Hillary Clinton just broke the Rand Barrier.

"We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."

And she wasn't joking. Dang, when I hear things like that it just gives the the willies. It's bad enough to be similar to characters in Atlas Shrugged, but when you start quoting them verbatim, that's when it gets a little freaky.

Hillary will be president some day. Maybe in a few years, just for writing this, I'll be laying on a rack with Richard Burton's fatherly face hanging over me. "Picture a boot," he'll be saying with that velvet voice. Oh, shit, man, then he'll do that thing where he pulls out my tooth. I hate that part.

Heh. HillaBurton.

(Via: Babalublog)

Sweet.

A nicely done post from another Georgia boy, Michael King. I can imagine the twisted expression of indignation and hatred that pours over "anti"-War people's faces when they see these two smirky State-Terrorists having a laugh over the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis who weren't botherin' nobody no-how.

Fuck 'em. If they'd wiped their own asses we wouldn't have had to go over there and mop the floor with them. Here's your country, all nice and fixed. And if you screw it up, we're just gonna go back over there and do it again. Now, get to work!

Update: Heh.

Holy smokes! I just took a couple of things out of my refrigerator that I wasn't sure I could legally throw into the garbage, owing to strict German HAZMAT regulations. I had trouble identifying some of them; luckily, most of the labels were still legible, under the green slime running down the sides. Every time I clean out my fridge, I swear to God it's the last time I'll let the shit go like that. It's amazing, and repulsive, to compare the inhabitants of my refrigerator in their original form to the pulsating, slimy, hideous, mutated forms they've now assumed.

I swear, I will never let that shit go like this again.

Update: Fridge-rot zeitgeist?

Poking around at Jeff's Place, I came across this article, the gist of which is that cell phones are bad for your boys. Seems to me that just about everything these days is targeting the testicular tadpoles. After a little googlin', I was shocked at how many things have been proven to lower your sperm count.

Things That Have Been Proven To Lower Your Sperm Count

• Tighty Whities
• Smoking
• Slamming Your Genitals in a Car Door
• Margret Cho
• Ovaries
• Taking Cold Showers

Keep em covered, and stop rubbing yourself with your cell phone, weirdos.

Name that tune:

Translated by Rube into German Schalt dein Gedächtnis aus, relax und geh mit dem Strom (Es heisst nicht sterben) Leg alle Gedanken ab, gib Dich zum Nichts auf (es funkt) Noch wirst Du den Sinn des Innens begreifen (Es heisst Dasein) Die Liebe ist Alles, und die Liebe ist Alle (Es heisst Wissen) Ignoranz und Hass bedauern den Tod (Es heisst Glauben) Doch hör den Farben deines Träumens zu (Es heisst nicht Verlassen) Also, Spiel das Spiel Existenz bis zum Ende (Das Ende vom Anfang)

Translated by Google back into English Still your memory switches off, relax and goes with the river (it does not mean to die) puts down all thoughts, geb you to the nothing on (it transmits) you the sense of the Innens will understand (it is called existence) the love is everything, and the love is all (it is called knowledge) Ignoranz and hate regrets death (it is called faith) hears colors of your dreaming nevertheless too (it is not called leaving) thus, play the play existence up to the end (the end of the beginning)

My boiler went out on me. For those of you who live in the First World, let me explain what a boiler is. A boiler is a huge, obnoxious contraption that hangs on the bathroom wall and goes out on you, forcing you to take cold showers, and shave with icy-cold razors that, as Davy Jones promised all those years ago, do indeed sting. In America, I've never seen a boiler. That doesn't mean they don't exist; it just means they're at least hidden and don't go out on you. This particular boiler, which I've learned to ignore over the years, is about 5 feet tall, a foot deep, and 2 feet wide. It's made of steel, is painted white, and hangs on the wall right next to the bathtub. It blocks an entire corner of the room ,and sometimes it drips black, greasy, evil smelling fluids onto the floor. Now it doesn't even make hot water, so I'm not sure what the point of the thing is.

I'm a vegetarian; I separate my trash, because otherwise the trash-men won't take it; I have socialized health care; I recycle, because I have to; and, now, I hate bathing. Living in Europe is just like being in college, without the drugs and smug illusion of superiority. Objectively, I'm more pinker than even the pinkest of American pinkos.

Damn dirty hippy.

Andrea Harris shouldn't keep it all bottled up.

Every blog should have a "Bitchslaps" category, because there's nothing like a good rant to getcha all woken up on a Saturday morning. Unless she's down under, which means it's, like, Tuesday or something for her.

Cheney to Leahy:

Go Fuck Yourself

Does this mean that the FCC can jump on C-SPAN now? That would actually be a good way to generate some revenue. Just put Cheney up there like he's going to make a speech, then he starts up like "fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck F-uhhh-uuhhh-uuh...CK!" That's $3,000,000 per day right there.

And who woulda thought that "a conversation about politics, religion, and money" with Dick Cheney could turn unpleasant? Shit, man, Leahy should be thanking his lucky stars that Dick didn't pull his jersey over his head and give him the Willi Plett treatment.

If C-SPAN commentators would start goading senators into hockey fights, it would at least put some butts in the seats in the Capitol. Last time I watched Congress on C-SPAN, the gallery looked like a late-80s Braves game; back then, the peanut guy just sat down next to you and watched the game. With more fights, you could get enough people in there to get the wave going. And there could be an awesome EA Congress 2004 game. I'd play Daschle, because he's the scruffy little Reijo Ruotsalainen of American politics.

I expect this kind of thing from British MPs. When you watch the Brits in session, they always seem to be 5 seconds away from a rhubarb.

The Mozilla Workers' Party has announced version 0.9 of Firefox (click the link over there on the clichd and unintuitive interface element, "left-hand sidebar"). In the name of openness, and to avoid a browser monopoly, every single person on the Internet should use Firefox.

IE==HITLER!!!

If you're not using Firefox, you might just as well have sawed off those guys' heads with your own blood-soaked hands. Take a stand! Internet Explorer won't even let you see its source code! Firefox will, though the shit might as well be in Chinese for all the good it'll do you. No, really, peruse them 35,000,000 lines of spaghetti and find the little meatball that's sending your surfing habits to Richard StaLLLman. Ok, maybe that's not such a hot metaphor, but I think you get my point.

Seething Rage

That's the feeling I get every time I see that smirking, chimp-like blue "e" spinning in the top right navigation area thing up there. Ugh, how the hell did this insane Nazi browser get (ssssss)elected to be king of the freaking web, anyway? Nothing but a little piece of trailer-trash, elevated to the role of Puppet-in-Chief by its connections to Big OS Money.

It's time for Regime Change here in the Internet. I want to be able to use CSS rounded corners and alpha transparency, not "filters" and "effects". Don't let the Internet's fate be determined by the same kind of people who made BonziBuddy a household word.

Stop killing babies and start using Firefox!

It's that time of year again. 1 score and 14 years ago, I began the slink towards Jerusalem which we call life. I traditionally celebrate my birthday with this ancient Negro spiritual, as performed by the Atlanta, GA-based bluegrass band, Blur.

Damon say:

It's my birthday No one here day Very strange day I think of you day Go outside day Sit in park day Watch the sky day What a pathetic day I dont like this day it makes me feel too small I dont like these days They make me feel so small

It's the first birthday I've ever had where I was cold. It's cold outside.

Update:

I woke up this morning, well, today, and it wasn't cold anymore. It turned out to be the most stunning day of the year so far. 73F, little cottonball clouds, and the kind of sky they had to invent words like "azure" for. It just goes to show you, if you whine enough, God will hear you. Which doesn't bode well for November.

As I noted last year, the unbridled hatred of George Bush makes me nervous. It's not hard to believe he'll be assassinated at some point. In order to defeat the bug, I said to myself as I was shaving this morning, you have to understand the bug. Speaking of shaving, I usually use a single-blade safety razor, like grandpa's, to shave with. Those things are downright dangerous once they get dull; you might as well wear an orange jumpsuit and sit cross-legged on the floor while you shave, exhorting your people to rise up against the oppressor and follow your example by also shaving their heads off, praise be to Allah. I can't find new blades anywhere; I guess I'll have to buy a new razor. So I thought of a few reasons to hate George Bush.

Reasons to Hate George W. Bush

• A President needs to have a way with words. Bush...not have way
• He gave you a wedgy in high school
• He gave you a wedgy in 2000
• He took the last fucking slice of pizza, that bitch
• He banged your girlfriend at that party
• He's one of those religious fundamentalists
• He always makes that shitty little self-righteous coughing noise when you light a cigarette IN A BAR, for fuck's sake
• He doesn't drink
• That Medicare thing

Screw George W. Bush.

This might just be the best blog entry...evar. I don't say that lightly, as I consider my own work to be the zenith of western philosophy. But, realistically, aside from a few Oxford commas, what really differentiates the men from the boys in the quaintly-bemonikered "blogosphere"? You have the greats, no doubt: The "Velociman" does indeed "use his tongue purdierna two-dollar whore"*, if I may be so bold as to quote the belovd Slim Pickens vehicle, "Les Setts Flambs". Another great adventurer of the soul is "Protein Wisdom" who, though a Jew, manages to express his "ideas" in an art that doesn't scream "Catskills". Recommended, if only with certain obvious reservations.

The Wilburn Brothers says:

I met a little girl in Knoxville a town we all know well And every Sunday evening out in her home I'd dwell We went to take an evening walk about a mile from town I thought of how she cheated me so I knocked that fair girl down I picked a stick up off the ground and knocked that fair girl down Oh Willy dear don't kill me here I'm not prepare to die She never spoke another word I only beat her more Until the ground around me within her blood did flow I took her by her golden curls I dragged her round and round Then threw her into the river that flows through Knoxville town Go there go there you Knoxville girl with dark and rolling eyes Go there go there you Knoxville girl you'll never be my wife I rolled and tumbled the whole night through my dreams were living hell And then they came from Knoxville and carried me to jail I'm here to waste my life away and time is passing slow Because I killed that Knoxville girl the girl I loved so

Visit the Knoxville Girl. I haven't read her stuff, but she's hot, in a green-eyed emo kinda way.

I'm no boy scout, not any more, but I still sometimes suffer from a debilitating case of morality. As an example, I was swilling beer with some friends of mine last night, and one of them was explaining his marketing idea to me. He's driving into work, and he decides to leave his iBook on. He's got his wireless card turned on, and a sniffer program running. On his way to work, about 5 miles, he finds something like 20 wireless networks, only 2 or 3 of which are password-protected. His idea is to find drive around, sniffing out open wireless networks, and going into the businesses and telling them their networks are wide open to whomever drives up to the curb, and offering to fix it for them for a fee.

This is a little too chaotic for me. That would be like coming home and finding some guy sitting on your couch. Then he tries to sell you a new lock. We debated the legality of it, and I'm pretty sure that it's legal, but I could see some reasons why it wouldn't be.

One other thing I'm not really sure about is how the network techs who already work there will feel about it. I mean, if you're a network tech and you've got an unsecured wireless network hanging on on your LAN, you're incompetent, no question about it. But you're still a guy, and you'll still want to kick my ass when I saunter into your boss's office with a backup CD of his Quickbooks directory that I made from the parking lot.

There's nothing like ethical ambiguity and an almost certain ass-kicking to discourage a business venture.

Bill Clinton's book comes out today. Needless to say, I stood in line last night for hours in sleet and snow (summer in Germany). Clintons book reflects his sophisticated world view, and his disarmingly earthly sense of humor.

My favorite passage?

I LIEK MEAT!

(pp. 62-63, Harcort-Brace Edition)

Not surprisingly, my opinion of this book differs wildly with that of Mr. Schwarz, who is less than enthusiastic.

According to Drudge, American military personnel are to be put in charge of Saddam Hussein while he's custody in Iraq. This makes good sense, as the U.S. still has the best-organized and best-equipped military in the region. Here are some pieces of technology that could be prominent in Saddam Hussein's future:

	X-Tra Large 10-inch "Mega" Glowstick Just in time for the 4th of July, and the Iraqi Sovereignty Handover, these firecrackers will put a "spark" into any home movie!
	The Autolite Sta-Ful Battery With up to 20A cold-cranking power, the classic Autolite Sta-Ful will fulfill all your power needs. Recommended for use with Autolite Sta-Put Testicle Clamps
	Victoria's Secret™ Lace Trim Thong Perfect headgear for any occasion. The saucy, sexy Lace Trim Thong brings flair to any holiday snaps.

Enjoy!

It's about as warm and cheerful as a dead hobo clown outside, here in lovely Augsburg. I still haven't gotten the hang of the metric system, but I can tell you that 10C is the temperature at which the will to throw the baseball around freezes. It's June 20th, about 6:00PM in the workers' paradise, and it's butt-numbin' cold. It's even colder in my dank, ground-floor apartment. It makes you want to defenstrate yourself.

Things That are About as Joyless as a Cold and Grey June 20th

• Filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
• Cubs Fans
• Watching the Last 10 Minutes of Old Yeller, Over, and Over, and Over...
• Greenpeace Rallies
• Franz Kafka, Right After His Cat Died
• Laurence Olivier's "World At War" Voice-overs
• Robert Fisk
• A Morrissey Concert
• Masturbating While Looking at Pictures of Your High-school Sweetheart
• Dachau Field Trips
• The Augsburg Entry in the "Culture Capital of Europe" Contest

That last item actually cheers me up, just because of the absurdity of it. For those who either don't know or don't give a damn, Europe's having a marketing contest between various cities to see which can show that it's the cultural center of the continent.

Augsburg is a fine city, no question, but it's a little out of its league. Its own site (linked above) begins with the following burst of positive thinking:

"Cultural Capital of Europe"? No doubt about it: Paris, London, or Madrid. Maybe even Berlin. One thinks of the Louvre, and of Covent Garden, and impressive architecture and internationally-renowned artists. But Augsburg?

Optimism that borders on arrogance. It reads like a newspaper article, written by someone hostile to the project. But it's their own damn page! Their entry was quite possibly the most sniveling, humorless, depressing, and obsequiously "artsy" film short I've ever seen. It consisted of grey- and blue-toned shots of black-clad old men and women reading passages of Bertholt Brecht. Brecht! For those who aren't familiar with anything but Mack the Knife, Bertholt Brecht was a famous communist from Augsburg. He moved to Hollywood in the 1930s to escape persecution by the Nazis. After World War II, McCarthy chased him out of the country, so he moved to Soviet-controlled East Germany, where he famously assisted a crackdown by the Russians on students and intellectuals, assisting in the murders of dozens of protesters. A Brecht wikipedia entry gives some rough facts about him, but makes the predictable attempt to whitewash his support of Soviet communism by relating it to Nazism.

But I digress.

The contest itself is a sham. They've taken it upon themselves to steal money from taxpayers all over Europe, even ones that would never have a chance to win, and give it to the one city that can suck up enough to the snobs of some kind of unelected committee. Absolutely breathtaking immorality. And you just know that, when there's money involved along with government, it's eaten up with corruption. The winning city will have to bribe the judges, hire their cronies to produce their entries, give them kickbacks on the award money, you name it. All in the name of culture.

But really, what is culture? Looking at the contest, you would think culture is just paintings and movies. Culture is not just art; it's also language, currency, history, religion, philosophy. It's whether or not you leave a tip when you pay your bill (they don't); it's whether you're monogamous or promiscuous.

Probably the most insulting thing about the whole program, is that it's for all of Europe. Europe is made of many cultures. Germany alone has several: Bavarian, Hessian, Westfalian, Prussian, Jewish, Saxon. France is actually pretty homogeneous, if you loosen your definition of culture to include "just being a pussy". >/cheapshot<. So what they're actually doing is having a contest to see which culture in Europe should be appointed, by a non-elected committee, as the Master ber-Culture.

There! Now I feel better.

Have you ever done something, sitting around on your own, that you found...unsettling?

I'm sitting here in my apartment, programming some sort of meaningless eye-candy for some customer I've never met. I gave up listening to music when I work, so I have to make my own noise. Being a self-employed, work-at-home, recluse-by-nature geek, I haven't brushed my teeth, showered, or even put on pants today. It's 5:30 in the P.M., and I need a shave.

So, I'm sitting there fondling the Powerbook, gazing longingly at it's sleek form, inspired design, and oh-so-curvy air vents, relishing the feel of the tactile-feedback mechanism under the warm, pliant keyboard that, though I'll never understand, I breathlessy appreciate. I'm a man, goddamnit. A man with needs, such as ergonomic design and thoughtful engineering.

There I am, trying to figure out how to make an image filter process a tiny 25,000-pixel image in under an hour, stroking my computer, sitting around in my underwear at dinnertime, filthy and unwashed, and I realize I'm singing that wading-pool song Gollum was singing when he brained that fish in Two Towers.

Fuck me, that's creepy.

Bowing to the meme carried by Tim Blair, I submit to you three things that just chap my ass:

• Feng Shui (or any mysticism, for that matter)
• Kung Fu in movies
• James fucking Joyce

Jesus, I hate James fucking Joyce. What a simpering, worthless little twat. I think I'm going to file suit in my home state of Georgia to have his name legally changed to James Fucking Joyce. I hate that son of a bitch. I hear from someone or 'nother that some little kiss-ass literary "New Yorker"-wannabe had a fucking "Ulysses Day" jack-fest this month, supposedly because it was the date that was portrayed in Ulysses, by James Fucking Joyce. One goddam day, 11,000 pages. If you need 11,000 pages to describe one fucking day, you need to find a job you're good at.

Whatever happened to appreciation for elegance? James Fucking Joyce needed 150,000 pages to describe one fucking day. ONE! I could describe today in one word: Shit. I could also describe it in 1,500,000,000 words, just like J.F. Joyce. But it would just be the word "Shit" copied and pasted 1,500,000,000 times. I'll spare you the suspense and the outrageous Amazon pre-order fees.

Fuck James Fucking Joyce, fuck the Wachowski Brothers for re-introducing Kung Fu in polite Gesellschaft, and fuck anybody who tells me I need to have a goddamn turtle in the northern corner of my yard if I want to be potent.

And, by the way, fuck the next person who tells me in a bar that belief in a supreme being betrays a diminutive intellect, grasping at the tiniest of hopes in order to bring meaning into an abjectly meaningless existence, and then flips out because I light my cigarette with a fucking candle, because, as we all know, lighting a cigarette with a candle is bad luck for sailors. Fuck sailors, and fuck you Paul, you pseudo-intellectual, self-aggrandizing sack of shit.

Did I leave anything out?

I got a frantic email from my mom a few days ago. Apparently, the cat had caught a chipmunk, and offered it to her as a small token of his gratitude for the 9 years of expensive food and even more expensive veterinarian visits.

What follows is the heart-rending photo-essay of this ill-starred relationship, that of cat and chipmunk.

Jones hunts his prey

Prey hides behind door

Prey sleeps with the dust-bunnies

Note to chipmunks who may be reading this: Cats can apparently see through doors. Anybody who has a cat experiences this phenomenon whenever they get a good book and go to the bathroom: as soon as your legs fall asleep, the cat will begin thrashing the door in order to join you.

Dramarama say:

Okay, what is it tonight? Please just tell me what the hell is wrong! Do you wanna eat? Do you wanna sleep? Do you wanna drown? Just settle down, settle down, settle down! I'll give you candy, give you diamonds, give you pills give you anything you want-- hundred-dollar bills I'll even let you watch the shows you wanna see just marry me marry me marry me! I'm so sick of you tonight You never stay awake when I get home Is something wrong with me? Is something wrong with you? I really wish I knew wish I knew wish I knew! I'll give you candy, give you diamonds, give you pills I'll give you anything you want-- hundred-dollar bills I'll even let you watch the shows you wanna see Because you marry me marry me marry me! Marry me marry me marry me! I was young, I learned a game And love and happiness were the same Now I'm older and I don't lpay-- I found out the hardest way. I got wasted she got mad Called me names and she called her dad He got crazy and I did too Wondered what I did to you. I gave you candy, gave you diamonds, gave you pills Gave you anything you want-- Hundred-dollar bills! I even let you hear the songs I want to sing I'll give you anything anything anything I'll give you anything anything anything I'll give you anything anything anything Anything Anything Anything

As I'm struggling through "Atlas Shrugged", I figured I'd Google Ms. Ayn Rand. I came across this letter from 1941:

You say, what can one man do? When the Communists came to power in Russia, they were a handful of eighteen men. Just eighteen. In a country of [170,000,000] population. They were laughed at and no one took them seriously. According to their own prophet, Karl Marx, Russia was the last country in which Communism could be historically possible, because of Russia's backwardness in industrial development. Yet they succeeded. Because they knew what they wanted and went after it historical destiny or no historical destiny. Adolf Hitler started the Nazi Party in Germany with seven men. He was laughed at and considered a harmless crank. People said that after the Versailles Treaty Germany could not possibly become a world power again, not for centuries. Yet Hitler succeeded. Because he knew what he wanted and went after it history or no history. Shall we believe in mystical fates or do something about the future?

Ayn Rand was an important person. You rarely see such conviction in conservative philosophers. What I hear in this paragraph is that, goodness gracious, if Hitler can do it, why can't I? I will take over the world, and I'll become one rich motherfucker doing it. And there's nothing anyone can do about it.

(via Allah)

Guys my age who want to sound politically savvy now have something to talk about other than prostate problems: SNL's Pathological Liar Guy. What was that guy's name? Jon Lovitz, I think. Anybody who watched SNL in the 80s will instantly think about this guy when they hear that John Kerry said that he dated Morgan Fairchild.

Holism can be a bitch.

Today is the internation day of commies and pinkos. Did you know that Earth-Day is actually the celebration of Lenin's Birthday? Me neither.

So, let's start this new year of the Worker with a little joke.

What's the medical term for the skin around a vagina?

A woman.

According to Googlism:

rube is a tribute to rube goldberg rube is a twisted programming language named after rube goldberg rube is driven by greed rube is a strange convert to the jacked thoughts army rube is one of the best kept dining secrets in the western region of quebec rube is the only living cartoonist and humorist to have been so honored rube is a man of charm rube is life rube is considered to be an awkward unsophisticated person rube is an expert in broadcast journalism rube is down rube is just another way of saying fool rube is young and handsome rube is a giant 8x8x8 replica of a rubik's cube that skot and tollef made for bm last year rube is cool rube is young and handsome so new to your bedroom floor you know damn well where you'll go rube is spritey rube is a wonder rube is still impressed by that? rube is probably the way to go rube is like putty in our hands rube is a hottie rube is of fire with dog eat dog rube is not a boob today

(via Jim Goad)

Meet Maddox. Maddox rules. He likes himself, but he doesn't like feminists, the Matrix, vegetarians, or just about anything else he writes about.

Not that that's bad. I don't like anything either. I just find it interesting that someone who is a programmer, a perfectionist, and uses vi to make his webpage can create such startlingly bad HTML. Granted, the page isn't meant to showcase his web design abilities; it's meant to show the world how cool he is and how lame it is. At least I think that's the point. I just read it for shit like this.

Maddox even has the following comment in his pages: <!-- The code to this page is a piece of shit, I know there are a lot of things I could change and do better but I just don't care/have time.-->

Fair enough. The code really is a train wreck. There's font tags in the HEAD, for the cgi-generated pages there isn't even an HTML tag. For all that, it looks great in lynx. There's even ALT tags for the navigation.

At least he doesn't use a pussified FrontPage-wannabe like Movable Type.

So, there's this goober on the radio, and he's talking about legalizing hemp. It's a wonder crop, apparently. You can make clothes out of it, oil, fuel for cars, paper, just about anything!

Amazing! Unbelievable! But you know, when I look at these guys, I don't really think they want it legalized so they can make a shirt out of it. Why don't they just say, "Legailze pot, cause we wanna get high, and don't wanna get no heat from the man"? Why do they have to build a car that runs on the stuff?

