Convoluted Insanity

Turd Blossom

2005-07-10T07:07:00.000-07:00

Date: February 11th, 2004:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush said Tuesday he welcomes a Justice Department investigation into who revealed the classified identity of a CIA operative.

"If there's a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is," Bush told reporters at an impromptu news conference during a fund-raising stop in Chicago, Illinois. "If the person has violated law, that person will be taken care of.

"I welcome the investigation. I am absolutely confident the Justice Department will do a good job.

"I want to know the truth," the president continued. "Leaks of classified information are bad things."

Linky

*****
Fast forward to July 10th, 2005:

The newsmagazine has obtained documentary evidence that White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove was indeed a key source for Time magazine's Matt Cooper and that Rove--prior to the publication of the Bob Novak column that first publicly disclosed Valerie Wilson/Plame as a CIA official--told Cooper that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife apparently worked at the CIA and was involved in Joseph Wilson's now-controversial trip to Niger.

Linky

Does that mean that Turd Blossom isn't with us, he's against us?

Oh please, please, PLEASE let this work!

2005-06-28T12:39:00.000-07:00

This would be so fucking awesome.

Linky

Weare, New Hampshire (PRWEB) Could a hotel be built on the land owned by Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter? A new ruling by the Supreme Court which was supported by Justice Souter himself itself might allow it. A private developer is seeking to use this very law to build a hotel on Souter's land.

Justice Souter's vote in the "Kelo vs. City of New London" decision allows city governments to take land from one private owner and give it to another if the government will generate greater tax revenue or other economic benefits when the land is developed by the new owner.

On Monday June 27, Logan Darrow Clements, faxed a request to Chip Meany the code enforcement officer of the Towne of Weare, New Hampshire seeking to start the application process to build a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road. This is the present location of Mr. Souter's home.

Clements, CEO of Freestar Media, LLC, points out that the City of Weare will certainly gain greater tax revenue and economic benefits with a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road than allowing Mr. Souter to own the land.

The proposed development, called "The Lost Liberty Hotel" will feature the "Just Desserts Café" and include a museum, open to the public, featuring a permanent exhibit on the loss of freedom in America. Instead of a Gideon's Bible each guest will receive a free copy of Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged."

Clements indicated that the hotel must be built on this particular piece of land because it is a unique site being the home of someone largely responsible for destroying property rights for all Americans.

"This is not a prank" said Clements, "The Towne of Weare has five people on the Board of Selectmen. If three of them vote to use the power of eminent domain to take this land from Mr. Souter we can begin our hotel development."

Clements' plan is to raise investment capital from wealthy pro-liberty investors and draw up architectural plans. These plans would then be used to raise investment capital for the project. Clements hopes that regular customers of the hotel might include supporters of the Institute For Justice and participants in the Free State Project among others.

C'mon "activist judges!" Stick it to the fucker!

I TOLD YOU.

2005-06-24T15:07:00.000-07:00

You see???? They sure don't waste any time, do they?

Freeport to seize 3 properties

Court's decision empowers the city to acquire the site for a new marina

FREEPORT - With Thursday's Supreme Court decision, Freeport officials instructed attorneys to begin preparing legal documents to seize three pieces of waterfront property along the Old Brazos River from two seafood companies for construction of an $8 million private boat marina.

The court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled that cities may bulldoze people's homes or businesses to make way for shopping malls or other private development. The decision gives local governments broad power to seize private property to generate tax revenue.

"This is the last little piece of the puzzle to put the project together," Freeport Mayor Jim Phillips said...

Hear that flushing sound?

2005-06-23T15:36:00.000-07:00

That's the sound of America, going down the tubes.

No more internet boobies. (See previous post)
Free speech being crushed. (See previous post)
Now you can lose your house and property to Wal*Mart (can't even blame Bush for this one.)

NO LONGER APPLICABLE:

First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Fifth Amendment:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

I love my country, but I'm finding it harder and harder to tolerate and deal with not only the government, but with my fellow citizens. It's because of your apathy and bickering that this is happening. What ever happened to ONE NATION, UNITED? Politics isn't a fucking game, with winners and losers! How can we ever get this nation back on course if we can't stop fighting amongst ourselves? I really can't believe that people are just letting this shit happen to them! I've seen some REALLY stupid shit in my time, but this.... WHY WON'T YOU PEOPLE GET UP OFF THE COUCH AND WRITE TO YOUR GODDAMN SENATORS WHEN SHIT HAPPENS?!?!?! Fuck me! Holding a sign and standing outside the capitol doesn't do SHIT. You want to put up a fight? Hand-write a letter stating your greviances, and snail-mail it to your congressperson. Email won't do shit. Take the time to buy postage and send it. 1000 envelopes with angry letters can't be deleted as easily as 1000 emails. And STOP defending your political party no matter what they do. Liberal democrats, conservative Republicans, Libertarians, Greens... You're all wrong in some way, shape or form. Have the balls to admit it, and stand up to injustice, instead of convincing yourselves that a minor infraction of your rights isn't that big a deal.

BECAUSE IT IS. Just ask the people who are getting their homes bulldozed in order to make way for a health club and an office park. Ask the people whose homes are being legally raided under the USA PATRIOT ACT. Shit, just go to the local library and see if you can find a copy of Heather Has Two Mommies.

Here are your choices. Grease up your asshole, or remember that you have a spine, a brain and power in numbers.

The kittens are safe, but we're fucked.

2005-06-23T11:43:00.000-07:00

Once again, I would like to extend my deepest thanks and praise to any and all of the incredibly ignorant and dimwitted fuckwads that voted for GWB.

YOU made this possible:

US Code 18, Section 2257
More...

Basically, as of midnight, this federal law requires website owners to keep records documenting, among other things, that "every performer portrayed in a visual depiction of actual sexually explicit conduct" is over the age of 18. That's not just porn, folks. We're talking webcams, adult-themed cartoons, certain parts of Rotten.com and so much more. Not just that, but under the proposed changes, some forms of ID now commonly used for age verification will no longer be accepted - among them, Selective Service cards and college IDs.

Records for every model or actor would have to be indexed alphabetically by legal name ("or numerically where appropriate"), and include all stage names used since 1992.

The updated regulation would also mandate that records be cross-referenced by title, number or alternate identifier for every publication in which they're involved - including print, broadcast, online photos, streaming video and other media. Not only that, but under 75.1 (c)(2), the term "distributor" is redefined to include posting on an internet web site. Specifically the term "secondary producer" is defined to include anyone who posts a digital image on an internet site.

That bears repeating.

THE TERM SECONDARY PRODUCER IS DEFINED TO INCLUDE ANYONE WHO POSTS A DIGITAL IMAGE ON AN INTERNET SITE!!

Example:

This is now considered to be pornography. In order to show this on a website, I must provide the following:

The full legal name of the model
John Stickfigure
Jane Stickfigure

All other names, (maden/married/stage name, aliases)
John S
John The Stick
Jane
JaneS
Jane Sticky
Jane Markwitchz

Copy of the depiction, printed on the paper record.

Copy of every associated URL the image is displayed on, and the URL of the image every place it appears.

I must also maintain indexes which find the record alphabetically, numerically, by the performer's last name (followed by first), aliases, stage names, title, and identifying marks. Yes, I have to record each and every tattoo that said actor has on his/her body.

If someone else should reuse this image on their site, but linking it from my server, I must also append my records then. If http://my-anal-retentative-government-agency.gov put my picture on their site, linked from my server, I must update my records accordingly.

If the indexing and record keeping weren't enough, there are rules for record maintenance and retention and inspection.

The record must be maintained at my place of business. I cannot have a 3rd party company maintain my records for me. I must keep these records segregated from any other records. I must keep the records intact for 7 years from creation or amendment, and finally even if my organization should fail, I'm required to keep these records on file for 5 years, which makes the following interesting.

My location must be available for inspection from 8am to 6pm, 365 days a year. I understand this has been amended to only be 20 hours per week.

While "inspecting records", the agents may seize any evidence of any felony while conducting an inspection. Basically, they're opening up a door for warrentless entry into any adult business (adult video store, book store, or Internet business)

Ahhh, and the disclosure statement. Several paragraphs in 11 point type, on the front page of the site, saying the title of the work, date of production, publication, duplication, reproduction, or reissuance, the street address where the records are kept, and the name, title, and business address of the custodian of records.

One more right taken away from you, thanks in part to BushCo. Honestly, what's next? Oh, I know. It's a constitutional amendment that bans burning the flag! Why am I opposed to this?

Because no one even displays proper flag etiquette. No one shines a light on it at night. People drive around in Ford Excursions with tattered, faded and soiled flags on the wrong side of their car (yes, there is a correct side to display it on). People write jingoistic catchphrases across the flag, and then slap the image on coffee cups, lighters, bumperstickers and even thongs and undershirts. I'm sure I could find an American flag condom if I looked hard enough. People leave them up after they've been faded to a light pink. And I'm willing to bet that most people don't dispose of the flag in the proper way (ironically, the correct way to dispose of a flag is to burn it.)

I've seen McDonald's flags flown above the US flag. I've seen Denver Broncos flags flown at the same height as the US Flag. I've seen them displayed at full mast all day on Memorial Day. I've seen them dragging on the ground, displayed during rain and hailstorms, and flown backwards. I've seen them on fucking PIZZA BOXES! You're not supposed to put them on items that are designed for discard. That in itself is disrespectful.

Even more than that, I am opposed to this because it takes away another one of my freedoms. The freedom to protest. If I burn a flag, it's a sign that I am unhappy with what the flag represents. Listen, the flag is a piece of cloth. Most likely, it was made in China or Korea. It represents different things to different people. To a Vietnam vet, it might symbolize how this nation shunned them when they returned from the war. To some, it represents everything that is right with this country. To others, it represents everything that is wrong with this country. To me, it's a symbol of how bass-ackwards we have become. We put more stock into petty shit like this (anti-flag burning bills have fizzled in the senate for about 30 years now), than we do to important issues. And the way that certain people are going about promoting this egregious Constitutional Amendment, well, it really makes me feel physically ill. I'm speaking in particular about Randy Cunningham, California asshat. He contributed this priceless gem:

"Ask the men and women who stood on top of the (World) Trade Center," said Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham, R-Calif. "Ask them and they will tell you: pass this amendment."

FUCK YOU. Using 9/11 victims to promote your cause is one of the most vile and unforgivable things that a person in your position could do, and I am going out to purchase a flag, JUST TO BURN IT. But first, I am going to write on it the name of every senator who voted in favor of this horseshit.

Think about this: the Iranian government prevents Iranians from burning Iran's flags. The Chinese government prevents Chinese from burning China's flags. The Cuban government prevents Cubans from burning Cuba's flag. Next in line? USA!

By the way, if you haven't contacted your senator about this yet, please do so.

"No one ever died for a flag. A flag is a piece of cloth. They might have died for freedom, which is also of course the freedom to burn the fucking flag."
-Bill Hicks

That's what I thought

2005-06-15T10:55:00.000-07:00

Dear Bob and Mary Schindler, President Bush, Dr. Frist, the Religious Right, idiots in Congress and everyone else who insisted that Terry Schiavo would still be able to recover:

SUCK ON IT.

#1 - Terri's brain was 200g -less- than another patient who died in PVS, and less than half the expected weight of a woman her age.

#2 -Tthere was marked atrophy (shrinkage) of the brain globally, to the point that certain areas of the brain that are expected to be 'packed together', were, in fact, loosely floating about.

#3 - She had a thalamic stimulator installed (an electrical device designed to stimulate the brain) in an attempt to revive some of her function. This stimulator prevented the ability to do an MRI, due to overheating of the electrodes being reported in previous cases of MRI's on stimulators.

#4 - She had smaller than expected optic nerves, otherwise her cranial nerves were normal. Optic nerves are the nerves responsible for receiving optic information from the eyes and passing it to the occipital lobe, along with other lobes of the brain. The clinical implication of this is difficult to understand, but it is likely indicative of non-functioning eyesight/vision. Essentially, she was blind.

Wait... you mean that she really didn't see those balloons that were floating in front of her face? It was all a ruse, and the videos were doctored? Well, fuck me running! Should we be expecting an apology from all the hardcore fanatics, the Bush camp and the GOP? Of course not! That would mean admitting you were WRONG. And who needs scientific and factual proof when you have God on your side?

6-3 against

2005-06-06T08:05:00.000-07:00

Fuck.

U.S. Supreme Court Rules Against Use of Medical Marijuana

June 6 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a setback to the medical marijuana movement, ruling that federal narcotics laws make it a crime to grow and use the drug even when it never crosses state lines and is used only to relieve pain or nausea.

The justices today said Congress's power over interstate commerce is broad enough to let it ban locally grown and used medical marijuana. The 6-3 ruling, issued in Washington, overturns a lower court decision that had let two California women use cannabis to treat pain, nausea and other symptoms.

California and nine other states exempt seriously ill people from laws banning cultivation and use of marijuana. Today's ruling means people in those states nonetheless will face the risk of federal prosecution if they use or distribute marijuana.

The case is Ashcroft v. Raich, 03-1454.

Charlie Brown wants to give me money!

2005-05-27T07:39:00.000-07:00

Gmail has done a fabulous job of filtering out spam (they also just added a link to report phishing attempts, which is kinda cool), but one got through today. It gave me a great laugh, so I am going to share it with you. As you're reading through it, please note the absence of capital letters, and the unintentional misspellings. As a cunning linguist, this email irritated me in so many different ways, and you'll soon see why...

*******BEGIN TRANSMISSION*******

From: mr. Charles Brown.
24 river lane government
reserved area, Abuja.

Attention please! strictly confidential!

Dear sir,

With all due respect, i guess my letter will not embarrass you, since i have
no previous correspondence with you. i strongly believed, i would not regret
approaching you in this matter. i am mr.charles brown, a solicitor at law
and the personal attorney to late mr. Mark Michelle, a french national. late
mr.mark ichelle is a private oil consultant/contractor with the shell
petroleum development in saudi arabia, herein after shall be
referred to as my client.

(Charlie Brown - great psuedonym, by the way - wants to let me know that either Mark Michelle or Mark Ichelle, with Shell Oil has an *important* message for me! Well, the email's not from Nigeria, so it must be real! I'm gonna read on!)

I have avery urgent and mutual business relationship to propose to you. On
thursday june 6th 2000, my client and his wife with their three children
were involved in an auto clash, all occupants of the vehicle unfortunately
lost their lives. since then, i have made several enquiries with his
country's embassies to locate any of my clients extended relatives, this has
also proved unsuccessful. after these several unsuccessful attempts, i
decided to personally contact you with this business partnership proposal. i
have contacted you to assist in repatriating a huge amount of money left
behind by my client before they get confiscated or declared unserviceable by
the finance and security company where these huge deposit was lodged. the
deceased had a deposit valued presently at $12,000,000.00
million us dollars (twelve million united state dollars) and company has
issued me a notice to provide his next of kin or beneficiary by will
otherwise have the account confiscated within the next thirty working days.

(So, the guy and his family die almost 5 YEARS ago , and he waits until 30 days before the account gets closed to contact me. Great fucking timing there, genius. Maybe he was also in a deadly auto clash. Auto Clash, is he Japanese all of a sudden? Or is that what happens when you put your Joe Strummer CD on repeat?)

Having been unsuccessful in locating any of my late client relatives for
over two (2) years now. i am now seeking your consent to present you as the
next of kin/beneficiary to the deceased so that the proceeds of this account
valued at $ 12 million united states dollars can be paid to you. it is not
necessary to be a blood relation to late mr. mark michelle, neither is it
necessary to bear the same surname with him. it is even not important for
the stand-in next of kin to be a french national.

(So, according to French math, 2000 + 2 years = 2005? And if it's not necessary to be a blood relation, share a surname or even be the next of kin to a French national, why the hell isn't he taking the TWELVE MILLION DOLLARS?)

Already, i have worked out modalities for achieving my aim of
appointing a next of kin as well as transfer the money abroad for us to
share in the ratio of 60% for me and 40% to you. it is my intention to
achieve this transfer in a legitimate way, all i required is your honest,
co-operation,confidentiality and trust to enable us see this transaction
through. the money transfer paper work itself will include a certificate
of origin so that the receiving bank does not ask question. also the paper
work will include proper certificate that the fund being transferred is
from non-criminal sources. in short this will be a proper and legal money
transfer with apparently no risk involved. the transaction
is guaranteed to succeed without any problem.

(Oh, he's taking over half the money. Greedy bastard. Well, that still leaves me with about 5 million, I can live with that.)

As soon as i hear from you, i shall provide you with further
clarification that you may need.

your urgent response will be highly anticipated and appreciated. Best
wishes,

Mr.Charles Brown.

Note: in the event you are not willing to assist, kindly notify me to
prevent me from making further contact.

*******END TRANSMISSION*******

So, should I take him up on it? I don't want to sound gullible, but it seems completely legit to me; they didn't pester me for my SSN, my bank account number or even my real name or birthdate. It's gotta be real!

I'll be going Jeeping and camping this weekend (wooo! Memorial Day!!!) and won't have time to reply to him with something wever and clitty, but I'm open to any suggestions about how I should reply to Chuck. If you're a regular reader of this blog, then you know that I like to send angry, snarky letters to people and companies that raise my ire, so if anyone has any ideas, let me know. I'll be back on Monday evening with some pictures to post, and hopefully some stories to tell.

Have a great holiday!!

So NOW he tells the truth?

2005-05-26T07:43:00.000-07:00

President Participates in Social Security Conversation in New York:

"Now, a personal savings account would be a part of a Social Security retirement system. It would be a part of what you would have to retire when you reach retirement age. As you -- as I mentioned to you earlier, we're going to redesign the current system. If you've retired, you don't have anything to worry about -- third time I've said that. (Laughter.) I'll probably say it three more times. See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." (Applause.)

Now say it with me, kids.

Iraq was responsible for 9/11
Iraq was responsible for 9/11
Iraq was responsible for 9/11
Iraq was responsible for 9/11
Iraq was responsible for 9/11
Iraq was responsible for 9/11
Iraq was responsible for 9/11
Iraq was responsible for 9/11
Iraq was responsible for 9/11
Iraq was responsible for 9/11
Iraq was responsible for 9/11
Iraq was responsible for 9/11
Iraq was responsible for 9/11
Iraq was responsible for 9/11
Iraq was responsible for 9/11
Iraq was responsible for 9/11
IRAQ WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR 9/11!!

Got it? Man, I don't know if I'm more scared at the fact that he admitted to "catapulting the propaganda," or the fact that people actually APPLAUDED him after he said that.

Enough is enough

2005-05-25T15:56:00.000-07:00

You know what? I've absolutely had it with you goddamn churchies. Catholics, Christians, Baptists... you're all a bunch of fucking loons, and I would appreciate it if you would either Darwin yourself, or move to Rwanda. They'll love you there.

And for those of you who continually email me when I put up something anti-religious, let me just say that you did this to yourselves. Christianity is now viewed by a large number of people on this planet to be equal to fundamentalist Islam. You're one suicide bomber short of becoming a fucking terrorist organization. Believe me when I say that you people belong to a well-established cult. Nothing more. The only difference between Christianity and Scientology is Christianity has been around for a bit longer. Please, make a conscious effort to stay at least 50 feet away from me, and keep your stories about your invisible man to yourself. I outgrew Santa when I was 9, God lasted exactly 2 years longer, and I have no intentions of letting that asshole back into my life.

Now that I have that out of the way, here's a few examples of why I have more tolerance and respect for a Jehovah's Witness than for you. At least the Witnesses will leave you alone if you don't answer your door. They don't break in and try to convert you to ~~stupidity~~ their religion.

By they way, all instances of extreme idiocy are emphasized.

Example 1:

Linky

Ken Ham has spent 11 years working on a museum that poses the big question - when and how did life begin? Ham hopes to soon offer an answer to that question in his still-unfinished Creation Museum in northern Kentucky.

The $25 million monument to creationism offers Ham's view that God created the world in six, 24-hour days on a planet just 6,000 years old. (I guess you no longer need facts in order to label something a "museum". Not surprising, they haven't been included in school textbooks for some time now, so this is just a natural progression. Personally, I would have named this monstrosity "The Godatorium.") The largest museum of its kind in the world, it hopes to draw 600,000 people from the Midwest and beyond in its first year.

Ham, 53, isn't bothered that his literal interpretation of the Bible runs counter to accepted scientific theory, which says Earth and its life forms evolved over billions of years. (Yeah! Screw facts, scientific evidence and this newfangled thing called "evolution." It's much easier to believe in magic, or maybe Tarot cards.)

Ham said the museum is a way of reaching more people along with the Answers in Genesis Web site, which claims to get 10 million page views per month and his "Answers ... with Ken Ham" radio show, carried by more than 725 stations worldwide.

"People will get saved here," Ham said of the museum. "It's going to fire people up. If nothing else, it's going to get them to question their own position of what they believe."

Ham is ready for a fight over his beliefs - based on a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament.

"It's a foundational battle," said Ham, a native of Australia who still speaks with an accent. "You've got to get people believing the right history - and believing that you can trust the Bible."

Among Ham's beliefs are that the Earth is about 6,000 years old, a figure arrived at by tracing the biblical genealogies, and not 4.5 billion years, as mainstream scientists say; the Grand Canyon was formed not by erosion over millions of years, but by floodwaters in a matter of days or weeks and that dinosaurs and man once coexisted, and dozens of the creatures - including Tyrannosaurus Rex - were passengers on the ark built by Noah, who was a real man, not a myth. (So, carbon and radon dating are now tools of the devil, and not to be trusted? I can blast water through millions of tons of rock in a matter of a few weeks to create the Grand Canyon? Well, shit. Was the Royal Gorge in Colorado made by that flood as well? And a T-Rex on Noah's Ark? Jesus Christ monkey balls! Hook me up with the shit you're smoking! I wanna see a T-Rex on a boat!)

(...)

"He takes extraordinary liberties with Scripture and theology to prove his point," Adams said. "The bottom line is, he is anti-gay, and he uses that card all the time."

Ham says homosexual behavior is a sin. But he adds that he's careful to condemn the behavior, not the person. (So, he just hates buttsex, but not the perpetrators? Sounds like he had an "experience" that he's rather ashamed of...)

If that wasn't enough for you, here's another group of retards to point and laugh at.

Linky...

TUPELO, Miss. -- A conservative Christian group has ended its nine-year boycott against the Walt Disney Co.

The American Family Association, based in Mississippi, launched its strike in response to what leaders perceived as the erosion of the company's squeaky-clean image.

The group specifically rejected Disney's extension of benefits to domestic partners of gay employees, promotion of gay-related events at its theme parks and violent and sex-filled content of movies made by its Miramax subsidiary.

But now the association's president said it's time to move on, saying there are "so many other issues" that need attention (read: Disneyland laughed in their faces, and told them to STFU.)

He added that the announcement is not an endorsement of Disney, just an end to the boycott "as a ministry agenda item."

The boycott had a limited impact.

Disney has reported higher earnings, citing increased attendance at its theme parks and strong performance from its film studio and ABC television network.

Listen up, you fundie asshats. I'm going to quote your good book, and use it against you. You want a literal interpertation of the Bible? Try this one on for size:

1 JOHN 3:17
But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?

Keep that in mind next time you start spewing your tired old rhetoric about the evils of fagdom.

Here's a quote from MY bible. The book of Adams, Chapter 6:

"The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist' says God 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'

'But' says Man, 'the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. IT proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own argument, you don't. QED.'

'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

I really hate people.

Be cool to the pizza dude

2005-05-23T07:47:00.000-07:00

Being a former driver for both Domino's and Papa John's Pizza, I can attest to this. Be cool to the guy who is bringing you food. Call it Pizza Karma.

Oh yeah..... I'M BAAAACCKKK!!!!

Linky

Principle 1: Coolness to the pizza delivery dude is a practice in humility and forgiveness. I let him cut me off in traffic, let him safely hit the exit ramp from the left lane, let him forget to use his blinker without extending any of my digits out the window or towards my horn because there should be one moment in my harried life when a car may encroach or cut off or pass and I let it go. Sometimes when I have become so certain of my ownership of my lane, daring anyone to challenge me, the pizza dude speeds by me in his rusted Chevette. His pizza light atop his car glowing like a beacon reminds me to check myself as I flow through the world. After all, the dude is delivering pizza to young and old, families and singletons, gays and straights, blacks, whites and browns, rich and poor, vegetarians and meat lovers alike. As he journeys, I give safe passage, practice restraint, show courtesy, and contain my anger.

Principle 2: Coolness to the pizza delivery dude is a practice in empathy. Let's face it: We've all taken jobs just to have a job because some money is better than none. I've held an assortment of these jobs and was grateful for the paycheck that meant I didn't have to share my Cheerios with my cats. In the big pizza wheel of life, sometimes you're the hot bubbly cheese and sometimes you're the burnt crust. It's good to remember the fickle spinning of that wheel.

Principle 3: Coolness to the pizza delivery dude is a practice in honor and it reminds me to honor honest work. Let me tell you something about these dudes: They never took over a company and, as CEO, artificially inflated the value of the stock and cashed out their own shares, bringing the company to the brink of bankruptcy, resulting in 20,000 people losing their jobs while the CEO builds a home the size of a luxury hotel. Rather, the dudes sleep the sleep of the just.

Principle 4: Coolness to the pizza delivery dude is a practice in equality. My measurement as a human being, my worth, is the pride I take in performing my job -- any job -- and the respect with which I treat others. I am the equal of the world not because of the car I drive, the size of the TV I own, the weight I can bench press, or the calculus equations I can solve. I am the equal to all I meet because of the kindness in my heart. And it all starts here -- with the pizza delivery dude.

Tip him well, friends and brethren, for that which you bestow freely and willingly will bring you all the happy luck that a grateful universe knows how to return.

I'm not quite dead

2005-05-07T22:04:00.000-07:00

Not yet, anyway. For the two people who still visit this site, I felt it necessary to post an update, before getting a restraining order against Grace. =)

Work: Mucho sucko. I work for a medical company, and we just had a major product launch. What that means, is we don't have anything in stock, but we still take orders. It's a very odd system. As near as I can tell, their business plan is this:

1) Produce small amount of new product, and 1/3 of the accessories for said product.
2) Launch the product in the US, Australia and Canada about 1 month early.
3) ????
4) Profit!

On top of this, we are going live with Oracle after planning the switch for 3 years. We go live in July. I have had 1 training course. Again, we come back to the business model:

1) Plan major software change, linking us with Canada, Australia, Germany, UK and Asia Pacific.
2) Launch a major product 2 months before software implementation to ensure that if something goes wrong, it will go SPECTACULARLY wrong.
3) ????
4) Profit!

I've also been spending all my free time working on music with my band. I'll be posting more about that later, with some music clips and other fun stuff. But for now, this will have to hold you over.

Cheers!

Did you know Shel Silverstein wrote for Playboy?

2005-04-16T17:03:00.000-07:00

There once was a boy named Gimmesome Roy. He was nothing like me or you.
'Cause laying back and getting high was all he cared to do.
As a kid, he sat in the cellar, sniffing airplane glue.
And then he smoked bananas -- which was then the thing to do.
He tried aspirin in Coca-Cola, breathed helium on the sly,
And his life was just one endless search to find that perfect high.
But grass just made him want to lay back and eat chocolate-chip pizza all night,
And the great things he wrote while he was stoned looked like shit in the morning light.
And speed just made him rap all day, reds just laid him back,
And Cocaine Rose was sweet to his nose, but the price nearly broke his back.
He tried PCP and THC, but they didn't quite do the trick,
And poppers nearly blew his heart and mushrooms made him sick.
Acid made him see the light, but he couldn't remember it long.
And hashish was just a little too weak, and smack was a lot too strong,
And Quaaludes made him stumble, and booze just made him cry,
Till he heard of a cat named Baba Fats who knew of the perfect high.

Now, Baba Fats was a hermit cat who lived up in Nepal,
High on a craggy mountaintop, up a sheer and icy wall.
"But hell," says Roy, "I'm a healthy boy, and I'll crawl or climb or fly,
But I'll find that guru who'll give me the clue as to what's the perfect high."
So out and off goes Gimmesome Roy to the land that knows no time,
Up a trail no man could conquer to a cliff no man could climb.
For fourteen years he tries that cliff, then back down again he slides
Then sits -- and cries -- and climbs again, pursuing the perfect high.
He's grinding his teeth, he's coughing blood, he's aching and shaking and weak,
As starving and sore and bleeding and tore, he reaches the mountain peak.
And his eyes blink red like a snow-blind wolf, and he snarls the snarl of a rat,
As there in perfect repose and wearing no clothes -- sits the godlike Baba Fats.

"What's happening, Fats?" says Roy with joy, "I've come to state my biz.
I hear you're hip to the perfect trip. Please tell me what it is.
For you can see," says Roy to he, "that I'm about to die,
So for my last ride, Fats, how can I achieve the perfect high?"
"Well, dog my cats!" says Baba Fats. "here's one more burnt-out soul,
Who's looking for some alchemist to turn his trip to gold.
But you won't find it in no dealer's stash, or on no druggist's shelf.
Son, if you would seek the perfect high -- find it in yourself."

"Why, you jive motherfucker!" screamed Gimmesome Roy, "I've climbed through rain and sleet,
I've lost three fingers off my hands and four toes off my feet!
I've braved the lair of the polar bear and tasted the maggot's kiss.
Now, you tell me the high is in myself. What kind of shit is this?
My ears 'fore they froze off," says Roy, "had heard all kind of crap,
But I didn't climb for fourteen years to listen to that sophomore rap.
And I didn't crawl up here to hear that the high is on the natch,
So you tell me where the real stuff is or I'll kill your guru ass!"

