And now, a tribute to the greatest Olympic champion of all time:

Don’t know the original source; it was emailed to me by a friend.

Have you ever finished a great book or film and enjoyed it so much that you wished that there was a sequel you could sink your teeth into right away?

Now imagine a movie so good that you almost don’t want there to be a sequel because you couldn’t bear the disappointment when it doesn’t measure up to what you just witnessed.

Batman: The Dark Knight has left me with that feeling. It has been called the “Godfather” of its genre, in that it will likely be decades — if ever — before anything tops it. It is a film of stunning writing, acting, and directing. It is epic in its emotional magnitude — you will want to laugh, cry, gasp in fear, cheer, cringe in horror, lose hope, regain your faith…it grabs you from the minute it starts and does not ever let go. The story between Bruce Wayne, the Joker, Harvey Dent, and Rachel is so perfectly woven that not once do you feel like anything is being forced, like anything was being written down to the lowest common denominator of movie-goers. It is complex and richly detailed, gritty and dark — so dark, in fact, that I’m sure it had to be close to an ‘R’ rating. You definitely feel the evil and chaos pervading Gotham City.

The whole cast is great, but of course, as we’ve all heard by now, Heath Ledger as the Joker was undeniably fantastic. It will no doubt go down as one of the greatest film performances of all time, made all the more poignant by Ledger’s death just over six months ago. He created a character that was simultaneously funny and bloodcurdlingly creepy. You could feel the menace and the psychosis through the eerie face paint, with every smack of his lips and flick of the tongue. It is something I will never forget.

Go see this movie. I don’t remember the last time I could give such an unequivocal recommendation. Everyone needs to see this movie (except for young children — it could seriously be very disturbing for them); this is a landmark film. I’m listening to the Batman Begins soundtrack as I write this and am still occasionally getting the chills thinking about what I saw last night. Go see this movie while it’s on the big screen. You won’t be disappointed.

This is a very old video, but still incredibly hilarious.

Watch out for those hyrdocopic marzelveins.

A 13-year-old girl in an Illinois middle school got two days of detention as punishment for hugging a couple of her friends at school. The punishment was administered because the student, Megan Coulter, supposedly violated the school’s policy against public displays of affection.

Megan explained, “I was just giving them a hug goodbye for the weekend.” Her mother added that they weren’t even full-body hugs, just the arm-around-the-shoulder-and-squeeze thing. The superintendent, Sam McGowen, said he thinks that the punishment is fair and that the school administrators were adhering properly to the policy in the student handbook. In other news, Sam McGowen is a complete idiot.

This crap is really getting out of control. We had anti-PDA rules when I was in school too, and I don’t remember the exact wording but it was pretty well understood that they meant no kissing and no getting it on inside the band locker room. But this girl got in trouble for hugging her friends. Is this the message we want to send to kids these days? That hugging is bad? That you can never, ever show any sort of emotion or affection for someone while in public? I don’t want to see anyone else’s make-out session, but hugs are friendly, casual, and for most people completely non-threatening to the social fabric of their lives. I still hug most of my good friends, both men and women, especially when I haven’t seen them for a long time, and I’m all grow’d up (supposedly). I’ve never heard of anyone objecting to seeing friends hug or clap their arms around each others’ shoulders.

This is yet another case of kids’ lives being more and more micromanaged, of rules for the sake of rules; too many of these rules and they’ll never figure out anything on their own, never develop independent social skills, never learn anything “the hard way”…which for some things is the best way. See also “Grade school bans tag” for more reasons to hate school administrators practicing the CYA policy rather than allowing kids to be kids.

There’s some nasty storms rolling through the Midwest today, as CNN.com is reporting in the main story on their front page. The lead line under the photo is especially interesting:

No! Not the beer tents!!!

Not that she ever liked him in the first place (and who does, really?), but Sen. Clinton let typical political diplo-speak fall by the wayside last night when she referred to the vice president as such, describing the administration’s attempts to keep Republican lawmakers’ support for the Iraq war.

I’m not exactly a big Hillary fan, but it’s nice to know that sometimes in Washington they see what the rest of us see.

Read: CNN Political Ticker

It’s been a long time since I harped on Fox News. Not for shortage of material, mind you, but just because it’s so depressing to see a news organization which is practically a state-run agency have such a large audience that actually believes the crap they’re being shoveled. This is just a fun little tidbit, a piece of anecdotal evidence, if you will, for why you still should not be watching Fox News.

