DEAD BLOG.. I MOVED TO WORDPRESS.

Blog moved to ClintJCL.WordPress.com

My blog is now moved to http://clintjcl.wordpress.com Why? I said in the post below, but: Because I want tags (categories). Why make 1 and 10 posts a movie review, unless there is a way I can click "movie reviews" and see just my movie reviews... Indexing is how we get back to our information. Indexing is how information becomes useful. Blogger is unfortunately just a pile to throw stuff on. No new posts will be posted here anymore. However, I will leave the page up until it dies a natural death.

Blog moving to WordPress

I am in the process of moving our blog to WordPress.

They support tagging. Blogger does not. And I don't want to just throw things on a disorganized pile for the rest of my life!

Tagging my old blogs is a good way to alleviate boredom.

Dear Citizens Of The World (repost)

Dear Citizens of the World,

I believe the time has come to reveal to you some of the perplexities you have faced in recent decades.

It is well for you to understand some of these things so that you might know how to behave in the New Order now taking shape in the earth. We want you to be able to become fully involved and integrated into our new society. After all, this is for your best interest if you will do this.

First of all, it is well that you understand some of our purposes so that you may more fully cooperate. I cannot tell you the hard times you will face if you resist us.

We have ways of dealing with resisters. I am only telling you this now, since it is much too late to turn things around. The days of putting a stop to us have long since past.

We have full control of the earth and its finance, along with the major media propaganda, and there is simply no way any nation or power can defeat us.

We have eyes in every level of government in every nation of the world. We know what is being planned, for our ears and eyes are ever present. State secrets are fully known to us.

China recently accused the media in the U.S. of lying about Kosovo.

Oh, you silly people, of course we lie. In this way we can keep the people unbalanced and always facing controversy which is very helpful to us. Have you not seen the talk show spectacle?

Some of you believe we are the liberals and the good people are the conservatives. In reality, both serve our purposes. Each camp merely serves with the stamp of our approval but they are not allowed to present the real issues.

By creating controversy on all levels, no one knows what to do. So, in all of this confusion, we go ahead and accomplish what we want with no hindrance.

Consider the President of the United States. Even though he regularly breaks every known check on his power, no one can stop him. He goes ahead and does whatever we want him to do anyway.

The Congress has no power to stop him. He does what we want since he knows if he does not, because of his rather dark character, we can have him removed in a moment's time. Is not that a rather brilliant strategy on our part?

You cannot take us to court because you can't see us and the courts are our servants as well. We run everything, yet, you do not know who to attack. I must say this invisible hand is wonderfully devised and without any known historical precedent on this scale. We rule the world and the world cannot even find out who is ruling them.

This is truly a wonderful thing. In our media we present before you exactly what it is we want you to do. Then, as if in a flash, our little servants obey.

We can send American or European troops to wherever we like, whenever we like, and for whatever purpose we like, and you dutifully go about our business. How much more evidence do you need?

We can make you desire to leave your homes and family and go to war merely at our command. We only need to present some nonsense to you from the president's desk or on the evening news and we can get you all fired up to do whatever we like. You can do nothing but what we put before you.

Your Vain Resistance

When any of you seek to resist us, we have ways of making you look ridiculous as we have done with your militia movement. We have delighted to use this movement to show the world how impotent any resistance is.

They look so silly marching around with their guns as if they were some match for our military. Look at what we did near Waco. Did the Davidian's little store of weapons help them?

We have generously taxed you and used that money to make such sophisticated weapons you can in no way compete. Your own money has served to forge the chains we bind you with, since we are in control of all money.

Some of you think you may escape by buying some land in the country and growing a garden. Let me remind you that you still pay us ground rent. Oh, you may call it property taxes, but it still goes to us.

You see, you need money no matter what you do. If you fail to pay your ground rent to us, we will take your land and sell it to someone who will pay us. Do you think we cannot do this? And with your ground rent we pay for the indoctrination of your children in the public schools we have set up.

We want them to grow up well trained into the system of our thinking. Your children will learn what we want them to learn, when we want them to learn it, and you pay for it through your ground rent.

Those funds are also used for other projects we have in mind and our contractors are paid handsomely for their work.

You may doubt that we own your children, or have such control, but you will find that we do. We can declare that you abuse your children when you spank them and have them confiscated. If they do not show up for school indoctrination, we can accuse you of neglect, thereby, giving them to us.

Your children are not yours. They are ours. You must inoculate them, you must bring them to our hospitals if we decree or we will take them from you. You know this and we know this.

Through our electronic commerce we are able to see where you are, what you are buying and how much you have to buy things with. Where do you suppose we come up with our monthly financial statistics?

Through the Internet and other sources we can even know how you think and what you say. It is not especially important to us what you believe as long as you do what we say.

Your beliefs are nonsense anyway. But if you think you have a following, and we perceive that you might be somewhat dangerous to our agenda, we have ways to deal with you.

We have a Pandora's box of mischief with which to snare you. We can have you in court so long you will never get out. We can easily drain away all your assets over one pretext or another. We have an inexhaustible fund with which to draw from to pay our lawyers.

These lawyers are paid by you in the form of taxes. You do not have this vast supply of wealth. We know how to divide and conquer. Have we not brought down rulers of countries through our devices?

Do you think your tiny self will be any match for us?

Your Vain Organizations

And, let us consider your religions and the "moral majority."

The "moral majority" is neither moral nor is it in the majority. We have delighted to use this wet noodle of a movement to make ridiculous the Christian faith.

The silly men who run that organization always end up with egg on their faces. We have always put them in defense of themselves as we have so successfully done with the NRA.

We can make it seem by our media propaganda that the National Rifle Association is actually the New Radical Attackers.

Have we not turned the American conservative movement on its ear? If it serves our purposes we can use the conservatives to turn the liberals on their ear.

It makes no difference to us but it serves to make you believe there are two sides struggling for their particular position. This helps to make things seem fair and free since everyone has a voice.

Actually, there is only one side now with all kinds of masks on, but you are unable to penetrate our purposes.

You see, we can do whatever we like and you can do nothing about it.

Does it not seem reasonable that you simply obey and serve us? Otherwise, you get eaten up in the resistance you suppose will liberate you.

You cannot be liberated. Imagine how you can.

We supply your fuel for your cars. We can turn it off whenever we like claiming that there is some sort of fuel shortage. What if your car breaks down? You cannot get parts for it without us.

We supply all the money you use. At any whim of our desire we can stop the money supply or cause a complete crash all together.

We can then order the president to declare all money worthless and that we will have to have new money. All of your stashes of cash will go up in smoke in a moment's time.

Don't you need food?

If necessary, we can cause a trucker's strike which would stop deliveries of food to your local store. We can starve you whenever we like. You only have food because we have provided it to you from our table.

During the great depression we controlled the food. We heaped mountains of food behind fences and let it rot.

The hungry were then made to work in our labor camps even though there was enough and more to feed them. Do you really think you can beat us?

You say you will hoard gold coins so you will still have money in the time of the crash. We can simply pass a law which outlaws the possession of gold as we have done in the past.

If we find gold in your possession, we would simply confiscate it and put you in prison for breaking the law.

While in prison you would be required to work in one of our prison industries. We have so formed a picture of the labor camps in our prisons these days that no one seems to object to them.

We tell people that murderers should pay for their own keep.

No one seems to consider that we have the power to put tomato growers there also.

We can pass laws that prohibit gardens and then make up some scientific reason why you may only buy food from our sources.

If someone sees you growing tomatoes, they will report you to us and then we will have you in our fields working for us.

Oh, silly nationalists, there is no escape for you, for since long before you were born, we were planning your capture.

Your teachers and ministers have been forming your thoughts for us for generations now. You have no idea how to pull out of our influence short of suicide. Go ahead and commit suicide, it will only help us to deal with the excessive population.

You cannot hurt us, find us, or even imagine what we are up to. I am throwing you these few crumbs only so that you may, if you have a little good sense, obey and follow our orders.

Your Controlled Mind

We run Hollywood. The movies such as Terminator and Armageddon, along with a great host of others, were simply created to get you thinking according to our directions.

You have been made to delight in violence so that when we send you off to kill some bad man we have put before you, you move without a whimper.

We have placed violent arcade games in your malls to prepare your young minds in the art of battle. We have made you to view our armies and police as the good forces and you submit to things that were unthinkable just a few decades ago.

Our artful programs are all designed to help you to submit and even help the New World Order. Star Trek, and other such creations, have taught you to simply obey orders from the new international rulers.

Oh, silly people, you thought you were being entertained, while you were actually being educated. Dare I use the words, "brainwashed" or "mind control?" By the way, have you seen the new Star Wars?

What a masterpiece of mental manipulation. Humans confer with nondescript beasts of all shapes and sizes and they confer in English.

I wonder where those space beasts learned English. Oh, the simple-ness of the mind of the citizen. He never considers he is being taken into fairyland.

We have placed advertisements for Star Wars almost everywhere you go. You will find them in Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Taco Bell and a host of our institutions of commerce.