"Ok, OK," says Baba Fats, "you're forcing it out of me.
There is a land beyond the sun that's known as Zaboli.
A wretched land of stone and sand where snakes and buzzards scream,
And in this devil's garden blooms the mystic Tzu-Tzu tree.
And every ten years it blooms one flower as white as the Key West sky,
And he who eats of the Tzu-Tzu flower will know the perfect high.
For the rush comes on like a tidal wave and it hits like the blazing sun.
And the high, it lasts a lifetime and the down don't ever come.
But the Zaboli land is ruled by a giant who stands twelve cubits high.
With eyes of red in his hundred heads, he waits for the passers-by.
And you must slay the red-eyed giant, and swim the River of Slime,
Where the mucous beasts, they wait to feast on those who journey by.
And if you survive the giant and the beasts and swim that slimy sea,
There's a blood-drinking witch who sharpens her teeth as she guards that Tzu-Tzu tree."
"To hell with your witches and giants," laughs Roy. "To hell with the beasts of the sea.
As long as the Tzu-Tzu flower blooms, some hope still blooms for me."
And with tears of joy in his snow-blind eye, Roy hands the guru a five,
Then back down the icy mountain he crawls, pursuing that perfect high.

"Well, that is that," says Baba Fats, sitting back down on his stone,
Facing another thousand years of talking to God alone.
"It seems, Lord", says Fats, "it's always the same, old men or bright-eyed youth,
It's always easier to sell them some shit than it is to give them the truth."

They really are slimy bastards

2005-04-14T12:05:00.000-07:00

And now I can prove it:

Link

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld can now also be called bushi, cheneyi and rumsfeldi, or simply slime-mold beetles.

Two former Cornell University entomologists named three species in the genus Agathidium after the U.S. leaders, Cornell announced on Wednesday.

It's mildly funny, but I found some better instances of humorous biological nomenclature in Entymology (funny names for things).

Link

Aegrotocatellus Adrian and Edgecombe, 1995 (trilobite) Latin for "sick puppy".
Boselaphus tragocamelus (Pallas) (nilgai, an Indian antelope) This translates to "ox-deer goat-camel"
Brachyanax thelestrephones Evenhuis, 1981 (fly) The name translates from Greek to "little chief nipple twister".
Dziwneono etcetera Dworakowska, 1972 (leafhopper) "Dziwneono" is Polish for "it is strange."
Eucritta melanolimnetes Clack, 1998 (fossil amphibian) Loosely translates as "Creature from the black lagoon"
Lycoperdon (puffball) Literally, "wolf-fart".
Vampyroteuthis infernalis Chun, 1903 (squid relative) "Vampire squid from Hell".
Strigiphilus garylarsoni Clayton, ~1989 (owl louse) "I considered this an extreme honor. Besides, I knew no one was going to write and ask to name a new species of swan after me. You have to grab these opportunities when they come along." - Gary Larson
Montypythonoides riversleighensis Smith & Plane, 1985 (fossil snake)
Baeturia laureli and B. hardyi de Boer, 1996 (cicadas)
Sula abbotti costelloi Steadman, Schubel & Pahlavan, 1988 (a subspecies of Abbot's booby, recently extinct)
Funkotriplogynium iagobadius Seeman & Walter, 1997 (mite) from Iago, "James" and badius, "brown," named after James Brown, the King of Funk.
Mackenziurus johnnyi, M. joeyi, M. deedeei, M. ceejayi Adrian and Edgecombe, 1997 (trilobites) Named after the Ramones.
Metallichneumon neurospatarchus Sime and Wahl, 2002 (ichneumonid wasp) "Neurospatarchus" translates as "Master of Puppets," which is the seminal album by the thrash metal band Metallica. The name refers to the larval ichneumonid's manipulation of its host insect.
Villa manillae Evenhuis, 1993 (bee fly) Inspired by Millie Vanillie. [Idesia 12:19]
Maxillaria gorbatchowii (Bolivian orchid) Named after Mikhail Gorbachev.
Mandelia Valdes & Gosliner, 1999 (sea slug) in honor of Nelson Mandela, who led the struggle for multiracial government in South Africa.
Fiordichthys slartibartfasti Paulin, 1995 (triple-fin blenny) Named for Hitchhiker's Guide character Slartibartfast, who is noted for designing fjords.
Erechthias beeblebroxi Robinson & Nelson, 1993 (tineid) with a false head; after Zaphod Beeblebrox, two-headed character from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

What did that banner say?

2005-04-13T15:01:00.000-07:00

As of Tuesday, April 12, 2005, at least 1,546 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. At least 1,176 died as a result of hostile action, according to the Defense Department. The figures include four military civilians.

The AP count is one higher than the Defense Department's tally, last updated at 10 a.m. EDT Tuesday.

The British military has reported 86 deaths; Italy, 21; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 17 (Don't forget Poland!); Spain, 11; Bulgaria, eight; Slovakia, three; Estonia, Thailand and the Netherlands, two each; and Denmark, El Salvador, Hungary, Kazakhstan and Latvia one death each.

Since May 1, 2003, when President Chimpy McFlightsuit declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended, 1,408 U.S. military members have died, according to AP's count. That includes at least 1,067 deaths resulting from hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

Link

It averages out to a little over 4 deaths a day. Oh yeah, Mission Accomplished.

White gold, Denver tea..... snow!!

2005-04-11T08:15:00.000-07:00

Yeah, it's pretty crappy here. I didn't take any pictures of my own, because there was no way in hell I was leaving the house (17.5 inches of snow in 12 hours), so here's some articles for you.

CNN
My Way News
The Denver Post
Rocky Mountain News

And some pics for you:

2005 Blizzard - 9 News Photos
Dogs of Blizzard 2K5 (Slow news day?)

For those of you new to the Denver area, let me explain our seasons to you.

November, December, March and April are our winter months.
January, February and May are our Spring months.
June, July, August and September are summer.
October is autumn.

It's kinda screwy, but you get used to it. And if you don't believe me when I say Colorado weather is weird, here's the weather we've had since last Wednesday:

Thursday   -   Upper 60's
Friday      -     Lower 70's
Saturday   -   Mid 60's
Sunday      -   Woke up at 7:30 am to 14 inches of snow.
Monday      -   17.5 inches of snow, clear skies
Tuesday      -   High is the 60's
Wednesday   -   High in the 70's

The down side to this is we NEVER get work closures. Even if there's five feet of snow on the ground at 8 AM, it will melt off by noon. Which is why I am severly unmotivated today at work....

Fuck Best Buy and Baltimorons

2005-04-07T11:28:00.000-07:00

Just another reason that I refuse to shop at this stupid store. Nothing but morons and social rejects working there.

(linky...)

Put yourself in Mike Bolesta's place. On the morning of Feb. 20, he buys a new radio-CD player for his 17-year-old son Christopher's car. He pays the $114 installation charge with 57 crisp new $2 bills, which, when last observed, were still considered legitimate currency in the United States proper. The $2 bills are Bolesta's idea of payment, and his little comic protest, too.

For this, Bolesta, Baltimore County resident, innocent citizen, owner of Capital City Student Tours, finds himself under arrest.

Finds himself, in front of a store full of customers at the Best Buy on York Road in Lutherville, locked into handcuffs and leg irons.

Finds himself transported to the Baltimore County lockup in Cockeysville, where he's handcuffed to a pole for three hours while the U.S. Secret Service is called into the case.

Have a nice day, Mike.

"Humiliating," the 57-year old Bolesta was saying now. "I am 6 feet 5 inches tall, and I felt like 8 inches high. To be handcuffed, to have all those people looking on, to be cuffed to a pole -- and to know you haven't done anything wrong. And me, with a brother, Joe, who spent 33 years on the city police force. It was humiliating."

What we have here, besides humiliation, is a sense of caution resulting in screw-ups all around.

"When I bought the stereo player," Bolesta explains, "the technician said it'd fit perfectly into my son's dashboard. But it didn't. So they called back and said they had another model that would fit perfectly, and it was cheaper. We got a $67 refund, which was fine. As long as it fit, that's all.

"So we go back and pay for it, and they tell us to go around front with our receipt and pick up the difference in the cost. I ask about installation charges. They said, 'No installation charge, because of the mix-up. Our mistake, no charge.' Swell.

"But then, the next day, I get a call at home. They're telling me, 'If you don't come in and pay the installation fee, we're calling the police.' Jeez, where did we go from them admitting a mistake to suddenly calling the police? So I say, 'Fine, I'll be in tomorrow.' But, overnight, I'm starting to steam a little. It's not the money -- it's the threat. So I thought, I'll count out a few $2 bills."

He has lots and lots of them.

With his Capital City Student Tours, he arranges class trips for school kids around the country traveling to large East Coast cities, including Baltimore. He's been doing this for the last 18 years. He makes all the arrangements: hotels, meals, entertainment. And it's part of his schtick that, when Bolesta hands out meal money to students, he does it in $2 bills, which he picks up from his regular bank, Sun Trust.

"The kids don't see that many $2 bills, so they think this is the greatest thing in the world," Bolesta says. "They don't want to spend 'em. They want to save 'em. I've been doing this since I started the company. So I'm thinking, 'I'll stage my little comic protest. I'll pay the $114 with $2 bills.'"

At Best Buy, they may have perceived the protest -- but did not sense the comic aspect of 57 $2 bills.

"I'm just here to pay the bill," Bolesta says he told a cashier. "She looked at the $2 bills and told me, 'I don't have to take these if I don't want to.' I said, 'If you don't, I'm leaving. I've tried to pay my bill twice. You don't want these bills, you can sue me.' So she took the money. Like she's doing me a favor."

He remembers the cashier marking each bill with a pen. Then other store personnel began to gather, a few of them asking, "Are these real?"

"Of course they are," Bolesta said. "They're legal tender."

A Best Buy manager refused comment last week. But, according to a Baltimore County police arrest report, suspicions were roused when an employee noticed some smearing of ink. So the cops were called in. One officer noticed the bills ran in sequential order.

"I told them, 'I'm a tour operator. I've got thousands of these bills. I get them from my bank. You got a problem, call the bank,'" Bolesta says. "I'm sitting there in a chair. The store's full of people watching this. All of a sudden, he's standing me up and handcuffing me behind my back, telling me, 'We have to do this until we get it straightened out.'

"Meanwhile, everybody's looking at me. I've lived here 18 years. I'm hoping my kids don't walk in and see this. And I'm saying, 'I can't believe you're doing this. I'm paying with legal American money.'"

Bolesta was then taken to the county police lockup in Cockeysville, where he sat handcuffed to a pole and in leg irons while the Secret Service was called in.

"At this point," he says, "I'm a mass murderer."

Finally, Secret Service agent Leigh Turner arrived, examined the bills and said they were legitimate, adding, according to the police report, "Sometimes ink on money can smear."

This will be important news to all concerned.

For Baltimore County police, said spokesman Bill Toohey, "It's a sign that we're all a little nervous in the post-9/11 world." (Yes, because if we use $2 bills, Al Qaeda wins!! BULLSHIT. Stop blaming everything on 9/11. No one flew a $2 bill into the World Trade Center.)

The other day, one of Bolesta's sons needed a few bucks. Bolesta pulled out his wallet and "whipped out a couple of $2 bills. But my son turned away. He said he doesn't want 'em any more."

He's seen where such money can lead.

RE-TAR-DED. Thank Bob I can go to Twist & Shout, Wax Trax or Angelo's for my music. Best Buy is right behind Wal-Mart on the list of stores I refuse to frequent. Fuck you, Best Buy. Fuck your overpriced items, fuck your worthless sales staff (damn computer techs don't even know the difference between a CPU fan, and a heat-sync fan), and fuck your "post 9/11 hysteria."

Links and links and links!

2005-04-02T11:08:00.000-07:00

Now that I have the Mozilla Firefox extention StumbleUpon, I've been finding some great links. Too many not to share. So, once a week, I'll post up the cream of the crop for everyone.

Enjoy!

New Invention Allows Humans To Live Forever:
(link)
How does this amazing device work? "By wearing the Eternal Life Device, you should immediately experience a very powerful energy flowing in your body. What is the reason? What I believe is that the small finger or the toes are the transistor of the entire body. Your body acts like a transistor. A transistor is a switch used in electronics. One gate, which induces a small amount of energy, opens or closes a larger flowing energy. So there is a way for us to use a little bit of energy to control a larger amount of energy."

BUY NOW, VERY EXPENSIVE!!!

Keyboard Scrabble:
(link)
NEERRRRRDDDDS!!!!!

Tha Shizzolator:
(link)
Translate any webpage into da Snoopspeak 'n shit. Know what I'm sayin?

Blind Spots:
(link)
Find out exactly where your blind spot is, and learn about other cool optical tricks. If you follow any link, go to this one. More cool information on the brain and behavior can be found here.

Charles Darwin - The Origin of Species:
(link)
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Go read it, churchies. It's not just about humans and apes.

Item Tracking:
Bookcrossing: Take an old book, register it on this site and get an ID #, then release it into the wild. If you wind a book with an ID, check to see who released it. Bookworms unite.
Where's George?: Ever find a bill with www.wheresgeorge.com stamped or written on it? I've come across a few before. Go to this site, and see where it came from. Or register the bills you have in your wallet, scribble the URL on them, and periodically check back to see what strip clubs your cash makes it to (3/4 of all $100 bills are circulating outside of the US, so there's a good chance you might get some Colombian drug money).
Phototag: Same idea as the above sites, but this one is for disposable cameras. They have some weird animal system that they use for naming and tracking the cameras. They also have a spotty return record. 47 releases since September, 2000 and only 7 returns.
GeoCaching: Got a GPS? Play an updated version of hide-and-seek. There's quite a few active caches in Colorado. Maybe I'll go pick up a GPS.

Have fun link jumping!

Update the death toll

2005-04-01T11:47:00.000-07:00

Pope dead
Frank Perdue dead (It takes a virile man to inseminate a chicken)
Mitch Hedberg finally confirmed dead (there were rumors that it was a Kaufman-esque April Fool's joke, but it turned out to be heroin.)
US Intelligence About Iraqi WMD Dead Wrong (big surprise there).

What a fucking week.... Da Pope-ah, Mitch Hedberg, Terri Schiavo, Frank Perdue, Johnny Cochran, thousands of seal cubs, thousands in Thailand (1 earthquake the day after Christmas, another one the day after Easter. Eerie), US Intelligence (America has FIFTEEN spy agencies?!?! FBI, CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, DEA... what are the rest??)

The Gods must be seriously pissed. Glad I'm an Agnostic. Jesus didn't die for MY sins.

How to poop at work

2005-04-01T09:26:00.000-07:00

We've all been there but don't like to admit it. We've all kicked back in our cubicles and suddenly felt something brewing down below. As much as we try to convince ourselves otherwise, the WORK POOP is inevitable. For those who hate pooping at work, following is the Survival Guide for taking a dump at work.

CROP DUSTING: When farting, you walk really fast around the office so the smell is not in your area and everyone else gets a whiff but doesn't know where it came from. Be careful when you do this. Do not stop until the full fart has been expelled. Walk an extra 30 feet to make sure the smell has left your pants.

FLY BY: The act of scouting out a bathroom before pooping. Walk in and check for other poopers. If there are others in the bathroom, leave and come back again. Be careful not to become a FREQUENT FLYER. People may become suspicious if they catch you constantly going into the bathroom.

ESCAPEE: A fart that slips out while taking a leak at the urinal or forcing a poop in a stall. This is usually accompanied by a sudden wave of embarrassment. If you release an escapee, do not acknowledge it. Pretend it did not happen. If you are standing next to the farter in the urinal, pretend you did not hear it. No one likes an escapee. It is uncomfortable for all involved. Making a joke or laughing makes both parties feel uneasy.

JAILBREAK: When forcing a poop, several farts slip out at a machine gun pace. This is usually a side effect of diarrhea or a hangover. If this should happen, do not panic. Remain in the stall until everyone has left the bathroom to spare everyone the awkwardness of what just occurred.

COURTESY FLUSH: The act of flushing the toilet the instant the poop hits the water. This reduces the amount of air time the poop has to stink up the bathroom. This can help you avoid being caught doing the WALK OF SHAME.

WALK OF SHAME: Walking from the stall, to the sink, to the door after you have just stunk up the bathroom. This can be a very uncomfortable moment if someone walks in and busts you. As with farts, it is best to pretend that the smell does not exist. Can be avoided with the use of the COURTESY FLUSH.

OUT OF THE CLOSET POOPER: A colleague who poops at work and is damn proud of it. You will often see an OUT OF THE CLOSET POOPER enter the bathroom with a newspaper or magazine under their arm. Always look around the office for the OUT OF THE CLOSET POOPER before entering the bathroom.

THE POOPING FRIENDS NETWORK (P.F.N): A group of co-workers who band together to ensure emergency pooping goes off without incident. This group can help you to monitor the whereabouts of OUT OF THE CLOSET POOPERS, and identify SAFE HAVENS.

SAFE HAVENS: A seldom used bathroom somewhere in the building where you can least expect visitors. Try floors that are predominantly of the opposite sex. This will reduce the odds of a pooper of your sex entering the bathroom.

TURD BURGLAR: Someone who does not realize that you are in the stall and tries to force the door open. This is one of the most shocking and vulnerable moments that can occur when taking a poop at work. If this occurs, remain in the stall until the TURD BURGLAR leaves. This way you will avoid all uncomfortable eye contact.

CAMO-COUGH: A phony cough that alerts all new entrants into the bathroom that you are in a stall. This can be used to cover-up a WATERMELON, or to alert potential TURD BURGLARS. Very effective when used in conjunction with an ASTAIRE.

ASTAIRE: A subtle toe-tap that is used to alert potential TURD BURGLARS that you are occupying a stall. This will remove all doubt that the stall is occupied. If you hear an ASTAIRE, leave the bathroom immediately so the pooper can poop in peace.

WATERMELON: A poop that creates a loud splash when hitting the toilet water. This is also an embarrassing incident. If you feel a WATERMELON coming on, create a diversion. See CAMO-COUGH.

HAVANA OMELET: A case of diarrhea that creates a series of loud splashes in the toilet water. Often accompanied by an ESCAPEE. Try using a CAMO-COUGH with an ASTAIRE.

UNCLE TED: A bathroom user who seems to linger around forever. Could spend extended lengths of time in front of the mirror or sitting on the pot. An UNCLE TED makes it difficult to relax while on the crapper, as you should always wait to poop when the bathroom is empty. This benefits you as well as the other bathroom attendees.

I hope this benefits some of you. Wash your damn hands, you filthy monkeys.

Death Trifecta

2005-03-31T14:40:00.000-07:00

Man, they're dropping like flies.

Johnny Cochran - DEAD
Terri Schiavo - DEAD
Mitch Hedberg - DEAD

I was waiting for Terri to go (I could deliver some DRY humor - yes, I'm a prick - but I'll just send you to her blog instead.), but the other two surprised me. I was never a fan of Johnny "If Chewbacca is from Endor, you must acquit" Cochran (He got O.J. off, he got P. Diddy off, he tried to prosecute comedian Lenny Bruce on obscenity charges and he represented Rosa Parks in the lawsuit launched against OutKast and their label, LaFace Records); he was just another money-grubbing ambulance-chaser, so I'm not going to pretend that I am sorry to see him go. Same for Mitch Hedberg. I never liked his comedy, the one-liners and deadpan schtick is better when it comes from Steven Wright, but Mitch made people laugh, and the world needs a clown.

Now CNN is reporting that the pope-ah has a high fever and is probably going to shuffle off this mortal coil pretty soon. Can't say that I'm upset about that one either. It'd be a double bonus if he and the "honorable" Jerry Falwell died on the same day. Two shit-birds with one stone, you might say. By the way, God... while you're snatching people up, can you PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE take Rush Limbaugh? Let him OD on OxyContin or something. Out of all the people on this list, he deserves to go most of all. Fucking sanctimonious prick.

While we're on the subject of death, how long do you think it will be before some loony NeoCon nutjob decides to take out Michael Schaivo? I'm sure he's had quite a few threats against his life already. He should be happy that Eric Rudolph is already locked away.

Isn't it strange that Republicans support you for the 9 months that you're in the womb, the 15 years you spend as a brain-dead Mr. Potato Head, and if you have a terminal ilness, but they don't care about you otherwise? I guess life begins at conception, and ends at 9 months.

Let the hate mail roll in.

A clubbin' we will go

2005-03-30T09:57:00.000-07:00

Is this the Canadian version of "Whacking Day?"

(Bloody Link)

Thousands of hunters armed with clubs, rifles and spears have begun the world's largest seal cull on the ice floes off eastern Canada.

Turning the ice red with blood, they killed hundreds of pups during the first day of the annual harp seal hunt.

The cull, which has been the target of protests since the 1960s, will mean the slaughter of up to 320,000 young seals on the floes and islands around Quebec's les de la Madeleine in the Gulf of St Lawrence.

"It's just horrific out there," said Rebecca Aldworth of the Humane Society of the United States. "There is blood all across the ice and seal carcasses as far as the eye can see. We've seen seals that were moving around and breathing, that have been left in these piles, some left conscious and crawling."

Animal rights campaigners, who claim the pups are often skinned alive, have begun a boycott of Canadian seafood products and are planning protests until the end of the cull on 15 May.

Despite an import ban imposed in the United States and the European Union, a growth in demand for seal pelts from eastern Europe and China led the Canadian government to issue a quota in 2003 that allows hunters to kill 975,000 seals over three years.

Canada says the seal population is "healthy and abundant" and three times the size it was in the Seventies.

Awwwwww......

Awwwwwww!!!!

Awwwwwwww!!!!!!!

AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

*whack* Bad seal! *whack* Bad seal! *whackwhackwhack*

Part 2...

2005-03-28T10:15:00.000-07:00

The U.S. Geological Service is reporting an 8.5 magnitude earthquake near Sumatra. Apparently this occurred on the same faultline as the December 2004 earthquake. No reports on tsunamis as of yet, but CNN doesn't even have a full story, and the USGS website is blank as well.

Early insensitivity reports by The Cunning Linguist estimate 100,000 dead or missing. Stay tuned....

I now have a name for them.

2005-03-24T14:26:00.000-07:00

Bush-bot (n):

A Bush-bot is defined as a person who believes the most important thing in politics is to elect Republicans and hates anyone who believes otherwise.

A Bush-bot will defend his/her chosen one(s) to the death, right or wrong, regardless of any evidence to the contrary of the chosen one's position, simply because the chosen one's surname is followed by an "(R)".

Bush-bots do not blink at sacrificing principle, they will champion a leftist Republican rather than a conservative Republican in the interest of a short-term political win.

Their most common fallback is to namecall - "fringer", "purist", "extremist" and "activist" are frequently used. Bush-bots view any disagreement with anything they believe or dissent of any kind as anti-American. Bush-bots are akin to liberal Democrats except that liberal Democrats aren't as deceptive about what they stand for.

If the above has at all angered you in a personal way, you may be a Bush-bot. As a preventative measure, read the Constitution of the United States.

If any of the above has reinforced in your mind the belief that "anyone who voted for someone other than George W. Bush in 2004 hates America, is endangering its security and/or could be responsible killing my children and grandchildren", you are a full-blown Bush-bot.

You may also be a Bush-bot if:

* You blame Clinton for 9/11
* You have used the "Well, Clinton got a blowjob" argument to defend any Republican, their actions or ethics
* You blame Clinton for anything after 2002
* You play the "Clinton card" when arguing with people who don't agree with you
* You think the reason we went to war in Iraq was to liberate a country from a brutal dictator
* You think Iraq had ties to Al-Qadea
* You have at least one magnetic ribbon that says "Support Our Troops" on your SUV
* You think that there is still a liberal media bias
* You think Dubya dutifully served his time in the National Guard and received no favoritism
* Conversely, you believed the Swift Boat Veteran's attacks on John Kerry

There are many, many other indications that you may be a Bush-bot that are not listed here.

As of yet there is no cure for acute Bush-botism. However, the severity of the symptoms may lessen with generous doses of tolerance, humility, wisdom and conscience.

/Props to WalkingCarpet for this.

Once again, an invisible man in the sky trumps common sense.

2005-03-23T10:00:00.000-07:00

Some IMAX theaters not screening volcanoes flick

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) -- The IMAX theater in Charleston and several others in the South have passed on showing a science film on volcanoes because of concerns it might offend those with fundamental religious beliefs (emphasis mine).

"We've got to pick a film that's going to sell in our area. If it's not going to sell, we're not going to take it," said Lisa Buzzelli, director of the local IMAX theater. "Many people here believe in creationism, not evolution."

Buzzelli said while the Charleston theater doesn't rule out showing "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea" in the future, she considers people's religious views when showing films.

The film makes a connection between human DNA and microbes inside undersea volcanoes. Buzzelli said the handling of evolution was considered in her decision.

IMAX theaters in Texas, Georgia and the Carolinas have declined to show the film, said Pietro Serapiglia who handles distribution for Stephen Low, the film's director and producer who is from Montreal.

"I find it's only in the South," Serapiglia said.

Some people worry screening out such films will discourage filmmakers from making others in the future.

"It's going to restrain the creative approach by directors who refer to evolution," said Joe DeAmicis, vice president for marketing at the California Science Center in Los Angeles and a former director of an IMAX theater. "References to evolution will be dropped."

The IMAX Theatre in Myrtle Beach also decided against showing the film. The theater's director, Jerry Lennard, would not comment.

Some IMAX theaters are connected to science centers. Charleston's is next to the South Carolina Aquarium but has no formal relationship with the aquarium.

Whit McMillan, the aquarium's director of education, said while evolution is taught there, he didn't see a problem with the IMAX decision.

"They're a for-profit theater," he said. "It's basically none of my business."

So what they're saying is "We're not going to show something that might educate people, because we're afraid of the backlash from redneck Christian fundies." Super, let's stick pour heads in the sand a little deeper. More and more, southerners remind me of The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (42!!). The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast is so mind-bogglingly stupid that it thinks that if you can't see it, it can't see you. Therefore, the best defense against a Bugblatter Beast is to wrap a towel around your head.

Churchies are so afraid of anything that might compromise their precious holy book, that they will do whatever they can to keep themselves in the 18th century. Facts? Who needs facts, irrefutable proof of life before 10,000 years ago, scientific evidence and pesky little things like carbon and radon testing? They're all tools of the DEVIL!

For Christ's sake (and I really do mean that), it's a GODDAMN MOVIE!!! ABOUT VOLCANOES!!! I love IMAX movies, and it really saddens me that they would sink to this level. Education isn't about learning anymore, it's about money, just like everything else. Time to write another pissy letter. And to the people who live in the south who are sick of me ragging on them... Perhaps you should consider moving to a part of the country where your shoe size and IQ isn't interchangable (translated into redneck-ese: Move outta yer state if'n ya wants ta get some more smerts. Get 'er done!!!)

The only nuts are the administrators

2005-03-22T08:19:00.000-07:00

School To Go Nut-Free Because Of Student's Severe Allergy
Officials Hope Students, Parents Will Voluntarily Comply With Ban

(Linky...)

MEDINA COUNTY, Ohio -- Students across Ohio are finding out what lunch is like without the classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich, as school districts try to make accommodations for the growing numbers of students with food allergies.

NewsChannel5's Debora Lee reported on a Medina County school where nut products are being banned because of a student with a severe allergy.

Buckeye Local School District Superintendent Craig Bailey is trying to make Litchfield Elementary School nut-free because they cause life-threatening allergic reactions for one of the students.

"Under law, we have the responsibility to do what we can to ensure the child's safety in our building," said Bailey.

There are no plans to discipline students who ignore the ban, but Bailey hopes everyone will voluntarily leave the peanut butter at home.

The ban will go into effect next month when the Litchfield students return from spring break.

Bailey also says the ban will likely follow the student into junior high and high school.

Ahhhh#@!$#@! My head ASPLODE!! This is just so fucking stupid, it makes Terry Schiavo look like Stephen Hawking. Let's ban something for 99.9% of the population because it might disrupt the life of .1% of the population. Here's an even better idea. Know what your allergies are, and stay the hell away from things that might kill you. That's why they put warnings on every single food product that was packaged in a facility where nuts are stored. Now you're going to ban PB&J's through HIGH SCHOOL?!?

Christ on crutches. I'm honestly wondering if these people made the story up, or accidentally quoted a story fromThe Onion. If this is real, pray for us all.....

Bush Mail

2005-03-21T22:01:00.000-07:00

What is in Dubya's MSN Mailbox?

Click here to find out.

It's finger-ricking good!

2005-03-18T11:48:00.000-07:00

KFC pulls two items from its Chinese menu

(Linky...)

KFC outlets in China have apologized to customers and stopped selling "New Orleans" flavor roast chicken wings and chicken burgers after finding a seasoning used in the products contains an industrial dye linked to cancer.

"We feel deeply sorry for this food safety accident and promise it will never happen again," Yum Brands Inc., parent company of KFC, said in a statement received Thursday.

Yum, based in Louisville, Kentucky, did not name the supplier of the contaminated seasoning, which it said contains Sudan I, a red dye used for coloring oils, waxes, petrol and shoe polish that has been linked to cancer.

Mmmm! Tasty! I especially like the Kiwi brand shoe polish, it has a richer texture, and a smoother aftertaste. Speaking of gasoline and other chemicals, it seems that inhalant use is on the rise among teenagers. I wonder why that could be?

Inhalant Abuse Increasing Among U.S. Teens

(Linky...)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Over a million American teenagers intentionally inhale the vapors of common household products like hairspray, shoe polish and glue each year and the number is rising, government officials said on Thursday.

Kicking off a week of activities designed to alert parents and children to the dangers posed by inhalants, White House drug czar John Walters said recent trends were unacceptable.

