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Today's Fortune: |
   
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Saturday, September 14, 2002
Tiffanystar.com is a site my sister and I put together a long time ago. It was a good place for her to display some of her art and to express her appreciation for hardcore punk-rock. It was a good way to distract me from my classes, which I hated. Tiffany and I have kind of neglected it in the past year and a half. I've updated it with new material twice in the last year. I just checked the traffic. It seems like a lot. The bandwidth especially seems like a lot. 5 gigs over the past 30 days, vs 29.0 megs for flooz. I wonder if this is causing anybody any problems, since I'm not exactly paying for any of this bandwidth.
.: posted by Jeremy 9/14/2002
Just watched Impostor. It was very good, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers that Go Boom.
.: posted by andy 9/14/2002
Friday, September 13, 2002
Now you just need some whooping llamas and it'll be perfect.
.: posted by Jeremy 9/13/2002
.: posted by andy 9/13/2002
An aside to the clean-shaven special ops article; the personal body guard of Karzai who killed the gunman, and who was featured in Jeremy's article was one of the original eleven assigned to Karzai when he entered Afghanistan last fall. I learned this from a PBS special that aired Tuesday night. He was also present when the spotter gave his own coordinates to the B-52 instead of the target's. Karzai, incindentally, was less than a hundred yards away from the spotter post hit by friendly fire when it happened.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 9/13/2002
.: posted by Bill 9/13/2002
Thursday, September 12, 2002
Andy, if you want a good candidate for the Decline and Fall of the American Empire, I nominate Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence. Here are some reviews of it. As a supplement I nominate Joan's Didion's new book, which is about the scarriest thing since sliced bread. There is also a book called Decline and Fall of the American Empire, for what it's worth.
.: posted by Bill 9/12/2002
Ah, royal purple. The perfect antithesis to devin's populist statements. Nice choice.
Andy's indignation at our special forces' attire didn't go unnoticed.
.: posted by Jeremy 9/12/2002
What's so funny about "not found on this server"?
.: posted by George 9/12/2002
God likes to screw with our feeble little minds. He must think this is a hoot.
.: posted by Jeremy 9/12/2002
Maybe a bright pink background? You know, to go along with Devin's political ideals.
.: posted by Jeremy 9/12/2002
I'm sure we've all seen [the picture of the man who catches himself on fire while lighting the American flag] before, but I thought I'd post it just for the heck of it. Very funny. (the picture diappeared after I linked to it. So it goes)
.: posted by andy 9/12/2002
Do you remember the Visa Smartcard commercial with the cool version of "If I Only Had a Brain"? Well, the company that made the track for the Visa commercial has released a full version of the song, apparently just for fun. Yesterday they sent out a link to the people who wrote them and asked about it. So now I'm one of less than a hundred people in the world who has this song.
The song was released by Sacred Noise. It was performed by the Miami Relatives, and arranged by Chuck Lovejoy.
.: posted by andy 9/12/2002
I might redesign flooz this weekend. Any suggestions?
.: posted by andy 9/12/2002
I've been plagued by insomnia for the past few months, pretty much since I started working the 7AM shift. I call it insomnia because I have trouble falling asleep before 1AM, and I have to wake up at 6AM (of course, when I was working the evening shift, it was completely normal to go to sleep at 3 and get up at noon...).
This week is no different, but I've decided to start treating my ailment with brandy-fortified wines. After 3/4 of a bottle of port I'd been getting drowsy, and had been hoping late night teevee would finish the job.
Unfortunately, I chose to watch David Letterman. Dave had Bill Clinton as his only guest. Bill Clinton was so captivating I couldn't stop watching. I didn't necessarily agree with all of his politics but if there are two things he has a firm grasp of, they are foreign policy and common sense. I don't think there was a single thing he said on the show that I disagreed with. The show drifted from remembrance to terrorism to palistine to oil to non-centralized energy systems.
Worse than Dave was the Late Late Show that followed it. Ben Stein was the first guest. I generally find Ben to be humorous, and liked his game show. During the show I realized that he is a fascist. The only statement he made that I agreed with was that killing innocent women and children is cowardly.
