Proof #397

that Macs are easier to use than Windows PCs:

I got a Razr when I re-upped with my cell service. This is slightly ironic since I'm the kind of guy who guards my phone number with almost the same zeal as I guard my SSN. Point being, I'm not the type to be using it very much, but it was free and every gadget geek is obligated to acquire the most awesome hardware he can.

I was under the impression from the reviews on the Internets that it would be possible to use MP3 ringtones and customise the display with my own pictures and so forth, by downloading them from my computer. The Razr has both a standard USB port and Bluetooth, and since Ruri is an older iBook and didn't come with Bluetooth, I thought it might be possible to use the cable to transfer da goods.

Silly human. iSync will work with calendars and address books, but not simple file transfers. So I went on a search for some software that would let me do it with a Windows laptop, since we have a bunch of those at work and I could possess one temporarily. After ONE HOUR of downloading software that said it would work then didn't, searching Motorola's help site and dozens of other cell phone sites and trying to find the drivers, all I could get was a form for buying, at $29.99, the sync package from Moto that would enable the basic communications features I was seeking.

So I gave up. I Grabbed a 17" PowerBook, turned the Bluetooth on, paired the device, and sent my files over. It took three minutes with built-in software to accomplish on a Mac what it would have taken thirty bucks and two Install Wizards to do on a PC. That is proof #397.

This struck me

as odd, and sad. I think they've missed the point:



Let me zoom in on the top of the container, in case you missed it.



Yes, friends, this coffee is superior because it is Patriotic.

I have no idea why. Why? Why? Why?

There are few

words, phrases, or expressions that suit my mood at approx. 7:15 AM this day. This is when I saw Charlie Gibson sail a courteous greeting at Bill O'Rielly, welcoming him to Good Morning America.

Here's the phrase:
What the FUCK?

Ow. Oowoww. Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow.
This happened just after they introduced Robin Roberts live from some disaster zone, wearing a t-shirt that said "GMA - Getting It Done." When a news organisation has to try out new action-oriented slogans while covering a token rebuilding effort in the middle of the worst natural devistation in a hundred years, you know you're in trouble.

Or you're in the Twilight Zone! Doo dee doo doo, doo dee doo doo! That's how What the FUCK?-ed up it was.

I just told

Lindsay B. to follow the dream that I abandoned. She seems to have something I don't, a belief in the basic goodness of Humans, which should make her far better equipped to write in a way that people will pay attention to.

It follows that I do not have a belief in the basic goodness of Humans. This has been said before, and is the primary source of my tendency to be an asshole, which I have just realised creates a very serious feedback loop of Negative Vibes. It is easy to feel superior or inferior to people when you believe that a person can be either. It is hard, in the course of a day, not to believe it honestly. I watch people throw trash out their car window and I think, "I have a superior understanding of the consequences of littering. They are ignorant." I hear people talk about how awesome their drug and alcohol use makes them feel, and I think, "I have a superior understanding of the effects these have on the human body and spirit. They are self-destructive."

I watch parents shopping with their fat children, buying them candy and junk food and yelling at them to quit running around, and I think, "These people have no idea the damage they wreak upon their heirs. They will cripple the civilisation that sustains them. But I know better."

All of which is despicably self-congratulatory, and yet, feels right. I suppose that's just as scary as listening to some crazy Revelationist describe the lake of fire that we'll all be cast in to, for they are no less certain of themselves. This is my weakness.

Could it be true?

Am I really watching a fat woman outside this cafe hand out pamphlets by Jews for Jesus? What kind of spiritual/racial/personal clusterfuck is going on there?

At least we're heading for the End Times. Not in the silly teleport-the-nice-ones-to-Heaven kind, but the social upheaval that will likely result from the extraordinary cost of natural gas heating this winter. Combined with a real gas / refinery shortage and the orgy of debt spending that will surely come with the Shopping Season, these factors will start causing real problems for an awful lot of folks in the near future. I had a long talk with mum the other day about what I really believe will happen, and why I'm not doing more about it - educating people, writing, working for environmental groups and so forth.

It comes down to the fact that there's damn-all we can do at this point. The disease - growth-dependent capitalism and mass consumerism - has spread too far. The cancer is now in virtually every system. The body feeds its growth. To kill it is to kill the host.

Us.

So yeah, researching old ABM missile systems for history class isn't exactly the foremost thing on my mind right now.

Ah well.

I assured me mum that when the Navy finally arrives at New Orleans in force, some serious relief can get underway. The small boat capacity alone, together with all that helo space parked right next to the worst of the flooded areas, would make a huge difference. That is, if FEMA were interested in utilising them. Or if they felt like allowing people to leave the city. Is any of this real? How fucked up in the head do you have to be?

Something tells me that Bush could have waited a week before nominating a ghost like Roberts for Chief Justice of the Supreme Fucking Court, which raises the question of Why Now. Abysmal poll numbers and clearly videotaped incompetence during the nation's largest modern disaster relief effort, together with the blatant efforts at spinning massive death and utter destruction point to a lame effort to divert some smidgen of attention from his failings. I shouldn't even be able to consider this about anyone, it's wholly inhuman, but with these jokers...

Yes. The Devistation

is indeed nearly complete. It now appears certain that a number of "actionable items" were in the works to repair critical weaknesses in the levies and pumps that kept the water out of the New Orleans bowl. Funded in large part by government monies, these plans were cast aside as the more critical War On Terr'r sucked funds away from all sources. The Treasury, which once boasted of a tremendous budget surplus, has been wiped out, so that all our national savings, the product of past productivity, are gone. There is no room in the current budget - indeed, there could be said to be negative room, as the deficit en masse continues to grow. And all future plans, especially planned programs like Medicaid and Social Security, are endangered by this Terr'r. Is it scary, or merely strange, that we are siphoning funds from the entire American space-time continuum, past, present, and future? It no longer seems real.

I, like a not-insignificant portion of My Fellow Americans, have been to The City That Was. My time was spent wandering the old street fronts during Mardi Gras, the peak time for partying and chicanery of all sorts. I have fond memories, what memories remain intact, and of course the human loss should be enough to sadden even those who have never ventured outside their home counties. In the end, that's all there is in the state of LA. Loss.

Yes, Journal,

it's been a while. If Future Self is reading this, then he might be asking, why? Why did you shut off the treadmill and park yr. keister on the couch for more than two months, eating delicious donuts and drinking expensive forms of coffee?

Part of it was the exasperating prospect of trying to keep up with all the bloggable news - it's a Shit Storm, allright, and only the most dedicated of reporters will venture out into it on camera, shouting futile weather-truisms into their microphones while expensive waterproof parkas slap and flutter around their jaws.

I return because my prof in Writing Seminar for Majors, and to a lesser degree my sister, reminded me that we learn by doing. A gross Tonne of writing will be required of me this semester, and I must get the juices flowing again. Time to plug the treadmill back in and start sweating. Ruri's desktop has been recast, I am living in a new abode (equipped with wireless Internets and 48-inch TeeVee, the techie equivalent of a split morphine/caffine IV drip), and mum supports my plan of moving to Ireland and working for Apple when all this school nonsense is over with.

Blammo! Back into the Life.

Extremely Strange ad

of the day: Microsoft's web based XP Media Version flash ad, which claims, among other things, that "It will make your teeth whiter."

's True.

I'm sure the transcript

will be available somewhere online, but I had to get this down before it left my head.

In a report on ABC News, Bob Woodruf is exploring the parts of North Korea that North Korea wants him to see. In the capital of Pyongyang there is a large school for young children which lavishes them with money and attention, what few fruits of Kim Jong-Il's retarded economy can be directed their way.

The kids put on a remarkable music and dance performance for visiting dignitaries, and Woodruf ends his broadcast with something along the lines of, "It's remarkable what children can learn when the state is willing to teach them."

This has some interesting implications, and they cut both ways. On the one hand, there is clear evidence that a well-funded state standardised educational system benefits children, adults, and society. If every citizen were able to read and write coherently, and were fluent in not only the language of math and science but of art and music as well, is there any doubt that all of America would be richer in ways money cannot count? On the other, only the most careful monitoring by it's populace can keep the government from teaching it's own revised history, as the abuses of the governmental monopoly on telecommunications that North Korea so adeptly demonstrates.

Fascinating bits like this are mainly found on ABC, although their coverage of Jesus is second only to the Cornerstone Network and tends to irritate me. I particularly liked the bit about hand-fishing being made legal again in rednecked bits of the nation if only for Charlie Gibson's deadpan one-word response after the peice ended: "Okay."

I find myself

pining for the end of our world. Particularly after a bad day on the bus, full of smelly noisy freaks who yell into their cell phones then yell at strangers about what they were yelling about before. The GODDAMN ENDLESS MINDLESS THUMPING of the downstair's neighboor's stereo. My German teacher asked us why we enjoy camping. "Nich so viele leben" was my reply- "Not so many people."

My inner Destroyer longs for a semi-lawless wasteland of abandoned cars and looted store fronts. I'm even fine with being lost to the Die Off that some have posited will by necessity come with the end of cheap fuel. Being aware of both the remarkable damage we're doing to our planet and the near-total apathy we feel towards it, my mind is peirced by a constant ache, and perhaps the only cure for such pain is for the cause - what we so pompusly call Western Civilisation - to be removed.

Right now that part of me is ascendant. Every day that passes I long intensely to stand amongst the rubble of America. Tyler Durden leaps to mind;

In the future I see, you're stalking elk through the deep forest canyon that surrounds the ruins of Rockefeller Center.