Scott say:

I am a man, a man I'll give ya somethin' that ya won't forget I said ya shouldn't have worn that dress I said ya shouldn't have worn that dress

I know you want what's on my mind I know you like what's on my mind I know it eats you up inside I know, you know, you know, you know

Here I come, I come, I come

I am, I am, I am I said I wanna get next to you I said I gonna get close to you You wouldn't want me have to hurt you too, hurt you too?

Hillary Clinton just broke the Rand Barrier.

"We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."

And she wasn't joking. Dang, when I hear things like that it just gives the the willies. It's bad enough to be similar to characters in Atlas Shrugged, but when you start quoting them verbatim, that's when it gets a little freaky.

Hillary will be president some day. Maybe in a few years, just for writing this, I'll be laying on a rack with Richard Burton's fatherly face hanging over me. "Picture a boot," he'll be saying with that velvet voice. Oh, shit, man, then he'll do that thing where he pulls out my tooth. I hate that part.

Heh. HillaBurton.

(Via: Babalublog)

Sweet.

A nicely done post from another Georgia boy, Michael King. I can imagine the twisted expression of indignation and hatred that pours over "anti"-War people's faces when they see these two smirky State-Terrorists having a laugh over the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis who weren't botherin' nobody no-how.

Fuck 'em. If they'd wiped their own asses we wouldn't have had to go over there and mop the floor with them. Here's your country, all nice and fixed. And if you screw it up, we're just gonna go back over there and do it again. Now, get to work!

Update: Heh.

Holy smokes! I just took a couple of things out of my refrigerator that I wasn't sure I could legally throw into the garbage, owing to strict German HAZMAT regulations. I had trouble identifying some of them; luckily, most of the labels were still legible, under the green slime running down the sides. Every time I clean out my fridge, I swear to God it's the last time I'll let the shit go like that. It's amazing, and repulsive, to compare the inhabitants of my refrigerator in their original form to the pulsating, slimy, hideous, mutated forms they've now assumed.

I swear, I will never let that shit go like this again.

Update: Fridge-rot zeitgeist?

Poking around at Jeff's Place, I came across this article, the gist of which is that cell phones are bad for your boys. Seems to me that just about everything these days is targeting the testicular tadpoles. After a little googlin', I was shocked at how many things have been proven to lower your sperm count.

Things That Have Been Proven To Lower Your Sperm Count

• Tighty Whities
• Smoking
• Slamming Your Genitals in a Car Door
• Margret Cho
• Ovaries
• Taking Cold Showers

Keep em covered, and stop rubbing yourself with your cell phone, weirdos.

Name that tune:

Translated by Rube into German Schalt dein Gedächtnis aus, relax und geh mit dem Strom (Es heisst nicht sterben) Leg alle Gedanken ab, gib Dich zum Nichts auf (es funkt) Noch wirst Du den Sinn des Innens begreifen (Es heisst Dasein) Die Liebe ist Alles, und die Liebe ist Alle (Es heisst Wissen) Ignoranz und Hass bedauern den Tod (Es heisst Glauben) Doch hör den Farben deines Träumens zu (Es heisst nicht Verlassen) Also, Spiel das Spiel Existenz bis zum Ende (Das Ende vom Anfang)

Translated by Google back into English Still your memory switches off, relax and goes with the river (it does not mean to die) puts down all thoughts, geb you to the nothing on (it transmits) you the sense of the Innens will understand (it is called existence) the love is everything, and the love is all (it is called knowledge) Ignoranz and hate regrets death (it is called faith) hears colors of your dreaming nevertheless too (it is not called leaving) thus, play the play existence up to the end (the end of the beginning)

My boiler went out on me. For those of you who live in the First World, let me explain what a boiler is. A boiler is a huge, obnoxious contraption that hangs on the bathroom wall and goes out on you, forcing you to take cold showers, and shave with icy-cold razors that, as Davy Jones promised all those years ago, do indeed sting. In America, I've never seen a boiler. That doesn't mean they don't exist; it just means they're at least hidden and don't go out on you. This particular boiler, which I've learned to ignore over the years, is about 5 feet tall, a foot deep, and 2 feet wide. It's made of steel, is painted white, and hangs on the wall right next to the bathtub. It blocks an entire corner of the room ,and sometimes it drips black, greasy, evil smelling fluids onto the floor. Now it doesn't even make hot water, so I'm not sure what the point of the thing is.

I'm a vegetarian; I separate my trash, because otherwise the trash-men won't take it; I have socialized health care; I recycle, because I have to; and, now, I hate bathing. Living in Europe is just like being in college, without the drugs and smug illusion of superiority. Objectively, I'm more pinker than even the pinkest of American pinkos.

Damn dirty hippy.

Andrea Harris shouldn't keep it all bottled up.

Every blog should have a "Bitchslaps" category, because there's nothing like a good rant to getcha all woken up on a Saturday morning. Unless she's down under, which means it's, like, Tuesday or something for her.

Cheney to Leahy:

Go Fuck Yourself

Does this mean that the FCC can jump on C-SPAN now? That would actually be a good way to generate some revenue. Just put Cheney up there like he's going to make a speech, then he starts up like "fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck F-uhhh-uuhhh-uuh...CK!" That's $3,000,000 per day right there.

And who woulda thought that "a conversation about politics, religion, and money" with Dick Cheney could turn unpleasant? Shit, man, Leahy should be thanking his lucky stars that Dick didn't pull his jersey over his head and give him the Willi Plett treatment.

If C-SPAN commentators would start goading senators into hockey fights, it would at least put some butts in the seats in the Capitol. Last time I watched Congress on C-SPAN, the gallery looked like a late-80s Braves game; back then, the peanut guy just sat down next to you and watched the game. With more fights, you could get enough people in there to get the wave going. And there could be an awesome EA Congress 2004 game. I'd play Daschle, because he's the scruffy little Reijo Ruotsalainen of American politics.

I expect this kind of thing from British MPs. When you watch the Brits in session, they always seem to be 5 seconds away from a rhubarb.

The Mozilla Workers' Party has announced version 0.9 of Firefox (click the link over there on the clichd and unintuitive interface element, "left-hand sidebar"). In the name of openness, and to avoid a browser monopoly, every single person on the Internet should use Firefox.

IE==HITLER!!!

If you're not using Firefox, you might just as well have sawed off those guys' heads with your own blood-soaked hands. Take a stand! Internet Explorer won't even let you see its source code! Firefox will, though the shit might as well be in Chinese for all the good it'll do you. No, really, peruse them 35,000,000 lines of spaghetti and find the little meatball that's sending your surfing habits to Richard StaLLLman. Ok, maybe that's not such a hot metaphor, but I think you get my point.

Seething Rage

That's the feeling I get every time I see that smirking, chimp-like blue "e" spinning in the top right navigation area thing up there. Ugh, how the hell did this insane Nazi browser get (ssssss)elected to be king of the freaking web, anyway? Nothing but a little piece of trailer-trash, elevated to the role of Puppet-in-Chief by its connections to Big OS Money.

It's time for Regime Change here in the Internet. I want to be able to use CSS rounded corners and alpha transparency, not "filters" and "effects". Don't let the Internet's fate be determined by the same kind of people who made BonziBuddy a household word.

Stop killing babies and start using Firefox!

It's that time of year again. 1 score and 14 years ago, I began the slink towards Jerusalem which we call life. I traditionally celebrate my birthday with this ancient Negro spiritual, as performed by the Atlanta, GA-based bluegrass band, Blur.

Damon say:

It's my birthday No one here day Very strange day I think of you day Go outside day Sit in park day Watch the sky day What a pathetic day I dont like this day it makes me feel too small I dont like these days They make me feel so small

It's the first birthday I've ever had where I was cold. It's cold outside.

Update:

I woke up this morning, well, today, and it wasn't cold anymore. It turned out to be the most stunning day of the year so far. 73F, little cottonball clouds, and the kind of sky they had to invent words like "azure" for. It just goes to show you, if you whine enough, God will hear you. Which doesn't bode well for November.

As I noted last year, the unbridled hatred of George Bush makes me nervous. It's not hard to believe he'll be assassinated at some point. In order to defeat the bug, I said to myself as I was shaving this morning, you have to understand the bug. Speaking of shaving, I usually use a single-blade safety razor, like grandpa's, to shave with. Those things are downright dangerous once they get dull; you might as well wear an orange jumpsuit and sit cross-legged on the floor while you shave, exhorting your people to rise up against the oppressor and follow your example by also shaving their heads off, praise be to Allah. I can't find new blades anywhere; I guess I'll have to buy a new razor. So I thought of a few reasons to hate George Bush.

Reasons to Hate George W. Bush

• A President needs to have a way with words. Bush...not have way
• He gave you a wedgy in high school
• He gave you a wedgy in 2000
• He took the last fucking slice of pizza, that bitch
• He banged your girlfriend at that party
• He's one of those religious fundamentalists
• He always makes that shitty little self-righteous coughing noise when you light a cigarette IN A BAR, for fuck's sake
• He doesn't drink
• That Medicare thing

Screw George W. Bush.

This might just be the best blog entry...evar. I don't say that lightly, as I consider my own work to be the zenith of western philosophy. But, realistically, aside from a few Oxford commas, what really differentiates the men from the boys in the quaintly-bemonikered "blogosphere"? You have the greats, no doubt: The "Velociman" does indeed "use his tongue purdierna two-dollar whore"*, if I may be so bold as to quote the belovd Slim Pickens vehicle, "Les Setts Flambs". Another great adventurer of the soul is "Protein Wisdom" who, though a Jew, manages to express his "ideas" in an art that doesn't scream "Catskills". Recommended, if only with certain obvious reservations.

The Wilburn Brothers says:

I met a little girl in Knoxville a town we all know well And every Sunday evening out in her home I'd dwell We went to take an evening walk about a mile from town I thought of how she cheated me so I knocked that fair girl down I picked a stick up off the ground and knocked that fair girl down Oh Willy dear don't kill me here I'm not prepare to die She never spoke another word I only beat her more Until the ground around me within her blood did flow I took her by her golden curls I dragged her round and round Then threw her into the river that flows through Knoxville town Go there go there you Knoxville girl with dark and rolling eyes Go there go there you Knoxville girl you'll never be my wife I rolled and tumbled the whole night through my dreams were living hell And then they came from Knoxville and carried me to jail I'm here to waste my life away and time is passing slow Because I killed that Knoxville girl the girl I loved so

Visit the Knoxville Girl. I haven't read her stuff, but she's hot, in a green-eyed emo kinda way.

I'm no boy scout, not any more, but I still sometimes suffer from a debilitating case of morality. As an example, I was swilling beer with some friends of mine last night, and one of them was explaining his marketing idea to me. He's driving into work, and he decides to leave his iBook on. He's got his wireless card turned on, and a sniffer program running. On his way to work, about 5 miles, he finds something like 20 wireless networks, only 2 or 3 of which are password-protected. His idea is to find drive around, sniffing out open wireless networks, and going into the businesses and telling them their networks are wide open to whomever drives up to the curb, and offering to fix it for them for a fee.

This is a little too chaotic for me. That would be like coming home and finding some guy sitting on your couch. Then he tries to sell you a new lock. We debated the legality of it, and I'm pretty sure that it's legal, but I could see some reasons why it wouldn't be.

One other thing I'm not really sure about is how the network techs who already work there will feel about it. I mean, if you're a network tech and you've got an unsecured wireless network hanging on on your LAN, you're incompetent, no question about it. But you're still a guy, and you'll still want to kick my ass when I saunter into your boss's office with a backup CD of his Quickbooks directory that I made from the parking lot.

There's nothing like ethical ambiguity and an almost certain ass-kicking to discourage a business venture.

Bill Clinton's book comes out today. Needless to say, I stood in line last night for hours in sleet and snow (summer in Germany). Clintons book reflects his sophisticated world view, and his disarmingly earthly sense of humor.

My favorite passage?

I LIEK MEAT!

(pp. 62-63, Harcort-Brace Edition)

Not surprisingly, my opinion of this book differs wildly with that of Mr. Schwarz, who is less than enthusiastic.

According to Drudge, American military personnel are to be put in charge of Saddam Hussein while he's custody in Iraq. This makes good sense, as the U.S. still has the best-organized and best-equipped military in the region. Here are some pieces of technology that could be prominent in Saddam Hussein's future:

	X-Tra Large 10-inch "Mega" Glowstick Just in time for the 4th of July, and the Iraqi Sovereignty Handover, these firecrackers will put a "spark" into any home movie!
	The Autolite Sta-Ful Battery With up to 20A cold-cranking power, the classic Autolite Sta-Ful will fulfill all your power needs. Recommended for use with Autolite Sta-Put Testicle Clamps
	Victoria's Secret™ Lace Trim Thong Perfect headgear for any occasion. The saucy, sexy Lace Trim Thong brings flair to any holiday snaps.

Enjoy!

It's about as warm and cheerful as a dead hobo clown outside, here in lovely Augsburg. I still haven't gotten the hang of the metric system, but I can tell you that 10C is the temperature at which the will to throw the baseball around freezes. It's June 20th, about 6:00PM in the workers' paradise, and it's butt-numbin' cold. It's even colder in my dank, ground-floor apartment. It makes you want to defenstrate yourself.

Things That are About as Joyless as a Cold and Grey June 20th

• Filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
• Cubs Fans
• Watching the Last 10 Minutes of Old Yeller, Over, and Over, and Over...
• Greenpeace Rallies
• Franz Kafka, Right After His Cat Died
• Laurence Olivier's "World At War" Voice-overs
• Robert Fisk
• A Morrissey Concert
• Masturbating While Looking at Pictures of Your High-school Sweetheart
• Dachau Field Trips
• The Augsburg Entry in the "Culture Capital of Europe" Contest

That last item actually cheers me up, just because of the absurdity of it. For those who either don't know or don't give a damn, Europe's having a marketing contest between various cities to see which can show that it's the cultural center of the continent.

Augsburg is a fine city, no question, but it's a little out of its league. Its own site (linked above) begins with the following burst of positive thinking:

"Cultural Capital of Europe"? No doubt about it: Paris, London, or Madrid. Maybe even Berlin. One thinks of the Louvre, and of Covent Garden, and impressive architecture and internationally-renowned artists. But Augsburg?

Optimism that borders on arrogance. It reads like a newspaper article, written by someone hostile to the project. But it's their own damn page! Their entry was quite possibly the most sniveling, humorless, depressing, and obsequiously "artsy" film short I've ever seen. It consisted of grey- and blue-toned shots of black-clad old men and women reading passages of Bertholt Brecht. Brecht! For those who aren't familiar with anything but Mack the Knife, Bertholt Brecht was a famous communist from Augsburg. He moved to Hollywood in the 1930s to escape persecution by the Nazis. After World War II, McCarthy chased him out of the country, so he moved to Soviet-controlled East Germany, where he famously assisted a crackdown by the Russians on students and intellectuals, assisting in the murders of dozens of protesters. A Brecht wikipedia entry gives some rough facts about him, but makes the predictable attempt to whitewash his support of Soviet communism by relating it to Nazism.

But I digress.

The contest itself is a sham. They've taken it upon themselves to steal money from taxpayers all over Europe, even ones that would never have a chance to win, and give it to the one city that can suck up enough to the snobs of some kind of unelected committee. Absolutely breathtaking immorality. And you just know that, when there's money involved along with government, it's eaten up with corruption. The winning city will have to bribe the judges, hire their cronies to produce their entries, give them kickbacks on the award money, you name it. All in the name of culture.

But really, what is culture? Looking at the contest, you would think culture is just paintings and movies. Culture is not just art; it's also language, currency, history, religion, philosophy. It's whether or not you leave a tip when you pay your bill (they don't); it's whether you're monogamous or promiscuous.

Probably the most insulting thing about the whole program, is that it's for all of Europe. Europe is made of many cultures. Germany alone has several: Bavarian, Hessian, Westfalian, Prussian, Jewish, Saxon. France is actually pretty homogeneous, if you loosen your definition of culture to include "just being a pussy". >/cheapshot<. So what they're actually doing is having a contest to see which culture in Europe should be appointed, by a non-elected committee, as the Master ber-Culture.

There! Now I feel better.

Have you ever done something, sitting around on your own, that you found...unsettling?

I'm sitting here in my apartment, programming some sort of meaningless eye-candy for some customer I've never met. I gave up listening to music when I work, so I have to make my own noise. Being a self-employed, work-at-home, recluse-by-nature geek, I haven't brushed my teeth, showered, or even put on pants today. It's 5:30 in the P.M., and I need a shave.

So, I'm sitting there fondling the Powerbook, gazing longingly at it's sleek form, inspired design, and oh-so-curvy air vents, relishing the feel of the tactile-feedback mechanism under the warm, pliant keyboard that, though I'll never understand, I breathlessy appreciate. I'm a man, goddamnit. A man with needs, such as ergonomic design and thoughtful engineering.

There I am, trying to figure out how to make an image filter process a tiny 25,000-pixel image in under an hour, stroking my computer, sitting around in my underwear at dinnertime, filthy and unwashed, and I realize I'm singing that wading-pool song Gollum was singing when he brained that fish in Two Towers.

Fuck me, that's creepy.

Bowing to the meme carried by Tim Blair, I submit to you three things that just chap my ass:

• Feng Shui (or any mysticism, for that matter)
• Kung Fu in movies
• James fucking Joyce

Jesus, I hate James fucking Joyce. What a simpering, worthless little twat. I think I'm going to file suit in my home state of Georgia to have his name legally changed to James Fucking Joyce. I hate that son of a bitch. I hear from someone or 'nother that some little kiss-ass literary "New Yorker"-wannabe had a fucking "Ulysses Day" jack-fest this month, supposedly because it was the date that was portrayed in Ulysses, by James Fucking Joyce. One goddam day, 11,000 pages. If you need 11,000 pages to describe one fucking day, you need to find a job you're good at.

Whatever happened to appreciation for elegance? James Fucking Joyce needed 150,000 pages to describe one fucking day. ONE! I could describe today in one word: Shit. I could also describe it in 1,500,000,000 words, just like J.F. Joyce. But it would just be the word "Shit" copied and pasted 1,500,000,000 times. I'll spare you the suspense and the outrageous Amazon pre-order fees.

Fuck James Fucking Joyce, fuck the Wachowski Brothers for re-introducing Kung Fu in polite Gesellschaft, and fuck anybody who tells me I need to have a goddamn turtle in the northern corner of my yard if I want to be potent.

And, by the way, fuck the next person who tells me in a bar that belief in a supreme being betrays a diminutive intellect, grasping at the tiniest of hopes in order to bring meaning into an abjectly meaningless existence, and then flips out because I light my cigarette with a fucking candle, because, as we all know, lighting a cigarette with a candle is bad luck for sailors. Fuck sailors, and fuck you Paul, you pseudo-intellectual, self-aggrandizing sack of shit.

Did I leave anything out?

I got a frantic email from my mom a few days ago. Apparently, the cat had caught a chipmunk, and offered it to her as a small token of his gratitude for the 9 years of expensive food and even more expensive veterinarian visits.

What follows is the heart-rending photo-essay of this ill-starred relationship, that of cat and chipmunk.

Jones hunts his prey

Prey hides behind door

Prey sleeps with the dust-bunnies

Note to chipmunks who may be reading this: Cats can apparently see through doors. Anybody who has a cat experiences this phenomenon whenever they get a good book and go to the bathroom: as soon as your legs fall asleep, the cat will begin thrashing the door in order to join you.

Dramarama say:

Okay, what is it tonight? Please just tell me what the hell is wrong! Do you wanna eat? Do you wanna sleep? Do you wanna drown? Just settle down, settle down, settle down! I'll give you candy, give you diamonds, give you pills give you anything you want-- hundred-dollar bills I'll even let you watch the shows you wanna see just marry me marry me marry me! I'm so sick of you tonight You never stay awake when I get home Is something wrong with me? Is something wrong with you? I really wish I knew wish I knew wish I knew! I'll give you candy, give you diamonds, give you pills I'll give you anything you want-- hundred-dollar bills I'll even let you watch the shows you wanna see Because you marry me marry me marry me! Marry me marry me marry me! I was young, I learned a game And love and happiness were the same Now I'm older and I don't lpay-- I found out the hardest way. I got wasted she got mad Called me names and she called her dad He got crazy and I did too Wondered what I did to you. I gave you candy, gave you diamonds, gave you pills Gave you anything you want-- Hundred-dollar bills! I even let you hear the songs I want to sing I'll give you anything anything anything I'll give you anything anything anything I'll give you anything anything anything Anything Anything Anything

As I'm struggling through "Atlas Shrugged", I figured I'd Google Ms. Ayn Rand. I came across this letter from 1941:

You say, what can one man do? When the Communists came to power in Russia, they were a handful of eighteen men. Just eighteen. In a country of [170,000,000] population. They were laughed at and no one took them seriously. According to their own prophet, Karl Marx, Russia was the last country in which Communism could be historically possible, because of Russia's backwardness in industrial development. Yet they succeeded. Because they knew what they wanted and went after it historical destiny or no historical destiny. Adolf Hitler started the Nazi Party in Germany with seven men. He was laughed at and considered a harmless crank. People said that after the Versailles Treaty Germany could not possibly become a world power again, not for centuries. Yet Hitler succeeded. Because he knew what he wanted and went after it history or no history. Shall we believe in mystical fates or do something about the future?

Ayn Rand was an important person. You rarely see such conviction in conservative philosophers. What I hear in this paragraph is that, goodness gracious, if Hitler can do it, why can't I? I will take over the world, and I'll become one rich motherfucker doing it. And there's nothing anyone can do about it.

(via Allah)

Guys my age who want to sound politically savvy now have something to talk about other than prostate problems: SNL's Pathological Liar Guy. What was that guy's name? Jon Lovitz, I think. Anybody who watched SNL in the 80s will instantly think about this guy when they hear that John Kerry said that he dated Morgan Fairchild.

Holism can be a bitch.

Today is the internation day of commies and pinkos. Did you know that Earth-Day is actually the celebration of Lenin's Birthday? Me neither.

So, let's start this new year of the Worker with a little joke.

What's the medical term for the skin around a vagina?

A woman.

According to Googlism:

rube is a tribute to rube goldberg rube is a twisted programming language named after rube goldberg rube is driven by greed rube is a strange convert to the jacked thoughts army rube is one of the best kept dining secrets in the western region of quebec rube is the only living cartoonist and humorist to have been so honored rube is a man of charm rube is life rube is considered to be an awkward unsophisticated person rube is an expert in broadcast journalism rube is down rube is just another way of saying fool rube is young and handsome rube is a giant 8x8x8 replica of a rubik's cube that skot and tollef made for bm last year rube is cool rube is young and handsome so new to your bedroom floor you know damn well where you'll go rube is spritey rube is a wonder rube is still impressed by that? rube is probably the way to go rube is like putty in our hands rube is a hottie rube is of fire with dog eat dog rube is not a boob today

(via Jim Goad)

Meet Maddox. Maddox rules. He likes himself, but he doesn't like feminists, the Matrix, vegetarians, or just about anything else he writes about.

Not that that's bad. I don't like anything either. I just find it interesting that someone who is a programmer, a perfectionist, and uses vi to make his webpage can create such startlingly bad HTML. Granted, the page isn't meant to showcase his web design abilities; it's meant to show the world how cool he is and how lame it is. At least I think that's the point. I just read it for shit like this.

Maddox even has the following comment in his pages: <!-- The code to this page is a piece of shit, I know there are a lot of things I could change and do better but I just don't care/have time.-->

Fair enough. The code really is a train wreck. There's font tags in the HEAD, for the cgi-generated pages there isn't even an HTML tag. For all that, it looks great in lynx. There's even ALT tags for the navigation.

At least he doesn't use a pussified FrontPage-wannabe like Movable Type.

So, there's this goober on the radio, and he's talking about legalizing hemp. It's a wonder crop, apparently. You can make clothes out of it, oil, fuel for cars, paper, just about anything!

