Please allow me to introduce myself I am a man of ill health and waste. My budget doesn’t allow for much else and the notion of being ‘upwardly mobile’ makes me regret being born under the banner of King Reagan. Alas, the King is dead thus long live the fucking King. As similarly as a seer on a mountain can accurately survey the landscape I’ll just use my own special vantage point for your personal edification and reflection. Contrary to popular opinion, the phenomenon of ‘broke ass white boy’ is nothing new. There have actually been white people who have fallen on hard times throughout history believe it or not. Please don’t ask me to name any names of any proper poor palies; anomia is a bitch… but those little street urchin shits that Charles Dickens always wrote about immediately spring to mind. I’m not here to swing on the nuts of Dickens though so let’s get down to getting down. Today’s topic of discussion is R.A.B.S.: Rich Ass Bored Shits. R.A.B.S. is definitely a new phenomenon but put your ear to the ground and you’ll be shown that the Lords of This World are slowly phasing out this particular biological meme; most likely because they find it just as fucking annoying as everyone else. R.A.B.S. are aspiring yuppies who will fail in their yuppiedom just as hard and fast as they have failed in every other facet of their miserable existences. This inevitable doom is caused by no genuine shortcomings whatsoever; R.A.B.S. are the most intelligent, resourceful, educated and connected people you will ever regret being introduced to. The cause of spontaneous R.A.B.S. failure is due to the inability to quit fucking bitching and obsessing over the perceived imperfections of life. Rather than apply common sense to sensory perceptions and consult the memory bank when in doubt, R.A.B.S. find it easier to stick themselves inside an extremely negative and self-defeating mental cacoon of impending doom. This cacoon births no exquisite marmoreal winged moth or fleetingly beautiful butterfly but instead will dissolute all it comes into contact with. This continues in a Sisyphean fashion until something true enough penetrates the semi-permeable membrane of backwards ass thinking. Upon puncture the envelope expands rather than deflates as one might expect. The cause of random expansion is unknown at this time but evidence points to the misery loves company phenomenon. As we all know the best kind of misery is manufactured misery and nothing attracts vulgar artifacts as consistently as this special blend of bullshit. Once the R.A.B.S. crew has assembled into some amalgamated Voltron of Poor Me the real fun begins. Team R.A.B.S. will continue to flyff their parents’ monies on drugs, contraception, drugs, overpriced status symbols, drugs, nutritionally vacant foodstuffs, drugs, flavor of the month electronic gadgets, drugs and entrances to sweat encrusted clubs where the drinks cost more than a bottle of the decent stuff and the DJ’s worst nightmare is the crossfader somehow slipping away from the extreme right and left of the mixer whilst in the middle of queuing up the next Lil’ Wayne mp3 on Serato. This continues until the boredom of the R.A.B.S. becomes an all consuming conflagration of voiding desiccation, the R.A.B.S. crew becomes despondent and horrible things begin happening for no reason other than that they are something happening. In the sense that every major airport you visit across the world is exactly the same, the existence and habitations of every R.A.B.S. crew is exactly the same the reason being that familiarity is the best possible surefire way of gilding a cage. At this point R.A.B.S. will dissemble, most likely due to a staged nervous breakdown. Common activities in this point in an individual R.A.B.S. life-cycle include cyclopean made-to-be-broken promises/commitments, fugal talk of ‘finding oneself’, pursuing a religion that doesn’t properly appreciate right angles, three figure vacations that last less than a month and above all else going out of their way to be an obnoxious fucking cunt to everyone they come into contact with. This is the basic life cycle of the R.A.B.S. individual but the actual ethnography can fracture the soundest of minds and is best left to a better funded and unsaner person than I.
This guy. This fucking guy. Would you give this man your money? What if he promised you that by using his "psychic powers" he could give you vast riches?
The answer of course, is yes: you would give him money. Well maybe you wouldn't, but 100 investors from around the world gave Thai-chi Kitty Douchebag over 6 million dollars. He invested half of that in foreign currencies, embezzled a quarter million by putting it into his wife's non-profit, and did God-knows what with the rest. I'm guessing he donated it to American Cat Rapers Society.
