LEGENDARY, FINAL CALVIN & HOBBES STRIP

I have like six friends I could photoshop a varient of this picture with. In fact, the last time I had a beard, I went to the post office and saw a police composite sketch of my evil twin -- or my good twin, depending on your perspective, I guess -- menacing the customer line from the "most wanted" sheet.

Shoot the Girl



This is my favorite scene from the long-in-post-production SHOOT THE GIRL.

For some reason, this makes me laugh hysterically.

I'm so excited. Roger waters.

I'm so excited. Roger waters. Gonna be so cool.

Man, having an insulin reaction

Man, having an insulin reaction while a one year old plays with his weird toys is positively surreal.

William Shatner blows $20K for a contestant

Jesus, this is incredible.

Adventures of Hard Gay

As you all might have heard, liberal favorite John McCain has reached a compromise with the Bush Administration on the interpretation of Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. This “compromise” represents a capitulation on all fronts by Senator McCain, who is trying to maintain his viability as a Presidential hopeful amongst the far right, who are adamantly and disgustingly pro-torture.

You can read the “compromise” here. It would allow waterboarding, hypothermia treatment, and (let’s be honest) outright murder of prisoners, putting the United States in the same company as Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and Soviet Russia. Worse, it gives the President power to issue “authoritative interpretations” of treaty obligations in the Federal Register. Worse still, the bill allows the president to define “enemy combatant” as anyone “who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities,” a definition vague and broad enough to include everyone you know.

Despite the disclaiming anti-war slogan “Not In Our Name,” the fact remains that every US citizen is stained by the conduct of the war on terror, and as taxpayers, share responsibility and blame. Please contact every member of the Washington State delegation to register your opposition to HR 6054, Military Commission Act of 2006, as well as torture in general (contact info can be found here). Usually, it is best to send mail, but Congress is trying to rush a vote through before Congress recesses on Friday, so this can be over and settled before the elections. So, send your emails and faxes today.

The Republicans in the House aren’t going to care, but they still need to hear from us. The Democrats need to be urged to take leadership – or even a position – on this crucial issue that affects all of us.

This is the letter I sent (I left out the second paragraph for the Senators and Jim McDermott, who is my district rep):

I am writing to strongly urge you to vote to reject the HR6054, The Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Although I am not a resident of your district, and the issue hasn't even reached the House yet, I feel this is important enough to contact you immediately, in the hope you will speak out now, and will vote against any attempt to legalize torture and secret prisons when the time comes.

Please do not allow your colleagues to rush through this ill-considered bill to allow torture and secret prisons, and please vote against any legislation that incorporates the Bush Administration proposals. Even if you feel that torture represents an American value and a necessary tool in the War on Terror, surely you would agree that the issue requires a full and sober debate, one that should not be tabled as an expedient prior to the Fall elections.

I urge you to join with the former military leaders and retired judges who are speaking out against torture and secret prisons. Congress should not undermine the internationally accepted standards for treatment of prisoners articulated in the Geneva Conventions.

The brutal, inhuman, and degrading treatment of prisoners undermines U.S. security and violates the principles on which this country was founded. Civilized nations agree that these techniques are immoral, and, according to military leaders, do not lead to accurate intelligence information. The humane treatment of war prisoners has been a principal of the United States since the founding of our country, and remains the right, principled and Christian way.

As a constituent and an American, I would greatly appreciate if you and your fellow Democrats showed leadership on this issue above and beyond casting your dissenting votes. This is an issue too important to remain silent on. Far too many Americans appear willing to trade away our cherished rights, principles and traditions, and I feel the Americans who oppose torture are not being given a voice -- and a brave, loud voice is what is needed.

Please vote against The Military Commissions Act of 2006, and all attempts to amend our laws to allow torture.

Thank you for your time.

White recycled rage.

White recycled rage.

Found on Andrew Sullivan's blog:From an article at CNN about Bush's decline in popularity among Southern women:

"There are some people, and I'm one of them, that believe George Bush was placed where he is by the Lord," Tomanio said. "I don't care how he governs, I will support him. I'm a Republican through and through."

