Just found an article about this on Kuro5hin. I can't believe games like this still exist.

Here's the Guidebook. Check it out.

I downloaded it. I'll tell you later if it's any good.

Donnie Darko to play Superman? I read it on the Internet...

Marcus has a post up about the big MFA wedding this weekend here. With Pictures!...as soon as the link gets fixed.

Just for Jennifer, here's a page of Law & Order-inspired artwork.

The folk and street art of Bogota, Columbia. (via MetaFilter)

While we're at it, I actually saw these somewhat-depressing murals while I was in Belfast four years ago. I can't believe that was four years ago. More murals here.

Two fairly representative samples:
They May Kill The Revolutionary, But Never The Revolution
Prepared for Peace / Ready for War

I stumbled across this passage in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting yesterday, and was struck by the way it seems to anticipate both blogging and the Internet as a whole. This was written in 1978:

"…A woman who writes her lover four letters a day is not a graphomaniac, she is a lover. But my friend who makes photocopies of his love letters to publish them someday is a graphomaniac. Graphomania is not a mania to write letters, personal diaries or family chronicles (to write for oneself or one's close relations) but a mania to write books (to have a public of unknown readers)…

…Graphomania (a mania for writing books) inevitably takes on epidemic proportions when a society develops to the point of creating three basic conditions:

1) an elevated level of general well-being, which allows people to devote themselves to useless activities;
2) a high degree of social atomization and, as a consequence, a general isolation of individuals;
3) the absence of dramatic social changes in the nation's internal life. (From this point of view, it seems to me sympomatic that in France, where practically nothing happens, the percentage of writers is twenty-one times highter than in Israel...)

But by a backlash, the effect affects the cause. General isolation breeds graphomania, and generalized graphomania in turn intensifies and worses isolation. The invention of printing formerly enabled people to understand one another. In the era of universal graphomania, the writing of books has an opposite meaning: everyone surrounded by his own words as by a wall of mirrors, which allows no voice to filter through from outside."

That last part must be what blogging was like before there was no Internet. Now things have changed a little.

For instance, I learn from Google that this guy was here first.

Via email from Neil Howard Farbman, summa cum laude, we get the following: a giant Lego sculptures of Bart Simpson and Milhouse Van Houten.

I can't believe we're been open this long, and we haven't linked to the Brick Testament yet. The Laws is the best sub-page, hands-down. But the whole site is amazing.



Go.

Calvin & Hobbes: The Movie has been rumored for so long, I hardly even believe in it myself anymore.

The legend goes that Bill Waterson has been hand-drawing C&H:TM in seclusion since the strip ended in 1995. (Has it been that long?)

More from AICN, from a while ago (c. 2002), here. Apparently credits from the nonexistent movie started showing up on resumes. But I haven't heard anything new on this in a long, long time. I'm beginning to lose faith. But I'm still a believer.

I've always wanted to see Calvin as a teenager.

In honor of our wildly successful grill-out, and also Jaimee's and my dominating 3-1 record in the sport, Backwards City Review is proud to present: The Rules of Badminton.

We also present, at no additional charge, The Rules of Calvinball.





Come back Bill Waterson! All is forgiven!

From McSweeney's: Pros and Cons of Kerry's Top Ten VP Picks

Could have been better, but still, some good gags.

Just added a Google search bar to our ever-crowded left column. You can search either the whole web, or just this page. Enjoy!

Very sad story.

After displaying a painting of U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners, a San Francisco gallery owner bears a painful reminder of the nation's unresolved anguish over the incidents at Abu Ghraib -- a black eye and bloodied brow delivered by an unknown assailant who apparently objected to the art work.

Here's a link to the piece in question. I originally just had the image imbedded in this page, but I guess it's the sort of thing that people should choose for themselves whether they want to see it or not. I think you should look, though.

Fairly comprehensive Geek Test. I got 32.15% (Total Geek), I'm sorry to say, although in fairness most of that comes from the deadly combination of my good memory for crap and my fantastically geeky middle school science fiction years.

There are still five levels of geek above me, so it actually could have been much worse.

Just found this on Linkfilter. Lovingly detailed fansite for the 1960s Batman show. Really, don't skip the intros.

My brother and I watched this show all the time.

It's the little differences.



Click on the map for access to specific state data.

Need I mention that New Jersey--along with Maine, Connecticut, Hawaii, and Rhode Island--is the most solidly "Soda" state in the Union? Damn right.

(from Political Animal)

So tonight I wanted to rent Gerry, the exciting tale of two people, both named Gerry, who have some sort of disastrous survivalist adventure. (I see this film as the culmination of an important and disturbing national trend, in which one-shot minor characters in movies and on television that are losers, accountants, mentally unbalanced, or all three are named Jerry/Gerry.) But they wouldn't let me.

Instead, we got Vanilla Sky, because a bunch of people hadn't seen it yet, and I'd been thinking about it ever since the cyrolab post earlier. For more information on Vanilla Sky, consult your local fanboy. "Theory" #1 is obviously what the filmmakers intended, though Theory #6 is somewhat interesting as well. But the real meat of the page is in its secrets, some of which are nice to know, and others of which are completely not secrets at all.

In any event, I think we all know what day my splice happened.

