Lindburgh sure got around

According to CNN the famous aviator fathered seven, count 'em seven kids over in Germany (in addition to the six kids he had with his wife. In the words of Groucho Marx "I like my cigar too, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while"

Memorial Day

I am a bit conflicted these days. My feeling about this war are no secret. This Op-Ed piece pretty much says it all in a nutshell.

We are in a War based on a seriese of bad calls. I don't believe that this or any administration would go to war solely for profits or because they are 'evil'. That is an oversimplification. But I do believe in the falability of man. Thousands are dead because Bush thought Iraq was a threat when it wasn't. Despite intelligence that showed it was no threat, we went to war. No country goes to war just because there might be profit in it later, or because their daddy didn't 'finish the job'. You go to war to destroy an enemy before they destroy you. For some reason, Bush was absolutely convinced that Iraq was a threat and gambled that once we were in, the evidence would bare out his hunches. Many leaders have made such gambles. But in this case there was no need to guess. The intel was there. More time was needed, but for some reason Bush felt he had to act quickly. In his rush to prove that he was a good President and was protecting America he had people skew the intel. He ignored contrary evidence. He stepped up bombing raids to provoke Iraq. He sent Colin Powel (a man I used to respect) to the UN to give the bluff more legitimacy. And it was all wrong.

I thought once Americans knew the truth that the political system would correct itself. It didn't and I have NO explanation for this.

Now we are in Iraq. The Downing Street memo states that America had no long term plans in place for what happen after the war and that has proven trajically true. In the run up to the War when did anyone have time to draw up plans on rebuilding a nation? Planning a war is hard enough. Rebuilding a county is an order of magnitude more difficult and is something the military isn't built for. Thank goodness we have Halliburton (the Vice Presidents old company) to help us out.

But we're there now. And most of the soldiers there are doing the best they can to get by. They are trying to help Iraq, which isn't too keen to shake the hand of the people who now fight on their streets, bomb their homes and torture and humiliate their people. Did we liberate Iraq? Yes. Are they better off now? Good question. Saddam was a power mad dictator, but there are plenty of them out there that we don't seem too concerned about.

If we stay, we're a target. We're a symbol that can unite fundementalists against us and the US backed govenment. If we leave the country will fall apart and we will have shown ourselves and our 'pure' intent to have been a lie. It is a no win situation.

Into this mess steps our all volunteer military. They are the ones who have been shafted the worst. They are learning the bitter fact that no conquering army is welcome in a conquered country for very long. They are trying to fight a conventional war against guerrilla forces, which never works. The British learned that in America, the Russians learned that in Afghanistan and we learned it in Vietnam. They were ill equipped and are being kept in beyond completion of their tour of duty because despite all those people with 'I support our troops' magnets on their cars and all the chickenhawks in DC and religious leaders who support this war our military is struggling to maintin its fighting strength. All they can do is keep taking hits. They can beat any force in a stand up fight, but there aren't many of those fights left. We're down to street fighting where tanks are planes are almost useless. When we do use them, we find out that we've wiped out a wedding party, destroyed a Mosque, killed an innocent family. And that endeers us to no one.

I am very glad most of my friends who served are now out. But a few days ago I learned that a friend of mines son will be heading out for service in the National Guard. I had to force myself not to pick up the phone, call them and scream 'What the fuck are you doing?'.

There are many benefits to serving in the military. Job training, learning self reliance and teamwork. Developing character and a hard work ethic. Money for college, medical care and VA loans to help buy a house. But the job of the military is to first and foremost, fight in wars. They are put into harms way. And Iraq has a lot of harm to give.

I don't want to see this kids face flashed on the 10 o'clock news for five seconds while sappy music plays in the background because he got fragged by an IED. I don't want to hear that his unit accidentally killed a family of five at a checkpoint because the car wouldn't stop. I don't want him to loose a leg to a landmine. I don't want him to suffer Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for the rest of his life. I don't want him to see his buddy from basic get killed by a car bomb.

There is no draft (yet), no compulsory military service in this country. So despite the failure of the political system, the fact that we volunteer for service might be the thing that stops this war. No Army, no war.

Ok, I've calmed down and am feeling better now...

Go take a look at this over at Something Aweful. Worst superhero costumes ever with somew veruy funny commentary. I actually remember some of the 'superheroes' that they are showing here and indeed, it proves that there was a huge creative void in comics for years.

I am vibrating with anger

Go here and read this.

It is rare to find a judge who so has gone so fucking far off his rocker. A lot of Left Wing blogs are using the term 'American Taliban' to describe the current right wing agenda. That term usually strikes me as being a bit over the top. But not in this case. This judge crossed a line.

