I recommend reading this article about Ted Hayes, a black social worker from Los Angeles who is a staunch Republican. He sounds like a hell of a guy, and his story is really interesting (found at Curmudgeonly and Skeptical).

Frank J links to this trailer for the upcoming movie Serenity, based on the awesome but short lived sci-fi show Firefly. I have previous posts on the awesomeness of this show here and here, and I highly recommend at least renting the DVD to anyone. Seriously, excepting comedy shows, this is my favorite show that was ever on TV. The movie trailer is great, but based on what it shows it does seem like they're straying from the style of the series a bit to make it more like a Hollywood blockbuster film. The TV show had little if any Matrix-style kung fu, most of the fights being either shoot-outs or bar-type brawls. Even so, the trailer had me drooling, and I have become even more infuriated by having to wait until September 30th for the movie. While the show did have some really great action scenes, especially for a TV show, it was really the great story and dialogue that makes the show as great as it is. Hell, I would probably say that my favorite action scenes on the show were in my least favorite episodes. But even the episodes that show some weaknesses in the writing, I would put them up against any action/drama on TV. Hopefully the movie will be successful enought to bring the show back on the air, or at least enough that they can make the movie trilogy they intend to.

I can not even begin to fathom what a Star Wars live action TV series would be like, but there's a pretty good chance I'd end up watching it regularly, even if it was this pathetic. Hey, very little of it will be written by George Lucas, so that's a definite plus, huh?

As I mentioned in the comments to a previous post, I got the Strong Bad E-mail DVD. It's kind of expensive (we all know blank CDs and DVDs are cheaper than dirt, but for some reason they can still sell like hotcakes at $20 a disc), but Strong Bad is the embodiment of all that is good and pure in the world, so I broke down and finally bought it. By the way, if any of you enjoy the Stinkoman 20X6 game on HomestarRunner.com, the now have the 4th level available to play. I have to warn you though, it is definitely the most difficult one on there. I beat it, but not without a good deal of frustration (partially caused by random spyware pop-ups that made me die a lot).

Anything else awesome that you know about please post in the comments.

UPDATE: I'm in good company, it looks like. DANE throws in his endorsement of Firefly.

A fairy tale by the Mad Alchemist

Once upon a time there was a school that had Asbestos. Asbestos had many industrial uses, and all the children liked him. In fact, Asbestos' best friend was Billy, the nicest and most popular kid in the school. One day Billy and Asbestos were playing in the schoolyard, and it was the best fun they ever had. But the next day Billy died of cancer, and everybody blamed Asbestos. After that, all the children were mean to Asbestos. None of the children would play with him, and some of the parents wanted him taken out of the school. Asbestos was sad and lonely, he missed Billy and he didn't understand why none of the other kids liked him. He had the most industrial uses of any kid in the school, he'd think to himself, why would none of the other children want to play with him? So, as the months went by, Asbestos found himself more and more alone. One day Asbestos felt so sad that he didn't want to go to school at all that day, but he went anyway and sat in the corner by himself. The teacher never called on Asbestos anymore when he raised his hand in class, so he just sat with his face in his arms and hoped none of the other children would hear him cry. Then, all of a sudden in the middle of class, the radiator exploded and sent fire everywhere! Children who could get away ran out of the classroom screaming. Even the teacher had run out of the classroom. But Asbestos didn't leave. He had seen little Sally fall down during the confusion, and the flames were working their way towards her. Asbestos immediately threw himself on top of Sally and shielded her from the flames. When all was safe he picked her up and carried her our into the hall. Molly shouted to him that there were still some children in the classroom who were trapped in a corner behind the flames. So Asbestos ran back into the classroom, and charged through the flames to save the other children. He went in, and one by one he pulled Timmy, then Molly, then Steaver from the flames, protecting each of them with his flame-resistant body. And out all the children ran, into the hallway, and there were cheers of joy! The entire class fled out of the building, the rest of the school either following them out there or already outside. The children cheered Asbestos, and they all hugged and played with him. When the children started back at their new school building, Asbestos was the most popular kid in all of the school. And Sally, and Molly, and Timmy, and Steaver, and the teacher, and everyone except Billy's parents and family all would talk fondly of Asbestos forever more! THE END.

This story is dedicated to the memory of Sally, Timmy, and Steaver.

Cameron Diaz teaches us all to keep on rockin' in the third-world. Or, more acurately, she teaches us that we should all feel guilty for not living in shit-houses in third-world countries and hitting things with sticks.

I left some mildly funny remarks in the comments to that post, so feel free to scroll down and read them if you feel like being mildly amused. If you're not interested in being mildly amused, you can just hang around here or something.

