BunkBlog

“Today Christians stand at the head of [our country] … I pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity .. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit … We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press – in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past years.”

Who would say such a thing? Is it Swaggart? Is it Robertson? Bush? Maybe it’s Tom DeLay?

Give up?

Think Germany, late 30s, short Austrian man. Yeah.

1. beer:
   I like good beer. I also like good wine, and the random nip of amaretto. Not all at once, though – that would be unwise.
2. bruce sterling:
   Bruce Sterling has a phenomenal grasp of science and its impact on the near future. And his old cyberpunk writing was damned good too.
3. did i mention sex:
   Um, duh?
4. freedom:
   I spent 12 years in the army, which I hope helped in some way to defend our freedoms.
5. learning:
   Learning is a lifelong process, but I am taking a break from formal education for a while, now that I’ve finished my BS.
6. mountain dew:
   The nectar of the geek gods.
7. origami:
   When in doubt, fold paper. It’s calming, and it produces something which can be either ephemeral or permanent, as you see fit.
8. rock:
   and Roll!
9. sigint:
   Signals Intelligence, the main realm of the intelligence spectrum I’ve been immersed in for the past 16 years. I also have a glancing familiarity with IMINT.
10. technology:
    Me, geek?

Enter your LJ user name, and 10 interests will be selected from your interest list.

What is with this family and substance abuse? They’re like a Republican version of the Kennedys.

I love the fact that Jeb Jr. was busted not just for public intoxication but resisting arrest. Oh, yeah, that’s smart – when you’re a high-profile person, resisting arrest will definitely be a wise move.

If you do a search for “I voted for the moron” on Google, you now get my post about the button and bumpersticker design I made. I wonder how frequently that particular search is made. hehe

Just got back from watching Lord of War tonight. There’s a feelgood movie for the year! The opening sequence, which is the life cycle of a bullet from manufacturer to target, is a remarkable piece of cinematography that sets the tone for the movie.

Dark comedy, family drama, a touch of romance, and a heavy dose of “what the fuck” discussion of the gunrunning trade all combine to make this a very powerful film. Do not take small children to this film, under any circumstances. Unless, of course, your children have seen a lot of gunshot wounds being made in their daily lives, in which case – nothing new here for them.

Nicolas Cage, as always, is great. Ethan Hawke doesn’t chew the scenery, but he doesn’t quite make me believe his character is as boy scout as he is supposed to be. The rest of the cast is really peripheral, with the exception of Eamonn Walker’s thinly-veiled Charles Taylor fictionalization. Most of the screen time is devoted to Cage and his narrations, which really make the tone. His deadpan patter throughout the most insane gunfights and family dramas caused me to think of his character, Yuri Orlov, as an amoral near-affectless person.

Great movie, and I expect a cinematography award at the next Oscar ceremony – the camera work is good, but the long cut scenes are fantastic.

Remember that New Design I posted two weeks ago? One of my coworkers is proud of her “Blame Me – I voted for the moron” button. She feels that he’s not a moron, but she considers it a “buck stops here” statement. Although she and I have vastly different views on the proper role of government, we do agree on one thing – there’s been a whole lot of stupid to spread around on all layers of government lately.

By the way, the buttons don’t refer to any particular political candidate or official, so you can give them to anyone who you think has voted badly, for any race. Cheers.

Didn’t someone once say they’d send me an invite to Orkut? I don’t recall ever getting it, and I feel so left out.

OK, maybe not. I wonder if Orkut is any better than the MySpace and Friendster zones of “what is the point” land.

In case you don’t know why the “Trusted Computing” concept is an inherently bad one, please go view the short video that was recently pimped on BoingBoing. It explains a bit, and hopefully it’s enough to get people to look into it more.

Trusted Computing is not a new idea, and it’s been growing lately. It’s all part of the same RIAA/MPAA mindset, the one that says, “Consumers are crooks and must be controlled by the copyright holders at all costs.” The technology industry (well, Sony anyway) stood up for your rights against commercial interests over 20 years ago, and for that we have VCRs, and MP3 players, and burnable CDs, and TiVos and all the wonderful things that allow you to control your own media that you’ve legally purchased. Now, the technology industry has largely been purchased by or merged with the entertainment industry. So, who will stand up for the customer?

