Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Hump-Worthy

Wednesdays I've decided to devote to others. People who deserve to be heard on Hump day.
Our first hump-worthy person and guest blogger is the 39th President of the United States.

Carter

This isn't the real America
By Jimmy Carter

IN RECENT YEARS, I have become increasingly concerned by a host of radical government policies that now threaten many basic principles espoused by all previous administrations, Democratic and Republican.

These include the rudimentary American commitment to peace, economic and social justice, civil liberties, our environment and human rights.

Also endangered are our historic commitments to providing citizens with truthful information, treating dissenting voices and beliefs with respect, state and local autonomy and fiscal responsibility.

At the same time, our political leaders have declared independence from the restraints of international organizations and have disavowed long-standing global agreements — including agreements on nuclear arms, control of biological weapons and the international system of justice.

Instead of our tradition of espousing peace as a national priority unless our security is directly threatened, we have proclaimed a policy of "preemptive war," an unabridged right to attack other nations unilaterally to change an unsavory regime or for other purposes. When there are serious differences with other nations, we brand them as international pariahs and refuse to permit direct discussions to resolve disputes.

Regardless of the costs, there are determined efforts by top U.S. leaders to exert American imperial dominance throughout the world.

These revolutionary policies have been orchestrated by those who believe that our nation's tremendous power and influence should not be internationally constrained. Even with our troops involved in combat and America facing the threat of additional terrorist attacks, our declaration of "You are either with us or against us!" has replaced the forming of alliances based on a clear comprehension of mutual interests, including the threat of terrorism.

Another disturbing realization is that, unlike during other times of national crisis, the burden of conflict is now concentrated exclusively on the few heroic men and women sent back repeatedly to fight in the quagmire of Iraq. The rest of our nation has not been asked to make any sacrifice, and every effort has been made to conceal or minimize public awareness of casualties.

Instead of cherishing our role as the great champion of human rights, we now find civil liberties and personal privacy grossly violated under some extreme provisions of the Patriot Act.

Of even greater concern is that the U.S. has repudiated the Geneva accords and espoused the use of torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, and secretly through proxy regimes elsewhere with the so-called extraordinary rendition program. It is embarrassing to see the president and vice president insisting that the CIA should be free to perpetrate "cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment" on people in U.S. custody.

Instead of reducing America's reliance on nuclear weapons and their further proliferation, we have insisted on our right (and that of others) to retain our arsenals, expand them, and therefore abrogate or derogate almost all nuclear arms control agreements negotiated during the last 50 years. We have now become a prime culprit in global nuclear proliferation. America also has abandoned the prohibition of "first use" of nuclear weapons against nonnuclear nations, and is contemplating the previously condemned deployment of weapons in space.

Protection of the environment has fallen by the wayside because of government subservience to political pressure from the oil industry and other powerful lobbying groups. The last five years have brought continued lowering of pollution standards at home and almost universal condemnation of our nation's global environmental policies.

Our government has abandoned fiscal responsibility by unprecedented favors to the rich, while neglecting America's working families. Members of Congress have increased their own pay by $30,000 per year since freezing the minimum wage at $5.15 per hour (the lowest among industrialized nations).

I am extremely concerned by a fundamentalist shift in many houses of worship and in government, as church and state have become increasingly intertwined in ways previously thought unimaginable.

As the world's only superpower, America should be seen as the unswerving champion of peace, freedom and human rights. Our country should be the focal point around which other nations can gather to combat threats to international security and to enhance the quality of our common environment. We should be in the forefront of providing human assistance to people in need.

It is time for the deep and disturbing political divisions within our country to be substantially healed, with Americans united in a common commitment to revive and nourish the historic political and moral values that we have espoused during the last 230 years.

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Science Tuesday II

Here are my favorite Science Stories of the week:

#1. Fish Communicate by Farting

fishfart
Thereby joining college-age males in the evolutionary ladder

#2. Vatican Calls "Bullshit" on Intelligent Design
vs-jesuseinstein
You know you're beat when the Vatican, who doesn't believe in birth control, says you're being an idiot.

#3.Atlanta Opens Big-Ass Aquarium
aqua.animate.
Having solved the homelessness, and race problems that have been plaguing it for years, Atlanta invests in its future,

Monday, November 21, 2005

Wingpeople


wingman
Originally uploaded by alflamont.
This weekend was a Social-Heavy weekend, and it seems weekends to come will also be heavy on the social calendar.