Pedro: Did you draw him that picture?
Mad Alchemist: Heck yes I did!

Back when I had intended not to publish this post that I had partially typed up, I was considering deleting the draft and posting something more like the above-linked cartoon instead. It would definitely be more in line with my typical posting on this blog. During the recent messiness I noticed that my more compassionate and altruistic side was showing through in my writing, and quite frankly it scares me. I was pretty sure I had long suppressed the fuck out of that side of me. I mean, caring is creepy. So, therefore, I will with this stick figure cartoon attempt to steer the blog back towards the irreverent and stupid days of old.

Before we all move on completely though, there's a few things I think we should take to heart from the recent arguments. For one, here's what Angry Stick-figure Man was absolutely right about: We do all need to subject our own ideas to scrutiny and hold our own principles to a higher standard than those we oppose. Every last one of us, no matter how intelligent, will have failings in our beliefs and ideas, and we all have our moments of monumental stupidity on occasion. Some more than others, but we do all have to be observant of our own fallibility. Sometimes that does mean telling someone you like that you think they're full of shit. Of course, there's no reason you can't do it politely. None of us is ever going to be completely objective or right all the time, and if we do lapse in this regard it doesn't hurt to have it brought to our attention. I know I'd rather hear what I'm doing wrong from one of you regular readers than to have some confrontational leftist come by the blog and make me look like an ass someday down the line.

Hopefully, though, you don't take yourself too seriously in the process. There's no need to make ourselves miserable over some unattainable goal of intellectual perfection. It seems the more political freedom people have, the more they seem to hate each other over it, and that seems to have reached a pinnacle with the open communication made possible through the internet. If, like I suggested, every ideology is imperfect, total ideological rigidity simply serves to make people militantly insistent on being wrong at times. Now, do be consistent in your beliefs, but there's no need to be an ass about it.

Now, Angry Stick-figure Man has as much right to lash out at regulars he is upset with on his blog as I do to post weird punk song lyrics, eulogies for people who are alive, fatwas against people in marketing, gripes about left-wing college professors of mine, angry rants against animals who escaped the tsunami, armchair psychological profiling, commentaries on the hotness of the mom from The Incredibles, memories of the 80's, jokes about the pope dying, and stick-figure cartoon strips. I just didn't like it, and I said so. I am typically very good humored, I didn't even get pissed off when someone did a hit and skip on my car in the school parking lot the other week, but even for me there's a point where I stop putting up with bullshit, and I spoke up. Even if all of the charges levied against Sip as justification were completely accurate, the response was still entirely disproportionate to the "crime," in my opinion. If Angry Stick-figure Man sees himself has completely in the right than that is fine, that's his prerogative. If he thinks he made his blog better, well then so long as he keeps his server fees paid then I'm not going to argue. Right-Thinking just doesn't feel like a place for me anymore.

That's it, I'm done. Go play. Enjoy my blog.

The hitcounter on the page has gone up quite a bit since friday. I guess I should probably say something smart or profound or something. Um...

Fectin, want to help me out hear?

Uh... here's some good blogs. Go read them.

UPDATE (by request): Yeah, you heard me. Shit-fuckers.

I'm honestly too lazy to give this post the effort (not to mention links to supporting news stories) that it deserves, but I felt I need to say something on the death of the humanitarian aid worker Marla Ruizicka who was killed by insurgents in Iraq last week. I am just going to repost here what I said about it on Kallini.com:

From the little I did read/hear about this woman (which, admittedly, may include some NPR spin), while she did apparently associate herself with some really shitty left-wing groups like Code Pink, I have to say she sounds like a really good person. While at first she was taking census of only casualties of American attacks, but eventually she did start taking census of insurgent attacks as well (which, interestingly enough, ended up being what killed her). Also, they played a soundbyte of her on NPR (while she was kind of cute in pictures I have seen of her, her voice was pretty atrocious) making her argument for us to take census of Iraqi casualties and make some reperations (which, for making this case, it kind of makes sense to tally only casualties of American attacks) and here’s the kicker: she made the argument on the grounds that it helps to show Iraqis our goodwill, and helps to win them over to our side, helping to win the peace.Wow! To me, to hear a (presumed) leftist make an argument like this is amazing. She sounds, based on this, like she actually wants us to succeed in Iraq! If more leftists and anti-war groups argued like this I might *gasp* actually have respect for them! I was always utterly disgusted by leftists who were (in many cases) obviously appalled by the notion that we might actually win, and that Chimpy McSmirk might actually succeed at bringing freedom to the Iraqi people for the first time in history. Any even moderately decent and sensible person, even if they oppose the war, ought to be at least supportive and hopeful now that the war is over that we can actually bring some good out of it. This woman seems to have supported that notion, and I think she deserves credit for that at least.

