AmendmentOne

I ♥ Boxxy!

2009-04-06T14:42:00.000-07:00

Brilliant! Combining the super-viral "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" w/ Boxxy = Memetic Perfection.

On the bridge of the starship Enterprise an odd communication is displayed on the viewscreen.

The Japanese horror film, "Ringu", was re-made for American audiences as "The Ring". The worst case scenario would be Boxxy coming out of your TV and explaining how Gaia Online and 4Chan changed her life, blah-blah, etc.

Nov. 22, 1963 as President Kennedy is shot in the head from the grassy knoll by the shadowy figure obscured by foliage, another shadowy figure lurks behind the infamous stockade fence.

Doctor Who

2009-03-25T15:49:00.000-07:00

Thinking of you...

Meghan McCain!

2009-03-22T08:57:00.000-07:00

Oy vey!
This chick had me with her smile and zaftig good looks, but I'd never reward a Republican with a 'fan letter'...
She is not a 'plus sized model', and anyone thinking that is really messed up in the head. I'm no chubby-chaser, but there is something kind of scary about the too skinny 'ideal' that the fashion biz proclaims as perfection. More like concentration camp heroin chic... skinny chicks need help, please feed them!

American 'Death Squads'?

2009-03-22T08:45:00.000-07:00

Well, of course. You didn't really think we'd fight the war on terror from the moral high ground when we can get dirty in the filth and muck of revenge?
Investigative reporter scion Seymour Hersh is working on a new book and mentioned the black specter of American death squads while speaking in Minnesota.
The audio is here.

The relevant excerpt:
"Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...
"Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.
"Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us."

Watch the Watchmen!

2009-03-06T13:00:00.001-08:00

I took some time off to see the long-awaited film version of the graphic novel (comic book for adults) The Watchmen. I was surprised to see the Small Man of the Big House played by Danny Woodburn, who played Mickey Abbott on 'The Stand In' episode of Seinfeld. It was the best $6.50 I have spent recently and only wish he had a bigger part, pardon the pun!

The Cult of Ray

2009-02-18T17:00:00.000-08:00

I was perusing my dear old dad's bookshelf and came across a book by Ray Bradbury titled, 'Zen and the Art of Writing'.
There were a pair of good quotes from the book.

"Life is short, misery sure, mortality certain." - pg. 9.
"Who are your friends? Do they believe in you? Or do they stunt your growth with ridicule and disbelief? If the latter, you haven't friends. Go find some." - pg. 47.

I also love the album by Frank Black, which includes one of my favorite songs: Men in Black.

Chupa Chups!

2009-02-17T12:05:00.001-08:00

Chupa-cabra Chups?
Nah, these lollipops were first seen by me at a 'rave' several years back... DJ Tron was spinning early 'house' music in an old warehouse near Springfield MA. The 'kandy kids' were handing these out to suck on while you were X'd out in the chill-out area.

Sen. Patrick Leahy has the right idea

2009-02-13T12:59:00.000-08:00

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) is the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and has been a thorn in the side of wily Republicans for many years now. When he asked former VP Dick "I'll shoot ya in the F-ing face by accident" Cheney about Halliburton, the Veep told Leahy in June of 2004 ON THE FLOOR OF THE U.S. SENATE, "Fuck yourself!"
He's a class act... er... a crass act.

The 'maverick' Senator recently proposed we set-up a 3rd World style "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" to investigate Bush-era crimes, including possible War Crimes! These commissions have helped several countries that suffered through years of abuse at the hands of their governments. South Africa looked into the horrors of the apartheid 'regime' that were inflicted on their own people, mostly poor blacks.

OBEY Shepard Fairey!

2009-02-13T09:27:00.001-08:00

Just when you thought it was safe to be a Liberal again!
Former 'Guerilla' street artist and phenomenologist Shepard Fairey of 'Andre the Giant has a Posse' fame was arrested in Boston on his way to the ultra-hip Institute of Contemporary Art.
Apparently his wildly successful 'hack' of an old AP photo of Barack Obama got them thinking we should enforce our 'rights' against him.
Great...
The NY Times got it right and cited the photographer Tom Gralish's contention that the AP does't 'own' the rights and he was 'proud' to be the source of the iconic image!

Dion's 'Abraham, Martin and John'

2009-02-12T06:22:00.000-08:00

This song makes me cry, we have come so far by electing Barack Obama President, at yet we still have so far yet to go. God Bless America!

Has anybody here seen my old friend Abraham?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
You know, I just looked around and he's gone.

Anybody here seen my old friend John?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
I just looked around and he's gone.

Anybody here seen my old friend Martin?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
I just looked 'round and he's gone.

Didn't you love the things that they stood for?
Didn't they try to find some good for you and me?
And we'll be free
Some day soon, and it's a-gonna be one day ...

Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up over the hill,
With Abraham, Martin and John.

Equal in death if not in life...

2009-02-12T06:15:00.001-08:00

A few years back I was in Kentucky at a bed and breakfast near Bowling Green and out back was a 'family plot' of sorts. Two distinct burial grounds seperate but equal. Slaves on one side and their master's on the other. The contrast was saddening, I cried openly and thought about those times. I also remembered in elementary school around President's Day when we learned about Lincoln, the Civil War and slavery. I looked at my black classmates and wondered how we could have done that to them, to their ancestors, so recently, just a couple generations ago... I realized that in death they were finally equal.

The Scarlet Letter R, for REPUBLICAN!

2009-02-09T05:34:00.000-08:00

In the first week of December I tried to find the address of a former co-worker so I could mail them a Christmas card. Turns out my superior online investigative skills (cyber-stalking) had me finding them somewhere in California in a new job, but what of the home address? Sending a card to their place of employment wasn't what I had in mind, but would suffice as a Plan B. I kept clicking on links and found they had made a $1,000 contribution to the McCain for President Campaign!
Huh?
What?
NO CARD FOR YOU!
I remembered this person as a Liberal, at least outwardly, an enlightened and educated person who I admired whiel slaving away from 9-5.
Oh well...

Team UES?

2009-02-04T05:15:00.000-08:00

I was out to dinner with some friends at a local BBQ joint and ran into some interesting people from the Upper East Side of Manhattan. After eating we sat at the bar and we chatted them up a bit. Afterwards I had a flash and realized they needed their own gear for their NYC identity... but someone beat me to it!
Team UES

Last year I attended an event at the NY School of Interior Design. During the break in the program I took a walk around the neighborhood and saw a lovely woman coming towards me pushing a pram. As she approached I was expecting to see two cherubic baby faces, but instead was surprised to see two panting lap-dogs!

They are underground...

2009-02-03T09:14:00.000-08:00

Recently a 'pagan' mosaic was discovered underneath a Catholic church in Italy. Why am I not at all surprised the Christians would do something like this?
From the MSNBC story...
"Another extraordinary scene shows a naked man wearing an ivy crown and holding a lotus flower in his right hand. In his left hand, the mysterious character holds a lituus. This is a crooked cane which in ancient Rome was used by the augurs as a cult instrument. The cane was regarded as a symbol of a priestly group."
God bless us, everyone!

"Who's this guy?"

2009-02-02T06:26:00.000-08:00

I was a little hungover from having watched the Superbowl last night and a certain 9 year old kid I know was at the computer desperately trying to find the Doritos advertisement that he saw on TV last night. You know, the one with the guy who bites into the Dorito snack chip and a lady's clothes fly off to reveal her foundation garments and silky unmentionables!
I wiped the sand from my eyes and instructed him to search "Superbowl Commercials 2009" and at the top of the results was a link to Tom Shales Washington Post 'style' column.
So...
The kid clicks on good old Tom and takes a quick look at his article on the advertisements.
The kid looks Tom's article over and askes me, "Who's this guy?", and I answer, "Oh, he's an interesting person with some opinions on our mass-media culture, maybe when you are older he'll make some sense!"
I remember being in a college mass media communications course and having to do complex 'content analysis' of what was being broadcast for a sample period of time... how many times did the idiots mix up "less" and "fewer" was not in the matrix, incidences of sexism were.
When Mrs. Potato Head loses her mouth and can't give Mr. Potato Head grief for his driving (in a commercial fo Bridgestone tires), the kid laughed and I winced.
I grew up in the mid-1970s reading my mother's Ms. magazine about the same time I was also reading the National Lampoon. My sensibilities remain somewhere in between these two.
In the CBS Sunday Morning TV show, Hugh Hefner's daughter lamented the days when they were lumped into the 'porn' that feminists were fighting against despite the fact Playboy magazine was in favor of women's rights, especially abortion. All these things and plenty more went through my mind in that hungover moment at the computer...
What was surprising was when, after the Doritos ad was over, he took the computer cursor and ran it back and forth along the slider so that it was 'video scratching' as a DJ would work a vinyl platter of a phonograph record, a blur of images, her clothes coming off and going back on in a flash, the bus hitting and then un-hitting the eager snack muncher over and over again...
The medium IS still the message.

Minimum Security comes to NYC!

2009-01-30T11:33:00.000-08:00

Leftist-Cartoonist Stephanie McMillan comes to NYC in February to talk about her work at two cool bookstores...
Kick-ass, controversial cartoonists Ted Rall (www.rall.com ) and Stephanie McMillan will present a slideshow of their latest comics, plus a humorous and inspirational discussion about politics, ecocide, the Evil System, and resistance.

This will happen twice:

* 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009
Revolution Books
126 W. 26th St. (between 6th and 7th Aves)
New York, NY
212-691-3345
Free

* 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 13, 2009
Bluestockings Bookstore
172 Allen St., New York, NY
(between Stanton and Rivington, near the Second Ave. F train stop)
212-777-6028
$3-$5 suggested donation

People obsessed with what others are eating...