My immediate reaction to this was, I can't believe God would inflict a President like Bush on this country. After a moment's thought, I realized that yeah, it's totally something God would do. I've read some of the Old Testament -- Bush's presidency is just like the time The Lord slew all the Egyptian' first-born. It certainly is for the families of Iraq, and for the families of soldier here in the United States.

AREA MAN LIVING A DAVID LYNCH FILM

A former city official who is under investigation in an FBI corruption probe was arrested for public intoxication after claiming he was robbed by naked and scantily clad attackers at a male strip club, authorities said.

Police arrested D'Angelo Lee early Sunday outside Club Knubian Fantaciez, a dance club that becomes an all-nude male revue after midnight. Police said he told them he was attacked by three men, one naked and another in only a towel.

Lee told police the men threw him out of the club, broke his glasses and stole his wallet, though he later found the wallet. Club employees told police they removed Lee, who said he was there picking up women, because he was causing a disturbance. Lee later called the incident "just stupid, just really frivolous" and said he was only trying to get his wallet back.

Lee resigned from the City Plan Commission last year after being targeted in the FBI's corruption investigation into Dallas City Hall. Lee has been accused of voting on zoning cases where he was a paid consultant and not reporting gifts.

Watch THE PRESIDENT get snippy and agressively point his finger at Matt Lauer. What a little man.

Has it been five years already? It seems like yesterday that I rudely answered my phone after getting on the bus, and struggled to hear my sister excitedly tell me that civilation was collapsing, as it became increasingly hard to hear due to the phones ringing around me. This was before incidents were fully understood as attacks, and we all thought it was an ugly future where pilots were stupidly gliding into tall buildings, and explosions just happened at the Lincoln Memorial. Oh, for those innocent days of 6:45 AM PST, 9/11/2001.

What have we learned five years later? That everyone who hates America may have a point. I am mystified by proponents of the War, who insist everything is going hunky-dory. Don't they want to win? Bush isn't even pretending to crave victory anymore. He thinks that even establishing a objectives for victory is sending the wrong message. Heck, he wants to invade Iran, which would finish the proecess of reviving the conservatives there that the invasion of Iraq began. The cultural response from the Right has been even sicker. We must sacrifice freedom. Dissent is bad. there are conservatives who actually seem to admire Muslim societies. At least that's empathy.

I honored the anniversary the usual way, by watching movies. I screened a bunch of conspiracy documentaries, which were tedious, as well as a bootleg of World Trade Center, which was boring as all shit. The high point was when I watched 11'9"01, which was not great, except for Alejandro González Iñárritu's segment, which was mostly an audio montage, with clips from the big day. There's a part when you can hear the sounds of the WTC collapsing from the inside, each floor rythmically hammering at the ones below, accompanied by screams that sounds like they're coming from a rollercoaster. It's pretty hard to handle. Someone should post that part, and nothing else from the movie, on You Tube.

After five years, I'm starting to develop a little empathy for the affected. I read an article about the September 11th widows, which I would link to, but I can't find it. Basically, it's all about how widows and lovers got fucked around by greedy family members, and the injection of sudden wealth. It's bad enough to lose a loved one, but to then suffer through an existential Dickensian lesson on thrift and spending is pretty fucked up.

Click here for my real-time, day-of emails from September 11, 2001.

Click here for my mordantly amusing one-year anniversary article.

I figure I'll tackle the subject again in ten years, if I remember.

"Blue Moon" by Big Star

Let me be your one light
And if you'd like a true heart
Take the time to show youre mine
And I'll be a blue moon in the dark.

While you sleep you'll see me there
Clouds race across the sky
Close your eyes and don't ask why
And I'll be a blue moon in your eyes.

Morning comes and sleeping's done
Birds sing outside
If demons come while you're under
I'll be a blue moon in the sky

Let me be your one light
And if you'd like a true heart
Take the time to show you're mine
And I'll be a blue moon in the dark.

This is an odd bit of viral marketing, isn't it? There were a dozen or more of these scattered alongside the road by my house.

Holy. Living. Fuck. Are you fucking believing this? Over.



Holy mother of fuck. The fucking moon. Over

Like anyone gives a fuck what he thinks.

Sometimes my judgement is so bad even I can tell how bad it is.

