Just So You Guys Know,

...Seether is from South Africa.

I wasn't - I admit it - aware that South Africa boasted such talent.

Color me embarrassed. Seether kicks ass, and after listening to a couple of their albums the other night, I realized that they've released several songs over the last few years that I heard on the radio, liked, but never managed to match up with a band name.

Learn something new every day.

Gift



Fine Again



Fake It

...Such as, "Seether kicks ass."

Seether "Fake It" Uncensored

The Most Magically Awesomely Wrongest Thing Ever. EVER.

Ok. I am posting this as a blog, not a review, because I feel that basing a review on a single pilot episode of a TV show is perhaps not enough to render a real judgement.

But seriously, y'all. OMGWTF now reigns supreme.

Ok, Before I really get into this, let me say that I already know this show won't last long, and I already know that once it is inevitably, regardless of what seems likely to be a huge audience despite the near-total lack of advertising leading up to the premiere, cancelled, it will never be picked up again by anyone anywhere ever.

Know why?

It's on Fox. And see, Fox has a problem.

They're retarded.

No, seriously. They are the single broadcast network that picks - consistently - the widest 
variety of really cool shit to put on TV; yet, for some reason, despite a lot of their new programs' 
instant popularity, after a few episodes, usually in the middle of the first season, *poof* 
cancelled.

Right.

Now, the real problem with this is that - well - TV execs are stuck in the 60's. See, back in the day, when you ran a TV show, and it got cancelled, it was because NO-ONE WANTED TO WATCH IT.

They all still assume it works that way.

See, the reason this is a problem is that Fox has been known to cancel shows after a SINGLE EPISODE aired. They've also been known to cancel... oh, let me see, a sci-fi show, in its first season, whose fan base was already so widespread and possessed of such fervor that they were able to arm-twist Hollywood into making a full theatrical movie of it?

Right, so the standard "it got cancelled, it HAS to suck" model doesn't work for Fox programming.

And that's why "The Moment Of Truth" is soon to fade away, and sadly, never be seen again, I suspect.

That - if it happens - would be a goddamn shame. Because I am convinced that this is the single most awesomely wrongest TV show ever created EVER, and everyone should watch it.

Here's how it works. Before the show, the contestants are asked - on a lie detector - 50+ of the most fucked-up, embarrassing, potentially marriage- or friendship-ruining questions ever. The 21 of those questions with the MOST FUCKED UP ANSWERS become the question set for the show.

21 questions to $500,000; all you have to do is tell the truth. Sounds easy, right?

...Until you hear, in front of your wife, and one friend of each gender, "As a pro football player, have you ever sneaked a peek at other men's genitals in the shower?"

See, here's the trick that makes this show nasty: once you hear the question, you HAVE TO ANSWER or you lose all your money to that point. And since they announce whether or not you're lying, once they ask the question, the world - or at least the audience - will know the truth either way.

"Have you held back from having children because you think (your wife) might not be your lifelong partner?"

I mean, goddamn, Gus.

Plus - credit where credit's due - the host is awesome. The first contestant got busted lying about whether or not he'd ever - as a personal trainer - felt up one of his female clients, in front of his wife. (Boy, did she look pissed off, too.)

The second contestant was asked if he thought he looked better than most men his age; said he did; as an aside, the host asked how old he was, and was a bit surprised to hear the dude was like 10+ years older than he'd thought. The host asked, "How do you keep your looks so well?" The contestant said "oooo, you know, man, I got secrets." The host said, with a big used-car salesman grin, "Not for long."

In structure it's fairly simple, so here goes: the contestant has three people from their life come with them on the show. They sit on a couch together; there's a big-ass button in front of the three of them. It's a one-use-only "not that one, thanks." If any of the three of them don't want to hear the answer to a particular question, they can smack the button; that question will be withdrawn, and replaced by another question at random. (Note that that might very well make things far, far worse.)

The money is structured in tiers; $10K, $25K, $100K, $250K, and $500K. For each tier you must answer a certain number of questions; as the number of questions per tier drops, the "difficulty" of the questions goes up. A LOT. Once you hit a tier, that money is yours UNLESS you lie on a question. Although you can walk away prior to any question, and keep the money you have to that point, once you hear a question, you must answer it truthfully or lose every penny.

I will say that I cannot IMAGINE being stupid enough to go on this show, seriously.

But GODDAMN it was fun to watch. I did have a couple of technical quibbles; they gave long enough pauses between the 
answer and confirmation of its verity that they could have squeezed in at least a couple more 
commercial breaks, and that was kind of a pain, but I remain convinced that this show is the 
funniest goddamn thing I've seen in years, and I can't WAIT for more of it.

