DEAD BLOG.. I MOVED TO WORDPRESS.

Blog moved to ClintJCL.WordPress.com

2006-02-04T19:27:00.000-05:00

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

2006-02-01T18:02:00.000-05:00

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)

2006-01-30T17:57:00.000-05:00

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

2006-01-30T10:21:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-01-27T16:51:00.000-05:00

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

2006-01-27T15:08:00.001-05:00

borg_cl-700c, originally uploaded by ClintJCL.

Borg Pic from Vegas honeymoon: Carolyn

2006-01-27T15:08:00.000-05:00

borg_cas-700c, originally uploaded by ClintJCL.

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

2006-01-25T10:03:00.000-05:00

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

2006-01-20T16:10:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-01-20T10:25:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-01-18T16:11:00.000-05:00

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.

2006-01-12T09:19:00.000-05:00

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.

2006-01-12T07:55:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-01-10T21:25:00.000-05:00

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".

2006-01-10T10:29:00.000-05:00

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

2005-12-28T13:55:00.000-05:00

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.

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
Contact: Clint@acm.vt.edu   Yahoo:ClintJCL   AOL:Clint JCL   ICQ:3630258
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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

2005-12-09T14:09:00.000-05:00

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

(They charged her later.)

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

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.

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.

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

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?

Gee, so using your camera is illegal now?

I think this is a quote about the same anecdote:

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

VIDEO: Movies watched in 2003 list

2005-11-19T08:01:00.000-05:00

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.

2005-11-16T13:40:00.000-05:00

100-0057_IMG, originally uploaded by carolyncasl.

We got a new kitten.

Halloween party picture

2005-10-30T17:05:00.000-05:00

100-0042_IMG, originally uploaded by ClintJCL.

Smoking this way was appropriate.

PARTY: Halloween: at Britt's house

2005-10-30T17:03:00.000-05:00

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!

2005-10-28T12:49:00.000-04:00

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

2005-10-28T12:14:00.000-04:00

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

This is freaking awesome. Especially the end.

EYE CANDY: A new optical illusion

2005-10-28T10:45:00.000-04:00

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

2005-10-27T13:10:00.000-04:00

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

2005-10-27T11:09:00.000-04:00

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

2005-10-26T10:59:00.000-04:00

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?

2005-10-20T15:04:00.000-04:00

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

2005-10-20T12:47:00.000-04:00

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?

2005-10-19T15:00:00.000-04:00

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!"

See Saw!

2005-10-13T09:48:00.000-04:00

We just saw Saw. (The movie Saw.) I must say that is my favorite "horror" out of everything I've watched this year. It narrowly edged out Phone Booth (which was a bit more psychologically intense) by having some of the most twisted situations I've ever seen in any movie. As horrors go, it was a 10. As movies in general go, it was probably about a 9. Good stuff. I highly recommend.

Also, the new Justice League season 5 is turning out to be as good as any of the past seasons.

Jesus & He-Man roll a joint

2005-10-11T15:56:00.000-04:00

Jesus & He-Man roll a joint, originally uploaded by Jesus & He-Man.

I am going to make my "What Would Jesus Smoke?" tee-shirt very soon. I just need to find a suitable image. This one is not quite it. Can someone direct me to a better one?

Atlanta Business Trip

2005-09-29T12:59:00.000-04:00

Clint had to go to Atlanta for business. It was a "leave monday, work tuesday/wednesday, return wednesday deal". But Carolyn managed to get the time off, and came with Clint, so we left Sunday instead, in order to have some extra time in Atlanta. We don't know if it was worth it, and all-in-all it was a great hassle to go on this trip. Still, it was interesting to exist elsewhere for a short period of time, even if it was coerced by Clint's employer. "Travel broadens the mind," they say, though they neglect to mention that it shrinks the wallet. Even with airfare and hotel paid (except the first hotel night) we spent something along the lines of $1000. Ugh.

Again, as usual, if the tenses sound weird, it's because this was a collaborative effort, both of us have written various parts of this and passed it between us, and the narrator as well as our writing styles can change at random, even sentence to sentence.

8/21/05 [Sunday]

This was the day we traveled to Atlanta. The airplane left at 10:30am. We got to the gate about a half-hour early, concluding that we shouldn't believe the hype, and didn't need to leave 2 hours before the departure time.... Just for some background, Clint was on 45 minutes sleep that night.

All was smooth coming from Washington to Atlanta... We had three drinks on the plane - Clint had white wine and Carolyn had Bud Light... By the time we landed at 12 NOON, we were both a bit drunk and had already spent like $30 just on the plane! We didn't need to drive, so it was a good thing. (Yes, we knew in advance we were not driving.) Of course, the intense sunlight was a bit of a buzzkill anyway.

When we arrived at Atlanta, Carolyn needed to pee, so we headed to the bathroom first. When Carolyn came out, she didn't see Clint immediately. After a second, she saw him waving at Carolyn from the ice cream line... so she went over and we both got ice cream. At some point, Clint tried to pee, but the men's restroom was closed for cleaning... We kept walking.. After the ice cream, Carolyn suddenly exclaimed, "Oh yeah! We got to get our luggage from baggage claim!!"..

On our way to baggage claim, we discovered the cleaning was done so Clint headed into the bathroom.. Carolyn called after him, "I need to go to, wait for me afterwards"... Unbeknownst to Carolyn, Clint did not hear her at all.... he was single-mindedly focused on the nearest toilet... There was a small line for the ladies' room, so it took Carolyn a little while... When she came out, there was no sign of Clint.... Carolyn looked around and thought she could see a person who looked like it could be Clint way down the hall walking towards baggage claim.... Carolyn went up to the men's bathroom and asked some guy coming out if he saw a guy with a blue shirt in there, and he didn't know.... So Carolyn decided to start walking to baggage claim, but the whole way she wasn't sure if she was doing the right thing...

Carolyn had everything -- both wallets, the tote bag, the cell phone, and no way of reaching Clint to find out where he was -- whether he had started walking to baggage claim, or was still in the bathroom, or what. Carolyn finally starts walking to baggage claim, and it took forever!! She kept walking and walking, and there was a train, but she wasn't comfortable getting on it... Finally, Carolyn went up to an airport worker and asked how much further to baggage claim, and he said a 15 minute walk, and Carolyn was like "From here?!?" and he replied "it's a 4-minute train ride" and pointed at the train... So Carolyn got her ass on the train and 4 minutes later Carolyn she was walking up the escalator to baggage claim..

Clint was too determined and focused to even give the trains second thought. He walked all the way across the airport, a 20- to 30-minute walk. Sweating by the end, wondering every step of the way if he would have to turn around and walk all the way back to get his wallet. Hitting the wall and cursing at random intervals. Catching a cute girl checking him out as he mouths "This sucks" randomly into the air in front of him. She definitely sensed my perturburance. (Did I just make a word up?)

Meanwhile, Carolyn was walking up the escalator to the baggage claim. While on the escalator, her phone rang once, but cut off...so Carolyn gets to the top of the escalator, and there's Clint, and he's LIVID. At least we were re-united. Clint said Carolyn was wrong because she abandoned him, and didn't ensure that he heard Carolyn say she was going to the bathroom. He said the last thing we were talking about was baggage claim, so after he waited around for "only" 3 minutes, and assumed Carolyn had continued on to baggage claim...

Carolyn said Clint was wrong, Clint said Carolyn was wrong, and to "save our marriage" as Carolyn melodramatically states it, we just had to let it go... But while at the airport, Clint was the one who wouldn't let it go (in the short run... in the long run Clint would say Carolyn doesn't let it go)... He kept yelling at Carolyn about it, or any other little thing that came up... (Clint doesn't remember any other thing coming up).... Carolyn wrote in my diary that "Atlanta airport sucks, it makes Carolyn and Clint fight"... Clint in particular admits really hating the hassle of travelling and not dealing with the stress or responsibility of travelling very well. "I am a cranky traveller."

We weren't sure where to go to get our bags, and the workers sent Carolyn to an Independence Air thing -- but Carolyn saw signs that said Independence Air, and they kept pointing Carolyn in the wrong direction... Carolyn had left Clint at the baggage claim area while Carolyn found out, but the baggage claim area was huge... Once Carolyn realized she was no longer in the baggage claim area, she went back, and Clint was nowhere to be seen again... Carolyn went up to the baggage claim and saw her bag, but not Clint's... Tears were rolling down her eyes (awww) because she incorrectly concluded that Clint had found the bags, took his bag, left hers, and left Carolyn behind... (Clint, just finding out about this while editing this story, is surprised she would ever think I would ever go that far! I'm hardcore, but not airport-abandoning hardcore.)

However, thankfully when Carolyn went to the other side of the conveyor, there was Clint's bag... So Carolyn now had both of these heavy bags, and was a little worried, but then Clint showed up and was mad again that Carolyn had "left him again"... it was terrible, although Clint thinks it was nothing compared to the 30-minute-walk.

We finally get our bags and go out to ground transportation and the question becomes how do we get to the hotel... Clint decided he wanted to rent a car... Carolyn said maybe we should catch a cab to the hotel and just crash. (BTW, Clint was on 40 minutes of sleep, YES -- FORTY MINUTES, and Carolyn was on two hours of sleep -- so we were both tired, cranky, and a little tipsy)... Clint asked a cab driver about inexpensive rental cars and they said the best was Payless (not the shoe store)... We had to wait extra long for a payless shuttle, but finally one came... Carolyn went to the driver of the "dollar rental" to ask the rates, and he gave Carolyn a number to call, but Carolyn didn't call... Clint had talked to payless before so we knew the rate was going to be $40/day (actually more like $70/day with the insurance... it turned out to be more than the hotel room!)

Anyway, we rented a car - a white Kia Optima that was an automatic with a manual shift option. Clint had a LOT of fun with the manual shifting of gears. And the best part is, you're playing with someone ELSE'S transmission. I think we both gained a far gerater understanding of manual transmissions than we had ever had in the past. We got to the hotel room and pretty instantly passed out from 3PM til 6PM.

When we woke up, we tried to decide where to go to eat... and we saw that Ruby Tuesday was right up the street from our hotel. We were trying to find something else.... We couldn't think of anything, so we went to Ruby Tuesday... There was a 15-minute wait so we told them we'd sit at the bar, and they said they'd come find us when our table was ready... So we were sitting at the bar drinking the hugest beers either of us have ever seen (not counting the "yard long" beers)... and the bartender asked if we wanted to see a menu and we thought it'd be a good idea to get a headstart... So we decided what to order, and the bartender took our order... Then Clint went to check on our table and saw that people who came in after us were already crossed off the list... so he went back and asked and they said they had come to the end of the bar and said our name, but of course we didn't hear them, there was no room at the end of the bar, and we were at the far end... So after much headache, we ended up having to pay our bill to the bartender and sat at a table to eat our food.. we split a Monterey jack hamburger (rare) and a sampler platter... it was good... Carolyn had another megabrew that she had to pay the waitress for, since we'd closed out at the bar.

When we got back to our hotel room, we then had to come up with something to do, so we were going to check out some clubs... we got all dressed up, and one of them didn't exist anymore, and the other was $50 and it didn't sound all that....We were conflicted as to whether we should do it or not, and we decided not to, but later think that was a mistake..... Damn. So then we were like "let's just go to the hotel and get some beers and hang out"... but everything was closed so we just went to our hotel room, no beer, and hung out..... hanging out included a lot of hot sexy sex (Carolyn's words). Carolyn slept naked and felt compelled to add this fact to this summary.

8/22/05 [Monday]

We had no idea what to do or where to go.. we checked out some stuff online. Some of the things we thought about were Stone Mountain, horse carriage ride, the zoo.. we had decided on Dixieland amusement park, but for some dumb reason, it was closed on weekdays after August 7th..... Clint & Carolyn agreed that that seemed dumb to us because August is a big travel month. Isn't it?

So, Clint had left a message for his half-aunt Tatiana who lives in Atlanta, and she called back.. She suggested we check out Little 5 Points, which she described as the "Grenich Village of Atlanta".. So we were trying to find that, and we drove buy this huge store that had this huge mural -- lots of colors... So we turned to check it out along the way, and hey! This is what we were looking for... We were in little 5 points... We didn't know it at first.

We went to Criminal Records first, and Clint found an awesome shirt of George Bush as a vampire sucking the blood out of the Statue Of Liberty. (Because Bush IS a power-hungry madman who thrives on taking our liberties away for his own gain, just like a real vampire.) He had just gotten that picture online on Friday, so he had to get the shirt.... We then went to Junkman's Daughter, which is the huge store with the mural. Inside was very VERY huge... with LOTS of neat stuff. We had to resist buying more clothes for Carolyn, because Carolyn have so much clothes already... we did get a couple of shirts for Clint, and also had to buy a welcome mat that said "Go Away"... we got a couple of belts, a Misfits ashtray, a Misfits lightswitch cover. We checked out the headshop in the back... we went upstairs (the stairs were a giant, 2-storey high high-heel), but all they had were shoes... Some of them were interesting, but not interesting enough...

Clint was in the dressing room trying on his shirts was when Tatiana showed up... so we hung out in Junkman's Daughter a little longer and then left... We checked out some other stores in Little 5 Points, but apparantly most closed at 7. By then, we were pretty hungry, so we went to the Vortex to eat. The Vortex is a biker bar with the best food in Tatiana's opinion, and she proved right... Carolyn had southwestern eggrolls, and Clint & Tatiana split a reuban and nachos (usually Carolyn and Clint do that, but this worked out because Carolyn wanted the eggrolls, and Carolyn got to have tatertots and nachos too, and Clint still got an eggroll).. Clint had a $20 shot of 150-year-old Grand Marnier (that's 1855, folks) that was very very VERY good... we each tried a bit of it... it was funny, because before the waitress gave us our bill, she looked at it for a second, then looked at Clint and asked him how the shot was. It was damn fine.

