Elvis Costello = Worst Sound EVER

I saw Elvis Costello tonight at the Palace Theater in Louisville and it was without a doubt the shittiest sound EVER. For the first few songs the volume level was horrendous and the quality of the sound was very harsh. The keyboards were as loud as the vocals which were distorted, the guitar sounded like shit, the drums sounded like they were in the back of a cave... only the bass guitar sounded relatively OK though even it was indistinct. After a few songs they backed off on the mains but from that point on Elvis's vocals were lower than the bass player's backing vocals and his guitar was almost absent from the mix. The keyboards were too loud throughout. At more than $60 a ticket I at least expect decent sound from a concert. The worst thing about it is he played a great set that went on for over 2 1/2 hours with three encores but there were times when you couldn't even tell what song he was doing. The sound was that bad. I'm trying to find out who was doing sound now so I can make sure they're on every black list I can get them added to.

Nasty Little Pig

Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch

This guy may be the perfect emblem of the Shrub administration. He has obstructed justice, perverted our elections, and has completely subverted the mission of his office. Despite appearing to be (or maybe because of being) a closeted fag, his first action upon taking office was to refuse to investigate discrimination based on sexual preference.

Will this finally be the damning link in the chain that will lead to the impeachment of the man that installed him? For two reasons it will not: 1) this Congress put the SOB in office. 2) not even taking us to war based on lies is enough.

It is too bad there will not be a revolution because it would be nice to see people like this guy, Ashcroft, Gonzalez, Bush, and Cheney lined up against the wall. It won't happen, though. We've got too many morons in pickup trucks that hate people that can think more than 8 hours into the future that believe narrow minded fuckers like these are somehow on their side.

We are a nation of imbeciles.

Open Letter to Hillary: Gas Tax Holiday?!?

Senator Clinton, why do you feel it necessary to cater to the dumb fucks that voted for Bush? Who else would relate to someone who says things like, "I'm not going to put my lot in with economists" and “Elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantages the vast majority of Americans.”(1)

You are espousing a tax break that would enrich the oil companies and do little or nothing for those of us that actually pay out of our pockets for the gas we use. Just like Bush ignored any advice from scientists you brush aside the opinions of hundreds of experts that say your tax cut will not change the price at the pump. You, Mrs. Clinton, cannot remember the last time you actually had to budget for something as cheap as (or as expensive as) a tank of gas. For someone with a personal wealth exceeding $1.5 million to say they understand how hard it is to pay for anything is such an immense lie it is sickening. To then play upon our difficulty in making ends meet by supporting a tax cut that will weaken the government and change nothing for us is just about the same as "let them eat cake." And you, an extremely wealthy and privileged white woman (married to a former President) accuse those that disagree with you of being elitist?!?

The "Tax Holiday" is one of the worst examples of pandering to the lowest common denominator that I've seen since Karl Rove first set up photo ops of Shrub clearing brush or Shrub's "tax rebate" bribery. We can barely afford to maintain our transportation infrastructure as it is, and with this never ending war in Iraq there ain't gonna be somewhere else to take the money from. So I might save a few pennies when I fill up my tank. Do you know how much more money a broken axle due to unrepaired potholes costs? No, you don't. Someone that works for you will tell someone else that works for you to get you a new car if the axle breaks. Those of us that work for a living don't have that luxury. Why can't we elect someone that works for a living?

I wasn't so sure I was actually against Hillary until this. I am now officially opposed to her. They're all politicians but she's one of those really nasty, scum sucking ones.

Difference?

Got this link from Moveon.org today: Is McCain different from Bush?

RIP Albert Hofmann

Albert Hofmann was 102.

"I produced the substance as a medicine. ... It's not my fault if people abused it," he once said.

The Swiss chemist discovered lysergic acid diethylamide-25 in 1938 while studying the medicinal uses of a fungus found on wheat and other grains at the Sandoz pharmaceuticals firm in Basel.