Awesome pictures from the snow and ice festival in Harbin, China. Just a taste:



(Via BoingBoing, of course.)

Old-school text adventures, online. These hold up surprisingly well.

I remember playing Zork with Ryan Kaye almost twenty years ago, in first grade. We swore at Zork. We could never get the damn clockwork bird out of the damn jeweled egg without breaking it. A good time was had by all.

Someone's gone and built a cryopark. MetaFilter debunks for no additional charge.

Get peace of mind.

The screenwriter for the new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has interviewed himself, and posted the results on the movie's official blog. It's hard to imagine this movie being anything but a disaster without Douglas Adams's involvement, but I'll probably watch it.

There's also a new Life, the Universe, and Everything radio show out coming soon, for the truly geeky, also with some Adams preposthumous involvement -- including Adams himself as the voice of Agrajag, the guy that Arthur Dent kills throughout history in every single one of his reincarnations, including one time as a bowl of petunias ("Oh no, not again.")

I had a very detailed dream once about the sixth book in the Hitchhiker's Series, which sadly was never written. I never liked the way Mostly Harmless ended, though it made sense from a Hitchhiker standpoint--it was just really bleak and sad. In my dream, the sixth book was called Oh No, Not Again, which I really think it would have been, if Adams had ever gotten around to writing it.

Now I'm sad.

...that today is a Gotham Equinox? It's the day each year that the setting sun perfectly aligns with the grid structure of the city streets, blinding everyone.

Is there really a touch of death? Ask the Science Guy.

Huge, detailed map of Homer Simpson's hometown. Obviously, this must be publicized.

Rodeohead: Bluegrass Radiohead cover band. Exactly what it sounds like. Actually really cool. Listen to their whole medley. Paging Dan Albergotti...

(via Boingboing.)

Let Kurt Vonnegut have his say on Iraq too. This is a bit dated (May 10), but maybe some of you all haven't seen it.

We're inching ever closer the official launch of both the magazine and the semi-official BCR blog you're reading right this second. Your call is important to us; please continue to hold. In the meantime, bookmark us, keep coming back, and once this thing has started, if you can, give us a little cash.

We've got some great stuff coming up the pipe.

The views expressed in this blog are not the views of the editors of the Backwards City Review.

The first issue of Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men came out today. I picked it up out of curiosity. It was kind of hard to follow, because I'm not really familiar with X-Men continuity in general or recent X-Men history in particular. From what I gathered, in this continuity, Jean Gray has recently died (presumably through activation of the Phoenix Force, although that's not expressly mentioned) and Xavier is off someplace, leaving Cyclops, Wolverine, Beast, Emma Frost, and Kitty Pride in charge of Xavier Academy.

The issue itself seems all right, though I doubt I'll pick up further issues in the series. Maybe if they change the name to Magneto Loves Xavier I'd think about it.

Interview with Joss on X-Men here.
Review #1
Review #2



This ends your lesson in geekery for the day.

I just wanted to make sure everyone saw the already-halfway-down-the-page George Saunders post, because we LOVE George Saunders at the BCR. We love him. And we hope that he loves us.
Also, we love Cory Doctorow. Notice us! Nooootice uuuuuuuuuuus!

Also, a link to Jaimee's Frankstein's Zoo, and also her incredible sand animation post, because it gets so lonely here with just me.

Also the Pops. Instant Nostalgia's gonna get you.

Is it finally here?

While researching the Sorites/paradox of the heap for snarky, half-funny joke about cannibalism related to the human-hair-soy-sauce story, I discovered this much cooler wikipedia entry about paradox, with plenty of neat examples:

Fermi's Paradox, that the aliens ought to be here already, an old favorite (more here)
The Unexpected Hanging Paradox, so delightfully kafkaesque
The Cretan Liar
Newcomb (Today feels like a "take just the closed box" kind of day, though I could perhaps be persauded otherwise)
The Mere Addition Paradox (I actually kind of got into a version of this other on Matt Yglesias's blog the other day, only with Rawls)
The Raven Paradox (epistemology): does seeing a red apple provide evidence for the hypothesis "All ravens are black"?
The Berry Paradox: What is "the first number not nameable in under ten words"?
Epicurus and the problem of evil
And, of course, Zeno.
And many others.

My favorite one today, though, is Buridan's Ass. How do we make a rational choice between our two beloved sons, both of whom are drowning at just-barely-reachable, equidistant points in different rivers?

Second favorite? Kavka's Toxin. Can you intend to do something you know you'll never have to do?

WASHINGTON — President Nixon jokingly threatened to drop a nuclear bomb on Capitol Hill in March 1974 as Congress was moving to impeach him over the Watergate scandal, according to transcripts of telephone conversations released yesterday.

"I was told to get the football," White House chief of staff Alexander Haig told Secretary of State Henry Kissinger less than five months before the president's forced resignation, during a conversation in which the two men exchanged stories about Nixon's increasingly erratic behavior.

"What do you mean?" asked Kissinger, who called Haig to express concern the president might unwittingly unleash a war in the Middle East with his new, get-tough policy against Israel.

"His black nuclear bag," Haig replied. "He is going to drop it on the Hill."

Kissinger rules. Except for being a war criminal.

