Dear newspaper editor; I DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THE OCTUPLET MOM.

Move on.

Last week a complete stranger walked up to me and gave me an upright piano.

This warrants repeating; someone I didn't know said "Hey, do you want a piano?" Elia and I said "sure." It's about four hundred pounds.

I'm learning the piano.

Obama just recently relaxed US policy toward Cuba.

"Otto Reich, who served presidents Reagan and both Bushes in a number of high-level Latin American posts, also testified Wednesday before the House Foreign Affairs Committee [and said] he did not like the Cuba provisions in the budget because the United States gets nothing in return."

Imagine that! Doing something without the intent of getting something out of it.

I don't know what to call it, geez. Maybe ...Christ-like?

Sounds like the antithesis of Bush policy.

Perhaps our last election should give Mr. Reich not-insignificant pause.

The end of the story.

RIP Paul Harvey

This notepad was found on the street by Elia.

And no, not kidding.

An oldie but a goodie.

The letter Michael Phelps should have written

Dear America,

I take it back. I don’t apologize.

Because you know what? It’s none of your goddamned business. I work my ass off 10 months per year. It’s that hard work that gave you all those gooey feelings of patriotism last summer. If during my brief window of down time I want to relax, enjoy myself, and partake of a substance that’s a hell of a lot less bad for me than alcohol, tobacco, or, frankly, most of the prescription drugs most of you are taking, well, you can spare me the lecture.

I put myself through hell. I make my body do things nature never really intended us to endure. All world-class athletes do. We do it because you love to watch us push ourselves as far as we can possibly go. Some of us get hurt. Sometimes permanently. You’re watching the Super Bowl tonight. You’re watching 300 pound men smash each while running at full speed, in full pads. You know what the average life expectancy of an NFL player is? Fifty-five. That’s about 20 years shorter than your average non-NFL player. Yet you watch. And cheer. And you jump up spill your beer when a linebacker lays out a wide receiver on a crossing route across the middle. The harder he gets hit, the louder and more enthusiastically you scream.

Yet you all get bent out of shape when Ricky Williams, or I, or Josh Howard smoke a little dope to relax. Why? Because the idiots you’ve elected to make your laws have have without a shred of evidence beat it into your head that smoking marijuana is something akin to drinking antifreeze, and done only by dirty hippies and sex offenders.

You’ll have to pardon my cynicism. But I call bullshit. You don’t give a damn about my health. You just get a voyeuristic thrill from watching an elite athlete fall from grace–all the better if you get to exercise a little moral righteousness in the process. And it’s hypocritical righteousness at that, given that 40 percent of you have tried pot at least once in your lives.

Here’s a crazy thought: If I can smoke a little dope and go on to win 14 Olympic gold medals, maybe pot smokers aren’t doomed to lives of couch surfing and video games, as our moronic government would have us believe. In fact, the list of successful pot smokers includes not just world class athletes like me, Howard, Williams, and others, it includes Nobel Prize winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, the last three U.S. presidents, several Supreme Court justices, and luminaries and success stories from all sectors of business and the arts, sciences, and humanities.

So go ahead. Ban me from the next Olympics. Yank my endorsement deals. Stick your collective noses in the air and get all indignant on me. While you’re at it, keep arresting cancer and AIDS patients who dare to smoke the stuff because it deadens their pain, or enables them to eat. Keep sending in goon squads to kick down doors and shoot little old ladies, maim innocent toddlers, handcuff elderly post-polio patients to their beds at gunpoint, and slaughter the family pet.

Tell you what. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll apologize for smoking pot when every politician who ever did drugs and then voted to uphold or strengthen the drug laws marches his ass off to the nearest federal prison to serve out the sentence he wants to impose on everyone else for committing the same crimes he committed. I’ll apologize when the sons, daughters, and nephews of powerful politicians who get caught possessing or dealing drugs in the frat house or prep school get the same treatment as the no-name, probably black kid caught on the corner or the front stoop doing the same thing.

Until then, I for one will have none of it. I smoked pot. I liked it. I’ll probably do it again. I refuse to apologize for it, because by apologizing I help perpetuate this stupid lie, this idea that what someone puts into his own body on his own time is any of the government’s damned business. Or any of yours. I’m not going to bend over and allow myself to be propaganda for this wasteful, ridiculous, immoral war.

Go ahead and tear me down if you like. But let’s see you rationalize in your next lame ONDCP commercial how the greatest motherfucking swimmer the world has ever seen . . . is also a proud pot smoker.

Yours,

Michael Phelps

she is the Janet, her name is Leah, she's pre-med, and oh yeah, most importantly, I AM GOING TO HIT THAT LIKE THE FIST OF AN ANGRY GOD, OH YES

there is no other metaphor for how badly i want to swan dive into her goodies

Ella on her Rocky exploits.

