From An Email Sent Earlier Today

So a friend uploaded the Hüsker Dü record Flip Your Wig for me to snag and now I'm listening to it through cranked headphones. The song "Divide and Conquer" came on and I had on of those involuntary in-chair rock-gasms where something sounds so good and so perfectly essentially irreducibly RIGHT that it made my whole body shake and left a silver snake of adrenaline crackling up and down my spine. And I thought, this album came out in 1985. Almost 24 years ago. When's the last time a new piece of music has grabbed me like that? Or maybe that reaction is only possible with an old record that you've loved and set aside -- it's been YEARS since I've listened to Flip Your Wig. I long ago lost the CD through either pilferage or poor lending practices. I have it on vinyl, but who knows where that is, and me with no record player to boot. It's not even my favorite Hüsker Dü record -- that'd be New Day Rising. But I didn't need to listen to it: I could summon it up any time I wanted. Or maybe I could summon a ghost of a recollection of what I had felt like as I listened to it with new ears. So maybe hearing it blew the cobwebs out of those long-disused channels, amplifying the experience.

And I keep listening. You know, there are some bad songs on that record. And not good bad -- bad bad. Hackneyed melodies one step above a nursery rhyme coupled with trite pity-party lyrics. All awash in shiny, chiming guitar and heroin-soaked drums that lag a half step behind the beat.

But.

Then comes "Keep Hanging On", a song that kept me alive when I wanted to die, and I can excuse all the precious little songs and feel that rope again, not the one around my neck but the one that dangles at the bottom of the well and is strong enough to grip and climb. Sometimes nursery rhymes are all we have. How's that for a pity party?

It gets better. I flip over to amazon.com and there they are. Every fucking Hüsker Dü record you could ask for. I'd never thought to look. iTunes didn't have them, so why would Amazon? They've been in court wrangling for back profits and who owns what for years, right? But there they are: from Metal Circus and New Day Rising to the Eight Miles High/Love Is All Around (Mary Tyler Moore theme) split EP.

I buy them all.

Revisiting New Day Rising is like going back to my childhood home and finding it much smaller than I remembered. What I had thought of as an uncompromising "punk" record, screamy and spiky and loud, seems so much more melodic, somehow innocent now. All that angst, and beneath the bristling skin of Bob Mould's guitar and impassioned yowls beats the heart of a house cat. An angry, spitting, house cat, but a house cat nonetheless. Yet I'm not dismayed. I'm comforted. Even "59 Times the Pain" seems regretful now, not as strident as it seemed to the angry ears who first heard it in 1985. Bob sings, "All I feel is bitter, and it doesn't make it better" and these days that's worth a rueful smile, not white half-moons of fingernails dug into reddened fists. Is that maturity or resignation? Both, perhaps.

I can't separate the music from the memories, you know? It's more than nostalgia, I hope. Maybe not. The music brings back not just memories but memories of memories: a taste of my first serious girlfriend's lips, bitter with beer and cigarettes; the view from my dorm window; the smell of the library, dust and old leather. Central Park in the snow. Standing in Monet's Water Lilies room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art ripped to the tits on acid, feeling submerged in aqueous pastels.

There are surprises. "Powerline" is a really lovely song: a bass line like a bed of smooth stones over which a liquid wash of guitar burbles and chimes. And "Books About UFOs"! What a blast of pure power pop happiness!

Then we hit "Whatcha Drinkin'" and "Plans I Make": it's this perfect hardcore one-two punch. My legs twitch: I know how to dance to this. My body wants to own these songs. The galloping drums struggling to keep up with Bob's chainsaw guitar, Greg Norton's bass set to subsonic stun, the last song's desperate shouted pleading lyrics occluded by the chaos: "Make plans. Make plans. Make plans."

Such good advice, so sorely unheeded. And the last note soaring up into supersonic nothingness. Beautiful.

