The following post is totally racist, so in order to compromise between my desire to share it with you (I wrote it a while ago) and my natural embarrassment, I've decided to post it in the same color as the background so that you have to highlight it to read it and be corrupted by its racism. Of course, now that you know that, how could you resist finding out what it is? I just want to say it's a parable for Man's use of non-human animals and also please don't assassinate me.
Negroes deserve compassion, not rights
-Renewable resource
-Helpless
-It's Natural

I'm going to hell.

Plan To Live In Storage Facility Voiced

LOUISVILLE, KY—Just Sunglasses employee Eric Thorp intrigued coworkers Monday with his ingenious plan to live in a storage-facility unit. "The rent would be, like, 50 bucks a month," Thorp said. "Those things are totally heated in the winter, you know. For another $50, I could join a gym, and shower there." Coworkers could find no significant downside to Thorp's idea, which no one in the world had ever thought of before.

Vote for a Weasel
In the best weasel tradition, this poll is exuberantly, unapologetically unscientific. Last year a conservative group rallied its troops to bias the poll to serve its own agenda. We applaud that behavior and find it to be in the true spirit of weaseldom.

Let the speculation begin!
Using Atrios' list from earlier, let's have fun speculating who the treasonous felons in the White House could be.
1) Karl Rove - Advisor to the President and notorious user of dirty tricks. Since ambassador Wilson fingered him, he has become the leading suspect. But today the White House issued a specific denial that it was not Karl Rove. Would they do this if it really was Rove? The correct answer to "was it Rove?" is "we don't know because we don't even know if this claim is true. We have to let the Justice Department decide if a crime really occurred and who committed it." But instead they said "no."
If the White House knows it was Rove but lies about it, they are guilty of aiding a felony. So it would be a huge criminal mistake for the new press secretary to lie in response to that question. If it was Rove, he can't be protected because at least 6 people in the media already know who made the calls- it's going to be hard to make someone take the fall for this because one of those 6 could just say "he didn't call me, Rove did!"
The fact that they specifically denied it was Rove instead of claiming ignorance leads me to think it might not be Rove after all. But then who could it be?
2) Dick Cheney - Vice President - Cheney was a driving force behind the War and might take public criticism of that war personally. If it isn't Rove, it could be Cheney. Someone in the press should ask "Was it Cheney?" at tomorrow's press conference so that the White House will be on record on the matter. How can Bush "know" it wasn't Rove unless he knows who it really was. Does he also "know" it wasn't Cheney?
3) Ari Fleisher - Press Secretary - Almost certainly the second criminal. Whoever ordered the calls probably used Ari to spread the leak and make the calls. Ari scheduled is resignation on the same day that the article happened to come out. Possibly a coincidence, but still... Best odds right now are on Fleisher.
4) Condi Rice - Assistant to the President for National Security - Could definitely be Condi, but she was the one who was caught hopelessly trying to spin this story away over the weekend. If it was her, the prudent thing to do would be to send someone else on the weekend talks shows to do the spinning. Also if Rove wasn't involved and found out Rice did this, I think he would have made her resign two months ago so as to insulate the President from the potential firestorm.
5) John Gordon - Assistant to the President and Homeland Security Advisor - I don't know anything about this guy, but it would be ironic if the Homeland Security Advisor compromised national security out of petty spite over criticism of the Iraq evidence.
The remaining three don't seem to have motive or ability to do this, so let's cut them from the list:
6) Andy Card - White House Chief of Staff
7) Dan Bartlett - Assistant to the President for Communication (speechwriter)
8) Scooter Libby - Vice President's Chief of Staff (only if he acted under orders from Cheney)

So I put today's money on Cheney and Ari.
If you want to put real money on it, Maxspeak is running a paypal based pool. So place your bets!

Today's Press Conference

McCLELLAN: The President knows (Rove) wasn't involved.

QUESTION: How does he know that?

McCLELLAN: The President knows.

QUESTION: What, is he clairvoyant? How does he know?

