Since "Who's Tucker?" Won...

Preston Tucker was an engineer and eventually automobile designer.

He was born in Capac, Michigan, September 21, 1906.

His first automotive experience was working on the production line at Ford Motor Company; he was demoted because he installed a heater in the dashboard of some of the cars he worked on, a feature that at that time Ford did not install.

After time selling cars, designing Indy 500 racers, and building armored cars for the Dutch government, (able to hit 80 MPH, in an armored car, in 1939? Unheard of.) Tucker spent time designing and building armored gun turrets for the U. S. Navy.

Finally, in the 1940's, Tucker began work on one of the world's all-time great "concept cars."

Named the Tucker Torpedo, it was the first American vehicle to incorporate such features as a rear-mounted engine, disc brakes, fuel injection, a padded dashboard, instrumentation in front of the steering wheel, and - last but not least - a center headlight that turned in the direction of the steering wheel, an innovation STILL not used today.

However, Tucker ran out of money, and tried to raise money in a way that raised eyebrows - by selling accessories for the Torpedo before the vehicle was even in production. This caused his indictment for fraud in 1949, and the trial and legal fees left Tucker Corporation bankrupt.

Only 50 Torpedoes were ever built, 37 from the production shop at Tucker Corporation, and 13 later finished from parts in stores. The major auto manufacturers at the time pushed heavily to have him indicted, and "helped" out the prosecution as much as they could, and as a result Tucker was put out of business before being able to become a serious threat to their business.

He was able to resurrect his reputation after the trial, but died from cancer in 1956 before his next automotive project, a sports car, was ever completed.

His innovative ideas - with the exception of the swivelling headlights, which you stil won't see on the road - are still used by auto manufacturers to this day.

Of the 51 (including the prototype) Tucker '48 sedans ever built, 47 still exist today.

The Tucker Torpedo featured:

• 334.1 cubic inch flat-6 engine, adapted from a helicopter engine. 166 horsepower!
  
• First automobile to have a "safety cage."
• First automobile to mount the steering box behind the front axle to protect the driver from front-end collisions.
• First (and only!) automobile to use a swiveling headlight.
• First "hemi."
• First fuel-injected automotive engine.
• First "safety glass" pop-out windshield.
• Automatic transmission. (In the prototype. They were unable to work all the bugs out before production, and the existing Tucker '48's have manual transmissions.)
  
• 4-wheel independent suspension.
• Tubular shocks.
• First all-sealed water cooling system.
• A drag coefficient of only 0.27 - better than 90% of the cars on the road today, which average between 0.3 and 0.35. Equivalent would be the Infiniti G35, or the Mercedes-Benz W-203 C-class.
  
• Top speed of 109 MPH, and gets 24 MPG. I will note that this is better than the car I drive now.
• Oddly, the Torpedo did not have seat belts - Tucker had considered them, but rejected them because he was afraid they might give the impression his car was unsafe.

This is Tucker Torpedo #34; it has only 4,500 miles on it!

To give you an idea, this vehicle has about the same weight to power ratio as a 2005 Lexus LX. And it was made in 1948.

Preston Tucker was one of America's automotive pioneers.

1948 Tucker Sedan, Driver's side.



1948 Tucker Sedan, Passenger side.



1948 Tucker Sedan, Rear.

   1948 Tucker Sedan, dashboard detail.



1948 Tucker Sedan, Steering wheel detail.

1948 Tucker Sedan, Interior.

We're not worthy, dude.

Tara Insists...

So, here's a link to my latest article over at Xeno's Paradox.



The reason she wants to see it here is so you can all go read about the asteroid that might destroy a huge chunk of our terrain, 99942 Apophis.



It's about halfway down the article.

No Shortage Of Weird, Or Stupid.

Dell Computers' Fatal Weakness: SMS

when you “put your mobile phone close to the cd-rom unit of the Dell Optiplex GX520 and then recieve a sms/txt” it “goes into some sort of suspension mode from which you can’t bring it back without breaking power or holding down the power button for four seconds.

Yeah, that's right: you can shut down a Dell by getting a text message. Whoa, Dude, you're getting an irreversible standby mode.


Irony struck violently on Saturday, after a small plane carrying skydivers crashed outside Sullivan, Missouri. Everyone inside died, which is tragic. THEY WERE SKYDIVERS, which lends credibility to my theory that people ought not to try to jump out of perfectly good aircraft - UNLESS THEY'RE CRASHING.

You'd think that would be a GOOD time to try out this whole "skydiving" thing, hmmm?



A Penn State student was arrested on Friday after coming out of his house to see what was causing the huge commotion in the street. Seeing that the street was filled with police, Neftaly Cruz, 21, of Philadelphia, pulled out his camera phone to take a picture, and was immediately snagged by a police officer and dragged off in handcuffs. The explanation? Apparently it is illegal to photograph the police. Nobody mentioned in the article what seemed obvious to me - that this law was instated to prevent any further Rodney King videos - but I will say it's utter bullshit, and they ought not to get away with it. If you're out in public, you're fair game, there, chum. That's how that whole "public" thing works.



Scientists at Columbia University Medical Center in New York have announced they've discovered a protein switch in human nerve cells that, when activated, turns on chronic pain symptoms, such as those found in arthritis sufferers. They're now working on a pill to turn that protein off. They will no doubt make billions, until in 10 years the drug is found to also cause liver damage, kidney failure, nerve damage, and bad breath.



Just so you know, there is, but there isn't, a disease called Morgellons, which does, or doesn't, cause skin lesions, pain, "fibers" growing from the skin, and a sensation of crawling upon the skin, except that there is, but isn't any physical evidence that it actually exists.
Confused yet?
You should be; although the medical establishment so far denies the existence of the syndrome, calling it a "delusional parasitosis," which apparently means "they're crazy, so they think they have bugs on them."
What's funny about that is that there are over 1100 cases of it so far, and the numbers are climbing steadily; and yet, so far not a single doctor has been willing to take the simple step of dragging the patient into the lab, and simply testing to see if the damn stuff really exists or not. I know, that's kind of a left-field, out there kinda idea, but MAYBE YOU OUGHTA RUN SOME TESTS TO BE SURE. Just thinking out loud here.



Just so you know, we may be in the last years of Earth's existence!!! SCAAARY!!!
Actually, it really is, but we're not in any rush to colonize outer space anyway.
But, just in case anyone feels like writing letters about extraterrestrial colonization, in 2029 an asteroid called "Apophis" after the Egyptian god of nihilism (really, dissolution and the void, but close enough) will pass closer to Earth than our own communications satellites.
This first orbit will determine, thanks to Earth's own gravitational effects upon Apophis, whether or not it will hit us head-on during its second orbit in 2036. For this reason alone, 99942 Apophis, as it is dubbed by NASA, retains a 1 on the Torino Hazard Scale; however, it should be mentioned that thus far this particular asteroid is the only object in recorded history to reach a 4 on the Torino scale; the 1 rating currently only applies to the approach due April 13th, 2036. It will certainly be raised or lowered after the 2029 approach.
To give you an idea what we're talking about here, this is a rock approximately 390 meters in diameter - about four and a quarter football fields - and weighing 174,165,187,130 pounds. Estimates place the energy released should it hit as 880 megatons - about 65,000 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. To give another example, it's about 44 times more powerful than the imapct that created Barringer Crater - better known as "Meteor Crater" in Arizona. Now, according to the eggheads, they're gonna try to go all Hollywood style on it and "nudge" it a bit to keep it from hitting any of the orbital sweet spots, called "gravitational keyholes" that would put it on track to hit us.
Good luck with that; it still weighs 174 billion pounds. At least there's one consolation; if it hits us, there's some speculation that we could in fact lose California for good.



Nothing like a little scare-mongering, eh?



Ok, now I know I've said before that if you're 85, you probably shouldn't be driving; but now there's a stack of injured Starbucks patrons who agree with me. That's thanks to Ted Kawashima, of El Monte, California, who drove his Toyota into a crowded patio at Starbucks on Friday night. Apparently, he just can't tell the gas from the brake anymore. However, the cops apparently aren't going to charge him with anything, despite two of his victims needing hospital stays, so he'll be free to do it again next week. Woohoo, go LAPD!