Public Service Announcement

All right gents. When was the last time you actually went and got a physical? I mean it. We're not teenagers anymore are we? Do you know what your cholesterol level is? How about your blood pressure? How's your heart?

I urge you to go and get a complete physical. Yes, it costs money. But an ounce of prevention vs a pound of cure and all that. Don't put it off, I urge you. Not because I am particulary concerned about how healthy YOU are. Rather, I shouldn't be the only one to have to suffer through a @#$%! prostate exam. That shit just ain't right. We live in the 21st fucking century people. We have sent men to the moon and can split the atom but we can't test the health of the prostate without cramming a finger where the sun don't shine.

So please, go get a checkup. Because I feel oogey and you should too.

Thank You.

An internet stream of consciousness..

There are many keen things I can now do with my high speed access to the internets. It has nothing to do with downloading pRon or warez. Let me 'splain...

With broadband I can now engage in a kind of internet stream of consciousness. Beginning in one place with one goal and ending up somewhere completely unexpected. Last night I was over at Slashdot.org where I learned about a Firefox browser extension called Greasemonkey. I installed it and then perused the many scripts that do cool things. One of the things it can do is make ifilm.com movies open up in media player rather than an ad riddled browser popup. I suddenly realize that I can now view streaming movies again and proceed over to ifilm where I see that fanboys are still producing Star Wars fan films. Sweet. I check out 'The art of the saber'. Holy crap this is cool! These two guys should be doing fight choreography for big budget movies. In the film, there is a haunting tune. The credits list it as J'attends by Gartoz A Ran (with the accompaniment of Lisa Gerard of Dead Can Dance). The song is from the soundtrack to Black Hawk Down. A hop over to amazon.com shows that I can buy the soundtrack used for $12 bucks, but I am an impatient mas. itunes only has the audio book. A final search of Kazaa gives me nothing. Finally a google search leads me to allofmp3.com a Semi-legal Russian mp3 site that the US record companies has been desperately trying to shut down with little success. I said a short prayer and charged $10 to my visa. Their selection is good but by no means exhaustive. But here's the kicker. I downloaded (at great speed) the entire soundtrack for about $1.50 in unrestricted mp3 format. (The site also does wma, mpeg4 and oog).

I have truly missed this kind of web journey. And while it can waste a massive amount of time it can also be quite rewarding. Anyone else do this? Leave a post.

So funny on SO many levels.

Remember, this is the morals party.
Welcome to MichaelMoore.com!

Greasemonkey = 'The Bomb'

I just downloaded and have been playing with a firefox extension called Greasemonkey. Holy crap this thing is cool. It essentially allows people to write scripts that can reformat webpages on the fly as they are presented to you. For example; go look at yahoo.com just take a look at all those ads. Now install the no ad script for greasemonkey and refresh the page. Voila! No more ads. There are literally hundreds of scripts that do all manner of things, ad removal just happens to be the most helpful. I know, I know, many of these sites rely on ad revenue. But I honesty don't feel very guilty about it. The scripts can also be uninstalled if you want your webpages the way they were.

I'm not sure how the extension works. If it intercepts the html on its way to the browser it might save valuable time for dial up connections. Go check it out for yourself.

UPDATE: It looks like the content downloads as normal, then is reformated by the script. No bandwidth savings here, but still very cool.

Fun = Cool

Found this doing a bot of broadband surfing (oh, did I mention I have broadband again?)
Create your own Southpark Character

This is about as close as I could come to myself.

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Politics (Social Insecurity)

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Politics (Social Insecurity)

Everybody has their own crack...

Mine has been broadband. And right now I am wallowing in it. Do you hear me?? Wallowing. When I moved out here to Wellington (aka the boonies) I was told by the cable company that I could get broadband. The day I moved in they called me to inform me that they were A) lying and that B) I was a chump for believing them.

The answer seemed to come from a local company run out of a semi-abandoned building that used surplus Israeli tank radio technology to beam broadband to a big-ass receiver in the home. I am not making this up. Alas, the technology needed line of sight to work and unless I wanted to build an 80 foot tower on my land I was SOL.

Tinme passed and I suffere the repetitive kick to the balls that is dial up. My best connection was 24k. Like sipping shit through a straw. Then I got a call from my contact. He said there was a new gizmo. Some new tech that could do it. I handed him a check without hesitation with the promise that if he were lying, I would have his balls for lunch with some Sun chips and a Fresca.