I feel a little

used now. The Fam and I had gone to see Star Bores Episode 3: Revenge of the Pith (-y Dialogue). It's the least sucky suck of the three sucks, but that still implies an unfortunate degree of suckage. Basicaly, mum fell asleep twice and we all laughed and cringed whenever a character talked. Every time they started talking, in fact, I found myself waiting for them to stop. And I kept hoping, against all evidence and past experience, that it wouldn't turn out to be a complete disaster.

It is. But the worst moment came when I caught a commercial for Burger King that featured new Star Wars merchandise in the kiddie meals. I realised then, as I suspected all along, that the new movies weren't really about the story - you could sum up the plot of all three in a fortune cookie - but about the Merch. The bulk of Lucas's profits won't come from theater tickets, but from cross promotions and plastic figurine sales, from an epic sort of exploitation. And I gave my money to the machine responsible, believing that I had to participate in this cultural phenomenon. It is a culture of Blind Consumption, and now I feel used.

I'm only through the

first installment, but this series in Harpers is fabulous for many reasons. Having grown up in Colorado Springs, and having many direct tussels with the Fundamental folk, I delight in reading that they've forsaken the center of the city - which is highly walkable and bikable - for the "exurbs" of the north and east. If NASCAR is the perfect sport for christianity (making simple and endless philisophical circles until The End of The Race) then their weird desire to make the exurbs the center of their revolution is also perfectly appropriate. Suburban development is by definition soulless, with every house and street mind-numbingly identical, across states and countries. Any calling to faith that demands unquestioning obiedience to one line of ideology seems to me as horribly conformist as those off-white Lego brick family boxes.

I'm disappointed that

Ken Salazar, from my own home state, has turned out to be a far more conservative sort of Dem than we were all hoping for. Although, given the general "redness" of Colorado - excepting spots like Boulder and Manitou Springs - getting anyone with a capital D after their names into national public office is a real challenge.

So I was greatly encouraged when I learned that he's been sparring with our good friends at Focus on the White Christian Family. I suspect that what stings Mr. Dobson is not that Salazar compared their desire for theocracy to a similar Saudi affliction, but that they really, truly desire an all-Christian government. In other words, it's not the comparison itself that stung, but the truth that underlies it.

Fabulous.

One of my favourite

fortune cookie fortunes, to date at least, is now my AIM away message.

"There can be no existance of evil as a force to the healthy-minded individual."

Allow the profoundity of this statement to penetrate your forebrain and percolate for a time. You will recognise it as a Truth, one of those near-magical ideas that allows you to slice through the thicket of deceit we trudge through every day. I share it with you freely.

Now that I'm working

I have too much time to read stuff. Blogs, news wires, almost any form the english language takes upon my tiny screen.

Oh, tiny? Yes, Pallas has been sold and replaced with a delightfully lightweight 12 inch iBook named Ruri. I upgraded the memory and hard drive myself, which was fun and surprisingly exhausting the first time through.

Week Three of Super German Class began with our first test, and today I got it back graded - "B." That might be the best grade I've ever gotten on a German test in four years of trying to pass the first term. I told my current teacher that I'm a poor student in foreign languages because of my love affair with English, and I'd likely find something wrong with every language that isn't English. Still, to mind it seems as though there's a few things utterly perverse about the German language, which were hilariously summed up by Mark Twain in his essay, "The Awful German Language." Google it, then be like me - read it!

For the first time

in a long long time, words have failed me.

Actually, that's not true. They regularly fail me when it comes time to describe some new and exciting form of idiocy in human life. But in this case, all I'm trying to do is describe the weather in Pittsburgh.

It's so nice, so genuinely enjoyable, so picturesque that I just don't know how to describe it. Even when it rains, it rains solidly and with great assurance, so that you feel that your time is not wasted. Don't worry, says The Weather, I'm serious about getting you wet today. No light halting showers. Relax and enjoy. The sun, as it shines, heats you pleasantly, not oppressively, and when a breeze blows to cool you it feels like a fine light spray of moisture, like those little mister/fan combo things.

I want to burn these days into my limited memory, so that when conditions again become awful, when the air is thick enough to chew and hot enough to melt hip kids' hair gel, I can have a few positive thoughts to draw on.

The Barbarism of Certitude

Ooh, that's some catchy English. I happened upon a Tract, or small illustrated booklet by a man named Chick, which told the tale of an Olde West Gun Slinger. This Gun Slinger came to town to stir up trouble, for some mysterious reason attends church on Sunday morning, and gradually comes to accept the line that God loves all sinners and Jeebus can save him from going to Hell. In the meantime, the local sheriff has posted a reward for his capture and is gathering the forces of Decency, or perhaps Greed and Self-Interest, to capture this Nefarious Bad Guy.

The Gun Slinger emerges from church a converted man, but the locals have him surrounded and cart him off to jail to await his hanging. There is presumably a preponderance of evidence that this dude has done some Heinous Crimes, such that no trial was necessary to determine his guilt. The Sheriff watches his neck snap, the Reverend stands by and covers his eyes. The Nefarious Bad Guy, who may have burned down orphanages, shot countless innocent people, and otherwise engaged in the worst possible criminal behaviour in mid-19th century America, goes to Heaven because he clapped his hands together the night before and agreed to believe in a magical book and special Power Words.

After he's buried, the Sheriff is rejoined by the Reverend to accept Jeebus as well. The Sheriff declines, rides off into the sunset, get's bitten by a snake, dies, and is immediately sent to Hell. Apparently, no amount of Doing Good on Earth can get you into heaven, but no amount of Doing Evil can keep you out. It all hinges on whether or not you believe that a 2,000 year old dead dude can erase a lifetime of moral crapulence.

But Wait, There's More! Apparently a lot more, although I won't link directly to this man's website. I realise no one reads this journal, but I don't even want to take the chance that someone might increase his business. Let it be said that there are plenty of other Tracts on other subjects, including the absolute truth of the Bible in regards to the creation date of the Earth, roughly 6,000 years ago.



The light from distant stars that's been traveling for millions of years? The measurable radioactive half-life of the most common life-giving element on Earth? The less than 2% variation between higher ape and human DNA? The amount of evidence and provable fact that you must ignore in order to arrive at the conclusion that only an invisible Super Man could have built the universe is staggering. It's just not even worth conversing with these people. If that sounds horrible it, is, but I cannot believe that anyone who buys this crap whole could make any useful contribution to human society. It's just flabbergasting.

My sister discovered

an old word for me, one that apparently sums up Who and What I Am in This World.

She said I was a Navigator.

And the moment she said it, I felt a little tingle of certainty, as in yes, that describes "Me" perfectly. What does it mean? In the context of our conversation, it does not refer merely to an aptitude with maps and star charts, although I've demonstrated that as well. To make it through this world one must know how to Navigate the endless streams of desire and need, fact and fiction, possibility and apocalypse, Reality and Unreality that we are presented with minute by minute of our mediated existence. More than anything, I think, no matter what the circumstances a Navigator knows instinctively how to find their way, and aide others in finding theirs.

That is an immense gift, terrifying and humbling yet strangely comforting as well. It should not be confused with an ability to know the absolute truth, or to disseminate such truths to those who lack them. That's a bit egotistical. Finding your way, in the traditional Bhuddist sense, means coming to an understanding of your place in this world and making the care of others your highest charge after eliminating the root of selfishness, your Self.

Mystical gobbledygook, perhaps. The Bus Stop Prophet told me that I would be a Warrior, who would show "all the rest of us how to do things right." Who the fuck knows? I think I can do both.

The Awesome New Book

That Is Currently Occupying My Thought Processes For Most of the Day: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris. He makes some difficult points and some outrageous-sounding claims, but the logic of his central position seems solid. Here are some tastey bits -

"The idea that any one of our religions represents the infallible word of the One True God requires an encyclopedic ignorance of history, mythology, and art even to be entertained... for there is no more evidence to justify a belief in the literal existance of Yaweh and Satan than there was to keep Zeus perched upon his mountain throne or Poseidon churning the seas."

"The belief that certain books were written by God... leaves us powerless to address the most potent source of human conflict, past and present. How is it that the absurdity of this idea does not bring us, hourly, to our knees? It is safe to say that few of us would have thought so many people could believe such a thing, if they did not actually believe it. Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything - anything - be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in."

As I said, many rough points about the unsustainable influence of religious faith on what we think of as modern understanding. Somewhat perversely, I am now gripped by a real desire to read the Bible, or at least as much of it as I can manage to get through, just to confirm my own worst suspicions about this oddly powerful tome of myths and legends.

At the very absolute minimum, it will Get You Thinking.

My job is so much easier

when raving lunatics actually begin raving. Not in the hipster Party Scene sense, but in the jabbering foam-mouthed caveman oratory sense. And I hope that when I say Right Wing Religous Nuts are completely hypocritical, not to mention dangerously ignorant of many of the basic tenets of modern civilisation, more people will pay attention. Here's a juicy bit:

Conflating the right to participate with the right to evangelize, Mohler said, "We are not calling for people to be moral, we want them to be believers in the Lord Jesus Christ."

How are the two not connected? When did they teach that lesson in Sunday School? I sometimes feel like I'm missing something, but no, I understand completely. They are missing quite a bit more than just something, they're missing pretty much everything, which is a nice way of saying that they're Bat Shit Crazy.

The Weirdness Of

Selling Via Online Auction has become known to me. I set up a five-day auction for my beloved Pallas, with a reserve price of $1200 - far below what other 17-inch PowerBooks are selling for, but respectable considering the two-pixel defect of her otherwise beautiful screen. Four days and 22 hours later, there are two bids, one of them for the reserve price exactly. Plenty of people are watching the auction, I was just hoping for, ya know, a few more bids. A little bit more than the absolute minimum. A sliver of wiggle room for when I purchase Ruri, my lighter and slightly faster new sidekick. Ah well, we'll see. We'll see.