And finally, did you know that food manufacturers are actually intentionally dosing your food with a chemical that causes you to crave more of their product?
You didn't?
They are. Look at the ingredients for - well - any soda you drink. What do you find: High Fructose Corn Syrup. Why that, and not sugar? Two reasons: HFCS is cheaper, and it doesn't process in your body the way cane sugar does. Cane sugar causes your body to produce a hormone that gives you a feeling of fullness, while HFCS not only does not produce that hormone, but actually blocks it, causing you to remain hungry despite eating or drinking way too much. Isn't that nice?
So, if you drink Mountain Dew, Pepsi, Coke, Dr. Pepper, or your local store brand generic cola, you're drinking not one, but TWO addictive chemicals - HFCS and caffeine. Gotta love it.

This Is Why I Never Sing In Public.

...Not because I can't sing - I actually can, thanks - but because I might get sued.



If you think I'm kidding, think again.



ASCAP is suing a Syracuse, NY karaoke bar for insufficient royalties paid for their karaoke performances.



Pretty soon, we won't be able to sing in the shower, either; and your car will be right out.



After all, allowing other people to see your lips move in the shape of the lyrics to a song constitutes illegally sharing that content with them, doesn't it?



Just wait, if it's not illegal, it will be.

From The Department Of "Hey, Tucker, We Missed Ya"

...comes Martin Eberhard, CEO of Tesla Motors.



He's producing an electric car that gets comparable performance to gasoline cars, can plug in anywhere, can run 250 miles on a single charge, and - wait for it - costs about 1 cent a mile.



According to the article, currently the cars are (obviously) wildly expensive, but they have plans to get a family version at a reasonable price onto the street in three years.



Two things:



One, tell me I didn't say something about this already. Several times, even.



Two, anyone want to place bets on how fast the oil companies will shut this down?



(*A note: if "Who's Tucker" gets too many votes, I will do a post about the guy so you know. Don't be afraid to vote for it if you don't know.)

You've Heard Me Say This Before...

But, here I am, saying it again.



IRAQ HAD WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION. The reason we haven't found them is because they hid some of them - the FIVE HUNDRED they DID IN FACT ALREADY FIND - and sent the rest to Syria.



Yet another eyewitness report of WMDs being shipped to Syria before the U.S. invasion hit today.



How many times does this have to get reported before the PEOPLE - not the media, who will NEVER admit that they were wrong - realize that at least one of the many, many reasons Congress cited for going to Iraq in the first place was absolutely true, and no lying in fact took place.



As I've said before, Bush has done many, many things wrong. Hate him for them.



Iraq isn't one of them.

Yeah, So, If You Live In Chicago, You're Gonna Hate It.

Because your city council just passed an ordinance requiring any retailer in the so-called "big-box" market - that's anything over 50,000 square feet, in other words, Wal-Mart and Target - to pay $10 per hour in wages and $3 per hour in benefits by 2010.



Wal-Mart responded by canceling plans for future expansion - they HAD been planning to build as many as 20 new locations in Chicago over the next five years, but not anymore. Too bad for those workers. I guess they didn't need $7.25 / hour jobs as bad as they needed to sit at home, unemployed, saying "Woooo! $10 minimum wage! Yeehaaaa!"



Oh, and Target not only canceled future expansion - three new stores in the South Side - but warned that they were likely to close existing stores.



Wal-Mart will also likely close existing stores, but they're less likely to rattle their sabers about it.



Anyway, if you live in Chicago, all your retail prices are gonna go through the roof over the next few years. Without the big-box discounters, you're gonna be paying full retail - and anyone who opens a big-box store under the new ordinance will simply pass along the savings to you. (That's sarcasm, you know.)



So: minimum wage hike. Good luck with that.

And Just Because I Want To Show The Love...

You gotta give respect. DDR may be the most completely ridiculous game ever, but some people are damn good at it, like these two guys here:

\r\nBut the world's all-time champion, the best there ever was, or will be, is this gentleman right here. Show some love.
\r\n
\r\n
\r\n
\r\nDude. He has one leg, and can outdance 90% of the human race. As Sharkey from Badassmofo.com would say: Applaud, bitches!

Another Actual Conversation...

Me: You can't actually do that without a nuclear reactor. You don't have a nuclear reactor, do you?



Her: I don't think so... I can be a bit emotional sometimes, but...







Tara, I love you, you fricken goofball.

Remember Those Tax Cuts Destroying The Economy? Yeah, About That...

Apparently, it just ain't true.



You know I hate to say that Bush has done anything right, but sadly, again, it appears he wasn't wrong.



Now, those of you who know me know my position is that ALL tax cuts are inherently good; here's yet more evidence.



Despite all the doom and gloom and naysaying by SOME people, did you know that since the tax cuts in 2003, our economy has grown?



Did you know that it's GROWN an amount equal to the Gross Domestic Product of China?



Not Taiwan, either;  the People's Republic of China, the most populous nation in the world.



That's right. In three years, our economy has expanded by about 2.2 TRILLION dollars.



That's 2,200,000,000,000. BIIIIIG number. During the first year of the Reagan administration, our ENTIRE economy was about 4 trillion dollars; in the last three years, we've grown over half that much.



Why? Because corporations don't pay taxes. Customers do. In case you've never noticed, although you should have, every time there's a tax hike, prices go up, across the economy. Every time there's a minimum wage hike, the same. In fact, every time there's an economic change that results in increased costs to corporations, that translates without pause into increased costs for the consumer.



Citizens pay ALL taxes, without exception. No-one seems to remember that. When there is a tax cut, it DOES NOT MATTER who it affects; ultimately it affects you and me, in the form of lower prices.



Thus, the surge in small business jobs of recent years - despite the media whining that big corporations aren't hiring as much, which is true, the simple fact is that the job market has GROWN in this country under the Bush administration. The economy has grown under the Bush administration. EVEN TAX REVENUES HAVE GROWN UNDER THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION.



Because President Bush understands what I've said so many times before: you have more pies if you take a tenth each of fifty pies than you do if you take a fifth each of five. Lower taxes on corporations, and more companies will be created, and be able to afford to pay those taxes.



Lower the taxes on your citizens, and fewer of them will have to claim exemptions to avoid paying at all.



Lower the taxes on ANYONE OR ANYTHING and the economy strengthens, because costs lower; this means increased tax revenue, as there are more sources for it.



Damn shame so many people in the media can't seem to figure that out.

An Actual Conversation...

Me: GodDAMN your elbows are sharp!



Her: They're not that sharp!



Me: Yes they are! They oughta be registered as lethal weapons! Look at this pointy thing on the end!



Her: You have points on your elbows too!



Me: Yes, dear, but I KNOW mine are dangerous. This is why I don't hit you in the head with them.



Her: I don't hit you!



Me: You do too, at least twice a week.



Her: It doesn't count if I'm sleeping!



Me: Still hurts, though. Especially when you get me right in the eye.



Her: When did that happen?



Me: The other night. There you are, on your side, facing the wall, I go to put my arm around you, suddenly I'm seeing stars and there's this pain in my soul. When I can see again, you're on your back. I say "OW, WTF." And you? You go "Ehhhh." All whiny like I did something wrong.



Her: But I was sleeping!



Me: Yeah. One night you're gonna get me in the eye, and it's just gonna burst, and I'm gonna be like "Ahhhh! Ahhhhh!" and there will be jelly everywhere, and blood going like "Squirt!"



Her: Ewwwwww! You're gross!



Me: I'll make sure it squirts RIGHT ON YOU.





This is the kind of teasing to expect if any of you ever come visit us.

The Most Magically Stupidest Thing Ever. EVER.

And I mean it.



We have lost, forever. The sue-happy fucktards will rule the world.



Why do I say this?



Because Washington, D. C. is beginning a program to prevent lawsuits.



Specifically, to prevent "OMG I CANNOT WALK IN A STRAIGHT LINE AND IT'S YOUR FAULT WTF!! LOLZ!!!"



More specifically: they're going to be building the sidewalks out of rubber from now on.