Amazing! Unbelievable! But you know, when I look at these guys, I don't really think they want it legalized so they can make a shirt out of it. Why don't they just say, "Legailze pot, cause we wanna get high, and don't wanna get no heat from the man"? Why do they have to build a car that runs on the stuff?

Scott say:

I am a man, a man I'll give ya somethin' that ya won't forget I said ya shouldn't have worn that dress I said ya shouldn't have worn that dress

I know you want what's on my mind I know you like what's on my mind I know it eats you up inside I know, you know, you know, you know

Here I come, I come, I come

I am, I am, I am I said I wanna get next to you I said I gonna get close to you You wouldn't want me have to hurt you too, hurt you too?

Hillary Clinton just broke the Rand Barrier.

"We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."

And she wasn't joking. Dang, when I hear things like that it just gives the the willies. It's bad enough to be similar to characters in Atlas Shrugged, but when you start quoting them verbatim, that's when it gets a little freaky.

Hillary will be president some day. Maybe in a few years, just for writing this, I'll be laying on a rack with Richard Burton's fatherly face hanging over me. "Picture a boot," he'll be saying with that velvet voice. Oh, shit, man, then he'll do that thing where he pulls out my tooth. I hate that part.

Heh. HillaBurton.

(Via: Babalublog)

Sweet.

A nicely done post from another Georgia boy, Michael King. I can imagine the twisted expression of indignation and hatred that pours over "anti"-War people's faces when they see these two smirky State-Terrorists having a laugh over the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis who weren't botherin' nobody no-how.

Fuck 'em. If they'd wiped their own asses we wouldn't have had to go over there and mop the floor with them. Here's your country, all nice and fixed. And if you screw it up, we're just gonna go back over there and do it again. Now, get to work!

Update: Heh.

Holy smokes! I just took a couple of things out of my refrigerator that I wasn't sure I could legally throw into the garbage, owing to strict German HAZMAT regulations. I had trouble identifying some of them; luckily, most of the labels were still legible, under the green slime running down the sides. Every time I clean out my fridge, I swear to God it's the last time I'll let the shit go like that. It's amazing, and repulsive, to compare the inhabitants of my refrigerator in their original form to the pulsating, slimy, hideous, mutated forms they've now assumed.

I swear, I will never let that shit go like this again.

Update: Fridge-rot zeitgeist?

Poking around at Jeff's Place, I came across this article, the gist of which is that cell phones are bad for your boys. Seems to me that just about everything these days is targeting the testicular tadpoles. After a little googlin', I was shocked at how many things have been proven to lower your sperm count.

Things That Have Been Proven To Lower Your Sperm Count

• Tighty Whities
• Smoking
• Slamming Your Genitals in a Car Door
• Margret Cho
• Ovaries
• Taking Cold Showers

Keep em covered, and stop rubbing yourself with your cell phone, weirdos.

Name that tune:

Translated by Rube into German Schalt dein Gedächtnis aus, relax und geh mit dem Strom (Es heisst nicht sterben) Leg alle Gedanken ab, gib Dich zum Nichts auf (es funkt) Noch wirst Du den Sinn des Innens begreifen (Es heisst Dasein) Die Liebe ist Alles, und die Liebe ist Alle (Es heisst Wissen) Ignoranz und Hass bedauern den Tod (Es heisst Glauben) Doch hör den Farben deines Träumens zu (Es heisst nicht Verlassen) Also, Spiel das Spiel Existenz bis zum Ende (Das Ende vom Anfang)

Translated by Google back into English Still your memory switches off, relax and goes with the river (it does not mean to die) puts down all thoughts, geb you to the nothing on (it transmits) you the sense of the Innens will understand (it is called existence) the love is everything, and the love is all (it is called knowledge) Ignoranz and hate regrets death (it is called faith) hears colors of your dreaming nevertheless too (it is not called leaving) thus, play the play existence up to the end (the end of the beginning)

My boiler went out on me. For those of you who live in the First World, let me explain what a boiler is. A boiler is a huge, obnoxious contraption that hangs on the bathroom wall and goes out on you, forcing you to take cold showers, and shave with icy-cold razors that, as Davy Jones promised all those years ago, do indeed sting. In America, I've never seen a boiler. That doesn't mean they don't exist; it just means they're at least hidden and don't go out on you. This particular boiler, which I've learned to ignore over the years, is about 5 feet tall, a foot deep, and 2 feet wide. It's made of steel, is painted white, and hangs on the wall right next to the bathtub. It blocks an entire corner of the room ,and sometimes it drips black, greasy, evil smelling fluids onto the floor. Now it doesn't even make hot water, so I'm not sure what the point of the thing is.

I'm a vegetarian; I separate my trash, because otherwise the trash-men won't take it; I have socialized health care; I recycle, because I have to; and, now, I hate bathing. Living in Europe is just like being in college, without the drugs and smug illusion of superiority. Objectively, I'm more pinker than even the pinkest of American pinkos.

Damn dirty hippy.

Andrea Harris shouldn't keep it all bottled up.

Every blog should have a "Bitchslaps" category, because there's nothing like a good rant to getcha all woken up on a Saturday morning. Unless she's down under, which means it's, like, Tuesday or something for her.

Cheney to Leahy:

Go Fuck Yourself

Does this mean that the FCC can jump on C-SPAN now? That would actually be a good way to generate some revenue. Just put Cheney up there like he's going to make a speech, then he starts up like "fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck F-uhhh-uuhhh-uuh...CK!" That's $3,000,000 per day right there.

And who woulda thought that "a conversation about politics, religion, and money" with Dick Cheney could turn unpleasant? Shit, man, Leahy should be thanking his lucky stars that Dick didn't pull his jersey over his head and give him the Willi Plett treatment.

If C-SPAN commentators would start goading senators into hockey fights, it would at least put some butts in the seats in the Capitol. Last time I watched Congress on C-SPAN, the gallery looked like a late-80s Braves game; back then, the peanut guy just sat down next to you and watched the game. With more fights, you could get enough people in there to get the wave going. And there could be an awesome EA Congress 2004 game. I'd play Daschle, because he's the scruffy little Reijo Ruotsalainen of American politics.

I expect this kind of thing from British MPs. When you watch the Brits in session, they always seem to be 5 seconds away from a rhubarb.

The Mozilla Workers' Party has announced version 0.9 of Firefox (click the link over there on the clichd and unintuitive interface element, "left-hand sidebar"). In the name of openness, and to avoid a browser monopoly, every single person on the Internet should use Firefox.

IE==HITLER!!!

If you're not using Firefox, you might just as well have sawed off those guys' heads with your own blood-soaked hands. Take a stand! Internet Explorer won't even let you see its source code! Firefox will, though the shit might as well be in Chinese for all the good it'll do you. No, really, peruse them 35,000,000 lines of spaghetti and find the little meatball that's sending your surfing habits to Richard StaLLLman. Ok, maybe that's not such a hot metaphor, but I think you get my point.

Seething Rage

That's the feeling I get every time I see that smirking, chimp-like blue "e" spinning in the top right navigation area thing up there. Ugh, how the hell did this insane Nazi browser get (ssssss)elected to be king of the freaking web, anyway? Nothing but a little piece of trailer-trash, elevated to the role of Puppet-in-Chief by its connections to Big OS Money.

It's time for Regime Change here in the Internet. I want to be able to use CSS rounded corners and alpha transparency, not "filters" and "effects". Don't let the Internet's fate be determined by the same kind of people who made BonziBuddy a household word.

Stop killing babies and start using Firefox!

It's that time of year again. 1 score and 14 years ago, I began the slink towards Jerusalem which we call life. I traditionally celebrate my birthday with this ancient Negro spiritual, as performed by the Atlanta, GA-based bluegrass band, Blur.

Damon say:

It's my birthday No one here day Very strange day I think of you day Go outside day Sit in park day Watch the sky day What a pathetic day I dont like this day it makes me feel too small I dont like these days They make me feel so small

It's the first birthday I've ever had where I was cold. It's cold outside.

Update:

I woke up this morning, well, today, and it wasn't cold anymore. It turned out to be the most stunning day of the year so far. 73F, little cottonball clouds, and the kind of sky they had to invent words like "azure" for. It just goes to show you, if you whine enough, God will hear you. Which doesn't bode well for November.

As I noted last year, the unbridled hatred of George Bush makes me nervous. It's not hard to believe he'll be assassinated at some point. In order to defeat the bug, I said to myself as I was shaving this morning, you have to understand the bug. Speaking of shaving, I usually use a single-blade safety razor, like grandpa's, to shave with. Those things are downright dangerous once they get dull; you might as well wear an orange jumpsuit and sit cross-legged on the floor while you shave, exhorting your people to rise up against the oppressor and follow your example by also shaving their heads off, praise be to Allah. I can't find new blades anywhere; I guess I'll have to buy a new razor. So I thought of a few reasons to hate George Bush.

Reasons to Hate George W. Bush

• A President needs to have a way with words. Bush...not have way
• He gave you a wedgy in high school
• He gave you a wedgy in 2000
• He took the last fucking slice of pizza, that bitch
• He banged your girlfriend at that party
• He's one of those religious fundamentalists
• He always makes that shitty little self-righteous coughing noise when you light a cigarette IN A BAR, for fuck's sake
• He doesn't drink
• That Medicare thing

Screw George W. Bush.

This might just be the best blog entry...evar. I don't say that lightly, as I consider my own work to be the zenith of western philosophy. But, realistically, aside from a few Oxford commas, what really differentiates the men from the boys in the quaintly-bemonikered "blogosphere"? You have the greats, no doubt: The "Velociman" does indeed "use his tongue purdierna two-dollar whore"*, if I may be so bold as to quote the belovd Slim Pickens vehicle, "Les Setts Flambs". Another great adventurer of the soul is "Protein Wisdom" who, though a Jew, manages to express his "ideas" in an art that doesn't scream "Catskills". Recommended, if only with certain obvious reservations.

The Wilburn Brothers says:

I met a little girl in Knoxville a town we all know well And every Sunday evening out in her home I'd dwell We went to take an evening walk about a mile from town I thought of how she cheated me so I knocked that fair girl down I picked a stick up off the ground and knocked that fair girl down Oh Willy dear don't kill me here I'm not prepare to die She never spoke another word I only beat her more Until the ground around me within her blood did flow I took her by her golden curls I dragged her round and round Then threw her into the river that flows through Knoxville town Go there go there you Knoxville girl with dark and rolling eyes Go there go there you Knoxville girl you'll never be my wife I rolled and tumbled the whole night through my dreams were living hell And then they came from Knoxville and carried me to jail I'm here to waste my life away and time is passing slow Because I killed that Knoxville girl the girl I loved so

Visit the Knoxville Girl. I haven't read her stuff, but she's hot, in a green-eyed emo kinda way.

I'm no boy scout, not any more, but I still sometimes suffer from a debilitating case of morality. As an example, I was swilling beer with some friends of mine last night, and one of them was explaining his marketing idea to me. He's driving into work, and he decides to leave his iBook on. He's got his wireless card turned on, and a sniffer program running. On his way to work, about 5 miles, he finds something like 20 wireless networks, only 2 or 3 of which are password-protected. His idea is to find drive around, sniffing out open wireless networks, and going into the businesses and telling them their networks are wide open to whomever drives up to the curb, and offering to fix it for them for a fee.

This is a little too chaotic for me. That would be like coming home and finding some guy sitting on your couch. Then he tries to sell you a new lock. We debated the legality of it, and I'm pretty sure that it's legal, but I could see some reasons why it wouldn't be.

One other thing I'm not really sure about is how the network techs who already work there will feel about it. I mean, if you're a network tech and you've got an unsecured wireless network hanging on on your LAN, you're incompetent, no question about it. But you're still a guy, and you'll still want to kick my ass when I saunter into your boss's office with a backup CD of his Quickbooks directory that I made from the parking lot.

There's nothing like ethical ambiguity and an almost certain ass-kicking to discourage a business venture.

Bill Clinton's book comes out today. Needless to say, I stood in line last night for hours in sleet and snow (summer in Germany). Clintons book reflects his sophisticated world view, and his disarmingly earthly sense of humor.

My favorite passage?

I LIEK MEAT!

(pp. 62-63, Harcort-Brace Edition)

Not surprisingly, my opinion of this book differs wildly with that of Mr. Schwarz, who is less than enthusiastic.

According to Drudge, American military personnel are to be put in charge of Saddam Hussein while he's custody in Iraq. This makes good sense, as the U.S. still has the best-organized and best-equipped military in the region. Here are some pieces of technology that could be prominent in Saddam Hussein's future:

	X-Tra Large 10-inch "Mega" Glowstick Just in time for the 4th of July, and the Iraqi Sovereignty Handover, these firecrackers will put a "spark" into any home movie!
	The Autolite Sta-Ful Battery With up to 20A cold-cranking power, the classic Autolite Sta-Ful will fulfill all your power needs. Recommended for use with Autolite Sta-Put Testicle Clamps
	Victoria's Secret™ Lace Trim Thong Perfect headgear for any occasion. The saucy, sexy Lace Trim Thong brings flair to any holiday snaps.

Enjoy!

It's about as warm and cheerful as a dead hobo clown outside, here in lovely Augsburg. I still haven't gotten the hang of the metric system, but I can tell you that 10C is the temperature at which the will to throw the baseball around freezes. It's June 20th, about 6:00PM in the workers' paradise, and it's butt-numbin' cold. It's even colder in my dank, ground-floor apartment. It makes you want to defenstrate yourself.

Things That are About as Joyless as a Cold and Grey June 20th

• Filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
• Cubs Fans
• Watching the Last 10 Minutes of Old Yeller, Over, and Over, and Over...
• Greenpeace Rallies
• Franz Kafka, Right After His Cat Died
• Laurence Olivier's "World At War" Voice-overs
• Robert Fisk
• A Morrissey Concert
• Masturbating While Looking at Pictures of Your High-school Sweetheart
• Dachau Field Trips
• The Augsburg Entry in the "Culture Capital of Europe" Contest

That last item actually cheers me up, just because of the absurdity of it. For those who either don't know or don't give a damn, Europe's having a marketing contest between various cities to see which can show that it's the cultural center of the continent.

Augsburg is a fine city, no question, but it's a little out of its league. Its own site (linked above) begins with the following burst of positive thinking:

"Cultural Capital of Europe"? No doubt about it: Paris, London, or Madrid. Maybe even Berlin. One thinks of the Louvre, and of Covent Garden, and impressive architecture and internationally-renowned artists. But Augsburg?

Optimism that borders on arrogance. It reads like a newspaper article, written by someone hostile to the project. But it's their own damn page! Their entry was quite possibly the most sniveling, humorless, depressing, and obsequiously "artsy" film short I've ever seen. It consisted of grey- and blue-toned shots of black-clad old men and women reading passages of Bertholt Brecht. Brecht! For those who aren't familiar with anything but Mack the Knife, Bertholt Brecht was a famous communist from Augsburg. He moved to Hollywood in the 1930s to escape persecution by the Nazis. After World War II, McCarthy chased him out of the country, so he moved to Soviet-controlled East Germany, where he famously assisted a crackdown by the Russians on students and intellectuals, assisting in the murders of dozens of protesters. A Brecht wikipedia entry gives some rough facts about him, but makes the predictable attempt to whitewash his support of Soviet communism by relating it to Nazism.

But I digress.

The contest itself is a sham. They've taken it upon themselves to steal money from taxpayers all over Europe, even ones that would never have a chance to win, and give it to the one city that can suck up enough to the snobs of some kind of unelected committee. Absolutely breathtaking immorality. And you just know that, when there's money involved along with government, it's eaten up with corruption. The winning city will have to bribe the judges, hire their cronies to produce their entries, give them kickbacks on the award money, you name it. All in the name of culture.

But really, what is culture? Looking at the contest, you would think culture is just paintings and movies. Culture is not just art; it's also language, currency, history, religion, philosophy. It's whether or not you leave a tip when you pay your bill (they don't); it's whether you're monogamous or promiscuous.

Probably the most insulting thing about the whole program, is that it's for all of Europe. Europe is made of many cultures. Germany alone has several: Bavarian, Hessian, Westfalian, Prussian, Jewish, Saxon. France is actually pretty homogeneous, if you loosen your definition of culture to include "just being a pussy". >/cheapshot<. So what they're actually doing is having a contest to see which culture in Europe should be appointed, by a non-elected committee, as the Master ber-Culture.

There! Now I feel better.

Have you ever done something, sitting around on your own, that you found...unsettling?

I'm sitting here in my apartment, programming some sort of meaningless eye-candy for some customer I've never met. I gave up listening to music when I work, so I have to make my own noise. Being a self-employed, work-at-home, recluse-by-nature geek, I haven't brushed my teeth, showered, or even put on pants today. It's 5:30 in the P.M., and I need a shave.

So, I'm sitting there fondling the Powerbook, gazing longingly at it's sleek form, inspired design, and oh-so-curvy air vents, relishing the feel of the tactile-feedback mechanism under the warm, pliant keyboard that, though I'll never understand, I breathlessy appreciate. I'm a man, goddamnit. A man with needs, such as ergonomic design and thoughtful engineering.

There I am, trying to figure out how to make an image filter process a tiny 25,000-pixel image in under an hour, stroking my computer, sitting around in my underwear at dinnertime, filthy and unwashed, and I realize I'm singing that wading-pool song Gollum was singing when he brained that fish in Two Towers.

Fuck me, that's creepy.

Bowing to the meme carried by Tim Blair, I submit to you three things that just chap my ass:

• Feng Shui (or any mysticism, for that matter)
• Kung Fu in movies
• James fucking Joyce

Jesus, I hate James fucking Joyce. What a simpering, worthless little twat. I think I'm going to file suit in my home state of Georgia to have his name legally changed to James Fucking Joyce. I hate that son of a bitch. I hear from someone or 'nother that some little kiss-ass literary "New Yorker"-wannabe had a fucking "Ulysses Day" jack-fest this month, supposedly because it was the date that was portrayed in Ulysses, by James Fucking Joyce. One goddam day, 11,000 pages. If you need 11,000 pages to describe one fucking day, you need to find a job you're good at.

Whatever happened to appreciation for elegance? James Fucking Joyce needed 150,000 pages to describe one fucking day. ONE! I could describe today in one word: Shit. I could also describe it in 1,500,000,000 words, just like J.F. Joyce. But it would just be the word "Shit" copied and pasted 1,500,000,000 times. I'll spare you the suspense and the outrageous Amazon pre-order fees.

Fuck James Fucking Joyce, fuck the Wachowski Brothers for re-introducing Kung Fu in polite Gesellschaft, and fuck anybody who tells me I need to have a goddamn turtle in the northern corner of my yard if I want to be potent.

And, by the way, fuck the next person who tells me in a bar that belief in a supreme being betrays a diminutive intellect, grasping at the tiniest of hopes in order to bring meaning into an abjectly meaningless existence, and then flips out because I light my cigarette with a fucking candle, because, as we all know, lighting a cigarette with a candle is bad luck for sailors. Fuck sailors, and fuck you Paul, you pseudo-intellectual, self-aggrandizing sack of shit.

Did I leave anything out?

I got a frantic email from my mom a few days ago. Apparently, the cat had caught a chipmunk, and offered it to her as a small token of his gratitude for the 9 years of expensive food and even more expensive veterinarian visits.

What follows is the heart-rending photo-essay of this ill-starred relationship, that of cat and chipmunk.

Jones hunts his prey

Prey hides behind door

Prey sleeps with the dust-bunnies

Note to chipmunks who may be reading this: Cats can apparently see through doors. Anybody who has a cat experiences this phenomenon whenever they get a good book and go to the bathroom: as soon as your legs fall asleep, the cat will begin thrashing the door in order to join you.

Dramarama say:

Okay, what is it tonight? Please just tell me what the hell is wrong! Do you wanna eat? Do you wanna sleep? Do you wanna drown? Just settle down, settle down, settle down! I'll give you candy, give you diamonds, give you pills give you anything you want-- hundred-dollar bills I'll even let you watch the shows you wanna see just marry me marry me marry me! I'm so sick of you tonight You never stay awake when I get home Is something wrong with me? Is something wrong with you? I really wish I knew wish I knew wish I knew! I'll give you candy, give you diamonds, give you pills I'll give you anything you want-- hundred-dollar bills I'll even let you watch the shows you wanna see Because you marry me marry me marry me! Marry me marry me marry me! I was young, I learned a game And love and happiness were the same Now I'm older and I don't lpay-- I found out the hardest way. I got wasted she got mad Called me names and she called her dad He got crazy and I did too Wondered what I did to you. I gave you candy, gave you diamonds, gave you pills Gave you anything you want-- Hundred-dollar bills! I even let you hear the songs I want to sing I'll give you anything anything anything I'll give you anything anything anything I'll give you anything anything anything Anything Anything Anything

As I'm struggling through "Atlas Shrugged", I figured I'd Google Ms. Ayn Rand. I came across this letter from 1941:

You say, what can one man do? When the Communists came to power in Russia, they were a handful of eighteen men. Just eighteen. In a country of [170,000,000] population. They were laughed at and no one took them seriously. According to their own prophet, Karl Marx, Russia was the last country in which Communism could be historically possible, because of Russia's backwardness in industrial development. Yet they succeeded. Because they knew what they wanted and went after it historical destiny or no historical destiny. Adolf Hitler started the Nazi Party in Germany with seven men. He was laughed at and considered a harmless crank. People said that after the Versailles Treaty Germany could not possibly become a world power again, not for centuries. Yet Hitler succeeded. Because he knew what he wanted and went after it history or no history. Shall we believe in mystical fates or do something about the future?

Ayn Rand was an important person. You rarely see such conviction in conservative philosophers. What I hear in this paragraph is that, goodness gracious, if Hitler can do it, why can't I? I will take over the world, and I'll become one rich motherfucker doing it. And there's nothing anyone can do about it.

(via Allah)

Guys my age who want to sound politically savvy now have something to talk about other than prostate problems: SNL's Pathological Liar Guy. What was that guy's name? Jon Lovitz, I think. Anybody who watched SNL in the 80s will instantly think about this guy when they hear that John Kerry said that he dated Morgan Fairchild.

Holism can be a bitch.

Today is the internation day of commies and pinkos. Did you know that Earth-Day is actually the celebration of Lenin's Birthday? Me neither.

So, let's start this new year of the Worker with a little joke.

What's the medical term for the skin around a vagina?

A woman.

According to Googlism:

rube is a tribute to rube goldberg rube is a twisted programming language named after rube goldberg rube is driven by greed rube is a strange convert to the jacked thoughts army rube is one of the best kept dining secrets in the western region of quebec rube is the only living cartoonist and humorist to have been so honored rube is a man of charm rube is life rube is considered to be an awkward unsophisticated person rube is an expert in broadcast journalism rube is down rube is just another way of saying fool rube is young and handsome rube is a giant 8x8x8 replica of a rubik's cube that skot and tollef made for bm last year rube is cool rube is young and handsome so new to your bedroom floor you know damn well where you'll go rube is spritey rube is a wonder rube is still impressed by that? rube is probably the way to go rube is like putty in our hands rube is a hottie rube is of fire with dog eat dog rube is not a boob today

(via Jim Goad)

Meet Maddox. Maddox rules. He likes himself, but he doesn't like feminists, the Matrix, vegetarians, or just about anything else he writes about.

Not that that's bad. I don't like anything either. I just find it interesting that someone who is a programmer, a perfectionist, and uses vi to make his webpage can create such startlingly bad HTML. Granted, the page isn't meant to showcase his web design abilities; it's meant to show the world how cool he is and how lame it is. At least I think that's the point. I just read it for shit like this.

Maddox even has the following comment in his pages: <!-- The code to this page is a piece of shit, I know there are a lot of things I could change and do better but I just don't care/have time.-->

Fair enough. The code really is a train wreck. There's font tags in the HEAD, for the cgi-generated pages there isn't even an HTML tag. For all that, it looks great in lynx. There's even ALT tags for the navigation.

At least he doesn't use a pussified FrontPage-wannabe like Movable Type.

So, there's this goober on the radio, and he's talking about legalizing hemp. It's a wonder crop, apparently. You can make clothes out of it, oil, fuel for cars, paper, just about anything!

Amazing! Unbelievable! But you know, when I look at these guys, I don't really think they want it legalized so they can make a shirt out of it. Why don't they just say, "Legailze pot, cause we wanna get high, and don't wanna get no heat from the man"? Why do they have to build a car that runs on the stuff?

Scott say:

I am a man, a man I'll give ya somethin' that ya won't forget I said ya shouldn't have worn that dress I said ya shouldn't have worn that dress

I know you want what's on my mind I know you like what's on my mind I know it eats you up inside I know, you know, you know, you know

Here I come, I come, I come

I am, I am, I am I said I wanna get next to you I said I gonna get close to you You wouldn't want me have to hurt you too, hurt you too?

Hillary Clinton just broke the Rand Barrier.

"We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."

And she wasn't joking. Dang, when I hear things like that it just gives the the willies. It's bad enough to be similar to characters in Atlas Shrugged, but when you start quoting them verbatim, that's when it gets a little freaky.

Hillary will be president some day. Maybe in a few years, just for writing this, I'll be laying on a rack with Richard Burton's fatherly face hanging over me. "Picture a boot," he'll be saying with that velvet voice. Oh, shit, man, then he'll do that thing where he pulls out my tooth. I hate that part.

Heh. HillaBurton.

(Via: Babalublog)

Sweet.

A nicely done post from another Georgia boy, Michael King. I can imagine the twisted expression of indignation and hatred that pours over "anti"-War people's faces when they see these two smirky State-Terrorists having a laugh over the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis who weren't botherin' nobody no-how.

Fuck 'em. If they'd wiped their own asses we wouldn't have had to go over there and mop the floor with them. Here's your country, all nice and fixed. And if you screw it up, we're just gonna go back over there and do it again. Now, get to work!

Update: Heh.

Holy smokes! I just took a couple of things out of my refrigerator that I wasn't sure I could legally throw into the garbage, owing to strict German HAZMAT regulations. I had trouble identifying some of them; luckily, most of the labels were still legible, under the green slime running down the sides. Every time I clean out my fridge, I swear to God it's the last time I'll let the shit go like that. It's amazing, and repulsive, to compare the inhabitants of my refrigerator in their original form to the pulsating, slimy, hideous, mutated forms they've now assumed.

I swear, I will never let that shit go like this again.

Update: Fridge-rot zeitgeist?

Poking around at Jeff's Place, I came across this article, the gist of which is that cell phones are bad for your boys. Seems to me that just about everything these days is targeting the testicular tadpoles. After a little googlin', I was shocked at how many things have been proven to lower your sperm count.

Things That Have Been Proven To Lower Your Sperm Count

• Tighty Whities
• Smoking
• Slamming Your Genitals in a Car Door
• Margret Cho
• Ovaries
• Taking Cold Showers

Keep em covered, and stop rubbing yourself with your cell phone, weirdos.

Name that tune:

Translated by Rube into German Schalt dein Gedächtnis aus, relax und geh mit dem Strom (Es heisst nicht sterben) Leg alle Gedanken ab, gib Dich zum Nichts auf (es funkt) Noch wirst Du den Sinn des Innens begreifen (Es heisst Dasein) Die Liebe ist Alles, und die Liebe ist Alle (Es heisst Wissen) Ignoranz und Hass bedauern den Tod (Es heisst Glauben) Doch hör den Farben deines Träumens zu (Es heisst nicht Verlassen) Also, Spiel das Spiel Existenz bis zum Ende (Das Ende vom Anfang)

Translated by Google back into English Still your memory switches off, relax and goes with the river (it does not mean to die) puts down all thoughts, geb you to the nothing on (it transmits) you the sense of the Innens will understand (it is called existence) the love is everything, and the love is all (it is called knowledge) Ignoranz and hate regrets death (it is called faith) hears colors of your dreaming nevertheless too (it is not called leaving) thus, play the play existence up to the end (the end of the beginning)

My boiler went out on me. For those of you who live in the First World, let me explain what a boiler is. A boiler is a huge, obnoxious contraption that hangs on the bathroom wall and goes out on you, forcing you to take cold showers, and shave with icy-cold razors that, as Davy Jones promised all those years ago, do indeed sting. In America, I've never seen a boiler. That doesn't mean they don't exist; it just means they're at least hidden and don't go out on you. This particular boiler, which I've learned to ignore over the years, is about 5 feet tall, a foot deep, and 2 feet wide. It's made of steel, is painted white, and hangs on the wall right next to the bathtub. It blocks an entire corner of the room ,and sometimes it drips black, greasy, evil smelling fluids onto the floor. Now it doesn't even make hot water, so I'm not sure what the point of the thing is.

I'm a vegetarian; I separate my trash, because otherwise the trash-men won't take it; I have socialized health care; I recycle, because I have to; and, now, I hate bathing. Living in Europe is just like being in college, without the drugs and smug illusion of superiority. Objectively, I'm more pinker than even the pinkest of American pinkos.

Damn dirty hippy.

Andrea Harris shouldn't keep it all bottled up.

Every blog should have a "Bitchslaps" category, because there's nothing like a good rant to getcha all woken up on a Saturday morning. Unless she's down under, which means it's, like, Tuesday or something for her.

Cheney to Leahy:

Go Fuck Yourself

Does this mean that the FCC can jump on C-SPAN now? That would actually be a good way to generate some revenue. Just put Cheney up there like he's going to make a speech, then he starts up like "fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck F-uhhh-uuhhh-uuh...CK!" That's $3,000,000 per day right there.

And who woulda thought that "a conversation about politics, religion, and money" with Dick Cheney could turn unpleasant? Shit, man, Leahy should be thanking his lucky stars that Dick didn't pull his jersey over his head and give him the Willi Plett treatment.

If C-SPAN commentators would start goading senators into hockey fights, it would at least put some butts in the seats in the Capitol. Last time I watched Congress on C-SPAN, the gallery looked like a late-80s Braves game; back then, the peanut guy just sat down next to you and watched the game. With more fights, you could get enough people in there to get the wave going. And there could be an awesome EA Congress 2004 game. I'd play Daschle, because he's the scruffy little Reijo Ruotsalainen of American politics.

I expect this kind of thing from British MPs. When you watch the Brits in session, they always seem to be 5 seconds away from a rhubarb.

The Mozilla Workers' Party has announced version 0.9 of Firefox (click the link over there on the clichd and unintuitive interface element, "left-hand sidebar"). In the name of openness, and to avoid a browser monopoly, every single person on the Internet should use Firefox.

IE==HITLER!!!

If you're not using Firefox, you might just as well have sawed off those guys' heads with your own blood-soaked hands. Take a stand! Internet Explorer won't even let you see its source code! Firefox will, though the shit might as well be in Chinese for all the good it'll do you. No, really, peruse them 35,000,000 lines of spaghetti and find the little meatball that's sending your surfing habits to Richard StaLLLman. Ok, maybe that's not such a hot metaphor, but I think you get my point.

Seething Rage

That's the feeling I get every time I see that smirking, chimp-like blue "e" spinning in the top right navigation area thing up there. Ugh, how the hell did this insane Nazi browser get (ssssss)elected to be king of the freaking web, anyway? Nothing but a little piece of trailer-trash, elevated to the role of Puppet-in-Chief by its connections to Big OS Money.

It's time for Regime Change here in the Internet. I want to be able to use CSS rounded corners and alpha transparency, not "filters" and "effects". Don't let the Internet's fate be determined by the same kind of people who made BonziBuddy a household word.

Stop killing babies and start using Firefox!

It's that time of year again. 1 score and 14 years ago, I began the slink towards Jerusalem which we call life. I traditionally celebrate my birthday with this ancient Negro spiritual, as performed by the Atlanta, GA-based bluegrass band, Blur.

Damon say:

It's my birthday No one here day Very strange day I think of you day Go outside day Sit in park day Watch the sky day What a pathetic day I dont like this day it makes me feel too small I dont like these days They make me feel so small

It's the first birthday I've ever had where I was cold. It's cold outside.

Update:

I woke up this morning, well, today, and it wasn't cold anymore. It turned out to be the most stunning day of the year so far. 73F, little cottonball clouds, and the kind of sky they had to invent words like "azure" for. It just goes to show you, if you whine enough, God will hear you. Which doesn't bode well for November.

As I noted last year, the unbridled hatred of George Bush makes me nervous. It's not hard to believe he'll be assassinated at some point. In order to defeat the bug, I said to myself as I was shaving this morning, you have to understand the bug. Speaking of shaving, I usually use a single-blade safety razor, like grandpa's, to shave with. Those things are downright dangerous once they get dull; you might as well wear an orange jumpsuit and sit cross-legged on the floor while you shave, exhorting your people to rise up against the oppressor and follow your example by also shaving their heads off, praise be to Allah. I can't find new blades anywhere; I guess I'll have to buy a new razor. So I thought of a few reasons to hate George Bush.

Reasons to Hate George W. Bush

• A President needs to have a way with words. Bush...not have way
• He gave you a wedgy in high school
• He gave you a wedgy in 2000
• He took the last fucking slice of pizza, that bitch
• He banged your girlfriend at that party
• He's one of those religious fundamentalists
• He always makes that shitty little self-righteous coughing noise when you light a cigarette IN A BAR, for fuck's sake
• He doesn't drink
• That Medicare thing

Screw George W. Bush.

This might just be the best blog entry...evar. I don't say that lightly, as I consider my own work to be the zenith of western philosophy. But, realistically, aside from a few Oxford commas, what really differentiates the men from the boys in the quaintly-bemonikered "blogosphere"? You have the greats, no doubt: The "Velociman" does indeed "use his tongue purdierna two-dollar whore"*, if I may be so bold as to quote the belovd Slim Pickens vehicle, "Les Setts Flambs". Another great adventurer of the soul is "Protein Wisdom" who, though a Jew, manages to express his "ideas" in an art that doesn't scream "Catskills". Recommended, if only with certain obvious reservations.

The Wilburn Brothers says:

I met a little girl in Knoxville a town we all know well And every Sunday evening out in her home I'd dwell We went to take an evening walk about a mile from town I thought of how she cheated me so I knocked that fair girl down I picked a stick up off the ground and knocked that fair girl down Oh Willy dear don't kill me here I'm not prepare to die She never spoke another word I only beat her more Until the ground around me within her blood did flow I took her by her golden curls I dragged her round and round Then threw her into the river that flows through Knoxville town Go there go there you Knoxville girl with dark and rolling eyes Go there go there you Knoxville girl you'll never be my wife I rolled and tumbled the whole night through my dreams were living hell And then they came from Knoxville and carried me to jail I'm here to waste my life away and time is passing slow Because I killed that Knoxville girl the girl I loved so

Visit the Knoxville Girl. I haven't read her stuff, but she's hot, in a green-eyed emo kinda way.

I'm no boy scout, not any more, but I still sometimes suffer from a debilitating case of morality. As an example, I was swilling beer with some friends of mine last night, and one of them was explaining his marketing idea to me. He's driving into work, and he decides to leave his iBook on. He's got his wireless card turned on, and a sniffer program running. On his way to work, about 5 miles, he finds something like 20 wireless networks, only 2 or 3 of which are password-protected. His idea is to find drive around, sniffing out open wireless networks, and going into the businesses and telling them their networks are wide open to whomever drives up to the curb, and offering to fix it for them for a fee.

This is a little too chaotic for me. That would be like coming home and finding some guy sitting on your couch. Then he tries to sell you a new lock. We debated the legality of it, and I'm pretty sure that it's legal, but I could see some reasons why it wouldn't be.

One other thing I'm not really sure about is how the network techs who already work there will feel about it. I mean, if you're a network tech and you've got an unsecured wireless network hanging on on your LAN, you're incompetent, no question about it. But you're still a guy, and you'll still want to kick my ass when I saunter into your boss's office with a backup CD of his Quickbooks directory that I made from the parking lot.

There's nothing like ethical ambiguity and an almost certain ass-kicking to discourage a business venture.

Bill Clinton's book comes out today. Needless to say, I stood in line last night for hours in sleet and snow (summer in Germany). Clintons book reflects his sophisticated world view, and his disarmingly earthly sense of humor.

My favorite passage?

I LIEK MEAT!

(pp. 62-63, Harcort-Brace Edition)

Not surprisingly, my opinion of this book differs wildly with that of Mr. Schwarz, who is less than enthusiastic.

According to Drudge, American military personnel are to be put in charge of Saddam Hussein while he's custody in Iraq. This makes good sense, as the U.S. still has the best-organized and best-equipped military in the region. Here are some pieces of technology that could be prominent in Saddam Hussein's future:

	X-Tra Large 10-inch "Mega" Glowstick Just in time for the 4th of July, and the Iraqi Sovereignty Handover, these firecrackers will put a "spark" into any home movie!
	The Autolite Sta-Ful Battery With up to 20A cold-cranking power, the classic Autolite Sta-Ful will fulfill all your power needs. Recommended for use with Autolite Sta-Put Testicle Clamps
	Victoria's Secret™ Lace Trim Thong Perfect headgear for any occasion. The saucy, sexy Lace Trim Thong brings flair to any holiday snaps.

Enjoy!

It's about as warm and cheerful as a dead hobo clown outside, here in lovely Augsburg. I still haven't gotten the hang of the metric system, but I can tell you that 10C is the temperature at which the will to throw the baseball around freezes. It's June 20th, about 6:00PM in the workers' paradise, and it's butt-numbin' cold. It's even colder in my dank, ground-floor apartment. It makes you want to defenstrate yourself.

Things That are About as Joyless as a Cold and Grey June 20th

• Filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
• Cubs Fans
• Watching the Last 10 Minutes of Old Yeller, Over, and Over, and Over...
• Greenpeace Rallies
• Franz Kafka, Right After His Cat Died
• Laurence Olivier's "World At War" Voice-overs
• Robert Fisk
• A Morrissey Concert
• Masturbating While Looking at Pictures of Your High-school Sweetheart
• Dachau Field Trips
• The Augsburg Entry in the "Culture Capital of Europe" Contest

That last item actually cheers me up, just because of the absurdity of it. For those who either don't know or don't give a damn, Europe's having a marketing contest between various cities to see which can show that it's the cultural center of the continent.

Augsburg is a fine city, no question, but it's a little out of its league. Its own site (linked above) begins with the following burst of positive thinking:

"Cultural Capital of Europe"? No doubt about it: Paris, London, or Madrid. Maybe even Berlin. One thinks of the Louvre, and of Covent Garden, and impressive architecture and internationally-renowned artists. But Augsburg?

Optimism that borders on arrogance. It reads like a newspaper article, written by someone hostile to the project. But it's their own damn page! Their entry was quite possibly the most sniveling, humorless, depressing, and obsequiously "artsy" film short I've ever seen. It consisted of grey- and blue-toned shots of black-clad old men and women reading passages of Bertholt Brecht. Brecht! For those who aren't familiar with anything but Mack the Knife, Bertholt Brecht was a famous communist from Augsburg. He moved to Hollywood in the 1930s to escape persecution by the Nazis. After World War II, McCarthy chased him out of the country, so he moved to Soviet-controlled East Germany, where he famously assisted a crackdown by the Russians on students and intellectuals, assisting in the murders of dozens of protesters. A Brecht wikipedia entry gives some rough facts about him, but makes the predictable attempt to whitewash his support of Soviet communism by relating it to Nazism.

But I digress.

The contest itself is a sham. They've taken it upon themselves to steal money from taxpayers all over Europe, even ones that would never have a chance to win, and give it to the one city that can suck up enough to the snobs of some kind of unelected committee. Absolutely breathtaking immorality. And you just know that, when there's money involved along with government, it's eaten up with corruption. The winning city will have to bribe the judges, hire their cronies to produce their entries, give them kickbacks on the award money, you name it. All in the name of culture.

But really, what is culture? Looking at the contest, you would think culture is just paintings and movies. Culture is not just art; it's also language, currency, history, religion, philosophy. It's whether or not you leave a tip when you pay your bill (they don't); it's whether you're monogamous or promiscuous.

Probably the most insulting thing about the whole program, is that it's for all of Europe. Europe is made of many cultures. Germany alone has several: Bavarian, Hessian, Westfalian, Prussian, Jewish, Saxon. France is actually pretty homogeneous, if you loosen your definition of culture to include "just being a pussy". >/cheapshot<. So what they're actually doing is having a contest to see which culture in Europe should be appointed, by a non-elected committee, as the Master ber-Culture.

There! Now I feel better.

Have you ever done something, sitting around on your own, that you found...unsettling?

I'm sitting here in my apartment, programming some sort of meaningless eye-candy for some customer I've never met. I gave up listening to music when I work, so I have to make my own noise. Being a self-employed, work-at-home, recluse-by-nature geek, I haven't brushed my teeth, showered, or even put on pants today. It's 5:30 in the P.M., and I need a shave.

So, I'm sitting there fondling the Powerbook, gazing longingly at it's sleek form, inspired design, and oh-so-curvy air vents, relishing the feel of the tactile-feedback mechanism under the warm, pliant keyboard that, though I'll never understand, I breathlessy appreciate. I'm a man, goddamnit. A man with needs, such as ergonomic design and thoughtful engineering.

There I am, trying to figure out how to make an image filter process a tiny 25,000-pixel image in under an hour, stroking my computer, sitting around in my underwear at dinnertime, filthy and unwashed, and I realize I'm singing that wading-pool song Gollum was singing when he brained that fish in Two Towers.

Fuck me, that's creepy.

Bowing to the meme carried by Tim Blair, I submit to you three things that just chap my ass:

• Feng Shui (or any mysticism, for that matter)
• Kung Fu in movies
• James fucking Joyce

Jesus, I hate James fucking Joyce. What a simpering, worthless little twat. I think I'm going to file suit in my home state of Georgia to have his name legally changed to James Fucking Joyce. I hate that son of a bitch. I hear from someone or 'nother that some little kiss-ass literary "New Yorker"-wannabe had a fucking "Ulysses Day" jack-fest this month, supposedly because it was the date that was portrayed in Ulysses, by James Fucking Joyce. One goddam day, 11,000 pages. If you need 11,000 pages to describe one fucking day, you need to find a job you're good at.

Whatever happened to appreciation for elegance? James Fucking Joyce needed 150,000 pages to describe one fucking day. ONE! I could describe today in one word: Shit. I could also describe it in 1,500,000,000 words, just like J.F. Joyce. But it would just be the word "Shit" copied and pasted 1,500,000,000 times. I'll spare you the suspense and the outrageous Amazon pre-order fees.

Fuck James Fucking Joyce, fuck the Wachowski Brothers for re-introducing Kung Fu in polite Gesellschaft, and fuck anybody who tells me I need to have a goddamn turtle in the northern corner of my yard if I want to be potent.

And, by the way, fuck the next person who tells me in a bar that belief in a supreme being betrays a diminutive intellect, grasping at the tiniest of hopes in order to bring meaning into an abjectly meaningless existence, and then flips out because I light my cigarette with a fucking candle, because, as we all know, lighting a cigarette with a candle is bad luck for sailors. Fuck sailors, and fuck you Paul, you pseudo-intellectual, self-aggrandizing sack of shit.

Did I leave anything out?

I got a frantic email from my mom a few days ago. Apparently, the cat had caught a chipmunk, and offered it to her as a small token of his gratitude for the 9 years of expensive food and even more expensive veterinarian visits.

What follows is the heart-rending photo-essay of this ill-starred relationship, that of cat and chipmunk.

Jones hunts his prey

Prey hides behind door

Prey sleeps with the dust-bunnies

Note to chipmunks who may be reading this: Cats can apparently see through doors. Anybody who has a cat experiences this phenomenon whenever they get a good book and go to the bathroom: as soon as your legs fall asleep, the cat will begin thrashing the door in order to join you.

Dramarama say:

Okay, what is it tonight? Please just tell me what the hell is wrong! Do you wanna eat? Do you wanna sleep? Do you wanna drown? Just settle down, settle down, settle down! I'll give you candy, give you diamonds, give you pills give you anything you want-- hundred-dollar bills I'll even let you watch the shows you wanna see just marry me marry me marry me! I'm so sick of you tonight You never stay awake when I get home Is something wrong with me? Is something wrong with you? I really wish I knew wish I knew wish I knew! I'll give you candy, give you diamonds, give you pills I'll give you anything you want-- hundred-dollar bills I'll even let you watch the shows you wanna see Because you marry me marry me marry me! Marry me marry me marry me! I was young, I learned a game And love and happiness were the same Now I'm older and I don't lpay-- I found out the hardest way. I got wasted she got mad Called me names and she called her dad He got crazy and I did too Wondered what I did to you. I gave you candy, gave you diamonds, gave you pills Gave you anything you want-- Hundred-dollar bills! I even let you hear the songs I want to sing I'll give you anything anything anything I'll give you anything anything anything I'll give you anything anything anything Anything Anything Anything

As I'm struggling through "Atlas Shrugged", I figured I'd Google Ms. Ayn Rand. I came across this letter from 1941:

You say, what can one man do? When the Communists came to power in Russia, they were a handful of eighteen men. Just eighteen. In a country of [170,000,000] population. They were laughed at and no one took them seriously. According to their own prophet, Karl Marx, Russia was the last country in which Communism could be historically possible, because of Russia's backwardness in industrial development. Yet they succeeded. Because they knew what they wanted and went after it historical destiny or no historical destiny. Adolf Hitler started the Nazi Party in Germany with seven men. He was laughed at and considered a harmless crank. People said that after the Versailles Treaty Germany could not possibly become a world power again, not for centuries. Yet Hitler succeeded. Because he knew what he wanted and went after it history or no history. Shall we believe in mystical fates or do something about the future?

Ayn Rand was an important person. You rarely see such conviction in conservative philosophers. What I hear in this paragraph is that, goodness gracious, if Hitler can do it, why can't I? I will take over the world, and I'll become one rich motherfucker doing it. And there's nothing anyone can do about it.

(via Allah)

Guys my age who want to sound politically savvy now have something to talk about other than prostate problems: SNL's Pathological Liar Guy. What was that guy's name? Jon Lovitz, I think. Anybody who watched SNL in the 80s will instantly think about this guy when they hear that John Kerry said that he dated Morgan Fairchild.

Holism can be a bitch.

Today is the internation day of commies and pinkos. Did you know that Earth-Day is actually the celebration of Lenin's Birthday? Me neither.

So, let's start this new year of the Worker with a little joke.

What's the medical term for the skin around a vagina?

A woman.

According to Googlism:

rube is a tribute to rube goldberg rube is a twisted programming language named after rube goldberg rube is driven by greed rube is a strange convert to the jacked thoughts army rube is one of the best kept dining secrets in the western region of quebec rube is the only living cartoonist and humorist to have been so honored rube is a man of charm rube is life rube is considered to be an awkward unsophisticated person rube is an expert in broadcast journalism rube is down rube is just another way of saying fool rube is young and handsome rube is a giant 8x8x8 replica of a rubik's cube that skot and tollef made for bm last year rube is cool rube is young and handsome so new to your bedroom floor you know damn well where you'll go rube is spritey rube is a wonder rube is still impressed by that? rube is probably the way to go rube is like putty in our hands rube is a hottie rube is of fire with dog eat dog rube is not a boob today

(via Jim Goad)

Meet Maddox. Maddox rules. He likes himself, but he doesn't like feminists, the Matrix, vegetarians, or just about anything else he writes about.

Not that that's bad. I don't like anything either. I just find it interesting that someone who is a programmer, a perfectionist, and uses vi to make his webpage can create such startlingly bad HTML. Granted, the page isn't meant to showcase his web design abilities; it's meant to show the world how cool he is and how lame it is. At least I think that's the point. I just read it for shit like this.

