This is what happens when I'm not in charge

That's right, fucking West Virginia starts powering Blogger. Now you know why this blog is so rickety... too much moonshine and not enough genetic diversity.

Checkest Thou Black Bile?

Want a little more spring in your step? Want something to clean every cauldron in your hut? Want to kill Klimas with a poison modern science has most likely forgotten?

Everything you ever wanted to know about alchemy.

i'm obsessed with dukakis. if he had won the election he deserved, things would be completely different. a self-proclaimed 'proud liberal' in the presidency would have meant that clinton would never had rose through the ranks to become president, reganism would be rejected at the roots, w. would never have become president...

sigh. feez, can you alter your tear-power time-machine to run on caffine and nicotine?

DNC convention wrap-up

Forget the issues... the Democrats need a better stage manager, Mo Rocca is now an important pundit, and blogs are an all-new way to regurgitate what those retarded important pundits say. Where did we go wrong?

new 'vites, please.

nicole.fisher@zurichna.com
ian@jessandian.com

"their lives should not be experimented with"

-richard nixon

i have a hunch that klemis is the only one of you schlubs that will fully digest this site, but i'll give'er a post anyway.

Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?

As reparation for my crappy post yesterday, I offer you the Death Star.

The most convoluted ad campaign since Perfect Dark...

So, apparently in front of major movies this week, microsoft has put trailers for Halo 2. The odd thing is, at the very end of the trailer, there's a brief flash of a website -- www.ilovebees.com. Go check it out...it gets weirder from there.

it's an omen of things to come

in five hours, i have to go take the day two of the cali bar with day three looming.  you think i'd be sleeping, dreaming about torts and raping virgins, but no, my sister's cat pissed all over my bed and my pillows, making it impossible for me to sleep.

it's a goddamned sign, isn't it.  i should just go sell fruit on the side of the road like all the other normal non-white people in l.a.

mweh.

You're wearing a Red Wings jersey to a strip club -- you obviously suck

If good old ergot eye were less talented and less of a gentleman, he might write a story like this. Estimated time before Haddock rags on me for a certain episode in the story: 30 minutes. Parental guidance suggested.

Be ye warned...

Just to let you all know, i actually got my car towed out of the church lot by my place yesterday, so you may want to park in the doctor's lot next door, or somewhere else that's reasonably close.

Also, due to the $200.00 fine incurred from the towing, i have no money to play tonight. So either someone has to stake me, or i'm not playing. Bear that in mind when counting a potential number of players.

The Berlin Wall sucked

A really interesting story of how three people managed to defect from East Germany back in the day. One-time pads, dead drops...

the chinese lack of respect for their own lives is appalling.

you owe it to them to fucking blow up as many of their helicopters as possible.

'fleep' is good.

and that's why you should read it.

here here.

ROBB CARJACK-FIREARM

fighting crime online has never been so easy.

Your inept government and you...

So apparently the 911 commision's full report can be viewed online. Go give it a look see.

the gold chips are worth a thousand, the silver chips are worth...

what's next? making board games olympic sports?

One small jelly doughnut

NASA just put up a bunch of new photos from the Apollo 11 mission. Really pretty. Right now their server is pretty much fucked, but people have mirrored a few of the better ones here and here.

If you have QuickTime, there are interactive panoramas here and here.

Your Saturday:

Is a good day to rehash old political matters, while enjoying a lively discussion of current political matters.

Anyway, if anybody wants to come over this Saturday afternoon, my door is open.

 

bounty hunters? we don't need their scum.

admittedly a premature conclusion to draw, this guy could be the coolest fucker ever.

from the bbc:

A US citizen arrested in Kabul over an alleged freelance counter-terrorism operation says he was working with the knowledge of the US defence secretary.
Jonathan K Idema said the US government had abandoned him. Washington says he was a mercenary.

Mr Idema was speaking shortly before he went on trial with two other Americans, Edward Caraballo and Brent Bennett.

The trial, on charges of torture, kidnapping and running a private jail, was adjourned on Wednesday for 15 days.

Bread and circuses

Michael Jackson wants an exception made in his case... to the Bill of Rights?

The New Yorker does McSwy's

"Oh, snap!" Mr. Kennedy recalls thinking at the time. "It’s getting kind of hectic up in this piece."

Only nerds will find this funny

But hey, I laughed.

Britney == Microsoft

they're ba-a-ack!

the dems came out swatting today with the official 2004 democratic party platform. you should read it. the preamble sounds like the roll-up text from a star wars movie.

alright.

what the fuck is going on this morning? i mean, holy fucking shit!

PRESIDENT George Bush has promised that if re-elected in November he will make regime change in Iran his new target.
Bush named Iran as part of the Axis of Evil along with North Korea and Iraq almost three years ago. A US government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that military action would not be overt in changing Iran, but rather that the US would work to stir revolts in the country and hope to topple the current conservative religious leadership.

