Poor, dumb f'ing Glenn Beck. While I appreciate the fact that he's made a career out of being the king of the low-information voters by way of soft-witted gotchas, today's op-ed is a remarkable standout.

Beck's latest ire is directed at the visage of Che Guevara emblazoned on the t-shirts of the rescuers who saved the FARC hostages in Columbia.

"That's right, the same T-shirts you see Hollywood celebrities, starving pseudo-artists and confused hipster teens wearing around local coffee shops. To all those who decide that you want to be coffee house communist-chic, remember this: When you are wearing a Che T-shirt, you're wearing the same shirt that makes terrorists believe you're just one of the gang.

I hope that
latte is tasty."

ORLY?



Glenn Beck, populist fuckwad (and enthusiastic wearer of khakis), demolished without a word being fired.

Elia > Magic Wool Socks

We are meeting tomorrow for the first time.

This is my 777th post on 30thhour.

I do not believe this is coincidence.

Actually, I do, but it's still nice to think about. =)

Last week Fox News wondered if a gesture given by Barack Obama to his wife -- the so-called "fist bump" -- might be "a terrorist fist jab." Because if you've seen bin Laden give a pound once, you've seen it a million times.

Fox went on to lament "what ever happened to the old pat on the back?" Seriously! What's wrong with these kids today? Why can't they just use a good old-fashioned awkward chest bump?

Today, Fox News referred to Michelle Obama as Barack's "baby mama."

WHAT THE FUCK EVERY HAPPENED TO "WIFE?"

What a bunch of douchebags. Why don't you just get O'Reilly to do his show in blackface while you're at it?

I ran tonight for the first time in about twenty years.

Two thirds of a mile, total. Slow pace up hills, moderate pace the rest of the way. Not sure how long it took but I am pretty happy that I never had to stop.

And yesterday I lifted.

w00t. Go me.

OK, so this guy thinks that there are peeping toms checking out his daughters so he sets up a video camera. It records something that the guy believes is irrefutable evidence of alien life. He will not release the video yet but did give news outlets this video still:



What's bizarre is that he actually proved his original suspicion. The peeping tom just happens to be wearing a Punisher t-shirt...

IF YOU PEE IN MY BEDROOM I'LL FIND YOU, SKIN YOU AND TURN YOU INTO WHATEVER YOU PEED ON.

- Ella, talking to her cat.

Uh Oh

It's about a girl and what she did to my head over about three weeks in '01.

A Kuwaiti man released from U.S. custody at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in 2005 blew himself up in a suicide attack in Iraq last month, Pentagon officials said Wednesday. Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi was one of two Kuwaitis who took part in a suicide attack in Mosul on April 26, the officials said. Records show that an attack in Mosul that day targeted an Iraqi police patrol and left six people dead, including two police officers.

If al-Ajmi wasn't a terrorist before he got to Guantanamo, apparently we gave him ample reason to be one.

If al-Ajmi was a terrorist before he got to Guantanamo, why was he released?

No matter how you slice it, a failure on the part of Bush.

Say, how many does he need to get before he's impeached, anyway?

Jesus, if only the man would blow his load on a dress...

Police authorities in the US city of Philadelphia are investigating a video showing officers kicking and beating three suspects pulled from a car during a traffic stop. [...] The city's police commissioner on Tuesday said the video "certainly does not look good", but stressed the force did not want to "rush to judgement".

Police have an awful strange habit of calling for cool heads and lucid contemplation immediately after a dozen of those officers did neither.

Critics of today's major DEA drug bust at a San Diego college campus called the sting operation a "ridiculous, nonsensical waste of DEA resources." Ninety-six people, including 75 San Diego State University students, were arrested for charges stemming from possession and sales of cocaine, marijuana, ecstasy and other drugs. "It would be different if they picked one or two of the worst offenders, or if there was violence involved, but what is the point of this? Don't they have anything better to do than go after college kids?" asked Ethan Nadelmann, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which promotes alternatives to the war on drugs.

I'm certainly no fan of the war on drugs but isn't justice blind? Nobody is entitled to special dispensation. What's good for minorities on the streets of Los Angeles is certainly good enough for upper class white kids with a degree hanging in the balance.

I can just imagine one of these parents sitting at a kitchen table and thinking to themselves, "You mean my child's future is destroyed because of twenty-eight grams of a plant that's less toxic than salt? My god, this War on Drugs thing is ridiculous!"

Yep. In 2006 alone it put 829,625 cannabis smokers behind bars.

So welcome to the club. Ready to call your Congressman yet?

Another day at the "let them eat cake" Whitehouse. This is Tony Fratto whoring himself wholesale at the May 1st Whitehouse press briefing:

Fratto: Victoria?
Press: Um, in the new Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll, only fifteen percent of people think that the country is moving in the right direction and twenty seven percent approve of the job that the president's doing. To what does he attribute this and is he concerned about this?
Fratto: Uh ...I don't think he was paying attention to it.
Press: Do you think that perhaps he should?
Fratto: No.

She continued to ask "why" but Tony moved on to someone else.

Listen for yourself.

you can wonder why you make yourself sick / you can fight it but / this feeling its starting to stick / well it must be assigned / that my heart is my own design

aqueduct

OK. You know you've been using a laptop too long when you sit at the kitchen table and slide your finger across the surface in an effort to move something on it.

Or that you need coffee. One of the two.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the old analog scale downstairs was apparently shaving 10lbs off my weight. Boy that sucked.

Given such a rude awakening -- plus spring being here -- I decided to go on a don't-eat-until-my-stomach-complains diet and even then, only stuff like skinless chicken, brown rice, salad, etc. Much to my amazement it's going really well, dropped seven pounds in fifteen days and took 1% off my bodyfat too.

I also started lifting, running (a wee bit) and jumping rope. I'm such a creature of Newton's second law which means it's a real bitch to get me moving but once I'm moving it isn't too hard to keep going.

w00t.

One thing I discovered is that I eat waaaaay more often than I need to. I want to eat All. The. Fu*k. Ing. Time. Now I ask myself "k, but are you actually hungry" and I'm amazed at how often the answer is "no." Apparently it's way more of a comfort thing for me than I realized.

So yeah, seven pounds in two weeks and without really ever going hungry. If my stomach goes "hey, feed me," I feed it. But now I'm beginning to wonder when I'm going to start leveling off. Before I'd have said around 200 but now, given my height, I'm wondering if it's going to be closer to 185.

"It would be a "cop-out" for countries to skip the opening ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics as a way of protesting China's crackdown in Tibet, President Bush's national security adviser said Sunday. The kind of "quiet diplomacy" that the U.S. is practicing is a better way to send a message to China's leaders rather than "frontal confrontation," Stephen Hadley said."

Maybe you should have tried that in Iraq, dumbass.

