Century Egg; or Why I Washed My Hands Fifty Times Last Night

i am become death, destroyer of worlds

So. Our good friends J&J went to Thailand recently, and while they were there they took a cooking class. Or more likely several cooking classes, judging by the level of proficiency they seem to have attained. Anyway, they invited the Wife and I and several of our friends over last night for a traditional Thai feast. I love Thai food. I love the spices and textures and flavors, the lightness of the rice, the heady peanut aura that infuses the chicken, etc. etc. The thing is, when shopping for ingredients for this amazing feast, J stumbled upon something that should never have been, something that, to my surprise and horror, I could not eat.

Now, this is a strange thing indeed. I have eaten strange things that others find repellent. I ate fried grasshoppers last month. I regularly eat octopus, which I find amazing. But this, this was beyond me.

This thing, this abomination, was the Century Egg.

What the fuck is a century egg, you ask. A century egg the fuck is a duck's egg that has been preserved in a mixture of ash, lime, salt and rice hulls for several months. The shell has become a beautiful, intricately patterned thing not unlike polished stone. The white has turned to a jellied, translucent mass the color of amber resin. And the yolk. OH GOD THE YOKE.



So these things got broken out last night. I watched JW eat one, cautiously. She commented that it was "salty", and not her "favorite food". C. ate one and grimaced painfully, then offered one to her husband J., who placed it in his mouth and immediately vomited into the sink.

Seeing this, I though "well shit I’d better try that right away".

So I cracked one open. The colors are instantly alarming. Food that looks like death, as the century egg does, is generally best left alone, if you value your septic system. But apparently these things were intended for human consumption, so wtf.

I studied my adversary intently. The thing, though vile, was actually quite beautiful in an evil sort of way, like the fang of a cobra. I steeled myself to eat it, brought it to my face, and inhaled.

BIG MISTAKE.

Now, I’m not saying I would have fared any better had I just popped it in instead of smelling first. But when that stench hit me, brothers and sisters, I surrendered immediately. Many people describe the smell of century egg as sulfur mixed with ammonia. Sounds bad enough. But that is not the century egg. The smell of the century egg is the smell of corruption, the smell of creeping decay, of the charnel house, of the conqueror worm. Imagine not showering for a week. Then imagine you have eaten nothing but Indian food and malt liquor for the week. Then imagine that, on Friday night, you somehow fall asleep with your thumb up your own ass. Then on Saturday, as soon as you wake up, you smell your thumb. That, my friends. That is the smell of century egg.

I threw the goddamned, christless thing onto my plate and declared that I would NEVER, under any circumstances, eat such a thing.

So yeah, I failed. But you know what? That fucking thing smelled like ass. So fuck that shit.

Back Down to It; or why i went missing for over a year

So I took a look at this page tonight and saw to my astonishment that I haven't posted anything since December of 2008. Seriously. And it's fucking stupid, because 2009 was easily the most eventful year of my adult life. I changed jobs. I lost my Grandfather. I started writing semi-professionally. I GOT MARRIED, for fuck sakes.

Life, as it turns out, has been good. Also, reading over these old posts, I can see that I'm calming with age. The last four years took it out of me with my obsessive news consumption and hatred of the government. It may simply be because Bush is no longer in office, or I may be getting tired. But I'm going to change the taste of this site a bit. I'm not sure what I'll be writing about; maybe camping, maybe married life, maybe just rambling that no one will read. Who knows. Anyone who has any ideas should let me know about them. I'm also going to try to post at least once a week. If I find out that people are actually reading it and seem interested, I will probably post more than that.

So I close with this promise; by the end of this week I will have something up here that will hopefully make you laugh until you puke.

lots of shit

happy holidays, everyone. i haven't been to la Zona much since the election way back in november, but a few things since then have finaly made me angry enough to lace up my boots and climb back up the tree.