THEY'RE MAKING RUBBER SIDEWALKS SO YOU DON'T GET AN OUCHIE.

Even OMGWTF, even OMFGWTF, doesn't do it.



This deserves...



Oh, hell, I don't know what it deserves. A firing squad?

The, Seriously, Most Badass DDR Player EVER.

This guy has no life.



At all.



However, he moves so fast he looks like he hovering, so that's gotta count for something.

In Case There Are Any Of You Out There Who Don't Know...

...THIS is why you want to watch Battlestar Galactica Season 3.

\r\nYou may drool now.
\r\n
\r\nThree words.
\r\n
\r\n Best. Show. EVAR.

Just So You Guys Know...

...we've established that my computer is having two simultaneous problems.



First, it's overheating wildly, and I'm not sure why; I replaced the CPU fan and checked the fan on the graphics card - fine - the case fans - fine - and the hard disk coolers - fine - so I'm not sure WTF.



Second, the primary HD is getting ready to die.





Soooooo, Tara and I are currently sharing her PC.



Bear with us.



I do, of course, have a Master Planâ„¢ which is to replace the HD with a similar one, and the current HSF with a water kit that will also let me take the aging reference fan off the graphics card and put a water block on the CPU and the graphics card.



I am, of course, being a cheap bastard about this, but then, we're poor, so I have to.



Anyway, this is the water kit I'm planning on getting, and this is the HD. I know, it's small, but then, I have a much bigger drive for data / games / "other activities," which is perfectly fine; the drive I'm using as HD0 right now is a 40GB drive, and I actually have a good bit of space on it. You'd be amazed how little space you use up if all you have is Windows, bookmarks, and OpenOffice.



For those who are curious, the primary reason I use a dual-HD approach is speed (Windows and games not fighting for HD access= Love,) but the second (a very CLOSE second) is the fact that if one drive goes down, the contents of the second are safe. If the games drive dies, my computer is still up, I just have to wait a week or so to play Homeworld 2; if the system drive dies, at least I didn't lose my data. Add in redundancy in terms of a save game folder on C: and a bookmarks folder on D: and resolving a problem like this becomes almost an issue only of $$. Still have to reinstall WinXP, but I imaged my XP CD with nLite and slipstreamed Service Pack 2, as well as adding all my device drivers and my media player / office software / codecs on the one disc, and set it up for an unattended installation.



What all that means is that basically I can pop the CD in, reboot, and go get a snack, and when I get back, my system is good. Gotta love nLite. If you haven't used it, you should. Far better to simply NOT INSTALL all the extra garbage that comes with XP than to have to manually turn all that crap off in Services Manager.



The upshot of all this is that my computer will be back up in a few weeks, hopefully; in the meantime, it's just a waiting game until I get the money to order the stuff I need. No biggie. When Tara wants the intarwebs, I have my PS2 right here in the bedroom. Heh.

For All The Extremists, On Either Side...

...not of politics, but of the so-called "intelligent design" debate.



Let me clear things up for you, yet again, since this seems to keep coming up over and over.



Science and creationism are not mutually exclusive.



EVOLUTION and creationism are not mutually exclusive.



Theology and science explore DIFFERENT THINGS.



Science explores HOW something happens. Theology explores WHY it happens.



The Biblical book of Genesis says God created the world. IT DOES NOT SAY HOW. It says God created all the animals, insects, fish, plants and everything that inhabits the planet. IT DOES NOT SAY HOW.

It DOES say it took six days, but considering there WASN'T such a thing as a day until quite a bit along in the process, I find that figure to be allegorical for "we don't know how long it took, but it was cool."



Genesis also says that God's first act of Creation was to say "Let there be light!" (Fiat Lux! Woot Latin class.) Science says the light from the Big Bang can still be seen today. That's a pretty huge light, like, say, what would happen if God said "Let there be light!"



Science says that going from the Big Bang to now took "we don't know how long, but it was cool." Sound familiar? They don't know exactly how long it took. They can come up with a reasonable guesstimate, but even the foremost of physicists point out that according to their experiments, as you get closer to the conditions at the Big Bang, the rules of time become somewhat flexible.



Genesis says God created all life. It never, even once, says "...and He in his wisdom did NOT use evolution to do so." BECAUSE RELIGION IS NOT CONCERNED WITH HOW. IT IS CONCERNED WITH WHY.



Science does not speculate as to the meaning of life, or the REASON there was a Big Bang in the first place. BECAUSE SCIENCE IS NOT CONCERNED WITH WHY. IT IS CONCERNED WITH HOW.



Is this clear enough? I am sick of people on either side of the "debate" trying to pelt each other with apples and oranges; the two sides are simply not discussing the same things.



Science belongs in a classroom, because it enables our children to find jobs.



Religion belongs in a church, because it enables our children to find themselves.



Science does not belong in a church, mostly because organized religions are innately illogical, and science requires logic. Coincidentally, so does the function of the universe, which seems to escape most religionists.



Religion does not belong in a school, mostly because  organized religions are inherently illogical, and jobs require people who can think logically.



There's nothing wrong with being spiritual, but if you let it shut off your brain, and its ability to compare theory to evidence, then you're risking dire consequences, such as being surprised when you drop something and it falls onto your toe.



As I said, the universe functions logically. Just because we don't know how it all works yet is no reason to expect that we won't eventually, or can't; it just means we don't right now. The supporters of intelligent design frequently use the argument that life contains an "irreducible complexity," which means that it's so complicated that it is impossible to truly understand.



To which I respond that if they weren't aware of this, we didn't even know there is such a thing as GERMS 200 years ago. Just because we haven't figured it out yet, doesn't mean we CAN'T.



The IC argument is the same as saying "the bus has been on time all week, so it will always be on time." Wanna bet?



As an added bonus, I will throw in Something To Think Aboutâ„¢. IF you assume that God created the universe, you imply that the universe contains rules. You might call those rules PHYSICAL LAW. Do we know what they all are? Nope, not by a long shot. But the fact that we live here - under those rules - means that it IS inherently possible for us to understand the rules, since to do so all we have to do is understand OURSELVES and the deed is accomplished.



Since God is - dependent on your point of view - either outside those rules, or the physical substance of them, or their enforcer, we are inherently unable to understand him in specific terms, and only able to generalize.



Which is WHY religion and science are concerned with different things; science is the study of the rules under which the universe operates, while religion is the search for that which lies outside those rules.



Since the MSM will never, ever get that straight, I felt I was obliged to clear that little matter up for you.

Just In Case Anyone Is Interested...

You can get tilapia fillets from your grocer - Weis has them $2.99 a pound this week.



So:



2 cups lemon juice

3 tbsp. masa flour (fine corn flour. I use Goya brand, but that's up to you.)

2 tbsp. each garlic and onion powder

3 tbsp. butter / margarine / whatever.

1 tsp. black pepper



Heat on medium until butter is melted and masa is mixed evenly, no lumps. (Masa will expand. If the sauce thickens too much, add more lemon juice.)

Turn heat up to medium-high and simmer for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently.

Remove from heat.

This sauce is very sour. Tara adds sugar, but I didn't feel it needed it.



But anyway: sugar to taste.



Fry the tilapia fillets on medium either in butter or a very light oil. They should be turned when the edges get white, and should only cook until they are white and flaky.



Do NOT overcook - if it burns, it ruins it.



Good luck trying to get them out of the pan in one piece, LMAO.



Anyway, when they've cooled enough to eat, serve with the lemon butter sauce.

Don't use too much - it drowns the flavor of the tilapia, which is quite good.



The best part? The only sodium in the whole shebang is in the butter and fish - if you can get unsalted butter, no salt at all. The fish depends on whether it's fresh or packed; fresh has only naturally occurring sodium, which isn't much.



Garlic / onion powder / lemon juice = zero mg Na.



Low salt living at it's finest.



We added in a pot of fresh steamed snap peas and a bowl of applesauce apiece as dessert.



Pimp dinner, right there. And altogether it cost us about $10 - with ingredients left over for several more meals.

How To Overhaul Our Elections...

Since there's SO MUCH yammering about it, every time the topic turns to elections in the news.



