Thursday, September 28, 2006

I'm glad I do my drinking in NYC

Wed Mar 22, 6:05 PM ET

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Reuters) - Texas has begun sending undercover agents into bars to arrest drinkers for being drunk, a spokeswoman for the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission said on Wednesday.

The first sting operation was conducted recently in a Dallas suburb where agents infiltrated 36 bars and arrested 30 people for public intoxication, said the commission’s Carolyn Beck.

Being in a bar does not exempt one from the state laws against public drunkenness, Beck said.

The goal, she said, was to detain drunks before they leave a bar and go do something dangerous like drive a car.
“We feel that the only way we’re going to get at the drunk driving problem and the problem of people hurting each other while drunk is by crackdowns like this,” she said.

“There are a lot of dangerous and stupid things people do when they’re intoxicated, other than get behind the wheel of a car,” Beck said. “People walk out into traffic and get run over, people jump off of balconies trying to reach a swimming pool and miss.”

She said the sting operations would continue throughout the state.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

When The President Talks To God

This is "Bright Eyes". Looks like he really wants to be a young Bob Dylan but I guess that's a good thing! How the heck did he managed to get this song on Network TV though?

Monday, September 25, 2006

Buddha ON a Beerglass





The Buddha tats are finished, and have been for months. Just never got round to putting pics up so here they are. It took about 15 hours in 5 sessions. The handpoke shading takes forever but like everything that takes forever, it was worth it. The pictures don't really do it justice as Shinji's shading has minute detail and really close up, it looks like a watercolor painting.

The Japanese letters are the symbols for the Amitabha Buddha.

Saturday, September 23, 2006

Eat your Veggies

Unlike some, I am always talking about how the media is so right-wing and so on and so on, well for once I find myself agreeing with a conservative TV watchdog about this liberal monstrosity! Apparently NBC is censoring all references to God from a kids show called "Veggietales".

Well, I never......

If your kids can't learn about Jesus from a talking cucumber then who can they learn from??? I say let the asparagus of freedom ring!!!! Didn't the Easter Bunny lay chocolate eggs in the bible too Mummy? I'm so confused!

Improving the Karmic Universe

I had an idea on how to improve American Idol (Pop Idol in the UK) - we run the competition as usual but rejected contestants are tarred and feathered then beaten by dwarves in vinyl mini-skirts armed with cricket bats.

Eventually we pick our winner but instead of giving them a recording contract or whatever the fuck they win, we surgically remove the winner's vocal chords and transplant them in their bumhole. They are then forced to sing the national anthem at every major sports event for the rest of their lives.

It sounds dreadfully negative and violent doesn't it? Well actually, I'd argue that we are, in a way, doing our bit to improve the state of the karmic universe.

National Anthems would sound embarrasing and would be done away with. As a result of this we will destroy rabid patriotism and "my country's better than your country" vibes everywhere. Wars will end and we would never have to listen to any of those boring songs like "God Save The Queen" and "The Star Spangled Banner" ever again. We can replace them with farting baby videos like the one below and the sun will shine like never before.




Friday, September 15, 2006

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

The Wee Yin will not sleep in her cot - she will only sleep if she is in the bed with Mum and Dad. As much as we love this, we have been trying to get her to go down in her own bed so other people can put her to sleep if we are not there. It's harder than you think!

We have tried a bunch of different methods but everyone meets the same reaction - she will lie sleeping and relaxed for about 5 minutes then the hands will start to move like John Travolta shooting for the disco lights in Saturday Night Fever. Seconds later her eyes will start moving and her mouth will start to grimace like her bed is made out of broken glass (it's not)... next thing you know the screaming starts and you shoot out of your own bed like you just discovered George Dubya naked under your covers. It's a helluva way to start a night!

We have concluded that she loves our body heat - it is the only thing it can really be as her basinet (cot) is physically bolted onto the side of our bed and she gets to feel all the movement we make in there as well.

Oh the joys of parenthood!...........

Crikey!

I know I am a bit late with this post as he has been dead for about a week - but I have been busy getting myself in trouble in some of the online forums I frequent over the human formally known as Steve Irwin, a.k.a The Crocodile Hunter.

It started on my hometown list, the jclist (Jersey City), when I posted that Steve Irwin was in a way just proving Darwin right after all these years and that the "survival of the fittest" applies greatly in this case. My basic argument about this guy - and let me point out before I start, that I in no way wanted him dead - was that, in a way he was like a gazelle that decided it was going to taunt lions for a living. He had to come to grief eventually.

