Saturday, November 30, 2002

Silly government workers! They don't understand that perks associated with the phony 'war on terror' are only for oil companies/Republican cronies.
Bush slams government salaries in the name of the nebulous, fictional 'War on Terror'
"Such cost increases would threaten our efforts against terrorism or force deep cuts in discretionary spending or federal employment to stay within the budget," Bush wrote. "Neither outcome is acceptable."

Thursday, November 28, 2002

Reflections on Arctic Landscapes
[That's not Santa coming down your chimney] Children's war toys in Bush's New America.
"This is not just another war toy -- it's a total paradigm shift in the war toy industry. It's setting up the young people for this new kind of war, where soldiers come into your house and take it over when they need to."
Depending on which source is selling it, Forward Command Post is recommended for children five years and up, as is the G.I. Joe Long Range Army Sniper.
Happy Thanksgiving!

Wednesday, November 27, 2002

Post-Traumatic Slavery Disorder. Now. In 2002/3. (!)
Now, Mims, Reid, and Higginbottom - none with backgrounds in academia - have taken it upon themselves to try to educate other mental health workers about their theory, and promote a curriculum and therapy based on the idea. They would like to see what they call ''PTSlaveryD'' entered into diagnostic manuals.
I'm of Irish descent and have relatively humble economic origins. I have never, nor is it like that I will, complain of Post-Traumatic Potato Blight Syndrome. If I on the off chance start exhibiting symptoms, how much should I ask for?
72-year old pilot survives three crashes.
[Signs of abject totalitarianism] An ad was banned for poking fun at faux-president Bush

Monday, November 25, 2002

Strange, strange caving journal courtesy of metafilter.
The RIAA orders the U.S. Navy to surrender.
Balmer's behavior echoes Microsoft's makeover
Europe lacks moral fiber, says US Hawk So now it takes moral fiber to adopt an aggressor stance and authorize missle strikes in the name of oil profits...

Sunday, November 24, 2002

New Enemy of the Russian State: Barbie
The doll's outrageous curves are corrupting the minds of children, says President Putin
The government answer to Barbie, Ken, and their assorted paraphernalia, has been Natasha and Dima. Boris Bukharov, Deputy Director of Science at the Moscow Institute of Toys, said: 'They were recently put into production, along with a daughter, a friend and a complete set of furniture.' He admitted: 'Our dolls still suffer from a lack of glamour and diversity.'
It appears that nothing is going to stop unelected buffoon/tyrant/idiot daddy's boy George Bush's sociopathic murder-lust. The mumble-mouthed imbecile is just dying to bomb poor people and throw the western world into a senseless oil war, regardless of how little sense it makes. (NYTimes link) If he bombs a city full of destitute civilians that has nothing to do with their government or military regime, wouldn't that make his terrorist quotient trump Bin Laden's? Of course, Bush has more to gain from a hostile attack than Bin Laden. That's all its really about anyway, right?

Friday, November 22, 2002

If I ever get hurt, take me to a good hospital. If I ever get really, really hurt, take me to this hospital. Courtesy of Sharpeworld.
Corrupt, filthy, vile, evil moron George Bush loosens .. fucking LOOSENS ... clean air restrictions.
"The Bush administration is again putting the financial interests of the oil, gas and coal companies above the public's right to breathe clean air,"
Good Tom Tomorrow on 'Why we're going to war'
Scientist burns penis with laptop.
Was it overclocked?
Know your enemy: Convicted felon, scumbag Republican liar, and all-around evil beurocratic fascist John Poindexter wants to spy and collect data on you. It seems this jackass is good for more than just subverting the democratic process with wacky hijinx like Iran-Contra. He's got all kinds of fun planned for you!
But lets just hang on a minute and hear out their side of the controversy:
"What John Poindexter is doing is developing a tool, he is not exercising the tool, he will not exercise the tool. That tool will be exercised by the intelligence, counterintelligence, and law enforcement agencies," Aldridge said.

Ohhhh... my mistake. I think we can all relax now! Whew!
Cave Man's best friend
Woman put in a body bag in a refrigerated box had a pulse.
Trifling Pentagon Agency considered changing the architecture of the Internet, but dropped the plan. (NYTimes)
"The plan, known as eDNA, called for developing a new version of the Internet that would include enclaves where it would be impossible to be anonymous while using the network. The technology would have divided the Internet into secure "public network highways," where a computer user would have needed to be identified, and "private network alleyways," which would not have required identification."

Tuesday, November 19, 2002

What a strange day... I can believe the corrupt, power-grabbing Republicans are passing a bill that will undoubtedly allow the government to snoop on even more pervasively than they already do, but I can't believe that Michael Jackson waved a hooded baby over a 4th floor balcony.