Allright. Calmed down and

started reading some more, mediating the impact of the Doomsday Article on my consciousness. I found myself walking by a car dealership that was busy promoting that "press a button and win a car" sweepstakes, and I wondered just what I'd do with the monetary windfall that selling that car would represent.

I did not, for more than one second, seriously consider keeping any vehicle obtained in such a manner. That's hardcore, or maybe just pessimistic. I have family in the upper ranks of a Major Car Manufacturer whom I will be visiting with this summer vacation time, and I will ask him just what he's planning to do about the coming of the Downward Slope of the Bell Curve, representing the end of cheap gas. He's a crypto-conservative, which is to say his wife is Conservative and he doesn't often disagree, but he's also smart like a bull-whip and eminently practical, so there's hope.

The theories put forth

in this blasted article are exherting an unhealthy grip on my latent Fascination Engine. The brain, in other words, cannot shake the idea that this man's predictions are founded on Logic and Reason and are thus deserving of serious consideration.

P'raps. Those who sound the alarm in time are often ignored as alarmists.

Just as an exercise, then, let us consider a few of the things that will END when oil/natural gas disappear from our nation:
Cars. American society for one hundred years has depended on universal access to this mode of transportation. Not just cars, but interstate trucks and airplanes hauling goods. When gasoline is too expensive for anyone to afford, interstate travel and trade will cease almost entirely, bringing an end to all things that depend on it. Fast food will end. Supermarkets and mall shopping will end. Commuting into town and back out from a suburban home will end. Wal-Mart, Kaufmanns, Journeys, GAP, Abercrombie, all of them will cease to exist.

Planes. If automobiles will be too expensive to run, forget airliners. It will cost more to fill the plane with fuel once that it would cost to build the plane in the first place, and so all these jaunts across the country to visit the relatives will end. The massive organisations that depend on air transport, including all freight shippers and government/conglomerate entities organised on a national or international level, will end. International travel will once again be limited to those forms of transport which require no fossile fuels, namely sailing ships.

Electricity. Or, the ability to produce it in anything like the amounts that we have become accustomed to using so blithely. All the massive buildings in massive cities that require constant ventilation and lighting will empty, being completely unsustainable. Television and the internet and the radio and cell phones will end. All these things rely on a power grid fueled mainly by natural gas and coal, which will run out or become unusable within our lifetimes, perhaps within twenty or so years. There will be no more Daily Show or The West Wing, which will be sad, but there will also be no more The Simple Life Interns or Entertainment Tonight or Fox News. I would trade all the best television of the past fifty years to expunge the influence of all the worst, but that deal has already been struck. When it comes to a choice between running the water pump from your biomass battery or watching twenty minutes of a national broadcast that will never again matter to your life, people will make the right and natural decision.

Celebrity Culture will vanish. All these daft neo-conservative Projects For a New American Hegemony Under GOD will collapse of their own weight, when the lines of communication and hatred that they rely on disappear like the oil that fueled them.

Our vast International Military will end. The ships and planes and tanks and Jeeps that place our troops overseas will no longer be operable, and so our ability to "project power" will disappear as well. Obviously, this will have some tremendous consequences, but in the long run it will largely be a reversion to our pre-WWII posture, that of an impregnable fortress-continent, isolated from the rest of the world by the oceans. Of course, given that our entire society will collapse to a pre-industrial local agrarian form, there won't be much incentive for anyone to try and pick a fight. India and China will be very very busy dealing with their own collapse. Russia has been collapsing for decades, but they've got the internal resources to maintain themselves for a while longer, at least. Africa will be largely unaffected, except that all outside aid in the form of either arms or food will cease. The only people that will survive will be those who have lived off the land since man evolved on those plains, although millions will continue to die from AIDS and starvation until the population stabilises itself at a sustainable level.

Europe will be an interesting case to watch, because the continent was built for horse and buggy, then later upgraded to handle cars (with varying success). To a degree they have immitated Western centralisation, but the rural landscape of Europe remains largely intact. Their transistion to an oil-less world will be far smoother, and much more of their civilisation will survive.

Yeah, and now I've got a book to read about how the media shapes our perceptions of everything. Seems kinda redundant, knowing that the media will shortly cease to exist.

This is literally the saddest

thing that I think I've ever seen, and it does much to confirm my opinion that there is absolutely nothing redeeming about organised religion.

"The American Dream

is that an individual in this country should have every opportunity to go from the guttermost to the uppermost."
-George W. Bush, March 2005

I cannot describe the physical sensation of Deep Hurting that this caused me. Every day, it seems, I am confronted with some jewel of Cross-Eyed Badger Spit Lunacy that confirms all my worst fears about the future of human kind. We're thoroughly doomed, kids, it ain't even funny, if this AWFUL JACKASS could wriggle into the Presidency for eight solid years of pain.

I dunno how long this article will be up, but it made me think a bit. Actually, it just sort of reaffirmed not a few of my own suspicions. I can't argue for the accuracy of some of the predictions that this man makes, but the underlying facts seem solid. So draw your own conclusions.

I was bored, so

last night I rented The Incredibles and Outfoxed, being respectibly curious about both. The first was a high-energy and heart felt action romp, entertaining on many levels and generally the kind of quality cinema that so rarely makes it's way from the California coast into national theaters.

The second, which had been shown here at Pitt in the past, was incredibly disappointing. As a documentary, the production values are so cheap and rediculous that I had a hard time sitting through it, possessed of the tingling knowledge that I could have put together a superior product with my PowerBook Pallas.

I am not even making that up. The cue-card cut scenes, "animated" graphics, and boorish use of splicing styles are painful for a man in 2005 who, six years ago, produced a video of similar, even slightly superior quality in a high school media class.

Having said that, the footage that the producer garnered from Fox News is absolutely chilling. As article after article demonstrates, these people literally inhabit a completely different world than the rest of us, which totally precludes rational argument. You cannot make a case against their world view because, simply put, the facts which govern your own are not present or so deeply twisted in theirs that they might as well not exist. Fact is wholly subordinant to ideology, and thus reality is subordinant to religious phant'sies.

It's not an isolated bastion, or even an occasional gathering of like-minded Bat Shit Crazies. It's an entire cable news channel, with the money and resources of the second richest man in the world, and it's on 24 hours of every one of your days. Sometimes, imbicillity really does seem like the only realm that happiness could be found in, for anyone ignorant of such monstrosities would be much happier.

"The English have devised...

an extraordinary scheme for the military defense of their homeland, which is that they have no money." - Monsieur le comte de Pontchartrain, The Confusion, 2004 by Neal Stephenson

Had I been sipping a favoured beverage at the time of my reading these lines, I am certain that a not-insignificant amount would have burst through my nasal cavity and onto the unfortunate book from which they were gleaned. For if one were to make a minor substitution, replacing "The English" with "The Americans," one would have a Jan van der Meer-esque rendering of our current fiscal reality.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the definition of debt is when you (or an organisation) have made expenditures for which you lack the specie to render payment. In other words, you spend money that you do not have.

We do not have any money. In fact, we may be said to possess negative amounts of money. That's what "red ink" is. And yet, the government continues to spend as though the consequences of such policy belonged to the past, and not the future. This is fascinating, in the way that a flash food might be to a valley farmer - all is abstract beauty until that wall of water erases your pasture and home and life.

Today I saw...

1. A shop's busted window sign that read "Good Luck Harms."
2. A man on the bus holding a telephone conversation with a calculator.
3. A Renaissance reenactment troupe on the lawn of the Cathedral of Learning.
4. A magnetic disco dance number.

My shopping trip was otherwise a failure, as it seems the premium price for a pair of Chuck Taylors is now about $40. That's $15 higher than the last time I bought a pair, which was around high school. They can't be that popular.

This is why I will...

forever be loyal to Apple. A week or so after I bought my iPod Shuffle, I noticed that static would creep into the left earbud at random intervals for irregular spans of time. Sometimes it was all day, sometimes it was never, but when it did my music listening experience suffered. And I know we all hate to suffer unnecessarily.

So I walked into the Apple Store this fine afternoon, and let the dude at the Genius Bar know what the problem was. I'd been using the buds for about an hour already in an attempt to duplicate the problem, but as is the natural course with such things my equipment operated perfectly. This I relayed as well, after the dude attempted to discern for himself the conundrum. I couldn't tell by the look on his face if I was successful, but he went into the back for one point two minutes, then emerged with a brand new plastic packaged set.

"Here you go."

"What, really? You don't need my receipt or anything?"

"Nope."

"That's outstanding. Thank you."

It seems unreasonable, somehow, to expect this level of service. Their profit margine on something like earbuds is thin enough, never mind giving away a new set any time someone complains of a problem. But they do, with a grace and efficiency that borders on ephemeral. No other earthly institution is so fantastically agreeable to deal with, at least not in my experience.

Much postage today...

but I thought this was funny when, the other night, I attempted to obtain a file via a groovy program which shows you where the file is coming from.



Peace!

Too Freakin

Weird. I'm listening to Missing, from Beck's latest brilliance, and all of a sudden I find the clouds and snow outside the window of the cafe have disappeared. Curious, I seek a map of the current cloud cover for America, and on one site I am treated to a dancing ear of corn, kernels labeled with the two-letter abbreviations for all the states of the union. It jiggles itself from left to right, shakes off invisible dirt, allows butter patties to carress it, all in time to this strange strange song.