I can't *wait* for Powell's tapes to come out about Tipsy.

Me, I'm glad that just a few huge companies own all the media in this country. What could possibly go wrong?

Film documentary "Super Size Me," a critical look at the health impact of a fast-food only diet, has been downsized at cable network MTV which has refused to air advertisements for the film, its distributors said on Wednesday.

Roadside Attractions and Samuel Goldwyn Films said in a statement the cable TV channel targeted to young audiences has told them the ads are "disparaging to fast food restaurants."

What do you get when you cross a rabbit and a monkey?

A post relevant to literature? No!

George Saunders tells us how to get out of Iraq. It's actually really good:

Since it is clear that we cannot leave until they stop killing us, and equally clear that they will not stop killing us until we leave, I propose the following exit strategy:

1) Kill all the ones who are trying to kill us, in such a way that none of those who presently do not want to kill us suddenly start wanting to kill us.

2) At the moment of the death of the last person who wanted to kill us, race quickly out of the country before some additional person suddenly decides he/she wants to kill us, thus necessitating our continued presence in Iraq, in order to kill him/her.

3) Having left Iraq quickly, do not look back, so as not to witness individuals claiming they would have liked to kill us, which would then necessitate a return to Iraq, in order to etc., etc. (See No. 2, above.)

To implement this exit strategy, we will have to practice running quickly. It is further recommended that, while running, the eyes be cast down, to avoid witnessing any last-minute people trying to kill us. We will have to establish excellent communications so that the moment that final person begins dying, we can all begin running quickly at the same time, eyes cast down, quickly, to our vehicles, to get to the airport and get out of the country.

This exit strategy will demand a high level of coordination, dedication, and planning.

...

People of Iraq, I say to you:

Stop trying to kill us, so we can leave. But also, do not fear. We are in it for the long haul, although we cannot stay with you indefinitely. No, as soon as you stop trying to kill us, believe us, you will never see us again. Therefore, trust us, people of Iraq, have faith, we assure you: As long as you continue trying to kill us, we will never abandon you.

Looks like Bush and Nixon have more in common than we thought.

Can't they think of anyone more worth investigating than Bev Harris?

The free showing of The Day After Your Momma was all sold-out when we got there. Looks like we missed out. Damn you, Rhino Times!

Go back to hunting terrorists, John.

This is actually really cool.

The Onion never stops.

For a long time, I refused to believe that Alanis Morissette was on the show until I saw the ocular proof. It still blows my mind, almost as much as when I found out that "You Oughta Know" was about Uncle Joey. (It's true. It's horribly, horribly undetermined true.)

I'm not a fancy big-city entertainment type, but I'm pretty sure that my interest in the Harry Potter movie series will plummet dramatically if they ever replace any of the actors. Just hurry up and finish the series and it'll all be fine.

The President is sticking it to the pretend president. Why is it that public figures only become admirable after they lose all chance at future office?

UPDATE: Oh man. Here's the speech. I love this Al Gore. Where was this guy four years ago?

In December of 2000, even though I strongly disagreed with the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to order a halt to the counting of legally cast ballots, I saw it as my duty to reaffirm my own strong belief that we are a nation of laws and not only accept the decision, but do what I could to prevent efforts to delegitimize George Bush as he took the oath of office as president.

I did not at that moment imagine that Bush would, in the presidency that ensued, demonstrate utter contempt for the rule of law and work at every turn to frustrate accountability...

So today, I want to speak on behalf of those Americans who feel that President Bush has betrayed our nation's trust, those who are horrified at what has been done in our name, and all those who want the rest of the world to know that we Americans see the abuses that occurred in the prisons of Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and secret locations as yet undisclosed as completely out of keeping with the character and basic nature of the American people and at odds with the principles on which America stands.

I believe we have a duty to hold President Bush accountable - and I believe we will. As Lincoln said at our time of greatest trial, "We - even we here - hold the power, and bear the responsibility."

Sure, we all know about putting things on the back burner (Sorry, Shunk). But who knew there was a front burner?

It still blows my mind that anyone loses money on the 419/Nigerian scam. I got three today in my Hotmail box. They basically admit up front that they're criminals, but they promise to give you some money if you help them, so you wire then $10,000? It's completely insane.

Ever wonder what happens if you reply? Here's where it goes from here. Here's another webpage devoted to the fine art of Nigerian counterscam. I'm off to work.

I have nothing more to add.

How long can you hold the button?

Who will the hippies follow now?

Better put Ben on suicide watch.

I've never understood the appeal of Dance Dance Revolution. But then again, I never knew before this article just how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Your future is calling.

Tom Clancy poops on the Iraq Adventure. This guy thinks it may be bad news for Bush. God, I hope so, but I wonder what could possibly reach anyone who hasn't already been completely disgusted by four long years of stupidity, fundamentalism, illegality, and incompetence. If it takes Jack Ryan, though, that's fine with me.

(via you-know-who.)

A diet cola! Why didn't they think of this years ago?

On pause.

When you eat a bag of chips, how far down are you willing to go before the contents of the bag become repulsive to you? Some people will shake the last bit of crumb that they can possibly get out of the bad. My father and brother are both that sort of person. I find those people completely horrendous.

