Crime Watch: Who will Bush arrest first?

Will it be...

A) Osama Bin Laden, the man who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks and is still conducting terrorist attacks

or...

B) Cindy Sheehan, mother of a American soldier who died in combat in Iraq


While the CIA says it had Bin Laden trapped in early 2002 but the President refused to send enough troops to capture him, he has made it clear that if the grieving mother of a fallen soldier sets foot on his ranch in texas, she will be arrested as a threat to national security.

So what does Mrs. Sheehan want that's so intimidating?

She wants one hour of Bush's time during his 5-week long vacation to explain to him why she and all of the other members of Gold Star Families for Peace (families that have lost a loved on in combat) want him to bring the troops home so no one else's children have to die. This, of course, being a much more greivous crime than ramming planes into the World Trade Center.

Which one will it be, Mr. Bush?

Who wouldn't want a baby girl named after a boy named after a girl?

 So my friend/improv troupe director Doug is about to have a baby. Well, technically his wife Laurel is about to have the baby, but you know what I mean. Anyway, the baby was due on the first of August, but it's still hanging out, enjoying yet another perfect day in the womb, making it 8 days late. On his homepage, Doug has a "baby watch," and will let the world know what day the little girl (potentially known as "Francie"...blech) has entered the world.

Now, the catch is that the 11th is my birthday. This means that if the little one holds out for a mere two more days, she and I will share the day of our birth, mine having come a scant 23 years before hers. Now, at that point, being a good friend of the family, and all-around renaissance man, it would only seem appropriate that they name their child after me. Yes, Jesse Scott Genesius Wozniak Palmer Shaw. Sounds pretty good to me. Much, much better than "Francie," at least.

The problem is that despite the numerous times I have brought this idea up, Doug and Laurel politely laugh and then change the subject, as if I'm making some sort of poorly conceived joke. To show them I'm serious, I need your help with my petition. I have started a letter campaign asking them to name their child after me if it is indeed born on the 11th. An adendum to the letter asks Laurel to hold out until the 11th to ensure that this happens. I need you, loyal reader, to send a copy of the letter to Doug in the hopes that enough letters will sway their opinion. Please send letters to doug@dougshaw.com. You may feel free to compose your own letter, or simply copy and paste the letter below:

To Dr. Douglas Shaw and Laurel Palmer (which I'm vaguely certain is her last name...on second thought, better just leave that out),

As a concerned citizen, it has come to my attention that you two are about to become the bearers of a new human life. As countless medical and psychological studies have shown, a child's name can have a great impact on future health and well-being. Therefore, as first time parents, you undoubtedly want to give your child a moniker that will bring her health and good fortune through all the years. That is why I would like to add my voice to the growing number of conceerned individuals that request your child's name be Jesse Scott Genesius Wozniak, with whatever last names you deem appropriate to saddle her with as well. In addition, I would like to request Laurel to postpone delivery of the child until the 11th of August, in the year of our Lord 2005, but no later, as this has been proven to be a day on which exceptionally attractive and talented people have been born (such as wrestling Hall-of-Fame member Terry "Hulk" Hogan and holder of the world's highest recorded IQ/parade magazine advice columnist Marilyn Vos Savant). In so doing this, you will be giving a gift not only to your unborn child, but to the future of humanity.
In solidarity with your momentous task,
Johnathon Quincy Public

A Great Day for common sense

CNN has just announced that they have indefinately suspended conservative/creepy commentator Robert Novak after he had a tempertantrum on air in which he swore at James Carville (which, admittedly, most of us want to do) and then stormed off the set. You might remember Novak as the man who committed treason by publishing, in his nationally syndicated column, that Valerie Plame is an undercover CIA agent, thus putting her life in great danger. Of course, it was in no way connected to the fact that Mz. Plame's husband, Joe Wilson (also a CIA agent), was a very vocal critic of the President's reasoning for going to war. Oh, and his storming off the set has nothing to with the fact that the moderator was just about to ask him about the investigation into his treason. I'm sure there's a very valid reason for all of this, and that history will prove Novak was only trying to serve his country. In the meantime, you can watch the footage of his entire career being destroyed here.

A Visual Guide to My Education

I've mentioned a few times in my blog that I'm finally leaving Iowa and beginning graduate school at the University of Minnesota. This lead me to do some misty-eyed reflecting on my past educational experiences. More specifically, I've spent a large amount of time reflecting on how idiotic school mascots are. Here, presented for the first time, is a life that can contend for having endured the worst ideas people have ever had to create school spirit.

