This is crossposted to blogging.la.

In addition to countless lies, denying basic civil rights to gays and lesbians, and calling an unnecessary special election with powergrabs that masquerade as "reform," I present yet another reason Arnold Schwarzenegger makes me want to puke. Last week, while firefighters were battling the Topanga fire, the Governor flew in for a George Bush-esque photo-op, and several firemen say they were ordered to stand with him for the cameras.
It’s an outrageous insult to firefighters to force them to pose for a photo-op with this idiot, who is doing everything he can to silence their union with prop 75.

A few firefighters were bold enough to complain they were ordered to stand behind the governor against their will on the day of the news conference, KCAL 9’s Linda Breakstone reported. Seven more came forward Wednesday.
“We did not want to do it,” Los Angeles County firefighter Greg Alldredge said. “Then it came down as an order directly from above.”
Firefighters were "ordered and forced" to participate, Alldredge said. Rank-and-file firefighters were very displeased with "having to shake hands with somebody who really doesn’t support us.”
Schwarzenegger’s press secretary says "No one from the governor’s office ordered anyone to do anything.

Could it have come from his campaign office, and not his Sacramento office? I guess it could depend on what your definition of "office" is.

Updated: via comments, I see the Governor’s incredibly compassionate, thoughtful, appreciative response to the firefighters’ criticism:

Schwarzenegger later brushed off criticism of the stunt. He says everybody is ordered to do things at one point or another. He also pointed out that "as a matter of fact, in one of my movies, I played a firefighter."

It’s almost like the word "asshole" was invented specifically for him. He played a firefighter once in a movie, and we’re supposed to believe that fact is somehow relevant to anything.
Well, actually, it is. It shows how arrogant, out of touch, and clueless this coddled celebrity who’s playing governor actually is.

Wow. According to C|Net, there are fourteen million blogs on The Internets . . . and their editors have selected WWdN for inclusion in their top 100.

I don’t usually care about things like this, because they’re so subjective, and it’s too easy to obsess over what lists I’m on or not on, and what my ranking is or isn’t, but the blogs on this list are all really fantstic. It’s a real honor to be included with them.

. . . I guess I’d better hurry up and get WWdN working again, huh?

Several WWdN readers who have temporarily joined us here in exile (*wave*), wrote in this morning to inform me that I’ve earned a spot in another Joy Of Tech comic.

Clicky for teh funnay.

I haven’t had time to see Serenity, yet. I was too busy to attend both of the screenings I was invited to, but I hope to see it before the end of next week. I hear it’s fantastic.

In Games of our Lives this week, I took a big risk and tackled an incredibly popular coin-op game: Moon Patrol. I sent my editor about 45000 words, which he skillfully cut down into 300-ish good ones.

Witness:

Gameplay: The moon isn’t very safe, and thanks to budget cuts,
your buggy explodes as readily as a 1972 Pinto. Luckily, you’ve tricked
it out with a dashboard Jesus, lasers, and hydraulic shocks, so you can
blast the rocks and jump over the bottomless craters that get in your
way.

Kids today might not like it because: They can’t pick up a hooker, nail her in the back of their moon buggy, then kick her out, run her over, and take her money.

Kids today might like it because: Moon Patrol is much more realistic than the car-racing games they’re used to playing.

It’s easier to do games that people may not have crystal clear memories of, and passionate attachements to, because if I don’t cover that game exactly the way they want me to, people can get really worked up. When I poked fun at Midnight Magic, some Atari Nerds wished that I would die. Because I wrote a humorous column about a game that is over 20 years old. Uhh . . . yeah.

So I’m a little nervous about the reaction to Moon Patrol, but no matter what happens, I got to sneak in a Futurama joke, (which made me almost as happy as my Obscurity Hall of Fame reference to Jon Byner in Anteater), so I am TEH WINNAR!!11

So the best candidate to replace Justice O’Connor on the Supreme Court of the United States just happens to be a sycophantic Bush Crony who lead the search.

Wow. What are the odds?