From there I move on to "Eight Miles High", a cover of the Birds classic, and one of the great cover songs of rock history. Hüsker Dü's manifesto. Melody via screaming. Beauty through feedback. Everything louder than everything else.

But now my ears are getting tired, and it's all beginning to sound over-familiar. Same old stuff. I'm glum: have I really ossified that severely? Am I stuck in 1985? I try not to be.

Are The Democrats That Timid, Or Simply That Well Bought?

This (like many things) pisses me off: the Democrats are going to roll over and allow the moratorium on offshore drilling to expire next week. WTF, guys? Are y'all truly so craven that the big bad MINORITY PARTY is gonna give you a swirlie that you simply gave in? Or are you just another set of bought-and-paid for tools of Big Oil?

Is there a single person in the United States of America who can both walk and chew gum simultaneously who believes that expanding offshore drilling now will have ANY effect on short-term oil prices? If so, who the fuck are these people? They're either lying or retarded or both.

And this would have been a great moment for a bit of political theater. The Dems could have brandished alternative energy proposals, accused their colleagues across the aisle of stifling American entrepreneurial innovation, alluded to the growth of the technology sector under previous (Democratic) administrations, made hay with both the high-tech sector, the manufacturing sector, and the greens.

But they caved.

What's the thought process there? "We must be seen to be doing SOMETHING, even if it's the wrong thing!"

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not necessarily OPPOSED to more drilling. Fuck ANWR, drill away, I don't care. But don't set in motion a DECADES-LONG process and tell me it's gonna bring back the days of $2.50/gal gasoline.

How many nuclear plants could we bring on line in that same time frame? How much more efficiency could we build into the national power grid in ten years?

The simple fact is drilling for oil brings high-paying blue-collar jobs to eastern coastal states that vote Republican. Make of that what you will. I am, again unsurprisingly, disgusted by the whole thing.

Not To Say I Told You So, But...

I started this blog as a reaction to the absurd state-mandated brainwashing I had to go through following a conviction for misdemeanor possession of marijuana. I had to go to twice-weekly piss tests and "counseling", I had to attend AA/NA meetings, I had to do 30 days in jail.

The jail I didn't mind so much. The biscuits and gravy for breakfast every Friday morning were much better than those served at Shoney's. I picked up roadside trash, lost some weight, got a tan. It was the stupid fucking counseling sessions that really got my goat. I was told, over and over, in the solemn terms usually reserved for those speaking from a pulpit, that I was a Marijuana and Alcohol Addict, and I Needed Help to Stop, because Addiction is a Disease.

Prove it, I said. The DSM-V, the manual psychiatrists use to diagnose mental disorders, has removed "alcoholism" as a disease diagnosis. Instead, it lists "alcohol abuse" and "alcohol dependence" as different diagnoses. About marijuana addiction? Eh, not so much. In fact, it specifically states that there have been NO studies showing marijuana to be physiologically habit-forming. This didn't stop the sad-eyed hand-wringing by the counselors, who were convinced I was going to Hell doomed to die an addict.

I bitched, I moaned, I threw hissy fits and tantrums, I raged and railed against the dying of right reason in a pseudo-clinical setting.

My interrogators counselors were not pleased. I was not willing to accept Jeebus, I was not willing to kowtow to pseudoscience, I chose not to play. I followed the letter of the law in order to get through the damn thing without getting additional charges thrown at me or getting more deeply embroiled in the bureaucratic nightmare of drug court, but in our group meetings, I let my feelings be known.

I was in Denial, I was solemnly told. Doomed! Doomed! The ONLY way to solve my Addiction Problem was to Submit to a Higher Power, to go to Meetings, to Follow the Program. To Admit my Powerlessness.

Bullshit, I said. The counselors wrung their clammy hands and regarded me sadly.

Well, whaddya know. Turns out all that claptrap they were selling was just that.

Don't get me wrong -- addiction treatment is the right thing for many people: junkies, tweakers, pill-poppers, wet-brain long-term drunks. But it turns out (SPOILER!) that most people figure this stuff out on their own. Amazing! People shape up when they're sick and tired of being sick and tired! And many of them do it without state-mandated brain-washing!