High School: Rodger Dodger


Since I couldn't find and online image, I was forced to draw a composite sketch, although this is pretty much it. His name is Rodger Dodger (quite descriptive in and of itself), and as to what he is, your guess is as good as mine. Top hat? Life-sized promotional battery? Friendly anthropomorphic bong? All I know is that the outfit required someone under 5'4" to wear it, so the majority of the time, we didn't have a mascot.

Undergrad: T.C. Panther



This is the mascot of the University of Northern Iowa Panthers, seen here cavorting with a drunken elderly woman. Quite ferocious and at least of discernable genesis. Yes, just like De La Soul, I graduated from UNI-versity. Anecdotally, I once saw T.C. in the student union while I was studying. Apparently, the cheerleading squad, in conjunction with some fraternity, was offering to take your picture with T.C. for a fee to benefit some charity. Seriously. I remember that he (and he is a he...read an article here in which he relates having to beat up a high school student in self-defense) spent quite a bit of time at the tables of attractive women. Now, I can't help but wonder what he was thinking. He can't be seen or heard from inside there. But he seemed to be fully expecting to stumble onto a girl sitting there thinking "I have such a void in my life. If only I could fill it with sex with a man who isn't afraid to dress up in an over-sized novelty animal costume." Oh, and what does the "T.C." stand for, you ask? It stands for "The Cat." Yes, his full name is "The Cat Panther." However, even this redundant name does not take the cake, for there is also...

Grad School: Goldie Gopher


Yes, now I will be represented by Goldie the Golden Gopher, seen here conferring an honorary degree upon State Representative Gene Pelowski. I think "Goldie" may be even more stupid than "The Cat Panther," but it's a pretty close call.

Although over my career I may have totalled the highest number of idiotic mascots, I didn't hit the worst of them. For example, I could have been any of these:

In the religious category, we have the Demon Deacons of Wake Forest, as well as the Battlin' Bishops of Ohio Wesleyan. Of course, they don't match the loveliness of Lansig (Mich) Lugnuts or the Akron (Ohio) Zips. Then there's my personal favorites, the UC-Santa Cruz Banana Slugs.

However, none of these are overtaken by the Arkansas Tech Wonder Boys who preseumably at one point in time had both Michael Douglas and Toby Maguire playing for them, with a pep band soundtrack by Bob Dylan.

Too good to pass up

This blog won't be as funny as it could be because I'm on a 10 yr old p.c. in a 3rd world nation, but I found this little doozy on MSN. Rock and Roll "legend' and former News frontman Huey Lewis will be starring in "Chicago" on Broadway. He may or may not be appearing in "Checking In," the smash-hit broadway musical about the Betty Ford Center, as well. He joins such other luminaries who left one tragically successful career to join the ranks or legitimate stage actors as John Schneider (Bo Duke), who came all the way from Hazzard county to play Frank Butler, and Macaulay Culkin, who at age 20 re-entered the acting world by plaing a 15 yr old in Madame Melville in London. I think I won't be the first in rushing off to the box office this year!

A long and probably boring blog

Hey, I'm finally at a computer with enough time to do this, so I'm just putting down shitty, unedited e-mails I sent to friends about my trip. Feel free to peruse them...some are funny, some are politically interesting, some are just pointless personal stuff that will mean nothing to those of you who aren't my close friends, but seeing as how I haven't posted in a month or so, I thought I'd do this. Look for new and better posts coming next weekn when I'm back in the good ol' U.S. of A.