"Well I figured a more simple way to amuse my 1.5 year old kid. When I get back from work I just take anything off and give it to him. Once I said HEEEY SEE WHAT DADDY GOT YOU and took my socks off. He loved it crazy. I felt really sorry for him :P If only he knows what I really gave him."

Overheard in 10 Ways To Entertain Young Children for $1 or Less Without the TV.

I wrote some code. It does neat things.

Big progress. w00t.

OK. I'm noticing a trend on Youtube...

There's a little bar labeled "Recommended for You." Here's mine:



Mia? OK, I can see that. I've probably looked up a video of hers at some point.

And there's Real Genius a little further down the list. I think I looked it up to explain the Jordan character to Elia.

It's the second one that's remarkable...

Huge amazone wrestle.

And the description is clutch: "Amazon [spelled correctly] woman wrestling little black man.

And what's with the "part two?" A sequel? Really? Because there were so many unanswered questions in the first one?

OK, maybe it got keyed from my frequent MMA searches but yipes, d00d.

RIP Bettie Page.

The teen was shot as he tried to throw a fuel-filled bomb at the officers (says a police statement about the boy's death), police said. Other youths -- often referred to in Greece as "the known-unknowns" -- converged on the site almost immediately, using texting and Web sites to organize and communicate.

Huh.

OK, wtf is wrong with it?

Yeah. Gravity Bomb is back.

It occurs to me that a big problem I had, in its previous incarnation, was trying to do a few subjects per show. But I'd spend many hours on each, publish once a week, and by then the issue was somewhat beaten to death by the media. ZzZzz.

So why not just pick a story, a subject, an audio clip and a response, then publish that as a podcast. Microcasting? The podcasting equivalent of Twitter? Dunno. I'm sure someone has thought of it before me.

More soon.

She smells of the sun
and she's constantly saying
that's it's all right,
because lies sound so nice.
And like soil to seed goes
to casting my fears aside...

She says,
  "The satellite is coming". I pray,
  the wrecking ball is waining."

She says,
 "The satellite is coming.
 It's come to take us home."

     BT - satelite

These are an important four years.

So ...I might very well be reviving my political podcast, Gravity Bomb. Not entirely sure atm but if McCain wins it's just about definite.

And quick shout-out to Shira Chess who is doing her thesis on social networks in MMORPGs.

Courtesy of Ella.

Rant #1

So I was aware that what ACORN does is, by any rational standard, legit. They hire people to register voters and got swindled by some wage-earners trying to make a fast buck by making up fake names to make quota. ACORN flags the applications they believe to be falsified and they are forbidden, by law, from not turning them in.

I've yet to hear a conservative offer what they think ACORN should have done differently. That's because it's easier to be ominous and deal in innuendo when you haven't got a leg to stand on.

[Yes, Bill-O the Clown, I'm looking at you...]

Further, for these fake registrations to become actual votes, Mickey Mouse (yes, one of the names was Mickey Mouse) would need to show up with a valid ID in-hand and actually vote.

Good luck.

But maybe I'm living in a cave because I completely missed this:


I think it's important for people to know exactly what is happening. We do massive voter registration to low- and moderate-income folks. The Right Wing and Republicans, specifically, have been coming for us since the 2000 and 2004 elections. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales sent U.S. attorneys after us to investigate and try to find a prosecutable action. In 2006, the reason he stepped down is that he fired eight attorneys because they kept coming back to him saying, "There's no evidence; ACORN is clean."

Bertha Lewis - Executive Director of NY ACORN.


So let me get this straight...

A conservative administration gives politically-independent state prosecutors a choice; "Bust ACORN or you're fired. It doesn't matter if there's evidence or not, we're quite sure they're guilty. If you can't, you're clearly incompetent and we'll bring someone in who can."

Huh.

If this party, these self-labeled "strict constructionists," have such little reverence for the 5th, 6th and 14th Amendments of the United States Constitution -- the foundation of the right to be presumed innocent -- then it's fitting that We, the People, should show them the door.

I'm sure McCain would appreciate the irony if he was only capable of noticing it.

Rant #2

I am, for the first time during this election, sure that Obama is going to win. Why? Because the Palin/McCain ticket is imploding. I saw some story on CNN about a McCain spokesperson referring to Palin as "a diva" and "going rogue."

Jesus H. on a greased-up pogo stick. That's rather severe language from a running mate's own camp.

And while we're on the topic, wasn't Palin's raison d'être the whole "mavericky" appeal?

So I hit news.google.com around 5PM and found this:



Three stories. Hm.

Four hours later, I get home and check again:



1,256 stories. Moahahahaha. Christmas in fucking October.

Rant #3

Yes, people lie to pollsters but nobody lies to their bookie.

Intrade is a company that trades in the political futures market. You can buy stock in a given party/candidate being elected to the White House. Here's the trading for the last thirty days: