Even though he was just a famous celebrity who never did anything but smoke dope and try to kill Sarah Conner, Arnold Schwarzenegger overcame his popularity and racial background to become California’s favorite governor! Let’s celebrate his life and art, today, on his birthday. MORE »

Hey everyone, what are you having for dinner tonight? Ha ha, we already know the answer and it’s NOTHING, because there is no longer any food in the world. As you may have heard in the news, the world’s most powerful leaders are convening this week for their annual G8 summit, which is being held in Japan this year. Among the top items on this year’s Agenda is devising a plan to combat the global food shortage. And that is why the leaders and their spouses yesterday ate a fancy six-course lunch and 18-course dinner, the highlight of which had to be the chef’s vinegar jelly. How insensitive! Vinegar jelly is the most endangered of the world’s basic foodstuffs. [Daily Mail]

Here’s WALNUTS! on this morning’s Today show, fucking himself over. He says that getting our troops out of Iraq is “not too important” considering the fact that we have military bases in such places as Japan and Germany, still. You may recall this “permanent occupation” line of logic from the Republican primary season, as it was the single most horrifying thing a presidential candidate said all cycle. Ohhh, WALNUTS! [YouTube]

Sweet Japanese Jesus: “A Japanese civil servant was demoted for logging more than 780,000 hits on pornographic Web sites on his office computer over nine months, an official said Friday.” 780,000, divided by nine months, divided by 22 workdays in a month… carry the zero… he looked at four billion Internet pornography boobs a day, every day. [AP/Raw Story]

Hillary Clinton is afraid that Americans are going to start prancing around in knee socks and filming radioactive giant lizard-based horror films, now that we are sinking into a “Japanese-style malaise.” But these terrible tragedies can be avoided if we resort to crazy nanny state policies like having the Federal Housing Administration purchase underwater mortgages. MORE »

In the city of Obama, Japan, they are wildly promoting the American candidate-warrior who shares their name. His reputation is legend, like the ancient samurai Tom Cruise! After the jump, watch various small business owners in Obama, Japan declare that “every Tuesday is Super Tuesday,” and other inane crap that they don’t understand. MORE »

Shinzo Abe announced his retirement today as Japan’s least favorite Prime Minister. Try to read this New York Times description without being reminded of someone: “the nationalist leader whose vision of an unapologetic and strong Japan foundered on scandals, incompetence and gaffes…” Nationalistic? Scandal-ridden? Gafes? That’s right, it sounds just like Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov.

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* Xiu Xiu at the Rock and Roll Hotel with Casiotone for the Painfully Alone and Shearwater. $12 at 8PM. [R&R Hotel]
* U of M professor Benjamin Barber is always on NPR talking about shopping and he’s funny and not sanctimonious. His book is called Consumed. He’ll say “Capitalism has created an adolescent culture rooted in instant gratification” tonight at Politics & Prose. Free at 7PM. [P&P]
* “For 500-plus years, the Yamagata area farmers, tradesmen, merchants, and Kasuga Shrine parishioners doubled as actors and progressively infused the performances with the local dialect and outlook to make Kurokawa noh distinctive.” It’s a form of Japanese theater that uses masks. Part of the Smithsonian’s Japan WOW! program, $18 at 6:30PM. [Smithsonian]

So one of the two very similar political parties wins control of the Congress again because overwhelming majorities of Americans are sick of killing U.S. kids in Iraq, welfare-state big-government spending, crippling national debt and deficits, and Republican politicians who strangle their prostitutes and have gay sex with children. But what does it all mean? MORE »

Now we’re officially scraping the bottom of the holiday news barrel, because we’re going to invoke that goddamned National Zoo baby panda we hate so much, Sun Myung Moon or whatever it’s called. MORE »