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(link via Cardinal Ugenesis Nixon Thunderfawk. It’s not my fault!)
Some things, once seen, cannot be unseen. I will now go scrub my eyeballs with Brillo pads.
Yes, fine, there are far worse criminals in the Bush administration than ol’ Turdblossom. No argument there. But this is such a clear-cut case of impudent, brazen contempt for the law that I don’t see how even the spineless wimps of the Democratic Congress can ignore it.
And hell, maybe if they do exercise their Constitutionally-mandated authority, and Turdblossom is facing the prospect of a few months as prison pussy, he might roll over and turn state’s evidence against his masters. Who knows? If the Democrats just do their jobs, it could be The End for the squalid war criminals of the Bush White House.
Hey, why’s everybody laughing?
As of tomorrow, it will be one year to the day since the Special Lady Friend and I arrived in Maine, fresh off our 4,300 mile odyssey, moving back from Seattle. (Although, if you want to be pedantic about it, this is a leap year, so technically today is exactly 365 days. Luckily, I am not pedantic.)
It’s been an eventful year. Since setting up shop back on the East Siiiide, I’ve
After being away from my home state for the better part of a decade, I can say it’s changed quite a bit. I used to curse the place for being too conservative and claustrophobic, but an interesting thing happened while I was gone: Mainers have loosened up quite a bit. There’s state-run health insurance for the poor, every 8th grader gets a laptop, the Green Party has official standing, marijuana laws are fairly lax, and George W. Bush is staggeringly unpopular, even in Kennebunkport.
In fact, given its large size, low population density, large swathes of pristine wilderness, and odd mix of rednecks and hippies, Maine less resembles its urbanized, overpopulated Northeast neighbors than a large, Western state.
Except, of course, that here, the sun rises out of the ocean, instead of setting in it. As it should be.
For my birthday last month, the Special Lady Friend and her mother cordoned off a 4X6 plot of yard in back of the house and planted me a garden. Today, I harvested the very first leaves of romaine lettuce and made a salad. Alas, said salad was just lettuce, but a couple of tomatoes have formed, and it won’t be long before they’re ripe. The squash, zucchini, and pumpkin plants are also growing like crazy. (The carrots and broccoli? Not so much, but maybe next year.)
In other words,
For those of you not familiar with my Fiendish World Domination Plan™, it is as follows:
1) Grow massive food supply in back yard, becoming entirely self-sufficient
2) Set up turbines and solar panels on property, thus allowing removal of house from power grid
3) Build bio-diesel distillery in shed
4) Mount cistern, water purification equipment, hydroponic grow lab, and brewery in attic
5) Stockpile weaponry to protect all this booty
6) Take over the tattered, post-apocalyptic remnants of what was once America
And just in case George W. Bush’s destruction of our entire economy isn’t as complete as it now appears to be and America doesn’t disintegrate into series of warring city-states dominated by bloodthirsty warlords like myself, there’s a Plan B:
Steps 1-5: See above.
Step 6: Transport previously noted equipment and supplies out to Boon Island, secede from America, form own micronation with myself and the Special Lady Friend as King and Queen, respectively
So who wants citizenship in my future dystopia? I’m open to bribes, but it’ll cost ya. Don’t wait too long!
Contrary to popular opinion, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are not (respectively) a hilarious comedian and the creator of delicious candies. What they are is the collective owner of 50% of all the mortgages in the United States of America. They’re also roughly 1.7 trillion dollars in debt combined, and teetering so close to complete failure that the federal government may have to step in, take them both over, and print money hand over fist to cover their debts.
And if that happens…yeah.
We now return you to “Dancing With the Stars.”
(UPDATE: 7/16) It’s gonna be so much worse than we realize even now. Of course, given everything else our race has screwed up, total economic meltdown is probably the least of our worries.
It’s a red letter day here at Semiconscious Dot Org. Regular readers know that your humble author loves him some metal and some punk. Wellsir, not only is there a Dropkick Murphys/Mighty Mighty Bosstones concert tonight at the Civic Center, but last night I found out that the new Melvins album is out! I took the day off from work (cough, cough) and once Tannhauser arrives in a few hours, we’ll be heading downtown to purchase the Melvins, imbibe heavily on the patio at Novare Res, and head off to the show.
Anyhoo, here’s the new music roundup. You’re welcome.
