Sadly, No!

And to think that it only took us a year to implement code that’s been available for 3 years.

Given that there’s no consensus as to which is best (dark or light background,) we’ve followed The Editors‘ lead and added the possibility for you, the user, to switch back and forth between our regular style and Georgia Blue Plain Jane. (See “How should I look” on the right.)

For reasons we are too drunk to explore the result isn’t entirely satisfactory in IE6, with the links on the right being displayed on some weird blue background. If you know why, tell us. If you don’t and want to complain, leave us alone, we’re drunk!

When we left the Geeklog behind and moved to Movable Type, we quickly settled on the style you see now, with a black dark gray or whatever background, for the site. Of the options available we liked it best, and it had the advantage of not being used by any of the MT blogs we knew at the time.

We once tried tweaking the colors, which led to this comment:

AAAGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! My eyes!

ok, so that attempt did not turn out to be entirely successful.

As time has passed however, we’ve come to experience a bit of ennui over the layout and color scheme. For one thing, the clever use of a non-white background has been copied by many lesser blogs. Besides, it might just be time to change anyway.

Given our commitment to customer satisfaction however, we thought we’d ask you for your opinion. Should Sadly, No! overhaul its appearance? Go back to a white background like all the normal people? Design a fancy pants blog like Katieweb? Or should we just stop writing altogether?

*. That’s right, *.

What the hell is it about you wonder? Well, it comes straight out of Scooby Doo McClellan’s press gaggle for August 18:

Under the President, funding* for our veterans has more than doubled over the previous eight years.

We’re impressed, needless to say, about Scott’s ability to speak complete with footnotes. [By the way, when was Bush elected anyway???] So what is this about?

* by nearly doubling the funding increase of the previous eight years

Oh, now we get it! According to the chart posted here, veterans funding $36bn in 1994, $47bn in 2001, and is estimated at $65bn for 2005. So the “Bush increase” is estimated at $18bn, while the “Clinton increase” (from 1994 to 2001) was $11bn. Put another way:

In Bush’s first three years funding for the Veterans Administration increased 27%. And if Bush’s 2005 budget is approved, funding for his full four-year term will amount to an increase of 37.6%.

In the eight years of the Clinton administration the increase was 31.7%

And this is the administration that thinks Kerry has problems telling the truth? McClellan flat out lied* in yesterday’s briefing.

* Compared to the truth.

Last March, we wrote some unkind things about Richard Poe’s Hillary’s Secret War: The Clinton Conspiracy to Muzzle Internet Journalists. Mr. Poe thought it unfair we ridiculed his work, and wrote about it on his web site:

Taking a page from the Abe Foxman School of Clairvoyant Criticism, an anonymous blogger sporting the handle “Sadly, No!” has mocked, ridiculed, and excoriated my forthcoming book — Hillary’s Secret War: The Clinton Conspiracy to Muzzle Internet Journalists — without even bothering to read it.

Ouch! So imagine our surprise when we found the following customer review of Richard’s book on Amazon:

It has been known among us internet users for a long time that Hillary has been on a crusade to stamp us all out. I remember the time that I posted a message on a forum about Clinton’s cigar, and 2 days later, Hillary and about 40 of her sword-weilding thugs showed up at my house in the middle of the night. They sliced up all my computer cables and smashed my monitor in slow-motion, and then shot my computer to bits. It was a bloodbath. I have many colleagues who also posted anti-Clinton jokes on the internet and went into Republican chatrooms and typed truthful messages about what slimebags the Clintons were. And almost everyone of them can tell you horrific stories of retribution by Hillary and her secret torture unit. One freind tells of the time Hillary came to his workplace with her group of killers and broke his keyboard over his head in slow-motion, then strutted outside, again in slow-motion with Soudgarden playing in the background, and set the whole place on fire by throwing Molotov cocktails at the building. Read the book, and know the truth.

Was Richard right all along? Scary!

PS: Fixed Poe link.

If you want grade A quality wingnut roundups, go to World O’Crap. If you want derivative, uninspired third-rate wingnut roundups, keep reading. Today’s special is: all your favorite wingnuts imitate Seinfeld.

First up, the future Mrs. Pete M., one Karen H. Pittman:

Then a funny thing happened on the way to eighteen: my body rebelled. I grew up, too. The metamorphosis didn’t take place overnight?I didn’t suddenly become a monster the way the Wolf Man did.

Sidra: And by the way… they’re real… and they’re spectacular!

Back then I was serious. I couldn’t understand why all those mad grownups running round loose in the world didn’t see what I saw. Of course war was bad. Were they insane? I mean, wasn’t it obvious?

Elaine: That is so true! Although one wonders if “War and Peace” would has been as highly acclaimed as it was if it was published under it’s original name “War –What Is It Good For?”

But that’s what growing up is, isn’t it?a slow, methodical, ruthless strangling of innocence.

Buckles: “Rochelle, Rochelle”… A young girl’s strange, erotic journey from Milan to Minsk.

Next up, Carey Roberts:

I’m an unabashed fan of women’s tennis and figure skating. I love the artistry and grace. But many of the Olympic sports have little to do with artistry or grace.

Elaine: Alright, alright, look – I don’t have grace, I don’t want grace…I don’t even say grace, O.K.?

Let’s hear from Vanilla Ice Marck C. Abbott:

To his credit, Keyes seems to be taking it all in stride. He won’t let such vociferous criticism stifle his unconditionally pro-life, pro-family message.

Kramer: It’s not a pizza until it comes out of the oven!

