UPDATE 2-18-07: Since Viacom no longer allows any of their content to be posted at YouTube, most of the links on this page no longer function. I’m sorry about that. Viacom is a bunch of douchebags.

I really hope you all watch Stephen Colbert’s show “The Colbert Report” on a regular basis. From his early days on “The Daily Show” Stephen has

consistently displayed the remarkable ability to highlight the idiocy of popular culture, politics, and bears with his ironic snarkiness.

From popularizing the term “truthiness” to deep-throating bananas, Stephen’s comedic material spans the gamut from surface-level parody to insightful satire. His show garnered five Emmy nominations this year, and I have no doubt he’ll walk away with at least one little statue.

In one of the recurring bits on his show, “Better Know A District,” Stephen interviews congressmen in their respective offices in his absurd on-going quest to personally interview all 434 congressional representatives (yes, I realize there are 435, but Stephen declared California’s 50th ‘dead to him’). A couple of weeks ago Stephen’s interview with Floridian Rep. Wexler garnered quite a bit of attention after Stephen finagled the representative into saying that he liked cocaine because “it’s a fun thing to do.” Then last week, he conducted an interview with Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes-Norton that completely blew my socks off. After it ended Leigh and I couldn’t believe what we had just seen.

Warning: Do not watch those interviews while drinking milk. I will not be held responsible for your nostrils if you do.

Internet forums are filled with rumors that Colbert roams the net regularly. Internet memes appear on Colbert’s show with amazing frequency, and I’ve seen things appear on his show the same day they appeared on the net. He has a website dedicated to his fictional, as in never actually having been written, sci-fi novel “Alpha Squad 7: Lady Nocturne: A Tek Jansen Adventure,” and if you read the site carefully it becomes clear that Stephen is most likely the actual designer of the site.

Tonight on his show during “The Word” segment, appropriately titled “Wikiality,” Colbert called on his viewers to change a few facts on Wikipedia, the user-ran on-line encyclopedia. He asked that his viewers amend the entry for “elephants” to include the “fact” that the elephant population has tripled in the last six months, thus proving Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” wrong. In true Orwellian doublethink fashion, Colbert basically stated that if we all agree on a reality then it must be true, regardless of verifiable “facts.” Therefore, if we all agree that the elephant population has increased three-fold then it must be true.

Well, because I watch TV with the computer in my lap I immediately logged onto Wikipedia and searched for “elephants.” The entry looked okay. So I refreshed it a couple of times and after about the fourth reload, just like magic, the line “THE NUMBER OF ELEHANTS HAS TRIPLED IN THE LAST SIX MONTHS” appeared. I refreshed the page once more and it came back with an internal error, which usually occurs when a massive amount of traffic overloads a server. This happens when an overwhelming number of people try to access a page simultaneously. I refreshed some more, the page came back up, and amazingly the moderators had already removed the erroneous “fact” and had also locked the page to prevent any more additions. All of this happened within maybe three of four minutes.

You can thank me later, because I was quick enough to get a screen capture of the wikipedia page before the mods corrected the page. You can click the image below to see the Colbert-elephant-entry in all its full-size goodness.

I hope I’ve piqued your interest in “The Colbert Report.” It’s a brilliant piece of satire, and the fact that Colbert is a huge nerd definitely helps. He’s much more likely to latch on to and report on interesting subjects that I want to hear about.

• Free Movies Fallen out of Copyright (Public Domain)
  What a neat idea. I hope the practice of posting public domain works on-line in a complete form continues.
• Star Trek Cribs- via YouTube
  This is almost better than Robot Chicken. I nearly lost my mind when Spock said “Dope.”
• Scientist thinks invisibility possible in future - via Yahoo! News
  I’m so glad that scientists are pursuing avenues of scientific inquiry based on the works of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Where’s the cure for AIDS, you dickheads? How’s that cancer research coming along?
• NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
  Let me repeat that: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

I’ve kinda been sitting on this, just in case something fell through, but I got conformation today so I feel comfortable in sharing.

UTSA hired me to teach four freshmen composition classes in the fall. The semester begins at the end of August, so by that time I should have a full-time job. Truthfully, I’m simultaneously excited and scared piss-less (no, I will not allow my students to use that term in their papers…they can get their own damn blog).

I just accessed the university web page to see my name at the top of four class listings. Pretty exhilarating stuff. I would appreciate it if all of you would light a candle for me in hopes that I don’t lose my cool with some earring perforated emo punk or a vacuous girly-girl. I would so hate to get fired my first semester for kicking someone in the throat.

If anyone’s interested I plan on using the Conan-method in conducting my classes. I was very impressed how well it worked for the librarians. I can’t wait for my first, “I’m sorry, sir…this paper’s a little overdue.”

Sorry about the title. I’m too tired to think of anything more poetical than that.