For a time, this is real entertainment.

For yr. amazement....

and general edification, herein I shall present a list of Logical Fallacies, straight from my freshmen year in college, which you may use to deconstruct or destruct any argument yr. favorite Pundit or Dumbass Colleague may attempt to use against you.

Appeal To Force We are riteous because our Army kicks Major Ass!
Appeal To Pity Conservatives are under attack because the Liberals hate us!
Appeal To The People Hey, everybody else is accepting Jesus. Shouldn't you, too?
Ad Hominem Liberals are wrong because they're stupid.
Enclosed: Two Quoque Don't tell me I'm immoral, look at you and your immoralality!
Accident Surgeons are responsible for thousands of stabbings. Arrest them before they stab any more innocents!
Straw Man I may oppose gun control, but you're pro-abortion, so you're for more killing!
Missing The Point It's snowing in the north-east, so God must hate you liberal heathens.
Red Herring The Republicans have ideas on taxes, therefore, we must generate similar ideas on taxes, since the public wants us to be tough-minded about taxes.
Appeal To Authority If Jerry Falwell says that God hates all gays, then God must hate all gays, because Jerry Falwell sure knows God.
Appeal To Ignorance Since you DON'T know God, you heathen, then everything Jerry Falwell says about God is right and true.
Hasty Generalisation That Liberal is a Communist, therefore, all Liberals must be Communists!
False Cause The President lost the debates whenever he wore a red tie. No more red ties, and he'll always win!
Slippery Slope If we start letting gays marry, then all our children will grow up gay and no more children will ever be born!
Weak Analogy My tax plan is big and full of loopholes for major corporations. Therefore, if your tax plan is big, it must also be full of loopholes for major corporations.
Begging The Question Snowflakes are so complex that only God could make them.
Complex Question Why do Liberals hate God and America?
False Dichotomy Either the President is wrong or the Liberals are wrong, and since the President can't be wrong, then the Liberals must be wrong.
Supressed Evidence Most Americans worship God, so if you see an American, go ahead and pray with them.
Equivocation Any theory can be proven wrong. Gravity is just a theory. Therefore, gravity can be proven wrong.

Seen or heard any arguments like these? I know I have, and it drive me INSANE. Don't fall into the trap of using these when it suits yr. ends! Keep that Logic clean!

Kinda scary...

but perhaps more honest. My "wu name" is Arrogant Killer. I certainly have a reputation for being arrogant at times, and perhaps this refers to my ability to kill men's souls by flaying them with icy shards of truth. I dunno.

I feel terrible, but the fact that Spinsanity.org has been closed up for months completely escaped my attention. They did good work, and I proudly own and display for my conservative family members All the President's Spin. So today I'm replacing it with an entertaining blog I found via Tom Tomorrow's site. Say hello to Pandagon.net. Good Stuff.

Well Thank Jeebus...

something is finally going right.

"You won't be bored for long! New adventures are on their way."

Thus opined my lunch special fortune cookie. It is different from the more typical prognosticating foreign pasteries in that the English is decent, and the text is blue not red. In this it is slightly disappointing, because half the fun of these magic slips of paper was trying to interpret their obscure yet strangely confident verbiage.

Some of the best reside here. Some are truly as mystical as a Zen koan, and some are obviously the unfortunate result of trying to espouse profound universal truths in a language you barely understand.

In other news, the sun shines today. Do whatever you can to bask in it. Now!

The Awe-Inspiring

Time Waster. I have 7 and a half pages of an 8 page paper to write, due tomorrow, I've been here at school for two hours now, and have yet to add a single word to it. Reminds me of the time I was editing a multimedia presentation for Government and Law class right up to the time we presented it - my skill at procrastination is surpassed only by the intensity of my apparent academic deathwish.

Time to calm down. Focus. You can do this.

...Bathroom break!

Three Steps To...

Dealing With Rejection:

Actually, I don't have a plan of any kind. The most common response when one is not hired for a highly desired job is to soak the inside of the head with a favoured liquor, and thus obliviate yr. knowledge of any form of existance outside of the bar. If one is confident enough, and skilled enough, one can simply move on to kick some ass in say, HALO or CoH. That is guaranteed to Restore Confidence. Find something you can do better than anyone else... indeed. That is the key to survival in all circumstances.

So FUCK YOU APPLE STORE SHADYSIDE. I may not have been the loudest person at that Hiring Event, but my understanding of the product and the philosophy is pure and highly contagious. Whorefaces! I sell more product without even working there than ten of yr. best men. SHIT, now I shall have to return to the coffee industry for money.

Or maybe not. My Writing Professor insists that I should be making a living writing columns for many different Big Time Publications, which was a wet dream for a long time when I was young and thought that Journallism would be the key to my future. And she is a published Author, with books and many other peices living under her byline. Shit! I should be that lucky, put into exactly the right place & time with the skills developed here, in this worthless rantage space. Why not? Ride whatever comes along.

Oh, and this...

There just aren't enough words in the language. I know that some people think there are too many, but there aren't.

The raping and pillaging continues. And the one magic word that describes it all?

Fuck.

God Fucking Dammit...

Just when you thought it was okay to believe in a politician, any politician, they go and do something like this. The consensus seems to be that this legislation is built to please the Mega Rich and the credit companies who use small print and legal trickery to suck money and life directly from their customers, like the Christopher Reeve in South Park, snapping the spines of the weak and drinking their life-giving fluids like nectar.

Yes, Mr. Barak I Believe In America Obama. How is voting for this bill taking a stand against the financial rape of the middle and lower class? It's not!

Just when you thought it was safe to start paying attention to politics again, when it seemed that there might be one or two days of the week when you wouldn't feel like slaughtering the guilty in an endless stream of blood and broken bodies. Something happens, always, to confirm your suspicion that where the world to end today in a firey cataclysm, the rest of the universe would be much better off.

I've read a bunch of posts...

on the problems that we Athiests have in relating to Religious folk. Many people argue that lefties operate under a severe handicap when we display an unwillingness to engage in religious debate on religious terms. But if it's true that the Antichrist is supposed to be good at quoting scripture, where exactly does such a debate get us? I don't think it can really go anywhere, because honest debate relies on having a set of agreed upon facts to work from, and religion by it's very definition eschews facts in favour of faith. In other words, it is impossible to reason with someone who is, in the purest sense of the word, unreasonable. "Faith defies Reason, and without Faith I am nothing..." I might have butchered that a bit, but Douglas Adams was straight on. Forgive me, then, if I display little interest in fighting about whether or not God exists, or if America was founded on religious principles.

It was, BTW, but only because we wanted to escape a world in which Religion ruled public life. I think most NeoCons choose to forget that little, monumental detail.

The Rude Fat Man

At the Internet Cafe who did not even purchase food or drink from the cafe and instead waltzed (waddled) in with a Wendy's cup a dirty three-day near-beard B.O. and a wheeled cart packed with wires and cheap or free computing devices looking for a power outlet since his circa-1995 laptop had no battery power and he wanted free web access.

Breath. I was sympathetic until he made a big show of unpacking said wires in an attempt to find his AC adapter. He placed his laptop on another table across from a girl who not long after asked him to leave her alone. I had nabbed the last free outlet in the place, and when he said he had a three-way adapter I gladly agreed to share.

My sympathy evaporated pretty quickly when I realised that he hadn't actually bought anything. This is the WiFi equivalent of running into a restaraunt, pissing on the toilet seat, then running back out. I rarely make assumptions about a person's hygenic habits, since some folk are just born dirty, but this man clearly did not take care of himself and didn't particularly care. As he swung his substantial gut around to take a seat I noticed that his belt buckle was straining and nearly failing to keep that gut in check.

His cell phone would ring, and upon every call he would peer down his nose at it's screen as though deciding whether the caller merited a slice of his invaluable time.

Then he leered at a young girl that walked past him to use the restroom, and that did it. My loathing became honest and complete, and I know that in a way that's bad for me. It's okay to say someone's behaviour is outside accepted social norms, but it's another to actively despise said person. That takes energy and produces no results other than self-riteous satisfaction, and Damn Me, that feels pretty good right now. I think I'll pick up something at the liquor store on my way home tonight.

God Damn It.

The Great Savage Beast has stepped off this landscape. Hunter S. Thompson could feel the warning signs in his bones, the sudden drop in pressure that foretells a gathering Shit Storm, and he was not prepared to watch the dying of the light again after all his insane efforts to warn and educate and ready us. He railed against the Dumbness of America in a time when no one else seemed to get away with it, and he was always painfully right, at least in some way.

I will not miss the writing so much as the idea of the man, which is what I think we all fell in love with. The thought that a stone-crazy shotgun-wielding peacock-owning Flower Child could still be alive in this age of Terror and Riteous Fighting in the name of Jesus was strangely healing. No matter how we despaired when debating our Republican office colleagues, or how out of touch we felt when the President told us that he could balance the budget by making 2+2=5, we knew that somewhere far away, even from the top of a mountain in Colorado, another man would back us up with a ferocity and honesty few could match. He was a sharp reflection of just how crazy one has to be in order to stay sane.

Did he really mean to emulate Hemmingway, a fellow in the realm of tortured intellects? Who knows. If the movies are right and you really do get to float up above your body before your spirit leaves the earth, I'm pretty sure I know what he'd have said.

Holy Fuck, look at that goddamn mess.

And now the Great Scorer will have to write against his name. For an unmatched honesty and purity of spirit, no matter how twisted it's manifestation, he deserves at least a council, a chance to speak for himself and his time. He will do well, and will laugh at his enemies in Hell through a tall glass of tea & Wild Turkey.

