Here:

And am I the only one that noticed that Mike Myers in the Cat in the Hat makeup is a childhood vision of horror? If this god damn nature-taunting cat man was a howling scorpion with my father’s face riding the blood-soaked ghost of Joseph Stalin I couldn’t be more terrified of it.

I just had a seangasm.

*note: while true, this post is totally ridiculous. i like it that way.

i sit a lot, trying to stay chill, trying not to bust holes in the wall. i do a lot of crossword puzzles. humiliating my friends at games like scrabble and trivial pursuit is one of my favorite hobbies. tried throwing myself into my work and found that shit bores me a lot of the time. so the NYT crossword is like my daily challenge. it gets harder as the week progresses, generally peaking on saturday. the sunday puzzle is larger, but in my experience not as hard. just big.
today i went to the starbucks by my work on my lunch break and busted out mr. friday, by my formula the second-hardest puzzle of the week. usually i’m about 75% finishing fridays. monday through thursday are generally gimmes (except this wednesday’s, which dominated me) but fri-sat is the evil axis of devastating puzzledom.
often you don’t have to even look at the clues to know how hard a puzzle will be…if the grid has few black squares, and from a bit back has a lighter feel to it, you could be in trouble. this is indicative of a lot of long, long words/phases with fewer opportunities to fill in chunks with shorter words overlapping a lot. today’s friday had a definite lack of black squares. it was whiter than beverly hills.
well, i’m not letting some puzzle scare me am i? a little. perhaps a small whimper of fear escaped my quivering lip. but i bore ahead bravely, dove into the fray, etc. wielding my pen as a sabre, i scanned the field of battle for vulnerable enemies. while it presented an imposing front, there were weaknesses, and i quickly moved to exploit them. the bottom left began immediately to buckle under the weight of my assault, and discovering a 3 letter “asian holiday” (tet) afforded me an opportunity to rout the enemy from this part of the field. with the center of the line holding, i moved to the bottom of the grid, and scored a coup when i filled in a long one (“staring into space”) and the bottom fell, though not without a hard-fought battle.
one way to tell if you’ve done a good job on the puzzle is to see how clean it is when you’re done. if you have written over words again and again trying to find out what the right one is, you’ve fucked up, and deserve to be sent to a corner. as an aside: never use a pencil. it shows weakness, and the New York Times crossword puzzle can smell weakness from several newspaper racks over. use only pen, preferably one with a strong, clear black line. i prefer rollerball pens, the pilot precise V5 to be specific.
anyhow, my top third of the puzzle today was riddled with errors. i incorrectly remembered the german word for “high” (its 4:20 zumvere, ya?), putting “alte” (the word for “old”) instead of “hoch”. the bitterness in my mouth was unbearable. the battle was turning against me, and my lunch hour was dwindling. i became desperate, scanning the three long, grid-wide across clues that composed the top three lines of the puzzle. “Deviant, in a way” “You know…that woman.” ‘there are no options”. I could think of nothing. the corpses of several incorrectly filled squares led me to chase many red herrings, feints and counter feints in the blood-soaked grid of battle. i feared i would lose this conflict, my pen forced to flee the field. morale plummeted and my hand shook with exertion.
all of a sudden, as a lone raven flew overhead, it struck me. “Deviant, in a way”. SADOMASOCHISTIC. the random letters i’d managed congealed in my head and i let out a fierce whoop of bloodlust. i bore down on the now-shattered puzzle, routing its armies from the plain. “You know…that woman” OLDWHATSHERNAME. there are no options….YOUHAVENOCHOICE. My victory was complete.
i sat back. and looked around. i get very intent when i’m doing puzzles and often miss things happening around me. if there had been a pterodactyl attack, i would have been fucked. thankfully, no ancient flying dinosaurs were menacing my local starbucks. i had a smoke to calm my nerves, still singing with the joy of combat.
then i got up and threw the paper away, and made my way back to work. i wondered…do the passing drivers know? can they see it in my face?

then i realized it’s highly probable i’m completely insane. i had a little chuckle over that, but it was interrupted by a ferocious pterodactyl attack. ah, but that’s a tale for another day.

on august 19 1998 the US launched missiles into Afghanistan and the Sudan, in response to terrorist attacks on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. the Sudan missiles destroyed the Al Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries factory, and its owner’s assets were frozen by the US Treasury Department, as his factory was accused of producing/hiding/harboring chemical weapons. Eight months later, to no notice in the US media, the government unblocked the owner’s (Saudia Arabian Salih Idris) assets with the admission that the bombing had been a mistake.
i haven’t found direct evidence of the efficacy of the Afghanistan bombings, and thus can’t comment on it. But the attack in Sudan was ridiculous and caused death and suffering for many people. The fact that the world’s lone superpower felt it necessary to unload advanced munitions against a factory that it had no credible evidence to suggest was dangerous constitutes, in my mind, a war crime. From Media Monitors:

The ultimate consequences of the U.S. missile attack on Sudan has been the ongoing death of thousands of innocent Sudanese civilians who due to the destruction of the al-Shifa plant, have no access to medicines that would otherwise have been made easily available by the plant. The death toll, in other words, of the U.S. missile attack, has continued to increase to this day.