After the vortex, we went over to Tatiana's & her boyfriend Marcus's house... we met Marcus's dad Randy and his cousin, Chris... We hung out talking for awhile, and then played Skip-bo.. Carolyn hadn't played that since she was a kid, and Carolyn probably played it wrong as a kid... but it was a really fun game. Clint had never played. Marcus's dad had interesting stories about working security at Phish shows, confiscating bootleg Phish shirts, and how they are sent to 3rd world nations, and somewhere in Africa there are some poor 3rd-world people wearing bootleg Phish tee-shirts! After Skip-Bo, Carolyn decided we had better get back to the hotel..... Earlier, on the way to Little 5 points, we picked up some beer so we wouldn't have a repeat of Sunday night.. so we had a couple of beers and went to bed... Monday night, Carolyn felt like a headache was coming on, but thought sleep would cure it. Unfortunately, she woke up Tuesday and still had a slight headache. So Carolyn bought some Advil to take care of that.

8/23/05 [Tuesday]

Carolyn had been all concerned about she Carolyn was going to do on Tuesday and Wednesday while Clint was at work.... So at some point Monday, it suddenly occurred to Carolyn as to what to do on Tuesday - go to Stone Mountain. On Monday when we discovered it, Carolyn thought it sounded cool, but Clint wasn't all that interested... so Carolyn decided that was her plan for Tuesday... She woke up and had the complimentary breakfast (a muffin, a danish, 2 cups of decaf coffee, and a hard-boiled egg). Carolyn was upset that there weren't anymore bananas. Clint had gotten his breakfast at 1 in the morning... Carolyn forget why he went to the front desk at one in the morning, but the guy had apparently set the breakfast out because he had a slipped disk so he wanted to get it taken care of in the low-stress time. When Carolyn went back to the room, Carolyn discovered Clint had left a banana for me!! Yay!!! The complimentary breakfast also had a waffle iron, and already-measured out waffle mix... Carolyn was tempted, but didn't make a waffle for myself... Clint had one and it was fabulous.

So, anyway, Carolyn talked to her Uncle Mark to make plans for dinner that night, and she told him she was going to Stone Mountain. He commented that Carolyn was getting off to a late start... but Carolyn mentioned the park didn't open until 10, and it was only around 10 right then.. Carolyn thinks it was a little bit after 10... but anyway, Carolyn ended up arriving at the park at around 11am... the first thing she saw was a huge stone mountain... then she noticed it had a carving on it... as she walked to the park, Carolyn kept trying to take a picture of that carving, but the pictures didn't do it justice.

Once Carolyn got into the park, the first thing she decided to do was the "4-D" imax theatre.. (What makes it 4-D rather than 3-d?? Carolyn still don't know). Carolyn went towards it, and stopped in some shops along the way.. they had an awesome glass blowing shop... she looked at some jewelry.. Carolyn wanted to get something for her mom, but didn't find anything she thought she'd like.. The closest were hummingbird earrings, but they didn't seem quite like her to Carolyn... so she was a bit disappointed.. Carolyn finally made it to the theatre, and the next showing wasn't until 11:30... it was only 11:10ish, so Carolyn said I'd come back rather than wait the 20 minutes... so Carolyn went and glanced at the blacksmith, and then went into the outfitters store... She saw something she thought Vicky would love, but it was high up on a shelf and looked expensive and so Carolyn didn't get it.... She did look to see if they had a smaller cheaper version, but didn't see one... It was a mallard duck candle holder, so it wasn't worth spending a lot of money on... Carolyn went on down the strip of shops to the Stone Mountain souvenir shop and bought Vicky a postcard... much cheaper than the mallard duck candleholder, and Carolyn knew she'd LOVE that. Carolyn got Clint a shotglass only because it was marked down to $1.

After the souvenir shop, it was about 11:20 so Carolyn decided to make my way back to the theatre. When Carolyn got there, this older family was asking questions about it... and the worker told them to wait by the doors.. So Carolyn meandered on over as well... one of the men looked at Carolyn and asked if she was by myself. She said yes and he told Carolyn she was a brave soul... hmm.. the movie was short, and a little lame, but the special effects were cool... when Carolyn had gotten in and sat down, Carolyn started to put our digital camera on the seat next to her, and noticed it was a little wet... at first she was a little confused, but it didn't take Carolyn long to be like "oh yeah, let Carolyn put the camera under the seat where it'll be safe"... good thing, because the water effects happened a lot. The movie and pre-show only lasted 15 minutes...

After that, Carolyn decided to go up the skylift to the top of stone mountain. After walking to it, Carolyn got in line and walked all the way through the Disneyworld-like maze only to realize she had gone the wrong way... confusing.... So then this mom & dad and daughter came in, so Carolyn watched where they went and then followed them... the wait was a long time because they wanted to have more people.. but then we finally get on, and it was beautiful...you could really see the carving in great detail... Carolyn tried to take a couple more pictures... At the top of the mountain, the whole ground was stone... it was pretty neat... Carolyn walked down the mountain a ways... they have hiking trails that you can walk all the way down the mountain on, but Carolyn only walked a littleafter awhile, Carolyn went back to the skylift to go back down the mountain.

The last thing was the Discovering Stone Mountain museum... It was pretty neat, but not as exciting as the other things...

Carolyn headed back to the hotel. Carolyn talked to mom on the phone for awhile, and then she had to get off the phone suddenly. Clint came back right after that... so when mom called back, Carolyn told her Clint was back, so she let Carolyn go. So then we just took a nap.. we woke up around 6 to meet Uncle Mark at 6:30-7... but we were a little late.. We got to Uncle Mark's a little after 7... so Clint said Carolyn was rude that Carolyn didn't call Uncle Mark to warn him of the lateness ... Carolyn didn't so, so she'll learn from that one.. Anyway, we saw where Uncle Mark is living... it's a nice house - with very VERY high ceilings..

Then we went to this restaurant/bar called Six Feet Under. It was called Six Feet Under because there was a cemetery right across the street. It reminded Carolyn of the other place Uncle Mark took the family to that Dad had described as "a dive". Mom reminded Carolyn the name was something like Beyond The Sea.. anyway, it had the same type of seafood - baskets of fried shrimp... but it also had some weird stuff -- Uncle Mark jokingly said the catfish tacos were great... Clint was intrigued by the taco part, so he ended up getting the catfish tacos. He also got the chicken fajita soup that Carolyn shared with him... Carolyn took the first bite and told him it needed hot sauce... They had some on the table... Clint was like "if Carolyn's saying that, then it definitely needs some!".. so he spiced it up and made it better...

Uncle Mark had a hamburger... they didn't give us extra napkins, so Uncle Mark had mustard all over his hands and had to ask insistently for napkins.. Clint considers running out of napkins even once to be enough to cut a tip from 15% to 10%. Carolyn had a basket of shrimp... oh yeah, their hush puppies had a hot pepper in them... that was interesting, but good... and their potato chips were hand made and the best potato chips any of us have ever eaten.. After we dropped Uncle Mark off at his house, we went back to the hotel. We couldn't decide what to do after that, so we had some more hot sexy sex and then went to bed......

Here's what Clint said at 1:31AM (in a web-based complaint-system run by the hotel) about what happened Tuesday night:

"WinGate Inn. 2020 Sullivan Rd, College Park, GA 30337. Original reservation was Aug 22-Aug 24th. Arrived a day early and asked if Carolyn could have my room a day early, and they let us. Then on the evening of Aug 23rd, our keycard did not work and we were caught in the rain and had to walk all the way around the hotel. They said they had to add the next day to the computer.This is a business trip. Have to wake up at 6AM. THEN, AT 1:15AM, OUR DOOR IS OPENED WHILE WE ARE SLEEP. We yell "HEY!" and they go away. We are scared to death and try to call the front desk and there was no answer. Who was that? What were they trying to do? How did they get into the room? Clint tried calling the front desk back 3 times. He WAS ONE RING AWAY FROM CALLING THE POLICE TO REPORT A ROBBERY ATTEMPT, because we have no clue who would just open the door to a used room that has a "Do Not Disturb" sign posted! Let's see how our service went: A noisy alarm clock that makes loud noises spontaneously in the middle of the night, keycards that strand you in the rain, staff that raids your room -- We HAVE BEEN ROBBED OF HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS OF STUFF in the past from maids, and we don't like staff in my room. Any hotel gets a "Do Not Distrub" sign from the minute we check in til the minute we check out. Not happy. Wont be coming here again, ever. Be wary of WinGate in!"

8/24/05 [Tuesday]

The night before, Carolyn had woken up when the security came bursting in, but she had no problem going back to sleep.. Clint however was very upset about what had happened and had a horrible time getting back to sleep... so he was tossing and turning until at least 4AM... and he had to wake up at 6AM. He finally drifts back to sleep, and then happens to wake up and "Hey! The alarm clock never went off and I'm late!".. so he had to rush around in the morning getting ready to get to work... including coordinating with the taxi. (Yes, we had a rental car, but since Clint's company wouldn't pay for it, we absolutely were not using it for work purposes. The taxi cost more per day than the rental car! Their loss.)

Meanwhile, we realize how much it sucks that Clint's on basically no sleep (again -- remember, 40 minutes on a previous nite, and 2 hours that nite). Our checkout time was 11am so we won't have a hotel for Clint to take a nap in afterwards.. So Carolyn was going to have to get everything packed and in the suitcases (it would be a miracle with all the stuff we bought). Carolyn tried to set a wakeup call for 9:45AM, but there was no way she was going back to sleep.. She kept going from trying to sleep in the bed, to packing up a bit, to wondering what the heck She was going to do that day... and then finally she was just like "Ok, no hope, I'm just going to get this packed up..." But Carolyn did call the front desk and tried to get a later check-out time... They said the latest they can give was 2PM, but that wasn't going to do us any good as a place to nap after clint's work is over.... The lady said she couldn't authorize later than 2PM, because the check-in time is 3PM. but the manager comes in at 9:30AM... Carolyn decided to just go for the 11AM check out time since she was not getting back to sleep.

Carolyn finally realized what she was going to do that day -- go to the zoo! That was another thing we had thought about doing on Monday that Clint wasn't interested in and Carolyn was... So then Carolyn put everything into packing up, and suddenly she realized her wallet was gone.. She started tearing the room apart looking for her wallet.... Both of the room keys were there and the car keys were there, so Carolyn wondered if Clint had picked up my wallet by mistake... it was her only hope -- even if that would be a miserable pain... so Carolyn wondered if Carolyn should call the client contact cell phone number which was the only way Carolyn could dream of to get a hold of Clint, who does not use cell phones... She didn't have much of a choice, so Carolyn called the lady... Carolyn apparently interrupted the training session Clint had flown down to assist, but Clint said she understood.... Anyway, Clint gets on the phone so Carolyn asks if he has my wallet... he did... He had a black leather wallet in each of his pockets! He had picked up his wallet, forgotten, then picked up Carolyn's wallet afterwards. Serves us right for using identical wallets.

So then Carolyn asked him where he was so she could come get it... Carolyn needed her wallet for the zoo...She went down and had the complimentary breakfast (a muffin and a danish and a cup of decaf coffee, and 2 sausage patties). Carolyn told management that Carolyn she was going for the 2PM checkout time. So Carolyn had to go to Clint's work and find him.. The receptionist said she wanted to come with Carolyn to the zoo.

Carolyn mentioned to Clint that they gave us a 2PM check out time, but Carolyn was going to check out when Carolyn got back anyway... Carolyn just told them 2PM because she wasn't sure how long she was going to be running around the world retrieving her wallet... when she got back, Carolyn put the rest of the suitcases into the car and then checked out; it was 10:30am. Carolyn got to the zoo at 11AM...

The flamingoes were right by the entrance, so Carolyn watched them for a minute... They had some cute baby flamingoes that were standing on one leg... Carolyn got the Violent Femmes 'Flamingo' song stuck in her head... then she made her way to the African plains... She checked out the two elephants, a sleeping rhino (these kids were yelling at it trying to wake it up), an elk, a crane... But didn't see the zebras anywhere. But there was a giraffe eating... Carolyn tried to take some pictures of it but there was a sign in front of it, and Carolyn couldn't get a good angle.. There was also a crane standing next to the giraffe, and it walked right up to the fence... so Carolyn got some pictures of it... then Carolyn moved on... She didn't see the lion at all.. She walked by a stage and saw some people gathering. It said next show was at 11:30, so Carolyn glanced at her watch, and "hey, it's 11:30".. She took a look at the guide to see what the show was and it was Animal Encounters. Sounded cool so she sat down to watch... the lady comes out with three animal carriers and is doing her introduction... talking about the rainforests and how there are three of them... suddenly, "Meow! Meow! Meow!"... damn, how embarrassing Carolyn get a call in the middle of show... At least the cell phone ring is animal-themed so it seemed more in place in a zoo.

Carolyn answered and clint's getting out of the training -- gee a 2PM checkout time might have actually helped us take a nap! D'oh... so we decide to meet at the enterance of the zoo at 12:30.. Clint didn't want to take away from Carolyn's zoo time, but Carolyn didn't want Clint waiting at the entrance for a long time.. so then Carolyn go back to the show... Carolyn had missed the first animal, but the second one was a millipede... Carolyn was very interested in the third one, because it was in a substantial carrier -- the size of a cat.. But the lady was droning on and on about this millipede, and so then Carolyn was worried she wasn't going to see the rest of the animals, so she left..

She saw the gorillas, the monkeys, the orangutan... but because Carolyn thought Carolyn didn't have much time, Carolyn skipped the giant pandas. But she saw the tiger -- he was sleeping way in the back so it was hard to see him... and Carolyn saw a certain type of Leopard... he was soooo cute! It was up in a tree with all his limbs (including his tail) hanging down... And he was having a very hard time staying awake... he kept falling asleep, and then would open his eyes... then would close them again... it was so cute.... Carolyn got a picture of him. Then Carolyn saw the kangaroos... Carolyn skipped the petting zoo, but the goats were cute.. She saw a red panda... that thing was very cute.. he was sleeping on top of a treehouse... he looked similar to a raccoon... Carolyn took his picture....