I'd say I leave at least a tenth of an inch at the bottom of any bag of chips. A chip-fragment must also be of a certain, arbitrary size before I consider it edible and not gross.

But the point of all this is to say that I'm flagrantly violating my own rules on chip consumption to go back and back to the office bag of Tostitos, which, for some reason, seem today to be the very best food in all the world.

I'm so hungry. I can't wait for 24 + pizza.

So it turns out that you're only living heir of the worst man who ever lived. Do you sue the state of Bavaria for back royalties on his insane manifesto?

Sorry, all, this morning has been hectic, and I've got to head off to work in a minute, and none of my co-bloggers ever blog (AHEM), so there's likely to be very little blogging today. Most likely, until the last tick of the clock chimes on 24 tonight, I'll be gone. In the meantime, you should probably try to solve the Mystery of Space and Time.

In other news, courtesy of my gig at the Rhino, I've swung free tickets to a preview tomorrow of global warming climate change thriller The Day After Tomorrow. I'll let you know if the junk science gets in the way of the important message.

The Amazon Platinum Visa card ad isn't showing up on the right for some reason (I think the problem is on their end), so here is the direct link to the application. Remember, when your application is accepted, both you and we get 20 bucks. Please take the very short amount of time it takes to earn us both $20. It's a deal no sensible person can refuse!

UPDATE: Actually, it turns out the problem was that ZoneAlarm started blocking all banner ads. But apply anyway!

All the things MacGuyver did...and no guns.

Seriously, The Swan is the worst show ever. I can't believe it. I caught about five minutes of it today, and it just depressed me so much.

What are these extreme makeover people all going to look like in ten years?

After last week's craptastrophe, this week's Sopraneys was freakin' great, even if I accidentally spoiled myself in advance.

They did the thing I always thought they might, the one thing (or one of the very few things) that would make Tony irredeemable. We'll see what happens.

Time to break out some of your old LPs.

But whatever you do, don't click here. It's unspeakable.

Atrios is reporting that Al Franken is beating Limbaugh in New York. Amen and Halleujah.

Listen now!

Some folks down in South Carolina are thinking of seceding again.

I'm sorry, I'm having trouble seeing the downside.

The long decline of Bush's approval rating has hit 41%.
We really did blow up a wedding.
Ahmed Chalabi really was an Iranian spy (LA Times registration: bselig, bselig).
And Bush appears to have contracted...the virush.

I meant to say this earlier. I was in Barnes and Noble, killing time flipping through a couple of bound Superman comics, when I came across Superman: Red Son, a What-If comic about what would have happened in Superman had landed in Soviet Russia instead of Smallville, Kansas. Good premise, and from what I saw of the book, good execution. (The ending seemed particularly neat and original--to my knowledge it's the first time that (spoiler, highlight to read) Krypton was depicted as a far-future Earth, rather than an completely alien world.
Sure; why not?

Anyway, this is all completely tangential to the point, which was the coolest thing I saw in comic books at Barnes and Noble today: the word necronaut, as in, "Clark Kent Jr. was a necronaut, the first man to set foot in the afterlife." What a cool idea.

Even granting the usual standard of pathetic from the Bush cabal, this is pretty pathetic.

So I just accidentally spoiled myself on tonight's Sopranos, which I can't watch until tomorrow. And the surprise was HUGE. HUGE. (Though I predicted it several weeks ago, after a certain piece of news hit the entertainment press, which I won't mention now because I don't want anyone to pay the ultimate price, as I have, don'tclickhere.) Damn you aintitcoolnews!

If you're going to do the classic Mission Impossible gag where a character suddenly yanks off a clever disguise to reveal that they were actually another character all along, it is imperative that the disguised character and the revealed character be played by the same actor.

Otherwise, this effect is not cool, but extremely cheesy.

You can't have Jennifer Garner yank off her Sydney-mask and suddenly have Melissa George standing there. That's not Mission: Impossible, that's Scooby-Doo.

New Zealand researchers have isolated a gene that drastically increases a teenager's risk for self-mutilation:

Joyce said the study, yet to be published, found that of the young people who did not carry the gene and who had not been sexually abused, only 5% self-mutilated.

By comparison, those who had the gene and had not been abused, or who had been abused and did not have the gene, had a 50% chance of self-mutilating.

I'd have never guessed that one for genetics, but sure.

Richard Donner says no Goonies 2 for now.

Come on, America. You know it would rock. You know it.



Look, it's Short Round!
Look, it's Skinny Chunk!
Make this movie!

I've been meaning to put a link up about this, because I don't think anyone knows about it, and everyone should: Amazon's new "Search Inside The Book" feature is *incredible*.

For instance, how many times does the word "banana" appear in the 640+ Gabler edition of Ulysses?

Two.

How about in my favorite book and yours, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler? Just once.

Really, this is unbelievably useful.

Well, after a reading marathon this morning, I finally finished Ulysses. It's very difficult, as I expected, but it's also very, very good. Unbelievably so, in fact. If you decide to read it, I'd recommend getting a little help, either from SparkNotes (free!), as I did, or from a companion book of some kind, as I also did. There's just too much you'll miss otherwise.