Also, it sounds like she actually did spend much of her life sacrificing of her own time and efforts for charitable causes, where your typical leftist usually just demands the government take action so he/she can take credit for caring.

As I said, I'm assuming this woman is a leftist, but even so she sacrificed her life to help the lives of Iraqi people, and for that I think she should be put on a pedestal with Coalition soldiers who made the same sacrifice. These are the kind of virtues that have helped make this country great, and they transcend Left and Right.

Pedro: Do you still post over at Right-Tinking?
Mad Alchemist: I don't know. Lee pretty much hates me by now.
Pedro: How come?
MA: Because Michael Schiavo's a freakin' idiot!
Pedro: Do you have anyting to give him?
MA: No. Not unless he likes self-indulgent posts about obscure TV shows and punk bands nobody's ever heard of.
Pedro: You're pretty good at drawing those pictures, right?
MA: Yeah. Pretty much the best that I know of.
Pedro: Maybe you could draw him a picture or someting.
MA: Yeah. I guess so.

TO BE CONTINUED...

I'm a celebrity now, I guess. This post of mine, kind of bashing Lee of Right-Thinking, got linked to by Lee of Right-Thinking. I've been a visitor of his blog for a long time, and in fact you can see some of my contributions to the blog probably a third of the time you refresh his page. Well, for the first time ever I received a comment posted to my blog from Lee, and an entire post dedicated to me over at Right-Thinking (two things that would have thrilled me if they had happened a few months ago). Now, while Lee doesn't savage me in his post or anything like that, he does completely mischaracterize what I had said about him, and goes on to attack that strawman. In response to his post, the readers who agree with Lee make several comments that pretty much prove they didn't bother to follow the link and read for themselves what I had said. Here are some examples:

"F’ing A right, brother! Whatis it with people who assume that if you’re a Republican, conservative or supported Bush that you’re then a traitor if you criticise GOP policies, decisions or opinions !!??"

"Does Lee actually disagree with the GOP? What? Do you agree with everything the GOP says dogmatically never wavering from the party line, and supporting the party even when it makes the wrong decisions? Because I am SURE you have NEVER accused the “moonbat” (as you call them) democrats of doing exactly the same thing. Refresher on democracy: you don’t support a policy because it is your party’s policy. You support a party that has a platform that most closely matches your ideals, needs and what you feel the country needs."

"Seems like you have really arrived when people are creating blogs just to talk about you. Soon I expect to see a leewatch.com. The problem with so many web sites is that they are little more than right or left wing circle jerks, hopefully this blog will start a whole new era of genuine debate, rather than just name calling."

I did not once complain about any such thing. I complained about Lee's ad hominem bullshit against Sipidation. Where, anywhere, do I ever complain about disloyalty to the GOP from anyone ever? Jesus H. Christ, man. I was defending a friend, not the fucking GOP! Fuck the GOP! They have nothing to do with this whatsoever.

And where does this RTotLC reader get the impression that there are blogs devoted to Lee besides his own? The last post I remember publishing about Lee, aside from the post that Lee requested I publish to my blog after a loyal Lee-bot reported back to Lee Command that I had mentioned typing up the draft on Sip's blog, was a post suggesting that readers go and pay respect to Lee's father who had passed away.

I gotta tell you, for Lee to misportray my message as one opposing a lack of GOP loyalty, and for a lot of his readers to take that on faith without reading what I wrote has done serious damage to my faith in blogs in general as a forum to spread information. It reminds of me of this Michael Crichton lecture, in which he talks about how people presume the accuracy of a media that speaks on issues of which they are ignorant, even when they are fully aware of how inaccurate that media is on subjects they are familiar with.

You can see some of my own posts in response to Lee's (posted under the name Chris D) in this thread and this one.

Oi.

UPDATE: Any new visitors over here from Right-Thinking? I thought I might point out the following comment Lee left under this post of my blog:

TUA, I have to admit. Your "defection," if you will, was the only one that hurt.
The rest of these morons I couldn't give two squirts of piss about, but you
leaving bothered me. Such a shame.

