Tuesday, July 15, 2003

So I saw "LXG" this weekend, and now that I've had a chance to think about it, I have decided my opinion. It blew hard. Great concept, but that's about all.
Give me Moore Or give me death!
"We gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in." Bush is a nutcase But you knew that already.
pixeltees.com/ Think R.Stevens knows about this?
Building a Terrabyte data storage system in 1970.
Blake at 5:27:00 PM

Saturday, July 12, 2003

Bjork and I share a birthday. But I don't have an island.
Also, demi and willis were married on the same date.
Blake at 11:07:00 PM

LEGO worldbuilder Very cool.
XXX-ceptable Truth be told, porn is pretty mainstrem these days
That episode of Gobots that was just like that episode of OZ. god, I hate gobots.
Traiding on Fear America Loves Psyops.
Man Driven Temporarily Insane By Jasmine Tea Yeah, right.
Frozen Stars - Black holes may not be bottomless pits after all
Polygamy 101
Robotic Rat brain Artists developed. Not kidding.
171 pictures of Rob Jeremy dressed as Super Mairo Also not kidding.
The victims of a growing mental disorder are obsessed with amputation. disturbing.

Blake at 1:53:00 PM

Friday, July 11, 2003

The Mythical Quest: In search of adventure, romance & enlightenment
Golden Age Comic Cover Gallery
the neuronaut's guide to the science of consciousness
Hyperinsturments music
Fucking Bullshit
Beached "blob" mystery solved
don't go breaking my heart or I'll sue you good
Why we can't tickkle ourselves
Pirate Keyboard
Blake at 4:43:00 PM

Wednesday, July 09, 2003

English is Fun. Here's a prime example offered by an English professor at an American University.

"Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. One of you will then write the first paragraph of a short story. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back and forth. Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. There is to be absolutely NO talking and anything you wish to say must be written on the paper. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached."

The following was actually turned in by two of my English students: Rebecca (last name deleted), and Gary (last name deleted).

THE STORY:
(first paragraph by Rebecca)
At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The
chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the question.

(second paragraph by Gary)
Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A.S. Harris to Geostation 17,???*?? he said into his transgalactic communicator. "Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay.
The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.

(Rebecca)
He bumped his head and died almost immediately but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. "Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel," Laurie read in her newspaper one morning.
The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out
the window, dreaming of her youth, when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspapers to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things round her. "Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.

(Gary)
Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to
live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament Treaty through the congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they
swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile
entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret
Mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion, which vaporized poor, stupid, Laurie and 85 million other Americans. The President slammed his fist on the conference table. "We can't allow this! I'm going to veto that treaty! Let's blow 'em out of the sky!"

(Rebecca)
This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic semi-literate adolescent.

(Gary)
Yeah? Well, you're a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. "Oh shall I have chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of FUCKING TEA??? Oh
no, I'm such an air headed bimbo who reads too many Danielle Steele novels."

(Rebecca)
Asshole.

(Gary)
Bitch.

(Rebecca)
DICK!

(Gary)
Slut.

(Rebecca)
Get fucked.

(Gary)
Eat shit.

(Rebecca)
FUCK YOU - YOU NEANDERTHAL!!!

(Gary)
Go drink some tea - whore.

(TEACHER)
A+ - I really liked this one.
Blake at 8:28:00 PM

============================

R o l l i n g C o m m e n t a r y

Snooty English liberal Alan Moore reviews our government's recent activities.

============================

Here's a joke: What do you call an eight-year-old Iraqi kid with no arms,
surviving family members, or unblackened skin below his waist? I don't know.
I was shouting at the TV and I didn' t catch his name. Don't worry if you
don't get it. We'll no doubt be telling it again in another dozen years or
so. And still not getting it. It' s the repetition that grinds us down. All
this Groundhog Day shit. The history classes of the twenty-second century,
assuming that we can be bothered to hold one, will hate us for doing
everything twice and messing up their grades. "So which Bush was Gulf War II
again? Was that the wimp or the chimp?"

