The Greatest Living American is.....

Stephen Colbert, duh.

Dinesh D'Souza

Well all my godless friends around the blogsphere have taken their shots at this fella, so I'll get a few kicks in while hes down. Actually thats not entirely true. I'm just curious why we all cared? I mean yeah this piece about how there were no atheists to be found at the VA tech massacre was quite horrible. Which he followed up with this because he must think that his toes are quite tasty. Then he even responded directly to the attackers of his first batch of crap.

The question isn't why people are pissed, the question isn't about this guys views. The question is why are we (now including myself) giving him the satisfaction of taking him on. There is no point arguing with someone like this, they will never concede how wrong they are, so why bother. It's like ranting about how bad a person Ann Coulter is, theres no point you gain nothing. Unless something big happens I would be surprised if I ever mention Dinesh again.

I Write Like a Girl

At least according to this. The Gender Genie. Just for curiosity I tried twice it needs to bee 500 words or more to work well so I tried the longest post that was only my own words, the first was about my weekend in Boston. That came up as assuming I was female. Ok that was an emotional piece about having a great weekend with a great woman, so my manhood wasn't too hurt when it go that wrong. The only other long post I had was about Bin Laden threatening to kill the Dalia Lama, when that one turned up female as well I was a little supprised then I took a closer look at how it comes up with its answer. I'm not sure how using the words your, and not often makes you a woman but apparently it does. Who knew? Its friday and is gorgeous outside, so I'm in too good of a mood to care what this things thinks. Oh and at least at school most of the best writers were girls so I'm not insulted anyway.

Second Amendment

I've heard several things on this same vein but this just cut through and hit the nail on the head with the title alone. The rest is quite good as well.
Heres the Newsvine seed, or here is the original article. Oh its from The Young Turks, I don't really know them but I've heard some good things.

I'll Give You the Second Amendment If You Give Me the Rest Back

I'll make you a deal. You give me the rest of the amendments back that Bush has gutted and I'll gladly give you the second amendment. What happened to the right to an attorney? What happened to not being forced to incriminate yourself? What happened to not being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment? What happened to warrants?! What happened to habeas corpus?!!!

You give me all of those back and then some, and you can have your lousy second amendment. America is a little sick in the head with guns. The NRA believes we should have unfettered access to all firearms and doesn't believe there is any downside. That is so wildly disingenuous.
[...]

We have to find reasonable middle ground. But in order to do that, you have to reasonable people on the other side. Unfortunately, I think we're all out of those at this point.

I don't get terribly upset by the fact that I am surrounded by psycho's, I came to terms with that years ago. When you try to hand someone a flier for a politician and they simply look at you and say, "how's he feel about guns" it makes me sad. I can understand why a person would not want to vote for a politician who wanted to make their favorite pass time illegal. I get busted on by my car buddies when I mention voting for Nader. Sure he killed the muscle car, but I like his politics. He might go after the racing that I love as a means to reduce environmental damage, and yeah race cars with mufflers are lame. But its still racing, if we have a mode of transport, any mode of transport we will race it. Perfect example, segway races, uber-lame but its still a race. So on to hunting, no one cares what you do in the woods. No one plans to take away your right to go kill bambie, its just not important to the world. But taking automatic weapons off the streets and requiring background checks for pistols has absolutely nothing to do with hunting. Ok theres some hunting that uses pistols, snakes I think, but hunting usually has a season, you need to get your permit more than 5 days ahead, why is it so tough to need to buy your gun five days ahead too?

Partial Birth Abortions

Ok this is another issue I catch a minor amount of heat from my liberal friends for. Basically as a guy I have a very hard time taking any stance at all. This is one of the only places where I can fully understand the oppositions stance, even if they do shoot themselves in the foot by being anti-abortion and pro-war. I feel this is decision to be made by the individuals involved and not by the government, in other words I'm pro-choice. But, and this is where I occasionally catch flak, I don't see why limits are wrong. As for the ban on partial birth abortions well, to say that you only have 6 and not 9 months to make the hardest decision anyone can be faced with seems reasonable. I understand being against this ruling for the slippery slope rational. As long as this doesn't lead to an outright ban on abortions then I personally am Ok with it. It's not the decision I would have hoped for but it doesn't bother me, thats all. As I said at the start this is an issue I'm not completely set on, a good argument either way could definitely change my stance, if you want to try go ahead and leave me a comment.

Ok now that I know that this is the first time any limit on abortions had been passed I can understand why people are worried, I guess I did know that, I just didn't think about it before.

Here is more about it, to be honest I didn't read a single word of this but I wanted a link and its the first that came up that wasn't Faux News or some other uber-conservative groups news.

UPDATE: OK maybe I was wrong. It appears that some states are already planning on putting more limits on abortions because they feel now they will be upheld. I was wrong I'm sorry, I failed to remember how adamantly people oppose abortion.