Now, every one of us "morons" has been a long time reader and commenter on Lee's blog (though I don't yet consider myself a defector, I'm going to assume he was referring to me as well). Can any of you claim that you are held in as high esteem over on Right-Thinking as TUA was? If not, then it's probably safe to assume that Lee "couldn't give two squirts of piss" about you either. You may get along well enough on RTotLC now, but God forbid the day ever comes where you question the infallibility of Lee or perhaps, as was the case with me, stick up for a friend who was insulted and denegrated for committing the attrocious act of quoting Empire Strikes Back. And, hey, maybe that really doesn't matter. You don't go to blogs to be liked, you go to read opinion. But, personally, I don't honestly see how someone can think of themself as a libertarian or an indivdualist if they have no respect whatsoever for the intellectual capacity of other individuals (at least, those who disagree with them on some issues). If you claim to be a believer in free markets, I don't see how you can become angry with people for not accepting your word as gospel. You simply haven't sold them on the concepts you believe in, don't be mad at them for that. That is the equivalent of Bill Gates being mad at you for buying Macs, where does he get off assuming he is entitled to your business?

UPDATE #2: I do feel obligated to point out that Lee has in fact given me a compliment on the argument I have put up over on his blog, though it is somewhat negated by his inclusion of the compliment in the same sentence with a derogitory comment towards Sipidation and Steve of Norway, which was the whole thing that pissed me off at Lee in the first place (the whole statement was: "And unlike Sip or SON or any of the other defectors, you can make an intelligent argument. I tip my hat."). I'm having a bit of trouble articulating my exact reasons for being upset. It's not the swearing in and of itself, it was more the excessively agressive response to seemingly minor transgretions. If Lee had a problem with Sipidation from earlier threads, he should have addressed them in those threads, and not simply have snapped over the Star Wars quote, and given a completely over the top response. None of it really made sense in the context of the thread that I was reading. Even in the old days I thought of Lee as a mean-spirited, curmudgeonly asshole, but in the same sense that P.J. O'Rourke (who will forever be my favorite political pundit of all time) is a mean-spirited, curmudgeonly asshole. Or at the very least I thought of Lee as Maddox with P.J. O'Rourke's opinions thrown into the mix. I thought he was funny and entertaining, and he always came up with interesting news posts, whether they were on serious news issues or boobies. I think the major problem is that while Lee is persuing noble ends (independant/critical thinking, objectevity, and open debate) he often chooses some of the jackassiest ways to persue them. You can make a highly visible display of approving of liberals who meet these standards, and denegrating conservative who you believe don't, but that really only serves to create an image of these pursuits. And you really don't need the kind of agressiveness on display to pursue them, because that only serves to disassociate those objectives with the notion of nobility. Sorry if I am being too abstract here, but like I said this is difficult for me to articulate.

Me as a South Park character. You can make your own at this site (found via the Super Kallini-o Brothers).

The other day I was reading Right-Thinking, and in this post, the following irrelevant, throw-away comment just kind of got to me:

Week or two ago, I wrote a post about the Repuiblican belief that living wills should be ignored under the guise of “erring on the side of life.” Andrew Sullivan, (boo hiss, yes, I know, get it out of your system) who I wroted in the original post, has written a follow up, which I think is wiorth quoting verbatim.

It's honestly not that big a deal, but it just irritated me. Lee has had a few occasional readers who made a few mild complaints when he speaks approvingly of Sullivan (I think all of those readers are banned by now, though), so he talks to all of his readers as if none of us is willing to hear anything that isn't a sycophantic reenforcement of our own beliefs. Personally, I like what I've read by Sullivan, and have nothing against the guy (he at least seems respectful towards readers who disagree with his opinions, at least on the occasions I have read his blog), and I imagine most Right-Thinking readers don't either. Lee's statement bugged me, and my mood was already more irate than I usually am, so I started typing up a post to express it.

However, I ended up deciding not to publish the post in haste, slept on it, and really didn't feel so frustrated in the morning. A few days later, however, Fectin (who I don't think visits Right-Thinking with any regularlity) read the draft on Blogger and IMed me insisting that it needed to be post. I re-read it, thought "yeah, alright", but I figured I'd start the post off with a disclaimer (which is what you're reading now), since I really didn't feel so irrate anymore. I read a few posts recently on Right-Thinking that I really liked, and I still feel like the good ol' Lee I used to think I knew is still in there somewhere. I like Lee. I do. I guess I'm just fairly conflict-averse, and the fact that he has turned his blog into an almost non-stop fight with other people I like just doesn't sit well with me. I would honestly rather be the one who is maligned and insulted by Lee than watch it happen to folks like Sip who have been nothing but polite and decent as long as I have known him.