Why we really need a "Vegan Police"
And on the non-White-House-filled-with-petty-treasonous-criminals side of the news:

"Every night I went to bed asking the Lord for guidance," recalled Balfour, a devout Mormon. "Then one morning, I woke Judy and told her I had the craziest dream - I just had a dream of how to catch prairie dogs with a giant vacuum cleaner."

When you have "the craziest dream," the sane thing to do is to not make it a crazy reality.

If it is wrong to do it to a dog, it is wrong to do it to a praire dog.
story via Vegan Porn

This is the genius in charge of our national security:

MR. RUSSERT: How'd (the discredited intelligencee about Iraq looking for uranium in Africa) get back in?

DR. RICE: It's not a matter of getting back in. It's a matter, Tim, that three-plus months later, people didn't remember that George Tenet had asked that it be taken out of the Cincinnati speech and then it was cleared by the agency. I didn't remember. Steve Hadley didn't remember. We are trying to put now in place methods so you don't have to be dependent on people's memories for something like that.

Okay, deep breaths. Slowly Count to 10. Try not to type in all caps...
Don't worry about National Security because "We are trying to put now in place methods so you don't have to be dependent on people's memories" about if a hostile country is or isn't making nuclear bombs.
Feel safer yet?
Update: I originally posted a helpful suggestion to Dr. Rice about Post It Notes, but apparently that idea was pretty obvious, because Tom Tomorrow suggested it too, and he is a professional so I will just quote him:
Gosh, I guess we all forget things from time to time. What we had for dinner last night, or whether a key piece of evidence supporting a planned unilateral invasion is credible or not. Things like that. At least they're working on methods to supplement fallible human memory. And Condi, if you're reading this, might I suggest Post-It notes? You can just scribble a quick note to yourself -- yellowcake uranium story utterly fictional, say -- and stick it on your computer monitor, so that when you get to work on that State of the Union address, you and everyone else who vets the SOTU speech in the entire goddamned White House don't "forget" anything.

Let the Frog Marching Begin!
Atrios notes that the two senior White House administration officials who are treasonous felons are drawn from a short list. Assuming it wasn't Bush himself, Atrios narrows it down to:
1) Dick Cheney - Vice President
2) Karl Rove Senior - Advisor to the President
3) Condi Rice - Assistant to the President for National Security
4) Andy Card - White House Chief of Staff
5) Ari Fleisher - Press Secretary
6) Dan Bartlett - Assistant to the President for Communication
7) John Gordon - Assistant to the President and Homeland Security Advisor
8) Scooter Libby - Vice President's Chief of Staff

So it looks like frog-marching money is on Karl Rove using Ari Fleisher to call the reporters. But it could also be Rice or Cheney. And how did these two white house officials find out that Wilson's wife was an agent?

And anyone who knew that this felony had been committed but did not alert the Justice Department or the FBI is guilty of aiding a felony. That could incriminate all the players in the administration, even Bush.

Note to self (and nathan (and anyone else who wants to come)):
Let's see these old people in concert before they die:
Herbie Hancock
Jimmy Smith
Jimmy Cliff
Airto

probably some others too. I'll update this when I think of them so as not to forget.

Also, we missed a George Clinton concert in Oakland this Thursday. Not that we would have spent $50. But I would have stood in the street and listened for free. Oh well.

I have added comments. See? Comments.
So to all 4 of my readers, feel free to comment. Yes.

In the spirit of What The Hell Does a Vegan Eat Anyway? a nice blog that posts what the author ate for dinner, I present

What the Hell Am I Eating Anyway?

Not all vegans are as sensible as the "wthdavea?" blogger. I eat crazy things. Things I find growing on trees around town. Whatever fruit I can buy cheap. Things inspired by articles I've read or dreams I've had. Once I ate a bunch of pollen from my front yard.
It is past noon and so far today I've eaten a banana and 4 cups of stevia sweetened cheap-ass Yerba Mate tea. But I got the sorbet maker running right now...
Here is recipe #4: After reading an article about raw-foodist Woody Harrelson where he said he loved Hemp Ice Cream, a cartoon light bulb lit up over my head and I decided to make some. Luckily I have hemp seeds on hand for just such an impulse.
Blend 1/4C hemp seeds
1C water
1 banana
a piece of frozen peach
1T maple syrup
freeze in sorbet maker or freeze and then champion juicer it.