So, Wednesday night at 9PM eastern. Go watch it; you will simply be amazed, and either love it - if you're sarcastic like me - or hate it, if you, you know, have a heart full of love for your fellow man and sweetness and light, and stuff like that. Me? I'm a mean, vindictive, sarcastic, hurtful person, who revels in the misery of others, and apparently is capable of such sarcasm that comments made in passing and I THOUGHT out of the hearing range of others are sufficiently brutal that they cause innocent young fast food employees to burst into tears and abandon their aspirations towards a fried-potato domination of the planet, and instead flee for less Xeno-frequented employment.

(In case you ever read that, Emily; "My bad. Mea culpa." I'll try honestly - a good faith effort - to walk farther away from the counter before I begin badmouthing your employability and genetic heritage, or whatever the hell it was that I said that made you cry and flee the counter when we came in ever after.)

At any rate, THIS:



This is The Moment Of Truth. And it is the coolest, most awesomely wrongest game show, ever. Bet your life, your marriage, your friends, your family, versus your honesty, for $500, 000. And then wonder how different it would have been if you would simply have told them the truth in the first place.

Global Warming, My Ass, Part 97263482

So: Iran is having a bit of internal strife.

Why, you ask? Because the Ayatollah Ali Khameini - supreme leader of the THEOCRACY that is Iran - has ordered the country's "President," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to reverse his position and enact a law that Ahmacrazyguy had previously refused to enact.

Right.

Well, what was this bill designed to do?

The bill releases $971,096,587.98 worth of gas supplies from Iran's "emergency reserve funds."

Right. Well, what was this such a big deal for? Ahmacrazyguy argues that parliamentary interference could potentially wreck the Iranian economy.

Khameini, on the other hand, thinks that if HUGE NUMBERS OF IRANIANS DIE OFF FROM INSUFFICIENT HEATING IN THE COLDEST WINTER IRAN'S HAD IN DECADES, that might have a tiny bit of impact on the economy as well.

Now, I've never claimed that "climate change" isn't happening. It clearly is; the weather patterns are shifting globally. But "global warming" is clearly bullshit. If the OVERALL TEMPERATURE of the 
entire planet is rising, NOPLACE ought to be having "the coldest winter in decades." I hate 
to have to be the one to point that out, but come on, guys. How much more obvious does it 
have to be that the scientists simply DO NOT UNDERSTAND what's really going on? I 
realize there's some sort of moral obligation to always pretend like you know everything, but 
really.

The Bush Administration

Rating:	★★★
Category:	Other

"It is not enough just to identify the problem, nor just to choose the best course of action, a leader must also convince the people of it. It is on that last part that our current leader has failed. He understood and believed in his decisions with such conviction, that he didn't understand why it would need explanation. His opponents then defined the issue in their own terms." - WOTN

The greatest failure of the Bush administration, in my eyes, was in its stewardship of our individual liberties; it allowed the communists and socialists to redefine things at will, thus weakening our political foundation perhaps irretrievably. The second greatest failure was as described above: knowing the right thing to do, knowing its necessity, President Bush has naively believed that the self-evident nature of his decisions would be sufficient to convince the people of their rightness. He didn't count on the absolutely inevitable vociferous campaign of opposition to his every idea mounted by the socialists, and this has allowed the socialists to portray him, his ideas, and his administration repeatedly in the worst possible lights, so much so that Joe Normal on the street believes, by an overwhelming majority, that he made the WRONG decisions on most of the things he did.

As such, President Bush has failed our country in such a way, and to such an extent, as has never been accomplished by any previous President. (FDR did it on purpose.) The only redeeming value to be found in his administration is that, despite his near-catastrophic public relations failure, he has accomplished most of his national security goals, thus leaving our nation, in his last year in office, safer, despite the weight of public opinion.

Fortunately, his administration has also been marked by the presence of increasingly loony opposition; the socialists have allowed his agenda to smoke them out in the open, where their irrationality can be clearly seen by the public, whose approval of the socialist agenda is even lower than its approval of the Bush administration.

In conclusion, the Bush administration, through its catastrophic failures, has been perhaps the worst Presidency ever; but it has succeeded in weakening dramatically the sources of the greatest external threat the U.S. currently faces, as well as forcing the true nature of the socialist opposition in this country to reveal itself. As such, despite its failures, the Bush administration might well come to be seen in future years as an important POSITIVE turning point in this nation's history. Three stars.

Goddamn Right, I Say...

You may not know this, but there are people out there whose mission in life it is to reduce, destroy, limit, deface, and minimize your individual liberties.

The one most frequently under attack is one of the most basic: your freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech is very simple: it means you have the right to say WHATEVER THE HELL YOU WANT.

Or to write and publish WHATEVER THE HELL YOU WANT.

The Founding Fathers knew, when they drafted the First Amendment, that under the aegis of its protection, it was inevitable that people would say, and write, offensive things.

But the purpose of the First Amendment was to prevent - forever - the banning of unpopular points of view. It was to prevent the government from being able to decide what constituted an "acceptable" opinion.