One might argue "it would never have worked in Iraq." Maybe, but does anyone seriously believe that "quiet diplomacy" is going to bring China to its senses over Tibet?

All this demonstrates is that Bush's rhetoric about standing with those who cherish freedom is precisely that.

Been a bit since I've blogged anything personal.

My daughter visited this weekend past.



First day went well enough. Second day was somewhere in the vicinity of unmitigated disaster.

I apparently wouldn't know Sandra Bullock if she bit me on the ass.

Spent some time tooling around Second Life. Boy, that was a mistake...

Dropped about three pounds. This would be great 'cept for the fact that I'm ten pounds heavier than the old scale said.

And thank god some reasonable weather is here.

I just found the coolest website ever; muxtape.com.

last.fm and Pandora and such are cool but neither allows for song selection and order and everyone knows that order can easily make or break a mix. I'd much rather listen to a tape someone bothered to put together than a random sampling of their playlist.

WAY more interesting.

My god, this is the shiz.

See, this is why I don't drink, see?

I listen to every single goddamn White House press briefing and it can get downright painful sometimes.

"Well, I guess Fox learned how to shitcan you."

Me, after Fox did precisely that to John Gibson.

In Germany they have this thing called Schadenfreude. Meaning to take pleasure in someone else's failings. In America it's just called "haha."

(overheard while passing the family watching Two and a Half Men...)

One biblical story that sticks in the memory is that of Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 22). God commands Abraham to offer up his son Isaac as a blood sacrifice because . . . well, God just needs a regular supply of blood sacrifice to keep him going. Don't you? So Abraham says, "right you are God," and takes Isaac up a distant mountain, puts him on a pyre, ties him down, sharpens the knife, raises it into the sky, ready to plunge it into the heart of his only son. By this stage, Isaac is really shitting himself. Then, at the very last moment, God was like "LOLZ!" Now both Abraham and Isaac are pissing themselves at the sheer hilarity of the situation. They're miles from home, cold and tired, Isaac is still tied down on the altar, and Abraham is laughing so hard that he can't even undo the knots.

RIP Gary Gygax.

"Where's a paladin when you need one?" - Jameson

So I mentioned a while ago that I adopted a polyphasic sleep schedule but it had to be abandoned because I had a gargantuan photo gig and unfortunately, "polyphasic" and "functional" do not belong in the same sentence. Now that that's squared away, I'm back to trying.

Normally, when you crash out, your body goes through a couple of phases of sleep over and over again. The fourth stage is the most famous and, as near as we can tell, most useful: REM. It's during this stage of sleep that the restorative effects of sleep take place. ... We think...

You go through these cycles several times a night. At first, it can take up to 90 minutes to even get to REM and the duration is fairly short. As the night wears on, it takes less and less time for the brain to arrive at REM and when it does, it stays longer.

Polyphasic sleep is based around the idea that REM is the only useful part of sleep and seeks to bypass the other phases. How the heck do you do this? I'm glad you asked.

Simply put, you'd just sleep for twenty minutes every four hours. At first it'll be hard to even get to sleep within those twenty minutes but once you do, the fun has just begun. Remember, your brain normally takes more than an hour to even begin REM so when you start sleeping, you won't be in REM and so you won't get the restorative effect. In other words, you'll be effectively getting no sleep at all for a few days.

Eventually, your brain realizes "hey, if I'm going to get any REM at all I'd better skip the useless stuff and start dreaming right away." Actually dreaming is kind of the light at the end of the tunnel when you're trying to adapt to this schedule.

The final effect is that you fall asleep within perhaps a hundred seconds, spend the next 18-ish minutes in REM and you do this 6x every 24-hour period. That's two hours of sleep per day. By day 7 one should be reasonably acclimated, capable of functioning at a nominal level, and by day ten you should be feeling pretty much normal. You'll wake from a twenty-minute nap feeling completely rested.

I'm currently on Day 7 but I'm not really on Day 7 because I've had a bunch of oversleeps. Some due to technical mishaps (such as being too tired to set the alarm right), some due to just saying "hell, I need to sleep."

At this point I'd say I'm around Day 3 or 4. Dreamful sleep now comes within seconds and as the days wear on, each nap is better able to keep me going for the next couple of hours.

You can cheat a little. For example, I switched to naps every three hours instead of four with the goal of scaling back to four once I'm doing a little better. Perhaps this will help me avoid the oversleeps. I wouldn't suggest extending the sleep periods themselves past thirty minutes, however, since that may cause the brain to actually get into REM sleep and therefore not be forced into adaptation.

Some observations...

• The induction phase SUCKS.

• Dreams are incredibly vivid and can sometimes seem to take much longer than the time I actually spent asleep.

• Don't even think about trying this unless you've got a full week to be utterly useless.

• Days stop being discrete units, they all just kinda ...blend...

• It feels kind of strange, too. If you've ever hyperventillated in a pool and then held your breath underwater, you know there's this strange "wow, I should have needed to surface a long time ago" feeling. This is kind of similar.

• If you're a person who gets stuff done, you'll have a HELL of a lot more time to get stuff done.

• If you're a person who procrastinates, you'll have a HELL of a lot more time to procrastinate.

Whee. =)

BREAKING NEWS!

HUFFINGTON POST BREAKS THE MEDIA EMBARGO THAT PRINCE HARRY IS IN AFGHANISTAN!

REPUBLICANS OUTRAGED FOR LIBERAL MEDIA PUTTING SOLDIERS IN HARMS WAY! "WHY DOES THE LEFT WING HATE AMERICA SO MUCH?!," WRITES ACE-HQ.

Oops. Sorry, it was Drudge, not HuffPo.

Kind of explains why we don't hear a f'ing thing from the wingnuts...

I actually know a girl who is so geeky that she and her new boyfriend fucking whiteboarded an outline of their future relationship.

Swear to god, not making that up.

On a different note, ever want something very, very badly but something else happens, fucks it all up, and in the process you realize your original want was a stunningly poor idea and you just dodged a world-class bullet?

Ayup.

WANT.

This is an interesting picture, given the filename and the domain that's hosting it.



Found at:

http://www.foxnews.com/images/root_images/021208_doomsday2.jpg

Thanks to Ella for the heads-up.

Because the delegate count between Obama and Clinton is virtually tied, even after Super Tuesday, the contest may very well come down to the so-called "superdelegates," a select group of people whose votes in the primaries mean a lot more than yours or mine.

There are about a million people in Rhode Island and collectively they send 32 delegates to the convention to pick the Democratic nominee. This means roughly 31,000 people will collectively cast one vote.

A superdelegate, on the other hand, is a single individual -- such as a senator -- whose single vote carries as much weight as those 31,000 people. The United States has an eligible voting population of about 200,000,000 people and they collectively send 3,253 votes to the convention.