Three months later it has finally happened. He spent much of the day erecting an antenna on my garage roof and running wires into the house. Does it look ugly? You bet it does. Do I care right now? Fuck no! It works. I have blessed broadband again. I've spent the last few hours just basking in its goodness. The shakes have almost completely dissapeared. I went and bought a Modest Mouse tune from the itunes store (which didn't work on dial up) I watched a full screen trailer for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Right now Steam is downloading Half-Life2 deathmatch. Joy!

Tomorrow the guy returns to clean up the cabling and get Rossanas system to work. As a bonus, I can now get web access out in the shop. Oh sweet jesus it feels like I have come back to life again. You bastards will have to find someone else to mock for their lack of broadband. Mine's just fine, thank you.

Here's a picture of my ugly-ass 30 foot tower:

The telltale skull...

Before moving to Bag End I lived in Elyria for about five years, and before that I rented a house in North Olmsted. I loved this house. It was a large 1920s bungalow with lots of woods and a cool stone fireplace. Our landlady was a nice Transylvanian woman who never bothered us. It also had about 5 acres of land.

I held several theme parties at the house that were a lot of fun. One of the last ones was a kind of scavenger hunt involving stealing headstones from graveyards (they weren’t real headstones, relax) and locating an old family burial plot behind the house.

I had an old style coffin made and constructed a crude skeletal body for it. The party went off without a hitch but the next day it rained and the grave I had dug filled up with water. We left it alone since it was in the far back of the property and forgot about it. Two years later the landlady sells the house and we have to move right around Christmas. Not fun.

Flash forward 7 years. We decide to get stone steps put in at the new house to replace the rotting wooden ones. The guy doing the work asks us to come see the stone in person to give final approval and send us, by complete coincidence, to our old house. The buyers had bought the property, renovated the house, and now operate a landscaping supply company called Stone Quarter.

It felt strange walking around the old place. A lot had changed. The house looked good. They had poured a lot of money into it that we could never have afforded to. The property was also cleared out to make room for all the stone and materials they sell. As Rossana and I are looking over the materials that will be used the owner comes over and introduces himself.

“Didn’t you guys used to live here?” he asks.

I was hoping he wouldn’t remember us. It felt kind of weird prowling around our old place and we’d been unhappy to move.

“Uh, yeah. It was quite a while ago.”

“So you’re the guys who left a bed of nails behind in the basement.”

I had completely forgotten about that. The first bed I’d built for the Sloan Gypsies troupe had been way overbuilt. It was too large and too heavy to take so we’d left it behind as a gift. Of course, he didn’t know that I used to perform with a Gypsy troupe. I could see how this might look like something completely different to him. Freakers with swords on wall have kinky playtime dungeon in basement… oy


“Uh, yeah, well you see we had this performing troupe and…”.

“So did you guys bury the body too?” he asks, waving aside my explanation. For a moment I had no idea what he was talking about. Body?

“We were clearing out the back of the property three years ago with a bobcat and when the very first bucket of dirt comes up I see a skull sitting on top of it.”

I now begin to recall digging the hole for the coffin the night before the party. For several years after we moved away we wondered if they would ever find the grave. We just assumed the hole had filled up and the coffin had rotted away to nothing.

“Everybody freaked out and we called the police.”

“Police?” I asked, suddenly feeling very very uncomfortable.

“I mean, we find a skull buried behind the house. And we remembered about you guys and the bed of nails and my wife flipped out. She made me get the gun out of the safe and was ready to move out right then and there. “

“Ah, uh you see…” I stammered.

“So the cop shows up and the first thing he says is ‘That doesn’t look good’. He taped off the area and called in the detectives for a possible homicide. But then he looks at the skull kinda funny. ‘Turn it over’ he tells me. And I said ‘you’re the cop, you turn it over!’ and he says ‘I shouldn’t touch this if its evidence, but I have to be sure’. So he slowly turns it over and sees the mold marks. ‘It’s a fake’ he said and everybody breathed a huge sigh of relief. We used to keep it on a shelf in the office with a sign that said ‘Bad check writers beware’ until someone stole it.”

Everyone was now looking at me.

“I’m… sorry about that. It was a sort of Halloween party thing.” Telling him the entire storyline for the party would take half and hour. I cut to the chase. “I hope the police weren’t too upset.”

“Oh no, it was a hoot once we knew it wasn’t a real dead body. Besides, there aren’t a lot of murders in North Olmsted so the cops and the detectives hung around and compared notes and talked about how they would handle it if it were real. They even found some scraps of material and a shoe. They seemed pleased as punch that they got to use some detecting skills.”


Scott eventually delivered the stone personally to our house. After having a look around he said “How come it doesn’t surprise me that you guys now live in a Hobbit-hole house?”