Update: The Hemp Ice Cream is ready and the verdict is... pretty good! I could eat this all the time. Next time I think I'll leave out the banana as the hemp flavor is subtle, and so the single banana shines through. Maybe add strawberries or more peach. The tecture is quite creamy for a raw sorbet. But Woody isn't crazy- this is pretty damn good!

Watergate Redux
The CIA has asked the Justice Department to investigate allegations that the White House broke federal laws by revealing the identity of one of its undercover employees in retaliation against the woman's husband, a former ambassador who publicly criticized President Bush's since-discredited claim that Iraq had sought weapons-grade uranium from Africa.

This is important, so bear with me.

After former ambassador Joseph Wilson wrote an editorial debunking the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa, the White House retaliated by leaking to reporter Robert Novak that Wilson's wife was a covert CIA operative. Revealing this information is not only a felony, but easily could have placed the agent in mortal danger. Wilson has suggested that Karl Rove is the source of the leak. Now the CIA wants Ashcroft to investigate and press charges. Will Ashcroft drop the case and protect his friends in the administration?

Let's hope this story doesn't get swept under the rug.

It's Talk like Bill O'Reilly Day!

Shut Up, just Shut Up!

In respect for your father... Shut up. Shut up.

I don't want to debate this! Just shut up!

Then he slipped her panties down her legs and, within seconds, his tongue was inside her, moving rapidly.

Who's on First?
In Japanese, "nan" means "what" and food is very flavor neutral.
Living there for an extended period of time, and being a spicy-liking vegetarian, I actively sought out Indian restaurants.
Of course, asking for more bread (a.k.a. Naan), could be confusing...
But, unfortunately it never was. Indian chefs speak English after all, thank you colonialism. Still, there was always that potential for wacky misunderstanding.
Naan. Nani? Hai, Naan. Nan desu ka, wakarimasen. Naan, onegaishimasu. Nani? Naan da. Nani? Etc etc etc.

And while we are on the subject of CIA shenanigans, don't go thinking that trying to replace foreign democracies with Military Dictatorships was something they only did in the 50's, 60's, 70's, and 80's.
They were doing it again this year.
See America Behind Failed Military Coup in Venezuela at Project Censored.

I always like seeing what the CIA is up to, so if you missed this on Fark, it was an interesting piece.

And since the photos in the book were all supplied by the agency, we have to consider that this is the stuff they are willing to tell us about.

It is kind of impressive that after all they did, Iraq still turned into a quagmire.
During the build up to war I thought it was strange that the CIA seemed against the proposed war. Not because it wasn't rational, but because they are supposed to be on the same page as this president, who had a summer job in college with the CIA and who's father was CIA Director. Once you are in the CIA, you are never out. If you think that this administration isn't a CIA administration, you are wrong. We've had a lot of them in the last 50 years.
But I think the cabinet took over the foreign policy, and soured the ties with the Agency.
If the CIA is against him, Bush will not be reelected.

God damn I want a mangosteen! (frryyy)

The first time she cut open a mangosteen and tasted a segment, she "burst into tears at the sheer perfection of it, almost pushed to mawkish poetry."

The problem is that they can't be imported because of fruit flies. But that may soon change:

the government issued a ruling that all fruits and vegetables that might carry fruit flies could now be irradiated for sale in the United States.

The real solution is to go to Vancouver, where they are able to be imported without being bombarded by electrons.

Anybody want to go to Vancouver?

recepie #3
Actually, this is really just the same as my first recipe, but with watermelon.
Blend the watermelon and drain the pulp through a cheese cloth and the result is a very drinkable, hawaiian punch colored, watermelon juice.
Living up to its name, the juice yield is fantastic, with hardly any mush to discard.