Of course, the massive treatment industry consisting largely of marginally qualified sanctimonious hand-wringers will roll right over this study, because they want to keep their jobs and they're unqualified to do anything else.

But it's nice to be right once in a while.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go light a spliff, eat a baby, and sell my soul to Satan.

Oh PayPal, How I Hate You So

So I want to send some money to a friend in Canada. It's a significant amount of money, but no more than many middle-class folks earn in a week. I figure, hey, I have that PayPal account I never use, I'll just do that and zap it'll be there instantly, right?

Oh, no. Not even close.

I start this process last Saturday, where I sign in to my PayPal account and send the money. No problem. About an hour later, I get an email from the recipient, who informs me that, uh, thanks for the cash, but I don't think you meant to send me this. I check email addresses. Damn. She's right. Her email address is one letter off from the correct one -- I have made a mistake, and I'm lucky that the person who got the payment was honest enough to notify me. I email her back, apologize for the hassle, and ask her to deny the transaction. Done. OK, now that that is straightened out, I figure I can resend the amount to the correct address.

Oh, no. This is just getting started.

I try to resend, this time to the (triple-checked) correct email address. Transaction = FAIL. I call PayPal (who do not offer their customers an 800 number -- yeah, it's a 15-minute hold on a long-distance call). The guy I talk to tells me that because the first transaction was denied, the second transaction won't be possible until the pending charge on my credit card is reversed, which makes a weird sort of sense, so I figure I'll wait until EOB and resend in the morning.

The next day, the transaction fails again. I need another form of payment, PayPal informs me. Though I have no way to do so, short of driving to their headquarters and standing in the parking lot with a bullhorn, I wish to inform PayPal that they will never ever ever have my bank account information, no matter how they beg and plead or cajole and demand.

So today I spend a good HOUR (at daytime long-distance rates!!!) on the phone with some lady who claims her name is Joan but, judging by her accent, is more likely named Jalbala (pretty name, means "lotus flower", I think). She is kind, compassionate, well-informed, and completely and utterly unhelpful. I speak to her supervisor, Anna. For the record, Anna is not a bot. But she may as well have been, because she is snide, cold, unhelpful, and completely unsympathetic.

Here's what I learned from Anna-Not-A-Bot:

1. My credit card is now flagged to hell and back by PayPal's ominous-sounding "Internal Security Department" and can NEVER EVER BE USED FOR A PAYPAL TRANSACTION EVER EVER AGAIN STOP ASKING.
2. I mistyped an email address and had a transaction denied. Therefore it is all my fault, nothing they can do, tough shit, so long sucker.
3. There are no humans who work in PayPal Internal Security, only Cylons who do not deign to communicate with meatbags.
4. The only way to resolve this problem is to give PayPal my bank account info.

Um, no. I use a credit card online, because I'd rather risk THEIR money than MY money, and because my card issuer has a phalanx of lawyers just quivering for the chance to sue some hacker into dust.

So I went to Western Union. With a wad of cash. Which they cheerfully accepted. And sent to my friend. Took five minutes. No problem. Even got a smile from the little cutie working the desk.

I'm going to post this, then go to Amazon.com and attempt to purchase a book using my PayPal account. If that transaction is denied, I'm closing the account with a hearty, "Fuck you, PayPal!"

Free Speech, Unless You're In High School

This left me flabbergasted.

If I'm reading the story right, the precedent is now that what a teenager says FROM HOME and ON HER OWN TIME and ON HER OWN BLOG is now subject to the whims of school officials under the false flag of "ultimately causing some disruption in the school setting."

Douchebags.