The British have been running this bayonet-porn loop for more than a
millennium, since the 1090s and the first Crusades, waged to safeguard holy
Christian sites (which, being also Muslim sacred places, were not actually
threatened in the first place) rather than for Freedom and Democracy,
although strangely enough the invading forces were even then led by Franks.

Back then, those territories blocked England's access to the Silk Road, but
that wasn't why we were going to war. It was those Christian monuments we
were concerned about. Richard the Lionheart addresses his men with that Tony
Blair weasel-in-a-slaughterhouse look in his eyes: "Look, okay, I know
there's always a conspiracy theory, but I can honestly say this is not about
silk."

Fast forward to the early twentieth century and we find Britain still
stoically putting the Mess into Mesopotamia. While Johnny Arab had helped us
out against the evil Turk, we now needed his oil to lubricate the gears of
burgeoning British industry, and that necessitated a regime-change. Thus we
liberate the area, and set it on its proper path towards Iraq and Ruin.

Forty years later, with Britain still running the country, we have Winston
Churchill proclaiming that he has no serious objection to RAF aeroplanes
bombing rebellious Kurd natives with poison gas. As with so many great
cultural high points like, say, concentration camps, chips, or colonialism,
you'll fi nd that the British are usually ahead of the curve.

Around about this time, during the 1930s, Prescott Bush had made the family
fortune through his business deals with the Third Reich (he was even able to
make a gift of Hitler's dinner service to the Skull &Bones fraternity),
these carried out enthusiastically and profi tably right up to the afternoon
in 1942 when Roosevelt screwed the pooch by making trade with Nazi Germany
illegal. This, no doubt, came as a great relief to Winston Churchill, with
England having been at war against the Reich since 1939, and the American
diplomats in London urging him repeatedly throughout those years to take the
side of Germany.

Now, since the late nineteenth century, Millennialist Christians had been
lobbying the British Parliament to create an Israeli homeland in Palestine,
their reasoning apparently based on Biblical prophecy rather than on
political or humanitarian considerations. If the prophecy of God's Chosen
People coming to a home within the Promised Land was fulfi lled, this would
presumably be followed by, successively, the Second Coming of Christ and the
Apocalypse. And you have to admit, they were pretty much on the money,
except for all that second coming shit.

When the Second World War ended with its spectacular unveiling of the
world's first genuine weapon of mass destruction, the momentum to create a
Jewish State had become considerable. Taking advantage of advances in
technology and thus media coverage that war had brought, a group of Zionist
freedom-fighters (including in their ranks a young Menachim Begin) bombed a
British Army Canteen in the area. The way in which this drew world media
attention to what would be an ultimately successful cause quite clearly
created the modern concept of, uh, freedom fighting, and gave all subsequent
freedom fighters an excellent workable model to follow: blow stuff up and
get on television.

Of course, it turned out that the Land Without A People wasn't seen in quite
that light by, well, the Palestinians, as an example. This led to all sorts
of trouble, but within a couple of decades, Israel had the cushion of a
number of Pro-Western regimes that had been established in the area, such as
that of much-missed torture impresario the Shah of Iran. The oil, not that
this has ever been about oil, was relatively safe.

Then Jimmy Carter somehow wins the ?76 elections, appoints clean-up crusader
Stansfi eld Turner as head of the C.I.A. and subsequently halts clandestine
C.I.A. cash payments to Iran's mercenary Ayatollahs, made on the
understanding that the clerics would ignore the torture and imprisonment of
ordinary Muslims, and would leave the Shah alone. Naturally, that went down
real well, and by 1979 the Shah had been deposed, fundamentalist Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini was in charge of Iran and had taken an plane- full of
American hostages to show he meant business.

Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, it was around this time that the
Western powers found it in their best interests to support the military
government of handsome forty-two year old Saddam Hussein in neighboring
Iraq. He may have been a psychopath and murderer, but at least he wasn't an
Islamic fundamentalist, and he was our psychopath and murderer, just like
President Marcos had been "Our son-of-a-bitch" in the Philippines, and
Slobodan Milosevic was the Balkan we could do business with.

During the inevitable Iran-Iraq War, we helpfully supplied Saddam with the
munitions and the poison gas he used on the Iranians. In fact, that's how we
can be so certain that Saddam has hidden weapons of mass destruction like,
say, anthrax or Sarin gas: Donald Rumsfeld (whose company was selling these
aforementioned commodities to the Iraqi dictator until just before the first
Gulf War in 1991) was thoughtful enough to keep all the receipts.

But while Johnny Iraqi had helped us out against the evil Iranians, it now
looked like he might be thinking of acquiring all his country's oil wealth
for himself, along with that of neighboring Kuwait. We were fairly certain
about this last point, since according to several reports, Saddam's minions
had been in touch with Madeline Albright at the U.S. State Department
regarding whether the U.S., as a valued ally and weapons-provider, would
have any objection to such an invasion. The State Department didn't say no.
Which brings us to the first Gulf War, courtesy of former C.I.A. operative
and Nixon- booster George Herbert Walker Bush.

After staging what amounted to a brilliantly media-managed Arms Fair in the
region (where after all most prospective arms-customers were conveniently
situated) , Bush senior seemed to lack the necessary resolve to finish off
Saddam Hussein's regime, perhaps because of his most senior military
advisor's firm assurances that such a move would almost certainly lead to
the Iraqi leader, with nothing to lose, launching weapons of mass
destruction at Israel and precipitating "Armageddon in the Middle East".
Interestingly, the same advisor, whose views are believed to be identical
with those of Bush senior, made exactly the same point when advising against
the current Iraqi conflict, but presumably the younger Bush, possessing even
less of "the vision thing" than his father, was not persuaded. Cue one
thousand points of light over Baghdad.

The elder Bush had not, it turns out, been the first to offer other Middle
Eastern powers relief from the widely- despised Saddam. Accomplished
American-trained freedom fighter and millionaire heir to a Saudi builder,
Osama Bin Laden, fresh from having successfully repelled the evil Soviet
Union from Afghanistan at the request of the U. S., apparently tried
unsuccessfully to persuade the Saudis that his growing band of Mujahedin
freedom-fighters, AI Qaeda, could remove Saddam if only permitted to base
themselves within Saudi Arabia. Perhaps mindful of how difficult it might be
getting rid of AI Qaeda after such a conflict was concluded, the Saudis
declined and instead placed their trust (disloyally, it seemed to the
grudge-prone Bin Laden) in America. With retrospect, you can see how this
carefully-balanced, teetering pile of megalomaniacs was beautifully set up,
and only needed one disaster to be escalated into almost unbelievable
catastrophe.

That disaster happened at the 2000 U.S. elections, which many of us might
have mistaken for an episode of The Dukes of Hazzard if only there'd been a
little banjo music playing in the background. Elected by the slenderest,
some would say actually non-existent majority, George Walker Bush the
younger obviously needed something to make him appear legitimate if he was
to hang onto office long enough to accomplish all that his corporate backers
required of him. Surrounding himself with enthusiastically pro- war figures
such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld (who'd been recommending an invasion
of Iraq to safeguard oil supplies since 1998), Deathrow Dubya announced
during the early months of his administration that the time had come to wage
a war on Terror, taking in such rogue states as Afghanistan and Iraq.

Afghanistan was, at that time, the Bush administration's first priority. A
pipeline through Afghanistan with which the estimated thirty trillion
dollars' worth of oil remaining in the former Soviet Union could be pumped
to the Gulf, reducing the United States' worrying dependence on Arab
resources, was a favored option by the U.S. oil corporations in the 1990s.
Clearly, such hopes were dashed by the emergence of the strongly anti-U.S.
Taliban regime during the decade's later years, and just as clearly it would
have been against International Law to overthrow a country's leadership
simply because they didn't comply with American commercial interests.

At this point it was recalled that former anti-Soviet Mujahedin hero Osama
Bin Laden was believed to be residing, with his AI Qaeda cohorts, in
Afghanistan. The U.S. had semi-legitimate reasons for wishing to pursue Bin
Laden, since he had, after all, been behind that first terrorist bomb at the
WTC, and also behind the attacks on America's African embassies.
Accordingly, during a diplomatic summit taking place over the Summer of 2001
and subtitled "Brainstorming Afghanistan", American diplomats communicated
with the Taliban using the intermediary of Pakistan, informing them during
the informal "phase two" period of the meeting that the U. S. would be
launching a War Against Terror sometime in September, invading Afghanistan
for the purposes of unearthing the AI Qaeda leader. This information was
presumably passed on to Osama Bin Laden by his contacts in the Taliban and,
unsurprisingly given that the Pentagon war-machine has promised to descend
upon him in September whatever he did or didn't do, it seems he opted to get
his retaliation in first.

Following the Twin Towers attack, with the war on Afghanistan successfully
underway, Dick Cheney retired from his executive position at the company
engaged in building nuclear plants in North Korea, just in time for George
Bush Junior to announce his rogue-state shopping list, the Axis of Evil,
with Iran and North Korea right there following Iraq. Mind you, on taking up
the office of Vice President, Dick "The Man of a Thousand Faces " Cheney
also declared that he was not currently being paid by Iraqi reconstruction
contract winners Halliburton. This was technically true, but only due to
Cheney's new arrangement with the company where, for tax reasons, they'd
agreed to only pay him every six months.

With the Afghani war wrapped up in its half-assed, inconclusive way and
Saddam next in the Bush administration's sights, we were assured that any
attack on Iraq would be only engaged in for the purposes of ridding Saddam
of whatever nuclear, chemical or bio-weaponry he still possessed. This was
definitely not about oil, whatever those cynics who pointed out all the
American main player's links with energy corporations, or the fact that
Condoleezza Rice actually has an oil tanker named after her, might suggest.

Then, during those months the U. S. and U. K. required to get sufficient
forces for invasion to the Gulf, when they pretended to give a shit about
what Hans Blix found or didn't find, in face of the continued non-discovery
of a clearly smoking warhead, they changed tack and made the Saddam regime's
supposed links with AI Qaeda and other terrorist organizations the focus of
their self-justification. It was suggested that old weapons lying around in
Iraq could fall into the hands of terrorists, although why any would-be
terrorists would look for raw materials in Iraq, the world's most heavily
monitored country, when there's pounds of the stuff going for a song out in
the wilds of the largely bankrupt former Soviet Union is anybody's guess.
The touted AI Qaeda linkage also disappears before the simple fact that
Saddam Hussein is a secular leader, while AI Qaeda are a bunch of headcase
Islamist fanatics sworn to depose the hated unbeliever from his seat of
power, or else wait for the coalition of the willing to do it for them.

As the long-established start-date for the war approached with no clear
evidence for its necessity having emerged, the coherence and authority of
the United Nations turned out to be its first casualty. This venerable
institution was cast as a laughing stock purely for its refusal to state
that black was white upon America's say-so. The arguments and evidence
served lukewarm by the coalition were a laughable, moronic embarrassment
(like that British Intelligence document detailing Saddam's WMDs that Colin
Powell seemed so impressed by, and which turned out to have been mostly
copied from a graduate thesis written by a Californian student more than ten
years earlier), but for anyone to actually laugh or to point this out was
spun by the Bush administration as equivalent to a bunch of smug and snooty
French intellectuals pissing on the dead of the Twin Towers while eating
snails and taking Jerry Lewis seriously. Apparently, you' re either for us,
or against us. This means, effectively, that unless we are all willing to
accept every word that comes from the mouth of former cokehead, allegedly
recovered alcoholic and corporate fraudster George W. Bush as literally
God's own truth, then we must expect to be regarded and treated as actual
members of AI Qaeda.