Darkness worshed over...

the Dude, darker than a black steer's tuckus on a moonless praerie night." Hey, I spat that right off the top of my head. Pretty good, no? Of course, that's a fairly accurate description of my mood. I used to write for fun, and because I believed that I was more than halfway decent at it. The sheer joy of the excersize was at one point worth it, but now I find myself applying this gift to meeting deadlines once again, and it's just as unappealing as it was when journalism was my profession of choice. I still hate being ordered to write things I have no desire or interest in.

Dealing with medical bills and taxes and my total lack of monetary income is another factor, of course. Nothing could be better calculated to make you feel like a victim than having expenses that are absolutely necessary outweigh your ability to earn the dollars to cover them. It is not, according to some recent research by Time, entirely our fault. I suppose that one major factor in my current ennui is that professional adults have finally admitted in plain language that our generation will be the first in the history of human advancement to experience a lower standard of living than our parents.

Goddam retards! The Sonic Wall Content Filtering Service has prevented me from accessing the online manual for a program I recently downloaded, apparently with the blessing of the same said service. Who designs this shit?

Anyroad, I've also got so many freakin' passwords and email accounts and whatnot that even forgetting one of them creates major headaches. I'm told the new Beck Hell Yes EP is fully worth downloading, but my iTunes store ID? What's your password, fucker? HA! NO MUSIC FOR YOU! Oh, and here's a few hundred spam emails. Enjoy! On the plus side, I found a Bittorrent client that gives you a neato 3D live picture of the swarm network you're sharing with. Bits of data that leave my powerbook appear as tiny red cars on a red beam of delicious freed information. It's priceless, especially when you have the bandwidth for some fast freaking connections.

Last week I finally accepted...

the truth that I'm not really paying to attend any of my classes. So long as I get a passing grade my attendance, and by extension anything I might otherwise have learned, means nothing. No employer with a sliver of working grey matter will ever care whether you earned an A+ or a B or a C- in your psyche class sophomore year (which for me actually was a rare A). They will care if you have a degree that's appropriate to the position you want, and they will want to hear stories about how life has prepared you for this and what an excellent employee you've been to others.

I'm paying Pitt for a diploma, and perhaps some neat experiences, but precious, precious few of my classes are actually worth attending regularly, and it's an equally rare prize when I end up learning something worthwhile in a lecture. Hey, for fun let's make a list of Good Classes I've Had:
Biology for Non-Majors: Taught by a hilarious Scotsman, this class is thoughtfully structured in a way that assumes that you don't already know everything about biology. The reading follows right along with the lectures, and is available as a cheap Xerox from the bookstore. Sadly, the site of my sole falling-asleep-and-drooling incident.
The American Way of War: Professor Goldstien ("Goldy") is priceless. Hilarious and serious, well-read and experienced, he'll tell you about life in post-WWII Air Force and actually fucking know what he's talking about. Well structured class means that you rarely leave without being enlightened in some way.
Introduction to Art: Fucking hard, basically a memorisation course, but it literally gave me an entirely new appreciation for the "art world." Plus the Prof (Gretchen Bender) was way, way cute. Sounds a tad immature, but dammit, it's true.
Explanations of Humans and Society: This sounds like one of those throw-aways, and in a way it was. The lectures were generally interesting but damned difficult to stay awake through. The recitations shined, though, and apparently, magically, somehow I convinced everyone that I knew the subject matter. Well enough to "A"ce a few papers, anyroad. And, Freud fucking rules!

So, four for fifteen so far. Actually, five, 'cause this Creative Non-Fiction is becoming enjoyable. Other profs have tried, many have not, but if only one in every three of yr. classes is anything but a bore and a hassle, something isn't jiving. My poor attitude towards academia in general, coupled with traditionally non-existent study habits, might have something to do with this opinion. And of course there are kids in any class who do well and even seem to enjoy it, but thanks to my Inner Rebel I have never ever been one of those. The classes I am interestsed in I have already studied for and quite likely know as much as the teacher does, and the ones I don't care about I cannot bear to expend effort upon. I just want my degree, please, and there's no need for it to be painful for either of us.

A new class...

requires me to write things quite frequently. It's Creative Nonfiction, something with which I should be intimately familiar. Unfortunately I've not felt very, well, orignial as of late. I'm sure that my observations and interpretations of current and past events is in some way unique, set apart from all the rest of the rantings and the ravings of the press-slash-blogsphere. Even the topic on which I will do much of my writing this semester, Religion in America and/or American Politics, has recieved much coverage thanks to Dubya's supposed ability to harness the Fundamentalists as a viable voting bloc, a theoretical counter to the Crazy Commie Lefties who would ban all guns and make dope legal and use Bibles to fuel the melting machines of the recycling plants.

Perhaps there are a few more words in there than I thought. At any rate, things should get interesting when I have to infiltrate some religious organisation and write up its nefarious operations. Having the experience that I do in this area should also provide some grist for the word-mills, as it were, although being predisposed to certain positions (i.e. right-wing religious nutters aren't rational and cling like children to made-up stories about a benevolent invisible Superman named "God" who will reward them for eliminating individuality in His name, but only once they die) is supposed to be bad for honest reporting. So, to what degree are we supposed to be "creative"? Sounds like a good question to ask the instructor, no?

This might be illegal or something...

but this must be preserved / exposed. An icy hand from the past, risen once again to remind us that nothing, really, changes in this country. It might be past the Statute anyways, I dunno, it's from a past edition of the Onion. Let's just see if anyone finds it.

---

To Hell with Journalistic Objectivity, Vote for George Bush, Dammit!
Onion Election Watch
by Victor Runbeck
Onion Campaign Reporter

I've been a political reporter for The Onion longer than most of its readers have been alive, and never have I compromised my duty as a journalist to further my own agenda. Until now. I simply cannot stand by any longer without voicing my fervent support for the sitting president of these United States, George Bush. Furthermore, I feel safe in assuming the majority of Americans - indeed Onion readers - agree with me.

Lend me your political scruples and let's take a look at George Bush, quite possibly the most qualifie person to lead this country who ever lived.

George Bush is a President who'll keep American women obliged to our proud Puritanical past. (Hey, I don't plan on having an abortion this year!) Now girls, no matter how you stack your blocks, having children is what you do best. Who would take care of the kids if you decided to try your hand at being a corporate attourney? Your husband? Ladies, there's not a sane man alive who would allow that to happen. A vote for George Bush is a vote for Leave It To Beaver's June Cleaver. You wouldn't see Mrs. Cleaver trotting downtown to her obstetrician for an abortion and she certainly wouldn't be pulling in bigger paychecks than Ward.

We need a President who values individual rights - as long as they ain't gay rights! OK, you're gay. Fine. Great. Sorry. You should have thought about that before you signed up for the U.S. military. Sexually harassing women isn't exactly what we teach our boys-in-uniform, but at least it's better than sending love notes across enemy trenches to the other side. And that's precisely the sort of thing gays do. Fellow Americans, this is a call to arms - a rally to reelect our President and to assure that our military is rife with brawny, masculine, thick-necked, hairy-chested, back-slapping heterosexual men.

If ever there was apolitical party that had an affinity with God allmighty, it would be the Republican party. As a matter of fact, looking out of my study right now I see Jesus Christ sitting on a cloud smiling down upon the GOP. (He's wearing a little elephant lapel on his tunic.) Seperation of Church and State is a fine idea, but when we can't make our teachers lead classroom prayer, we're no better than the Communists! A vote for George Bush is a vote for every little boy who folds his hand for the first time to murmur The Lord's prayer. Pick up your cross and vote my friends!

George Bush and the Republican Party represent everything that is right and just in the aggregate American mind. We Republicans know who we are. The Waltons, Harry S. Truman, and yes, even the blond-haired Jesus Christ is at home in our party. When our ideals no longer offer the reassurance they once did, the American people will look to the future. It's happened before. Social Security and Civil Rights were the product of a society that oculd no longer hold off change. The 21st century will produce new problems demanding new change, but I ask you, has that time come? Hell no! Hang on to the last century with all your might and vote George Bush in '92!

---

Scary, no? Put a W between the George and Bush in that story, and replace the lond mention of Commies with the word Terrorists, and blammo, that damned History thing, like a busted-ass record, repeats itself.

"Back in the burgh..."

says a friend's IM away window, and the same applies to me. When I arrived it was raining and hovering around 55 degrees, which according to the weather predictor will be the norm for the rest of the week and beyond. The occurences of brain-killing holy-fuck-it's-cold temperatures have been few, and concentrated in the period when I was enjoying sun in California. BTW, the two trends emerging from the Governator's Domain are large, internally lit inflatable lawn figures, and big-screen HD televisions. EVERYONE has or will soon aquire one, so hop on the wagon and be the first on yr. block!

Navigability Q. Anthropoid sent me an email the other day regarding some lasses who had recently lost their innocence. That's probably the neatest automatically generated spam name I've heard. I should use that as a spoof address...

Hells Bells,

over 100 pageviews? Of course, half of them are me checking the site for the status of the updates, but still... kinda neat.

I feel dirty now that I've been denied access to two very different websites by this joke of a service provider - I'm talking to you Unwired Access. For some reason, it is possible to view Penny Arcade but not Mac Hall, and anyone even vaguely familiar with these two comics should understand the irony. Poor programming job, boyos - even my site has enough cussing on it to set the filters alight. Ah well.