There are approx. 796 of these superdelegates an each one of their votes is worth one vote toward the nominee. Put another way, 0.000004% of the population will cast 20% of the votes which determine who represents the Democratic party in 2008.

Kind of reminds me of a quote from Orwell's Animal Farm: "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others."

CNN politicla analyst Donna Brazile said this of the superdelegates: "If 795 of my colleagues decide this election, I will quit the Democratic Party. I feel very strongly about this."

I'd like to say I couldn't agree more but actually, I can.

If superdelegates decide the Democratic nominee, I will vote for the GOP candidate in the general election. Why? Because simply staying home won't convey my disgust quite as well as I'd like.

And frankly I don't care if that nominee is Obama. It's wrong.

"Well, he found out how to quit you."

Fox News' John Gibson on Heath Ledger's death (over funeral music)

Aww. He's just bitter because nobody'll fuck 'em. Not even with a bullseye superglued to his rectum and a fist full of drink tickets, my god would you just look at those teeth...

A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks. The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

Turn your labia into a YAYbia!

So I'm thumbing through this month's issue of Wired and the cover has a blurb that reads "how to survive on two hours of sleep." If you know me at all you realize that this is a kind of life-long dream so I buy the magazine. I figure the five bucks will be worth that article alone.

Long story short, each night we pass through five distinct types of sleep and each complete cycle lasts about an hour and a half. The fifth stage is known as "REM," the stage during which we sleep and, apparently, the brain does mysterious shit that's necessary for us to keep functioning. Earlier in the evening the REM period lasts perhaps ten minutes and as the night progresses the REM period increases in duration, lasting perhaps as long as an hour during the last cycle.

Seems there's this thing called "Polyphasic sleep." The basic idea, as I understand it, is to view the first four stages as functionally useless. The goal is to train the body to get to REM as quickly as possible and this is accomplished by sleeping, for example, 20-30 minutes, 6x per day. The downside is that you feel like dogshit for a month. The upside is obtaining an extra 5-6 hours per day.

Apparently this has been the sleeping method of choice for people like DaVinci, Erdős and Bucky Fuller. So of course I've got to try it.

Whee!!!

This is funny on so many levels.

I like to subscribe to the wingnuts emails to find out what shit they're shoveling on any particular day. On Jan 5th I received a gem from RedState, a plea for cash which reads, in part:

You see, when we started RedState in May of 2004, we used a website program called Scoop — the same program a lot of similar sites on the left used. But, as the number of visitors to our site grew, Scoop kept crashing on us. If we’d been a liberal website, we would have been able to fix the problem quickly and relatively cheaply. The online left loves Scoop. Unfortunately, there weren’t really any conservative Scoop developers out there to help us. We kept crashing and were out of money. We had to close down or take drastic action.

Jesus. Where to begin?

RedState is actually asserting that while there are droves of liberal blogs that use Scoop and they can't find a single, solitary conservative-friendly developer to work on their code?

Scoop is written in a language called Perl which is twenty fucking years old. Throw a gyros sandwich into any crowd at the CES convention and you have better-than-even odds of hitting someone who knows Perl for fucks sake.

Hell, *I* know Perl.

But the most absurd part is the assertion by RedState that this is somehow a free speech issue. Look...

The right to free speech is a right to be heard, not a right to an audience. That's their first mistake.

Second, the fact that RedState can't find a single developer to work on their code is a testament to their assholery -- "free speech" doesn't come into play in the slightest. Nobody is preventing them from being idiots posting on their site. Nobody has denied them bandwidth.

And not to beat a dead elephant but show me one single, solitary conservative blog that stood up for "free speech" when Clear Channel refused to allow liberal messages on their billboards which is, I should point out, actually a free speech issue.

Name ONE.

I watched a weatherman this morning explain how it was raining where it was and then followed up with an erudite "you might be able to see [the rain] going from the top of your screen to the bottom."

Jesus Christ on a greased-up pogo stick.

I'm a complete sucker for New Years Eve. Couldn't care less about any others.

Oh, and the best line of the night comes from Stacey who said:

Ooo, look, it's 11:53 which is only seven minutes away from [BEEEEEEEEEEEELCH].

I thought this was interesting...

Apparently Bhutto was planning to meet with Patrick Kennedy and Arlen Specter about four hours after she was killed. During that meeting she planned to give them both "a report accusing Pakistan's intelligence services of a plot to rig parliamentary elections, sources close to the slain former Pakistani prime minister told CNN Tuesday.

From that report:

"Ninety percent of the equipment that the USA gave the government of Pakistan to fight terrorism is being used to monitor and to keep a check on their political opponents."

That's funny in a perverse kind of way.

I'll be your potiwan!

I'd have a hard time introducing this story any better than MSNBC.com:

Each class at the Idaho Police Officer Standards and Training Academy is allowed to choose a slogan that is printed on its graduation programs, and the class of 43 graduates came up with "Don't suffer from PTSD, go out and cause it."

Roland S. Martin, in a commentary featured on CNN.com, whines:

"This whole push to remove Christ from the Christmas season has gotten so ridiculous that it's pathetic."

Good point. It took two centuries (and just a little bit of plagiarism) to put him there in the first place. Call me nuts but ...I'd have thought the drive to drag it out of its current commercial morass would make you happy.

Look, why can't you just be happy to say whatever the fuck you want to say and worry your pious little head about what I say or don't say. I have never, in my entire 35 years, heard someone receive a "Merry Chrismas" and get offended.

Not once.

So take your imaginary war culture (theism, terrorism, drugs) and stick it up your puckered, self-righteous chimney.

Oh. And Merry Christmas.

"I didn’t get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn’t have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives. […] I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ."

Mike Huckabee in 1998 at the National Pastors’ Conference

From an email that's making the rounds. Thanks to Ella for pointing it out.

'Twas the month before Christmas
When all through our land
Not a Christian would shut up
'Bout their stupid demands

"Oh, help us!" they shouted in panicky voices
"These days when we shop there are holiday choices!
The children can't sing in their schools about Jesus,
except when they do, but it still doesn't please us

To hear about Kwanzaa and Hanukkah too.
They should know God does not hear the prayer of a Jew!"
Yet the schools and the stores would not listen, it seemed.
And the poor Christian zealots were getting quite steamed.

Some people remained puzzled by this position
They were mad stores stopped cheapening their religion?
"Don't they know mass appeal drives up sales left and right?
We though conservatives were pro-business types."

But the right-wingers screeched "It's barbaric! It's pagan!"
After prayers to twin portraits of Jesus and Reagan
Sure, the stores put up wreaths and play just Christmas music
But exclude the word 'Christmas'and watch everyone lose it.

Belligerent, haughty, but most of all pissed
They whined of a "war" that just doesn't exist.
Now Hannity, Coulter, now Limbaugh and Gibson
On Bill O and bloggers from Reno to Lisbon!