The WTC plane-bombings, for the Bush administration that provoked them in
the first place, failed conspicuously to prevent them and then shamelessly
exploited this awful human tragedy for the advancement of its own shitty
little agendas, have become the sacred touchstone of this proposed "War
without end." Any previously unthinkable political action can be instantly
validated by the magic words 9-11, in much the same way as Ariel Sharon's
government in Israel can make horrific moral and humanitarian issues simply
vanish by mentioning the Holocaust. The logic seems to be that if anything
sufficiently dreadful has ever been done to you in the past, then you have
complete license to do dreadful things to everyone else, forever. This, of
course, is a logic that would set serial killers from bad homes free to kill
as they pleased, would even provide them with the necessary chainsaws and
electrical tape. It is a logic that states "Monstrous things have been done
to us, so therefore its okay to behave monstrously." It is George Bush's
logic, and also that of Osama Bin Laden. Or any four-year-old boy, for that
matter. As a result of following this logic, it seems that since the
September of 2001, America and Israel have been competing against each other
in a breathtaking downhill slalom from the moral high ground, squandering
public sympathy as if neither nation ever expected to have further need for
such a thing.

Which brings us back to the current Iraqi conflict, the way in which it has
rolled inexorably into being despite the glaring lack of proof for its
necessity, despite the condemnation of the world's religious leaders and the
previously unimaginable millions worldwide who marched against the war in
February. Because, in a way, it's actually true when they say that this war
is not about oil... or at least, not entirely about oil. It is, as they say,
an "effects-based campaign." Part of its major intended "effect" must
presumably be to terrify other potential enemies into submission by
convincing them the world's last Superpower/first Ultrapower has fallen into
the hands of a shrieking, masturbating lower primate and is now constantly a
hair's-breadth away from going absolutely foaming fucking mad and killing
everybody. It almost makes you long for the cosy and nostalgic days of the
Nixon/Kissinger "Madman" ruse. I mean, say what you like about Richard
Nixon, but he was at least enough of a human being to know that he was
wretched and cursed, and to writhe and lie in order to conceal his shame.
George W. Bush, on the other hand, has been Damned so long it looks like
Saved to him. Being blissfully unburdened by moral considerations, anyone
questioning the ethics of his administration will he met with that same
half-amused, half-genuinely puzzled look in those remarkably closely-spaced
eyes. Clearly, we don't get it. He's the President of the United States. He
can do whatever the fuck he likes. Isn't that what the job's all about?
Doesn't it say that in, oh, the Constitution or the Declaration of
Independence or one of those other pieces of ass-wipe that he means to read
if he ever finishes The Very Hungry Caterpillar?

Another effect of this effects-based strategy is presumably to intimidate
and stifle opposition back home in the Land of the Free and the Home of the
Brave itself. Buy a "Give Peace a Chance " Tshirt and prepare to take your
next shit blindfolded in Camp X-Ray. So that's the Free taken care of. And
by occasionally giving the electorate another squirt of Orange Alert, George
"The Omen II " Bush can apparently reduce the Brave to sitting at home in
their Hefty XXL Haz-chem suits with the windows taped up. As for any
hold-out mouthy liberal celebrities, with the noble exception of Michael
Moore, they can probably be convinced that discretion is the better part of
valor, if only by taking a peep at the hate-mail received by poor old Martin
Sheen for portraying an American President who is unlike George Walker Bush
(This last point frankly confuses even keen America-watchers such as myself.
I mean, I saw The Dead Zone, and I' ve got to say that I thought Sheen
really had that dot-eyed fundamentalist fuckwit down.)

Perhaps the most important effect is the message sent to the rest of the
world, which would seem largely to be the announcement of a new age of
American unilateralism. (As one senior U. S. military source said regarding
the real reasons for a war on Iraq, "We did it because it was doable.") If
America decides that the assassination of foreign heads of state is now
permissible, whatever international law might have to say on the subject,
then that's just how it is. If America decides that it will stand alone in
not recognizing the new International Criminal Court in The Hague then
America has the military power to insist upon that stance, and it seems that
military power has it all over that moral authority stuff that used to be so
much of an issue. Might turned out to make right after all. Bullies
everywhere punch first the air and then their wives in celebration. And of
course, having made it plain that America no longer feels that it needs
friends or allies amongst the world community, this tends to put the burden
of responsibility for the relationship upon those increasingly nervous
former allies themselves. The question becomes not "How much do we genuinely
like America?" but "How scared of them are we? Wouldn't it be better to be
inside the American tent and pissing out?"

