lurid.org

there is enough treachery, hatred, violence,
absurdity in the average human being
to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man
the average woman
beware their love

their love is average, seeks average
but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their
hatred to kill you, to kill anybody.

not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy
anything that differs from their own

not being able to create art
they will not understand art

they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world

not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you

and their hatred will be perfect
like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock

their finest art

–Charles Bukowski, 1966

Weatherman vs. cockroach

Oh my gaaaaaad! Ahhhhuhhghrumphhpp! This is what just happened, that thing was crawling on my leg!

Reporter gets fly in his mouth, switches from straight-laced reporter mode to “omfg dude wtf lolz” mode in 3 seconds (NSFW language)

The fuck is that?? Shit! I’m dying in this fuckin’ country-ass fucked-up town. Shit flying in my mouth. The fuck, I can’t see. Pollen.

Killer flying attack lizard
(watch for the lizard at 0:13)

Scawwtht gahhh geee git goooh!! What the– Get this thing off me man!!

I’m sure most every everyone has read the stories about the pregnant “man” making the rounds lately.

He even appeared recently on Oprah and called the child a “miracle.”

Enough already! This “man” is just a female who began taking testosterone injections 10 years ago. All of the reproductive organs were left intact. This is only a man as much as any manly looking woman is a man. It’s not a miracle or even newsworthy that a transgendered person with female reproductive organs is pregnant. I’m sure it happens all the time.

Just because someone looks like a man doesn’t mean they are actually male.

This may be a news flash to some of you, but men can’t get pregant. So stop freaking out about this story.

The Manchester, UK City Council is looking for a Teenage Pregnancy Implementation Manager.

That’d look pretty snazzy on business card,eh?

Drudge is leading with the Secret Service / Obama story I commented on yesterday. Other news outlets have picked it up as well.

Let me make sure I have this straight, k? The TSA won’t allow people to carry bottled water, pool cues, or snow globes (huh?) through an airport security checkpoint. But yet, the Secret Service orders police to not screen people for weapons at an event held by the presumptive Democratic nominee for president?

All together now.

Wtf?

How can this possibly happen in this day and age in America? The government has spent the last 6 years telling us that terrorists are going get us unless we surrender our civil liberties for greater security. And by and large, we have stood by passively and watched as they took them from us, one by one. But when it comes to protecting a very high profile member of the opposition party, they are suddenly lax and carefree with security?

This evokes memories of the Bhutto assassination. How could it not? She was a popular member of the opposition party, who was assassinated because of lax security due to meddling by the ruling party.

Consider this story, which details how police abandoned their posts and did not screen everyone for weapons and implicates the ISI, Pakastan’s version of the Secret Service.

Perhaps more shockingly, an attendee at the rally where Bhutto was killed says police charged with protecting her “abandoned their posts,” leaving just a handful of Bhutto’s own bodyguards protecting her.

“Police officers had frisked the 3,000 to 4,000 people attending Thursday’s rally when they entered the park, but as the speakers from Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party droned on, the police abandoned many of their posts,” wrote Saeed Shah in an essay published by McClatchy News Service. “As she drove out through the gate, her main protection appeared to be her own bodyguards, who wore their usual white T-shirts inscribed: ‘Willing to die for Benazir.’”

While some intelligence officials, especially within the US, were quick to finger al Qaeda militants as responsible for Bhutto’s death, it remains unclear precisely who was responsible and some speculation has centered on Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, its military or even forces loyal to the current president Pervez Musharraf.

Sound familiar?

According to this UPI article, the Secret Service told Dallas police to stop screening people for weapons at an Obama rally because the crowd “seemed friendly.”

A huge WTF is in order here.

I’m sure republican leaders have seen the polls that show Obama beats McCain by over 5 points in a general election. I’m sure the republican establishment knows that they are getting outdrawn in the primaries by 7 million voters. Some simple math shows 13.4 million total voters in all republican primaries vs. 20.4 million voters in all democratic primaries. I’m sure the Bush administration knows that polls show McCain easily beats Clinton in a general election.