He reminded me of most of the people I work with, simplistic, reactionary, and violence-oriented. I hear crap like "I think we aughta nuke the hell outta alla them Ay-rabs, and take the oil" every day, and while it's expected if not understandable from the mouth of a redneck in Muenster Texas who dropped out of high-school in 1976 to roughneck on oil rigs, it is not acceptable from a very intelligent and politically educated person like Ben Stein.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 9/12/2002
Wednesday, September 11, 2002
.: posted by andy 9/11/2002
Tuesday, September 10, 2002
I don't think Devin is worried as much that the justice system is already flawed as he is that Americans seem more than willing to sacrifice civil liberties for the illusion of security. Specifically, Americans seem more than willing to sacrifice someone else's civil liberties. Particularly if they're brown-skinned and Muslim. Maybe this is the beginning of the end of the American Era. I bought a book on the decline of the Roman Empire, called The Decline of the Roman Empire, with the idea that I would find parallels between the Roman Empire and the United States. Someday I'll read that book.
I feel like the decadence and apathy that led to Rome's collapse are similar to the decadence and apathy we find in the US these days. Devin's civil rights lady is a perfect example. She probably drives her kids to school in a Chevy Tahoe, and doesn't care what the government does as long as it doesn't interfere with her ability to go to the mall or watch Survivor. Maybe reality shows are the modern equivalent of the Roman colisseum. Maybe Sept. 11 is the modern equivalent of the first sacking of Rome.
It took hundreds of years for Rome to rise to its highest heights, and hundreds more for it to decline to its present level. Maybe as technology has doubled, redoubled, and doubled again, production and consumption levels have increased, and the timeline for the rise and fall of great civilizations has condensed. I think history will certainly show the United States to be a great civilization, even if we do only last 300 years.
Then again, there are always naysayers who claim the endtimes are near. I don't know.
.: posted by andy 9/10/2002
Wonder where this is headed.
.: posted by Bill 9/10/2002
You should at least read though the first paragraph on the second page of this article. Isn't it appalling how religion has taken advantage of capitalism?
Devin, I bet if you looked you'd find plenty of brown-skinned muslims in prison who have been processed through the justice system in the traditional way. I think you know the difference here. I also don't understand why ashcroft is afraid of standing him in front of a judge. Maybe a lack of evidence would get him released? I think that if there's any merit to the accusations against him, though, no judge in this country would allow him to be released on bail. It's bad enough that ashcroft is abusing americans' rights, but why does he have to do it in such a stupid way?
.: posted by Jeremy 9/10/2002
NPR today had the results of a survey about what civil rights natural born citizens, naturalized citizens, and legal aliens should have in this country. 51% said that legal aliens should, based solely on their religion and physical appearance, not have civil rights. No protections from search and seizure, no access to a lawyer, fair trial, jury of their peers, nothing.
They had a clip of a woman stating her opinion on the subject, and it went something like this, "If you're really here to become a citizen, and you really love the US, and understand what the US stands for, then you'll understand being jailed without access to a lawyer. It will be an inconvenience, but if you really love this country you'll understand and deal with it, because it's just an inconvenience." Inconvenience? How about this inconvenience: I stab you in the face with an ink pen until your head resembles HAMBURGER, you STUPID F#CKING C#NT!
Argh!
I heard that show five hours ago and it still makes me want to break something.
Then we've got good old Jose Padilla, born in FUCKING Brooklyn, all of ten miles from the site of the WTC, and he doesn't get rights either. Why? Coz he meets the same criteria: he's got light brown skin and he's Moslem. Nevermind that he's puertoricano, a long stretch from Arab. I don't think that Jose should be released, but he should face justice, not be locked in a concrete room in South Carolina. Timothy McVeigh at least got a trial, got a chance to face his accusors, let society know that it was not punishing an innocent man and not letting a guilty one go free before sticking the needle in his arm.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 9/10/2002
Monday, September 09, 2002
If anybody here likes the Renaissance Festival in houston, I can get tickets for 6 bucks (normally 21 at the gate) for October 26th, through my company. I need to know before september 19th, though.
.: posted by Jeremy 9/9/2002
Rip mp3s from your old vinyl records.
.: posted by andy 9/9/2002
Sunday, September 08, 2002
Did you know electronic games (all of them) are illegal in Greece, now? I guess you can fight Progress.
.: posted by andy 9/8/2002
Judge plays game of one-on-one with defendant. Judge wins.
.: posted by andy 9/8/2002
Is this the best our government can do? They're trying to get us into a war, and the best justifications they can give us are blown apart in less than 24 hours? This morning I don't have much confidence in these people.
.: posted by andy 9/8/2002
Just because you spent your evening watching drivel doesn't mean that our civilization has peaked. There's plenty of quality programming on television these days. I'll have you know that Mrs. Thomas and I enjoyed two back to back episodes of COPS: Mardi Gras, and found the entire experience very worthwhile and enlivening.
.: posted by andy 9/8/2002
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