Monday, November 18, 2002

Free online books: Index at UPenn. Bibliomania, Electric Book Company, Bartleby, and the very cool Blackmask (with special sections on Pulp, Westerns, and Dime Novels!).
Stardust - Bringing Cosmic History to Earth
136000 Names were collected and sent into space. Yours might be one of them.
Metafilter's got 'Garbage Pail Kids'.
Here's Wacky Packs Stickers- from whence they came: Series 1, Series 2, Series 3, Series 4, Series 5, Series 6, Series 7.
I know I've linked this in the past, but I always get a kick out of revisiting Peter Gilstrap's "It Crawled From the Bins". I'm also really scared that somebody is going to take this gem of a site offline, and all of this genius will be lost to the sands of time. If you love crawling through dusty bins of thousands of records in the hopes of finding elusive treasures like 'Famous Monsters Speak' (got it), or 'The Payne Family - featuring David' (want it), or "Mr. Tremendous Speaks. Everyone Listens" (would consider trading limb), then you need to get to this site, and fast. Come on Peter... Its been years... There are plenty more albums out there. Come on back, will ya?
I like crawling through record bins too. The one thing I've learned is that you should get used to seeing thousands upon thousands of copies of 'Whipped Cream and Other Delights' - easily the most second-handed, flea-marketed, garage-saled album in the history of recorded music. Somebody tell me why there are 10 times as many copies of this record out there than the combined recorded output of every british invasion, soul/motown, funk, disco, and rock act ever. It defies reason. Why was this album once so loved, and now so carelessly tossed aside? There's a sociology paper in there somewhere.

This weekend I got a Flash/Aquaman split 7" story record and two Firehouse Five Plus Two 78s (of of them Good Time Jazz #2) - all for under five bucks.

Sunday, November 17, 2002

The complete contents of issues 1-9 of Aspen Magazine. Each issue was originally published in a box and was issued from 1965-1971. There's a phenomenal amount of great material here. link found on Sharpeworld
Circlemakers. for DIY Crop Circle enthusiasts
The Fluxus site which linked this is no longer maintained, but some pictures of Video Sculptures by Nam June Paik remains
[Photography] Scott Mutter: A more perfect world
Thrift Store Art. Excellent collection of surreal, outsider, and hobby art, and the price was right.
Crucifix-in-a-bottle
Marin women strip for peace.
West Marin women are serious enough about PEACE to spell it out. Wearing nothing but afternoon rain, 50 determined women lay down on Love Field near the Green Bridge Tuesday afternoon to literally embody PEACE and "show solidarity with the people of Iraq," said the organizers. "Women from all ages and walks of life took off their clothes, not because they are exhibitionists but because they felt it was imperative to do so,"

Saturday, November 16, 2002

LivingInABox - Pinhole Photography
The Original Homies - Streetgang action figures.

Friday, November 15, 2002

R. Stevie Moore makes music. More of it than you can imagine. He's recorded hundreds of albums- most on cassettes, and his music sounds like... well... like a guy who's got hundreds of albums worth of stuff that's somehow really important for him to sing about. Check out his website, and you'll see what I mean.
Day of the Dead skeleton Dioramas
Star Wars Dioramas (French, but you don't need to speak it to enjoy the pictures).
Sony's Gadget Gamble
Japan is the market maker in CE. The rest of the world waits around until they spill us the great stuff.

Thursday, November 14, 2002

I saw AeroGel (aka solid smoke) at a museum design show a year or so back, and recently its been popping up quite a bit. NASA's got it.
These guys sell it, but it isnt cheap. Especially if, like me, you need a chunk this size.
You're a suspect.
Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend — all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."

Wednesday, November 13, 2002

Milk Bottle of the Week, from Bifurcated Rivets
Here's where you will find some of the world's most bizarre, beautiful and sexy milk bottles.
I assure you, friends, that this is no idle boast.
"Go Home USA!"... Ok, again people... This time with more 'oomph'! You're supposed to be zealots. Gimme some zeal. Sergio! Where the fuck is catering?!!
Squirrels playing poker.
Remember web-panhandler "Karyn" who was e-begging her way out of 20K worth of shopping debt? It worked.
The 24 hour distributed supercomputing project
By linking together 1,360 computers, a team of Canadian scientists created a supercomputer that ran for a single day. The 24-hour distributed computing project, which last week formed the world's fifth largest supercomputer while it lasted, tackled a computational chemistry problem that otherwise would have taken more than three years to complete.
Baseball cards vs. Market economic theory. Market theory loses.
Who wants to be an astronaut?
The unfulfilled promise of the dome-home.
Mitch Kapor, author of upcoming groupware app codenamed 'Chandler' is taking on Microsoft.