"As drug use overall has gone down in this country, we have had an increase in inhalant use," Walters said.

Inhalants commonly sniffed, or "huffed," by children as young as eight include gasoline and lighter fluid, spray paints, cleaning fluids, paint thinners and other solvents, degreasers, correction fluids, hair sprays and odorizers.

"These substances are everywhere in our lives. We have almost 23 million people who have abused inhalants in their lifetimes. The problem is pervasive," said Westley Clark, director of the center for substance abuse at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Jessie, a 17-year-old from Indianapolis, said she became hooked by sniffing the helium used to fill balloons for weddings and parties.

"They told me, stay away from cocaine, stay away from heroin. They never said stay away from inhalants," she said at a news conference with Walters.

Jeanette Smith, whose 17-year-old son, Jimmy, died last year after inhaling butane, said, "He didn't know it could kill him and we didn't know he was huffing."

Good thing we spend all this money, time, effort and manpower fighting the War on Drugs. Looks like it's going about as well as the War on Terror. Anything else you'd like to declare war on?

This just goes to show that no matter what you outlaw, no matter how many substances you make illegal, people are still going to find a way to get high. Look at Prohibition. Alcohol was banned, and a shit-ton (yes, that's an actual number) of people died from drinking bathtub gin, and blindness-inducing moonshine. If all drugs are made illegal, people will huff gasoline. If you make gasoline illegal (hah!), people will just start playing the blackout game (cutting off oxygen to your brain isn't harmfuflasla#!$#). Just STFU and let people do what they want to do.

This stupid fucking administration...

2005-03-17T13:36:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON - Iraq needed fuel. Halliburton Co. was ordered to get it there — quick. So the Houston-based contractor charged the Pentagon $27.5 million(!!!!!) to ship $82,100 worth of cooking and heating fuel.

In the latest revelation about the company's oft-criticized performance in Iraq, a Pentagon audit report disclosed Monday showed Halliburton subsidiary KBR spent $82,100 to buy liquefied petroleum gas, better-known as LPG, in Kuwait and then 335 times that number to transport the fuel into violence-ridden Iraq.

Pentagon auditors combing through the company's books were mystified by this charge.

"It is illogical that it would cost $27,514,833 to deliver $82,100 in LPG fuel," officials from the Defense Contract Audit Agency noted in the report.

The portions of the audit report released Monday did not specify exactly how much fuel was involved in this billing.

(Rest of article here)

Art and nature must die!!!

2005-03-10T10:27:00.000-07:00

CDOT Fells the "Peace Tree"

The "Peace Tree" was cut down Monday by the Colorado Department of Transportation, but it may be headed for Estes Park or an Internet auction block.

Paul Sterling said crews showed up about 9:30 a.m. and brought the 13-foot-tall tree to the ground. Sterling had perched on top of the tree all day Thursday, Friday and Sunday in hopes of preventing its demise.

"I'm very tired, but mostly I'm very disappointed," Sterling said.

Sterling had hired a chain saw artist last month to put a peace sign and the words "Peace Tree" on two sides of the tree. The tree stood near U.S. 34 and on Sterling's property in Big Thompson Canyon.

Sterling said he wanted the tree to remain standing to brighten up the canyon for motorists. But CDOT said Sterling did his work without proper authorization and that it could pose a traffic hazard.

"I really don't think a lot of workers who showed up wanted to cut it down," Sterling said. "But I think they were trapped by rules."

Sterling will ask the Estes Park Town Board tonight to adopt the tree for placement somewhere in town. If that fails, Sterling said, he wants to put it on the Internet auction site eBay.

He thinks the tree's message will attract buyers.

"It's hard to explain how excited people were by the tree," said Sterling, who put in eight hours a day sitting on its top. "People waved and smiled and beeped their horns.

"It was a great way to connect to them."

Damn, I'm pretty fucked up.

2005-03-09T12:14:00.000-07:00

...And an asshole to boot. Thanks to Kirk for the link. Now if you will excuse me, apparently I have some serious issues that need to be worked out.

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid:	Very High
Schizoid:	Moderate
Schizotypal:	High
Antisocial:	High
Borderline:	Moderate
Histrionic:	Moderate
Narcissistic:	High
Avoidant:	High
Dependent:	High
Obsessive-Compulsive:	High
-- Personality Disorder Test - Take It! --

Police return pot, apologise to smoker.

2005-03-08T11:46:00.000-07:00

Pot Smoker Gets Apology From Police

(linky...)

DENVER -- A man who was stopped by Debnver (sic) police and his marijuana confiscated received an apology recently because that man was allowed to smoke the pot for medicinal purposes.

Thomas Lawrence is among the first to take advantage of Colorado's law that allows marijuana to be used like a prescription drug.

Lawrence, who has chronic back pain and rheumatoid arthritis got his marijuana back along with an apology from police.

"It's more of a victory for the people who actually voted for it, and the rest of the patients to know that the law actually worked. They don't have to be as concerned about what's gonna happen if a cop pulls them over. Tell them you're a patient, show them your ID, show them your permit," said Lawrence.

His case was a first for Denver officers.

"This is the first time that drugs have been released to anyone," by the Denver Police Department, Detective Teresa Garcia said last week.

Because marijuana possession is illegal, except in this case, officers suggest medical marijuana users keep their permit with them at all times.

Good! The whole reason I haven't tried to get my medicinal marijuana card is because people were getting arrested with or without them, and the CBI was actually using the list to bust potential growers. I'm glad the DPD was forced to make a public apology about it, too.

Iraqi checkpoints

2005-03-07T12:30:00.000-07:00

A good article about who Iraqi checkpoints are like for both sides, and the reason that so many innocent people get shot *coughItalianJournalistcough*. Don't discount the story because it's in the Christian Science Monitor. They tend to have a pretty unbiased viewpoint (amazing what happens when you don't rely on ad revenue from large corporations), and they did a great job with this.

(Linky...)

As an American journalist here, I have been through many checkpoints and have come close to being shot at several times myself. I look vaguely Middle Eastern, which perhaps makes my checkpoint experience a little closer to that of the typical Iraqi. Here's what it's like.

You're driving along and you see a couple of soldiers standing by the side of the road - but that's a pretty ubiquitous sight in Baghdad, so you don't think anything of it. Next thing you know, soldiers are screaming at you, pointing their rifles and swiveling tank guns in your direction, and you didn't even know it was a checkpoint.

If it's confusing for me - and I'm an American - what is it like for Iraqis who don't speak English?

In situations like this, I've often had Iraqi drivers who step on the gas. It's a natural reaction: Angry soldiers are screaming at you in a language you don't understand, and you think they're saying "get out of here," and you're terrified to boot, so you try to drive your way out.

Fear of insurgents and kidnappers are another reason for accelerating, and in that scenario, speeding up and getting away could save your life. Many Iraqis know somebody who's been shot at on the road, and a lot of people survived only because they stepped on the gas....

I just threw up in my mouth a little.

2005-02-26T19:17:00.000-07:00

It's official. Republicans have no original ideas, and are not funny in any way, shape or form. This is borderline embarrasing.

Link

Help our Hockey Players!

2005-02-23T10:22:00.000-07:00

(Linky...)

We must come together to overcome a tremendous injustice and suffering thrust upon innocent young men. Hundreds of Professional Hockey players in our very own nation are locked out, living at well below the seven-figure salary level. And as if that weren't bad enough they could be deprived of their life giving pay for several months, possibly longer, as a result of the upcoming lockout situation.

But you can help!

For only $20,835 a month, about $694.50 a day (that's less than the cost of a large screen projection TV) you can help an NHL player remain economically viable during his time of need. This contribution by no means solves the problem as it barely covers the annual minimum salary, but it's a start, and every little bit will help!

Although $700 may not seem like a lot of money to you, to a Hockey Player it could mean the difference between spending the lockout golfing in Florida or on a Mediterranean cruise.

For you, seven hundred dollars is nothing more than a month's rent, half a mortgage payment, or a month of medical insurance, but to a hockey player, $700 will partially replace his daily salary.

Your commitment of less than $700 a day will enable a player to buy that home entertainment center, trade in the year-old Lexus for a new Ferrari, or enjoy a weekend in Rio.

HOW WILL I KNOW I'M HELPING?

Each month, you will receive a complete financial report on the player you sponsor. Detailed information about his stocks, bonds, 401(k), real estate, and other investment holdings will be mailed to your home. Plus, upon signing up for this program, you will receive an unsigned photo of the player lounging during the lockout on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean (for a signed photo, please include an additional $150). Put the photo on your refrigerator to remind you of other peoples' suffering.

HOW WILL HE KNOW I'M HELPING?

Your NHL player will be told that he has a SPECIAL FRIEND who just wants to help in a time of need. Although the player won't know your name, he will be able to make collect calls to your home via a special operator in case additional funds are needed for unforeseen expenses.

YES, I WANT TO HELP!

I would like to sponsor a locked out NHL player. My preference is (check below):

[ ] Forward [ ] Defenseman [ ] Goaltender [ ] Entire team

(Please call our 900 number to ask for the cost of a specific team - $10 per minute)

Jaromir Jagr (Higher cost: $32,000 per day)

Please charge the account listed below $694.50 per day for the duration of the lockout.

Please send me a picture of the player I have sponsored, along with an Jaromir Jagr 2001 Income Statement and my very own Bob Goodenow (Executive Director of the NHLPA player's Union) pin to wear proudly on my hat (include $80 for hat).

# Your Name: _______________________
# Telephone Number: _______________________
# Account Number: _______________________ Exp.Date:_______
# [ ] MasterCard [ ] Visa [ ] American Express [ ] Other
# Signature: _______________________

# Alternate card (when the primary card exceeds its credit limit):
# Account Number: _______________________ Exp.Date:_______
# [ ] MasterCard [ ] Visa [ ] American Express [ ] Other
# Signature: _______________________

Now, kiss and make up, you whiney, overpaid bitches.

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.

2005-02-20T21:57:00.000-07:00

Author Hunter S. Thompson just committed suicide in Aspen, CO. The news hit the wire 4 minutes ago, and Wikipedia already has their page update. Amazing.

"We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws."

You may already be a winner!

2005-02-15T16:47:00.000-07:00

Check your quarters before you put them into a pop machine. Because a $.50 Pepsi could be worth $1,200.00.

Flawed quarters fetch a pretty penny

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin (AP) -- Some Wisconsin quarters issued last year are turning out to be worth considerably more than 25 cents.

Coin collectors say quarters with two variations in the design of a cornstalk on the back of the coin have been spotted at Tucson, Arizona, and San Antonio, Texas.

Rick Snow, who owns Eagle Eye Rare Coins Inc. in Tucson, said he started paying $50 each for the quarters when he learned of them.

"As soon as word got out about that, the prices escalated," Snow said.

On Monday, he was offering a set of three Wisconsin quarters -- the normal one, one with a leaf marking pointed up and a third with the marking pointed down -- for as much as $1,099. Individual coins with the variations were selling for $500 to $600, depending on condition, he said.

The U.S. Mint, which produced 453 million Wisconsin quarters for its state coin series, is trying to determine how the differences came about.

"Throughout history, there have been some instances of variations -- very, very rare instances," said U.S. Mint spokesman Mike White. "If there is any kind of situation like this, we just take a very close look at the process and all the different steps."

Regular Quarter:

Stalk facing down:
See how the extra stalk faces down?

Stalk facing up:
This one isn't as easy to notice.

I'm running to the bank tonight. I'm sure the Denver mint has pumped out a ton of these, if they're being found in Arizona and Texas. C'mon big money!!

What a total bitch

2005-02-04T11:24:00.000-07:00

You know, I really hate living in this state, surrounded by fucking idiots like Wanita Renea Young (two misspelled names? Idiocy must be genetic). I really hope karma comes back to bite this stupid cunt right in her vindictive, withered old ass. This is EXACTLY why people don't do nice things for each other anymore. Being kind is now a punishable offense. And fuck Judge Doug Walker for actually awarding this retard money.

Full story is here, here and here.

Teens' kindness backfires when neighbor wins suit

DURANGO, Colo. - Two teenage girls trying to perform an act of kindness for their neighbors ended up being slapped with a medical bill for $900 after one neighbor suffered an anxiety attack when they knocked on her door at 10:30 at night delivering homemade cookies.

The incident began July 31 when the girls, Taylor Ostergaard, 17, and Lindsey Jo Zellitti, 18, decided to skip a dance and stay home and bake cookies for their neighbors.

The deliveries consisted of a half dozen chocolate chip and sugar cookies accompanied by big hearts cut out of red or pink construction paper with the message: "Have a great night." The notes were signed, "Love, The T and L Club," code for Taylor and Lindsey.

But at one of the nine scattered rural homes south of Durango where they delivered cookies that night, a 49-year-old woman became so terrified by the knocks on her door around 10:30 p.m. that she called the sheriff's department. Deputies determined that no crime had been committed.

But Wanita Renea Young ended up in the hospital emergency room the next day after suffering a severe anxiety attack she thought might be a heart attack.

Here's the kicker:

The girls wrote letters of apology to Young. Taylor's letter, written a few days after the episode, said in part: "I didn't realize this would cause trouble for you. ... I just wanted you to know that someone cared about you and your family."

The families had offered to pay Young's medical bills if she would agree to indemnify the families against future claims.

Young wouldn't sign the agreement. She said the families' apologies rang false and weren't delivered in person. The matter went to court.

Judge Doug Walker on Thursday awarded Young almost $900 to recoup her medical bills.

Taylor's mother, Jill Ostergaard, said her daughter "cried and cried" after Judge Doug Walker handed down his decision in La Plata County Small Claims Court.

"She felt she was being punished for doing something nice," Jill Ostergaard said.

"The victory wasn't sweet," Young said. "I just hope the girls learned a lesson."

Yeah, they sure did. I doubt they'll have the urge to do anything nice for neighbors ever again. Thanks, Wanita. 2 more people, jaded and cynical, because you had to prove a point. They fucking APOLOGISED and offered to pay the medical bills for you! But that wasn't enough. You bitched about people showing up at your door with homemade treats, baked out of kindness, yet you complained when they didn't return to your house to say they were sorry in person.

There's no contest this week. Wanita Renea Young, you get the "Sandy Vagina Award." Also, you have been featured on Morons.org (and rightfully so, twat.) Do us all a favor, and shoot yourself in the head, so that the rest of the population won't have to deal with your bullshit ever again. For your sake, I hope you're barren, because the last thing we need is your offspring clogging up the filters in the gene pool.

This really, really chaps my ass. It's too bad that I can't find her address, because I would love to send her a copy of this post. Of course, she might have another panic attack and sue me for damages.

Once again, FUCK YOU, WANITA! Do something productive, like drive the wrong way down I-25. A Darwin Award would be too good for you.

***UPDATE***

Here is a copy of the letter I sent to Wanita, along with a copy of this post:

Dear Wanita,

I recently heard about the lawsuit that you filed against two teenage girls who attempted to do something nice for their neighbors. After reading it, I felt sick to my stomach. “How”, I wondered, “How could someone be this vindictive and malicious towards a small group of girls who were trying to promote community togetherness?”

In my own opinion, you are a horrible example of a human being, and your utter contempt for these two young women is simply appalling. I hope you sleep well at night, knowing that you have pissed off so many people.

This news story has been picked up by over 60 news outlets across the United States as of 1:00pm Friday. Comments have been made on numerous weblogs (mine included), and you were recently featured on the website, www.Morons.org. A poll conducted by the Kansas City Star reveals that 96% of the population thinks you are a complete jackass. Not only do you give this wonderful state a bad name, but you have shown that you have absolutely no empathy whatsoever.

Enclosed is a copy of a post found on a weblog, and a package of delicious Famous Amos Brand chocolate chip cookies. I suggest that you consume them, with the hopes that some of their sweetness will balance out the bitterness that dwells within you.

Furthermore, I have also written a letter to Chief Justice Gregory Lyman, asking for the removal of Judge Doug Walker, due to his indescribably stupid decision to fine these young women almost $1000.00 (which they originally OFFERED TO PAY YOU!!)

I hope it makes you happy knowing that you have become somewhat of an internet punching bag, being ridiculed on websites from coast to coast. Perhaps you will realize that you have probably jaded these two young girls, and discouraged them from performing further acts of random kindness in the future.

I am also sending a bit of money to the families of these two women, in the hopes that they will use it to cover some of their court costs.

$900.00 and public humiliation for free cookies? I sure hope it was worth it.

Still shaking my head in bewilderment,

PS: If you are worried about the cookies I sent you being tainted, let me assure you that they are not. Writing a letter expressing my feelings is about as vindictive as I get. Next time someone attempts to extend an olive branch of kindness, TAKE IT. Your neighbors will probably like you a lot more.

War Rationale: Version 10.0

2005-02-04T09:30:00.000-07:00

(Link to article...)

Saddam Hussein poses an 'imminent threat' to the American people.

* Version 1.0 - Saddam Hussein is an imminent threat
* Version 1.01 - Saddam Hussein is a gathering threat
* Version 1.02 - Saddam Hussein poses a real and dangerous threat
* Version 1.1 - The smoking gun will be a mushroom cloud
* Version 1.2 - We can't afford to wait
* Version 1.3 - We never said imminent
* Version 1.3.1 - OK, maybe we did say it once or twice
* Version 1.4 - We should have been more precise

Saddam Hussein is ready to use weapons of mass destruction.

* Version 2.1 - Saddam has weapons of mass destruction
* Version 2.2 - Saddam has nuclear weapons
* Version 2.3 - Saddam has biological agents he's never accounted for
* Version 2.3.1 - The trailers are mobile labs for producing chemical weapons
* Version 2.3.2 - Unmanned aircraft are ready to spread Saddam's biological weapons
* Version 2.4 - Saddam's going to make more of all these weapons
* Version 2.5 - We all know where the weapons are
* Version 2.5.1 - Well, Saddam has used weapons of mass destruction
* Version 2.5.2 - Iraq is a big country. We'll find the weapons eventually.
* Version 2.5.3 - Saddam had weapons of mass destruction programs
* Version 2.5.4 - Saddam had "weapons of mass destruction program-related activities"
* Version 2.5.5 - David Kay? Who's David Kay?
* Version 2.6 - It's not about misleading the American people"Saddam Hussein is gone and that's the most important thing

The intelligence is clear.

* Version 3.0 - We based our statements on our available intelligence
* Version 3.1 - Saddam tried to buy uranium ore in Niger
* Version 3.1.2 - Well, that was what the British told us
* Version 3.1.3 - Did we tell you about Joe Wilson's wife?
* Version 3.1.4 - Do you know a good lawyer?
* Version 3.2 - The intelligence is absolutely clear
* Version 3.2.1 - Intelligence is never 100 percent certain
* Version 3.2.2 - We didn't manipulate the intelligence
* Version 3.3 - There was no consensus within the intelligence community
* Version 3.3.1 - We saw the same intelligence the last administration did

Saddam Hussein has deep ties to Al Qaeda.

* Version 4.0 - Saddam has long-standing ties to Al Qaeda
* Version 4.0.1 - You can't distinguish between Saddam and Al Qaeda
* Version 4.0.2 - There is an Al Qaeda terrorist network in Iraq
* Version 4.0.3 - Saddam has provided Al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training.
* Version 4.0.4 - Saddam will give his weapons to Al Qaeda
* Version 4.0.5 - Colin Powell: I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection [between Al Qaeda and Iraq]
* Version 4.0.6 - Vice President Cheney: I still believe there's a connection.
* Version 4.0.7 - CIA Director George Tenet: I told Dick not to say that.

The United Nations just can't handle this.

* Version 5.0 - The UN had 12 years to deal with this
* Version 5.1 - We don't trust the UN to handle this
* Version 5.1.1 - We don't need the UN's help
* Version 5.1.2 - The UN should play a vital, but not central role
* Version 5.1.3 - You there, UN, tell Ayatollah Sistani that elections aren't possible
* Version 5.1.4 - UN, please oversee the election process
* Version 5.1.5 - Pretty please? We'll pay our dues

The war in Iraq won't hurt our efforts in Afghanistan or the hunt for bin Laden.

* Version 6.0 - Iraq won't affect our hunt for bin Laden
* Version 6.1 - Assets have been moved from Afghanistan to Iraq
* Version 6.1.1 - Assets are being returned to Afghanistan
* Version 6.2 - We're mounting a spring offensive against bin Laden
* Version 6.2.1 - We'll catch bin Laden this year
* Version 6.2.2 - We hope to catch bin Laden this year
* Version 6.3 - Even if we catch bin Laden, the threat will still exist.

Mission accomplished.

* Version 7.0 - We won't need hundreds of thousands of troops"that's wildly off the mark
* Version 7.1 - Mission accomplished
* Version 7.1.1 - We'll stay as long as needed and not one day more
* Version 7.1.2 - The troops will be home in six months
* Version 7.1.3 - The Iraqi Army will provide security
* Version 7.1.4 - Where's the Iraqi Army?
* Version 7.1.5 - We've disbanded the Iraqi Army
* Version 7.1.3 - The troops will stay a year and be replaced
* Version 7.2 - We're training the Iraqi army"Iraqification will work
* Version 7.2.1 - We don't need any more American troops
* Version 7.2.2 - Well, maybe we do
* Version 7.2.3 - We're keeping 30,000 more troops on active duty than were authorized
* Version 7.2.4 - We don't know if this increase in troops is a spike or a plateau
* Version 7.2.5 - We're establishing stop loss so troops can't leave
* Version 7.2.6 - The Army is planning multi-year rotations

The cost to the American taxpayer.

* Version 8.0 - Economic advisor Larry Lindsey: The war will cost $200 billion
* Version 8.0.1 - President Bush: You're fired!
* Version 8.1 - The war will pay for itself very quickly
* Version 8.1.1 - Iraqi oil revenue will pay for reconstruction
* Version 8.2 - Our allies will help us
* Version 8.3 - We'll pay for the war through supplementals
* Version 8.3.1 - Congress wouldn't let us put it in the budget
* Version 8.3.2 - Can we please have $87 billion?
* Version 8.3.3 - Well, we really can't calculate what it will cost...
* Version 8.3.4 - Well, maybe we can"$50 billion may be on the low side
* Version 8.3.5 - Ask us after November 2...

Democracy comes to Iraq.

* Version 9.0 - We will be greeted as liberators
* Version 9.0.1 - We'll establish democracy in Iraq
* Version 9.1 - We'll turn this back to the Iraqis quickly
* Version 9.1.1 - President Chalabi will be welcomed with open arms
* Version 9.1.2 - Well, not so fast"we're prohibiting political parties
* Version 9.2 - We have the November 15 agreement"it's unchangeable
* Version 9.2.1 - We will appoint a small governing council
* Version 9.2.2 - Well, maybe a larger one
* Version 9.3 - We don't favor elections
* Version 9.3.1 - Caucuses work in Iowa, why not Iraq?
* Version 9.3.2 - OK fine, we'll have elections
* Version 9.4 - We can't return sovereignty until there is a constitution
* Version 9.4.1 - Never mind, we'll turn over sovereignty first
* Version 9.4.2 - We need to return this to the Iraqis"How about June 30?
* Version 9.4.3 - We're still focused on elections"the ones on November 2

The bottom line.

* Version 10.0 - Trust us. We know what we're doing

This is just too funny

2005-02-01T16:17:00.000-07:00

Terrorists kidnap G.I. Joe!

I can't believe that CNN, Drudge, AP and so many other sources are still reporting this as "real." Without a doubt, one of the funniest stories of the year (so far).

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraqi militants claimed in a Web statement Tuesday to have taken an American soldier hostage and threatened to behead him in 72 hours unless the Americans release Iraqi prisoners. The U.S. military said it was investigating, but the claim's authenticity could not be immediately confirmed.

The posting, on a Web site that frequently carried militants' statements, included a photo of what that statement said was an American soldier, wearing desert fatigues and seated on a concrete floor with his hands tied behind his back. The figure in the photo appeared stiff and expressionless, and the photo's authenticity could not be confirmed.

A gun barrel was pointed at his head, and behind him on the wall is a black banner emblazoned with the Islamic profession of faith, "There is no god but God and Muhammad is His prophet."

A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Marine Sgt. Salju K. Thomas, said he had no information on the claim but "we are currently looking into it."

OK, check it out. This is NOT a kidnapped soldier. This is a fucking G.I. JOE!! I was able to tell within 5 seconds of seeing this picture. I used to OWN this action figure; his name is Cody. Need proof that this is a fake? Well, here's a picture for you. Notice that he still has his grenades intact (even terrorists aren't THAT stupid):

...and here is a picture of the soldier, before he was taken out of the box:

The following troops have been sent in to rescue him:

My only question? Why didn't he use his Kung-Fu Grip to escape from Cobra Commander?

Good times, good times. See? Terrorism CAN be funny! I now have a mental image of all these hard-core Islamic fundamentalists, screaming "JIHAD!!" while posing dolls, and making itty-bitty signs to hang behind them. Meanwhile, the American press is going nuts, trying to retract their earlier statements. I just hope the terrorists don't get ahold of a microwave; poor Cody won't stand a chance.

GO, JOE!!

Cannabis arrests fall by a third

2005-01-30T14:18:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, it's not in this country.

(BBC Link...)

Arrests for possession of cannabis fell by a third in the first year since it was downgraded to a Class C drug, official Home Office figures show.

An estimated 199,000 police hours were saved, according to data from 26 of the 42 English and Welsh police forces.

Cannabis was reclassified so that officers could target hard drugs.

Minister Caroline Flint said new crime survey figures also showed that fears for a rise in cannabis use among young people were "wholly unfounded."

'Significant savings'

Based on the feedback from the 26 police forces, there were an estimated 43,750 arrests in the last 12 months compared with 68,625 in the previous period - a fall of 36%, according to the Home Office.

Ms Flint said: "A year ago we reclassified cannabis on the recommendation of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, so that the police could concentrate on the far more destructive Class A drugs.

"One year on, the picture is encouraging, with significant savings in police time which can now be used to drive more serious drugs off our streets and make our communities safer."

She was pleased that critics' predictions for an increase in cannabis use among young people were "wholly unfounded".

"The figures show that young people's cannabis use has remained stable since reclassification and is still significantly down from 1998 levels," she added.

British Crime Survey figures published on Friday show that 24.8% of 16 to 24-year-old respondents reported using cannabis in the last year. This compared with 25.8% the previous year and 28.2% in 1998.

'Too soon'

With each arrest taking an average of eight hours to process, the 24,875 fewer arrests in the year since reclassification meant 199,000 hours of police time had been saved, the Home Office said.

Martin Barnes, chief executive of DrugScope, said the charity would continue to support the reclassification of cannabis.

It was encouraging that cannabis use among young people had been declining but it was "too soon" to draw conclusions from the latest figures.

"Most young people know that cannabis is illegal and can be harmful but we need a much greater focus on drug education and prevention," he said.

"It is concerning that the Government's own schools inspectorate has this week criticised the level and standard of drug education in some schools."

Wasn't there a time when England was considered to be a bunch of stick-up-your-ass conservatives and America was the land of progressive, intelligent thinkers?

What happened? Oh, wait... I know...

Drug War Victims

2005-01-28T23:53:00.000-07:00

Here's a site dedicated to the victims of the War on Drugs. Is this war a success? Ask a few of these folks:

Shirley Dorsey, 56: Rather than being compelled to testify against her 70-year-old boyfriend (Byron Stamate) for cultivating the medicinal cannabis she depended upon to help control her crippling back pain, Shirley Dorsey committed suicide. She saw it as the only way to prevent the forfeiture of their home and property. Despite her suicide, Stamate was sentenced to 9 months prison, and his home, cottage, and $177,000 life savings were seized.

Annie Rae Dixon, 84: Bedridden with pneumonia during a drug raid. Officer kicked open her bedroom door and accidentally shot her.

Ashley Villareal, 14: Ashley went outside at night with a family friend to move their freshly washed car under shelter. DEA agents, interested in her father, were staking out the house, and believing that her father was driving, shot and killed Ashley. The agents did not have a warrant for her father.

John Hirko, 21: An unarmed man with no prior offenses was shot to death in his house by a squad of masked police. In a no-knock raid, they tossed a smoke grenade in through a window, setting the house on fire. Hirko, suspected of dealing small amounts of marijuana and cocaine, was found face down on his stairway, shot in the back while fleeing the burning building. When the fire was finally put out, officers found some marijuana seeds in an unsinged plastic bag.

Peter McWilliams, 50: Peter was a world-famous author and an advocate of medical marijuana, not only because he believed in it in principle, but because it was keeping him alive (he had AIDS and non-Hodgkins lymphoma). After California passed a law legalizing medical marijuana, Peter helped finance the efforts of Todd McCormick to cultivate marijuana for distribution to those who needed it for medical reasons. Federal agents got wind of his involvement, and Peter was a target for his advocacy. He was arrested, and in federal court was prevented from mentioning his medical condition or California's law. While he was on bail awaiting sentencing, the prosecutors threatened to take away his mother's house (used for bail) if he failed a drug test, so he stopped using the marijuana which controlled his nausea from the medications and allowed him to keep them down. He was found dead on the bathroom floor, choked to death on his own vomit.

Alberta Spruill, 57: Police, acting on a tip, forced their way into Spruill's home, setting off flash grenades. She suffered a heart attack and died. It was the wrong address.

Donald P. Scott, 61: Government agencies were interested in the property of this reclusive millionaire. A warrant was issued based on concocted "evidence" of supposed marijuana plantings, and a major raid was conducted with a 32-man assault team. Scott was shot to death in front of his wife. No drugs were found. A later official report found: "It is the District Attorney's opinion that the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department was motivated, at least in part, by a desire to seize and forfeit the ranch for the government. Based in part upon the possibility of forfeiture, Spencer obtained a search warrant that was not supported by probable cause. This search warrant became Donald Scott's death warrant."