Opeth – Watershed
For over a decade, they’ve been perfecting their unlikely mix of death metal and Pink Floyd-y prog rock. This album tilts the balance noticeably towards the latter. I can’t say it’s as magnificent as either of their two acknowledged masterpieces, 1999’s Still Life or 2005’s Ghost Reveries, because I do like the thrashin’. But it’s still damn good, more of a “headphones” album than a “point the speakers out the windows and terrify your neighbors” album.
Boris – Smile
As with Opeth, Boris is faced with the daunting task of following up their magnum opus (in their case, 2006’s Pink.) And like Opeth, they come pretty close. Much like Pink, Smile mixes the monolithic walls of guitar drone from their earlier albums with shorter tracks influenced by 70’s hard rock and punk. They sing entirely in Japanese, so I have no idea what they’re saying. But with music like this, vocals are just another instrument anyway.
The Roots – Rising Down
Am I sensing a trend here? Here’s yet another veteran band following up their career-defining album. 2006’s Game Theory might just be the best hip hop release of this entire decade. Wisely, they chose to not try and duplicate its sound on Rising Down, instead going for a harder, darker edge. But while the music may be different, the lyrical viewpoint is not: these guys are the natural heirs to Public Enemy, and their music is a call to arms.
Sigur Rós – Með Suð í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust
Finally, a band not attempting to follow up their opus. Sigur’s best album, the awe-inspiring Ágætis Byrjun, was almost a full decade ago, and everything they’ve released since has unfortunately been boring, pretentious pablum. They obviously knew it was time to shake things up, because Með Suð í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust represents the most immediate, catchy, and uptempo music they’ve ever recorded. Check out the video for “Gobbledigook” to see the new direction. (Warning: nekkid people. Lots of them.)
The Black Angels – Directions to See a Ghost
And after all the veteran bands, we conclude with a young group whose best days are presumable ahead of them. This is their second release, following 2006’s debut, Passover. Like its predecessor, it’s a mass of reverb-drenched, Velvet Underground-inspired psychedelia. Excellent stuff, and well worth picking up, but I get the feeling they’re capable of even more. There’s a masterpiece coming from this band, and soon. Maybe next time out.
Yeah, I’m pissed too. The debate is raging over nyah, so there’s no point in rehashing it here. Read for yourself. Condensed version: yours truly is feeling a hell of a lot less forgiving towards Barack than are most of his friends. Yeah, I know the human race probably won’t survive a McCain Presidency, but does that mean I have to reward Obama for his cowardly, craven vote to repeal the Fourth Amendment?
Sadly, it probably does.
God damn it.
I’ve been deeply opposed to capital punishment since I was 14. Well, no more, pal.
A book bandit who checked out hundreds of books and DVDs from area libraries and then sold them online will be going to prison.
Thomas Pilaar, 34, was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay $53,549 in restitution. He pleaded guilty to theft in May.
(snip)
Denver Public Library last year estimated its losses at $35,000, while Douglas County reported that Pilaar had $11,000 worth of overdue materials, mostly pricey coffee-table books and DVDs.
We could spend a lot of time and burn many synapses trying to come up with appropriately vicious and agonizing punishments for this man, but why bother? The monks at the Monastery of San Pedro in Barcelona did all the heavy lifting for us long ago:
The Curse Against Book Stealers
“For him that stealeth a Book from this Library, let it change into a Serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with Palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in Pain crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no Surcease to his Agony till he sink to Dissolution. Let Bookworms gnaw his Entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not, and when at last he goes to his final Punishment let the flames of Hell consume him forever and aye.”
Damn, those dudes were not kidding around.
Why, scientists, why? Do you hate America that much? What other reason could there possibly be for the horrifying news that you are recklessly and foolishly giving Rubik’s Cubes to octopi?
Octopuses belong to the same family as slugs and snails, but scientists believe they are far more intelligent than their relatives. The researchers will give the 25 assorted creatures food and toys to play with, and record which limbs the animals use.
Claire Little, a marine expert at the Weymouth Sea Life Centre, explained: “Uniquely, octopuses have more than half their nerves in their arms and have been shown to partially think with their arms.
————-Previous work has shown them to have a capacity for learning and surprisingly complex memories. In 2003 an octopus in a German zoo wasrevealed to have learnt how to open jars of shrimps by copying staff. The five-month-old animal opened the jars by pressing its body on the lid and grasping the sides with its eight tentacles.
(above: your doom)
Today, Great Cthulhu’s minions are solving popular puzzles from the 1980’s; tomorrow, they’re building suitcase nukes to char broil us all for their Master’s lunch! Thanks a lot, you bunch of Commie Atheist Objectively Pro-Elder God liberals!
(link via Pharyngula)
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