The official said: “If George Bush is re-elected there will be much more intervention in the internal affairs of Iran.”

he-fuh-wuh?

f-f-from the s-s-simon:

...he heard two separate eyewitness accounts that Ayad Allawi, currently serving as Prime Minister of the new Iraqi government, personally executed as many as six suspected rebels to "set an example" against future insurgency.

what's your .iq?

regardless of what this guy says, we have a long way to go before we figure out how to wage war via the internet.

from the guardian:

Following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the lifting of sanctions, all that might have changed - except that 49-year-old Mr Elashi is now in jail and unable to administer any ".iq" websites.

head to the guardian for the full story.

Straight thug spammers

Don't fuck with the Nigerians.

Godless Sims

A kind of poorly-written article on religion in video games -- interesting quotes from Will Wright, Sid Meier, and Richard Garriott, though. Be sure to have a clean set of underpants at the ready, Haddock.

Les Cartes Gigantiques II: Electric Boogaloo

Okay, so i know who the basic people coming to cards tomorrow are. I just need to know if anyone's bringing any friends to cards this time...that way we can at least know in advance if a bajillion people are coming. I know fang isn't coming this week, i think Cree is bringing his friend, and i've invited rebecca and am inviting anne chan. I know all the regulars are coming, so that makes 6 people already. Should be another big night, boys. Bring your money.

yay! assholes!

stop tinkering with the fabric of the blog-o-verse, cocksuckers.

somebody save me. i don't care how you do it.

i realize most of you are on the periphery of my 'smallville' binge, a dramatic three week adventure that has taken me from the cratered cornfields of smalltown kansas to the mean streets of bigtown kansas.  i've consumed two seasons of highly stylized schlock, and survived not only to tell the tale but to be horribly crippled by withdrawal symptoms. 
 
see, the beauty of 'smallville' is not that sci-fi is cool for teenagers, or that the cast is peopled by attractive human beings.  these things increase the show's appeal for me as a nerd-ridden adult, true.  but the genius is in the design.  the characters in 'smallville,' intrepid teenagers the lot of them, solve mysteries, fall in love, break each others hearts, drink a good deal of coffee, stay up late at night, write newspapers, etc.  they all live these idealized adult lives, without sacrificing any of the awkward teenage glamour.  the boxcar children come of age.  they are half us now, half us then.
 
i understand that the inclination to draw parallels to 'buffy' is strong.  but 'buffy' balked, systematically eliminating the adult characters one by one, effacing the 'teenage-ness' from the main characters and leaving us with a sad passion play about the pitfalls of being unique.  those adults, no matter how complicit with adolescent adventuring, establish the frame of reference, the limits of the universe.  clark can run faster than the speed of sound, but he can't flagrantly defy his father.  these stories are too fantastic and have too much potential to become global in scope if narrative cages aren't built around them.  remember the severe limitations imposed on the early 'x-files' story lines, when the writers refused to even wink at the audience when alien after alien turned out to be a fake.  when the show broke the fetters of the small screen for the over-produced gloss of the big one, so too did it gallop free of the very restraints that made it interesting and real.  'buffy's' appeal was never as great as 'the x-files'', but it too erected a literal monument to the absurd and took everyone over the edge with it.
 
when it comes right down to it, science fiction is only limited by the human elements at the core of the narrative.  we can go as far as our human heroes take us.  i'm not saying 'smallville' is crowded with good characters; rather, it's crowded with the right characters, whirling in a gravitational ballet that is more space opera than soap opera.  i'm lucky enough to be watching this show for the right reasons.

If you're like me, and like Monkey Punch...

Check this out. I don't know anything about it, and lord knows i can't read japanese, but apparently it's a new show he has coming out.  Also, apparently he had one out this season (called Cinderella Boy), that i totally missed. Gotta go grab that.

"The Spine"

I started writing a review of TMBG's new album but it got too long, so I stuck over on my secret blog. That's right, I have a secret blog... don't you?

It's really fun and totally easy

(like losing your virginity?)

It's a shame I don't know anyone's work phone number, because then there would be hilarity and comedy gold and whatever tired catchphrase Strong Bad has these days.

Hilary Duff talks to your friends

you're drinking bordeaux with chicken?

your acerbic waiter-friend, or your acerbic millionaire-friend? you decide.

it is time for you all to face your shortcomings as functional human beings.

klemis, you can step outside.

it occurred to me that stephanie never got onto the blog, right?

1. she doesn't view her junk mail, so she missed my invite, 2. i will say without any fear of this assumption being inappropriate that fees never sent another one, probably because, 3. joel never gave fees the revised instructions he gave me before the counterrevolution, but 4. no one will give a shit until we are sitting around talking about something that happened on the blog and stephanie remembers that she never got invited and yells at us all.

i don't know why it came into my head as the phone continues to not ring, but i'll probably stab some one if 4. comes about.

how did the final hour of 'les cartes gigantique' go last night?

A skelton riding an old-style bike...

Well, they've gone from doing little shorts with Homestar to doing a full-fledged video. It's actually not that bad. I really like the song, and the video's kindof entertaining...

Just tell her how you feel

The images at the top of this article kinda remind me of that one movie. You know the one.

By the way, there's this cool site called Bug Me Not that lets you bypass sites that require registration. No, not those kind of sites.