2009-01-30T11:24:00.000-08:00

Some people need to get a life, that and stop obsessing over what other people are eating or not eating. I used to work with a lady who was 'anorexic' or something, she refused to reward herself with food, she liked being a miserable martyr. OK, fine. BUT...! She would come into the staff kitchen and watch the rest of us 'normal' people eat lunch. She also had impulse control issues so that the little voice in her crazy head was uncontrollable... "Do you know how many calories from fat are in that pizza?"
Sheesh... what a wet-blanket killjoy.
Go F yourself skinny bitch!
One day I was eating lunch and heard her coming up the stairs so I took my lunch to my office and closed and locked the door. I heard the footfalls approaching, then without even a knock, she tried to just open my very closed office door. I held my breath, she could probably smell my BBQ pulled pork sandwich through the door. She walked away. After I was done I saw her phone extension was no longer lit so she was done with her phone call. I called her on the intercom.
"Oh! Were you in your office?"
"Maybe. Did you want something?"
"No, no..."
"Fine, then next time knock!"
Click!
Go eat something ya crazy witch!

The Frisky!

2009-01-27T06:43:00.001-08:00

OK, so I'm not a 'leg man'... get over it!
I recently discovered the webpage The Frisky, that was linked off of CNN.com.
A post today is all about my favorite female body part - the breasts.
The Frisky seems to be the kind of web 2.0 blog where various sexperts post up their musings on the all too human conditions of 'relationships', 'sex', 'guys', 'celebs' and 'style'.
I can see how there might be some overlap of those subject headings and how random pairings would amuse me for the time it takes to drain a cup of tepid coffee into my innards...

Winter X Wrap-Up

2009-01-26T09:51:00.000-08:00

Another year has gone by and I can't stop enjoying ESPN's Winter X Games! I was riveted by the television coverage and hope they get back to the East Coast some year soon.
So, all I do now is go to 'ski' resorts and videotape the action with the Walter Mitty fantasy of actually strapping on a snowboard and shredding the slopes... but with the right motivation, equipment and freetime it could be done. Most of my time apres video was spent at the lounge sipping Irish Coffee (or a similar boozy hot beverage) while eyeing the locals and their out-of-town guests. I have a way of being an active listener and then connecting the proverbial 'dots' to ascertain who is who and what is what, despite the debilitating effects of alcohol.

Notes on Being Nothing...

2009-01-23T12:09:00.000-08:00

I am a fan of the Peter Sellers 1979 film 'Being There'. In it he plays the gardener to a rich man who passes away and is mistaken for his wizened confidante and madcap hilarity ensues.

Anyway... this important essay (Being Nothing) by Carol V. Hamilton compares and contrasts the persona of the simpleton played by Sellers (who knows about the world only from having watched television) with our (now former) President George W. Bush. Some have attempted to view him as an Evil Genius rather than as the Village Idiot, but the reality seems to be a bit of both, except when we needed a Genius we got the Idiot and when we needed the Idiot we got the Genius!
My view is that history will not absolve us for having elected him at all.

Stop the Music!

2009-01-21T11:46:00.000-08:00

Akin to the backwards and ignorant town in the 1984 Kevin Bacon film, 'Footloose', the Taliban in Pakistan want music banned from buses. "Coo-Coo!"
These idiots are extra nuts!
This is why they will never prevail, because their cause focuses on such silly symbolic things that we take for granted. Just because they can't handle the real world, why should they think they can threaten bus drivers with suicide bombers?
Crazy bastards... let Freedom ring!
Int he movie the religious simpleton fundamentalist zealot played by John Lithgow bans dancing.
As Homer Simpson said, "Hmmmmm... Bacon!"

Cheney in wheelchair!

2009-01-20T10:51:00.000-08:00

Egads! Could it be? Now former VP Dick "Darth" Cheney in a wheel chair? The rumor he threw his back out while stooped over a shredder all last night may or may not be true, but the fact is much of the 'evidence' a South American-style 'Truth & Reconciliation Commission' might use (or the War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague) is now gone forever... of course he himself didn't shred a thing, he had a rogues gallery of underlings just following orders when they hit the 'delete' keys after Nov. 4th.

The car club "Industry"?

2009-01-15T09:34:00.000-08:00

I used to be in a car club, The Black Knights of Massachusetts. We attended a car show and the guy at the registration booth was surprised we were white! Anyway, the club collapsed under some not so strange circumstances, it became a haven for complainers and malcontents and our meetings devolved into bickering over what font to use for the cruise night flyer and other nonsense. So, in describing this situation years later to some car loving chums I blurted out something about the "car club industry". They looked at me funny as they had never heard it put that way before, but there is in America (and around the world), many businesses who derive their profits from servicing the many car clubs around. These folks get up at the crack of early and polish their rides using some companies products, they get soffee and breakfast on the way, they pay an admission fee to park in the hot sun all day long and they then buy lunch, and maybe a new part for their car from the various vendors who habitually travel around hawking their wares. The love for the automobile will endure long after the gasoline powered internal combustion engine goes the way of the dinosaur. When I have a 240kV fuel cell in my car, why not 'hot rod' ir and bump it up to 380kV? Happy motoring!

R.I.P. Patrick McGoohan

2009-01-14T10:50:00.001-08:00

British born actor Patrick McGoohan passed away, he was 80 years old. Best known for his work on the TV spy show "The Prisoner" , I remember him best from the Cold War film drama 'Ice Station Zebra' where he played David Jones. The movie was based on the 1963 book of the same name by Alistair MacLean, author of The Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare, which were also made into movies.

Watchmen!

2009-01-13T09:52:00.000-08:00

My man Blunty 3000 posted this up on YouTube...

John Galt, where are you?

2009-01-03T11:34:00.000-08:00

I found this 'Who is John Galt?' mousepad online... of the Ayn Rand 'Atlas Shrugged' fame?
I also found the reportage on the John Galt Corp. in Bronx NY responsible for the clean-up of the Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty Street that was damaged in 9-11.
Then I found this.

Caution: Rogue Robots!

2009-01-02T09:08:00.000-08:00

OK, so I accidentally watched a kids movie... true, true.
Wall-E, which I was under the impression was about a kids robot project that hitches a ride on the NASA Space Shuttle, or something like that!
WRONG!
It had a very potent pro-environmental message (like the film 'Silent Running' with Bruce Dern) and a 'be careful of trusting robots' message akin to Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis' or Stanley Kubrick's film version of Arthur C. Clarke's '2001: A Space Odyssey' .
I usually hate cutsie-poo Disney sugary crap, but this one gets a nod for being 'on message'.

US MILSPEC blocked content

2009-01-01T10:03:00.000-08:00

There is a war on, and the first casuality is... the sense of humor, oh, and the truth!
Oddly, the Saturday Night Live TV Funhouse with Dick Cheney at the controls of Torboto, the robot that tortures prisoners, cannot be accessed by those fighting "over there" in Iraq.
This is the worst form of censorship, that which might actually lend an ear to those actually involved with the conduct of the war and give them some comic relief. Perception management...

John Forté Pardoned!

2008-12-23T09:20:00.000-08:00

Rap producer and performer John Forté has been released from prison.
God Bless America!
OK, he was popped at Newark airport in 2000 w/ cocaine, a LOT of cocaine!
But you know President Bush felt bad for a "fellow traveler" and hit him up with a Presidential Pardon to end his eight years in office.
In the song "Tryin' To Stay Alive" by Wy-Clef Jean and featuring John Forté I first heard the name...
"John Forte grab the mic roots sway it this way..."

King of Movie Soundtracks

2008-12-15T09:59:00.000-08:00

NO, not Danny F-ing Elfman...!
Silly goose, Bernard Herrmann.
As a young lad I stayed up late and snuck downstairs to watch "Taxi Driver" on HBO, back in... the last `70s. Anyway... the haunting music in the film stuck with me and the sax parts and the strings were just amazing. I found the soundtrack on casette and wore it out, mostly sitting around smoking and drinking - it was music to get depressed and angry to. Just ask Travis Bickle!

So, years go by and as luck would have it I sat down to catch the original "Day The Earth Stood Still" (not to be confused with the recent re-make) and guess who did the music? That's right, Bernard Herrmann.

Bettie Page R.I.P.

2008-12-12T10:01:00.000-08:00

A moment of silence please....

OK, for those of us men who grew up sneaking glances at the women's underwear section of the old Sears & Roebuck catalog before we even knew why we liked to do that, we must acknowledge how one "Bettie Page" took that fetish and ran with it at a time when cultural and sexual oppression was running rampant. Her courage and bravery should be remembered. She passed away and we will remember her iconic 'baby doll' bangs.

YouTube "Dead Ends"

2008-12-11T08:14:00.000-08:00

As an experiment in web "surfing" and as a test of the Situationist concept of derive', or 'drift', I went ahead and after clicking the bottom-right links of over 30 YouTube channels I got to this 'dead end', a 15 year old with no videos, no favorites, no friends, no comments, no subscribers and no subscriptions!
I tried this once before and found myself at a similar minimalist end point.
That's it, just a report on an observation.
A similar experiment took me to a bulletin board where the back-n-forth in name calling eventually ended in these two phrases repeated over and over...
"Black Helicopters" and "Tin Foil Hat". That about sums it up!

Vanity Fair does it again...

