This might just be the best blog entry...evar. I don't say that lightly, as I consider my own work to be the zenith of western philosophy. But, realistically, aside from a few Oxford commas, what really differentiates the men from the boys in the quaintly-bemonikered "blogosphere"? You have the greats, no doubt: The "Velociman" does indeed "use his tongue purdierna two-dollar whore"*, if I may be so bold as to quote the belovd Slim Pickens vehicle, "Les Setts Flambs". Another great adventurer of the soul is "Protein Wisdom" who, though a Jew, manages to express his "ideas" in an art that doesn't scream "Catskills". Recommended, if only with certain obvious reservations.

The Wilburn Brothers says:

I met a little girl in Knoxville a town we all know well And every Sunday evening out in her home I'd dwell We went to take an evening walk about a mile from town I thought of how she cheated me so I knocked that fair girl down I picked a stick up off the ground and knocked that fair girl down Oh Willy dear don't kill me here I'm not prepare to die She never spoke another word I only beat her more Until the ground around me within her blood did flow I took her by her golden curls I dragged her round and round Then threw her into the river that flows through Knoxville town Go there go there you Knoxville girl with dark and rolling eyes Go there go there you Knoxville girl you'll never be my wife I rolled and tumbled the whole night through my dreams were living hell And then they came from Knoxville and carried me to jail I'm here to waste my life away and time is passing slow Because I killed that Knoxville girl the girl I loved so

Visit the Knoxville Girl. I haven't read her stuff, but she's hot, in a green-eyed emo kinda way.

I'm no boy scout, not any more, but I still sometimes suffer from a debilitating case of morality. As an example, I was swilling beer with some friends of mine last night, and one of them was explaining his marketing idea to me. He's driving into work, and he decides to leave his iBook on. He's got his wireless card turned on, and a sniffer program running. On his way to work, about 5 miles, he finds something like 20 wireless networks, only 2 or 3 of which are password-protected. His idea is to find drive around, sniffing out open wireless networks, and going into the businesses and telling them their networks are wide open to whomever drives up to the curb, and offering to fix it for them for a fee.

This is a little too chaotic for me. That would be like coming home and finding some guy sitting on your couch. Then he tries to sell you a new lock. We debated the legality of it, and I'm pretty sure that it's legal, but I could see some reasons why it wouldn't be.

One other thing I'm not really sure about is how the network techs who already work there will feel about it. I mean, if you're a network tech and you've got an unsecured wireless network hanging on on your LAN, you're incompetent, no question about it. But you're still a guy, and you'll still want to kick my ass when I saunter into your boss's office with a backup CD of his Quickbooks directory that I made from the parking lot.

There's nothing like ethical ambiguity and an almost certain ass-kicking to discourage a business venture.

Bill Clinton's book comes out today. Needless to say, I stood in line last night for hours in sleet and snow (summer in Germany). Clintons book reflects his sophisticated world view, and his disarmingly earthly sense of humor.

My favorite passage?

I LIEK MEAT!

(pp. 62-63, Harcort-Brace Edition)

Not surprisingly, my opinion of this book differs wildly with that of Mr. Schwarz, who is less than enthusiastic.

According to Drudge, American military personnel are to be put in charge of Saddam Hussein while he's custody in Iraq. This makes good sense, as the U.S. still has the best-organized and best-equipped military in the region. Here are some pieces of technology that could be prominent in Saddam Hussein's future:

	X-Tra Large 10-inch "Mega" Glowstick Just in time for the 4th of July, and the Iraqi Sovereignty Handover, these firecrackers will put a "spark" into any home movie!
	The Autolite Sta-Ful Battery With up to 20A cold-cranking power, the classic Autolite Sta-Ful will fulfill all your power needs. Recommended for use with Autolite Sta-Put Testicle Clamps
	Victoria's Secret™ Lace Trim Thong Perfect headgear for any occasion. The saucy, sexy Lace Trim Thong brings flair to any holiday snaps.

Enjoy!