             For Voters:

1. Voting Machines must be secure. Current electronic machines can be hacked with a Palm Pilot (!) and don't have any kind of accountability, and current paper machines don't produce ballots that are in any way distinguishable or accountable, leading to fraud.
2. Voter registration should be centralized, and consist AT LEAST of photographic identification, preferably including biometrics. The technology exists, and wouldn't be difficult to implement. Centralized registration allows much better cross-checking to prevent the same person from voting in two districts, or in two polling locations in the same district.
3. Voter registration should be renewed annually, in person. There is no security substitute for "you gotta be there in person." The mail can be intercepted, and any renewal conducted through the mail depends only on the ability of a piece of paper to convince the official that the voter is alive / still a resident of the district, which isn't hard. Personal presence is much more difficult to fake.
4. Absentee ballots should be distributed by personal appearance, require voter registration validation at the time of pickup, and have much more stringent requirements for application. (Military deployment or permanent employment outside the USA counts; being on a cruise that week does not.)
5. Absentee ballots should be picked up by personal appearance, and require voter registration validation prior to acceptance. You ought to have to physically put it in the hand of the election official, and show them your registration ID before they take it from you. There is FAR too much fraud with absentee balloting, as the last 4 elections clearly proved.
6. Each vote cast ought to receive a receipt from the voting machine directly. Not just the end-of-poll "summary" that the current machines print out, but an additional, individual slip for each voter recording their votes. This slip could easily be made verifiable; have the machine generate a random, and really long, code when the poll opens, and insert it on each receipt as well as the summary. Then, in case of a recount, the voters' receipts can be checked against the summary, as well as the summary against the electronic record.
7. Upon completion of polling, your voter identification card ought to be deactivated at the polling station, preventing multiple votes. It has to be renewed next year anyway, so make it like a one-shot deal: you vote, you're done. No more card for you, until next year.

             For Candidates:

1. Each and every position on the ballot ought to have a "None of the above" option. If "none of the above" gets the most votes, ALL the candidates for that position ought to be removed from the ballot, and barred from running for that post again. If you're so terrible the voters will pick "no-one" rather than you, we don't need you, ever.
2. Each and every position on the ballot ought to have a space for write-in votes. There's no reason not to have this, even with electronic balloting; if they can figure out how to have you "sign your name" at the grocery store for a credit card purchase, which they can and do, there's no reason the balloting machines can't manage it.
3. Each and every ballot ought to have the right of referendum. If you can get 10,000 people to agree that something should be on the ballot, up it goes - and the will of the people becomes the LAW, unless it violates the Constitution.
   
   
4. Each and every electable position in government, from the local to the federal, ought to have a strict, no exceptions single term limit. You can get elected mayor of Denver exactly one time, period. In the case of a post such as Deputy Governor, Vice President, or Deputy Mayor, in which you are set to fill in for the main official if they are incapacitated, election to a term as the associated main official should bar you from the junior post, because if the mayor (for example) became incapacitated and you stepped in, you would be violating the term limit.
5. A candidate should be barred from standing for election to a single position more than two times. Candidates should not be allowed to run again and again and again. Similarly, ballot measures such as local ordinances should only be allowed on the ballot twice before being permanently barred; if the citizens dislike a law enough to vote it down twice, then they don't need it.

             For Campaign Finance:

1. All campaign contributions, from any source, should be limited to $1,000 from a single donor, and PACs and corporations should be considered single donors. This severely limits the ability of companies and interest groups to buy elections.
2. All candidates should be required to maintain an itemized list of contributions, listing dollar amounts and sources, and rejecting any and all anonymous donations. We do NOT need foreign companies financing the election of candidates who will give them preferential trade treatment, and that happens quite a bit now.
3. All contributions should be required to come only from contributors in the USA. This also helps with the aforementioned foreign companies.
4. Full accountability of campaign finance should be the LAW. If you can't tell where your money came from, you ought not to be allowed to use it. There are too damn many instances of "I don't KNOW where THAT came from, hmmm..." in recent history to make anyone feel comfortable. Just look at the last few elections' finances on OpenSecrets.Org, you'll see what I mean almost immediately.

             For The Electoral College:

1. All electors should be required by law to vote with the candidate who won the popular vote in their state. That's not the case now, and contrary to popular belief, is the only serious flaw in the current electoral college system. Someone "winning the popular vote" shouldn't win the election if everyone in the damn country except two states voted against him; it's not the fault of people living in Montana that there are an assload of people in California.

             For The Elections Themselves:

1. All elections should take place on the same day nationwide, that day to be a federally-mandated holiday. Because Wal-Mart workers have enough problems without getting ignored at the polls because they couldn't get off work.
2. All polls should be open for 24 hours - from 00:01 at night (12:01 am, for you non-24-hour-clock-understandin' mofos) to 2400 (midnight, for those same folks.) There should never, ever be lines of people standing outside a closed polling station.
3. 100% of all exit polls should be disallowed. The effect of the media, and their prognostications, upon the last several elections is clear and undeniable. That ought not to be allowed; our country deserves better than having voters stay home because they were told their candidate had already lost.
4. Propaganda pests - be it campaign volunteers, signs, pickets, WHATEVER, ought to have to remain 100 YARDS - not feet - from the ENTRANCE to the polling location. This means if the polls are in a school building, they ought to have to be 100 yards away from the entrance to the campus, not the individual building. Preferably across the street, but you can't really legislate that, because it's not always possible.

Now, is this a flawless system to ensure 100% security? No, I'm sure you could figure out a way around it if you really tried, but this would sure make it a hell of a lot harder.



Anyone got any other suggestions?

Because I'm Tired Of This Silly Crap...

Here's the deal.



People use their blogs for different things.



KJ talks about politics, and sex, and encourages discussion - fairly animated discussion - of both.



I talk about politics, and anything I find amusing, and encourage discussion - of anything.



Apey talks mostly about her family life, and mostly welcomes comments, but not arguments, about the same. It is, after all, her life, and since we're not in it, we don't get to disagree with how she lives it.



Syn pretty much rambles about WTF ever she thinks about, and talks smack to anyone who comments.



I'm not singling people out; I'm just using them as examples.



The point is, people have very different pages and use them for very different things. I can understand this, as, clearly, can the huge majority of users of this type of social networking site.



SOME PEOPLE CAN'T.



And I'm tired of it.



So here goes: A simple set of posting guidelines, since apparently they're necessary.



1. If you are stating an opinion, rather than an argument, say so. This seems obvious, but apparently it isn't, and if I get one more comment bitching about how I dared disagree with someone's comment ON MY OWN GODDAMN WEBPAGE, I am going to start deleting comments.



2. If you have an argument, feel free to post it. I'm certainly not infallible, and I welcome reasoned dissension.



3. IF YOU POST AN ARGUMENT, BE AWARE THAT ARGUMENTS GET ARGUED WITH. If you can't post without taking it personally if someone else - ESPECIALLY ME - disagrees with your thinking, just save that post and move on. Frankly, if you can't handle disagreement, then you're reading the wrong page.



4. If you get your feelings hurt by my totally unreasonable feeling that I should get the last word in on my own webpage, TOO FUCKING BAD. You'll notice that I at least attempt to comment on other people's 360 pages in the spirit in which they posted. Wendy was talking about a psychic the other day. I basically think all those people are full of crap. But on HER SITE I have the respect and decency to simply ask how it went, rather than posting a diatribe about fakery and con artists.



5. If you think this might apply to you, message me and ask me. I'll tell you, and even try to be diplomatic.



That's really pretty much it. I like logical discussion; if you want to state an opinion, please, feel free, but say so. Arguments get argued with, and that's a fact of life wherever you go.

MUTANT INSECTS MENACE US ALL!!!

You think I'm kidding.



I know you do.



However, I'm not. And they're not killer bees, either.



Ever see a yellowjacket? Yellowjackets are carnivorous wasps, living throughout the American south, to a lesser extent throughout the rest of the eastern US, and other areas worldwide.



Nests typically can grow to the size of a basketball, (the stereotypical "hornet's nest" you often see in old cartoons) containing a single queen and up to 3,000 individual worker / soldier wasps.