At the center of the "story" Avatar is an "inter-species" romance between the humanoid Na'vi and a Human. Our protagonist falls in love with an "alien" woman and an "alien" culture, abandons all to quite literally "go native." In my opinion the whole exercise is at best sloppy sci-fi; the Na'vi could easily be swapped with any idealized aboriginal tribe on earth (if their mysticism was real), the setting could be any tropical forest (with phosphorescence), and the Marines could be employees any colonial company of the 17th-19th century without any major change to the story. This is sci-fi that I hate as the technology and setting aren't used to explore any interesting aspects of humanity and the robots and aliens are just there to provide a CGI spectacular.
Imagine if instead our protagonist had to deal with an environment and alien species that was genuinely alien. Instead of dealing with a furry's wet dream of anthropomorphic cats, what if they where sentient blobfish? Instantly the love story is made more difficult by the fact that there is no innate sex appeal. Now the story has to deal with the issue of what love is should the blobfish even be capable of love. Suddenly we have to dissect what love is and weigh intellectual attraction v. sex appeal, human hormones in conflict with blobfish ones. And we'd also have the question of what is it like to be put into a truly alien form that lives in a truly 3D environment and swims as primary locomotion. Our characters would have to deal with how grounding is a human body; how does form effect our interactions, our self-concept, and our view of our environment?
Dealing with complex questions about humanity is what makes science fiction a great medium. Avatar is lazy. (4,081)
Andrew WK is unquestionably th' best rock artist of th' decade. It's a fact that his first album "I Get Wet," whipped uncountable youngins into a stiff froth and could turn a small room full of bored delinquents into a pogoing, fist-pumping maelstrom of PARTY. Sounding like Rob Zombie's band backing some kind of demonic party coach, "I Get Wet" was part art prank, part skinny dip in th' testosterone vat, and all zeitgeist. If this record was a part of your life in 2001, I bet you are the better for it.
There's a lesson to be learned here. You don't have to tolerate a life of mediocrity and wackness. Take a tip from Andrew WK -- when it's time to party, we must party HARD. (788)
This is a public service announcement to let all Latewire readers know that English producer Burial is the best music artist of the milennium.
On Burial's two records, "Burial" and "Untrue," switchblade trebles and gut-shifting bass duke it out in a spare reverberating mix, while plaintive samples moan and wail. The musical style is often called "dubstep," a direct descendent of another non-crummy UK music genre, drum + bass. But where drum + bass is rapid and and cerebral, Burial and the best dubstep are wobbly, 140-bpm lacerations that are at least as suited to solo-dolo sulking about as they are dancefloors. The tunes are simultaneously soothing and jarring, and their gloomy crispness makes any day feel like a March rain. Like, imagine if drum + bass had a kid with early Massive Attack, and you're getting there.
SPACEAPE
Burial's music has more feeling and creativity in one phrase than all th' garbage emo-metal and faceless Starbucks drug-casualty music put together. Chill them #$%^&* out and listen to this music now. It will help.
Here's another tune that saves lives in a very different way -- 2006's "Yeah Yeah" by Bodyrox. Beware prudes! Sex and nudity within, also amplifier desecration.
STOP DYING IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO GET YOUR SHAPE BACK (1,963)
Chris Mathews, the host of CNN's Hardball proclaimed that the Democratic Party will dissolve if it does not use a cloture vote to pass ObamaCare. This comment is the latest in a long string of reality challenged pronouncements and is the last straw for this author. I hereby proclaim that Chris Mathews has lost his sanity.
I'm ill as hell today. Still managed to finish it though!
Rough Transcript: Remember the movie back to the future 2? The villain uses a time machine to go back 30 years and change the timeline.
In the alternate timeline, the good guys are either dead or subjugated by the villain, who is so powerful he can essentially do whatever he wants.
The people of the alternate timeline are oblivious to how they ended up in that mess and just assume it's the way things are meant to be.