It's about as warm and cheerful as a dead hobo clown outside, here in lovely Augsburg. I still haven't gotten the hang of the metric system, but I can tell you that 10C is the temperature at which the will to throw the baseball around freezes. It's June 20th, about 6:00PM in the workers' paradise, and it's butt-numbin' cold. It's even colder in my dank, ground-floor apartment. It makes you want to defenstrate yourself.

Things That are About as Joyless as a Cold and Grey June 20th

• Filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
• Cubs Fans
• Watching the Last 10 Minutes of Old Yeller, Over, and Over, and Over...
• Greenpeace Rallies
• Franz Kafka, Right After His Cat Died
• Laurence Olivier's "World At War" Voice-overs
• Robert Fisk
• A Morrissey Concert
• Masturbating While Looking at Pictures of Your High-school Sweetheart
• Dachau Field Trips
• The Augsburg Entry in the "Culture Capital of Europe" Contest

That last item actually cheers me up, just because of the absurdity of it. For those who either don't know or don't give a damn, Europe's having a marketing contest between various cities to see which can show that it's the cultural center of the continent.

Augsburg is a fine city, no question, but it's a little out of its league. Its own site (linked above) begins with the following burst of positive thinking:

"Cultural Capital of Europe"? No doubt about it: Paris, London, or Madrid. Maybe even Berlin. One thinks of the Louvre, and of Covent Garden, and impressive architecture and internationally-renowned artists. But Augsburg?

Optimism that borders on arrogance. It reads like a newspaper article, written by someone hostile to the project. But it's their own damn page! Their entry was quite possibly the most sniveling, humorless, depressing, and obsequiously "artsy" film short I've ever seen. It consisted of grey- and blue-toned shots of black-clad old men and women reading passages of Bertholt Brecht. Brecht! For those who aren't familiar with anything but Mack the Knife, Bertholt Brecht was a famous communist from Augsburg. He moved to Hollywood in the 1930s to escape persecution by the Nazis. After World War II, McCarthy chased him out of the country, so he moved to Soviet-controlled East Germany, where he famously assisted a crackdown by the Russians on students and intellectuals, assisting in the murders of dozens of protesters. A Brecht wikipedia entry gives some rough facts about him, but makes the predictable attempt to whitewash his support of Soviet communism by relating it to Nazism.

But I digress.

The contest itself is a sham. They've taken it upon themselves to steal money from taxpayers all over Europe, even ones that would never have a chance to win, and give it to the one city that can suck up enough to the snobs of some kind of unelected committee. Absolutely breathtaking immorality. And you just know that, when there's money involved along with government, it's eaten up with corruption. The winning city will have to bribe the judges, hire their cronies to produce their entries, give them kickbacks on the award money, you name it. All in the name of culture.

But really, what is culture? Looking at the contest, you would think culture is just paintings and movies. Culture is not just art; it's also language, currency, history, religion, philosophy. It's whether or not you leave a tip when you pay your bill (they don't); it's whether you're monogamous or promiscuous.

Probably the most insulting thing about the whole program, is that it's for all of Europe. Europe is made of many cultures. Germany alone has several: Bavarian, Hessian, Westfalian, Prussian, Jewish, Saxon. France is actually pretty homogeneous, if you loosen your definition of culture to include "just being a pussy". >/cheapshot<. So what they're actually doing is having a contest to see which culture in Europe should be appointed, by a non-elected committee, as the Master ber-Culture.

There! Now I feel better.

Have you ever done something, sitting around on your own, that you found...unsettling?

I'm sitting here in my apartment, programming some sort of meaningless eye-candy for some customer I've never met. I gave up listening to music when I work, so I have to make my own noise. Being a self-employed, work-at-home, recluse-by-nature geek, I haven't brushed my teeth, showered, or even put on pants today. It's 5:30 in the P.M., and I need a shave.