Maddox even has the following comment in his pages: <!-- The code to this page is a piece of shit, I know there are a lot of things I could change and do better but I just don't care/have time.-->

Fair enough. The code really is a train wreck. There's font tags in the HEAD, for the cgi-generated pages there isn't even an HTML tag. For all that, it looks great in lynx. There's even ALT tags for the navigation.

At least he doesn't use a pussified FrontPage-wannabe like Movable Type.

So, there's this goober on the radio, and he's talking about legalizing hemp. It's a wonder crop, apparently. You can make clothes out of it, oil, fuel for cars, paper, just about anything!

Amazing! Unbelievable! But you know, when I look at these guys, I don't really think they want it legalized so they can make a shirt out of it. Why don't they just say, "Legailze pot, cause we wanna get high, and don't wanna get no heat from the man"? Why do they have to build a car that runs on the stuff?

Scott say:

I am a man, a man I'll give ya somethin' that ya won't forget I said ya shouldn't have worn that dress I said ya shouldn't have worn that dress

I know you want what's on my mind I know you like what's on my mind I know it eats you up inside I know, you know, you know, you know

Here I come, I come, I come

I am, I am, I am I said I wanna get next to you I said I gonna get close to you You wouldn't want me have to hurt you too, hurt you too?

Hillary Clinton just broke the Rand Barrier.

"We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."

And she wasn't joking. Dang, when I hear things like that it just gives the the willies. It's bad enough to be similar to characters in Atlas Shrugged, but when you start quoting them verbatim, that's when it gets a little freaky.

Hillary will be president some day. Maybe in a few years, just for writing this, I'll be laying on a rack with Richard Burton's fatherly face hanging over me. "Picture a boot," he'll be saying with that velvet voice. Oh, shit, man, then he'll do that thing where he pulls out my tooth. I hate that part.

Heh. HillaBurton.

(Via: Babalublog)

Sweet.

A nicely done post from another Georgia boy, Michael King. I can imagine the twisted expression of indignation and hatred that pours over "anti"-War people's faces when they see these two smirky State-Terrorists having a laugh over the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis who weren't botherin' nobody no-how.

Fuck 'em. If they'd wiped their own asses we wouldn't have had to go over there and mop the floor with them. Here's your country, all nice and fixed. And if you screw it up, we're just gonna go back over there and do it again. Now, get to work!

Update: Heh.

Holy smokes! I just took a couple of things out of my refrigerator that I wasn't sure I could legally throw into the garbage, owing to strict German HAZMAT regulations. I had trouble identifying some of them; luckily, most of the labels were still legible, under the green slime running down the sides. Every time I clean out my fridge, I swear to God it's the last time I'll let the shit go like that. It's amazing, and repulsive, to compare the inhabitants of my refrigerator in their original form to the pulsating, slimy, hideous, mutated forms they've now assumed.

I swear, I will never let that shit go like this again.

Update: Fridge-rot zeitgeist?

Poking around at Jeff's Place, I came across this article, the gist of which is that cell phones are bad for your boys. Seems to me that just about everything these days is targeting the testicular tadpoles. After a little googlin', I was shocked at how many things have been proven to lower your sperm count.

Things That Have Been Proven To Lower Your Sperm Count

• Tighty Whities
• Smoking
• Slamming Your Genitals in a Car Door
• Margret Cho
• Ovaries
• Taking Cold Showers

Keep em covered, and stop rubbing yourself with your cell phone, weirdos.

Name that tune:

Translated by Rube into German Schalt dein Gedächtnis aus, relax und geh mit dem Strom (Es heisst nicht sterben) Leg alle Gedanken ab, gib Dich zum Nichts auf (es funkt) Noch wirst Du den Sinn des Innens begreifen (Es heisst Dasein) Die Liebe ist Alles, und die Liebe ist Alle (Es heisst Wissen) Ignoranz und Hass bedauern den Tod (Es heisst Glauben) Doch hör den Farben deines Träumens zu (Es heisst nicht Verlassen) Also, Spiel das Spiel Existenz bis zum Ende (Das Ende vom Anfang)

Translated by Google back into English Still your memory switches off, relax and goes with the river (it does not mean to die) puts down all thoughts, geb you to the nothing on (it transmits) you the sense of the Innens will understand (it is called existence) the love is everything, and the love is all (it is called knowledge) Ignoranz and hate regrets death (it is called faith) hears colors of your dreaming nevertheless too (it is not called leaving) thus, play the play existence up to the end (the end of the beginning)

My boiler went out on me. For those of you who live in the First World, let me explain what a boiler is. A boiler is a huge, obnoxious contraption that hangs on the bathroom wall and goes out on you, forcing you to take cold showers, and shave with icy-cold razors that, as Davy Jones promised all those years ago, do indeed sting. In America, I've never seen a boiler. That doesn't mean they don't exist; it just means they're at least hidden and don't go out on you. This particular boiler, which I've learned to ignore over the years, is about 5 feet tall, a foot deep, and 2 feet wide. It's made of steel, is painted white, and hangs on the wall right next to the bathtub. It blocks an entire corner of the room ,and sometimes it drips black, greasy, evil smelling fluids onto the floor. Now it doesn't even make hot water, so I'm not sure what the point of the thing is.

I'm a vegetarian; I separate my trash, because otherwise the trash-men won't take it; I have socialized health care; I recycle, because I have to; and, now, I hate bathing. Living in Europe is just like being in college, without the drugs and smug illusion of superiority. Objectively, I'm more pinker than even the pinkest of American pinkos.

Damn dirty hippy.

Andrea Harris shouldn't keep it all bottled up.

Every blog should have a "Bitchslaps" category, because there's nothing like a good rant to getcha all woken up on a Saturday morning. Unless she's down under, which means it's, like, Tuesday or something for her.

Cheney to Leahy:

Go Fuck Yourself

Does this mean that the FCC can jump on C-SPAN now? That would actually be a good way to generate some revenue. Just put Cheney up there like he's going to make a speech, then he starts up like "fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck F-uhhh-uuhhh-uuh...CK!" That's $3,000,000 per day right there.

And who woulda thought that "a conversation about politics, religion, and money" with Dick Cheney could turn unpleasant? Shit, man, Leahy should be thanking his lucky stars that Dick didn't pull his jersey over his head and give him the Willi Plett treatment.

If C-SPAN commentators would start goading senators into hockey fights, it would at least put some butts in the seats in the Capitol. Last time I watched Congress on C-SPAN, the gallery looked like a late-80s Braves game; back then, the peanut guy just sat down next to you and watched the game. With more fights, you could get enough people in there to get the wave going. And there could be an awesome EA Congress 2004 game. I'd play Daschle, because he's the scruffy little Reijo Ruotsalainen of American politics.

I expect this kind of thing from British MPs. When you watch the Brits in session, they always seem to be 5 seconds away from a rhubarb.

The Mozilla Workers' Party has announced version 0.9 of Firefox (click the link over there on the clichd and unintuitive interface element, "left-hand sidebar"). In the name of openness, and to avoid a browser monopoly, every single person on the Internet should use Firefox.

IE==HITLER!!!

If you're not using Firefox, you might just as well have sawed off those guys' heads with your own blood-soaked hands. Take a stand! Internet Explorer won't even let you see its source code! Firefox will, though the shit might as well be in Chinese for all the good it'll do you. No, really, peruse them 35,000,000 lines of spaghetti and find the little meatball that's sending your surfing habits to Richard StaLLLman. Ok, maybe that's not such a hot metaphor, but I think you get my point.

Seething Rage

That's the feeling I get every time I see that smirking, chimp-like blue "e" spinning in the top right navigation area thing up there. Ugh, how the hell did this insane Nazi browser get (ssssss)elected to be king of the freaking web, anyway? Nothing but a little piece of trailer-trash, elevated to the role of Puppet-in-Chief by its connections to Big OS Money.

It's time for Regime Change here in the Internet. I want to be able to use CSS rounded corners and alpha transparency, not "filters" and "effects". Don't let the Internet's fate be determined by the same kind of people who made BonziBuddy a household word.

Stop killing babies and start using Firefox!

It's that time of year again. 1 score and 14 years ago, I began the slink towards Jerusalem which we call life. I traditionally celebrate my birthday with this ancient Negro spiritual, as performed by the Atlanta, GA-based bluegrass band, Blur.

Damon say:

It's my birthday No one here day Very strange day I think of you day Go outside day Sit in park day Watch the sky day What a pathetic day I dont like this day it makes me feel too small I dont like these days They make me feel so small

It's the first birthday I've ever had where I was cold. It's cold outside.

Update:

I woke up this morning, well, today, and it wasn't cold anymore. It turned out to be the most stunning day of the year so far. 73F, little cottonball clouds, and the kind of sky they had to invent words like "azure" for. It just goes to show you, if you whine enough, God will hear you. Which doesn't bode well for November.

As I noted last year, the unbridled hatred of George Bush makes me nervous. It's not hard to believe he'll be assassinated at some point. In order to defeat the bug, I said to myself as I was shaving this morning, you have to understand the bug. Speaking of shaving, I usually use a single-blade safety razor, like grandpa's, to shave with. Those things are downright dangerous once they get dull; you might as well wear an orange jumpsuit and sit cross-legged on the floor while you shave, exhorting your people to rise up against the oppressor and follow your example by also shaving their heads off, praise be to Allah. I can't find new blades anywhere; I guess I'll have to buy a new razor. So I thought of a few reasons to hate George Bush.

Reasons to Hate George W. Bush

• A President needs to have a way with words. Bush...not have way
• He gave you a wedgy in high school
• He gave you a wedgy in 2000
• He took the last fucking slice of pizza, that bitch
• He banged your girlfriend at that party
• He's one of those religious fundamentalists
• He always makes that shitty little self-righteous coughing noise when you light a cigarette IN A BAR, for fuck's sake
• He doesn't drink
• That Medicare thing

Screw George W. Bush.

This might just be the best blog entry...evar. I don't say that lightly, as I consider my own work to be the zenith of western philosophy. But, realistically, aside from a few Oxford commas, what really differentiates the men from the boys in the quaintly-bemonikered "blogosphere"? You have the greats, no doubt: The "Velociman" does indeed "use his tongue purdierna two-dollar whore"*, if I may be so bold as to quote the belovd Slim Pickens vehicle, "Les Setts Flambs". Another great adventurer of the soul is "Protein Wisdom" who, though a Jew, manages to express his "ideas" in an art that doesn't scream "Catskills". Recommended, if only with certain obvious reservations.

The Wilburn Brothers says:

I met a little girl in Knoxville a town we all know well And every Sunday evening out in her home I'd dwell We went to take an evening walk about a mile from town I thought of how she cheated me so I knocked that fair girl down I picked a stick up off the ground and knocked that fair girl down Oh Willy dear don't kill me here I'm not prepare to die She never spoke another word I only beat her more Until the ground around me within her blood did flow I took her by her golden curls I dragged her round and round Then threw her into the river that flows through Knoxville town Go there go there you Knoxville girl with dark and rolling eyes Go there go there you Knoxville girl you'll never be my wife I rolled and tumbled the whole night through my dreams were living hell And then they came from Knoxville and carried me to jail I'm here to waste my life away and time is passing slow Because I killed that Knoxville girl the girl I loved so

Visit the Knoxville Girl. I haven't read her stuff, but she's hot, in a green-eyed emo kinda way.

I'm no boy scout, not any more, but I still sometimes suffer from a debilitating case of morality. As an example, I was swilling beer with some friends of mine last night, and one of them was explaining his marketing idea to me. He's driving into work, and he decides to leave his iBook on. He's got his wireless card turned on, and a sniffer program running. On his way to work, about 5 miles, he finds something like 20 wireless networks, only 2 or 3 of which are password-protected. His idea is to find drive around, sniffing out open wireless networks, and going into the businesses and telling them their networks are wide open to whomever drives up to the curb, and offering to fix it for them for a fee.

This is a little too chaotic for me. That would be like coming home and finding some guy sitting on your couch. Then he tries to sell you a new lock. We debated the legality of it, and I'm pretty sure that it's legal, but I could see some reasons why it wouldn't be.

One other thing I'm not really sure about is how the network techs who already work there will feel about it. I mean, if you're a network tech and you've got an unsecured wireless network hanging on on your LAN, you're incompetent, no question about it. But you're still a guy, and you'll still want to kick my ass when I saunter into your boss's office with a backup CD of his Quickbooks directory that I made from the parking lot.

There's nothing like ethical ambiguity and an almost certain ass-kicking to discourage a business venture.

Bill Clinton's book comes out today. Needless to say, I stood in line last night for hours in sleet and snow (summer in Germany). Clintons book reflects his sophisticated world view, and his disarmingly earthly sense of humor.

My favorite passage?

I LIEK MEAT!

(pp. 62-63, Harcort-Brace Edition)

Not surprisingly, my opinion of this book differs wildly with that of Mr. Schwarz, who is less than enthusiastic.

According to Drudge, American military personnel are to be put in charge of Saddam Hussein while he's custody in Iraq. This makes good sense, as the U.S. still has the best-organized and best-equipped military in the region. Here are some pieces of technology that could be prominent in Saddam Hussein's future:

	X-Tra Large 10-inch "Mega" Glowstick Just in time for the 4th of July, and the Iraqi Sovereignty Handover, these firecrackers will put a "spark" into any home movie!
	The Autolite Sta-Ful Battery With up to 20A cold-cranking power, the classic Autolite Sta-Ful will fulfill all your power needs. Recommended for use with Autolite Sta-Put Testicle Clamps
	Victoria's Secret™ Lace Trim Thong Perfect headgear for any occasion. The saucy, sexy Lace Trim Thong brings flair to any holiday snaps.

Enjoy!

It's about as warm and cheerful as a dead hobo clown outside, here in lovely Augsburg. I still haven't gotten the hang of the metric system, but I can tell you that 10C is the temperature at which the will to throw the baseball around freezes. It's June 20th, about 6:00PM in the workers' paradise, and it's butt-numbin' cold. It's even colder in my dank, ground-floor apartment. It makes you want to defenstrate yourself.

Things That are About as Joyless as a Cold and Grey June 20th

• Filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
• Cubs Fans
• Watching the Last 10 Minutes of Old Yeller, Over, and Over, and Over...
• Greenpeace Rallies
• Franz Kafka, Right After His Cat Died
• Laurence Olivier's "World At War" Voice-overs
• Robert Fisk
• A Morrissey Concert
• Masturbating While Looking at Pictures of Your High-school Sweetheart
• Dachau Field Trips
• The Augsburg Entry in the "Culture Capital of Europe" Contest

That last item actually cheers me up, just because of the absurdity of it. For those who either don't know or don't give a damn, Europe's having a marketing contest between various cities to see which can show that it's the cultural center of the continent.

Augsburg is a fine city, no question, but it's a little out of its league. Its own site (linked above) begins with the following burst of positive thinking:

"Cultural Capital of Europe"? No doubt about it: Paris, London, or Madrid. Maybe even Berlin. One thinks of the Louvre, and of Covent Garden, and impressive architecture and internationally-renowned artists. But Augsburg?

Optimism that borders on arrogance. It reads like a newspaper article, written by someone hostile to the project. But it's their own damn page! Their entry was quite possibly the most sniveling, humorless, depressing, and obsequiously "artsy" film short I've ever seen. It consisted of grey- and blue-toned shots of black-clad old men and women reading passages of Bertholt Brecht. Brecht! For those who aren't familiar with anything but Mack the Knife, Bertholt Brecht was a famous communist from Augsburg. He moved to Hollywood in the 1930s to escape persecution by the Nazis. After World War II, McCarthy chased him out of the country, so he moved to Soviet-controlled East Germany, where he famously assisted a crackdown by the Russians on students and intellectuals, assisting in the murders of dozens of protesters. A Brecht wikipedia entry gives some rough facts about him, but makes the predictable attempt to whitewash his support of Soviet communism by relating it to Nazism.

But I digress.

The contest itself is a sham. They've taken it upon themselves to steal money from taxpayers all over Europe, even ones that would never have a chance to win, and give it to the one city that can suck up enough to the snobs of some kind of unelected committee. Absolutely breathtaking immorality. And you just know that, when there's money involved along with government, it's eaten up with corruption. The winning city will have to bribe the judges, hire their cronies to produce their entries, give them kickbacks on the award money, you name it. All in the name of culture.

But really, what is culture? Looking at the contest, you would think culture is just paintings and movies. Culture is not just art; it's also language, currency, history, religion, philosophy. It's whether or not you leave a tip when you pay your bill (they don't); it's whether you're monogamous or promiscuous.

Probably the most insulting thing about the whole program, is that it's for all of Europe. Europe is made of many cultures. Germany alone has several: Bavarian, Hessian, Westfalian, Prussian, Jewish, Saxon. France is actually pretty homogeneous, if you loosen your definition of culture to include "just being a pussy". >/cheapshot<. So what they're actually doing is having a contest to see which culture in Europe should be appointed, by a non-elected committee, as the Master ber-Culture.

There! Now I feel better.

Have you ever done something, sitting around on your own, that you found...unsettling?

I'm sitting here in my apartment, programming some sort of meaningless eye-candy for some customer I've never met. I gave up listening to music when I work, so I have to make my own noise. Being a self-employed, work-at-home, recluse-by-nature geek, I haven't brushed my teeth, showered, or even put on pants today. It's 5:30 in the P.M., and I need a shave.

So, I'm sitting there fondling the Powerbook, gazing longingly at it's sleek form, inspired design, and oh-so-curvy air vents, relishing the feel of the tactile-feedback mechanism under the warm, pliant keyboard that, though I'll never understand, I breathlessy appreciate. I'm a man, goddamnit. A man with needs, such as ergonomic design and thoughtful engineering.

There I am, trying to figure out how to make an image filter process a tiny 25,000-pixel image in under an hour, stroking my computer, sitting around in my underwear at dinnertime, filthy and unwashed, and I realize I'm singing that wading-pool song Gollum was singing when he brained that fish in Two Towers.

Fuck me, that's creepy.

Bowing to the meme carried by Tim Blair, I submit to you three things that just chap my ass:

• Feng Shui (or any mysticism, for that matter)
• Kung Fu in movies
• James fucking Joyce

Jesus, I hate James fucking Joyce. What a simpering, worthless little twat. I think I'm going to file suit in my home state of Georgia to have his name legally changed to James Fucking Joyce. I hate that son of a bitch. I hear from someone or 'nother that some little kiss-ass literary "New Yorker"-wannabe had a fucking "Ulysses Day" jack-fest this month, supposedly because it was the date that was portrayed in Ulysses, by James Fucking Joyce. One goddam day, 11,000 pages. If you need 11,000 pages to describe one fucking day, you need to find a job you're good at.

Whatever happened to appreciation for elegance? James Fucking Joyce needed 150,000 pages to describe one fucking day. ONE! I could describe today in one word: Shit. I could also describe it in 1,500,000,000 words, just like J.F. Joyce. But it would just be the word "Shit" copied and pasted 1,500,000,000 times. I'll spare you the suspense and the outrageous Amazon pre-order fees.

Fuck James Fucking Joyce, fuck the Wachowski Brothers for re-introducing Kung Fu in polite Gesellschaft, and fuck anybody who tells me I need to have a goddamn turtle in the northern corner of my yard if I want to be potent.

And, by the way, fuck the next person who tells me in a bar that belief in a supreme being betrays a diminutive intellect, grasping at the tiniest of hopes in order to bring meaning into an abjectly meaningless existence, and then flips out because I light my cigarette with a fucking candle, because, as we all know, lighting a cigarette with a candle is bad luck for sailors. Fuck sailors, and fuck you Paul, you pseudo-intellectual, self-aggrandizing sack of shit.

Did I leave anything out?

I got a frantic email from my mom a few days ago. Apparently, the cat had caught a chipmunk, and offered it to her as a small token of his gratitude for the 9 years of expensive food and even more expensive veterinarian visits.

What follows is the heart-rending photo-essay of this ill-starred relationship, that of cat and chipmunk.

Jones hunts his prey

Prey hides behind door

Prey sleeps with the dust-bunnies

Note to chipmunks who may be reading this: Cats can apparently see through doors. Anybody who has a cat experiences this phenomenon whenever they get a good book and go to the bathroom: as soon as your legs fall asleep, the cat will begin thrashing the door in order to join you.

Dramarama say:

Okay, what is it tonight? Please just tell me what the hell is wrong! Do you wanna eat? Do you wanna sleep? Do you wanna drown? Just settle down, settle down, settle down! I'll give you candy, give you diamonds, give you pills give you anything you want-- hundred-dollar bills I'll even let you watch the shows you wanna see just marry me marry me marry me! I'm so sick of you tonight You never stay awake when I get home Is something wrong with me? Is something wrong with you? I really wish I knew wish I knew wish I knew! I'll give you candy, give you diamonds, give you pills I'll give you anything you want-- hundred-dollar bills I'll even let you watch the shows you wanna see Because you marry me marry me marry me! Marry me marry me marry me! I was young, I learned a game And love and happiness were the same Now I'm older and I don't lpay-- I found out the hardest way. I got wasted she got mad Called me names and she called her dad He got crazy and I did too Wondered what I did to you. I gave you candy, gave you diamonds, gave you pills Gave you anything you want-- Hundred-dollar bills! I even let you hear the songs I want to sing I'll give you anything anything anything I'll give you anything anything anything I'll give you anything anything anything Anything Anything Anything

As I'm struggling through "Atlas Shrugged", I figured I'd Google Ms. Ayn Rand. I came across this letter from 1941:

You say, what can one man do? When the Communists came to power in Russia, they were a handful of eighteen men. Just eighteen. In a country of [170,000,000] population. They were laughed at and no one took them seriously. According to their own prophet, Karl Marx, Russia was the last country in which Communism could be historically possible, because of Russia's backwardness in industrial development. Yet they succeeded. Because they knew what they wanted and went after it historical destiny or no historical destiny. Adolf Hitler started the Nazi Party in Germany with seven men. He was laughed at and considered a harmless crank. People said that after the Versailles Treaty Germany could not possibly become a world power again, not for centuries. Yet Hitler succeeded. Because he knew what he wanted and went after it history or no history. Shall we believe in mystical fates or do something about the future?

Ayn Rand was an important person. You rarely see such conviction in conservative philosophers. What I hear in this paragraph is that, goodness gracious, if Hitler can do it, why can't I? I will take over the world, and I'll become one rich motherfucker doing it. And there's nothing anyone can do about it.

(via Allah)

Guys my age who want to sound politically savvy now have something to talk about other than prostate problems: SNL's Pathological Liar Guy. What was that guy's name? Jon Lovitz, I think. Anybody who watched SNL in the 80s will instantly think about this guy when they hear that John Kerry said that he dated Morgan Fairchild.

Holism can be a bitch.

Today is the internation day of commies and pinkos. Did you know that Earth-Day is actually the celebration of Lenin's Birthday? Me neither.

So, let's start this new year of the Worker with a little joke.

What's the medical term for the skin around a vagina?

A woman.

According to Googlism:

rube is a tribute to rube goldberg rube is a twisted programming language named after rube goldberg rube is driven by greed rube is a strange convert to the jacked thoughts army rube is one of the best kept dining secrets in the western region of quebec rube is the only living cartoonist and humorist to have been so honored rube is a man of charm rube is life rube is considered to be an awkward unsophisticated person rube is an expert in broadcast journalism rube is down rube is just another way of saying fool rube is young and handsome rube is a giant 8x8x8 replica of a rubik's cube that skot and tollef made for bm last year rube is cool rube is young and handsome so new to your bedroom floor you know damn well where you'll go rube is spritey rube is a wonder rube is still impressed by that? rube is probably the way to go rube is like putty in our hands rube is a hottie rube is of fire with dog eat dog rube is not a boob today

(via Jim Goad)

Meet Maddox. Maddox rules. He likes himself, but he doesn't like feminists, the Matrix, vegetarians, or just about anything else he writes about.

