I'm partisan but...

I think Kerry just bitchslapped Smirky McStallandstutter. But, hey, that's just me.

Pointless musings: American obesity

Here I am, blowing off discovery because my client's answers suck, and I have discovered the root of American obesity: life here generally sucks.

Think about it. What do we do when we're happy? We have a party, with cake and cookies. Cake and cookies are all about happiness. So I'm looking at this crappy discovery and I think... "I have some cookies in the refrigerator, I'm going to eat them now..." You get the cookies and you feel a little better, right?

We can use this phenomenon. "Hey, you've got cancer, here's a mint milano. Isn't that great?!?!" "You've lost your job and won't find one for months, have an Oreo. Things are great, right?!??!" "Four more years of mortgaging your future and pissing off the rest of the world, let's celebrate with ice-cream cake!!"

Dammit. Ran out of cookies.

Wired vs. Creationism

Wired takes on the topic of creationism, though Wired is nice enough to call it, and it pains me to type this, intelligent design.

Nerd voting.

Hey, the good folks at Science have posted the candidate's positions on science policy issues on their website for subscribers and non-subscribers alike to read. As MSD runs towards the nerdy, I thought people might want to check it out.

Lawyers

Can't live with 'em, can't take their law licenses away when they expose themselves to women and take a picture of their shocked expression.

Disclaimer: The lawyers I know get a bad rap because of other douchebag lawyers.

Why do people like George W. Bush?

I can see the argument for less taxes. I understand where these people come from. I can also understand some of the other arguments that seem to make up the Republican ideal. I don't necessarily agree with the arguments, but I understand them. What I don't understand is why so many people, who seem to be quite intelligent, are backing Bush. Have they all been snowed? Do they really believe things are going well in Iraq, and the Patriot Act doesn't restrict their freedoms? Do they not believe we have a huge deficit? Do they really think there is a liberal media? Do they honestly think John Kerry shot himself to get a purple heart so when he ran for president against a deserter it would look good? Can they honestly value "steady leadership" that amounts to ignorant resistance over "flip-flopping" that is actually an intelligent reassesment of position? What can possibly look good about Bush? What can possibly look worse about Kerry than it does about Bush? Why are these people, the same who crusaded against Clinton, so easily giving Bush a pass?

I'd like to think I'm going to give Kerry enough leeway to make some change, but screw him if he inches in one direction to something that looks like the Bush agenda. I'd call for his resignation as frequently I do Bush's.

What it seems to comes back to is racism, xenophobia, and hate. They don't care about Iraq because they don't care about Iraqis. They don't care about gay marriage because they don't care about gay people. They want borders up, non-whites out, straight across the board, crosses in every room, and women in their place.

Is there any other reason why you could support such an administration?

Sarah McLachlan Video

Sara McLachlan has a new video up on her website.

Watch the video, then you can use this site to join the Peace Corps.

GO STEWART!!! (not Martha!!)

Don't you love it when people confirm something you already know? Like the fact that the ultra conservatives in this country are generally uneducated, bible banging, thumb-sucking douchebags, and anyone with half a brain is more liberal than them?

Welcome to the United States of Afghanistan...

Let's see... arbitrary application of the law, restriction of speech, violent law enforcement, enforcement of morality, mistreatment of women...Sound familiar? Noi, it's not the
Taliban, it's the DC Metro police!!

Hey pirate boy!!

As the resident gamer-geek, I feel the need to point you to this. Assuming the link works, it's this cool little pirate game where you put together these snap together pirate ships and race around a table top getting treasure. The rules are easy, you can have enough ships to play with about $12, and it's amusing. I am most enamored with the little ships, which snap together easily, and look like... little ships.

Pirate Stuff

I guess as the quasi-official MSD Pirate Guy, I have to alert you to this. Take from it what you will.

The ONLY good thing to come from TypefaceMemoKerningCBSDanRatherGate

This comic* at Xoverboard.com. If you have the cash, and you blog, you should make this your blogging uniform.

See also, this Tom Tomorrow comic.

*His other comics are good too.

World O' Crap

Nobody skewers ridiculous Xtian zealots as hilariously as World O' Crap. Nobody.

Music Meets Politics

... again. What could possibly go wrong?