This is kind of the same thing we see with government stimulus. Essentially, our future could go one of two ways: with stimulus, or without. When stimulus is applied, the result is that people are in worse shape, and don't recognize what they've lost by government altering the timeline.
Let me first say that I'm talking mostly in terms of fiscal stimulus here, like the TARP, Obama's $700b stimulus, and the upcoming $15B jobs bill. However, many of the things I'm about to say could be applied to monetary stimulus as well.
Let's pretend first that you're an investor in 2008 after the stocks, housing, and other asset prices have fallen dramatically. Things are uncertain, and you want to be very careful in reinvesting your money. You're going to choose businesses that look like they have a healthy outlook. You're going to research, and you're going to pick your next investment solely based on the profit it will yield.
Government, on the other hand, does the opposite: Stimulus projects are chosen not based on what will be the biggest wealth producer in the future, but by a myriad of other factors including: - Who paid what in campaign contributions - Is the business located in my district where it will employ my constituents - What the most influential lobbyists are saying - What the politician is currently invested in*
*I bet you didn't know that it's actually legal for politicians or their friends to invest in a business they know will benefit from an upcoming piece of legislation. They can therefore use your tax dollars to bolster a stock and enrich themselves.
A lot of economists reply to this and say: "So what? It doesn't matter what the money is spent on. As long as the money is being spent, it will create jobs and help the crisis." This is what the Keynesians call boosting "aggregate demand."
The problem with this is two fold 1) Jobs are not about babysitting people or generally killing their time and handing them a paycheck, they're about creating wealth. 2) The money comes from somewhere, and invariably is shunting money away from legitimate long-term investments
Let's talk about jobs. Like I said, jobs are about creating wealth. I'm going to use a quick example of how wealth is created, so you can understand how it is our standard of living rises.
Say I save up and buy an empty plot of land and some saplings for $1,000 dollars. I spend another $1,000 on labor and grow the trees for lumber. I sell the rights to the trees to a lumber company for $5,000. Did you see that? I just created $3,000 of wealth. It doesn't end there, either. The lumber company cuts the trees down and processes them into planks and blocks at a cost of $1,000 in labor, $1,000 in machinery costs, and resells all that wood for $10,000. They have just created a net of $3,000. The company they sold the wood to makes furniture in a factory at a cost of $2,000 for the labor, $1,000 for the machinery, and resells the pieces for $20,000. Another $7,000 is created.
The laborers and capital investors of this scenario added $13,000 in value. That value is reintroduced into the economy either through consumption or yet even more capital investment. Using my profits from my tree farm, I can now choose to spend another $2,000 and double the size of my business. Then I could put the other $1,000 in the bank and they might loan that money out to someone else who might start their own businesses.
When government ties up labor for its own purposes, that labor never creates as much wealth as it would in the private sector. This can be due to the laziness of government contractors or employees, but it's also due to the fact that the investor chooses projects based on yield whereas the government does not. Essentially, government money is primarily either paying people to work less productively or paying people not to work at all.
Therefore, the biggest problem with government spending is not the taxes, it's actually the loss of the fruits of the labor we would've gotten in the alternate scenario where government was smaller and employed fewer people.
Now let's talk about the money. 100% of these stimulus packages have essentially been lumped into the national debt. People know that debt is simply deferred taxation--that we're syphoning off our children's future in exchange for a better standard of living today. What you probably didn't count on is that even in the present, large deficits have repercussions.
The national debt is composed of bonds. Bonds can be bought by anyone, and in fact despite what you may have heard, most US bonds are held domestically by Americans and American institutions. The biggest foreign bondholder is Japan, followed by China.
The question that you need to ask is: where is the money for the bonds coming from? People invest in US treasury bonds because they're perceived as a secure investment. In fact, until recently, most investors wouldn't even fathom a future where US Bonds wouldn't be the most secure investment out there.
In spite of the ballooning debt, people are still buying these bonds. The question is, as an investor, if in an alternate timeline, the government weren't issuing bonds, where would your money be?
Unless these people are inclined to keep their money under their mattress, their money would either be in other, carefully-chosen investments or in a bank. What does a bank do with deposit money? It also carefully invests.