Proving that charities are infinitely more responsive than governmental organizations, the Red Cross is paying thousands of hotel bills for hurricane victims. If you haven’t donated to the Red Cross yet, do it.

Not only has the Red Cross been handing out thousands of debit cards, days before FEMA even considered them, they’re paying for people’s hotel bills, getting them out of shelters and on the path to normalcy.

Great quote:

“I have never seen anything with the government that is this simple.”

and I have a problem. I’m compelled to collect as much music as I can. In the past few weeks, I’ve acquired Death Cab for Cutie, Aerosmith, DJ Rap, Alicia Keys, and Bach. The Bach is perhaps the strangest. A 17 CD set of Bach’s organ music. Seventeen disks. Let that sink in a few more minutes. I have 20 hours of Bach organ music. What party will that work for?

I discovered that Death Cab for Cutie, contrary to its name, is not some sort of death metal, poseur punk band, but more like Lifehouse with less attitude. Proves that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover (or a band by its name).

Played with Broderbund’s 3D Home Architect this weekend. Considering how limited the number of pieces of furniture are to choose from, this does look quite a bit like the view from the den into the living room and kitchen, if I were sitting in the PapaSan chair. Which I do, when I’m waiting for the dog to finish sniffing every single plant in the back yard.

In my email today:

————

hi dear,
how are you and how is your work going ?hopr its going smoothly?you know i promised to email you from our chat and right now i just wanna try to describe myself .
i think im gonna start from here cuz i dont really know how to do this ok but ill try .

Here goes my story ok.im 26/yrs old and im carol simson im white,guess you saw that in my profile huh.im 5″7 feets tall and i love guyz who are willing to show me care and love.hope you are the one im looking for?im kinda shy at first to talk to guyz and i have a set of good eyes a dark hair too.
im not an upgraed member of the yahoo personals ok.cuz ive been kinde busy with some stuffs which i believe are more important .
im a christian and i love kids alot .my parents area aloso christians and thay also love kids ,but it took them over 10 yrsbefore they had me as their only child .when i was about 5 years old ,my father died cuz he had asthma and i could remember i wept in that day .it was a tragic day i guess .
actually, my father is an american and mty mom is an african ,precisely a nigerian .after my fathers death, my mom took up the responsibility and she fedme ,cloth me and also paid my school fees .as time went on ,my mom had some problems with the US government and this made my mom leave the US for her country ,which made my mom laeve me with my paps sister in illinois.she caredabout me and really loved me soo much which was about 10 years ago .theni moved to texas about 5 months ago and i tried to get a home of my own which i got the money from my aunty and ive not finishedpaying the bills .
Some weeks later ,i got a message that my aunt was dead .then i felt it was over.
Recently i got a call from nigeria that my mom fell from the staircase and also broke her spinal cord.i had to rush down to nigeria with the little money i had left to get a ticket and flew down to africa.ok
when i got to nigeria .i gotto know that my mom had already been rushedto the hospitasl ok.i got to the doctor he explained everything to me and told me that my mom needed the attention of an orthopedist.which will cost about $500 and right now ive spent the only $200 i had to get some medication for her an dthe doctor says if shes not operated she will soon have to be on a wheelchair .and i felt it was over and not until i met you ,youve given my world a turnaround ,youve given me hope .thanks for this ok.]
i really would appreciate it if you could get me out of this mess so that we could start a new life together and live as man and wifeok cuz shes the only one i have left .im leaning on you for refuge ok. please dont let me dowm.
I wish to know more about you and would have preffered it if we could chat together but im kinda trying to treat my mom with the little i have left.
i really hope to hear from you soon and hope you are for real.
Must confess you are cool and i think we could work things out .bye love.
carol cares and will always love you

—————

Gotta love it. I’ve never chatted with you, and I don’t think I’m ready to “live as man and wifeok” right now, but thanks for the offer.