"We will fight through the wires 'bout displays at the mall
So write really bad parodies and forward them to all!"
Oh the Christians, they shouted! Oh the rest, how they scoffed!
"Just where in the hell do these assholes get off?"

The displays in the shop are the owner's decision,
As for schools don't forget there is no state religion
So you celebrate Christmas, and I might do the same
We will try to enjoy it, even though you're a pain
But you know what I'll say if you won't take my hints:

"SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU ZEALOTS, YOU'RE WORSE THAN THE GRINCH!

"There are some who may feel that religion is not a matter to be seriously considered in the context of the weighty threats that face us. If so, they are at odds with the nation's founders."

Mitt Romney, explaining his Mormon faith.

"...no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

Article 6 of the United States Constitution

Two of my favorite comedy clips of all time. Doug Stanhope is fucking brilliant

Patriotism:



How to Handle Anti-Abortion Protestors:

This whole mess involving Bush's nomination of Judge Mukasey for the Attorney General position has my head spinning.

Waterboarding -- I'm sure you've heard by now -- is a technique by which a person is subjected to drowning repeatedly until compliance is achieved.

Daniel Levin, then acting assistant attorney general, went to a military base near Washington and underwent the procedure to inform his analysis of different interrogation techniques. After the experience, Levin told White House officials that even though he knew he wouldn't die, he found the experience terrifying and thought that it clearly simulated drowning.

Then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales showed up and fired his ass. Call me impolitic but one might wonder if the two events had anything to do with each other.

Fast-forward to 2007. Senators ask nominee Mukasey what he thinks of waterboarding. Mukasey says he finds the practice "abhorent." OK, that's nice. Pressed on whether it's illegal, he won't say and this is where things, as they say, start to go plaid.

Dana Perino at the White House Press Conference dated November 1st, 2007 said this:

And on this one, narrow issue, I think it is very unfair for somebody who is not read into a program --being briefed on a classified program, who doesn't have all the facts at his disposal, to be asked to render a legal opinion. None of us would want that from a judge, if we were in front of a judge in a court of law, we would not want a judge to render a decision without having all of the facts in front of him.

Somehow -- dear sweet Jesus, don't ask me how -- precious few people seem to be seeing through this incredibly clumsy trick. THERE'S NO FUCKING TOP-SECRET INFO THAT NEEDS TO BE HAD IN ORDER TO MAKE THIS CALL. Here, I can do this on an Etch-A-Sketch.

• Posit: Waterboarding is simulated drowning.
  
• Posit: Simulating drowning is the act of causing someone to fear they're being killed.
  
• Posit: Causing someone to fear they're being killed is torture.
  
• Therefore: Torture is illegal.
  

Therefore, by the transitive property, waterboarding is illegal.

Holy fucking shit, Batman! No CIA memos to parse, no programs to be "read into." No listening to this twat Perino spend five minutes running down the clock, answering a question she wasn't asked. Just plain old common sense.

WATERBOARDING IS TORTURE

The Kansas City Star sees it thus:

Mukasey should have been confirmed as attorney general by now. But now some key Democrats say they’ll vote against him because he wouldn’t rule out waterboarding as a form of “torture.” First, Mukasey declared torture unlawful and contrary to American values. He said waterboarding is “repugnant” but wouldn’t rule it out because he has no idea how or if it is used by U.S. interrogators. That’s classified information.

Who gives a shit if it's classified? Suppose the military decides to classify the details of how or if they use H2O. OK, fine, but that doesn't change the properties of water, does it?

It's still fucking wet, right?

Mukasey doesn't need to know if or how we're waterboarding in order to say whether or not the technique is legal. The mechanics are moot. If it causes someone to believe they're dying, it's illegal.

KCS continues:

Interestingly, senators demanding a Mukasey declaration on waterboarding declined to do so in crafting the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which only vaguely bans cruel and inhuman treatment.

Come again? Crafting? You mean the authors of the DTA? That would be Senators John McCain (R-AZ), John Warner (R-VA), and Lindsay Graham (R-SC), all three of them Republicans and not Democrats, all three of which have stated that they will vote for Mukasey.

It isn't much of a demand if ignoring it doesn't actually involve consequences, does it?

John Hutson is a retired United States Navy rear admiral, attorney, former Judge Advocate General of the Navy and current dean and president of Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, New Hampshire. He had this to say about waterboarding:

You know, torture is the method of choice of the lazy, the stupid and the pseudo-tough. And that should not be the United States. No matter how you define torture. It's unconstitutional, it violates statutes, it violates the UCMJ, it violates Common Article 3, it violates what your mother taught you and it violates what you learned in kindergarten. And we ought not be even close to it. ... Other than, perhaps the rack and thumbscrews, water-boarding is the most iconic example of torture in history. It was devised, I believe, in the Spanish Inquisition. It has been repudiated for centuries. It's a little disconcerting to hear now that we're not quite sure where water-boarding fits in the scheme of things.

I love the neocon dead-enders who blather on about how we're not as bad as al Queda. We're not the savages beheading people, right?

Yeah, maybe, but they chop off heads and then release the videotape. At least they're got the balls to admit to their own atrocities. Can't say the same for us.

Got arrested.

I can taste again, that's good.

Every day, approx 4,000 young adults light their first cigarette.

A study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University indicates that those who begin smoking by the age of twelve are:

   • sixteen times likelier to abuse marijuana,

   • five times likelier to abuse alcohol,

   • three times as likely to binge drink and;

   • seven times likelier to use other drugs like cocaine and heroin.

I guess that would qualify cigarettes as a gateway drug, right?

Obviously there is going to be a rousing chorus of indignant parents demanding that cigarettes be made illegal with stiff, decades-long minimum federal sentencing penalties for those who would peddle this kind of poison to our children.

Any second now. I'm sure of it.

J.K. Rowling read some Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to a packed audience at Carnegie Hall then took questions.

She was asked by one young fan whether Dumbledore finds "true love."

"Dumbledore is gay," the author responded to gasps and applause.

"Oh, my god," Rowling concluded with a laugh, "the fan fiction."

Love it.

"Our country for the first time in my life time

has abandoned the basic principle of human rights.

We've said that the Geneva Conventions do not apply

to those people in Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo,

and we've said we can torture prisoners and deprive

them of an accusation of a crime to which they

are accused."

                  Former President Jimmy Carter

 

One of the best xkcd's ever.

KIM HAD HER BABY!!

And Ella, if you're reading this we wasn't talking to you, this ain't your part of the show right now. =)

And so without further ado I'd like to welcome Mary Grace Harper into the world and, by extension, the nightmare we all known as the "Bush Administration."

Just kidding. Well, ...kinda.

But yeah, wow. Congratulations to my two favorite fundies.