So basically, by issuing government bonds, the government ensures that those monies are not put into the wealth-producing private sector, but instead into the wealth-draining public sector.
Not only that, but there's the obvious problem with having to pay back those bondholders in the future, which is paradoxically better for the economy than the stimulus the debt was used to fund. (16,412)
So this is what it's come to. We've spent all and now are compelled to face the true reality of the situation we've chiseled out for ourselves. All these years trying to get more, get more, and get more independent have really all been spent mortaring ourselves tightly inside the chamber of the Hate Goat.
The Hate Goat sows confusion and harvests the gutted husks of dreams from within the foul Abbatoir of Hope. He rejoices that we've invested so much of our blood and effort, only to finally join him in his vile abode.
YOU LIED TO ME YOU SAID YOU'D NEVER TURN FROM ME YOU LIED TO ME YOU LIED TO ME (1,775)
Dr Roe has explained the dire state of the economy so fluently that I've been putting off publishing anything on the subject. But since we're getting near th' end zone in our collective run for a doomsday touchdown, I might as well just drop a note to explain why it is that some of the most educated economists and business experts in th' US made decisions that are, on their face, bound to destroy the value of the US dollar.
Currency values, even those of modern fiat currency, are pretty simple. They're really controlled by just two fundamental factors. The first, confidence in the government which issues the currency, is important because money that's not backed by a hard asset (like, say, gold, or lima beans) is only backed by the solvency and integrity of the government itself. If the issuing government is not going to be around or if it's going to default on its obligations, its currency isn't worth much. The second basic thing is the same factor that controls the price of all commodities - scarcity.
Scarcity means, simply, that the less of a commodity there is, the higher its price will be. And likewise, the more of that commodity there is, the cheaper it will be. This is a basic and immutable fact of commodity trading.
The government-chartered private bank that controls our money, the Federal Reserve, explicitly told us some time ago that it would print "as much [money] as necessary" during the current crisis. Current estimates are that it has printed, that is, created out of thin air, over three trillion dollars since 2008.
IMPORTANT : THE INTRODUCTION OF MORE SUPPLY OF A COMMODITY RESULTS IN ONLY ONE THING : THE DECREASE OF PRICE
This is basic high school econ stuff. You don't need a degree in econ or finance to know this stuff. So, when econ whiz kids Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson cooked up this scheme, they knew that printing dollars willy-nilly could have no other effect than the dilution of the dollar's value due to oversupply. That's what we call '%^&*ing massive inflation.' [Incidentally, they also would have known that eroded international confidence in the dollar would cause our big creditors -- like, say, China -- to get skittish about buying our debt, further depressing the currency]. So, knowing this and being employed by th' government -- that is, by taxpayers -- to save and not damn our economic posterior, why did they do it?
To quote Stimpy, the answer's simple, really. Just like Mark Hart made a killing betting against the housing market and Greek debt [ http://bit.ly/cIaFyO ], Bernanke and buddies are going to make a killing because they've bet against the dollar they swore to protect. That's right. I'm saying that the treasonous slaves Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, Henry Paulson, and all their pals made bets against the value of the dollar and then intentionally torpedoed it with their insane monetary policy and general bailout $%#&ery. I'm not kidding. When the jig is finally up and all that extra supply coupled with a tanking economy makes your Benjamins worth less than Zig-Zags, the bald buggerers will make a quick stop at the bookmakers', pick up the vast sums of cash they've made on the bet against your future, and take their NetJets to Aruba where they will sip pina coladas whilst your neighborhood burns.
This is not like your standard conspiracy hypothesis because it is very likely to be true. Use your %^&*ing head. These people aren't stupid. They know exactly what they're doing. And what they're doing is placing bets against US currency while making decisions that they know cannot other but adversely affect it.