(Read more...)

Our drug war results in staggeringly tragic losses. Drugs, when abused, can be dangerous, but they are not nearly as lethal as the drug war itself. In addition to the blights of an imprisoned population, lost rights, broken families, and economic waste, people are dying in this war. No, these are not deaths from drugs, but from prohibition.

It is important to realize that the vast majority of deaths on the drug war simply would not happen without prohibition. When drug dealers fight it out over territory and they or their neighbors are killed in the process, it is a sympton of prohibition, much as when we suffered the scourge of alcohol prohibition many years ago. Prohibition makes violence profitable.

When drug users overdose from tainted drugs, it is the result of prohibition. When they die from overdoses because they were afraid to seek help, it is the result of prohibition.

Increasingly, people are dying because of the tactics of the drug war. Military operations are being conducted on our soil, and collateral damage is inevitable.

When drug task forces dressed in black batter in doors without knocking or announcing themselves, the danger to citizens and police alike is enormous. Sometimes the greatest danger is to (or from) the innocent citizen that understandably believes that they are experiencing a home invasion, and rushes to defend their family and property.

Every now and then, a death happens that is particularly grotesque -- that points out the horrific folly of our actions. This page presents some of those deaths.

And it tasted almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

2005-01-28T10:22:00.000-07:00

Asteroid Named for Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams, the late author of the classic SF Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy BBC series and subsequent novels, was honored by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center with an asteroid bearing his name, MSNBC.com reported. Asteroid Douglasadams was among the 71 newly named celestial objects announced on Jan. 25 in Cambridge, Mass., the Web site reported.

The asteroid in question was chosen because of its original name, 2001 DA42, which references the year Adams passed away, his initials and the number 42, which, as fans of the author know, is the answer to "life, the universe and everything" according to the Hitchhiker stories.

The asteroid is not the first to have a connection to Adams. In 2001, just days after the author passed away, the organization named an asteroid after Arthur Dent, the earthling protagonist of the Hitchhiker series.

A great man who brought me many, many hours of entertainment and laughter. I really hope the movie doesn't suck.

Stizzatz, Bizzatch.

2005-01-27T07:31:00.000-07:00

I hate people who talk like that...

Here's some recent search engine queries that have brought people into my evil clutches:

Google: tapatio Scoville Unit
Google: yakov smirnov stand up mp3
Google: 53.137 billion
Google: "syrian wayne newton"
Yahoo: fascist slogans
Google: nomaddox
Google: "rev. jack arnold"
Google: "drunk drive" "her car"
Google: maddox cunning linguist
Yahoo: i want to see girl fucked in delhi school published by baazee.com
Google: Etching of Shedd Aquarium
Yahoo: america and fascism
Google: groening puker
Google: comatonin
Yahoo: repressitol

I still don't understand "syrian wayne newton" and "yakov smirnov stand up mp3", but I'd rather be found by people interested in repressitol, than meth-smoking scientologists.

Oddities

2005-01-26T16:17:00.000-07:00

Did you know that when you finally go insane, you hear a loud cracking sound inside your head? I didn't either, and it scared the hell out of me.

Strange facts that may or may not surprise you.
OR
I've been hella-stressed lately, and don't have anything else to write about.

Dr. Ruth, noted sex therapist, is a trained sniper, and knows how to throw hand grenades.

On September 11, 2001 Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy and American Dad, was scheduled to return to Los Angeles on American Airlines Flight 11 after being a keynote speaker at his alma-mater in Rhode Island. His travel agent gave him the wrong flight time, and he arrived at Boston Logan Airport a few minutes after boarding was finished. He was told he would have to wait for the next flight. At 8:45am one hour after the departure of American Airlines Flight 11, it was hijacked by terrorists and crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.

In an interview in USA Today a few days after the attacks he said that he was unable to get in touch with his office or his family in Los Angeles and he ended up driving half way across the country before he finally was able to get his office and his parents to tell them that he was all right. He also said that he thanked God that his travel agent had screwed up the departure time or he would have been on board and he wouldn't have known what to do when the terrorists took over the plane.

Maynard James Keenan, frontman for Tool and A Perfect Circle, contributed the line "Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin" to the novelty song "Three Little Pigs" by Green Jellÿ (whose leader was MJK's roomate, and the receiver to the death threats in the segues "Message to Harry Manback" and its sequel).

Man, I'm so old-school that I was listening to them back when they were "Green Jello" (pre-lawsuit.)

Harry Shearer, star of "This is Spinal Tap" and "A Mighty Wind", as well as the voice of Mr. Burns, Ned Flanders, Reverend Lovejoy and more on "The Simpsons", played Eddie Hascal in the original pilot for "Leave it to Beaver."

Hooray! Pointless facts!!

GREAT NEWS!!!

2005-01-21T09:00:00.000-07:00

Man, I've been hoping that this day would come! Michael Powell, Chairman of the FCC, is STEPPING DOWN!!! I'll be writing more on this later, bit I wanted to break the possibly great news (depending on who his successor ends up being) as soon as I head it. Look for an article sometime this weekend (as well as another Sandy Vagina Award.)

Here's the link to the article; it's obvious that the magazine is biased towards Michael Powell, but to balance it out, I've included some of the better quotes from the head of the Decency Police.

(Linky...)

"I have no idea what the public interest is."
- Michael Powell

"TiVo is God's machine."
- Michael Powell

"I personally don't think anybody is safe. I don't believe any company currently in communications is so well-structured and tied down that they are guaranteed to be here 15 years from now."
- Michael Powell

"It's easy to vilify a corporate mogul. But when you understand you make money producing what interests the public, the argument becomes quite a bit more queasy, doesn't it? Are you really indicting the mogul, or what your countrymen like to watch? The media companies, if they have one sin, is that they're too responsive."
- Michael Powell

All these are quotes from a guy who is pushing to eliminate ownership limits on media, and who recently gave Rupert Murdoch a second exception to current ownership rules, allowing him to own two TV stations and a newspaper in NYC (For everyone else, you can't even own a TV and newspaper (unless you're Murdoch)).

More later...

Maybe we should check the pound...

2005-01-19T14:28:00.000-07:00

I wouldn't fuck her with a stolen dick.

Condi vs. Hillary 2K8? I wouldn't rule it out...

Nifty gadget

2005-01-18T23:51:00.000-07:00

Tired trying to type on your PDA? Wish you had an actual keyboard, instead of that crappy mobile phone keypad? Then you need the I-Tech Virtual Keyboard.

This ingenious virtual keyboard is a great space-saving device designed for mobile business. The compact, rechargeable unit uses infrared and laser light technology to project a trapezium-shaped keyboard onto any flat surface, allowing you to type away as normal.

Every keystroke is accompanied by a sound effect, reassuring you that the system has successfully registered your character. The sensitivity of the keyboard can be tailored to individual preferences using the menus on the device you have attached.

Read more here.

Repressitol and Gleemonex

2005-01-18T07:43:00.000-07:00

Fictional Elements [Part 3 of 3]

My favorite fictional drugs. Added points if you can guess the movie, book, song or TV show where these originated from.

Blinkmoth Serum - Blinkmoth serum is created by killing and harvesting blinkmoths. It grants the user extreme intelligence, self-awareness, and understanding. It is extremely addictive.

Comatonin - Fast acting tranquilizer.

Dimoxinil - Hair regrowth drug. Requires daily application or regrown hair is lost. The name is an anagram of minoxidil, a compound which is actually used for treatment of male pattern baldness.

Drencrom - Ingredient in milk-plus, sold in the Korova Milkbar. Likely a reference to adrenochrome.

Focusin - A Ritalin-like drug.

Gleemonex - Anti-depressant.

Ice-9 - A chemical compound capable of ending life on earth by freezing anything under 114 degrees centigrade.

Iocane Powder - A deadly poison. Has no odor or taste. Dissolves instantly in liquid. It is possible to build an immunity to the poison by deliberately ingesting minute doses at intervals over the course of several years. Used by the hero Westley to outsmart the Sicilian, Vizzini. Vezzini: "He didn't fall? Inconceivable!"
Inigo: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Lot 6 - Hallucinogen; telekenetic power enabler.

Melange - Also called the Spice. Makes space travel possible. Can be addictive; whites of the eyes turn blue as a side effect of Spice addiction.

Repressitol - Supresses unpleasant memories.

Serum 114 - Injected during the Ludovico treatment, which uses a series of violent images forced on the viewer in order to cure violent urges in criminals.

Sex Packets - Ingestion of a packet makes one feel as if they are having a particular kind of sexual experience. Sold illicitly by street dealers and come in several varieties.

Stimutacs - "Herbal dietary supplement", produced from all natural ingredients (99% kelp, 1% fugu tetrodotoxin other). Highly hallucinogenic, euphoric stimulant.

Synthemesc - Ingredient in milk-plus, sold in the Korova Milkbar. Synthemesc is a hallucinogen, its name derived from "synthetic mescaline".

Vellocet - Ingredient in milk-plus, sold in the Korova Milkbar. Produces alertness and ultra-violent tendencies. As you can tell, I like A Clockwork Orange.

Admantium to Ziff

2005-01-17T23:04:00.000-07:00

Fictional Elements [Part 2 of 3]

Fictional compounds and alloys. You have to be a real geek to know most of these. I guess I'm showing my D&D roots this week.

Adamantium - The strongest metal known in the universe of Marvel Comics. Once cast, this alloy cannot be bent, blunted, or broken. It is used in weapons, notably Wolverine's claws and various robots. Captain America's shield is sometimes said to be Adamantium, but is actually an unknown alloy of Vibranium and iron. Adamantium was discovered by accident by Dr. Myron MacLain in an attempt to recreate the shield's metal.

Black Smoke - Toxic gas used by Martian invaders. Spectrographic analysis shows an unusual triplet of blue lines.

Blastolene - Fictional product ('highly concentrated distillation of pure cozmic essence') purportedly produced by the Blastolene Corporation, sponsors of two v-12 tank-engined behemoth automobiles, including Jay Leno's Blastolene Special.

Cheddite - Made by irradiating Cheddar cheese, it enabled faster-than-light travel. Not to be confused with the real class of explosive materials cheddites.

Chemical X - A mysterious chemical created by Professor Utonium. When he accidentally mixed it with sugar, spice, and everything nice, it created The Powerpuff Girls.

Cortosis - One of the few materials that lightsabers cannot cut.

Ferrocrete - A type of concrete containing, amongst other minerals, iron. It is unusually tough and resistant to artillery fire and is mostly used for Imperial fortifications, although some starship hulls are composed of ferrocrete.

Flubber - A rubberlike substance that rebounds from impacts with greater force than the original strike. This unlikely property leads to interesting applications such as leap-enhancing shoe soles and a flying car.

Nara - Super hard material made by compressing rock with very high pressure and heat. Used to coat tunnels and mine shafts to prevent their collapse.

Plasteel - Hard yet moldable; used frequently as armor.

Polydichloric Euthimal (PDE) - Used in Terminator 2 as a high explosive.

Porkanium Alloy - The material the SS Swine Trek is made of in Pigs In Space. Parody of Titanium.

Quicksilver - Liquid that bends visible light around its surface; a thin coat of it, however, can shift UV into the visible spectrum. Also acts as a drug when in the bloodstream.

Smilex - Poison created by The Joker, kills within minutes, leaves victims with a rictus grin on their faces.

Thiotimoline - Conceived and described in a spoof scientific paper entitled The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline in 1948. Thiotimoline has the property of dissolving in water slightly before the actual contact with water.

Tiberium - Highly valuable crystal in the Command and Conquer series, usually green, sometimes blue. Extremely toxic and mutagenic to terrestrial life-forms. Tiberium is used as a resource for mining.

Trioxyn Gas - Gas that brings the dead back to life as zombies.

Ziff - An unknown metal mentioned in the Book of Mormon (Mosiah 11:3). In Hebrew, this term means brightness, i.e. metallic brightness. It is possibly a mistranslation of zinc. Others have speculated that this refers to Orichalcum, providing a link with Atlantis.

Kryptonite and Balonium

2005-01-17T21:25:00.000-07:00

Fictional Elements [Part 1 of 3]

A fictional chemical substance is a chemical element, isotope, compound or mineral that exists only in works of fiction (usually fantasy or science fiction). It should be noted that no actual periodic elements end in '-ite', though many minerals have names with this suffix.

Balonium - A fictional element used to describe something as impossible or nonsensical: "Your explanations are pure, weapons-grade balonium!"

Dilithium - A reddish-orange crystal capable of moderating matter-antimatter annihilations, used in the reactors of many species' starships and a key system of faster-than-light warp drives. Unrelated to the real-life element lithium.

Dolemite - The blackest, hardest element of them all. That's Dolemite, baby! Dolemite sometimes contains fossilized animals. It is resistant to the heat of the Earth's core. Dolemite won't cop out when the heat's about.

Illudium Phosdex & Illudium Q-36 - Also known as the shaving cream atom, it was found only on Planet X, which was unfortunately destroyed when both Duck Dodgers and Marvin the Martian tried to conquer it for Earth and Mars. The "Q-36 Illudium Space Modulator" was used by Marvin the Martian as a planet-destroying explosive.

Kryptonite - Usually a green crystal, sometimes other colors. Most Kryptonite was created during the destruction of Superman's home planet Krypton; exposure to it is highly detrimental to Kryptonians (prolonged exposure can also harm Earth-humans). Can be used as a power source or ornament, but is more frequently used as a weapon against Kryptonians. The most notable variant color is red kryptonite, which induces mental (as opposed to green's physical) aberrations. An Action Comics story by John Byrne established Kryptonite as element 126 on the periodic table of elements.

Plutonite - Oakley uses this name for the polycarbonate lenses in their sunglasses.

Turbonium - The focal point of the first commercial for the turbo-charged version of the New Beetle. In theory, it was the element from which the turbo version of the car was forged.

Upsidaisium - Upsidaisium is a metal that is lighter than air and can be obtained by mining in upsidaisium-rich areas (The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show).

Fascism in America

2005-01-16T02:17:00.000-07:00

Political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt recently wrote an article about fascism ("Fascism Anyone?," Free Inquiry, Spring 2003, page 20).

Studying the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and Pinochet (Chile), Dr. Britt found they all had 14 elements in common. He calls these the identifying characteristics of fascism. The excerpt is in accordance with the magazine's policy. A few parts have been paraphrased by me, but nothing has been taken out of context. Any and all art has been added by me. Take it how you will, it's open for interpretation.

The 14 characteristics of fascism are:

Powerful and Continuing Nationalism

Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottoes, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays. Along with catchy slogans, pride in the military and demands for unity are common themes in expressing this nationalism. It is usually coupled with a suspicion of things foreign that often bordered on xenophobia.

Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights

Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc. Through clever use of propaganda, the population is brought to accept these human rights abuses by marginalizing, even demonizing, those being targeted.

Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause

The most significant common thread among regimes is the use of scapegoating as a means to divert the people's attention from other problems, to shift blame for failures, and to channel frustration in controlled directions. The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists; secularists; terrorists, etc. Active opponents of these regimes are inevitably labeled as terrorists and dealt with accordingly.

Supremacy of the Military

Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized. The military is seen as an expression of nationalism, and is used whenever possible to assert national goals, intimidate other nations, and increase the power and prestige of the ruling elite.

Military: 399 billion. Everything Else: 383 billion.

Rampant Sexism

The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy. These attitudes are usually codified in Draconian laws that enjoy strong support by the orthodox religion of the country.

Controlled Mass Media

Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Methods include the control of licensing and access to resources, economic pressure, appeals to patriotism, and implied threats. The leaders of the mass media are often politically compatible with the power elite. The result is usually success in keeping the general public unaware of the regimes’ excesses. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

Obsession with National Security

Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses. Inevitably, a national security apparatus is under direct control of the ruling elite. It is usually an instrument of oppression. Its actions are justified under the rubric of protecting “national security,” and questioning its activities is portrayed as unpatriotic or even treasonous.

Religion and Government are Intertwined

Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

Corporate Power is Protected

Although the personal life of ordinary citizens is under strict control, the ability of large corporations to operate in relative freedom is not compromised. The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

Labor Power is Suppressed

Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed. Under some regimes, being poor is considered akin to a vice.

Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts

Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.

Obsession with Crime and Punishment

Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

Rampant Cronyism and Corruption

Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

Fraudulent Elections

Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

Notice any similarities?

Me in a nutshell.

2005-01-15T11:51:00.000-07:00

I miss Bill Watterson.

...And speaking of stupid yellow "Support Our Troops" ribbons...

Heh.

Finish the sentence!!!

2005-01-11T16:34:00.000-07:00

Preacher dies with heaven on his lips

(linky...)

OVIEDO, Florida (AP) -- A Presbyterian minister collapsed and died at the pulpit after saying "And when I go to heaven...," his colleague said.

The Rev. Jack Arnold, 69, was nearing the end of his sermon Sunday at Covenant Presbyterian Church when he grabbed the podium before falling to the floor, said the Rev. Michael S. Beats, the church's associate pastor.

Several parishioners with medical backgrounds tried to revive Arnold and paramedics were called, but he appeared to die instantly, Beats said.

Arnold had been the senior minister at the church in this Orlando suburb until the late 1990s when he began traveling to Africa and the Middle East to teach pastors.

The cause of death was believed to be cardiac arrest. He had bypass surgery five years earlier.

I just want to know what the hell he was going to say! How the hell are you going to die, halfway through a sentence?!? What a ripoff.

What do YOU think he was going to say?

"And when I go to heaven..."

...I hope God forgives me for all those altar boys I sodomized.
...I'm going to take a piss on this stupid church, and every moron in it.
...I will organize a coup to overthrow God himself.
...I'll be damn surprised, because I killed a hitchhiker back in '85.
...I'll make sure to ask God if he is really a Republican, and why he keeps giving this idiot president of ours his support.
...I gonna light up the biggest fuckin' joint you've ever seen!
...I'll be sure to ask what this '42' thing is all about. Doug Adams should be available.

Personally, I think he was a pederast, and God was smiting him, just to strike fear into the hearts of those who were present. ZAP!!

Art isn't that damn subjective.

2005-01-11T00:05:00.000-07:00

Now showing at the Axel Raben Gallery in New York:

Cum Shot Series

Axel Raben Gallery: Ashkan Sahihi
For a weirdly compelling portrait series titled "Cum Shots," Sahihi asked his male and female sitters to bring along a male partner to ejaculate on their face just before the photo was taken. Because the subjects are seated fully clothed before a neutral studio backdrop, the results buzz with the tension between formality and abandon. Confronting the camera with semen splattered across their cheeks, each of these people has an odd post-coital glow--a flush of ebbing excitement that leaves them emotionally, totally naked.
-Vince Aletti, The Village Voice

I don't know about anyone else, but to me, the "flush of ebbing excitement" looks more like an expression of "oh shit, I can believe that someone just jerked off on me!" Someone, please, please, PLEASE explain to me how this is art! It's a fucking FACIAL! It's the last 20 seconds of every porno you have ever seen!

This is art:

This is not:

Now, maybe I'm not that cultured. Perhaps I am just another midwestern S.I.W.B. (Standard Issue White Boy) who can't tell a salad fork from a dessert fork (dessert is on the top, salad on the outside, right?) Maybe I lack the IQ to grasp the subtleties of the photograph. This might be so classy that it just blew my mind. It could be a bold statement about the vulnerability of the human race, and how we struggle to maintain our dignity and a sense of normalcy, even when we are extremely uncomfortable and even disgusted by the things we do and have done to us.

Or maybe some pervert with a camera likes watching people beat off on each other.

drool

2005-01-10T16:06:00.000-07:00

Ohhhh yeah... If I had a first-born child, it would be traded for this without a second though:

Yeah, that thang's got a Hemi. In fact, it's got two.

In a surprise move Sunday, DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group unveiled the Jeep Hurricane concept, a brawny off-roader powered by two of the automaker's famous V-8 engines and an answer to critics who believe the famously rugged Jeep brand is going soft.

"We haven't forgotten, nor will we ever forget, what makes a Jeep a Jeep," said Chrysler CEO Dieter Zetsche, standing next to the open-top monster at the 2005 North American International Auto Show.

Chrysler will more than double the Jeep lineup by 2007, beginning this year with a luxury SUV and later with expected car-based models, but Hurricane makes clear that Jeep is not ready to abandon its off-road heritage.

The Hurricane's two engines -- one in front, one back -- combine to make 670 horsepower, and offer 740 foot-pounds of torque. It has 14 inches of ground clearance, and does 0 to 60 in less than 5 seconds. The signature feature is a steering system that allows it to turn in a complete circle in the same spot.

While Hurricane is a concept, Zetsche said patents developed could show up on future Jeeps.

If you'll excuse me, I need to go change pants. Mine are sticky.

By the way, I need you to vote for a winner for this weeks "Sandy Vagina" award. There's currently a 3 way tie, and I need a breaker before I can announce the winner. I already have 3 contestants for next week lined up. This is going to be a fun addition to my blog, I can already tell. Good thing there's so many morans out there.

B.S. [Week 3] ~TCL's View

2005-01-09T13:32:00.000-07:00

Come check out the fun at Blog Spectrum!

[Blog Spectrum - WEEK 3/4, Part 1]

Question: What changes need to be made to schools, and our current education system?
Answer: More money and resources.

The Cunning Linguist Writes:

School is teachers who don't know, teaching facts that aren't true to kids who don't care.
-Matt Groening - Life in Hell-

There you go. That's my article in a nutshell. See you all next week!

aside: "What do you mean, make it longer? What ever happened to Keep It Simple, Stupid?"

*sigh*

Well, I guess I should attempt to elaborate. American education is riddled with problems. According to a December 17th, 2003 study by the NAEP, in fourth grade math, in only three of the ten jurisdictions polled did the percentage of kids scoring in NAEP's "proficient" range rise above the teens—and in just one did it beat the national average. In eighth-grade reading, at least two-fifths of the students were "below basic" in seven cities. In the six lowest-scoring cities, the percentages of reading-proficient eighth graders were grim: Chicago - 15 percent, Houston - 14 percent, Atlanta - 11 percent, Los Angeles - 11 percent, District of Columbia - 10 percent, Cleveland - 10 percent.

Professors Diane Ravitch and Chester E. Finn, Jr. did some research, and published their findings in an book called, What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know?. They found that three quarters of the students polled did not know that Columbus discovered the New World before 1750. One third did not know that the phrase, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" comes from the Declaration of Independence; some attributed it to the Gettysburg Address. Seventy percent could not identify the Magna Carta. Forty percent are ignorant of the fact that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor occurred between 1939 and 1943. Almost 75 percent can not place Lincoln's presidency within the correct twenty-year span. Almost 50 percent can not place Franklin Roosevelt's presidency in the years between 1929 and 1946.

All this erroneous information eventually leads to things like 41 percent of the public believing that Saddam had something to do with 9/11, or 37 percent of them believing that some of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi. Then we wonder why other countries label us "stupid Americans."

Internationally, how does our country rank when it comes to education? Well, we scored just above Lithuania when it came to math, but the Slovak Republic, Latvia, Estonia and Hungary all do better. Kids in high school today aren't much smarter than they were 10 years ago. We're a 'C' average nation. Mediocre is better than lousy, right? We may not be the brightest, but hey! We're not Mexico!

Part of the problem can be attributed to the money (or lack of) that we spend on education. Consider, for a moment, the 2004 Federal Discretionary Budget. Our budget was 782 billion dollars. Of that 782 billion dollars, The Department of Education only received 53.137 billion. We gave more money to the FCC (2.81b) than we did to Historically Black Colleges (2.77b). We spent 3 times as much money on funding for the V-22 Osprey Aircraft (30 deaths and counting!), as we did for the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities and the Museum and Library Services combined (.511b). How about Reading First programs (1.15b)? Nah, let's spend it on Foreign Military Financing (4.14b) instead.

Perhaps if we spend more money on things like education and tools for education (libraries, museums, art, music and culture), we might get more kids interested in learning on their own. Back in Illinois, my school took us on field trips to Shedd Aquarium, the Museum of Science and Industry, and the Museum of Contemporary Art. It got me interested in learning about things outside of school, and instead of sitting in class, staring at the chalkboard for 6 hours a day, we got to watch SCUBA divers feed sharks, and see rocks that fell from space! I became extremely interested in geology for a number of years, all because of trips to museums. In turn, I went to the library to learn more about xeolinths, lava flows and geologic faults, which nurtured an interest about natural disasters and the earth in general, which is a hobby that I still pursue to this day.

In fact, I learned so very little in high school, that I got incredibly bored and left after 3 years, took my GED (Good Enough Diploma), and scored in the upper 90th percentile in every subject but math. Even though I enjoyed most of my classes, I was bored stiff when it came to robotically memorizing facts that, in some cases, were completely erroneous. Watered down textbooks, reading assignments like "Go Ask Alice (outdated anti-drug propoganda), and authoritarian rules (I got in trouble for finding a few security holes in our school computer system, and suggesting how they be fixed. Punished for attempting to educate others, imagine that...) lead to me ditching school and avoiding any and all classes that didn't interest me. I learned more from my Science Fiction and Fantasy class by reading Bradbury, Asimov and Orwell, than I did from any of the other classes I took.

Public education is in need of a major overhaul. We can't continue on with things the way they are now. I'll get more into how things could be changed with my next article about private and home-schools.

On second thought, to hell with educating our children. Let's pick up a few TRIDENT II Ballistic Missiles instead.

Go figure.

2005-01-09T02:27:00.000-07:00

Link courtesy of Daily Traversal.

Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence

You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well.
An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly.
You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view.
A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary.

You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

Bitch of the Week

2005-01-07T15:30:00.000-07:00

It's time for another award. I know I already have the "Golden Dumpies", and I am now the proud recipient of KirkKitsch's "The Nell Carter 'Gimme a Break' Award For Disgruntled Bloggers." But that's just not enough. So I have created the "Sandy Vagina" award.

QUITCHER BITCHIN!

This prestegious honor will be given to the person or persons who exhibit an utter disregard for common sense, intelligent thought, rational ideas and open-mindedness. Only the top jackass will be eligible to win. No purchase necessary, void in Tennessee. I will leave it up to my readers to decide who should win. 1 vote per person. The person with the Sandiest Vagina will receive an email from me, letting them know that they should contribute to society by taking themselves OUT of it. They will also receive a coupon for $1.00 off "Summer Breeze" douche, which they can redeem, and hopefully flush the grittiness from their nether regions.

Let's meet the contestants!

Contestant #1 is a paralegal hailing from Cleveland, OH. Austin Aitken is yet another moron who feels he needs to sue the creator of all things evil. Television! When not actively campaigning for the PTC, or writing letters to Michael Powell of the FCC, Austin Aitken spends his spare time filing bogus lawsuits. What a wiener.... er.. winner!

Man sues "Fear Factor" for $2.5 million

Let me get this straight. The contestants on the show ate blended rats for a CHANCE at winning 50 grand, and you think you're entitled to 2.5 million because you couldn't even WATCH it from the comfort of your home? You sir, are a pussy. Grow a pair, and keep the TV remote in your hand at all times. You may have yakked all over the floor and smashed your empty head on a door, "causing suffering, injury and great pain", but you aren't even worthy to receive Pepto-Bismol, much less 2.5 million dollars. As NBC put it, "We believe that the claim is completely without merit." Hmm, ya think? Chances are, we'll see more about this when the Stella Awards come out later this year.

Contestant #2 is a hateful and fanatical "Anti-Liberal", hailing from the great state of Maine! Jesse Zack believes he has the gift of vituperation. Unfortunately, intelligence not only takes a backseat to unreasonable thought, but it is tied up and gagged in the trunk. A prime example of yet another dim bulb who blindly follows the words of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly. I would describe him as a "conservative Michael Moore", but that's being too kind to Michael Moore. Jay-Z was nominated due to the following post on The Jesse Factor (different Jesse, I've got nothing against that one), which is usually a pretty humorous and, for the most part, intelligent blog.

Gay marriage is wrong, abortion is for whores, and sub-human Liberals are allied with Terrorists! Oh noze!

Here's the gist of the asshattery in question:
"Liberalism is the manifestation of fallistic thinking and the mental breakdown when displaying judgment."
"Liberals are the dregs of society because they seek to ruin society as the constitutional framers had set it up."
"Liberals are such fucking maggots."
"Gay marriage is WRONG."
"Liberals are WRONG and/or piles of shit."
"Liberals prey on the weak."

Such compelling arguments! How can I not agree with blanket statements about gay marriage, like "Marriage already has had a consistent definition for several millennia, you self-centered deviants."? You know what else has had a constant definition for several millennia? Slavery, racism, cultural and ethnic bias, sexism and blind faith. Hop into your Wayback Machine with Sherman and Mr. Peabody, and go back to the 1920's to see if you can keep the 19th Amendment from being ratified. Or better yet, go back to the late 1700's, and try to keep Massachusetts from abolishing slavery. It must have been John Kerry's fault. That damn liberal hippy.

Just for fun, I hope that your firstborn daughter will be gang-raped by angry black men, forced to have an illegitimate mulatto child (because she didn't bother to use protection, how careless of her) and then goes on to be a lesbian on welfare. You are a poor man's Maddox. Nothing more. To use your own words against you, "Descrepencies in basic fundamentals of beliefs show you to be WRONG."

In the future, please note that intelligent debate does not consist of thought-terminating cliches, libelous claims and heresay. Intelligent debate requires fact-checking, citing your sources, and the ability to keep an open mind. Write it down, memorize it and practice it.

Contestant #3 is Lucius Robinson of Detroit, MI.