There is something we want you to learn from this movie. Or, perhaps it could be said, there is something we do not want you to learn. Either way, we will have what we want in the whole affair.

Of course, to keep you off guard we have instructed our elected officials to appear to be correcting the evil of our violence. President Clinton is now speaking against violence in Hollywood movies.

This will not solve the problem, but will only make the people believe the problem is being worked on.

Sex and violence are the very best powers to use to help us gain our advantage. How the people loathe to give up their sex and violence, so we place all they want before them. In this way, we keep them so occupied they do not have the integrity or brain-power to deal with the really important matters which are left entirely in our hands.

President Clinton has been very helpful to us. We knew of what character he was before we placed him as president. Exposing him was very helpful in adjusting the moral habits of the youth downward. This is to our advantage.

Even more agreeable to us were the vain efforts of those who thought they could remove him against our will. He is useful to us and he will not be removed by anyone until we are ready to have him removed.

Excuse me if I seem to be mocking your system of beliefs, but they are rather outdated. Have you no eyes to see your vain liberties and your righteous pontifications are nothing before us? You can only do what we say you can do.

We remove presidents when we are ready and the leader we set up will be there until it serves us to have another. At that time we place our purposed leader before you and you vote for what we want.

In that way we give you the vain voting exercise in the belief you had something to do with placing your president in office.

Our Unfathomable Mysteries

Our recent war in Serbia has many purposes to it but we do not speak of these things openly. We let the talk show hosts blather all sorts of nonsense but none of it touches the core.

First of all, there is a wealth of natural resources in Kosovo that we must have complete control of.

Kosovo has large supplies of uranium in its soil and uranium is very helpful to our regime. Also, it suits us to keep all such minerals out of the hands of potential enemies.

Milosovic has not been helpful in giving those resources into our hands so we simply make things difficult for him until he does. Even now victory over Yugoslavia is imminent.

We are reducing that proud nation to the level of humility we require from all people. After the war, if Mr. Milosovic does not sufficiently humble himself, we will take him to the world court charged with war crimes. We made up that term; rather ingenious, don't you think?

How could there be such a thing as a war crime? The very nature of war is that the rules are off. It is so entertaining to watch the nations try to fight war according to the laws we have placed before them.

The only war crime there really is only involves the crime of being against us.

Anyone against us is violating our law. As you have seen when someone is for us we do not care what they do. Was not Nelson Mandella [sic] a bomb toting terrorist who killed many of his enemies? We made a hero of him.

We observe no laws when it comes to war. We do what we want, when we want and where we want.

We can starve nations to death, we can ruin civilians and any other horror for which we would take our enemies to court. Look at our example.

We bomb Serbia out of its wits, bomb Kosovans out of their homes, poison their rivers and streams, turn off their electricity making a grand crisis in that country, and then we masterfully make it appear it is all Mr. Milosovic's fault and he needs to go to court for it.

It is the same way we made our inferno at Waco look like Mr. Koresh's fault. Then there was our chief villain, Saddam with all of his weapons of mass destruction.

Bad men are a dime a dozen and we can conjure one up whenever it suits us.

This is really quite funny when you think of it.

I am not one who is usually given to humor, but I do catch myself laughing sometimes at the absolute absurdity of the notions we place before you and you readily accept.

Do you wonder that the leaders of the world tremble at our presence? They know they have no power except the power we give them.

We have no fear of Russia or China for we are already in full control of their system of things.

China knows that we can freeze any number of its corporations in America and all of its capitol at the stroke of a pen. We use the nations for what we want to use them for. Everyone knows that they must yield to us or die.

Fortunately, we have had a few resisters such as Saddam and Milosevic that have been helpful in showing the world leaders what we will do to them if they do not submit.

There is only glory in following our purposes and doing what we say. If one does not, there will be such a sad and tragic result.

I would really have you spared of such an end. But, then, again, if you are not spared, it is of no consequence to us. We will use you to alleviate some of the overpopulation problem.

Your Silly Rebellion Against Our Dominion

Some of you have thought you could stop us by placing a bomb in one of our abortion clinics or in a government building.

Silly souls! How can that hurt us? All that does is give us an example to use so that we might place more controls and heavy burdens on the population.

We love it when you rebel and blow something up. You are our reason for making more laws against all those things which might contribute to your freedom from us.

If someone did not blow something up on occasion, we would have no justification in placing more hedges about you. Can't you see how impossible it is for you to resist us? The more you wiggle, the more we squeeze.

Our kingdom is the kingdom of money. Excuse me, but I must confess that we are the rulers of the kingdom of non-money.

You must see the humor in that statement. We have given you a piece of paper or some numbers on a computer screen that we have termed money.

It is backed up by nothing and proven by nothing but what we say it is. We create it from nothing, we print it, we loan it, we give it its value, we take its value away. All things that have to do with money are in our hands.

Think of it, what is it that you can do against us without money? If you try to resist, we can cancel your credit or freeze your accounts. Your cash is easily confiscated.

We have made so many rules in the realm of living that you cannot live without money.

Camp on government land and you must move in two weeks. You cannot grow much of a garden in two weeks.

Many of our wilderness trails are entered by permit only.

We have passed laws that do not allow you to live in trailers over a certain period without moving to another location.

Have you not thought it ridiculous that we will allow a man to live in a box full time but we will not allow a man to live in an RV full time unless he is in a taxpaying campground? We want you to be in the system.

When you are buying a house, we not only receive the tax revenue to use for our purposes, but we gain large increases from the interest on the loan. You may pay for your house two or three times over from the interest alone. The interest is also taxed which is again placed for use in those sectors of influence we choose.

We do not want you to escape free and that is why we have made it as we have.

You are our property. We will not permit you to buy or sell unless you submit to our mark of authority.

If you go to court against us, we will wear you out there and in the end you will lose.

If you use violence, we will end up having you in one of our labor camps, more specifically called prison industries.

You need our money, our entertainments, our fuel, and our utilities to function and if you don't have them, you feel deprived. By this, you are made to yield to our will.

You don't even know how to think anymore since we have thoroughly emasculated your religions and your faith in God. Now, you only have yourself and we have gotten that self pretty well chasing its tail these days.

I hope this little note is sufficient to inform you what the new millennium is all about.

The 21st century is our century. You may enter it if you do as you are told.

We have no intention of playing around with your so-called human rights or your so-called Constitution. These things were only used for our purposes for a time. Your Constitution is a joke to us and we can do with it what we please.

It never occurred to you that 50 years ago your Constitution was used to refuse abortions. When we decided to have abortions legalized we used the same Constitution to justify it.

Your human rights are what we say they are and your Constitution is what we say it is.

We have only used this phrase of human rights to keep things sufficiently in turmoil. The more things are unsettled, the better we like them until we have everything in complete servitude.

This little letter may offend you, since I speak so plainly, but that truly is no concern of ours. In simple terms, you're fucked!

NSA Spying Re-Visited: a good comment from a random person

Here's a random comment from an internet forum. I'm not posting the original poster's identity, to protect them.

(I'm also not asking for their permission to repost it.)

"I worked from 2001 to 2005 in a company where I was privy to the bid requests of the DARPA, NSA, CIA and others regards information mining and technology related. I am sure somebody will want to disagree with me and call me troll for saying so, but the Bush Administration's NSA spying campaign which they call limited monitoring of terrorists is nothing of the sort.

The Bush Administration undertook at various high levels in the US Government to secure every single communication and to process it for their use. That is a fact. It is not opinion. To be blunt this was securing a level of invasion of privacy that the German SS (1930's to 1940's) never imagined possible. It's only goal has to be the construction of a police state. I saw this in the bid requests! They wanted 100% of all data including to be able to evaluate photographs, many languages and even other issues. They wanted 100% of all commercial transactions and to pattern everything.

Read this for what you will, it isn't toll to tell the truth. I am reasonably certain some party will think I am being partizan. I am not. I am reasonably certain that the Democrat leadership would do the same thing if given the chance. We in the USA have a real problem with our leaders. Seeking to understand their behavior through the eyes of their party propaganda machines is just nuts. Republicans all too often have a Karl Rove point of view. Of course the Democrats have their own propaganda team. We need to see that what is being stolen in the name of national security is all of our security. We have none if people like these destroy the US Constitution this way.

For those who cannot read, I will spell it out for you. The US Constitution REMOVES from government the power to do anything not permitted. Specifically warrantless searches are prohibited in the US Constitution. The claim that there is no law prohibiting what is happening is just ignorant at the highest level of ignorance. This infinite seaching and invasion of privacy is ILLEGAL 100% no excuses. Excusing it because some Democrat did it or some previous crook did it is no excuse."

My IMDB movie ratings - they finally made it public!

http://us.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=1054136

Click here, then click the ratings column to sort from highest-to-lowest.

This is about 200 movies I've rated. In my netflix account I've rated 1400, and I wish I could export that to IMDB. Anyone know how to do that?

Borg Pic from Vegas honeymoon: Clint

borg_cl-700c, originally uploaded by ClintJCL.