I then got in trouble for asking wether people wanted to see the footage of his death (I don't). because in my opinion the kind of people who watched the show secretly wanted to see him getting bitten or injured, in the same way that some people watch motor racing just to see if anyone crashes.

Christ! The amount of abuse I got for that comment was unbelieveable! Apparently there is no-one out there that rubbernecks! If that's the case why does the highway slow down on the opposite side from an accident?

So I stand corrected! Everyone watched The Crocodile Hunter for the educational value alone. This would explain why it was so popular not like those boring old David Attenborough documentaries!!! In case you can't tell... I'm being sarcastic here.

To me, and I did sometimes watch the show but mainly to see if he was going to do something stupid and get bitten, the Crocodile Hunter was educational but dumbed down educational. He could tell you all sorts of facts and figures but all you will remember is how close the animal came to biting his balls off. Shame really.....

On the subject of dumbed down, I've also been following the story of Mike Judge's new film Idiocracy, here is a clip from the NY Times about it:

From NY Times:

Shying Away From Degeneracy
By DAN MITCHELL
Published: September 9, 2006

THE new film “Idiocracy” sounds like a sure winner. It was directed by Mike Judge, creator of the animated TV series “Beavis and Butt-head” and “King of the Hill,” and director of the sleeper movie hit “Office Space.” It stars Luke Wilson. It has received good reviews from the few critics who, despite the efforts of 20th Century Fox, have been able to see it.

So why did Fox, after sitting on the movie for two years before releasing it Sept. 1, decide not to market the film, opting instead to open it quietly in only 130 theaters and then quickly send it to video? Judging by the online reaction, there are at least two possible reasons.

The first is that the film is simply too stark a critique of American culture, or even that it is a cautionary tale about low-intelligence dysgenics (essentially, overbreeding among the stupid). The movie depicts a future in which everyone has become so dense and culturally lowbrow that Mr. Wilson’s character — an average guy from the present day who travels by accident hundreds of years forward in time — is a relative genius. Why, asks David Weigel on Reason magazine’s Hit and Run blog (reason.com), do “movies that exploit dumbed-down American culture get wide releases while a comedy making light of that, by the creator of ‘Beavis and Butt-head,’ is getting canned?”

He points to another blogger, Ilkka Kokkarinen, who writes that the implications of the movie’s theme — flatulence jokes aside — “are so immensely serious that it is simply unimaginable that any studio boss would take the slightest chance of becoming the next Mel Gibson over the idea that society of stupid people is worse than a society of smart people." (sixteenvolts.blogspot.com) Populists — defenders of the little guy — would not stand for it, Mr. Kokkarinen says.

Others theorize that Fox disowned the film because it makes fun not only of Fox News — the studio’s sister division — but also of Starbucks, Fuddruckers and other companies that may advertise with one or more media outlets of Fox’s owner, the News Corporation.

The blog FishBowlLA quotes Luke Thompson, a movie reviewer for E! Online, as saying, “some of the sponsors may well have been unhappy with the way their products are placed, and made some phone calls to higher-ups” (mediabistro.com).

A Fox spokeswoman told The Austin American-Statesman that the studio’s handling of the movie was “an executive decision from the chairman,” and would not elaborate.

Saturday, September 09, 2006

September 11th 2006

The baby has started smiling and it is great to watch her slowly gain control of her body. She smiled when I kissed her as I was leaving to go to work this morning. It made my day! However I'm not sure she meant it as she immediately followed up that smile by clenching her fist and proceeded to punch herself in the face!

The 5th anniversary of 9/11 is fast approaching and every morning as I get off the train at Ground Zero I am noticing more and more TV satellite trucks parked across the street. Today they were holding a rally for the 9/11 first responders who are sick and dying from the toxic dust they inhaled cleaning up the WTC site. The City of New York has shamed itself in pretending these people don't exist and the federal Government were the ones who said the air was good enough to breathe so where do the loyal members of NYPD and FDNY turn? Nowhere left but to fight it out in the media. I watched the speakers for a while, all dolled up for the TV cameras and I felt pretty sick myself.

It's such a shame, 9/11 will be remembered as a seminal event in the history of the world but it seems like the generation that actually lived through it has learned nothing - other than the fact that our leaders are lying murderers and cheats.