Swearing makes baby Jeebus cry

Little Diamond Robinson got a Cabbage Patch Doll for Christmas. But the serial number included the word FUCK! Obviously, this warped the young girl's mind (she was the one who noticed the foul language on the box, so she had to have known what it meant), and it completely ruined Christmas! Gosh dang it all to heck! A randomly generated sequence of letters and numbers destroyed the holiest of all Pagan holidays! I guess she won't be able to go to college now that she has suffered such an immesurable shock. It will take years of therapy to reverse the damage that was done by the devils at The Play-Along Company.

on the same note...

Contestant #4 is America!

The F-Bomb

Congratulations, America! You have shown that you really DO subscribe to herd-mentality. Hundreds of thousands of people complained to the FCC about wardrobe-malfunctions, curse words and violence, but not a single one of you had anything to say when Vince Neil said "Happy Fucking New Year" on the Tonight Show. Either 2005 is going to be the year of tolerance, or the PTC has yet to get involved and file multiple complaints about how TV is destroying civilization as we now know it.

The final contestant is Clayton County Sheriff Victor Hill of Jonesboro, GA. On his first day on the job, the new sheriff called 27 employees into his office, stripped them of their badges, fired them, and had rooftop snipers stand guard as they were escorted out the door.

Shake things up, Cletus!

Apparently, he believes that the new sheriff has the right to shake up the department in whatever way he feels necessary. He told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he fired the employees to "maintain the integrity of the department." Yes, nothing maintains integrity of the Sheriff's department like canning employees and making them leave the building under the watchful eye of a sniper. A super classy move from a super classy redneck on a power trip. I pity the people who live in that area. No doubt he views it as "MY town, so y'all better respek the rules! Yeee-haw!" Too bad that Department of Homeland Security position was already taken...

Now, vote away! Who will win? The lawsuit-happy puker, the angry anti-liberal, the deeply offended family, America, or the White Trash Sheriff? Place your votes now!! DO IT!!!

A tsunami of visitors.

2005-01-05T15:38:00.000-07:00

Top Search Engine Hits:

Tsunami pictures Thailand (or some variation of)
Tsunami pictures India
Carmello Anthony's tattoos
Dehli public school transcript
Convoluted (of course)
bdsm child custody pennsylvania court
"beth robbins" colorado
the coolest urinals
Filthy Garlic

Top Keyword Hits

24 4.03% convoluted
21 3.52% insanity
18 3.02% linkmbqp8ywgksgjogrishcom
10 1.68% pictures
10 1.68% the
9 1.51% zesty
9 1.51% commercial
9 1.51% chicken
8 1.34% tsunami
8 1.34% linguist
8 1.34% cunning
8 1.34% and
6 1.00% vang
6 1.00% artest
6 1.00% taco
5 0.84% save
5 0.84% nfsu2
5 0.84% free
5 0.84% meth
5 0.84% ron
5 0.84% dog
5 0.84% bundchen
5 0.84% bell
4 0.67% spongebob
4 0.67% pizza
4 0.67% nomaddox
4 0.67% chai
4 0.67% pics
4 0.67% bowl
4 0.67% border
3 0.50% robbins
3 0.50% carmello
3 0.50% beth
3 0.50% thailand
3 0.50% game
3 0.50% lost
3 0.50% comments
3 0.50% tactics
3 0.50% scare
3 0.50% decries
2 0.33% garlic
2 0.33% filthy
2 0.33% colorado
2 0.33% child
2 0.33% anthonys
2 0.33% unedited
2 0.33% marijuana
2 0.33% india
2 0.33% glacoma
2 0.33% dreidl

My picture blog started out last week with about 200 hits in 6 months time. As of today, I am at over 14 THOUSAND. The busiest day was 3,500 hits in 24 hours. I received visitors from every major continent, with the exception of Antartica. The closest I got was Greenland. Not only that, but I am in the top 10 for Google, Excite, Alta Vista, Yahoo and MSN Search when it comes to "Tsunami pictures." I had a French Press Agency contact me about photo publication, and have had emails sent to me from people all over the world. No major media mentions, like Cheese and Crackers and Pundit Guy, but that's ok. That's a bit too much exposure for me.

I guess that was my 15 minutes, eh?

Beating a dead horse.

2005-01-04T15:45:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I know I have complained about them before, but these stupid damn "Patriot Ribbons" are pissing me off again. So this time, I wrote a letter to the editor of one of Denver's major newspapers. I'll post any comments that come in (assuming that this letter is even published.)

Support our Chinese magnet manufacturers!

I drive through the Denver Tech Center on a daily basis, and I have begun to notice a large amount of the yellow "Support our Troops" magnetic ribbons proudly affixed to the tailgates of automobiles driven by our country's most heroically patriotic citizens (similar to the miniature American flags that appeared after 9/11.) You can't drive 100 yards these days without seeing some variation of the aforementioned faux-ribbon magnet plastered on the back of a minivan or SUV. Are 4 magnets on the back of your H2 REALLY necessary? Does that mean that you support our troops more than people with just 1 ribbon? Do the people who so proudly plop down $5.00 per magnet on their local convenience store counter ever stop to wonder how their purchase actually supports our troops?

I did, and decided to do a little research by asking several local ribbon retailers exactly where the proceeds from the sales of these noble accoutrements end up, and the results didn't exactly surprise me. Four out of five local retailers said essentially the same thing; the sale of a ribbon is like the sale of a bag of chips or soda, and is treated as general merchandise. The fifth retailer failed to understand the relevance of my inquiry and after telling me that he was "making a mint off of the ribbons", he promptly sent me on my way.

My psuedo-scientific research didn't stop there. A quick Google query of "Support Our Troops Magnetic Ribbons" yields a myriad of results that tells the real truth: there is no charity, no troop fund, no support for our troops. Ribbons are sold in mass quantities for as little as $0.40 each, and suggested retail is $5.00. Some sites even offer the suggestion that the profits you reap for the resale of the ribbons could be used for a charity if you want. If you look closely at the back of some of the ribbons, you will see a small "Made In China" etching near the bottom (the very definition of irony.) Purchasing a foreign-made magnet at a 1,250% markup isn't really support, now is it?

Does the display of a ribbon on your car or truck mean you support the troops? Maybe. But who doesn't? I don't know of a single person, whether they lean to the left or to the right, who would say they don't support our troops.

My advice? Spend five minutes online searching for a charity that actually supports our troops in a tangible capacity! I did an online search for "Troop Care Package" and yielded over 38,000 results, many of which will use your donation to directly send a troop a care package in Iraq or Afghanistan. I believe our troops would much rather receive a package of reading material, sunscreen, chewing gum, beef jerky or even Top Ramen, than know that citizens back in the States support them by ruining the paintjob on their 12-miles-per-gallon-behemoth.

If you have a family member currently serving overseas, then the ribbon can be a nice way to let others know this. But please, make sure that when you buy one, that the proceeds are going to fund programs and services that actually support our troops!! The USO is a good start. www.siyellowribbon.com and www.defendamerica.mil are a few others. So before you spend your hard earned money on a yellow magnet, make sure that it is a legitimate charity that you are giving to, and not some shady businessman who is making a profit off of your "support."

Cordially,
(My Name Here)

Bored? Yes. Out of things to complain about? NEVER!!!

Discoveries

2005-01-02T13:43:00.000-07:00

Interesting things I learned at the New Year's Eve party I attended.

1) If you take 1/2 shot of vodka, 1/2 shot of Frangellico and slam it, then follow it up by biting a piece of lemon coated in sugar, it tastes exactly like chocolate cake. I don't know how, but it does.

2) Getting drunk off of chocolate cake shots is surprisingly easy.

3) Cats don't like being force-fed prozac.

4) Drunk people like watching you attempt to force-feed prozac to a cat.

5) Chain-mail swimsuits with a thong bottom apparently are quite uncomfortable to wear.

6) The japanese spoken in the Kill Bill series is atrocious.

7) People still attempt to throw themselves off of bridges and onto the highway on December 31st. They rarely succeed.

8) If you are driving on said highway when said person attempts to throw himself off of said bridge, and get stuck in a loooong traffic jam, you will yell at said idiot to hurry the hell up and finish the damn job already.

9) Using the word "said" 4 times in 1 sentence makes said sentence look strange.

10) Sitting in a hot tub while drunk will cause you to do one of 3 things. Get sick, pass out or urinate. My girlfriend got sick. I passed out. Hopefully no one urinated.

11) 2005 can't be any worse than 2004. Can it?

Can it?!?

Greetings from ~tcl

2004-12-31T13:13:00.000-07:00

I just want to wish everyone a happy and safe new year. I'm finally moved into my new place, my 'puter is set up, and I will be back to posting on a regular basis this weekend.

Go out, have fun, get drunk, drive fast, take chances!

Pictures of the tsunami

2004-12-27T21:22:00.000-07:00

Hey all.

Just wanted to let everyone know that I have posted some incredible pictures of the tsunami that struck Thailand, India and elsewhere on my picture blog, Convoluted Perceptions. Go check them out. In 3 days I have had over 4,000 hits, and the videos are sucking up about 10 gigs of bandwidth a day, so view them now, while you still can. I have about 10 - 15 videos total, so email me if you want a copy sent to you via email, or if you'd like a compress file with all the photos I have collected.

And while you're at it, here's an excellent point brought up by Bob Harris:

Writing from Tasmania, which is a great place I'd love to write more about and surely will someday. But I just don't feel like it right now.

I wish I knew how to do more to help the people who need it right this minute. I wish I knew how to get my government to behave without its usual level of shameless self-absorption and shortsightedness.

$35 million. Swell.

The death toll is rapidly approaching six digits -- imagine 30 September 11ths, if you wish, with all the sudden speed, chaos, and complete wreckage of human life that entails -- with the number of affected people surely ten times that high. And the richest country in the world, the one which believes itself to be singular among nations (thus ironically fulfilling the notion before the neurons have even cooled), can only muster a few dollars per life destroyed.

What's $35 million?

The amount it takes to fix up one park in Pittsburgh.

It's exactly one new school in Montclair, New Jersey.

It's what Dick Cheney put in his own back pocket by ditching his Halliburton stock.

And it's one four-thousandth of what the U.S. has spent invading and occupying Iraq.

Tens of thousands of dead in a dozen countries on two continents, after a disaster so large it literally changed the map of Indonesia and completely obliterated the southernmost tip of India.

Survival infrastructures are simply gone now in many places. Famine and pestilence are likely to take at least as many lives if the rest of us fellow humans don't do enough to help right now.

$35 million. George W. Bush is telling the largest Muslim nation on Earth that the massive destruction in Aceh is worth less than the United States spends on occupying Iraq every day.

Obscenity.

It's a family name

2004-12-25T10:46:00.000-07:00

What were his parents smoking when they named him? What was he smoking when he changed it? Is he a big Tom Clancy fan? I wonder if he changed his last name to Constant. Or is that too much geek humor for Christmas morning?

(Nexus...)

SANTA FE, N.M. - Just in time for Christmas, Snaphappy Fishsuit Mokiligon got a gift from the state Court of Appeals: a name change. The Albuquerque resident's new name will be Variable.

The appeals court ruled this week that a state district judge in Bernalillo County didn't provide sufficient reason for denying Mokiligon's name change application.

The three-judge panel issued a formal opinion in order to clarify the standards that district courts must use in such cases.

While some states require petitioners to show good reasons for name changes, New Mexico doesn't, the court said.

That means it's up to the court or a third party to come up with objections that override a petitioner's right to a name change.

Typically, those can include an unworthy motive, the possibility of fraud, or a name "that is bizarre, unduly lengthy, ridiculous or offensive to common decency and good taste," said the appeals court, citing a Colorado ruling that there must be a substantial reason to deny the petition.

In Mokiligon's case, state District Judge Linda Vanzi found that the name change "is offensive to even the broadest accepted notions of common decency and good sense, and is otherwise contrary to the public good," according to the opinion.

But the district court never held a hearing — Mokiligon was told by mail he was denied — and didn't provide factual support for its decision, the appeals court said.

"Thus, there appears to have been no showing of wrongful or fraudulent purpose, and the name 'Variable' does not appear obviously offensive," Judge A. Joseph Alarid wrote.

Mokiligon, who represented himself, had filed seven petitions since September 2003 for name changes, and all were dismissed.

He said in his handwritten appeal that his right "to a name of my choosing" had been violated.

"My name is mine to define," he said.

The court cautioned in its opinion that Mokiligon must stick to Variable as his legal name, and that he must use it "unless or until he changes his name again through a recognized legal process."

Mokiligon could not be reached for comment. (That's because his name is Variable now! You just said so!!)

B.S. [Week 1] ~TCL's View

2004-12-25T02:50:00.000-07:00

[Blog Spectrum - WEEK 1]

Question: What is the biggest threat to America?
Answer: Americans.

The Cunning Linguist Writes:

This is a good broad question to start us out, but it's a bit vague; personally, I think that we can group our biggest threats into 4 categories. Political, Social, Economical and Military (ideas for later topics, Casual?) That being said, I wrote this because I feel that the greatest threat to our lives, and or way of living, is ourselves.

We are a nation divided. It should come to no surprise to you if you even glance at the newspaper. Both parties spew animosity and hatred towards each other. We have not made much of an effort to work together, united as Americans, instead of seperated by affiliation. We need to put the election to rest, retire the bitching and the gloating, and focus on something productive. For starters, we could pay more attention to life outside of the US. Let's be honest; when it comes to foreign affairs, we would rather watch Survivor - Africa than the BBC. This is made painfully obvious when you turn on the television.

Watch your local evening newscast. Out of the 45 minutes of actual news, perhaps 3 - 5 minutes are dedicated to world events. We are being sheltered from all the bad things that happen elsewhere. Collectively, we are like small children who put their fingers in their ears when it's time to go to bed. "Lalalalalala! If I don't hear it, then it's not true!" We don't want to see the dead soldiers. We don't want to see innocent civillian hostages being beheaded. We don't want to see suicide bombings. Well, we're told that we don't want to see them, anyway.

Because of this report-only-the-good-things mentality that the press has adopted, and the listen-to-only-the-good-things mentality we have adopted, we tend to miss it when other countries voice their opinions about America. Here's some examples of how the general population of the planet Earth views the US of A. I didn't cover all the continents, but here's a smattering for you.

Canada:

According to a Harris Interactive Poll, most Canadians, like most Europeans, are clearly able to differentiate in their attitudes between different aspects of the United States, its government and its policies. Substantial majorities of Canadians hold negative views of President Bush (by 67% to 17%), of U.S. policy in Iraq (by 65% to 21%), and of American foreign policy since 2000 (by 60% to 15%). (1)

Unsurprisingly, American perceptions of this country are generally much more positive than the perceptions of Europeans and Canadians. Majorities have positive opinions not only of the American people but also (by 54% to 22%) of American values, American food (by 76% to 9%), the quality of life in America (by 72% to 15%), and of the American system of government (by 59% to 23%). (2)

"In 1981, only 8 percent of Canadians had an unfavorable view of the United States. Now, 45 percent have an unfavorable view," said Michael Adams, a veteran pollster and philosophical proponent of the view that the two societies are diverging. "There has never been that kind of lopsided skew." (3)

Europe:

At least seven in 10 [people] in France, Germany and Spain said they have an unfavorable view of the U.S. president. Just over half of the French and Germans said they have an unfavorable view of Americans in general, and about half of Spaniards felt that way. (4)

[Germany], America's staunchest ally on the continent during the Cold War, has strongly opposed the drive toward war [in Iraq]. In June of last year, 61 percent of Germans had a favorable opinion of the U.S. That number plunged this year to 25 percent.

In France, where respondents last year held a 63 percent mostly favorable view of the United States, the number has fallen to 31 percent. Similarly, in Italy, the favorable opinions fell to 34 percent from 70 percent.

Only those in two nations - Poland and Britain - held views toward America that were more favorable than not. But that support has sharply diminished over the past year. Poles, who have long embraced the United States because of family ties and as protection against stronger neighbors, held a view that was 79 percent favorable of the United States last year. The new poll places that positive view at only 50 percent.

Last year, 75 percent of Britons had a generally positive view of the United States. This year, that number fell to 48 percent, while negative views more than doubled.

The United States did not fare any better with other partners in the anti-Iraq coalition. The Spanish, for example, held a 74 percent unfavorable opinion of the United States, and 79 percent of them opposed Bush's policies, even as that country's prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, hews tightly to Washington's strategy. (5)

Mexico

A majority of people in Canada, Mexico and five European countries have an unfavorable view of the role that President Bush plays in world affairs, Associated Press polls found. The AP polls were conducted by Ipsos, an international polling firm.

Only in the United States did a majority of those questioned, 57 percent, have a positive view of President Bush's role.

Just over half in Mexico and Italy had a negative view of Mr. Bush's role. In Britain, the closest U.S. ally in the war in Iraq, and in Canada, two-thirds had a negative view. (6)

Middle-East:

In Zogby's 2002 survey, 76 percent of Egyptians had a negative attitude toward the United States, compared with 98 percent this year. In Morocco, 61 percent viewed the country unfavorably in 2002, but in two years, that number has jumped to 88 percent. In Saudi Arabia, such responses rose from 87 percent in 2002 to 94 percent in June. Attitudes were virtually unchanged in Lebanon but improved slightly in the UAE, from 87 percent who said in 2002 that they disliked the United States to 73 percent this year.

Those polled said their opinions were shaped by U.S. policies, rather than by values or culture. When asked: "What is the first thought when you hear 'America'?" respondents overwhelmingly said: "Unfair foreign policy." (7)

Arab Attitudes Toward the US: June 2004/April 2002

Country - Favorable/Unfavorable

Morocco: 11/88 (2004) vs. 38/61 (2002)
Saudi Arabia: 4/94 (2004) vs. 12/87 (2002)
Jordan: 15/78 (2004) vs. 34/61 (2002)
Lebanon: 20/69 (2004) vs. 26/70 (2002)
UAE: 14/73 (2004) vs. 11/87 (2002)
Egypt: 2/98 (2004) vs. 15/76 (2002)

In five of the six countries we measured in both 2002 and 2004 (Morocco, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt) there was a decline in the US’s favorable ratings. This decline was most significant in Morocco, Jordan, and Egypt. Only in the UAE was there a slight increase in the positive rating. (8)

Poll Chart (9)

As you can see, we rank pretty high on more than a few shit lists. Now, I know that you've probably seen these floating around over the past few weeks, but I reposted a few of the transcripts (10) to further exemplify my point. I've edited them down quite a bit, but you can see original, unedited transcript with the link I included (I didn't do a Michael Moore edit, I promise.) Or, you can watch the quicktime movie (11).

From the November 30 edition of FOX News' Hannity & Colmes:

COULTER: Conservatives, as a general matter, take the position that you should not punish your friends and reward your enemies. And Canada has become trouble recently.

It's -- I suppose it's always, I might add, the worst Americans who end up going there. The Tories after the Revolutionary War, the Vietnam draft dodgers after Vietnam. And now after this election, you have the blue-state people moving up there.
[...]
COULTER: There is also something called, when you're allowed to exist on the same continent of the United States of America, protecting you with a nuclear shield around you, you're polite and you support us when we've been attacked on our own soil. They [Canada] violated that protocol.
[...]
COULTER: They better hope the United States doesn't roll over one night and crush them. They are lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent.
[...]
ELLIS HENICAN [Newsday columnist]: We share a lot of culture and a lot of interests. Why do we want to have to ridicule them and be deeply offended if they disagree with us?

COULTER: Because they speak French.

COLMES: There's something else I want to point out about the French. Is it's fashionable again on your side to denounce the French.

COULTER: We like the English-speaking Canadians.

From the November 30 edition of CNN's Wolf Blitzer Reports:

CARLSON: Without the U.S., Canada is essentially Honduras, but colder and much less interesting.
[...]
CARLSON: We exploit your [addressing Canadian Member of Parliament Carolyn Parrish] natural resources, that's true. But in the end, Canadians with ambition move to the United States. That has been sort of the trend for decades. It says something not very good about Canada. And I think it makes Canadians feel bad about themselves and I understand that.
[...]
CARLSON: Canada needs the United States. The United States does not need Canada.

From the November 30 edition of CNN's Crossfire:

CARLSON: Canada's essentially -- essentially a made-in-Taiwan version of the United States.
[...]
CARLSON: Doesn't that tell you something about the sort of limpid, flaccid nature of Canadian society, that people with ambition come here? What does that tell you about Canada?

Now, as I said before, I won't base my opinions of a political group because of a few lone nutjobs. Unfortunately, people like these have powerful voices, and everyone around the world has CNN. If all you hear are cocky, self-important individuals voicing negative comments about anyone/where/thing that isn't America, then logic dictates that that is the mindset of the typical American.

Not all Muslims are terrorists. But we see stories about Islamic funtamentalists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Chechnya, Indonesia, Sudan and even Holland. They're everywhere! How can we tell the normal Muslims from the radical Muslims? Maybe it's just easier to be distrustful of anyone who wears a turban or a ghutra.

See? It's that easy. Apathy is commonplace. We'd rather complain about our problems than solve them. We'd rather stick to our ways and bicker, than open our minds and find a common ground on which to form a foundation for a stronger society. Other countries see this, they see our arrogance and smugness, the way that we flaunt our authority. It's not just that we're uneducated about foreign countries. It's because we're uneducated, and we have no desire to learn. That, ladies and gentlemen, is why we are our own greatest threat. We've been THE superpower for about 50 years now. With that title comes all the heat. If we don't start protecting our best interests outside of our borders, instead of focusing inward, and if we don't stop carelessly and flippantly burning our bridges, we are going to find ourselves very alone. And who will protect you when you're the enemy? All empires topple. It's inevitible that someday, ours will too.

Sources
Harris International Polling (1)
Axcess News Network (2)
The Concord Monitor (3)
MSNBC (4)
International Herald Tribune (5)
CBS Newsl (6)
The Washington Post (7)
Zogby Internation Polling & The Arab American Institute (8)
Zogby International Polling (9)
CNN Transcripts (10)
CNN / FOX News Video (11)

*****

Come on over to Blog Spectrum and check out the rest of the debate, along with the commentary!

Once again, no material.

2004-12-23T09:38:00.000-07:00

-13 degrees oustside on my way into work this morning. NEGATIVE 13!! Yet, people are still driving on their cell phones and wearing short-sleeved shirts. Sometime I don't understand this bass-ackwards state. Work should be voluntary anytime it drops below single digit weather.

Here's a few more strange news stories for ya. I'm too unmotivated to actually write today, here's some more interesting news.

Paris Hilton gets banned from the New York Daily News!
(linky...)

Some of the reasons given for her bannation: She's a racist, an idiot, a total bitch, a bad tipper, snobbish, greedy, shameless, hypocritical (appearing in the "Vote or Die" campaign, and then forgetting to register to vote), dates abusive men, and is as dumb as a bag of hair. Well, shit. Who didn't know this? I think I'll follow suit. No more Paris Hilton on this site. Just like I promised not to post anything political after the election. Yeah.....

Hilton-ism of the day: "Like, I work every single day. ... I really work my butt off."
***

Nothing funny about this story, except for the title: Woman killed by Tomatoes.
I was expecting to read about a poor woman who was killed by an errant tomato at a comedy club. Turns out it was just an allergic reaction.
***

Man struck by lightning... 5 times.
(linky...)

Jorge Marquez says he is cursed and that lightning follows him, reports Terra Noticias Populares. Mr Marquez, who works as a farm worker in San Manuel, was first struck in June 1982. He told: "I feel like something very cold enters my body or as if I'm a hot iron being immersed in cold water." He said that in the first time he was struck he had his hair burnt and his fillings all flew out from his teeth.
***

Mexico bans indoor nudity!
(linky...)
***

The coolest urinals on the planet!
(linky...)

Includes the female urinal, a urinal on the International Space Station, as well as the Taj Mahal and others. Here's my favorite. It's almost too nice to pee into.

***

So they mounted a camera on an eagle...
(Linky...)

Check out some of the video. It's pretty cool, especially the dogfight with the buzzard.

***

That's all for now. Good stuff coming tomorrow, I promise. No, really.

Bombay the Hard Way

2004-12-22T10:27:00.000-07:00

Quite possibly the funniest news story I have seen in some time. I highlighted the better parts for you.

Linky...

NEW DELHI (AP) - It was a private act of two hormone-charged teenagers that lasted 2 minutes and 37 seconds on digital video.

But offered for sale on the Internet, the fuzzy images of the 17-year-old girl having oral sex with her high school sweetheart has sent shock waves through urban India, exposing the growing friction between the conservative middle class, its increasingly Westernized progeny and modern technology.

"It came to me as a surprise that kids are having sex so soon," Barkha Dutt, who hosts the country's most popular television talk show on social issues, said in an interview. "Even we are not aware of how much things have changed."

India may be the birthplace of Kama Sutra, the 6th century sex manual, but sex today is a generally taboo subject. Premarital sex is not widely condoned, and public displays of affection draw frowns.

Caught in the scandal's stinging sweep is Avnish Bajaj, the Indian-born American who heads eBay's Indian subsidiary Baazee.com, where the video clip - shot by the schoolboy himself using his cell phone camera - was put up for sale.

Arrested last week under an ambiguous Indian law on cyber porn, Bajaj was freed after posting bail Tuesday, but his U.S. passport remained confiscated.

Bajaj's arrest triggered a diplomatic spat between the United States and India and a threat by eBay executives to reconsider doing business in a country that would toss one of their top managers in jail as a scapegoat.

"This incident has certainly given us pause and raises concerns about the safeguards that are in place for businesses operating in India," said Henry Gomez, an eBay vice president in the United States.

"This situation is one of concern at highest levels of the U.S. government," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington.

Bajaj set up Baazee.com in 2000 and sold it to San Jose, Calif.-based eBay, the Internet's leading auction company, for about $50 million in June. The Harvard-educated executive has since headed the Bombay-based subsidiary.

The sex clip was recorded weeks ago and passed on by the bragging schoolboy to three of his friends and eventually made its way to video disc sellers in New Delhi. It did not draw much attention until an engineering student at a prestigious Indian college listed it for sale on Baazee.com.

Now the girl's parents have sent her off to Canada. The 17-year-old boy, the son of an affluent businessman, is now in a juvenile detention center. He went to Nepal to escape the media glare and was arrested at the airport when he returned to the capital on Sunday. A judge on Tuesday ordered him held until Jan. 4 for questioning to try to determine how the video clip reached the man who tried to sell it.

The controversy over the clip - it's the talk of urban India, an obsession of newspapers and talk shows - is typical of a society in transition, said Dr. Ranjana Kumari, the director of the think tank Center for Social Research.

India's recent economic boom has created unimaginable wealth among the tech-savvy urban population, who live in a globalized world dominated by the Internet, international brands and Western lifestyle with its relatively liberal sexual values.

Kumari says urban India is being pulled apart by these new values and its own centuries-old social conservatism.

"It is this transition which is resulting in a lot of confusion," Kumari said.

Observers like Kumari think a variety of people share the blame for grossly amplifying this sex scandal - including the authorities who arrested Bajaj and the boy, who remains unidentified because of his age; the teenagers' parents, who weren't aware of their children's activities; and teachers, for sidestepping sex education in schools.

Many are outraged by the arrest of the schoolboy, who along with the girl attended one of the capital's best known private schools, The Delhi Public School.

"What are we trying to say here?" asked Dutt. "What do we believe is wrong? Was it that he had sex? Was it that he sent out the clip? Which part is the disturbing part?"

Of greater concern to many in the business community is Bajaj's arrest under the Information Technology Act of 2000. The law makes a criminal offense of "publishing, transmitting, or causing to publish any information in electronic form, which is obscene." But it also says an Internet provider or Web site manager can't be held responsible if he acted diligently to remedy an electronic offense after learning of it.

Baazee.com maintains it yanked the sex video listing as soon as customer service managers noticed it, and Bajaj had traveled to New Delhi to cooperate with authorities.

Pawan Duggal, a cyberlaw expert, said Bajaj's arrest has serious implications, especially when Internet usage in the country is rapidly growing and foreign investors are increasingly looking to India for e-commerce opportunities.

"Ultimately we have to see bigger picture. We want to increase Internet penetration. (HAH!) All this will only happen if you allow service providers the freedom," he said. "The law needs to be more industry friendly and more pragmatic."

Internetional scandal! Teenage sex! Illegal pornography! Exile to Canada! INTERNET PENETRATION!! Let the good times roll!

Stupid people will believe anything.

2004-12-21T01:03:00.000-07:00

I've been a fan of Get Fuzzy for years, and I got a good laugh out of this particular strip. If you don't find it funny, then you're the person it's directed at.

Link to comic...

I was bored

2004-12-19T23:04:00.000-07:00

So I made an assortment of banners for the blogs that I visit. I hope everyone likes them.
To the owners of the blogs: If you don't like the banner, let me know, and I will take it down, or make a different one. If you have any ideas for an alternative design, drop me a line, and I will come up with something. Feel free to use these banners for yourselves as well, but do me a favor and host them yourself, so I can save precious bandwidth.

And to the few people who are still stuck with a plain text link; don't worry, punkin. I'm working on it.

Don't forget to check out Blog Spectrum on Monday for the beginning of the beginning. Also, please vote for Convoluted Insanity for the "Snarkiest Blog of the Year" award. I have no chance in hell of winning, but it's the first time I have been nominated for an award for this site. I know how you people are with clicking on links, so you can just lie, and tell me you voted if you want.

Until later!

BoB Awards

2004-12-18T21:46:00.000-07:00

Hooray! Someone nominated me for the Best Of Blog 2004 Awards in the category "Snarkiest Blog." You would be my hero if you clicked on the link below and left a comment at the bottom of the page, nominating me for this prestegious award. Voting ends on December 24th, so go do it now!