1: California. I always knew those people were full of shit. All holier than thou inclusive and then you pull prop 8 on us. Prop 8, probably the most inhumane doctrine to come out of the United States since the WWII internment camps, and those had at least some pretense of justification. And now, it looks like they want more. Right, they aren't happy with not letting others be happy, they want to make sure that anyone who might have become happy while they werent looking gets a nice solid kick in the cunt. By that, I mean they are looking to nulify some 18,000 same sex marriages that were preformed when the state was still pretending to be reasonable and humane. Keep in mind, that happened under Bush. Its amazing to me that we as a nation can actually seem to move BACKWARDS in our evolution. This isnt fucking Kingston, you guys.

to all my gay brothers and sisters, if you are worried about this, move to the Comonwealth of Massachusetts, or else its retarded little sister, Connecticut. Its cold half the year but at least you wont be prosecuted for the way god made you. See, California? The most puritain of states, where you cant by beer on sundays in some cases, is gonna be cool because we arent raging, hyperfecavoric assholes. Yeah, i made that word up, but if you know any latin its still a fucking word, and it fits the California legislature to a T.
story here.

2: Militant Atheists. I'm fucking sick and tired of you people. You decry "organized religion"'s persecution of you throughout the centuries by what method? Whats that again? Oh, right, persecution. Religious persecution, i might add, because anyone who thinks atheism isnt a religion is sorely mistaken about a great many things. I have a religion, and I've never ever ever ever, not once, tried to cram it down your throat or tried to prove to you that there is a god or any of that shit, so get the fuck up out of my face. Or i will cut you. Seriously, I spent all last sunday sharpening my survival knife.

3: Another thing; folks who assume I am an atheist just because i dont wear a fucking argyle sweater and say "golly gee". What is this, 1954? Lets get it straight right here, right now. I am alot of things; anarchist, socialist, wanker, lazy, christian, crooked, smoker, chef, alcoholic, animist, cat lover, buddhist, pool shark, gardener, sexual tyranosaurus, heretic, and pagan, but i am NOT an atheist. And no, I'm not "agnostic", either. In fact i think i am quite fucking gnostic, thank you.

4: To tie it all together, other Theists who are astounded that i can violently oppose prop. 8 and yet still believe in god. There isnt much i can say to you except this: at some station along the development of your beliefs, you COMPLETELY MISSED THE POINT.

that is all.

CALLED IT!; or Obama gets an early start with his human-rights-abuse-by-proxy

Got this email from Simo. Pretty much sums it up. LIke I said, you cant trust ANY OF THEM.


Sup guys. Did y'all hear who Obama's Attorney General pick is? Eric Holder....the same guy who is a "defense lawyer for Chiquita Brands international in a case in which Colombian plaintiffs seek damages for the murders carried out by the AUC paramilitaries - a designated terrorist organization. Chiquita has already admitted in a criminal case that it paid the AUC around $1.7 million in a 7-year period and that it further provided the AUC with a cache of machine guns as well. "

Anyway, just wanted to go on record saying I don't like where this is going. This is not a Kennedy-esqu coup against the establishment by outsiders (albeit well-established outsiders). This is business as usual, united under a dream candidate...

So yeah. Business as usual indeed. Well, at least it gives me something to stay vigilant about. Many dream of peace; I seem to thrive on anger. Oh well.

Simo titled his email "Meet the New Boss...", an obvious reference to the Who lyric that ends "Same as the old boss". My only consolation for now is that the song that lyric is from is, of course, called "Won't Get Fooled Again".

Obama; or that's great, but never give them the benefit of the doubt

So the democrats took the election and Barack Obama will be our new president. I wound up voting after all (the state ballot questions were allmost all very important to me, as it turned out), and i voted for Obama, so i was pretty happy about that. In the days that have followed, i keep getting more and more good news. it would appear that our national nightmare is nearly over. Mr. Obama is allready going over the ruinous policies instated by the bush "team" and slating many, presumably, for reversal. that makes me very happy. will we be able to close gitmo? will we finaly see the USA PATRIOT act recognized as the treasonous newspeak that it is? will i run out of things to be angry oubout and change the color of my blog to green?

all of that remains to be seen. while Obama does exude a great deal of promise for us progressives, we must continue to remain vigilant. no matter what else he is, the man is a politician. he will be lobbied by the same lunatics that lobby bush as we speak. the question is; will he allow himself to be controled by them?

so i'm keeping the page black for now. it was very recently that i witnessed citizens being stopped and searched illegaly by a border patrol that was hundreds of miles out of it's jurisdiction. it was only a few months ago that martial law was illegaly put into effect in our nation's capital. the war(s) on "terror" continue unabated. we have lost allot of our freedom, and we must be sure we get it back before becoming complacent. everything feels like its going to be allright now, but dont let yourself get too comfortable. when you are dealing with these kind of people (politicians, leaders in general), you have to be very very careful.

