suicide net

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24482080-401,00.html

"A giant suicide net will be hung beneath San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge in a $75 million bid to catch people trying to jump to their deaths."

Not only can't we get physician assisted suicide legalized – http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=691855
– but now we're going to actively work to stop people from making an honest leap to their deaths?

If you're not suicidal, then doesn't this actually make you want to jump off Golden Gate and into a big safety net? Couldn't $75 million be better spent on the arts or schools or hand crafted back scratchers?



http://www.compassionandchoices.org/hemlock/

Currently listening : Streetcleaner By Godflesh Release date: 1994-06-21

5:42 PM - 3 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

feel that big tent love

The crowds are getting restless. When Palin or McCain speak before their red-faced mobs, screams and taunts of "terrorist," and "Kill him!" erupt whenever Obama is alluded to.
For many years Republicans have spoken in hostile terms about the left. You can see it in the title of their most popular books: Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism by Sean Hannity, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism by Ann Coulter and The Enemy Within: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Churches, Schools, and Military by Michael Savage. In these titles liberals are defined as the enemy, as treasonous, as treacherous, as traitors and as plain evil.
It's hardly a surprise the right wingers in attendance at Palin and McCain speeches hurl such slurs when you get the politicians and major media mouth pieces of the party saying things like...

I tell people don't kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus - living fossils - so we will never forget what these people stood for.
– Rush Limbaugh

We're going to keep building the party until we're hunting Democrats with dogs.
– Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) – an architect of our current financial crisis and co-sponsor of the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act that paved the way to the $700 billion bailout. He is also John McCain's economic advisor, the one who said America was a nation of whiners and that the recession was psychological.

Get rid of the guy. Impeach him, censure him, assassinate him. – Rep. James Hansen (R-UT) 11/1/1998 talking about President William Jefferson Clinton.

We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors. – Ann Coulter

I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. – Glenn Beck

A submarine could take this place out. – George W. Bush speaking about the Clinton Library.

Intimidating liberals through violence, killing, hunting them down with dogs, proposing assassination for liberal politicians and pondering outright military strikes against physical "liberal" sites are all par for the course within the hateful rhetoric of a frighteningly angry political party.
War is all they know. Their followers will be committing violent acts, up to and including murder, before this election is through. Their rage will turn outwards, and it will fan outwards and it will be bloody and it will be their legacy.

2:08 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

HFCS - America’s healthy choice!

ADM and Cargill are fighting back against those high fructose corn syrup deriders by producing a series of commercials that dare to say, "Eat it bitch!"
The advertisements feature someone who doesn't want to ingest HFCS. He or she says, "You know what they say about that stuff?" Then their smug pro-HFCS friend replies, "Yeah, like what? What do they say? Huh? Answer me! Do they say it's made from corn? Delicious golden 100% natural corn! America was built on corn, you sugar-tit sucking commie! Eat it! Eat it!"

The videos and some commentary can be found here.

7:53 AM - 6 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Alaska is right next-door to Russia

ABC's Charles Gibson asked McCain, "Can you honestly say you feel confident having someone [Palin] who hasn't traveled outside the United States until last year, dealing with an insurgent Russia?"

McCain answered, "Sure, Alaska is right next to Russia. She understands that."

Sarah Palin, asked by Gibson for insights about recent Russian actions said, "They're our next-door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska."

Let's make one thing abundantly clear...



Is it clear now? Is it clear that McCain and Palin have no clue what they're talking about. Why do they insist on giving the press these basic geography lessons? Yes, Alaska is close to Russia, but this isn't Risk™. Holding Kamchatka will not prove a wise strategy.

9:26 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Happy Patriot Day

I'd talk about what day it is today, seven years later and all, but I feel I can't.
9-11™ is the proprietary trademark of the U.S. Republican party, and they reserve all rights to its political use. The memories of the dead, the national grief and trauma are all the G.O.P.'s. They own it. To discuss that day within a non-Republican approved framework opens me up to copyright infringement lawsuits. It's Patriot Day, and we all know who the true patriots are... Republicans! They are America's patriots. They're the ones who did nothing when handed a document titled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike In US." They're the ones who put the anti-terrorism command center in the World Trade Center even when experts advised strongly against doing so.
They're the ones who told us to buck up and go shopping after the attacks. They're the ones who were too obsessed with elephant shit on the virgin Mary's tits to look into NY City's firefighter's faulty radios.
They were the ones who told volunteer rescue workers at ground zero that the air was safe to breathe.
They're the ones who blamed the constitutional separation of church and state for the attack ("the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians ..., the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America...helped this happen...")
They're the ones who retaliated against a country that had nothing to do with the attacks on that day seven years ago and continue to spend $12 billion a month occupying that same country.
The Republicans own the memory of 9-11™ because they are the reason 9-11™ was what it was. It could have been just another day. If not for the interference of the Republican controlled supreme court ousting Gore and appointing Bush it could have been our very own Guy Fawkes Night.
With a little minor editing of the Guy Fawkes Night page on Wikipedia...