By this time, Carolyn had gone around and still had plenty of time.... So she went around the african plains again... This time there were three elephants... and Carolyn saw the lion on top of the rock... it was a perfect picture, but while Carolyn was floundering for my camera, the lion got up, and walked to the other side of the rock... damn, now Carolyn can't see it... so Carolyn quickly ran to the other viewing area, and snapped a picture RIGHT before the lion went into a cave and laid back down to sleep... so Carolyn did get a picture of the lion standing.. Not a good one... This girl came over and said "wow! She was awake and moved! That's the first time she's been up, and I missed it! You're so lucky"... but she wasn't up for very long. Carolyn eventually saw the giraffes again -- this time there were two of them..

Then Carolyn saw the lady who was doing the animal encounter show pulling her animals back on her wagon... so Carolyn glanced into the cat carrier and saw the third animal was an anteater... this 10ish-year old kid walked by an exclaimed "Wow! An armadillo!".. The lady said "no, it's not an armadillo.. it's an ant-eater.."

So, by this time, it was about 12:10, and Carolyn had worried that Clint was going to be early and waiting for a long time... so she decided to go back out to the entrance... they didn't have a person around to stamp her hand, so she figured she didn't need a stamp and left.... Carolyn waited at the entrance for awhile... Carolyn saw a cab loop around, but it wasn't Clint.. then at 12:35, Carolyn got a call from Clint... his cab still hadn't come! So we decided to meet at 1:15... Carolyn told Clint she'd be in the McDonalds by the entrance.... That was the most expensive McDonalds meal ever! 5 piece chicken tenders were $4.XX! Sprite and fries sounded good so Carolyn said yes... then the total was $8.. geeze that's an expensive combo... Carolyn was pissed but didn't say anything... Carolyn had dr pepper with my meal, and then refilled it with sprite.... Carolyn ended up waiting for a loooong time.. It started to rain, then stopped... Carolyn finally decided to wait outside... Carolyn went over towards the cyclorama and read about it since Carolyn had no idea what a cyclorama was (Clint still has no idea)... then when Carolyn turned around, there was Clint....

After we discussed what we should do all day until the airplane leaves at 9:40 (we checked to see how much it would be to get an earlier flight, but it would have cost $220!!! Yucky)... We decided to head back to little 5 points... we went to the other bar that had invented their own drink called the pain-killer... it was just a coconutty-pineapply drink... Clint didn't like it because of the coconut, and Carolyn wasn't a fan of it because of the pineapple... What a bomb. After that we went into some of the shops that we had missed on Monday... then we stopped at another bar where Carolyn had a couple of drinks... then we just decided to go to the airport and maybe lie down somewhere there... so we got to the airport a little after 6 or 6:30... a full three hours before our flight (which was delayed).

Carolyn played games on her laptop and PDA, talked to the guy next to her, and watched the CNN news, while Clint laid on the airport floor and slept... It got very cold.At one point, Clint woke up and looked at the guy next to me... he kinda gave Carolyn a quizzical look and asked if we were in Atlanta.. Carolyn said "yes".. then he looked at the guy again and said "Isn't he in dc?" and Carolyn looked at the guy and was like "Oh no, do I know this guy or something? I don't think so".. so Carolyn told Clint "no"... He went back to sleep... when he woke up later, he told Carolyn he thought the guy was Jay (Carolyn's brother, who lives in Woodbridge, VA, not Atlanta, GA) and so that's why he was confused and wasn't sure what city he was in.

The guy next to Carolyn, and the guy next to him were on the flight before ours to Chicago... Carolyn thought they had a bit of a delay -- the pulled a plane out of the hanger and it was hot so they were working to cool it down... their crew was flying in from somewhere at some other gate so they were waiting for them to land and unload their plane... they were working to get a reserve crew so they can start boarding, but they didn't have confirmation... They never said another word about the reserve crew.. They finally said the real crew had landed and were hurrying as fast as they could to unload that other plane.... And we were told that our flight was delayed about a half an hour (9:40 to 10:10 Carolyn guess). But there weren't any Independence Air workers there, and the air tran people didn't have any information about the Independence Air flight... so when the Chicago plane finally got out of there, we found out our plane wasn't leaving until 11PM... wow, what a delay... 4.5 hours in the airport! When the crew landed, the pilot came out and apologized for the delay and said that it was Atlanta's fault because they wouldn't let the airplane land due to weather... weird...

Anyway, on the plane Clint had the window seat as agreed... so it was hard for Carolyn to look out it.. and Clint was just sleeping anyway.... Carolyn tried to sleep, but Carolyn kept waking up because her ears would pop... they didn't serve alcohol at all on this flight!! (They serve alcohol at 11AM, but not 10PM? What bizarro world have we stumbed into?) So Carolyn didn't have a drink or food... that McDonalds had held Carolyn over.. Carolyn had a couple of clint's french fries from Burger King at the airport, and a little bit of his chicken fajita salad from the bar that had the painkiller. So Carolyn was good food wise... Clint didn't have anything either.... We finally got back into D.C. (DULLes Airport) around 1:40am...

Carolyn wondered if her brother Jay was working, but didn't try to hard to find out.. we got our bags, and then went out to catch the shuttle to the parking lot... Carolyn's PDA had just enough battery to remind us what lot and spot our car was in... yay, that was close... We had to catch the green shuttle, and our car was in 2c... the bus stop was at 6c... we didn't realize how long the row of cars in 2c were!!! So the shuttle dropped us off where we told it to ,and then we had to walk a long time to find our car... which was actually in 4c... Clint was walking up the 2c aisle, but Carolyn had remembered kind of that Carolyn had backed in, and the 2c aisle didn't seem right to her.. so she walked up the 4c aisle.. Our suitcases were so heavy we abandoned them and continued walking.. Carolyn finally find the car, and yell for Clint, then Clint told Carolyn to go to the bags... so Carolyn got his and walked it over towards Clint, who stopped to pick Carolyn up.. then we are finally on our way home.... Yay.

When we got home, our front door was completely unlocked due to the brilliance of the employees of Virginia Design Builders, someone nobody should ever be forced to deal with even with a gun pointed at their head. The work they had said they were going to do while we were gone was not done at all. We had turned off our computers, sacrified about 20 gigabytes of downloads due to them being off, covered everything with garbage bags, locked up, taken off of work early during a deadline crunch -- all this for nothing. Fuckers. Cost me bandwidth AND [house] security.

Anyway, the trip was fun, but I don't think either of us would go back in time and repeat it.

Now our Honeymoon (Las Vegas, 2/12/2000), we would probably go back in time and repeat.

Sin City

2005-09-27T13:39:00.000-04:00

OH MY GOD I loved that movie!!

And from the same director as Pleasantville.

Two movies by the same director that I rate a 10.

I believe few have achived this: Terry Gilliam, and maybe Tim Burton.

-Clint

Best movie I've seen in a long long long time?!?!?

2005-08-09T18:03:00.000-04:00

Carolyn & I watched another movie last night (the 56th of the year). I think it damn well may be the best I've seen this year. 80% of people on IMDB gave it a 9 or a 10! (50% gave it a 10. That's unheard of.) Definitely the most unique movie I have seen in a very long time. It is called "Mind Game'. IMDB the plot and style at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0452039/combined It's an anime that just won Japan's most prestigous award for animated films (which no one in america, including myself, has ever heard of). IT'S NOT YOUR TYPICAL ANIME. AS IN, IT'S GOOD. And even compared to other good anime, like Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, or even Cowboy Bebop -- I think it BLOWS THEM THE FUCK AWAY. The animation is like nothing I've ever seen before. (and not a cgi-fest, not at ALL) The plot is like nothing I've ever seen before. The emotion leaves you feeling refreshed and optimistic. It's trippy as hell and I wish I could smoke Timothy Leary's ashes while watching this. There's really nothing bad about it at all, except the end is very slightly tedious, and they make no attempt to be realistic (which I view as an asset, not a flaw). You wont see this on DVD in america anytime soon, but JAP-DVDs are going for $50. Not worth it. So....... um..... Find it another way. I wouldn't go through this much work if it wasn't mind-blowingly good.

GAME: Drunk Walking

2005-07-14T07:43:00.000-04:00

I could go on and on about it, but you wont get it unless you follow the link. Basically, you must keep the drunk guy from falling over by moving your mouse left and right. You cannot see the pointer. My record so far is 75M.

big business wins the right to destroy your home against your will

2005-06-27T09:05:00.000-04:00

I'm sure most people are, by now, aware of the Supreme Court decision where they the govt can take away your home to give it to another private party for "public" use. It reeks and my friend Greg describes why the judiciary has gotten out of control. Sorry for the formatting.

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Greg Spaulding <gspauld@yahoo.com>

__Clint__ <clintjcl@gmail.com> wrote: > But hasn't congress also taken more > power for itself as well? I'd think it's not just the judiciary. The > fed govt has been overreaching compared to how it operated in 1900....

(NOTE: This is a long one, but once I got started I felt the need to get this down in writing, so you get to be the beneficiary of it hehe)

That is very true; Congress has also overstepped its constitutionally defined bounds by a lot. In fact government from top to bottom in America has grabbed power far beyond what was intended by the founders. However that's another bigger discussion ;), but there are some tie-ins. The thing I find so dangerous about the judiciary is their unaccountability and distance from the citizenry combined with the way they can use their decisions to have the affect of law. With the other two branches we have elections, term limits etc. There is a way for the citizenry to replace them at the ballot box. That mechanism makes it where their decisions are much closely tied to their constituency. No one elects a federal judge and they have no constituency, they also serve for life. The original intention was to keep judges above political concerns so that they could concentrate on arbitrating cases based on the intent of the law and strictly interpreting the law within the bounds of the constitution. Unfortunately from the beginning (back to Marberry vs. Madison a very political decision), this has not been the case. Many of the founders were concerned about this danger.

A compounding problem is how judges are looked at as some kind of "wiser" person, almost infallible, and when the Supreme Court rules, that is it… period. These are men just like any other, with faults, ambitions, egos, and political and other biases. When they make a mistake the citizenry has no recourse other than to hope a future court rules in a way that undoes that bad decision. That rarely happens as rulings carry precedent into the future and live on as if law. I guess we could also pass constitutional amendments to counteract each bad decision, but that's a long and difficult process that is rather rare in our history. Congress tried impeaching judges in the past but failed, so they have taken that as precedent and no longer challenge the judiciary. By having the final say over any act of the other two branches, along with their unaccountability to the citizenry, the judicial branch has set itself up, by it's own decision outside of the constitution, as the supreme branch of the government. The only check upon it by the other branches is the choosing of who its members are, and you can't even truly know at the time of appointment if the new member will be the type of judge you think he will be. For instance Supreme Court justice Suiter was thought to be a conservative judge when appointed by George H. W. Bush. However he has turned out to be one of the most liberal judges on the court. If the only check upon the judicial branch is speculative at best, then we're in trouble.

The judicial branch itself was never intended to have broad decision-making power. Those powers were specifically granted to congress, as the representative body expressing the will of the majority, and in the executive that carries out that will. The judicial branch was intended to be the arbiter of disputes and to make very narrow interpretations of specific law based on the intent of the constitution. In fact, I find the constitution sets up the judiciary as almost a child of the congress. The definitions of the legislative and executive branches in the constitution are very explicit, but for the judiciary all we have is this:

"Article 3 - The Judicial Branch Section 1 - Judicial Powers The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behavior, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services a Compensation which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.

Section 2 - Trial by Jury, Original Jurisdiction, Jury Trials In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make. The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.

Section 3 - Treason Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted."

That is it for the definition of our court system in the constitution, the details are left to congress.

Here is an example of the broader problem of the overreach of power committed by our overall system of government. Part of what the judiciary over our history should be doing, as part of the checks and balances, is reign in the other branches when they overstep the bounds set for them in the constitution. However what the courts have been doing is granting the other branches broader powers than were intended and defined by the constitution. One of the nastiest cases (the name I can't remember right now) was decided earlier this century. It is the case that allowed the federal government to regulate almost all aspects of our lives under the guise of "interstate commerce". The constitution grants the federal government the power to regulate commerce when it has national effect, when it involves more than one state. This was to set up a consistent economic model on the national level so that trade between say VA and MD is the same as trade between VA and FL or NC and PA. I'm a little fuzzy on the details of this case but the gist is in the earlier part of the last century, I think the great depression times, congress regulated the trade of grain between states because supply of grain was much greater than demand. It was causing a deflation in grain prices on the national level and putting farmers out of business. Congress decided to regulate how much grain a farm could produce (or maybe a percentage of their land they could produce grain on), and would put fines on farmers that violated this regulation. There was a guy that was a grain producer but it was a farm and he also had a bunch of animals and such. He produced the amount of grain regulated by congress for sale, but he used the additional land to produce grain that he didn't sell but used to feed his animals. He was fined, and challenged the fines in court. He didn't sell his grain outside of the state, and the excess grain he used for his animals also never left the state. His challenge was based on the premise that since his grain never left the state, congress did not have the right to regulate his grain usage, as it was not a party to interstate commerce. Here's what the constitution says from Article 1 Section 8, Powers of Congress: "… To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;"

The Supreme Court ruled the in this case that because the man was using his own grain to feed his animals that he was not buying that grain from the market. In his local market he could buy grain that potentially came from out of state. So his use of his own grain causing him not to buy potentially out of state grain was affecting interstate commerce and thus could be regulated by congress. This decision opened the door for a big power grab by the federal government to regulate anything and everything simply by inventing whatever claim it could that the activity affected "interstate commerce". No longer do we have the right and freedom to enter into whatever economic agreement we want without the government looking over our shoulder. This includes everything from entering into labor agreements, purchases or trade of products, or even using products we produce on our own. This is an example of the mechanisms the court uses to expand government power outside of the constitution, and how it changes the meaning of the constitution in a way that the citizenry has no recourse.