Borg Pic from Vegas honeymoon: Carolyn

borg_cas-700c, originally uploaded by ClintJCL.

MUSIC: REVIEWS: My current music, including Type O Negative: Life Is Killing Me

I really like Type O Negative's newest album, Life Is Killing Me.

I thought World Coming Down was much, much, much better than their last few albums. But this one is even better! It is so incredibly refreshingly rare for a band to get better. With my tastes, pretty much all bands get worse.

Let's face it -- the first album they were still migrating their sound over from their Carnivore sound to their Type O Negative sound, and they hadn't fully matured their style. It was a bit tediuos. It was not as good as Carnivore or Type O Negative's 2nd album.

Their 2nd album, Bloody Kisses (with "Black No. 1") is, to me, a seminal work in gothic rock/gothic metal/whatever you want to call it. I think it's an insant-classic album that I will listen to until my dying day. "Black No. 1" will remain in my party playlist forever.

But this new one -- it's awesome. They have a cover of Hedwig & The Angry Inch's song "Angry Inch". Sooooooooo much better than the original, which is too-straight-rock not-enough-metal for me. I particularly like "(We Were) Electrocute" as well. Also good is "If You Don't Kill Me, I'm Going To Have To Kill You (Gimme That)", and of course the title track "Life Is Killing Me". The opening song "I Don't Wanna Be Me" is also quite good and I'm sure is very self-serving to the goths and emo kids who might be listening to it.

Other music I've been listening to since I released a batch of music to myself 10/2005:

D.O.A. - Life Free Or Die, War & Peace - totally freaking awesome, they are my new favorite band, ousting Tiamat (for now), who ousted Atari Teenage Riot (who is still my favorite band ever , just not at the moment), who ousted Ween, who ousted The Misfits (which are also still my favorite band ever -- it's a Misfits/Ween/Atari Teenage Riot tie).

Moistboyz 4 - The latest from the Ween side project. They're new albums are better than Ween's new albums, much in the same way that NoMeansNo's side-project's Hanson Brothers new albums are better than NoMeansNo's new albums. Much in the same way that Faith No More's side-project's Mr. Bungle's new albums are better than Faith No More's new albums.

I really like the (typical for Moistboyz, and growing more relevant each day) anti-American slant in the opening songs "I Don't Give A Fuck Where The Eagle Flies", "Uncle Sam & Me", "Captain America". And I have a feeling "The Year Of The Maggot" should probably be about George Bush. In "I Don't Give A Fuck Where The Eagle Flies" some of the lyrics include "killing everybody that you don't like -- are you gonna come and kill me tonite?" It's a good album and I like the mellow rock style in "Everybody's Fucked Her" as well.

Screeching Weasel - random songs - but they are good. I'm glad I'm getting back into them again.

Skatenigs - Stupid People Shouldn't Breed. This album really varies from song to song, but "Shit Authority" sounds just like the Moistboyz! That's unique. "Fight Da Suckas" reminds me more of Red Hot Chili Peppers from their Mother's Milk era. "Poundsauce", "Roadkill" remind me of Ministry. "I Got It Made" has a nice rap-ish feel to it while still maintaining a rock/metal feel still slightly reminiscent of MInistry. But the opening song, "Chemical Imbalance", will always stand out to me because Beavis & Butt-head watched it! And the opening beatnik-ish soliloqy by that chick, while coming off as quite pretentious when you first hear it, really grows on you. And "Loudspeaker" just kicks ass.

Twin Peaks - soundtrack. Best TV show! I can't let go of the feelings I had when watching it, and this soundtrack helps me hold onto that. It's also the only series I've ever watched in its entirety twice in a row. (I have a "7 year rule" usually for reruns.)

The Weirdos - Vol 1 & Vol 2. Can't say I'm too crazy about these guys. A lot of their songs are just ho-hum to me. I REALLY like "Terrain" & "Fallout", and also "We Got The Neutron Bomb". And I really like "Terrain", "Cyclops Helicopter", even "Weird World". And "I'm Not Like You" definitely gets me to identify with the lyrics. And some other songs are okay: "Destroy All Music", "It Means Nothing", "Solitary Confinement". But alot of the songs are bland: "Rhythm Syndrome", "Jungle Rock" (which I would be happy to never hear again in my life), "Hey Big Oil", "Fat Back", "Barbaric Americana".

Anyway......... I did not "release any music to myself" for the longest time due to harddrive crash, and video-dealings-with taking precedence over audio-dealings-with (for technical reasons: larger files demand more immediate attention)... So, I am getting into music again and want to release more music to myself soon.

VIDEO: CARTOONS: Justice League Unlimited

So Dave Oranchak says I need to blog more about the shows I watch. This is true. I need to blog more in general. But without being able to tag my blogs and view blogs by-tag, I just can't bring myself to blog as much as I'd like. It's like sending data out with no way to get back to it other than chronological piles.

Anyway.............. Justice League Unlimited is fabulous. I was sooooooo pleasantly surprised to see a torrent creep up for S5E05. We watched it that night. It was great. It had been too long.

But then to see a torrent appear (minin0va) for S5E06 the next freaking day was awesome. It took less than 10 minutes to download at 300K/s. Not that I'm impatient, but when I had 75K/s, you could drop a torrent in right when you got home and if you were lucky it would be done at 10 or 11PM. It's nice having no limits or backlog.

So anyway, Justice League S5E06 was really good. They've shyed away from magic and dealt with science generally, but this episode had a mystic angle, souls, magic, all that jazz. And it was done well. And the plots had been building up to the battle at the end pretty much for this entire season.

I hope the remaining ~7 eps come out soon!

Meanwhile, we're working through Frasier. There's almost as many episodes as The Simpsons so I expect it to take awhile.

Hard Drive celebration!

Well, last night I set up the network sharing and edited my environment so as to include the 60G and 80G drives we recovered from Fire before decomissioning it. So now, we officially have over 2 terabytes of accessible disk space! Now I just have to get my FTP server working again so I can get to my files remotely. I'm hoping my new SATA card will come this weekend so I can install it while Carolyn is on her ski trip. If it works, a 500G drive will not be far off. By the end of 2006 I expect to have at least 3 terabytes. :)

Yay!

I would like to celebrate the day when I finally have re-memorized my new credit card number.

It took a few years. But everytime I order, I guess. And each time, I get closer. Today, I finally did it all (incl expiration and the 3-digit # on the back of the card) right without looking. Last time that happened, a site holding onto my CC# told me their databases had been compromised by Russian hackers. So maybe it's time again...

Fire.

So I tried installing VectorLinux on Fire (after burning a new disc with better media). No go.

At least with Kubuntu, through some googling I found out Alt-M puts you in adminstrator mode. So I can do administrator stuff despite the fact the button everything says to push doesn't exist.

Of course, that did nothing to fix the network, which doesn't work. And I'm not super-duper interested in finding out what the problem is when the card worked fine under windows.

This is my 3rd bout with Linux (Slackware in 1999, Redhat in 2002) and once again I do not think it is ready for old machines. Maybe it would work fine on new machines, but Windows is still better in my book. And less annoying. Yes, I said it.

Ubunto... Kubuntu... Meh.

Well, my computer "Fire" seems to be shaping up a bit. Once we realized the cd was invalid, despite passing verification, we realized we'd spent like 2 nites pulling harddrives 5 times, ram once, cpu once, moving monitors, and all kinds of crazy shit. All of it was a wild-goose-chase stemming from thinking the computer was bad instead of the CD!

Burned a new cd. Used its self-testing method to self-test. Fine. The thing actually worked.

I wasn't sure if it was going to work, so I only installed the base package. What a mistake that was. I was all done and all I got was a unix prompt! "HELP" only revealed shell operator commands. I guess I'm supposed to know all this stuff already? I manually went thru directory trees looking for "startx" where I thought it should be. Finally, I realized I only had the base package installed.

So I decide to install the rest. How do I do it? I don't know. Apt-Get? Nah. My network wasn't configured. I said "configure network later". No opportunity was given. If "configure network later" means having to do it manually later, then warn me!!! I kidna figured I would be presented with an opportunity of equal ease to setup my network. And to install the additional packages. No fucking way.

So, yes, I had to install again starting from scratch. This time I put in my network info right away, and did the full installation.

Yay! I had a login prompt by bedtime! But... My browser wouldn't work. Oh look, my network card is greyed out.

I'd like to change the settings, but they are greyed out. They say I need to push the "Administrator Mode" button to be able to make those kinds of changes.

I do not see this button. And upon googling, I am finding other people who don't see the button. So then they have to find out the name of the binary that is being called and "sudo <binaryname>" just to use what is essentially a control panel.

Fuck that. I might just literally throw the whole computer away. This Ubuntu is not living up to it's reputation.

There's still VectorLinux to try. At least it has some cool screensavers.

Damn you, Fire!