Osama Bin Laden Day (also known as Airline Day, Terror Day and sometimes Middle East Day) is an annual celebration on the evening of the 11th of September. It celebrates the foiling of the WTC Plot of the 11 September 2001 in which a number of Muslim conspirators, including Osama Bin Laden, attempted to blow up the World Trade Center Towers in New York, New York, USA and the Pentagon in Washington D.C., USA.

Because of Republicans that's a fantasy.

5:55 PM - 2 Comments - 1 Kudos - Add Comment

Track, Trig, Bristol, Willow, and Piper

Any thoughts on the names Track, Trig, Bristol, Willow, and Piper? Does it seem exceptionally cruel to name a down syndrome baby after a branch of higher mathematics the child is likely to never understand? Is Willow doomed to become a Golden Gate Park acid eater who puts on sock puppet shows for terrified children? I can't help but feel these sound more like the names of pets than children. Of course, judging by what Sarah Palin feels about the validity of a science curriculum that includes creationism, her kids probably had an education comparable to that of caged rabbits.

5:21 PM - 4 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Did I hear right?

4:03 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

domestic foxes

8:36 PM - 5 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

Police! Open up!

Teega, teega, teega! –– I know the door bell rang at least thrice. It might have gone off more than that, but it was the last three that woke me. It sounds like war outside. There is pounding on the window. I hear a masculine voice yell, "Hello! Open your door! Hello!" I drift bleary eyed out of the bedroom and into the living room. The air battering blades of a chopper beat close overhead. A flashlight beam shines through the sheer leopard print drapes. It darts franticly this way and that – crazy waterbug style.
"Police department," the voice yells. I get to the front door. I open it.
"Yes?" I ask. There's a cop in the yard with his flashlight, and two others standing over in the driveway holding a leashed dog. The cop by the front windows comes up to the front steps.
"Can you put your dog inside?" he asks. I look at what I thought was their police dog.
"I don't have a dog, " I say and make a feeble hand gesture towards their dog.
"The dog in back," he clarifies.
I understand a little better. "That's the people's in the back house," I tell him.
"We tried to get their attention from next door, but couldn't reach them," he says.
"She'll bark," I say, "but won't bite."
"Could get them to take her in?"
"I can just go back there with you," I say.
"It'd be better if she went inside. She won't like us very much."
"I can't blame her," I said. "I'll go have them take her in."
"Thank you," says the cop.
I put on a pair of shorts and slip on my shoes. I walk into the backyard. It's like a discotheque. Light and shadows are jumping in and out from all directions. The ground appears to swell and bust apart under my feet. I feel like I'm off center, staggering and weaving and tilting far to the right like I should have had a V-8. The neighbor's open the door before I get there.
"What's going on?" Antonio asks me.
"Cops. They want Nala inside. They have a police dog," I say.
"Do you know what they want?" Antonio asks.
"Just Nala inside. Nothing to do with any of us," I yell over the sound of the whapping blades and helicopter engine. I thought that "nothing to do with us" line would help him stay calm. Nala trots indoors, and I walk back to my back door. The cops are at the gate with their K9 unit. "She's in," I tell them.
"Good," the cop I had spoken to before says, and adds, "Please go inside; we're coming back."

He didn't need to say it. I was going in. I guess he needed to get in one order. All his other interactions with me had been requests, but that pig in him had to slip out for one fascist second. I went in, as I was doing before the blasted pig ordered it. They came back, shone their torches into the dark corners of the backyard, and left the way they had come.
What was the point? Ringing my doorbell, pounding on the windows, probing with their flashlights, waking me up, waking the neighbors up and making them take in the dog. What if a knife wielding madman was snarling in one of the dark areas of the backyard, unseen? Is that what they were looking for? Was I being used as bait? I was sent into no man's land in a white t-shirt and shorts, a helicopter spotlight making a well lit target of me. I didn't think about it then. I was too tired to think about it. The doorbell that woke me went off at 1:40 AM, and the whole thing was over in under five minutes. The helicopter and the rest of the pigs had split. It was 1:45 in the morning, and after all that I finally felt slightly awake, and had plenty to think about to keep me from sleep for another hour. Pricks.

11:17 PM - 4 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

High Fructose Corn Syrup

I've been on this war path for awhile. Hell, my band has a damn song about it.