New Blog for da Roll

I just saw this little link over at Russell's Teapot, a site that has some simply fantastic anti-religion cartoons, mostly jabbing at the christians because well, in the US thats the ones we run into all the time, and the one people most likely know best. Anyway the link was over to a new atheist website. Atheist's Wager, a modern take on Pascals Wager.

But My favorite part was in the comment, which BTW this bastard has 240 comments on his first post ever! Damn. but heres the line from the comments, actually the very first comment,

"I wouldn't worship God to stay out of hell even if I thought God and hell were both real. That would be the same as following Hitler to stay out of Auschwitz."

Thank you Donna.

Not Again

I don't have much to say about tragedies while they unfold. I'm speaking of course about the deadly shooting at Virgina Tech. This is already the deadliest shooting at an American School, not that it matters, it is a tragedy if a single person is senselessly slaughtered.

Here's what the BBC has to say about it, or you can find a million other articles very quickly if you go looking so I'm not going to waste my time with a bunch of links.

There are those upset about the fact that this person was able to obtain an AK-47 and will use this to springboard a new push for gun control, and we probably need it, but not yet. We don't even know the death toll yet and people are politicizing it. And this is a blog that I like, but it needs to be said. Is it so hard to have a little patience? At least wait till after the funerals before using it as an example of the problems with the world, is that too much to ask?

Apparently it is.

UPDATE: 32 dead... WTF people? No more school shootings, please?

I wish I lived in a theocracy

I know I know I should never never never link to fox "news" but in this case I don't think its that critical, its a short little blurb anyway. So here ya go. Fox "news" on Islamic Serial Killers. These folks killed 18 people and were tried for five of the murders. Now they have confessed to the crimes, thats not the issue, the issue is that according to their religion they should give the people two warnings to stop, which they claim they did, then if they don't stop you kill them. Sometimes by stoning, sometimes by suffocation, or in at least one case, you can bury them alive. So after being convicted it was overturned by the supreme court because the killers were correct, the Koran does say to kill people who behaved in the way the victims behaved.

Now people who regularly read/ look at Fox "news" may see this as an example of why we must be vigilant to take down this Islamic menace. They might even say it shows why we must become the Christian nation that we were founded as. Now I'm not going to get into the fact that this is in no way a christian nation. But what I see when I read this is what America could be like if it were in fact a christian nation.

Some may say at this point, but the Koran is angry and violent, The Bible is good, the golden rule and what not, hehe, yeah right. Could a christian nation allow murder if it was sanctioned by the bible? I don't know, but the bible sure as hell sanctions violence.

I've always been fond of this one: Deuteronomy, Chapter 13 verses 13 through 16

13 Certain men, the children of Belial, are gone out from among you, and have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which ye have not known;

14 Then shalt thou enquire, and make search, and ask diligently; and, behold, if it be truth, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought among you;

15 Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword.

16 And thou shalt gather all the spoil of it into the midst of the street thereof, and shalt burn with fire the city, and all the spoil thereof every whit, for the LORD thy God: and it shall be an heap for ever; it shall not be built again

So if America was a Christian nation, and you decided to incinerate New York City because you found out that there were people worshiping other gods, could you be punished? You conformed to the commands of god as the bible explicitly describes it, is that wrong? YES! In the world of morals it is obviously wrong to destroy a city because some people were of another religion, but if your principles aren't based on morals but are instead based on the bible then how can murder be wrong let alone outlawed? This is why I don't want to live in a theocracy. If you do then be my guest, move to Iran.

Heres a couple hundred examples. 858 examples to be exact, just under cruelty and violence.

Whenever we read ... the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind. And, for my own part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel. -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

No Spelunking For You

Spelunking means going into caves, it also is a word that makes the young at heart giggle, and once you know the real meaning it makes the term Ass-Spelunker all the funnier. Oh that goes back to probably jr high when we used the term Ass-Spelunker thinking it was funny but not knowing what spelunking was other than a funny word.

So yes I'm using this term for its giggle inducing connotations. So hows the whole no-sex sex education working? Well according to anyone who's ever been a teen it won't work, and now even the White House has had to admit it. So how does our government deal with finding out conclusively that a program they have put so much faith in (so much so that they reduced aid to Africa if they didn't teach abstinence only) doesn't work? Friday night news dump of course. This is my favorite line,

"We have been promoting ignorance in the era of AIDS, and that's not just bad public health policy, its bad ethics"