Let me put it this way - I called the family in pittsburgh from the home of my family in southern California on christmas day. I was told it was about 10 goddamn degrees in the 'burgh, and I sympathised. Then I put my shorts on and went to play some golf with Dad-O. We went to San Diego on Monday to see U.S.S. Midway, and the weather was so perfect that I was reminded of a dream.

Also, despite the size of the open blue sky and the concentration of highly religious crazies, there is another crucial difference between my two hometowns. In Colorado Springs you can actually drink the tap water without the distinct feeling that some measure of your USRDA of essential minerals is being filled at the same time. This simple fact can have a profound influence on one's feeling of overall health.

Is this wretched excuse...

for a year over with yet? Goddammit, 2004 will be remembered forever as the Year of the Foul Swine-Herd. History's pronouncement is in, folks, and there seems to be little doubt that after a few centuries of measurable progress towards a brighter future for all humanity, the scales finally tipped the other way this year, and we are now going backwards.

We're going fucking backwards. I know I just used that line, but I'll use it again Goddammit because that's the plain truth. Only the Greed Heads and Professional Pimps are doing better today than they were four years ago, and only fools and monsters think that our human world is a kinder and more enlightened place now that the Shrub has been allowed to wage his wars. FEAR and TERROR have such a grip on the hearts of the Swine in this nation that only an ocean of revenge-blood will break them. And you know what that means - we're TOO LATE.

FUCK I'm in a foul mood. The first minute of the first hour of January 1st 2005 will not be different in any way from the minute that preceeded it, and the weeks and months that follow it may not bring relief. Now would be a good time to invest in some liqour holdings, because the only guerantee I am willing to make is that people will continue to drink. I know this because I will be one of them. So long, suckers, I'm going to live in an altogether more tolerant land. It's called Future Land, and the bretheren of my generation have finally gotten into a few top positions and are already beginning to undo the massive damage this brain-dead batch of luddites is wreaking. See you there if we both survive.

Well, I tried this once...

already, but apparently Safari is designed to shut down after a certain amount of self-serving bullshit whining rantage. I thought it was pretty good, but I'm a notoriously poor judge of the quality of my own writing.

For some reason, the other night an episode of "Wife Swap" caught my attention, and it illustrated for me a point that I don't think a lot of people really consider day-to-day. This episode concerned the swapping of a Texas rock and roll semi-goth mom and a South Carolina baptist woman's-place-is-the-kitchen mom. It confirmed, almost too perfectly, every nasty suspicion and feeling I had about these fundamentalist religious fuck-nut cases, particularly the bits featuring the baptist husband. His mind wasn't just small, it shrank as you watched him. He was so perfectly prejudiced, so delightfully ignorant, so horrifically terrrifyingly mind-killingly stupid that I began to question my own grip on reality. Objectively I know that these people exist in large numbers - they're the "core" of Red State Fucks that did what they always do on November 2nd in an election year and voted for the dumbest beady-eyed Fuck on the ballot. I have even lived among them in Colorado Springs, that smoky hamlet at the foot of the Castle von Dobson, Focus on the Family.

But this was too easy. The man (Bill, I think, Mr. Bill Fucknut) presented such a clear target for lampooning that even the Iraqi National Guard could have taken him out, were they equipped with sarcasm instead of second-hand U.S. small arms (and here, the obvious joke would be "maybe they'd be better off with sarcasm," and that's just as cheap a shot. But come on, you were thinking it. Knock-Knock Joke Mortars and Funny Rhyming Humvees and Trenchant Wit Grenades and oh okay). And at some point towards the end I began to notice that the extraordinary level of editing - that is, splicing together short clips that may or may not be in correct chronological order - couldn't be due solely to time constraints. The staccato nature of the sound bites in particular bothered me, because it clearly destroyed the natural rythm of the conversations that were "taking place" on camera. Whole sentences would end and begin at unnatural times, sometimes a syllable or two shorter than they should have been.

But everything we see on television is edited this way, to one degree or another. That's why they call them shows. If it's on television at all it is by definition entertainment, and entertainment does not have to be real. In fact, it's generally better if it isn't. But these quote-unquote arguments that happen on Reality Television Shows never ever ever happen exactly the way we're made to think they do, and anyone who thinks they do needs to move a few feet back from the screen and check their pulse. Everything you see on that screen, Everything, Every Fucking Thing, is Edited to appear that way. All of it. From news interviews to America's Most Painful Pratfalls, nothing is real inside there, nothing, and the degree to which we Fat Americans depend on it and accept what it says unquestioningly is really, really fucking scary. I am both fascinated and terrified by the prospect of witnessing the next fifty years of our specie's development, because now I have a genuine fear that we'll start going fucking backwards.

What do you think, too much? So far Camino has behaved well, but it set my processor activiy monitor aflame with activity, and something called the "TrueBlue Environment". WTF? Why isn't it all just one fucking thing, one application one process, give me a break.

I suppose it's true...

that I'm one of the most vanishing of minorities, especially in God's America. That's right, no one in particular, I'm an Atheist. Been out of the closet for a while now, yessiree. Haven't been hit by lightning or run over by a Jesus Fish Magnet delivery truck as of yet, but it's definitely odd knowing that something like 98.6% of the other humans I see walking around me believe in an invisible super hero that lives in space and punishes people for wrongdoing after they're dead.

BTW, here's the credit for that description. GYWO is superb satire, because it isn't satire, really, it's just raw disgust channeled through some cheap red clip art and fantastic dialogue. And my contacts ache, so that's all for tonight. Future Self, if you're reading this, I get the feeling that a humongous rant is building in that dark, dark heart of yours, so here's hoping it gets out soonish.

Yay! It's there...

on page 624 of the gallery, I think. Yeah, that's it. One of the only pictures of me to ever make it onto the Inter-Web, my PowerBook Pallas has a message for the rest of the world.

I like it.

Good reading...

comes from odd sources. Consider this document, which has been handed down to us from our dear James Madison, one of the Founding Brothers. One passage in particular stood out to my eyes:

"Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate [liberty] needs them not. Such a Government will be best supported by protecting every Citizen in the enjoyment of his Religion with the same equal hand which protects his person and his property; by neither invading the equal rights of any Sect, nor suffering any Sect to invade those of another."

Such profound wisdom may be plumbed from the depths of our history with disconcerting ease. What modern politico could hope to match such eloquence, and what chance would a cadre of such people have to effect change in our hyper-polarised political world? Makes me whistful for a time I was never a part of.

Lines like this are why I love...

Teen Titans.



"Bumble Bee! Release the Mind Control Squid!"

Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HA HAAA!! Seriously, that show's got it where it counts.

To take arms against...

a sea of ignorance, and by opposing, end it? That seems to be the Question of the Week, whether 'tis nobler in the heart to suffer the taunts and jabberings of a slate of morons in order that their voices might be countered. But for the majority of my time as a registered Democrat, I've not been excited or energised by the party and it's machinery - rather, I've taken solace in running counter to a party of fear, superstition, and naked ignorance. Against such a tremendous front of Red on our map of America, is it really possible to fight against the Elephant without by default aligning with the other side? I was prepared to wear the ribbons and devices of our nation's armed forces in order to fight for America, but the new militancy taking hold among the Opposition would pit me against America. How is this behaviour any better than the "enemy"s?

I know, an Obviousman standard! I'll fight ignorance on both sides.

Well, that felt good...

but solved nothing, as always. Plus, now that the spleen has been vented and the balance of precious bodily fluids restored there are a few things that have become clear. John Kerry might have run a poor campaign, but he also faced the most rutheless, well-funded and hyper-disciplined political machine ever created in America. JFK walked up to the firing line with a revolver and watched as a tank battalion rolled over the hills towards him, and the fact that he came so close to winning despite the odds and the forces arrayed against him is a testament to the power of decency and real courage in politics. These ideals are oft overlooked because no one wants a Smith & Wesson when you could be driving an M1-A1 Abrams, and here I could delve into the similarities between the candidate's philosophies and their chosen weapons ad nauseum. Suffice it to say, if you bother to ruminate upon the contrasts offered, the illustration is simple and clear.

That is all for now. I wished to leave something in the great un-read blogsphere that was less vituperative than my last post. In the weeks and months to follow the forces of decency shall regroup and forge ahead, and we will prepare however we must to make sure that 50% of America is not squashed into the treads of the enemies' armour.

Congratulations! And Welcome...

To Four More Years of Bombs and Poverty! This race was John Kerry's to win or lose, and he lost it, folks. He did not have the Fire in his belly, or the ability to connect with the American population on more than an intellectual level. Reality has never had anything to do with who was going to win, so in a way the whole Bush line that "we make our own reality" has plainly become the truth. People don't actually know who will make a better leader until that person's leadership is tested, but people obviously believe that Dubya is the stronger man. John Kerry could not make himself look strong, not to save himself or the Republic.

Obviously a bare majority of Americans really are that terrified of Terrorists and Fags and Abortions. Obviously it is not necessary to appeal to Hope when an appeal to Fear is so much easier to understand and so much more effective. Make no mistake: Bush lives on, runs on, and governs by Fear. The Alternative, we are told by the ads and Dick Cheney, is a pack of wolves that will eat your children and steal away your bibles and turn those left alive into Queers, and so the man who can save you from those wolves will be your saviour no matter how ghoulish his true agenda.