Anyway I left the following comment on Sip's blog the other day:

I typed up a big anti-Lee post for my blog the other day, but I decided not to post it after my bitterness towards Lee subsided. Last night, though, Fectin read the unfinished draft and insisted that it was good and I needed to post it, so I might end up doing it any way, but toning down the anger.

I wasn't thinking much of it when I posted it, but then I got an e-mail from Lee, who obviously must be lurking at Sip's blog (which surprised me, since I honestly thought Lee wouldn't have given a crap) which only read "Don't wimp out and tone it down, post it as-is. I'm dying to see it. Havesome balls." If you're reading this Lee, I intended to post the entirety of what I had typed, only with a disclaimer in the heading, like this one, to set the context of my mood. You sound like you took my statement on Sip's blog as being completely literal, though at the time I posted that statement I wasn't thinking much about it and hadn't really meant it as I said it, so I think you're going to be pretty disappointed by how tame it is, given the context of the quote you read (I've been a geeky Right-Thinking fan boy since I first had an internet connection, did you think I was really going to leave RTotLC forever and burn all the bridges behind me?).

So, by the request of Fectin and Lee, the following is the entirety of my draft, which was originally titled Right-Ad Homineming on the High Horse. It is not completed, and it is not entirely formulated as I intended, but this is what I had:

I am really starting to get fed up with Lee at Right-Thinking. I have never seen anyone ever treat their own audience with such utter contempt. He has completely tapped into that sense of self-righteousness that I had always associated with the left-wing and the religious right. To see a fellow (small "l") libertarian become so unrepentantly narcissistic is just disillusioning and disheartening. Right-Thinking has for a long time been favorite blog, slipping to second place only when I discovered the Super Kallini-o Brothers. Now I can't even visit his blog without seeing him trashing his long-time readers as "Kool-Aid drinkers", or some other such term that he has overused to the point of being cliche. I know that Lee has always prided himself on being an independant thinker, and not a tower of any party-line, but I pride myself on this as well. The difference is that I only feel the need to prove this to myself, where Lee seems to have the need to prove this to the world. His chosen method of advertising this virtue of his is by denegrating and insulting perfectly decent people on the Right. How this proves anything to anyone is beyond me.

Of course, if you point out any gripe on his blog, you get some worthless remark about how "this blog isn't a popularity contest" or "you're not paying anything to be here". I don't know about you guys, but if I didn't care about getting feedback I'd keep a goddamn private journal or something. Certainly I wouldn't allow for comments if that weren't the case. Hell, I probably would have scrapped this whole stupid blog idea long ago if it weren't for the occasional reader out there who from time to time points out that I don't completely suck. Lee obviously wants and expects feedback, so why is it when anyone on the Right disagrees or complains about what he posts he gets pissed off, and quite often simply reminds the dissenting righty that he is free to leave whenever? An independant mind ought to value the dissenting views.

Underwhelming, huh? There was more I wanted to add to my rant before posting it, so I'll update as it comes to me. Anyway, that's the whole thing I had typed. That's it. I guess this means I have "balls" or something. Hooray for me. Do I get a medal or something?

I did have more to say on the topic of being a free-thinker. I don't make any profound claims of being completely free of the need to conform or feel accepted, or any of those nasty qualities of "sheeple." I do believe I am a fairly independant thinker, though, but if anyone can make a case to the contrary I invite them to try. My entire archives are available on the right-hand column, even the emarassing posts that I chose not to erase because I have Balls (TM) are available, and I defy anyone to build a case based on them that I am anything near a party line Republican waiting for marching orders from the GOP. In fact, you'd be more likely to come across my co-blooger Fectin's post on why you shouldn't vote for Bush (Fectin, if I'm not mistaken, supported Badnarik in the last election). You'll also come across some ringing endorsements of the Libertarian candidate Mike Kole (who, as previously noted, is the only candidate I've ever officially endorsed). Hell, I have seriously considered asking my staunch leftist friend to be a co-blogger here, as well as another leftist from his message board (who I do not personally know, but he was the only one over at that board that could put up a decent argument against me, the lone righty on the board). But then I would have to change some of my random slogans, and that just wouldn't be cool. I also often link to conspiratorial anti-Republican (though usually still right-wing) site like LewRockwell.com, ClaireWolfe.com, and SierraTimes.com. I have never in the past felt the need to point this kind of thing out to people, since I usually really don't care if they do think I'm a Republican zombie or not, but since there's a good chance Lee will read this post, I do in fact want him to know that his readers are not the people he suggests they are lately.