Now move ahead to yesterday's decision on imminent domain and the government's ability to confiscate your property for whatever uses it sees fit. It fits the same power-grabbing pattern as this "interstate commerce" case and I find it just as dangerous. The Fifth Amendment states that "… nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." The founders intended, and it has always meant, that "public use" meant exactly that, public use. A school, a courthouse, roads, government buildings, those are all uses that are then owned by the public, to all of us. Now "public use" means anything a government body can dream up. So your family has owned a mom and pop grocery store down town for four generations. Safeway or Giant wants to build one of their gigantic supermarkets where your grocery store is because it's just a great location. Now the argument can be made that the new store will provide more jobs, services and tax revenue in that location than your small grocery store and thus would serve the "public use". The government can now use the Fifth Amendment for the opposite purpose of what it was written for, to prevent the government from confiscating private property. They come in, force you to sell your property to them at a price they determine, and then sell it to Safeway at probably a profit, so that Safeway can build their supermarket. That is YOUR property to do with as you see fit. You don't want to sell it. You want your small grocery store there, and that is that. Well not any more as the Supreme Court by decree has now given the government a power the constitution specifically denied it from having, thus repealing part of the Fifth Amendment.

The question becomes, why would the judicial system want to go around granting more power to the other branches of government as it has. This is where you have to start speculating and here is what I think. The judicial system knows that it holds the power it does over the other two branches. Every law by the legislature or action by the executive is under its review, reinterpretation and veto. They have the final say and thus are the final holders of power in America. Any power they grant to the other branches becomes their power by proxy. They are not elected, they serve for life, and it has thus far been nearly impossible to remove them from their benches. This is what we call a Judicial Oligarchy with subordinate branches that are elected in a way to keep the allusion of a republic, particularly when the constitution is ignored. I don't think we are quite there yet, maybe not even half way. Nor do I think it is something that can't be reversed at this point in time, but that's the direction we are headed in, and we were warned by the founding fathers (see Thomas Jefferson quotes below).

The main enabler of this problem is the ignorance and complacency of the citizenry. As a nation we've had it good for so long that we take our system of government for granted. Our people have a horrible understanding of our history and founding documents. Our children are not being taught the revolution, constitution and early part of our history like they should. These things should be revered and aggressively defended by every citizen. It's been hundreds of years since we had to deal with the kind of oppression people are experiencing at this moment in countries like North Korea, Sudan, Cuba and Iran. Every citizen across this entire nation should be enraged to the point of near revolt over this decision. This decision allows our government to act in tyrannical ways like those enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. We went to war over this kind of shit. The way the people of this nation act reminds me of the frog story. If you put a frog in a pot of water, and slowly heat it up, the frog will sit there all happy while it cooks to death. We loose a right here, some freedom there, the government grabs new powers here and there, and nobody notices. Some people are pissed at the time, but that subsides. Few people look at the consequences of the big picture, and I don't really like what that big picture is!

Thomas Jefferson's warnings:

Letter to Abigail Adams, September 11, 1804: "The opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch."

Letter to Edward Livingston, March 25, 1825: "One single object… [will merit] the endless gratitude of the society: that of restraining the judges from usurping legislation."

Letter to Monsieur A. Coray, October 31, 1823: "At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance."

Letter to Charles Hammond, August 18, 1821: "The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal Judiciary working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped."

Letter to Thomas Ritchie, Dec. 25, 1820: "The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone. This will lay all things at their feet, and they are too well versed in English law to forget the maxim, 'boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem.'"

Letter to Thomas Ritchie, Dec. 25, 1820: "A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone, is a good thing; but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government."

Super-Dickery

2005-06-13T10:28:00.000-04:00

What can I say?

This website is friggin awesome:

http://www.superdickery.com/seduction/9.html

Sooooooooooo many examples of funniness there...

All comic-book based, real snapshots from real pages of real comics.

2005-05-25T22:40:00.000-04:00

Takes awhile to realize what's going on, huh?

Confrontation with a Bad-Driver-With-A-Badge

2005-05-12T11:28:00.000-04:00

I might edit this for better formatting later. This is pasted from an informal email and I'm too lazy to polish it off. This is a story about my run-in with a man-with-a-badge .

As background, you have to make a u-turn to get into to my house from the east. The road has a divider and that's the only way to get in. At the U-Turn intersection (a T-intersection, actually), there is simply not enough space in the middle to completely fit a car, so rather than lull people into thinking my car is in the middle and clipping me, I stop in a way that very obviously blocks the left lain until there is a gap sufficient enough for me to make the U-turn. I did this, and this civilian-SUV 3 vehicles behind me completely burns rubber... The fucking idiot. So after the U-turn, I make it a point to turn my head kinda and look at him like "What the fuck?", and he flicks me off! So I immediately went into road rage mode and re-U-turned back onto Braddock, where I drove a good 60MPH in order to catch up to him... It was difficult because it was rush hour and other traffic got inserted between us, but finally I weasled into the right lane enough to get next to him and again looked at him like "What the fuck?". So he flashed his badge at me! Whoa! Didn't know he had one!</div> <div> </div>So them i'm kinda like "Oh, Fuck!", but also feeling very righteous. I assumed he was making me pull over, so I pulled over in the gas station by the side of the road... I look in my rear-view mirror expecting him to be behind me, but then I see, he's simply at the red light not doing anything! What, did he think fear of authority gives authority the right to drive like an ass without being told off? This is America and I'll tell you off whenever I fucking want, asshole! So i get out of my car, with my hands where he could see them -- Because i've had a cop pull and point a gun at me before, barking orders downwind that I couldn't hear, and it's <em>not </em>fun.; It is a life-changing experience...... Anyway, hands are where he can see them, .. but he's totally ignoring me now! So I have to walk through some lanes of traffic (it's a long red light)... and have to walk right up to where I am 6 inches from his window. He is still ignoring me, so I have to wave my hands to get his attention... He rolls down window and I'm like "Why'd you flick me off?". He's like, "Why'd you U-turn?", obviously mad himself. I said very firmly and annoyedly "I LIVE THERE.... i HAVE to U-turn there!" Then he gives me shit about not signaling. He was 3 cars behind me, so he couldn't have even known. Wish I'd pointed <em>that</em> out.</div> I respond "I <u>DO</u> signal, I have to go out of my way to stop the speed demons from rear-ending me EVERY day, and it's a pain... I've made that U-turn every day for 6 years!" (Not completely true, but I've lived there for 6 years.) </div> <div> </div> <div>There are a few sentences tossed back and forth, but I was in the right, so I basiclaly rebutted everything he said back at him. He was an asshole and hated the fact that he couldn't win. Finally he's like "Just walk across the street".

Well, since he is an officer (?), or at least a rent-a-cop, and the light <em>was </em>about to turn green, I figured it was probably best not to disobey an order. Especially since I had just handed him his ass with a side-dish of attitude adjustment, so it was nice to end on a high-note. I laughed my way all the way home. The fact that he flashed his badge made it 10 times more satisfying.... I'm still feeling very satisifed today, weeks afterwards. The sense of satisfaction will continue. Stand up for your rights people. Don't take shit from anyone, especially the man. (When possible, anyway.)

Fwd: A Cornucopia Of Death

2005-04-12T16:54:00.000-04:00

A Cornucopia Of Death By Arianna Huffington

Paint the last month black. It's been an orgy of mourning; a cornucopia of death. We've had Terri Schiavo, Pope John Paul, Prince Rainier, and Charles and Camilla's wedding--which felt as grim as any funeral. All brought to us in no-longer-living color. If nothing else, the media have outed themselves as the ultimate necrophiliacs. I expect CNN and Forest Lawn to announce a sponsorship agreement any day now.

The pope's interminable interment was the magenta-colored cherry on the death sundae. The TV coverage was so over-the-top and utterly uncritical, it was as if John Paul had been, well, the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Or, at least, Jim Caviezel.

Now, I'm certainly not suggesting that the last week should have been spent trashing the late pontiff. His many achievements--taking on communism, embracing the Third World, speaking out for the poor, and standing up against war--surely deserved recognition and praise. But you'd think the wall-to-wall coverage would have included some serious discussion of the two tragic failures of his reign: his woeful mishandling of the church's child molestation scandal, and how his archaic position on condoms contributed to the deaths of millions of people, especially in Africa.

The molestation outrage is a black mark that can't be whitewashed.

Over 11,000 children were sexually abused and close to $1 billion in settlement money has been paid out, but the pope did not go much beyond decrying "the sins of some of our brothers." He never met with any victims, he never offered practical solutions to dealing with the problem, he never addressed the decades-long cover-up of the abuse. He even rejected a "zero tolerance" policy calling for the immediate removal of molester-priests, concerned that it was too harsh.

Too harsh?! This is a man who wouldn't allow a priest to become a bishop unless he was unequivocally opposed to masturbation, premarital sex and condoms. So, in his perversion pecking order, you had to be dead-set against "self-love" but when it came to buggering little kids, there was some wiggle room.

And let's not forget that the Pope appointed Cardinal Bernard Law, who was one of the architects of the sex scandal cover-up, and who even faced potential criminal prosecution for his role in the concealment. But instead of making an example out of Law, the pope gave him a cushy sinecure in the Vatican. Adding insult to the grievous injury suffered by the abuse victims, Law was one of the nine cardinals specially chosen to preside over the pope's funeral masses. It is a disgrace--and an indication of how detached the Vatican became under this pope.

The other stain on the pope's legacy is his tireless opposition to the use of condoms--even in places like Africa, where AIDS killed 2.3 million people last year alone, and where the disease has driven life expectancy below 40 years in many countries. But even in the face of that kind of suffering, he fought tooth and nail against condoms. Any time a church official even suggested that people infected with HIV should use condoms, they were either removed from office or censured by the Vatican. We were told again and again last week about how committed John Paul was to promoting a culture of life. I guess the 20 million people who have died from AIDS are the exception that proves the rule.

On the other hand, the pope's passing might have saved the political skin of one of his culture-of-life cohorts, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. If you have a series of looming ethics scandals about to come crashing down on your head, having the media focused 24/7 on something else is a very lucky break indeed. But, in the end, it's going to take a huge celebrity dying every three days for the next few months to keep The Hammer from going down.

The presence of DeLay at the pope's funeral in Rome, along with President Bush, the First Lady, Condoleezza Rice, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Bush Sr., was a stark reminder of our perverted priorities. The pope dies and it's Must Holy See TV; 1,547 American soldiers die in Iraq and President Bush and Laura have yet to attend a single one of their funerals. Not a single one. Maybe the president only goes to funerals of people whose death he wasn't involved in.

Reprinted without permission. Sorry Arianna, this time your article was too good NOT to post.

Fuck the Creationists

2005-03-19T06:11:00.000-05:00

On the Evolution vs Intelligent Design, an award for unintentional hilarity should go to:

Creation Science Fair: http://objective.jesussave.us/creationsciencefair.html

Some favorites: Middle School: 1st Place: "Life Doesn't Come From Non-Life" Middle School: "Rocks Can't Evolve, Where Did They Come From Mr. Darwin?" -Anna Reed (grade 6) Middle School: 2nd Place: "Women Were Designed For Homemaking" High School: "Young Earth, Old Lies" - Melvin Knuth & Glenna Reher (grade 11)

Well... we may as well throw the scientific method out the window now.

VIDEO: CARTOONS: ANIME: Oruchuban Ebichu

2005-03-15T19:50:00.000-05:00

Oh... My... God... I didn't think anime could be this twisted... And I've seen both a lot of anime, and a lot of twisted shows... But this one takes the take.... You see, my latest and greatest find had been the ADV dubs of Super Milk Chan (completely different from the shitty Cartoon Network version!).... But this... This is just outrageous.... Sex scenes and hampster violence.... Disturbing hampster violence... Followed by hampster cuteness and more sex.... Or a hampster in heat asking her owner if she can use her dildo... I could go on... The show is so absurdly unique and outrageous that, for the first time ever, I can honestly say I like a hamster anime (Note: Hamtaro sucks!). You can download the show using these torrents here using BitTorrent. (Everyone recommends Azureus for a bittorrent client.) If that link is dead, search for Oruchuban Ebichu torrents here.

RE: I'd like to hear the taped George Bush excerpts, though none of this surpris

2005-03-14T14:16:00.000-05:00

This is a not really all that related story that some of you might be interested in...

Where were these teachers when I was growing up!

This is the funniest line: "Teachers are supposed to help kids, they're not supposed to ruin their lives."

Substitute Arrested After Giving Students Pot

http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/news/030905_nw_substitute.html

Christopher Bochin is facing several charges. Perhaps the most shocking is he had students get pot out of his car and bring it back to the classroom at Fresno High to share.

The story of a teacher smoking pot with students is all over the campus. Students that Action News talked to are as surprised and shocked as their parents would be.

The young substitute teacher was hired to be teaching Earth Science. Gregg Sanders, from the Fresno Police Department, says 22-year-old Christopher Bochin smoked marijuana with at least ten of his students in a Fresno High classroom.

"What he did, he sent two students, apparently to his personal vehicle to retrieve his marijuana and a smoking pipe, " said Sanders. "When the two students returned, Mr. Bochin and approximately ten students smoked the marijuana in class."

There were other kids in the classroom who didn't join in.

School authorities learned about the pot party when a teacher confiscated a students cell phone and read a text message that was apparently sent by one of the students smoking pot.

Bochin was arrested at Fresno High. He's facing felony charges of providing marijuana to minors and misdemeanor charges of contributing to the delinquency of minors.

Students who talked to Action News had no sympathy for the substitute teacher.

"It's revolting. It's really disgusting."

"Teachers are supposed to help kids, they're not supposed to ruin their lives."

Police are still investigating the case and don't know if any of the students involved will face charges.

But, Susan Bedi, from Fresno Unified, says they are in trouble with the school district. "The students will be suspended parents have been contacted and there will be counseling. There might be some students that are recommended for expulsion."

Fresno Unified says Bochin has been a substitute since October.

He has been suspended by the district.

He posted bail and is now out of jail, but could face charges for each student he's accused of allowing to smoke pot.

Action News attempted to contact the substitute teacher, and were referred to his attorney.

He tells Action News that teacher Christopher Bochin is emotionally distraught. He adds they're looking to get him into a drug treatment program as soon as possible.