Sawatdee Crampdt (hello--from a fella)! Today downtown Bangkok was shut down because of massive anti-government protests, and I just couldn't help but think of all of you. So I thought I'd send you an e-mail to let you know how my trip is going, instead of sending you all postcards. I mean, I'm not made of Baht, people. Oh, and for those of you on the listserve who don't know me, feel free to delete this, or read on for an entertaining missle about my first week in Thailand. This is one of your more intersting countries. It's great to know that imperialism is alive and well--they just cannot get enough of white people here. In fact, they themselves want to be white, as is evidenced by the fact that literally every third commercial on tv is for whitening cream. (Side note on television--the MTV here is phenomenal. It plays a mixture of different asian videos, all looking as if they were shot with a $10 budget in someone's basement. I cannot understand a single word they say, but that's hardly necessary, if these lyrics are anything like the bands played no the U.S. MTV). It's pretty saddening to see how much people hate their own skin color. The upside of imperialism is that over here, my brother and I and his friend Jason are all considered very attractive, so I had to turn down several offers to go home with various women at the bar last night, which is definately a very new experience. So far, I've only been in Bangkok (one night here and the world's your oyster...you'll only get that refference if you listen to ABBA) and I must say that it's a very interesting city. The other day we were given a tour of it by the mother of the foreign exchange student my parents will be hosting next year. She's in the prime minister's cabinet as the secertary of technology, which is extremely impressive for a woman in this nation. So it was kind of like the equivilant of getting a tour of D.C. from Condeleeza Rice, except without the evil. We saw some pretty amazing things, all of which I'm not going to try to describe, because you really have to be there. But I can say that Buddhasts just love to cover things in gold. The hotel (or "mansion" as it, assumedly ironically, calls itself) is right across the street from the MBK center, which is Thailand's answer to the Mall of America. Yet another upside of imperialism--the dollar goes very far here. The exchange rate is roughly 40 Baht to one dollar, and to put it in perspective, my entire family, plus a friend, plus my borther's fiance, just had an entire dinner for 180 Baht, or roughy $4.50 U.S. And that was the entire bill, not per person. So again, it's nice to see the upside of our crippling economic policies (sorry about the rant, but you know what they say--you can take the boy out of rigorous sociological study, but you can't take the rigorous sociological study out of the boy). The other more interesting thing about Bangkok is the means of transportation available. For sissies there's the taxi, which are just like US taxis, only nicer. But for the fun-loving, there are these things called Tuk Tuks, which are hard to describe, but are basically half a counch on the back end of a motorcycle. The best thing about riding in a Tuk Tuk is that the drivers of them are completely insane. You haven't lived until you've been on the back of a motorcycle driving on the dividing strip between two lanes of oncoming traffic the wrong way down a one-way street. The straight-up motorcylclists are even crazier, never afraid to hop on the sidewalk, median, or gutter or to challenge a bus for the right of way. Kind of ironic that a culture which is so stereotyped for being selfless and polite has such crazy drivers. It is actually reccomended that you neglect traffic laws when driving in Thailand. Today we visited one of the schools my brother used to teach at, and again we experienced the upside of imperialism. As white people very rarely come out to the smaller provinces, we were of course treated like royalty for having such pale skin. Pretty ackward, but fu at the same time. My brother had to make an impromptu speech to the entire student body of the school, but he didn't have too many inspirational words of wisdom for the kids, so it was pretty short. I thought it was pretty hilarious, though. Well, much more than that has happened, but I've already wasted enough of your time. Hope you're all having a fun and safe time back there in the states, and hopefully you've been mildly amused by my recollections.