Got cash? Get rid of it. Sooner rather than later, you'll be better off with a wallet full of 'Bazooka Joe' comics. At least those smell good. (7,625)
The pop-critic establishment is already busy disparaging th' new release from Massive Attack, the English group responsible for welding R+B, dub, and pure burning hopeless doom into a mesmeric sound that rips lives out of living humans. The previous release under the Massive Attack name, "100th Window" was a grody platter of hot sleep garbage, so my hopes weren't all that high for this record, th' geographically-named "Heligoland." However, after listening to this joint on repeat for the past week, I can say with confidence that the critics hating on it either haven't listened to it (I'm looking at you, Pitchfork) or have no idea what Massive Attack are supposed to be about (hey bloggers!). The raw fact is that this record is exactly what a Massive Attack record is supposed to be : adventurous, unpredictable, and capable of sending the listener into a melancholic reverie.
Pitchfork's review goon intones that Massive Attack fail to 'engage current music' with this release, rattling off a list of recent genres like 'dubstep' and 'UK funky' in an attempt to sound hip and asking why th' band doesn't do something in relation to those styles. This is silly. Massive Attack has never been interested in following or 'engaging' current music trends, they are in the business of creating fresh music styles. Suggesting that the band should have incorporated obvious dubstep references into this album is like saying that "Blue Lines" should have had acid house splashed all over it.
While it wouldn't be fair to say that this is a retro album, the 90s do creep up pretty big here. The vocal spots by Blur's Damon Albarn and Tricky's Martina Topley-Bird, th' recklessly unpolished beats, th' wild assemblage of genres. In fact, th' record that sounds most like "Heligoland" is Tricky's own "Nearly God," wherein th' mush-mouthed master of paranoia explored all kinds of new craggy musical forms in underproduced, rough, and totally enveloping tunes. That same kind of punchy excitement is here on "Heligoland" as well.
It kicks off with "Pray for Rain," a number sung by that guy from TV On The Radio. This tune is strongly reminiscent of "Remain in Light" era Talking Heads or classic Peter Gabriel. A vaguely witch-doctor midtempo loop prods Tunde Adebimpe along in his lyrics which evoke some kind of weird tribal ritual. The climax of this tune has a cache of lyrical gems like "Drops on rocks fall fast and fleeting… hidden laws unleash their meaning." The vibe is tense and anticipatory, rather than tense and paranoid. Some complain that this tune is overlong, but in fact, it's just right for sending you zoning into a harsh rude daydream.
Th' next cut, "Babel" is a little jarring with its fast straight drum-and-bass loop and more Talking Heads guitars, but then Topley-Bird's sly, streetworn voice floats in and recalls in tempo and knowing authority her performance of "Black Steel in The Hour of Chaos" from 1995. The skittering drums might be distracting for some (they're certainly quicker than anything else Massive Attack has done), but it's no cookie-cutter Metalheadz beat, and the twitchy speed creates an ill mood.
The sole vocal appearance by much-needed Daddy G follows, on posse mope "Splitting the Atom." This is a crypto-rocksteady tune that is just glum enough while also grooving steadily. Horace Andy thankfully reappears for the first time on this track.
No lead-in could prepare the listener for "Girl I Love You," a generically-titled song that is by any measure, the equal of any other Massive Attack tune. With Horace Andy's plaintive voice floating over an urgent-sounding rock bass and terrifying horn chart, this tune immediately ensnarls you like a barbed wire tumbleweed. Th' uncertianty and fear in Andy's voice is almost unbearable, and this tune has the kind of dynamics that are bound to blow an addled mind.
Next up is th' unfairly-maligned "Psyche," a tune so minimalist that it borders on Minimalism. Again, Topley-Bird mics it here, with good lyrics and her characteristic after-hours tone. Some folks find this jam overly simplistic or boring, but if you ask me, it's kind of fresh and has a deep structure that really sneaks up on you.
The "Flat of the Blade" is next, wherein some guy from a band called Elbow proceeds to maximally creep out over a very Bjorky percussion and drone track. I'm not a fan of this individual's singing, but the track gets gold (or is it grey?) stars for spooky atmosphere.