This would certainly seem to be the position that Tony Blair has taken.
Swearing allegiance to George Bush and his policy makers, Blair has
obviously been prepared to alienate most of his own party, the greater part
of the British population and a disturbingly large section of his former
friends in what we laughingly refer to as "the European community". That's
how important it was to him. He would echo every pronouncement from the Oval
Office, and then would express his deep indignation at the way in which most
of the world's people continued to see him as "Bush's poodle." One can only
imagine how cross he'd be if the phrase "Bush's cock- puppet" achieved
similar currency.

Now, though, with the seeming collapse of any organized Iraqi resistance and
the apparent disappearance of Saddam Hussein and most of his Ba'ath party
inner circle, it seems that any moral considerations that existed before or
during the war have been somehow retroactively neutralized by this
ambiguous, heavily qualified victory. The Hawks feel vindicated. They showed
all those peaceniks that they could invade Iraq after all, and seemingly
fail to remember that the debate wasn't about whether they could, but
whether they should. Wasn't there some stuff about weapons of mass
destruction that Saddam would be sure to deploy if he had nothing left to
lose? Weapons that even the highly motivated,
specially-created-to-retroactively- justify-the-war "US-movic" forces have
thus far failed to find any sign of. A minor quibble. Let's gloss over it
and get on with the victory parades and the award ceremonies. George and
Dick, having been conveniently occupied elsewhere during that Viet Nam
thing, finally get to take part, albeit from a safe distance, in a real,
honest-to-gosh war. Tony gets a special Ellis Island medal, and perhaps a
decoder ring. The Iraqi people get their freedom and democracy, although
that means that the Shi'ar majority will almost certainly vote in an
Ayatollah, and reject America. Or at least, they will if that big
demonstration in Karbala chanting "No to America, No to Saddam! Yes, yes,
Islam!" the other day was anything to go by. The Kurds get Kirkuk. The Turks
get cross. AI Qaeda and Islamic Jihad, get a free recruitment drive. And I
guess we'll just have to wait and see how many Tim McVeighs or John
Mohammeds (both Gulf veterans) came home from the war with a party in their
head this time round.

This, in many ways, whatever it sounds like, is a best-case scenario in that
it makes the fairly unreasonable assumption that the "War in Iraq" was that
three or four weeks of blowing our own people to bits in green-tinted
pillhead night vision sandstorms that we' ve all just seen on television,
and that it's over now. This assumes that the U. S. is not going to get
pinned down, for years or perhaps decades, as an occupying force in an area
largely hostile to its presence and already fraught with explosive religious
tensions. It assumes that when the older British troops in this conflict
ventured the opinion that Iraq could turn into "another Northern Ireland,"
all they meant was that there would be more Guinness theme- bars and that
you could maybe dye the Euphrates green on St. Pat's Day. (Actually, to be
strictly fair, there are significant differences between Iraq and Northern
Ireland. One of these is that Ireland is relatively isolated in the midst of
the cold and wet North Atlantic, whereas Iraq is slam in the middle of the
hottest, driest political tinderbox in the world. Do the math, as they say.)

And meanwhile the world is gradually divided into Terrorists and Crusaders,
white stetsons and black turbans. We have a war whose aims are so flexible
and ambiguous that it could keep running for decades, simply hopping from
rogue state to rogue state, designating new enemies as required if it ever
looks like the wheels are going to fall off our current Axis of Evil. This
is the world that we consider an appropriate gift for our children, and for
their children. And when they look up at us with wide eyes and ask how we
got rid of all those weapons of mass destruction, we'll tell them that we
developed a marvelous Massive Ordnance Air-Burst device specially to do just
that. Imagine their little faces: Shock. Awww.

