 20th Century were not kind to the republican party and it's ideals. A lot of resentment had built up; Jimmy Carter's incompetence in Iran was a lucky break for those who wanted a return to earlier times. Somewhere along the line, though, nostalgia turned to nihilism: and an administration was installed that seems to have had as it's only goal the wreaking of as much destruction and theft as it can in the time allotted, while the Cartoon President dances about on stage and diverts your attention. I have a feeling that the 2k9 Inaugural Ball may feature paper plates and tablecloths and sporks, since the china and silver may go missing. There may be a couple of fall guys who get heavily covered show trials, but I has a feeling, in the main, the next government is going to be too busy shovelling shite to really call anyone to account for the corruption and criminality of the current regime. The Cartoon President, hated and despised more than any other, will trip lightly off the stage and into a comfortable retirement, secure in the knowledge, that for once, he was actually a success.

O'Reilly author and Photoshop expert Deke McClelland featured an image from the Church Sign Generator in his latest podcast. It's a really funny (not to mention informative) video, and Deke and the producers over at O'Reilly Digital are super-nice folks. Thanks, Deke and crew!

I was skimming my e-mail from Media Matters of America, and my attention was attracted by this item: Limbaugh again invoked discredited Fort Marcy Park smear of Clintons. Clintons. Yeah, um, Vince Foster, right. It's like this happened yesterday, not 15 freaking years ago. I can haz reality plz? kthxbai. Holy god, they just will not let go. There were three investigations of Foster's death-one by Kenneth Starr, no less, and the conclusion of each was that Foster committed suicide. And still, 15 years after the fact, El Rusbo continues to pimp the lie.

The reason why he mentioned it, was because Barack Obama was on an airplane that had to make an emergency landing for a 'maintenance problem'. The rear door opened and the emergency slide deployed.

Rush wasted no time in speculating:

Well, that's what I was thinking. See, I was thinking somebody like a B.D. Cooper or whatever -- a D.B. Cooper, bailing out with all the money. Maybe somebody bailed out from that door, figuring they knew what was going to happen. After all, it was Fort Marcy Airline.

...And there's this conspiracy theory is that Mrs. Clinton, through Mr. McAuliffe, is gonna massage things out in Denver so that he doesn't get the nomination. You couple this with Obama's plane, Fort Marcy Airlines, having to take a detour to St. Louis for a mechanical problem. You get the left-wing kooks out there, who are just convinced as they can be that the Clintons are not out of the picture, that they're still mobilizing behind the scenes to take down Obama. And believe me, they do believe this. So a ripe opportunity here for Operation Chaos.

What gets me, though, is that I expected a certain adaptability on his part; there are plenty of lies that can be told about Obama, insinuations about his colour, heritage and religion; and Rush, being the nominal 'leader' of the 'New Media,' should be the one leading the charge. Apparently not.