UPDATE: Lee has made some clarifications in the comments to this post, which I will take on faith to be true, as I don't have a great recollection of the events. He has said he only banned one person who disagreed with him over Andrew Sullivan, and that person he claims went on a big tirade (which I seem to remember being a 2-way tirade). So, we are clear. My statement wasn't accurate in that reguard, but the rest stands.

1775 - the battles of Lexington and Concord

1943 - armed uprising of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto against SS troops

1993 - assault on the Waco compound

1995 - terrorist attack on the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City

Okay, I'm closing in on the end of the semester (and I presume Fectin is too), so if this blog is neglected over the next couple of weeks, that's the excuse I'm going to use. I will have a few weeks off school between the end of this semester and the beginning of the summer semester, so hopefully then I will be able to draw up another Ted Rall parody for you guys.

I'll take this moment to give a big thank you to Fectin, Sipidation, and everyone who has ever posted a comment or linked to this blog. You all rock, and I have no honest idea why you all bother with a loser like me :)

Anyone who comes to this blog semi-regularly knows I'm a huge fan of a somewhat obscure band called The Vandals. Well, if I've ever sparked your interest at all in the band, and you would like an opportunity to hear them, you can legally download a bunch of Vandals MP3s from this page.

The songs available for download include Pizza Tran and Anti from Fear of a Punk Planet, their first album under the current line up. They also have A Gun for Christmas (the greatest holiday song ever! read the lyrics) and Oi to the World from their Christmas album of that name. Change the World with my Hockey Stick and Right on Q are from movie soundtracks. Elvis Decanter and Desert Woman are from The Vandals Play Really Bad Original Country Tunes (which is actually really good, in my opinion). Anarchy Burger (Hold the Government) and Pirate's Life are both really cool songs from the original Vandals line-up, but these MP3s are supposedly from the Sweatin' to the Oldies, which is a live album that features the current line-up performing the older songs. Look What I Almost Stepped In and Internet Dating Superstuds are not some of my favorite Vandals albums, as they are poppier that their other stuff, but they are still good albums in their own right, and just as funny as any of their other albums, and here's a decent selection from those albums: Behind the Music, Go, and The New You from LWIASI and 43210-1 and I'm Becoming You from IDS. There's also How They Getcha and My Special Moment from the excellent Hollywood Potatochip, their most recent album, plus two very cool Ramones covers, Sheena is a Punk Rocker and Judy is a Punk.

Unfortunately my three favorite Vandals albums are on a different record label, and so none of those albums had tracks available for download. Still, I think this is a pretty decent collection of songs, and the ones I didn't already have (the Ramones covers) downloaded very quickly. If this isn't enough to convince you the Vandals are awesome, then just read this post and this post from my blog.

I got a brief glimpse of the president getting into his helicopter today. He came to my school for this round-table discussion on Social Security. I took a few pictures of the helicopters and security detail, and when I get that developed I'll post any worthwhile pictures here after they're developed. Here are the highlights:

-At the intersection turning on to campus I saw a normal looking gray-haired man holding a "Bush Supports Communism" sign. This wasn't a crummy posterboard sign, this was the full, professional looking Kinko's deal.
-After parking, while I was walking up to the school, there were about a dozen protestors, who I could not tell if they supported Bush or not, since they were all holding signs that were about Social Security, with slogans like "Reform Social Security Now!" They politely shouted some stuff at me, and I waved and said hi, and when I kept walking some guy in the crowd shouted "I guess you don't like old people."
-Pretty much the entire campus north of the main building was blocked off from the public. There were police all over the place, many with German Shepherds, and a few mounted on horses. There were two huge, double-rotor military helicopters and a bunch of news vans parked near the gyms/athletic department, which I believe is where they held the round-table conference.
-I took a few pictures outside, until a cop yelled at me. After that I took all my pictures from inside.
-They had a TV outside the part-time faculty office, playing the president's conference on Social Security on the school's cable channel, and a bunch of faculty were sitting in the hall watching it. Booooooriiing.
-Lots of Marines around the building, but not quite as many Marines as police.
-The best view, I found out, was from the library, which was on the third floor of the school. From here I could see bomb squad trucks, rows of long trucks and buses that were apparently used to make temporary walls, a couple of SWAT guys on the roof of the building the president was presumably in, and a small crowd of about 30 to 40 protesters out by the parking lot. From another window I could see two other large (but not as big as the double-rotors) helicopters with United States seals on them, and it seemed pretty likely that one of those was the president's helicopter.
-I went outside to look at the protest crowd, and it appeared that most of them were Bush supporters, though they were facing they other way so I couldn't read anyone's signs or shirts in their entirety. It looked like about half of the crowd were young children waving American flags.
-Pretty soon I was about to leave out of boredom, but on my way out some woman was running the other way, and I heard her shout to someone that "He" was leaving. So, I ran back up to the library and went to the window, where a crowd was starting to gather. We waited kind of a long time, but I was trapped in the crowd of people anyway. Eventually, after a whole lot of police, Secret Service, and Marines standing around doing nothing for about half an hour, and a red helicopter circling the airspace several times, a large group of men in suits stepped out of the building and walked quickly to the helicopter. You couldn't pick one out of the crowd, but one stuck his head back out of the helicopter and waved, and nobody had any doubt that it was the president. I got a picture, but I'm not terrifically optimistic about how well it will come out. Watching the helicopters take off was neat, and I got a picture of that too.
-One student who was among that large crowd, who had been at the school all day and had seen the helicopters first land, said that he had been in one of the blocked off areas earlier, and had been asked if he had a press pass. He had produced a fake press pass, which he showed people there in the library, which looked to be just a sheet of green computer paper that he printed "PRESS PASS" on, and he said the cop accepted it, but another cop a few minutes later told him "I'm going to have to ask you to leave." Anyway, I thought that was kind of funny.