So, Islam good, America bad, is that what we' re saying? Of course not.
Islam is a noble and humane faith that unfortunately suffers from having no
clear earthly chain of command, with a resulting vulnerability to self-
appointed holy men who may wish to lead Islam into terrible conflicts, often
against itself. Islam is one of the most important wellsprings of world
culture, and if it wishes to preserve its considerable integrity into the
foreseeable future, it needs to get its own house in order and do its best
to isolate any dangerous crackpots who do not represent the ordinary,
peace-loving average Muslim (much the same thing could of course be said
about Christianity and Judaism. Islam hardly has a monopoly on blinkered
sectarian fanatics whom we'd all be better off without).

How about America, then? Aren't all of us snooty European liberals
anti-American these days? Of course not. Who told you that? What, we're anti
Duke Ellington, Tom Waits, Herman Melville, Jackson Pollock, Chester Himes,
Emperor Norton, Patti Smith, Tex Avery, Dorothy Parker, Edgar Allan Poe,
Orson Welles, Billie Holliday, Raymond Chandler, Kathy Acker, Edwin Starr,
Nina Simone, Raymond Carver, Paul Robeson, Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, Emily
Dickinson Lou Reed, Wilhelm Reich, Thomas Alva Edison, Jimi Hendrix, Captain
Beefheart, William Burroughs, Emma Goldman, Jack Kerouac, William Faulkner,
Walt Whitman, Spike Lee, Allen Ginsberg, John Waters, Matt Groening, The
Sopranos, Robert Crumb, Damon Runyon, Woody Guthrie, Edward Hopper and all
the thousands of other wonderful people who express what the gigantic,
unruly, thundering heart of America is really all about? No. You're a great
country, but you (and the rest of the world) got Bushwhacked. A spooky
little clique who for some considerable while contented themselves with
being part of America's un-elected Shadow Government have now stepped boldly
up into the footlights, where they feel (perhaps correctly) that they can
now do or say whatever they want, and that nobody can or will do anything
about it. They' re ready for their close-up, Mr. DeMille. There is no longer
any need for secrecy or shadows. Covert wars were so last century, don't you
think? This is 2003, and they can be as overt as they like, dividing up the
millennial pie with the fuhrer's silverware.

As for the rest of us, if we're all not very careful, we could get dragged
into a ruinously destructive and avoidable ongoing sprawl of war with the
Islamic world, a culture every bit as astonishing and important as our own.
A culture with which an exchange of information rather than missiles would
surely be to the greater benefit of all concerned. Let's have a bit less
cheap Shock here, and a bit more genuine Awe. Or at the very least, if we
can't manage Awe, simple Respect. Respect for others, and, even more
importantly, respect for ourselves. There hasn't been much of it around
lately, between the Freedom Fries and the Friendly Fire.

So, you: give 'im 'is country back.

And you: smarten yourself up a bit.

Peace out.
Blake at 7:34:00 PM

After a period of pause, the blog is reborn. Granted, new.blogger.com took away the Blog This function, which is a sin I hold comprable to stealing a baby or removing all the limbs of a nun or holy man, I have jurry rigged a solution to the problem. Also, new template. It is monumentous. Still working on the links. Can't stand the omniblog, I love it so. Time to go and wonder where everyone and my girl abandoned me too this week.
Blake at 6:58:00 PM

Stalin vs. Hitler
Ellis vs. Others
Showing their love for rape, Japan's men head elsewhere
The CIA warned the US Government But do they listen, of course not.
ACLU finds Justice spouting falsehoods about PATRIOT Act
Lynch didn't get shot and gutted by Iraqi bandits. She was in a CAR CRASH. Ha. Hahahahahaha.
Messing with votes is easy Not that you'd even have to.
Women and their organs confuse me deeply and baffle science peeps even more.
American Antigravity has movies and databases on, well, antigravity!
"Gecko Man, Gecko Man, does whatever a Gecko can." With Van Der Waals forces!
Superman's Idenity Crisis
Gullable, weak-minded americans
You never hear about Aimee Semple Mc Pherson anymore.
Pirate Image Arrrrrrrchive
Dissertation Could Be Security Threat Student's Maps Illustrate Concerns About Public Information
Jewel's new release "Intuition" rants against post-modern fads, commercialism and fakery. Song then used as jingle for new Schick razor called "Intuition"
Rumsfeld backpaddles like a motherfiend
Blake at 5:40:00 PM