So my computer Fire is confusing me again... Now I find out the Ubuntu install cd has some sort of self-check program, and it tells me the fucking disc is corrupt! Well goddamn, I burned it using Nero with Verify turned on on my pre-built Gateway machine running Windows XP. Never in my whole life of Windows not-XP or non-Gateway cd-burners have I had this problem. And "Storm" (my main computer, best computer ever) just had it's cd-burner break! That Plextor burned every cd I burned for years! (Of course I'll never get another Plextor, but that's another story.) So now I am stuck with 600 or so blank cds from my huge batch of 1,200 way way way way back when (3 dvd burners ago). And they aren't "in the burn strategy list" for the stupid Gateway DVD/CD burner. It insists on a verification. And lies to you that it is fine when it isn't. What... The... Fuck. Am I to become suspect of combo cd/dvd drives now? Do I need to buy a separate cd burner? (That's sooooooo stupid when dvd burners are so cheap!) Do I have to research the cd-burning capabilities for my dvd drives? Oh why did I buy those 1,200 CD-Rs? Fortunately Gateway had some stupid recovery program that came with their computers, and I opened the shrink-wrap and found five CD-Rs I can use in the meanwhile. I must choose wisely. Ugh. It's like collecting fancy pennies. Worthless, but you need several kinds. Okay sue me I'm not in the mood to think of a good analogy, you'll just have to be happy with a bad one. I'd be surprised if anyone read this far. :)

Goodbye "Fire".

Well it definitely looks like our computer "Fire" is dead, and dead for good. Carolyn gave it a bad IP address and didn't change it back last summer, which in theory contributed to the death of that machine's webserver, shortly followed by TCP/IP stack death and/or total OS death. It sat for a few months during this construction detente and finally we needed the space back bad enough that we started trying to fix it -- in January. (Yes, a few months passed by, and I really needed some of the data on the 160G that lived on that machine.!)

We tried Win2K. We tried TinyXp. We tried Linux -- both Ubuntu and VectorLinux. No go. Nothing installed.

Then we took the 17G out, and moved it to Carolyn's computer "Magic". Our newer computers (Hell, Magic) have SATA cards and all SATA harddrives. But Magic is our oldest new computer (if that makes sense), so it had both SATA and EIDE ports. So we moved Fire's old old 17G harddrive (the oldest harddrive still in use in the house: we use 17G, 25G, 80G, 80G, 80G, 120G, 120G, 120G, 160G, maybe a 200G, 250G, maybe a 300G, 400G). We use so many harddrives I can't rememeber them all but the total storage is about 2.2 terabytes.

So anyway we move 17G over to Magic, map it on the network, and I finally recover many files I've needed for about 6 months. After a couple hours I've moved everything over to my main computer ("Storm"). Now we have an EMPTY 17G drive. We tried Ubuntu Linux and Vector Linux and TinyXP again. No go.

I thought, "What if the installs are failing because the cd-drive is reading the disc improperly?" Very improbably, but I hunteded down the old computers people had given me, found one, and gutted it, gaining a floppy drive, a cd drive, and 2 EIDE cables. The 90W power supply was utterly useless and the 8G drive was too hard to unscrew (A drive screwed directly into a case? What the fuck were they thinking back in the Pentium-II days?!?!).

Tried the new cd drive and lo and behold, the thing doesn't even eject. Okay, we got to stress test the cd tray at least. "If I kick this, will it really break off?" Findings indicate cd drive eject trays don't break as easily as one would expect. Still, "It's fun to smash stuff" as Homer says to Marge.

Is "Fire" dead? I think so.

But I'm still going to try 2 more installs. One with half my ram in, one with the other half of my ram in. Maybe I have some bad RAM.

And I'm going to set the bios to failsafe. Sure, I enjoyed overclocking my P3-450 to 558mHz all these years, but if it's making it a non-computer, it's not worth it.

If all that fails, I'll gut it for the cd, floppy, network, sound, and video cards and it will be on my curb.

Someday, I'll have a web and ftp server again.

How'd you like YOUR grandma to be tasered? [Police Brutality] / rant against cops

So.....

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/12/28/nola.shooting/index.html?section=cnn_topstories

I find it interesting now that police are using the fact that tasers somtimes kill, as an excuse for killing.

Riley: Tasers weren't the answer

Two sergeants and a patrol officer fired nine shots at Hayes, killing him

Riley said that Tasers, which deliver an electric jolt from as far away as 20 feet and are intended to temporarily paralyze a person, would not necessarily have prevented Hayes' death either.

Citing the dozens of people who have died after being hit by a Taser jolt, Riley said the department is not "totally comfortable with Tasers yet." Only SWAT officers carry the weapons, he added.

So............. let me get this straight........ They aren't comfortable using a taser, since it might kill somebody, but nine shots are somehow better?

And, for the record, I don't think the shooting was justified, even though he was trying to stab a policeman with a hunting knife. And even if 1 bullet was justified (it's not), the remaining 8 should carry a muder charge with each one.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: __Clint__ <clint@acm.vt.edu>
Date: Dec 9, 2005 2:09 PM
Subject: How'd you like YOUR grandma to be tasered? [Police Brutality] / rant against cops
To:

So I watched this video on CNN of a 68-year-old grandmother being tasered in the police station lobby while waiting to make a statement. She was not yet charged. I'm not sure if she was actually arrested or not. She got sick of waiting and decided she wanted to leave, they told her no, and tasered her. Course, as an old lady who had just been tasered, she couldn't get up, so when the officer told her to get up and she didn't/couldn't, he tasered her again. And again. And again. And again. All on camera. Real Smart.

http://abclocal.go.com/wtvg/story?section=local&id=3705505

(They charged her later.)

I could possibly be persuaded to agree with the 1st tasering. Possibly. But the 5th?? Because of course, <sarcasm=on> a whole police station of cops can't wrestle a 68-yr-old lady to the ground.............................

I saw the video interview of her on CNN. Decided to google for "taser grandmother" to read more (which is how I got the ABCLocal link above).... I didn't find what I was looking for at first, though, because other grandmas have been tasered too:

http://www.thekansascitychannel.com/news/3426924/detail.html

Grandma tasered. She accidentally hit the horn of her car in her own fucking driveway. 4-months-on-the-service-so-far rookie cop came to give her a ticket. [I've been pulled over for using my horn to beep at jaywalkers as well! Now I make it a point to beep every time I see a police car. I can't believe horns aren't considered free speech. What if I beeped in morse code? -Clint]

He grabbed her, she pulled away, he claimed she assualted him and tasered her and let her fall to the ground (she was recovering from knee surgery). She got a year's probation for the incident.

On the subject of assaulting an officer, I also find it disgusting that you could get in a fight with someone who hasn't told you he is a cop, but be charged with assaulting an officer just because the person you got in a fight happened to be an officer. But I digress.

Oh, and let's not forget the cop that pointed his gun at my head for me trying to ask directions. Or the one that assualted me in the RennFest parking lot in October. Or the ones that lied in court to get my college roommate's car forfeited. Or the ones that slammed my 16-year-old friend's head into their cruiser repeatedly. Or the one who shot a bullet throught he window of a house during a holiday party (called on a noise violation) because there was someone inside dressed as a robber waiving a fake gun around. (On the subject of fake guns, how about the kids killed for playing Laser Tag?) Or the elementary school children that have been tasered this year.

Oh and in other news, Air Marshals finally killed their first American Citizen civilian. While not innocent, the man was crazy, would have freaked the hell out of me, and may have deserved a beating. However, hindsight is 20/20 -- and what happened was the summary execution of a mentally disabled person who did not have his medicine, in front of his wife while she was telling them this. He wasn't even on the plane. He probably should never have gotten on the plane in the first place; I'm sure his wife feels terrible now. Still, does shooting someone guarantee the bomb wont go off? Gee.................. Can't bombs have these things called, well, timers? Didn't al queda learn from the shoe bomber's failed attempt that if you have to trigger the bomb yourself, it might not work? Moot point. No explosives were found because there weren't any. I read up on bipolar disorder and saw mention of aggressive and erratic behavior. Probably he was freaking out, and yelling "i've got a bomb" was to his crazy mind, the fastest way to get off the plane. Because he WAS freaking out. Still, I don't think summary execution helped anything or made anyone safer. The plane had landed. If it was a terrorist with a bomb, he would have already detonated it by now.

Realize we are in a police state. The patriot act only makes things worse. Al Queda got exactly what they wanted: Less freedom for us. The Justice Department did exactly what they wanted. Sept 11th was a victory for Al Queda because we reacted precisely how they expected.

I have another interesting question. If the police want to stop you for, say, a misdemeanor... And you run away in a manner where they cannot catch you... Should they be able to shoot you?

I say no.

We are innocent into proven guilty in this country.

Democracies are not supposed to do summary executations; police are not juries.

More:

Traffic stop results in man's death via repeated tasering:

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:voalU6g5lKcJ:www.unknownnews.net/031210cops.html+ taser+grandmother+death&hl=en

I actually agreed with them using the taser here. It wasn't until most of the way thru the article that it began to really reek: "He kept saying, 'I don't want to die, I don't want to die,", "Henderson stood in his front yard about 50 yards away. "You could smell the flesh burning from down here," he said." "He said one of the deputies joked that the man wouldn't be walking away from the crime scene and another was heard laughing."