2008-12-10T12:51:00.000-08:00

I used to dwell with the Tin Foil Hat-N-Black Helicopter crowd... oh it was SO very easy to spin out tales of CIA-Mafia conspiricies to off any number of great people, Marilyn Monroe, JFK, RFK, MLK, E. Howard Hunt's wife, Cord Meyer's ex-wife, and plenty more. As time went on I realized a few things. One was that, for me, I gained a measure of solace from being convinced (through my own research and that of reliable investigators) that the plot to kill JFK was; 1. Apolitical, 2. Pre-existing to his Presidency and, 3. Quite small.
Hard to believe, I know!
Unlike the "everyone including the Secret Service" theory of Oliver Stone et al, I came to the reasoned conclusion that there was a group within the U.S. Government that was up to "something" (probably heroin smuggling from S.E. Asia) and that they would have had problems with any President that crossed their path.
In this case it was John F. Kennedy, but it could also have been Richard M. Nixon... ( I know, I know...) BUT... my theory has some advantages in that it dovetails nicely with known facts and is elegant in it's simplicity.
Vanity Fair magazine has often published excerpts from books (Anthony Summers' 'Official and Confidential' about J. Edgar Hoover) and from on-going research, such as that into the Iran-Contra Affair - 'A Crash in the Limo Lane' Dominick Dunne on Adnan Khashoggi (September 1989).
This time they reviewed the new book, Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination,' by Thom Hartmann and Lamar Waldron.

The CIA's playlist on maximum rotation...

2008-12-10T09:00:00.000-08:00

OK, so some Hip Hop and Industrial music can be torture, but the Seseme Street theme and that damn song by Barney the Dinosaur? Sheez! The CIA sure has some weird ideas on how to 'break' captives and make them talk. While the sounds of guitar and drum mayhem may assist in eliciting information and confessions, it can also serve to drown out the cries and screams of pain. The notoroious 'discotheque' of torture known as La Venda Sexy (The Sexy Blindfold or Bandage) that was run by Chilean secret police back in the 1970's is a case in point, dogs included.

Italian judge suspends trial of CIA agents?

2008-12-03T06:20:00.000-08:00

"Prominent officials warn disclosures may endanger Italy's national security", so says the MSNBC online news headline... this case is very interesting. Osama Nasr Mostafa Hassan (aka Abu Omar) was taken by a team of kidnappers from Italy to Egypt in 2003. Some of them stayed for a few nights at the Milan Hilton hotel. Besides their passports being phony, the crack team of agents used cell phones and their movements were easily tracked. Another good article is this one, "The CIA in the Dock: MILAN'S EXTRAORDINARY RENDITIONS CASE", from Spiegel Online. Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy flight!

My new favorite documentary is... 'A Man Named Pearl'

2008-11-29T17:04:00.000-08:00

Do your soul a favor and feed it this gem of a film. The story of Pearl Fryar of Bishopville South Carolina is uplifting, inspiring and a well crafted bit of documentary filmmaking by Scott Galloway and Brent Pierson. This self-taught artist and son of a sharecropper makes the most amazing creations out of plants, bushes and trees. The Garden Conservancy is helping assure future generations can enjoy his work. The DVD is now available.

Marcie Carlson?

2008-11-27T09:39:00.001-08:00

I noticed the Bloomberg reporter Margaret Carlson looks like Marcie from Peanuts... that's it. Happy Thanksgiving!

Nick Fury!

2008-11-24T17:59:00.001-08:00

I was over at a friend's place watching the film 'Iron Man'. He has a Blu-Ray player, a Sony widescreen LCD TV and surround sound. There were several moments in the film that required us to replay and enjoy a second and sometimes a third time. I've been a fan of Marvel Comics since I was a kid and enjoy the many interesting stories and cosmologies. When the government agent mentioned they had changed their long agency name to the acronym S.H.I.E.L.D., I looked at my host (who had seen the movie before) and said in my best David Hasselhof voice, "Nick Fury, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." and he about fell off the chair. He told me to wait until the end of the movie and I did. When Robert Downey said, "I'm Iron Man" when he was supposed to be reading a cover story off of an index card at a press conference - I laughed out loud. Then we were forced to watch the closing credits and despite my best protestations that I didn't need to see them, I'm glad I did, since this was the 'Easter Egg' after the last credits rolled...

Eat The Rich!

2008-11-21T13:02:00.000-08:00

"Eat the rich, eat the rich
Don't you know life is a bitch
Eat the rich, eat the rich
Out of the palace and into the ditch."
- Krokus

I was in a waiting room recently and got to see the latest issue of Town And Country magaaine... I know there is a lot of anger at stupid rich greedy people due to the economy being in the crapper, so I paged through the glossy upscale mag with an eye towards the truly egregious examples of waste and frivolity and was not disappointed!
One page 219 of the December issue were photos of some of the wares of Bottega Veneta... including a folding camp stool for, get this... $4,300!
I can't imagine why poor people hate the rich...

Take it out back and burn it!

2008-11-15T11:05:00.000-08:00

There is something very satisfying about getting rid of old things, a purge of the gross and stained stuff that makes you want to vomit... one of the best ways is to "Take it out back and burn it!"
I remember hearing this for the first time several years ago in relation to a small artifact of a previous life my friend lived. He was in one of those alcohol fueled moods and any time there is the opportunity to set something on fire, he'd take it!
On another occasion was the demise of an old couch. It had served it's purpose and had fallen into decrepitude. Not worth the cost of reupholstering, it was decided to set it aflame one warm night as we again sipped beverages on the back porch.
Now and again when I can work it into the conversation as a general negative comment on something I will say outloud with comic effect, "Take it out back and burn it!"

If you really want 'Socialism'...

2008-11-13T10:00:00.001-08:00

Then nationalize some of our poorly performing industries, like automakers, oil companies and most importantly - the airlines. We need deserve better than to be held hostage by the whim of some greedy and stupid Capitalists who are not Americans first. Israel has one properly managed airline that has the best security, El Al, unlike our own that is sketchy at best - even with the TSA taking over from the $8 an hour high school drop-outs that let 9-11 happen. Why do we trust greedy people to do what is right for our country? Force of habit perhaps? Or, an acknowledgement that the alternative is potentially worse than we can ever imagine?
Maybe we could have one well run national automobile company that made a wide selection of cars for all needs, small cheap ones for the poor folk and roomier ones for those who can afford them, but they'd all be 'green' and super-fuel-efficient.
And the one well run national airline, they'd be able to plan things, schedules, hiring of pilots and buying jet fuel from the government, because instead of duplication of efforts and wasting of resources, we'd be able to preserve pension plans and avoid layoffs.

Al Qaeda in Canada or ELF?

2008-11-11T16:52:00.000-08:00

Last month a couple of pipeline blasts in Canada near the town of Dawson Creek in the province of British Columbia caused little stir as the news media barely reported the act of terrorism.
It could be the work of the Earth Liberation Front, or their arch-nemesis and headline stealers the world famous - Al Qaeda.
Again, the lack of coverage of this story underlines the lack of facts and further undermines confidence in complex systems unable to defend themselves, including energy.

"It doesn't take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows..."

2008-11-02T06:33:00.001-08:00

In support of be being a friend to Bill Ayres-

All things, people, ideas and actions are only truly known "in context". If we were to go back in a time machine to the late 1960s and take a look around, we'd see very strange things. We'd see a divided America, one hopelessly clinging to the past in a reactionary way, one that saw the domino-like spread of Communism in southeast Asia and had to act against it. Act against it despite the costs in blood and treasure. That plain vanilla America listened to Lawrence Welk and wouldn't think twice about going down the American Legion hall for a beer and to listen to tall tales of fishing and hunting trips and worse. Then there was that 'other' America, they grew their hair long because they wanted to, had freedom to, and it pissed off the 'squares' that they felt were repressing them. They avoided the draft and the war and the trappings of a stagnant soulless middle class existence with a Cadillac, a good stable job and 2.5 children. The Days of Rage and the Summer of Love and Woodstock Nation and all the cliches and bromides live on and the evidence is in all the freedom we have personally, kids with mohawk haircuts, tattoos and piercings... the Sixties happened and that genie will never be put back into the bottle of history. The invasion of Cambodia and the Kent State Massacre and the Hard Hat Riots in NYC were all real. Leftist underground groups did make explosives and shout "Off the pigs!" Dissent was patriotic and so was supporting the ground soldiers in the struggle. The very language of revolution assumes a sophisticated mind and an enlightened soul as it makes little sense to the simple-minded and the brain-washed. The war crimes we committed as a nation 'over there' have been well documented, what was less well documented were the war crimes committed here against our own people. When Black Panthers were shot dead in their homes by police in Detroit, when protestors were clubbed in Chicago in `68, when Peter Fonda as Captain America was killed in 'Easy Rider', when blacks were bitten by police dogs because they wanted to be treated like human beings, when... OK, the war was here too and there were political prisoners and real dead victims. People like Bill Ayres have become a cartoon character during this election season. The Culture War rages on and a new generation is being influenced by the rhetoric and emotional arguments for their hearts and minds... some of us have the courage and moral compass to know Right from Wrong and the rest play video games where there is a skewed sense of justice and who the 'hero' is. (to be continued)

Who the BLANK is that???

2008-10-30T09:35:00.001-07:00

So we were watching (by accident) 'Celebrity Rehab' on VH1. They showed Brigitte Nielsen and the lady I was with looked at the TV and said, "Wow, Billy Idol is a real fierce tranny hot mess!"
Uh, that's not Billy Idol, but maybe they were separated at birth!

Funk 4 Peace by the Fort Knox Five!