>From: __Clint__ >Reply-To: clint@acm.vt.edu >To: "Mom (Becky Prophet Lipinski)" , "Dad (Vic >Lipinski) (primary)" , "Brittany \"sister\" >Sweet" , And-How Current Events/Politics >Discussion List >CC: blognow >Subject: I'd like to hear the taped George Bush excerpts, though none of >this surprises me.... >Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 10:19:25 -0500 > >Years after candidate George Bush's non-answers to questions about his >possible drug past fueled controversy and a sense that he indeed had >such a past, proof for some of it at least has at last emerged. Taped >excerpts from a conversation, released by the author of a new book, >reveal the future president essentially admitting to past marijuana >use and explaining why he would never acknowledge it in public. > >On one level, the educated reaction to this news is something along >the lines of, "so what?" Tens of millions of Americans have used >marijuana during their lives. It wasn't a big deal for most of them. >Even the more dangerous drugs aren't a problem for most of their users >-- that's not the strongest argument for legalization of them, but >it's true. All the more so for marijuana. Bill Clinton used marijuana. >Al Gore used marijuana. It did not and should not have disqualified >them from the nation's top job. Nor does it disqualify George Bush. > >On other levels, however, the information is troubling, for two >reasons. One is that candidate Bush criticized his opponent, Al Gore, >not for having used marijuana but for having admitted to it. "I want >to lead," he explained, and "I don't want some little kid doing what I >tried." He couldn't criticize Gore for having used drugs because he >had also used drugs. So instead he criticized him for being open and >truthful. > >There is a level on which one could legitimately hold that it is >counterproductive for kids to be keenly focused on the drug use of >famous role models; this is an area on which reasonable people can >hold varying points of view. But the way to accomplish that would be >through legalization and treating private drug use as not a big deal. >And that is not what George Bush has advocated. > >Which leads us to the second reason, one of hard policy. As governor, >Mr. Bush escalated sentences for some drug offenses, putting other >people in prison for longer time periods for things that he himself >had done or supported. As president, under his authority the federal >government has targeted medical marijuana cooperatives, escalated the >war on pain doctors, campaigned against drug policy reform initiatives >or legislation, promoted drug testing and vastly overreaching drugged >driving laws, gone to court against any reform to drug policy that it >could no matter how modest. > >So if marijuana use in the distant past is not relevant to judging the >president, hypocrisy on the drug issue is very relevant. And if not >being open or candid about one's own youth is not exactly the same as >lying to children, it verges on that. Not to suggest that his >predecessor and failed opponents have stellar records on the issue by >any means; they most certainly don't. But they're not president right >now. > >So if it is unimportant that George Bush used marijuana, it is kind of >sad that he opposes honesty about it. And it is very sad that he >continues to support cruel and repressive drug policies -- policies >which could have ruined his life if they had been in place back then, >but realistically only in theory. > >I am glad, therefore, that now there is proof of George Bush's drug >use. If only by providing one more bit of rhetorical ammunition, it >will make it slightly harder for the drug warriors to continue to >escalate their pogrom against the American people. > >ARTICLE FROM: http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/376/theproof.shtml

I'd like to hear the taped George Bush excerpts, though none of this surprises me....

2005-03-14T10:45:00.000-05:00

Years after candidate George Bush's non-answers to questions about his possible drug past fueled controversy and a sense that he indeed had such a past, proof for some of it at least has at last emerged. Taped excerpts from a conversation, released by the author of a new book, reveal the future president essentially admitting to past marijuana use and explaining why he would never acknowledge it in public.

On one level, the educated reaction to this news is something along the lines of, "so what?" Tens of millions of Americans have used marijuana during their lives. It wasn't a big deal for most of them. Even the more dangerous drugs aren't a problem for most of their users -- that's not the strongest argument for legalization of them, but it's true. All the more so for marijuana. Bill Clinton used marijuana. Al Gore used marijuana. It did not and should not have disqualified them from the nation's top job. Nor does it disqualify George Bush.

On other levels, however, the information is troubling, for two reasons. One is that candidate Bush criticized his opponent, Al Gore, not for having used marijuana but for having admitted to it. "I want to lead," he explained, and "I don't want some little kid doing what I tried." He couldn't criticize Gore for having used drugs because he had also used drugs. So instead he criticized him for being open and truthful.

There is a level on which one could legitimately hold that it is counterproductive for kids to be keenly focused on the drug use of famous role models; this is an area on which reasonable people can hold varying points of view. But the way to accomplish that would be through legalization and treating private drug use as not a big deal. And that is not what George Bush has advocated.

Which leads us to the second reason, one of hard policy. As governor, Mr. Bush escalated sentences for some drug offenses, putting other people in prison for longer time periods for things that he himself had done or supported. As president, under his authority the federal government has targeted medical marijuana cooperatives, escalated the war on pain doctors, campaigned against drug policy reform initiatives or legislation, promoted drug testing and vastly overreaching drugged driving laws, gone to court against any reform to drug policy that it could no matter how modest.

So if marijuana use in the distant past is not relevant to judging the president, hypocrisy on the drug issue is very relevant. And if not being open or candid about one's own youth is not exactly the same as lying to children, it verges on that. Not to suggest that his predecessor and failed opponents have stellar records on the issue by any means; they most certainly don't. But they're not president right now.

So if it is unimportant that George Bush used marijuana, it is kind of sad that he opposes honesty about it. And it is very sad that he continues to support cruel and repressive drug policies -- policies which could have ruined his life if they had been in place back then, but realistically only in theory.

I am glad, therefore, that now there is proof of George Bush's drug use. If only by providing one more bit of rhetorical ammunition, it will make it slightly harder for the drug warriors to continue to escalate their pogrom against the American people.

ARTICLE FROM: http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/376/theproof.shtml

Attention Minimum Wage Losers

2005-03-13T04:42:00.000-05:00

If you're voting for Bush, you deserve whatever wage you get.

"Democrats sought minimum wage increases in three steps of 70 cents each, to $7.25. Republicans countered with raises in two steps of 55 cents apiece, to $6.25, as well as several pro-business provisions.

These include an option for employees to work up to 80 hours over two weeks without qualifying for overtime pay; a provision restricting the ability of states to raise the minimum wage for restaurant employees; and waiving wage and overtime rules for workers in some small businesses now covered."

Yes, not only do they want to not increase minimum wage, but they want to take away your overtime too. Not that this affects salaried workers. We're already slaves to our bosses's whims. We already get to work over 40 hrs without overtime.

But now, that slavery shall creep the ever-growing working class as well.

Thanks fucking Republicans. And thank you to the United fuckheads of America who voted for this shit.

Cherry Orchards

2005-03-03T09:01:00.000-05:00

so now Yoplait has named a yogurt after a Celtic Frost song... go figure.

WORKING: Job Satisfaction Down -- for EVERYONE

2005-03-03T01:31:00.000-05:00

http://www.conference-board.org/utilities/pressDetail.cfm?press_ID=2582

These people deserve to die.

2005-02-27T15:53:00.000-05:00

'Nuff said.

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n215/a02.html?5830

R.I.P. Hunter S. Thompson [20050220]

2005-02-26T16:54:00.000-05:00

Hunter S. Thompson, the creator of "gonzo" journalism and one of the most influential modern-day journalists in America, was found dead Sunday of a single self-inflicted gunshot wound; he was 67. Thompson's son, Juan, discovered the body at Thompson's home outside Aspen, CO, where the author lived with his wife, Anita, who was not home at the time. A self-styled rebel who lived hard and fast (it could be said he created the model for hard and fast living), Thompson helped pioneer the concept of New Journalism, in which a writer inserted himself into a story and relayed his experiences in the first person. Thompson's most notable achievement in this medium was 1972's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which detailed his drug-influenced escapades in the desert city; Johnny Depp later starred as Thompson's alter ego, Raoul Duke, in Terry Gilliam's 1998 film adaptation. Writing for Rolling Stone magazine, Thompson became a notorious counterculture figure in the early 70s, lambasting the Nixon administration and other politicians; he was also the model for Garry Trudeau's "Uncle Duke" character in the comic strip Doonesbury. Though he continued writing and living a hard-core lifestyle that would have been the undoing of men half his age, Thompson was always most well-known for Fear and Loathing as well as the film Where the Buffalo Roam, where the writer was portrayed by a young Bill Murray. Thompson is survived by his wife and son; no statement has been released as to whether the author left a suicide note. --Prepared by IMDb staff

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0860219/bio

COMEDY: Another Haiku, this time not so offensive

2005-02-19T22:44:00.000-05:00

"Put seeds in the ground.... Wait for the flowers to grow.... You suck at growing."

-By Clint, Carolyn, and Evan

2005-02-19T17:28:00.000-05:00

CAPITALISM: The Wal-Mart You Didn't Know

2005-02-19T15:10:00.000-05:00

The Wal-Mart You Didn't Know Good article. Very thought provoking. Shows the good and bad about Wal-Mart. I personally think, given this article, they are a bit evil. Not necessarily malevalent (which implies intent), but evil nonetheless. I do believe the needs of the many often outweigh the needs of the few (Thanks Spock), but is helping 1000 people get cheaper pickles worth a (loser) family losing its only income? What really scares me is how it seems to be a force that operates on its own. It's like a giant monster that consumes everything, even the soul of its own employees as they are forced to work harder to maintain an ever-increasing, leaner company that will never, ever be good enough (because there's always room to be even more efficient). Wal-Mart can't get no satisfaction. South Park really illustrated this "monsterism" well. You can get the episode here. It's a very funny episode and also illustrates how it is our own human nature that causes us to do things that aren't in our best interest. Thanks for the links Compn.

Bush and Vioxx?

2005-02-18T13:31:00.000-05:00

How about that Vioxx scandal? Official estimates that as many as 100,000-150,000 people unnecessary had heart attacks due to the risks that were never disclosed to the public. And of course, business interests pressure scientists to give results that are in the interest of the business, as a news item this week mentioned. How could the situation possibly be worse? I didn't think it was possible to make such a situation worse -- selling people poison that kills them, marketed as medicine. But now Bush has made it harder for class-action lawsuits against companies by passing a bill limiting such power. Of cousre Bush cowtows to big business. Expect many more needless deaths due to the corps hunger for power and profit.

Virginia Senator George Allen supports torture too...

2005-01-27T10:05:00.000-05:00

From: senator_allen@allen.senate.gov Dear James: Thank you for contacting me regarding President Bush's nomination of Alberto Gonzales to become the next Attorney General of the United States. I appreciate your concerns and value to opportunity to respond. I applaud President Bush's nomination of Alberto Gonzalez. He is the embodiment of the American dream, a man whose hard work, legal sense and intellect have already lifted him to some of the highest positions of trust in our nation. I look forward to his confirmation hearings and a fair vote before the U.S. Senate. I am confident that he will make an outstanding U.S. Attorney General. Once again, I appreciate you contacting me regarding this matter and hope you will not hesitate to contact me again about issues important to you. If you would like to receive an e-mail newsletter about my initiatives to improve America, please sign up on my website (http://allen.senate.gov). It is an honor to serve you in the United States Senate, and I look forward to working with you to make Virginia and America a better place to live, learn, work and raise a family. With warm regards, I remain Sincerely, Senator George Allen

MOVIE REVIEW: The Big One (1997) (Michael Moore)

2005-01-26T22:53:00.000-05:00

Just watched Michael Moore's 1997 movie "The Big One". Very interesting. I too am pissed off about corporate welfare and the fact that our tax monies get turned into free handouts for corporations, all the while many americans do not have any health care at all. The free money we give to corps that don't need it vastly outweighs the free money we give to people in the form of welfare and free medical aid. What the hell is wrong with us? Do we really worship the dollar so much nowadays that we can turn a blind complacent eye to the suffering around us? Does everyone really live in such an isolated media bubble that they think they are immune to the effects of the madness all around us? And I can't stand people who bash Michael Moore for knee-jerk reasons. I challenge anyone to watch the film and to take issue with anything he said at all. The only time he showed any mean-spiritedness is when he sicced the police on his "media escort" as a joke. And it was hilarious! He has always had an element of comedy in his work, and it helps keep things down to earth. Really, I think he could be another Jon Stewart (who I *don't* watch) if he just lost a few pounds. :) Regardless, for a fat ugly dude who failed English in 12th grade, he has made a bigger difference than whoever you are reading this blog right now. He gave $10,000 to the Flint school system in order to get the Nike CEO to match him. That's $10,000 more than *I* have given to charity. People who bash him are hippocrites when they themselves have done little to better the world around them. I haven't done my part either, but I'm not going to go bash someone who is actually positive for a change. Interesting was that he sent 4 politicians (Clinton, Perot, Buchanan, and Bush I think) 4 $100 checks from made-up groups, to see if politicians really will take money from anyone. Buchanan cashed his first, from "Abortionists For Buchanan". Perot cashed his from "Pedophiles For Free Trade" and even sent back a thank you note saying "Thanks" and mentioning that he was thanking pedophiles. Automated, but funny nonetheless. These symbolic acts are viewed as harassment by naysayers, but are incredibly symbolic of the fucked up state things are currently in. People who miss the symbolism are over-simplifying things. I pity them. Anyway -- this is not his best work, and has a very "camcorder" feel to it, very homey, very down to earth. I would still recommend someone not experienced with Moore's work to start out by renting Season 1 of "The Awful Truth" from Netflix. He saves a life in the first episode. Someday, *I* would like to be able to save a life. Most people who are lucky enough to save a life do so only in a life-or-death situation, and only physically (i.e. pull someone out of a burning building, perform CPR). Moore did it for a non-life-and-death situation via media pressure (cancer is not *immediate* like being on fire, so it's much more easy for an HMO to turn the other way and ignore you til you die). Either way, it was fucking brilliant that he could get a corporation to save a life by -- gasp -- actually spending MORE money (no pun intended). That's more than you and I can do. Quit knocking him for being a liberal fatty. Remember, he bashed Clinton a-plenty too. Or do you not remember due to self-imposed doublethink?

In case anyone doesn't think fascism is rapidly creeping up on us... Boy arrested for stick-figure drawing...