A Checklist For Pastor Hagee

I figured that since Jeremiah Wright got a full week of press to demonstrate his asshattery, it would only be fair for John Hagee to get the same. Hagee, you may recall, is the jowly dough-boy who opined from the pulpit that Hitler was an instrument of God for shooing the Jews back to Israel where they belong, and that Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for New Orleans holding a Gay Pride parade (then why was the gay part of town the least damaged, I wonder?) Here's a summary of his stupider statements. Oh, and did I mention that McCain went out of his way to seek this idiot's endorsement because you can't be a Republican contender until you get down with the fundies, and digging up and embracing the corpse of Falwell was deemed too aerobic an activity for a 71-year-old man? And then it took McCain three months to reject said endorsement, after Hagee's increasingly insane rants came to light? So with that in mind I've put together a series of talking points for the right reverend Hagee to use when he stops running from the press:

God digs genocide. The genocide in Rwanda was God's way of showing the power of radio and the glory of the machete: a cheap, efficient, and useful weapon, whether clearing brush or butchering the neighbors. Plus, it's just black people -- God doesn't like them much.

Indiscriminate death always benefits the faithful. The Black Plague wiped Christendom's slate by killing all the feebs and weirdos, leaving only the strong Christians to rebuild Europe: just like God wants it. AIDS almost killed off the gays until the damn demon-possessed libruls stepped in and came up with retroviral therapy.

The mind of God is an open book, which only I am privy to read. That's right, MY Bible has stuff in it yours can only dream about. With pictures. And flowcharts. And stuff.

Democrats want to eat your babies. My babies? Yes, your babies. Raw. And they'll set up government-run camps to breed babies for their awful blood orgies during which they summon the spirit of Socialized Medicine and dance around nekkid.

Global warming is either a lie perpetuated by the liberal elite or God's wrath on the liberal elite, I haven't decided which yet. But when I do decide, I'll be sure and let you know what God thinks about it.

In Which I Watch C-SPAN, And Am Disgusted

OK, it's late. I'm drunk.

But C-SPAN flipped my shit tonight.

It's the prototypical Senate subcommittee hearing: the Government Affairs Subcommittee on Government Information, in fact, chaired by Tom Carper (D - Somewhere). Testifying before the committee committee committee (sorry, it's just somehow fun to type that word committee committee committee), the Archivist of the United States, Allen Weinstein, was blase and reflective about Lockheed-Martin's software that the Nation Archives was using to store all government documents.

Wait, what?

Lockheed-Martin?

Really? Rilly? O RLY? 4RL?

Lockheed-Fucking-Martin?

Don't they make airplanes? And land mines, and super-secret-Navy-Seal-tell-you-hafta-kill-you stuff?

Do we really want Lockheed-Martin in charge of the PROGRAM FOR PRESERVING OUR NATIONAL HISTORY?

Worst part of it: the Inspector-General of the National Archives and Records Administration, Paul Brachfeld, quotes a Dave Matthews Bland lyric, and the subcommittee subcommittee subcommittee chairman winks at the motherfucker.

Salient quote: "People would be shocked at the kind of records we hold." Good thing that's all classified, then. Oh, wait, no it isn't.

It's the NATIONAL ARCHIVES.

I Wonder How Many Sermons On The Evil Of Homosexuality He's Preached?

Megachurch minister arrested in Texas for planning to have sex with 13-year-old.

Of course, it isn't the church's fault. I mean, they have 26,000 members and 40 ministers, who can keep up with all of them?

And I'm waiting for the tearful "we have all sinned" court appearance where he'll inevitably ask for forgiveness and seek compassion from his invisible sky wizard, and by extension, the jury.

It must be nice to go through life convinced that not only are you irreparably flawed, but that forgiveness is just a genuflection away. How that must relieve one of responsibility.

I'll bet money this guy will "minister" to other inmates while he's in.

Because he's a man of God.

*barf*

Cognitive Dissonance In The Snack Food Aisle

The other day I went grocery shopping and my head exploded.