He became the first human guinea pig of the drug when a tiny amount of the substance seeped onto his finger during a laboratory experiment on April 16, 1943.

"I had to leave work for home because I was suddenly hit by a sudden feeling of unease and mild dizziness," he subsequently wrote in a memo to company bosses.

"Everything I saw was distorted as in a warped mirror," he said, describing his bicycle ride home. "I had the impression I was rooted to the spot. But my assistant told me we were actually going very fast."

Upon reaching home, Hofmann began experiencing what he called "wonderful visions."

Lexmark + Circuit City = CRAP

A few months ago my printer died. As this is modern America there is no choice to repair the unit. No, when the motor burns out you can't get to it without breaking the machine and you couldn't get a replacement to save your life anyway. This is the third Lexmark printer I've bought over the years and I've had pretty good luck finding them on the "open box" shelf at the various big box stores around (Circuit City or Best Buy) for less than the pair of printer cartridges cost so I went out in search of a replacement. At Circuit City I found a Lexmark printer for cheap (seems it was $60 or so) so I bought it.

I brought it home, installed it and started using it. It was so far so good at that point. Still slow as Xmas but it seemed to print fairly nice prints. After a few weeks I ran out of ink and that's when I discovered I'd been screwed. You see, on the front of the box in the lower right hand corner in teeny tiny print was a notice that the ink cartridges for this printer were available only from Circuit City or direct from Lexmark. None of Circuit City's employees bothered to point this out to me. The print is almost impossible to read without a magnifying glass and a very bright light. I don't know about you but no Circuit City stores are near my house. None of their stores are convenient or easy to get to and since I'm not the kind of person that ever shops in a fucking mall except as a last resort, a trip to Circuit City (all of the locations here are near a mall) is out of my way.

So I end up having to go to Circuit City to get a printer cartridge. That's a pain in the ass but I figured I'd get a couple color and a couple black and try to stay ahead of the game. Well, much to my surprise, the closest Circuit City was out of the black cartridges so I had to go across the river (basically backtracking 8 miles and going 8 miles further) to get a cartridge. This happened the next time as well. So the last time my computer told me I was running low on ink I decided to order direct from Lexmark so I clicked the "order now" link in my printer's program. It took me directly to an order page and recommended the #34 "high yield" black ink cartridge. "Excellent," I thought, "more ink!" So I ordered the slightly more expensive #34 which came in the mail a few days later.

When the printer program warns you're running low on ink it doesn't mean you're about to run out the next page you print. I kept using the cartridges I had, waiting for the quality to deteriorate. So it comes around to tax day and I've finally finished my taxes online. For some reason they couldn't submit them electronically so I had to print them and mail them in. No problem, I thought and went to print. After two or three pages (that were instructions on how to file) the black ink cartridge gave up the ghost so I opened the #34 and put it in the machine. Lo and behold, the Lexmark Z1480 doesn't support the #34 cartridge that Lexmark's website recommended to me! I call Lexmark and they promise me a new cartridge... in a few days! When I question them about the different cost I'm assured they'll contact me within a day to refund the difference. To say the least I was furious at this point, having to drive to Circuit City to get another cartridge instead of being able to walk to Walgreens.

When I arrived at the closest Circuit City (drive 2 miles through the city, get on the interstate, change to the expressway, get off near the malls, drive another couple of miles to the point where I have to wait several minutes for traffic to clear enough to turn into the stripmall) I go in only to find they're out of the fucking things. This is an EXCLUSIVE PRODUCT!!! They're out every goddamned time I need one of the things and I really need one. So I wait for some kid to finish with another customer and get him to find me one in another store. There's an old lady waiting for the exact same thing. This is the fifth time she's been to this store to get a replacement cartridge only to find none in stock.

