124,000 and counting

A lesson from the tsunami of use in my own life: it's not as important where you start, as that you start somewhere.

Stay out of trouble, and Happy New Year! May 2005 be as excellent as 2004 was craptacular.

Happy Happy Happy Happy Happy Happy Happy...

For those of you who were not aware, today is David's 438th birthday. Let us all join hands and recite a warding spell to keep him at bay. Alternatively, perhaps we could eat some Ethiopian food, or something...

Oh Yes...

Casshern is here. I will be taking over David's television presently.

Some geek notes, for those that care...

1. yes, it is all-region encoded
2. yes, it has English subtitles
3. most importantly: YES, it does have the silly anime movement lines...

I am all a-twitter, truly!

Bastard pets

So I ask you, what sort of pets decide that, their owner having hit yon sack at 3 am, it is in any way appropriate to wake said owner up at 7:30? All of them, apparently, the little fuckers.

At any rate, let it be known that I fully intend to post about some of the following overdue subjects in order of overdue-ness. Overdueth. Whatever:

1. The reason I was up until 3 am, and the reason that I had been drinking pretty much continuously since 2 pm. Um. There may not actually be a reason here, just a sort of historic note.
2. The blogpeople happening of the previous evening.
3. Some other stuff.

Meanwhile, I find that 4 hours of sleep is NOT sufficient. Whatever Leonardo and Napoleon say.

Work Snort

This is one of the finest prose passages I've ever read in my life:

I looked over when I heard the generous glug-glug-ery, and--look, this isn't nice, but fuck them--I have to say that they were really very ugly people. The fellow looked like something poorly die-stamped at a factory in China, and the woman . . . well, she looked like several miles of wagon trail. Together, they resembled something like a total repudiation of evolutionary tactics, and I imagined that their children would all come out looking like broken chairs or puddles of botched stew. I mean, ugly. There was no getting around it. I speak as someone pretty funny-looking myself.

From here.

!

I'm pretty sure this is going to be the coolest movie ever made. It may actually already be out on DVD. I can't read Japanese, being an incurious American and all. Damn.

UPDATE: I so just bought this on eBay for $16 from some dude in Tennessee... I am currently bouncing up and down in my seat with excitement. Or maybe that's too much coffee. Either way.

This Just In...

Christ, Martin Sheen is a good actor.

Meanwhile, the laptop, from work? Mixed blessing.

Given My Financial Situation...

I should be less excited about the new for 2005 availability of a CVT and steering-wheel mounted Steptronic paddle shifters on the Mini Cooper S.

I'm not, though. Really, really not. Anyone have $27K I can borrow?

UPDATE: No, really, I'm good for it... once, I even paid off a debt. And that was a mere 10 years ago. What's your point?

UPDATE, REDUX: Knockando is SOOOO much easier to drink than Laphroaig. Yes, I know it's Wednesday. What's your point?

Analogy

This morning, as I was waiting for a man to come and take final measurements for my exceptionally expensive replacement windows, I went to This Modern World and read an item about a State Representative in Missouri that compared liberals to the al-Qaeda.

Because I am a well-reasoned sort, I sent her this email:

Representative Davis,

I believe you'll find that comparing liberals to fanatical terrorists that would fly innocent Americans into a building is well outside the bounds of rational debate. I am also concerned that you seem unaware that your party has controlled the government since 2000, so it's unclear how exactly you believe liberals to have misguided the country. I think you'll find that Bush is the one that has mired us in Iraq, and has created a culture of misleading and dirty tricks by his example.

I demand an apology on behalf of all Americans, not just liberals. Someone who feels as you do is not qualified to represent anyone.

Also, if you're looking for a reasonable comparison to fanatical religious terrorists, you might try any number of anti-abortion terrorists who have killed doctors and bombed clinics. Whether or not you agree with the right to abortion, that right is enshrined in law, and it is your duty as a member of the legislature to respect or change that law.

Not my finest work by any means, but I hadn't had any coffee yet. At any rate, after the guy came and went, and after I'd arrived at work, I mentioned that I started the morning writing an email to a Missouri representative because she compared liberals to terrorists. My Republican coworker asked, "well, didn't you compare the Bush administration to Nazis?"

I could not but answer yes; in fact, since I started just before the election, I did this on my first day of work. I responded, "true, but that's completely different" but he was having none of it, and actually got agitated that I was trying to continue the discussion. This tactic of conservatives annoys the living shit out of me: "oh, shit, I might have to defend a complex opinion, I'm going to find an excuse to end the conversation", and I felt myself getting angry, so I left the room to get some PopTarts. When I came back, I said, "One final word on the subject, then I'm done. The Nazis were ELECTED."

Sign o' the Times

When I was younger, up until High School, I had such a massive callus on my right middle finger that I could (and did; I was that sort of a child) stick a thumbtack into it nearly an eighth of an inch before I'd feel it.

Now, I feel it almost immediately (I just checked). This, to me, is the psychological equivalent of looking in the mirror when I'm 60 and looking with dismay at my flaccid man breasts before getting so exhausted that I have to immediately have a nap.

Fucking computers. Ruined my life.

UPDATE: despite the snooty usage note, I DID confuse 'callous' and 'callus'... thank god I caught it before David did.

What we got here, is a failure... to communicate

So this morning on All Things Considered (minor side note; I know they've had the incredibly annoying smoove jazz version of the ATC theme for a long long time, but when, exactly, did they switch it? Didn't they used to have one that was a little more brassy and/or not as sucktacular?) there was an item about the largest agricultural subsidy fraud case in history, which, and this is shocking, has occurred during the Bush administration.