What’s up with the GOP? The formerly solid wall of “Bush can do no wrong” is crumbling lately. Not only has Bill Frist gone against the White House by following his medical experience instead of faith-based science and supporting stem cell research, now he’s calling for hearings on the federal reaction to Hurricane Katrina. Damn. They haven’t even counted the dead yet, there are hundreds still to rescue from rooftops around New Orleans, and Frist is hacking at the Prez? Where was your spine when you could have prevented something, Mr. Majority Leader? Did you have to wait for Maxine Waters to pull her Jesse Jackson-assisted publicity stunt at England AFB before you could start questioning some of the bizarre decisions the administration has made?

I watched the Video Music Awards (OK, they were on while I was blasting aliens nearby) the other day. Several times during the broadcast, MTV played commercials which claimed that the recurring meme that “MTV Doesn’t Play Music” is actually a falsehood, an urban legend. Glancing at their schedule on Zap2It this morning, I find that MTV does play music videos. At 5 am. Twice per week. For an hour. That can’t be right, I thought. Maybe some of these other shows with hip and happenin’ names are actually music videos.

Turns out, MTV After Hours plays videos, from 2am to 5am each weekday. And MTV Video Wakeup plays videos from 5am to 8am each weekday. And we can’t forget TRL, which plays about one video per 15 minutes of mindless yammering, and only one hour per day anyway.

So, what do we end up with? On weekdays, there are music videos from 2 to 8 in the morning, which is convenient if you’re a vampire. And then there are videos interspersed with screaming teenaged girls at 4 each afternoon. Being as generous as humanly possible, that gives a grand total of 40 hours of music during a seven-day period that has 168 hours broadcast. Less than 25% music on Music Television.

During those hours when I could watch television, the schedule is filled with endless hours of reality shows and Laguna Beach. Yay.

For those of us who have jobs that require we work and sleep normal hours, this is very entertaining. I guess you could Tivo the videos on some sort of low priority, so if there’s nothing you want to watch on, you could zone out to videos. Otherwise, the “urban legend” is true, at least insofar as it applies to normal people who sleep when it’s dark and work during the week – MTV really doesn’t play music.

Y’all know I don’t often link to anything right-wing except to mock it, but this post is dead-on. The emergency response plan for New Orleans included everyone who had a car driving away. Full stop.

Meanwhile, the 100,000 residents (20% of the population) who did not actually possess cars were unadressed by the plan. And the school buses which were owned and operated by the city were left in their lot, now filled with water and unusable. How many buses? Enough to evacuate all 100,000 carless citizens in something under 3 days, if they went all the way to Houston.

As Michael says, this isn’t a political issue. Democrat, Republican, Libertarian – doesn’t matter. If you have hundreds of buses and you don’t plan to use them to evacuate the city, you’re just a dumb ass.

Just to add a trifle more surrealism to your websurfing experience, I’ve added a little code to my site that displays the lyrics to the most recently played song from Winamp on the sidebar (bottom of the right side). Yes, I am a geek, thanks for asking.

In case there’s anyone who isn’t watching The Interdictor journal – you should. I’ve known this guy for a few years now, and his no-nonsense views from the heart of the New Orleans business district are enlightening.

Take care, Michael.

Live television has a way of producing unexpected comments.

I’m amazed that Mike Myers attempted to stick with the script while Kanye West is ranting about the Administration ignoring the refugees in New Orleans because they’re black. Amazing.

There are some truly messed up people in the world. This guy, supposedly a man of God, preacher of the Gospels of forgiveness and love, has this to say about why Katrina was a blessing to New Orleans:

“New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion — it’s free of all of those things now,” Shanks says. “God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there — and now we’re going to start over again.”

I have no words.
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Saw a fellow this afternoon, filling up his RV at the local gas station, with a boat on a trailer following. I can just imagine the dedication to his vacation he must have, to be paying (at that station) $3.01 per gallon for regular.

One of my cow-orkers today referred to the 89-octane fuel as “high test” gas. I offered to help him knead the yellow coloring into his oleo if his arthritic senior citizen hands could use the break. So he said he wasn’t being anachronistic – it’s a Californian thing. “Hey, I am from California, I think I’d know, buddy.”