So, I'm sitting there fondling the Powerbook, gazing longingly at it's sleek form, inspired design, and oh-so-curvy air vents, relishing the feel of the tactile-feedback mechanism under the warm, pliant keyboard that, though I'll never understand, I breathlessy appreciate. I'm a man, goddamnit. A man with needs, such as ergonomic design and thoughtful engineering.

There I am, trying to figure out how to make an image filter process a tiny 25,000-pixel image in under an hour, stroking my computer, sitting around in my underwear at dinnertime, filthy and unwashed, and I realize I'm singing that wading-pool song Gollum was singing when he brained that fish in Two Towers.

Fuck me, that's creepy.

Bowing to the meme carried by Tim Blair, I submit to you three things that just chap my ass:

• Feng Shui (or any mysticism, for that matter)
• Kung Fu in movies
• James fucking Joyce

Jesus, I hate James fucking Joyce. What a simpering, worthless little twat. I think I'm going to file suit in my home state of Georgia to have his name legally changed to James Fucking Joyce. I hate that son of a bitch. I hear from someone or 'nother that some little kiss-ass literary "New Yorker"-wannabe had a fucking "Ulysses Day" jack-fest this month, supposedly because it was the date that was portrayed in Ulysses, by James Fucking Joyce. One goddam day, 11,000 pages. If you need 11,000 pages to describe one fucking day, you need to find a job you're good at.

Whatever happened to appreciation for elegance? James Fucking Joyce needed 150,000 pages to describe one fucking day. ONE! I could describe today in one word: Shit. I could also describe it in 1,500,000,000 words, just like J.F. Joyce. But it would just be the word "Shit" copied and pasted 1,500,000,000 times. I'll spare you the suspense and the outrageous Amazon pre-order fees.

Fuck James Fucking Joyce, fuck the Wachowski Brothers for re-introducing Kung Fu in polite Gesellschaft, and fuck anybody who tells me I need to have a goddamn turtle in the northern corner of my yard if I want to be potent.

And, by the way, fuck the next person who tells me in a bar that belief in a supreme being betrays a diminutive intellect, grasping at the tiniest of hopes in order to bring meaning into an abjectly meaningless existence, and then flips out because I light my cigarette with a fucking candle, because, as we all know, lighting a cigarette with a candle is bad luck for sailors. Fuck sailors, and fuck you Paul, you pseudo-intellectual, self-aggrandizing sack of shit.

Did I leave anything out?

I got a frantic email from my mom a few days ago. Apparently, the cat had caught a chipmunk, and offered it to her as a small token of his gratitude for the 9 years of expensive food and even more expensive veterinarian visits.

What follows is the heart-rending photo-essay of this ill-starred relationship, that of cat and chipmunk.

Jones hunts his prey

Prey hides behind door

Prey sleeps with the dust-bunnies

Note to chipmunks who may be reading this: Cats can apparently see through doors. Anybody who has a cat experiences this phenomenon whenever they get a good book and go to the bathroom: as soon as your legs fall asleep, the cat will begin thrashing the door in order to join you.

Dramarama say:

Okay, what is it tonight? Please just tell me what the hell is wrong! Do you wanna eat? Do you wanna sleep? Do you wanna drown? Just settle down, settle down, settle down! I'll give you candy, give you diamonds, give you pills give you anything you want-- hundred-dollar bills I'll even let you watch the shows you wanna see just marry me marry me marry me! I'm so sick of you tonight You never stay awake when I get home Is something wrong with me? Is something wrong with you? I really wish I knew wish I knew wish I knew! I'll give you candy, give you diamonds, give you pills I'll give you anything you want-- hundred-dollar bills I'll even let you watch the shows you wanna see Because you marry me marry me marry me! Marry me marry me marry me! I was young, I learned a game And love and happiness were the same Now I'm older and I don't lpay-- I found out the hardest way. I got wasted she got mad Called me names and she called her dad He got crazy and I did too Wondered what I did to you. I gave you candy, gave you diamonds, gave you pills Gave you anything you want-- Hundred-dollar bills! I even let you hear the songs I want to sing I'll give you anything anything anything I'll give you anything anything anything I'll give you anything anything anything Anything Anything Anything