Along with political speech, artistic speech, your general conversation on the street, your blog, and dissent with the government, other things are protected as well.

Pornography is protected. You have an absolute right to NOT BUY porn; an absolute right to NOT GO TO ADULT STORES, or order adult movies, or go to adult websites. But you do NOT have the right to "ban" pornography.

(I will note here, before my rant really gets under way, that email spam - specifically pornographic spam - is a separate issue. You have the right to say anything you want; you do NOT have the right to say it TO ME. Implicit in the right to say whatever the hell you want is my right to ignore you. Porn spam comes to my email whether I want it to or not; that makes it something other than a "free speech" issue, because I wasn't given an opportunity to choose not to see it.)

And something else is also protected. Something that - despite the Constitutional protection of the First Amendment - we have tried and tried to legislate out of existence. That would be so-called "hate speech."

Personally, I find racists - and any other kind of bigot - to be pitiful, stupid, undereducated, ill-bred, snaggle-toothed, retarded jackasses. And I can say that, because it's a statement of my OPINION - which is specifically protected. I have an absolute right to my opinion, and to state my opinion, no matter how stupid or offensive it might be; just as you have an absolute right to ignore me.

But here's the trick: racists and other bigots have that same right, and that same protection. They can say WHATEVER THE HELL THEY WANT, and unless they're twisting your arm to force you to listen to them, under the Constitution of the United States, you can do nothing to stop them. You can ignore them until they go away - which is the proper response - but "Hate speech" laws are, de facto and de jure, unConstitutional.

We keep passing them, but all it will take is one lawsuit to overturn them, across the board.

At any rate, in keeping with this fine tradition, is the following story. A blogger from Canada wrote - last year - a story about the huge Muslim riots that erupted across Europe and the Middle East following a Danish newspaper's publication of some cartoons depicting - among other things - "the Prophet Mohammed" with a bomb in his turban. (Some of you might recall my own reposting of those cartoons.)

Said blogger, by the name of Ezra Levant, was then dragged in by the Canadian government for "questioning" following a couple of complaints being filed claiming he had offended "the prophet Mohammed."

Despite the government demanding that it be a closed session, he brought recording equipment; despite their order not to publish the recording he made, he did.

Witness the awesomeness of an angry Canadian who understands his rights - and yours - standing up to a representative of his increasingly fascist government.

Now, my personal favorite moment: "he's dead, by the way, so I don't think I've offended him." 

Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?

...Most likely not, since this story seems to be flying, right now, strictly under the radar. Even being posted on FARK seems to have had little or no impact, which is highly unusual.

...To bring you up to speed: NASA takes pictures of stuff in space.

One of the things they take pictures of is Mars.

Lots and lots of pictures of Mars.

So, a Russian, one Alexsander Novgorodov, was looking at / through the reams of NASA Mars pictures, when he noticed something odd.

VERY odd.

A mountain - a very unusual-shaped mountain - standing, totally alone, in the middle of a vast ice sheet, with a very regular rectangular cavity in the side of it.

Now, the article - here - rushes to explain that there's nothing to indicate that this is an artificial construction of any kind, and that it's almost certainly strictly an artifact of erosion; to which I reply:



*ahem*

"When was the last time you saw a 90 degree, square corner occur in nature, hmmmm?"

*ahem.*



So; most likely nothing - almost certainly nothing - but it IS damned odd-looking, isn't it?

New Year's Treats...

...Now, I currently reside in the northeast, and here in Pennsylvania there's a traditional meal eaten for New Years: pork and sauerkraut.

Right.

Now, Tara doesn't really like sauerkraut - as in, "OMG EW." And for my part, it seems silly to partake in a "tradition" that doesn't belong to me, and that my wife won't participate in with me.

So, instead, we do what my family, and most of those I know who live in East Texas, do: black-eyed peas.

The following is an example of "WTF do we have in the kitchen? Well, let's see, some of this, and a couple of those, and..." When this happens, it's rarely "Meh." It's usually "Oh, wow, this is tasty," or "Burn that, away from other humans." This particular set was one of the ones that was more "Oh, wow, this is tasty."


Beginning with 3 cans of black-eyed peas, drain them partially - until the juice gets thick - and place them in a medium sauce pan. Add to this 1 package of dried onion soup mix, one of the larger - I will post ounces tomorrow evening, but the ones in the giant juice box - boxes of beef broth - I used Swanson's - and a drained can of mushrooms. Stir in a tablespoon of garlic powder and a teaspoon each of black pepper and onion powder.

Place this on medium heat. Leave it there until you're satisfied that it's done.

I will note that - since Tara had conveniently fried up some pork chops tonight, I also shredded into the beans 3 thin pork chops, shredding them fairly finely, but by hand.

After an hour and a half or so - lowering the heat to "Low" after about 35 minutes - they brought the Yummay.

Enjoy!