Now I work with teen mothers (ok I only work in the office), I have several friends who had children while they were hardly more than children themselves. I also know very religious people who refuse to use birth control because thats against gods plan, and they don't like condoms, claims to be allergic but they make non-latex for that reason. Shockingly they have had a few scares (Late/STDs), although it is genuinely shocking that they have only been scares and not worse. Teach people the truth is that too much to ask? They are going to do what they are going to do, they can either know all the dangers and the ways to reduce those risks or they can go blindly into the night. Either way young people are going to have sex, there is no way to prevent that, its genetics, animals want to fuck. Its just that simple, teaching people to be responsible is the hard part, telling people "just say no" is a lame excuse to try to avoid a topic that is so natural, yet so taboo in our society. It doesn't have to be awkward, in the words of the movie "Van Wilder" don't be a fool, wrap your tool. Its sad that their is better sex-ed in a national lampoon movie than there is in our classrooms. But thats useful actually, if safe-sex can become the norm within popular culture it can be a very powerful tool for changing the national mindset of young people. Oh and obviously any sex-ed includes the fact that abstinence is the only fool proof method of not ending up with a child and not having it hurt to pee.

Ok and here is the promoters defending their program against this report.

"The field of abstinence has significantly grown and evolved since that time, and the results demonstrated in the Mathematica study are not representative of the abstinence education community as a whole."

Um... Quick question how can "the field of abstinence grow and evolve?" How many ways are there to say no humpy humpy? Oh they also point out that it was only a sample of 1% of the programs, yup thats how studies work, you can't study everyone, you study a few thousand and make inferences based on that. One of the programs had children meeting every single school day. That could reduce teen sex by simply not giving them time to fornicate. Or they'll be thinking about sex every single day.. oh wait.. teens, they're already thinking about sex many many times a day.

They teach abstinence until marriage, its not a bad idea to have family planing in your mind even when your married. You might be in a good relationship, but that doesn't mean your ready for a family yet. There is no evidence that these abstinence only programs work better, but this also didn't show they work worse, which is an important point that in the interest of fairness must be pointed out. I think there is enough info in the world that kids don't really gain much from sex-ed. They learn details about STDs and anatomy, but those who were planning on have sex are still going to, those who want to wait till marriage still will, my only concern is making sure that they know about safe-sex, and how putting a condom on wrong makes them ineffective. Nothing worse than trying to be smart and still having the unwanted outcome.

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars for being awesome, and for the links to the CNN article. Heres one from The Guardian.

Crazy Ass Weather

Maybe that should be our term instead of Climate Change and its way better than Global Warming, which is way more than just warming, its Crazy Ass Weather. Its snowing out right this moment. And fairly hard. I'm in a valley that for some reason usually gets much less snow than surrounding areas, we also miss out on the lake effect snow, which is nice. The biggest snow storm I can remember happened in March in the 90's when we got four feet one evening. But its April now, and its not even the begining of april its the 16th. We're currently looking at a few (3-4) inches on the ground and they are expecting another 3-5 tonight. Now I just talked about how the fact that it is snowing in april is a sign that Climate Change is real, and not a sign that global warming is a fraud which simple minded folks might think based on the name. So I'm not going to say too much more about it. If you want you can scroll down a little and find the one called Snow.

Migratory animals must be so confused right now, they didn't know when to leave in the fall because it never decided to become winter until January, now its still winter in April. Why do I have a bad feeling that this is going to be a very hot summer. I hate the heat, it takes the fun out of going outside if you sweat standing still. Of course losing about 60+ lbs would help in that regard.

Best Take on Imus

Ok I'm a fan of The Rude Pundit, but seriously this might just have to be the best response to the whole Imus debacle. His point is clear be angry at him, stop listening to his show, stop buying products that are advertised on his show, but don't fire him for doing exactly what he was put on the air to do.

Heres a taste. Go Here for the whole thing, but be warned, Strong Language.

Because, ultimately, what happened to Imus happened because of his speech, and if you wanna, say, giggle when the Rude Pundit attacks someone, then Don Imus gets to say his non-FCC violating insults. Yes, the Rude Pundit's aware that there's a qualitative, historical, and ethical difference between calling white conservative evangelicals nasty names and calling a women's college basketball team "whores," but it's still speech. Hate speech is speech; yes, sadly, angrily, we must call it "speech."

The Rude Pundit's concern can be divided into two incompatible areas with cliched names: the slippery slope and the sacrificial lamb.

The slippery slope is that we start getting 'em all fired, de-advertised, whatever. And this is where the Rude Pundit's grappling with this fucker like he's trying to put snakes in a bottle (yeah, yeah - it's early, the Rude Pundit hasn't slept yet, fuck off). No, of course MSNBC and CBS don't have to give Imus a platform for his speech. But this point is that they did. And they knew, they fucking well knew, what Imus was about. Just because this time his bullshit, sad, I'm-down-with-poor-man-lingo fucktardery got noticed by Media Matters and others, that doesn't mean that they didn't use Imus and profit off him and, to be sure, egg him on for ratings.

This might be my favorite part here. OH and again STRONG LANGUAGE, including a word that otherwise would never get on this site, you can probably guess which one.

