Yo Joe

A day late, but happy birthday to the late Joe Strummer. I never checked out The Future is Unwritten like I meant to when it was available On Demand through IFC. Put it on the To Do List.

I also would have posted the "Rock the Casbah" video, because I love that song and video, but there ain't a one on YouTube that lets you embed. So follow the linky.

This was my first exposure to The Clash when I was a young'n. When I first saw the vid, I had no idea The Clash were punks, or that punks even existed. Everyone was dressed weird on MTV at that point. But I knew they were cool.

Lil' Simpsons

Kidrobot released some mini Simpsons figures today, and they look pretty sweet.

I might even consider getting a case to get all of them (although there are three chase figures too), but cases contain blind boxes, so you don't know what you're getting. This is common with limited edition toys like this, but I've never made such an order. Can you get stuck with 14 Wiggums, for example?

This is a problem with the Adult Swim figures too. I like a few, but not all.

You can buy open boxes at Fugitive Toys, so maybe I'll scoop some up there, though they don't appear to offer all the characters. Here's a dude from Fugitive showing some of the characters, though he calls Comic Book Guy "Gus." D'oh.

6 months of slobberin' time

My nephew Franklin looks like he enjoyed his 6-month birthday yesterday. Bonus "green" points for recycling the Burger King hat.

Can death by pit kicking be too far away?

Via Dani.

These bikes go to 11

I was watching TV yesterday and saw a McDonald's ad in which a kid riding a BMX bike had a small, hand-held radio attached to his bike. And I thought, "That's dumb, no one would be listening to a radio tied to their bike." Well ...



Doesn't mean they're doing tailwhips on those things, though. Via.

Killing it

If you're not watching Generation Kill on HBO you probably need to, because it's really good.

When I first saw the ads I was a little skeptical because the dialogue seemed overly obnoxious, but I should have known better since it's made by the creators of The Wire. In fact, it's kind of like The Wire in Iraq, only with Daniels' special unit in Baltimore subbed out for the 1st Marine Recon Battalion.

Generation Kill is a seven-episode miniseries based on the book by Rolling Stone writer Evan Wright. There's also a book by Nathaniel Fick, platoon lieutenant and one of the main characters in the show, that I also want to check out.

Sit on it, newsie!

I either didn't see the original reports or don't now remember them (it's been a while) but, according to Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com, ABC News aired a number of reports implicating Iraq in the anthrax mailing attacks following 9/11. These reports were denied by the White House, and in fact were completely erroneous.

ABC News cited "well placed" sources that very likely included (unless ABC News completely made the story up) personnel at the lab that employed Bruce E. Ivins, the guy who committed suicide this week and reportedly the FBI's lead suspect in the anthrax attacks. These sources, whoever they were, made up a story that ABC News reported, and which helped lead many to believe Iraq was involved in the anthrax attacks.

Who those sources/liars are would seem to be a massive story. A massive story ABC News, who never admitted their mistaken reporting, is sitting on.

Read on for more fun.