We The People have given George W. Bush a brand new rubber-stamped permission slip to continue on his Riteous Course, and anyone who buys the line from Sen. Frist that they will govern more moderately this time around should have their ears plugged with molten lead, because they're obviously not using them. We have told the world to Fuck Off and Get Out Of Our Way. We have the tanks, friends, and we'll decide where to park them, thank you and good night. Anyone who thinks that Iraq will be fixed before the next Islamic china shop is torn apart has learned nothing and has no sense of history, and anyone who expects the rest of the world to do more than wring it's hands together and pass a few resolutions has learned even less. Nothing short of massive economic and diplomatic retaliation will ever convince Americans that it is a poor idea to have a bald-faced jack-ass in office that bitch slaps foreign leaders into doing things the American way. And nothing will ever convince Dubya that he was wrong in the first place. America is Too Big, Too Great, and Too Powerful to ever be swayed by the pygmy voices of other nations, and that will never change so long as our taxes go to Halliburton in order to fix the things that our fine Army breaks.

I am strangely at peace with this result. It is clear, now more than ever, that America is truly ruled by fear. In 2000 it was Bush who accused Al Gore of trying to "scare people into the voting booth." That ranks as one of his most subtle yet important hypocrisies. "Why Take The Risk?" shouts another Bush ad that ran every thirty seconds in the week before the election, apparently referring to the risk that John Kerry will personally take all the money from the CIA's bank account and give it to AIDS patients and homeless unwed mothers. Or start non-stop shuttle service from Kabul to Cleveland with special discounts for guys named Mohammed. Or use the National Guard to take over all church basements and turn them into no-questions-asked 24 hour abortion clinics.

Don't laugh. People are afraid of this, which is why 11 states just made gay marriage illegal. The specter of a Homosexual A-Team driving around in a van and breaking into your house at dinner time to turn your innocent little boy into a Lover of Men is real to these people, on some dark fundamental level, because a piece of paper that says two humans are married cannot possibly justify that sort of reaction. Americans are deathly afraid of Terrorists and Gays and Non-Christians, but they are not afraid of Tomahawk missiles or Stryker APCs or F-15 Strike Eagles. Those are the weapons of God and Justice, and to date they have killed or allowed the death of over 100,000 Iraqi civilians. Iraqi families are afraid of those weapons, but their deaths are totally justified by the two buildings that fell down on September the 11th of 2001. The tens of thousands of children's bodies that lie mangled in the streets of Baghdad are just a part of that "group of folks" that "hate freedom." Killing them is necessary, ladies and gentlemen, until as Mr. Rumsfeld said they become "tired of killing themselves."

Congratulations America. Your fear will rule the world and the future of our children for the next seven generations. God Bless.

Attending a mini-rally with Reverend...

Jesse Jackson was good for the soul, even if I'm not traditionally moved by populist emotional appeals. People chanting in a crowd, no matter the message, always creeps me out. But this was helpful because after all the reading I've done, and all the polling that's taken place and been ignored, and all the reporting that has been spewed out of that God Damned Television, I really do feel that Kerry will win. If the "likely voter" polls now show an absolute dead even tie, then the massive new voter registrations and minority (read: Black) votes will almost assuredly tip the balance. Republicans tend to get a consistent degree of support from their registered voters, and if this one election were any less crucial I'd say that they'd probably win, although with an unacceptably thin margin again.

But I have the feeling that people are really starting to wake up en mass, and are considering just what another four years of Dubya would cost this country. It still shouldn't be this close, but it is. This time, however, it will be close in our favour.

5 days to go.

We are slowly working...

towards an understanding of the consequences of electing Dubya in 2004. My own family is very well split, but there are a few normally staunch conservatives that are beginning to balk at giving our current White House another four years to run willy-nilly around the world and blow stuff up in the grand delusion that it somehow makes us safer. I really really hope it's not too late, although it appears that the registration rolls in PA favour the Dems by a steady margin, and one thing you can be sure of in this election is that when people register under a party they're going to vote for that party come Nov. 2.

Sweet Merciful Jeebus, less than one week to go.

I watched Jon lay down the law...

to Msrs. Carlson and Begala on the taped and now world-widely distributed edition of Crossfire that Mr. Stewart appeared on. My impressions are thus:

1. He said many things that needed to be said, such as "You're a part of their strategies." "You have a responsibility to the discourse in America." And "The lead-in to my show is about puppets making crank calls. What is wrong with you?"

2. Debate does not involve shouting loud enough to drown out the opposing voices. When Mr. Begala claimed that Crossfire was a "debate show" he ignored this key distinction, and the two gentlemen proceeded to illustrate this by repeatedly interrupting Jon and shouting their points and questions at him.

3. Much of the news that fills up "the cycle" in this era of 24-hour power networks isn't really news at all, but fluffy incidents of little import that are blown into proportions enormous. It's fairly disgusting, and as a trained Journalist it was always one of the turn-off of the profession for me. And it is a powerful and damning statement indeed that some of the best journalism practised in America these days is done by professional comedians.

Sad, yet true. What does it change for Crossfire? Not a whole hell of a lot, except that perhaps a pang of conscience shall visit the minds of those responsible for journalism's downfall, and the citisenry who allow it to happen.

I had to explain...

to the nice man in the coffee shop why my bumper sticker "Bush-Orwell '04: War Is Peace" was an ironic message, and not meant to imply literaly that a state of war means tha there is peace in the world. He was receptive, and open to discussion, so there is hope, but I worry sometimes that I'm being too clever for my own - and Our Republic's - good.

I met the clever girl that had been putting up contrarian Homecoming Queen posters next to the mass-copied photos of semi-attractive guys and gals, messages like "This Toaster For Homecoming Queen: Brought to you by Bread." They've been torn down, but to me that says that at least people see them, for the smaller message at the bottom says "Wake up and vote for something important."

Please Jeebus, bring that date ever closer. 15 days to go.

I Wonder Why...

this particular image from the large collection at Exploding Dog.com is so singularly fascinating to me. On the other hand, I know exactly why, but part of me continually questions. It is a simple, direct, beautiful condemnation of everything this !President has done in the "War On Terror." We all knew that the right thing to do was avoid a costly war waged for a dubious purpose. We now know that we were not only right, but prescient. We knew that Iraq was not a threat to America. We knew that war would not solve our problems, but worsen them. We knew the costs would be devistating, not in lives or money but in spirit, the one thing that America has had from it's first days as a peice of parchment in 18th century Philadelphia to the days following 9/11, when we were all Americans. I wept when a German mourner held a sign up in front of a camera that said "Freiden," because we knew for certain that at that point that we had real hope for a better future for people across the globe.

And now what do we have but contempt? 18 days to go.

How do you trust...

a cafe full of strangers when you have to poo and your laptop is still hooked up to everything and your food and coffee is only halfway eaten? Generally, I do one of two things: Pack it up early. It takes a few seconds to get Pallas disentngled from the local power outlet, but all told it's pretty painless. Most of the time I rely on her size to keep her anchored, the theory being that someone would have to be real real dumb to try and run off with a 17' screened laptop once everyone else in the establishment has seen me bring it in.

And lo, I'm proven right again!

Any suggestions for getting rid of an all-pervasive static electricity field in one's apartment? Every article of clothing I own adheres. AND, as though there were a God and he had set himself to thwarting me in all Earthly endeavours, someone moved into the apartment above mine and almost immediately began playing loud rap music into my kitchen. The change was instant and remarkable. I moved away from the University to move away from the noise and pig-habits of my neighbours, above and below and next of doors. Initially, things went swimmingly, and I treasured the silence that seemed to pervade my new home. I also took comfort in the assurances of my landlord that intra-building disturbances would be met with the most severe disapproval. I shall call them today and discover specifically what actions may be taken, but the issue for me is larger. It is the fact that simple courtesy, the understanding that the actions we take in this universe have instant and real consequences in the lives for other people, has disappeared with the introduction of powerful stereos. It is impossible to walk any street in the cities of America without hearing at least one good string of "Fuckin' bitches and hoes" repeated as refrain to some mindless Casio keyboard bass line. This is an insult to many things, personal dignity and simple privacy foremost among them. And unfortunately, I'm sufficiently offended to fight against it, particularly when such refrains make their way into my private life whether I want them or not. It's Just Wrong.

Dirty stinking...

rotten filthy useless ORGANS! Damn. Whining Now changes nothing about Then, but it can help to ventilate the spleen. Thanks to this disease, over the past few years the doctors seem to have made a habit of taking pictures of the inside of my body. This is fascinating and disturbing at the same time, allowing the suffering patient to observe the cause of their suffering while being powerless to do naught but watch.

I had a similar dream this morning as I lay recovering from said photo-op, in which I witnessed the aftermath of a car crash and was powerless to help anyone but the victim's dog. It was a little grey shaggy thing with a leash, and there was definitely the strong sense that I was useless in any other capacity than to hold on to it should the victim survive. I'm sensing a common thread here.

Watch the debates. Anyone who truly cannot make up their mind, who honestly believes that there is little difference between the two candidates, is merely suffering ignorance. I'm not kidding. At this point, there should be no questions left in the mind of the concerned citizen.

Another Sunny Day...

Well, that's the name of the song, anyway, and it actually is rather nice today, at least outside this window. This idea has been percolating for some time now, but I've yet to confirm it with any other iChat users: iChat's unique (read:immediate) presentation of your buddy list and the away messages listed therein makes it much easier to think that just saying Hi is a good idea. It also makes reading said away messages something of a hobby, witness this sample:
"Arbeit erledigend... und jen saugt Kugeln."
"Don't eat your soul to fill your belly. I think that's how the quote goes, anyway..."
"This window is named for me. It is also named for you. We share in it."
"my life is so exciting I might die! i hear the ice cream man!"
"i'm so afraid of waking... please don't shake me... i must be dreaming."