The real solution is to use speech to combat speech, not silence. Rather than getting Imus fired, why not get people to stop listening? And if they don't, if they wanna listen, well, fuck, you lost then. But you need to keep trying to get people to shift away from one way of thinking. Just because you got rid of Imus doesn't mean the sentiments go away. Just because you come up with some pussy voluntary ban on the word "nigger," or you say "the n-word" instead, doesn't mean the word or the feeling goes away. Civil discourse? Fuck that. It's not possible. You don't change hearts and minds by silencing people. (The Rude Pundit has called for Ann Coulter to be kicked out of newspapers, but not for her pathetic little wet spaghetti slap insults - it's because she says things are facts that are, in fact, lies.)

I just hate censorship. Was he wrong to say what he did? Absolutely, but this is America, he can say it if he wants. But we don't have to listen.

Killing the Dalai Lama

What is wrong with people?
I wrote a bit then realized I never summed up what the hell I'm talking about. Go here, Al-Qaeda threatened to kill the Dalai Lama.

I bust on religion pretty hard around here but how could anyone be so upset by the Dalai Lama that they would kill themselves to try to kill him? First off its a bad plan from the fact that he is believed to be the reincarnation of the original Lama, meaning if you kill him he's only going to be replaced by someone else. Then there is the fact that at least by my limited knowledge Buddhism is one of the better religions, I mean its all about finding "god" in yourself. I know there are some issues with Karma, namely that if a baby is born with problems it is assumed they were a bad person in their last life and therefore should not be pitied. But all and all their pretty good folks. And of them religious leaders the Dalai Lama is about the only one I would actually care to meet. He is not afraid of science, he realizes that the world has changed in the thousands of years since his holy texts were written, new information is available. He says that it is wrong to hold on to out dated dogmas in the face of new evidence. Of course the fact that they don't believe in an omnipotent god makes this view far easier to accept than it would be in other religions. Which leads me to this lovely quote.

in a recent document, Osama bin Laden denounced "pagan Buddhism" as part of his general attack on anything not Islamic.

(most) Buddhists don't believe in a single "god" how the fuck can they be Pagan you twit!?! Now I'm obviously no fan of Bin Laden, but before I always at least considered him mildly intelligent. He's a pretty impressive guerilla fighter, I mean he's now had Russia trying to kill him when they were a superpower, then he pissed of the US and yet the bastards still alive, he can't be stupid. If you want to hate them for not being Muslim thats one thing but at least have a better excuse than calling them pagans. If he was talking about Hindu it would be more understandable, but I'm not going to let myself get side tracked onto explaining why Hinduism is NOT polytheistic. Seriously folks Buddhists aren't threatening, at least in recent times you don't here much about fundamentalist Buddhists, it just doesn't work. They don't kill others for having the "wrong" beliefs. So back off. Of course if your dealing with a suicide bomber appealing to reason might not be the best route and so they are going with more security, makes sense. I haven't read enough by the Lama to know but I have been told that he's not accepting of gays, but all things considered thats not surprising. Given his track record of open-mindedness (at least by religious leader standards) he, or one of his successors, will probably change this someday.

Silly terrorists.

Vonnegut, again

I think I've said all I can about him, although I did just read a great little post about someone who was at a church book burning and he saw someone throw a Vonnegut book on the fire and so after a moments thought he reached in a pulled the book out. Now thats a compliment.

Anyway why I did this second post was simply to say that there are few times I have ever wandered my usual favorite blogs and everyone of them had something to say about the same issue. Everyone it seems has some connection to his works. Some even had personally met with him. I never realized how many people were fans.

Thanks again Kurt, we're all going to miss you
*

A.M. UPDATE: Last night I sat down and started reading Slaughterhouse Five again. It had been a while since I last read it. Next thing I knew I was 2/3rds of the way through the book so I figured I might as well finish it off. That might be the fastest I've ever read a real book.

ANOTHER UPDATE: When asked what he would like people to say at his funeral Vonnegut suggested his favorite joke,
"Kurt is in heaven now"

Snow

Its April 12th and it was snowing this morning. I was going to write about that initially but was distracted by the passing of my name sake.

Now those who don't believe in evidence will use this as evidence that global warming is a scam. Now normally the line "those who don't believe in evidence will use this as evidence" would be illogical, and hypocritical, but when your already talking about people who don't believe in evidence then normal arguments can be thrown right out the window, they'll probably land on top of logic which was tossed long ago even before when they had spring cleaning on sanity, reason, and questioning. But the fact still remains that I had crystallized frozen water landing on my head this morning. How can that be proof of global warming? Easy, first off their is a reason we have abandoned the term global warming in favor of Climate Change, its not just semantics its just a more accurate term. It basically means that we are screwing with the environment in unprecedented ways and we honestly have only guesses as to what will actually occur. What is know is that things will change. Change isn't always a good thing. If the breadbasket of america was suddenly to turn into a desert it would be bad. I don't claim to know what will happen, no one knows for certain (other than the baby jesus) what will happen, but the chances of it being a good thing are slim to none and the chance that we will no longer be able to support all the people on earth is a very real one. Then again we aren't doing that great a job supporting everyone on earth now, and right now we have that ability. Imagine how many people will starve if we honestly can't make enough food, and some of us are still gluttons.