On the other hand, if you don't invite me down to RI for a liberal application of my Nikon you're coming off my top eight MySpace friend's list and nobody wants that...

Quiz time!

Who said, "...intimidation and force ... and reports about very innocent people being thrown into detention where they could be held for years without any representation or charges is distressing."

(a) Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General on Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp.

(b) Dana Perino, White House Press Secretary on Myanmar Buddhist protest crackdown.

But wait, there's more...

Helen Thomas: Would [Bush] tell congress before he attacked Iran?
Dana Perino: Helen, we are pursuing a diplomatic solution in Iran.
Helen Thomas: Does he feel committed to ask Congress for permission?
Dana Perino: We are pursuing a displomatic solution in Iran.

     October 1st, 2007 White House Press Briefing

Reado n. To misread something. Analagous to typo.

Example.

Cira: I love my new emo hair, hahahah

Jason: Ha. Scene kid. *points

Cira: yea, eww. you can't see it in the pic, but the back of my head and the hair underneath is all bright red. fire engine red

Jason: Really! That sounds cool.

Cira: yea. it was my "vision". I love it

Jason: Nice.

Cira: but seriously, I'm the only one in Kentucky / Ohio with dyed hair. even at the show!!!!

Jason: I thought Keoki's hair was cool when it had those leopard prints. His club kid days were cool but as a DJ he sucks.

Cira: haha club kids. Keoki was Alig's bf, right?

Jason: Oh ...dunno about that. One sec.

Cira: ok

Jason: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DJ_Keoki

Cira: yea I know who he is. "As a young man he moved to New York City, where he met and began a romance with Michael Alig"

Jason: Oh my god, you're gonna laugh. I thought you were saying "Ali G's" boyfriend.

Cira: ohhhhh hahahahahah

Jason: I just misread it and thought "he's dating ...a character?"

Cira: lollll

Cira: read-o

Jason: New word.

Cira: yea!

Jason: I'm blogging.

My sentiments exactly (religion rant).

Props to Ella for sending this like ...2 months ago. =)

Congratulations, woman.

The girl who lives above Jennie found the camera on the steps and took it to make sure I'd get it back.

I'm back in biz.

*long, slow exhale

I'm gonna have to do something nice for that kid...

I lost my Nikon last night.

Shit happens. I wear a helmet.

Courtesy of Ella.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Embattled U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced his resignation Monday in a brief statement at the Justice Department. "I have lived the American dream," said Gonzales, the nation's first Latino to hold the post. "Even my worst days as Attorney General have been better than my father's best days."

That's probably because a construction worker can't fuck the Constitution sideways.

Gonzales described public service as "honorable and noble"...

Alberto, you signed off on the firing of federal prosecutors because they weren't "loyal Bushies" and then claimed you didn't know anything about any of it.

That narrows the options down to "liar" or "incompetent." Take your pick.

You attempted to strong-arm Attorney General Ashcroft in the hospital while he was in excruciating pain, barely conscious and all hopped up on goofballs.

You then lied about it to Congress. We know you lied because former deputy attorney general, James B. Comey was there. It's also flatly contradicted by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III.

So we can add "asshole" and "perjurer" to that list but sorry, still nothing even approximating "honorable" or "noble." Not exactly surprising, however, coming from the same gaggle of idiots that "planned" (I use that phrase loosely), executed and continue to profess that Iraq is going well.

Last night, post-work, I headed over to Ella's. Left around 11PM to catch the 12:10 home.

Arrived at North Station with about seven minutes to spare, no problem. The monitor that displays the gates has been removed. I look around the corner, the JumboTron thing that displays the gates is turned off. I hear someone say that Rockport is Gate 4. I head over, a female conductor that used to work the Rockport line is at the gate.

I make small talk then board. Geeze, this train is taking a long time to leave...

Fifteen minutes later the train is in motion. About ten minutes after that, I realize I forgot my wallet and I sought out a conductor -- hopefully one who knows me and that I normally have a Zone 8 pass -- to explain.

The good news is I find that Rockport conductor again. The bad news is she isn't working the Rockport line tonight.

"Are you on the wrong train?"
"... Tell me this is the Rockport train."
"...no...

And so there I am. West Medford. At 12:45AM. No busses. No commuter rails back into Boston. Can't find a payphone. No taxis at all and no wallet to pay one anyway.

That conductor was good enough to call Ella a few more times after I disembarked, that was nice of her.

I found a cab, took it all the way to Watertown. Ted was nice enough to front me $20, Ella covered my food and gave me an extra $21 for the trip home. Huge thanks to both for turning a hellish night into a fully tolerable one.

But now I'm home, I smell like a hirsute armpit and my brain can't figure out if it's awake or not.

Ugh.

RIP Phil Rizutto.

Here he comes, squeeze play, it's gonna be close, here's the throw, there's the play at the plate, holy cow, I think he's gonna make it!

"I get tired of people that are holier than thou because they've been pro-life longer than I have."

    Mitt Romney at the GOP debate

"We're pretty tired of people that are holier than thou because they believe in one particular version of God."

    67% of the globe's population who don't believe in Jesus.

"We're pretty tired of people that are holier than thou."

    The horde (2.5%) of atheists, agnostics and humanists who are "oppressing you."

Ella has a new kitten named BamBam that is just straight-up surreal. He has an almost human personality, very precocious, very curious, LOVES to be pet and will, without hesitation, step on your head if it helps matters and head butts if proper attention isn't given. And I don't mean one of those nudges cats do or even an urgent "hey you." We're talking billy goat style.

I'd think it was a reincarnated spirit if I believed in such things.

Wrote and arranged my first techno song. Well, it stands alone but it's really a hook for a longer song. This PSP is the bestest thing I have ever bought, hands down.

The life is beginning to even out, find its keel. Thank god.

They found this on someone's lawn in NJ.

Well that's amusing.

You may have seen the news that Conservative Republican Senator David Vitter of Louisianna has turned up as one of DC madame Palfrey's clients. Well, his wife is whining about the attention.

On MSNBC's Nightly News podcast, Wendy Vitter said, "Our marriage is stronger every day but for our children -- and now I'm going to speak to you as a mother and I hope you will understand -- it's been terribly hard to have the media parked on our front law and following us every day and yesterday the media was camped at our church."

Well Wendy, speaking as a citizen -- and I hope YOU will understand -- your husband is a politician. This means his private life is wide open to public scrutiny and when he is found to have frequented a brothel, while legislating under the guise of "family values" in particular, well ...uh ...tough shit.

Mrs. Vittner, if you didn't want the media attention and you didn't want your kids to endure the scrutiny that's openly and clearly stated in the job description, scrutiny essential to a functioning democracy, then perhaps you shouldn't have married a Senator who likes to stick his married dick in hookers.

