Being angry all the time is tiresome. But, until things get better….

Another hit from a cute, fun British girl-pop band (is there any other kind?).

The great Pat Condell is back and I’m wasting no time in featuring his latest video on my blog. Check out what Pat has to say about the latest shift in the political spectrum regarding the West’s fight against this growing tide of medieval darkness.

The real phobia lies with Islam itself (and all religions) and their pathological fear of Reason – which they know can evaporate all their delusions in an instant. Because Reason to religion is like sunlight to a vampire.

Longtime visitors to this site may recall a previous video from Pat Condell which I happily featured some time back. I said then that I’d very much like to feature more of this witty and insightful man’s work here at Merch.

Well, today we enjoy his brief video treatise on Islam and the idea that somehow people of the West are ‘phobic’ towards this noxious belief system. As always, Mr Condell provides and erudite and articulate repudiation:

Found this earlier today and was laughing so hard my sides ached. Even if you don’t normally watch Mixed Martial Arts fights, this is great fun!

Check out Cracked Magazine’s top Holy Crap moments from past MMA battles:

The Top 8 ‘Oh @$%&!’ Moments from Mixed Martial Arts

Mother of all fan films, The Hunt for Gollum is now on-line at DailyMotion. Watch it in full screen HD for the best effect.

“Above all I was so inspired by Peter Jackson’s trilogy – and jealous that he got to make it first! I loved the scale, the quality, the epic scope of it all and figured, hey, maybe we can do that too. We don’t have millions of dollars of funding (our budget is less than £3000) but we do have a huge love for the subject, a growing number of talented volunteers behind us and above all the determination to make it happen to a high standard of professionalism.”

What can be said? The quality of the production is amazing considering the cost and – after a few quiet minutes of exposition – the amateur production does all it can to mimic the big-screen quality of Hollywood’s most impressive trilogy.

The best part? They pull it off! With appearances by most every major character of Peter Jackson’s seminal films, excellent special effects, stunt work and professional film direction, this short film truly impresses.

It’s the first few hot days of summer arrived early this week and I’m loving it. I really needed the sun and some nice sittin-outside kind of weather.

Someone else who likes this time of year is obviously Gus, an English bulldog who just got a new pool of his very own:

Enjoy the sunshine!

Here are five 30-second “character profiles” from the upcoming move X-Men Origins: Wolverine. They are quick jump-cut introductions to the main characters of the film – Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber), Gambit (Taylor Kitsch), Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds), John Wraith (Will i Am).

X-Men Origins: Wolverine hits theatres May 1st, 2009.

“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.” – Thomas Jefferson

I haven’t devoted too much attention to the whole “tea party” movement going on right now in America. It always seemed cheesy and contrived, like too many of the gimmicks employed by the Right in recent years  (“Joe the Plumber”, Freedom Fries, etc.). I’ve always been of a mind that you beat the other guy with ideas, not fads and forced pop-cultural memes.

But what do I know? Turns out they had an inspired event recently – the Alabama Tea Party at Veterans Park in Hoover, Ala. Stephen Gordon has a good article on the whole shebang. But what seems to be getting everyone’s attention is the following speech by Stacy McCain: