Part of what that treasonous fathead Rush Limbaugh rails against as Obama’s “tax increase” is simply the sunset of Bush’s 2001 rollback of a decrease in marginal tax rates from 36 to 33 percent. Who designed that rollback? Bush. When this expires, what will be the impact on all those people making about $250,000 a year that McCain and Joe the Plumber were fretting about late last year? About the price of a cup of coffee per day. If you fall in that category, don’t order a daily latte and you’ll never notice.

Drink Watchmen coffee.

Jon Stewart on false populism from, of all places, the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM – Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

Yes, my jaw is still killing me. At this point, I’m considering horse tranquilizers.

That’s what I’m thinking about at the moment:  nothing but the tooth. Or teeth, actually:  two big juicy ones in the back on the bottom that have the whole of my head throbbing.

Today started as most others do:  filled with optimism. Places to go, things to do. Progress to be made! Then I checked in on my day’s schedule and saw “2 PM. Dentist.” And I knew what that meant. The first in the latest series of procedures, excavations, exhumations, and consternations. My body stayed in motion toward the door, but my heart slunk upstairs back under the covers. It’s especially dispiriting when everything feels jim-dandy in your mouth, but you know that in a few short hours nothing will feel good.

For the record:  I brush regularly. I floss regularly. I don’t eat candy or drink soda. But I’m sure I serve as an unsung case study in dental schools across the nation. At age 14 I had three front teeth capped — three! At age 14! I didn’t break them; they just… fell apart. This runs in my family. Before the air force put my  brother in active duty, they set about fixing all his teeth. By his 20’s, my father had already lost most of his teeth before opting for full extraction and dentures. I’ve had crowns, root canals, extractions, and so many metal fillings I’m surprised I can pass airport security. In our family we haven’t seen a lot of overweight, heart disease, strokes, cancer, or other ailments, but we have definitely felt the bite of genetics in this other way.

When I go to the dentist, I feel like the first steer walked into the abattoir. Without going into the full horrors of today’s experience, let me note the strange sensation of opening your eyes to see your own blood sprayed across two other people’s faces. I always ask for a mirror so I can see the various stages of what’s being done (imagery that will inform my eventual dental horror drama, I’m sure), and the way it feels and tastes rarely matches up with the miserable little image of some blood, odd stalagmites of bone or metal, and sometimes yawning pits of pulsating nerve. Today was no different. “That’s it?” I asked, looking at a reflected diorama very much at odds with all the drilling, sawing, hammering, and epoxying that had just taken place. Once it was all done, it didn’t seem that bad.

Until an hour later. When the novocaine wore off. And now, like that steer, I felt a hammer coming down on my head. Again and again. It’s now five hours later. It still feels like that. So I’m going to fix a big nasty drink — a drink-drink — and go sleep it off.

I go back in two weeks.

Yes, it’s time for the manufacturer to once again update the legendary board game Solarquest (which, along with Risk and Cosmic Encounter, was a preferred board game for my college gang).

First, Pluto was deplanetized, which threw gamers and believers in astrology into a spin.

Now Saturn has a new moon. Which is sure to drive up real-estate values on the entire system.

Some op-ed images the New York Times refused to print, and why.

It’s worth noting again how poor a job the Fourth Estate has done of informing and protecting us, especially in the last decade. Now imagine the next few years when all those newspapers are out of business and nothing better has yet come along.

Here’s a good interview on Flavorwire with T.C. Boyle.

I’m nearing the end of “A Friend of the Earth” and noting again Boyle’s existential humor. Half the novel is set 20 years from now, when the result of ecological ruin is raining down upon us; but the other half is set in the late 1980’s and shows the eco-warriors as naifs and fools. So I guess either way (do something about it or don’t do something about it), we’re fucked. Which I’m sure is great fun to write, but probably not the best call to action.

The reviews of the film adaptation are coming in and so far agree in two ways: They don’t like it, and they give away almost every plot detail, right up to the end.

Cases in point:

Anthony Lane in The New Yorker

 The Hollywood Reporter

Variety

So if you haven’t read the comic and plan to see the movie, don’t read the reviews. If you plan to see the movie and risk enjoying it, don’t read the reviews.

If the medium is the message, this is self-explanatory.