Poppie: It’s a pizza the moment you put your fists in the dough!

Last and least, we bring you Ed Daley:

At this point I can only ask this: WHAT DO YOU PEOPLE EXPECT?

Kramer: Emphysema, birth defects, cancer. But not this.

Elaine: I love the Sadly, No!
Jerry: How could you not like the Sadly, No!?
Kramer: I love the Sadly, No!

Earlier this week, someone drove into our parked car (in all likelihood because of our Bush/Cheney sticker but who knows for sure?) The car (a Toyota Yaris) is now in the shop, being repaired at someone else’s expense. The car we got to drive around while we wait? This:

We can live with that.

Sadly, No! darling Kerry L. Marsala has been watching the Scott Peterson trial. The effect has been, uh, not good:

If I were Ms. Frey, I would be embarrassed over my inexcusable, nymphomaniac lifestyle. … Who in her right mind goes out on a blind date to a bar and winds up in bed with someone she has just known for all of two hours? … After a little dinner and a little dancing, they have sex in a hotel room. … Do people flippantly go around having sex with strangers? … Frey stated she felt –all within a few days– that the relationship with Peterson was moving from “just sex” to something more serious. What happened to developing a relationship based on getting to know one another first?before playing horizontal mambo? Apparently, for a certain percentage of people out there, sex comes first and then a lasting relationship. Such behavior makes humans no different than animals. … They eat, dance, and hours later have sex. They go on a second date, approximately two weeks later. … Surely any woman in such a brief period of time would see that this meant more than just sex! … The use of hormones as a guide to building one relationship after another is deadly. People will believe what they want to believe. … For the love of God, a single mother having sex with men she doesn’t even know, bent on a storybook fantasy coming true.

Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex. All the other kids are getting some, so why can’t I?

Adam Yoshida is no stranger to readers of Sadly, No! There are a lot of reasons for that of course, among them the always reliably craptacular quality of Adam’s writing:

Napoleon Muhammad: The ?Emperor? of the Islamic Republic of France is a distant relation of the original Bonaparte- a half-French, half-Algerian who was initially elected as the President of the Fifth Republic in 2037, the new Napoleon fused together France?s rising Islamist tide with a growing and virulent strain of ultra-rightism.

The best response was posted in the comments at Adam’s web site by the management of Hairy Fish Nuts:

I do wish you’d work in more Ninjas, talking pies and laser swords in your fictions.

Speaking of Hairy Fish Nuts, they also offer their thoughts on NewsMax:

I love NewsMax, it’s so transparent and sloppy, it’s like if Pravda were run by monkeys who had three quarters of their brains sliced out and replaced with shredded copies of L. Ron Hubbard novels.

Ah, to be witty and sarcastic like the other kids!

Ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, meet your musketeers: Greg Koukl, Scott Klusendorf, Steve Wagner and Brett Kunkle. We hope you agree that, with the notable exception of Steve, all of these names sound completely made up. If only they were a law firm, forcing someone to answer the phone with Koukl, Klusendorf, and Kunkle can I help you? Who needs she sells seashells by the seashore when you have Koukl, Klusendorf, and Kunkle could clearly clue you in on Christianity? But we digress.

According to WorldNetDaily, there is a disturbance in the force:

Stand to Reason, a nonprofit apologetics organization, says its “AdWord” advertisement on Google recently was pulled down.

Things haven’t been the same at Stand to Reason since all those for profit companies have gotten into the apologetics business.

Specific AdWord ads are listed in the right-hand margin of search results on the popular site when key words an advertiser submits match with those put in by a Net user. A company promoting hats, for example, could have their site displayed when a user searches for information about hats.

Just like a company promoting Wilson C. Lucom could have their site displayed when a user searches for information about nuclear bombs. ***

“Google’s objections had to do with other articles on our website pertaining to homosexuality,” Penner told WND. “They claimed that their specialist had deemed us a hate site and that their policies didn’t allow people to have ads that discriminated against certain groups, which include sexual orientation.”

Gee, what could be so bad on the Stand to Reason site?

Yes–the Boy Scouts are discriminatory and prejudiced. But what’s wrong with that?

Oh.

Does the fact that homosexuals have made great contributions to society have any bearing on whether or not homosexuality is immoral?

We bet the answer is… sadly, no!

Is AIDS a Noble Disease?

Hmm, we’re starting to detect a pattern.

You Can’t Marry Your Canary

Right. Besides, wasn’t there a song by Yes about that?

Owner of a lonely heart
Owner of a lonely heart
Much better than
married to your canary
Owner of a lonely heart

Moving along:

Couldn’t one argue that it’s discrimination, that it’s discrimination against me from a heterosexual perspective, that heterosexuals narrowly allow marriage just for a man and a woman and they’re discriminating against anyone who would want to marry their pet or machine or anyone who would want to marry their computer or T.V. or VCR, or anything else. Why couldn’t we do that?

Didn’t the whole man-on-VCR thing die with the betamax format?

We’ll have more from Stand to Reason later — right now our George Foreman grill needs some lovin’.

*** How long has it been since we ran a really, really dumb contest? Not long enough you say? What if we said fabulous prizes will be awarded this time around? So now you’re interested! Use the comments to enter your suggestion for a line following the example shown below:

Just like a company promoting XXX could have their site displayed when a user searches for information about YYY.

The winner gets a lot of stuff sent by mail. Really.

PS: Thanks to Jamie for the tip.

Truth Desperation in advertising:

Buy anything, get Farah’s amazing book FREE!

We know what kind of web site it is, now we’re merely negotiating the price.