Try reversing positions, and imagine a Sudanese warship had launched missiles into the US and destroyed medical and pharmaceutical facilities. The response would be unequivocal and devastating, and the nation of Sudan would likely have been wiped off the face of the earth. But this does not enter into the equation. This was a terroist act. The Sudanese government asked for an apology. Needless to say, none has been forthcoming for the last eight years.
This is justice? ask the parents of the dead children.

The Independent Onlinearticle(archived at Refuse and Resist!)
What Really Happened?

i got a nasty sunburn in colorado when i was riding around on my kayak. my legs were really red. the next day i went out again, because chris (who never posts because he’s a douche) was visiting from denver. i so paranoidally sprayed sunscreen on my charred legs that it eventually lacquered them in a clear coating. i didn’t get burned, though it was completely disgusting.

the best, best best part of getting a sunburn is, of course, getting to peel the skin off later. it’s like a joyous romp to me. i giggle with glee at the thought of getting a long, sheer section of skin peeling off. it’s not a sexual fetish, not yet anyway…

being fairskinned, i feel cautious about getting burned, so when i get a real good peel working it’s like a special treat from the melanoma bunny.

I know it’s just one staffer for one insane idiot neo-con, but it’s still telling. Bear in mind that this is in reaction to ONE op-ed in ONE newspaper.

“Connecticut should have its statehood taken away from it. The foolishness of its pampered residents should be demonstrated to others by a government program to bulldoze the entire state, salt the land and construct a windfarm to supply NYC with electricity. And its residents should be relocated to Guantanamo Bay where they can take a number behind the 3 who hung themselves this weekend, since they seem so intent on suicide.”
— Daniel Kish, a senior adviser to Pombo, in an email

we live in a time where a significant chunk of the country supports a party that believes it’s okay to kill and imprison other Americans if they disagree with a political standpoint you have. That is alarming as fuck. some people call it a “rise in eliminationist rhetoric”. i call it “buy a fucking gun and keep your name and address secret”. Because, although they’re right now just a bunch of windbag assholes, they’re setting the groundwork for the even bigger psychos who will come after them. And since their predecessors set the bar for acceptable rhetoric so low, they will infer that the bar for acceptable actions is equally low. And then horrible tihngs happen.

I have a counter-proposal to Mr. Kish. I posit he should defend his call to imprison Americans and destroy their belongings because of a disagreement over a miniscule amount of oil (less than a week’s supply) that his boss’s wealthiest contributors are likely to squeeze a couple extra dimes out of. I say to Mr. Kish: You, by this email, have qualified as a grade-A fucking psycho dickbag, and should be locked up in a nice, clean mental facility and routinely cavity-searched. That’s a little nicer than your desires for the people of Connecticut isn’t it? Pudding twice a day, i bet.

hey! you’re doing the same thing! you may holler at the screen, slapping your knee in outrage, perhaps gripping the drapes. Sure. But look closely at the context. Mr. Douchebag is advocating imprisonment and impoverishment for millions because he doesn’t like something they said. I’m advcocating a nice “vacation” (perhaps some ECT) for his call to destroy a US state. I know he’s engaged in rhetoric, assholes. So am i. but he’s help pushing norms to gross places, as i explained above. so fuck him. Fuck him in the ass with a big rubber dick. than break it off inside and beat him with what’s left, and ditch his still quivering shitpile of a body in a filthy men’s room in some run-down ghetto his fucking party makes bigger and smellier and more hopeless.

just kidding.

you ever wondered about the pro-life movement, and the motivations of its intellectual masters, read this post by Jill guest-bloggin at Rude Pundit. Whatever their motivations may be, however honorable or hopeful, they do nothing but provide cover for a Nazi-esque program to control women, wombs, and reproduction in service of a vile agenda. PERIOD. There is no “life” in “pro-life”, only control. the goal is to gain control of women’s ability to dictate their reproductive lives, and it’s revealed in deed after deed. don’t listen to their profoundly dishonest rhetoric. look at their deeds. the truth will be evident, and it is as fucking awful as you could imagine.

if i was John Conyers, I’d stay away from airplanes for a while. nosy Democrats have a way of dying in plane crashes.

i found this page on snowsurfer, which i hadn’t been to in years, and it was the first of what appeared to be many “Link-fest Friday” pages. Of all 13 links on there, mine is the only one still active. I don’t know what that says about me, but I’ve been doing this for a long time.

i give israel the right to defend itself…but is this the way to do it?

