I stopped screwing around with the blog title, because even though I'm kinda sick of "Alchemy for Dummies", for some reason that utterly meaningless title just seems to fit. Probably because I'm used to it. Anyway, no more acting like I'm having an identity crisis.

Seriously though, I've had no idea what to post lately, and barely anything really feels worth posting. Lately I've been mostly getting my Leisure Suit Larry on. I have no life.

In words.
In pictures.

(h/t Freedom Keys and Korg)

Seems like capitalism could deliver a six minute video about how wonderful Karl Marx was for less than $125. There isn't even time in seven minutes to prove that Jesus was a Marxist or that Noam Chomsky is the new Messiah, either - just to rate Marx as the Greatest of All Great minds.

Does this thing have an Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn interview in the bonus materials?

There's a reliable set of symptoms that cue a keen observer in on the fact that a cat is vanishing into opiate oblivion. Consider the following:

Your cat sleeps all the time. Heroin causes this.

Your cat's speech is inarticulate, incomprehensible, or repetitive. Smack is not improving anyone's conversation skills.

Your cat seems nosy. The cat may have lost a fix, or have forgotten he already used all his junk. Or he may be looking for something of yours to steal to sell to buy drugs.

Your cat gets violent. Cats do not take to withdrawal well.

Your cat shreds stuff. Again, the cat may just be looking for a "lost" cache of drugs or something to pawn.

Your cat seems to be enjoying stuff way too much. Self-evident. He probably just did some junk, and that's you see the purring for no reason or the paw-trampling activity. Drooling may ensue.

Your cat avoids people. When a cat runs out of drugs, he sometimes begins to imagine that strangers are attempting to rip off his dwindling stash.

Your cat seems friendly to strangers. He's setting them up to rip them off, or panhandle them, or to ask them to front for a drug deal where he has no intention of delivering the drugs. He may offer to go find a completely different drug and then take the money and buy heroin for himself.

Your cat stares out the window. He's watching for his dealer.

Your cat fights with other cats. Sometimes drug deals go wrong.

Your cat gets run over. Cats' traffic navigation skills get impaired when they use a lot of heroin. Sometimes they don't even realize there are cars out there.

Your cat fouls the rug. Depending on how much heroin he uses, a cat may forget he's not in the box, or may just not care. Humans may suffer an antidiuretic effect from heroin, but there is no evidence cats stop whizzing just because they're on the junk.

Your cat is up late at night. Withdrawal can occur any time of day.

Your cat licks his fur a lot. Cats do not have the same kind of hands humans do, which makes handling an injection rig difficult. Sometimes they have accidents and spill more heroin on themselves than they can get into a spoon to cook. When this happens, about the only way to recover the drug is to lick it off the fur. This method is not as effective in getting heroin into the bloodstream, but it's better than nothing.

Your cat pretends to love you when you open a tuna can. Most tuna in the ocean are on heroin, and cats detect this in the smell of the prepared fish. Occasionally you find a cat that seems disinterested; you probably found the rare straight-edge fish that eschews hard drugs.

Your cat charges all over the place. While heroin tends to depress activity, sometimes cats do too much of it. An overdose frequently kills my lowering the metabolism until the heart and breathing stop. Cats have an instinctive anti-overdose instinct that sets them running all the hell over the place to keep their metabolism high enough to get them through the overdose without dying in their sleep.

Be watchful and report to the appropriate authorities if you see your cat demonstrating these behaviors. The tragedy of heroin use in cats is that it tapers off dramatically with church attendance, but very few cats go to church because they'd rather hang out behind the garage shooting up with their friends. But they find they have no friends when they run out of drugs.

Ever read one of those stories about how an asteroid the size of Australia passed through where the earth was three days previously? Well, the Kos came to visit a neighborhood I used to live in... and it already smells like commie nutroots doodoo when I open a window now.

The human spirit rises to conquer all despite the size of the container.

So anyway, after playing one of our sloppiest gigs ever at an unnamed bar in an unnamed location, some of us were sitting around with some of the guys we knew from the audience, and one of them turned the topic to politics. Because in this town, if you're breathing it's time to enlist everyone in a Moonbat Convergence. And he mentioned seeing the "best bumper sticker ever." This is a guy that thought living next door to furriners who bragged about sending money to Hamas was amusing (he smirked when laughing at being asked "Are you a Jew?") but was horrified by living up the street from an Air Force reservist ("Every day I just want to walk up to him and make him account for the horrible shit he's doing.")

Here's what the Best Bumper Sticker Ever said:

LOVE THY ENEMY MEANS "DON'T KILL HIM!"

But to my eye, this one Does Too Little and Costs Too Much. Thanks to the guys at 4BumperStickers.com, I came up with the really Best Bumper Sticker for this guy's car:



Doesn't it give you a warm feeling inside to bask in the rays of glorious moral perfectionism?

Click Dancing Gay Stickmen for illumination. Or click here to benchmark the stickmen against flesh-and-blood equivalents.

If it's mandatory, it's not a "tip," it's a "service charge," and passing a law to require restaurants to charge it more or less allows them to list an item for $10 and charge you $12 for it.

I'm not sure this law would be complete without a rider that allows you to be arrested for complaining about bad service. Why just break the relationship between good service and a good tip, why not invert it? Allow waiters to charge you by the hour they make you wait, with an additional surcharge for bringing your food to you cold, another for being rude to you, and a special fee for messing up your order. And a $20 minimum for spitting in your food.

Sure, there are plenty of more serious 9/11 conspiracy debunkers out there, but Wong's take is a lot more fun to read.

Think about this for a while.

Somebody please buy me this book!

(found at KisP)

I just started at a new school, which I transferred to kind of at the last minute. Also, my brother is moving into a new appartment, which I've had to help him with some, and I also had some family stuff to do over the Labory Day weekend. So, sorry for not blogging.

Last night I was at a New Bomb Turks reunion show, and I happened to be up against the stage in the biggest gap between speakers, so I ended up getting probably more interaction with the band than I bargained for. I repeatedly had Eric Davidson's crotch right in my face, I got spit on quite a few times (I got a big glob of Davidson spittle in my right eye at one point), I got a microphone shoved in my mouth that had previously been down Eric Davidson's pants (if you've ever seen a Turks show, then you know he likes to do gross stuff like shoving the microphone down the front of his pants and then making people sing into it), and he rubbed my hair at least four times during the course of the show (though a lot of people have been doing this to me lately, since I recently shaved my hair really short on an impulse, and people seem to take that as an invitation to rub my head). So, anyway, yeah, the New Bomb Turks are one of the awesomest bands ever, and even though I'm a totally awkward nerd when I'm in a crowd, it was still cool to be singled out so much by one of my top favorite bands. The headliner for the show was Radio Birdman, but I left before they went on, since I had school this morning.

One last thing, Fectin, I know you're busy with school now, but are you ever going to get that Campaign Finance Reform post up?