As I'm struggling through "Atlas Shrugged", I figured I'd Google Ms. Ayn Rand. I came across this letter from 1941:

You say, what can one man do? When the Communists came to power in Russia, they were a handful of eighteen men. Just eighteen. In a country of [170,000,000] population. They were laughed at and no one took them seriously. According to their own prophet, Karl Marx, Russia was the last country in which Communism could be historically possible, because of Russia's backwardness in industrial development. Yet they succeeded. Because they knew what they wanted and went after it historical destiny or no historical destiny. Adolf Hitler started the Nazi Party in Germany with seven men. He was laughed at and considered a harmless crank. People said that after the Versailles Treaty Germany could not possibly become a world power again, not for centuries. Yet Hitler succeeded. Because he knew what he wanted and went after it history or no history. Shall we believe in mystical fates or do something about the future?

Ayn Rand was an important person. You rarely see such conviction in conservative philosophers. What I hear in this paragraph is that, goodness gracious, if Hitler can do it, why can't I? I will take over the world, and I'll become one rich motherfucker doing it. And there's nothing anyone can do about it.

(via Allah)

Guys my age who want to sound politically savvy now have something to talk about other than prostate problems: SNL's Pathological Liar Guy. What was that guy's name? Jon Lovitz, I think. Anybody who watched SNL in the 80s will instantly think about this guy when they hear that John Kerry said that he dated Morgan Fairchild.

Holism can be a bitch.

Today is the internation day of commies and pinkos. Did you know that Earth-Day is actually the celebration of Lenin's Birthday? Me neither.

So, let's start this new year of the Worker with a little joke.

What's the medical term for the skin around a vagina?

A woman.

According to Googlism:

rube is a tribute to rube goldberg rube is a twisted programming language named after rube goldberg rube is driven by greed rube is a strange convert to the jacked thoughts army rube is one of the best kept dining secrets in the western region of quebec rube is the only living cartoonist and humorist to have been so honored rube is a man of charm rube is life rube is considered to be an awkward unsophisticated person rube is an expert in broadcast journalism rube is down rube is just another way of saying fool rube is young and handsome rube is a giant 8x8x8 replica of a rubik's cube that skot and tollef made for bm last year rube is cool rube is young and handsome so new to your bedroom floor you know damn well where you'll go rube is spritey rube is a wonder rube is still impressed by that? rube is probably the way to go rube is like putty in our hands rube is a hottie rube is of fire with dog eat dog rube is not a boob today

(via Jim Goad)

Meet Maddox. Maddox rules. He likes himself, but he doesn't like feminists, the Matrix, vegetarians, or just about anything else he writes about.

Not that that's bad. I don't like anything either. I just find it interesting that someone who is a programmer, a perfectionist, and uses vi to make his webpage can create such startlingly bad HTML. Granted, the page isn't meant to showcase his web design abilities; it's meant to show the world how cool he is and how lame it is. At least I think that's the point. I just read it for shit like this.

Maddox even has the following comment in his pages: <!-- The code to this page is a piece of shit, I know there are a lot of things I could change and do better but I just don't care/have time.-->

Fair enough. The code really is a train wreck. There's font tags in the HEAD, for the cgi-generated pages there isn't even an HTML tag. For all that, it looks great in lynx. There's even ALT tags for the navigation.

At least he doesn't use a pussified FrontPage-wannabe like Movable Type.

So, there's this goober on the radio, and he's talking about legalizing hemp. It's a wonder crop, apparently. You can make clothes out of it, oil, fuel for cars, paper, just about anything!

Amazing! Unbelievable! But you know, when I look at these guys, I don't really think they want it legalized so they can make a shirt out of it. Why don't they just say, "Legailze pot, cause we wanna get high, and don't wanna get no heat from the man"? Why do they have to build a car that runs on the stuff?