Two of th' remaining tracks, "Rush Minute" and "Atlas Air" are showcases for Robert "3D" Del Naja, who as on "100th Window" abandons rapping for a strange kind of flat-toned singing. The difference between these tracks and the mess that is "100th Window" is that the actual music here has a lot more ideas to offer and is not pandering. Both of these cuts are heavy on synth elements and have a kind of weary New Wave feel. The fact is that 3D sounds better rapping after all and is kind of stiff and unswinging in his production, but the tunes are still worth listening to.
The other two tracks, "Paradise Circus" and "Saturday Come Slow" are stone brilliant. The former is a ghostly exercise in chills featuring Goth poster girl Hope Sandoval. This jam has the kind of shifting, spare, slow beat that really gets those mope juices flowing. "Saturday Come Slow" is a love dirge right at the cusp of bleak sentiment like "Dissolved Girl." Damon Albarn lets loose some of the most sorrowful wails he's done since "Tender" dropped; this limey is hurting! People tend to associate Albarn with puckish Britpop pogoing and general punkitude, but anyone who's seen him do "This is a Low" or "No Distance Left to Run" will know that he can really tear up that sad mic thing. His ragged voice telegraphs profound heartbreak better than nearly anyone else.
I think that the bitter mistake all these reviewers make is in trying to compare this joint to "Mezzanine." "Mezzanine" isn't an album, it's a giant shard of volcanic glass that plunges straight into the soul of anyone who dares to listen to it. It's monolithic, oppressive, and non-reproducible. Comparing anything to "Mezzanine" is like saying "Oh well this roadside ditch isn't as cool as th' Marianas Trench." Stupid. "Mezzanine" is an artifact of its time that could not be any other way or from another time; any attempt to recreate or follow it now would result in abject self-parody. People tend to forget now, but Massive Attack's other two classic albums -- "Blue Lines" from 1991 and "Protection" from 1994 -- were totally different from each other and from "Mezzanine," and took a lot of getting used to. i remember how people would talk smack about "Protection" when they bought it after having loved and crumbled to th' narcobludgeon of "Mezzanine," only to come back two months later and crow about how brilliant it was when they finally 'got' it. So, like those other two classic albums, give this one some time and repeat listens late at night, and I think then that all th' irrelevant comparisons will drop away and you'll be able to soak in this record properly. It's funny, just today I was rapping with my pal and CERN inhabitant monster -- he said "I've listened to 'Mezzanine' hundreds of times, but can't really name a favorite song." It's just not possible to cleave up that LP -- it's a complete and matchless monument of psychedelia.
"Heligoland" is something different but equally needed : a collection of diverse fresh tunes, fearlessly chosen and correctly sung. Massive Attack have refused to try to replicate the hazy druglike syrup of of 1998 and instead are exploring a quicker-stepping, more raw style that demonstrates how unsettling sounds don't always come at plodding molasses tempos. I strongly recommend that all freaks, goths, and sad pandas obtain a copy of this; it's adventuresome, worth your brainspace, and an antidote to the stale. Wait until 2 or 3am, sit back with spooky lights on, and devolve to th' destructive sounds of this joint. Now, if only it came with a reason to get out of bed th' next day.. (9,199)
As a relative newcomer to urban agronomy but a very experienced practitioner of cynicism, crypto-radicalism, and anti-everythingism, I knew already that the current corporate approach to commercial seed-and-plant selling was doomed and damned. It's a fact that many commercial seeds and plants are bred for appearance and not function, and that many of them are genetically designed to be infertile.
However, there is another practice in which I am highly experienced : that of doing things at the last minute. So, when I realized that planting season was upon me and that there was very little bee activity in my food-production area, I zoomed out and hastily bought a lot of started flowers in an attempt to bring th' bees over to where I wanted them. I spent about $75 (that's my strychnine money for a whole week) on snapdragons from Home Depot and marigolds and petunias from Whitfill's Nursery. I planted the suckers in my two containers and in sunken beds that I'd freshly dug, interspersed appropriately with my early food crops' seeds and transplants. I figured that since they'd been locally grown (all were marked with Arizona grow sites) that they'd be 'native' enough to be appropriate for my application. [dun dun duuum!]