2005-01-26T09:14:00.000-05:00

Does anyone else read this and view this as anything BUT an abuse of authority? When I was a child I made all kinds of messed up drawings. I'm sure some of you have read my dirty haikus. Were they felonies? I talked about other students being dead. Maybe the police should have draggedme away in handcuffs? Article below. I am fucking outraged: Boys arrested for stick figure drawings [cnn.com] Wednesday, January 26, 2005 Posted: 7:29 AM EST (1229 GMT) OCALA, Florida (AP) -- Two boys were arrested for making pencil-and-crayon stick figure drawings depicting a 10-year-old classmate being stabbed and hung, police said. The children, charged with a felony, were taken from school in handcuffs. The 9- and 10-year-old boys were arrested Monday and charged with making a written threat to kill or harm another person. They were also suspended from school. One drawing showed the two boys standing on either side of the other boy and "holding knives pointed through" his body, according to a police report. The figures were identified by written names or initials. Another drawing showed a stick figure hanging, tears falling from his eyes, with two other stick figures standing below him. Other pieces of scrap paper listed misspelled profanities and the initials of the boy who was allegedly threatened. The boys' parents said they thought the children should be punished by the school and families, not the legal system.

RECREATION: CAMPING: Mosquito advice.

2005-01-25T14:56:00.000-05:00

Helpful camping hint: I hear "Avon Skin-So-Soft" brand soap helps prevent mosquito bites while camping. Some groups of park rangers are using it. While not specifically designed to repel mosquitos, new science is currently coming out that mosquitos are attracted to an order ALL of us emit; only some of us mask it. Apparantly, this soap masks it as well.

PETITION: CHEAPER TEXTBOOKS: http://action.virginia21.org/petition/

2005-01-25T14:23:00.000-05:00

See article below and sign the petition at: http://action.virginia21.org/petition/ I myself have personally been effected by high-priced textbooks. Spending $100 on a book that is a "new edition" (via the change of 10 or so pages of content) while never realizing the "old edition" would be good enough to learn the concepts at hand. As a student, I spent many Ramen-noodle meals on overpriced textbooks! Article: Va. public-school students would have more options under legislator's plan BY GARY ROBERTSON TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Del. G. Glenn Oder, R-Newport News, says one of his daughters, a junior political-science major at the College of William and Mary, recently spent $600 on books. And a woman who was taking an evening education course told him she had spent $94 for a textbook. At the end of the class, she had to tear pages out of the book to take a test -- which meant the book couldn't be resold, Oder said. Those are some of the reasons that Oder is sponsoring what is being called the Textbook Market Fairness Act. "This is a step toward halting the rapid rise of textbook prices," Oder said, noting that students will be able to "level the playing field" by being able to buy books without going through the college bookstore. He said a free and fair market for textbooks does not exist. [So true! -Clint] His proposal, now in the House Education Committee, seeks to prohibit publishers from giving inducements to public-college professors or other employees for requiring students to purchase specific textbooks. It also would require colleges to post assigned textbooks on their Web sites as soon as professors decide on them, so students could search elsewhere for books. "I would expect that students could save as much as 20 to 40 percent," Oder said. He said a companion study would seek to investigate the entire system of college textbooks sales. Oder credited Virginia21, a group that seeks to mobilize those in the 18-24 age group on nonpartisan issues, for pressing for reform in textbook sales. Sumeet Bagai, Virginia Tech's student-body president, said, "As any student or parent with a child in college knows, the price of textbooks has gotten out of control." He said more than 3,000 students at public colleges throughout the state have already signed the Petition for Textbook Fairness. Oder said he expects the number of online signatures for the petition in support of his bill to multiply as students become aware of the petition. A ranking spokesman for the Association of American Publishers was at yesterday's news conference announcing the textbook initiative, to offer his industry's perspective. "Publishers do not overcharge for textbooks," said J. Bruce Hildebrand, executive director for higher education for the publishers association. "The significant, upfront investment for a textbook must be spread over a small, niche market," he said. [Typical excrement from a corporate fatcat. -CL.] Contact Gary Robertson at (804) 649-6346 or grobertson@timesdispatch.com.

Yay! We finally have heat!

2005-01-21T12:19:00.000-05:00

After 3 (or 4?) very hard winters, we finally have heat in our house again! (3-ton capacity heat pump in our attic, underutilized until the rest of our addition is built so it can only get the house up to about 67 degrees.) I'm very happy! Went barefoot and everything.

I cannot yet describe how this makes me feel. Planting seeds is illegal??

2005-01-18T17:07:00.000-05:00

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/14/2254236&tid=191&tid=123 Friar_MJK writes "Now even traditionally non-tech-savvy farmers are getting the rap for piracy. This isn't your grandma's p2p filesharing, but rather replanting bio-engineered seeds. Somehow the powers-that-be got the idea that replanting seeds grown from your own soil is a crime. A company called Monsanto sells those specially engineered seeds, and according to their license agreements, they make it illegal to replant the seeds harvested from a previous crop. To enforce this, they have brought many hard-working farmers to court and even thrown some in jail. According to the story, the company has not lost a case yet." This totally reeks. JoeBuck writes: "...There's a problem with this. He was doing what plant breeders have been doing for ten thousand years: noticing which plants have a desirable property and saving the seeds from those. Monsanto is basically arguing for the end of agriculture as it was traditionally carried out, and certainly the end of subsistence agriculture (as their seeds, if they have a property that lets them out-compete other seeds, will spread everywhere). You'll either pay Monsanto or you won't eat." Do people out there really not see how the corporations are attempting to close in on and control most aspects of our lives? Capitalism is our own worst enemy when allowed to grow unchecked. Although I am a Libertarian, this is exactly why government must indeed stay somewhat involved in things. Of course, you could argue that government involvement is what created this: We never should have allowed lifeforms to be patented. I was against this from Biological Patent #1. Hate to say I told you so...

Why Unix Still Sucks In Many Ways

2005-01-18T14:43:00.000-05:00

I thought it was funny to run into "The Linux Incompatibility List" (http://www.leenooks.com/). It lists hardware not compatible with Linux. I am sure it is by no means a complete list, but let's check it out and see if I have ever used anything that is not compatible with linux... Soundcards: Guillemot Maxi Studio (i had to get this when it came out because it was the first consumer card I was aware of that had RCA *inputs* for excellent audio capture quality when doing video capture) Webcam: Creative Webcam Go (fortunately, it is a piece of crap anyway, but we still used this one for years... under windows) Webcam: VEO Stingray. (This is our current webcam brand, dunno if the model is the same.) Video cards: ATI Radeon 9550, 9800, 9800 Pro, 9800SE, and 9800XT on x86_64: ATI's Radeon driver doesn't work at all with 64 bit Linux Kernels. OUCH! I consider an ATI card (with s-video tv-out) to be the foundation of a good system. TV-OUT on other brand cards does NOT live up to ATI quality. I have used an ATI AIW, ATI AIW Pro, ATI Radeon, Radeon 8500, Radeon 9700, and Radeon X600. Their drivers for windows suck which explains why their drivers for Linux suck even more. Video cards: ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder: No TV Tuner. (Good thing I used my VCR--and windows--for tv tuning!) So, it looks like I have been using at least 1 piece of incompatible hardware in at least 1 computer since 1995 (when I got my first ATI All-In-Wonder). Not to mention that Redhat 6.2 doens't support Soundblaster for Quake3. Let's face it boys... Linux isn't ready for the common man yet. Computers are supposed to be Swiss Army Knives that can adopt, adapt, and improve with the situation. Linux is anything but. They adopt new hardware slower than unix which means if you want to stay on the cutting edge of capability you have no choice but to use Windows! That being said, I vastly prefer any webserver or email server to be running Unix. (Though, mine run under Win2K.)

One more thing: No WMDs found.

2005-01-18T14:08:00.000-05:00

Ain't it interesting that the announcement that we are giving up in the search for WMDs came out just this week? They couldn't possibly come out BEFORE the election, no. We've been searching for what, two-ish years now? And we could have kept on searching for years more. But no, we choose to stop at this exact time: Right after one election, but as far as possible from the Senate election of 2006........ Do you really think that is a coincidence? I think it's naive to think so.

Forced blood tests allowed to stand

2005-01-18T13:56:00.000-05:00

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/01/18/scotus.drinking.tests.ap/index.html It's so nice to know we are not in control of our own bodily fluids. Cop wants your blood? You're gonna bleed, baby. Whether you like it or not. I love how zealous everyone is over prosecuting drunk drivers. If every american had their blood forcibly extracted from them, we'd see some major backlash, but since this is for drunk drivers, everyone will complacently look the other way. The thing is, in America, you are innocent until proven guilty, and you are supposed to need a warrant for searches! And how this doesn't violate the spirit of the 4th Amendment amazes me. My blood can testify against me far better than my mouth! But because my blood doesn't literally put its hand on a bible and swear itself in at court, it's not really considered testimony, so it's not really considered forced self-testimony. Now our blood is "evidence". What will be evidence next, our brains and hearts? Will they forcibly extract our lungs to see if we've been smoking crack? After all, crack-laced lungs would be valid evidence. I'm all for punishing drunk drivers who abuse their position as a driver. Unfortunately though, specific quantitative measures like BAC do not uniformly apply across the board. There are people who drive better drunk than certain people drive sober. I've chosen a drunk driver over a sober driver in situations where I know the drunk driver is still going to perform better. (A drunk-but-sane driver is generally safer than a sober-asshole-driver.) I'm not defending them here, but the idea is that police need to test your blood THAT VERY SECOND, before the measured BAC level goes down. Now, either a crime was comitted or it was not. If no real crime was comitted, they can give them a DUI, but only if it measures over the threshold. This attempt to bypass warrants and get results sooner is an attempt to make everyone's measurements higher (due to eliminating the delay). It is actually a de-facto way of lowering the legal BAC level without actually doing so. Those crazy "activist legislators"... Always willing to take away OUR freedoms if it helps THEIR numbers.

Firefox still not up to IE standards.

2005-01-16T17:54:00.000-05:00

I hate to say it, but Mozille Firefox isn't as good at rendering pages as IE is. And that's the main point for what a web browser is supposed to do. Oh, it's superior in many ways, like security purposes and such. And Gmail seems to run a lot faster in Firefox than in IE. Too bad in only 1 day of using Firefox I have already managed to find another situation where IE works right and Firefox does not. (The first situation was reading slashdot: I have trouble grabbing window edges so I always make my edges 5px thick instead of the standard 1px thick. Firefox incorrectly counted the thick border as the edge of my window, which made CSS position definitions 5px off, which meant that when I read Slashdot.org, the grey sidebar overlapped with the news articles. Yucky.) This situation is a crying shame, because IE is annoying me currently by trying to re-install a critical piece of Office XP that I removed. Yet, I still will be forced to use it because IT WORKS. What a shame. The background is: I have a script called "image-index" which generates a temporary HTML file that contains all the images in the current directory. I've been using this for various image management purposes for a good 6 or 7 years. The script has suited me fine, but now I have to update it to work with Firefox. Or specifically make it use IE instead of the default browser (My default browser is Firefox currently). When a program is supposed to assist me, but instead makes me to work, then it is having the oppositte effect. It's wasting my time instead of saving it. How hard is it to parse this HTML (Firefox=Wrong, IE=Right):

img href="c:\a.jpg"

In my head, I know what is. "Show the image at c:\a.jpg." I can render it in my HEAD! And what does Firefox do? It shows the word "a.jpg". IE shows the image. The quibbletrons will doubtlessly inform me that backslashes are not valid HTML for indexing a file. And yet, that IS the filename, I am using this on a local machine, and IE is smart enough to realize that I MIGHT BE USING FORWARD SLASHES. I am not a heathen for using a backslash in HTML This is a local file on a local machine. No webservers are involved. Addressing is absolute, not relative. Yet Firefox is too lazy to even bother looking to see if that file really exists. Most people will miss the point of this posting entirely. But my point is thus: Computers must serve us, not the other way around, and they must DO WHAT WE MEAN, even when we break the rules a little bit. Strict adherence to all standards merely thwarts things from becoming mainstream by restricting the group that can properly use them to an elitist group of ubergeeks. Things need to work and they need to work as the user intended, even if the user is an asshole like me.

The computer geeks will disagree because they want strict adherence to standards so that things can be uniform. But look at Unix? It's the least uniform OS there is. 32 flavors at some points in time? Even Windows does not have those many flavors, and Windows has much greater interoperability between versions than unix does. (We sure as hell never need to recompile our kernel, or consider what window manager we are using before compiling something.) HTML is another language like English. Sometimes things, like the word "ain't", are not syntactically valid, but they become de facto valid nonetheless. Imagine having a conversation with someone who refused to acknolwedge what you said, simply because you used a word that was not in the dictionary, like "Ain't". That's what my conversation with Mozilla Firefox was like today. Time to edit my image-index script I guess...

Mandate My Ass

2005-01-14T05:58:00.000-05:00

"Fifty percent of Americans believe the invasion of Iraq was a mistake, and 59 percent say the war there is going badly for the United States, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll released Monday. Fifty-six percent said they disapproved of President Bush's handling of the war." Yeah... We gave Bush a real clear mandate. (This is sarcasm.)

Unix vs Windows, round 1000: Why is installing so damn hard?