2008-10-30T06:11:00.000-07:00

Oh man, ya gotta love this!

"America, we cannot turn back. Not with so much work to be done. Not with so many children to educate, and so many veterans to care for. Not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save. Not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend. America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future." - Barack Obama

"I'm a kook too!"

2008-10-21T15:58:00.000-07:00

I LOVE online news... instead of the filtered and watered down for the masses national news we can now be narrowcasted to by the locals who know the stories best.
Akin to the guy on Cape Cod who worked for the newspaper that had all the nitty-gritty details on Chappaquiddick, Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne in 1969, and as those laboring away in Wassilla Alaska know where the bodies are buried in Sarah Palin's backyard, Nick Coleman of the Minneapolis Star Tribune lets the rest of us know all about their favorite girl - Congresswoman Michele Bachmann aka Joe McCarthy's illegitimate grand-daughter! Nick goes all the way back to german WWI ace pilot Max Immelman to get the allusion just right...

"An Immelmann is a precise aerobatic maneuver in which an airplane performs a half-roll to reverse its direction. A Bachmann is sloppier but more spectacular: To perform a Bachmann, a candidate for Congress puts her foot in her mouth, talks stupidly for seven minutes and watches her reelection campaign burst into flames."

To add fuel to the fire, supporters of her Democratic opponent have been dumping cash contributions into his campaign coffers in order to Negate the Hate! God Bless Amerika y'all!

Andy Martin for President!

2008-10-15T08:30:00.001-07:00

My old pal Jonathan Turley, the DC lawyer and fellow trouble-maker, blogged up another dilly with his outing of one Andy Martin as being the source for the rumor that Barack Obama is Muslim... NOT THAT THERE IS ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT!
I first became familiar with Turley back when he was involved with assisting Helen Frost in Las Vegas. Her late husband passed away after breathing fumes from the open pit burning of chemicals at a secret desert base in Nevada, better known as Area 51!

My new hero - Christopher Buckley!

2008-10-14T11:01:00.000-07:00

For years I railed against the doctrinaire and dogmatic 'Conservatives' who were always cooking up new, diabolical and insidious ways to mess up our Democracy. Turns out there are those on the Left who are right there, back-to-back with the Right Wing Nuts that if one merely changes a few key hot button words around you have a mirror image of the other!
Christopher Buckley, son of Conservative scion William F. Buckley was fired from the very publication his father created out of a sow's ear - the National Review!
As a teen I saw the parody of it in the National Lampoon and they called it the National Socialist Review, meaning they are Nazis! Anyway...
He is voting for Obama and made the mistake of writing about it online for The Daily Beast...
My main problem with Liberals is on gun control, hey, aren't they the only way to really protect yourself from the all those creepy "domestic terrorist religious fanatics"? And I mean the Christian Identity Movement (Neo-Nazi Skinheads) and the FLDS Mormans - not Muslims!
I didn't vote for Bill Clinton, I wanted Mrs. Linda Ronstadt and former California Governor Jerry Brown or at least a seasoned veteran Senator like Tom Harkin. Instead I voted twice for H. Ross Perot and when asked why I'd blink my eye with a wildly crazy tic as if I had been drugged and would answer, "Because he's the only one who knows the truth about the Mafia-CIA-POW-MIA Southeast Asian heroin cover-up!"
That would create an immediate cessation of further questioning!
I read with interest the book by J. William Middendorf II, "A Glorious Disaster: Barry Goldwater's Presidential Campaign and the Origins of the Conservative Movement" and fell in love with that silly gang of Draft Goldwater types who thought they could beat the party apparatus at their own game!
The more things change the more they stay the same...
Good work Chris, your father would be proud of your flexible thinking!

"The Man (and Woman) Who Knew Too Much"!

2008-10-09T09:10:00.001-07:00

OK, so some American tourists travelling in the Middle East get confused for spies in an Alfred Hitchcock movie, so what? The recent flap on the border of Syria and Lebanon might make a good jumping off point for a Hollywood re-make of the original that starred Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day. So we may still be using newspapers and other media as cover for secret agents, so what? As anyone will tell you these is a very thin line between someone asking questions overseas as a curious freelance reporter and asking the very same questions as a CIA agent or freelance intel contractor...
Oddly enough a story today from the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) mis-reported "missing American journalists" Holli Chmella and Taylor Luck's names as "Holy Robin Shmella and (get this!), "Taylor LANGLEY Luke! Oy Vey! The CIA HQ is in Langley Virginia... certainly a coincidence.

Mix it Up at Lunch Day!

2008-10-09T08:47:00.000-07:00

This event will be on Nov. 13th and aims to create "inclusive school communities" and is part of the Southern Poverty Law Center and Tolerance.org's Teaching Tolerance project. It is like walking a mile in someone elses moccasins by sitting at their lunch table. If you don't think the drama of school lunch rooms can be intolerant, you don't know what is going on... back in my day we had as a lunchroom at middle school an indoor gym that had a partition. On one side was the 'hot lunch' and on the other was the 'cold lunch'. I for one wanted a hot lunch on occasion and had come from a different school to 9th grade. I found out it was a form of 'de facto' segregation as most of the kids on the hot lunch side of the very real divider were either black or hispanic. Some received lunch 'tickets' as part of a social service program. Sometimes I'd go over to the other side and hang out with the kids there, slowly I came to realize the seperation did indeed have psychological effects...

Flirting her way to Victory!

2008-10-08T11:10:00.000-07:00

Republican Vice-presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska has been called a VPILF and worse. Michelle Goldberg's October 3rd article in the UK newspaper 'The Guardian' was not just a great piece on feminism, politics and Palin, but her word choice demonstrates once again how the English have a real command of... English!

'preposterous'
'platitudes'
'venerate'
'vaporous'
'cutesy'
'spunky'
"fuckin' redneck"

Notes on Susan Sontag

2008-10-03T18:34:00.001-07:00

Susan Sontag's 'Notes on Camp' was a revelation that echoes down through time. An essay of observations on 'camp' sensibility and taste, a way of seeing and enjoying things, not the velvet jacketed rarified world of the modern day 'dandy' but a nod to the seemingly tastelessness of the underclass, the way a John Waters film makes one feel in the know, happy to be part of a cool inside joke the stuffy square people just don't get...
Celebrate her birthday the next January 16th by renting a low-budget B-movie that makes you groan and laugh and be glad you can appreciate the 'other' side of our culture.

The New Sentimentality

2008-10-03T18:22:00.001-07:00

Robert Benton and David Newman wrote the script for the film "Bonnie and Clyde". At the time few could have seen the lasting impression the portrayal of the two 30's criminals by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway would have. This is mainly because Benton and Newman had managed to channel the prevailing 'zeitgeist' of the times when they wrote an article for Esquire magazine titled, "The New Sentimentality".
It posited the idea that in 1964, after the assassination of JFK, we, as a country, were in a profound transition... we had one foot in the past and one in the future, we were somewhere in a grey area between the simpleness of "Leave it to Beaver" and the mixed-up family of "The Brady Bunch" and the fatherless "Partridge Family".
We are yet again at another crossroads of cultural sentimentality, seen in the upcoming election, in the messages the media mediates, or fails to mediate.

We still may have a 'last decade' view of media and politics although those quaint notions should have been destroyed after the treatment of Al Gore and John Kerry. Karl Rove and 'Scooter' Libby are modern day criminals who should be on the run, dodging the cops, driving through the mid-west in a V8 Ford looking for a bank to rob, the old fashioned way - with a gun. I saw on TV an 'old' movie from 1976. I forget how the definition of 'old' keeps changing! 'Rocky' was the story of an under-educated under-class meat cutter and boxer from the tough streets of Philadelphia played by Sylvester Stallone. He fought the flamboyant black man - very much like Muhammad Ali. The same week I warmed over that chestnut I also saw 'The Legend of Ricky Bobby' about a down home Southern-baked under-educated and under-class race car driver played by Will Ferrell. Whereas for Rocky we felt kinship for the underdog and understood his tortured syntax and verbal malapropisms, we laughed at Ricky Bobby and his. One was a hero and the other was a joke. My how times have changed.

Rise of the Anti-Hero, Part 12

2008-10-03T18:01:00.000-07:00

Every 20 years or so we see the ascent of the Anti-Hero, a cultural embrace of the bad, the wrong, the... polar opposite of what we were all taught to believe was 'right'.
We are in another of those times, back when Lt. Col. Oliver North broke the laws of the land to facilitate and illegally finance a war on Communist subversion in 'our' hemisphere and to (in his mind) help free hostages in Lebanon by selling weapons to Iran, it was President Ronald Reagan who was the proverbial 'good guy' who would later look so confused in the dock testifying about the murky details of the Iran-Contra Scandal.
Now, we have another set of super-patriot bad guy anti-heroes close to being at the end of their terms in public service who will go away and perhaps, with a little luck will end up testifying before some committee about how they broke laws and subverted democracy to facilitate the War on Terror, with W as the confused ex-President pretending not to know what the guys down the hall were up to...
If the original Superman movie were made today, I wouldn't be surprised if good old General Zod was not only elected President, but he'd be the champion of defeating the subversive elements in our midst, including Al Qaeda, and there would be those apologists who would say, "But he got rid of the bad guys."

Obama is going to win because of my dream!

2008-09-24T05:32:00.000-07:00

I had a dream!
Last night at around 3am.
It was of a rocket-powered space plane soaring into the sky and beyond to the International Space Station and then onto the International Moon Base, much like the book and film, "2001".
Sometimes I dream the future.
Nothing of any consequence, just some odd event that later I live and feel that sense of deja vu.
So... I think the dream was a good omen for Barack Obama's eventual election victory because in my dream, the name emblazoned on the side of the rocket space plane was...
USS Martin Luther King Jr.!