check back frequently for updates; the next couple of years are going to be very interesting.

in the wee, small hours of the morning, or; who knew that generic tylenol had caffeine in it?

another sleepless night at la zona. we went out to dinner with my whole family, which is rare and very special to me. my youngest brother had his 19th birthday and we celebrated with a sushi dinner. afterwords, ms. giles and i returned home and tried to watch game 7 of the ALCS, but due to a very fun weekend and several zombies and kirins with dinner, we quickly fell asleep and missed the last game of the year for our beloved red sox.

after sleeping a few hours on the couch (and wasting a sam addams brown ale), we retired to bed. i slept well until about 3am, at which point i got up to use the bathroom and let the cats out. my head ached, and i didnt want to wake up that way at 6:30, so i decided to take two tylenol even though i am not supposed to because of a dormant kidney disease that i discovered in 1999.

i felt ok, got into bed, and about 20 minutes later i was still awake. then an hour later, still awake. fully two hours passed before i came into some semblance of sleep, and that was troubled by the kind of restless, repetitive dreams that drive me insane. they seemed to revolve around me not being able to figure out what time it was, although it was obviously far later than i needed it to be, and not being able to take a shower because of construction or uninvited guests in the house. to make it worse, i believed that i was actually awake despite sharp differences between my experience and what i know to be reality. at one point i went out to go to the office and was forced to return home when boston was destroyed by a cluster of massive tornados. wtf?

anyway, i think i'll go to bed early tonight.

Free Soup; or, in the Good Old Days, everyone was broke, and it was OK

this seems largely to be a time of verging. everything seems to be poised on the edge of one thing or another. last night the Red Sox squoze under the door of the ALCS, thankfully buying us another week or so of perfect entertainment. and, we are going to need it. the news comming out of manhattan, and now most of europe, is dire indeed. those of us, myself included, who have been thinking for years that our course of action has run far to closeley paralel to that of the Roman empire, are wringing our hands in near panic, because we learned this before in a high school history class. the overextended military, the crumbling infrastructure, the rampant political and economical recklessness, it all adds up to what the romans themselves called hubris, and historicaly speaking, it always preceeds a fall. This has been repeated in more recent times by the british, and then the soviets, and now, apparently, our own empire has begun to slide. Once it starts you cant stop it; the only hope is to ride it out and learn from it.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. True, we are all going to have to tighten our belts and get used to the way our grandparents lived. But how many of you have ever heard your grandparents claim that times are better now than they were then?

The most recent cover of Time magazine summed up nicely, if (probably) unintentionally, what I’m trying to get at here. The cover is a photograph from the Depression of the 1930s, a picture of a line of men outside of a soup kitchen. The headline is “The New Hard Times”, and it is a picture I’ve been waiting for them to run for about 3 weeks now (at least they have stopped the damned Obama-McCain-Palin bobblehead theme that ghey got stuck on last month sometime). Anyway, take a look at the picture when you get a chance. The men are lined up next to a building with a large window. On that window is a sign that reads “FREE SOUP”. Take a minute to think about that.

After 9/11, everyone was talking about how strong the country was, how together everyone felt, etc. I was cynical and thought that it would all change pretty quick, and I was right, although looking back, I feel that things may have been different if bush hadn’t begun to sodomize the COTUS right away. But try for a moment to remember that feeling, that idea that no matter what happened, everything would be OK because we were all Americans now and forever, and we were going to stick together and get through it. The Free Soup sign reminds me of those days, those brief couple of weeks when it almost seemed like the attacks had had a bright side, in that they had caused such unprecedented (at least in our collective amnesia) solidarity.

So if we go crashing into financial ruin (and it seems that we will, my friends), if our standard of living gets set back about 80 years, if times are tough, if luxury grows scarce, we will grow stronger as a people, even as our empire weakens to the point of irrelevance. We will start to see things in our character as Americans that will remind us of what it used to mean to be an American, of what is good about this country; not it’s might, not it’s hegemony, but the ability of it’s People to pull together and surmount any obstacle, to get the most out of “hard times”, and to come out the other side wiser, stronger, and better for it. Remember, money isnt’ everything. It isn’t even close. We stand to loose vast sums of it in the coming months, and perhaps we deserve to, and perhaps we need to.