One of the first things you see on walking into my neighborhood Publix, right after you pass the seasonal display in the front, is a row of two-for-one bins. Crackers, mayonnaise, canned soups, and, today, chocolate chip cookies. Buy one, get one free. There's a variety available: chewy, white chocolate chunk, peanut butter, original. I examined a package more closely.

"REAL CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES!!!" it declares.

Well, yeah. I don't see why that's worth stating, much less bragging about. Of course the package contains real chocolate chip cookies. If it were full of mousetraps, or geraniums, or something, it would probably state as such, too. But the implication is -- there are FAKE chocolate chip cookies out there, just waiting to tempt the witless, innocent cookie consumer. These are REAL, much better than those FAKE ones.

In the right hand corner of the package is a smiling chocolate chip cookie, replete with eyes and chocolatey eyebrows.

That cookie is obviously a fake.

So to advertise the realness of their chocolate chip cookies, the manufacturers have chosen a fake cookie. And they then thought it necessary to reassure them that the cookies were, in fact, real.

I think I may have drooled a bit, then.

I stood there stunned as an ox for a couple of beats.

And yes, then I bought the goddamned cookies. Two packages. They aren't very good, but they are indisputably real.

WhineFest '08

The economy's in the crapper, we're bogged down in a war we can't win, and now I need a real estate agent, a lawyer, an accountant, and a bunch of other besuited parasites designed to rid me of my money under the aegis of "consulting".

Mom was confused and irritable all day, demanding that I take her "home", that I "go find the cat she left at the other house" and that I give her her car keys back if I was just gonna ignore her, dammit.

Hint: there's no other house, there's no other cat, and you haven't driven in over a year, you crazy old bat.

And it never stops. That conversation loops through her head all day, and it erases every ten minutes. So, every eleventh minute it's like SHAZAM! what a great idea she's had! And I hear it again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again.

And then I lose my shit. "GODDAMMIT LISTEN TO YOURSELF ARE YOU CRAZY?" And she looks so lost and confused and hurt that I feel like the lowest scumbag to ever get lippy with his sainted mum.

I need a break.

Happy Horrordays!

I'm fed up. I'm sick of this shit.

Our president is EVIL. And the Democrats are QUISLINGS.

I have nothing good to say.

Merry Fucking Christmas.

How To Understand Punk Rock

If you like this, you'll like punk rock!

If You Hate The Hold Steady, Skip This

Someone please tell me why I should hate this band. Beside the fact that they do everything wrong: derivative licks, pretentious lyrics, frat-boy posturing.

I wish I hated this band. But I am not cool enough to hate this band. I love this band. I love the way they find that expansive big riff that carries the song. I love the way they shamelessly worship gesture rock. I love the way they sound like Social Distortion meets Molly Hatchett while The Fall mediates the peace talks.

I'd like to see them tour with the Drive-By Truckers, so folks could see side-by-side what a trying-to-sound-like-a-rock-band band sounds like next to a real rock band.

There's a deep sad irony in why Lucero and DBT aren't the shit yet The Hold Steady manages to garner significant press. Don't get me wrong: I love this band. Like, I play "Arms and Hearts" over and over again. I love 'em. But they have copped that hipster pose that allows them to ape authenticity without having the responsibility to back it up. DBT backs it up. And Lucero is simply too good for people to grasp until the band dies horribly or saves a baby from a well.

Leach the irony from a Hold Steady song, add pedal steel, better songwriting, and a Southern drawl and you have the Drive-By Truckers.

But DBT has been honing their craft in bars for 20 years, and The Hold Steady arose from the remains of Lifter Puller (an admittedly pretty good band)....like, Tuesday.

DBT actually thinks that there's a vernacular rock and roll that matters to people. They still exist at the locus of rock, R&B, country, and blues. The Hold Steady sees that as a pose and tries to take something from the dead parts and build a zombie out of it.

Both approaches have merit. Guys go for looks, girls go for status. That's hard to argue with.