Not that that's bad. I don't like anything either. I just find it interesting that someone who is a programmer, a perfectionist, and uses vi to make his webpage can create such startlingly bad HTML. Granted, the page isn't meant to showcase his web design abilities; it's meant to show the world how cool he is and how lame it is. At least I think that's the point. I just read it for shit like this.

Maddox even has the following comment in his pages: <!-- The code to this page is a piece of shit, I know there are a lot of things I could change and do better but I just don't care/have time.-->

Fair enough. The code really is a train wreck. There's font tags in the HEAD, for the cgi-generated pages there isn't even an HTML tag. For all that, it looks great in lynx. There's even ALT tags for the navigation.

At least he doesn't use a pussified FrontPage-wannabe like Movable Type.

So, there's this goober on the radio, and he's talking about legalizing hemp. It's a wonder crop, apparently. You can make clothes out of it, oil, fuel for cars, paper, just about anything!

Amazing! Unbelievable! But you know, when I look at these guys, I don't really think they want it legalized so they can make a shirt out of it. Why don't they just say, "Legailze pot, cause we wanna get high, and don't wanna get no heat from the man"? Why do they have to build a car that runs on the stuff?

Scott say:

I am a man, a man I'll give ya somethin' that ya won't forget I said ya shouldn't have worn that dress I said ya shouldn't have worn that dress

I know you want what's on my mind I know you like what's on my mind I know it eats you up inside I know, you know, you know, you know

Here I come, I come, I come

I am, I am, I am I said I wanna get next to you I said I gonna get close to you You wouldn't want me have to hurt you too, hurt you too?

Hillary Clinton just broke the Rand Barrier.

"We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."

And she wasn't joking. Dang, when I hear things like that it just gives the the willies. It's bad enough to be similar to characters in Atlas Shrugged, but when you start quoting them verbatim, that's when it gets a little freaky.

Hillary will be president some day. Maybe in a few years, just for writing this, I'll be laying on a rack with Richard Burton's fatherly face hanging over me. "Picture a boot," he'll be saying with that velvet voice. Oh, shit, man, then he'll do that thing where he pulls out my tooth. I hate that part.

Heh. HillaBurton.

(Via: Babalublog)

Sweet.

A nicely done post from another Georgia boy, Michael King. I can imagine the twisted expression of indignation and hatred that pours over "anti"-War people's faces when they see these two smirky State-Terrorists having a laugh over the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis who weren't botherin' nobody no-how.

Fuck 'em. If they'd wiped their own asses we wouldn't have had to go over there and mop the floor with them. Here's your country, all nice and fixed. And if you screw it up, we're just gonna go back over there and do it again. Now, get to work!

Update: Heh.

Holy smokes! I just took a couple of things out of my refrigerator that I wasn't sure I could legally throw into the garbage, owing to strict German HAZMAT regulations. I had trouble identifying some of them; luckily, most of the labels were still legible, under the green slime running down the sides. Every time I clean out my fridge, I swear to God it's the last time I'll let the shit go like that. It's amazing, and repulsive, to compare the inhabitants of my refrigerator in their original form to the pulsating, slimy, hideous, mutated forms they've now assumed.

I swear, I will never let that shit go like this again.

Update: Fridge-rot zeitgeist?

Poking around at Jeff's Place, I came across this article, the gist of which is that cell phones are bad for your boys. Seems to me that just about everything these days is targeting the testicular tadpoles. After a little googlin', I was shocked at how many things have been proven to lower your sperm count.

Things That Have Been Proven To Lower Your Sperm Count

• Tighty Whities
• Smoking
• Slamming Your Genitals in a Car Door
• Margret Cho
• Ovaries
• Taking Cold Showers

Keep em covered, and stop rubbing yourself with your cell phone, weirdos.

Name that tune:

Translated by Rube into German Schalt dein Gedächtnis aus, relax und geh mit dem Strom (Es heisst nicht sterben) Leg alle Gedanken ab, gib Dich zum Nichts auf (es funkt) Noch wirst Du den Sinn des Innens begreifen (Es heisst Dasein) Die Liebe ist Alles, und die Liebe ist Alle (Es heisst Wissen) Ignoranz und Hass bedauern den Tod (Es heisst Glauben) Doch hör den Farben deines Träumens zu (Es heisst nicht Verlassen) Also, Spiel das Spiel Existenz bis zum Ende (Das Ende vom Anfang)

Translated by Google back into English Still your memory switches off, relax and goes with the river (it does not mean to die) puts down all thoughts, geb you to the nothing on (it transmits) you the sense of the Innens will understand (it is called existence) the love is everything, and the love is all (it is called knowledge) Ignoranz and hate regrets death (it is called faith) hears colors of your dreaming nevertheless too (it is not called leaving) thus, play the play existence up to the end (the end of the beginning)

My boiler went out on me. For those of you who live in the First World, let me explain what a boiler is. A boiler is a huge, obnoxious contraption that hangs on the bathroom wall and goes out on you, forcing you to take cold showers, and shave with icy-cold razors that, as Davy Jones promised all those years ago, do indeed sting. In America, I've never seen a boiler. That doesn't mean they don't exist; it just means they're at least hidden and don't go out on you. This particular boiler, which I've learned to ignore over the years, is about 5 feet tall, a foot deep, and 2 feet wide. It's made of steel, is painted white, and hangs on the wall right next to the bathtub. It blocks an entire corner of the room ,and sometimes it drips black, greasy, evil smelling fluids onto the floor. Now it doesn't even make hot water, so I'm not sure what the point of the thing is.

I'm a vegetarian; I separate my trash, because otherwise the trash-men won't take it; I have socialized health care; I recycle, because I have to; and, now, I hate bathing. Living in Europe is just like being in college, without the drugs and smug illusion of superiority. Objectively, I'm more pinker than even the pinkest of American pinkos.

Damn dirty hippy.

Andrea Harris shouldn't keep it all bottled up.

Every blog should have a "Bitchslaps" category, because there's nothing like a good rant to getcha all woken up on a Saturday morning. Unless she's down under, which means it's, like, Tuesday or something for her.

Cheney to Leahy:

Go Fuck Yourself

Does this mean that the FCC can jump on C-SPAN now? That would actually be a good way to generate some revenue. Just put Cheney up there like he's going to make a speech, then he starts up like "fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck F-uhhh-uuhhh-uuh...CK!" That's $3,000,000 per day right there.

And who woulda thought that "a conversation about politics, religion, and money" with Dick Cheney could turn unpleasant? Shit, man, Leahy should be thanking his lucky stars that Dick didn't pull his jersey over his head and give him the Willi Plett treatment.

If C-SPAN commentators would start goading senators into hockey fights, it would at least put some butts in the seats in the Capitol. Last time I watched Congress on C-SPAN, the gallery looked like a late-80s Braves game; back then, the peanut guy just sat down next to you and watched the game. With more fights, you could get enough people in there to get the wave going. And there could be an awesome EA Congress 2004 game. I'd play Daschle, because he's the scruffy little Reijo Ruotsalainen of American politics.

I expect this kind of thing from British MPs. When you watch the Brits in session, they always seem to be 5 seconds away from a rhubarb.

The Mozilla Workers' Party has announced version 0.9 of Firefox (click the link over there on the clichd and unintuitive interface element, "left-hand sidebar"). In the name of openness, and to avoid a browser monopoly, every single person on the Internet should use Firefox.

IE==HITLER!!!

If you're not using Firefox, you might just as well have sawed off those guys' heads with your own blood-soaked hands. Take a stand! Internet Explorer won't even let you see its source code! Firefox will, though the shit might as well be in Chinese for all the good it'll do you. No, really, peruse them 35,000,000 lines of spaghetti and find the little meatball that's sending your surfing habits to Richard StaLLLman. Ok, maybe that's not such a hot metaphor, but I think you get my point.

Seething Rage

That's the feeling I get every time I see that smirking, chimp-like blue "e" spinning in the top right navigation area thing up there. Ugh, how the hell did this insane Nazi browser get (ssssss)elected to be king of the freaking web, anyway? Nothing but a little piece of trailer-trash, elevated to the role of Puppet-in-Chief by its connections to Big OS Money.

It's time for Regime Change here in the Internet. I want to be able to use CSS rounded corners and alpha transparency, not "filters" and "effects". Don't let the Internet's fate be determined by the same kind of people who made BonziBuddy a household word.

Stop killing babies and start using Firefox!

It's that time of year again. 1 score and 14 years ago, I began the slink towards Jerusalem which we call life. I traditionally celebrate my birthday with this ancient Negro spiritual, as performed by the Atlanta, GA-based bluegrass band, Blur.

Damon say:

It's my birthday No one here day Very strange day I think of you day Go outside day Sit in park day Watch the sky day What a pathetic day I dont like this day it makes me feel too small I dont like these days They make me feel so small

It's the first birthday I've ever had where I was cold. It's cold outside.

Update:

I woke up this morning, well, today, and it wasn't cold anymore. It turned out to be the most stunning day of the year so far. 73F, little cottonball clouds, and the kind of sky they had to invent words like "azure" for. It just goes to show you, if you whine enough, God will hear you. Which doesn't bode well for November.

As I noted last year, the unbridled hatred of George Bush makes me nervous. It's not hard to believe he'll be assassinated at some point. In order to defeat the bug, I said to myself as I was shaving this morning, you have to understand the bug. Speaking of shaving, I usually use a single-blade safety razor, like grandpa's, to shave with. Those things are downright dangerous once they get dull; you might as well wear an orange jumpsuit and sit cross-legged on the floor while you shave, exhorting your people to rise up against the oppressor and follow your example by also shaving their heads off, praise be to Allah. I can't find new blades anywhere; I guess I'll have to buy a new razor. So I thought of a few reasons to hate George Bush.

Reasons to Hate George W. Bush

• A President needs to have a way with words. Bush...not have way
• He gave you a wedgy in high school
• He gave you a wedgy in 2000
• He took the last fucking slice of pizza, that bitch
• He banged your girlfriend at that party
• He's one of those religious fundamentalists
• He always makes that shitty little self-righteous coughing noise when you light a cigarette IN A BAR, for fuck's sake
• He doesn't drink
• That Medicare thing

Screw George W. Bush.

This might just be the best blog entry...evar. I don't say that lightly, as I consider my own work to be the zenith of western philosophy. But, realistically, aside from a few Oxford commas, what really differentiates the men from the boys in the quaintly-bemonikered "blogosphere"? You have the greats, no doubt: The "Velociman" does indeed "use his tongue purdierna two-dollar whore"*, if I may be so bold as to quote the belovd Slim Pickens vehicle, "Les Setts Flambs". Another great adventurer of the soul is "Protein Wisdom" who, though a Jew, manages to express his "ideas" in an art that doesn't scream "Catskills". Recommended, if only with certain obvious reservations.

The Wilburn Brothers says:

I met a little girl in Knoxville a town we all know well And every Sunday evening out in her home I'd dwell We went to take an evening walk about a mile from town I thought of how she cheated me so I knocked that fair girl down I picked a stick up off the ground and knocked that fair girl down Oh Willy dear don't kill me here I'm not prepare to die She never spoke another word I only beat her more Until the ground around me within her blood did flow I took her by her golden curls I dragged her round and round Then threw her into the river that flows through Knoxville town Go there go there you Knoxville girl with dark and rolling eyes Go there go there you Knoxville girl you'll never be my wife I rolled and tumbled the whole night through my dreams were living hell And then they came from Knoxville and carried me to jail I'm here to waste my life away and time is passing slow Because I killed that Knoxville girl the girl I loved so

Visit the Knoxville Girl. I haven't read her stuff, but she's hot, in a green-eyed emo kinda way.

I'm no boy scout, not any more, but I still sometimes suffer from a debilitating case of morality. As an example, I was swilling beer with some friends of mine last night, and one of them was explaining his marketing idea to me. He's driving into work, and he decides to leave his iBook on. He's got his wireless card turned on, and a sniffer program running. On his way to work, about 5 miles, he finds something like 20 wireless networks, only 2 or 3 of which are password-protected. His idea is to find drive around, sniffing out open wireless networks, and going into the businesses and telling them their networks are wide open to whomever drives up to the curb, and offering to fix it for them for a fee.

This is a little too chaotic for me. That would be like coming home and finding some guy sitting on your couch. Then he tries to sell you a new lock. We debated the legality of it, and I'm pretty sure that it's legal, but I could see some reasons why it wouldn't be.

One other thing I'm not really sure about is how the network techs who already work there will feel about it. I mean, if you're a network tech and you've got an unsecured wireless network hanging on on your LAN, you're incompetent, no question about it. But you're still a guy, and you'll still want to kick my ass when I saunter into your boss's office with a backup CD of his Quickbooks directory that I made from the parking lot.

There's nothing like ethical ambiguity and an almost certain ass-kicking to discourage a business venture.

Bill Clinton's book comes out today. Needless to say, I stood in line last night for hours in sleet and snow (summer in Germany). Clintons book reflects his sophisticated world view, and his disarmingly earthly sense of humor.

My favorite passage?

I LIEK MEAT!

(pp. 62-63, Harcort-Brace Edition)

Not surprisingly, my opinion of this book differs wildly with that of Mr. Schwarz, who is less than enthusiastic.

According to Drudge, American military personnel are to be put in charge of Saddam Hussein while he's custody in Iraq. This makes good sense, as the U.S. still has the best-organized and best-equipped military in the region. Here are some pieces of technology that could be prominent in Saddam Hussein's future:

	X-Tra Large 10-inch "Mega" Glowstick Just in time for the 4th of July, and the Iraqi Sovereignty Handover, these firecrackers will put a "spark" into any home movie!
	The Autolite Sta-Ful Battery With up to 20A cold-cranking power, the classic Autolite Sta-Ful will fulfill all your power needs. Recommended for use with Autolite Sta-Put Testicle Clamps
	Victoria's Secret™ Lace Trim Thong Perfect headgear for any occasion. The saucy, sexy Lace Trim Thong brings flair to any holiday snaps.

Enjoy!

It's about as warm and cheerful as a dead hobo clown outside, here in lovely Augsburg. I still haven't gotten the hang of the metric system, but I can tell you that 10C is the temperature at which the will to throw the baseball around freezes. It's June 20th, about 6:00PM in the workers' paradise, and it's butt-numbin' cold. It's even colder in my dank, ground-floor apartment. It makes you want to defenstrate yourself.

Things That are About as Joyless as a Cold and Grey June 20th

• Filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
• Cubs Fans
• Watching the Last 10 Minutes of Old Yeller, Over, and Over, and Over...
• Greenpeace Rallies
• Franz Kafka, Right After His Cat Died
• Laurence Olivier's "World At War" Voice-overs
• Robert Fisk
• A Morrissey Concert
• Masturbating While Looking at Pictures of Your High-school Sweetheart
• Dachau Field Trips
• The Augsburg Entry in the "Culture Capital of Europe" Contest

That last item actually cheers me up, just because of the absurdity of it. For those who either don't know or don't give a damn, Europe's having a marketing contest between various cities to see which can show that it's the cultural center of the continent.

Augsburg is a fine city, no question, but it's a little out of its league. Its own site (linked above) begins with the following burst of positive thinking:

"Cultural Capital of Europe"? No doubt about it: Paris, London, or Madrid. Maybe even Berlin. One thinks of the Louvre, and of Covent Garden, and impressive architecture and internationally-renowned artists. But Augsburg?

Optimism that borders on arrogance. It reads like a newspaper article, written by someone hostile to the project. But it's their own damn page! Their entry was quite possibly the most sniveling, humorless, depressing, and obsequiously "artsy" film short I've ever seen. It consisted of grey- and blue-toned shots of black-clad old men and women reading passages of Bertholt Brecht. Brecht! For those who aren't familiar with anything but Mack the Knife, Bertholt Brecht was a famous communist from Augsburg. He moved to Hollywood in the 1930s to escape persecution by the Nazis. After World War II, McCarthy chased him out of the country, so he moved to Soviet-controlled East Germany, where he famously assisted a crackdown by the Russians on students and intellectuals, assisting in the murders of dozens of protesters. A Brecht wikipedia entry gives some rough facts about him, but makes the predictable attempt to whitewash his support of Soviet communism by relating it to Nazism.

But I digress.

The contest itself is a sham. They've taken it upon themselves to steal money from taxpayers all over Europe, even ones that would never have a chance to win, and give it to the one city that can suck up enough to the snobs of some kind of unelected committee. Absolutely breathtaking immorality. And you just know that, when there's money involved along with government, it's eaten up with corruption. The winning city will have to bribe the judges, hire their cronies to produce their entries, give them kickbacks on the award money, you name it. All in the name of culture.

But really, what is culture? Looking at the contest, you would think culture is just paintings and movies. Culture is not just art; it's also language, currency, history, religion, philosophy. It's whether or not you leave a tip when you pay your bill (they don't); it's whether you're monogamous or promiscuous.

Probably the most insulting thing about the whole program, is that it's for all of Europe. Europe is made of many cultures. Germany alone has several: Bavarian, Hessian, Westfalian, Prussian, Jewish, Saxon. France is actually pretty homogeneous, if you loosen your definition of culture to include "just being a pussy". >/cheapshot<. So what they're actually doing is having a contest to see which culture in Europe should be appointed, by a non-elected committee, as the Master ber-Culture.

There! Now I feel better.

Have you ever done something, sitting around on your own, that you found...unsettling?

I'm sitting here in my apartment, programming some sort of meaningless eye-candy for some customer I've never met. I gave up listening to music when I work, so I have to make my own noise. Being a self-employed, work-at-home, recluse-by-nature geek, I haven't brushed my teeth, showered, or even put on pants today. It's 5:30 in the P.M., and I need a shave.

So, I'm sitting there fondling the Powerbook, gazing longingly at it's sleek form, inspired design, and oh-so-curvy air vents, relishing the feel of the tactile-feedback mechanism under the warm, pliant keyboard that, though I'll never understand, I breathlessy appreciate. I'm a man, goddamnit. A man with needs, such as ergonomic design and thoughtful engineering.

There I am, trying to figure out how to make an image filter process a tiny 25,000-pixel image in under an hour, stroking my computer, sitting around in my underwear at dinnertime, filthy and unwashed, and I realize I'm singing that wading-pool song Gollum was singing when he brained that fish in Two Towers.

Fuck me, that's creepy.

Bowing to the meme carried by Tim Blair, I submit to you three things that just chap my ass:

• Feng Shui (or any mysticism, for that matter)
• Kung Fu in movies
• James fucking Joyce

Jesus, I hate James fucking Joyce. What a simpering, worthless little twat. I think I'm going to file suit in my home state of Georgia to have his name legally changed to James Fucking Joyce. I hate that son of a bitch. I hear from someone or 'nother that some little kiss-ass literary "New Yorker"-wannabe had a fucking "Ulysses Day" jack-fest this month, supposedly because it was the date that was portrayed in Ulysses, by James Fucking Joyce. One goddam day, 11,000 pages. If you need 11,000 pages to describe one fucking day, you need to find a job you're good at.

Whatever happened to appreciation for elegance? James Fucking Joyce needed 150,000 pages to describe one fucking day. ONE! I could describe today in one word: Shit. I could also describe it in 1,500,000,000 words, just like J.F. Joyce. But it would just be the word "Shit" copied and pasted 1,500,000,000 times. I'll spare you the suspense and the outrageous Amazon pre-order fees.

Fuck James Fucking Joyce, fuck the Wachowski Brothers for re-introducing Kung Fu in polite Gesellschaft, and fuck anybody who tells me I need to have a goddamn turtle in the northern corner of my yard if I want to be potent.

And, by the way, fuck the next person who tells me in a bar that belief in a supreme being betrays a diminutive intellect, grasping at the tiniest of hopes in order to bring meaning into an abjectly meaningless existence, and then flips out because I light my cigarette with a fucking candle, because, as we all know, lighting a cigarette with a candle is bad luck for sailors. Fuck sailors, and fuck you Paul, you pseudo-intellectual, self-aggrandizing sack of shit.

Did I leave anything out?

I got a frantic email from my mom a few days ago. Apparently, the cat had caught a chipmunk, and offered it to her as a small token of his gratitude for the 9 years of expensive food and even more expensive veterinarian visits.

What follows is the heart-rending photo-essay of this ill-starred relationship, that of cat and chipmunk.

Jones hunts his prey

Prey hides behind door

Prey sleeps with the dust-bunnies

Note to chipmunks who may be reading this: Cats can apparently see through doors. Anybody who has a cat experiences this phenomenon whenever they get a good book and go to the bathroom: as soon as your legs fall asleep, the cat will begin thrashing the door in order to join you.

Dramarama say:

Okay, what is it tonight? Please just tell me what the hell is wrong! Do you wanna eat? Do you wanna sleep? Do you wanna drown? Just settle down, settle down, settle down! I'll give you candy, give you diamonds, give you pills give you anything you want-- hundred-dollar bills I'll even let you watch the shows you wanna see just marry me marry me marry me! I'm so sick of you tonight You never stay awake when I get home Is something wrong with me? Is something wrong with you? I really wish I knew wish I knew wish I knew! I'll give you candy, give you diamonds, give you pills I'll give you anything you want-- hundred-dollar bills I'll even let you watch the shows you wanna see Because you marry me marry me marry me! Marry me marry me marry me! I was young, I learned a game And love and happiness were the same Now I'm older and I don't lpay-- I found out the hardest way. I got wasted she got mad Called me names and she called her dad He got crazy and I did too Wondered what I did to you. I gave you candy, gave you diamonds, gave you pills Gave you anything you want-- Hundred-dollar bills! I even let you hear the songs I want to sing I'll give you anything anything anything I'll give you anything anything anything I'll give you anything anything anything Anything Anything Anything

As I'm struggling through "Atlas Shrugged", I figured I'd Google Ms. Ayn Rand. I came across this letter from 1941:

You say, what can one man do? When the Communists came to power in Russia, they were a handful of eighteen men. Just eighteen. In a country of [170,000,000] population. They were laughed at and no one took them seriously. According to their own prophet, Karl Marx, Russia was the last country in which Communism could be historically possible, because of Russia's backwardness in industrial development. Yet they succeeded. Because they knew what they wanted and went after it historical destiny or no historical destiny. Adolf Hitler started the Nazi Party in Germany with seven men. He was laughed at and considered a harmless crank. People said that after the Versailles Treaty Germany could not possibly become a world power again, not for centuries. Yet Hitler succeeded. Because he knew what he wanted and went after it history or no history. Shall we believe in mystical fates or do something about the future?

Ayn Rand was an important person. You rarely see such conviction in conservative philosophers. What I hear in this paragraph is that, goodness gracious, if Hitler can do it, why can't I? I will take over the world, and I'll become one rich motherfucker doing it. And there's nothing anyone can do about it.

(via Allah)

Guys my age who want to sound politically savvy now have something to talk about other than prostate problems: SNL's Pathological Liar Guy. What was that guy's name? Jon Lovitz, I think. Anybody who watched SNL in the 80s will instantly think about this guy when they hear that John Kerry said that he dated Morgan Fairchild.

Holism can be a bitch.

Today is the internation day of commies and pinkos. Did you know that Earth-Day is actually the celebration of Lenin's Birthday? Me neither.

So, let's start this new year of the Worker with a little joke.

What's the medical term for the skin around a vagina?

A woman.