In March, Milwaukee police fired a Taser stun gun at a [4'11'']

63-year-old grandmother who was trying to keep child welfare workers from taking her grandson. Again, gee, can't officers possibly, say, wrestle her to the ground?

Swalheim, of Wauwatosa, was taking pictures of the officers removing others from a scene and said, "I''m exercising my freedom of speech." He struggled with police and was shot by Officer Torrey Lea with the Taser and arrested, the report says.

Gee, so using your camera is illegal now?

We need wireless internet cameras that transmits pictures to the internet directly via sattelite. Then police will be unable to confiscate incriminating videos, and the real level of brutality will be much more publicized.

I think this is a quote about the same anecdote:

Swalheim denied ever resisting police. He said he took the pictures because police were roughing up his friends. He said he started to walk away when police tackled him from behind, then stood him up and hit him with a Taser. He said he still has numbness in his hand, which started after he was shot with the Taser.

This is actually much like what happened to me at RennFest. I saw people being roughed up by RennFest security and was a witness. They tackled a couple waking away and sat on the girl's neck. Police came. I gave my phone # (and was called from the hospital later) to the couple. I stayed around and told them stuff like "you don't have to answer that question". I refused to leave the scene when the officer told me, citing my first amendment right to assemble in the renfest parking lot. Plus I had business being a witness. (Evan & I were separated from Carolyn & Tabbitha and couldn't find the car for about 45 minutes in the parking lot.)

They don't like it when you cite your constitutional rights because they don't want you to have them. My lawyer warned me of this but also said I could stand in my driveway and curse at officers all I want and that she had successfully defended a case like that.

Anyway, the story just flew me into a rant mode. These "less lethal" weapons merely provide them with an excuse to be even more trigger happy. A non-civilian is supposed to be willing to sacrifice their life to save a civilian. Not the other way around. Last I checked, 10 soldiers would give their life to save one civilian. But police are somehow more special than that?!?!? Because as it stands now, a cop could shoot 10 people that he thought were threats to him, and still continue on with his work.

I wont personally be happy until every officer has a built-in webcam into his badge and can be watched by citizen activist groups who monitor for brutality, and until every citizen has a sattelite-internet camera to take pictures that cannot-be-confiscated, and until my car has a tape-recorder that records what is being spoken at any traffic stops (for my benefit, not for their benefit).

That badge-with-a-webcam would not be so hot in ongoing investigations, but certainly it would help answer a lot of questions in these cases where police are called to public areas and do illegal things. (Note: Do public areas actually exist anymore?)

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q= taser+grandmother+death

--
-Clint
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"People who talk about revolution and class struggle
without referring explicitly to everyday life,
without understanding what is subversive about love
and what is positive in the refusal of constraints,
such people have a corpse in their mouth."
-Raoul Vaneigem, "The Revolution Of Everyday Life"

"In a closed society where everybody's guilty,
the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves,
the only final sin is stupidity."    -Hunter S. Thompson

How'd you like YOUR grandma to be tasered? [Police Brutality] / rant against cops

So I watched this video on CNN of a 68-year-old grandmother being tasered in the police station lobby while waiting to make a statement. She was not yet charged. I'm not sure if she was actually arrested or not. She got sick of waiting and decided she wanted to leave, they told her no, and tasered her. Course, as an old lady who had just been tasered, she couldn't get up, so when the officer told her to get up and she didn't/couldn't, he tasered her again. And again. And again. And again. All on camera. Real Smart.

http://abclocal.go.com/wtvg/story?section=local&id=3705505

(They charged her later.)

I could possibly be persuaded to agree with the 1st tasering. Possibly. But the 5th?? Because of course, <sarcasm=on> a whole police station of cops can't wrestle a 68-yr-old lady to the ground.............................

I saw the video interview of her on CNN. Decided to google for "taser grandmother" to read more (which is how I got the ABCLocal link above).... I didn't find what I was looking for at first, though, because other grandmas have been tasered too:

http://www.thekansascitychannel.com/news/3426924/detail.html

Grandma tasered. She accidentally hit the horn of her car in her own fucking driveway. 4-months-on-the-service-so-far rookie cop came to give her a ticket. [I've been pulled over for using my horn to beep at jaywalkers as well! Now I make it a point to beep every time I see a police car. I can't believe horns aren't considered free speech. What if I beeped in morse code? -Clint]

He grabbed her, she pulled away, he claimed she assualted him and tasered her and let her fall to the ground (she was recovering from knee surgery). She got a year's probation for the incident.

On the subject of assaulting an officer, I also find it disgusting that you could get in a fight with someone who hasn't told you he is a cop, but be charged with assaulting an officer just because the person you got in a fight happened to be an officer. But I digress.

Oh, and let's not forget the cop that pointed his gun at my head for me trying to ask directions. Or the one that assualted me in the RennFest parking lot in October. Or the ones that lied in court to get my college roommate's car forfeited. Or the ones that slammed my 16-year-old friend's head into their cruiser repeatedly. Or the one who shot a bullet throught he window of a house during a holiday party (called on a noise violation) because there was someone inside dressed as a robber waiving a fake gun around. (On the subject of fake guns, how about the kids killed for playing Laser Tag?) Or the elementary school children that have been tasered this year.

Oh and in other news, Air Marshals finally killed their first American Citizen civilian. While not innocent, the man was crazy, would have freaked the hell out of me, and may have deserved a beating. However, hindsight is 20/20 -- and what happened was the summary execution of a mentally disabled person who did not have his medicine, in front of his wife while she was telling them this. He wasn't even on the plane. He probably should never have gotten on the plane in the first place; I'm sure his wife feels terrible now. Still, does shooting someone guarantee the bomb wont go off? Gee.................. Can't bombs have these things called, well, timers? Didn't al queda learn from the shoe bomber's failed attempt that if you have to trigger the bomb yourself, it might not work? Moot point. No explosives were found because there weren't any. I read up on bipolar disorder and saw mention of aggressive and erratic behavior. Probably he was freaking out, and yelling "i've got a bomb" was to his crazy mind, the fastest way to get off the plane. Because he WAS freaking out. Still, I don't think summary execution helped anything or made anyone safer. The plane had landed. If it was a terrorist with a bomb, he would have already detonated it by now.

Realize we are in a police state. The patriot act only makes things worse. Al Queda got exactly what they wanted: Less freedom for us. The Justice Department did exactly what they wanted. Sept 11th was a victory for Al Queda because we reacted precisely how they expected.

I have another interesting question. If the police want to stop you for, say, a misdemeanor... And you run away in a manner where they cannot catch you... Should they be able to shoot you?

I say no.

We are innocent into proven guilty in this country.

Democracies are not supposed to do summary executations; police are not juries.

More:

Traffic stop results in man's death via repeated tasering:

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:voalU6g5lKcJ:www.unknownnews.net/031210cops.html+taser+grandmother+death&hl=en

I actually agreed with them using the taser here. It wasn't until most of the way thru the article that it began to really reek: "He kept saying, 'I don't want to die, I don't want to die,", "Henderson stood in his front yard about 50 yards away. "You could smell the flesh burning from down here," he said." "He said one of the deputies joked that the man wouldn't be walking away from the crime scene and another was heard laughing."

In March, Milwaukee police fired a Taser stun gun at a [4'11'']

63-year-old grandmother who was trying to keep child welfare workers from taking her grandson. Again, gee, can't officers possibly, say, wrestle her to the ground?

Swalheim, of Wauwatosa, was taking pictures of the officers removing others from a scene and said, "I''m exercising my freedom of speech." He struggled with police and was shot by Officer Torrey Lea with the Taser and arrested, the report says.

Gee, so using your camera is illegal now?

We need wireless internet cameras that transmits pictures to the internet directly via sattelite. Then police will be unable to confiscate incriminating videos, and the real level of brutality will be much more publicized.

I think this is a quote about the same anecdote:

Swalheim denied ever resisting police. He said he took the pictures because police were roughing up his friends. He said he started to walk away when police tackled him from behind, then stood him up and hit him with a Taser. He said he still has numbness in his hand, which started after he was shot with the Taser.

This is actually much like what happened to me at RennFest. I saw people being roughed up by RennFest security and was a witness. They tackled a couple waking away and sat on the girl's neck. Police came. I gave my phone # (and was called from the hospital later) to the couple. I stayed around and told them stuff like "you don't have to answer that question". I refused to leave the scene when the officer told me, citing my first amendment right to assemble in the renfest parking lot. Plus I had business being a witness. (Evan & I were separated from Carolyn & Tabbitha and couldn't find the car for about 45 minutes in the parking lot.)

They don't like it when you cite your constitutional rights because they don't want you to have them. My lawyer warned me of this but also said I could stand in my driveway and curse at officers all I want and that she had successfully defended a case like that.