Now, there is a big mass of weedy flowering plants on the other side of my yard that is always full of bees, so I figured that a few smart bees were likely to venture over to the new beds and find their tasty flower snax. [Why didn't I just plant my food crops closer to the existing flowers, you ask? It's because there's not enough shade / light filtration in that area for the crops I'm growing.]
I planted the things, and kept them well-watered with a buried soaker hose, and was ready for a bee essplosion!
So imagine my surprise when I watched bee after sleepy bee buzz around and sniff these new flowers, only to turn up their noses at them and pass by without landing! I was like WHAAAT
Meanwhile, the weedy flowering plants on the other side were budding more flowers and attracting more bees than ever. What the snake was wrong?
Here's what's wrong. Instead of planning ahead and planting native wildflowers earlier, I decided to cut corners and buy commerical garbage varieties of subspecies from other states that have nothing to do with my climate and also are unfamiliar to the local insect population (and being sold as ornamentals, may even be engineered to repel insects). See, bees and other benefical critters know to look for plants that grow normally in their area. And when they see and smell a native plant, they know it's good eatin'. But when they see a non-native blooms, they're like "well what is that" and sometimes they don't even recognize it as a potential nectar source. Even if they do recognize it as a flower, its alien smell will not likely entice the little beastie to munch. It's like if you put a big dish of palak paneer in front of a Wyoming cowboy. They'll just be like "now whut in tarnation is that racket" and move on.
So, I then spent all night doing what I should have done way earlier : I dug up some new sunken beds and sowed them with all-native desert wildflower seeds from http://NativeSeeds.org .
There are two lessons here. 1) Don't be lazy and then try to do everything in a quick-fix panic state. 2) Buy only native plant and flower varieties because your local beneficial insect population will know what to do with them.
Get your urban ag cranking in 2010 -- it's not too late. (4,515)
What a terrible and brutish era it is that we live in. With the last credible mote of hope having been shuffled off to the abattoir, all we can offer you is this fleeting reminder that not everything has always sucked :
In old Army parlance, a "forlorn hope" was a band of soldiers sent off on a mission that was deemed necessary but presumed suicidal. We're th' forlorn hope. We're being sent out into a burning hail of deathspittle in an attempt to wrench humanity's future from the weasel class. The kicker is, of course, that we know there is no future. The weasel class and we are going to shriek and wail together, in broken sorrowful awe of the horror we've hewn out for ourselves.
On th' positive side, th' new Massive Attack record is really excellent -- expect a review of that puppy tomorrow! (3,771)
In a completely unexpected turn of events, the 'yes we can have hope and change' president has vetoed hope and issued an executive order against change. Obama has apparently lied about not enforcing the federal ban on marijuana in otherwise legal situations. As Obama pays populist lip-service to medical marijuana, his minions at the DEA are continuing to raid medical marijuana growers. Some of them may never live outside of a prison cell again. If this were done on a lower level, the claim that he would not enforce certain laws and giving the go-ahead to violate them may be considered entrapment.
"Yes I can!... Be a Machiavellian despot!"--Barack "The Prince" Obama (10,664)
...the Ancient Ones, to the Lord of Abominations, Humwawa, whose face is a mass of entrails, whose breath is the stench of dung and the perfume of death, Dark Angel of all that is excreted and sours, Lord of Decay, Lord of the Future, who rides on a whispering south wind, to Pazuzu, Lord of Fevers and Plagues, Dark Angel of the Four Winds with rotting genitals from which he howls through sharpened teeth over stricken cities, to Kutulu, the Sleeping Serpent who cannot be summoned, to the Akhkaru, who suck the blood of men since they desire to become men, to the Lalussu, who haunt the places of men, to Gelal and Lilit, who invade the beds of men and whose children are born in secret places, to Addu, raiser of storms who can fill the night sky with brightness, to Malah, Lor of Courage and Bravery, to Zahgurim, whose number is 23 and who kills in an unnatural fashion, to Zahrim, a warrior among warriors, to Itzamna, Spirit of Early Mists and Showers, to Ix Chel, the Spider-Web-that-Catches-the-Dew-of-Morning, to Zuhuy Kak, Virgin Fire, to Ah Dziz, the Master of Cold, to Kak U Pacat, who works in fire, to Ix Tab, to Xolotl the Unformed, Lord of Rebirth, to Aguchi, Master of Ejaculations, to Osiris and Amen in phallic form, to Hex Chun Chan, the Dangerous One, to Ah Pook, the Destroyer, to the Great Old One and the Star beast, to Pan, God of Panic, to the nameless gods of dispersal and emptiness, to Hassan I Sabbah, Master of thee Assassins. To all the scribes and artists and practitioners of magic through whom these spirits have been manifested... NOTHING IS TRUE. EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED. NOTHING IS TRUE. EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED. NOTHING IS TRUE. EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED.