I was irritated by the report that Pluto has been officially downgraded from "planet" status. What is the new classsification? Oh, it's "dwarf planet." How lazy can you get. The worst thing is the criteria astronomers used for dwarf planets was specifically designed to downgrade Pluto, by specificying that actual planets need to have near-cirular orbits (Pluto's orbital ellipse is far more pronounced than the others in the solar system, taking it within Neptune's orbit on some rotations). What a bunch of fuckers.

Honestly, if someone had told me yesterday that this story would have upset me so much, I'd have thought they were crazy.

"I would never question the patriotism of somebody who disagrees with me. This has nothing to do with patriotism. It has everything to do with understanding the world in which we live."

-- President George W. Bush

Seriously. Bush said that. BUSH said that.

I think we killed them.

I think we killed them.

Hempfest

Britney Spears

She's certainly acting... odd...

My favorite columnist at National Review Online is Mark R. Levin. On a site loaded with sputtering, impotent white men with a slighted sense of entitlement, Levin trumps them all. It is almost required of a writer for National Review to hold loyalty to the Beloved Leader above idealogical consistency, the good of the country and even personal best interests.

Levin is supposedly a legal scholar and author, and yet when an entirely fair comment on his torture advocacy is made, he is so unable to comprehend how anyone could question his... well, to call it faith would paint his struggles with an unearned and wholely blasphemous purity, so let's say his sense of entitlement to allow torture, the best he can do is sputter in outrage: "Why does anyone take this guy seriously anymore?"

"This guy"? I know the appeal of blogging is the insta-journalism of it all, but surely a professional writer would be a little more artful. At least one would hope.

This post deserves to be quoted in full:

Gitmo Finally Revealed
07/31 03:02 PM
I want to congratulate the attorneys who work with me at Landmark Legal Foundation for tenaciously pursuing the untold story of the systematic abuse of American MPs by the al-Qaeda terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. It took us a full year to bring this stunning information to light, but the truth is now out. Thanks to Pete Hutchison, Mike O'Neill, Matt Forys, and Eric Christensen.

Because prison guards are the true victims of the War On Terror.

The other thing I like about Levin is how his mug shot at NRO is cleverly cropped to disguise his baldness.

National Review does a pretty good job with their mug shots all around. Perhaps their greatest achievement was in making David Frum, to all appearances a subhuman pig man, almost frattishly handsome.

Trunk Monkey

I had this idea a while ago, but it was as a panhandler response system. This is pretty good, though.

Holy crap, the women of the Israeli Defense Force are hot!











I read this article (hopefully a translation) about what they do.

Who'd have thought if you handed a rifle to a young Jewess she'd become so appealing?

Check out this wonderfully obsequious interview with Dick Cheney in National Review. Conducted by Byron York, the transcript repeatedly identifies Cheney as "THE VICE PRESIDENT." All caps, with preposition.

Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Rainbow

I've always heard about this, but never watched for myself. Calling it perfectly synchronized is probably a stretch, but the tornado sequence set to "Great Gig in the Sky" is synchronistic genius.

My friends dance at their wedding

After five years... you will become a zombi if you don't seek adventure and change.
-- Robert Anton Wilson

These are the saddest words I've read about Syd Barrett's sad death: Syd Barrett, who died several days ago (no one is sure exactly when)...

I've got a bike. You can ride it if you like.
It's got a basket, a bell that rings and things to make it look good.
I'd give it to you if I could, but I borrowed it.

You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world.
I'll give you anything, everything if you want things.

I've got a cloak. It's a bit of a joke.
There's a tear up the front. It's red and black, I've had it for months.
If you think it could look good, then I guess it should.

You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world.
I'll give you anything, everything if you want things.

I know a mouse, and he hasn't got a house.
I don't know why. I call him Gerald.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.

You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world.
I'll give you anything, everything if you want things.

I've got a clan of gingerbread men.
Here a man, there a man, lots of gingerbread men.
Take a couple if you wish. They're on the dish.

You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world.
I'll give you anything, everything if you want things.

I know a room of musical tunes.
Some rhyme, some ching. Most of them are clockwork.
Let's go into the other room and make them work.

Syd Barrett Dies At The Age Of 60

Pink Floyd’s legendary former front man Syd Barrett has died at his home in Cambridgeshire a spokesman has confirmed.