An open letter to Ann Coulter

Sometimes writing is so clever, you kind of regret it, because it means you really must read it all.
Whereas, if it were funny, but not brilliant, you could just dip in and then get on with your life.

Unfortunately, Mcsweeney's, the publisher of an extremely clever and always quite nice looking quarterly journal, also has a website filled with this type of brilliant, clever, must-read humor writing. Pages and pages of it. And it is so funny that you really should read it all, but come on, don't they know that we have other things to do, like eat and sleep?

This week's Brain Exploder, which is kinda like the games on the comic page of a newspaper, except more awesome, is GubernatoriAlyssa Milano where you must combine the names of actual canidate with the name of a potential hollywood running mate.
I also recommend the Lists page and the New Food Reviews page.
That should be enough to give you hours and hours of things to read when you should be working. But since it is so, what's the word... Clever, really those hours should be spread over several weeks in order to give your system time to rest.
And when you finish those, check out Open Letters To People Or Entities Who Are Unlikely To Respond

I wish my job title was "Supreme Commander"

I think instead of tagging Wes Clark as "General (Ret.)" when he appears on tv, he should be tagged as "Supreme Commander (Ret.)"

In the mean time, Wes Clark is not a liar.
And also, Wes Clark would make a great President.

Update: Josh suggests that Wes Clark isn't very liberal, kinda like how Howard Dean isn't actually liberal. While I agree that Dean isn't liberal, I think it is probably too soon to weigh in on Clark's place on the spectrum, since he has no voting record to look up. We'll see in two weeks. But I stand by my statement that he would be a great President. The fact that the right wing media is making up crap to try to discredit him (see above) is evidence that Rove is scared of him. He is preeminently qualified by both his personal experience and intelligence, making him the antithesis of our current president. And the antithesis of our current situation is peace and prosperity.

In honor of the upcoming October 7th un-MST3Ked Manos The Hands of Fate DVD release, ($6.98 new on Amazon!), its...
All About Manos Day!
Widely considered the worst movie ever made, Manos delivers the kind of unique eyeball melting experience that you should really pay $7 for.

Halloween 2000 I dressed up as Torgo! ...

Also for the costume I encoded an MP3 with the Torgo theme and put it on my Rio MP3 player. Needing a place to stash the speakers, I placed them in the knees!

Writes the operator of Torgo.org which also offers Torgo midi files, MST3K clips, Torgo screensavers, and more Manos oddities than you would think existed.
And if you are feeling lonely in your morbid interest with Manos, drop by the Manos the Hands of Fate Livejournal community to meet others who share your affliction.

Dr. Phil needs to lose weight

Dr. Phil, who suffers from a fat head, should really lose some weight if he wants to write a bestselling book about weight loss.

You'd think that overweight people would make bad diet gurus, but you'd be wrong. Atkins was overweight and had a heart attack and then later, "slipped on some ice" when he suffered a massive brain hemorrhage. But millions and millions of sacagawea are at stake, so if anybody asks, please pretend that Atkins' heart disease had nothing to do with him eating steak, lard, and fried eggs for breakfast.

Now Dr. Phil, wants in on the dolla dolla bills y'all, and has entered the lucrative market for dumbass books about weightloss.
Phil, who has a doctorate of psychology and no medical or nutritional training whatsoever, is apparently going the long discredited route of blaming obesity on a lack of willpower.

And this entry isn't to stigmatize overweight people. Only to stigmatize overweight people who try to make money telling other people how to lose weight.

So if you see a fat person, don't tell them that Dr. Phil says they just don't want to be thin bad enough. Because fat people get enough unsolicited weight loss advice from strangers as it is. Your helpful suggestions won't be the straw that leads to them becoming Laura Flynn Boyle.

But if you see Dr. Phil, tell him he really needs to lose weight.

