Month: June 2006

“I can sum her up in one word: pleather”

  1. xtreme_pr0k, pbd, and other motorcyclists may be interested in Yamaha’s new CROTCH AIR BAG.
  2. Ben Metcalf dares to ask: Am I allowed to write that I would like to hunt down George W. Bush, the president of the United States, and kill him with my bare hands?
  3. I want a WIG plane!

    wig

    I’d heard of the Soviet one, and I think I posted about it before, but this shit is amazing, especially the newer Soviet one and the Boeing Pelican.

  4. Watch your rear view mirrors, NASCAR drivers: The ENTURBULATOR‘s gonna bump ya into the wall!
  5. Today’s APOD is the best picture of a volcano I’ve ever seen, I think.
  6. Hey all you ex-girlfriends in black Jettas (and other jettazens), take the Jetta Report survey! Or something.
  7. In other auto news: 0-100 mph is a good measure of your acceleration. But if you want to know how good your car really is, how’s your 0-100 and back to 0 again? Once again Ultima wins this one. Power is good; power to weight plus braking is better.

Don’t blame me, I voted for Zombie Joseph Beuys

And I did! Our comically corrupt and incompetent district attorney, Tony Rackauckas, was running unopposed so I wrote in ol’ Zombie Joe.

There was also a candidate named Martin Luther Church but I did not vote for him.

I ran into AJ Reznor tonight and we talked about books, which was nice. I think he’d like Lem so I was trying to get him to read some.

In ten minutes just now I found three four Christian Myspace clones: http://xianz.com/ http://www.holypal.com http://www.5loaves.net http://www.jcfaith.com/

Please panic now about everything and do as we say

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/06/05/terror/main1683852.shtml

It starts:

U.S. officials believe Canadian arrests over the weekend and three recent domestic incidents in the United States are evidence the U.S. will soon be hit again by a terrorist attack. Privately, they say, they’d be surprised if it didn’t come by the end of the year, reports CBS News correspondent Jim Stewart in a CBS News exclusive.

Then they go on to say that terrorists are committing robberies in order to finance terror attacks, and list a couple of incidents in which various bad guys had what seemed to be political terrorism objectives.

The fun is all in the last sentence, though:

The next attack here, officials predict, will bear no resemblance to Sept. 11. The casualty toll will not be that high, the target probably not that big. We may not even recognize it for what it is at first, they say. But it’s coming — of that they seem certain.

Okay. So, they’re now reserving the option of pulling out any Very Bad Day that might have some tenuous connection to Islamic extremists and calling it a terrorist incident. If some career criminals who got Muslim names in prison rob a store in a mall and there’s a big ugly shootout, or if some mentally unstable loser with a connection to Islam runs over a lot of people on a sidewalk, or if any number of medium-spectacular crimes occur that they can tie to “terror” in any way, it will be more evidence that we should be afraid and that we should give up yet more liberty.

And the news calls this an “exclusive” and runs it unchallenged. Bleah!

Obscurantisme Terroriste

With Derrida, you can hardly misread him, because he’s so obscure.
Every time you say, “He says so and so,” he always says, “You misunderstood
me.” But if you try to figure out the correct interpretation, then that’s not
so easy. I once said this to Michel Foucault, who was more hostile to Derrida
even than I am, and Foucault said that Derrida practiced the method of
obscurantisme terroriste (terrorism of obscurantism). We were speaking
French. And I said, “What the hell do you mean by that?” And he said, “He
writes so obscurely you can’t tell what he’s saying, that’s the obscurantism
part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, ‘You didn’t
understand me; you’re an idiot.’ That’s the terrorism part.” And I like that.
So I wrote an article about Derrida. I asked Michel if it was OK if I quoted
that passage, and he said yes.

From an interview with John Searle

We’re still fighting bravely for our vague goal!

  1. Only the U.S. Government’s GIANT SPACE SLINGSHOT can save us now!
  2. The Pixies as done by Prince, Jimi Hendrix, The Beach Boys, and others.
  3. Simone Weil said that she didn’t want to go to Heaven, because she thought the people in Hell would need more help. Dear Kirk Cameron: You’re no Simone Weil.
  4. In other religious news, the story of Daniel in the lion’s den is meant to prove a point, not to provide an example to emulate literally.
  5. Since I am a terrible physical coward I would probably just slip this card under someone’s wipers rather than present it in person.
  6. The Vespa saved Italy from Communism. Maciej’s piece on the occasion of the Tiananmen anniversary asks: Will Wal-Mart save China from capitalism?
  7. My friend Russell has shot a hilarious promo for a new tv show called It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and it’s here on his page. Warning: earworm. Browsing around his site I found the painfully perfect promos he did for the Sci-Fi channel a few years ago, which haven’t lost their ability to make me chorf.
  8. I have installed a lonesome electric chicken.