BTW, I am having a hell of a time quitting smoking.

Nicotine Dreams; or, sleeping with a patch on will send you on a roller coaster ride through the very bowels of hell itself.

So I’ve decided to quit smoking cigarettes again. Ive tried this twice before. Once I went 8 days and then bought a pack on the way home from work. The other time, I went three days. The problem both times (I think) has been facing the difficulty of the task; months (if not years) of cravings, irritability, and general discomfort is not an appealing prospect. This time I’ve armed myself with a box of nicotine transdermal patches (the patch) couressy of the Commonwealth of massachusetts.

The patch system works thus: You have four different strengths of patch in the box. An average smoker (pack-a-day plus) starts with level one for X weeks, then weens down to level 2, etc. Smokers like me, who smoke less than 10 per day on average, are instructed to start at level 2, which is a 14MG dosage over 24 hours. I think my biggest difficulty is that I tend to smoke less that FIVE a day, except on weekend nights at parties. So even the 14MG dose is pretty strong for me, especially during the day, when I tend not to smoke at all.

Anyway, the first night was a complete disaster. Despite the warnings of just about everone I know, I followed the instructions on the box and left the patch on overnight. Do not attempt this. EVER. You will be rewarded with the worst, least restfull night of sleep you have ever had. As an extra bonus, your night will be chock full of the most ball-shrivellingly terrifying nightmares you have ever had. Your dreams will be filled with images of such pure, unadulterated evil, that your mind’s ability to withstand them without snapping will force you to question the existence of god, the devil, and your mortal motherfucking soul.

So yeah, try to avoid that.

Then last night, I slipped and smoked three butts. (don’t worry, I took the patch off first). This leads me to believe that my smoking habit has less to do with an addiction to nicotine, and more to do with a compulsive habit. (insert your best “oral fixation” joke here). Luckily, I am not discouraged by this lapse. The literature that came with the patch stresses that you will lapse and smoke, but that you must not give up. Having one (or three) one night doesn’t mean that im not quitting. It just means I fucked up.

So I’ll keep you up to date, my dear Zona, with my progress. Hopefully I can do it this time. I’m tired of butts anyway. As Renton said, “with God’s help, I will conquer this terrible affliction”.

Dr. Catlove; or, how i learned to love the bomba and stop worrying

first of all, i'm proud as hell of that title. if you dont get it you are missing out on one of the best movies ever made.

so yesterday, Bomba went missing. for those who havent met him, he is the black one. in the picture on my profile, i mean.

we let him and Doolin outside at about 5am because they wouldnt stop jumping on our heads as we slept. usually, they both come home after a few hours to grab a snack. but by 11:30 i was on my way to work and still no sign of Bomba. this was very worrysome, especialy since it was raining hard all day.

once it got dark and he still wasnt home, i really started to worry. I called animal controll and reported him missing. I posted on craigslist, and i used my office printer to make missing posters. It was at about this time that i realized that i am rediculously in love with my cats.

now, i know men arent supposed to like cats. we are supposed to think of them as efeminite, for some reason. but my cats arent. they are little badasses who tear the heads off of everything in their path. i mean that quite litteraly.

so i was freaking out, to put it mildly. i left work early and biked around my neighborhood for almost an hour looking for him. then i went home and decided i had to try to get some sleep somehow. luskily, Cobb and Weathers had come over to keep Katelyn company. Katelyn was worse than me; a complete wreck. After Mike and Jess left, we had a few beers and tried to stay positive. We were just getting ready to go to bed when we heard a distinctive "mew...mewww" at the front door. and just like that, our boy was back. soaked to the bone, but no worse for the 20 hours of wear.

i realised two things last night. One, Bomba can take care of his shit and i shouldnt worry about him. Two, I really do love those cats. Between them and Katelyn, i have an axis of stability that keeps me ballanced, happy, and sane.

To Bomba and Doolin: may their whiskers never fall out.

Holy Fucking Shit, Batman: or, i honestly think Dark Knight is the best movie i've seen since Jaws

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.

