Pun Salad

Pootie is so cool, his everyday language has evolved to a state that only a select similarly cool few, like Bob Costas, can figure out what he's talking about. (The subtitle on the movie is: "Sine Your Pitty on the Runny Kine.") His dad was tragically felled by a gorilla in a steel mill. Pootie is popular with everyone except the bad guys; well, the redneck local sheriff is a little miffed at Pootie, but not because Pootie's black; it's because he's reluctant to marry the sheriff's daughter.

Nobody's going to confuse Pootie Tang with The Godfather Part II, but it's unpretentious, good-hearted, and funny on its own terms. I note Roger Ebert gave it a mere half-star, but that just shows that Ebert has gone insane.

• Jane Galt has a short article containing an insightful point about poor countries:

  The appalling poverty of Sri Lanka or Mozambique is not some bizarre aberration that can be tracked to a cause we can cure. We are the aberration; Sri Lanka and Mozambique are the normal state of human history.

  This reminds me of how I was struck in reading some of Thomas Sowell's books of how much of our current fortune is the product of blind and dumb luck. (Sure, hard work as well. But poor societies work hard too.)

• Ronald Coleman makes a point about "free speech on the Internet" that's an oldie but a goodie. (Via Instapundit)