I also still get a kick out of downloading crap on the campus wireless at speeds exceeding 120 kbps. Why is that? One could link it to the kind of thrill that gearheads get from slamming new headers on their V8 gas-eater and feeling those extra thirty horses push their stomach into the seat. Except for us the thrill is more intellectual, at least, one hopes that no one in Nerd Land experiences a different physical sensation when bandwidth is maximised.

I came up with an idea for a webcomic. Nerdslayer would be a consummate Nerd himself, utilising all form of wireless devices in his quest to set free the infinite mountains of information in the world. But he is the sworn enemy of the Common Nerd or Helpless Geek, those who give his kind a poor name and reputation by laughing loudly over their previous D&D exploits in the Land of the Night Elves, wearing long unkempt ponytails and shirts three sizes too large for their frame (disregarding those whose frame is substantial enough to require the largest size of garment), and the placing of Japanese techno-pop in any form of public music system. Mind you, similar uncouth behaviour in others is just as perverse and detested, but we must pick our battles.

Using a special reinforced and alltogether sharper-edged 17" PowerBook and an arsenal of discarded AOL CDs and hockey-puck iMac mice, Nerdslayer would hop from campus to campus and office block to office block kicking nerd ass and forcing them into more socially adept behaviour through concussion, amnesia, and tailored relocation/resizing of garments. He would discourage the use of pointless electronic devices and inappropriate use of common ones, mainly cell phones.

You might ask yourself, if you care (which is more than doubtful), if some event precipitated this idea to form itself? The answer is yes, and no. Yes, because there was a minor incident in one of my classes regarding one of our token "I think I'll use my cheap-assed laptop to take notes in class because it's still more sophisticated than you mongrel lead-eaters" that, while too boring to get into, caused me to remember all the little moments I had felt the above frustrations, particularly at my place of work, the University's instructor media services office.

Also, The Ministry of Truth is apparently open for business, capitalism being an odd sort of anethemic enterprise to involve itself in. The bumper sticker with "Bush-Orwell '04: War is Truth" now adornes Pallas's backside, and the response around the campus has been either curious or positive or both.

Substance? Nay...

But there was a strange lack of, let's call it idiocy in the debate last night. One can almost use the word "debate" to describe it and not raise the hackles of a dead William Webster. It is as close to a truly substantive discussion betwixt the candidates as we're likely to get, and I can be happy with that if Kerry continues to whallop Bush.

Wallop. H or no h? Either way, the word is appropriate, for a whalloping is what Bush got (and gave himself). He became particularly upset, and I thought this was brilliant on Kerry's part, when his father's record was compared to his. Is it not evident that everything Dubya has done in his life, from the spurned guard service to flailing at Yale and Harvard Business to killing businesses of his own to his entire political existence, has been a failed effort to emulate his father? And now they even have Iraq wars to compare. Analysis can do nothing but harm Bush, and the only way it harms Kerry now is if it is done without context.

A friend of mine (who remains a friend, despite being at odds politically) can only speak of Kerry's positions without context, the whole "he was for it before he was against it" thing. What's funny is, those statements are true, and their veracity is not challeneged. Rather it is their complexity which is somehow worthy of scorn, and if that is how we measure our leaders then by all means give me polysyllabic conceptual iterations. The leader of the Free World should be smart.

Masochism Part II

Am I even spelling that right? Anyroad, I just had a conversation that might have convinced me of the earlier point - that people will only come around if we lose more than we've lost already. And I don't even think I'll bother writing about the debates, because I know what they're going to be already, toothless pointless insults to intellect and democracy and humanity in general. Doubt me? We'll see...

Also, it's been decided that The Big Lebowski has the best dialogue of any slacker movie ever. Prove me wrong.

Masochism as Therapy

What is this insane desire in my heart, to see Bush win his first legitimate term in this most foul year of our Lord 2004? Would it really be what the blind deaf and dumb pig voters deserve? Yes, but it's not what the country deserves. It's not what our wildlife and air and waterways deserve. It's not what our youngest children and high schoolers and college graduates deserve. It's not what our fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers deserve. And it's most certainly not what our brothers and sisters in the armed forces deserve.

But, as some have speculated, we may actually require another round of beatings in order to break the cycle. Maybe we actually need a few more million jobs to disappear and be replaced by minimum-wage part-time slots in the McMeaties or Whore-Mart industries. If a few more people's lungs are destroyed by coal plant emissions and global warming brings a half dozen more hurricanes to our coasts every year, that might be what it takes to get people to START THINKING. Only the most painful of stimuli can convince a person to hurt themselves more gently: such is the effort to get people to use their sizeable brains.

Sez yous...

Rev. Lou Sheldon, lads and ladies, president of the Traditional Values Coalition in Aneheim and obviously bat-shit crazy: "Schwarzenegger has sided with the homosexual and drag queen lobby in muddying the biological realities of male and female."

Thus he spake when referring to The Governator's addition of Transvestites to the list of people it is possible to commit hate crimes against. That's right folks, Ahhnold is apparently a closet Democrat, at least when it comes to things like gun control and environmental regulations and equal rights for homosexuals. It remains to be seen if he will turn around Cali's messy electricity situation and still-not-inconsiderable financial woes.

Shit, I didn't even know there is a Homosexual and Drag Queen Lobby. HaDQueLob (Had - Kwê - Lob. This guy lives in a bunker where he dreams of and curses that acronym I just made up.

Also nabbed one of these hotties on eBay for a considerable discount, which is awesome seeing as they're normally around $70. A wireless mouse allows for nearly total freedom in, well, mousing around the interface, which I try to minimise anyway. God Bless Pallas and her spacious design, trackpads in general just weren't designed with long-term usage in mind. Although they are a considerable improvement over the old trackball (whose mechanical vexations I miss not one bit), and an infinite distance -in whatever medium one measures quality in- from those accursed pink nub joysticks Windows users suffer with. Cast off your shackles, brothers! If not from Windows entirely, then at least rid yourself of the Nub.

Takes getting used to...

For all of last year I was known to my ROTC shipmates by my last name only. I made a deliberate effort to get to know everyone by their first names as well as teach them my own, because it felt odd to pass someone on the street and be greeted by "Hey, Roy!" instead of "Hey, Liam!" I began this year by insisting that they use my first name exclusively, since I was no longer to be a part of the Service, but apparently that was just too weird.

Now I understand that there will forever be a very small group of people that know me as Roy, and I suppose I should consider it a privilege. There may be a dozen Liams lined up in a row if someone calls our name in a crowd, but I'll know any of my shipmates instantly if they call out Roy. I think that's something to treasure.

I'd Rather be an anchorman...

Yes, did you catch the clever reference? This entire CBS non-story is brilliantly timed and executed, and there are a few things that few people seem to be considering or addressing.
1. This story about the memos being fakes broke at a crucial time for the !President, when his poll numbers were really beginning to slide and the story regarding his "missing year" in Alabama had gained some real traction with the people and the press.
2. The story that CBS reported has not been discredited directly. Indeed, the questionable memos are just a part of a large pile of evidence whose sole conclusion is that Bush did NOT serve the time that he was required to in the National Guard, and indeed was penalised for failing to report for training on several occasions.
3. SOMEONE gave CBS those faked memos. This wasn't a clerical error. This was a deliberate attempt on the part of one or more persons to cast doubt on the whole of the story, and to say that the timing is convinient is an understatement. I don't subscribe to the theory that Rove or one of his elves masterminded this coup, if only because there has been no link demonstrated or proven. That's not to say that I don't find them capable of doing so. If these pigs can sink McCain and Cleland by similar sneak attacks of innuendo and false charges, they can certainly engineer something like this.

And poor CBS. The state of journalism in the mainstream media of America is disgusting, decrepit, and any number of other d-words that mean it doesn't work. Discombobulated, there's a fun one. In the wake of the shocking success of Fox News's "We Smear, You Concur" style of reportage larger outlets with genuine respect have fought hard to equal them, sometimes imitating line for line their tactics. The worst is the "he said she said" method, in which no investigation or even thought is required, but the words of polished party hacks are aired without context or inspection. That CBS was duped is regrettable, and the investigation into the Hows of this case will be illuminating for journalists across the country. But Dammit, they were at least doing some genuine reporting! Despite it's flaws it is a step in the correct direction, but it will be ignored because the story is no longer how Bush failed to serve even in the most minimal of ways, but that some copies of some documents from the time were from questionable sources.

Witness at once the brilliance of the Bush machine and the total incompetence of the media.

Every excess...

...becomes a vice. Thus spoke the fortune cookie on Sunday afternoon. Weirdly, this is the lesson of my life, one of the immutable rules that I live by.

Pallas seems happy with this new brain. No real issues to record, even the friggin' DRM mess cleaned itself up with eerie ease. I have yet to get my second partition (Ruri) formatted with a backup plan, but the whole thing's smooth as silk.

I read Kerry's speech in NY, watched him on Regis and Kelly this morning, and am starting to wonder if it's just enough but too late. There remains a more-than-substantial block of first time voters who, like virgins, are unsure of how they will perform but are certain that the time is right.

A friend of mine is away at a College Republican's meeting. Should I send her the speech, or the text of the NIE (if I can find it)? Might be better to use documentation that's non-partisan. Hmmm...

The Recovery

Spent yesterday convincing two good friends to buy MACS, which they were going to do anyway. Played with the new 17 inch iMac, possibly drooling in the process. Spent a good three hours Zeroing Pallas and reinstalling everything with the help of the G-Bar guys, super lot. Everythings just about back to normal, except that Pallas now feels like a brand new beastie, clear mind and pure heart.

Nothing like a full reformatting to get the geek blood pumping.