I'm now in the village of Amnat Charoen, where my brother lives. Life sure is interesting in the boondocks of a third-worl nation. For instance, last week I encountered my first eve Thai toilet. It consisits of a hole in the ground with two footholes next to it. The flushing mechanism AND toilet paper is a bowl floating in a concrete tub full of stagnant water next to the toilet. Needless to say, I've learned to hold it until I get home to Wassana's (my borther's fiance's mom, even though because of myt age I can't call her that, it's easier for the purposes of this e-mail) house, where thankfully there is a western style toilet. Well, a close approximation of a western style toilet. The food is pretty good, but Jason and I made the mistake of saying we like fish the first day we got here, so every night Wassan fixes us each a foot-long fish to eat. I don't know a polite way to tell her that the previous 10 fish have been enough to last me for life. Last night we had Thai pizza, which like everything in this country, is an attempt to copy something western that fails miserably. It was quite interesting. I would do just about anything in the world for a good hamburger. I'm actually beggining to miss America. It's like Lisa Simpson said "America may have it's granduers and it's follies, but mostly it's where all of our stuff is." Last night, through a strange series of events, I went out drinking and karoake-ing with an entire platoon of US Marines. With my back to back renditions of Bon Jovi's "It's my life" and Bryan Adam's "Everything I do I do it for you," I became quite the toast of the Marines, if you can believe it. Even though every toast (which happened approximately every 45 seconds) was either to the "Red White and Blue, what we die for" or for "Kicking Saddams ass" or some such thing like that, the Marines unanimously thought that Bush is an idiot and this war is wrong. Of course, that didn't stop them from following orders and shipping out to Falujah today, which they al knew too well meant that they weren't all coming back. To add to the irony, I had lunch on the Mekong river yesterday. Interesting to have lunch on the river where my uncle took half a dozen bullets 30 years ago. Again, maybe I'm too cynical, but it was surreal to be placidly looking at a place where thousands of people died because Henry Kissinger is a jerk. And he won the Nobel Peace Prize, thus making the prize entirely meaningless. Yesterday we went to yet another Buddhest temple (as a side note, for those who complain about Catholics eating off of gold plates at mass while people starve, which granted, is despicable, they should see one of the thousands of Buddhest temples), I got stung by a very angry wasp many times. I'm sure it was my white, male God becoming upset with me for paying respect to the wrong person. Anyway, the welts have finally gone down enough for me to move my arms, but there's definately still some pain there. On the plus side, after climbing a seven-story spiral staircase with stairs that I shit you not were only 3" wide, I saw a bag containing the bones of Buddha, so I should get some good karma out of that. In happier news, my new suit of Thai silk clothes came back from the tailor today, so I'll be looking pretty styling for the engagement party this friday. I've never had a tailor made suit of clothes before, so I'm feeling pretty good. Well, that's about al for now. The only computer I was able to find that's connected to the net looks ot be about 20 years old, so I'm having a heck of a time using it. So please excuse what I am sure are the many thousands of spelling and grammar errors. Well, much, much more than that has happened, but that's all I have time to write. If you've made it this far, thanks plenty for reading.

I'm now in Malaysia, having finished my little tour of Thailand. The wedding/engagementparty (we're not really sure which one it was...it's a long story) was really fun. Very different, but interesting. Even my brother, who speaks the language, had very little idea what was going on the whole time, so I don't feel so bad. And then, of course, there was karaoke. Nobody does more karaoke than Thai people. I don't know how much of this news you're getting in the states, but there's a very peculiar situation going on in Southern Thailand. Might even be something for Amnesty to focus on next year. Anyway, there has been a large increase of Muslim seperatists in the region for quite some time (think Al Quiada-type folks) that have been commiting quite a bit of violence. Anyway, the gov't had opriginally pledged to solve it peacefully with full respect for human rights, etc. But now, in the pas two weeks, theprime minister went around the parliament and declared a state of martial law. He can now censor any publication, detain and arrest without charge, wiretap without warrant, and, well, basically everything that's in the Patriot Act. I think the most depressing part of it, though, is that the newspapers (which were already subject to censorships laws, but are now subject to even more stringent censorship) are still dramatically better than American newspapers. Eveery major paper carried article after article criticising the PM's move and calling for greater respect for civil liberties and human rights. And these are CENSORED newspapers. To make a tired point, we know what American newspapers would do in that situation, because we're already in it. So there's some interesting politics form this side of the world. 牋?Malaysia is quite a different world from Thailand eventhough they share a common border. The most obvious difference is that it is a Islamicist state, and not a Buddhast state. It's extremely weird to see women walking around in full burkhas. Even though most women wear only a simple veil, or not religious clothing at all for some, there are still plenty of woemn dressed head to toe in black, even some with their eyes covered. It's like Pop says, it's hard to understand why every major religion in the world feels it needs to oppress women. The politics here are similarly fragile. Again, though, it's pretty similar to the states. There's a growing fundamentalist movement which wants to enfore it's crazy, half-baked interpretation of a religion on everyone, and a vocal opposition which would prefer to be allowed religious freedom. So there are many interesting posters and spray paint around, but those voicing anti-Islamicist state opinions are usually defaced by the gov't before anyone can read them. But as an Orang Pute (honky) I've had no problems, so I don't think things are getting that bad yet. Malaysia is a former Brittish colony, so pretty much everyone here speaks pretty good English, which is nice, because my Malay is even worse than my Thai, which is not very good at all. Though right now we're having a very Malay experience, because in the small village we're in, the best Hotel we could find features amneties such as being only a block away from a public toilet, which is less than convenient when you get up in the middle of the night and need to use the bathroom. Also, the smaller towns tend to be more conservative, so I'm usually not allowed to enter buildings wearing shorts (you're not supposed to show you legs), which is extremely annoying because it's about 110 degrees in the shade. But I always find something to complain about. On the upside, it's extremely beautiful here, and my parents were able to find their old friends form when they were in the peace corps 30 years ago, so we've gotten to see so many intersting things too numerous to mention. 牋 Well, that about does it. I'm set to come home to the states in a short while, and then I'llbe off to Minneapolis. I miss you all and hope you'll come visit me up in the Twin Cities. Take care.