Being recently (Recently?) singled I am observing the age-old tradition of having/being a wingman in the dogfights of social wooing. I have observed, and it is the god's honest truth that a wingman has to be a very well chosen person.

To that extent I am hereby deleting the following groups from the potential wingperson list.

Family: My brother, his girlfriend, my parents, all sound like used car salesmen when they "assist". With our dark skin, it's like watching a morroccan market.

"Look! Look My friend! I have special deal for you! He is have good job."

Girls: No matter how "Just friends" you are, girls will ALWAYS sabotage your chances with another girl. For example, I had two parties to go to this weekend. One involved a ridiculous and obscene costume, the other was a nice, laid back, serene affair where there would be NO available women. So My friend and I dressed like goofballs for the second party and we show up to wild gawks of humor and nervous looks. Never imagining that someone Extremely available was going to show. So i proceed to make a severe ass of myself. My friend, FEMALE, who should be supportive of me ,fails to tell me that the person I'm talking to has been recently singled. I in turn make such an extreme jerggoff of myself, that the Anti-Alf / hellspawn Image I built for that night may be the only one my trollop of choice may remember for the rest of her days. A GUY WOULD NEVER OMMIT SUCH A CRUICIAL DETAIL.

The really strange friend: This is a tough one. "Strange" is all in the eye of the beholder. I for one, am many people's "Strange friend", and MY "Strange Friends" Have "Strange Friends" of their own. Simply put, you don't want the friend you play D&D with, on your side. You appreciate him, you hang out, but god forbid the object of your desire catch wind of your Comic-con gold passes without testing the waters first. You love your pal, and revel in the nerdery. However, there is no place for ten sided dice in a bar. If youre at a sports bar, you don't want a vampire by your side, and likewise at a goth club...whatever. Those girls are easy.

Friday, November 18, 2005

Friday = Death of the Week

My new concept of bringing stability and security to my blog continues with DEATH OF THE WEEK. The premise being; the week dies, and so do people. So I use "Chunk" to "Shuffle off those mortal coils" and pay homage to the famously deceased. Along with a deadly "Item of the week" and a Nugget of Death from the sauciest Funeral Director this side of the Mississippi, Mandy Barnes (Bubblegum Vernacular on my sidebar).

ANOTHER REASON TO SAY "TGIF", AND TO "TAKE A SWIG OF ALF"!

chunk

Shuffled off this week:

Lobot

lobot

1932-2005

He didn't say much, but he said it loud. Your nod to Lando will be forever remebered.



Ralph Edwards

Ralph Edwards


1913-2005

The first person to embarass celebrities in public. So old that Bob Barker considered him a mentor.

Deadly thing of the week:
Grim ReaperSalt

mandyMandy Barnes' Tidbit of Death:

"The coroner has a fee of $200 for release unless it's a homicide or a child under 14. Babies are free!"

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Science Tuedays

So I've decided to start some sort of schedule to my blog to prevent me from being so damn lazy about it. I present to you SCIENCE TUESDAYS. This will hopefully be followed by a daily theme to each weekday allowing structure and joy to enter my blog. Most probably this will fall to the wayside when I find a video of someone getting hit in the Nads and have to post it on Tuesday.

Nonetheless, here they are. My three favorite science stories of the week:

#1. John Cleese gets a Lemur named after him.
CLEESE Lemur
Ministry of Silly Monkeys

#2. Scientists excavate "Godzilla" remains, and Tokyo moves to threat level "Olange"
Godzilla
Rook Out!


#3. Robo-Carp added to London Aquarium. It almost Immediately decides to go by the name "Murphy", and kicks a barracuda's ass.
robot_fish
Robo Carp

Monday, November 07, 2005

Focus on the Thighs...

thekid_familyorg

So as i was fucking about on the web, I found myself face to face with the most beloved/ despised sites conjoined by the evil furrow browed child pictured above.

Focus on The Family, Facists supreme, are sharing the cockeyed kid with none other than THE THIGHMASTER himself.

What's next?

Pink meets Anne Coulter?

Friday, November 04, 2005

Mandy Barnes on Freakin' NPR!

My old friend, Mandy "I'm a Funeral Director Y'all!" Barnes was featured on an NPR piece last weekend.


NPR Y'all!

mandy

Please Make sure to Visit her permanent home on the web:
Bubblegum Vernacular (Posted On my Sidebar)

Does anyone know whatever happened to UNC Alumni from the east coast?
Anyone?