Click here to vote for Convoluted Insanity! Otherwise I will kill and eat this kitten.

You don't want that, do you? Now go vote for me!

Blog Team Spectrum... AWAY!

2004-12-18T14:08:00.000-07:00

Well, after putting up yesterday's post, and chatting a bit with The Casual Observer, he kindly invited me to join the Blog Spectrum.

(Info taken from Blog Spectrum)

The Blog Spectrum is a group blogging experiment. Each week the Blog Spectrum team will address one issue at a time, as posed by The Casual Observer. Participants will go into as much (reasonable, no Jordan stylings please, that means under 5k) detail as needed to address their point.

This is a civil effort, with many broad points of view (Liberals, Libertarians, Conservatives, Moderates, and all the rest); we are not going to be indulging in word games when responding to other’s posts and we will cite our sources if we are stating something as fact.

This is an *issues* forum, not a Bush fans vs. The World steel cage death match!

Blog Spectrum is going to be more of a think-tank for ideas and issues, and hopefully it won't turn into a Fark-esque message forum, rife with flame wars and malice. I'm pretty excited about it, and since there is at least one person representing each political view (I signed on to take a liberal standpoint, just because I like a challenge), I'm cordially inviting you to take a peek. I put up a Blog Spectrum link in my sidebar, along with links to the other Blog Spectrum members.

Just in case you're wondering, Convoluted Insanity won't be changing at all, and I'll still be posting up the same type of material that I always do, with the same frequency as well. So have no fear, fellow bloggers. I'll still be holding down the fort. You might even see a new post from me on Daily Traversal, since I have been slacking hard-core lately (getting things packed to move in the middle of the Christmas season is not an enjoyable task). You might want to check out Convoluted Perceptions in the next few days as well. I'll be putting some new photos online. A busy beaver, that's me!

Cheers!

Nazi punks fuck off!

2004-12-16T23:10:00.000-07:00

I got an email from The Casual Observer (who ran across my blog somehow) informing me about a post of his. The post in question (for those of you too lazy to click on a link) is about a company in Phoenix, Arizona called T-Shirt Hell. TSH is a company that specializes in selling T-shirts with various slogans across the front. Some of their stuff is funny, some is kind of lame, and some were made strictly for shock value. According to their FAQ, they started up in 2001 with 10 designs, and since then, have been featured in the New York Post, various magazines (mostly porn, soft-porn and tabloid) television shows, and they even sued Ozzy Osbourne when he attempted to rip them off.

Anyhow, Casual was browsing through their online catalog, when he ran across a few designs that offended him. The designs are displayed below, and if you're easily offended, then you should have looked away 2 sentences ago. Too late!

Not exactly PC, are they? Now, before I go any further, let me ask everyone who is reading this 2 questions.

1) Does this offend you?
2) Would you ever buy one of these shirts?

Now, I don't like racism (although I am always game for a racist joke), and I personally wouldn't purchase any of the above shirts. I'm not a big fan of getting stomped by a bunch of pissed off black people. Besides that, I know the value of tact. I wouldn't go as far as to say that I was offended by seeing them; truth be told, the 4th one made me chuckle a bit (Captain Lowbrow, that's me). But seeing those shirts made me wonder, what type of a person would buy one of those shirts, and wear it? I could only think of 3 types of people who would do such a thing.

1) A white supremacist.
2) Someone who is into S&M, and likes getting his ass kicked.
3) Someone who bought it as a gag gift, never intending to wear it.

How do you feel about T-Shirt Hell? Would you boycott the store, based on those (or other) offensive products? Or would you still do business with them if you wanted to get a non-white-power shirt? They have a disclaimer on their site that says "We design our shirts to amuse ourselves. We don't care if you're offended by them. Regardless of race, color, creed, national origin, or sexual preference- you are all fair game.". Their company name makes it fairy obvious that these are not the run-of-the-mill Gap shirts you are buying.

Personally, I wouldn't boycott them, because they are just exercising their First Amendment rights. But how, exactly, does Freedom of Expression fit into that equasion? According to The National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, protected expression includes such non-verbal expression, such as wearing a symbol on one's clothing. But that's not the problem. The problem is being offended. And that's more of a judgement call than a legal definition. What is offensive to a judge in rural Alabama may not be offensive to a judge in California. What is offensive to a priest, may not mean a thing to an atheist, and vice versa. If I may draw a parallel for you:

You think gay marriage is gross. But you're not gay. So why should it matter to you if gay people get married? Perhaps homosexuals think that hetero sex is gross. I know for a fact that Dan Savage, noted gay sex columnist feels that way, and has said so on many occasions. How would you feel if hetero marriage was outlawed? You've got to try and see both sides of the issue. Before you judge someone, walk a mile in their shoes, and all that.

Freedom of Speech applies to speech that you don't like. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't understand that concept (see my article about the PTC, Beth Robbins or numerous other posts for more instances of this), and try to outlaw anything that pushes their buttons. And that can lead to a dystopian society.

Read it!

Subscribe to it!

Now how do you feel? Did that change your mind at all, or do you feel the same? Do you think this is artistic expression, or barely concealed hate?

Let me throw a wrench into the works for you. White Power Music and Distribution is a label for such bands as A Mighty Lion Roars, Racist Redneck Rebels (their songs include "Oh My God - I Married A Nigger" and "Whatever Happened To That Dear Ol' Klan Of Mine?") and Panzerdivision. Aside from the sidebar quotations twisting the words of Benjamin Franklin and Friedrich Nietzsche in an attempt to justify their bigotry, and the Frosty the Snowman picture on their banner (he's dreaming of a White Christmas, no doubt), it seems to be your typical racist record label. Klan Kountry Music, German Oi bands and the rest of the shit that 14 pissed off rednecks in Mississippi listen to.

However, on the bottom of their main page, they have a banner linking to T-Shirt Hell. So does their streaming station, Aryan Radio. Now, you can't order custom t-shirts from T-Shirt Hell, so everything they make is in-house. That means that White Power Music and Aryan Radio are not responsible for the designs. They just found something that fits their cause, and linked to it. T-Shirt Hell is profiting from their prejudice. I highly doubt that their marketing team went out to all the Klan meetings, pushing their product, but the Klan (or a related group) is definitely endorsing them.

What do you think T-Shirt Hell should do? Does Free Speech cover Free Enterprise? If this was your company, what would you do? Would you take money from a hate group? I'm just trying to generate some conversation, and see where people stand on this issue. I'd love to hear your thoughts and opinions.

As I said in a post the other day, "I hate the KKK, NAMBLA and the Religious Right. I think that they are comprised of sick, demented and shallow-minded people whose sole focus is to spread hatred. BUT THEY HAVE THE RIGHT TO DO SO. You'll never see me hanging out with skinheads, but if the government decides to try and disallow them from holding a meeting, or having a public rally, well, you may see my face in the crowd when they protest."

I'm going to stick by those words. This isn't exactly a skinhead rally being banned by the government, but it's a similar situation. As much as I dislike the message, I'm going to side with T-Shirt Hell on this. I'm not going to boycott them. I won't purchase those particular shirts, but I'm not going to judge their entire company based on a few offensive items. They have shirts poking fun at Native Americans, homosexuals, Republicans, Democrats, rape victims and Christopher Reeve. So they're equal-opportunity pricks. Heh.

For a similar story, I recommend reading Skin Deep, a 2002 story about the first neo-nazi music festival in Colorado. It was published in Westword, Denver's alternative newspaper. It deals with the public and legal problems that various venues faced after booking the show. Regardless of what the message of the festival was, these people are still paying clients. Once again, money vs. morals. Also, thanks to Casual Observer for letting me know about this. Although I ended up disagreeing with you about boycotting the company, it was nice to have a new topic to discuss and research (thanks for letting me look up court cases?!? For fun?!? What kind of a nerd am I?), as well as post about.

Convoluted Insanity (a primer)

2004-12-15T23:55:00.000-07:00

con vo lut ed
adjective.
\Con"vo*lu`ted\, [Latin. convoltus, past participle of convolvere, to convolve. See convolve.]

1) Having convolutions.
2) Folded in tortuous windings.
3) Intricate; complicated: convoluted legal language; convoluted reasoning.

in san i ty
noun.
\In*san"i*ty\, [Latin. insanitas unsoundness; cf. insania insanity, F. insanite.]

1) The state of being insane; unsoundness or derangement of mind; madness; lunacy.
2) Relatively permanent disorder of the mind.

I started this blog in June of 2004. This is actually my 4th or 5th blog, but it is the only one that I have continuously updated, and actually posted to on a daily basis. I tried a few other services like Diaryland (too much like a 14 year old girl's diary), mblog (now defunct), Live Journal (didn't like the layout) and blogdrive (again, didn't like the layout). Finally ran across Blogger, and learned some basic HTML. The end result is what you see before you. Pretty sad, ain't it?

This blog has no set agenda; that is to say, it's not strictly a political blog, or a news, picture, humor, tech or music blog. I have many different interests, and I like to post about many different things. Sometimes I read a news story that makes me laugh my ass off, and I'll share it with everyone. Some days, I've had it with people, and I rant about everything under the sun. Maybe I'll pick up a new CD and decide to write a review on it, or a blog that I come across. Sometimes I just put up the random flotsam and jetsam that my mind produces.

I also have a very haphazard style of writing; I'll start on an entry in the morning and work on it sporadically throughout the day. I usually have between 3 - 5 partially finished pieces at any given time (for instance, I have been working on this post for 2 weeks now.) That tends to make things seem a bit disjointed when reading it. And that, boys and girls, is why I chose to name this blog Convoluted Insanity.

Some Very Uninteresting Things About Me

I am an ordained minister. Really.
My family is German.
Everyone in my family speaks German.
Except for me. Dammit.
Everyone in my family has been to Germany.
Except for me. Dammit again.
For some odd reason that I think my father should fully explain to me, my first, middle and last names are all the same as very famous Nazis. Worse yet, they were all rumored to be gay (not that there's anything wrong with it.)
I slip obscure and not-so-obscure references to TV shows, movies, books, pop culture and inside jokes into my posts. If you didn't get something, Google it. If you still don't get it, then it probably wasn't that funny.
I was born at Longitude -87.97601, Latitude 41.96880.
I live in Colorado, but I don't like to ski or snowboard (a felony offense out here).
I live in Colorado, and I really don't like the Nuggets.
I live in Colorado, and I really, really don't like the Broncos.
I live in Colorado, and I fucking hate the snow.
I am not a liberal, but for some reason, people label me as one. I've even been called "dangerously liberal", so watch out! I may tolerate you until you can tolerate no more tolerance!
I think sports suck, but when I was younger, I played baseball, American football, football (soccer, Yank), tennis, basketball and competed in a triathalon.
I am a music snob. I think it pisses people off, but they listen to Metallica and Green Day, so screw 'em.
Even though I know it is a grammatical faux pas, I like to interject my sentences with side-notes (kinda like this), and I do it way too often (as you can tell.)
I play guitar, bass, program music on my computer, and am a decent drummer. But Baby Jesus cries when I try to sing.
I never run spellcheck. I'm too impatient to skip over all the intentional misspellings (like chrissake, wtf, and heh) that I use.
At one point, I owned 5 ferrets, 2 cats and a chinchilla. Then I fixed my stove (simmer for 25 minutes, top with garlic butter, serve warm.)
I play devil's advocate sometimes, and post about things I don't believe in, just to try and get people pissed off.
I'm hard up for something to write; normally I wouldn't post something as cliche as an FAQ. It's like running a "Best Of" episode.
My personality type is INTJ (Introversion, Intuitition, Thinking, Judging).
I religiously watch The Simpsons, and actually go through withdrawl if I don't see at least 1 or 2 shows a week.
I try to slip at least 1 Simpsons quote into every post. It's due to my nerdish leanings (didja catch it?!)
I am an encyclopedia of useless information.
This annoys my friends and co-workers to no end.
My very first job was in a butcher shop owned by a family of chinese people who illegally crossed into the US from Mexico. The head butcher knew 3 phrases in engrish. "Gaddammudafuk!", "Come heah boy" and "Cleeoopdadispraycayce" (rough translation: "Clean up the display case"). He would usually yell one of those phrases before throwing knives at me.
I owned a motorcycle before I owned a car.
I don't like alcohol.
I over-analyze and second-guess everything I do. It gets really annoying. Or does it?
I really hate kids, especially yours.
"Drizzle" is a really funny sounding word. Say it.

No, I am not high right now.
I don't have a political affiliation, because there is no "Common Sense" party.
I laugh at things that people find offensive, and have the ability to find humor in any situation, regardless of how fucked up it is. And it's all because of video games and rap music.
I think organized religion is for people who are too weak to control their own lives, so they rely on higher beings to make their decisions for them.
I'm not sorry if that offends you. If you don't like personal opinion, then you should click that Next Blog button in the corner.
I am, by nature, an optimist.
It gets harder to be one every day.
Ethnically, I hate people as a group (caucasians included), but I like individuals. Some people think that's racist. They're just stupid Jews.
Sometime I use very subtle, tongue-in-cheek and somewhat acerbic humor... *cough*
Because I work for a medical company and am subjected to 3 seminars a month dealing with blood-born pathogens and contagions, I am obsessively clean.
I always carry around a backpack filled with books, food, cd's, clean socks, winter hat and various small objects. It's either because I was in Scouts, or because I have OCD.
I find learning to be extremely fun. Really. I would rather read a textbook on Greek Mythology or leaf through an encyclopedia than watch reality-television. Or Drawn Together. Yeech.
I am still surprised at how many people don't read unless they are forced to.
It is wrong to judge a person based wholly on their sex, religion, age, race, sexual orientation, handicap or physical appearance. It is, however, ok to make fun of them and point and laugh. You can do it to me, too.
I am eligible to receive medical marijuana. Party at my house tonight!
I constructed this list in a hard-to-read manner, and I was too lazy to fix it.
I can't come up with a good way to end this post, so I'm just going to trail off..........

Q: What do you call an epileptic in a lettuce patch?

2004-12-13T18:41:00.000-07:00

A: A seizure salad.

Here's a list of famous people who have epilepsy. A few of them surprised me.

* Grover Cleveland Alexander
* Alexander the Great
* Aristotle
* Napoleon Bonaparte
* Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac
* Buddha
* Julius Caesar
* Truman Capote
* Lewis Carroll
* Agatha Christie
* Ian Curtis of Joy Division
* Dante Alighieri
* Leonardo da Vinci
* Charles Dickens
* Danny Glover
* Georg Fredric Handel
* Margaux (Margot) Hemingway
* Sir Elton John
* Jack Lemmon
* Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
* Abraham Lincoln
* James Madison - President of the United States
* Michelangelo
* Sir Isaac Newton
* Alfred Nobel
* Peter the Great
* Pope Pius IX
* Edgar Allan Poe
* Pythagoras
* Socrates
* Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
* Vincent van Gogh
* William III of England
* Neil Young

No point to this post, I just thought it was interesting.

Q: What's the difference between an epileptic Oyster shucker and a
prostitute with diarrea?

A: The epileptic oyster shucker shucks between fits.

Thoughts, quips and arbitrary contemplations

2004-12-12T20:22:00.000-07:00

More topics, news stories and bullshit from the last few days.

Why Models Are Not Real People:

Super Model Gisele Bundchen, Reneges on “Lost Dog” Reward Offer; San Bernardino Couple Arrested, Released, and Talking to Media
(story...)

A young San Bernardino couple is going public with questions about supermodel Gisele Bundchen's "no questions asked" $5000.00 reward offer, which remains unpaid more than two weeks after the couple returned Bundchen's dog only to be arrested at gunpoint, handcuffed and held in custody. Although cleared by the police, the couple has no explanation from Bundchen of why they were treated like criminals and denied the reward.

“My friends and I found the dog running in the street where it was almost hit by a pickup truck” said Janelle, we picked it up and took it with us to keep it safe. As soon as she could get back to Hollywood, six days later, Janelle made sure to go to the neighborhood where the dog was rescued. There she saw the anonymous reward posters, which Bundchen, reportedly on the advice of Paris Hilton, had plastered all over the neighborhood. That evening Janelle and Paul, along with their 18 month old son gathered up Vida and brought her back to Los Angeles where they arranged to meet with the owner and exchange the Vida for the reward. Instead, after returning the dog in good condition as promised, Paul and Janelle were suddenly arrested at gunpoint by three detectives, thrown to the ground and held their while 18 month old Schyler, their son, screamed with distress and fright. Transported to the police station still in handcuffs, Paul asked officers “what have I done wrong”? Two hours later after questioning, Paul and Janelle were released and told by police that they had been cleared of any wrong-doing. In subsequent conversations with authorities, Paul and Jenelle were told that the owners of the dog had made a theft complaint, apparently failing to tell police about published reports that Vida had run away from home before, and even after police cleared Janelle and Paul, Bundchen was refusing to pay the reward. Attempts by Paul and Janelle to get an explanation from Bundchen were rebuffed, until they hired attorney Frank Edward Harrigan III of Claremont, who made contact with Bundchen’s agent, Ann Nelson at IMG and has since been in discussions about the matter with attorneys for Ms. Bundchen.

From the day the dog was missing the police may have known how to find Janelle and the dog, but they made no attempt contact her. Also, one press report initiated by Bundchen’s press operation, however, explicitly stated that Bundchen suspected “dognappers” in the disappearance of Vida. The “hefty” reward offer was a clever trick, a ruse and a deception, from what we have read perhaps suggested by Ms. Hilton. Now that the police have verified Janelle and Paul acted innocently, Bundchen and her people still don’t want to honor the reward or even apologize to Paul and Janelle for what they went through, including a car chase in which someone apparently associated with Bundchen terrorized Janelle by chasing her car around the Hollywood Hills the day she learned of the reward.

Look, Paris "Cum dumpster" Hilton in not capable of creating a clever trick, a ruse OR a deception. I highly doubt that she even knows what those words mean. The only clever trick she knows is the "Magical Disappearing Penis" illusion. Too bad there's no "Magical Disappearing Paris" illusion. Really, isn't it time for her to turn back into a pumpkin or something? As for Gisele, she's fap material, and nothing but. I mean, she is pretty good looking, but really, who wants to deal with a bitch like that?
14:57, 14:58, 14:59...

Reading Material:
I just finished the Dean Koontz novel "By the Light of the Moon." I've noticed something about his books. 9 times out of 10, the lead character is wealthy in some way, shape or form (probably so that he doesn't have to worry about coming up with money), and he/she is a good person at heart. They like animals, dislike violence and are generally very selfless. That's all fine and good, but seeing as how I own 97% of his books, it get REALLY old. How about a change of character every so often? The lack of imagination makes all your stories run together. Criticism aside, "Dark Rivers of the Heart" is still one of my favorite books of all time.

This Week's Search Engine Queries:
Nfsu2 save file pizza
METH PICS STRANGE
what is insanity
confessions socialist-libertarian
el chubby's hot sauce
pictures of Klaasbuur
link:MBQP8YWgksgJ:ogrish.com/ (5 hits in 2 days. 1 hit each from Vermont, Florida, Morocco, Italy and Sweden. WTF?!?)

Google Stats:
#1   -   Convoluted Insanity
#1   -   Ekupes
#1   -   link:MBQP8YWgksgJ:ogrish.com/
#2   -   Convoluted (just behind the definition from Hyperdictionary.com)
#4   -   The Cunning Linguist
#20 -   Insanity

Apologies and Retractions:
This goes to Jesse at The Jesse Factor. When I listed posted about the blogs I frequent, I said he was a "right-wing conservative". Whoops. Apparently he took a bit of offense to that label, as he sees considers himself to be an "atheist libertarian who supported Bush on views." So, my bad. People tend to label me as a liberal, just because I have a few liberal views, but I think it's mainly because people on the right use the word "liberal" to brand someone who doesn't agree with their line of reasoning. Kind of like the whole J. Edgar Hoover/Communist blacklisting. "I don't like you, so you're a liberal/communist/hippie." No wonder liberals like to be called "progressives" nowadays. Anyhow, my apologies to J for making that assumption, for I have made an ass out of u and... umption?

Thanks:
To everyone who commented about this site and left me feedback about why they come here. My ego has been stroked, and now my keyboard is sticky.

What's the Deal?
What the hell is the big attraction to Maddox? I set up an online petition to support him, because some ultra-prude woman made a petition to rid the internet of his filth. If you'll scroll down to my post about the PTC, you'll see that I am very pro-free-speech, and so naturally, seeing someone bitch that their UNSUPERVISED children are being morally corrupted by a website kinda irked me. Anyhow, one of the 10 year old Maddox worshippers found the petition I made and told all his grade-school friends about it. Now, the petition is filled with lots of witty and intelligent comments, as proven by the following gems:
"Beth Robbins raped my children and spit on my dog! Then she pooed in my yard because my website linked to the best page in the universe"
"All hail Maddox,for we are the lamb and he is the shepherd.The shepherd of Ass-kicking."
"Beth loves it doggy style in the ass!"
"Maddox is Amazing/God"

For a better idea of the type of people who visit his site, go check out the comments that were left on Amazon.com, after Maddox slammed Bill O'Reilly's book.

Now, I have nothing against Maddox, I personally enjoy his writing. And I get about 10 hits a month from people doing a Google for "nomaddox". But goddamn, I'm glad I don't have a following of 1 million grade-school pirates like he does. I prefer visitors who don't use internet slang like "teh" and "RULZ!!!11!!1one1!", or fanatically follow the every word of someone they have never met before. But I guess you can't choose your fanbase. Just make sure to finish every last drop of that grape Kool-Aid, kids. I am now preparing to be deluged with hate-mail from his minions. Hopefully I won't get shot 5 times in the head (is it too soon to make a Dimebag Darrell joke?)

Fun Sites:
Ugly Christmas Lights. Horrible displays of Christmas decorations gone wrong.
Subtly Simpsons. Explanations of quotes from The Simpsons, with humor derived from subtleties of language, esoteric allusions, or just plain wit.
The Official Ramen Homepage Mmmm... Ramen.
Road Rage Cards. I could use a few of these. Especially these two:

New Blogs of Interest
Cry Now ~ Laugh Later She visits me, I visit her. It's a good tradeoff
Life in This Girl's Army Authored by Sgt. Lizzie in Iraq who "got her happy ass blown up" by an IED attack on her vehicle.
Mastermind of the Design. AWESOME blog layout. I'm jealous.

That's all for now.

Things you never knew about Christmas

2004-12-11T20:28:00.000-07:00

   Christmas is a festive time of year. Until you turn 12. Then it becomes a gigantic pain in the ass. Christmas is one of my least favorite times of the year, simply because something bad always happens. Every year, for the past 5 or 6 years, some stupid shit has occured right around this time of the year, leaving me broke, unable to buy presents for friends and family, and stressed beyond belief. This year, it's moving. I have to be out of my place by December 29th. Hooray! I sure hope it snows!

   Personal problems aside, Christmas has become something that is more hassle and worry than fun and excitement. Everywhere you look, there are small groups of lonely, angry little grinches, running around and complaining about how the holiday offends them. Non-religious people bitching about nativity scenes at the state capitol. Christians complaining that their rights are being infringed upon by having to remove said nativity scene. Epileptics having fits (pun intended) because of the flashing lights on the Capitol building. The mayor taking down the "Merry Christmas" sign in front of Denver City and County building, replacing it with "Happy Holidays", and then replacing it with "Merry Christmas" 2 days later. Taking down the nativity scene. Putting the nativity scene back up. Now, Mary now wears a burka, Joseph has a skull-cap and dreidl, and the 3 Wise Men bear gifts of beef-free Gardenburgers for the Hindus, tinfoil hats for the Scientologists, and bitter self-loathing for the Catholics. This is all set underneath a bodhi tree for the Buddhists.

   There. Now, are we all equally represented? Is there anyone else offended? Have we all lost the will to enjoy Christmas? Good! Now, go back to protesting the St. Patrick's Day Parade, or renew your efforts to ban Halloween. Will no one be happy until... no one is happy? Have a Valium and some nog-based beverage, and chill the fuck out. Christmas is for children anyway. Any sort of religious meaning tied to this holiday is erroneous, and mostly made-up. Let me prove it to you.

The Truth About Christmas

   Christmas wasn’t always a day of celebration, in ancient Persia it used to be a day of chaos, where the rich and the poor would change positions in their social order. The rich would be robbed blind, houses set aflame, and anarchy would rule the streets. The poor would commit murder; thievery and general mayhem were permitted, and the rich weren’t allowed to do anything to stop this.

   The history of a Christmas festival dates back over 4000 years. Ancient Midwinter festivities celebrated the return of the Sun from cold and darkness. Midwinter was a turning point between the Old Year and the New Year. Fire was a symbol of hope and boughs of greenery symbolized the eternal cycle of creation.

   The term "Xmas" instead of "Christmas" is Greek in origin. The word for "Christ" in Greek is "Xristos." During the sixteenth century, Europeans began using the first initial of Christ's name - the "X" of "Xristos" - in place of the word "Christ" as a shorthand version of the word "Christmas." Although early Christians understood that the "X" was simply another form for the name of Jesus Christ, later Christians, who had no knowledge of the Greek language, mistook "Xmas" as a sign of disrespect. Eventually, however, "Xmas" came to be both an accepted and suitable alternative to the word "Christmas."

   Many of today's Christmas traditions were celebrated centuries before the Christ Child was born. The Twelve Days of Christmas, blazing fires, the yule log, the giving of gifts, carnivals or parades complete with floats, carolers who sing while going from house to house, holiday feasts and church processions are all rooted in the customs observed by early Mesopotamians. Many of these traditions began with the Mesopotamian celebration of the New Year. The Mesopotamians worshipped many gods, the chief of whom was Marduk. Each year as winter arrived, it was believed that Marduk would battle the Monsters of Chaos. In order to assist Marduk during his struggle, the Mesopotamians held a festival for the New Year. They called this celebration Zagmuk, and the festivities lasted for twelve days.

   The King of Mesopotamia would return to the Temple of Marduk and swear his faithfulness to the god. The tradition called for the King to die at the end of the year and then return with Marduk to battle at his side. To spare their King, the Mesopotamians utilized a "mock" king. A criminal was chosen and dressed in royal clothes. He was given all due respect and the privileges of a true king but, at the end of the celebrations, the "mock" king was stripped of the royal garments and then put to death, thus sparing the life of the real monarch.

   The ancient Persians and Babylonians celebrated a similar festival which they called the Sacaea. Part of that celebration included the exchanging of places within the community; slaves would become masters and the original masters were obliged to obey the former slaves' commands.

   In Scandinavia during the winter months, the Sun would disappear for great lengths of time. After thirty-five of such dark days, scouts would be dispatched to the mountain tops to await the return of this life-giving heavenly body. When the first light was espied, the scouts would hurry back to their villages bearing the good news. In celebration, a great festival would be held, called the Yuletide, and a special feast would be served around a fire burning with the Yule log. Huge bonfires would also be lit to celebrate the welcome return of the Sun. In some areas, people would tie apples to the branches of trees as a reminder that Spring and Summer would eventually return.

   The ancient Greeks held ceremonies similar to those of the Zagmuk and Sacaea festivals. The purpose of this feast was to assist their god Kronos, who would battle against the god Zeus and his army of Titans.

   Members of the pagan order have always celebrated the Winter Solstice; the season of the year when days are shortest and nights longest. It was generally believed to be a time of drunkenness, revelry and debauchery. The pagan Romans called this celebration Saturnalia, in honor of their god Saturn. The festivities began in the middle of December and continued until January 1st. On December 25th, "The Birth of the Unconquerable Sun" was celebrated, as the days gradually lengthened and the Sun began to regain its dominance. It is a general pagan belief that the Sun dies during the Winter Solstice and then rises from the dead. With cries of "Jo Saturnalia!", the Roman celebration would include masquerades in the streets, mangificent festive banquets, the visiting of friends and the exchange of good-luck gifts known as Strenae, or "lucky fruits." Roman halls would be decked with garlands of laurel and green trees, adorned with lighted candles. Again, as with Sacaea, the masters and slaves would exchange places.

   Saturnalia was considered a fun and festive time for the Romans, but Christians believed it an abomination to honor such a pagan god. The early converts wanted to maintain the birthday of their Christ Child as a solemn and religious holiday, not one of cheer and merriment, as was the pagan celebration of Saturnalia.

   As Christianity spread, however, the Church became alarmed by the continuing practice among its flock to indulge in pagan customs and celebrate the festival of Saturnalia. At first, the holy men prohibited this type of revelry, but it was to no avail. Eventually, a decision was made to tame such celebrations and make them into a festive occasion better suited to honor the Christian Son of God.

   According to some legends, the Christian celebration of Christmas was invented to compete against the pagan festivals held in December. The 25th was sacred not only to the Romans, but also to the Persians whose religion of Mithraism was one of Christianity's main rivals at that period in time. The Church was, however, finally successful in removing the merriment, lights and gifts from the Saturanilia festival and transferring them to the celebration of a Christian Christmas.

   Christmas means "Christ's Mass" and is the celebration of Jesus Christ's birth and baptism. Although December 25th is generally accepted as being the time when the Christ Child was born, the exact date has never been chronicled with any degree of accuracy. There is neither scriptural nor secular evidence to establish the exact moment. One thing is relatively certain, however, the event did not take place in December. Since the child was born when shepherds were "abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night" (Luke 2:8), it is unlikely that shepherds in Israel would have been sleeping outside with their flocks during the month of December. In Winter, the herders would have led their sheep outside only during the daylight hours; the nights would have been far too cold. It is known that during the very early Christian centuries, the birth of the Christ Child was not celebrated in any manner.