Anyway, the story just flew me into a rant mode. These "less lethal" weapons merely provide them with an excuse to be even more trigger happy. A non-civilian is supposed to be willing to sacrifice their life to save a civilian. Not the other way around. Last I checked, 10 soldiers would give their life to save one civilian. But police are somehow more special than that?!?!? Because as it stands now, a cop could shoot 10 people that he thought were threats to him, and still continue on with his work.

I wont personally be happy until every officer has a built-in webcam into his badge and can be watched by citizen activist groups who monitor for brutality, and until every citizen has a sattelite-internet camera to take pictures that cannot-be-confiscated, and until my car has a tape-recorder that records what is being spoken at any traffic stops (for my benefit, not for their benefit).

That badge-with-a-webcam would not be so hot in ongoing investigations, but certainly it would help answer a lot of questions in these cases where police are called to public areas and do illegal things. (Note: Do public areas actually exist anymore?)

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=taser+grandmother+death

VIDEO: Movies watched in 2003 list

Here's a list of all 101 movies Carolyn & I watched in 2003. At the bottom is also several odd coincidences that happened as well. More to come (shows in 2003, and 2004 stuff).
*** LIVE-ACTION MOVIES:
8 Mile
24 Hour Party People (a movie about punk & rave culture, cool)
A Beautiful Mind (excellent)
A Guy Thing (somewhat funny)
Accidental Spy (Jackie Chan)
Bachelor, The (watched by Carolyn, not Clint... she doesn't remember it)

Back To The Future 2 (Clint's favorite, the most underplayed, underrated movie of the trilogy + deleted scenes)

Being John Malkovich (2nd time, at end of Lipinski family reunion)
Black Hawk Down (war sux)
Bridget Jone's Diary (Hugh Grant as a womanizer...imagine that)
Bringing Down The House (watched by Carolyn, not Clint) (Clint watched it the next year)
Cats And Dogs (kinda lame) (October:Clint can't remember it)
Changing Lanes (that was messed up... not the ending I expected all the way through, though)
Clockstoppers (not that great)
Clueless (has aspects like that of Royal Tenenebaums...)
Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind (interesting... a true story?)

Count Of Monte Cristo (excellent) (+deleted scenes/featurettes)
Cube (1997) (good horror movie, eerie)
Dances With Wolves(Special Edition)
Dead Again (1991) (interesting past-lives/present-lives mystery--a 7)
Deep Blue Sea (generic)
Donnie Darko (Clint liked it less than 90% of people; must rewatch sometime)
Eight-Legged Freaks (don't remember this well.. I just think of Evolution)
Election (Reese Whitherspoon can be so evil)
Evil Dead, The (also recently saw the Evil Dead unreleased prequel - 'Within The Woods')
Evil Dead, The 2 (very richly textured horror movie, such suffering)
Evolution (comedy/sci-fi combos are somewhat rare, this was entertaining)
Exotica (different)
Eyes Wide Shut (including unedited scene not on dvd [downloaded])
Frailty (doesn't go with it's title... messed up, a bit slow)
Friday (we both had seen it before, but didn't rememeber--esp Clint) (also saw Friday 2 & 3)
Friday After Next (also saw Friday 1 & 2 -- this one was the worst of the three)
From Hell (about Jack The Ripper)
Game, The (good & unique movie, from the director of Se7en/Fight Club/Panic Room)
Gangs Of New York (meh!)
Ghost Ship (predictable--but Clint was freaked out when my kitchen cabinet opened by itself during the movie [due to heavy techno bass music during one part])
Gone In 60 Seconds (good)
Good Will Hunting (reminds me of A Beautiful Mind but with spirituality instead of psychology)
Half Baked (Carolyn's 1st time, Clint's 2nd)
Harry Potter 2 (2.5hrs!)
Heist (Gene Hackman... eh) (horrible)
High Crimes (twist!)
High Fidelity (+ deleted scenes/featurettes)
Hollow Man (a 6, some cool carnage + Elizabeth Shue)
How High (why can't I remember this movie? Carolyn does...)

Hudsucker Proxy, The (good movie! Tim Robbins)
Jackass:The Movie (pretty disturbing...)
Johnny Mnemonic (I want the laser whip!!!)
Just One Time
Legally Blonde 2
Lock,Stock&2 Smoking Barrels (too many characters!)
Loser (from the director of Clueless with starts from American Pie & American Beauty)
Lost in Translation (saw by Carolyn, not Clint) (Clint finally saw in 2005)
Man Who Wasn't There, The (Cohen brothers hold my attention, but this is not a GREAT movie)
Manhunter(director's cut)(1986)(based on Red Dragon... slow and kind of boring... wtf is with the tiger?)
Mask Of Zorro, The
Masters Of The Universe (the He-Man movie... with Courtney Cox! Ha, Ha, Ha Ha Ha. POS.)
Me, Myself & Irene (Jim Carrey rules!)
Mothman Prophecies, The (a let-down)
Mr. Deeds (Wynona Rider looking her greatest [ever] at the beginning of the movie. Sandler funny as always)
Mulholland Drive (whoa dude.. glad I read what the fuck it meant..)
Next Friday (also saw Friday 1 & 3 -- this one was the funniest of the 3)

Not Another Teen Movie (very funny, surprisingly.. Whoa.. Janey was Tuesday from That 80's Show??)
Old School
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (2nd time for both of us, also watched the 8 deleted scenes)
Panic Room
Patriot, The (very sad)
Pirates Of The Caribbean (in the theatre--Arlington Draft House--kinda distracting compared to watching at home, didn't know totally what happened)

Psycho Beach Party (surprisingly good movie starring Lauren Ambrose--redhead from Six Feet Under)
Ring, The (Stir Of Echoes reminded me of this movie, but not as good)
Queen Of The Damned (better than we thought it would be, going in w/low expectations)
Quiet American, The (Carolyn liked it more than Clint)

Requiem For A Dream (+ dvd extras--interview w/author, making of, deleted scenes--wow!)
Road To Perdition (decent gangster drama, Tom Hanks 1931)
Rock Star (guy in tribute band becomes singer in real band, interesting, Jennifer Aniston saying fuck and kissing another girl is a nice change of pace)
Royal Tenenbaums, The (interesting movie!)
Saving Private Ryan
Silence Of The Lambs, The (Carolyn had never seen, Clint's 2nd time, sooooooo much better than Manhunter)
Scorpion King, The
Short Films Of David Lynch,The(worst crap ever, until the end at least)
Showgirls
Signs (good movie!!)
Slackers (2002) (entertaining but not super..MMMM...Laura Prepon made it worth it)
Solaris (Clint & Kipp passed out, Carolyn made it but said it wasn't worth us watching)
Speed (FINALLY...tried to see it in the theatre once and they LOST IT)
Stir Of Echoes (pretty good) (Carolyn had seen the last half before and freaked Clint out by saying lines before they happened)
Sugar Sweet
Sum Of All Fears, The (sucks if this happens)
Surf Nazis Must Die (Director's Cut) (from Troma, makers of The Toxic Avenger and other grade-C B-movies)
Sweet Home Alabama
Time Machine,The (2002) (not a particularly great remake or true to the original)
Training Day (+ deleted scenes / alt endings)
Two Weeks Notice
Vampire Clan (based on true story, interesting but not great)
Where The Buffalo Roam (more Hunter S Thompson Fear-And-Loathing type stuff)
*** ANIMATED MOVIES:
Batman Beyond:Return Of The Joker
Gen13 (2000) (from Image comics)
Ice Age
*** ANIME MOVIES:

Grave Of The Fireflies (sad/depressing.. but one of the most thought provoking anime ever, and, coincidentally, when we looked it up on imdb.com it was in the top 250 movies ever)
Kite (unreleased uncut version) (hmmm, I can see why they cut the American release at parts)
*** MUSIC:
Sex Pistols - Live At The Longhorn Dallas (19780110) (44min) (first American show I think)
*** KIND OF WATCHED BUT NOT REALLY:
Back To The Future 3 (while waking up after new year's party + watched beginning some in february)
Happy Gilmore (already seen it, good movie)
*** MOVIE-RELATED:
Back To The Future 1-3 (deleted scenes/outtakes only)

*** Coincidences (contains spoilers):
# 1: watched 2 movies with themes involving step-incest within a few days (The Royal Tenenbaums, Clueless) (at least both were step/adopted siblings and not blood siblings)
# 2: watched 2 movies with themes involving architectural mutiliation to find the grave of a murdered girl whose ghost was walking the earth, within a few days (Stir Of Echos, The Ring)
# 3: watched 2 movies with Dan Akroyd in a row (Loser, Evolution)
# 4: watched 2 videos with someone waking up the next day unexpectedly finding themselves in a tomb (movie:The Game, and Simpsons #306:C.E.D'Oh!)
# 5: watched 2 shows with references to "A Clockwork Orange" in a row (Six Feet Under #29, Smallville #39)
# 6: watched 2 movies with the song "All By Myself" in it, within a few weeks (Clueless, Bridget Jones's Diary) (Clint likes the Babes In Toyland version of the song better anyway...)
# 7: watched 2 movies with a promiscuous protaganist who becomes a failed media mogul, in a row (24 Hour Party People, Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind)
# 8: watched 2 movies with surfing in a row (Surf Nazis Must Die, then Psycho Beach Party [much much much much much better])
# 9: watched 2 movies with "Sweet Home Alabama" song in them in a row (Sweet Home Alibama, 8 Mile)
#10: watched 2 movies with car-involved plots in a row (Gone In 60 Seconds, Changing Lanes)
#11: watched 2 movies with cheating wives in a row (Man Who Wasn't There, Mulholland Drive)
#12: watched 2 shows with references to the movie "Red Dawn" in the title

and in the plot within 2 months (South Park:#106:Grey Dawn, SeaLab 2021:#24:Red Dawn)
#13: watched 2 shows with an animated version of Rob Reiner in 2 nights (Kid Notorious:#5:The Nazi Party, South Park:#109:Butt Out)
#14: watched 2 videos with plots involving strippers within a week (Exotica, South Park:#110:Raisins,haha) A pretty good year, but the movie selection perhaps could have been a tad better.