Cornsploitation
Maize man war
corn is the master that enslaves mankind
golden pestilence whose name is profit
the Indians great plague upon the pale face
perversion of evolution's food chain
bloating humanity – HFCS
definitive link to diabetes
now set to usurp our fuel supply
destruction in the form of ethanol
subsidy corruption
commodity dysfunction
raze the fields of zea maize
crush its corporate colonels
archer daniels midland burn
grind Cargill into corn dust
undo this yellow disease
unmake all its misery
murderers all in a row
fattened cows humanity
defiled by kernels grotesque
devastation simple born
cheap vulgar maize
death by the ear
husks line our grave
corn syrup tears
maize man war


And now more damning studies are out. Piss on all these trans fat bans. HFCS is the real reason the United States is a nation of the fatties. Get it out of your diet. Just fucking try. The shit's in everything.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/does-fructose-make-you-fatter/

"The researchers found that lipogenesis, the process by which sugars are turned into body fat, increased significantly when the study subjects drank the drinks with fructose."

11:20 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

media bias, succinctly put...

...but not by me.

Presenting, McCain's $520 loafers...

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/07/31/400-haircuts-vs-520-italian-leather-loafers/

3:27 PM - 6 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

30 years ago today

the world's first test tube baby was born.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/25/newsid_2499000/2499411.stm

10:25 AM - 3 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Taco Truck

First taco truck cited under new SoCal food vendor law

By RAQUEL MARIA DILLON, Associated Press Writer


(05-23) 19:33 PDT Los Angeles, CA (AP) --

The first taco truck to run afoul of Los Angeles County's new ordinance to regulate mobile food vendors was cited for allegedly staying in the same parking spot longer than permitted, police said Friday.

A truck called La Flor de Sahuayo was cited Wednesday by the parking enforcement detail after neighbors filed 20 complaints about it the past four months, said Sheriff's Lt. Linda Martinez, who declined to detail the complaints.

Alejandro Valdovino, who owns the truck, said he parks it in front of his restaurant in East Los Angeles.

"The policeman arrived with the citation in his hand," Valdovino said in Spanish in a phone interview Friday. "He didn't tell me to move. He just came and handed me the ticket."

"It's not right what they're doing," he said.

Phillip Greenwald, a lawyer who has consulted with taco truck owners, said Valdovino received a misdemeanor citation, and faces up to a $1,000 fine and six months in jail if convicted.

After restaurateurs complained that taco trucks are unfair competition, county supervisors unanimously passed an ordinance last month making it a misdemeanor for the trucks to stay in a spot longer than one hour.

Some taco truck owners have vowed to defy the law, saying their businesses are popular and an essential part of the city's landscape and culinary traditions.

Valdovino, from Mexico, said nearby stores have complained his truck is "invading" the neighborhood, creating trash on the sidewalks and traffic in the streets.

"Whose business am I stealing? My own?" he said.

Valdovino and his two brothers started serving tacos out of a truck in 1983, he said, and moved their business into the restaurant 17 years ago.

"The truck outside is for busy people who only have a few minutes to eat. Customers arrive, order and are served," he said. "In the restaurant you have to wait longer, but inside there's more variety — enchiladas, quesadillas, caldos, birria, menudo."


I was vaguely aware of some new fascist regulations of the 100s (if not 1000s) of Taco Trucks in Los Angeles, and now it's law. What is the drunk taco fiend to do at 2am? If the Taco Truck has to move every hour, then how is the drunk man to find asada-y satisfaction?

The results of this law are already visible. It is essentially, taco truck prohibition, and I have seen the future - taco bootleggers. It's already happening. People are setting up taco stands on the streets, in alleys, private driveways. This has been done for decades, but the numbers have now gone viral. Whereas once the taco trucks paid licenses and taxes to the city, now organized taco crime is taking all that money for themselves. This could get big. This could get out of control gang-taco-warfare big. Drive-by taco stand shootings. Poisoning the competition's frijoles and tainting their queso. There will be retaliation, open murder in the streets. The strong will wrestle control of the taco from the weak. No torta will be safe. 1991s riots will look like an orderly queue in front of a taco truck window compared to what's to come. I fear for our salsa. I quiver for the al pastor future. This is bleak. This is human misery, loss and the destruction of values - taco values. We all march under the sign of the swastako now.

4:04 PM - 9 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

emos attack!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/may/22/dailymail.pressandpublishing?gusrc=rss&feed=media

Hundreds of black-clad fans of "emo" band My Chemical Romance are planning to march on the Daily Mail's headquarters in Kensington, London, to protest at what they see as an unjustified media attack on the group and its fans.

The fans, furious at a string of articles that they claim wrongly portray followers of the emo youth tribe as a "suicide cult", plan to stage a peaceful protest outside Northcliffe House on May 31.

Organisers said yesterday that they had already signed up 300 protesters and hoped to at least double that. They urged protesters to be polite and pick up their litter.


Pick up their litter! How many tears will water the lawn outside Northcliffe House on the 31st?

12:39 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Back from Europe

I was bit by a dog, poisoned by pizza, had my ribs badly bruised, fell off a riser after too much Jager, turned into Jesus, got kicked out of an all you can drink buffet, ran around a ferry boat in my undies, walked on the Gulf of Bothnia, proved that Americans are indeed the loudest of all and met more kind and generous people than I can number .

5:38 PM - 5 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment