so i just got back from my local theater to see Dark Knight. I've been a fan of Batman all my life; even the old serial when i was a kid. Needless to say, the later installments of the franchise that Burton started in '89 didnt sit very well with me, but Batman Begins I liked.
this, though. Jesus. Until now there have only been two sequels that were as good or better than the orriginal film, and those are The Godfather II and Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Until tonight, I thought T2 was the only trully good action movie since French Connection, but this shit makes T2 look like a fucking power rangers movie.
its not that its an excellent action film, which it is. Its not that its a good superhero movie, because its not really a superhero movie at all. And its not Ledger's preformance, although that guy is a fucking scary actor. Was. Sorry.
Anyway, i cant put my finger on it, so i'll have to go and see it again when Giles gets home. Maybe if i watch it in IMAX ill figure out what makes it the best goddamned movie since Star Wars.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Saturday, July 12, 2008
OBAMA = McCAIN = BUSH; or: i cant remember why i used to say i would never vote. seems a silly thing to... oh. right.
well folks, i gotta tell you, they nearly got me this time. my guard was down. i actually registered to vote this year. went right to the belly of the beast and gave them all my info, as if they didnt know it. i was gonna vote for Senator Obama, as you may have guessed. Actually, i was going to vote for Ron Paul, but it seems that that ship has sunk.
and thats totaly beside the point.
many of you (both of you) may remember me saying that voting was pointless, waste of time, waste of energy, waste of innocence. I used to say it all the time; that everyone was the same and if they were different, the game was rigged, loaded dice, no point at all. i turned my back on democracy and started wearing an anarcho-syndicalist flag on my chest and writing a blog that two people read and typing out angry, borderline suspicious letters to my congressman (Markey) on a 1956 Hermes Rocket manual typewriter, like some kind of goddamn revolutionary. I even sampled the old school and wrote "THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS" in sharpie on the typewriter case. Jesus.
sometime in the spring, i seem to have had a lapse in judgement. this Obama guy seemed to really have his shit together. not only that; he seemed to know exactly where this country was needing to go, providing we were still playing by the rules. so i was gonna vote for him. i wanst going to encourage anyone to do the same, or get a yard sign or a bumpersticker, because a) those are tacky as fuck, and b) im not a goddamned missionary. But i was intending to cast my vote as a good citizen.
well, the events of this past Wednesday took all that momentary hope and flushed it down the toilet. then, they fished it out of the septic tank, shot it full of holes, raped it in all orifices, soaked it in whiskey and set it to burn on my fucking porch.
On Wednesday, July 9, 2008, Obama turned to the Bush camp. He turned to the Dark Side. and if you think im exaggerating, you'd better check your facts.
OK, lets break this down, in simple terms, and without too much bullshit.
Remember a few years back when the news broke that the department of homeland "security" had been reading our emails, listening to our phone calls, and opening our motherfucking mail?
the bumbling man-child who is our president had to admit that he had authorized this, and that it was illegal, based on a 1978 FISA law and a little thing called the FOURTH GODDAMN AMENDMENT to the COTUS. (from now on, i'll refer to the Constitution of the United Sates as COTUS, cause it's cute.)
now, according to the oaths everyone has to take, at that point king george should have stepped down, and if he didnt his vice president should have forced him to, and if he didnt, then the US Marine Corps should have stepped in and forcibly escorted them out of the capital building and into a prison to await trial on charges of treason and corruption of COTUS.
but we all know that's just make-believe. oaths mean fuck all these days. there is WAY too much money to be had.
instead, several years went by, and the ACLU, among other, decided to sue the telecom corporations for their role in turning over said emails, phone calls, etc. to the government (they've allready got your mail, unless you use UPS or FEDEX exclusively and never go to the post office). Well, bush, or more likely, someone he hired to think for him, realized that if the telecoms went to trial, eventually it was all going to wind up in the laps of the administration, and then they would, if the law was followed, go to fucking federal prison. so, they decided to write up a bill known as HR 6304, the title of which, i shit you not, is
To amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to establish a procedure for authorizing certain acquisitions of foreign intelligence, and for other purposes.
did you catch that last part? yeah. thats the part that says that the law as it stood last Tuesday, including the FOURTH AMENDMENT OF THE COTUS, no longer applies. by the way, if you havent read the fourth amendment (like i told you to, damnit), its the one that promises that the government will never come into your home and take your shit, search your purse, or hold you without probable cause. Yeah, thats all gone now. better find a really good place to hide your weed.
anyway, why did all this change my mind on the whole voting thing? well, i think the voting record speaks for itself. Thats right my friends, Senator Obama voted in favor. He voted "yea". he raised his hand and said that, in essence, the "change" this country needs is the removal of our bill of rights, one step at a time.
