From the land of the Hanging Chad

Comes more election-related chaos and confusion among the voters. A recent returnee from "Del Boca Vista Gardens" reported a retiree said out loud that "A muslim is running for President.", probably part of the Osama-Obama problem and related to the scam story that Barack Obama attended a "madras" (religious extremist brain washing "school" like Pat Robertson's Regent U.) in Indonesia. But, it gets worse since someone also stated that Mike Huckabee pardoned Doors singer Jim Morrison! Huh? What? OK, let me get this straight... turn on computer, log on, open browser, get to Google, search... OK, apparently Huckabee pardoned Rolling Stones guitarist and part-time fossil embalmed with Jack Daniels (Me and my shadow...) Keith Richards for a traffic related arrest many moons ago in 1975. The report was also that the current Governor of Florida Chaz Crist (aka Not Jeb Bush and not Christ) might pardon Morrison for "exposing himself" way back when (Kids, go watch the Oliver Stone movie on your iPhone!).
So these are the kind of nit-wits who voted for Pat Buchanan when they wanted to vote for Joe Lieberman and we trust them with our Democracy? May I order them all a round of
Brompton Cocktails?

Kasparov 2008!

Yes, HERE in America! The former chess champ and thorn-in-the-side of uber-evil dictator Putin should seriously consider helping take our country back from our unenlightened despot. Not since Fischer vs. Spassky or Nixon vs. McGovern in 1972 have we seen such a dramatic contest for the hearts and minds of the electorate! Ron Paul could even be his Vice President! Where do I donate?

Russian Election 2008 Blog

Wired magazine sucks!

I was an early adopter of Wired magazine. I have issue #2 (May/June 1993) and on the cover are some "black hat" hackers with masks on behind an American flag. The cover text reads, "Rebels with a Cause - Your Privacy" and one of them in the photo is wearing a t-shirt with the Electronic Frontier Foundation's name and URL, www.eff.org.

Ah, the good old days! Lou Rossetto Jr. is an interesting character and a Libertarian type associated with the Ayn Rand inspired "Reason" magazine. He also wrote a fictional book about Richard Nixon and a coup d'etat, titled "Take-Over" which is worth a read regardless of your politics.

Anyway, enough of lamenting the loss of the original Wired, because I want to focus on how crappy the new one has become. I receive a gift subscription from my father who knows I like tech, but I am not obsessed with gadgets at all, if anything I avoid them like the plague since they are to me little more than vanity accessories for the status conscious. Wired sucks because of their parent corp., Conde Nast Publications which has turned a very cool thing with counter-cultural roots and Libertarian leanings into a high-tech Vanity Fair with all the crappy adverts and hype and, well, crap! In the past year the British "grimehall" entertainer known as Lady Sovereign has been in Wired three times... so what is so "wired" about this girl? Nothing at all, but she is on Jay-Z's Rocafella label and the hype machine has it's hooks in print media as much as it has in cable TV or any other medium.

I then turned to issue #2.06 with the classic Mad magazine Spy vs. Spy guys choking and knifing each other, one wearing a propeller beanie with the text, "Spy vs. Nerd: The super-secret NSA answers Clipper critics" and "The EFF is fighting for your rights in cyberspace". Ah, the good old days... if you REALLY want to know more, click here... because if you think Wired cares about you and your privacy you are a fool because the mags advertisers PWN THEM!

DO NOT CALL!

I figured something out, maybe. When the federal Do Not Call list we signed up for expired, we had to renew it so we would not be bothered by telemarketers. We also have Anonymous Call Rejection, which is cool too. BUT! When you renew your Do Not Call register for your phone number, you have to give them an e-mail address, which is fine I suppose, but I realized this "service" is actually doing something the feds could not do without your help - connect phone numbers to e-mail addresses! OOPS! WTF? Hmmmmmm... (cogs turning inside a paranoid post 9-11 brain)
I wonder who else can get this matrix of information, just in case someone wanted to trace an e-mail to a phone and then to an address! Diabolically brilliant!

The Watchmen! (who watches them?)

OK, I love the graphic novel "The Watchmen", great stuff. About 10 years ago there was a rumor some people were trying to make a film based on it. Good thing they waited, because with CGI it can now be visually much closer to the dark vision of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.

Warner Bros. is making it and it's due out in March of 2009. More info can also be found here.

War Movies (again) & Black Xmas

OK, there was a post awhile back lamenting the dearth of contemporary "war movies" and I accused "Hollywood" of not having the guts to explore the current situations in Afghanistan and Iraq - well I now stand corrected. Thankfully brave people decided to make some of them, overdue, but welcome nonetheless. One is Rendition and the other is Lions for Lambs, both approach the fuzzy ideas of "torture" and other things... it's about time and I expect more.