Found via the Kallini Brothers

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050403-115203-1997r.htm

"To win back the White House in 2008, our party must change. We must be willing to discard political strategies that may make us feel good but that keep falling short. We must finally reject the false choice between exciting our base and expanding our appeal, because unless we both motivate and persuade, we'll lose every time," said DLC founder Al From and President Bruce Reed in a new manifesto for their party.

That's what the right has been saying for years. (That we don't back it up either is an unfortunate problem we need to fix.)

Not quite the spin that it was presented with by the friendly florideans (listed there as an example of liberal intolerance of debate), but even so.

Heh. Wouldn't it be ironic if the democrats turned into the hardcore functionalists? I don't expect it to happen, but it'd be nice

Hopefully I'm just worrying over nothing, but I'm starting to think I may have broken my brain. I never in the past used to have any problem with mixing up words that sound similar (like "they're", "their", and "there", or "hear" and "here"), but lately I keep noticing instances wear I use the wrong won (Okay, I was just kidding with those too their. Those ones two.). Something else highly disturbing, in the comments to a previous post a reader left the comment in response to the post on the death of Frank Perdue "I'll really miss Frank Perdue, though", and despite having introduced Mr. Perdue into the discussion by name and what he was known for myself, I had no goddamn clue who the reader was referring to! I figured, since we were also talking about the late Cleveland Plain Dealer editorialist Tom Brazaitas, that Perdue must be another Plain Dealer columnist who I wan't familiar with. It wasn't until several days after I first read the comment that I was skimming through my blog page and noticed Perdue's name within the text of my original post that I had my "Duh!" moment. Geez. I think I've just stumbled upon a higher plain of stupid. Hopefully none of this is indicative of anything.

Cheesy New Wave, trashy punk, hokey metal, kick-ass children's cartoons that were created solely for the purpose of selling kick-ass toys, classic 8-bit video games, the greatest cheeseball action movies ever made, the rebirth of classical economics/laissez faire... the 80's were awesome!

Here is a compilation of definitive proof (in no particular order) that the 80's were the greatest decade ever!

Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C, Exhibit D, Exhibit E, Exhibit F, Exhibit G, Exhibit H, Exhibit I, Exhibit J, Exhibit K, Exhibit L, Exhibit M, Exhibit N, Exhibit O (they were good in the 80's to mid-90's), Exhibit P, Exhibit Q (kind of a stretch, but the Christmas special premiered in December of '89), Exhibit R.

I'm sure there's more evidence out there, but now I'm drawing a blank right now (and there's plenty of cool stuff I left out, simply because it's been too long since I last experienced it, and my memories are kind of vague), but please feel free to and your own in the comments.

I'm going to have to go with the Mad Alchemist on this one.
I've been impressed with Kole's writing every time I've read it. It's not that we always see eye to eye, it's that he doesn't dip into sloganeering and demigogery. (Those are bad things.) His opinions and arguements are well constructed, and seem mostly built on empirical evidence and facts. He's like an old school Republican, actually; Lincoln era or so.
Musings aside though, Kole is smart. I don't know if he has the political skills to get the job done (I don't doubt it, I simply don't know), but I'd love to see him take a crack at it. Lord knows, he couldn't be worse than the vast majority of politicians out there. And for those of you who are considering voting party line republican the better choice, because, hey, at least they're better than the democrats, take a good look at the party. I'm not convinced the republicans are beyond help, but right now, the only major difference in the parties is the name of the moral authority they sanctimoniously evoke.