Expect blogging to be pretty gosh darn light

Loyal readers, faithful and true: just letting you know that blogging on this site will be extremely light to non-existant for the next month. I'll be visitng my brother in Thailand and some old friends of my parents in Malaysia, so I'll be out fo the country from tommorow until August 1st. I may hit a computer somewhere in there and have some time to throw down a post or two, but I don't know how likely that is. So, read all the old posts one more time and appreciate both their humor and historical significance, and come back August 1st to resume your regular reading.

Lifestyles of the rich and...Jesse?!?

Seeing as today is my last day at work here at the ol' FCC, my coworkers took me out to lunch. Not just any lunch, but Bena's restaurant, conveniently located at the fancy-shmancy Pipac Centre (note that it is not speeled "center," for that is how poor people would spell it). For those of you not in the CF area, the Pipac Centre is a really fancy place (think marble floors...actual marble) where people have weddings and proms and things like that. So the lunch was as it always is at those kind of places, overpriced and focused much more on the appearanca rather than the actual taste. But that's not what caught my eye. When I went to the bathroom, the urinals were entirely filled with ice. Right up to the brim. Every last one of them. So I used the ice-filled urinal, and I came back after I was done eating (too much water to drink) and they had been re-filled. Up to the brim with ice. Now, I'm certainley not rich by any means, but I've eaten in fancy restaraunts before, and none of them had ice-filled urinals. Is this the new thing amongst the ostentaiously rich?

Well, apparently (according to this source) it's because people are too lazy to flush. My theory? Rich people just like doing things differently, even when it makes no sense, just as a way of seperating themselves from us. For example, right now Ken Lay is somewhere yelling at his butler because their isn't enough ice in the toilet.

How to tell you're losing a war, part XIV

Readers of this blog will be quite familiar with my position on the war, so there's no need to get into all of that here. And seeing as I'm a fairly meaningless person in the grand scheme of things, my opnion also matters little. However, some important people with important opinions are starting to agree with me, and they're people you wouldn't have thought would join my side of the battle.

For instance, Representative Walter Jones. You may remeber him as the Republican Congressman from North Carolina who lead the battle to rename French Fries to "Freedom Fries" in the Capitol lunchroom (also while doing so, he presumably took his shirt off and spun it above his head in a helicopting motion). Well, now Rep.Jones, still very much a Southern Republican, is one of four co-sponsors of a bill in the house demanding a withdrawl of troops beginning in 2006. Also among the signers, the best dressed man in either chamer of congress, Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii).

Much like LBJ said of Walter Cronkite and the Vietnam war, Bush will one day look back and say "When I lost Freedom Fries Guy, I lost the nation."

¡Viva Bolivia!

Under the "You think we got it bad here" file...

Currently, as you're reading this (or it may have already happened, if you don't check often enough) the Bolivian government is meeting in secret to put in a *gasp* puppet of U.S. corporations. Despite the fact that over 80% of the population does not want him being in office. In fact, they blockaded all the roads so that the corrupt officials had to be flown out into the boonies to avoid democracy. However, thousands of Bolivians are marching through the country side to show their dissaproval.

Read about here.

Who reads my blog? Let's take a look-see...

So I got this fancy new hit counter (prominently displayed down at the bottom of the ol' blog...don't trust it's count, though, because my blog is much older than the counter, so it looks like not too many people have visited) and one of its best features is that it allows me to see what web page someone visited immediately before they came to my blog. For instance, if someone was googling something and my blog came up, it would show me what they were googling.

Sounds fun, right?

Well, it's actually kind of disturbing. There is some humorous stuff, such as the majority of people coming to my blog were searching for some combination of "Lil' Jon" and "Nerd," no doubt coming to see an old blog of mine with the diminuative Johnathon's senior protrait. But the disturbing thing is that many people who ended up at my blog were clearly looking for porn. In one case, this individual was clearly looking for incestuos porn. One of the many downfalls of a having blog titled "I blogged your MOM" and having an entry titled "I kick ASS for the Lord, my SON," I suppose. You can see how the combination would cause problems.