Wendy, remember how your kids would do something wrong, you'd ground them and they'd get mad at you? Like the rest of us, you probably reminded them it was their own actions that caused the punishment, not you? Now would be a good time to remember that truism and come to grips with the fact that the only person responsible for your familiy's misery is Senator Vitter, your husband.

I'm not saying his actions are your responsibility but you don't get to bitch about the fallout.

MSNBC drones on:

And with a good deal of sadness in her voice Wendy Vitter said in most families this would have been handled completely privately but she lamented in the politics of today virtually nothing is private.

True but but "most families" don't write our laws or, in the case of your husband, legislate morality while proclaiming "marriage is truly the most fundamental social institution in human history."

Suck it up, buttercup. Life is hard. Wear a fucking helmet.

And speaking of the asshole Senator currently using his family as a shield, two hours after being contacted by a representative from Hustler about his phone number being found in the madame's black book, Senator Vitter released a press statement.

Well he didn't fucking write it in those two hours, it was prepared in advance. Which means if he never received the call, he never would have come clean. That's not "sorry," that's "sorry I got caught."

Sen. Vitter was perfectly content to lie to his entire constituency to save his own skin.

Zero sympathy. None.

On another political front, Harry Reid is going to continue the Senate session overnight in order to force a vote on Iraq and put Republicans on the record.

ABCNews.com calls this "political theater," comparing it to "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" because the effort is unlikely to to garner the 60 votes necessary to force cloture.

Which is kind of funny since I've never seen ABCNews.com call Bush's idiotic "troop surge" "political theater" since it has zero chance of succeeding.

One of these results in a loss of sleep and the other massive loss of American lives but hey, who's counting?

I reminded of a quote by Pulitzer, something about a servile press creating citizens as craven as itself. Or something.

In his defense, Virginia Senator John Warner says he cannot "support a binding timetable for withdrawal because it would usurp the president's constitutional power as commander in chief."

Hey, news flash for you, asshole, THAT'S YOUR FUCKING JOB.

I'm taking an indefinite hiatus from everyone.

If there is a real need, I can be reached either at work or home by phone.

"The prescription drugs allegedly found in Al Gore III's possession Wednesday are favorites among young people, according to drug abuse experts, who say prescription drugs may soon overtake street drugs in popularity. Some young people perceive that prescription drugs are safer than street drugs, experts say. "I wouldn't be surprised if right now at this point in time, there are more kids abusing prescription drugs than abusing marijuana," said Joseph A. Califano Jr., chairman and president of CASA, the National Center on Alcohol and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.

That's what you get for twenty five years of claiming cannabis is just as bad as heroin. Now you're surprised that some teenager four years into discovering masturbation smokes a joint, realizes its harmless and thinks "maybe railing oxy isn't so bad either?"

STOP. LYING. TO. OUR. TEENAGERS.

And stop acting surprised when they act logically in response to those lies.

Douchebags.

The only way Olbermann could have been more flagrant was if he walked up to 1600 and flipped the chimp a double-deuce.

If you click on just one link from my blog this year, this should be it.

And just so I'm not captain bringdown, here, look at this.

"Actually, ma'am, we sh*t ourselves."

     • A pilot -- shot down and hot evaced under fire on the wing of an Apache going 120mph and no helmet -- replying to a CNN's reporters question on what military training instincts kicked in while his aircraft avionics, instrumentation and control surface was being liberally perforated by two fixed heavy machine gun positions and small arms fire (paraphrased)

I'm not making fun of these guys at all. I think it takes a lot of courage for someone in the military to admit blind fear on CNN.

Seriously, listen to these guys. "This is my first tour, ma'am, and I ain't never been shot at before today."

Yipes. That's a fine-how-do-you-do...

So anyway, there is a local skunk that makes the rounds, minds its own business and doesn't spray such that some locals don't even know it exists. I know the skunk exists because I've seen it myself.

Well today there was this little baby skunk walking the same path. And I didn't have my camera. *wince

Oh, almost forgot; don't do what Donny Don't does.

Nick just graduated. Bought a used car, his first, clearly loving the freedom and oblivious to all else.

Laura: Who is this?
Brendan Frye: I won't waste your time: you don't know me.
Laura: I know everyone, and I have all the time in the world.
Brendan Frye: Ah, the folly of youth.

     Brick

some days aren't yours at all
they come and go as if they're someone else's days
they come and leave you behind
someone else's face
and it's harsher than yours
and colder than yours

     Regina Spektor - "Somedays"

Ruby needs to cut back on the American Idol, I think.

Me: Well, look at the bright side. Paris Hilton has herpes.
Ella: Who?
Me: ...good answer...

Dragster loses control and spins into crowd, kills 4.

Dragsters: 4
Marijuana: 0

like an instrument for a song
like the sun for tomorrow's dawn
every moment of time's just an answer to find
what you're here for
what you breathe for
what you wake for
what you bleed for

     - Mute Math ("Progress")

"I loved to go out and shoot in strange places, to talk to the types of people I`d never meet were it not for the excuse of the camera. I love the heft of the black metal in my hands, the way it felt like a weapon. I love to press the shutter, to freeze time, to turn little slices of life into rectangles rife with metaphor. I love to collect the rectangles, like so many souvenir trinkets, to gaze at them, study them, find the one that best summarized a particular lived moment..."

     - Deborah Capaken Kogan

The model I photographed yesterday, her water just broke.

These pics are of someone's mother a day before their birth. And someday that person might look at these photos.

Wouldn't that be a cool thing to have?

It pains me, psychically, to hear Anderson Cooper reporting on Paris Hilton.

Now he's interviewing a Hilton flak who says being let go after two days on a 45-day sentence is completely normal because the jails are overcrowded. Not that its this guy's fault but who the fuck are they overcrowded with, anyway?

1.2 million non-violent drug offenders, that's who.

Thanks guys, thanks for letting the probation-flaunting car-driving drunk-a-holics go free while the guy who just wants to listen to Led Zepplen, ponder life and smoke something that doesn't even cause cancer is safely caged away from us civil folks out here.

Oh wait, the flak just compared Hilton's plight to Jack Nicholson's in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I think that poor man is on drugs himself now that I mention it...

Had my first "real" model shoot today. She's a friend of a friend of a friend. Due Tuesday

Yes, this Tuesday.

I knew what to put behind her, she knew how to be. It was a really good combination.





I was really honored to be asked.

Helvetica turns 50. *throws confetti

When the going gets weird, the weird go pro. So be it.

Speaking of which ...ow, owwie ow ow.

DO NOT WANT. Merf...

If natural disasters are god's wrath over sin, why does he send all the tornadoes and hurricanes to the so-called "Bible Belt"?

Some eleven year-old kid kills a 9ft, half-ton ...pig ...with a handgun. I'm not kidding, it's about the size of a small minivan.