We got a new kitten.

100-0057_IMG, originally uploaded by carolyncasl.

We got a new kitten.

Halloween party picture

100-0042_IMG, originally uploaded by ClintJCL.

Smoking this way was appropriate.

PARTY: Halloween: at Britt's house

Went to a Halloween party. Got wasted. Ate a lot of candy. Had fun.

Pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/clintjcl/tags/20051029/

MUSIC: Ween concert!

Carolyn & I went to see WEEN last night (20051027) at the 9:30 Club.

It was -- as usual -- an awesome show. Ran into Aaron Evans, who helped us get to the front (and took some pictures) (and gave his "Home Rainbow" video using Rocky footage to Deaner after the show). Also ran into John The Canadien, who failed to sell his extra ticket...Again. (Did the same at a Rammstein concert years ago).

They played 35 songs over an almost 3 hour span:

What Deaner was Talking About
The HIV Song (nothing like a whole club of people shouting "AIDS!" with glee)
Spinal Meningitis
Happy Colored Marbles
Piss Up A Rope
Take Me Away
Waving My Dick In The Wind
Mr. Richard Smoker
Transdermal Celebration
Voodoo Lady
Mutilated Lips
Bananas And Blow
Leave Deaner Alone (new song)
You Fucked Up
Puerto Rican Power
Touch My Tooter
Nan
Springtheme
Push Th' Little Daisies
The Mollusk
Light Me Up
Dr. Rock
I Can't Put My Finger On It
Buckingham Green
Boys Club
A Tear For Eddie
Zoloft (very long, drawn-out version)
Ocean Man
Sorry Charlie (used the megaphone for this, since they didn't play "Awesome Sound")
Fluffy ENCORE:
Dont Get 2 Close (To My Fantasy)
Going Gets Tough From The Getgo
In The Mood
Johnny On The Spot
Mr. Would You Please Help My Pony?
Never Squeal On The Pusher (sick extended jam, Claude drum solo)

Always a pleasure. Although the over-zealous 930 security decided to grab the wrists of some couple that was trying to leave and dragged them into the back, I think just for taking the set list. (Refer to http://www.acm.vt.edu/~clint/media/concerts.htm -- I already have setlists from 930 club so I don't see what the problem is.)

It just reminds me of that asshole cop who pushed me and threatened me with arrest in the Rennesaince Festival parking lot a couple weekends ago. Dickwad.

It's as if anyone who considers themselves a hired thug has the magical ability to grants themself the power to detain people at will -- if they think they've done anything wrong. I'm pretty sure only the police actually have that power. It was the same shit at 930 as RennFest -- a couple trying to leave, getting harassed for having too much fun.

This is America. Don't stray too far from the herd, or you will be asked to provide papers, please.

COMEDY: Become A Republican

http://www.thefrown.com/player.php?/frowners/becomerepublican

This is freaking awesome. Especially the end.

EYE CANDY: A new optical illusion

stare at black plus, pink dots appear to turn green but don't really (MUST VIEW AT FULL SIZE FOR ANIMATION TO WORK), originally uploaded by ClintJCL.

My coworker Scott emailed me this optical illusion today. It's pretty damn cool.

You'll have to actually click on the image and drill down to the full-size version to see the animation -- otherwise it's just a bunch of pointless pink dots.

I actually have 500 or so optical illusion images in an archive at home.

Paintball

In response to Clint's post about the paintball outing:

I had to close my eyes and look away from the camera because the sun was sooooooo bright!!! i guess my eyes are ultra-sensitive to sunlight after my lasik surgery.... i couldn't even look at clint when the sun was behind him because my eyes would automatically shut.

that was the only time i've really noticed sensitivity to sunlight, though.. it doesn't bother me while driving, and it didn't bother me when we were actually playing - but we were mostly in the woods under the shade of the trees...

it was a good time.. the camoflage helped -- last time i went, i wore a bright blue shirt because i didn't know what it was like... i thought it was a group of people having fun by shooting paint at each other.. i didn't know it was a whole war setting and we'd have to sneak around and stuff.... this time, i knew better...

--
-Carolyn

Paintball on 20051023

20051023_2, originally uploaded by ClintJCL.

Paintball was fun. Here's me trying to look goofy in a group picture afterwards. I succeeded. Carolyn is looking cute as usual.

MUSIC: recent listening habits

I really like d.o.a.... Skatenigs is pretty good... And i recognize that Suspects is good, but it will take longer to learn.. but d.o.a. totally caught on fast with me.. i even like the reggae/ska-ish songs ("war in the east, war in the west.... war only brings destruction").. but i really like Death To The Multinationals and We Don't Need the W.T.O.... but yea, i wanna get more D.O.A. albums!

Fiscal Months?

I was at this pointless meeting where people were very confused about what was happening during what year. All the confusion centered around the fact that the fiscal year, in the U.S. at least, is October 1st to September 30th. "But it's not 2007 yet." "But it will be FY 2007 in October so we need to think about 2007 as "next" year.

Just a lot of painful confusion.

So I decided to reduce confusion, we need fiscal months.

FM (fiscal month) 1 would correspond to our October.

FM (fiscal month) 2 would correspond to our November.

etc.

It was a boring meeting that had nothing to do with me directly, so I came up with them on the spot:

Jackuary
Federalary
Farch (inspired by 'farce')
Anlil (inspired by 'anal')
Pay
Jewne
Juliar
Ughrust
Sepmember
Octoburn
Neverender
Distemper

I think we should all switch to the new system immediately.

Have fun on Halloween.

'Jackuary' was inspired by jackoffs but this time it can mean jackolanterns as well.

Altoids survival kit

Wow, this guy likes Altoids boxes even more than me:

http://www.survival.com/best.htm

Altoids box survival kit. Who woulda thought?

Are politicians who served in the army more or less likely to warmonger?

Okay, I got an interesting email about military service. Then I sent it to my friend Greg S who is a staunch and vocal conservative. Amazingly, I find most of his reasons valid, but some of his beliefs in a few core areas just over-the-top enough that I end up rejecting a lot of his conclusions despite agreeing with his reasoning.

Anyway, here is the email, followed by Greg tearing apart of it. It is his style of tearing it apart utterly that I really like, even if I don't necessarily like everything he says.

[snip]

"THIS is an eye-opener!!!! Men who served in the military know what war is all about and want to save their children from such gore by opposing the war! Its always interesting to see how people who have lived through life altering events later project them on to what they feel others should do. In this case, those that have served in our armed forces seem much less jingoistic and anxious to send our children into war, than those that have avoided and never served in the a! rmed forces!!!

Democrats: * Richard Gephardt: Air National Guard, 1965-71. * David Bonior: Staff Sgt., Air Force 1968-72. * Tom Daschle: 1st Lt., Air Force SAC 1969-72. * Al Gore: enlisted Aug. 1969; sent to Vietnam Jan. 1971 as an army journalist in 20th Engineer Brigade. * Bob Kerrey: Lt. j.g. Navy 1966-69; Medal of Honor, Vietnam. * Daniel Inouye: Army 1943-47; Medal of Honor, WWII. * John Kerry: Lt., Navy 1966-70; Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V, Purple Hearts. * Charles Rangel: Staff Sgt., Army 1948-52; Bronze Star, Korea. * Max Cleland: Captain, Army 1965-68; Silver Star & Bronze Star, Vietnam. Paraplegic from war injuries. Served in Congress. * Ted Kennedy: Army, 1951-53. * Tom Harkin: Lt., Navy, 1962-67; Naval Reserve, 1968-74. * Jack Reed: Army Ranger, 1971-1979; Captain, Army Reserve 1979-91. * Fritz Hollings: Army officer in WWII; Bronze Star and seven campaign ribbons. * Leonard Boswell: Lt. C! ol., Army 1956-76; Vietnam, DFCs, Bronze Stars,and

Soldier's Medal. * Pete Peterson: Air Force Captain, POW. Purple Heart, Silver Star and Legion of Merit. * Mike Thompson: Staff sergeant, 173rd Airborne, Purple Heart. * Bill McBride: Candidate for Fla. Governor. Marine in Vietnam; Bronze Star with Combat V. * Gray Davis: Army Captain in Vietnam, Bronze Star. * Pete Stark: Air Force 1955-57 * Chuck Robb: Vietnam * Howell Heflin: Silver Star * George McGovern: Silver Star & DFC during WWII. * Bill Clinton: Did not serve. Student deferments. Entered draft but received #311. * Jimmy Carter: Seven years in the Navy. * Walter Mondale: Army 1951-1953 * John Glenn: WWII and Korea; six DFCs and AirMedal with 18 Clusters. * Tom Lantos: Served in Hungarian underground in WWII. Saved by Raoul Wallenberg.