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".

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.

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

FARC hostages are free

HUGE development here. some of heat should be quenched by this.

"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.

none of you will read this, but you really, really should

i talk allot about the Constitution here. there arent many things that i capitalize of punctuate properly, but that is one of them. i never thought of myself as a patriot until i saw the potential of our nation through the lense of the Constitution, and through the contrast of the war-whore she has become.

if i'm going to keep referencing and quoting it, i'd better at least link to it so as to shore up my credibility.

so here it is, in its entirety.

honestly, though? i wouldnt trust this one. i dont trust the internet at all. go to your library and sit there for a half an hour with a coffee or an ice tea and read the thing. all of it. even the boring parts (which is most of it). you will be amazed at what you are supposed to be entitled to, what you are supposed to be allowed to do, by law, which you aren't.

if you dont know where your library is find it here, at least if you live in the commonwealth of massachusetts.

our bad; or, some people claim that theres a government to blame, but i know its our own damn fault

dark times in los estados perdidos. you've been reading; you know. undeclared (and unsanctioned) martial law in DC. border patrol roadblocks in southern new hampshire (live free or die trying?). and now, the sobering realization that when you boil it down, its our fault. my fault. your fault. oh yes. there is no sense in denying it. because when you turn your back on the meanest kid on the playground, you dont get to complain when your mouth is filled with sand and broken teeth.

you remember back in the 2nd grade when you first heard the phrase "of the people, by the people, and for the people", and you wonder where that went wrong. you think, if the government is of the people, why dont i get a say? i'll tell you. you let it go. you shut the hell up. we all did. so did our parents. it started with cynicism, when people would joke about voting for "the lesser of two evils". it gained strength through fear, and it ripened and began to fester on the vine with legislation that took away the voice you had never heard; your own.

there is a popular bumper sticker that says "take my civil liberties; i wasnt using them anyway". well, shit, people. first off, these things that are now called "civil liberties"? about ten years ago, we called them "our rights". we suposed that they were "god given" and "unalienable". now, they are granted to us ever so condescendingly in packages like free-speech zones, and we forget that this entire country is a free-speech zone, acourding to the First Amendment.

and yes, why the fuck werent we "using them"? why is it that when you start quoting the Constitution, people look at you as if you were babbling on about the end is near, repent now? It isnt enough to say that we werent using them because most of us didnt know about them. they said "shit" on south park, we all remember that, and yeah, wasnt it good to live in a country that had freedom of speech. Oh, by the way, if you need to protest, please do it over here. yes, around the block from where the mayor is speaking. yes, behing this razor wire. oh, the dog? that's just molly. careful, she tends to go for the jugular once she smells tear gas, hippie.

how did i get started on this? oh yeah, it was this quote from my favourite turncoat, senator mccain:

"My friends, I will have an energy policy which will eliminate our dependence on oil from Middle East that will then prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East."

Right there; did you catch that? if you ask me, thats a full-on admission that our current clusterfuck in the Former Republic of Iraq had fuck all to do with WMDs, "Iraqi freedom", "spreading democracy", or even staying the course. it was, and is, about oil. plain and simple.

But Mr. Conklin, you ask, if it was about oil, then why are we paying so much for gas???

Answer: when your boss is the vp of an energy company, and your godamned secretary of state has a motherfucking oil tanker named after her, do you really want "cheap gas"?

bit im off track, as usual. point being, WE FUCKING KNEW IT WAS ABOUT OIL. come on. i mean, a year before the war, Pakistan got the Bomb. we didnt give a fuck. they said they were going to use it on India, friends of ours, and we did nothing. a fe years into the war, the DPRK actually DETONATED A NUCLEAR GODDAMNED MISSLE in the sea of Japan. what did we do? we said it was "provocative". anyone who was paying attention knew that the WMD line was just that, a line.

so heres the problem, and its two-fold.

most of us werent paying attention. because we've got precious little of that shit, because we are so used to 30 second summaries of what is going on. bad fucking news.

so ok, maybe those people are excused. but the rest of us, myself included, the people that pay so much attention that their hair is falling out and their desks are littered with eyelashes, WE FUCKED UP. it was up to us to stop this. it is, or was at the time, a government OF THE PEOPLE.