So I guess what I'm getting at, is that although I do appreciate a good round of consensual sexual intercourse, if you're looking for that, I'm afraid all you will encounter here is some witty reparte and sarcastic political commentary. Sorry about that.

Democra...what?!?

In case you haven't heard of the Downing Street Memo yet, the jist of it is that David Manning, A Biritish intelligence official, had his notes from meetings with Bush & Co. leaked to the public. In the notes from his meeting with them in 2002, he noted that Bush wanted to go to war with Iraq, but the justification just wasn't there. So, he noted, the "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." So this proves that the president was (get ready to gasp) lying!

But it gets better.

So several members of congress were upset by this memo (and by "several" I mean "89") and they wrote a letter to President Bush expressing their shock and outrage. Scott McClellan, the President's press secretary, said he has "no need" to respond to the letter.

Just for clarification:
He claims to have no need to respond to a letter written to the President by 89 members of congress asking him to explain a memo that proves he lied about a war which was killed nearly 2,000 Americans in a nation which posed no threat to us.

As always, "I'm not making this up™!"

Best genre-crossing musical pairing ever?

A) Jay-Z & Linkin Park
B) Slash & Michael Jackson
C) Tim McGraw and Nelly
D) Paula Abdul and Mc Skat Cat
E) Bing Crosby and David Bowie

Which is it people?

How to destroy the credibility of something entirely credible, part1

So Amnetsy International recently came out with a 200+ page report detailing the abuses of prisoners in American detention camps. In it, Amnesty referred to the prison camps (especially Gauntanamo Bay) as the new-century "gulags," comparing them to the prisons where political dissidents in the Soviet Union where allegedly disappeared to. The point is, the allegation was always that the Soviets used the Gulag to imprison those who they disliked, for as long as they wanted and without any charges. George Bush has taken great offense to this. As he is quick to point out, our prisons hwere we send people that we dislike for as long as we want without charging them with anything are to prevent terrorism, thus making them ok. So he came out and call the Amnesty allegations "absurd."

Here again, I will predict the future.

You see, when Bush was calling the thrice-checked report absurd, he focused on the fact that Guantanamo was called a gulag, not so much on the fact that we have both video and pictorial evidence of prisoners being beaten to death. What is going to happen now is yet another show of republican brilliance. Bush and the entire wingnut media will focus entirely on the word "gualg" instead of the quite-correct charges of abuse. Then we will have big debates in the media as Bill O' Reilly yells at his guest for agreeing with the use of the term gulag. In the end, Amnesty will finally back down and retract the word gulag, and Bush will triumphantly come out and say "See! Our rape and tortoure chambers are not gulags!" and everyone will forget the fact that the 200+ page report was entirely true.

Gosh, it's kind of depressing, isn't it?

It was so polite of them to invite us, but we prefer cake to thousands of our children dead

So there are a precious, precious few in the White House press corps who still feel the need to do their job. This little doozy of a gem of a conversation came out the other day as Scott McClellan, the White House press seceratary, defended the invasion:

Question: the other day -- in fact, this week, you said that we, the united states, is in afghanistan and iraq by invitation. would you like to correct that incredible distortion of american history --

Mr. mcclellan: no, we are -- that's where we currently --

q: -- in view of your credibility is already mired? how can you say that?

Mr. mcclellan: helen, i think everyone in the room knows that you're taking that comment out of context. there are two democratically-elected governments in iraq and --

q: were we invited to iraq?

Mr. mcclellan: there are two democratically-elected governemtns now in iraq and afghanistan, and we are there at their invitation. they are sovereign governments, and we are there today --

q: you mean if they had asked us out, that we would have left?

Mr. mcclellan: no, helen, i'm talking about today. we are there at their invitation. they are sovereign governemnts --

q: i'm talking about today, too.

Mr. mcclellan: -- and we are doing all we can to train and equip their security forces so that they can provide for their own security as they move forward on a free and democratic future.

q: did we invade those countries?

Mr. mcclellan: go ahead, steve...

Angry movie rant...

So two jerk-offs at Time magazine (they refer to them as "movie critics") have come up with a list of the 100 best movies of all time. One movie that was conspicuously left off of the list just happens to be my favorite movie, Apocolypse Now. They also left off some notable others, such as North by Northwest that I haven't seen, so those don't piss me off as much. This isn't just a personal beef. It's not like I'm complaining that they left off Pretty Woman and I'm upset because that Julia Roberts has such a pretty smile. I mean, this is Apocolypse Now. Never mind that the American Film Institute named it the 28th best film ever made, or the fact that the editorial board of the Modern Library named "Heart of Darkness" (the novella on which it was based) one of the 100 greatest English language novels of the 20th century.