One of favorite new webpages is the Internet Movie Script Database (the pop-up ads really suck BTW!) where you can go and READ scripts of movies. I read the original script for Apocalypse Now and liked seeing the "other" ending where Capt. Willard (Martin Sheen) goes and sees crazy Col. Kurtz' widow at her home in "scrubbed clean" sunny California... this description of the home stayed with me, "Everything good and secure and desirable about America."
Ah... domestic bliss based on labor-saving appliances and consumption of status symbols.

OK, here is the ADDENDUM to this post, it is going to be a BLACK XMAS this year since I just saw on the Idiot Box 2 ads for movies coming out... "Perfect Christmas" and "This Christmas", both featuring casts "of color" and seemingly FOR black folks, as if we have some kind of de facto seperate-but-equal cinema policy... WHATEVER!

Reporter Fluff

This is the video about cable TV news and what is "Fluff", but is what most people now have to call "News"...

Make Art Not War

This is a video I made for community access TV and which is now on YouTube. Enjoy!

Rachael Ray sux!

Yeah, this so-called TV "celebrity chef" is officially OVERexposed and has in my mind, jumped the proverbial shark.
Rachael Ray Sux!

So, I'd like to give a big Bloggo shout-out to the good folks at the above link, who have already done (way too well) what I wanted to do. I think the RR deal got out of control in the middle of the year when her saccharine mug was on every other dopey smiley happy-talk morning show on TV. Next, we are on our way to the NASCAR race up at NHIS in Loudon New Hampshire and we stopped off at Dunkin Donuts to get some coffee. There is a poster with crazy looking RayRay staring at me as if trying to will me to do her evil bidding, but I resisted. I didn't mention my aversion to her until later we passed a Dunkin's billboard and there she is again... Oy vey! Lord give me strength! I almost had a fit and blurted out, "That silly rotten twat!" as if I had Tourette's Syndrome or something. The guy driving was like, "Hey, uh what was that about?" I fumed, "Oh, that damn Rachael Ray is driving me nuts, she's way out of hand..." I was interrupted by one of the other race fans in the car who said, "That one, yeah, she's delish, ya know? I want to shut her up with my eight inches my manmeat in her friggin' mouth!" And I thought I had it bad, sheesh!

Next I'm in a waiting room and there is InStyle or InTouch or "Why the AlQaeda wants to destroy us" kind of trashy gossip rag and there is ever-perky Rachael Ray in the mag with all the details of her marriage, which may or may not be on the rocks. Echhh! Blechh! Ptooiee! Frazzz!

Anyway, last week I'm in the local suparmarket and I spy Rachaels smiling visage on a box of Triscuits, then, like some weird other worldly life-shaking event, her grating voice came over the store's PA system touting the many benefits of the salty crackers we used to throw at each other in disgust in the back of the station wagon if some silly adult tried to palm these pasty squares of crap off as an actual thing for kids to eat... "They're delish!" Yuk! But it gets worse and the store adds insult to injury by having a huge stack of her "magazine" at the check-out counter, it was all I could do not to set them rack on fire and roast up some Triscuits (made out of people, like Soylent Green and Necco Wafers) on her burning face from the cover!

I know there are defenders out there who have sensed she is a victim of some childhood abuse or suffers from low self-esteem and is a real people pleaser and approval seeker, which is no excuse in my book, she needs a psychological evaluation and some meds.

We're Back!

Hello Blogosphere! We tried to Blog in the spring but there was some weird Google sign-in log-in scam deal that when we tried to do it the computer just froze up and we laughed and laughed and cursed the darkness and, uh, well... anyway, we Blogged elsewhere until Homeland Security shut us down for allegedly helping support some sort of crypto-fascist Left-wing "death squad" that got their marching orders from a disgruntled faction of Federal agents based here in Boston using dead drops and coded messages in steganography, so look closely at those cheezy JPGs people send you because if you open them up using the right kind of editor and run that gibberish through PGP, you get "secret messages".

Anyway, there I was in the local laundromat minding my own business when the place was "invaded" by some skethcy Central American types. Now I know you know I had that gut instinct idea to shake them down for "Green Cards" and make a Citizen's Arrest, which is fine here in Mass. as long as you actually have the suspected miscreant "dead to rights", but if you don't remember you can be jailed for "false imprisonment", so be careful out there aspiring street vigilantes! Anyway... there they go eating nacho cheese chips out of a bag and slicing up a lime right there on top of a washer and... the one guy takes out a small bottle of cheapie tequila and they go at it for 5 minutes straight before noticing me and offering me a pull. I politely declined the offer and smiled. Remember the "Frito Bandito" that oh-so politically incorrect corporate shill for Fritos?


The swarthy bandoliered six gun shooting lover of Frito flavor? Well, these guys could have been his cousins, or at least extras in a "spaghetti western". I love life in the Big City!