New project: Solar lantern

I found two nice looking lanterns at Big Lots. I have them hanging outside but rarely light them because its a hassle. But what if I converted to solarpower? I did a quick conversion using a cheap solar footlight with pretty good results. Click here to see the step by step process.

Lucas, the whore of Babylon

I know that marketing swag is part of the movie industry now. And I am not ashamed to admit that as a young tot, I indeed had Star Wars bedsheets. But this shit has got to stop.

What exactly IS the criteria for obtaining a Star Wars product license? Do you just have a dump truck pull up to Skywalker Ranch and dump a mass of the filthy green lucre in exchange for an a-okey-dokey from George or his toadies? Honestly, do they even look at this shit?

I've heard some really great stuff about the next film. I am geeked about it bit time. But you are stepping on my Star Wars buzz when you put out the Darth Tater Mr. Potatohead and have the M&M characters interacting with the Lord of the mutherfuckin Sith.

Thanks to The Big Red Monkey for the heads up on this.

If only Life imitated Art

Went to see "Kingdom of Heaven' tonight and enjoyed it quite a bit. Orlando did pretty good and the Syrian Actor who played Saladin was very good . It was also good to see Siddig el Fadil (now Alexander Siddig) from DS9 get a decent role. In fact there were many good smaller rolls in the film.

The movie certainly plays fast and loose with history. But people don't have the attention span to learn the details of this conflict. Of course, it doesn't help that the crusades took place over something like 200 years. Lots of details there. If you want some fact about the movie here you go. I also found a few interresting facts at the site of a person who certainly did not enjoy the movie.

The simple fact is that most if not all the parties concerned in the affair were cruel, bloodthirsty, powerhungry bastards. We already know that the Knights and pilgrims had various reasons for wanting Jerusalem ranging from drooling fanaticism to cold and calculating economics. But the Arabs were not all poets and sagely well-dressed men of wisdom. In listening to Amin Maaloufs 'A history of the Crusades through Muslim eyes' I learned that the Muslims could easily have repelled/defeated the first crusading armies but were too busy screwing each other over, or paying them off. At the time they were a group of individual kingdoms fighting for power and land. United under Saladin they were not always sagely and magnanymous. They did in fact wipe out everyone during a battle just 3 months before the events in the movie took place and although Jews and Christians could pray in Jerusalem they were often treated quite badly. These were men who were products of their timer though. And they were brutal times. I wonder what our excuse is now?

What I enjoyed most about the film was its visual style, its very natural feel. The costumes were simply amazing. This film didn't cut one corner or substitute more flashy looking armoror. Everything down to the shoes looked right. I even saw a European carrying a falchion (single edge) sword, which you never see in a movie even though it was a very popular style at the time. The battles looked absolutlely real. It makes you understand why you would want to surrender a city rather than withstand a prolonged siege.

Overall, I give it a "C-" for history and an "A" for style. Go check it out.

Seems perfectly reasonable to me

I know that we live in a world with rules. We can't just go around and do shit just because we want to can we? Of course not. But some times it just feels good to whip out a big ass sword and do some damage.

Cops: Driver Defends Skills With Sword

NASHUA, N.H. (AP) -- A man is accused of defending his driving skills by pulling out a sword and popping a tire on another man's car.

Charles O'Neil, 36, was driving slowly on the Henri Burque Highway last Sunday when someone driving behind him became annoyed, honked his horn and passed him, police said.

When both vehicles stopped at a light, the two drivers got out and started an argument that ended with O'Neil allegedly pulled out a broadsword with a blade more than three feet long and telling the other driver, "I ought to run you through with this."

Police said O'Neil also pierced the other car's tires and then drove off.

He's been charged with criminal threatening and criminal mischief.

I know that swords should only be used to defeat evil warlords and dragons, sure. But sometimes a broadsword IS the answer to a minor disagreement.

I'm with you guys

There are a million of these things out there on the internets. So I finally broke down and took one. It's a fun test, which is meant to show my ability to survive a zombie attack. Hey, that kind of info is important. What's wierd though is that I only got a 72% and my friend Cat got a 92%. That means she's more hard core than me. That's kinda fucked up. Here ya go:

Official Survivor Congratulations! You scored 72%!

Whether through ferocity or quickness, you made it out. You made the right choice most of the time, but you probably screwed up somewhere. Nobody's perfect, at least you're alive.

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 71% on survivalpoints

Link: The Zombie Scenario Survivor Test written by ci8db4uok on Ok Cupid

IFILM - Viral Videos: World of Warcraft with Leeroy

IFILM - Viral Videos: World of Warcraft with Leeroy
This is THE funniest thing I have ever seen. A quick google search with net you a higher quality downloadable version that you should burn to disk and send to random people.