As the crow flies?

2008-09-23T08:52:00.000-07:00

Funny thing how you can look at a map and see things previously unseen. In the Middle East we (the US of F-ing A!) are now on both sides of a pre-nuclear armed Iran. We have sizeable troops in both Afghanistan (BurqaStan) to the east and in Iraq (The Shit) to the west. Further west is Jordan and beyond that Israel. A recent discussion of concussion bombs (an aerosolized air-fuel mixture that is dispersed over a wide area and ignited) led to talk of the secret Israeli 'stealth' plane program and finally connecting the dots to how the requirements of a mission to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities are partially met by having the airspace over Iraq in friendly hands... so while some of our helicopters are being shot at by our ally Pakistan, I doubt anything would happen to an Israeli air force plane should it need to fly over Iraq to it's date with destiny - 30 Seconds Over Tehran.

Magibon! \^^/ MRirian!

2008-09-18T12:35:00.000-07:00

OMG!
What an odd series of clicks took me from YouTube, to Japan and back again!
This chick is whacked! (thank God!)

Magibon?
Cinnabon?
Cinnabun?
OK, methinks there may be something here beyond our power to grasp, something metaphysical, something... not of this Earth!
"この地球の何か…ない、形而上学的な何かつかむ私達の力を越えて何かがここにあるかもしれない"

Meanwhile, TimothyDeLaGhetto2 from YouTube has a fake date with her here...

Alaska Uber Alles!

2008-09-09T16:35:00.000-07:00

There is something eerily familair about Republican Vice-Presidential candidate and Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. It was as if I had seen her somewhere before, in another context, another time and place... but WHERE?
Nazi Germany?
Maybe...
the screaming crowds, the rampant patriotic symbolism at the mass rally?
Was that the subliminal trigger, or was it something else?
Her grin, smile, smirk, the... how does one describe it?
A knowing nod to those in the know, I am one of you!
Seig heil!

The Circuit, on ABC Family!

2008-06-08T13:23:00.000-07:00

It's true!
Michelle Trachtenberg finally got her boobies!
Of course I wasn't tracking their progress, but I did notice when I logged onto Yahoo Mail on the front page is a hype with her crazy smiling face and her name and some silly crap about "young celebrities".
Of course, knowing how internet marketing and the shameless media-entertainment hype machine works, I was sure it was a paid ad pretending to be something else, like, what people are looking up and searching for! Like Rihanna or whatever talentless flavor-of-the-month needing a publiscists boost... ever see Sweet Smell of Success? Get the DVD from NetFlix, OK? Burt Lancaster plays Walter Winchell, or at least someone strikingly simliar!

SO, a couple of days go by and I'm beating the summer heat by watching the NASCAR race from Pocono PA and theres an ad for The Circuit, an ABC Family (wholesome and square) 'movie' or 'series' or whatever the F it is... starring, MT's new boobies in a race car driver's uniform! Wow! Mommy, I want to be a teen idol race car driver just like Joey Daytona! Please, can I? Please?

Right Said Tony?

2008-05-25T13:21:00.001-07:00

-Photo by Joey Daytona-
IRL "driver" and producer of spare race car parts Tony Kanaan aka Vin Diesel not only looks like the mesh-shirted bloke from the "band" Right Said Fred, he loves their "music" and subs for one of the Fairbass brothers, the bald one, (right? Oi Oi!) when he is laid up in hospital with various symptoms better left undescribed here. (Penis problems)

The REAL worst case scenario... plane + shampoo napalm?

2008-05-25T09:54:00.001-07:00

I was talking to some people a few weeks ago and had a revelation that only last night 'gelled' while watching "The Assassination of Richard Nixon" starring Sean Penn from 2004, but about the true story of Sam Byck, a guy who lost his wife and kids, his job and his sanity and decided to hijack a passenger plane and have it flown into the White House. (sound familiar?)
I can't help thinking it was Penn's way of saying Bush Administration claims that 'no one knew' what was possible and preventable was straight up BULL SHIT!
Byck brought onboard a gun and a suitcase with gallon sized anti-freeze jugs of gasoline...

When we were talking about the potential of a shampoo bottle bomb, Richard Reid the 'Shoe Bomber', matches and lighters, etc... as well as the Anarchist Cook Book style 'binary' bomb where one mixes 2 safe substances to create a real BANG... I realized that a potential terrorist attack on a plane doesn't have to be the perfectionist version of a hole blown in the side causing an explosive decompression and/or airframe failure and eventual crash - what if they just made homemade NAPALM and squeezed it all over the passengers and set them on fire?
Do THEY know about this?
THEM and US?
What else aren't our own gov't and the 'baddies' telling us?
If the media was honest and not concerned with being alarmists, we'd understand thinsg better and give up our bottles of shampoo more willingly.

What's with all the smiles?

2008-05-25T08:36:00.000-07:00

OK, so I'm in a transit bus stuck in traffic in Harvard Sq. Cambridge MA due to construction causing an already constricted traffic flow into a nightmare when 2 lanes become 1.
I'm looking out the window ignoring the mothers feeding their childern "Orange Breakfast", meaning orange soda and orange artificially colored Cheezy Poofs! Yuk... no wonder they are all so ignorant, these little growing bastards need PROTEIN!
Anyway, as I peered out the filthy bus window and slowly passed by a bank, a clothing store, a drugstore and a coffee shop, I noticed something odd passing itself off as tediously normal. In each of those windows looking out onto the busy street rife with pedestrians numb to the visual assault on their eyeballs... I realized that those phony smiling faces that were in a studio photo shoot with commercial photograhpers being paid by the marketing departments of the companies desiring you to give them your money willingly, the real message was - All is Well.
Despite a scary economic downturn bordering on full-blown RECESSION, the faces of these models looked more like POW's at a staged propaganda session... "OK, stand there and smile, everything is OK, we feed you, you are not being tortured, right?"
Right...!
All that was missing was one of them sending out in Morse code by blinking their eyes - "H-E-L-P" or, "S-O-S" or better yet... "L-I-E-S".

LIVE from the Faculty Lounge...

2008-04-23T05:48:00.001-07:00

This morning on the 'Morning Joe' show on MSNBC, Pat Buchanan once again hit the nail on the head as other's just waltzed ever so closely to it.
They were discussing the Pennsylvania Democratic Primary and Pat said that Obama was "faculty lounge", a comment and a characterization that sums up some very complex ideas. Ideas like anti-intellectualism, a gut-level distrust of the over-educated. In the same way Sen. John Kerry appeared to be Eastern Establishment, Ivy League, 'limousine liberal', and perhaps condescending and pedantic - Buchanan painted Obama with that brush so that the image of him pontificating on some obscure international social justice subject as he swills free-trade coffee in an Armani suit in the university faculty lounge became a "mental bumper sticker" (C)2008 - Beaconite Group. These are the crafted short-hand of idea brokers, a way to concisely describe a person, place, thing or idea in a nutshell, without the extended verbiage used to soften the message.

The Last American Hero

2008-04-18T10:09:00.000-07:00

In the 1960s Tom Wolfe wrote an article in Esquire magazine about moonshine bootlegger turned stock car driver Junior Johnson. The other day as I flipped through the channels lamenting the utter banality of cable TV 'news' (infotainment avec fluff!) I found the 1973 movie based on his colorful describe of the race car driver starring Jeff Bridges. Also look for a young Gary Busey as part of his Southern-baked pit crew!

The REAL Men in Black!

2008-04-18T09:06:00.000-07:00

OK, this MIB legend has some truth behind it... I remember sitting in a movie theater waiting for the start of The People V. Larry Flynt. Among the movie trivia slides was a hype for the upcoming Men in Black movie and I was very excited! I leaned over and told my lady about how in the 50s a guy in New Jersey had a UFO newsletter and he was told by three men in black to stop his research, he closed up shop and then "disappeared". I was hopeful the movie would be a dark X-Files style thriller true to this story.
But I was so bitterly disappointed that what came out was a childish comedy with Will Smith - that hack!
BOO! BOO! HISSSSSS....

Anyway, I got over it and there is info on Albert K. Bender here, and here...

I'd also suggest watching the music video for the Frank Black song.

War veteran recovers, marries...

2008-04-18T05:39:00.001-07:00

Making fun of a disabled veteran is not my style, but maybe you heard about the guy who came back home from the war after being blown up by an RPG. The surgeons put him back together as best they could. He was in the hospital recovering for months and his high school sweetheart read about his heroism in the local paper so she visited him. They slowly fell in love and as the day of his release came he proposed to her and she accepted. On their honeymoon night he was nervous as the doctors told him everything would "work right", and in practice it did! So, she was waiting in bed and when he took off his clothes she screamed. The surgeons had reconnected his penis to his right hip!
"Oh my god! What the...? No way baby, that's crazy!" she screamed as he swayed side to side as if he was doing the 'bump', demonstrating how it was going to happen.
"No, don't be afraid, it works fine! We can still have children! The doctor said so!" he said.
She shook her head and demanded he put his clothes back on, that he was a "freak" and they would have to get an immediate divorce. He thought for a moment and pointed to his left armpit and told her,
"Kiss my ass bitch!"

The Mechanic 2 = sequels that never were!