Maybe the Secret Service was honestly convinced there was no threat. Maybe it was just poor judgment and there was no sinister intent.

Sorta reminds me of the Eddie Murphy routine about the first black president. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwITXrXkdG8 and fast forward to 3:50. NSFW.

Radiohead’s seventh album, titled In Rainbows was released as a digital download today via their website. Users choose how much to pay, between £0.00 and £100.00.

Radiohead are no longer under contract with any music label, so all of the money goes directly to the band. The band owns all of the copyrights to the songs, and all of the future earning potential of the music.

This is the future of the music business.

I have a business trip to the Knoxville office tomorrow. I fire up the browser to check the weather and see this headline:

Air traffic resumes over Nashville after communications failure

I have a love/hate relationship with flying. When I was a kid, dad would fly the family around the country for vacations every summer. Getting on the plane, the acceleration of takeoff, having your own private a/c vent and reading light and a waitress to bring you snacks and cokes? Pretty much the coolest stuff ever.

Between the ages of ~10 and 23, I didn’t fly a single time. As childhood memories are wont to do, I remembered the cool stuff about flying and forgot all of the bad, which set up my first flight as an adult to be quite memorable. If you are a frequent flier, you are no doubt familiar with the climb profile of most commercial planes. Jets use full thrust during takeoff and the initial climb, until they retract the flaps about a minute into the flight. At which point, they reduce thrust to about 50% for the rest of the climb. The result of lowering the thrust is that the plane suddenly goes from climbing very quickly, to climbing very gradually. The effect you feel is akin to the feeling when a fast elevator reaches the top floor of a building. You get a bit of butterflies in your stomach and the sensation of falling. Why? Because your rate of acceleration changes from fast to slower, which your body equates to falling. I’m not making this up. Try it yourself.

Needless to say, I didn’t remember this detail from my days flying as a kid. When it happened, my thought process was something like this: I have flown a lot as a kid, I understand planes and how flying works. I do *NOT* remember this sensation of falling happening just after takeoff during my previous flights. I’ve read that the most likely time for an airplane crash to occur is just after takeoff or just before landing. Therefore, something is wrong with the airplane, and OMFG I’M GOING TO DIE THE FKING PLANE IS CRASHING.

My body dumped a huge surge of adrenaline into my system and I went into panic mode for a few minutes until I realized the plane wasn’t crashing after all.

It took me a good 10 years to get comfortable with flying again. I know it was an irrational fear, and I know source of my anxiety was that bad episode, but it didn’t matter. For a while there I was taking Xanax before flights and Jack and coke during. Now, I travel so much that I’m jaded to the whole thing and usually have no problems. But headlines like the one quoted above don’t help.

Legislatures May Act on Columbia — Silver Warns of Impact on State Aid

In an interview with The New York Sun, the speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, said lawmakers, outraged over Columbia’s insistence on allowing the Iranian president to speak at its World Leaders Forum, would consider reducing capital aid and other financial assistance to the school.

In other words, these republican assholes are upset because the president of Columbia university didn’t bow to public pressure and prevent the speech. So now they’re going to attempt to withhold funds in retaliation.

What a bunch of fucking idiots.

Noam Chomsky had this observation about controlling public opinion by limiting the scope of debate:

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion but allow very lively debate within that spectrum– even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limited put on the range of debate.

With that in mind, check out this recent headline regarding Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent speech at Columbia University.

Michelle Malkin: Ahmadinejad Shouldn’t Even Be Allowed on US Soil

Granted, it is from the Bush administration’s right-wing propaganda machine Fox News, so take it with a grain of salt.

But this one does come as a shock. Republican congressman Duncan Hunter from California has threatened to introduce legislation to cut off federal funding to Columbia for allowing the speech to go forward. WTF?