A populated poker night...

Okay all, looks like we're actually going to have 7 or 8 people at poker night tonight! By my estimation, the only people that are up in the air about showing up are Rob Roan and Fishel. If anyone knows if they're coming, by all means, let me know. Also, apparently Kochis is bringing his boss to play as well. Should be interesting.

Anyway, if people could bring snacky-type things, or maybe bottles of coke or some such, that would be cool, since we don't have much snack food at the place.

You may ask yourself: where is that large automobile?

An amusing but dumb game.

If Your Name Is C.H.

And you are missing your cell-phone, the J-Bomb can help.

Goin' out for a little drive / Could be the last time you see me alive

So my car is totalled -- the full story will have to wait til Tuesday, but the megashort version is that nobody got hurt and it was the other guy's fault. So I'm the market for a new car. I liked my Toyota Corolla, but I'm curious if there are better cars in the class. My taste in cars is like that of an aging Amazon, as my general criteria are:

1. Reliability
2. Leg room
3. Fuel efficiency
4. Coolness

Any advice?

dean v. nader: this time it's political

i know you are all capable of listening to radio telemagraph-o-casts over the intr-o-net, so you should tune in to the charmingly under-produced justice talking for a friday afternoon fracas featuring the ever-ferocious SCREAMIN' DR. DEAN versus RALPH 'THE GREEN MACHINE' NADER. they'll be debating the state of politics, parties and election in the us of a.

starts in t-11 minutes, so get a click on.

In an interstellar burst

I'm back to the stupid blogiverse. I have two links for your consumption. One is weird and possibly interesting. The other, good old Zargon will undoubtedly needle me over. My dedication, however, to the collective good compels me forward. Here is one link. Here is the other.

celebrate morrissey.

hot and influential, morrissey deserves all of our respect.

the virus took a while to become active...

...but i'm totally infected. klemis, it fucking rocks.

as much as it pains you all to heed any recommendation i make...

...i honestly would not mind if you went to mcsweeny's and read today's feature, 'T H E N O R T H
K O R E A N S T A T E
N E W S S E R V I C E
P I C K S U P O N
L E S S G L O B A L L Y
R E L E V A N T
A M E R I C A N N E W S'

thank you, and fuck yourselves.

The Mysteries of Finance...

So, sitting down last night after that post-poker cashing out fiasco, I added up all the numbers, and we ended up with $13 dollars unaccounted for. The total bank should have been $140, but we paid out $127 in chips, with the mystery $6 left over. Even assuming I shortchanged myself by $5, that still leaves $8 lost to the vagaries of time and space. Unless it was someone's obsessive-compulsive changing of his chips to red...

Anyway, let's keep better track next week.

Crappy Coding Frustrates Local Blogger

Blogspot's brilliant coding has made it a Herculean task to merely read the page, and thoughts of posting comments might as well be washed from your mind. In fact, the odds of any of you actually seeing this post are probably in the range of 1%-4%, so congrats if you do.

slam: let the boys be boys.

so bush's website was slamming edwards this morning, and i'm thinking, 'woah, i can't believe i missed the news that edwards was chosen as veep.' so i check my email, and, lo and behold, kerry made the decision this morning. like 15 fucking minutes ago.

it goes without saying that the bush team is staffed with insiders, and this whole choosing edwards thing surprises no one, but bush's people had their finger on the left-click, ready to drop this barb in cyberspace the absolute fucking minute kerry made it public.

i mean, i thought this wasn't the time for pessimism and negativity...

well they said it was impossible.

yes, they said it was impossible. sure, strongbad emails have always played a dangerous game of chicken with that lumbering trans-continental freight train called mediocrity. perhaps that's why they didn't see the flaming plane wreck of total shit descending upon them. 'cheatday' has managed, in a feeble formulaic gasp, to achieve a new low. it features: 1.) a made-up holiday, 2.) strong bad singing, 3.) a dumb strongmad line and 4.) a retarded name produced by colliding ethnic phonetics at low speeds.

my conclusion? they've made a program that randomly generates s.b. emails every couple'a weeks.

This takes bravery

Who among you wishes to view the motion picture Dodgeball tonight? Location and time to be determined by interest.

Bums and their crazy antics

So some guy on the street asked me for a quarter and I told him I didn't have a quarter for the guy standing right next to him that just asked me so why would I have a quarter for him? and he told me I couldn't talk like that to him 'cause "he ain't no ho." I told him it was cool and he didn't have to worry about it because there was no way his ugly ass could be a ho. True Story.

Let Freedom Reign, Said He

In the spirit of glasnost, I offer two ridiculous Kuro5hin stories: How to get free copies at Kinko's and Confessions of a guy with a nervous bladder.

the brotherhood of men!

written from the small mountain bodega that has kept me hidden from the FEES DEATHSKWADS

peace, brothers, peace! fees can cry to blog-o-strators, AFCINS can nuke the jerk store...what does it prove?

we should sign a truce (based largely around the principle of NOT ending sentences with prepositions. i mean, 'took it back over?' c'mon now.)

let's exchange pows, shake hands and swap the traditional handjobs.