According to Googlism:

rube is a tribute to rube goldberg rube is a twisted programming language named after rube goldberg rube is driven by greed rube is a strange convert to the jacked thoughts army rube is one of the best kept dining secrets in the western region of quebec rube is the only living cartoonist and humorist to have been so honored rube is a man of charm rube is life rube is considered to be an awkward unsophisticated person rube is an expert in broadcast journalism rube is down rube is just another way of saying fool rube is young and handsome rube is a giant 8x8x8 replica of a rubik's cube that skot and tollef made for bm last year rube is cool rube is young and handsome so new to your bedroom floor you know damn well where you'll go rube is spritey rube is a wonder rube is still impressed by that? rube is probably the way to go rube is like putty in our hands rube is a hottie rube is of fire with dog eat dog rube is not a boob today

(via Jim Goad)

Meet Maddox. Maddox rules. He likes himself, but he doesn't like feminists, the Matrix, vegetarians, or just about anything else he writes about.

Not that that's bad. I don't like anything either. I just find it interesting that someone who is a programmer, a perfectionist, and uses vi to make his webpage can create such startlingly bad HTML. Granted, the page isn't meant to showcase his web design abilities; it's meant to show the world how cool he is and how lame it is. At least I think that's the point. I just read it for shit like this.

Maddox even has the following comment in his pages: <!-- The code to this page is a piece of shit, I know there are a lot of things I could change and do better but I just don't care/have time.-->

Fair enough. The code really is a train wreck. There's font tags in the HEAD, for the cgi-generated pages there isn't even an HTML tag. For all that, it looks great in lynx. There's even ALT tags for the navigation.

At least he doesn't use a pussified FrontPage-wannabe like Movable Type.

So, there's this goober on the radio, and he's talking about legalizing hemp. It's a wonder crop, apparently. You can make clothes out of it, oil, fuel for cars, paper, just about anything!

Amazing! Unbelievable! But you know, when I look at these guys, I don't really think they want it legalized so they can make a shirt out of it. Why don't they just say, "Legailze pot, cause we wanna get high, and don't wanna get no heat from the man"? Why do they have to build a car that runs on the stuff?

Scott say:

I am a man, a man I'll give ya somethin' that ya won't forget I said ya shouldn't have worn that dress I said ya shouldn't have worn that dress

I know you want what's on my mind I know you like what's on my mind I know it eats you up inside I know, you know, you know, you know

Here I come, I come, I come

I am, I am, I am I said I wanna get next to you I said I gonna get close to you You wouldn't want me have to hurt you too, hurt you too?

Hillary Clinton just broke the Rand Barrier.

"We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."

And she wasn't joking. Dang, when I hear things like that it just gives the the willies. It's bad enough to be similar to characters in Atlas Shrugged, but when you start quoting them verbatim, that's when it gets a little freaky.

Hillary will be president some day. Maybe in a few years, just for writing this, I'll be laying on a rack with Richard Burton's fatherly face hanging over me. "Picture a boot," he'll be saying with that velvet voice. Oh, shit, man, then he'll do that thing where he pulls out my tooth. I hate that part.

Heh. HillaBurton.

(Via: Babalublog)

Sweet.

A nicely done post from another Georgia boy, Michael King. I can imagine the twisted expression of indignation and hatred that pours over "anti"-War people's faces when they see these two smirky State-Terrorists having a laugh over the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis who weren't botherin' nobody no-how.

Fuck 'em. If they'd wiped their own asses we wouldn't have had to go over there and mop the floor with them. Here's your country, all nice and fixed. And if you screw it up, we're just gonna go back over there and do it again. Now, get to work!

Update: Heh.

Holy smokes! I just took a couple of things out of my refrigerator that I wasn't sure I could legally throw into the garbage, owing to strict German HAZMAT regulations. I had trouble identifying some of them; luckily, most of the labels were still legible, under the green slime running down the sides. Every time I clean out my fridge, I swear to God it's the last time I'll let the shit go like that. It's amazing, and repulsive, to compare the inhabitants of my refrigerator in their original form to the pulsating, slimy, hideous, mutated forms they've now assumed.

I swear, I will never let that shit go like this again.

Update: Fridge-rot zeitgeist?

Poking around at Jeff's Place, I came across this article, the gist of which is that cell phones are bad for your boys. Seems to me that just about everything these days is targeting the testicular tadpoles. After a little googlin', I was shocked at how many things have been proven to lower your sperm count.

Things That Have Been Proven To Lower Your Sperm Count

• Tighty Whities
• Smoking
• Slamming Your Genitals in a Car Door
• Margret Cho
• Ovaries
• Taking Cold Showers

Keep em covered, and stop rubbing yourself with your cell phone, weirdos.

Name that tune:

Translated by Rube into German Schalt dein Gedächtnis aus, relax und geh mit dem Strom (Es heisst nicht sterben) Leg alle Gedanken ab, gib Dich zum Nichts auf (es funkt) Noch wirst Du den Sinn des Innens begreifen (Es heisst Dasein) Die Liebe ist Alles, und die Liebe ist Alle (Es heisst Wissen) Ignoranz und Hass bedauern den Tod (Es heisst Glauben) Doch hör den Farben deines Träumens zu (Es heisst nicht Verlassen) Also, Spiel das Spiel Existenz bis zum Ende (Das Ende vom Anfang)

Translated by Google back into English Still your memory switches off, relax and goes with the river (it does not mean to die) puts down all thoughts, geb you to the nothing on (it transmits) you the sense of the Innens will understand (it is called existence) the love is everything, and the love is all (it is called knowledge) Ignoranz and hate regrets death (it is called faith) hears colors of your dreaming nevertheless too (it is not called leaving) thus, play the play existence up to the end (the end of the beginning)

My boiler went out on me. For those of you who live in the First World, let me explain what a boiler is. A boiler is a huge, obnoxious contraption that hangs on the bathroom wall and goes out on you, forcing you to take cold showers, and shave with icy-cold razors that, as Davy Jones promised all those years ago, do indeed sting. In America, I've never seen a boiler. That doesn't mean they don't exist; it just means they're at least hidden and don't go out on you. This particular boiler, which I've learned to ignore over the years, is about 5 feet tall, a foot deep, and 2 feet wide. It's made of steel, is painted white, and hangs on the wall right next to the bathtub. It blocks an entire corner of the room ,and sometimes it drips black, greasy, evil smelling fluids onto the floor. Now it doesn't even make hot water, so I'm not sure what the point of the thing is.

I'm a vegetarian; I separate my trash, because otherwise the trash-men won't take it; I have socialized health care; I recycle, because I have to; and, now, I hate bathing. Living in Europe is just like being in college, without the drugs and smug illusion of superiority. Objectively, I'm more pinker than even the pinkest of American pinkos.

Damn dirty hippy.

Andrea Harris shouldn't keep it all bottled up.

Every blog should have a "Bitchslaps" category, because there's nothing like a good rant to getcha all woken up on a Saturday morning. Unless she's down under, which means it's, like, Tuesday or something for her.

Cheney to Leahy:

Go Fuck Yourself

Does this mean that the FCC can jump on C-SPAN now? That would actually be a good way to generate some revenue. Just put Cheney up there like he's going to make a speech, then he starts up like "fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck F-uhhh-uuhhh-uuh...CK!" That's $3,000,000 per day right there.

And who woulda thought that "a conversation about politics, religion, and money" with Dick Cheney could turn unpleasant? Shit, man, Leahy should be thanking his lucky stars that Dick didn't pull his jersey over his head and give him the Willi Plett treatment.

If C-SPAN commentators would start goading senators into hockey fights, it would at least put some butts in the seats in the Capitol. Last time I watched Congress on C-SPAN, the gallery looked like a late-80s Braves game; back then, the peanut guy just sat down next to you and watched the game. With more fights, you could get enough people in there to get the wave going. And there could be an awesome EA Congress 2004 game. I'd play Daschle, because he's the scruffy little Reijo Ruotsalainen of American politics.

I expect this kind of thing from British MPs. When you watch the Brits in session, they always seem to be 5 seconds away from a rhubarb.

The Mozilla Workers' Party has announced version 0.9 of Firefox (click the link over there on the clichd and unintuitive interface element, "left-hand sidebar"). In the name of openness, and to avoid a browser monopoly, every single person on the Internet should use Firefox.

IE==HITLER!!!

If you're not using Firefox, you might just as well have sawed off those guys' heads with your own blood-soaked hands. Take a stand! Internet Explorer won't even let you see its source code! Firefox will, though the shit might as well be in Chinese for all the good it'll do you. No, really, peruse them 35,000,000 lines of spaghetti and find the little meatball that's sending your surfing habits to Richard StaLLLman. Ok, maybe that's not such a hot metaphor, but I think you get my point.

Seething Rage

That's the feeling I get every time I see that smirking, chimp-like blue "e" spinning in the top right navigation area thing up there. Ugh, how the hell did this insane Nazi browser get (ssssss)elected to be king of the freaking web, anyway? Nothing but a little piece of trailer-trash, elevated to the role of Puppet-in-Chief by its connections to Big OS Money.

It's time for Regime Change here in the Internet. I want to be able to use CSS rounded corners and alpha transparency, not "filters" and "effects". Don't let the Internet's fate be determined by the same kind of people who made BonziBuddy a household word.

Stop killing babies and start using Firefox!

It's that time of year again. 1 score and 14 years ago, I began the slink towards Jerusalem which we call life. I traditionally celebrate my birthday with this ancient Negro spiritual, as performed by the Atlanta, GA-based bluegrass band, Blur.

Damon say:

It's my birthday No one here day Very strange day I think of you day Go outside day Sit in park day Watch the sky day What a pathetic day I dont like this day it makes me feel too small I dont like these days They make me feel so small

It's the first birthday I've ever had where I was cold. It's cold outside.

Update:

I woke up this morning, well, today, and it wasn't cold anymore. It turned out to be the most stunning day of the year so far. 73F, little cottonball clouds, and the kind of sky they had to invent words like "azure" for. It just goes to show you, if you whine enough, God will hear you. Which doesn't bode well for November.

As I noted last year, the unbridled hatred of George Bush makes me nervous. It's not hard to believe he'll be assassinated at some point. In order to defeat the bug, I said to myself as I was shaving this morning, you have to understand the bug. Speaking of shaving, I usually use a single-blade safety razor, like grandpa's, to shave with. Those things are downright dangerous once they get dull; you might as well wear an orange jumpsuit and sit cross-legged on the floor while you shave, exhorting your people to rise up against the oppressor and follow your example by also shaving their heads off, praise be to Allah. I can't find new blades anywhere; I guess I'll have to buy a new razor. So I thought of a few reasons to hate George Bush.

Reasons to Hate George W. Bush

• A President needs to have a way with words. Bush...not have way
• He gave you a wedgy in high school
• He gave you a wedgy in 2000
• He took the last fucking slice of pizza, that bitch
• He banged your girlfriend at that party
• He's one of those religious fundamentalists
• He always makes that shitty little self-righteous coughing noise when you light a cigarette IN A BAR, for fuck's sake
• He doesn't drink
• That Medicare thing

Screw George W. Bush.

This might just be the best blog entry...evar. I don't say that lightly, as I consider my own work to be the zenith of western philosophy. But, realistically, aside from a few Oxford commas, what really differentiates the men from the boys in the quaintly-bemonikered "blogosphere"? You have the greats, no doubt: The "Velociman" does indeed "use his tongue purdierna two-dollar whore"*, if I may be so bold as to quote the belovd Slim Pickens vehicle, "Les Setts Flambs". Another great adventurer of the soul is "Protein Wisdom" who, though a Jew, manages to express his "ideas" in an art that doesn't scream "Catskills". Recommended, if only with certain obvious reservations.

The Wilburn Brothers says:

I met a little girl in Knoxville a town we all know well And every Sunday evening out in her home I'd dwell We went to take an evening walk about a mile from town I thought of how she cheated me so I knocked that fair girl down I picked a stick up off the ground and knocked that fair girl down Oh Willy dear don't kill me here I'm not prepare to die She never spoke another word I only beat her more Until the ground around me within her blood did flow I took her by her golden curls I dragged her round and round Then threw her into the river that flows through Knoxville town Go there go there you Knoxville girl with dark and rolling eyes Go there go there you Knoxville girl you'll never be my wife I rolled and tumbled the whole night through my dreams were living hell And then they came from Knoxville and carried me to jail I'm here to waste my life away and time is passing slow Because I killed that Knoxville girl the girl I loved so

Visit the Knoxville Girl. I haven't read her stuff, but she's hot, in a green-eyed emo kinda way.

I'm no boy scout, not any more, but I still sometimes suffer from a debilitating case of morality. As an example, I was swilling beer with some friends of mine last night, and one of them was explaining his marketing idea to me. He's driving into work, and he decides to leave his iBook on. He's got his wireless card turned on, and a sniffer program running. On his way to work, about 5 miles, he finds something like 20 wireless networks, only 2 or 3 of which are password-protected. His idea is to find drive around, sniffing out open wireless networks, and going into the businesses and telling them their networks are wide open to whomever drives up to the curb, and offering to fix it for them for a fee.

This is a little too chaotic for me. That would be like coming home and finding some guy sitting on your couch. Then he tries to sell you a new lock. We debated the legality of it, and I'm pretty sure that it's legal, but I could see some reasons why it wouldn't be.

One other thing I'm not really sure about is how the network techs who already work there will feel about it. I mean, if you're a network tech and you've got an unsecured wireless network hanging on on your LAN, you're incompetent, no question about it. But you're still a guy, and you'll still want to kick my ass when I saunter into your boss's office with a backup CD of his Quickbooks directory that I made from the parking lot.

There's nothing like ethical ambiguity and an almost certain ass-kicking to discourage a business venture.

Bill Clinton's book comes out today. Needless to say, I stood in line last night for hours in sleet and snow (summer in Germany). Clintons book reflects his sophisticated world view, and his disarmingly earthly sense of humor.

My favorite passage?

I LIEK MEAT!

(pp. 62-63, Harcort-Brace Edition)

Not surprisingly, my opinion of this book differs wildly with that of Mr. Schwarz, who is less than enthusiastic.

According to Drudge, American military personnel are to be put in charge of Saddam Hussein while he's custody in Iraq. This makes good sense, as the U.S. still has the best-organized and best-equipped military in the region. Here are some pieces of technology that could be prominent in Saddam Hussein's future:

	X-Tra Large 10-inch "Mega" Glowstick Just in time for the 4th of July, and the Iraqi Sovereignty Handover, these firecrackers will put a "spark" into any home movie!
	The Autolite Sta-Ful Battery With up to 20A cold-cranking power, the classic Autolite Sta-Ful will fulfill all your power needs. Recommended for use with Autolite Sta-Put Testicle Clamps
	Victoria's Secret™ Lace Trim Thong Perfect headgear for any occasion. The saucy, sexy Lace Trim Thong brings flair to any holiday snaps.

Enjoy!

It's about as warm and cheerful as a dead hobo clown outside, here in lovely Augsburg. I still haven't gotten the hang of the metric system, but I can tell you that 10C is the temperature at which the will to throw the baseball around freezes. It's June 20th, about 6:00PM in the workers' paradise, and it's butt-numbin' cold. It's even colder in my dank, ground-floor apartment. It makes you want to defenstrate yourself.

Things That are About as Joyless as a Cold and Grey June 20th

• Filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
• Cubs Fans
• Watching the Last 10 Minutes of Old Yeller, Over, and Over, and Over...
• Greenpeace Rallies
• Franz Kafka, Right After His Cat Died
• Laurence Olivier's "World At War" Voice-overs
• Robert Fisk
• A Morrissey Concert
• Masturbating While Looking at Pictures of Your High-school Sweetheart
• Dachau Field Trips
• The Augsburg Entry in the "Culture Capital of Europe" Contest

That last item actually cheers me up, just because of the absurdity of it. For those who either don't know or don't give a damn, Europe's having a marketing contest between various cities to see which can show that it's the cultural center of the continent.

Augsburg is a fine city, no question, but it's a little out of its league. Its own site (linked above) begins with the following burst of positive thinking:

"Cultural Capital of Europe"? No doubt about it: Paris, London, or Madrid. Maybe even Berlin. One thinks of the Louvre, and of Covent Garden, and impressive architecture and internationally-renowned artists. But Augsburg?

Optimism that borders on arrogance. It reads like a newspaper article, written by someone hostile to the project. But it's their own damn page! Their entry was quite possibly the most sniveling, humorless, depressing, and obsequiously "artsy" film short I've ever seen. It consisted of grey- and blue-toned shots of black-clad old men and women reading passages of Bertholt Brecht. Brecht! For those who aren't familiar with anything but Mack the Knife, Bertholt Brecht was a famous communist from Augsburg. He moved to Hollywood in the 1930s to escape persecution by the Nazis. After World War II, McCarthy chased him out of the country, so he moved to Soviet-controlled East Germany, where he famously assisted a crackdown by the Russians on students and intellectuals, assisting in the murders of dozens of protesters. A Brecht wikipedia entry gives some rough facts about him, but makes the predictable attempt to whitewash his support of Soviet communism by relating it to Nazism.

But I digress.

The contest itself is a sham. They've taken it upon themselves to steal money from taxpayers all over Europe, even ones that would never have a chance to win, and give it to the one city that can suck up enough to the snobs of some kind of unelected committee. Absolutely breathtaking immorality. And you just know that, when there's money involved along with government, it's eaten up with corruption. The winning city will have to bribe the judges, hire their cronies to produce their entries, give them kickbacks on the award money, you name it. All in the name of culture.

But really, what is culture? Looking at the contest, you would think culture is just paintings and movies. Culture is not just art; it's also language, currency, history, religion, philosophy. It's whether or not you leave a tip when you pay your bill (they don't); it's whether you're monogamous or promiscuous.

Probably the most insulting thing about the whole program, is that it's for all of Europe. Europe is made of many cultures. Germany alone has several: Bavarian, Hessian, Westfalian, Prussian, Jewish, Saxon. France is actually pretty homogeneous, if you loosen your definition of culture to include "just being a pussy". >/cheapshot<. So what they're actually doing is having a contest to see which culture in Europe should be appointed, by a non-elected committee, as the Master ber-Culture.

There! Now I feel better.

Have you ever done something, sitting around on your own, that you found...unsettling?

I'm sitting here in my apartment, programming some sort of meaningless eye-candy for some customer I've never met. I gave up listening to music when I work, so I have to make my own noise. Being a self-employed, work-at-home, recluse-by-nature geek, I haven't brushed my teeth, showered, or even put on pants today. It's 5:30 in the P.M., and I need a shave.

So, I'm sitting there fondling the Powerbook, gazing longingly at it's sleek form, inspired design, and oh-so-curvy air vents, relishing the feel of the tactile-feedback mechanism under the warm, pliant keyboard that, though I'll never understand, I breathlessy appreciate. I'm a man, goddamnit. A man with needs, such as ergonomic design and thoughtful engineering.

There I am, trying to figure out how to make an image filter process a tiny 25,000-pixel image in under an hour, stroking my computer, sitting around in my underwear at dinnertime, filthy and unwashed, and I realize I'm singing that wading-pool song Gollum was singing when he brained that fish in Two Towers.

Fuck me, that's creepy.

Bowing to the meme carried by Tim Blair, I submit to you three things that just chap my ass:

• Feng Shui (or any mysticism, for that matter)
• Kung Fu in movies
• James fucking Joyce

Jesus, I hate James fucking Joyce. What a simpering, worthless little twat. I think I'm going to file suit in my home state of Georgia to have his name legally changed to James Fucking Joyce. I hate that son of a bitch. I hear from someone or 'nother that some little kiss-ass literary "New Yorker"-wannabe had a fucking "Ulysses Day" jack-fest this month, supposedly because it was the date that was portrayed in Ulysses, by James Fucking Joyce. One goddam day, 11,000 pages. If you need 11,000 pages to describe one fucking day, you need to find a job you're good at.

Whatever happened to appreciation for elegance? James Fucking Joyce needed 150,000 pages to describe one fucking day. ONE! I could describe today in one word: Shit. I could also describe it in 1,500,000,000 words, just like J.F. Joyce. But it would just be the word "Shit" copied and pasted 1,500,000,000 times. I'll spare you the suspense and the outrageous Amazon pre-order fees.

Fuck James Fucking Joyce, fuck the Wachowski Brothers for re-introducing Kung Fu in polite Gesellschaft, and fuck anybody who tells me I need to have a goddamn turtle in the northern corner of my yard if I want to be potent.

And, by the way, fuck the next person who tells me in a bar that belief in a supreme being betrays a diminutive intellect, grasping at the tiniest of hopes in order to bring meaning into an abjectly meaningless existence, and then flips out because I light my cigarette with a fucking candle, because, as we all know, lighting a cigarette with a candle is bad luck for sailors. Fuck sailors, and fuck you Paul, you pseudo-intellectual, self-aggrandizing sack of shit.

Did I leave anything out?

I got a frantic email from my mom a few days ago. Apparently, the cat had caught a chipmunk, and offered it to her as a small token of his gratitude for the 9 years of expensive food and even more expensive veterinarian visits.

What follows is the heart-rending photo-essay of this ill-starred relationship, that of cat and chipmunk.

Jones hunts his prey

Prey hides behind door

Prey sleeps with the dust-bunnies

Note to chipmunks who may be reading this: Cats can apparently see through doors. Anybody who has a cat experiences this phenomenon whenever they get a good book and go to the bathroom: as soon as your legs fall asleep, the cat will begin thrashing the door in order to join you.

Dramarama say:

Okay, what is it tonight? Please just tell me what the hell is wrong! Do you wanna eat? Do you wanna sleep? Do you wanna drown? Just settle down, settle down, settle down! I'll give you candy, give you diamonds, give you pills give you anything you want-- hundred-dollar bills I'll even let you watch the shows you wanna see just marry me marry me marry me! I'm so sick of you tonight You never stay awake when I get home Is something wrong with me? Is something wrong with you? I really wish I knew wish I knew wish I knew! I'll give you candy, give you diamonds, give you pills I'll give you anything you want-- hundred-dollar bills I'll even let you watch the shows you wanna see Because you marry me marry me marry me! Marry me marry me marry me! I was young, I learned a game And love and happiness were the same Now I'm older and I don't lpay-- I found out the hardest way. I got wasted she got mad Called me names and she called her dad He got crazy and I did too Wondered what I did to you. I gave you candy, gave you diamonds, gave you pills Gave you anything you want-- Hundred-dollar bills! I even let you hear the songs I want to sing I'll give you anything anything anything I'll give you anything anything anything I'll give you anything anything anything Anything Anything Anything

As I'm struggling through "Atlas Shrugged", I figured I'd Google Ms. Ayn Rand. I came across this letter from 1941:

You say, what can one man do? When the Communists came to power in Russia, they were a handful of eighteen men. Just eighteen. In a country of [170,000,000] population. They were laughed at and no one took them seriously. According to their own prophet, Karl Marx, Russia was the last country in which Communism could be historically possible, because of Russia's backwardness in industrial development. Yet they succeeded. Because they knew what they wanted and went after it historical destiny or no historical destiny. Adolf Hitler started the Nazi Party in Germany with seven men. He was laughed at and considered a harmless crank. People said that after the Versailles Treaty Germany could not possibly become a world power again, not for centuries. Yet Hitler succeeded. Because he knew what he wanted and went after it history or no history. Shall we believe in mystical fates or do something about the future?

Ayn Rand was an important person. You rarely see such conviction in conservative philosophers. What I hear in this paragraph is that, goodness gracious, if Hitler can do it, why can't I? I will take over the world, and I'll become one rich motherfucker doing it. And there's nothing anyone can do about it.

(via Allah)

Guys my age who want to sound politically savvy now have something to talk about other than prostate problems: SNL's Pathological Liar Guy. What was that guy's name? Jon Lovitz, I think. Anybody who watched SNL in the 80s will instantly think about this guy when they hear that John Kerry said that he dated Morgan Fairchild.

Holism can be a bitch.

Today is the internation day of commies and pinkos. Did you know that Earth-Day is actually the celebration of Lenin's Birthday? Me neither.

So, let's start this new year of the Worker with a little joke.

What's the medical term for the skin around a vagina?

A woman.