There is no excuse for a store like Circuit City to ever be out of anything unless it is no longer being manufactured. Every time an item enters or leaves the store the UPC symbol is scanned so there is a record of every sale made. With a centralized system like they have you should be able to order any piece of stock and have it the next day. You should never run out because you can see you have twenty in stock and you sold five a day for the last three days and you can rush order another thirty or hundred.

So let's sum up here.

Circuit City: sells exclusive product requiring refills. Is always out of stock on refills.

Circuit City = CRAP

Lexmark: produces an exclusive product but sells the wrong refills from their own website. They also never contacted me about refunding the extra I spent on the #34 cartridge and it took more than ten days for the replacement #3 to get to me.

Lexmark = CRAP

When the cartridges I have in this printer run out I'm buying a Canon printer from anyone but Circuit City.

Can't Make it Up...

Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital

By Joe Bavier Tue Apr 22, 1:24 PM ET

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Rumours of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

"You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We've had a number of attempted lynchings. ... You see them covered in marks after being beaten," Kinshasa's police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters on Tuesday.

Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have since been released.

"I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke," Oleko said.

"But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, 'How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it'," he said.

Some Kinshasa residents accuse a separatist sect from nearby Bas-Congo province of being behind the witchcraft in revenge for a recent government crackdown on its members.

"It's real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny," said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.

We're Curing Cancer With Kittens...

This is a planned billboard attack that I never carried out. It was a little difficult to get to the billboard and the size of the alteration was pretty daunting. They changed the billboard after only a week or so also. The original said, "Cancer. We Kill it with Kindness." which I think is straight up stupid. If I have cancer I want that shit killed with radiation, drugs, and poisons. Don't fucking hug it. I did this mock up a little over a year ago:

Quote of the Moment

"Not all conservatives are stupid, but most stupid people are conservative." - John Stuart Mill

Thanks to my girl for finding this one.

The "Debate"

Since the earliest days that I've paid attention to politics (back when Carter was President) I've felt that the television debates were a stinking crock of shit. It's only gotten worse over the years and finally it seems the television hosts scraped bottom with this last Democratic debate. The candidates have not been anywhere near as vomitous as Bush (the blubbering retard) or Gore (who sounded like a childless professor trying to speak to a room full of four year olds) but they did show they were cowards like we all know Democrats to be. Obama should have walked the fuck out of their after the second or third question and Hillary should have applauded him and left as well. But neither has the balls to stand up to those worthless bastards that play acted as moderators when they were in fact standing in for Rush Limbaugh and the like.

Only David Brooks would give these guys an "A" which he did. What a tool. (I guess he fits into "the like," don't you think?)

That's all I'm going to say about this. I think the 19000+ comments on ABC's site or the endless ranting here, here, here, and here. Really say all that needs to be said. Here are some samples:

A few from ABC's page:

After watching that sorry display of a debate you might as well plan on having Charlie Gibson and George Sthephanopolus on Dancing with the Stars.

so disappointed in ABC news! where are the issues? give me a break. don't waste our time. ask questions about healthcare, iraq, economy, foreign policy. i hope these questions come up soon!

I think George's EGO and long held grudges against any politicians are showing.

PLEASE !!! We don't care about these petty issues.We want to know how they plan to fix things !!!!!!!!!!!!!We want to know about the ISSUES !!Come on, moderators... get it real, this is our last chance to really hear them.

A few from a Moveon.org e-mail:

"A stinker, an absolute car crash—thanks to the host network ABC...[It] ran the gamut from banal to inane. At the end of the debate members of the crowd appeared to be booing moderator Charlie Gibson."—The Guardian's Richard Adams²

"Halfway through the debate, not a single question on any policy issue had been asked."—OpenLeft.com's Chris Bowers³

"For the first 52 minutes...Gibson and Stephanopoulos dwelled entirely on specious and gossipy trivia that already has been hashed and rehashed, in the hope of getting the candidates to claw at one another over disputes that are no longer news. Some were barely news to begin with."—Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales.⁴