I like the classics, like this story from earlier this year that you might have missed.
Canidates in the February election in the Indian state Meghalya included

Hilarious Dhkar
Adolf Lu Hitler R Marak (incumbent)
Tony Curtis
Frankenstein
Britain War

And others! Recall Schmecall: Now this is an election!
These unlikely names have their roots in Meghalaya's tribal groups who like to sound knowledgeable by naming their children after great leaders... The names are also part of a culture where laughter is considered important.

Here is the complete list of canidates (a google cache of a pdf) suitable for browsing if you are bored.

In other news, after losing to Zenith M Sangma, it looks like Adolf Lu Hitler R Marak is in some trouble as he was arrested for his alleged connections with insurgent militants.

Fun Fact(s):

The Offspring’s “Why Don’t You Get A Job” sounds a lot like Simon and Garfunkel’s “Cecilia”

“Cecilia” sounds a lot like the Beatles “Ob La Di Ob La Da”

“Ob La Di Ob La Da” sounds a lot like crap.
...
You should download the Offspring and Simon MP3s and play them at the same time. Then you should destroy them, but not before first noting that they match each other exactly.

Recipe # 2

It turns out that Avocado and Jellys sandwiches are really good. Seriously. Mash up some avocado and a little lime, or use guacamole, and put it together with some jam between your best sandwich bread.

I'm going to start posting recipes.

In no paticular order, here is the first:
Today I took a big bag of red seedless grapes (that I bought on discount) and blended them to pulp in my blender. Then I poured the mush through a cheese-cloth and pressed the juice out.
I put the filtered juice into the fridge and went to work. When I got home, the remaining sediment had settled to the bottom leaving a wonderful clear pink juice.
The taste is super sweet, but also complex, and much much better than store bought grape juice.
It took about half an hour of work, so I'm not sure I would do this all the time, but If you have 30 minutes and a lot of grapes, I highly reccommend it!
Also, this would make a wicked base for 100% juice pink lemonade (or Pink Limon-Lime-onade).

fruit flies when you're having fun

Looks like it's time to start fasting.

I feel older already.

Note to self: Tomatillos rule.

Affirmative Action For Super Villains!

- Lex Luthor in Superman The Animated Series
- Mettalo in STAS
- Kingpin in Daredevil (the movie)

What's a Nubian?

Affirmative Action may be on the rocks for college students, but it is flourishing for comic book super villains. In an attempt to blackwash their media into the appearance of diversity, a number of comic book adaptations have turned traditionally white villains into new, cooler, hip hoping, (black) villains.
Of course they can’t be expected to turn Superman into a dark skinned hero. But why not Lois Lane, or Jimmy Olsen, or newspaper chief Perry? Surely they all could have been recreated as positive supporting black characters, figures of authority, romantic interests, and just average people. Or even Ma and Pa Kent back in Smallsville could have been turned into African American sharecroppers, because Supes is, after all, adopted. But instead, when children’s television finally gets a black self made CEO, he is Lex Luther and he uses his accumulated power in futile attempts to destroy the heroic protagonist and his lily-white coworkers.
For the Daredevil movie, it seems like twelve MBAs sat around a table and agreed, “this murderous, overweight, but well dressed drug cartel leader looks just like one of those rappers!”

Maybe less visibility is better than negative fictional visibility.

In his appearance on "Meet the Press" Sunday, Cheney fell woefully short of truth.

Cheney repeated the mantra that the nation ignored the terrorism threat before Sept. 11. In fact, President Bill Clinton and his counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke, took the threat very seriously, especially after the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000. By December, Clarke had prepared plans for a military operation to attack Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, go after terrorist financing and work with police officials around the world to take down the terrorist network.

Because Clinton was to leave office in a few weeks, he decided against handing Bush a war in progress as he worked to put a new administration together.

Instead, Clarke briefed national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Cheney and others. He emphasized that time was short and action was urgent. The Bush administration sat on the report for months and months. The first high-level discussion took place on Sept. 4, 2001, just a week before the attacks. The actions taken by the Bush administration following Sept. 11 closely parallel actions recommended in Clarke's nine-month-old plan.