Tuesday, July 08, 2003

Harvey Wasserman
"zee germans!" and their propaganda
DOC SAVAGE PULP MAGAZINE COVER SCANS
The Suppa Sushi Race! Super-Fun.
Jetbug!
Artifacts from the long lost era of the 90's
Blake at 8:54:00 PM

Kim Jong is a movie madman
What we need more of is crime science
Elephant Sex Logo critizised for lack of condom
Stonehedge is really just a big female nasty part
Max Cleland Survived Nam, but leaves because politics is evil now
Movie Cliches
Everything You wanted to know about Numbers but were afraid to ask.
Blake at 7:35:00 PM

Monday, July 07, 2003

I am a wordsmith.
-Blake Reitz
EL BIKE TZAR
BLAZER TIKE

-Blakley Reitz
BAKE LIZ TYLER
ZEBRA YET KILL
EL LYRE BAT KIZ
LET KIRBY ZEAL
ELK BLITZ YEAR
KILL EZRA BY ET That's ominious
TIL RAZE BY ELK
ZETA BY KILLER
TALK BREEZILY
KATZ BEER LILY
TEL LIZ YAK REB
YAK BLITZ REEL
YAK BIZ TELLER
TRAL BY EEL KIZ
LAZY BE KILTER
LAZY REBEL KIT
LAZY BEER KILT My college Scottish Exchange program name.

My Mother:
THE CRAZY IT
AZTEC HI TRY
CRAZY HE-TIT
CRAZY ET HIT Nooo! don't kill ET!
HEY TIT CZAR
HEY RITZ CAT We use to have a cat named Ritz. It clawed a quater of my face off.

My Father:
FRYER FEZ JET I

My Sister:
A GAZER THAT I
HEAR A ZAG TIT
A HEART AT ZIG
A ZIG AT EARTH
HE ZAG A TRAIT
A ZIG TAT HEIR
I ZAG AT EARTH

Blake at 6:57:00 PM

Don't do the Dew
George joins PETA
Ten Lies about Iraq
Ellis was right, French is dead, long live French.
Blake at 6:39:00 PM

Saturday, July 05, 2003

God loves lightning
Playgrounds suck these days
Fireworks rule
Future 300
Blake at 12:44:00 PM

Thursday, July 03, 2003

Your Body May Be Worth More Than $45 Million Sounds silly, I know, but once you remember that all your bone marrow nets 23 mill...
Blake at 8:34:00 PM

MIRACLES OF THE NEXT FIFTY YEARS from a 1950's Scientific American.
Blake at 7:25:00 PM

The last resort
Were you to glance up from the deserted beach below, you might mistake Tranquility Bay for a rather exclusive hotel. The statuesque white property stands all alone on a sandy curve of southern Jamaica, feathered by palm trees, gazing out across the Caribbean Sea. You would have to look closer to see the guards at the wall. Inside, 250 foreign children are locked up. Almost all are American, but though kept prisoner, they were not sent here by a court of law. Their parents paid to have them kidnapped and flown here against their will, to be incarcerated for up to three years, sometimes even longer. They will not be released until they are judged to be respectful, polite and obedient enough to rejoin their families.

Parents sign a legal contract with Tranquility Bay granting 49 per cent custody rights. It permits the Jamaican staff, whose qualifications are not required to exceed a high-school education, to use whatever physical force they feel necessary to control their child. The contract also waives Tranquility's liability for harm that should befall a child in its care. The cost of sending a child here ranges from $25,000 to $40,000 a year.

Opened in 1997, Tranquility Bay is not a boot camp or a boarding school but a 'behaviour modification centre' for 11- to 18-year-olds. An American Time magazine journalist visited in 1998, and since then no media have been allowed inside. With all access denied, there has been little coverage beyond sketchy reports based on hearsay - even the local community knows almost nothing of what goes on. My discovery of Tranquility Bay came only by accident in 2000, while living nearby, and all my approaches since then were, like every other media request, firmly rejected.

Blake at 7:15:00 PM