Barrett passed away on Friday (July 7) due to complications to do with the singer’s diabetes.

His brother Alan confirmed his death to the paper, saying: "He died peacefully at home. There will be a private family funeral in the next few days."

A statement from the remaining members of Pink Floyd says: "The band are naturally very upset and sad to learn of Syd Barrett's death.

"Syd was the guiding light of the early band line-up and leaves a legacy which continues to inspire."

Barrett, real name Roger Keith Barrett, departed the Pink Floyd fold in 1968 and became a recluse for more than thirty years after a drug induced breakdown.

However, he was convinced by EMI to have a short solo career.

He produced two solo albums - ‘The Madcap Laughs’ and ‘Barrett’ – in the late 60s and early 70s.

In 1972 he formed the short lived band Stars with Ex-Pink Fairies member Twink but he left shortly after a disasterous gig at Cambridge's Corn Exchange.

He is thought to be the inspiration behind the song ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ from Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’ album.

Barrett made a surprise appearance the Abbey Road sessions for the album and was present when the remaining members of Pink Floyd recorded the track.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY

...we are back to David Miller invoking rumor as fact.

--John Byrne, cartoonist

The internet message board produces one thing of value: taken out of context, one can find the strange thoughtless poetry of a young cultural generation in a romantic decline.

As seen on The V.

More numbers madness: as of 9:42 omn, Pacific Time, I have used 66.6 units of insulin. Whooaa,,, And spookier still, I watched both versions of The Omen last weekend!

As part of my job, I sent an email at 1:09 pm to a group of artists, requesting an online donation. At 1:42 we received our first online renewal, from Port Townsend. A total of 33 minutes had passed!!!

Soem reflections:

33 is the largest positive integer that cannot be expressed as a sum of different triangular numbers.

Classic LP records turn at 33 1/3 RPMs.

There are 33 degrees in Freemasony. The 33rd Degree is the highest rank in the Scottish Rite of Freemasony. My uncle, Arnold Flottman, is a 33rd Degree Freemason.

33 is the best-known car number of retired NASCAR driver Harry Gant.

33 is the code for international direct dial calls to France.

A normal human spine has 33 vertebrae when the bones that form the coccyx are counted individually.

The number 33 is printed on all Rolling Rock beer labels.

There are 33 Cantos in each of Dante's 3 parts of the Divine Comedy.

Elvis Presley appeared in 33 motion pictures, including "Tickle Me" (1965).

The composer John Cage wrote a piece of silent music, entitled, 4'33".
The landmark film King Kong debuted in 1933.

Sea water pressure doubles every 33 feet of depth.

There are 33 customer reviews on Amazon.com for The Witch Doctors, by John Micklethwait.

The Hindu Rg Veda describes "the 33 divinities."

The existence of a total of 33 black holes has been confirmed, in our own galaxy and elsewhere in the universe.

Roswell, New Mexico is at 33°37'N latitude. This geo-latitudinal line also passes through what is known as the "Bermuda Triangle" in the Atlantic Ocean, as well as Dealey Plaza in Dallas, TX, where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by as many as 33 conspirators.

King David ruled Israel for 33 years.

Michelangelo was 33 when he began painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Jesus Christ was 33 years old when He was crucified and ressurected. Some Gnostic sects who accept reincarnation believe Jesus has led 33 lives.

And I will turn 33 next month!!!

Coincidence? I THINK NOT!!!

Renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking from the University of Cambridge, front, is accompanied by his nurse during a visit at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Hong Kong Tuesday, June 13, 2006. Hawking, author of the global best-seller a "Brief History of Time", arrived in Hong Kong on Monday and plans to give a lecture on Tuesday. Hawking is on a six-day visit in Hong Kong before going to Beijing.(AP Photo/Vincent Yu) 

Okay, am I wrong, or is that nurse hanging out of her shirt to a ridiculous degree? I know Hawking is a reknowned astrophysicist, but that amount of cleavage on his help is just crazy.

I just finished making 40 burritos. I am all that is man!

Some guy is standing in my driveway talking about how his relationship went wrong: "We were always living in the past, and that preventd us from moving forward" I wonder if others share my knowledge, and if that contributed to the break up? Or does his trite analysis of What Went Wrong hint at greater shallows?