On the upside, they're not ashamed:

"Music for America is a partisan, political nonprofit getting 1 million new voters to participate in the 2004 elections. The country is headed in the wrong direction. Our generation has the most at stake and as long as we remain spectators, nothing will change. Through live concerts and an interactive website, we are connecting culture and politics, exposing political hypocrisies, and igniting a grassroots movement."

Oddio Overplay

Check out this cool website that let's you DL weird tidbits like Surf Report or piped-in store muzak. Oddio Overplay.

Tip of the hat goes to boingboing.

Pointless Musings: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Most of you people don't know me, but I'm a pretty type A guy. I have always been so. As a result of that, I have also always been somewhat obsessive compulsive. This got a whole lot worse after a car accident that scrambled my brain for a while at the end of law school, although it's still pretty rare. My obsessive compulsions are usually pretty simple, things like checking to make sure doors are locked and windows are closed and parking brakes are on, etc. I get caught in these "feedback loops" where I check things out over and over and over and waste a lot of time. Usually I can break out of the loop after 2 or three iterations, but sometimes it's almost autistic..., I'll run back to my car 15 times to see that the parking brake is on, I'll go back up the stairs for half an hour to make sure that the door is closed. These things are worst when I'm stressed out or busy, which makes me more stressed out or busy because I spend a half hour making sure my shoes are lined up perfectly, or all the hangars in the closet face the same way, or no edges on paper stick out of a stack... Think the guy in Rain Man. It's usually an infrequent problem and never a common one.

Anyway, you do the repeated behaviors because you get this non-specific dread of bad things happening. "I can't remember if my door is locked. If it isn't locked, someone could get in. There are people who might want to get in. Someone will get in. I should check to see if the door is locked. [check] [walk away] I need to make sure my door is locked. If it isn't locked, someone could get in. There are people who might want to get in. Someone will get in. I can't remember if my door is locked. If it isn't locked, someone could get in. There are people who might want to get in. Someone will get in. I should check to see if the door is locked." [check] [walk away] [repeat].

I was making my 6th trip up the stairs this morning to make sure my door was closed (I live in a house with a 2y/o, and I have been under a bit of career-related stress lately, hence the worsening problem), and I started thinking objectively about the sensation. The closest I can get to describing it is to say, imagine you had 2,347,981 breaths allocated to you in life, and you just breathed your 2,347,981st. You are now going to die. Not necessarily by suffocation, or oxygen-debt, or whatever, and your functioning will continue unabated until that instant where you die, which you can't exactly predict but you are definitely going to die in the near future, and there's something you need to make sure gets done before then. Regardless of what building is burning down around you, or what state of dress you are in, or how inconvenient it is, you are singularly focused on that one thing you have to do. That's an obsessive compulsion. Objectively, it's pretty cool. When you've spent 10 minutes checking your parking brake, it really sucks.

Copyright gone (further) awry?

So WIRED News leads with a few different stories on copyright and remixes today. The one that really caught my attention was the one on the Sixth Circuit ruling that "requires all musicians to get permission before sampling any music -- even if it would be unrecognizable in the new work."

Does this make any sense? I mean, how would the creators of the sampled source even know? From my point-of-view, it seems that we are in a legal trend of letting copyright spin out of control as every creator (or company that sells a lot of music, films, books, etc.) fears loss of income and cries foul. I'm all for protecting the ability of a creative artist to make a paycheck (moreso than some on this blog, I am pretty sure), but it seems we are radically expanding the protection afforded to copyright holders, without any clear guiding purpose or logic.

Verba Artis, Hawthorne, and Mokie Jovis--I suspect all three of you have fairly insightful opinions on this.

USA hates on Cat Stevens

We are a bunch of piss-ass scum crap dirtbastards. Jesus Fucking Christ in a chickenbasket, we CANNOT let this guy in.

SHIT! This pisses me off.

Ganesh bless Elvis Costello

Check out the back of Elvis' new album. All the way at the bottom there, right above the ostentatious FBI warning, is his own response to the warning. I'd buy the album on principle if I weren't already going to buy it because he's such a damn good musician.

Wish for the Day.

I hope Kofi Annan pimp-slaps the smirking little emperor into a new time zone.