Toys For Troy

Maybe if we send Troy King something to fuck he'll stop turning his raging moralistic hard-on on us. That seems to be the thinking behind a recent "Toys For Troy" proposal, dreamed up by Alabama's finest shit-stirrer, Loretta Nall. With our lead lawman sporting major wood and gunning for Hoover's own Love Stuff, purveyor of skimpy lingerie and butt plugs, the time has come, citizens, to take matters into our own hands.

And when you're through, towel off, wash up, and finish reading this post.

There. Feel better? Cigarette?

I am trying to imagine just what it is about the sale of sex toys that has King in such a lather. As usual, my imagination is not equal to the task. Why would anyone waste tax dollars and time pursuing this? Does Troy King really think that dildos and fucksleeves and nipple clamps are a problem? Why? Is there a mad, nipple-clamped dildo bandit on the loose? That actually might explain the gaping assholes recently exhibited by a host of GOP ne'er-do-wells, but I haven't read anything about it in the papers. What's the basis for this? If not for a general fear of sex and sexuality and honesty about the naughty bits?

Troy, c'mere man. See that? No, I'm not going to touch it. That right there? That's your PENIS, Troy. And you know what else? God GAVE YOU that penis, and He made orgasms fun for a REASON. And those orgasms, Troy? WOMEN HAVE THEM, TOO! I know, huh? Who'd a thunk it? And sometimes your penis may not suffice, or perhaps you climaxed when she removed her burqua, and then she might need a little artificial stimulation. Because making women happy during sex is OK, Troy! Really, it is. And while we know that YOU have never suffered from any sort of sexual inadequacy, God forbid, others HAVE. And in order for them to stay married and keeping pushing out babies to create the great Christian army, sometimes they require ASSISTANCE. In the form of a BIG FAT BLACK VEINY DILDO.

I'm glad to see that your ban on sexual aids like Viagra and Cialis is working so well. What's that? You haven't declared war on THOSE forms of sexual assistance, just the ones that you find titillating? S'OK. I'm sure you'll get around to it.

Meanwhile, the state constitution is the laughingstock of the developed world, Northern paper companies continue to evade property taxes that would fund rural schools, Alabamians' access to hospitals and primary care doctors continues to decline while our insurance rates skyrocket, and METH LABS ARE TAKING OVER SOUTH ALABAMA.

But please, continue your crusade against sex toys. It'll make us all a harder, firmer, more tumescent state.

Yeah, Well....

Eleven days is a long time between posts.

Fuck you.

I Know More About Rock'n'Roll Than You Ever Will, Part One Of Many

Why's Tool so cool, but none of their indie fans have ever heard of Neurosis? You know the fans I mean: the we-got-here-via-The-Pixies, tiny-glasses-wearing, retro-tattoo-sporting, I-never-liked-metal-except-for-Master-Of-Puppets-and-then-I-was-on-shrooms kinda hipsters?

Them?

Well, fuck 'em.

I'll put Given To The Rising up against any Tool record. It's bolder, chancier, and more coherent a piece of music than anything Tool has ever made. And yes, I HAVE listened to all of it, both Given To The Rising and Tool's catalog. I don't hate Tool; I'm glad they're there. I'm not a big fan, but I'm first to admit that they're better than 90% of what passes for rock music. Nothing wrong with Tool at all, or A Perfect Circle, for that matter. And I know personally that Tool has done a bit of dues-paying, in that I saw The Melvins open for them on a nasty, windy, rainy night at what was then Oak Mountain Amphitheatre. I was trashed, and spent the whole Tool show hollering, "Bring back the Melvins!", much to the dismay of the people I was with.

*looks knowingly at Chappy*

But here's Neurosis, steadfastly doing their own thing, running their own label, spawning their own whole genre of heavy music. Fugazi gets nominated for sainthood for that shit. And much of Neurot's catalog, unlike Dischord's, is damned good.