Republicans -- and these are the guys sending people to war: * Dick Cheney: did not serve. Several deferments, the last by marriage. * Dennis Hastert: did not serve. * Tom Delay: did not serve. * Roy Blunt: did not serve. * Bill Frist: did not serve. * Mitch McConnell: did not serve. * Rick Santorum: did not serve. * Trent Lott: did not serve. * John Ashcroft: did not serve. Seven deferments to teach business. * Jeb Bush: did not serve. * Karl Rove: did not serve. * Saxby Chambliss: did not serve. "Bad knee." The man who attacked Max Cleland's patriotism. * Paul Wolfowitz: did not serve. * Vin Weber: did not serve. * Richard Perle: did not serve. * Douglas Feith: did not serve. * Eliot Abrams: did not serve. * Richard Shelby: did not serve. * Jon! Kyl: did not serve. * Tim Hutchison: did not serve. * Christopher Cox: did not serve. * Newt Gingrich: did not serve. * Don Rumsfeld: served in Navy (1954-57) as flight instructor. * George W. Bush: failed to complete his six-year National Guard; got assigned to Alabama so ! he could campaign for family friend running for U.S. Senate; failed to show up for required medical exam, disappeared from duty. * Ronald Reagan: due to poor eyesight, served in a non- combat role making movies. * B-1 Bob Dornan: Consciously enlisted after fighting was over in Korea. * Phil Gramm: did not serve. * John McCain: Vietnam POW, Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross. * Dana Rohrabacher: did not serve. * John M. McHugh: did not serve. * JC Watts: did not serve. * Jack Kemp: did not serve. "Knee problem, " although continued in NFL for 8 years as quarterback. * Dan Quayle: Journalism unit of the Indiana National Guard. * Rudy Giuliani: did not serve. * George Pataki: did not serve. * Spencer Abraham: did not serve. * John Engler: did not serve. * Lindsey Graham: National Guard lawyer. * Arnold Schwarzenegger: AWOL from Austrian army base.

Pundits & Preachers

* Sean Hannity: did not serve. * Rush Limbaugh: did not serve (4-F with a 'pilonidal cyst.') * Bill O'Reilly: did not serve. * Michael Savage: did not serve. * George Will: did not serve. * Chris Matthews: did not serve. * Paul Gigot: did not serve. * Bill Bennett: did not serve. * Pat Buchanan: did not serve. * John Wayne: did not serve. * Bill Kristol: did not serve. * Kenneth Starr: did not serve. * Antonin Scalia: did not serve. * Clarence Thomas: did not serve. * Ralph Reed: did not serve. * Michael Medved: did not serve. * Charlie Daniels: did not serve. * Ted Nugent: did not serve. (He only shoots at things that don't shoot back.)

Please keep this information circulating --Illinois State Sen. Howard W. Carroll

---------- Forwarded response ---------- From: Greg S

Yea, I just find this pretty stupid. Anyone can come up with slanted political propaganda like this. I could easily find 50 republicans that did serve and 50 democrats that didn't. This doesn't appear to be a comprehensive list of every republican and democrat that holds a political office nationwide along with demographic breakdowns and statistical analysis. Also the descriptions next to the people's names are biased towards democrats, as an example look at how the entries for Al Gore and Dan Quayle are phrased:

* Al Gore: enlisted Aug. 1969; sent to Vietnam Jan. 1971 as an army journalist in 20th Engineer Brigade.

* Dan Quayle: Journalism unit of the Indiana National Guard.

The Al Gore entry includes more information in order to carry more "weight", while Dan Quayle's is phrased to sound dismissive. I'm not saying Dan Quayle actually did anything as he is a big douche, I'm just pointing out the use of language. Also the Bush description is the dishonest leftist version. If Max Cleland were a Republican the description of his service would probably have included something along the lines of "blew himself up while taking a beer break with his buddies" in order to belittle his service.

Now the main thing is there is no point to any of this, it's a strawman type attack. It assumes that in order to lead your nation in a time of war, it's a requirement that you have served in the military. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of US history would find the very concept ridiculous. Had military service been required to lead the nation into war, the world would be a much different place as the War of 1812, the Mexican American War, The Civil War, World War I and World War II would never have been fought. The vast majority of our presidents have been life long, career politicians usually studying law and then moving directly into government. Hell that describes most of our politicians (and to me that's a big part of our problem).

This is the problem I have with the typical attacks on Bush or Republicans coming from the left. It's just an attack that avoids argument of the issues. It's geared towards either convincing stupid people who just don't know any better by appealing to emotion or their lack of knowledge and logical reasoning skills or to rally political partisans as a type of slogan. They might as well just go around yelling, "Bush has smelly nads and fucks his dog!" Overall, it's just childish and amateur. But what can you expect, this is the kind of crap that has been driving our political system since basically it was founded, and especially after Martin Van Buren engineered the modern political and government systems along with the creation of the Democrat party.

So if people want to go at Bush over the War on Terror, fine, but come up with a view and argument to back it up. I just don't get why the left continues with these vapor arguments when there is so much you can legitimately attack the guy on. I could go down the line of almost every issue and attack the crap outa Bush and Republicans on it. Is this the best the left can come up with? Pathetic. If I had the time I could write an essay on the things I think the Bush administration is doing wrong in the WOT, but who was in the military and who was not doesn't have anything to do with the argument I would lay out. Here, I'll give you a good blog entry I! read the other day on the topic. http://nicedoggie.net/2005/index.php/?p=1010 [Clint's note: I disagree with the linked blog and the mentality it portrays.]

I believe in holding beliefs and argue on issues. Since the 1820s there really hasn't' been much room for arguing issues in American politics, and that's by design. I consider myself a Conservative Libertarian. I'm for a very small and non-intrusive government, maximum personal liberties, minimalist spending with a minimalist "fair tax" system, constitutional originalism and strict constructionism, legislative power over executive or judicial, local power over federal power, strong military/foreign policy, free market capitalism, etc. That is basically the opposite of the left. The left considers Libertarians the farthest wacko right you can get. They are for a huge all powerful government that intrudes directly into every life making many decisions for them, subjugation of individual liberties in favor of government, massive taxes to support their huge government, ignore everything the constitution says and what the founders intended in order to make up what it says on the fly so that it fits in with their agenda, power wherever they get their way (right now they like the judiciary), weak military and a foreign policy that subjugates the United States to the UN to further the creation of a one world government, communist/command economic system. Pleny of room for argument on issues there, but debate seems rare expecially in politics. Gotta come up with something bland so I can go after that "undecided" voter, or come up with some bullshit to say so as to skim x% of y demographic from my apponent. Where are you when we need you Thomas Payne, we could sure use your "Common Sense" again!"

Best Unknown Programs:
		Displays lyrics to whatever song you are listening to!
Milkdrop		Best winamp visualization plugin

DEAD BLOG.. I MOVED TO WORDPRESS.

2006-02-04

Blog moved to ClintJCL.WordPress.com

2006-02-01

Blog moving to WordPress

2006-01-30

Dear Citizens Of The World (repost)

NSA Spying Re-Visited: a good comment from a random person

2006-01-27

My IMDB movie ratings - they finally made it public!

Borg Pic from Vegas honeymoon: Clint

Borg Pic from Vegas honeymoon: Carolyn

2006-01-25

MUSIC: REVIEWS: My current music, including Type O Negative: Life Is Killing Me

2006-01-20

VIDEO: CARTOONS: Justice League Unlimited

Hard Drive celebration!

2006-01-18

Yay!

2006-01-12

Fire.

Ubunto... Kubuntu... Meh.

2006-01-10

Damn you, Fire!

Goodbye "Fire".

2005-12-28

How'd you like YOUR grandma to be tasered? [Police Brutality] / rant against cops

2005-12-09

How'd you like YOUR grandma to be tasered? [Police Brutality] / rant against cops

2005-11-19

VIDEO: Movies watched in 2003 list

2005-11-16

We got a new kitten.

2005-10-30

Halloween party picture

PARTY: Halloween: at Britt's house

2005-10-28

MUSIC: Ween concert!

COMEDY: Become A Republican

EYE CANDY: A new optical illusion

2005-10-27

Paintball

Paintball on 20051023

2005-10-26

MUSIC: recent listening habits

2005-10-20

Fiscal Months?

Altoids survival kit

2005-10-19

Are politicians who served in the army more or less likely to warmonger?

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