By the way, Emperor, when Kofi Annan said

No one is above the law. Again and again, we see fundamental laws shamelessly disregarded -- those that ordain respect for innocent life, for civilians, for the vulnerable -- especially children.

you thought he meant Saddam. But he means you.

Try To Reach Minimum Safe Distance

This has been a rough 10 days or so. For those of you who don't know, my career has recently become a black hole from which not even light can escape.

Unfortunately, so have my clients. I got to court one day last week to find out that my client had been killed a few days earlier in a drive-by. Then I had my crappy ass office support staff leave me alone in my office on Friday (the guy who runs my office thinks its a good idea to close at noon on Friday...) with a guy who kept threatening to kill himself. I dutifully told him he was looking at 5-life, and that if I thought he was going to kill himself, I had to call the cops. He said he wasn't. On Monday, I found out he did... try... by injecting an overdose of insulin into his heart. Today, after my morning ritual of fighting my way through profound depression barely in time to show up for what I have to do, I went to court and found out that my guy for the day has been held on Federal charges... and now i can't locate him in the federal system.

So I say, keep your distance. You may want to run faster.

Blogs you should read (after this one)

If you're not already, start reading One Good Thing. It's a blog by a mom in Chicago who also happens to run a sex toy store for women. She's a competent writer with an offbeat sense of humor. Good to break up the monotony every now and then.

I may have found my new employment industry (Just Kidding Mr. Ashcroft)

It isn't often you get to agree with a great political powerhouse...

CNN.com - Bush 'pleased with the progress' in Iraq - Sep 18, 2004

this guy has serious issues with reality...

Message for Madonna and her guards...

Don't fuck with the police in Israel. They are seriously NOT screwing around over there...

Hey, since they're getting paid, are these really expensive prostitutes? Mmmmmm cocained and prostitutes... sans latex

So you want your pornstars with AIDS or without AIDS?

Galacticpariah??

My posts seem to have been too spicy for you wimps. Well I'm going to KEEP being raunchy, if only because I feel like it!! And you can imagine the Olsons selling sex toys whether you like it or NOT!!

On a more serious note...

Did you see this? Eminent domain for purely private commercial purposes in order to increase tax base... There are three or four of these issues all at once. And this Court could go the wrong way. Holy shit. Can you imagine? The Supreme Court may say.... "Go on ahead and demolish that whole neighborhood there so we can move more desirable rich people in..." How fucked up is that?

A new endeavor...

I just got back from teaching for the first time ever. Tomorrow morning I start my other class. I'm teaching criminal law and family law for paralegals. How cool is that? Who is dumb enough to let ME teach?!??!?

Pirates: Helping people worldwide

Because some douchebag stole what was rightfully my post, I now have to post this anecdote slighty out of context. Context is here.

Y'know, after all the looting, slavery, and murder, pirates aren't bad people. My girlfriend has used the "pirate accent" to teach a kid who said his "r" sounds like Barbara Walters to say his "r" sounds properly. Apparently she just told him to say his "r" like a pirate. He did, and got over his speech issue. Imagine telling people you learned how to say your "r" by pretending to be a pirate.

Yar.

Avast.

Poopdeck.

It's almost here!!

Don't forget, me mateys, September 19th is International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

You think I'm kidding?

Check this. And this. Then grab an eyepatch and a plank, and go nuts. (C'mon, ACW, this one is just fo you. You know you want to...say it, say it,...say Yar! There ya' go.)

War... What is it good for?

GO MOM!!!

The "eataMcMeal" club?? Couldn't they sell sex toys instead?

you have to be fucking kidding me

oops

I don't know why the url didn't work, but it's a string on zoemitchell.com regarding former mayor Barry winning a counsel seat in DC.

Sometimes being a jerk is fun. I must be sad inside...

Mmmmmm... cocaine and prostitutes...

Mmmmm ... Cocaine and Prostitutes...

this string has become amusing.

Dvorak

One of my favorite composers, and apparently it's a "Dvorak year." If you haven't heard the New World Symphony, (you probably have and just don't know it) DL it and give it a listen. It's one of the greatest musical compositions about America I've ever heard.

Batman Gets Dumped

"Holy Fucktard Dumb Batman"

Referencing this post.

God probably doesn't exist

Though the odds are slightly in his favor.