But Tool's somehow carrying the torch. I don't get it. I guess that doesn't fit the narrative, the comfortable story. There's a comfortable indie rock story, just like there's a comfortable Iraq war story and a comfortable election story and a comfortable that-cunt-in-a-hat-from-The-Libertines-gets-his-cat-high-on-crack story.

I think there's some weird anti-prog-post-punk backlash going on.

MMO Pony Request

Beta impressions of uberdork Richard Garriot's new MMO, Tabula Rasa, are in. Results are, well, mixed...leaning toward meh.

Props to the developer for trying something different, but barring major tweaky from now until launch, the game sounds dead on arrival. NCSoft has deep pockets, so maybe not dead, but on life support.

CCP should buy it and work it into Eve Online.

OK, I know. I just blew your mind. Take a moment. Think about it.

What do Eve players want, more than cheese, more than a unicorn fucking a rainbow? They want to walk around. They want to be more than a ship.

What is Tabula Rasa? It's a sci-fi pseudo-FPS that's about an alien invasion. It's about walking around. While fighting, sounds like, but still walking around. In a science fiction-y kinda way.

OK. What does Eve have more of than any other game ever created in the history of human civilization? Give up? I'll tell you: empty space. Some of which is filled with moons and planets that are little more than a) places to warp to when you're getting your ass kicked; b) a handy bookmark for dropping a can of goodies for your corp; c) pretty.

What if your ship scanner could detect, say, evidence of life on a planet? Maybe you could land there, or teleport there, or ride a unicorn-fucked rainbow down to the surface. And there you would find the Bane, the baddies, the invading BEMs. And you could fight them. While walking around. Or maybe, there's no Bane there, just a dusty field with a bored tower controller and a seedy brothel upstairs from a bar selling crunk juice in front and illegal implants in back. Or just a field, with a couple of curious three-eyed lizard-like animals chewing their cud and swatting flies. Or a barren moonscape that seems empty until a dropship of Bane soldiers roars overhead.

Nifty.

And Eve could continue to be the hardass MMO that we know and love. Like, who's guarding your ship while you're on the planet? I assume it would be orbiting, awaiting your command. Hmm, tempting. Die battling the Bane? Surely your clone is up-to-date. Maybe asymmetric instancing, too: you find a Bane planet, land, and you wipe in a single blow. Mark it up to experience, and come back later, after finding an easier planet to conquer. Or send your more-experienced corp buddies to clean the place up.

Of course, I have no idea how this could work, or even if it's possible. I could spout some nonsense about instancing and servers and shit, bit I don't really know what I'm talking about.

But, wouldn't that be COOL?

Drink Up Kids, Mommy's Got To Step Out For A Bit

A stay-at-home mom gets 27 months in jail for providing booze for a party of teenagers during which:

A) No one tested was legally intoxicated.

B) No one present was allowed to leave, much less drive.

WHAT THE FUCK HAS BEEN SUBSTITUTED FOR OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM?

Should she be prosecuted for providing alcohol to a minor? Sure, and given probation. But 27 months in jail?

Don't we have better ways of using our community resources?

Oh, that's right -- the prosecutor has to get re-elected.

Mama We're All Krazee Now

American culture is schizoid.

We spend billions on porn and preach abstinence in schools. We have draconian drug laws and we consume more drugs than any other country. We "demand educational excellence" and then practice social promotion. We teach our children not to lie or to steal...until they get to business school. We uphold "family values", but we have the highest rate of single mothers in poverty in the developed world. We talk about "freedom" and we lock up more people per capita than anyone on the planet. Beer ads urge us to drink their products...in moderation. But not behind the wheel of that car designed to do 130 mph, 'cause the speed limit is 65. The "Partnership for a Drug-Free America" PSA is sandwiched between adds for Zoloft and Cialis.

All this sprang to mind after I read this. The state of Alabama, Big Brass Buckle of the Bible Belt, in the form of the House Education Policy Committee (their motto: "Keep 'em dumb and fulla cum!") is considering a proposal for "Christian Heritage Week" in our schools.

Feel that icy shiver down your spine?