It feels strange to be in NYC on September 11th. The day is really burned into your mind and you remember strange things. I remember how blue the sky was, the smell of airline fuel drifting across NY harbor to Brooklyn, miles away from the site. I remember Abdul, our Lebanese next door neighbor standing on his porch with his son. He was horrified. His kids played on the street outside our house all the time. After 9/11 the kids were never allowed out on their own again.

I listened to the song "Radio Baghdad" by Patti Smith today. This song says it all to me.
.

Suffer not Your neighbor's affliction
Suffer not Your neighbor's paralysis
But extend your hand Extend your hand
Lest you vanish in the city And be but a trace
Just a vanished ghost And your legacy
All the things you knew Science, mathematics, thought
Severely weakened Like irrigation systems
In the tired veins forming From the Tigris and Euphrates
In the realm of peace All the world revolved
All the world revolved Around a perfect circle
City of Baghdad City of scholars
Empirical humble Center of the world
City in ashes City of Baghdad
City of Baghdad Abrasive aloof

Oh, in Mesopotamia Aloofness ran deep
Deep in the veins of the great rivers
That form the base Of Eden
And the tree The tree of knowledge
Held up its arms To the sky
All the branches of knowledge All the branches of knowledge
Cradling Cradling
Civilization In the realm of peace
All the world revolved Around a perfect circle
Oh Baghdad Center of the world
City of ashes With its great mosques
Erupting from the mouth of god Rising from the ashes like
a speckled bird Splayed against the mosaic sky
Oh, clouds around We created the zero
But we mean nothing to you You would believe
That we are just some mystical tale We are just a swollen belly
That gave birth to Sinbad, Scheherazade We gave birth
Oh, oh, to the zero The perfect number
We invented the zero And we mean nothing to you
Our children run through the streets
And you sent your flames Your shooting stars
Shock and awe Shock and awe
Like some, some Imagined warrior production
Twenty-first century No chivalry involved
No Bushido

Oh, the code of the West Long gone
Never been Where does it lie?
You came, you came Through the west
Annihilated a people And you come to us
But we are older than you You come you wanna
You wanna come and rob the cradle
Of civilization And you read yet you read
You read Genesis You read of the tree
You read of the tree Beget by god
That raised its branches into the sky Every branch of knowledge
Of the cradle of civilization

Of the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates
Oh, in Mesopotamia Aloofness ran deep
The face of Eve turning What sky did she see
What garden beneath her feet The one you drill
You drill Pulling the blood of the earth
Little droplets of oil for bracelets Little jewels
Sapphires You make bracelets
Round your own world We are weeping tears
Rubies We offer them to you
We are just Your Arabian nightmare
We invented the zero But we mean nothing to you
Your Arabian nightmare

City of stars City of scholarship
Science City of ideas
City of light City
City of ashes That the great Caliph
Walked through His naked feet formed a circle
And they built a city A perfect city of Baghdad
In the realm of peace And all the world revolved
And they invented And they mean nothing to you
Nothing to you Nothing

Go to sleep Go to sleep my child
Go to sleep And I'll sing you a lullaby
A lullaby for our city A lullaby of Baghdad
Go to sleep Sleep my child
Sleep Sleep...
Run Run...

You sent your lights Your bombs
You sent them down on our city Shock and awe
Like some crazy t.v. show

They're robbing the cradle of civilization
They're robbing the cradle of civilization
They're robbing the cradle of civilization

Suffer not The paralysis of your neighbor
Suffer not But extend your hand

"Radio Bagdad" by Patti Smith

Friday, September 01, 2006

Darwin's Nightmare Redux

Well a couple of weeks ago I wrote about the documentary "Darwin's Nightmare", read the original post here. This morning at 5.41AM someone posted this comment:

Anonymous said...

NO

what is said in the documentary is no true..

Just try to check out this website

http://www.darwinsnightmare.net you will see the truth.

So I checked out the link and it is a website devoted to refuting the claims in the documentary. Wow! Does this film bother someone so much that they are trawling the net for every little comment made about it just to make sure we get another point of view? I am a blogger with an actual readership of about 10 fucking people for god's sake!

Boy, did you just make me feel important!!!

When I googled the website itself, apparently it was set up by the government of Tanzania to make us feel like we have been lied to. Well just for the sake of argument I suggest that in the spirit of healthy discourse I recommend once again that you see this film because if someone has hired some poor bugger to sit at a computer all day refuting every two-bit blogger like myself who liked the movie, then there must be something to it after all.