Until recently.



Now, reports are beginning to come in from the south that huge, really huge, FRIGGIN GIGANTIC, nests are being found.



How big and scary? Well, as big as a Volkswagon, and containing up to 100,000 wasps.  (A note: sorry about the registration. Just lie to them; they don't have a legal right to ask you for any personal info anyway. Or better yet, use BugMeNot.)



How, you ask?



Apparently, yellowjacket queens have learned to cooperate, allowing them to build multi-queen nests of truly monstrous proportion. Of course, this is being blamed on global warming - "it doesn't get cold enough to freeze them anymore, so now they don't die," but in reality, it doesn't freeze that hard or that often in Georgia and Alabama to kill them off in large quantities anyway. The change isn't in the weather, despite the reporters' ill-informed yammerings; it's in the species, and it's horribly, horribly dangerous.



Yellowjackets are a bitch anyway. I've been stung by one, and it hurts like a sonuvabitch. One sting can swell up your whole arm into a welt the size of a golf ball. Now imagine 100,000 of them attacking you. It could happen; yellowjackets emit an alarm pheromone which alerts other workers of the hive to attack when they are frightened / disturbed / swatted at / pissed off. The kicker? They have straight stingers; they can sting again, and again, and again.



Ok, all of you with bug phobias can get the creeping ickies now. The rest of us are probably going out to buy some RAID for Flying Insects.

Something To Think About...

...this year has absolutely sucked for movies.



I am a movie fanatic, and watch anything of even remote interest.



And yet, somehow, I have trouble actually remembering anything remotely distinctive about the movies that have come out this year. There are a few upcoming that look interesting, but so far, blah.



And that's where Samuel L. Jackson comes in.



Let me put it like this.

Now, you may know what I'm talking about, or you may not.



On August 18th, Snakes On A Plane hits theaters. AICN reviews it first, and surprisingly, says it may actually kick ass. Now for those of you who don't know, SOAP is a movie that started as a kind of an inside joke: SOAP was the working title for a movie in production, when somehow it got leaked onto the intarwebs, and it took off.



In a stroke of genius, the studio realized that the huge buzz that sprang up surrounding their movie was A. free publicity, and B. a ready-made audience, if and only if they didn't fuck it up.



The result may well be movie history.



With a huge built-in audience, enormous word-of-mouth hype, and a lackluster summer movie season, SOAP may be positioned to outperform any other movie this year, simply by lack of competition.



Assuming they didn't fuck it up, they may very well have the hit of the year on their hands. Something to think about, indeed.





I'll be a motherfucker.

Entry for July 17, 2006

129.



This is a list of 200 movies that you're supposed to check off what you've seen; I'm adding "and own" because I can. (That will be a "+o" at the end of the title.) You're supposed to put your "score" at the top; that's mine, up there. Obviously, I have no life. I'm also adding another notation: (NA2HG) which means "Not Another Two Hours Gone!!!" for movies that really, really, violently suck.



(x) Rocky Horror Picture Show
() Grease
(x) Pirates of the Caribbean
() Boondock Saints
(x) Fight Club
(x) Starsky and Hutch
(x) Neverending Story
(x) Blazing Saddles +O
(x) Airplane
(x) PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTOMOBILES +O
(x) DEAD ALIVE
(x) ARMY OF DARKNESS +O

You Just Can't Make This Stuff Up, I Tell You...

You know that French soccer player who headbutted the Italian guy?



You don't?



Well, maybe this will help.

Yeah. Wanna know why he did it? United States President George W. Bush, that's why. That's right. The Prez brainwashed a random French soccer player into headbutting another soccer player.
\r\n
\r\nWhat?
\r\n
\r\nOh, you want to see the story?
\r\n
\r\nFine, then. Here you go.
\r\n
\r\nI mean, you just can't make this kind of thing up, you know? When are people going to wake up and realize that the President should rightfully be castigated for the things - the many, many things - he's done wrong, rather than attempting to blame him for all the world's woes?
\r\n
\r\nOh, and while I'm at it: yet again, supply-side tax cuts work.
\r\n
\r\n Go, go, Gipper, go go go.
\r\nAs you've all no doubt heard me say numerous times before: "You have more pies if you take a tenth each of fifty pies than you do if you take a fifth each of five."
\r\n
\r\n For those of you math challenged / liberal, 50/10 = 5. 5/5 = 1.
\r\nYou wouldn't think that's so hard to grasp, yet CEOs, CFOs, Democrats, and Burger King seem unable to grasp it.
\r\n
\r\n(The Burger King reference is from an event that happened to me personally. Burger King ran a promotion earlier in the year - yes, this year - where they sold their Whopper sandwich for about half what they usually charge. I asked them; they were making a tidy profit on each sandwich at that price. They also outsold their previous sales records by a landslide. At the end of a month's time, the price went back up, and predictably, people went back to not eating at Burger King. The branch manager said - no, I'm not kidding - "I don't understand it, it's like they quit liking our food.")
\r\n
\r\nOh, and I'd like to add a note. The story blaming the President for the Zidane headbutt? The author is so grossly underintelligent - and yet they let him write a column - that he says, stridently, "If guys dressed as Mohawk Indians dumped tea in a harbor as a protest today, which side do you think the administration would be on?"
\r\n
\r\nNewsflash, genius. The LEGALLY CONSTITUTED GOVERNMENT at that time - and please note, there was none of this "he stole the election" crap, King George WAS the legitimate ruler - was against it last time.
\r\n
\r\nAnd yet somehow this government should be FOR it?
\r\n
\r\nA brief education in the ways of government, my friend. Government takes power; it does not give it up. It acquires control; it does not relinquish it.  No government has ever existed in human history that did not attempt to strengthen itself, ultimately to the detriment of its citizens. EVER. However sterling the motivation, giving increased power to a government is always, universally, and without exception, a mistake.
\r\nAnd ultimately, governments are replaced in one of two ways: conquest from without, or revolt from within. No government in history has EVER fallen in any other way; they are removed by force, be it military or economic. A government can become so corrupt that it collapses - revolt from within; it can be taken by coup - revolt again; it can be conquered militarily - conquest; or it can be brought down by economic means, such as the trade warfare committed against the Soviet Union by the U. S. in the 1980's - external conquest, all the same.
\r\n
\r\nIt's looking more and more as though we should have cleaned house at home first, though; our internal corruption and bureaucratic inertia is so great that it may have turned our economic conquest of Russia into a Pyrrhic victory of sorts.
\r\n
\r\n

Oh, And Now I Started Myself Off On A Rant...

...So here we go.



I am tired of hearing brainless lefties (there are some semi-intelligent lefties, but they usually have the good sense not to say things like this) tell me that anyone thinking the government is out to get them is just being paranoid.



"That's only in the movies."

Uh-huh.



Well, the plethora of ways the government is spying on you now seeming to have no effect on the invincible wall of willful ignorance you've generated for yourselves, I am going to attempt to breach it with logic.



This will, unfortunately, inevitably fail. If you are so closed-minded that you are incapable of understanding that when facts disagree with theories, the theories are wrong, then logic cannot touch you, because you are an irrational idiot.



But maybe there are a few of you out there who simply don't know what to believe; you may be rational, but ill-informed.



This Post's For You!â„¢

So here we go.



Government does not give up power. It acquires it and does not give it back unless forced to.



That's a bald statement, hmmm? I'll tell you why this is true.



Human beings are the administrators of government.

That's it. Simple, eh?

See, human beings, as rational - or at least semi-rational - beings, have an innate drive to sustain or improve their conditions. There's not a "real" term for this that I know of; maybe someone with a better vocabulary than mine can come up with an obscure word. The closest I was able to get was homeostasis: an organism's desire and ability to regulate itself to maintain an acceptable status quo. This, of course, does not take into account the inherent desire for IMPROVEMENT.



You! Yes, you reading this! Ever wish your life was better?



That's what I'm talking about. Every thinking being wishes that it was having a better time, and each time a goal is achieved, the being thinks "and now, I want THIS..." ad infinitum.