2008-04-17T13:55:00.000-07:00

I watched Charles Bronson and Jan Michael Vincent in the assassin movie The Mechanic from 1972. I've seen it before but this time I saw some odd things in it, maybe something more than they planned on... a certain 'more than friends' aspect to the drama. But who can say?
And even if that was the case, would it really matter?? Nah!

Anyway, I mentioned I saw the flick to a media-obsessed friend and he mentioned TV's "Airwolf" with JMV and Earnest Borgnine flying a super high-tech helicopter to stop bad guys!!! Wow! I remembered it not at all fondly as the acting was wooden and melodramatic as I remember.
Then I mentioned, as a goof, the sequel to The Mechanic that was not made, The Mechanic 2: He's NOT my father! The guy looked at me and believed me until I laughed out loud at that title, but it stuck and I found this fake ad for the movie that never was.

Another misdirection tactic!

2008-04-16T04:59:00.001-07:00

Some people see things in a picture of VP Dick Cheney while fishing...

I see something too, a misdirection tactic cleverly timed to distract newsies and their ilk away from the Cehney-related news story that came out the day before, 4/10/2008 about secret White House torture memos!

"Cheney, Others OK'd Harsh Interrogations" - AP
WASHINGTON (April 10) - Bush administration officials from Vice President Dick Cheney on down signed off on using harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists after asking the Justice Department to endorse their legality, The Associated Press has learned."

OK, so, the memos come out and are reported, proving the war criminals are not some group of wayward patriots...
The next day a cute photo of Cheney fishing, his hand gripping his pole reflected in his sunglasses, is released by the White House and the news jumps on it since some creepy perverts see boobs reflected in his sunglasses?
What?
Boobs???
Uh... yeah... he said, Boobs!
Yeah, he's a boob alright, and a war criminal.

Baby Bump on Lockdown!!!!

2008-04-15T08:59:00.000-07:00

Seems our language, American English, is indeed being slowly destroyed from within as if some sort of ignorant 5th columnists are at work night and day. I remember cringing the first time I hear "preggers" years ago. Euphamisms are silly and childish and adults who use them who are not in the company of actual children are in fact adult children. Cutsie poo crap drives me nuts. A few years ago the so-called tabloid media began describing pregnant celebrities as having a "baby bump", which is just stupid! Grow up!

NEXT!

The Lockdown fetish.
I have noticed a lot of references to "lockdown" nearing some sort of obsession, as in, there should be some enterprising web-czar making a Lockdown monitoring service where you get "e-mail alerts" about who, what and where is currently on "Lockdown". What school, neighborhood or office is being plagued by criminals and those unlucky enough to be on the scene are denied their freedom of movement since, they are guilty until proven innocent. Cable TV news is the worst offender shrieking how some elementary school in East Bumlick is on "lockdown" because some idiot scribbled "Death to jocks!" on a bathroom wall...

Welcome to Diamondville!

2008-04-15T08:47:00.001-07:00

It's true!
I worked for Neil Diamond's production company as a temp when I lived in Albany NY, the whole strange story is here.

Another good movie...

2008-04-11T16:15:00.000-07:00

A Boy and His Dog starring Don "Miami Vice" Johnson!
Yes, it's true... I love science fiction movies, especially those in a post-WWIII dark vein. This 1975 gem was a book by Harlan Ellison from 1969. Johnson subsists on scraps, as does his dog - with which he is in telepathic communication. What???
OK, so then they discover there is an underground, not a factional rebel underground like I am part of, but a literal underground civilization.
They are actually the remnants from our own society complete with a patriotic marching band and cheerleaders, except these semi-inbred soon-to-be-troglodytes are in need of new 'seed' to refresh their ever-shallowing gene pool.
One of the best midnight movies that freaked me out! 5 stars! I laughed, I cried!

Remembering Grand Royal

2008-04-11T15:10:00.000-07:00

The Beastie Boys own magazine was a freak of nature. The deep-thinking hip-hop mag had it all, then the inevitable decline into the gutter... oy vey!
My favorite article was from issue #4, 'Kojak - Zen warrior or the White Shaft?', where various lines of dialogue embedded in his TV show from the 1970s was rife with Zen wisdom, like, "Who loves ya baby?" and "Drop the gun punk!"
Love it...

Franks Sinatra sings...

2008-04-11T12:23:00.000-07:00

Mrs. Robinson!
He changes the lyrics around too.
Ding, ding, ding!

Dazed and Confused!

2008-04-11T12:17:00.001-07:00

Watching movies and I realized this is another film I lived...
it was the late 1970s and I was hanging out with the 'wrong crowd' at the local bowling alley. I met a character much like Mathhew McConaughey's - David Wooderson (who looks just like Joe Walsh when he was in the James Gang), except his name was Ralph Aviles and he drove a black 1969 396 Chevelle, 4 speed Muncie rockcrusher transmission and he'd street drag race it up and down Rt. 9 in southern Dutchess County. A lot of the action in this 1993 film by Richard Linklater was eerily familiar to me.
I was the young guy learning the ropes at the gameroom at the roller rink, in the parking lot out back, how to handle more than a few beers and how to be cool in front of the chicks. Ah, good times...

Bomb the FLDS!

2008-04-05T16:23:00.000-07:00

Texas authorities finally raided the FLDS compound to 'save' underage pregnant 'married' girls from Fundamentalist Mormans...

I know if they were Muslims this would have never happened, they would have been bombed long before they laid the first brick, too bad 'we' treat religions differently... put up with one way too long and vilify the other. What hypocracy, all religious fanatics are a threat to freedom, liberty and democracy!
Wareen Jeffs is as bad as Osama bin Laden.

Seinfeld in accident!

2008-04-03T06:14:00.000-07:00

True, true... news comes forth that Jerry Seinfeld driving a 1967 FIAT had a failure of the braking system (surprised? Not really...) and flipped over as he was approaching an intersection grabbing the emergency brake to no avail. He was alone at the time, Saturday night and the accident happened in East Hampton Long Island New York.

An on the spot report of the FIAT tragedy was sent in by noted British used car 'expert' Carcoat Damphands who was on vacation in the States at the time and made his way from Manhattan out to the Hamptons for brunch with alleged 'friends' Sunday morning...

"Bleety! The very crumblies of the soggy eggies and veggies on the plate were a sharpshard of tasty noshies. Friends of Dampies sipped slappy fizzy chams with Yank bangers. Talk of porker flogger Seinfeld's flippy trip night last brought fast fun trummy bum laughs. No shock as FIAT brakies are gareth at speed. Night work is unbecoming and the Italian special `67 BTM was a real noggler to the unencumbered biscuit gripper! We had a belfursh blush at that quiet claim of samsteenism, at best a nardy tipsy bank shot off the motorway flexy pipes. More fizzies and another wet bagel messy sack of wast-leaf. Semi-minty, firm and tufted like Connolly in dapper British racing green, left a smidge of shmear as we piped the birds off to the shoppies with doggies and pram pushers aloft to the Hampton scrapies. Puffy must preen the miffed dollypops as his rappies are a shambles. Simply moist for them to regard as a natch-match made in rooster cack. So along comes a peepers type from the briny froth claiming he viddied the Dago crash aftershock, bits of bumper bites and metal frags permeated the undergrowth of the area as the Bobbies pretreated the tarmac to conceal the reperswigs and Bathurstoki gobbies. I had a snicker and a glam puff at the describe. Jerry sings to the radio as he plies the tyres over the meander poppy areas underneath, dig? Can't fasten the hatcher fast and pedal shake indicates a lump nod, panic poster as he grips the e-brake lever, crackles of pasto as the wet noodle brakies sunder his britches. Flash of fellow porker flogger James Dean in ghostly miasma and ectoplasm. A fast turn to avoid shackles in his face at the grippy pike poker. Me thinks he had a crass Jackson moment of clarity and lucidity as his breefy-conny comedy life flashies before his wonkers. Egads! Could have been the last showboat for the Jerry bullyboy. Sharp. Quincey. Pricey. Back to the snoggle chow and we are off for the tight turn slippy drifty compact Merc in the car park."

Huh? That guy is nuts...

Chevy Grand Prix of Snowboarding

2008-03-26T15:42:00.002-07:00

Independent Truck Co. Visor Beanie, Ocean Pacific sunglasses, Trebark shirt, Grenade Frontline jacket, Bonfire Particle pants, Oakley Casing boots...

BBC's Top Gear #1!

2008-03-23T09:33:00.000-07:00

Top Gear is the best auto program and is on the BBC America cable channel, brilliant!
I was introduced to this cult by a gift of the book, Crap Cars, by Top Gear magazine writer Richard Porter...
Hysterical!
Follow the trail of exploded burned up bits of cars and you come to this online gem, Sniff Petrol!
Some of their best work are the fake car adverts...

Thier coverage of Formula 1 is incomparable, as well as their constant skewering of driver "Crazy" David Coulthard and the Schumacher brothers, but for me the state of driving excitement is best summed up by this Toyota ad parody...

Boycott China and Free Tibet!

2008-03-23T06:15:00.001-07:00

Seriously, the Chinese need to stop their Gestapo tactics!
Boycott the upcoming Olympics and Free Tibet!

The SciFi Channel? Boo that!

2008-03-21T13:08:00.000-07:00

Why can't the SciFi Channel just show old science fiction movies? The real cool funky ones from the 1950s with all the thinly veiled Cold War weirdness? Why do they insist on playing their own craptacular stuff that is so weak? Can we just see flicks like Kronos?
Or... Them?
When World's Collide?
Things to Come?
This Island Earth?
Forbidden Planet?

Why make your own stupid junk when there is already great stuff out there not being shown?