   So, there you have it. All of you (insert religious, political or social label here) idiots are bitching and moaning about how your precious feelings are being hurt, and it's all over something that is a LIE! Use Christmas as a time to get together with family, have fun with friends, buy worthless plastic toys for your children, only to have them break 2 days later, or relax at home by yourself. Go out and look at some pretty lights, or go to church if that's your thing. Eat fatty foods and regret it the next day! But stop it with the complaining already!

Happy Festivus! Now, let's all gather around the pole for the Airing of Grievances and the Feats of Strength.

"Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them." ~Mark Twain

2004-12-08T15:26:00.000-07:00

Oh yeah, today's beef is a good one. Mostly because it is about something that I am VERY vocal about. The First Amendment. For those unaware, the First Amendment reads: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Think about that for a moment before continuing on with this post...

"I may disagree with what you say but I will defend until death your right to say it."
--Voltaire

Did you think about it? Hopefully you did, because I am going to talk about a very, very stupid group of people who are not only attempting to do something incredibly frightening, but they are actually succeding at it. They want to restrict what you see on television, including cable services. No, it's not the FCC. It's the Parent's Television Council (PTC). And if you haven't heard of them, it's not surprising. They're a relatively small faction of religious extremists. That is not an overblown statement either, that is a stone-cold fact. They try to hide behind the guise of morality, but it's a very transparent cloak. So, fear not, constant reader (or Blog Explosion surfer!) For I, in my indelible wisdom, shall tune you in, and explain to you the horror that is the PTC.

"Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day."
--Thomas Jefferson

A Few Facts About the PTC

The PTC was founded in 1995, and claims to be a nonpartisan group (which is utter bullshit. The definition of nonpartisan is: Based on, influenced by, affiliated with, or supporting the interests or policies of no single political party) that is interested in restoring television to its roots as an independent and socially responsible entertainment medium (their words, not mine.)

The PTC is currently headed by Brent Bozell, who claims to be "one of the most outspoken and effective national leaders in the conservative movement today. Mr. Bozell is Executive Director of the Conservative Victory Committee (CVC), an independent multi-candidate political action committee that has helped elect dozens of conservative candidates over the past ten years.

So much for that claim of nonpartisanship, eh?

"Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason…
There can be on right of speech where any man…[is] compelled to suppress his honest sentiments.
Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker."
--Frederick Douglass

Brent Bozell, man of morals.

"I am opposed to any form of tyranny over the mind of man."
--Thomas Jefferson

Brent Bozell is an incredibly close-minded ignoramus whose only goal in life seems to be the supression of ideas and opinions that do not conform to his own. Hell, the guy even won a Disinformation Award recently. In case you are a WWE fan, Brent Bozell is the man (and I use that term lightly, because a REAL man wouldn't have bitch balls like this guy) who tried to get them tossed off of UPN back in 2000. When that didn't work, he went after the advertisers, and succeded in getting a few of them to pull out. Very shady and underhanded, Mr. Bozell. Very shady indeed. Of course, after the WWE caught them spreading lies about their orginization, they sued, and the PTC ended up slinking away, tail tucked between their legs.

"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist."
--Salman Rushdie

The PTC has many "star-studded" supporters in the entertainment industry, including Steve Allen, Billy Ray Cyrus, Dr. Delores Tucker (the woman who, with Tipper Gore, tried to ban hip hop in the early 1990's), Pat Boone and Tim Conway. Obviously a board of individuals who are very tuned in to what's going on. I mean, if Billy Ray Cyrus believes in something, then I should too!

Now, you may be aware of a lot of the brouhaha in the news regarding Michael Powell and the FCC. Since the now-infamous Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction during the Superbowl last year, Michael Powell has been on a personal crusade to censor anything and everything that is even the slightest bit risque, in the name of decency and to appease the vocal minority that constantly complains about the filth that is TV and radio. But what many people aren't aware of is the impact that the PTC is having on this issue.

Let's look at some statistics, shall we?

Indecency Complaints to the FCC:
Year: 2000 - Complaints received: Under 350.
Year: 2001 - Complaints received: Under 350.
Year: 2002 - Complaints received: 14,000.
Year: 2003 - Complaints received: 240,000.
Year: 2004 - Complaints received: 1,068,767 (as of late November).
Percentage of complaints filed by the PTC for 2003: 99.8%
Percentage of complaints filed by the PTC for 2004 (excluding the Superbowl): 99.9%

That means in 2003, there were only 480 complaints filed by people who are NOT affiliated with the PTC. 480!!!

LISTEN UP, PEOPLE! A very small, very vocal minority group is deciding what is best for YOU. These Christian conservatives are attempting to hijack the Bill of Rights, and change it to suit their beliefs. If that doesn't scare the hell out of you, then just imagine what is next on their list of things to burn (video games, books, movies, the internet, satellite radio...) Their list of "approved" television shows include, but are not limited to: 7th Heaven, Joan of Arcadia, American Idol and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Their list of "The Worst Shows on TV" include That 70's Show, Fear Factor, CSI and Will and Grace (no doubt because it features homosexuality, and that's just NAAAASSTY!)

"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there is one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded faith."
--Thomas Jefferson

Freedom of Speech is something that too many people take for granted. Our society has become so anal retentive, so fixated on the possiblity that we might offend someone, that we are taking radical steps towards insuring that no one has their feelings hurt. Here's what I have to say about that.

GROW A FUCKING PAIR, YOU WHINEY BITCHES!

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
--Eric Arthur Blair

You preach about tolerance and celebrating diversity, but you fail to realize that by attempting to ban certain types of speech, you are supporting intolerance and suppressing diversity. You can't get 100% of the people to agree with you about any given subject. What is offensive to one person is not necessarily offensive to another. I find Rush Limbaugh to be offensive. But I also recognize that he has the right to say what he wants, no matter how much I disagree with his opinions. But that's the difference between us. I actually DO celebrate diversity, whereas you celebrate it until it becomes TOO diverse for you to wrap you small minds around. I hate the KKK, NAMBLA and the Religious Right. I think that they are comprised of sick, demented and shallow-minded people whose sole focus is to spread hatred. BUT THEY HAVE THE RIGHT TO DO SO. You'll never see me hanging out with skinheads, but if the government decides to try and disallow them from holding a meeting, or having a public rally, well, you may see my face in the crowd when they protest.

"We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still."
-- John Stuart Mill

Giving media power over to activist groups like the PTC, whose roots lay heavily in religion, isn't as good an idea as it makes itself out to be. Here's why. We live in an era where the media has a huge influence on what we think and do. If one group controls the media, it distorts the message to suit it's own purposes, and thereby becomes propaganda. Yes, propaganda. Look at the parallel: Bush is using religion to rally the American people towards his cause, which is a cleaner, more sterile America. You can't be offended if there's nothing around to offend you. On the flip side of the coin, Osama bin Laden is using the same type of propaganda to recruit new members to his cause. Death to Westerners. Because the West is comprised of people who are immoral, depraved infidels. Both people are twisting religion to suit their own causes, and the weak-minded people follow. Do you think that's an unfair comparison? What about Russia? Germany circa World War 2? Adolf Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf that "I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord's work." Yes, Herr Hitler used religion as a stepping stone to attempt to create what he felt was the Lord's work. Hell, propaganda has been used throughout human history from the time of Alexander the Great and the Roman Empire to the Reformation. The only think that has changed is the way that propaganda is presented.

"I find that the pain of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure of much praise."
--Thomas Jefferson

I strongly urge you to contact these people, and let them know how you feel. Start complaining to the FCC about the shows that are on the PTC's "Best 10" list. Tell them that you think what they are doing is WRONG. Tell them to take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. Let these people know that you can't be bullied by them. Do you really want to pay $60 a month on cable, only to have wholesome PAX-type programs shown? Here's how to contact the PTC:

By email: editor@parentstv.org

By snail mail:
Parents Television Council
707 Wilshire Boulevard #2075
Los Angeles, CA 90017

Phone: 213.629.9255

You can even use their own form to file a complaint against them! Nice!

Something else I found on their site that was a bit disturbing to me:

"You can put your TV in the garage, avoid movies altogether, and use earplugs to spare your hearing from the sounds of hip-hop or heavy metal, but these forms of entertainment will still change your life through their influence on everyone else in society. Though you may struggle to protect your own kids from music that encourages violence or drugs or irresponsible sex, you can't possibly protect them from all the other kids in your community who have received full exposure."

"Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning."
--Frederick Douglass

Are you fucking kidding me? If you actually have to put your television in the garage and wear earplugs to keep out The Devil's Music, then you need to lock yourself in the basement and NEVER COME OUT. We don't need idiots like this interacting with the rest of society. Statements like that are not only foolish and asinine, but they are incredibly dangerous. If you can't even handle other people's music, then I weep for not only you, but your poor children as well. They are going to grow up so maladjusted that it will be a miracle if they make it to age 20 without killing themselves. By blocking off any sort of outside stimulation, you are making them weak, brainwashed clones of yourself.

Children will hear and see these things that you are trying to hide from them. In fact, because you are trying so hard to keep them from discovering them, they are more apt to go off the deep-end when they are finally exposed. A repetitive mantra of "Sex is bad, sex is bad, sex is bad, sex is bad" will only pique their imagination, and make them want to see what the big fuss is about. And suddenly, you have a pregnant 14 year old on your hands. Same goes for drugs, alcohol, music, movies, television and anything else that you deny your child access to. Whatever happened to "Prepare the child for the path, not the path for the child?" What happened to "If you don't like it, change the channel?"

"Freedom to speak... can be maintained only by promoting debate."
--Walter Lippmann

I would like to cordially invite Mr. Bozell or anyone affiliated with the PTC to visit my site, and engage in some intelligent, thought-provoking debate with me, or anyone else who wishes to join in. I have sent a email inviting them to drop by and defend themselves, and their position on censorship. I can't promise to clean up my language, because millions of people have died so that I have the right to use 4-letter words, and it would be insulting NOT to use them. But I am capable of debating without hurling insults. I am capable of opening my mind to outside stimuli. I can, and have changed my mind about things before. I am, by no means, dedicated to a narrow, simplistic view of the world. I would LOVE to talk shop with anyone out there who is interested in... what's the word? Oh, yeah. THINKING.

So, to Mr. Bozell and the rest of the PTC, I leave you with that offer, and these words of wisdom from a great man:

"I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking."
--Woodrow Wilson

Come debate, sir. Let's see what type of a person you really are.

Threat Advisory Chart

2004-12-07T23:15:00.000-07:00

I was doing a GIS today, and I decided to look for the Department of Homeland Security Threat Advisory Chart. I found a lot of different variations, some of them pretty funny. Here's a few of my favorites. Please excuse the horrible photoshopping job.

By the way, have you stroked my ego yet?

Why the hell are you here?

2004-12-04T18:01:00.000-07:00

No, seriously. Why are you visiting my site? And if you're a steady reader, why do you keep coming back? What about this site interests you? I'm just curious, because I seem to have about 10 - 15 "fans", and frankly, I can't figure out why. As you can tell from my profile picture, I am one sexy bastard, but that can't be the only reason you come here. So do me a favor. Leave me a comment and let me know what you like about this site, as well as what you hate about it (I have thick skin). How'd you initially make your way over to Convoluted Insanity? What kind of posts do you enjoy more? The rantings? The humor? The observations/news stories? I'm not going to change how I write to pander to you, I'm not your monkey. I'm just interested to see why people visit.

In turn, I am going to let you know about the blogs I hit on a daily basis, and maybe get some more traffic for them, thereby increasing my blog karma. Or some new-age shit like that. Anyhow...

Convoluted Perceptions: It's my picture blog, and it kicks ass. Visit now! Diddy mao!!

American Blogger: I found him a while back, and I just kept visiting. He recently redesigned his site, and I just now noticed that he took me off his links list, so to hell with all the nice things I was gonna say about him. Heh.

My So-Called Strife: He loves everything Kitsch, and I grew up in the 80's, so we both have the same tastes in cheesy horror movies. He's got a very humorous and snarky writing style, and he likes to take pictures of the yuppy Texans around him and poke fun at their half-caff-no-foam-soy-milk-latte-drinking asses, and their oogly, inbred mouth-breathing children. And not childish fun, either. He puts thought into his ridiculing. He's also one of the only people to religiously update his site, sometimes 2 - 3 times a day.

Shut Up Ed: He was the first person I heard of to get kicked off of Blog Explosion. His writing is crude, offensive and fun for the whole family. He reminds me of someone I used to work with who would say the most outrageous and incredibly rude comments, and then laugh when a co-worker got a shocked look on his/her face. Fucking priceless. If Maddox had a brother, then Ed would be him. That was intended to be a compliment, by the way.

The Jesse Factor: I don't know why I go to his site. He's an atheist-Libertarian, Bush-voting, liberal-hating, shit-talker. But he's a very intelligent and opinionated person, considering how old he is. I know people twice his age that are twice as dumb. And even though I may not agree with what he says politically, he's got a brain, and he uses it, which is admirable to say the least. He kinda reminds me of me when I was 14 years old. Whatever the case, I dig his site. I just wish he would activate his comments option, because there have been a few times that I would have liked to debate with him. I suppose I could sign up on his message board, but that'd be another login and password I'd have to remember, and I am a lazy, lazy man.

SeeTwist: My dad's blog. Politics, cartoons and news stories of interest. I've posted a few times on his site, and I did a TERRIBLE job of trying to design his blog, but there's good stuff on there anyway.

Political 8-Ball: This guy had an awesome idea for a blog. He would pick a topic relating to current events, like "Are all Terrorists Muslims?" Then he would consult a Magic 8-Ball for the answer, and then try to defend that point of view with news articles and facts, even if he didn't believe in the answer he was giving. It was a really nifty premise, but unfortunately, he posted once in late September, and then disappeared. Bummer.

Daily Traversal: I've been a guest writer on this site for the past month during NaNo (well, I slacked for the last part of it...) It's a collection of links from around the web; some news, some techie stuff (People still use *nix! Hooray!) and some general strangeness. I think I found his site in a Fark.com Gmail Giveaway thread or something. Me Likee.

/Filthy/Garlic/: He took the time to fancy up his title with forward slashes. I admire that type of dedication. Heh. I dunno, he's got one of those "I'm a dick, so fucking what?" attitudes that I tend to like in a blogger (use MORE fucking curse words, people!!), and he posts about whatever interests him. But he likes sports, and seeing as how I'm always talking shit about them, I'm rather surprised that he still comes here.

Observational Pissings: I really like what Trufflepig writes about. He takes time to research his rants, and they are always well written, thought-provoking and injected with rabid humor. I look forward to reading his stuff whenever I visit. Good chit, mang.

News Bits: I've found all sorts of nifty pieces of information on this site. It is what the name implies. Bits of news from all over that are of some interest.

in10sity: An aspiring stand-up comedian from NYC. I've actually laughed out loud (Not LOLed) reading some of the things he writes. It's usually observational humor, but every once in a while he puts up hilarious stories (he did one recently about a Spanish test that was muy picante) or quippy one-liners.

The Gerbil Wheel: More ranting, usually on the same subjects that I talk about. He works in a bookstore, and having worked at Media Play before, I know what kind of hell that can be. I like the name Rabid Gerbil as well. I had a gerbil named Tungsten when I was 13 that bit me on my thumb and wouldn't let go. Fucking rodent.

Fiat Lux: Latin for "Let there be light". I think she found my site, and we traded links. A general interest board.

The Licorice Diaries: She's from Colorado Springs, and she likes my bitching. She has some pretty good gripes on her site as well. I simultaneously wish she was, and thank god she wasn't my mother. =)

PIMPeration: PIMP stands for Politics, Issues, Movies, Pop culture. He's got some neat stuff hidden throughout his site.

Kingdom of Love: Lotsa links, and music stuff. Sites that regularly host MP3's. Not many people out there are musically diverse enough to quote The Kinks, and also post about MF Doom. The blog is on hiatus until January, but that seems to be the blogger cycle.

Aaafter Effect: More randomness, kind of like a mix between interesting links, and a personal journal. I don't know why his stuff intrigues me, it just does.

Island Dave's View v2.0: Marijuana activist, liberal, technogeek, Fan of Floyd. For some reason, he reminds me of Jimmy Buffet. Go figure. He's another person that updates his site multiple times each day. I like his bong, too.

Hanzi Smatter: Dedicated to the misuse of Chinese characters (Hanzi or Kanji) in Western culture. It's kind of like a reverse engrish.com. Some of my favorites are the guy who got "Green Rice" tattooed on his arms instead of "essence", "Exile Husband Retrievable Arrow with a String Attached to It", and Lebron James' Nike shoe, "Extinguish Fire but With Base". I'm glad I'm not one of those people who got "Bean Curd", thinking it was "Pure Love"

Jace's Musings: The drummer from my former band, Blackbird Down (not Blackhawk, goddam it!! BIRD!!). He's been in as many bands as he has had blogs. Let's see if he can keep this new one going. Oh, and Jace, good luck with your new group, The Siren Project. That Polish lead singer is HAWT! I'd ask her out, but the Germans and the Polish have a bad history, and it wouldn't work out. Heh.

A New York Escort's Confessions: She found my site somehow, which makes me all tingly. She's a twenty-something escort from New York (or a fat, balding 45 year old man who gets off on fucking with people), and somewhat obsessed with Ken Jennings of Jeopardy fame. Pretty funny writing, and the occasional fap material. =)

Submission: Another 20-something female/45 year old man. Becca got sick of shitty relationships, and decided to enter the world of BDSM, and blog about her experiences. Tasty.

Memoirs of a Lawnmower Man: Someone else who has disappeared from the blog radar. He used to post techie stuff, and he liked the same type of movies as I do (Bonus: He lives 7 miles from where they shot the movie The Frogs), but he hasn't posted in quite some time now. In fact, his final post was a link to this site, and the enormous post-election bitch I posted. Where you at, man?

Welcome to My World: She likes DJ Shadow and other great music. It's unpossible to dislike anyone who is into Shadow. Too bad for me that she just got married (a few years ago). Asian women are smoking, especially when they like good hip hop AND video games. Don't worry Steve, I'm not moving in on her. =) I think she got the link to my site from American Blogger. She posts good trip blogs (she just got back from the Merry Old Land of Oz with her man), and likes to use ellipses...

I also visit a few other site that are located in the Progressive Blog Alliance blogroll, like Susannity!, Daily KOS, Mouse Musings, Pesky Apostrophe, BlogOsphere ZoO, Now Then, Hammer and Nail, The Monkey Diaries and a few others, as well as larger blogs like Drudge Report and Slate. My apologies if I forgot to include you on my list.

There you have it. Go check some of these sites out, and let 'em know how you found them. And leave me a comment, tell me how you like my stuff. I desperately seek attention. Heh.

Daily Stupid

2004-12-03T21:21:00.000-07:00

Shaddap!!!

God, what a fucking moron. "I don't know why all my money is still in my bank account! My account number is 16548987, and my PIN is 6237. God, it's so easy to rip me off!" I hate redundant names like that, too. Tommy Thompson. Bill Williamson. Fred Fredricks. Bah, if you can't even come up with an original first name, you shouldn't have kids. They grow up to do stupid shit like this:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson resigned Friday, warning of a potential global outbreak of the flu and health-related terror attacks. "For the life of me, I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do," he said.

Well, they sure know now! You and Geraldo Rivera need to get together and draw them a map, outlining the best way to break into the facilities. Better hope Osama isn't trolling The Drudge Report. Asshat.

Drugs Wars are bad, mmkay?

2004-12-03T09:22:00.000-07:00

An interesting article I ran across today about the US Drug War.

The Drug War is Failing

In Washington, D.C., a 27-year old quadriplegic is sentenced to ten days in jail for marijuana possession, where he dies under suspicious circumstances. In Florida, a wheelchair-bound multiple sclerosis patient now serves a 25-year prison sentence for using an out-of-state doctor to obtain pain medication. And in Palestine, Texas, prosecutors arrest 72 people -- all of them black -- and charge them with distributing crack cocaine. The scene bears a remarkable resemblance to a similar mass, mostly-black drug bust in nearby Tulia five years ago.

These examples aren't exceptional. They're typical. America's drug war marches on, impervious to efficacy, justice, or absurdity. Drug prohibition was nowhere to be found in Election 2004. There was no mention of it in the debates, the conventions, or the endless cable news campaign coverage.

In some ways, that was a blessing. Campaign discussion of drug prohibition has too often focused on which candidate took what drugs when, and who was more sorry for having done so.

While it's refreshing that we've moved beyond apologies, it's also true that under the laws many of today's politicians support, a kid who experiments with illicit drugs the same way many of them once did may not get the chance to finish school or go to college, much less run for political office.

The number of policymakers who've dared to question any aspect of the drug war could comfortably fit on the back of a pocket-sized edition of the Bill of Rights. This needs to change. America should reexamine its drug policy.

Today, federal and state governments spend between $40 and $60 billion per year to fight the war on drugs, about ten times the amount spent in 1980 -- and billions more to keep drug felons in jail. The U.S. now has more than 318,000 people behind bars for drug-related offenses, more than the total prison populations of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain combined.

Our prison population has increased by 400 percent since 1980, while the general population has increased just 20 percent. America also now has the highest incarceration rate in the world -- 732 of every 100,000 citizens are behind bars.

The drug war has wrought the zero tolerance mindset, asset forfeiture laws, mandatory minimum sentences, and countless exceptions to criminal defense and civil liberties protections. Some sociologists blame it for much of the plight of America's inner cities. Others point out that it has corrupted law enforcement, just as alcohol prohibition did in the 1920s.

On peripheral issues like medicinal marijuana and prescription painkillers, the drug war has treated chronically and terminally ill patients as junkies, and the doctors who treat them as common pushers. Drug war accoutrements, such as "no-knock" raids and searches, border patrols, black market turf wars and crossfire, and international interdiction efforts, have claimed untold numbers of innocent lives.

For all that sacrifice, are we at least winning?

Even by the government's own standards for success, the answer is unquestionably "no." The illicit drug trade is estimated to be worth $50 billion today ($400 billion worldwide), up from $1 billion 25 years ago. Annual surveys of high school seniors show heroin and marijuana are as available today than they were in 1975. Deaths from drug overdoses have doubled in the last 20 years.

According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the price of for a gram of heroin has dropped by about 38 percent since 1981, while the purity of that gram has increased six-fold. The price of cocaine has dropped by 50 percent, while its purity has increased by 70 percent. Just recently, the ONDCP waged a public relations campaign against increasingly pure forms of marijuana coming in from Canada.

So despite all of the money we've spent and people we've imprisoned, despite the damage done to our cities and the integrity of our criminal justice system, despite the restrictions we've allowed on our civil liberties, despite the innocent lives lost and the needless suffering we've imposed on sick people and their doctors -- despite all of this -- the drug trade isn't just thriving, it's growing. Illicit drugs are cheaper, more abundant, and of purer concentration than ever before.

Like alcohol prohibition before it, drug prohibition has failed, by every conceivable measure. Isn't it about time for America to take a hard look at its drug policy?

Where's my pants?

2004-12-01T09:25:00.000-07:00

HEADLINE! International Fugitive Kidnaps Spongebob Squarepants!

Have you seen this sponge?

People have been stealing the inflatable cartoon character off the roofs of Burger King resturaunts in Minnesota, Florida, Pennsylvania, Conneticut, Illinois, New York, Maine, Arizona, Tennessee, Colorado, Utah and Sheboyban, Wisconsin. The crime spree has even reached Canada. This chilling ransom note was found at the scene in Minnesota:

We have SpongeBob. Give us 10 Crabby patties, fries and milkshakes.
Signed,
Plankton

PS: Patrick is next.

The following green pickle-looking-thingy is wanted for questioning.

The funny thing about this is that each Spongebob costs over $1000 dollars. So if anyone is busted for trying to rip it off, they will be charged with... wait for it... FELONY GRAND THEFT! Hah! So, who wants to place bets on which state will be the first to prosecute a 13 year old and permanently destroy any chance he has of getting a job? I think it will be either Utah or Florida.

On to the funnier side of the news:

Police have been warning residents here in Colorado about puffers. For those unaware, a puffer (which is a stupid, stupid name) is someone who steals your car when you leave it running in the morning before work, or when you stop at a 7-11 for a Taquito. So naturally, a police officer left her car running in her driveway the other morning. Guess what happened? No, really. Guess.

Link to story

WESTMINSTER - A car that was stolen from the driveway of a Denver detective Monday morning was recovered Tuesday evening. One person was taken into custody.

Troy Allen Mackey of Denver was arrested following the chase. He faces charges of Theft By Receiving, Vehicular Eluding, Resisting Arrest and Reckless Driving. It is anticipated that additional charges will be filed once the investigation is completed. Mackey is currently being held at the Adams County Jail.

There weren't any weapons inside the unmarked 2003 Chevy Monte Carlo when it was taken, but it did have a laptop, a traffic vest and a pair of handcuffs.

Westminster police officers recognized the stolen vehicle Tuesday night and tried to pull it over, spokesman Tim Torres said. He said the driver took off with the officers in pursuit. Arvada Police and the Adams County sheriff's department assisted Westminster during the chase.

It started at 68th and Federal and ended at 67th and Lowell, when the suspected stolen car crashed (into a river!! -tcl). One person was taken into custody. Another person in the car ran off and police were using dogs to search an area west of the crash site.

Troy Allen Mackey: You have a pair on you! Holy damn! You're extremely stupid, but your cojones are unmatched in size. Props to you, sir. Enjoy Federal-pound-me-in-the-ass prison!

Good times, all around.

Jetzt schützt wer das Vaterland?

2004-11-30T16:11:00.000-07:00

Tom Ridge to Resign

Please, tell me they're keeping the color chart! How will I know if the Terrorist threat is elevated or high without it?!?! I won't be able to function unless I can wake up to see bright yellow or orange!! OH MY GOD, WHERE'S MY DUCT TAPE?!?!?!?!

(apologies to family members, because my Deutsch is absolute Scheiße...)

sniff Fuckin' beautiful.

2004-11-30T11:41:00.000-07:00

Linky

WASHINGTON — Handing a significant legal victory to gay-rights advocates, a federal appeals court ruled Monday that academic institutions may restrict on-campus recruiting by the military because of the Pentagon (news - web sites)'s policy on gays and lesbians.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (news - web sites), based in Philadelphia, ruled that a federal law known as the Solomon Amendment infringes on the free-speech rights of schools by allowing the federal government to withhold funds from colleges and universities that deny access to military recruiters.

The preliminary injunction issued in one of four separate lawsuits filed by students and professors at law schools throughout the country found that by threatening to withhold federal funds from schools that do not accommodate military recruiters, the government was compelling them to take part in speech they did not agree with.

"The Solomon Amendment requires law schools to express a message that is incompatible with their educational objectives, and no compelling governmental interest has been shown to deny this freedom," the panel wrote in a 2-1 decision.

The court overturned an opinion by a federal judge in New Jersey who ruled a year ago that law schools must open their doors to military recruiters, even if the Defense Department's refusal to admit openly gay or lesbian individuals to military service offends a school's antidiscrimination policies.

"The court understood that if bigots have a 1st Amendment right to exclude gays, then enlightened institutions have a 1st Amendment right to exclude bigots," said E. Joshua Rosenkranz, lead counsel for the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, a coalition of more than 25 law schools — including those at Stanford University, New York University and Georgetown University — that filed suit against the Pentagon in September 2003.

I love that quote. Breaking it down, the guy is basically saying "Look, if you're going to be a close-minded hate-monger and hide behind the Bill of Rights just to deny people the right to be who they are, then we can do the same to you. Suck it, bitches." It reminds me of the Dead Kennedy's song "Nazi Punks, Fuck Off."

It's nice to see a bit of common sense returning to a country that sorely needs it.

Holy Misplaced Wildlife, Batman!

2004-11-26T11:30:00.000-07:00

Wow, talk about a strange morning. I went out about 9:30 to grab a coffee and a game of Scrabble (I watched Word Wars last night on the Discovery Times Channel, and now I have a jones to play), and came face to face with something very unexpected. I was close to Hampden Ave (i-285), which is a 6 lane road, and very busy. As I turned the corner in my neighborhood, I noticed something that was out of place. It was a giant freaking deer. WALKING THROUGH THE PARKING LOT OF THE 7-11.

Now, I know when people think Colorado, they naturally assume that it's a Cow Town, and this type of thing happens all the time. But you see, I live right on the outskirts of the Denver Technological Center, which is kind of like a 2nd downtown. This is a major city. Which is probably why it took me a few seconds to process what I was seeing. This deer (I'm not a hunter, but I can safely say that it was a 6 point buck) was trotting down the street, right towards the busy intersection. The first thought that flashed through my head was "I wonder if he escaped from someone's back yard", like he was a pet or something.

After the initial shock of seeing this thing wore off, I saw that a few other people were trying to herd it away from Hampden, but he kept going. So I turned on the flood lights on my jeep, and swung it right in front of him. Layed on the horn, and revved my engine a bit. He turned, and walked right through the drive-thru of the El Chubby's Mexican Resturaunt (I'm sure the guy working there did a double take when he saw that). After about 10 minutes of wrangling, it became apparent that he was dead set on making it across Hampden. So the 3 or 4 other people that were trying to keep this animal from running headlong into the side of someone's sedan, and undoubtably ruining their Thanksgiving weekend, changed plans and stepped out into traffic.

People slowed to a stop (thank God) and shot all of us dirty looks. Those looks quickly changed to wide-eyed surprise as the buck walked calmly across 6 lanes of blacktop, and onto the golf course across the street, pausing in front of each car to stare at the driver. A look that said "Go ahead. Try and hit me. I DARE you." After he made it across the street, and we were sure that he was going to stay on the golf course, we all walked back to our vehicles and had a good laugh about it. But here's where I began to get a bit upset.