This is even true of government workers.  See, secretly, they're human beings too. That means they want a raise. How do you get a raise? Prove you're better than the guy in the next cubicle, that's how. In government, this takes the form of influence - peddling; each bureaucrat tries to get the most stuff possible declared to be his (or her, God knows) responsibility, thus proving their astounding capacity, and therefore worthiness for betterment.



Of course,  if that betterment is dependent upon their area of responsibility, they will guard their responsibilities like attack dogs, BECAUSE THEIR LIVELIHOODS DEPEND ON IT.

The inevitable result of this is that when a government agency is empowered to do something - anything - it stays that way, because every bureaucrat whose rent payment and 401(k) depends on that power will fight tooth and nail to prevent its dissolution.



Governments acquire power and do not return it unless forced to do so, because it is human nature to defend one's interests, and no government yet has been devised to get around that, except by fiction authors. (David Eddings once came up with the interesting notion that elected officials should have a strict "one elected term, in any job, ever" limit, and upon election, have their entire material wealth liquidated and put in the public treasury, thus placing their wellbeing as hostage to their job performance in a more direct fashion; if the society made money, so did they. If not, they could get out of office and go directly to the poorhouse.)



I've never actually heard of anyone trying that. That doesn't preclude the possibility that someone, somewhere, has - but I've done a good bit of reading about this, and I would have to see very, very convincing proof.



Anyway, my point is that the form of government does not matter: communism, socialism, libertarianism, democracy, federalism, republicanism, all are subject to the same immutable fact that if a human is rational, they will attempt to better themselves; thus government workers have a vested interest, personally, in screwing the citizens.

Oh, and in case anyone still thinks all the stuff you see in the movies can't happen, let me ask this: if Google Earth can show pictures of your house from space, why is it challenging to you to believe that the military can read your license plate from space? It shouldn't be; the only reason Google Earth can't do better is that the government won't let them.



Get scared: you should be. Go watch the Will Smith movie Enemy of the State, and then tell yourself over and over that they can't really do those things.



You're lying to yourself, but maybe it'll make you feel better.

Issues, Man, Issues...

...are what my computer has right now.



Just so you guys know.



Bought a new HSF for my machine after the original one started making funny noises, but my machine is still going into heat cutout and shutting down periodically.



I stepped down my processor to temporarily alleviate the problem until I can figure out WTF, but in case you've been curious, that's why no posts for a few days. Once I get the issue, whatever it is, figured out, I should be back online and posting regularly, and I'm hoping that I should have something figured out by next weekend.



But in the meantime, I'm nursing my computer along gently, and not letting it work too hard, hmmm?

I Don't Know If Any Of You Play This Stupid Game, But...

...if you play The Sims 2, here's a little story for you.



Tara finally got around to playing this game she's pestered me to get for her for AGES. I tried to tell her it was inconsiderate and sucked, but she insisted.



So, she got going, got her Sim made, got her a house, a job, and a computer; even made one friend - and then, disaster. The computer broke.



Rather than call for a repairman, in her genius, Tara made her Sim try to repair the computer herself.



You may guess from the fact that you're reading this that it didn't go well...



After the HUGE BOLT OF LIGHTNING FROM THE COMPUTER FRIED HER SIM, her Sim attempted to stand up, turned black, quivered, fell over, curled into the fetal position, and DIED.



Her friend stood there, crying, as Death appeared to collect her Sim.



Death took one look and started laughing hysterically. Finally, shaking his head, he took out the list, noted her down, collected her, and left.



BUT FIRST, DEATH MOCKED HER DEMISE.



HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Please Protest During Business Hours.

...says Wood County, Texas.

Richard Eugene McLemore kicked off his Independence Day by exercising a first amendment right - sort of.

The 59-year-old Quitman man chained himself to the handrails of the Wood County Courthouse in protest of his June arrest for possessing methamphetamine.

The problem? The courthouse was closed.

But Wait: It Gets Better!

When Wood County Sgt. John Farmer made contact with McLemore, he told Farmer he was protesting the Sheriff's Department and Lt. Miles Tucker, the officer who arrested him June 22.

"He was saying he wanted to get his plight brought to the attention of the public," Criddle said. "He was protesting (Tucker) and the sheriff for defaming his name."

Farmer issued McLemore a criminal trespassing warning and told him to come back when the courthouse was open.

"(He told him) if he had beef to come up to the courthouse and discuss it during regular business hours," Tucker said.

That's right. He chained himself to the courthouse to protest his arrest, and got ticketed again because the court was closed.

Mr. McLemore, I salute you. Truly, among rampaging dumbfucks, you are a colossus.

Now, you and I both know there are good reasons for being careful about your website's domain name registration, right?
You don't?
Well, you should, and Stone Mountain Middle School in Georgia can explain why. See, they got sloppy about their school magazine - "Black Girl" - and let their domain registration run out - whereupon it was snatched up by a porn company out of Curacao. The school found out about this later, when reports began to come in that their school homepage linked to a porn site.
Oops.
Might I suggest GoDaddy.com?

Now, I admit that like anyone else, I forget things.
Really!
I sometimes wonder how you can forget a child, but since it happens from time to time it's obviously possible.
But I have to say: if you are the mother of the 6-year-old boy, AS YET UNCLAIMED, who has been waiting at the Taste Of Chicago for EIGHT FUCKING DAYS, I have two things to say to you.
First: you are a bitch from hell and should die in a fire.
Second, failing the aforementioned death by fire, COME GET YOUR CHILD.
That is all.

Chicago seems to be full of bright, shining lights of genius this week: a 56-year-old man in Chicago is fine, after being treated for minor injuries, which he received when he ran over himself with his own car.
How, you ask, can such a magnificent event of dumbassery actually happen? (And it was truly magnificent. Just look at the picture.)
Well, he left the car on and went to empty the trunk, when it "slipped" into reverse, a turn of phrase I find exceedingly unlikely, and "rolled" over him. Doubt my skepticism? Look at the pic. There's simply no way on this planet that happened without someone on the gas pedal, hmmm? No car manufactured EVER idles high enough to do that. (Playing the attached video is also enjoyable, if only for the inane commentary on the part of the news anchors. "Ooo, hate when that happens." "Ooo, hate when you write your own material.")

My Favorite Town, New London, Connecticut, is back in the news with another story illustrating the SUPERB and ENVIABLE quality of the people who live there; although less far-reaching in implication than last year's story, it was nonetheless illuminating.
Oh, yes, my point. Well, in this case, it's less of a POINT, so much as a Bludgeoning Impact With Fleeing Crowds Of Screaming Pedestrians, as an 89-year-old man rams his station wagon through a crowd, injuring 27 people. No doubt screaming "Get off my damn lawn, hippies!" and laughing maniacally. I will note that the story claims he hit one person, then panicked, causing him to drive - they describe it as "lurching" twice - into the crowd, but I think my version sounds better, so I'm sticking to it.

From the Department of Not Learning From The Lessons Of The Past, I bring you V. Marathai, of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Or rather I would, except he's dead. See, he got killed while trying to crawl underneath a train. Now personally, I'd be trying to find ways AROUND the train, rather than crawling under the friggin' wheels, but HEY, not my call, right?
Anyway, the sad part of this is that Mr. Marathai's father died in the same place, doing the same thing, eight months earlier, which is the previously mentioned not learning thing. You'd think seeing your father get squished would kinda put you off of it, but apparently not if your last name is Marathai.

And last but certainly not least, because I don't want them to think I'm ignoring them and fire a nuke at me, we come to North Korea. Some of you may have been following recent events regarding that particular country run by a crazy person - not to be confused with Iran, whose president is actually CALLED Ahmacrazyperson - and some of you may not, but you should know that they recently "test" fired a couple of nuclear capable Taepodong-2 ICBMs. That's Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, for you liberals, if any of you are sturdy enough to read my blog.
Anyway, it's not enough to have SDI - Strategic Defense Initiative, for you lefty pinkos - Star Wars, for everyone else - even though more and more people are starting to wonder what happened to that, now. Why, you ask? Well, because one of those "test-fired" missiles North Korea launched the other day was aimed at Hawaii.

You read that right.