Sarah Jessica Snider?

2008-03-21T13:00:00.001-07:00

OK, they sort of look alike, but... who would YOU rather wake up next to???

Blame Abramhoff for Obama Passport-gate???

2008-03-21T06:45:00.000-07:00

We get around, and we have 2 brains and 4 eyes, so we see things and remember them... A Wikipedia entry for the Unisys Corp. was changed, but we retained the original text for you to peruse below. The question not being asked in the news media is WHAT COMPANY DID THE FIRED STATE DEPT. CONTRACTORS WORK FOR?
and better yet, where were they? Not in Bangledesh we hope!
Privitizing and outsourcing is a mistake, a tragic greedy and stupid error.

First off...
www.unisys.com/eprise/main/admin/micro/doc/Unisys_Government_Wide_Aquisition_Contract_Center.pdf

"Hybrid Information Technology Services for State (HITSS)
Subcontractor to Edgesource, Contract Number: SAQMPD07D0068
Exp. 04/03/2012 • ADP systems development, support, maintenance andsecurity • Systems and software analysis and development • Local/Wide Area Network (LAN/WAN) support • Computer enter operations • Hardware/Software maintenance • Computer security • Support to the Travel Document Issuance Systems"

Second...
http://www.allbusiness.com/government/government-bodies-offices/6981555-1.html

"MCLEAN, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 6, 1997--Unisys Corp. Tuesday announced that its Federal Systems Division has been awarded a $15.7 million contract for program and systems support services from the Department of State, Office of Foreign Missions (OFM) to support compliance with the 1982 Foreign Missions Act."

Third...
http://www.publicintegrity.org/wow/bio.aspx?act=pro&ddlC=59

"As a result of Operation Ill Wind, Unisys pleaded guilty to an eight-count felony indictment, which included using fraud, bribery and illegal campaign contributions to obtain billions of dollars in defense contracts. Unisys' former vice president Charles Gardner, former executive Ralph Hughes, former defense consultant William Galvin and at least nine other Unisys employees and consultants were indicted and later pleaded guilty to charges of fraudulent practices in obtaining Pentagon contracts. More than a dozen former Unisys executives and defense consultants admitted to unlawful activities."

Fourth...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/23/AR2007092301471_pf.html

"The FBI is investigating a major information technology firm with a $1.7 billion Department of Homeland Security contract after it allegedly failed to detect cyber break-ins traced to a Chinese-language Web site and then tried to cover up its deficiencies, according to congressional investigators. At the center of the probe is Unisys Corp., a company that in 2002 won a $1 billion deal to build, secure and manage the information technology networks for the Transportation Security Administration and DHS headquarters. In 2005, the company was awarded a $750 million follow-on contract."

OH, these guys are good!

Here's the ghost Wiki entry...

"In 2003 and 2004, Unisys retained influential lobbyist
Jack Abramoff, paying his firm $640,000 for his
services in those two years. In January 2006, Abramoff
pleaded guilty to five felony counts for various
crimes related to his federal lobbying activities,
though none of his crimes involved work on behalf of
Unisys. [6] The lobbying activities of Abramoff and
his associates are now the subject of a large federal
investigation.

In 2005, there was further trouble for the company
related to consulting work it was doing for the U.S.
Transportation and Security Administration. In
October, federal auditors announced that the company
had overbilled on the $1 to 3 billion contract for
almost 171,000 hours of labor and overtime. Unisys
denied wrongdoing. [7]

In 2007, the FBI began investigating Unisys for
allegedly botching its duties under a contract with
the United States Department of Homeland Security. A
number of security lapses supposedly occurred during a
period in which Unisys was supposed to be improving
the security of DHS networks, including incidents in
which data was transmitted to Chinese servers [8].
Unisys denies all charges, but would not comment on
details because of classified information.[9].

In 2007, Unisys also had to pay the Australian
Department Of Immigration and Citizenship large sums
of money due to numerous security breaches including a
volatile email sent by a staff member to the Secretary
Of Immigration.[citation needed] The Immigration
project was intended to be their red ribbon project in
the Asia-Pacific region and also was the project they
implemented in the hope of bringing themselves out of
default in the Asia-Pacific region.[citation needed]

In 2007, after 3 years of massive losses and
consecutive losing quarters, Unisys spun off one their
service divisions to remain in business. Since the
loss of Larry Weinbach the company has been in a free
fall. Its Blue Bell Headquarters is already on the
auction block and stands to bring in 100-150 million
dollars to help stem the blood loss. In other cost
cutting measures employees mileage reimbursements have
been slashed and wages frozen.

Outsourcing almost all administrative and technical
positions to India has led to the loss of more
customers."

UPDATE: The Stanley Co. and The Analysis Corp. are the contractors behind the Passport-gate Scandal... but it gets weirder with a CIA connection! From the Washington Times...

"TAC is a McLean-based information firm that has helped the State Department automate the Terrorist Watchlist over the last several years, the company’s Web site said. TAC’s Chief Executive Officer John O. Brennan is a former CIA agent who is an adviser to Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign."

Egads!

Remembering Flight 93

2008-03-19T15:10:00.000-07:00

I was going through some photos and found this one that I took at the 5th year memorial service at the crash site of Flight 93 in Shanksville PA on 9-11-2006.

"Urban" Fashion Trend Watch

2008-03-17T19:28:00.000-07:00

I am sometimes aware and notice things while walking or driving around town. Some people have been making some interesting, non-conformist and maybe borderline irrational fashion statements. No, not the uber-ethnic `door knocker' earrings ladies swing around like ear axes, but XXL NASCAR jackets on otherwise hip-hop types, especially the black Dale Earnhardt #3 Chevy items that I have always been partial to. I also saw a few guys wearing hoodies with their hats on top of the hoods so thay can show off the logo on their hat. Interesting... but still kind of goofy looking. See you on the sidewalk looking silly!

The Plum Card?

2008-03-04T09:47:00.001-08:00

Less Than Zero

2008-02-29T11:42:00.000-08:00

I watched this movie from 1987 again and still can't believe it has been 20 years since I lived the plot of the Bret Easton Ellis novel of the same name. Around that time I went home from college and found a bunch of people had either died, moved away, got married, been in rehab or jail. Among the users were a few suburban freebase smokers, the "white" version of crack cocaine. A friend had me drive him to rehab only before he bought a can of soda he poured out in the parking lot and a box of baking soda so he could make a pipe out of the can and base up one last time... it was sad to the extreme, but I had my own problems, mostly with women go figure! Cheaters, fakes and phonies, pretending to be one thing to get you to like them and then turning into their true personalities while I stuffed my own feelings inside, lived in denial and bounced from one relationship to another like a pinball on its way to a tilted game...

The movie had mixed reviews, but Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal of a cocaine addicted over-privelaged Hollywood boy was more than foreshadowing for his later life. The soundtrack was assembled by Rick Rubin and includes a good time capsule for the mid-1980s.

Special Buddies!

2008-02-26T09:18:00.000-08:00

One of the most hysterical things I've seen on TV in a long while was the episode of MTV's "Rob and Big" where they make their own cereal box as a knock-off of Kashi's "Good Friends" cereal.
Rob and Big dress in drag and get the photo on a demo box of their cereal, "Special Buddies", they even have their own theme song. The bootleg of the video gets periodically posted and removed off of YouTube by Viacom, so good luck finding this gem!
It occurred to be that Rob looks just like Rudy Giuliani in drag, separated at birth?

You decide.

Making dinner...

2008-02-24T17:53:00.000-08:00

I LOVE the Chef Boyardee Pizza 'Kit'!

It's true... thing is make sure to buy a bag of shredded mozzarella to put on top, because the powdered cheese they give you is good for adding to the sauce to thicken it up, but extra real cheese is a must. Also, make both bags of dough at the same time and in the double up make it in a deep dish. Do this after half a bottle of bourbon and add fresh basil, garlic, pepperoni, mushrooms, crushed red pepper, black pepper, oregano, and... what was I doing???
Oh, yeah, another variation is to top it with any weird leftovers you have in the `fridge, or make a breakfast pizza with sausage or bacon and some scrambled eggs!
Helpful Hint: place the mixed dough in a metal pan with a lid and place it on your gas stove between the burners where the pilot light is to help raise up the dough!
Delish!

B2 crash in Guam = Toxic Stealth!

2008-02-23T15:51:00.001-08:00

The recent crash of a B2 stealth bomber in Guam could be yet another toxic tragedy. The radar absorbing materials coating the plane's outer surfaces is dangerous when burned and inhaled.
The news stories included phrases such as, "A crowd gathered..." if anything these people should have been running away and seeking shelter indoors, grab those dusty plastic sheets and duct tape and get at it sealing up your winter home in... Guam.
The case of Mr. Frost and his widow in Las Vegas is another tragedy of the military-industrial complex... the story is criminal.
Since the Clinton administration, and continuing to the present day, the "Area 51" base in Groom Lake Nevada is exempt from even the most basic environmental protections - because of national security secrecy.

Robo-Cindy, Vicki & CACI

2008-02-21T08:26:00.000-08:00

Cindy McCain is very pissed off at the NY Times.
She is also apparently a Terminator robot from the future!
Alleged Washington D.C. "lobbyist" Vicki Iseman has (had?) some good clients; Telemundo, PAXTV and CACI International among others.
CACI, as many of you know, is accused of training interrogators in the War on Terror including those fun-loving kids at Abu Ghraib and CIA Black Sites around the world. Some would characterize them as torturers, but I leave that to the experts and their former employees who are slowly revealing just how far we have wandered away from being the moral center of the universe and have become little more than a disinterested observer to such ephemeral ideas like 'Human Rights'.