Here's what really pisses me off though.

It's more about who did make the list. It had all of your truly notables, like Citizen Kane, The Godfather, and Casablanca. However, it also features such lesser known notables as 2003's Finding Nemo and the 1982 classic featuring acting hero Rutger Hauer, Blade Runner. That's right...fucking BLADE RUNNER. Blade Runner?!?!? I repeat myself only because I cannot believe they thought that Blade Runner is a better movie than Apocolypse Now. I mean...Blade Runner? Why not put Rambo III on the list? Because after all, Rambo didn't save his commanding officer from Afghani warlords, he also got a spike through his midestion, so to cauterize the wound, he was forced to pour gunpowder into his stomach and light it on fire, causing an explosion to burst out of both sides of his torso, after which he was fine. And he did this only after crawling miles through sewer pipes to escape a prison camp. Now that deserves a nod from Time magazine.

How does one define tautology? Well, it's strikingly similar to quagmire

So there's a very funny episode of the Simspons (entitled "Lard of the Dance" for those of you nerdy enough to know t.v. episodes by their titles) in which Homer tries to make money off of selling grease. In it, he has the following conversation with Bart after he's recylced the grease he got from cooking up and feeding to the dog a pound of bacon:

Homer: Woo-hoo! 63 cents!
Bart: But dad, all that bacon cost $27.
Homer: Yeah, but your mom bought it.
Bart: But doesn't she get her money from you?
Homer: And I get my money from grease...what's the problem?

The problem with this logic is that it's the same logic being used by the Bush administration in Iraq right now. As William Pfaff points out, the occupation of Iraq is what is responsible for the insurgency. It's pretty simple; the Iraqi people didn't like Sadaam, but strangley enough, they don't like someone else coming in to kill and torture them, either. The insurgency is simply a reaction to a bunch of foreignors who are killing thousands upon thousands of people. So the conversation basically goes like this:

Bush: We'll leave Iraq as soon as the insurgency stops.
Rational thought: But the insurgency only exists because they're upset about being occupied.
Bush: Yes, and we'll stop occupying them as soon as the insurgency stops.

People, say whatever you will will about the administration, but when their logic is the same logic used by Homer Simpson, it's definately time to become suspicious.

The best rap super group you've never heard of

Boston area MCs Mr. Lif and Akrobatik, along with longtime friend DJ Fakts One, have finally made it official and formed the new rap super group The Perceptionists. Their first release, Black Dialogue, is probably the best rap albulm of the year this far. With DJ Fakts dropping audio samples from Aqua Teen Hunger Force and a guest appearance by Shock G, a/k/a Humpty Hump (yes, he's still spunky and prefers a lumpier style oatmeal), it touches on both the poignant and the insignificant. The Lyrical style ranges from "Where are the weapons of mass destruction?/Been looking for months and we ain't found nothin/Hey Mr. President tell us something/Knew from the beggining yo ass was bluffin" to "Get ladies in bunches/They like the stomach so I don't do crunches."

Go support your local capitalist and get this album now.

Stop the new-cue-ler option

Folks, in case you haven't been paying attention, Bill Frist, Senate Majority Leader, is set to move through complicated parliamentary rules today to eliminate the filibuster so that he and W can move any judge they want through the senate with Democrats unable to put up any opposition. And they're actually trying to put up oposition this time.

Please take 2 minutes out of your day to call your senator and ask them to oppose removing the filibuster. This is an extremely important issue, the state of our democracy hangs in the balance, etc.

Senate Switchboard: (202) 224-3121

I'm mentally unstable, bitch!

Don't know how many of you are following the Dave Chapelle saga, but the story as to why the third season of his show isn't happening range from him being in a mental hospital in South Africa, to over-the-top partying and drugs, to taking a break for spirituality reasons, to the network suits being uncomfortable with how fas he's pushing the racial envelope. Whatever the case is, and wherever he's at, I think we all join in wishing him a speedy recovery.

And that he makes more of those shows where he makes fun of Rick James, because that's hi-larious and the joke certainley has not burned itself out!