North Korea launched a nuclear-capable missile at a territory of the United States. Despite the fact that it broke, and fell into the ocean, you can bet your ass if I was President there would be paratroops all over the launch site in 18 hours, goddammit. THEY LAUNCHED A FUCKING NUKE AT US. It doesn't matter if it was armed or not - or if it didn't work, or if it was "only a test." There's a difference between firing a missile at some random chunk of ocean, and firing a POTENTIAL NUCLEAR WEAPON at OUR LAND. Firing a potential WMD at one of the States is an act of war, plain and simple. They ought not to get away with it; the President ought to send a huge number of paratroops to North Korea and take away their fucking toys, right now. Maybe they missed Hawaii, but there's no reason as yet to think they'd miss Japan. Or Alaska.

In fact, despite the length of time I've been out of the military, I bet I can still remember how to shoot a Ma Deuce. You want someone to go take care of that little problem for you, there, Prez? Pack me up. I'll fucking go. You'll have those fucking missiles giftwrapped on the White House lawn so fast your head will spin.

Since We Just Talked About This...

The other day on JoyMonsta's blog, there was a bit of a discussion about the One Red Paperclip Guy.



A bit of background:



Kyle MacDonald made it his mission in life to trade one red paperclip for a house. He started by trading for a pen, which he traded for a cool knob, which he traded for a barbecue, which he traded for a generator, which... until just recently, his final trade to date was for a paid, credited, speaking movie role.



I now report with pleasure, that one year to the day from the time his quest began, Kyle MacDonald will become the proud owner of a house in Kipling, Saskatchewan, Canada.



The town of Kipling offered him a ton of crap to go with it, too; including declaring July 12th "One Red Paperclip Day," and building the world's largest Red Paperclip.





Dude.  One Mission.  One Year.  One Red Paperclip.  14 Trades.  One house.



Epic.

An Update On The Missing Arm Lady...

Several points to consider.



1. Her arm was apparently not CUT off, it was TORN off.



2. She wasn't so drunk she slept through it - she was so drunk she blacked out and forgot what happened.



3. She didn't "get" out of her husband's truck. He threw her out of it.



And last but not least,



4. When she didn't get out of the truck fast enough, her husband drove off anyway - with her arm still wrapped in her seatbelt - causing the missing arm when her feet got caught under the rear tire of the truck.



That's right. HER OWN HUSBAND RIPPED HER FUCKING ARM OFF.



He dragged her under the truck down a dirt road until her arm ripped clean the fuck off, then took her to a hospital and tried to pass it off as someone else's fault.





You can OMGWTF!?! now, and while you're at it, write letters aplenty to the Monroe County Sheriff's office - That would be:



Sheriff Tilman Crutchfield

100 E Second St Monroe Mi 48161

734-240-7401



or,



their webpage.


- urging more than a 5-year sentence for dismembering his wife. This asshole deserves the absolute maximum the law allows, and then some.

65 Million Years Of Evolution, And Look Where It's Gotten Us: Part 3

The 5-second rule is FOS.

He is now a food safety consultant and culinary instructor at The Art Institute of California in San Diego. "We teach students that any surface, especially floors, should not be considered clean, and any food that comes in contact with it is trash."

That includes counters that have been washed and sanitized. If the precaution sounds extreme, consider the potential for damp floors and what might be on the shoes of a worker who walked her dog or used the restroom before coming to work. Then someone lifts a carton of produce from the floor and sets it on the counter. Maybe you don't want to eat food that has fallen on that counter.

In other news, scientists spent money to figure this out.

Darwin rules this week, apparently. There's currently an epidemic running wild in Indiana - of TEH STOOPIT.

Why, oh, why, would I say such a cruel and hurtful thing, aside from my obvious callousness and general rudeness? Well, because these dumbasses are attempting to steal copper from POWER LINES. Hey, have 110,000 volts, why don'tcha? Fortunately for the power companies, this is kind of a one-off deal, since the thieves are very unlikely to attempt this more than once.

You gotta hate it when you get called in to work by mistake.
You REALLY gotta hate it when you called in to work by mistake, and have to STAY.
But it completely blows to new, unbelievable levels when you get called back to work by mistake and sent to Iraq for a YEAR. Jim Dillinger of Mount Oreb, Ohio, suffered this indignity when the military accidentally misnoted his separation date from the Individual Ready Reserve, otherwise known as the "Force of Guys We Already Trained And Therefore Just Have To Give A Refresher." Somehow, to me, this seems like a bit more than an "inconvenience."

Speaking of the military, did you know that despite "acknowledging" Wicca as a valid religion, Wiccan soldiers who die in the line of duty are not allowed to have a Wiccan symbol of protection inscribed on their military tombstone? Roberta Stewart, of Reno, Nevada, didn't know that either, until her husband died, and the military wouldn't let her put a pentagram, a traditional symbol of protection, on her husband's tombstone, despite allowing him to change his dogtags to read "Wiccan" and allowing Wiccan chaplains into the Armed Forces.

A note about this, for those of you who don't pay attention to these sorts of things. A pentagram is a symbol with many meanings in many religions. However, I'm really tired of the ignorance surrounding it, so prepare for a small discussion, hmm?

First, in Christianity, the pentagram does NOT represent Satan, regardless of what ignorant fuckmonkeys may believe. The pentagram in Christianity is used to represent the five wounds of Christ, or alternately, the five senses.
In Wicca, the pentagram represents the elements and "Spirit," and the circle surrounding it represents the binding holding the elements together.
This is a pentagram.The symbol used by Satanists, which is commonly confused with the pentagram, is correctly called the Sigil of Baphomet; it is represented by an INVERTED pentagram, with a goat's head superimposed. The Hebrew characters in the border translate to "Leviathan," commonly identified (incorrectly) with Satan.
This is the Sigil of Baphomet.

See the difference?
A "pentacle," a term commonly confused with "pentagram," refers to a physical amulet upon which is represented a protective symbol, and although the symbol of choice for most who wear them is a pentagram (thus the confusion,) the symbol is not defined by the term pentacle, and can be any symbol of protection you wish. Those kids you see in church camps wearing a cross around their necks? That's a pentacle.
End of minirant; I'm just tired of hearing the same old ignorant claptrap get repeated. Now you know what these symbols really mean and represent; try not to get confused again.

As if you didn't get annoyed enough by the damn things already, now there's ringtones for your landline! Yeah, you heard me right. I have no friggin' idea what was wrong with "rrrring!" to alert me that someone was calling, or even "bbbbeeeeepp!" in the case of my cordless, but this is completely ridiculous.

And last, but not least; Barbra Streisand.
Yeah, I had to go there.
Why? Because her fans are suing her for fraud, that's why. (!!)
See, a few years ago, Streisand did a "farewell" tour, for which she jacked up the ticket price SIGNIFICANTLY. Like, $1400 a pop significantly. Now, she's back on tour, and some of her fans are a bit pissed off that they paid through the nose for her final performances, only to be screwed a few years later when she decided that "some" millions weren't enough.
So, I did a bit of reading, and found some really interesting comments about this.
For example, there are some of her fans who are honestly stupid enough to think that her costs during the tour somehow justify a $1400 ticket price. You can read that here.
However, me saying "for the record: you're FOS" lacks credibility with some of you, no doubt; so I decided to do a bit of research. If her tickets were worth $1400 in 1999, because of her touring costs, then why are they only worth $750 this time? I mean, unless she lives in a special world, costs haven't dropped since 1999; so what's the deal? But it's more than just that.
I wanted to know what the real deal was. So I dug more.
Streisand performs onstage by singing. She has an orchestra, but I find it highly unlikely that her touring costs approach those of, for example, the entire Ozzfest tour, whose tickets are going for $100 this year. AS LOW AS $30.75 for general admission, but the most expensive single ticket you can get from general admission seating on Ozzfest 2006 is $100.
But, ok, maybe some of you are saying "but Streisand has a whole orchestra! Even 20 bands don't have that much gear!" This is, of course, in fact crap, but I'll give it to you for the sake of argument.