Check out this video: Robo-Cindy?

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UPDATE: Vicki Iseman graduated in 1990 from Indiana University of Pennsylvania with a degree in 'elementary education', the perfect field to 'educate' politicians, who are so like elementary school students, naive and simple nose-pickers. Perhaps it's time to go back to 3rd grade and actually put that education to good use instead of trying to game the system and ruin people?

Atlas Shrugged trailer...?

2008-02-01T07:56:00.000-08:00

I love this fabricated Atlas Shrugged trailer for the film coming out of the Ayn Rand book, it uses the audio book read by Edward Hermann, brilliant! 5 stars, I laughed, I cried...

Gay Republicans for Jesus!

2008-01-29T05:07:00.000-08:00

I have a love-hate relationship with gay Republicans. It's not so much the schizo-hypocracy or their lack of fashion sense, but the sleazy, sneaky "in-the-mens-room-at-the-airport" kind of furtive behavior that shows not just a lack of "pride" but also a profound shame and fear of getting caught.
So, is that the attraction?
Are they the same kind of person who as a child in the school yard received a cheap thrill from picking their nose when no one was looking? The kind of weird adult who in the workplace has a simple smile for you, then tries to read the memo on your desk upside-down when you turn around to take a call? The risk taker who gets a perverted rush when they wear pantyhose under their chinos? Should politicians like Mark Foley be pilloried publicly and be forced to march in San Francisco's Gay Pride Parade once they've been outed as a sick form of penance? Sure, why not... "We accept you, we accept you, one of us!" they would scream from the sidewalks as they blow kisses at their latest conquest... call John Waters, we may have a script for his next movie!

Winter X Games!

2008-01-26T14:07:00.001-08:00

That chilly wild time of year again bro and we're wicked stoked!
Winter X Games is fun, fun, fun and hazardous. So what if I'm a 40+ year old silly dude, but I know a cool thing when I see it and when we went to Winter X 2000 at Mt. Snow Vermont and it was the first year of Motocross with the Metal Mulisha hitting the 20 foot kickers like they were Mike Tyson on steroids, well... we fell in love and hope to see them back on the East Coast again some year soon. In the meantime we're getting ready for the Chevy U.S. Snowboarding Grand Prix at Killington in mid-March.

Shaun White;-)/

Official Winter X 12 song... Kanye West samples Steely Dan in
"Champion".

Best new boots = Oakley Casing (no paid promos here!)

DJ Spooky Rocks the Boston ICA!

2008-01-26T10:42:00.000-08:00

Yes indeed, "That Subliminal Kid" himself was at the Boston Institute for Contemporary Art last night and it was "SPECTACULAR"! A real SPECTACLE! The SITUATION was under control! It was part of the ICA's "Experiment" series of events and my lovely fiancee' got us tickets for this sold-out event. While known for remixing the likes of Marcel Duchamp and D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" into the "Re-Birth of a Nation" he played it safe and played some esoterica and obscurata mixed in with the more familiar tunes; Sweet Dreams by the Eurythmics, Message in a Bottle by The Police, some Beasties, some Doors and other appropo audio vignettes.

All the while he had one video projector playing a goofy loop of 8-bit video game graphics akin to Space Invaders on speed. He also played a montage of the flags of the world and that segued into him playing a grainy Black-N-White film based on the writings of French Situationist philosopher Guy Debord, "The Society of the Spectacle." It was more than a little ironic since it seemed many in the audience probably did not (and could not) understand such heady things in their consumer posing and posturing, Burberry scarf around the neck, calling friends who were most likely watching a basketball game to say, "Guess where I am?", and generally acting like the oblivious/shameless ugly Americans who just don't know any better and don't care. The booze helped lubricate them and the dancing was a mix between pretentious theater as one would see at a Grateful Dead concert with the highly stylized moves obviously seen elsewhere and "borrowed" like so many audio samples to be recontextualized... Overall a great example of his ability and talent. If only we could build that darn elusive "Time Machine" and go back to Paris in 1968 and be a part of the students rioting in the streets - just because.

The Boston Herald was Right!

2008-01-17T18:21:00.000-08:00

So, there I was seated at a stool at the old neighborhood bar drinking a beer and watching local news, which in the Boston area means sports and weather, a few people crashing cars into houses, a fire and some cutsie-poo info-tainment including stories not anywhere NEAR here (why do they even bother to call it LOCAL news?) before another 10 minutes of sports and weather. (Note to Capitalist media baron self: Create new regional cable channel, the New England Sports & Weather Channel)

Anyway, I saw the Jan. 5, 2008 issue laying there (or is it lying?) and thumbed through it... the usual tabloid crap that leaves guilty pleasure ink on your grubby calloused fingers and a numbing sensation in your booze addled brain... then... ah ha! The editorials!

One that caught my eye was by Deroy Murdock and the title was, "Red alert on a Romney adviser" and it was a complaint that his campaign staff included a former CIA official/executive/agent/spook, one J. Cofer Black. (Note to creepy right-wing self: Change name to first initial and middle name ala J. Edger Hoover, E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy) Black's counter-terrorism credentials sure smell impressive on first sniff, but the editorial lays the blame for the non-watch listing of 2 of the 9-11 suicide commandos and other bureaucratic bungles... OK, it was true enough, Newt Romney thinks he knows how to pick `em, but as the final line of the editorial stated: "This should keep Republican primary voters awake at night."

UPDATE: I dug up the article by Mark Hemingway in the Dec. 18, 2006 issue of The Weekly Standard my father sent me... titled, "Warriors For Hire:Blackwater USA and the rise of private military contractors", it had some information on the leadership cadre of the mercenaries, including "Blackwater vice-chairman Cofer Black, a former CIA agent and State Department coordinator for counterterrorism..." Ah, yes, the wonderful revolving door of jingo-minded right-wingers in and out of government and private enterprise, the real American way the poor saps these ideologues need to keep voting for their proxy puppets. Sheer diabolical evil genius. No wonder why the terrorists want to blow us up and kill us all, we let this kind of crap happen...

Bomb Khartoum NOW!

2008-01-06T19:25:00.000-08:00

OK, here we go again, BUT... as in a Sherlock Holmes mystery, why didn't the "dog" bark? When a British teacher in Sudan allowed her class to name a stuffed bear Mohammed, the entire media establishment went frothing-at-the-mouth crazy when the local religious fanatics wanted to prosecute her. When an American embassy employee is murdered in the streets of Sudan, there is barely a peep. This seeming "non-story" is a mystery, and probably for a good reason. In the past, the CIA has used the Agency for International Development as cover so we can do what we do best, gather intelligence and do little about it. Now I'm wondering if this man, John Granville, a 33 year old former resident of Buffalo NY, was a US intelligence agent working out of our embassy under USAID cover. The genocide still going on in the Darfur region and the sad impotence of the United Nations to do anything about it is another example of how we should be truly fighting terrorism, and not in Iraq, but where it really is - the Sudan. The NY Times article is
here.
Rest in peace John, and Happy New Year.

ADDENDUM: 1/7/08
From the USAID webpage...

"Currently he is working to bring radios to the population of South Sudan in order to maximize the impact of USAID’s broadcasting initiatives in the region."
Radios? I thought they needed food.
What exactly are we broadcasting to these people?
What is this? Voice of America propaganda? Radio Free Africa?
Don Imus?

Baseball steroids scandal? SNORE!

2008-01-06T19:19:00.001-08:00

We may as well formalize the informal and turn the great American game of baseball into what it is, "professional" wrestling on a diamond. Let's just go ahead and let them juice up, wear silly costumes and get their `roid rage on and beat on each other every time they steal a base. It would certainly be more entertaining that way. Say it ain't so! We get what we deserve... cheaters.

Is the "Maytag Repairman" now a non-union scab?

2008-01-06T19:09:00.000-08:00

The Dependibility People? Thanks for nothing greedy corporate idiots!
So Michael Moore was right, so what else in new? The sad fact is that we can not trust so-called American companies to to behave as if they are actually "American". SHAME! Fred Maytag is surely rolling in his grave.
The Sioux City Journal article.

Cheap stupid father almost kills children?

2008-01-06T18:59:00.000-08:00

Yes, in search of a free Christmas tree! I know, I know... that feels like a long time ago, but... Frederick Dominguez should be in jail for endangering his children by taking them into the snowy mountains of California to steal a tree on public land. No wonder he and his wife, Lisa Sams are divorced. What a cheap stupid thing to do. Please never do that kind of crap again! The San Jose Mercury News article is here. He "joked" that next year he'd buy a plastic tree, thank JESUS! Maybe if he wants to treat them to a seafood dinner he'll take them deep sea diving during a tsunami to get some free food?

America and the American Dream

2007-12-22T10:15:00.000-08:00

I remember hearing US Sen. Jack Kemp from NY talk about the "Gold Standard" back on Voice of America in the late 1980s. We used to connect our shortwave radion to the cable TV antenna lead to pull in Radio Moscow (in "special" English) and plenty of foreign news and music. We listened to the former NFL football player go on about how we didn't need a "rising dollar" nor a "falling dollar", but a stable dollar. Sometimes we do not completely understand what someone is talking about until years later, as in this case. I also found this in the NYT from 1988.
From the speech...
"Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not running for President for the prize of prestige and power. I'm running because I want to challenge America -as no other candidate in our party will - to reach for our greatest potential. I believe in unlimited and boundless opportunity for our future."
Ah, the good old days...