I had a really good post in my head all read to go, but I stayed up all night watching the Battlestar Galactica season two DVD set. Now I’m too exhausted to think of anything besides nasty little limericks.

Regular bloggeity bloggin’ will resume tomorrow. Well, since it’s 4:30 in the morning, I guess I should say later today.

Who the hell knows. I’m goin’ to bed.

• There is no 9/11 conspiracy you morons.- via The Best Page In The Universe
  Maddox takes on the 9/11 conspiracy movie “Loose Change.”
• Sex Panther T-Shirt
  60% of the time it works everytime.
• Captain Kirk farts- via YouTube
  Don’t you judge me. You know you laughed too.

Sorry for the downtime. The stooges at Dreamhost tell me that one of their generators caught fire, which as you can imagine, seriously compromised the stability of Hyperliterature.

They’re telling me everything should work properly now. I guess we’ll see.

I had a really good link dump for today too. I’ll see if I can get it to repost.

Michael Brown is back in the news. Fortunately for us, the only thing he’s mismanaging now is his mouth. CNN has an article about his latest adventure.

During a Playboy interview Brown says of Rep. Gene Taylor: “He said I didn’t recognize the death and suffering that was going on…For that little twerp to claim I didn’t recognize death and suffering — he can just bite me, for all I care.”

Ooooo, damn! That’s your ass Gene Taylor! Go on Brownie…now say sumptin’ ‘bout his momma!!!

We should give Brown another government job. Not because he’s a competent, reliable public servant, but more because he makes for good headlines. Hopefully he’ll start cursing in interviews. I have a feeling that if people keep telling him he’s a fool eventually he’ll climb a bell tower with an automatic weapon and truly voice his dissatisfaction in a meaningful way.

As much as I like Brown’s comment, I’m only halfway satisfied with the level of divisiveness in our government. I can appreciate badmouthing opponents, but when are we gonna see some real action?

I wanna see a republican slap a democrat in the mouth. I’m anxiously anticipating the moment when a democrat kicks a republican in the nuts. I’m waiting for the day when I flip over to C-Span and see the House and the Senate engaged in a full-on brawl. You’d see those old, silver-haired ladies jumping off of tables and onto the backs of the men…pulling their hair and clawing at their eyes. Gavels would be flying, three-piece suits would be ripped and shredded, and the smart guys would take off their ties and put that Windsor knot to good use—by tightening it around the neck of the loud-mouth a-hole from Alaska.

When that day comes I’m placing a considerable amount of money on John “The Tank” Murtha. He looks like he could take on a few guys all at once. I’d also like to see Bill Frist and John Kerry throw down. They’re both tall, lanky guys with long arms, and as Tyler Durden would say: “Big guy, big reach. Skinny guys fight ’til they’re burger.”

Some of those guys served in ‘Nam, and I’m betting a brouhaha like that would send them directly to flashback city, virtually guaranteeing us some decent action.

Don’t look at me like that. If those shit-heads at the Hill won’t even try to get along and get some work done, then I say they should at least provide us with some entertainment. Now: LET’S GIT IT ON!!!

I completed all the site maintenance, so things should be smooth sailing from here on out. Let me know if there's anything you'd like to see implemented on the site.

In other news, my stat counter went through the roof after that Martinez post. Apparently lots of people type in terms like "anal sex," "vibrator," and "virgin" into Google and Yahoo, because I got tons of people hitting Hyperliterature as a result of that post. Oddly enough, I've also received a lot of hits because I used the beginning two lines of an Emily Dickinson poem as the title for a previous post.

So here's my plan: From here on out I'm titling all of my posts with lines from a classic poem, and in the body of each post I'm mentioning anal sex and fellatio at least once. Maybe twice.

Hey, I gotta attract readers somehow.

During the course of setting up this site I had to construct a mirror site so that you could see the content on this page (don’t bother understanding that). Well, now it’s time to delete that mirror because I’ve completed all of my domain maintenance. That means that the site www.hypermark.dreamhosters.com will no longer function.

Only the url www.hyperliterature.com will bring you to this page. Please update your bookmarks accordingly, because I will delete the mirror in the next few days.

• CoOl D!mens!on- via Flickr
  It takes a second to really see the coolness of this photo. Found via Warren Ellis’ Blog.
• “In the Summertime”- via YouTube
  Featuring Billy Idol and Slash. How can you resist that? Maybe it’s just the lights or the make-up, but Billy has aged very well.
• The Hoff is king of the internet- via YouTube
  Yeah, that’s right. Another Hoff video. The man has lost his mind.
• Nike McFly Commercial- via YouTube
  I WANT A PAIR!! DEAR GOD DO I WANT THOSE!
• House votes to block police from seizing legal guns in disasters
  From my cold, dead hand!