Anyway, long story short, Kole gets two AFD thumbs up.

Pope still dead.

Developing...

I don't think we have ever officially endorsed any political candidate for office on Alchemy for Dummies before, but today that changes, as I am now officially endorsing Mike Kole, chair of the Libertarian Party of Hamilton County in Indiana, for Secretary of State in Indiana in 2006. I am pretty familiar with Mike Kole, as he used to do a great college radio show here in the Cleveland area called Laissez Faire, and his blog, Kole Hard Facts, has been on my blogroll for quite a few months. While most of my readers tend to be bigger supporters of the Republican Party, I think most of us here are more philisophically in line with the Libertarians, at least on domestic issues, if not on national defense. If any of my readers live in Indiana, I highly encourage you to satiate the subversive, freedom-loving anarcho-capitalist inside you at the ballot box when Mike Kole runs in '06. I assure you (though, if you don't take my word for it, click the link to his blog) that Mr. Kole is a man with a great deal of common sense, and practical enough to take his victories where he can get them (unlike some libertarian intellectuals out there, who would rather lose every battle rather than take a compromise now and then). He is obviously a great lover of freedom, and I would love to have someone like him run in Ohio (We have an 8% sales tax in Cuyahoga county! We need Mike Kole bad!). He also has the distinction of being the only candidate for office (at least that I am aware of) who has posted comments on this blog.

Mike, if you read this, my blog has a pretty small readership, with no Indiana readers that I am aware of, so I am doubtful as to whether I can even produce for you a single vote with my endorsement. I am not a resident of Indiana, so you obviously can't count on my vote, but if you wish to run a smear campaign against any competing candidates, Alchemy for Dummies is at your service :) Anyway, feel free to send me any information relating to your campaign that you would like my readers to be aware of, and I'd be happy to post it. I wish you excellent luck on your campaign.

So.
As for us intolerant Religious Fanatics, we're about to elect A Nigerian Pope. So there.

Actually, I really don'tknow what will happen. I do know that one of the two front runners is a truely amazing man from Nigeria. I was hearing about him years before this Italian guy who's apparantly his only real competition.

But anyway, this Bastion of Evil Conservativism and all, how many of the enlightened liberal European countries have had a leader with dusky skin?

on being the next pope!

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/robot.html

So. I read things like this, and I wonder exactly why our current draconian immigration system is in place. We have people, exactly the sort of people we want, putting up with atrocious conditions for the chance to live here. It's not as though these people are going to be some sort of "drain on society, " these are brilliant, hard-working American Dreamers.
Now, I'm not advocating breaking the law; rule of law is one of western civilization's major contributions to humanity. I'm just wondering, why do we have such an imbicile, bass ackwards law in the first place?

http://www.nationstates.net/

Max Barry is an Australian author. He wrote a couple books, and came up with the idea of marketing one of them with a game.
Long story short: Nation States is a fun game where you get to take the helm of your own tiny country. You take a short quiz at the beginning, and then deal with issues as they come up. I highly recommend taking a look at it.
Also, has anyone read his books? _Syrup_ and _Jennifer Government_? He seems like a good enough writer online. Actually, on that note: http://www.maxbarry.com/2005/01/20/news.html#anti
his thoughts on things. He is articulate, and this entry is definitely worth reading.

There's the common expression/superstition that death comes in threes. Lately it has seemed like death is coming in an avalanche. Terri Schiavo, as everyone knows and everyone expected, is dead, and while I am not happy about it I am at least glad that her period of starvation is over (imgaine the outcry from the Left if we starved Saddam Hussein while he is in captivity). And I'm sure you're all aware that Johnnie Cochrane just died. Tom Brazaitis, an editorialist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, just died at the age of 64 (I have yet to read anything by Brazaitas that I agree with, and I always thought he was an asshole while he was alive, but it is still kind of sad to see him pass on). Bass Wolf, the bassist of the Japanese band Guitar Wolf supposedly died of a heart attack at 38, though I'm still hoping this is just a really tasteless April Fool's joke. I just read online that Frank Purdue, the chicken guy, has died as well. The Pope is still alive, but just barely, although this wouldn't be the first time he's been so close to crossing over. Of course, these are just the people I know by name. You also have the hundreds killed in the earthquake in Southeast Asia, and the people killed in the school shooting in Minnesota, both far worse tragedies than the above.

It feels like I'm forgetting someone, too. Anyway, this is just creepy. Anyone have any thoughts, or additions to the bodycount to mention?