I’m sure we’ve all heard at least part of the lovely scandal about Senator Larry Craig (R-ID), a staunch conservative who has voted time and again to ban homosexuals from doing anything except for breathing (which you get the impression he would also ban, if he could), who allegedly solicited sex acts from a man in an airport bathroom who turned out to be a cop. Fox News is known for way too frequently having “accidentally” flipped an “R” to a “D” during a scandal involving Republicans, or “mistakenly” calling Sen. Barack Obama “Osama” (even putting it in an on-screen graphic with his picture!), and a number of other thinly veiled “oopsies.” In their coverage of this recent scandal, it was noticed that a Fox News article mentioned Senator Craig’s party affiliation exactly zero times. They then proceeded to quote a bunch of Republicans denouncing him, the obvious subtext being they want their readers/viewers to not connect Craig with the Republican party and maybe even think he’s a Democrat. They also devoted less than half the air time to the scandal than MSNBC, and about six times less than CNN.

While we’re on the subject, I’d like to point out again the guys involved in this reprehensible behavior are always the ones condemning it the loudest. Larry Craig was one of the most outspoken anti-gay politicians…and goes and tries to get some in a men’s bathroom. Mark Foley (R-FL) was the House Rep who was a crusader against the sexual exploitation and abuse of children…and then was caught doing it himself. Ted Haggard was one of the biggest gay-bashers in the country…and then it turns out he’s been doing drugs and a guy from Denver for over three years. A number of “family values” Republicans were fingered in the D.C. Madame call-girl scandal. So remember the lesson here: If a politician’s lips are moving, he’s lying. And if he’s an ultra-conservative with a cause, he apparently is not only lying but means the exact opposite of what he says.

I just read an excellent analysis piece from TIME Magazine. Despite the huge scandal at the DOJ — in fact because of the very nature of the scandal — Bush will not ask Attorney General Gonzales to resign. Other than stubbornness and general stupidity, qualities which this president certainly has in abundance (and I don’t write that way about the office of the president lightly), until now I had not heard any reasonable explanations as to why Gonzales is still in charge of the Department of Justice. As TIME points out, Bush has not exactly had issues with axing high-profile appointees in the past, like Rumsfled late last year.

The conclusions the TIME article reaches fit perfectly, and they are just disgusting enough for you to know, in the context of this scandal-ridden administration, that they are accurate. To put it briefly, Gonzales is Bush’s last remaining shield from a series of long-overdue investigations and prosecutions — illegal wiretapping, unconstitutional abuse of power, illegal use of executive privilege, illegal subversion of Congressional investigation subpoenas, etc. The DOJ, the very branch of the government that’s supposed to be executing these investigations in support of the law and in check of the other branches of the government, is not doing so because Gonzales is Bush’s loyal buddy and has done all he can to dig in his heels and not approve such investigations and prosecutions. I have never, ever seen public servants — politicians or otherwise, and politicians are a pretty low form of public servant — with such blatant contempt for the rule of law. It is truly disgusting. For crying out loud, not only has Gonzales perjured himself at least once during his testimony, but he actually used the phrase “I don’t recall” something like 164 times during one day’s session alone, claiming not to remember even the broadest facts about the politically-motivated firings for which he is being investigated. I say, whether he’s guilty or not (and it’s all but clear at this point that he is sinfully guilty), that he should be fired for having such a crappy memory! How can you trust someone with that much power if they can’t remember a damn thing from just a few months ago?

Read the article at TIME.com.

I just finished reading an excellent article by a woman named Kathy Jo Nicholson, who was born into the extremist group FLDS (the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), or fundamentalist Mormons. This sect still practices polygamy, in secret of course, and Kathy Jo’s incredible insights into — and eventual escape from — such a strange social structure make for a fascinating and disturbing read. Check it out.

In a Rhode Island nursing home, death comes in a strange form…a brown and white cat who seems to know when patients are at their end. Normally not a socializing creature, when the creepy feline curls up with a patient they usually meet their end within just four hours. He has been studied by the New England Journal of Medicine and has been observed to be accurate in at least 25 cases. He is statistically better at predicting death than the rest of the nursing home staff. Fortunately, most patients, by the time they receive such a visit from the furry little harbinger of death, they are too out of it to realize he’s there. Families, for the most part, seem to find it comforting that some”one” was there with their loved one in his or her final hours.

Read the story on CNN.