Country singer Sheb Wooley, who charted with Purple People Eater and penned the theme to Hee Haw has died. He was a friend of Johnny Cash AND John Ritter (whose father was country singer Tex Ritter), so now I'm worried that these deaths are some sort of chain letter curse, and that, per six degrees of seperation, Kevin Bacon and eventually everyone last one of us is doomed.

I'd make a terrible Buddhist

If you are in New York, why not call 1-800-644-3545 on your cell phone and get a toll-free walking tour narrated by Jerry Stiller?

Bible gets a makeover as teen-girl magazine

Among the sidebars:
Questions and answers about topics of interest to adolescents. Was Jesus a vegetarian?
No: Plenty of fish, some lamb.
...
Does "honor my parents" mean I have to smoke pot with them if they ask?
"No, you actually don't honor your parents by breaking God's law."

And there's more!

"Top Ten random ways to have fun on a date," including "a double date with your parents"

About 6 months ago at Veg Fair, I saw John McDougall speak, and I've also read a couple of his books even though I don't need Maximum Weight Loss. So as far as diet gurus go, I'd trust him above most others, since first of all, he is not fat. Not that there is anything wrong with being fat, I just think that if you are going to make money telling people how to lose weight, then it would be best if you yourself were not fat. As opposed to Barry Sears. Who is a little fat. And also kind of goofy looking.
But I digress.
What's important is that McDougall has written an interesting article about vitamin supplements. I once subscribed to the insurance theory, where you take a daily multi-vitamin to make sure you get it all every day. But McDougall has me questioning that, and even made me paranoid about those Clif bars and fortified breakfast cereals I eat.
Also, Josh and Nate might be interested in his article on trans-fats, which includes scientific looking diagrams of fat molecules but still doesn't do a perfect job of explaining the specifics of why trans fats will kill you.

"If a giant meteor was headed towards Earth, and I quickly constructed a rocket ship and flew out there and deflected the meteor, saving the Earth from certain destruction, the headline would be: 'O'Brien Saves Earth, After Rocky Start.'"

4000 is the new 2000.

Time Started Flowing Reversely is a brilliant website by an unknown 21st century artist.

Worst... Band... Ever...

Dashboard Confessional is the worst band ever. I intuitively know this, but I've also devised a formula to prove my initial conclusion.
To calculate the goodness or badness of a band, it is important not to consider just their actual quality, but also their non-sarcastic fame or success.

Actual Quality / divided by (non-sarcastic) exposure (determined by how many times I have to change the station)

Q/f = how good a band is.

For example, dashboard confessional, which had it's own Unplugged special among other crimes against humanity, has a Q = "Shitty" like maybe a 1 out of 10 with 10 being Archie Bell and the Drells "Tighten Up" or The Magistrates. But many high school bands also are very shitty, perhaps in a few cases, even worse than Dashboard Confessional, although it is hard to imagine such a band. What distinguishes DC as the current worst band of all time it that their mind-numbing horribleness has done very little to stop them from selling a million records.
Their fame, in the grand range of all bands ever, from the middle school Blink 182 tribute band to the Beatles, is something like a 5/10.
Therefore their International Jason Band Goodness Ranking is 0.2
Most bands are around a JBGR of 1, with fame almost matching their quality. But I dare you to find a shitty band more successful than Dashboard Confessional.

Update: Nathan has thoughtfully suggested that Creed is a crappier, more famous band. This is a good point, but most of my exposure to Creed has been people making fun of them. So I think their non-sarcastic f might be slightly lower than DC. But it is close. Why can't we just agree that they are both really crappy bands?

Welcome to my autohagiography. I am still trying to get the hang of this. Presumably, this blog will be overflowing with witty insight, until I run out of that, and lose interest in publishing altogether. Just like my shortlived zine "IdylWild" and pretty much everything else I've ever tried.
Enjoy it while it lasts.

Is it possible to sneeze without closing your eyes? Why not?