I am certain that it's a total coincidence that in 2002 (and these numbers come from The Washington Times, mind you, not exactly fans of Clinton) Bush raised farm subsidies up to 70 percent above the previous levels. And levels of agricultural subsidy during the Bush administration are enormously higher than the levels of the second Clinton administration, even BEFORE this 2002 law. I am positive that this was not done in a naked grab for red votes. You want to know why farmers voted against their own economic self-interest? Not all of them did. The man they were discussing, who created tens of fake corporations called clever things like "Megabucks Co" and "GetRichQuick, Inc." had fraudulently diverted something over $11M from the program over the last three years. They didn't mention how much he received legitimately, but he has a 40,000 acre farm, so we can assume it was also significant.

The piece went on to talk about the fact that there are some inordinate number of hundreds of billions of dollars of farm subsidies out there, and then they put on some apologist expert (I didn't catch his name, because some jackass was riding his brakes in front of me) who said: "it's like any other system, some people will find a way to beat it. There are people who beat food stamps, and people that beat welfare. This is just like that. These people should not be allowed to ruin the system for everyone else." He did not add, "except that THESE people are white" nor did he add, "except that people that game the food stamp system RARELY CLEAR $11M IN THREE YEARS."

If I didn't already hate people, I would by now. How many Republicans (and, um, me at age 15) have argued for abolishing welfare EXACTLY BECAUSE it's subject to such abuse, without EVER providing actual cases? It's fucking right-wing gospel. This might be a good time to note that total welfare expenditures are smaller than farm subsidies by a factor of at least ten. I'm fairly certain there are more people living below the poverty line than there are farmers. So here's my advice for the Democrats: fuck the country, win the next election by dropping huge amounts of money on a group that traditionally votes against you. Good luck, and may god bless America.

UPDATE: it was Morning Edition, not All Things Considered... I am, like, SOOOO embarrassed! Meanwhile, the smoove jazz theme still sucks.

At last it comes out

The Homosexual Agenda revealed. Frankly, I'm impressed by their efficiency. I couldn't get that much done in 30 minutes if I tried!

Next stop, jetpacks...

While this is not quite as cool as a rocket car, it's pretty cool. I'd be awfully worried about bottoming out and crushing the hull, though... it doesn't look like it's got a lot of ground clearance....

Fooomp!

So I've been hearing about this recent arson in Indian Head, Maryland (a Charles County ex-rural area South of DC), on my very exciting 3-mile commute to work. Somewhere between 14 and 29 McMansions were damaged, and although it seems pretty obviously a work of eco-terrorism (the development is next to a wetland called Araby Bog, and the Sierra Club has said the development will severely degrade the state's largest magnolia bogs, and has given the project its thumbs-down), the police refuse to rule anything out. This is fine, I guess, because it just might turn out that it was an accident that happened when the captain of the water polo team went with his buddies to beat up the new kid who was secretly living in one of the model homes, and accidentally knocked over a candle that lit the drapes, etc. And you definitely don't want to rule that out. I SUPPOSE it might also be a case of exceptionally shoddy wiring, like those Ford Aerostars that had to be recalled because, um, the ignitions would sometimes, you know, burst into flames...

That said, there are two discussion questions for us here:

1) how exactly is it ecologically sound to burn giant boxes of wood, plastic and metal? Corollary: do you actually think they're not just going to hire some pinkertons or something, and rebuild the same giant boxes over the bulldozed ashes?

2) how was NPR able to find someone who was willing to give his name and be heard saying, "I can't believe they say we're against nature. The whole reason I moved out here was because I love nature," WITHOUT IRONY?

The good news is, he can take shelter in his SUV until they rebuild his house. It has a pool!

Color Me Underwhelmed

So I went to this seminar at Hopkins tonight, and despite the promise of "cultural refreshments" and the potential for a very topical discussion, I ended up $4 poorer (free parking? Not so much...) and a coupla premade Shogun maki pieces richer, and not exactly galvanized to storm Gitmo.

The seminar purported to be about the Japanese-American experience with internment in World War II, and the guest list included a couple of people who had been interned at a camp in Arizona and a gentleman who had been in the 442nd Regiment, which was an all Japanese-American unit of the US Army. There was a lot of opportunity here for a number of salient connections to be made between 1930s anti-Japanese sentiment and modern anti-Islamic sentiment, and plenty for linking the complete absence of any pre or post-war espionage convictions to the current complete absence of terrorist convictions from Guantanamo.

The main difference is that there were 120,000 Japanese-Americans, and today one of them is a Senator from Hawaii and one the Transportation Secretary, so there's unlikely to be a truly similar detention in these times, at least in terms of sheer scale. But the basic thrust behind the detentions of WWII and of Camp XRay and of the Third Reich's concentration camps was the same: fear and control of the Other.

There were a couple of excellent points that surfaced from the mostly disorganized presentations tonight; that the Liberal Icon FDR was the man leading the charge for internment, and that there's a hell of a difference between a hastily built camp of tents and crappy food, and a carefully planned factory for executing a segment of the population, but mostly there were missed opportunities. The turn-out was decent for a Thursday night on a campus where the main recreation is drinking (at least it was before the turn of the century, when I was there... consarnit!); there were about 70 people there, and while at least one of them reeked of beer, and the guy in front of me just reeked, there could've been a trifle more energy. Like, say, any.

Still, I'm glad I went. It gave me yet another chance to reflect that, goddammit, the campus looks SO MUCH NICER than when I went there! I shall console myself with the knowledge that a year's tuition with board was more than $20K cheaper then, as well...

At any rate, for those of you who were invited with, like, almost 10 hours of notice, who totally bailed, and you know who you are, um, good work.