YouTube is quite possibly the worst depository of comments on the internet. While other sites may surpass the depths of stupidity YouTube makes up for it with enormous volume, so much so that the comments section of the videos should be called YouTroll.
Today I got a good dose of confirmation bias:
Bill: The majority of votes in favor of siphoning off wealth to bail out their crony banker friends where in fact Democrats. O-Bot: No you are wrong, what the democrats are doing is trying to put some money into the banking industry because the money which was supposed to be there was taking out of the country by republicans during a period of 8 years, they so a bastard that we keep trying to inject money into the economy and they keep taking the money out of the banks to banks abroad, we the democrats don't own the banking industry my friend, that industry is owned by the republicans Bill: Which is why Ben Bernakie, Rattner, and Geitner are administration fixtures, and why big banking firms like Goldman Sacs dumped millions of dollars in the Obama campaign? Not buying it. O-Bot: no buddy you are wrong, the Obama campaign money came from the owners of GOOGLE, they campaigned for the democrats because the republicans had taking so much money away from Americans that their sells through avertisement campaigns had decrease by more than 20%
[Lookes up data from OpenSecrets.org]
Bill: Goldman Sacs has made hundreds of millions since Obama took office and is the number 2 PAC that gave the campaign [behind a California university]. (Donating three times the amount of money they gave to McFail.) Citibank and JP Morgan came within 10% of funds offered by Google. O-Bot: if you think that the banking industry is owned by liberals (whom have a tendency to give benefits to the poor) you are the one being played for a fool here, the few banks that "gave money to Obama" gave 10 times that amount of money (behind the curtains) to the republicans, if you don't know that the republican are taking our money and putting it in private accounts in banks abroad you don't know anything
[Does more cursory checking.]
Bill: Steven Rattner, Timothy Geithner, Leon Panetta, Ben Bernanke, and other bankers/financiers are prominent in this administration. Fannie May, Freddie Mac, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup Inc, JPMorgan Chase & Co, UBS AG, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, and other investment houses contributed hundreds of thousands to Obama. Need I point out that Geitner's phone records indicate that he calls his buddies at Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and JP Morgan more then the President? No need for secrecy, Wall Street sits in the Oval Office. O-Bot: No I know you are not throwing Timothy Geithner in my face, we all know that the republicans made him president of the federal reserve in 2003 and that he is still working for the republican behind the curtains
At this point my brain broke entirely. Why do I even bother? (3,714)
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At the center of the "story" Avatar is an "inter-species" romance between the humanoid Na'vi and a Human. Our protagonist falls in love with an "alien" woman and an "alien" culture, abandons all to quite literally "go native." In my opinion the whole exercise is at best sloppy sci-fi; the Na'vi could easily be swapped with any idealized aboriginal tribe on earth (if their mysticism was real), the setting could be any tropical forest (with phosphorescence), and the Marines could be employees any colonial company of the 17th-19th century without any major change to the story. This is sci-fi that I hate as the technology and setting aren't used to explore any interesting aspects of humanity and the robots and aliens are just there to provide a CGI spectacular.
Imagine if instead our protagonist had to deal with an environment and 
In a completely unexpected turn of events, the 'yes we can have hope and change' president has vetoed hope and issued an executive order against change. Obama has 