According to Googlism:

rube is a tribute to rube goldberg rube is a twisted programming language named after rube goldberg rube is driven by greed rube is a strange convert to the jacked thoughts army rube is one of the best kept dining secrets in the western region of quebec rube is the only living cartoonist and humorist to have been so honored rube is a man of charm rube is life rube is considered to be an awkward unsophisticated person rube is an expert in broadcast journalism rube is down rube is just another way of saying fool rube is young and handsome rube is a giant 8x8x8 replica of a rubik's cube that skot and tollef made for bm last year rube is cool rube is young and handsome so new to your bedroom floor you know damn well where you'll go rube is spritey rube is a wonder rube is still impressed by that? rube is probably the way to go rube is like putty in our hands rube is a hottie rube is of fire with dog eat dog rube is not a boob today

(via Jim Goad)

Meet Maddox. Maddox rules. He likes himself, but he doesn't like feminists, the Matrix, vegetarians, or just about anything else he writes about.

Not that that's bad. I don't like anything either. I just find it interesting that someone who is a programmer, a perfectionist, and uses vi to make his webpage can create such startlingly bad HTML. Granted, the page isn't meant to showcase his web design abilities; it's meant to show the world how cool he is and how lame it is. At least I think that's the point. I just read it for shit like this.

Maddox even has the following comment in his pages: <!-- The code to this page is a piece of shit, I know there are a lot of things I could change and do better but I just don't care/have time.-->

Fair enough. The code really is a train wreck. There's font tags in the HEAD, for the cgi-generated pages there isn't even an HTML tag. For all that, it looks great in lynx. There's even ALT tags for the navigation.

At least he doesn't use a pussified FrontPage-wannabe like Movable Type.

So, there's this goober on the radio, and he's talking about legalizing hemp. It's a wonder crop, apparently. You can make clothes out of it, oil, fuel for cars, paper, just about anything!

Amazing! Unbelievable! But you know, when I look at these guys, I don't really think they want it legalized so they can make a shirt out of it. Why don't they just say, "Legailze pot, cause we wanna get high, and don't wanna get no heat from the man"? Why do they have to build a car that runs on the stuff?

Scott say:

I am a man, a man I'll give ya somethin' that ya won't forget I said ya shouldn't have worn that dress I said ya shouldn't have worn that dress

I know you want what's on my mind I know you like what's on my mind I know it eats you up inside I know, you know, you know, you know

Here I come, I come, I come

I am, I am, I am I said I wanna get next to you I said I gonna get close to you You wouldn't want me have to hurt you too, hurt you too?

Hillary Clinton just broke the Rand Barrier.

"We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."

And she wasn't joking. Dang, when I hear things like that it just gives the the willies. It's bad enough to be similar to characters in Atlas Shrugged, but when you start quoting them verbatim, that's when it gets a little freaky.

Hillary will be president some day. Maybe in a few years, just for writing this, I'll be laying on a rack with Richard Burton's fatherly face hanging over me. "Picture a boot," he'll be saying with that velvet voice. Oh, shit, man, then he'll do that thing where he pulls out my tooth. I hate that part.

Heh. HillaBurton.

(Via: Babalublog)

Sweet.

A nicely done post from another Georgia boy, Michael King. I can imagine the twisted expression of indignation and hatred that pours over "anti"-War people's faces when they see these two smirky State-Terrorists having a laugh over the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis who weren't botherin' nobody no-how.

Fuck 'em. If they'd wiped their own asses we wouldn't have had to go over there and mop the floor with them. Here's your country, all nice and fixed. And if you screw it up, we're just gonna go back over there and do it again. Now, get to work!

Update: Heh.

Holy smokes! I just took a couple of things out of my refrigerator that I wasn't sure I could legally throw into the garbage, owing to strict German HAZMAT regulations. I had trouble identifying some of them; luckily, most of the labels were still legible, under the green slime running down the sides. Every time I clean out my fridge, I swear to God it's the last time I'll let the shit go like that. It's amazing, and repulsive, to compare the inhabitants of my refrigerator in their original form to the pulsating, slimy, hideous, mutated forms they've now assumed.

I swear, I will never let that shit go like this again.

Update: Fridge-rot zeitgeist?

Poking around at Jeff's Place, I came across this article, the gist of which is that cell phones are bad for your boys. Seems to me that just about everything these days is targeting the testicular tadpoles. After a little googlin', I was shocked at how many things have been proven to lower your sperm count.

Things That Have Been Proven To Lower Your Sperm Count

• Tighty Whities
• Smoking
• Slamming Your Genitals in a Car Door
• Margret Cho
• Ovaries
• Taking Cold Showers

Keep em covered, and stop rubbing yourself with your cell phone, weirdos.

Name that tune:

Translated by Rube into German Schalt dein Gedächtnis aus, relax und geh mit dem Strom (Es heisst nicht sterben) Leg alle Gedanken ab, gib Dich zum Nichts auf (es funkt) Noch wirst Du den Sinn des Innens begreifen (Es heisst Dasein) Die Liebe ist Alles, und die Liebe ist Alle (Es heisst Wissen) Ignoranz und Hass bedauern den Tod (Es heisst Glauben) Doch hör den Farben deines Träumens zu (Es heisst nicht Verlassen) Also, Spiel das Spiel Existenz bis zum Ende (Das Ende vom Anfang)

Translated by Google back into English Still your memory switches off, relax and goes with the river (it does not mean to die) puts down all thoughts, geb you to the nothing on (it transmits) you the sense of the Innens will understand (it is called existence) the love is everything, and the love is all (it is called knowledge) Ignoranz and hate regrets death (it is called faith) hears colors of your dreaming nevertheless too (it is not called leaving) thus, play the play existence up to the end (the end of the beginning)

My boiler went out on me. For those of you who live in the First World, let me explain what a boiler is. A boiler is a huge, obnoxious contraption that hangs on the bathroom wall and goes out on you, forcing you to take cold showers, and shave with icy-cold razors that, as Davy Jones promised all those years ago, do indeed sting. In America, I've never seen a boiler. That doesn't mean they don't exist; it just means they're at least hidden and don't go out on you. This particular boiler, which I've learned to ignore over the years, is about 5 feet tall, a foot deep, and 2 feet wide. It's made of steel, is painted white, and hangs on the wall right next to the bathtub. It blocks an entire corner of the room ,and sometimes it drips black, greasy, evil smelling fluids onto the floor. Now it doesn't even make hot water, so I'm not sure what the point of the thing is.

I'm a vegetarian; I separate my trash, because otherwise the trash-men won't take it; I have socialized health care; I recycle, because I have to; and, now, I hate bathing. Living in Europe is just like being in college, without the drugs and smug illusion of superiority. Objectively, I'm more pinker than even the pinkest of American pinkos.

Damn dirty hippy.

Andrea Harris shouldn't keep it all bottled up.

Every blog should have a "Bitchslaps" category, because there's nothing like a good rant to getcha all woken up on a Saturday morning. Unless she's down under, which means it's, like, Tuesday or something for her.

Cheney to Leahy:

Go Fuck Yourself

Does this mean that the FCC can jump on C-SPAN now? That would actually be a good way to generate some revenue. Just put Cheney up there like he's going to make a speech, then he starts up like "fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck F-uhhh-uuhhh-uuh...CK!" That's $3,000,000 per day right there.

And who woulda thought that "a conversation about politics, religion, and money" with Dick Cheney could turn unpleasant? Shit, man, Leahy should be thanking his lucky stars that Dick didn't pull his jersey over his head and give him the Willi Plett treatment.

If C-SPAN commentators would start goading senators into hockey fights, it would at least put some butts in the seats in the Capitol. Last time I watched Congress on C-SPAN, the gallery looked like a late-80s Braves game; back then, the peanut guy just sat down next to you and watched the game. With more fights, you could get enough people in there to get the wave going. And there could be an awesome EA Congress 2004 game. I'd play Daschle, because he's the scruffy little Reijo Ruotsalainen of American politics.

I expect this kind of thing from British MPs. When you watch the Brits in session, they always seem to be 5 seconds away from a rhubarb.

The Mozilla Workers' Party has announced version 0.9 of Firefox (click the link over there on the clichd and unintuitive interface element, "left-hand sidebar"). In the name of openness, and to avoid a browser monopoly, every single person on the Internet should use Firefox.

IE==HITLER!!!

If you're not using Firefox, you might just as well have sawed off those guys' heads with your own blood-soaked hands. Take a stand! Internet Explorer won't even let you see its source code! Firefox will, though the shit might as well be in Chinese for all the good it'll do you. No, really, peruse them 35,000,000 lines of spaghetti and find the little meatball that's sending your surfing habits to Richard StaLLLman. Ok, maybe that's not such a hot metaphor, but I think you get my point.

Seething Rage

That's the feeling I get every time I see that smirking, chimp-like blue "e" spinning in the top right navigation area thing up there. Ugh, how the hell did this insane Nazi browser get (ssssss)elected to be king of the freaking web, anyway? Nothing but a little piece of trailer-trash, elevated to the role of Puppet-in-Chief by its connections to Big OS Money.

It's time for Regime Change here in the Internet. I want to be able to use CSS rounded corners and alpha transparency, not "filters" and "effects". Don't let the Internet's fate be determined by the same kind of people who made BonziBuddy a household word.

Stop killing babies and start using Firefox!

It's that time of year again. 1 score and 14 years ago, I began the slink towards Jerusalem which we call life. I traditionally celebrate my birthday with this ancient Negro spiritual, as performed by the Atlanta, GA-based bluegrass band, Blur.

Damon say:

It's my birthday No one here day Very strange day I think of you day Go outside day Sit in park day Watch the sky day What a pathetic day I dont like this day it makes me feel too small I dont like these days They make me feel so small

It's the first birthday I've ever had where I was cold. It's cold outside.

Update:

I woke up this morning, well, today, and it wasn't cold anymore. It turned out to be the most stunning day of the year so far. 73F, little cottonball clouds, and the kind of sky they had to invent words like "azure" for. It just goes to show you, if you whine enough, God will hear you. Which doesn't bode well for November.

As I noted last year, the unbridled hatred of George Bush makes me nervous. It's not hard to believe he'll be assassinated at some point. In order to defeat the bug, I said to myself as I was shaving this morning, you have to understand the bug. Speaking of shaving, I usually use a single-blade safety razor, like grandpa's, to shave with. Those things are downright dangerous once they get dull; you might as well wear an orange jumpsuit and sit cross-legged on the floor while you shave, exhorting your people to rise up against the oppressor and follow your example by also shaving their heads off, praise be to Allah. I can't find new blades anywhere; I guess I'll have to buy a new razor. So I thought of a few reasons to hate George Bush.

Reasons to Hate George W. Bush

• A President needs to have a way with words. Bush...not have way
• He gave you a wedgy in high school
• He gave you a wedgy in 2000
• He took the last fucking slice of pizza, that bitch
• He banged your girlfriend at that party
• He's one of those religious fundamentalists
• He always makes that shitty little self-righteous coughing noise when you light a cigarette IN A BAR, for fuck's sake
• He doesn't drink
• That Medicare thing

Screw George W. Bush.

This might just be the best blog entry...evar. I don't say that lightly, as I consider my own work to be the zenith of western philosophy. But, realistically, aside from a few Oxford commas, what really differentiates the men from the boys in the quaintly-bemonikered "blogosphere"? You have the greats, no doubt: The "Velociman" does indeed "use his tongue purdierna two-dollar whore"*, if I may be so bold as to quote the belovd Slim Pickens vehicle, "Les Setts Flambs". Another great adventurer of the soul is "Protein Wisdom" who, though a Jew, manages to express his "ideas" in an art that doesn't scream "Catskills". Recommended, if only with certain obvious reservations.

The Wilburn Brothers says:

I met a little girl in Knoxville a town we all know well And every Sunday evening out in her home I'd dwell We went to take an evening walk about a mile from town I thought of how she cheated me so I knocked that fair girl down I picked a stick up off the ground and knocked that fair girl down Oh Willy dear don't kill me here I'm not prepare to die She never spoke another word I only beat her more Until the ground around me within her blood did flow I took her by her golden curls I dragged her round and round Then threw her into the river that flows through Knoxville town Go there go there you Knoxville girl with dark and rolling eyes Go there go there you Knoxville girl you'll never be my wife I rolled and tumbled the whole night through my dreams were living hell And then they came from Knoxville and carried me to jail I'm here to waste my life away and time is passing slow Because I killed that Knoxville girl the girl I loved so

Visit the Knoxville Girl. I haven't read her stuff, but she's hot, in a green-eyed emo kinda way.

I'm no boy scout, not any more, but I still sometimes suffer from a debilitating case of morality. As an example, I was swilling beer with some friends of mine last night, and one of them was explaining his marketing idea to me. He's driving into work, and he decides to leave his iBook on. He's got his wireless card turned on, and a sniffer program running. On his way to work, about 5 miles, he finds something like 20 wireless networks, only 2 or 3 of which are password-protected. His idea is to find drive around, sniffing out open wireless networks, and going into the businesses and telling them their networks are wide open to whomever drives up to the curb, and offering to fix it for them for a fee.

This is a little too chaotic for me. That would be like coming home and finding some guy sitting on your couch. Then he tries to sell you a new lock. We debated the legality of it, and I'm pretty sure that it's legal, but I could see some reasons why it wouldn't be.

One other thing I'm not really sure about is how the network techs who already work there will feel about it. I mean, if you're a network tech and you've got an unsecured wireless network hanging on on your LAN, you're incompetent, no question about it. But you're still a guy, and you'll still want to kick my ass when I saunter into your boss's office with a backup CD of his Quickbooks directory that I made from the parking lot.

There's nothing like ethical ambiguity and an almost certain ass-kicking to discourage a business venture.

Bill Clinton's book comes out today. Needless to say, I stood in line last night for hours in sleet and snow (summer in Germany). Clintons book reflects his sophisticated world view, and his disarmingly earthly sense of humor.

My favorite passage?

I LIEK MEAT!

(pp. 62-63, Harcort-Brace Edition)

Not surprisingly, my opinion of this book differs wildly with that of Mr. Schwarz, who is less than enthusiastic.

According to Drudge, American military personnel are to be put in charge of Saddam Hussein while he's custody in Iraq. This makes good sense, as the U.S. still has the best-organized and best-equipped military in the region. Here are some pieces of technology that could be prominent in Saddam Hussein's future:

	X-Tra Large 10-inch "Mega" Glowstick Just in time for the 4th of July, and the Iraqi Sovereignty Handover, these firecrackers will put a "spark" into any home movie!
	The Autolite Sta-Ful Battery With up to 20A cold-cranking power, the classic Autolite Sta-Ful will fulfill all your power needs. Recommended for use with Autolite Sta-Put Testicle Clamps
	Victoria's Secret™ Lace Trim Thong Perfect headgear for any occasion. The saucy, sexy Lace Trim Thong brings flair to any holiday snaps.

Enjoy!

It's about as warm and cheerful as a dead hobo clown outside, here in lovely Augsburg. I still haven't gotten the hang of the metric system, but I can tell you that 10C is the temperature at which the will to throw the baseball around freezes. It's June 20th, about 6:00PM in the workers' paradise, and it's butt-numbin' cold. It's even colder in my dank, ground-floor apartment. It makes you want to defenstrate yourself.

Things That are About as Joyless as a Cold and Grey June 20th

• Filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
• Cubs Fans
• Watching the Last 10 Minutes of Old Yeller, Over, and Over, and Over...
• Greenpeace Rallies
• Franz Kafka, Right After His Cat Died
• Laurence Olivier's "World At War" Voice-overs
• Robert Fisk
• A Morrissey Concert
• Masturbating While Looking at Pictures of Your High-school Sweetheart
• Dachau Field Trips
• The Augsburg Entry in the "Culture Capital of Europe" Contest

That last item actually cheers me up, just because of the absurdity of it. For those who either don't know or don't give a damn, Europe's having a marketing contest between various cities to see which can show that it's the cultural center of the continent.

Augsburg is a fine city, no question, but it's a little out of its league. Its own site (linked above) begins with the following burst of positive thinking:

"Cultural Capital of Europe"? No doubt about it: Paris, London, or Madrid. Maybe even Berlin. One thinks of the Louvre, and of Covent Garden, and impressive architecture and internationally-renowned artists. But Augsburg?

Optimism that borders on arrogance. It reads like a newspaper article, written by someone hostile to the project. But it's their own damn page! Their entry was quite possibly the most sniveling, humorless, depressing, and obsequiously "artsy" film short I've ever seen. It consisted of grey- and blue-toned shots of black-clad old men and women reading passages of Bertholt Brecht. Brecht! For those who aren't familiar with anything but Mack the Knife, Bertholt Brecht was a famous communist from Augsburg. He moved to Hollywood in the 1930s to escape persecution by the Nazis. After World War II, McCarthy chased him out of the country, so he moved to Soviet-controlled East Germany, where he famously assisted a crackdown by the Russians on students and intellectuals, assisting in the murders of dozens of protesters. A Brecht wikipedia entry gives some rough facts about him, but makes the predictable attempt to whitewash his support of Soviet communism by relating it to Nazism.

But I digress.

The contest itself is a sham. They've taken it upon themselves to steal money from taxpayers all over Europe, even ones that would never have a chance to win, and give it to the one city that can suck up enough to the snobs of some kind of unelected committee. Absolutely breathtaking immorality. And you just know that, when there's money involved along with government, it's eaten up with corruption. The winning city will have to bribe the judges, hire their cronies to produce their entries, give them kickbacks on the award money, you name it. All in the name of culture.

But really, what is culture? Looking at the contest, you would think culture is just paintings and movies. Culture is not just art; it's also language, currency, history, religion, philosophy. It's whether or not you leave a tip when you pay your bill (they don't); it's whether you're monogamous or promiscuous.

Probably the most insulting thing about the whole program, is that it's for all of Europe. Europe is made of many cultures. Germany alone has several: Bavarian, Hessian, Westfalian, Prussian, Jewish, Saxon. France is actually pretty homogeneous, if you loosen your definition of culture to include "just being a pussy". >/cheapshot<. So what they're actually doing is having a contest to see which culture in Europe should be appointed, by a non-elected committee, as the Master ber-Culture.

There! Now I feel better.

Have you ever done something, sitting around on your own, that you found...unsettling?

I'm sitting here in my apartment, programming some sort of meaningless eye-candy for some customer I've never met. I gave up listening to music when I work, so I have to make my own noise. Being a self-employed, work-at-home, recluse-by-nature geek, I haven't brushed my teeth, showered, or even put on pants today. It's 5:30 in the P.M., and I need a shave.

So, I'm sitting there fondling the Powerbook, gazing longingly at it's sleek form, inspired design, and oh-so-curvy air vents, relishing the feel of the tactile-feedback mechanism under the warm, pliant keyboard that, though I'll never understand, I breathlessy appreciate. I'm a man, goddamnit. A man with needs, such as ergonomic design and thoughtful engineering.

There I am, trying to figure out how to make an image filter process a tiny 25,000-pixel image in under an hour, stroking my computer, sitting around in my underwear at dinnertime, filthy and unwashed, and I realize I'm singing that wading-pool song Gollum was singing when he brained that fish in Two Towers.

Fuck me, that's creepy.

Bowing to the meme carried by Tim Blair, I submit to you three things that just chap my ass:

• Feng Shui (or any mysticism, for that matter)
• Kung Fu in movies
• James fucking Joyce

Jesus, I hate James fucking Joyce. What a simpering, worthless little twat. I think I'm going to file suit in my home state of Georgia to have his name legally changed to James Fucking Joyce. I hate that son of a bitch. I hear from someone or 'nother that some little kiss-ass literary "New Yorker"-wannabe had a fucking "Ulysses Day" jack-fest this month, supposedly because it was the date that was portrayed in Ulysses, by James Fucking Joyce. One goddam day, 11,000 pages. If you need 11,000 pages to describe one fucking day, you need to find a job you're good at.

Whatever happened to appreciation for elegance? James Fucking Joyce needed 150,000 pages to describe one fucking day. ONE! I could describe today in one word: Shit. I could also describe it in 1,500,000,000 words, just like J.F. Joyce. But it would just be the word "Shit" copied and pasted 1,500,000,000 times. I'll spare you the suspense and the outrageous Amazon pre-order fees.

Fuck James Fucking Joyce, fuck the Wachowski Brothers for re-introducing Kung Fu in polite Gesellschaft, and fuck anybody who tells me I need to have a goddamn turtle in the northern corner of my yard if I want to be potent.

And, by the way, fuck the next person who tells me in a bar that belief in a supreme being betrays a diminutive intellect, grasping at the tiniest of hopes in order to bring meaning into an abjectly meaningless existence, and then flips out because I light my cigarette with a fucking candle, because, as we all know, lighting a cigarette with a candle is bad luck for sailors. Fuck sailors, and fuck you Paul, you pseudo-intellectual, self-aggrandizing sack of shit.

Did I leave anything out?

I got a frantic email from my mom a few days ago. Apparently, the cat had caught a chipmunk, and offered it to her as a small token of his gratitude for the 9 years of expensive food and even more expensive veterinarian visits.

What follows is the heart-rending photo-essay of this ill-starred relationship, that of cat and chipmunk.

Jones hunts his prey

Prey hides behind door

Prey sleeps with the dust-bunnies

Note to chipmunks who may be reading this: Cats can apparently see through doors. Anybody who has a cat experiences this phenomenon whenever they get a good book and go to the bathroom: as soon as your legs fall asleep, the cat will begin thrashing the door in order to join you.

Dramarama say:

Okay, what is it tonight? Please just tell me what the hell is wrong! Do you wanna eat? Do you wanna sleep? Do you wanna drown? Just settle down, settle down, settle down! I'll give you candy, give you diamonds, give you pills give you anything you want-- hundred-dollar bills I'll even let you watch the shows you wanna see just marry me marry me marry me! I'm so sick of you tonight You never stay awake when I get home Is something wrong with me? Is something wrong with you? I really wish I knew wish I knew wish I knew! I'll give you candy, give you diamonds, give you pills I'll give you anything you want-- hundred-dollar bills I'll even let you watch the shows you wanna see Because you marry me marry me marry me! Marry me marry me marry me! I was young, I learned a game And love and happiness were the same Now I'm older and I don't lpay-- I found out the hardest way. I got wasted she got mad Called me names and she called her dad He got crazy and I did too Wondered what I did to you. I gave you candy, gave you diamonds, gave you pills Gave you anything you want-- Hundred-dollar bills! I even let you hear the songs I want to sing I'll give you anything anything anything I'll give you anything anything anything I'll give you anything anything anything Anything Anything Anything

As I'm struggling through "Atlas Shrugged", I figured I'd Google Ms. Ayn Rand. I came across this letter from 1941:

You say, what can one man do? When the Communists came to power in Russia, they were a handful of eighteen men. Just eighteen. In a country of [170,000,000] population. They were laughed at and no one took them seriously. According to their own prophet, Karl Marx, Russia was the last country in which Communism could be historically possible, because of Russia's backwardness in industrial development. Yet they succeeded. Because they knew what they wanted and went after it historical destiny or no historical destiny. Adolf Hitler started the Nazi Party in Germany with seven men. He was laughed at and considered a harmless crank. People said that after the Versailles Treaty Germany could not possibly become a world power again, not for centuries. Yet Hitler succeeded. Because he knew what he wanted and went after it history or no history. Shall we believe in mystical fates or do something about the future?

Ayn Rand was an important person. You rarely see such conviction in conservative philosophers. What I hear in this paragraph is that, goodness gracious, if Hitler can do it, why can't I? I will take over the world, and I'll become one rich motherfucker doing it. And there's nothing anyone can do about it.

(via Allah)

Guys my age who want to sound politically savvy now have something to talk about other than prostate problems: SNL's Pathological Liar Guy. What was that guy's name? Jon Lovitz, I think. Anybody who watched SNL in the 80s will instantly think about this guy when they hear that John Kerry said that he dated Morgan Fairchild.

Holism can be a bitch.