Tuesday, November 12, 2002

What Shakespeare might look like as a criminal suspect today.
The ultimate XTC Discography
Three Philly boys make good. Three buddies found a way to rig offtrack computer betting, and won 3 Million. They're in big trouble.
After the races were run, Davis' computer account showed he had picked the winner in each of the first four races. He also picked every horse in the last two races. He had the only winning Pick Six tickets for a total payout of $3,067,821.60. The cost of his bets was $1,152.
The U.S. Government wants to check computers globally.
The Information Awareness Office, run by former national security adviser John M. Poindexter, aims to develop new technologies to sift through "ultra-large" data warehouses and networked computers in search of threatening patterns among everyday transactions, such as credit card purchases and travel reservations, according to interviews and documents.

Monday, November 11, 2002

Ecstasky Airlines - Their business model is apparently to take tiny Cesnas, and maintain a 1-to-1 bimbo-to-passenger ratio for each flight. They're not booking a lot of passengers, but they're hauling plenty of ass. You've gotta see the trailer (RealPlayer).
Whether bringing you champagne, caviar, or other fine delicacies, providing a soothing neck and shoulder massage, or treating you to a sexy exotic show, our Ecstasky Entertainers will give you a unique flight experience to remember.

Saturday, November 09, 2002

Ricardo Montalban
Ricardo Montalban
Ricardo Montalban
Ricardo Montalban
(I also stumbled across this strangely funny post at the U.S. Customs siezure site that references Mr. M...
Rich Corinthian Leather -- Someone wanting to take a drive down memory lane with Ricardo Montalban might be interested in buying a 1980 Chrysler Cordova. This vehicle was seized by Customs inspectors at the San Luis port of entry on March 18, 1999 after they found 62 pounds of marijuana hidden in false compartment beneath the rear seat.
[Bad Idea Marketing 101, pt IV] Betty Ford Liquor courtesy of Brainsluice.
Great page on the Rorschach method , concentrating on the classical European tradition of the test. You can even buy prints from the publisher to test the kids and neighbors.
If nothing else, you'll learn that Hermann Rorschach, the guy behind all of this had utterly fantastic hair. I'm not just talking about one picture either. He's rocksteady in every single picture you'll see. Somebody go to their barber with these and say 'Make me look like Hermann Rorschach." It'll be a laugh. Or not.
To hear Marvel's Stan Lee say it, he's been an unappreciated salaryman all his life, and he gets no (financial) respect for dropping the phenomenon that is Spiderman upon the unsuspecting masses. Its ironic that like Peter Parker, he does great work for a publication that barely pays him. I wonder if his boss smokes a cigar and constantly screams at him to get out of his office? Well now he's pissed and he wants his cheese. Marvel, you greedy bastards, give the old guy his due before he makes up another superhero that fights corporate irresponsibility in the name of employee rights.
Man drinks blood of 207 goats- Wants More. Nuff said.
Interpol says Bin Laden is alive, and planning strikes.
The Pentagon is planning a system that would spy on personal data of Americans. (NYTimes/login req'd)
As the director of the effort, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, has described the system in Pentagon documents and in speeches, it will provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials with instant access to information from Internet mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel documents, without a search warrant.
Samsonite makes a suitcase that uses bluetooth technology.

Friday, November 08, 2002

Interview with cartoonist Joe Matt
Drunky (flash)
Large, but the "loading" intro animation alone is worth it.
Magnifying Glass photos from BugPowder
DNA as Destiny- A Wired writer gets his genetic code read.
The last results from my DNA workup have also come in. Andi Braun has tested me for 77 SNPs linked to lifespan in order to assess when and how I might get sick and die. He has given me a score of .49 on his scale. It indicates a lifespan at least 20 percent longer than that of the average American male who, statistically speaking, dies in his 74th year. I will likely live, then, to the age of 88. That's 44 years of StairMaster to go.
I'm pretty discouraged by U.S. politics these days, but I can't resist this one about our lying-ass faux-president, and the so-called liberal media's complicity.
... readers were treated to such complicated linguistic circumlocutions as: Bush's statements represented "embroidering key assertions" and were clearly "dubious, if not wrong." The President's "rhetoric has taken some flights of fancy," he has "taken some liberties," "omitted qualifiers" and "simply outpace[d] the facts." But "Bush lied"? Never.

Thursday, November 07, 2002

Interview with Sam Jones, on his Wilco documentary 'I Am Trying to Break Your Heart'.
Everybody Must Get Armed The NRA reminds you, please exercise your God-given right to wallow in fear and kill stuff. Thank you
A couple travelling to NYC from New Mexico have been hospitalized for what is believed to be the Bubonic Plague.

Wednesday, November 06, 2002

Hoo-Ahh. Rosie gets slagged by former staffers for being a nasty imbecile!
In October 2001, O'Donnell featured the 96-year-old grandmother of her partner, Kelli Carpenter, and a story about the wedding of Carpenter's stepsister, Vanity Fair said. "It's like a five-year-old who puts out a newspaper," a Rosie editor told the magazine. O'Donnell also reportedly insisted on showing celebrities their interviews before they went to print -- a journalistic no-no.
Excellent conspiro-paranoia jive at 8March2003.com. I marked my calendar. Courtesy of Bifurcated Rivets.
Global implications, shattered cameras, computers that take over and run themselves. This site has it all. I'm hoping this isn't another 'guerrilla' product launch for teeth-whitener.
The pictorial guide to date nails.
They were used for showing ownership, treatment purposes, Identification, sequencing poles and bridge timbers. Dating ties and poles for replacement purposes. Some nails show the height of a pole, or the wood it is made from.
The strange surfaces exhibition - molded mathematical models inspire art.
The Army shot down a missle with a giant laser.
The people have spoken... the bastards...

Looks like its time to get our war on, hand lunatic John Ashcroft more power, ignore emergency healthcare issues, give more power to corporations and special interests, and a thousand other disappointing and harmful things that I don't want to think about. Shit.

Tuesday, November 05, 2002

New report that the FBI has bugged and is monitoring computer usage at public libraries.
The FBI system apparently involves the installation of special software on the computers that lets the FBI copy a person's use of the Internet and their e-mail messages. (Don't ask me how I know about this because I can't reveal how I was able to collect the information.) Members of the public who use the library have not been informed that the government is watching their activities. It's not just the computers. Circulation lists that show which books someone borrowed are also accessible to the government.
Jonathan Harris (Dr. Smith from Lost in Space) dies at 87.
Math discovery rattles Net security
Will Manindra Agrawal bring about the end of the Internet as we know it? The question is not as ridiculous as it was just two months ago. Prof. Agrawal is a 36-year old theoretical computer scientist at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, India. In August, he solved a problem that had eluded millennia of mathematicians: developing a method to determine with complete certainty if a number is prime.

Monday, November 04, 2002

Faux president Bush lies about Iraq.
Yes, it was a Bushmaster (from michaelmoore.com, Oct 25)
Yesterday, Larry Bennett, a 16-year old, was shot in the head after he was involved in a minor traffic accident. You probably didn't hear about it because, well, how could he be dead if he wasn't shot by The Sniper? Yesterday, an unidentified woman was shot to death in her car in Fenton, MI. You probably didn't hear about it because she had the misfortune of not being shot by The Sniper. Two nights ago, Charles D. Bennett, 48, an apartment security guard, was shot to death after confronting two teenagers in his parking lot in Memphis, TN. You probably didn't hear about it because the sniper was too busy sleeping in his car that night, and thus, poor Charles was not shot by The Sniper. Yes, The Sniper has apparently been caught, so we can go back now to NOT reporting the DOZENS of gun deaths that occur every day, the ones that just aren't newsworthy because they happen in all those old boring ways -- unlike the ways of The Sniper, who was interesting and creative and exciting and scary! He played so much better on the news.
From metafilter, Matchbook Dioramas
Russia can't get enough Cosmonauts (even ones that they're willing to pay $300/month)
Rosie O'Donnell says that she would have defended Martha Stewart if she still had her talk show.
<sacrasm>

yeahhh... Greeeeaaat, Rosie. It's always refreshing when chummy multi-millionaire media magnates come to eachother's rescue when impropriety is suspected. That would have made us all us poor slobs out here in TV-Land feel so much better about not being entitled insiders who get illegal and unfair market advantages handed to us without question. Always the populist, aren't you, Rosie?
</sarcasm>

Saturday, November 02, 2002

Joan Miro: An African Experience
Four Nigerian Scam letters today alone. They'll each have to split my vast fortune equally.
Everyday is Halloween: 19 Scary-Ass Records
It's Halloween, and you know what that means: parents carefully inspecting Oh Henry! bars for razorblades, the best television of the year, and horrible sounds emanating from the neighbors' houses. But is that really enough? Doesn't it suck that kids could be going around with bloody hatchets and fake stab wounds instead of parading as Elmo and firemen? Where's the terror? Where the fuck is the goddamn fear??
Your plants are dying.
Nearly half of the world's plants could be close to extinction, scientists have warned. The calculation triples previous estimates.
Dear Abby, I killed my husband.
The syndicated advice columnist published a letter this week from a woman claiming she had purchased a gun to scare her abusive live-in boyfriend, "but he was accidentally shot fatally." The writer says she concealed the body because she was in a "state of panic
BMW Cheat code - Easter Egg in a car!

Friday, November 01, 2002

[The][Mighty][Black][Flag]