Scott say:

I am a man, a man I'll give ya somethin' that ya won't forget I said ya shouldn't have worn that dress I said ya shouldn't have worn that dress

I know you want what's on my mind I know you like what's on my mind I know it eats you up inside I know, you know, you know, you know

Here I come, I come, I come

I am, I am, I am I said I wanna get next to you I said I gonna get close to you You wouldn't want me have to hurt you too, hurt you too?

Child Sacrifice

Front pages were dominated by the story of 11-year-old Abdullah Quran, who carried a powerful bomb in his schoolbag, replete with a load of metal pellets and other assorted bits of hardware calculated to rip through human flesh. When they opened the bag, soldiers found, alongside the explosives, the boy's Spiderman doll.
Abdullah wasn't merely a courier. He was, unknowingly, a guided missile. A cellphone connected to the 10-kilo bomb he lugged was primed to detonate the bomb by remote control, if his dispatcher considered it expedient.

In the Cold War, actual shooting was avoided based on the principle of MAD. Although it was a mealy-mouthed, new-age, pussified sentiment, Sting was right when he said he "hoped the russians love their children, too". Communism is absolutely devoid of human sympathy, yet it was the human element within the Soviet system that kept them from lobbing gigatons of nuclear destruction our way. They didn't want to die, and they knew that that was exactly what would happen if they started anything with us.

Unfortunately, Muslims in general, and arabs in particular, want to die. They live for it. They consider the sacrifice of their own children not only acceptable, but desirable. I can't even fathom the lack of humanity that would result in the above action. Handing an eleven-year-old kid a sack of plastic explosives and woodscrews and walking him through a checkpoint, because you're too candy-ass to do it yourself is no way to run a war.

Oddly enough, I haven't found a single story at Spiegel Online about that kid. But the frothy-mouthed rantings and ravings of the Hamas zombies about the death of Yassin-Saruman is still front page news at the time of this writing.

You can't survive as a people when you don't love and protect your children. Your desire for fame and riches should come after your desire to protect the lives of your children. This despicable, piece-of-shit religion is eking its way to oblivion. We can't let ourselves be taken along for the ride.

Link via Allah

Cocksucker.

Ryan, the Gay Punk, Say:

My name is Ryan and this is my personal web site for selling my used sneakers and socks.

So begins a hair-raising, mind-boggling, and above all meal-ruining express-elevator trip into the Hell of the Many Things You Never Wanted to See, Not Even Accidentally™.

Much like an H.P. Lovecraft survivor-character, or a witness before the House Un-American Activities Committe, I shall not reveal the source of that map, nor the connections between myself and this horrible leftover of the Old Ones.

And no, I did not order his picture CD. It's feet, for the love of Sweet Jesus.

My mom sent me this picture of my cat, Jones. Apparently, he had a tough day out in the harsh Georgia winter. Right after she got through ironing, he jumped up and claimed the warm spot.

Wow, who woulda thunk it? The Germans have spoken out in a recent poll by the popular online news source, Spiegel Online, and they just love George Bush.

On the other hand, there might have been some ballot box-stuffing going on, engineered by certain unnamed lizardoids

At any rate, Spiegel has now decided to run an interesting story on Democratic nominee-to-be, John "Baby Kisser" Kerry, and his man-handling by the jackbooted thugs of the neocon cabal.

I posted six weeks ago that Alexa was dissin' me, putting me at position 3,261,621, approximately 3,190,346 spots behind the Peter Pan Guy.

Well, Sally's starting to feel the heat! In six short weeks, I've climbed 1,093 spots in Alexa's rankings, leaving only 3,189,253 between me and total victory!

At this rate, I shall overtake Peter Pan Guy in...336.67891803 years!!!

He's hearing footsteps!

Do you want to meet me?

Hezbollah

Getting scared yet?

Linux.com has an excellent post today on what all those pam.d files are for. Excellent reading for any linux gearheads who aren't up to speed on PAM. Which, I figure, means most of us.