I, however, have my money on Thor.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm going home to mourn. I'm not kidding. I'm going to write a letter and leave.

leaving a bad job

I am preparing to leave a bad job. An interminably worsening job. The mother, sister, and aunt of all inbred bad jobs. These guys have some creative ideas on how do do that. Thoughts?

Proctor and Gamble

The "American" "Family" Association is asking it's members to boycott products like Crest and Tide because the maker of those products, Proctor and Gamble, is working to give gay folks equal rights in Cincinnati via a donation of $10,000 to Citizens to Restore Fairness. Beat "A""F"A at their own game. Call Chrm. A.G. Lafley at 513-983-1100 and politely let him know that you are NOT participating in the boycott and will ask others to do the same. Let them know you'll be buying P&G products exclusively from now on. Whether you do or not doesn't really matter, at least they'll know that there are sane people out there. And pass this along to your friends if you could. You can email P&G here.

You can even say something like, "I just wanted you to know that I'm going to keep buying your products and I support what you have done for Citizens to Restore Fairness. I'll let my friends and family know to do the same."

The most amazing part of the boycott is the very comapassionate and well thought out letter from P&G that "A""F"A uses to indict P&G as compared to the looney fucking shit that follows, including the indictment, and a list of sexual "orientations" to equate homosexuality with things such as apotemnophilia. Check it out. (pdf)

Free MP3s!

You can get free They Might Be Giants MP3s by going to their site, clicking on "Free MP3's! Huzzah!" and signing up for their free MP3 email list. You can really amass quite a bit of weird TMBG stuff. Also, if you're into TMBG and you haven't done so yet, you should set (718)387-6962 as TMBG's Dial-A-Song number in your phone. It's worth it to try to get through to hear a rare or goofy recording. But be careful, the slogan is "Always Busy, Often Broken." There's also an online Dial-A-Song for those who don't find TMBG "Speeddial-worthy."

Look out! He's gonna explode. (Plus update.)

Holy Christ, it's hopeless! First, it's the psycho Swift Boat Liars for Character Assassination. Now it's Memogate.

Did President Bush dodge service? Are the incriminating memos frauds? The media certainly won't help anyone find the truth--that's bad for advertising revenue.

What is lost in this is the American voter. We need some information to help us make up our minds about WHO'S GOING TO RUN THE COUNTRY.

These matters of dispute aren't impossible to verify--so, go do some damn reporting, journalists. Speak some truth to power, you worthless soap-sellers. Don't tell me you're airing both viewpoints--find the evidence, evaluate the evidence, report the evidence. Not what makes the best story. Not what gets the most viewers.

The point is so obvious that even USA Today gets it. Find out what's going on!

And if you can't, if you simply can't find a single person who can verify Bush's service... If you can't come to a weighing of the evidence on Kerry's service record... If you can't tell us what we need to know, supported by logical stories, and credible evidence--well then, what good are you? Ask yourselves what the Fourth Estate has become--mere lap dogs to the sirens of celebrity, wealth and privilege?

It's crazy shit like this that drives people to vote for Nader. I'm so disgusted by politicians, the press, and the current level of discourse that I want to throw up.

Nausea in 2004. Now there's a campaign slogan that will resonate with the masses.


UPDATE: Hey, I'n not the only one--there's this guy, too.

This is where I continue to fulfill the dork quotient of this blog

A friggin' course on pirates at Trinity College. I'm afraid the link will go kaput shortly, so here's the article:

Avast, Students! Here Ye Can Add Keelhauling to Your Curriculum
By THOMAS BARTLETT -->Why doesn't every college have a course on pirates?That's what Thomas M. Truxes wants to know. For one thing, there is a wealth of pirate-related material for students to explore, including firsthand accounts of raids. Pirates also loom large in the popular imagination, serving as fodder for numerous novels, movies, and comic strips, not to mention a Disney ride and "Talk Like a Pirate Day," created by a couple of guys with way too much time on their hands. (It's September 19, by the way. Mark your calendars.)But what's most compelling about the subject for Mr. Truxes, a visiting history lecturer at Trinity College, in Connecticut, is how it leads to discussions on a wide range of important issues, such as terrorism. Those who don't believe pirates were terrorists don't know their history, Mr. Truxes contends."It was a huge problem," he says. "The reason these guys were able to keep going for so long is that no one nation had the incentive or the power to take charge and deal with them."During the heyday of piracy, which stretched from the 16th to the early 18th century, some countries tolerated pirates for the same reason some countries today tolerate terrorism: It was to their economic advantage to do so.The course, "Pirates and Buccaneers: Seaborne Terrorism in the Early Modern Period," also looks at the culture aboard pirate ships. For instance, some scholars believe that pirate ships served as havens for homosexual men. Others argue that the connection between piracy and homosexuality has been exaggerated.The demand for the course, offered for the first time this fall, has been strong. Some students had to be turned away."I guess I didn't realize it was such an unusual topic," says Mr. Truxes, who studies maritime commerce. "It's just something I find interesting."***Reading list:Bandits at Sea: A Pirates Reader, edited by C.R. Pennell (New York University Press, 2001); Captain Kidd and the War Against the Pirates, by Robert C. Ritchie (Harvard University Press, 1986); A General History of Pyrates, by Daniel Defoe (University of South Carolina Press, 1972); Pillaging the Empire: Piracy in the Americas, 1500-1750, by Kris E. Lane (M.E. Sharpe, 1998).***Assignments:Students will write a one-page response to the reading for each class. Each student also will lead one class discussion during the seminar. Along with quizzes and a final exam, students will be graded on a final research paper, which should be 10 to 12 pages long and can be on any pirate-related topic, such as the effect of international law on seaborne bandits.

As for pushing you into your thinking zone, I think this succeeds much better than my previous post. Also, here's a primer on keelhauling.

I'm the music guy, so I should probably do something about it

Culturally, and with regard to the internet, this link is about 200 years old. Regardless, I still think it's interesting.

If you hate pop music, as I do, and if you love musical innovation, as I do, then I think you may like mashing. And this guy is my favorite. He takes pop music that would otherwise drive you insane, and pairs it with classic rock, or other pop songs. His best mashup, which is unfortunately no longer available on his site, is "Sexual High," where he layers Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" over Radiohead's "High and Dry." I couldn't figure out which song I was listening to, but both were great. Go here, click on "Samples" and download everything he has up. Then delete it from your hard drive unless you already own the songs that he used to make the song. Nevermind, just delete it all together. You should, for no reason, keep these songs in your ipod and listen to them regularly.

If this all sounds familiar to you, you may be thinking of the Grey Album.

If some of GHP's stuff tickles your fancy, you should also check DJ Dangermouse, MCSLEAZY, and Frenchbloke & Son.

You fucking fruitcake...

A man in underoos tries to change the world. Film at 11.

HELP, I'm being oppressed!!!!

I have been censored by the owner of this site. I feel... violated... betrayed... misunderstood... I may have to go kill myself over this one.

For those of you who didn't get it, the three postings of the "what's wrong with a little wind" topic were to poke fun at the only state in the union that isn't smart enough to vote, Florida, which is about to get hit by devastating hurricanes for the third time in a month. In case you live in a cave.

Perhaps I should post THIS topic three times... Perhaps ALL OF MY POSTINGS FROM NOW ON SHOULD BE POSTED THREE TIMES THREE TIMES THREE TIMES.

I'm over it.

DAMMIT!!!

Microsoft is EVIL!!! Am I the only person on earth who can't get SP2 to frickin work?!??!? Why do they have to have such piss-poor development in the first damn place!! If you don't know what I'm talking about, and you use a computer, you need to go to microsoft and find service pack 2 and download it NOW, because you are who that particular update is intended for...

What's wrong with a little wind?

Hey FLORIDA, SUCKS TO BE YOU!!!!!

I am a -bad- person.

That anniversary is coming

Social issues, remember?

This morning NPR had Art Spiegelman on to talk about his first cartoon book since Maus. If you don't know what that means, start googling. Art, great name for a cartoonist, works with the New Yorker etc., and did the all black cover that appeared after the world trade centers fell where you could only see black until you looked really closely, and then you could see the outline of the towers. AAAAANYWAY, he was talking about how that anniversary was coming up, and on the day the towers fell he had to find his 9y/o son and 15 y/o daughter, and afterwards his head was all screwed up, and now he equates Osama and our buddy W as being equally ... inclined to incite terror.

his new book, with link to the interview, which was GOOD.

I know a guy, a sheriff actually, who is getting married on 9-11-04. There appears to be an epidemic of marriages occuring on that date, in fact, there was an article about it in the newspaper.

There also seems to be some issue with chronic health problems associated with 9-11-01.

I was not able to share in the "everyone remembers what they were doing when Kennedy was shot" phenomenon. Everybody remembers what they were doing when the planes crashed:

I was on my way to work in NoVA, listening to the local shock jock who had Ben Folds on. Ben Folds had just stopped playing and Elliot was babbling about something, only to be interrupted by Ben Folds with "A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center." That was surreal. I have two sisters. At that time, one lived (and still does) in Brooklyn and worked in the shadow of the towers. The other was at Cornell and went TO the site to help with the rescue efforts. I worked down the street from the NOVA CIA headquarters, in sight of the pentagon (I actually responded to being told by a co-worker that the pentagon had been hit with a plane by laughing and ridiculing that we were in the most restricted airspace on earth. I turned around to see a plume of smoke out my office window and added... "but I could be wrong". My parents were freaking out. No one could get a phone call out consistently, no one knew what was going on. It was crazy.

Some countries-- Israel -- deal with terrorist events all the time. This was the biggest ever, and it seems to have been seared onto not only America's collective consciousness, but the whole world's. Too bad we squandered the goodwill attached to the aftermath.

9-11-01 is becoming an issue in the presidential campaigns, and the Republicans forced a vote on an anniversary resolution deliberately, and dishonestly, linking the event with the war in Iraq. Will we ever allow this to fade into memory below the surface? Will it ever stop being a social, political, economic, religious etc. tool? I open the floor to discussion.

Radio, radio

Since we're off to such a prolific start, I thought I'd start doing my jorb and post something.

Driving cross country a few weeks ago (from Baltimore to Arizona), my car-mate and I were in an automobile that had only a cassette player. When trying to use the cassette to CD adaptor, the speakers would only produce sound when the plug running from the cassette adaptor to the CD player was only HALF plugged into the CD player. Even then, the sound was sub par. Dreams of listening to Woody Guthrie while in Oklahoma (worst state ever) were smashed. So we listened to more radio than I've listened to in the past 5 years. Which is none. I learned a few things on that trip. 1) You can find a ranting Christian at all hours, anywhere in the country except eastern New Mexico, where you can only find Mexican polka music, 2) You can also find NPR almost anywhere, but with nowhere near the frequency of FM Fundies or AM Wingnuts, 3) Clearchannel and Shamrock (no links, they need no more traffic) own almost everything you hear on the radio but, there is another resource outside of NPR - a growing set of Independent radio stations with strong signals. The one in Baltimore is WTMD. You can listen here. Unfortunately I can't remember the letters or frequencies of all the other independent stations on our trip cross country, but they're written on the map, which I hope to see again soon. Until, listen away.

I prefer magnets

This kind... This is a small business. They're really cool. ...And the magnets kick ASS. I use them in some of my modeling projects, but they're incredibly powerful. I too am a geek...

Defiant in not test posting... PFOX billboards are evil

What is PFOX you ask? Apparently it's some, "parents and friends of Ex-gays" group sponsored by the sicko christian right. Since it's my beat to hit social issues... enter the crosshairs.

On the way into Richmond, Virginia from the East, heading west on 64 INTO THE CITY, there is a giant bill board with a really gay looking guy saying "There is hope." And then it says something about how, with the help of friends and family this guy isn't gay anymore. Now, just so everyone knows, I'm not gay. A lot of people are pretty sure I'm asexual (which is mostly true), but in any event, I don't think it's appropriate to make where I stick my equipment an issue for other people. I think "openly gay" is just as bad as "openly straight," and I rank both up there with "die-hard Republican."

First, humour: This ad is about a half mile from one that reads "isn't she a little young?" which targets an apparent epidemic of statutory rape in the area. I'll just drop that without comment.

Second, how hateful is that? People are actually seeking a constitutional amendment, even putting out an ad campaign to not only stigmatize but actually stamp out a sexual orientation. What next? "I used to be Jewish, but now I'm better"? "I used to protect the environment but then I realized I was wrong"?

for further reference:
reparative therapy?? ick
religious tolerance?
and someone who wisely agrees with me