oh well. we sure screwed the pooch on that one. im gonna go distract myself and pray for forgiveness. my apologies to the dead. on both sides.

i can has fundamental human right of habeas corpus? kthnxbye.

well, well, well. things didnt go so well today for the people who are running this nation into the ground. remember me raving about the Military Comissions Act of 2006?

you know, when they suspended the Great Writ of Habeas Corpus, eliminating in one fell swoop the fundamental human right of due process prommised not just in the US Constitution (No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. and also The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it. {we can quibble about this, and i'd actually love to, but 9/11 was neither a rebelion nor an invasion}), but perhaps more notably in the motherfucking MAGNA CARTA of 1215? and yeah, thats the motherfucking YEAR 1215.

in case you missed it, that pic at the top is that shit going down. protection, indeed. protection from the oldest recognized human right, that even serfs in medieval england got to have.

anyway, its time to roll out the barrels, because salvation has come from the strangest of places; the Supreme Court of the United States, who yesterday reached a decision in the case of Boumediene vs. Bush.

I suggest you read it. Otherwise, just google that shit and learn all about how your children have been saved from concentration camp-style imprisonment without charge or trial.

im not exaggerating, either.

1984 comes 24 years late, give or take 7 years

in the latest outrageous, flagrant act of disregard for the Constitution or the Rights of the Citizenry, the washington dc police have announced plans to restrict access to parts of their city. by "restrict access", they aparently mean setting up monitored checkpoints, and ejecting under threat of arrest any person who is not a resident of the area. no, really.

http://www.examiner.com/a-1423820~Lanier_plans_to_seal_off_rough__hoods_in_latest_effort_to_stop_wave_of_violence.html


where have we heard this kind of thing before? police Chief Cathy L. Lanier claims it has been "done in other cities", and therefore she is "not worried about constiturionality". she's right, of course. it has been done in other cities. just, not in the united states. mostly in former soviet bloc countries. in cities like warsaw, stalingrad, belgrade, and of course east berlin. also, in south africa under apartheid. and more recently, good old bagdad. so yeah, thats a safe precedent, right? jesus fucking christ.

now, i understand that there are some pretty fuckin scary parts of dc. and yeah, something should probably be done about that. clearly, if people dont feel safe on the streets, thats not an acceptable state of affairs, and they should do something about it. but this kind of martial-law style tactic is insane, and its fucking terrifying.

if this kind of thing is going on in our nations capitol, then my friends, its the end of the line. there is no more america as we knew it. the land of the free is officially no longer free. and most of us probably never would have heard about how it began in the ghettos of dc.

i saw my first real proof of this trend on memorial day weekend, when i was driving back from the annual camping trip in the white mountain national forest. for some reason, the united states border patrol had set up a blockade / checkpoint on the southbound lane of interstate 93, in between exits 31 and 30. all traffic was forced to stop. american citizens were seized, in the deffinitive sense of the word. some cars were searched, with dogs.

it is this seizure in the definitive sense that absolutely floored me. the border patrol was acting not only out of it's jurisdiction (about 250 miles out), but was acting in direct violation of the fourth amendment to the Constitution (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment04/).

so i ask you, friends, what is happening here? I want anyone who reads this to think about what this means. nothing is being done about this stuff. its happening all around us, and we dont like to think about it so we shrug it off and go about our business like good citizens.

except that we are not being good citizens. if we were we wouldnt allow this kind of thing. the constitution doesnt stand up for itself. its the responsibility of the citizenry to make sure that it is adhered to. this is done partially through electing people to office whom we trust with it's care, but also through standing up and stopping it's abuse like we would stop the abuse of our own family.

i'll admit, i didnt do that. i hid my knife (which i always bring camping), put gum in my mouth (i had three beers the morning before we left the site), and stopped my car. i felt exactly the same way i did in grammar school when i pretended i didnt notice the bully throwing dirt at me. i felt self loathing and a rage that i could feel looking inside me for a place to hide and fester and eventually explode. i should have said something, asked for an explanation, even though it would surely result in my car being searched and possibly in my arrest, even though i wasnt doing anything illegal.

i dont know whats to be done about it. i need ideas.

any thoughts?

grace

my baby sister grace had her first birthday party a few weeks ago. this kid is unbelievable.