And Now For A Really ... Old ... Shew

The Zimmermans are the latest British Invasion. Which wouldn't be unusual, did the band not have forty members.

Including a 90-year-old lead singer, a 99-year-old guitarist, and at least one centenarian.



Doing The Who ... Including smashing the instruments.

For contrast, here's a young lady guaranteed to induce lycanthropy in any male over the age of 12, complaining about modern love in an archaic style.



I know I'm a little heavy on the YouTube lately. Too damn busy doing stuff. But I'm cooking a post about humour and the Great Enemy. Maybe Wednesday.

Wild, Wild Life

Okay, I know I expressed considerable annoyance at the display of gratuitous violence on a YouTube video. I still feel like that.

But over at Darren Barefoot's place, I found this. It is rather violent. It may make you sad. But it's also a lesson in the triumph of democracy.



Go ahead, watch it all. It's eight minutes and you might just feel pretty good after watching it.

This is not especially violent, apart from the car crashes, but I've always enjoyed being vaguely disturbed by David Byrne.



Peace out, all you Friday people.

Hell Yeah!

If this president is not to be impeached, Congress may as well amend the Constitution to remove the impeachment clause. It will, in that case, have become as much an anachronism as prohibition.

Good damn article. Go read it.

Like the short ugly guy in a crowded college bar waving for attention, the word impeachment has managed to elbow its way into the public discourse.

Now it just needs to grab that lousy collection of pious pinheaded pandering pimps by their ankles and drag them, heads bumping, up the courthouse steps to their long-overdue rendezvous with history.

It's a shame that life in prison seems unlikely.


I'm pissed at some folks on YouTube
I was watching a series of videos branded as "anarchist art". I wish to thank the miserable ©µη7 who posted it for £µ©λing up my innocence and losing me my sweet girlish laughter.

As a boy delivering papers I used to tear up reading "320 Die in Plane Crash" type headlines. When I see people killed on historical programs such as "The Winds of War" I feel an echoing misery inside. Seeing people die on the news feels uncomfortably voyueristic and fills me with despair.

I never watched the Nick Berg or Daniel Pearl murder videos. I never wanted to watch as men who were either trying to do a job or more-or-less innocent bystanders had their heads sawn off according to the scriptural interpretations of fanatics and maniacs with all the self-awareness of a slug and none of the sex appeal. If there is a hell, then the one redeeming feature of my damnation will be the satisfaction I get watching Abu Zarkawi for a while, though I'll eventually turn away.

I do not feel it is neccesary to watch someone die. It proves nothing. Untimely death is a misfortune and a misery, doubly so when the death is a murder, be it the circus-sideshow hanging of Hussein, "execution" videos posted to Jihadist websites, or three seconds of Al-Qaeda fighters getting strafed.

So I was not prepared in the first seconds of this "art" to watch a captured possible Russian soldier having his head cut from his body with a knife by people purported to be Chechen rebels.

I missed at least three hours of sleep last night, trying to clear the image from my head. Who the hell thought that was appropriate? How did this advance the discussion? In what way might this poor soldier's murder, gleefully filmed by his sub-human killers and promulgated by the self-described "artist" help us understand his/her/its argument? It was supposed to be about America. What is there about a Chechen torture-murder party that's supposed to be useful in discussing America?

Damn it to hell anyway, @$$#0!3. I didn't need this.

Maybe you think I don't have the hide to surf the 'net unrestricted. But had there been some sort of warning I would have made an informed choice not to watch this POS video. I know what's going on out there. Seeing it in dying colour changes nothing; not one goddam thing.

The victim is still dead. I feel no more nor less helpless than I felt hearing about Pearl's and Berg's murders on the radio. I feel no smaller nor bigger than I do when I hear that one group of fanatics has murdered twenty members of another group. I get no less depressed and angry than I do when US GI's murder an entire family to cover up the rape of a fourteen-year-old. There is no damn difference between these events. Not one friggin' iota.

£µ©λ the "artist".

The Next Damn lolthing

Okay, so we've had lolcats, bats, rats, giraffes, grbls, gays, lolephants, walruses and, FSM help us, lolgoths.

So what could possibly be next? Well O Avid Fans, lollow me to present:

lolvis:



Props to Former Frontier Editor, whose posting of rockin' tune Elvis is Everywhere provided a certain amount of inspiration.

If you happen to have any lolvis sightings stowed away on your hard drive somewhere, send them to metro61 AT gmail DOT com, and let the world know you saw him.

God Hates Who Now ???

I note from The Stranger's blog, Slog, that Fred Phelch--sorry--Phelps and his army of @$$#0!3s are planning to roll out the goons and picket another upcoming funeral.

Phelch and his merry band own two websites that have the distinction, alongside Michael Savage (a repressed radio host) of being sites I will not link to. As preacher of Westboro Baptist rat-₤µ©λ Church, Phelch has made a career out of picketing, among others, the funerals of known homosexuals (including beaten-hung-on-a-fence-and-left-to-die-of-exposure Matthew Sheppard), and the funerals of American soldiers killed in the George Bush II sandbox.

Phelps contends that "God hates fags", and because America tolerates them, "God hates America." And he makes this clear at every opportunity. He tried to have a monument erected alongside the Matthew Sheppard monument reading "Matt Sheppard: Dead and in Hell since [date of the murder].

So he's a pleasant sort of chap.

But now he's clearly come even more unhinged. He's disappearing around the bend and those of us that live in this thing we call reality will no longer be able to see him at all.

Because he's out to picket the funeral of Jerry Falwell.

Yeah ... Jerry ₤µ©λing Falwell.

According to Phelps and Phriends he was too nice to homos. First let's briefly revisit the late great Falwell's feelings on gays:

Homosexuality is Satan's diabolical attack upon the family that will not only have a corrupting influence upon our next generation, but it will also bring down the wrath of God upon America.

That is, "God Hates Fags."

Now let's look at Phelps' press release:

There is little doubt that Falwell split Hell wide open the instant he died. The evidence is compelling, overwhelming, and irrefragable. To wit:
1. Falwell was a true Calvinistic Baptist when he was a young preacher in Springfield, Missouri, and sold his soul to Free-Willism (Arminianism) for lucre.

2. Falwell bitterly and viciously attacked Westboro Baptist Church because of WBC’s faithful Bible preaching—thereby committing the unpardonable sin—otherwise known as the sin against the Holy Ghost.

3. Falwell warmly praised Christ-rejecting Jews, pedophile-condoning Catholics, money-grubbing compromisers, practicing fags like Mel White, and backsliders like Billy Graham and Robert Schuler, etc. All for lucre—making him guilty of their sins.

Falwell is in Hell, Praise God!!

It is enough to make me think, very hard. There might be a god after all.

Who else could line up the opinion of Fred ₤µ©λing Phelps with that of Christopher Hitchens? I mean if, as that smarmy liar, fraud, and predatory crook Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition says, Hitchens' opinion might make the Falwell family cry in their corporate reports, then imagine how this faithful family might feel if Phelps shows up to tell them their dearly departed is in Hell!

If Phelps gets into a shoving match at the edge of the grave, accidentally tumbles into it and is buried alive atop whatever lead-lined box they're storing Falwell in until his Rapture happens, I will take it as a sign and immediately go to confession.

Please God, hear a humble atheist ...

Up At My House

We're up at three AM. And this post, O Avid Fan, is brought you by ibuprofen, or the wearing-out thereof, and the weather.

You see, I have just had further proof that whatever intelligence may be at work in the universe, exercise is not part of its plan for me.

Last week I got back on the track with the Sun Run training program, acquired through Raincoaster. I ran one minute, then walked four in alternation until I had done each eight times (Monday) or nine (Tuesday).

Since I have no reliable chronometer--and can't seem to remember timings or do simple maths while wheezing, I basically run half-a-track (200 m, speedy I ain't) and walk a complete one. In a typical workout I go about three miles. I stick to the track because I'm still pretty porky around the belly regions and I am at the age when the future of one's knees has hove into view over the horizon, and I want to keep mine.

And things have been fine. I took a puff of powerful corticosteroids before headng out, so to circumvent the multiplying villanies of nature in my lungs, and felt amazingly good afterward.

Yesterday morning I was in the shower. The steaming water caressed my nude body. My hand traced lesiurely down my stomach, leaving bubbles in its wake. In the spririt of Bill O'Reilly I seized hold my loofah and ...

Hang on, hang on ... sorry ... that's for the other blog ... Where were we? Ah yes.

I raised my right foot, the better for to reach it: I keep it all the way at the end of my right leg and while my legs are not short, my torso is unreasonably long, so it's a fairly long way from my soap-bearing hands. And there was a wee twinge. I swore.

Mme Metro inquired solicitously what I was whining about. Hesitantly putting said foot back on the floor of the tub, I regarded it and its mate with some suspicion. They're plotting against me, I am certain. I swear sometimes they trade toes when they think I'm not paying attention.

But I felt that my tarsal toilette had been sufficiently made that I might reasonably end the procedings, so I turned to turn off the taps.

Which was when my spine, which had been lurking behind me, undetected, betrayed me.

The sensation was not unlike a powerful surge of electricity through my lower back and what are delicately referred to as the "hips". Hips, my ass ... more precisely.

I found myself leaning against the shower wall, getting a faceful of pressurized water and unable to gulp in the huge painful gasps I needed. I could not straighten up, and for a few seconds felt in very real danger of drowning.

Mme Metro and I have a pre-arranged secret signal to indicate trouble in the household. It is used only under the gravest circumstances, such as when the cat's pissed on the floor again, or we're out of milk, or one of us hasn't done the dishes (Since I am, by royal decree, only permitted to do the dishes on alternate leap years, you can guess who I'm referring to). The person in difficulty bellows:

"Aaaah ₤µ©λ!"

I duly did so, which brought Mme:
"Why the hell are you making that dreadful racket?" she inquired solicitously.

I explained, and Mme rose to the challenge, as I knew she would. Turning off the water, she bore me in her strong arms like a baby to the chiropractor ... or maybe I just imagined that bit.

"You're hurt," sums up in essence the words of the bone-cracker upon examining my spine.

Fortunately most of my essential work had been done this week, and I need only have some stuff finished by Monday night to address the balance. I spent the day, essentially, reading.

However, as Mme was at work and my (newish) glasses were way over in the bedroom, I was forced to lie on the sofa and snooze.

Which is what I would much rather do than exercise anyway.

So can't we make a deal here, Lord? I'll lie on the couch and snooze, and you just melt away the fat, deal?

But answer cometh there none.

Anyway, this is the sort of thing I think of when the drugs wear off, the room is too hot and muggy, and I'm afraid to try to roll over.

The Bandwagon's Rolling

Raincoaster came up with the lolgoth meme.



I was going to submit this (which original I got from Worth1000.), but after her failure to declare my inadvertent entry in the Name That Fad contest the winner, I have decided that her judgement is shaky.

Maybe I'm Turning Into a Butterfly?

I don't get it. I went for a run yesterday for the first time in ages and felt fine. Today, mindful of injury, I did a short session of stretching.

So I'm now at my desk and every muscle seems to be radiating heat.

Maybe it's my fault--I mean, hot yoga's so damn expensive ... So I just exercise in a foil-lined room with an old microwave that I took the back and sides off of.

But seriously, whence cometh this strange affliction?

Ah-maybe that's it:



Or perhaps this is more like it:

St. Jerry?

Already people are starting to eulogize Jerry Falwell. I've heard him described as, among other things "a warm and wonderful human being." I just see another conservative cult getting started a la Ronald Reagan.

They say one should not speak ill of the dead. You are, after all, going to be in the very same situation yourself. Although I hope in my case there are more naked cheerleaders involved.

So instead I'll let the dead put you in the frame himself. Here's a couple of quotes from the Fuhrer of the Moral Majority:

"The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country."

-- Rev. Jerry Falwell

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way - all of them who have tried to secularize America - I point the finger in their face and say 'You helped this happen'."

--Rev. Jerry Falwell, on the World Trade Center attacks.

"AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals."

--Rev. Jerry Falwell

No word yet on why his just and loving God killed him, but he must have done something truly evil, huh?

Isn't It Nice When Stuff Just Works?

This morning I was pouring milk onto my mini-wheats when I noticed a nasty odour on the morning air.

"That garbage under the sink has had it," I thought. Mme Metro and I live in a hotter climate than much of the rest of the country, and we have to be very regular about things like the garbage.

So I hoisted a spoonful of milk and cereal into my mouth and, for what I believe is the first time in my life, was faced with the eternal question:

Spit or swallow?

The milk, dear readers, was off. Not Jack-Black-chunks-pouring-into-the-coffe-cup-funny-off. It just smelled bad. What it tasted like was something I'll leave to your imagination.

Oh okay--a bit like yoghurt.

I strode to the fridge, wrenched open the door, and plucked the gallon plastic jug (since you can't find bagged milk in this benighted land) from the fridge door.

My eye sought the due date. Already in my mind I was sending Mme Metro up to the grocery to get a new jug: "The due date's May 26th," she'd say, "And it's already off."

But the due date was May 13th.

Today being the 14th, I experienced an odd satisfaction at how well the system had functioned, as I made my toast and sipped a cup of black coffee.



Now I'm curious: what's the grossest thing you ever took a bite of and swallowed?--without ever seeing it again.

The Gods Love Nothing So Much As Hubris

So yesterday I observed that my wee bike, the which I was boasting of riding in my last post, had a wee problem.

In the course of attmpting to fix this problem I managed to strip the threads on the wee shaft that holds the rear wheel in place, more or less.

Of course the part is available in great quantities--in some other wee dimension, I'm sure.

Whee ...

Rust Won't Take a Polish

My Avid fans (all three of them--or is it four nowadays? I forget) know that I am posessed of a Yamaha U7 (illustration below). It has been near the centre of my thoughts of late.

There was the "Show 'n' Shine" held this weekend on a local main street.
It was sponsored by the local strip bar, a place I am ashamed to admit to not yet having visited. I'm a strong believer in supporting the arts, if not the artists themselves, but since we replaced the dollar bill with the "loonie" and the two with the "twonie" it's become much pricier to fill a g-string.

And of course the event was dominated by the Hell's Angels and the Harley-Davidsons, which totally blew it for me. In the entire street full of bikes there was one loverly Enfield India, WWII vintage, a single 1980-ish Honda CB 650 Custom, like the one I still technically own, and an absolutely gorgeous BSA. There were some other Hondas, but to tell them from the Hogs one had to look really closely. Polished, porky bikes.

The rest were all H-Ds. Mostly wearing several thousand dollars worth of surplus hardware, usually chrome. The "West-Coast Chopper" mentality definitely has taken over. No Indians, no Kawi triples or '60s Suzuki racing twins. Just pile after pile of shiny, $20,000 bikes. Not even a single hard-tail or '80s AMF-made Harley (made with the famous porous oil pan).

The booths all sold leather (none of it particularly interesting leather), t-shirts, shades or knives. No parts, no tools, no manuals. There were some paint care products and graphics artists, but nothing else. Which told me all I needed to know.

But for fun I looked round at the crowd. There were a couple of real scooter tramps, shaggy, unshaven, eyes red from the road and the glare. But most of them were wearing about $1000 worth of clean, new leather gear. Their tattoos were, often as not, strategically high on arm or thigh so as to be concealed by a business suit. Gang colours were tastefully hidden, and presumably the Angels with arrest warrants stayed clear and let the lawyers and merchants get on with giving them legitimacy.


I'm sure there are a few riders who take their paint care seriously. But the H-Ds and lookalikes are about blending your identity with your bike.

I was so tempted to bring my old U7 down. It has a rubber-mounted spotlight in place of the headlight. The paint is flecked with rust, at idle the engine clatters with what I suspect is a loose piston slapping around on worn-out bearings (I'd feel a bit better if the bike had more than one piston). The spoked wheels are brown with rust and the pot metal trimmings are pitted. Half the bike was cut off after some unknown accident at least two decades ago and rewelded on again, then piled high with bondo. The leg shield is missing.

I felt like putting on my 1975 fibreglass ping-pong-ball helmet and riding downtown, then parking it next to the shiny bikes. Then when people stared I'd explain:

"Harley-Davidson is about choosing to buy a motorcycle for the same reason you choose your jeans, or your brand of smokes. It's about playacting attitude, and about image. That's not what real riders do.

Do you think I ride this bike to satisfy my ego? Does this bike say 'Check it out ... I may be forty and a corporate attorney, but I own a shiny big bike!'?

I ride this bike 'cos I love to ride.