It's odd that he's 11, it's odd that the pig is about as massive as a small minivan, but this statement just takes the cake.

"It feels really good. It's a good accomplishment. I probably won't ever kill anything else that big."

I'm extremely pro-gun but how did it come to pass that the destruction of the most rare and unique animal is cause for celebration? What other activity shares this dubious honor?

Headline of the Day:

"New U.S. Embassy in Iraq is world's biggest"

...which segues nicely into Quote of the day:

"What kind of embassy is it when everybody lives inside and it's blast-proof, and people are running around with helmets and crouching behind sandbags?"

    - a former top U.S. diplomat in Iraq.

Ann Coulter whines:

"Even Falwell's fans, such as evangelist Billy Graham and former President Bush, kept throwing in the "We didn't always agree" disclaimer. Did Betty Friedan or Molly Ivins get this many "I didn't always agree with" qualifiers on their deaths? And when I die, if you didn't always agree with me, would you mind keeping it to yourself?"

Don't worry about us, Ann. When you die the universe itself will smile.

"Let me be the first to say: I ALWAYS agreed with the Rev. Falwell."

What a coincidence! You've always been a twat!

Coincidence? I think not...

"First of all, I disagreed with that statement because Falwell neglected to specifically include Teddy Kennedy and "the Reverend" Barry Lynn."

You can almost hear Coulter wondering out loud, "What's the douchiest thing I can say to get back on the talkshow circuit and revive my delusion of relevance?"

Ah, I can't read any more of this article. It burns.

GALVESTON, Texas (AP) -- A woman blames the devil, and not her husband, for severely burning their infant daughter in a microwave, a Texas television station reported. Eva Marie Mauldin said Satan compelled her 19-year-old husband, Joshua Royce Mauldin, to microwave their daughter May 10 because the devil disapproved of Joshua's efforts to become a preacher.

Sounds like a rational defense to me. OK, maybe "rational" is not the right word. Perhaps the phrase "consistent with the Bible" is more accurate.

Hey, if God can command Abraham to offer up Issac, his son, to be burned to death, are we to believe that Satan is capable of less?

Since we obviously can't prove that the devil did or didn't put Mr. Maudlin to the task of microwaving his daughter, I recommend the judge pray about it and base his verdict on what god tells him.

And right after the verdict is read, why don't we split the country into two; one side secular, one side the faithful. You can keep the judge, Mr. Maudlin and we'll even throw in half of the space program if (and only if) you make Ralph Reed an astronaut.

Sure, space exploration is important but a faith-based shuttle launch would be worth its weight in gold.

Former President Jimmy Carter has been taking aim at the current chimp saying, "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history."

White House spokesman Tony Fratto indicated that Carter was becoming "increasingly irrelevant" for expressing these views.

Amber Wilkerson, Republican National Committee spokeswoman, said it was hard to take Carter seriously because he also "challenged Ronald Reagan's strategy for the Cold War."

They say victory has a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan.

We told you repeatedly that Bush's plans for Iraq were fatally flawed, we told you specifically why they were certain to fail and we have been right on every single count.

Carter is right, Miss Wilkerson and your man, the President you are paid to flak for, the sole director of the war who has had precisely ZERO restrictions placed on him for four years -- 1,500 days -- the "decider" who surrounded himself with sycophants assuring us and the complicit so-called "free press" that the war would be simple, the war would be quick and the war would pay for itself, the President who stumbled into Iraq without a plan (but no lack of swagger), the very epitome of Southern Baptist prayer and political might, the alpha and omega of right-wing Conservatism fucked up every single aspect of the war possible to fuck up.

And yet TO THIS VERY MOMENT, you continue to support him Miss Wilkerson.

When you get past the social stigma there's scant difference between Tony Snow et al and a prostitute, I think. Granted, one has something coming out of their mouth while the other has something coming in, but the prostitute has the distinct moral advantage of at least realizing they're for sale.

So tell me, what is it that makes you imagine your president -- much less you, his dutiful and oh-so-willing mouthpiece -- is taken seriously by the country he ostensibly leads?

If you've ever wondered how the various techno genres fit together thematically and chronologically, wonder no longer.

Thanks to Jen for cluing me in to this well-researched, extremely funny sampler.

Lessee, what else...

I ate bison last night and it was the best red meat I've had in my life. A slight char on the outside, red all the way through but not cold, melted in my mouth quicker than an ice cream soaked waffle cone.

The waitstaff explaining food to the adjacent diners was a tad bit weird, though.

"This venison was taken from the flank quarters of 'Bob,' a young but gregarious caribou born and bred on the southern tip of Nova Scotia."

TMI.

I wonder if our waitress heard me, though. She came over, put the food down and said, "your bison." It would have been even better if she simply pointed and said "meat."

I'm leaving Flickr, I'm no longer buying JPG, grr on the former, GRR on the latter.

More later, gotta run. This week has been nothing but...

My epic photo tribulations made it into the papers.

Spinning counterclockwise.

While doing research for another story, a reporter from BostonNOW (an upstart rival to the ubiquitous Metro) learned of my subway photography (and associated problems with the MBTA). A few emails turns into a twenty-minute interview on the phone. I'm told it'll likely be published Monday, maybe Tuesday.

Well this is going to be an interesting week...

In a thread attached to a video of James Randi making Uri Geller look stupid (yes, again), KING777TUTT wrote:

"There is twenty known constants in the universe, the electon volt measured at something like 10 to the power of -34, the speed of light, gravity and so on. If even one of these constant's values were moved one decimal place to the left or right the whole universe wouldn't work. It's sooo finely tuned its incredible. So the scientific community have come up with the theory of an infinte number of universes to explain it."

Nonsense.

Imagine for a moment you're a penny. If a penny could think, you might marvel at your situation...

How many different ways -- most not condusive to copper accumulating -- might the earth have formed? What are the odds of the earth forming at all? What are the odds that you'd wind up on a planet that can host life, much less develops life, much less life capable and inclined to extract ore?

What are the odds that your copper bits would even wind up on terra firma? Realize that copper is created by supernovae so most of it exists in space until gravity (read; mass) tells it otherwise.

And what are the spectacularly unlikely chances of YOUR particular chunk of copper being at the top 1% of the surface that man can reach? What are the odds that your particular rock would be in the 0.001% of copper that humans would extract from that thin crust humans can reach at all?

In fact, think about how unlikely it is that the specific mining company exists at all! If the mining company founder's parents didn't meet, or their parents didn't meet, or THEIR parents didn't meet, or have kids, or not get killed in a duel or by some disease, through dozens of generations, the odds of you existing go down dramatically. How about the specific human that actually pulled you out of the earth and what had to happen for them to be at that spot at that time?

