|
|
|
Browsing the internet can prove useful, educational, and entertaining.
Or it can be a stultifying waste of time.
However, ever now and then, one stumbles upon a site so supremely pointless and strange as to inspire awe.
I was directed toward just such a site today.
Subservientchicken.com purports to be somehow sponsored by or related to BK.com, the Burger King corporate site, but who knows if that's really so? It seems somehow unlikely.
Here's what you can expect when visit you Subservientchicken.com: You will see a slightly pixilated streaming image of a man in a chicken suit standing in the middle of what resembles the living area of a budget-priced "suites" motel.
The chicken will endeavor to perform just about any action you request of him. You make your request by typing it into the input window just before the chicken's image.
"Hop three times on one foot," I asked.
He did just, sliding a bit closer to the webcam to make sure I could see that he kept one foot in the air.
"Tell me you love me," I typed in.
He walked over to the maroon couch behind him, picked up one of its cushions, and held it in his arms (wings?), as if embracing someone he deeply care for.
"Wave to me with your left wing," I continued.
He complied -- only he used his right wing.
"Your left wing!" I corrected him.
Another wave, still with the right wing.
There occurs what appears to be a little jump edit in the streaming video before each action, which makes me suspect that all the actions were prerecorded -- that there's someone on the other end controlling which prerecorded clip is displayed, depending upon what's been typed in. Or maybe there's a sophisticated text recognition system that relies on key words to load up the clip that will most nearly fulfill each request.
But the thing is, no matter what I asked of the chicken, I never stumped it. This may say more about my limited imagination, however, than it does about whether or not the chicken is really stands continuously at the ready, waiting to do the bidding of any who logs in to the site.
"Show me your golf swing," I asked.
Done, and done.
"Pick your nose." (I suppose it's actually a beak he'd be picking, when you think about it, but he got the gist of my request and complied, sort of.)
"Scratch your butt." (What can I tell you? I was desperate.)
The first time I made that request, the chicken came very close to the camera and a black bar appeared that covered much of the image. The black bar had text that read something like, ""Chicken is performing action unsuited to younger viewers." That is not a direct quote -- I didn't get a chance to write down exactly what it said. So I waited an hour or so and asked again, pen at the ready, but the chicken this time turned sideways and made a vague sort of swipe at his backside with his right wing (the right wing, again -- I wonder if his left one is ailing?).
If you've read this far, you owe it to yourself to visit the chicken. I can't promise that he's actually there awaiting directives from strangers, but neither could I manage to prove that he isn't.
Now, it's your turn.
Having sat through Condoleeza Rice's bloviated responses to a handful of questions from the 9/11 commission, you, like me, might wish to have the veracity of her testimony appraised.
On its website, the Center for American Progress breaks down both Dr. Rice's opening statement and the Q&A session that followed it.
I was left wondering why Rice's time was so limited. Many of the panel members were limited to three or four questions, in large part due to Dr. Rice's rambling, longwinded, self-serving responses. More than one questioner was reduced to pleading with Dr. Rice to be concise.
The commission members should have been allowed to ask as many questions as they saw fit. What, Condee had a lunch date she couldn't break?
My New York Mets won last night, and all -- well, something, anyway -- is right with the world.
I'm not a sports fanatic, by any means, but I'm pretty devoted to a handful of teams. When it comes to my Oklahoma Sooners and the two primary sports of basketball and football, it's hard for me for me satisfied with anything less than national prominence. We Sooner fans expect our football team to be in the running for a national title year in and year out, and we're awfully disappointed when the hoops squad doesn't win at least a game or two in the Big Dance.
In both of those sports (but especially in college football), every single game is arguably make-or-break.
Baseball's different. It's a long, languid campaign, and even fans of the worst team in the Majors have good reason, some forty or fifty times a season, to cheer.
In contrast to my Sooner squads, I ask very little of my Mets, really -- not just this season, but on an ongoing basis. Just keep me hopeful through August, and I'm satisfied. Anything more than that -- a September division race, a playoff series or two, the rare and precious appearance in the World Series -- is just icing on the cake.
Baseball is like an amiable roommate, one who's perfectly willing to pass an evening conversing if you can use the company but doesn't resent you in the least if you opt instead for an evening on the town.
A football game is a weekly event around which one must plan one's schedule; basketball teams perform no more than two or three times a week. But baseball's there virtually every night of the week, if you want it. If you miss a game or two, no problem. It'll be there the next night. It's not going anywhere.
Now, if the Mets can just build on last night's sparkling debut, it could be a sweet summer indeed.
Just get me through August; that's all I ask. Anything more is gravy.
I fairly cheered when I came across this essay at the Gadflyer. Amy Sullivan nailed it when she wrote that "Bush, a man who has claimed loudly and often to have faith ... has refused to identify any deeds that live out that faith."
The Radical Right has had the press cowed for more than two decades now on the subject of religion. Many people of faith identify with the Left, but you'd never know it from the coverage afforded the so-called "Christian Right."
What's righteous about rewarding the rich at the expense of the poor? What's holy about sending men and women to die under blatantly false pretenses? What's moral about the heavy-handed tactics the White House has used to stifle dissent, even among those who have honorably served them?
What, in short, is Christian about the behavior exhibited by George Bush and his administration?
As Sullivan's piece explains, there was a bit of a hubbub recently when the White House complained that it was inappropriate for John Kerry to inject religion into the campaign for the presidency.
Kerry's offensive act? He quoted a single verse from the Bible -- specifically James 2:14, which reads, "What does it profit, my brother, if a man says he has faith but does not have works?"
One would be hardpressed, in my opinion, to cite a more apt verse when discussing this administration. What's more, Kerry wasn't even speaking of the Bushies when he quoted the scripture. As Sullivan explains it, the citation "was just part of a recitation of the ways in which Democrats will be tested this year and was ostensibly a reminder that Democrats need to stick to their guns, pay attention to doing good and living out their values."
I do try to recall that we are admonished to judge not, lest we be judged, but it's not easy to resist labeling this dissembling, self-righteous pack of thugs.
The idea that they'd get upset because Kerry quoted a brief bit of scripture is, as Sullivan terms it, "rich," indeed. I guess the cited verse hit just a little too close to home for the Bushies, the hypocrites.