Anyway, climate change is happening, if you don't believe it try going outside, then think is this normal?

A moment of silence

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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. has passed away.

"I will say anything to be funny, often in the most horrible situations,"
I know the feeling, but not right now.
I don't know what to say about one of if not my favorite author passing on. Here is what some others have said.
C&L, EB, Salon*, BC, NPR he loved NPR....

Here is his official website.
This might be my favorite interview on The Daily Show, Obviously it's with Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Thank you to Crooks and Liars for the vid. (if that link doesn't work go here, scroll down)
And Big Hat Tip to my friend Justin at Blog 4 Brains for being the first spot I saw announcing this, and it was dedicated to me. So that was cool too. Thank you Justin.

But most of all thank you Kurt, without your works I may never have realized what joy can be found in words.

Goodbye Blue Mondays *

UPDATE: After reading a few other fans posts about this man I feel I have not done justice. I don't think I have the literary skills to do justice, but I could have done better. One little problem I have always had was that as soon as I read my first Vonnegut book I found almost every other book he had and read them as rapidly as possible. I was terrible at english but I had to choose a modern american author for class, we were given a list and the only ones I had heard of were immediately chosen. It was a friday afternoon so I decided I needed to pick one that I would remember on monday. I ran through the list and saw one with a Jr. at the end. The teacher looked at me and said I think you'll like him. On monday I had completely forgotten who I had chosen and franticly ran through the list again until I spotted that trusty jr. I went to the library and picked one out, for the life of me I can't remember which. The assignment was to read 3 books by the author, if memory serves me I read 7. As someone who didn't read I suddenly had out read every student in the class, even the future valedictorian looked at me and wondered why I was putting so much effort into this. I just didn't see it as work for the first time in my school life.

The problem as I was alluding to is that if you read seven books very quickly by the same author, who recycles name and places and who books are anything but linear it gets very hard to remember which book is which. Thats why last night I had just grabbed a bunch of novels off my shelf including two Vonneguts and an Adams. I started reading Adams because I thought it was the one I bought and never read, it wasn't, but I was too lazy to switch. But there is something strange about the fact that I had intended on reading one of his books last night then find out this morning that he has died, or as Deborah put it (and I wish I had thought of it),
Kurt Vonnegut has come unstuck from time.

I will have to make sure I read his book again, space them out a little so I can keep them straight this time.

So It Goes...

Soundtrack of your life

If your life was a film, what would the soundtrack be?

So, here's how it works:

1. Open your library. (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle.
3. Press play.
4. For every question, type the song that's playing.
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button.
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool.
7. When you're finished, tag some other people to do it!

I included my favorite lines to songs that I have favorite parts of, plus links to pages with the lyrics if you want to read what these guys are saying. And yeah for some reason I have almost no music by women. I guess I like fairly aggressive music, and there are few female voices that work well for it, but there are some. Like the Horror Pops.

Opening Credits: Punk Rock Jock - Operation Ivy
Its a good fast song but very upbeat, nothing scary. Although the lyrics are nearly unrecognizable.

Waking Up: Thieves In The Night - Mos Def (maybe Blackstar?)
I'll point out that for some reason I have a lot more hip/hop on my phone than I normally listen too. I was on a Mos Def kick when I loaded songs onto the phone, which is my mp3 player. Anyway its a pretty good song. Favorite line,
"I asked him why we follow the law of the bluest eye, he looked at me said I'm clueless why? The question was retorical the answer is horrible."
Actually there are some lines right after that I might like better but thats more effort than I plan to expend.

First Day At School: You Will Lose Faith - NOFX
Favorite band. Good song from their newest LP, which is one of the most atheistic albums I've ever heard, especially if you get "never trust a hippy" which is an EP (or do I have those switched) and has only about 6 songs. Buy both then burn a copy with both on it, I like it that way.
"The unsympathetic judge who was having a bad day so he threw your life away is your faith a comfort still I know the answer still I ask where is your god now?"
Actually there is a part that would have been more fitting about breaking up a fight at school, only for someone to pull a gun and getting shot for trying to help.

Falling In Love: Instant Crassic - NOFX
Way too fitting. funny that it gave me the same group twice in a row, it happens.
"I'm swimming in a sea of pee, I'm hiking up a big mountain of poo, I feel like rolling in glass when I'm without you."