How about the happenstance for the person who wrote the schedule? Really, what are all the things that had to happen for everyone involved in your extraction to exist in the precise state necessary for you to become a penny? What if the foreman didn't have a cold ten years earlier, a cold that caused him to sneeze while waiting for the bus, a sneeze that caused him to meet his future wife three years later?

When you consider your existence as a penny you must also consider every little minor, insignificant action we make that winds up impacting out lives dramatically. It's known more coloquially as the so-called "Butterfly Effect."

But let's get more specific; how about the pocket you reside in right now? Since 1972 you've been passed from pocket to pocket, from person to person, from cornerstore tienda to 7/11 to McDonalds to Macy's, tens of thousands of transactions, ALL of which had to occur with ZERO deviation for you to be in the pocket you're in. If ANYONE in those 35 years decided to split a dollar bill instead of using change, or dropped you into the leave-a-penny cup to save pocketspace, or if ANYONE in those 35 years forgot to empty their pockets before washing their pants at the laundrymat or if ANYONE in those 35 years didn't remember to grab their change before leaving the house ...well ...you wouldn't be in the pocket you're in, would you?

The odds of all these things happening the way they did, with no deviation, are a trillion billion to one.

And despite all this, without any divine guidance, here you are. In this pocket.

KING777TUTT, you probably want to instinctively object and say "but if I wasn't passed from human to human in that exact sequence I'd just be in someone else's pocket." That's correct but now you'd be asking how unlikely it is that you were THERE which only demonstrates that your position isn't actually terribly unique.

On the other hand you might argue, "If I was never mined, or smelted, or formed into a penny, I wouldn't be around to ask the question at all."

And you'd be right!

When broken down your argument takes two forms:

    • If things were different then things would be different.

    • If we weren't here to ask the question, we wouldn't be here to ask the question.

...and both are tautologies.

This is hilarious. Front page of ABCNews.com:

Study Finds Drug Abuse by 10 Percent of U.S. Adults

The researchers based their findings on interviews with 43,093 people in 2001 and 2002. They estimated 10.3 percent of U.S. adults abused drugs during their lifetimes, including 2.6 percent who become addicted.

Ten percent? Really?? I could have sworn the incidence of drug use in high school was waaay higher. And everybody knows that use = abuse. ^[1]

So I headed over to the Google.

Hm. Something isn't right. According to the CDC, 40% of teens have tried marijuana alone.

Now ...call me crazy but if we make the assumption that 100% of adults were once teens and factoring in the official government "drug use is abuse" party line then ...at least four out of every ten adults are or were drug abusers "during their lifetime."

Right?

See, our government can't be consistent and say 40% of Americans have abused drugs in their lifetime because it would become instantaneously and blindingly obvious that (a) drug use must not be so terrible (since society hasn't burned to the ground) or (b) "abuse" is immediately proven to be a meaningless fucking term.

Think about this for a moment; forty percent of the population. Two out of every five. More than one in three. If you've got two neighbors and they're not pill-snorting meth junkies, guess what?

YOU'RE IT.

So they just say "10% of adults." Sounds plausible. Sounds epidemic-ish. And most importantly, keeps the middle class worried enough to keep funneling $20,000,000,000 (that's "billion" if you lose count) into the anti-drug law enforcement cartel.

Besides, nobody has a fucking memory in this country. Dick Cheney, to this very day, continues to claim that Saddam Hussein had WMD and something to do with 9/11.

-----

^[1] To cite just a single example, The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA, a government organization and a branch of the National Institutes of Health), publishes a "research report" on "marijuana abuse." The word "abuse" appears 22 times (excluding domain names, citations, etc.) over a whopping eight pages. Use is never distinguished from "abuse" and despite having a glossary, "abuse" is never defined.

^[2] From the U.S. Department of Agriculture website (no, seriously): For the government, any use at all of an illegal drug or misuse of a legal drug is drug abuse.

The latest.



...though it's much more impressive when viewed large on black.

I can't be specific -- because this journal isn't private and there are people who I'd rather not know details -- but something very odd, something very serreptitious happened to me last week. Suffice it to say that when all the dust settles, the hand is going to be on the other foot.

I should mention that large piles of credit go to Jennie for putting me in a state where I could receive it constructively.

PS: If I'm aware that you read this journal, you're not who I'm worried about. Just nudge me and I'll explain.

More people flock to the scene; rush-hour pedestrian traffic backs up; tempers flare; the National Guard is called; tear gas, rubber bullets, etc.

Oliver North v2.0.

Simple political math says whatever is in those emails is more damaging than being brought up on charges of violating the Presidential Records Act (PRA) of 1978.

The plot thickens.

In one instance, Mr Abramoff, who is serving a 70-month sentence on corruption charges, sent an e-mail to Susan Ralston, executive assistant to Karl Rove, the president's chief political strategist, on her RNC account about a gaming-related decision by the department of the interior.

When the e-mail was forwarded to another official in the White House e-mail system, Mr Abramoff was warned by an associate who said the official "said it is better not to put this stuff in writing in their e-mail system because it might actually limit what they can do to help us".

Mr Abramoff responded: "Dammit. It was sent to Susan on her RNC pager and was not supposed to go into the WH system."

Apparently this administration has been using Republican National Committee funded-and-supplied communication equipment (computers, Blackberries, etc.) which is fine so long as all government communications go through the official computers, in compliance with the with Presidential Records Act.

In the process of sifting through the l'embarras des richesses otherwise known as Bush Administration scandals, something interesting happened:

The private e-mail system came to light in the U.S. attorney controversy because one of Rove's deputies used an RNC-maintained e-mail domain — gwb43.com — to communicate with the Justice Department about replacing one of those prosecutors.

Karl Rove is using an off-the-radar laptop and email address?

And we now know that it's been used to "conceal contacts with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff?"

Well that's interesting. Logically, there are two possibilities...

The first is that Rove didn't know that these laptop's contents weren't making it into the record but it's inconceivable that every single person involved in the purchase, sale, distribution and use of these devices was ignorant of this federal law. In fact it's how they got Clinton.

The second option is that Karl did know these were shadow devices with a de facto invisibility in regards to things like, oh, say, subpoenas. Oh hell, a cynic might even say that's why they existed in the first place!

Now Karl wouldn't skirt the law if he thought there was any reasonable chance he'd get caught and if he doesn't think he'll get caught, he'd consider the communications to be secure.

Now what would Karl Rove do with communications methods that he believed were ironclad?

Oh MY this is going to be a fun April...

But Jesus Christ, don't you all long for the good ole days when our biggest national concern was the president having his dick sucked?

What the heck did I just see?

You saw SCUL, an anti-elite band of pilots testing out experimental ships, exploring the Greater Boston Starystems and occasionally other galaxies. We are an organized battalion of funk. Our routine patrols keep your skies secure. We bust the funk, crush the cup, and hi-five the populous.

Posi.