So, i knew it, i should have never let them fucking talk me into registering. in fact, i should never listen to these fuckers at all. litteraly everything they say, ever is a fucking lie. i'm never voting for anyone, ever again. I used to tell my self all the time that "anyone who wants to be president is suspect", and i cant believe i forgot that. seriously; why would anyone spend upwards of $50,000,000 to get a four-year job that pays $400,000 a year?
im so angry right now that its retarded, and im angry at myself. for being duped. for forgetting my stance. those fuckers tricked me. i said they allways trick you, and then i let them trick me.
well, thats not going to happen again.
if you are going to vote in November, if you must vote, take a line from one of my favorite movies; Brewster's Millions:
VOTE "NONE OF THE ABOVE".
Thursday, July 10, 2008
evildoers beware! or; how i became a crusader for truth and justice
i've been riding the bike to work for the past few weeks. seemed to make more sense than running a strait-6 that gets 12.5 mpg and getting fatter by the day. Anyway, bicycling is great. one of the things i like about it most is that you get to see things you dont notice driving. and you can stop and interact with situations as they happen.
today in harvard square, a hit-and-run took place right in front of me. In fact, the jerk who caused it nearly hit me and then he sideswiped a red sedan and then just kept on going. Luckily, his license plate was clearly visible since i was like 2 feet away from it. So i followed the sedan into a side street while the driver got out to check the damage, which consinted of pretty much the whole rear bumper being fucked. She was pissed, and when i gave her the dude's plate number, i saw a gleam of anger in her eye so righteous that it would have scared me if it hadnt been fucking awesome.
No need to thank me, ma'am. All in a days work for... THE SHITTY MOUSTACHES BICYCLE CLUB.
today in harvard square, a hit-and-run took place right in front of me. In fact, the jerk who caused it nearly hit me and then he sideswiped a red sedan and then just kept on going. Luckily, his license plate was clearly visible since i was like 2 feet away from it. So i followed the sedan into a side street while the driver got out to check the damage, which consinted of pretty much the whole rear bumper being fucked. She was pissed, and when i gave her the dude's plate number, i saw a gleam of anger in her eye so righteous that it would have scared me if it hadnt been fucking awesome.
No need to thank me, ma'am. All in a days work for... THE SHITTY MOUSTACHES BICYCLE CLUB.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Independence Day
what did you think i would post today?
(Adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776)
The Unanimous Declarationof the Thirteen United States of America
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
Source: The Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776
(Adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776)
The Unanimous Declarationof the Thirteen United States of America
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
Source: The Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
"smell like a sound"; or, how i discovered the fart humor in '80s pop music
it happened this past sunday. Katelyn, my brother Ethan, and I were driving through Hartford on the way to my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary. Katelyn had put in a mix CD with alot of good, old '80s new-wavey stuff on it. One of the tracks was Duran Duran's Hungry Like the Wolf.
As I drove along, listening to the lyrics, i heard it; one verse that stuck as both irritatingly obtuse and yet, at the same time, almost blindingly simple: "smell like a sound".
My mind seized on this image the way it tends to do with most abstract things. Almost instantly, i saw what it meant, what it HAD to mean.
"Smell like a sound" can only mean one thing: a fart.
think about this. a fart is the only thing that is at once a smell and a sound. You can walk into a room and exclaim that it "smells like a fart in here", and yet at the same time you can say that something "sounds like farts". There is nothing else on earth, at least that i can think of, that fitts these criteria.
And i tried to think of other things, believe me. I thought, you can say something smells like fish, like soap, like ass, like dirt; but you cant say that something sounds like any of those things.
Converseley, you can say that something sounds like thunder, like a scream, like a freight train, like a whisper. But if you name one thing that smells like either of those i'll eat my hat.
and yet, the Fart. a smell like a sound. Jesus.
I didn'd get how it fit in with the rest of the lyrics, which seem to be about sexual conquest, until i remembered that the members of Duran Duran were at least probably bisexuals. Im going to leave it at that for the sake of decency, which is something i do very, very rarely.
that is all.
As I drove along, listening to the lyrics, i heard it; one verse that stuck as both irritatingly obtuse and yet, at the same time, almost blindingly simple: "smell like a sound".
My mind seized on this image the way it tends to do with most abstract things. Almost instantly, i saw what it meant, what it HAD to mean.
"Smell like a sound" can only mean one thing: a fart.
think about this. a fart is the only thing that is at once a smell and a sound. You can walk into a room and exclaim that it "smells like a fart in here", and yet at the same time you can say that something "sounds like farts". There is nothing else on earth, at least that i can think of, that fitts these criteria.
And i tried to think of other things, believe me. I thought, you can say something smells like fish, like soap, like ass, like dirt; but you cant say that something sounds like any of those things.
Converseley, you can say that something sounds like thunder, like a scream, like a freight train, like a whisper. But if you name one thing that smells like either of those i'll eat my hat.
and yet, the Fart. a smell like a sound. Jesus.
I didn'd get how it fit in with the rest of the lyrics, which seem to be about sexual conquest, until i remembered that the members of Duran Duran were at least probably bisexuals. Im going to leave it at that for the sake of decency, which is something i do very, very rarely.
that is all.
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