Fight Song: One Dead Cop - Leftover Crack
Ok I cheated on this one. Operation Ivy is not fight music. Leftover Crack is.
" I never took such pleasure in a death, A hatred born of freedom’s dying breath, The police kill and then they lie some more, In a conspiracy to cage the poor."

Breaking Up: March of the Crabs - Propagandhi
Not my favorite song by them, lyrics aren't easily deciphered so no particular favorites.

Prom: Twice in a Lifetime - Mos Def
Theres a female artist at the start of this song that I'm just not a fan of. Shes spends too much time saying how great she is, and I'm never a fan of excessive ego's.
"You stoppin' us is preposterous, like an androgenous masohganist, You pickin' the wrong time, steppin' to me when I'm in my prime like Optimus."
preposterous like an androgynous misogynist, come on thats funny, yeah its spelled very wrong on the lyric page.

Life: Let Them Eat War - Bad Religion
I'm not sure what this would say about your life, unless you were a president or a king or something.
"You never stole from the rich to give to the poor, All he ever gave to them was a war, And a foreign enemy to deplore."
Good tune. Great Band. Lead singer has a PhD from Cornell I guess he's even taught a couple classes. I bet he's a cool teacher.

Making babies: Interrogation - The Coup
Ok terrible song for making babies. Who "makes babies" to one song anyway? I'm not trying to brag but "making babies" takes at least a full album, two if they are punk (short albums), although due to the tempo you might have a heart attack. I can think of worse ways to go. Oh anyway this song is nuts. Its all about talking to the police, first just about trying to avoid them, then about killing cops by the end of the song. I do like the begining,
"I aint seen shit, i aint heard (nothing) i dont know what happen, i dont speak pig latin"
I just love the idea of saying, I'm sorry I can't understand you, I don't speak pig latin, to a cop. If your not white you'd get shot. oh theres also a line about a "dead ocean of pigs" yeah I don't think these guys like police officers.

Mental Breakdown: Holiday in Cambodia - Dead Kennedys
"Kiss ass while you bitch so you can get rich, But your boss gets richer on you, Well you'll work harder with a gun in your back, For a bowl of rice a day"
DK has plenty of songs that would be fitting to have a mental breakdown too. Too Drunk To Fuck, and Kill The Poor come to mind. The first of those would be a good song for (not) making babies.

Driving: Sold As Freedom - Anti-Flag
I'd be speeding if this was my driving song... so... yeah.
"Fight fire with fire!, Pull gasoline on the world inferno, Burn it so hot that the world incinerates, when they're all dead we'll have no issues to resolve."

Flashback: Piss on Your Grave - The Coup
This is a song about peeing on George Washington's grave. Not sure if this is my favorite part but its good, er sorta, I mean its about something bad, but well done. I'm sticking with its good,
"That bitch ass on the front of a buck, never gave a fuck, he forced his black women slaves, to give him dick sucks, and when he bust a nut, he'd laugh and cackle, let the leather whip crackle, send 'em back to pick tobacco shackled."

Getting back together: I'm the one - Descendants
Ok this is an example of pre-emo emo. but quite fitting.
"I'm the one, who's shoulder you've been cryin on, i'm the one who wants you more than anything, you don't feel the same way you made it clear to me, but i'll stand my ground and maybe, you'll hear what i've been sayin, after all i've said and all i've done, i'm the one"

Wedding: Where They Wander - Horror Pops
This might be the only female led group on my phone. It would be a great song to dance to if you can do a swing at considerably higher than normal speed. It would be cool if you could pull it off. If you don't know the Horror Pops think of old swing music, mixed with punk rock and crappy horror movies. Of course this song is about zombies which isn't the best subject for a wedding. Oh well.

Birth of Child: Helena - Misfits
Hmm... this would have been better for the wedding.... This is a pretty twisted song in all reality.
"If I cut off your arms and cut off your legs, Would you still love me anyway?, If you're bound and you're gagged, draped and displayed, Would you still love me anyway?, Why don't you love me anyway?"
Those are just the opening lines.

Final Battle: Atheist Anthem - Leftover Crack
Uh not sure where to start. this is definitely a song you could get in a fight to. And someone is going to lose, and lose badly. Considering my death scene is next I'm not sure if I get mortally wounded here or if I'm the winner then get hit by a bus.

Death Scene: Who Killed Marilyn? - Misfits
These guys were big Marilyn Monroe fans, hence they named their band after her last movie. Oh and they hate the Kennedy's because they blame them for her death. Which is the reason for the song Bullet which is about JFK getting shot.

Funeral Song: Selfish Man - Flogging Molly
Irish punk rock these guys and Dropkick Murphys are just a great combo of old irish drinking songs and punk rock, flogging molly being the slightly more mellow of the two.
"And life leads me here, It shows me, I have never really loved no one but me, Like the time, you slipped through my hands, I'll never understand why I'm such a Selfish Man."
I have never really loved no one but me, I thought that was quite true until I was recently reminded that its not.

End Credits: The Roof is on Fire - Bloodhound Gang
This song shouldn't need an intro. great on so many levels. Everyone my age can still sing at least half of this song without the music. If one person breaks into it, instantly others will join in. Heres a good verse.
"Yeah I'm hung like planet Pluto hard to see with the naked eye, But if I crashed into Uranus I would stick it where the sun don't shine, 'Cause I'm kind of like Han Solo always strokin' my own Wookie."
Only problem is Pluto isn't a planet anymore.

Ok I stole this straight from My Life.... but thats sort of the idea. Usually these get passed on not stolen, but no one has ever sent me a meme, so I'm just going to pretent that someone did. Oh and I did cheat a couple of times, had to get some good songs up there, and some variety, so I broke #6, srry. Hope you enjoyed my little list.

google yourself

I do this from time to time for shits and giggles. I normally just look at the top couple and laugh. Actually the first one that comes up is a black judge from Florida which I find amusing. So this time I went to see how far till it was actually me, I also was curious if this site would come up, I don't use my real name when I write but my real name is on here if you know where to look. I also got thinking about this when my mother pointed out that smart companies will search possible employees. Think about that when putting drunken pictures on myspace. Also set your myspace to private, or don't use myspace which is probably the best plan. Anyway I first found myself on page 5 as my name was mentioned in the local newspaper announcement for my grandparents 65th wedding anniversary. BTW: huge congrats to the G-rents. I make another appearance on page 5 for a comment to The Nation magazine.

At least through Google it looks like I'm safe. I'm not ashamed of anything I've written. But there are things here that many people would find objectionable, especially my rants against religion. It's probably better that employers don't read this. At least not until I've been on the job a little while.

Thank You!

I love my little blog here. Some times I wonder if anyone is reading it, but I honestly don't care. I write because I want to. I write about what I want to write about sometimes its politics, sometimes its religion, the environment, how corporations are taking over the world and killing us all, how the unions are just corporations in their own way, or sometimes I just write about whats going on in my life. I occasionally ask questions, I don't usually expect answers because well like I said I have no idea if anyone reads this stuff. I don't even have a site meter cause when I did I always was concerned about how many hits I was getting. But then I left a little nothing post about journalism. Down just a couple. And not only did I get a couple responses but one was even very useful. ffbgirl from My Life... gave me the idea of Multi Media Communications. Sounds cool. So for being the first commenter to genuinely help, I say thank you! I'm going to look into what this degree is and see if it sounds appealing.

Your so going on the blog roll now.

Peace!

Evil Post (almost)

Dammit! I missed it by one. This is my 667th post, neighbor of the beast. Obviously I'm not superstisious, and I'm clearly not concerned about the scary number, but I do enjoy making jokes. Like for 6/6/06 I sent Happy Evil Day e-mails to my friends. So I would have done a nice little Evil post had I noticed. oh well.

Journalism

I've been thinking of possible career/education paths and I have often been interested in journalism but I don't consider myself a good enough writer for that profession. Who knows.

I lied

I said things were over and that I would get back to normal. Well things are still over, at least romantically, but I'm far from back to normal. I'm still very mixed up and I could just snap at any moment. Of course I'm not sure what will happen if I snap. I've come to the conclusion that I'm an emotional person who just doesn't care about much. If something manages to catch my attention then I can be very passionate about the task or job or person but most of the time I just don't care. But for the first time in my life there is something (someone) I am passionate about and I can't do anything about it. I tried to get past this over the weekend. I tried to say how it couldn't have worked, other people who know us both tried to comfort me but the only person who can comfort me is the person who can't comfort me. Just a few weeks ago I was fairly bored and depressed but at least I was stable. Now I'm bored, depressed, hopeful, confused and walking a tight rope (unstable). Thinks might not have been good when I just ignored all emotions, but they were easy.

smooth move shrub

Well the CEO of ford saved the presidents life by preventing him from blowing up the hydrogen car by plugging in the electric plug into the hydrogen tank. I'll assume the CEO was just acting out of self-preservation as he would have been blown up as well. See Hydrogen is perfectly safe, so long as we don't allow complete idiots to own the cars. Ok Shrub go play in the corner now, "No bad shrub." I've told him a million times not to play with electrical outlets. One of these days I should just let him, might teach him some respect. More info here.

Ann Coulter Master Satirist?

I know I know I normally refuse to acknowledge her existence at all let alone a whole post about her but this piece is so unexpected that its worth it.

The Coulter Hoax

On occasion, Coulter’s satire is quite esoteric. Such is the case when she states, “Behe disproved evolution—unless evolution is simply a nondisprovable pseudoscience, like astrology.” To understand the subtle linking of Behe to astrology, one must be familiar with Behe’s testimony in the Dover trial in which he had to concede that if intelligent design was accepted as science, one must also accept astrology.

Yeah its good, hope you enjoy. Satire about Satire that's not Satire at all.

ready to run

Not literally, I don't run.
But theres a bug in my side saying to get the hell outta dodge. I'm bored, half my friends will be gone by the end of the summer. My job is great but sucks at the same time. Theres no joy in it other than some very nice people I work with. Besides that I get nothing from this job and it barely pays the bills. So if anyone is looking for someone who can do almost anything fairly well and doesn't live anywhere overly hot, let me know I'm game for anything at this point. Seriously the best thing in my life right now (besides my family) is being the roadie for my friends band. I'm stuck in a rut and I want out I don't really care what direction I go so long as I'm not sitting still any more. I'm closing in on two years in this office, if I stay much longer they might need to put the padding back on the walls from the psych-center days. The first places that come to mind are Ithaca, Rochester, Pittsburgh, Boston, err maybe that last one should get scratched off the list at least for a little while. Where else do I know people? Buffalo. You can probably tell that I like it up here in the northeast. I'll go farther but it would be nice to know a couple people before heading to a new place.

Grindhouse

I watch too many movies, but I rarely bother to spend the money to go to the theater. But as some of my recent posts will indicate I was having a pretty bad day on Friday and so a good friend convinced me to go see Grindhouse. He didn't have to twist my arm too far, plus I had a free ticket from christmas. It was exactly what I needed. Three and a half hours as far from reality as sobriety will allow. The first movie was Robert Rodriguez zombie spectacular. Completely over the top and un-realistic. It was great. The second one was much slower. Lots of classic Tarantino dialog centered around a group of strong women. I almost wonder if Quentin keeps going female heroes to make up for reservoir dogs which didn't have a single speaking line for a woman. Or maybe he just realized that its his choice if he wants to be surrounded by beautiful women while at work... But the important bit is that the movie ends with a great chase scene between a Charger and a Challenger, straight out of Vanishing Point which is mentioned a few times in the flick. But being Tarantino he must take it another step further, so during the entire chase, there is a woman crawling around on the hood of the Challenger. They were playing a game where one person lays on the hood of the car while driving when suddenly it turns into a chase scene. Oh the woman are stunt professionals hence their rather unusual views of what constitutes a good time. Then again I've ridden in locations other than inside of a vehicle on a few occasions, ah the joys of youth and stupidity. So good flick, plus the fake movie previews are fantastic, such as "Werewolf Women of the SS." Quality.

Double Plus Ungood

The whole craziness is over.
I've lost the only girl* I've ever loved, again.
This whole event felt like it could have been the kind of movie that makes women cry, I just didn't know it was a dark comedy, the director never lets me read the script.

*(fuck you feminists shes can be a girl even if shes a woman, and an incredible woman at that)

Hehehehe, nicely put

From the Latest Carnival of the Godless: You're going to hell edition
It might just be because I love the book but I like this bit.

But Mark Dominus’s complaint that the Bible gets the value of pi wrong is certainly off target. Like the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Wikipedia, the Bible is always right; whenever it conflicts with reality, reality is in error.

Thank You Abstract Nonsense. I hope you all caught the irony. Oh and the book that I love is HHGG not the bible, both are fiction, but one is way funnier and possibly more believable.

Just a friend is no picnic either

The great Biz Markie, The Clown Prince of hip/hop



I'm not sure how I didn't think of this song before, its on my mp3 player/phone I hear it all the time. Its exactly whats going on, other than I'm not the guy singing the song. I'm the friend, and it's not a spot I'm comfortable with, not at all. But its a good song so listen to it.

Thunderbird Issues

Ok I'm a big fan of mozilla, its got some cool features, its not microsoft, and its free. But in the last couple days I've started having problems. Thunderbird, Mozzila's answer to Outlook, has been acting funny, not automatically finding new emails, generally going slowly and it claims that I have 183,402 emails in my inbox. I have a little over a thousand in reality. Something is weird.

UPDATE: apparently its a good idea to clean out your inbox all the time and don't keep old emails there. who knew? Theres a couple other little tricks that I'm going to try.

Chocolate Jesus

I don't understand why people care. Ok someone made a huge chocolate jesus, a bunch of christians freaked out, no more chocolate jesus. I mean yeah its sad that these assholes deprived bringing joy to a bunch of children in the form of a huge block of chocolate but its not very surprising. Oh the "sweet lord" was naked, thats why the christians freaked out, that should be mentioned.
But it just seems like people care way to much, I mean yeah the fundies are insane, so what? thats hardly news worthy. I wouldn't care if there was nothing going on in the world but there is so lets just be done with this story.
Heres the only link I feel like putting up for this topic.
The Rude Pundit: What would chocolate jesus do?