For what it's worth, my favorite chapters were #1 Ithaca (the questions chapter), #2 Scylla & Charybdis (the Hamlet/Shakespeare chapter), and #3 Nausicaa (the Gerty chapter). I also liked Penelope a lot, which is surprising, because normally I hate the stream-of-consciousness style. I may even promote it above Nausicaa when I've had more time to think about it. Circe's good too, though loooooong. Least favorite chapter: Oxen of the Sun. I get it, but man, it's just unreadable.

A book like Ulysses, variously described as modernist and postmodernist, and really beloning to both, just goes to show how none of these terms has any real meaning at all. Modernism, postmodernism--what's the difference, really? And don't get me started on Don Quixote.

In other news, the existence of James Joyce makes me feel extremely small, and sad.

Hey, they've finally (almost) made a blue rose.

Well, we tried to watch Elephant tonight. I heard it was good, so I rented it. But about 20 minutes into the movie I decided to leave the room, and five minutes later the rest of the people watching decided to shut it off as well.

I'm not going to spoil what exactly it's about, but suffice it to say, if you know going in what's going to happen, the entire movie is a slow, tense build that's extremely unpleasant to watch, because you know precisely what's coming and you can't imagine having to watch it, much less in the slow, extremely realistic documentary-style that Gus Van Sant chose.

I don't know how graphic the movie is, once they actually get to the fireworks factory, because we turned it off long before that part. But if the idea of waiting and waiting for an inevitable massacre is unpleasant to you, I wouldn't recommend Elephant.

I never liked horror movies when I was a kid. Never appealed to me. And within the last few months my anticipation of extremely graphic violence has caused me to leave two movies (this and The Butterfly Effect)in the very early going, just out of fear of where the movie might go. In both cases, I'm sure I could have stayed--it's not gonna kill me--but why would I want to?

Honestly, I'm a little surprised by this, but it turns out there are limits to how much I want to be disturbed.

Instapundit is linking to Jeff Jarvis who is claiming that New Jersey is a battleground state for Kerry. Yeah, right.

I invite the RNC and the Bush campaign to please spend a lot of money trying to get NJ to flip. I'm sure it will be money well-spent.

Quinnaipiac University: 46-43-5 Kerry-Bush-Nader (47-44 Kerry-Bush) 5/10 - 5/16
Eagleton Rutgers: 49-40 Kerry-Bush 4/28 - 5/4
Rasmussen Reports: 51-39 Kerry-Bush 4/20
Election 2000: 56-41 Gore-Bush

One poll doesn't make a trend, fellas.

More poll results at 2.004k.com

So it turns out that Bush's man in Iraq, Ahmed Chalabi, the guy Bush wanted to lead Iraq after June 30th, the guy Bush invited to the State of the Union, and the guy whose lies and manipulations helped get us into this mess in the first place, was an Iranian spy.

Is Bush incompetent yet?

Kevin Drum is, as usual, exactly correct when he points out the absurdity of using a 1913 law originally designed to kowtow to racist Southern state governments to prevent out-of-state gays from marrying in Massachusetts. The symbolic relationship is so obvious, and the blowback so easy, that you've really got to wonder what Romney is thinking. All he's doing is giving the pro-gay marriage camp an effective slogan.

As usual, evil devours itself.

Continuing commentary on the literally greatest day of my life, I will say that I wish they had kept the original shape. The new shape maximizes the percent of the pop that is touching the stick, which has always been the worst and most difficult part of the pop. But other than that, I'm still pretty pleased. I can't wait until I eat a meal so I can justify a pop.

The fun never stops.

Or, er, someone does. Anyway, the Ryan campaign has decided to call off its stalker.

After years of fruitless epic quests with Neil and seemingly-worthless online petitions, Jell-o Pudding Pops are finally back...and I can tell you, firsthand, they're still delicious.

That first bite, so long delayed, was unbelievable.

Get to a supermarket, now.

UPDATE: Swirl is still delicious too. Oh man, I'm so happy.

According to my informal survey, conducted over recent months, of people who react to my "Bush Is An Idiot" T-shirt, Bush's approval ratings are plummeting. Today in Borders three separate people came up to me to tell me that my shirt was great and that I was great for wearing it (not to mention the guy in Jack's Corner restaurant who told me I am "the man").

"Bush Is An Idiot" t-shirts are available at fine record stores everywhere on Tate St. in Greensboro.

Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum [ding]
Life is short; art is long...or is it?
Check out this transitory sand art, drawn on a projection screen. Lightning, the jungle, eels, etc.

Happy Birthday Mr. T!

Given that Ezra is Hannibal, Patrick is Faceman, and Jaimee is Howlin' Mad Murdoch--who gets to be B.A. Baracus, me or Tom? And does the other one of us have to be Col. Decker?

The lady at the counter calls me sweetie and rings up my two red bulls and a bag of utz salt and pepper potato chips. 4.93. I ask her how much the bay bridge costs, knowing it's 2.50. She asks me if I need ones and quarters. No, ma'am, I've got it, thanks. I take my change (a ten, five ones, one nickel, two pennies) and head to the car.