2005-01-12T22:49:00.000-05:00

This came from an anonymous slashdot comment. I didn't write it: I wish there was a way to install programs common accross all versions of linux. Linux zealots are now saying "oh installing is so easy, just do apt-get install package or emerge package": Yes, because typing in "apt-get" or "emerge" makes so much more sense to new users than double-clicking an icon that says "setup". Linux zealots are far too forgiving when judging the difficultly of Linux configuration issues and far too harsh when judging the difficulty of Windows configuration issues. Example comments: User: "How do I get Quake 3 to run in Linux?" Zealot: "Oh that's easy! If you have Redhat, you have to download quake_3_rh_8_i686_010203_glibc.bin, then do chmod +x on the file. Then you have to su to root, make sure you type export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5 but ONLY if you have that latest libc6 installed. If you don't, don't set that environment variable or the installer will dump core. Before you run the installer, make sure you have the GL drivers for X installed. Get them at [some obscure web address], chmod +x the binary, then run it, but make sure you have at least 10MB free in /tmp or the installer will dump core. After the installer is done, edit /etc/X11/XF86Config and add a section called "GL" and put "driver nv" in it. Make sure you have the latest version of X and Linux kernel 2.6 or else X will segfault when you start. OK, run the Quake 3 installer and make sure you set the proper group and setuid permissions on quake3.bin. If you want sound, look here [link to another obscure web site], which is a short HOWTO on how to get sound in Quake 3. That's all there is to it!" User: "How do I get Quake 3 to run in Windows?" Zealot: "Oh God, I had to install Quake 3 in Windoze for some lamer friend of mine! God, what a fucking mess! I put in the CD and it took about 3 minutes to copy everything, and then I had to reboot the fucking computer! Jesus Christ! What a retarded operating system!" So, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that what seems easy and natural to Linux geeks is definitely not what regular people consider easy and natural. Hence, the preference towards Windows.

oh fuck... i'm dead

2005-01-12T17:49:00.000-05:00

Clint's Dead: http://www.sciscoop.com/story/2005/1/6/61521/08655

More Police Bullshit

2005-01-07T11:55:00.000-05:00

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/01/07/force.allegation.ap/index.html Leon Nins said officer Michael Lee also beat him after he took too long to stop his car. Police deny that and say Nins attacked Lee. Nins, a World War II veteran who stands about 5-feet-7 and weighs 145 pounds, said to him, "I'd have seen you, I would have stopped....he started beating me on the leg and on the side of the arm. He pushed me down on the floor, and he was slamming the door on my legs." This 85 year old was jailed for 2 days. The cop used pepper spray on him "to subdue Nins, but only after Nins refused to produce identification and began flailing at the officer." WHAT A FUCKING PUSSY. Are we to believe a police offer needs a weapon to subdue an 85 year old [black] man? Is this anything any officer should be proud of? Can he even call himself a man? Speaking as someone who's had an officer point a gun at me when he really shouldn't, who's had officers lie in court against my friends, who's seen officers brutalize an intoxicated 16-year-old minor, this is just one more bullshit event by bullshit police, who have the right to walk all over citizens without any fucking recourse whatsoever. This is just another story to throw on the pile of other stories about police shootings and abuse -- where they always get away with it. Police are expendable. They are trained thugs issued weapons and training. Their duty is to use force, much like a soldier of the Army. We are more than willing to send thousands of soliders to their death, yet when an officer's life is threatened, he can shoot people in the back, pepper spray an 85-year-old, and totally get away with it. It fucking reeks, people, and you should be mad as hell. Violently mad. Recall the police officer investingating a New York marijuana case. He searched a woman's apartment. She was pregnant and asleep. He prodded her in the back with his gun, accidentally firing and killing her. HE FUCKING GOT AWAY WITH IT. Why? She had sandwich baggies in her kitchen. Seriously. Fucking weak.

"The only reason you are alive is because someone else chose to let you." -KMFDM Be scared. Be very scared.

Do Liberals Really Hate State Rights?

2005-01-07T11:08:00.000-05:00

I read an article called "The New Blue Federalists".

It implied liberals do not like state rights, and that they should. (Yes, everybody should.) Is this really true?

Are there really liberals against state rights out there?!? My friend Evan Goldstein says:

It started during the depression/new deal when the courts started interpreting the commerce clause so expansively that today it has no meaning (the commerce clause gives the fed govt the right to regulate commerce between the states - it is the clause by which 99% of fed power flows from today - because today, all the govt has to do is claim their policy is related to interstate commerce - no matter how hypothetical, tangential, or epherial the relationship really is. ) Then, the death knell for federalism came when the south asserted states rights as a means to continue to enforce segregation/jim crow. Thanks to the red states, the govt had to become the goliath it is today in order to preserve basic human rights throughout the nation. Fuck the south - they ruined it for everyone.

Offensive Haikus I Made When I Was 14 In 1988

2005-01-04T22:16:00.000-05:00

(These came from a boring, hour-long bus ride to a school I now live near)

These are posted on my webpage (http://www.acm.vt.edu/~clint/haiku.htm). I've actually had random people email me to tell me that I am evil and the reason for the destruction of the moral fiber of the country. These people apparantly have less so-called "moral fiber" than myself, since I support free speech and they obviously don't. Plus, people without sense of humor should be killed painfully. (And probably didn't realize that last sentence was a joke either .)

These are the product of teenage angst, pent-up agression, and other ninth-grader difficulties, and do not necessarily reflect my current mindset. I wrote these in 1988 when I was 14. Keep that in mind.

Without any further hesitation, here are the "masterpieces":

I saw a sad dog On the roadside sleeping sound. I kicked the fucker.

Suicidal boy Stabbing himself with a knife. You burn forever.

See all the dead bops Their naked [or dead] bodies glist'ning Necrophilia.

I hope you enjoyed these. I made about 20 during that busride, but I forgot most of them.

Maybe some day I'll find them and post them here. :)

Thanks to Brent Ingrebretsen for helping me remember the "bop" one.

(Since 1/24/1997, 2572 read the webpage version of this.)

Marriage? A worst-case scenario?

2005-01-04T16:21:00.000-05:00

http://www.dontmarry.com I agree with much of what this says, although the author's tone could use improvement. I think this page is a worst-case scenario that almost everyone should read at least once. Again: I agree with much of what this page says, but absolutely do not think it is a reflection of my relationship with Carolyn in any way whatsoever. And I'm not just saying that because she's on this blog.

Another good cartoon down the drain: Father Of The Pride is cancelled!

2004-12-28T21:17:00.000-05:00

NBC Has No More 'Pride' (imdb.com) ''''During a week of low TV viewing, NBC has decided to blow off three unaired episodes of its animated flop Father of the Pride tonight (Tuesday). (All other network shows airing tonight are reruns.) "The network is hoping to lull you into suspended animation," the Boston Globe quipped. Commented the New York Daily News: "Clearly, the network is looking forward to the day when it has no Pride left. Memo to NBC: With a schedule that includes this show and the likes of The Biggest Loser, you're already there."'''' Typical NBC SUCKAGE! They killed God The Devil & Bob [which finished in Europe, I downlaoded the remaining episodes 2 years later when they finally turned up]. They killed Stressed Eric [which went on to Season 2 in Europe]. Now they've killed Father Of The Pride. They just wont keep an animated show on long enough. They don't understand that cartoons take longer to catch on. Fuck them! And fuck SpikeTV for doing the same thing with a WHOLE FUCKING LINEUP of great cartoons that rivaled adultswim. Looks like Cartoon Network is the only safe haven for cartoon shows. Fox's saturday morning lineup of 1995 is shitty in comparison today. Most other networks don't have cartoons anymore. EVERY network-primetime-cartoon has been killed prematurely -- except King Of The Hill and Simpsons (And this from the network that killed Futurama and Family Guy). If all you adult cartoon watchers out there weren't so incredibly fickle and picky, we'd have more to choose from.

How To Stop Those Credit Card Offers From Coming In The Mail

2004-12-28T18:54:00.000-05:00

https://www.optoutprescreen.com/ I also used http://www.junkbusters.com in the past to eliminate most of my direct marketing postal junk mail. (But the best solution was to not answer mail for 3 months. The companies think you died and stop sending you junk.)

Integrated Browsers Are Not Automatically Evil

2004-12-28T10:43:00.000-05:00

> i would love to not install 90% of the "features" winXP comes with: > i.e. IE (i don't want a damn integrated browser!), windows media player, > and tons of other crap. I still don't understand why an integrated browser should or could ever be considered a bad thing. Doesn't unix come with Lynx? Ohh noo!!! Same thing, right? If not, explain why. Is IE bad simply because it does a better job than Lynx? Both unix and microsoft are OSes that have browsers out of the box. One is better (IE). Both are conceptually the same thing, a way to do what people want to do when they get their computer. Once upon a time I was content with Lynx and it had most of the "browser market share". Or is IE bad because microsoft is an evil empire with evil practices? So I guess IE would be okay if it came with Unix/Linux then? My point being: Business practices have zero to do with functionality. If you don't agree with their business practices, don't do business with them. I don't give Microsoft money. Here is an undeniable fact: People buy computers to do stuff. People don't want to build things from the ground up. People want stuff that works. Each year, computers do more than they did the last, and this trend should continue unabated. Furthermore, surfing the web is the ONLY reason many people have a computer. How can someone buying their first computer GET to the web if they don't have a browser? How do they download that critical security update? (And don't say Unix/Linux never has security updates.) I downloaded my first windows web browser (Netscape 2.x or 3.x) with Lynx, a web browser that is, oh no!, **integrated into unix**. I could not have done so without an integrated browser (Lynx), and sure as hell would not have compiled Lynx myself. I would have waited for something better to come along or found something else to do. Only the truest zealouts could ever suggest that REMOVING basic functionality from ANY os could ever be viewed as a positive thing. P.S. Be that as it may, it would be nice to be able to remove IE after the fact, but alternatives exist regardless. You can use Windows and never use IE (assuming you somehow got the firefox installer on your harddrive, which would require getting it somehow, PROBABLY WITH AN INTEGRATED BROWSER ON SOMEONE ELSE'S MACHINE... regardless, burning a cd with an installer file on it is beyond the capability of most n00bs.)

Best Subject for a Spam Email.

2004-12-27T21:31:00.000-05:00

I got a piece of spam today. The subject is: "Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You have got to set your self on fire for it." Words to live by, indeed.

Avoid using the new Napster service. IT REEKS.

2004-12-21T04:00:00.000-05:00

Dear Napster: Here is why I am cancelling my one month free trial. Let's review: 1) Tracks claimed to be 12 minutes are really 30 seconds. That means an overpayment by a factor of 24. 2) Paypal partnership encourages customers to use paypal instead of their credit card, thereby removing customer fraud protection becuase paypal does not cover immaterial goods. 3) Your email support is non-support. You waited 10 days to answer me. 4) Your email support is impotent: You simply told me to call on the phone. I had to wait 10+ days for that wonderful email advice. 5) Your phone support was slow. It took me 15 minutes to get my issue resolved. 13 of those minutes were being on hold. The hold music was the worst music I've ever heard in my life. 6) I found out I would have been charged monthly if i didn't cancel my service. I NEVER AGREED TO THAT. I DID NOT KNOW ABOUT THAT. THE ONLY WAY I FOUND THAT OUT IS IN THE HOLD MESSAGE WHEN I CALLED TO COMPLAIN. I don't do business with those that charge me without permission. You are the weakest music provider. Good-bye.

Iraqi Electrical Grid was restored in 3 months by Saddam in 1991

2004-12-16T09:06:00.000-05:00

"Iraqis like to point out that after the 1991 war, Saddam restored the badly destroyed electric grid in only three months. Some six months after Bush declared an end to major hostilities, a much more ambitious and costly American effort has yet to get to that point." This quote is from October 2003, but remains true today.

A.I. was a good movie. Fuck you all.

2004-12-15T14:19:00.000-05:00

This is a random posting of mine on slashdot, defending the ending of the movie A.I. after seeing people talk about "that stupid alien shit at the end, the movie should have ended sooner". ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It was plainly fucking obvious that those "aliens" were not aliens, but evolved robots. HELLOOO?!? Barren wasteland? No humans left? This is obviously the future. HELLOOO?!? The movie was about a new trend in creating intelligent robots. Maybe these robots continued on after the humans died?! Maybe that's slightly more plausible than fucking aliens! Idiots. I never saw it in the theatre, but my mom was completely appalled at how everyone thought they were aliens at the end. We are both extremely unimpressed with the ambient stupidity. But I thought slashdot readers were smarter than that. Finally, A.I. was an excellent fucking movie, and is totally underrated. It was not a sci-fi movie so much as a sci-fi fairy tale. It started out a bit more "normal" but became much more "fairy-tale like" by the end. I think the only mistake was not making it more obvious, sooner and up front, that this was a (almost prototypical) fairy tale and not a hollywood "blockbuster" like Independence Day. The extra ending made the movie much more sad, more poignant (though I can't spell the word), and more rememberable. Sure they could have ended it with him sunk in the ocean. But even sadder than that is to let the viewer know that yes, he sat in the ocean for no less than 1000 yrs. Even sadder than that is the fact that he is discovered and eventually "re-integrated" back into a "society", but that his fellow beings have evolved so much that he doesn't really belong (and never can). Even sadder *than that* is that they can recreate his mother, but only for one day. Even sadder *than that* is knowing that after 1000 years, he finally found his happiness, only to have it taken away within 24 hours. That is fucking tragic, and it appears it was lost on everyone but me. In other more recent news, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind was a DAMN GOOD movie. Much better than A.I. could ever hope to be. Of course, I like Pink Flamingos. And my favorite movie is Brazil. So take my opinion with a grain of salt.

A good quote to describe America.

2004-12-14T13:21:00.000-05:00

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money (generous gifts) from the public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship." "The average age of the world's greatest civilization has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence. From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependence back into bondage." [Currently I consider america somewhere between complacency, apathy, and dependency, depending on who you are and, very generally, how old you are.]

A Situationist Quote

2004-12-14T11:02:00.000-05:00

This is a good quote I just added to my email signature: "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" For more info, go to http://www.wikipedia.com and look up "situationism".