I carry my camera EVERYWHERE. I rarely leave the house with it, just because I never know what I will see that day. And, of course, this was the one morning that I didn't have it with me. And I could have taken some great pictures. At one point, the deer was close enough for me to reach out and touch (fearing the inevitible goring, or kick to the solar plexus that would happen if I did, I restrained myself), but how awesome a picture would that have been? A 1000 lb. deer with a full rack on his head, standing next to the drive-thru screen at a fast food resturaunt. That's a once in a lifetime shot. AND I FORGOT MY DAMN CAMERA!@# ARGHH#!@

Anyhow, the deer was safe and I had an interesting story to tell people (incidentally, the girl at Starbucks thought I was quite insane when I told her what I had just done; her actual words to me were "Are you SURE that's what happened?"), so I drove off to get my java fix.

Man, I am bummed that I forgot my camera this morning...

People who like meth, like my site

2004-11-25T09:50:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of the most recent Yahoo and Google searches that have ended up here:

Tijuana dumpster kids pics
Illegals DUI checkpoint
Jerry Seinfeld visits Smithsonian
Ving insanity hunter
Peru's Taco John's
Free Ron Artest (twice!)
Zesty Chicken Commercial (twice!)
"the end of the civilized world" bush "4 more years"
Artest reindeer
Chocolate mescaline cookies.
Meth Smoking Scientologists
Christmas Wish Laughs

I've talked about Artest, and the Zesty Chicken Bowl, but what is up with "Meth Smoking Scientologists" and "Tijuana dumpster kids pics", not to mention "Chocolate mescaline cookies". What the hell kind of site do you think this is, anyway?

A cornucopia of cogitation from a flibbertigibbet

2004-11-25T01:33:00.000-07:00

Randomness that has flitted through my head at one point or another during the week. Usually in the shower in the morning, which is where I have most of my ideas and ruminations. Conscious dreaming, perhaps? Or just a hangover? You decide.

I(eye) work for(four) a company that sells gray/grey adaptors/adapters that are(our) packaged in aluminium/aluminum. That sentence makes me realize/realise why people have(half) such a tough time(thyme) learning english.

I have been seeing ads on tv promoting the American Idol special with Kelly, Ruben and Fantasia. Can Disney sue Fox, or Fantasia (the singer) for unlawful use of the name "Fantasia?" If Fox makes money, and if the record company makes money off of Fantasia's music, does Disney get a cut?

Stephen Coonts is the poor man's Tom Clancy, and Dean Koontz is the poor man's Stephen King. The moral of the story is: Even if you are a good writer, if your last name is any variation of Coonts/Koontz, you're going to be overshadowed by someone else.

Does anyone celebrate St. Nicholas Day? When I was a kid, every December 6th I would wake up to find my shoes filled with chocolates, an orange and a note from a parent. When I mention this to people, they look at me like I am insane, and when I tried to do this for my girlfriend, I had to spend 20 minutes trying to convince her that I wasn't making things up. Maybe it's just because of my family's germs. Damn sour krauts. (If you got that, then you're probably a jerry yourself.)

In Germany, St. Nicholas is also known as Klaasbuur, Sunnercla, Burklaas, Bullerklaas, and Rauklas, and in eastern Germany, he is also known as Shaggy Goat, Ash Man and Rider and is more reflective of earlier pagan influences (Norse) that were blended in with the figure of St. Nicholas, when Christianity came to Germany. After the reformation, St. Nicholas's attire began to change, maybe as a reflection of the change from the Roman church, and he started to wear a red suit with fur. His dark-skinned helper is most often known as Knecht Ruprecht. Although he still visits many homes on Dec 5th/6th and leaves candy and gifts in the children's shoes, more recently St. Nicholas has begun showing up on Christmas Eve in Germany and is called Father Christmas.

I got this pre-Christmas holiday, and an Advent Calendar every year that I can remember. I love strange little customs like that, rather than mass-marketed holiday consumerism. But the day I see a "St. Nicholas Day Sale" or worse yet, a "St. Nick's in July", I call it quits.

I ate the hottest buffalo wings I have ever had in my life the other day. It was at a new place by my work called Buffalo Gold. I went there with a few friends, and got 100 wings. 25 Garlic, 25 Carribean Jerk, 25 Spicy BBQ and 25 HOT. The wings were great, all flavors of them (although the Carribean Jerk was a bit weird with beer), but the HOT wings were so damn spicy that I almost passed out. No joke. Not only that, but this was the kind of spice that creeped up on you, and before you know it you're bright red and your insides are melting. My ears kept popping because my sinuses shot open, my throat closed up, I got a massive head rush when I stood up and my legs and hands actually shook. It was fucking awesome.

Spice is my drug of choice. My anti-drug, if you will. I buy jalapenos everytime I go shopping, I am growing jalapenos and habaneros, as well as some scotch bonnet peppers. If it doesn't sear my tastebuds off, then add more Dave's Insanity to it. I have a collection of hot sauces, in fact. My dad got me some great scotch bonnet sauce in St. Lucia or St. Croix that is incredible. I've got the usual assortment of Tabasco, Cholula, Tapatio and Louisiana Hot Sauce, but I really want to get my hands on some of Blair's 2 A.M., 3 A.M. or, if I had the $130, Blair's 6 A.M. Limited Edition. 16,000,000 (yes, sixteen MILLION) on the Scoville scale. For those not aware of what the scoville scale is, here's some info:

A scale developed by Wilbur Scoville in 1912, to measure the heat level in chillies. It was first a subjective taste test, but since, it has been refined by the use of HPLC, the unit is named in honour of its inventor. The test officially measures the pungency level of a given pepper. There are other methods, but the Scoville Scale remains the most widely used and respected. The greater the number of Scoville units, the hotter the pepper. Of course, being a natural product, the heat can vary from pepper to pepper, so this scale is just a guide.

*The hottest pepper recorded was a Habenero. Pure Capsaicin measures 16,000,000 Scoville units. The original Scoville test asked a panel of tasters to state when an increasingly dilute solution of the pepper no longer burned the mouth. Roughly one part per million of chilli 'heat' rates as 1.5 Scoville units.

The local Fox affiliate here has a 9:00 newscast. Their weatherman predicts the weather by "Futurecast". If the definition of forecast is "To estimate or calculate in advance, especially to predict (weather conditions) by analysis of meteorological data", then why make up a word as redundant as futurecast? Maybe he's been sitting too close to all his electronical equipmentation.

I have come to hate the following catch-phrases and buzz-words with a passion. Unless you are using it in a humorous way, don't ever utter the following words around me:

"Liberal Media" - No such thing, so shut up about it. The Liberal Media is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Cork your complaint-hole. This means Rush, Hannity, Coulter and the rest of you right-wingers. Find a different scapegoat. You already beat this one to death. The media is skewed in both directions, in order to get a balanced story, you have to read more than just the Drudge Report. Stop being so lazy, and visit more than just 1 website. Go back to blaming the Muslims, the Niggers, the Faggots, the Democrats, the French, Bill Clinton and the Feminists. You had a much broader scope with them as the antagonists.

"Michael Moore" - Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've all heard everything about him. He's fat. Confrontational. Liberal. But really, who the fuck cares? If you quit giving him attention, he'll go away. Liberals, take note. Ann Coulter will shrivel up and die if you pretend that she's not there. Seriously. She's already a walking skeleton, if she turned sideways, she would disappear completely. Those kids who threw pies at her the other day weren't attacking her, they were trying to feed her.

"Person of (insert descriptive term here)" - Person of Tolerance is the one that bugs me the most. Just call them a cock, and save some letters, as well as some oxygen. If you use this term, your brain is in short supply anyway.

"Moral Majority" - This is an oxymoron, with an emphasis on moron. The "Moral Majority" are a small faction of zealots and complete nutjobs. There's like, 14 or 15 of them, at best. Keep your distance. Learn to speak in tongues, that's the only way you'll get through to them. Or actually read the bible, and debate with them.

Intolerance of Intolerance" - Being intolerant of intolerance is called PROGRESSION. No liking or respecting a serial murderer doesn't make you a bad person. Hating a hateful person strictly because they are hateful is OK. Judge them. It's fun. They don't have real feelings, anyway. That's what makes them hateful.

"Crime of Passion" - Did you accidentally fall on that hooker with a 8 inch hunting knife? Crime of Passion, my ass. "Can't Control Emotions" is a better, more apt term. Google Ron Artest, Eric and Kyle Menendez and Lorena Bobbit for more information.

"Hate Crime" - when referring to anyone other than a white person getting beaten/shot/stabbed/raped. Is shanking whitey a Love Crime? Or is it a Crime of Passion committed by a Person of Tolerance?

"Terroristic Threats" - when referring to a prank phone call made by a 12 year old, or 2 kids playing cops and robbers at school.

There's an article in the new issue of Scientific American entitled "The Brain's Own Marijuana". It's an interesting article, focusing on endocannabinoids. Regardless of your stance on medical marijuana, you should check it out. There's some really nifty stuff in there. For instance, did you know that marijuana was used to treat people with epilepsy in 15th century Iraq? And that there are up to 60 different cannabinoids that might have medical applications?

I'm glad I grew up during the birth of video games. It's cool to know that I have played every system, from an Atari 2600 to the X-Box, fiddling with everything in between. Even the crappier things like Sega CD, Atari Jaguar (the first 64 bit console!) and old Apple IIe games on a 5 1/4 floppy. Only a select few know what I mean when I say "Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, select, start." Fuck Super Mario Brothers, let's give it up for Joust, Frogger, Pengo, Lemmings, Tron and my personal favorite, Q-Bert. When I play games like Ghost Recon 2, I think back to the days of Pong and Donkey Kong, and I get chills. If you're under the age of 18 or 20, you have no idea what I am talking about.

That's enough for now. Happy Thanksgiving!

Monday retards

2004-11-22T12:26:00.000-07:00

I'm sure most of you have heard about the NBA brawl from the other day. In case you haven't, read these articles, or watch the video:

I'm going to beat up the people who support me!
That's right, I am an overpaid waste of human skin!
Video of jackassery

Underskilled, spoiled and immature bitches seen below:

Hi! My name is Ron Artest, and I am a short-tempered Nancy Boy who now makes exactly what I am worth. JACK SHIT.

This is what started it all.

The worst part of all is that people have already started hocking shitty merchandise in order to support a quick-tempered, violent and petulant little boy. Yes! Let's all side with this fucktard, give him our support and worship him, because he is a professional ass... er... athlete, and therefore, better than us. In fact, let's all get on our knees, and have him walk past us so we can suck his dick. That's how much we love Ron!

Free Ron Artest Gear
Leave Artest Alone
Artest, the fallen hero (This one sickens me more than the others)

Why do I not feel sorry for anyone? Because of this:

Player Name Salary lost
Ron Artest: $4,995,000
Stephen Jackson: $1,700,000
Jermaine O'Neal: $4,111,000
Ben Wallace: $400,000
Anthony Johnson: $122,222
Reggie Miller: $61,111
Chauncey Billups: $60,611
Derrick Coleman: $50,000
Elden Campbell: $48,888

That means Ronnie will be making only $1,163,000.00 this year. Awwww... My deepest sympathies go out to someone who doesn't have to play for 73 games, yet still makes over 1 million dollars. Hope you didn't buy that fleet of iced out H2's yet. Looks like no Christmas bling for you, dipshit! And if anyone can honestly tell me that they feel this is too harsh a punishment... well, you're an IDIOT. I'd like for you to hunt down the fan that Ron Artest beat the crap out of, and ask him how he feels. No, not the one that threw the beer on Ron, the poor person who dropped 100 bucks to sit 5 rows up from the court, and ended up getting his ass handed to him by a pissy little boy who is better suited to play in the WNBA. In my opinion, Ron should be benched for the remainder of the year, and be forced to wash his teammates dirty, sweaty laundry for the next 73 games. If you're going to get into a fight with the opposing team, then do it. More comedy for me to write about. But if you're making over 6 million a year, and you can't even take a little splash of beer being thrown on you without flipping out and going on a rampage through the stands, then you're not mature enough to play with grown-ups. You're a cock, and now everyone knows it.

One more reason that SPORTS SUCK.

In other news, there are now 5 more Bush voters out of the gene pool. If you're going to squabble over something as petty and insignificant as a hunting spot, and take the lives of other people, then you need to be removed from the gene pool. You're a danger to society, and it's quite obvious that the animals you are hunting are much, much smarter than you can ever hope to be. Which may explain why the only thing you were able to bag were a woman, a father and son, and a teenage boy, while hiding like a fucking pansy in a tree. Enjoy the ass-rape in prison, Chai Vang.

People fucking suck.

Kinda funny

2004-11-18T10:28:00.000-07:00

I got this over email the other day. It's good for a chuckle.

Dear President Bush:

Congratulations on your victory over all us non-evangelicals. Actually, we're a bit ticked off here in California, so we're leaving you. California will now be its own country, and we're taking all the Blue States with us. In case you are not aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, all of the North East States, the urban half of Ohio and the smart half of Colorado.

We spoke to God, and He agrees that this split will be beneficial to almost everybody, and especially to us in the new country of California. In fact, God is so excited about it, He's going to shift the whole country at 4:30 pm EST this Friday. Therefore, please let everyone know they need to be back in their states by then. God is going to give us the Pacific Ocean and Hollywood. In addition, we're getting San Diego. (Sorry, that's just how it goes.) But God is letting you have the KKK and country music (except the Dixie Chicks).

Just so we're clear, the country of California will be pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, and anti-war. Speaking of war,
we're going to need all Blue States citizens back from Iraq. If you need people to fight in Fallujah, just ask your evangelical voters. They have tons of kids they seem willing to send to their deaths for absolutely no purpose. And they don't care if you don't show pictures of their kids' caskets coming home.

So, you get Texas and all the former slave states, and we get the Governator and stem cell research. (We would love you to take Britney Spears off our hands, though. She IS from the south, right?)

Since we get New York, you'll have to come up with your own late night TV shows because we get MTV, Letterman, the Daily Show, and Conan O'Brien. You get... well, why don't you ask your people at Fox News to come up with something entertaining? (Maybe you should just watch Crossfire. That's a really funny show.)

We wish you all the best in the next four years and we hope, really hope, you find those missing weapons of mass destruction. Seriously... Soon...

Sincerely,

California

Just beat your goddam kids quiet.

2004-11-17T14:44:00.000-07:00

It seems that every time I am going to post about something, one of my "Blogger Cohorts" decides to post about the same thing, 5 hours before me. For instance, I have a severe issue with people yapping to me while I am in the bathroom, and apparently /Filthy/Garlic/ has the same issue. He just beat me to the punch. Then, I was going to post about the soft-core porn Amazon.com. You know the one I mean. "The Big O", Overstock.com. But Kirk got there before me. Rabid Gerbil already bitched about the stupid yellow "patriotism" ribbons (gotta give credit where credit is due). Now it's time to bitch about kids. And guess what, Davida and Trufflepig already got to that one as well. Dammit people! Get out of my mind!!! AAARGH!

It's all good though, because today's post is more of an observation than a rant (although it will most likely turn into one halfway though). In order for this post to make a bit more sense, I would suggest going to Observational Pissings, and reading what he has to say about apathetic youth. Once you're done, come on back, and start reading below.

ADD. ADHD. Hyperactivity. Diseases that are not really diseases. AIDS is a disease. Cancer is a disease. Attention Deficit Disorder is a cop-out for not disciplining your child. I find it very coincidental that right around the time it became taboo to smack your kid, or even slap their hands, we suddenly had an outbreak of ADD (it didn't become ADHD for a few years). Could this be due to the fact that "Time Out" is now the standard method of punishing your child? My parents never beat me; I got spankings, and one time my mom backhanded me and bloodied both sides of my nose (I seem to remember that I deserved it though). If I did something wrong, I feared the smack on the ass more than the 10 minutes in the corner. Not only that, but there's a factor of humiliation that has to be added to that equasion. It didn't really hurt being hit, but having your mother slap you in public was a bit embarrassing when other people are watching.

I think that's where the problem lies. Kids nowadays (never though I'd be using that term) not only have no sense of discipline, but they have no sense of humility. They NEED someone to take the wind out of them, and put them in their place. That's your job as a parent. Don't be afraid to pop your kid in public. Who gives a fuck what some ultra-religious nutjob thinks. Who cares if someone finds it offensive. It's YOUR kid. Look at it this way. When you're at a store, and your kid is screaming his ugly little head off because you won't get him that box of Cookie Crisp cereal, everyone around you not only wants to smack your kid, but they want to smack YOU, for letting your kid act the way he is. If you're a non-violent person, and your rugrat is acting up, just grab him by the collar, put your face up close to his so only he can hear you, and growl at him. Yes, growl. It will surprise them, and once you have their attention, say this to them:

"If you don't calm down and start behaving like a human being, I am going to kill this cute little kitten that I have. Do you want the kitty to die? No? Then sit down, and shut up. Otherwise, Fluffy dies."

Simple enough. An empty threat (unless you really do like killing kittens, and no, that's not a euphemism for masturbation), but an effective one. And if that doesn't work, use the old "Keep crying and I'll give you something to cry about" ruse. But for chrissake, do SOMETHING. I have reached the point that if I hear a kid squealing and caterwauling 8 aisles away, I will go and hunt the snot monster down, stand right next to the oblivious soccer-mom and SCREAM. "WAAAAHHH!!! ME WANTEE COOKIES!!! WAAAAHHH!! I'M A SPOILED SHIT!!! WAAAAHHHH!!" (a la Brian from Family Guy). You may think I am joking, but I am not. Not everyone has the ability to tune out a whiny child. That sound is like a dentist's drill. And if it goes on for more than 5 minutes, it's obvious that the parent is either clueless, or just doesn't give a shit. So I, being the humanitarian that I am, do their job for them. Sure, I get a lot of dirty looks, but 9 times out of 10, they SHUT THEIR KID UP. Once they realize that other people are being annoyed by their slobbering little carpet monkey, they get embarrassed, and do something about it. Which is good, because I have no qualms whatsoever about telling the parents to keep their fat, chocolate-covered sperm donation in check.

Oh what, you don't like receiving parenting tips from someone who isn't a parent? Tough shit, deal with it. I may not have children of my own, but it's because I know that
1) I am not responsible enough to care for a child at this point in my life.
2) I am not patient enough to deal with a child at this point in my life.
3) I just don't like kids.

"But children are our future!"

Yes, they are, but our planet is so overpopulated at this point that we are using 20% more natural resources than the Earth can provide. That's one of the reasons I am pro-choice. Better to abort a little speck of child than to have them grow up unappreciated, under-educated, unloved and undisciplined by shitty parents, sucking more money out of our collective pockets when he ends up in prison or welfare. Saddam Hussein's mother originally considered abortion, but in the end, she decided against it. And see how that worked out?

Before I get complaints from people, I am not saying that abortion should be used as a form of birth control, I just have issues with the religious-right and other idiots who have a moral objection to a woman getting rid up an unborn, undeveloped, unaware child, but they have no problems sending their 18 year old off to die in Iraq. These are the same people who refuse to use birth control because of religious reasons, but everytime they masturbate, they commit mass genocide.

**Dingdingdingding! There goes the Logic Train! Looks like you missed it. AGAIN.**

I didn't mean for this to turn into a rant on abortion; do whatever the hell you want with your body, it's YOUR body. But if you decide to keep that kid, do everyone a favor and make sure he is educated, disciplined and loved. Unwanted children end up shooting classmates in schools, and mutilating small animals. Or they end up getting yelled at by an irritable person like me.

To sum things up:
Parents: Beat your children! Not with belts or electrical cords, but every now and then, give them a nice whack with a rolled-up newspaper. It sounds loud as hell, hurts very little, and provides instant relief from the high-pitched keening of your demon-spawn. And it teaches them that sometimes life will kick your ass. Better get used to it now, before it catches you by surprise in 18 years, and you have NO idea how to cope.

Spankings can be fun!

Like clockwork.

2004-11-16T13:23:00.000-07:00

If you've been a steady visitor to this site, then you know that every 3 weeks or so, I let loose and post up a bitch list, which is essentially a rundown of all the things that are currently pissing me off. And for those of you who are coming here for the first time, well, now you know. So, without further ado, here are my complaints for early November!

1) w.bloggar. I use this program constantly, because I like to compose offline, and then upload my work when I am ready to post. In general, it is a GREAT program, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who posts on a daily basis. HOWEVER... if you do use it, be sure to always, always, always use the "Save As" feature. Even if you already have your work previously saved, when you save it again, DO NOT just hit "Save". Here's why:

I have been working on an article about hip hop and culture for about a month. On Saturday, I spent 4 hours, and added about 10,000 words to what I already have finished. Changed some phrasing, added a few links, some new parts, etc. Anyhow, I got stuck for about 15 minutes with nothing coming to mind, when I had an idea for another article. So I clicked "File", clicked "Save", and opened a new project. BIG MISTAKE. After finishing that short article, I switched back to the hip hop article.

FUCK@!#@!#$#@!

Nothing saved. Not a solitary word. And after putting that much time and effort into what I was doing, only to have it disappear really doesn't make me want to rewrite it. Mucho sucko, for sure. So my suggestion to the people who use w.bloggar is this: Always use "Save As". ALWAYS. Don't end up like me.

2) Mongolian BBQ: There is a great restaurant near my work called "Mongolian BBQ". It's pretty simple; you get a bowl, fill it with meat (beef/pork/chicken/turkey) and other items (broccoli, mushrooms, tofu, sprouts, noodles, etc.), top it off with some sauce (usually soy, garlic and hot peppers for me) and give it to the guy standing next to a huge grill. He cooks it up, gives it back to you, along with a bowl of rice and some rice-tortillas. GREAT food, but the people are stingy as hell. I always have leftovers, because this is one of those rare places where the food tastes better reheated. But the stupid Asian women will NOT hand out large boxes for leftovers. They'll give me the small ones, but never the large. Even if I ask for them. This pisses me off for a few reasons.
a) I have to fit all my leftovers into 2 small boxes, instead of 1 large box.
b) This happens EVERY time I go, and there are no other good Mongolian BBQ's around, so I have to deal with it.
c) It's just fucking STUPID.

It costs less money, and uses less cardboard if you give me 1 large box. Why the hell is this even an issue?? I paid 9 goddamn dollars for my lunch, if I don't finish it, I want to take it with me. I don't have cash to freely throw around, and every meal counts. And on top of all of this, they harass me to tip the waitress every time. The waitress comes by to give me my 1 soda, and my egg drop soup. She doesn't return until I am ready to leave. I am not going to tip someone who won't even refill my water glass. Fuck that.

To Insure Promptness. T.I.P. Here's the fucking memo, read it, memorize it, and follow it. I have no problem tipping waiters/waitresses. In fact, I would consider myself a generous tipper; I don't blame the waitress if the food is shitty, that's the cook's fault. I judge the wait staff on how often my drink is refilled, and if they make 1 (only 1) trip back to the table to see if I need anything. That's it. Keep me refreshed, and stop by for 15 seconds out of the 1/2 hour that I am there. Do that, and I'll give you at least 20%, usually 25%. I know you guys and gals make next to nothing, and I am understand that waiting tables isn't a super-fun career. I know it's not your fault that my toast was burned and my eggs were runny. I was a pizza delivery driver for a while, and I remember the shitty tips I used to get. But for Chrissake, at least make an attempt to LOOK at my table to see if I need some Ketchup or something.

3) "We Support Our Troops": No, you don't. Putting a yellow ribbon on your vehicle does not mean you support our troops in Iraq. It means that you have done nothing to help them out, and you feel guilty about them being over there for so long. So in order to feel like a better person, and to delude yourself into thinking that you are actually making a difference, you slap a bright yellow magnet on your gas-guzzling SUV. A bumper sticker does not boost moral half a world away. If you want to support our troops, send them some care packages like I do (yes, I regularly send deodorant, aspirin, beef jerky, Ramen and other items overseas through a program at my job). Here's this months shipment:

No one gives a flying fuck about your patriotism except for the guy at Maaco who will be repainting your car after you take the thing off and discover a discoloration in the shape of a ribbon. He's the only person who cares about you so-called "support". If you REALLY want to support our troops, then Google the term "Iraq Care Packages" or "Donations for Soldiers". Instead of spending 10 bucks on those stupid yellow magnets, spend it on some band-aids and some Lifesavers, ship it off to one of the donation centers, and feel good about yourself. Miniature American flags don't make you a patriot, and neither do witty catchphrases plastered to the rear of your Ford Excursion. You hypocrites make me sick. How about supporting our troops by getting them the hell out of there, for starters. Oh wait, the election is already passed. Too late. Guess those care packages will have to do.

38 soldiers have died so far to bring you this 3 minute long video. So ENJOY it.
Battle footage from Falluja

4) Jockey Temps: Every temp we have had in the past month is the size of a hobbit. I am tired of having to reach up to the top shelf to get a box for you midgets. That's why we have LADDERS. Get some lifts, or apply for a job that doesn't require you to reach above your head. All these dwarves have a shitty work attitude as well. They're perpetually angry, and I don't understand why. Maybe they were laid off from the North Pole, and they miss home. I don't know. But sooner or later I am going to start tossing them like a football. Or maybe I'll just stuff them in a box and mail them to Africa, so they can live with the rest of the pigmies.

5) Christmas Commercials: No, no, no, no, NO!#@!$ It's not Christmas yet. Every 3rd commercial I see on TV is holiday-themed (the worst one yet is that god-awful Old Navy commercial), and it's really irritating me. Seeing Christmas commercials makes me not want to visit your store. EVER. I am not going to buy a Lexus for someone. I am not going to purchase a $4,000 diamond tennis bracelet for someone. And I am not going to dress my animals up in cutesy elf costumes and reindeer hats. If you are one of those people who takes your cat to PetSmart to get its picture taken with Santa, you need to get a friend. Keep stuffing your face with cookies and gravy, but don't bitch to me for 2 months afterwards that you're fat. It's called SELF-CONTROL. Exercise it, tubby.

I hate Christmas, by the way. It was fun until I turned 14 or 15. Then it lost it's appeal. I am not a religious person, so I have no want or desire to go a-churching. I am not a greedy person, so I have no desire to collect as much loot as possible. I rarely have money to get other people presents, and I hate shopping, especially during the holidays, so I feel kinda guilty when I get a package and have nothing to give back. I'll burn people CD's and stuff like that, but that's about the extent of it.

I enjoy Christmas for 2 reasons, and 2 reasons only. The first is the fact that I get a day off work. Which isn't that spectacular anyway, because everything is closed on the 25th, so I just stay at home. Wooopidy-doo! The second reason I like Christmas is the food. I love food (which is surprising, seeing as how I am 6'1" and 140 lbs. soaking wet), and since my family is German, I get to munch on all sorts of good stuff, like red cabbage, goose, my aunt's awesome green bean casserole, and the usual Christmas fare, like stuffing, ham, potatoes, etc. We all get together and pig out, Kraut style! Good times. But as for Christmas trees, caroling, Christmas tunes on the radio, specials on TV and the plethora of crappy movies starring Tim Allen, I don't give a flying reindeer about any of it. Yeah, I'm a Scrooge, I know. So to all you Christians, Pagans, and nonsecular folks who love and celebrate the 25th of December, I say to you "Piss off. Ho ho ho."

6) Halo 2: Wow. I haven't been this let down by a video game since "Unreal Tournament 2". I'll warn you now, this part contains spoilers, so if you don't want the game ruined for you, skip to the next section. It only took me 16 hours to beat this game. It took me almost twice that to beat the original. The ending to Halo 2 is downright shitty, it's a giant cock-tease. The games ends right in the middle of a battle. No Boss Character to kill, nothing. Some of the deathmatch levels are exactly the same as in Halo 1. Literally. Very few new weapons, too. I will say, for the record, that the graphics are outstanding, and the gameplay is very smooth. The new levels that they did add are incredible, but I didn't buy the game for the graphics. I bought it to shoot people! For as many times as they pushed back the release date, it should have been a LOT better. It took me almost 2 months to beat Need For Speed Underground (NFSU2 is released today, I may go sell Halo 2 and buy that instead), and I can definitely say I got my moneys worth for that game. But not Halo 2. Let me save you the time and the money: BUY THE ORIGINAL. Unless you plan on just going online to play, it's really not worth it. It's the equivalent to the Star Wars movies. Graphics do not make the plot any better. I expect to get mountains of angry emails about this, but tough shit. Too much hype and not enough substance. On a scale of 1 - 10, I'd give it a 6.

7) Fingernails: I bite my fingernails like crazy, it's the only habit that I have NEVER been able to break. I've tried everything from taping them up, to coating the nails with pepper sauce (which didn't help, because I LIKE pepper sauce) or a horrible tasting concoction called "Thum". I try to trip and file them to keep them neat, but no dice. I remember having this habit as far back as 3rd grade, but recently it has progressed to a whole new level. I have been gnawing them down to the nubs, and my fingers are sore and have a ragged I'm-a-meth-addict-who-needs-a-hit look to them. Anyone have any ideas on how to kick this habit? I have no nails left, and am chewing my knuckles now. Please, help me! I can't scratch my mosquito bites!!

That about wraps it up for this month. I hope you enjoyed my rage.

ODB is no mo.

2004-11-14T14:38:00.000-07:00

Ladies and Gentlemen: Old Dirty Bastard, a.k.a. Dirt McGirt, a.k.a. Big Baby Jesus is dead. May we remember him as the whacko who crashing the Grammy's to talk about the clothes he just bought, stealing a $50 pair of sneakers, the eye-gouging contest he go into with himself (and subsequestly lost), his ability to record and release an album even though he was on the run from the police, and general insane behavior.

Here's a brief history of ODB. Very interesting stuff indeed.

WU-TANG!!!