The red bull helps and I give one to Marcus. He's driving. My job is to work the radio help keep an eye on the Budget rental truck fifty feet in front of us, and open stuff. Over the course of the trip I opened, unwrapped, or unscrewed one pepsi, two trail mix bars, a nalgene water bottle, a cranberry juice, two red bulls, the bag of chips, and two club sandwiches we got at our local Harris Teeter before setting out. I also peeled an orange and alternately removed and inserted cds from their cases, the player, and back.

It was Marcus' first time with a red bull. I told him my regular energy drink stories of coasting up and down near the croatian border drinking Dark Dog and Flying Horse, the latter being the prefered beverage of my friend Rick who laments the difficulty in finding it in stores outside of austria. I think it tastes like shit.

By the time we make it to Hardy's house, six hours after leaving Greensboro, NC, I wish moving trucks put graphics on the back of the truck instead of the sides. I have homestore.com rambling around in my head for hours, the budget logo and its two orange triangles that form a road make space recognition and figure-ground relationships iffy for awhile. We unpack the truck and look at toads, which are everywhere.

There is also ball and stick throwing for Tinsley, a chocolate lab. He is Chris' dog. We send him swimming into the bay to do some retrieving. Eventually the ball sinks and is unrecoverable. We are all sad and go inside, glad to stop talking about the war and online beheadings.

We watch game six of the fliers/lightning series. Philly wins 4-3 in overtime by Gange's bookend shot. We finish off a bottle of Sauza Gold, two budweisers, and a whole bottle of Pernod, all the liquor in the house. We watch tv and talk about frequency of sex amongst our married friends and neighbors. Turns out they are fifty percent more likely to have engaged in threesomes than the two unmarried boys.

I wake up early with signs that indicate that once again I have fallen over in the night. This happens often when I am drunk and talking with friends. I fell in the kitchen while making corrections to our shopping list. I crossed out donkey dick so Hardy crossed out hamburgers. We underlined scrapple. I put in "cock-mags", but crossed it out because we already have the latest Playboy.

It took me a long time to find the magazine this morning. I was hiding all the porn from the cleaning lady who showed up as I was whizzing. The bathroom door was open and I saw her coming up the path. I stashed the magazine under the ottoman and made some scrambled eggs.

When the cleaning lady and her daughter leave I go back to looking at Charisma Carpenter from Angel. She has tattoos on both her wrists, but the spread doesn't have but one good shot of the one on her left arm. The one on her right has a circle and the number two, but that's all I can make out. I think I will bring it home for Gerry who will refuse to read it. Not even the article detailing the abc's of rfid's will intice him.
Nor the misinformation from Marcus that the first hamburger invented at the St. Louis world's fair was originally called the beef bomb.

I can worry about that later, though. Now I'm going out to get some cheef bombs of my own.

All together now...

Barack Obama is the Democratic candidate for the open seat and his opponent is Republican Jack Ryan. For the last ten days, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, Ryan has had a campaign staffer, Justin Warfel, follow Obama with a video camera all day.

And I mean, all day.

Not only does he record Obama's public appearances, he tails Obama in his car; he follows him into restrooms; he stays a couple feet behind him when he's walking in public; he waits outside his office and pesters his secretary. And he heckles Obama at public appearances.

Read more here.

The Smurf with the Chef's hat was named Baker Smurf.

I don't remember Baby Smurf or Astro Smurf at all.

UPDATE: Aw, hell, just read all about it.

Rather tough review of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, written by distinguished Randolph High School debate team alumni Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, just posted at AICN (caution, spoilers). Quint didn't hate it as much as the reviewer did, at least.

Needless to say, I'm completely impressed that Hurwitz and Hayden have gotten this far, not to mention vomitously jealous. Would I be more satisfied if their movie was a success or a failure? I guess that all depends on whether or not they can help me sell my screenplay next year (once I write it, of course).

Seriously, good luck, you bastards.

UPDATE: Holy crap, there's an official website! You know, I realize this movie is actually being made--apparently trailers are being aired before Envy--but everytime I think of this movie, I think of it as being filmed in Randolph with a camcorder. It's just unbelievable to me that this is real.

SECOND UPDATE: Just watched the trailer. Weird.

And then the house of cards came crashing down when everyone got arrested.

What does "retroactive classification" even mean? What could it possibly mean? God, they're idiots.

This all has to do with Siebel Edmonds, who unsuccessfully sued the FBI over their complete incompetence, and whose story would be genuinely frightening if the media would ever give it the attention it deser--oh my god, look out, sharks are attacking kidnapped children!

Good catch on the part of LawGeek. The media--which obviously doesn't just include "Fair and Balanced" Fox News--does this sort of thing all the time, sometimes with a liberal bias, but lately almost exclusively with a conservative bias. Obviously the way they've been doing it lately makes me a lot angrier, but they really ought to try and just play it down the middle at all times.

I understand that at one point, they did.

I had a whole thing planned out, about my column from college that conceded the election to Bush, and how things since then have been orders of magnitude worse than the worst fears I had at the time--not to mention that since December 8, 2000, it has become unbearably clear to me that I was wrong, that legally the recount should have gone on and that if it had Gore would have won--but really, just go check out the headline on Drudge right now and see for yourself what's become of our country in just three short years.