Rumsfeld Lies about everything -- Even about the availablity of HumVee armor

2004-12-09T15:09:00.000-05:00

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=a4YojZM1phgM&refer=news_index He told the soldiers at that town-hall style meeting that it was a matter of physics, no expense was being spared on upgrading the armor on their vehicles. Turns out, that statement was "inoperative". The company who supplies the vehicles says they could upgrade their production run 20% or more per month no problem, just send them the order to do so... Lying is absolutly the first instinct with these guys. ----------------------- Armor Holdings Could Boost Humvee Armor Output 22% Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Armor Holdings Inc., the sole supplier of protective plates for the Humvee military vehicles used in Iraq, said it could increase output by as much as 22 percent per month with no investment and is awaiting an order from the Army. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday the Army was working as fast as it can and supply is dictated by ``a matter of physics, not a matter of money.'' A Pentagon spokeswoman declined comment. Jacksonville, Florida-based Armor Holdings last month told the Army it could add armor to as many as 550 of the trucks a month, up from 450 vehicles now, Robert Mecredy, president of the company's aerospace and defense group, said in an interview today. ``We're prepared to build 50 to 100 vehicles more per month,'' Mecredy said in the telephone interview. ``I've told the customer that and I stand ready to do that.'' Insurgent attacks on the vehicles with homemade bombs and rocket-propelled grenades account for as much as half of the more than 1,000 U.S. deaths and 9,000 U.S. wounded in Iraq, and have fueled criticism by members of Congress such as Representative Ellen Tauscher, a California Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, that the Pentagon didn't adequately equip U.S. troops. Tesia William, a spokeswoman for the Army Materiel Command, which handles the armored Humvee program, had no immediate comment on the status of orders. `Best Possible Equipment' President George W. Bush said concerns raised by soldiers in questions to Rumsfeld yesterday in Kuwait are being addressed,'' Bush said in response to a reporter's question. ``We expect our troops to have the best possible equipment. If I were a soldier overseas wanting to defend my country I'd want to ask the Secretary of Defense the same question, and that is are we getting the best'' equipment, he said. ``They deserve the best.'' U.S. troops preparing for deployment to Iraq told Rumsfeld yesterday in Kuwait that they are salvaging armor from landfills to install ``hillbilly armor'' on their Humvees. Rumsfeld replied that ``you have to go to war with the Army you have.'' Senator Chris Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, called Rumsfeld's remarks ``unacceptable'' in a letter sent to the secretary. ``Our troops go to war with the Army that our nation's leaders provide,'' Dodd wrote. ``Our military should spare no expense to ensure the safety of our troops, particularly as they confront a hostile insurgency and roadside bombs throughout Iraq.'' Higher Output Armor Holdings has already boosted output from 60 vehicles per month a year ago, said Mecredy, 58. As a result of the increased output, Armor Holdings has cut the price for the armor its supplies for the trucks to $58,000 per vehicle, from $72,000 per vehicle a year ago, Mecredy said. Shares of Armor Holdings rose $1.82, or 4.5 percent in New York Stock Exchange composite trading at 12:37 p.m. When he was asked about current production yesterday, Rumsfeld said he wasn't sure of the exact figure. ``It's something like 400 a month are being done,'' he said. ``It's a matter of production and capability of doing it,'' Rumsfeld, 72, said. Making the armor has to be coordinated with output of the actual trucks by AM General LLC of South Bend, Indiana, Mecredy said. AM General spokesman Lee Woodward also said that truck output could also be increased. `Not Close to Capacity' ``If they ordered more trucks, we'd build more trucks,'' Woodward said. ``We're not close to capacity. It might take some time to ramp up but we can do it.'' Woodward declined to provide exact details on production capacity. The main reason there isn't enough armor is because the military has underestimated its own needs, said Meghan Keck, spokeswoman for Senator Evan Bayh, an Indiana Democrat. Bayh wrote a letter to Rumsfeld in October calling for a more accurate estimate of Humvee needs. ``If the Army would be up front about the number of Humvees needed, the companies would be able to set their production accordingly to meet the need,'' Keck said in a phone interview. At Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, Capt. George Petropoulos came up with a design for armor cut from steel plates bought locally or imported and welded on to Humvees. ``If an improvised explosive device hits the armored Humvee, it ``would destroy the vehicle but save a life,'' said Petropoulos, a 32-year-old reservist from Milwaukee, who commands the 172 Transportation Co., in an interview at Navistar, a staging area for convoys to Iraq. To contact the reporter on this story: Edmond Lococo in Boston at elococo@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Rob Urban at robprag@bloomberg.net. Special thanks to David Milstein for forwarding me the article.

HELP WIN the WAR OF IDEAS: Vote for Fahrenheit 9/11 for THE PEOPLE'S CHOICE awards.

2004-12-09T14:28:00.000-05:00

Plus, you get to vote for all the other categories too! http://www.pcavote.com/voting/film/f01.shtml ----- Fahrenheit 911 has been nominated for a People's Choice award, but Bill O'Reilly [who I don't actually mind when he agrees with me -Clint] and others have already got their big guns out trying to say anything to spin their "war of ideas" their way. Here's our chance to show our support as Americans -- not liberals, not blue or red staters, not "morally corrupt" Saddam apologists, but as Americans -- for this great film. See Michael Moore's letter below for how to vote for the People's Choice. December 8, 2004 Dear Friends, May I take a break from our post-election despair to share with you a little piece of happy/silly/cool news? "Fahrenheit 9/11" has been nominated by the People's Choice Awards as the American public's "Favorite Film of the Year." The five nominees were chosen from a poll of thousands of Americans in mid-to-late November. The other nominees for best film are "Spiderman 2," "The Incredibles," "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (with Jim Carrey), and "Shrek 2." It is the first time ever a documentary has been nominated for best film by the People's Choice Awards. The People's Choice Awards are considered, among all the awards shows, to be the one which most accurately reflects the "mainstream" public opinion in the United States. OK, now, here's the best part: YOU get to vote! Online. Now. Just go to http://www.pcavote.com/voting/film/f01.shtml, click on the little circle next to "Fahrenheit 9/11" in the "Favorite Movie" category and press the "vote" button. Voting is going on now and continues only through this coming Monday, December 13, at 3:00pm ET, so send an e-mail to your friends and let them know they can vote, too. Winners will accept their awards live on CBS on January 9. Now, normally I wouldn't make a very big deal out of something like this. It's nice and I'm honored, but it's not exactly the number one priority on any of our minds these days. In fact, when we found out we were nominated over a week ago, I didn't even think to tell you about it or put it up on our website. But then a group of top Republicans took out a full page ad in USA Today (and placed a similar one in the Hollywood trade magazine, Variety) proclaiming that "An election is over, but a war of ideas continues." The point of the ad was to say that while they, as right wing conservatives, were proud of getting rid of Kerry, there was still one more nuisance running around loose they had to deal with -- me! They also issued a not-so-subtle threat to the Academy Awards voters that, in essence, said don't even THINK about nominating "Fahrenheit 9/11" for Best Picture. And Bill O'Reilly recently bellowed that if the Oscars recognize my work this year, Middle America will boycott Hollywood. Oops. I guess he spoke too soon. Because now along comes Middle America's favorite awards show, the People's Choice, and the People's Choice this year, along with a Spiderman superhero and a lovable green ogre, is a film that apparently continues to resonate throughout the country. The truth about Iraq, Bush, terror and fear. The election has not altered or made irrelevant, unfortunately, a single one of these issues. That they (and the film that dealt with these issues) are still at the forefront of the majority of the public's minds should give serious pause to Mr. Bush as he brags about a nonexistent "mandate" and begins to spend his "political capital." He may have been (barely) the people's choice on November 2 (Ohio recount excluded), but now the people get to vote again, this time for a movie. It's about the best we can do right now, and, trust me, it won't be long before we start the real work we need to do to get our country back. Again, go to http://www.pcavote.com/voting/film/f01.shtml if you want to vote for our film. I promise, if we win, to give a nice and polite speech. Yours, Michael Moore www.michaelmoore.com mmflint@aol.com P.S. Please feel free to post or forward this to your friends... P.P.S. Yes, it's true, I'm on the Barbara Walters people of the year special tonight. Did I cry? You'll have to watch to find out! :-)

2004-12-06T15:26:00.000-05:00

Indecency Complaints Come from One Group, Says Report

The startling rise in indecency complaints -- from fewer than 350 in 2000and 2001 to 14,000 in 2002 to 240,000 in 2003 -- was attributed Sunday toa single activist group, the Parents Television Council, part of L. BrentBozell's conservative Media Research Center. Mediaweek reported that anFCC analysis of the complaints dated Oct. 1, 2004 found that 99.9 percentof all indecency complaints had been brought by the PTC. The tradepublication's report came only two days after FCC Chairman Michael Powellwrote in a New York Times Op-Ed article: "Advocacy groups do generate manycomplaints, as our critics note, but that's not unusual in today'sInternet world...that fact does not minimize the merits of the groups'concerns." But Jonathan Rintels, head of the Center for Creative Voices inMedia, an artists' advocacy group, told Mediaweek that its report demonstrates how "a tiny minority with a very focused political agenda istrying to censor American television and radio."

No surprise here: America is full of fascists and mini-Hitlers.

Remember Bhopoal, India.

2004-12-03T17:00:00.000-05:00

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/03/1439218&tid=126 What we did there was far, far worse than Sept 11th, and America got away with it.

2004-12-02T20:45:00.000-05:00

Just testing this photo-blogging program. nothing to see here.

Sign the Voters' Bill of Rights

2004-12-02T11:44:00.000-05:00

SIGN THE VOTER'S BILL OF RIGHTS! The controversies surrounding the 2000 and 2004 election have revealed that our electoral system is broken. Far too many people are still voting on outdated machines. Far too many voters cast their ballots on touch-screen machines that have no paper trail. In the recent presidential election, too many voters--mostly the poor and people of color--stood in lines that were hours long. And too many citizens remain cynical about the basic mechanics of our democracy, the result of partisan administration of the elections. Sign the Voters Bill of Rights petition and tell America you are ready for voting reform: http://www.globalexchange.org/getInvolved/petition_voter_bill_of_rights.php

Is there even a reason we vote anymore?

2004-12-02T10:22:00.000-05:00

Here's another post I read on http://www.Slashdot.org, which summarizes how I feel quite well (but note that i do vote, usually Libertarian):

Is there even a reason we vote anymore.

In a word, no.

Democracy was a great experiment but now it's dead.

The vast majority of the pupulation of the US now lives in a house district where the candidate from one party wins overwhelmingly. The party made sure the district got drawn that way.

The vast majority of Americans now live in a state which always votes for the candidate of one party for president.

The vast majority of Americans live in a state who always votes for the senator from one party.

In America anyway (the supposed birthplace of democracy) vast majority of votes don't really matter.

Finally the politicians have perfected the art of manipulating the masses. They know what buttons to push to get you to vote for them.

For example when the next election cycle comes up the people will completely ignore this case and will instead vote purely on guns, abortion, homosexual marriage, or some other wedge issue. The fact that they are getting fleeced never occurs to them when somebody claims that joe shmoe will take away their guns or end (or begin) abortion.

A Brilliant Political Article/Commentary

2004-12-01T16:07:00.000-05:00

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/29/221636/33 This sums it up so much better than *I* could.

America... Fuck Yeah???

2004-12-01T15:44:00.000-05:00

This was a rant I sent my best friend's mother back in May of 2004. She sent me a chain letter that was very patriotic and made some good points, however, I just didn't buy it's message: That America is the best. It used to be. It currently is not. "Oh please! America has the highest percentage of prisoners of any country in the world, and has only not been the leader in this cateogory during about 5 yeras of the past 20. Over half our prisoners have never committed a violent act against someone else; they are political prisoners. The government can and will forfeit your property without ever charging you with a crime-- it is a multi-billion dollar a year industry and less than half the people who have their property forfeited are ever charged with a crime. There is no right to free assembly; clubs and public gatherings are often closed if they do not agree with local politicians and there are curfew and "anti-gang" laws being passed to prevent groups of people from getting together in public. There is no public property left -- you can't even go to a park after dark or light a campfire when camping. We are a hypocritical draconian country who has stationed it's soldiers in over half the countries in the world, while quietly propagandizing that we are the 'free-est' country in the world. I was forced to change shirts at a high school graduation because my shirt had a marijuana leaf on it (funny thing was it said "Land of the free?" with a big question mark on it, with handcuffed hands holding the leaves -- ironic that my shirt parodies the lack of freedom in the country but I am not even granted my basic first amendment right to wear a shirt that expresses whatever I want). The laws do not apply to the rich, and corporations basically run every aspect of your life. Ask any one who has emmigrated from any decent country, they will tell you there is generally less social freedom in America than in most of Europe. We turn away immigrants every year yet flaunt the statue of liberty ("Give me your poor, your sick") as another symbol of hypocracy. We gave arms to Iraq then we bombed them 10 years later. We are the world's police officer, basically a militia state who makes it's money as the world's cop. We try to force our drug policies onto other countries, which is really pissing off all of Latin America since most of the drug demand COMES from our country. We're going to put a billion dollars into Colombia's civil war (another Vietnam [except Iraq became the next Vietnam -CL]; actually several vets have turned in their medals of honor back to president clinton as a protest). I'm sorry, but I'm just not buying it at all. We are *the least* free country in the world becuase we have the highest incarceration rate, and those not in jail generally fear acting out. My own father refused to fly an inverted American flag because he was convinced he'd be arrested. People are scared to even assert their constitutional rights nowadays. No offense to you personally, but wake up."

Hmmm

2004-12-01T04:21:00.000-05:00

That was easy. Maybe I'll do this more often. But I'm going to have to make it bigger because I do everything on my 36inch TV...

News Flash: Movies cause psychological dependence.

2004-11-30T22:31:00.000-05:00

You know.. Movie-watchers always come back for more movies. They must be psychologically depdent on them! Oh no, think of the children! After some time, they buy more and more movies, and sometimes have to have a dealer supply them with a steady influx of movies (Mmmmm, Netflix). Advanced movie watchers even buy special paraphanilia such as projection TVs, so that they can "draw the movie deeper into their eyes" or "hear it louder". This obviously causes additional harm to the movie-viewer, so movie-watching paraphanilia should be banned, even when it could be used for legal purposes like watching Fox News. In fact, we should test people to make sure they have not watched movies lately. If someone has a past record of watching movies, they should not be allowed into college in the future. In Thailand, they shoot you in the head with no hearing if you watch movies. I feel sorry for anyone who has watched a movie just to have fun.

OH!: OH!

2004-10-04T20:44:00.000-04:00

OH!: OH! buhhhhhhhhhhh..confused

OH!

2004-08-18T20:36:00.000-04:00

OH! .................monkeys..............

hmm

2004-08-18T18:00:00.000-04:00

am I blogging?

Uhhh, huh huh..

2004-06-23T22:13:00.000-04:00

Is this thing on??