So, then, explain to me how Streisand has anything approaching the expenses of transporting THE ENTIRE FUCKING BARNUM AND BAILEY THREE RING CIRCUS. Streisand doesn't have lions, tigers, and elephants. Elephants are expensive. And so are clowns. The circus has clowns. Lots of clowns. Streisand has none. And yet the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus sells tickets to their events for - wait for it - $125 for the most expensive general admission ticket. That's one sixth the price of Streisand's tickets, and you get to see a trained elephant. Oh, and the circus can sell enough tickets to fill Reliant Stadium in Houston. Streisand is expecting to fill Philly's Wachovia Center, which - to give you an idea - is about the size of Lakewood Church in Houston. (I say Lakewood Church only because they bought what was formerly the Compaq Center a few years ago during the HP-Compaq merger, and it became the new Lakewood Church center. Houstonians may remember it as The Summit.)

Anyway, I guess what I'm getting at is that if you honestly believe that her tickets are worth their hugely inflated price, YOU'RE A FUCKING MORON. That is all.

Stop Me If You've Heard This One...

So, there's a general Election.



The leftists lose.



They scream "Recount! OMG Corruption! THEY STOLE OUR ELECTION"



Wanna guess who's doing the screaming today?



Mexico. That's right, the Mexican leftists apparently have lost the election, despite the now ongoing recount, and are really, really pissed about it. After all, if they lost, the right MUST have stolen the election in a Giant Right-Wing Conspiracy. It couldn't be a simple case of "the voters didn't buy your line of bullshit," whoa no.



Despite the fact that they had international observers in place to ensure that nothing like this happened, and all the observers are saying that the election was legitimate.



Let me give all the leftists in the world a freebie here; then maybe they can win an election. If your message isn't substantially different from that of your opponent, and you don't present a unified stance on issues, the voters are not going to believe that you will be better than the other guy. It really is that simple.



Stop mirroring the Right's views; stop VOTING with the right, then trying to pretend you're somehow different; stop getting voters confused with 23 candidates who all say substantially different things; and first and foremost, wait until you're ELECTED before lying to the public openly.



Oh, and watch Casshern; it is quite possibly the coolest superhero movie ever made, EVER.

You Know You're Drunk, When...

Your husband's drunken attempts to drive you home are annoying enough that you want to get out and walk.



You know you're three sheets to the wind, when you pass out in a ditch waiting for him to come back and get you.



But you know you're COMPLETELY FUCKED BEYOND BELIEF when you SLEEP THROUGH SOMEONE CUTTING OFF YOUR FUCKING ARM.



Lemme guess... You think I'm kidding.



I never kid.



Brenda Humphrey, 34, of Romulus, Michigan fell asleep in a ditch on Tuesday, after getting out of her husband's truck a few miles from the bar they had been drinking in. When her husband returned to pick her up, he found her asleep - and missing one of her arms.



Police are as yet unable to locate the missing limb.

And While I Have My Mind In The Gutter...

There's a hot-ass Asian porn star running for governor of Nevada.



Not only that, but she seems to be smarter than any of the other candidates, which is kinda pitiful if you think about it.



Anyway, just thought you should know.

You Gotta Hate It When...

...you're driving down the road, minding your own business, and suddenly, you hit a horse.



But that's not bad enough.



As the emergency crews extract you from the vehicle, they, and you, watch astonished as a second car flies down the road, hits THE SAME HORSE and rolls over.



This might make you think this is a BAD day.



But you know you're REALLY in deep shit when the ambulance taking you to the hospital then hits a moose.



Now, I know a few people who believe that life hands you lessons, and if the same bad things happen to you repeatedly, it's because of a life lesson that you're not getting good grades on.



I'm guessing this one is "Watch the frigging road, asshole!" But that could just be me.

More OMGWTF!?! Than Any One Country Needs, And Then Some...

Suicide Circle at IMDB.com!

Instead of a quote, I will start with a note. The Japanese language is syllabic, rather than letter-based, like English. This means that a lot of the time, when they go to name something, if they're using a word which derives originally from English, they spell it phonetically, which sometimes looks odd. The trick is, it always sounds fairly similar to its English origin if you actually say it out loud, which makes it easy to tell what word they were using. The American release of Suicide Circle didn't bother to understand this, and called the movie "Suicide CLUB" which is just wrong. The original title of this movie is "Jisatsu saakuru" which - say it - is CIRCLE.

Enough of the mini-rant; I just hate it when someone ignores something that's staring them right in the friggin' face, that's all.

Now, before I begin my discussion of this movie, I want you to be aware in advance that I am going to link images from this movie. I am linking them, rather than embedding them, because this movie is EXTREMELY gory, and some of you might just not want to see the actual images I'm discussing.

First things first. You will need to watch this movie twice, at least; once to go "OMGWTF!?!" and then let it sit for a couple of days, and then again to really enjoy it. The reason for this is because the movie is - subtle - about some of the things it tries to get across, and it may take more than one viewing to really get the point ; when I first watched it, my reaction was "OMGWTF!?!" and then about 2 days later, I began to realize that it was, in fact, a damned impressive movie.

The movie starts off with a shot that is, and should be, legend. A train station, filled with people, is waiting for the Tokyo Express train to pass through. Express trains don't stop; they fly right through. As the train approaches, 54 high school girls, in uniform, filter into the station, move to the platform, and line up across its edge. They clasp each others' hands; chant in unison "one... two... three!" and THROW THEMSELVES UNDER THE TRAIN. The train blows a literal tidal wave of gore across the station. In the resulting hysteria, someone who is never revealed deposits a white gym bag in the station, which is later found to contain a roll made up of 200 strips of human skin - from different people - sewn neatly together, end-to-end.

The detectives investigating don't even believe this is happening; the girls are from 18 different high schools and presumably didn't even know each other. However, this quickly becomes a trend; a nurse on night shift at a hospital tells a security guard she will talk to him later, steps up, and throws herself right out of a window to her death; another group of high school kids, joking around about a "suicide club" throw themselves - in nearly identical fashion to the train incident - off the roof of their school building; a performer stabs himself in the throat in front, so to speak, of a live studio audience; four women hang themselves as a group; and a news report is read in the background later on describing the apparent suicide of 200 more people who threw themselves off a castle in the country.

At every turn, Director Sono Shion takes us to a more extreme place than we expected. The infamous radish scene is a perfect example. Nearly every horror movie has an obligatory scene where someone is slicing a vegetable or other food item, and cuts their finger. Sono doesn't settle for the cheap shot, though; when his character slices, she takes her finger THE FUCK OFF. Then she cuts again, removing the rest of that finger and part of the next, then again, cutting her hand in half, then again, and again, and again, all the while smiling faintly, as if at a joke we cannot hear, all the while in full view of her daughter, who is maybe 5.

There appears to be no connection amongst the suicides, except that more of the white gym bags show up, with identical contents. The police are mystified. The discovery of a website that appears to be predicting the suicides doesn't help at all.

Now, to Western viewers, is the part where the director suddenly smokes a huge pipe full of crack and just goes batshiat crazy. A Japanese version of Frank N. Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show shows up and does a musical number - no, I'm not kidding - and the movie quickly concludes with a song by a teenybopper pop girl group whose name changes several times during the movie, advising us to become "connected to ourselves."

I realize you're all going "and you said this movie was GOOD?!?"

But, in fact, it is. Not because of the staggering gore and brutality evident in the movie - after the second batch of highschoolers die, the cops find an ear hanging from a ledge, where one of the kids hit their head on the way down, and the investigator gets a stick, yells "here comes an ear" and flips it off the ledge to fall at the feet of the medical examiners - but because of the point those things are getting across.

Japanese society is so highly industrialized, and so highly focused on work to the exclusion of anything else, that many Japanese are feeling increasingly alienated from their fellow humans. Suicide rates are very high, and the movie is not only pointing this out but in fact demonstrating the very factors that create this environment - the disillusionment, alienation, depression, hopelessness, and isolation.

I admit; I still think the Rocky Horror Guy was a bit much, but after thinking about it for a couple of days, and letting the movie kinda soak in, I am convinced that this was one of the better J-horror movies I've seen. Not on a par with Kairo, but then, what is?