That's what I thought.

In your face NY!

Why Boston Legal is quickly replacing LOST

BostonLegal

Danny Crane

CS assaults GWM in WeHo...total BS

In the time before sanitation, conservatism and the ruling class was made up of chinless, inbred landed gentry who could not possibly be bothered with the suffering of their own people. Now of course, conservatives are still chinless and inbred, but they are more and more becoming tragic, blind bumpkins or caricatures of wealth and corruption. Did I mention all conservatives are inbreds? Just making sure. The point I’m about to make here is a brutal one, and I’m just getting you kids accustomed to the tone.

Before I lay into the red, so to speak, let me back up to a pivotal moment in my life. I grew up in an insane little berg called Colorado Springs in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, at the foot of pikes peak and on the edge of reality.

city


Allow me to give you a crash course on CS. Colorado Springs is home to the largest percentage of Christian Organizations in the WORLD…yes, the WORLD. Among the cute, god-fearing orgs that make their home in Colorado Springs, is Focus on Das Family or “FOF”,as we called it, the mother of all goose stepping, right wing nut job action groups.
Jimmy Dobson, the leader of FOF makes Pat Robertson look like a gay hippy in comparison. Thanks to the influence of FOF, and Young Life and other faith-based groups, the whole town has jumped on the Jesus bandwagon and now the place looks like a hillbilly Vatican. Christian Bookstores, Christian Dry Cleaners, Christian Construction, Christian Phone Service (I think it doesn’t allow you to dial Jews and Catholics), Christian hot wings (Right Wings Only)…you get the point. Add to this religious fervor Fort Carson, Peterson Air Force Base, NORAD, and the Air Force Academy, and you get a place so conservative, that women who show their ankles are often stoned by clergy who can’t look at them for fear of becoming impure. Naturally this results in many innocent people being accidentally stoned by pastors in blindfolds. That however, is neither here nor there, and has even less to do with the anecdote I am about to shovel on to you.

My friend, my good friend , Matt Gregory is a toe-head bible thumper in the truest meaning of the world. Aryan to the hilt, and unmoving in his faith, he always wore a mustard seed necklace (Jesus Likes Condiments?) good guy though. His dad was a giant and gentle man who worked for focus on the family. Good sense of humor, both of them. Matt and I were in Advanced Placement US History, and we were learning about the civil rights movement. Progress in society in my book, is defined by the fact that even in the most backwoods bumpkin-filled hamlets in this country, most people can accept that segregation and Jim Crow laws were WRONG. So it was a pretty pleasing class when left and right could agree on redneck injustice. Our teacher Mr. Davis made reference to an asshole federal judge named William Cox, who released the defendants in the Mississippi burning case. My friend Matt was jarred.
“William Cox?” he spat out
“William HAROLD Cox?”
Mr. Davis nodded.
“But I thought he was a good guy. My dad knows him,”

I’m sure Matt went home and was given a bullshit line of “born again” or “different times” and he went on his merry way. But I know it hit him, as it should hit all right wingers. Yeah there’s Louis Farrakhan, and Peta and the Animal Liberation front, and numerous Eco-terrorists of marginal importance, Ultimately though, I would like to remind my right wing friends that you are more closely related to Nazis, segregationists, the inquisition, and the chinless inbred despots of yore. You guys share the scruples of the assholes at ENRON, everyone one of you who drives a HUMMER are responsible in part for the 2000 soldiers slain in Iraq, shortsightedness is an excuse you have been using too long. We are two opposing teams, and I take pride in being on the progressive team. Conservatism is inherently self destructive, and you can only stem or stop the flow of progress and humanism for so long before the damn breaks and the spirit of people overwhelms your selfish shortsightedness. Cowards, all of you, for not looking beyond the horizon, for fearing change and dwelling on differences and your own comfort rather than supplying the basic needs for the society and world that has given you so much.

A gay man in West Hollywood was on roller skates on Halloween. He and his friend were assaulted and beaten severely by YOUR right wing compatriots. Dismiss them as random thugs, but you’d be surprised as to how many of your views they share. You never hear about vegetarians stalking a meat eater and then bludgeoning him. You never hear of someone for socialized medicine attacking Insurance salesmen. Don’t fool yourselves. These are YOUR people. YOUR friends.

William Cox
Focus on the Family
Colorado Springs
Matt Gregory

YOU

Bottom of Page