Interesting article on Salon (warning: stupid daypass ahead) that argues that traffic regulation is counterproductive--we ought to be removing traffic signals and stop signs, not adding more and more. One graf gist:

Reversing decades of conventional wisdom on traffic engineering, Hamilton-Baillie argues that the key to improving both safety and vehicular capacity is to remove traffic lights and other controls, such as stop signs and the white and yellow lines dividing streets into lanes. Without any clear right-of-way, he says, motorists are forced to slow down to safer speeds, make eye contact with pedestrians, cyclists and other drivers, and decide among themselves when it is safe to proceed.

Makes a surprising degree of sense, although it's definitely something that libertarians would jump on, which gives me pause. It also seems like actually putting this plan into practice would make adjudication of insurance disputes nearly impossible, which would also please libertarians, and which therefore also makes me skeptical.

I do think that they should repeal nearly all speed limits, though, for what it's worth. And every new stop sign (like the one they put on Mendenhall last year) or traffic signal (like the one they just put up at Tate and McIver) they put up, I definitely find infuriating. I violate that pointless "No Turn on Red" at Mendenhall and Spring Garden nearly every day.

But I've seen the lunatics that are out there, and I don't want them deciding when it's safe to go. So it's a tossup.

From TAPPED, I learn that Kerry's campaign theme--"Let America be America Again"--is not only incredibly appropriate to the circumstances, but also poetic in origin:

Let America be America Again
Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

SpoilerFix (don't click the link--they've got info on the last episode that you don't want) is reporting that 24's been renewed, and is moving to Mondays. The premiere will apparently be two hours long, and all 24 episodes will run without preemption, all in a row, for 23 straight weeks.

This is the new thing the networks are doing--ABC is doing the same thing with Alias next January. It seems like it's a first step towards year-round programing, with 2 or 3 seasons of about 20 weeks each. It's also quite clearly an attempt to stop the viewership bleeding that long stretches of reruns cause, particularly with mythology-heavy shows like 24, Alias, or (sigh) Angel.

I say good on them. I'm surprised no one's tried this before now.

The original.

Garden statues of people scare dogs. I recently saw a frog "statue" or planter, that, much like the chia pet, uses its plant design to cleverly fill out the form of an animal. You put a green plant inside the hole in the frog's back, and you get a green frog. Only this planter was faded and now looks gray instead of green, and the plant inside of it was brown and spiny. So, naturally I assumed it was a mutated porcupine.

Psionic vampires in Portland.

Via Brent, the best (male) roommate a guy ever had, comes some great news:

Finally, at long last, the members of The State are working in conjunction with MTV Home Video to make the ultimate, REAL, DVD collection of The State. We going back to the original master tapes and loading it with great extras too, including commentary, interviews, unaired material, etc. Save your money! Stop buying bootlegs! We don't know when exactly this new DVD will be released, but the second we do we'll post here and on our mailing list. (Sign up to the left) *update 4/14/04: it looks like we've finally broken through 95% of the red tape on The State DVD. Deals are being closed as we speak and we hope to have a release date for you soon.

http://www.the-state.com/

And while you're waiting: State Video Clips. It appears to be clips of every skit from every episode ever.

Sorry about that. In other news, they're releasing Donnie Darko as a director's cut. I have to say, I'm pretty excited about it. There's an interview with the director about what's being reinserted here.

The official Donnie Darko webpage sure is weird, though.

The right's theory on this seems to be based on a novel standard for truth-telling whereby if any of Bush's statements (about, say, chemical weapons) turn out to have been true even in part it follows that he's not a liar. According to the standard theory of truthfullness, an honest case for war is one in which all the elements are true.

I think Matt's being a little non-specific here. An honest case for war is one which the president makes in good faith, using claims (s)he justifiably believes to be true. That is, a case for war could be factually wrong and still be honest. (Or factually correct, and still dishonest, for that matter.)

So now we have a subdefintion issue. How does someone "justifiably believe" a claim to be true? Well, that's classic epistemology, right? It's the "justified" and "belief" parts out of the "justified true belief" standard definition for knowledge. What would have made Bush's claims about the WMDs "justified beliefs"? a) If they were supported by a proper procedural evaluation of the evidence (they weren't) and b) if he really believed his own claims. Since none of us can speak to b), it's not worth considering either way. Regardless of b), since Bush's claims were intentionally manipulated by his own preconceptions, intelligence-organization rejiggering, and outright dishonesty on the part of his advisors, we can certainly conclude that the procedure was flawed, so no, his claims weren't justified, and yes, his case for war was dishonest.

It's important for people to understand that the left doesn't say "Bush Lied" because Bush, despite his best efforts at getting to the truth, turned out to be wrong--we say "Bush Lied" because the apparatus of his Presidency was directed not at finding the truth out about Saddam's weapons, but at convincing us that all of the worst possible things were true so we'd support the war (and by association him).

[Obligatory link to the Gettier dissertation (the shortest philosophy dissertation ever accepted, to my knowledge--and it's incredibly important to boot) here. Skip down to the cases, which aren't represented by symbolic logic, and aren't jargony.]

UPDATE: One sentence version of the above: Bush wasn't "dishonest" because it turned out he was wrong; Bush was dishonest because he didn't care whether he was right or not.

We're a giant corporation. We'd never let you drink water that we just used to process uranium.