“They wrote the names of the dead children on their plastic shrouds. ‘Mehdi Hashem, aged seven Qana’ was written in felt pen on the bag in which the little boy’s body lay. ‘Hussein al-Mohamed, aged 12 Qana’, ‘Abbas al-Shalhoub, aged one Qana.’ And when the Lebanese soldier went to pick up Abbas’s little body, it bounced on his shoulder as the boy might have done on his father’s shoulder on Saturday. In all, there were 56 corpses brought to the Tyre government hospital and other surgeries, and 34 of them were children. When they ran out of plastic bags, they wrapped the small corpses in carpets. Their hair was matted with dust, most had blood running from their noses.

Qana…

We’ve been killing little children in Iraq for 15 years. First our war, then our sanctions, designed and run by the US, and then another war and utterly disgraceful planning for the postwar period. Isreal had been killing Palestinians for as long or longer….but have returned to another pasttime, killing Lebanese children.

israel authorities claim that Hizbollah or however you spell it fighters are hiding amongst civilians. Okay. Who cares? how does that justify killing the civilians? it DOES NOT justify it. I’ll tell you one stone cold fact: if they were hiding amongst ISRAELI civilians, they would be safer than babes in the cradle. Since they’re allegedly hiding amongst Lebanese civilians, they’re meat, and everyone around them. It is disgusting. It’s also, without doubt, a war crime, though you will not hear about the proceedings, nor will you hear about the US vetoing any sanctions against Israel, which it doubtless will.

How is it okay to have 56 dead, 34 children? Why do we accept this. and it would stop too, if the United States turned off the money spigot. The people in power won’t do it, and it’s unlikely the people waiting in the wings will. we need to flush through the cycle rapidly to help create a just world, not just control petroleum. That’s what being a liberal is about: the creation of a moral, just nation. We have not done that. We’ve been carping and chirping about issues, and all the while these animals in charge get worse, with no one to stop them. What do you say to them? Stop, you’re being insane?

Aim yourself at a just world and other things fall into place.

I was reading this post. This song makes me cry.

Maria
RATM

she regenerates
And like tha sun disappears only to reappear
Maria she’s eternally here
Her time is near
Never conquered but here

Look at the last 100 years. Look at the death, war and blood spilled on foreign soil. Try and figure out what its for.

Its for the dollar. The Germans were vociferously supported by all American elites until they infringed on our trade practices. The Indonesians tried to keep US corps out. The Chinese wouldn’t let Brits sell opium in China. The American Indians wouldn’t let invaders take their homes. The response of the white man? Death. Endless death.

That’s capitalism.

Now it’s being reflected in the endless stream of the poor from south of us. They come some for work, some for free government services. All dreaming of living a better life. It’s a measure of the extremist right-wing efforts’ success at realigning people’s views that the poor white people (and trust me, you’re poor if you’re reading this, I don’t care what kind of car you drive) and some Latinos have voluntarily formed a buffer against this human tide. Some going so far as to plant their soft white asses on lawn chairs surrounded by media and Border Patrol agents on the border. Its a sorry sight.

One thing I don’t believe many people realize is that American policy in South and Central America, specifically state-sponsored terrorism campaigns and monetary/military/political support for extremist dictators, is what caused these countries to become so desperately poor. The campaigns in Nicauragua, if you extrapolate the casualty figures to a country the size of the US, would have been 2.25 million, more than the casualties the US suffered in all of its wars combined. And on a tiny country like Nicauragua… the impact was extreme. All because rich fuckers didn’t like poor, shit-upon people standing up and demanding a better life. The market rules over everyone but them you see.

So when you see the poor bastards dying in the desert, or swept away in ravines, or kicked by racist pricks, imagine Ron Reagan standing over them laughing, as his legacy and wishes are fulfilled. Imagine 50 years of US meddling and the death, torture and horror it’s lead to.

Look at yourself and ask, “Do I support this? Is this me?”.

Because unless you stand up and scream NO MORE, it is you.