Vicious Vitriol

• What I'm Watching/Listening To/Reading:
• Heard the new Metallica single, "The Day That Never Comes". People are saying it sounds like "One", but it's not nearly as good (of course). It is reminiscent of ...And Justice For All with a slow beginning and a fast ending comprised of very intricate guitar parts. Supposedly, this one is the slowest song on the album, which bodes well.
• If you haven't heard, by the way, the new album Death Magnetic will be the first album to be released as DLC for the Guitar Hero series at the same time as it hits stores. Great strategy. Also, apparently coming next spring: Guitar Hero: Metallica. I'm there.
• If you haven't heard, Rachel Maddow is getting her own show on MSNBC, starting on September 8. With the exception of Chuck Todd, no other news person has broken onto the scene as well as she has this year. She's a folk hero for progressives at this point.
• Random Thoughts/Links:
• Whew, I finally got the text today. Who would have guessed that Obama would pick Jonny Fairplay to be his VP? (The picture is not a fake.)
• Seriously though, I keep picking up my cell phone and staring at it. I'm like a 15-year-old girl, sitting at home, doing my nails, waiting for my crush to call. In reality, I'm a 32-year-old guy, sitting at home, biting my nails, waiting for my crush to text. Why won't he call? I know he likes me. His friend David Plouffe tells me every day in an e-mail.
• While we wait, please enjoy a clip in the running for favorite of the year: America Ferrera, bored and disgusted with her annoying co-star.
• Daily Rant:
• I'm a big fan of etymology, so today we'll look at a word that describes the style of restaurant in which I ate this afternoon. In Ancient Greece, the myths tell of a group of people who lived a charmed life in a forest just outside of Athens. They wanted for nothing, never going hungry or cold or unprotected from the wild. They were watched over by Zeus and they were happy. As time wore on, these people became bored with all that they had. They took the good life for granted and they began to stray. In time, they found a new god to worship who showed them ways in which they could spite all that they had been given. While people in other parts of Greece were not so lucky and starved, these people gave themselves over to their new deity. They renamed themselves after him and practiced a kind of self-denial that was not noble, but rather self-serving and incomprehensible. They began to flaunt their new practices in the faces of the other Greeks, saying that only they knew the true way and they were better for it. The rest of the country alternated between disgust, confusion, and mockery of this group, who had squandered their advantages and followed their god into a miserable, miserable existence. This god, from the Greek words ve, meaning "No", and ga, meaning "Fun", was named Vega. The people called themselves "Vegans".