If it's any consolation, Hal, I think we will win in November, though it won't be pretty, and I have very little faith that it will actually make things any better (though on the other hand I'm sure that the relative airspeed of our nation's decline will be slower under Kerry than under Bush):

Since the defining moment of the Bush presidency, the preposterous flight-suit, Fox News-produced photo-op on the Abraham Lincoln in front of the banner that read "Mission Accomplished," the shaming truth is that everything has gone wrong. Just as it was bound to go wrong, as many of us predicted it would go wrong--if anything more hopelessly wrong than any of us would have dared to prophesy. Iraq is an epic train wreck, and there's not a single American citizen who's going to walk away unscathed.
...
I don't think it's accurate to describe America as polarized between Democrats and Republicans, or between liberals and conservatives. It's polarized between the people who believe George Bush and the people who do not. Thanks to some contested ballots in a state governed by the president's brother, a once-proud country has been delivered into the hands of liars, thugs, bullies, fanatics and thieves. The world pities or despises us, even as it fears us. What this election will test is the power of money and media to fool us, to obscure the truth and alter the obvious, to hide a great crime against the public trust under a blood-soaked flag.

Have I mentioned lately that I can't believe I once supported this war, at this time, in this way, with these idiots at the helm? God, I'm an idiot. Gullible, too. Vote Kodos Vote Keeler Vote Kerry.

UPDATE: I'd just like to add that one thing about Hal's column that I don't support is his none-too-subtle suggestion that a sizable number of Americans would welcome the assassination of a reelected George Bush. ("If our presidential election fails to dislodge the crazy bastards who annexed Baghdad, many of us in this country would welcome regime change by any intervention, human or divine.") I don't think that's something that anyone should be saying, ever, and I also don't think that it's true. I'm not even sure that that's what Hal meant, exactly, but it's what he said.

I feel obligated to link to this silly hoax:

Andy Kaufman Returns

Kaufman always said that IF he was faking his own death, he'd return 20 years to the day after he "died," with a blog, on blogspot. And now he has. Or whatever.

The link to Instapundit seems like a dead giveaway that it's bogus. Or is that exactly what Kaufman would want us to think? Read the comments of the crazy people who'll believe anything.

I mean, it'd be cool if it was true, I guess.

In honor of the (sigh) last episode of Angel, I just purchased Buffy Season 6 from Amazon. I recommend that you all do the same. Who doesn't love Buffy the Musical?



And so on.

(Now we'll see if Amazon Associates rips us off or not.)

Christ.

I still think the EPA story is the most under-reported, and possibly the worst, crime among the many, many crimes of the Bush Administration:

The current administration told the EPA to lie to New Yorkers, putting them in danger and subsequently causing tens of thousands of people to develop "debilitating illnesses."

Now it's time for me to read right-wing propaganda for five hours.

Randy Johnson's thrown 26 strike-outs so far. You're the last dude. Do you take a dive? Do you try and screw up the perfect game on the very last out? I think some of these people, especially towards the end, are probably just letting him have his day. On the other hand, I know next to nothing about sports.

Is there a bandwagon/snowball effect on the psychology of batters when a pitcher has struck out 15 or 20 people straight before you? Or is it that the forces of baseball inevitability are so great and so unyielding that any attempt to rage agsinst what is destined to be a perfect game must necessarily fail?

Neil, Shankar, Patrick: what's the farthest a perfect game or a no-hitter has gotten before being screwed up?

Yes, apparently he's still making changes:



Can no one stop him?

Draft's on. (More at Political Animal.)

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As a general rule, I never really like dream episodes. They always sound good in theory, but never work out well in execution. Yesterday's Sopraneys was no exception. A whole lot of stuff that probably sounded really good when the writers kicked it around, but as with most dream episodes, it doesn't add up to much of anything at all. Maybe this will pay off in the last two episodes, but right now it seemed like a waste of too-valuable time. Especially weighed against the seemingly tremendous plot twist regarding Tony B, the overlong dream portion of this episode was glorified filler.

It looks like this is the place Jaimee and I will be getting married:

Cameron Art Museum

though as with all things this is subject to availability, cost, and the Ineffable Will of Granny.

Don't look at any of the art yet. Save it for next year. In fact, pretend I didn't say anything.

Often times I find my hands in my pockets for no good reason save reminding me what's down there. As with most things, it's not until you pull out a black plastic pig with vacant white eyes that everything falls into place and you realize what's at stake when it comes to living in a backwards city. Remember, this isn't a backwards village. We need lots of people from everywhichwhere. Even the midwest. We need languages that aren't spoken anymore. We need to wake some things up from the bowels of the earth, have them shake off the dust and say, "What up, dawg?" In return we'll say, click on www.backwardscity.net.

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What is the Backwards City Review?

The Backwards City Review was founded in 2004 by five graduates of the Greensboro Writing Program with one goal in mind: to create a journal that caters to the world above, beyond, around, near, within-sight-of and slightly out of tune with conventional literary outlets.

Cities are built upon need. In the physical world, they collect around resources: a spring, a bay, fertile soil. Imaginary cities collect around ideas: a style of art, a search for information, a game, a movie, a band, a book, a political ideal. It is these new cities, these backwards cities, that nourish us and make it possible for us to live.

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