"We've revisited bitter. We've gone back to Bosnia. We've dragged Rev. Wright back up onto the podium. We've mis-spent this debate by allowing Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos to ask questions that skirt what in my mind is what we need to know now."—Philadelphia Inquirer's Daniel Rubin⁵

1. "Clinton-Obama Debate: ABC Decides Top Issues Facing Americans Are Gaffes, Flag Pins and '60s Radicals," Editor & Publisher, April 16, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3580&id=12458-5608649-z6xDmR&t=6

2. "Worst. Debate. Ever." The Guardian blog, April 16, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3582&id=12458-5608649-z6xDmR&t=7

3. "Philadelphia Debate Thread," Chris Bowers, OpenLeft.com, April 16, 2008
http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=5195

4. "In Pa. Debate, The Clear Loser Is ABC," Washington Post, April 17, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3581&id=12458-5608649-z6xDmR&t=8

5. "The Debate Debacle," The Philadelphia Inquirer blog, April 16, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3583&id=12458-5608649-z6xDmR&t=9

From USA Today:

Guardian America's deadlineUSA blog issues its verdict with the headline: "Worst. Debate. Ever."

The Washington Post's TV critic says Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos "turned in shoddy, despicable performances."

"For the first 52 minutes of the two-hour, commercial-crammed show, Gibson and Stephanopoulos dwelled entirely on specious and gossipy trivia that already has been hashed and rehashed, in the hope of getting the candidates to claw at one another over disputes that are no longer news. Some were barely news to begin with," Tom Shales writes.

ABC is trying to pretend there's a little debate going on amongst media types and barely mentions that they have been roundly criticized across almost the entire media spectrum (we all know the far right mouthpiece machine was throwing victory parties after this travesty), as well as tens of thousands of Americans. It's sad that this is what American broadcasting has fallen to. Even our Presidential debates differ from Jerry Springer only that there are no chairs being thrown.

Solar Tower of Power

This is one of the best solar ideas I've read about as far as large scale energy production is concerned. Termites have been using the natural convection caused by differences in temperature, etc. between the ground and a higher point. This technology could also be used to create "green" skyscrapers and could be incorporated into all kinds of large works. Of course this thing is supposed to be around 1km high so the increased efficiency would be pronounced but using this kind of energy (which could be used directly as mechanical energy, not just to turn generators) to reduce the load on the power grid produced by any large structure seems to make sense.

Oh wait, that's why we won't do it, just like we won't build these generators and we won't invest in wind and tide power. It's not going to make the ultra-wealthy mine owners, oil tycoons, or speculators more ultra wealthy. Since the only resources one of these things takes is in building and maintaining it, it doesn't provide a "revenue stream" that feeds the rich. We'll have none of that in America.

Pope Visits Six Flags!

EUREKA, MO—Pope Benedict XVI returned to Rome today following a historic, three-day trip to Six Flags St. Louis, the first official papal visit to a major American theme park since Pope Paul VI's Thanksgiving Mass at Wet 'n Wild in August 1966.

From: The Onion

Sky Diving From Space

Here is a nice, sharp big version of this video.

Here's a cut from a science show with the story on the jump. He jumped from 30km reaching almost 1000km/hr.

This guy is going to try to break the record.

Comments

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Death Taxes

What's Wrong With America: Prison Industrial Complex

We throw people in jail for social problems: Drugs, prostitution, and sex crimes. Those people in prison are forced to do labor that benefits a small group of Republican benefactors. Prison labor undercuts the labor of Americans outside the prison system. Ultimately, we should never profit from our penal system. If society deems it necessary to take someone's freedom, society should pay for that, not profit from it. Anything else begs abuse and I believe our current system of "justice" feeds the giant business that builds, staffs, and fills more and more prisons.

By the way, I believe the same people that are "privatizing" our prison system are the main forces behind attempting to "privatize" our schools.