I don't need a t-shirt, a bandanna, or a tattoo to tell the world.

All I have to do is show up on my single-cylinder, 80 cc, thirty-year-old street rat."

Then I realized what was up. Of course the scooter tramps weren't there. The posers pose.

The riders are all out riding.

Possibly My All-Time Favourite

Headline from The Onion

Cosmopolitan Releases 40-Year Compendium: 812,683 Ways To Please Your Man

While you're here, as long as you have nothing better to do (and let's face it, if you did wouldja be here?)



I thought you might enjoy the video to the theme song from Weird Al Yancovic's UHF. I know no-one actually watches the videos, but it's worth a look. Count how many 80's icons you can identify from his imitations.

While we're on the subject ...

Well actually we're nowhere near it, but hell, here it is anyway. From the BBC:

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!


Harry's tips - " 'terpsichore' is pronounced terpsickery, 'lichen'is pronounced liken, 'melpomene' is pronounced melpominy, 'Feoffer 'is pronounced feffer, 'victual' is pronounced vittle, 'gunwale' is pronounced gunnell, 'groats' is pronounced grits."

This poem was taken from the BBC, to whom it was submitted by one Harry Nutall of Darwen, and apparently has not yet been missed.

Finally a Portrait

Of the elusive Raincoaster, possibly?



I don't know who the woman is ...

Totally ripped off of Octopia, whence I found it grace of PZ Meyers.

The Workplace is an Ass: Times Two!

I posted earlier about the situation at work.

Five of us were putting out written content enough for six. This week a power struggle arose between marketing and the writing department over a senior editor. The senior editor had stepped down to look after an ill relative and was working, relatively speaking, part time, although still putting in respectable hours.

So the office decided to transfer her to marketing. Marketing's writing is hopeless, and the sole employee responsible for vetting the copy excreted there is treated much like a traffic bollard is treated by cycle couriers. So I think the idea was that the editor could whip them into following the process, and free up the writer to produce more. More anything. Marketing likes more, and it's rare to see a piece of paper from that department that doesn't contain it, usually in red and in one of those starburst graphics, sometimes in captials.

Fine and dandy. But that still leaves us with four people in writing. And someone has to take over the three items that senior editor was overseeing. So my boss asked management for another bod to help out. The US office came to the meeting and hemmed and hawed while we said:

"There are five people. Together they produce as much as six people. If I take one person away, how much more will they have to produce, given that we have another issue of the magazine coming out next month, a pair of calendars following that which we've been asked to sit in on the meetings for, and at least three new long-term projects in the pipeline?"

I explained their solution in the earlier post: Break down the load into smaller units, and give everyone more units.

The head of the US writing office is a spastic, hyperactive ex-legal pro. He's been turning out phenomenal amounts of copy--at least 60 pages a month of dense legalese on complex issues, plus at least 400 additional words per day or so. Granted it's a superhuman achievment, but that's the point, really.

This week the office hired him two "sub-editors". Two.

Both ex-lawyers. They will take over the writing, between them, of a minimum of forty pages per month, edited by Twitch.

How much does one have to pay ex-lawyers to work for a twitching maniac? Given that a lazy lawyer could make $120,000 US simply by showing up for work and sharpening pencils.

And how many writers of at least my calibre could they have hired for that money?

I have yet to receive word on whether my salary demand will be approved.

Today I'm blogging at work, and (a rare event) I feel not the least bit guilty.


Speaking of asses--the law may or not be one, but the witness sure was.

The National Post's journalism is usually of a high calibre, even though it's opinions are rabidly right.

Nonetheless, the paper is unusually honest, given its bent. Today Andrew Coyne shreds the arguments offered by the Harper government regarding it's "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding torture of those the Canadian Forces captures in Afghanistan.

But let me be perfectly clear: We don't need the Afghans to tell us what's going on. We have just signed an agreement, allowing us visitation rights whenever we want on alternate Sundays.

That is to say, we are in the process of negotiating such an agreement. That is to say, the Liberals already had an agreement: Blame them if it's not working. Or rather, we don't need an agreement: We already have all the access we could ever want.

Not that we even need access, you understand. We have no evidence that any torture is going on in any jail in Afghanistan. That is to say, we are unaware of any reports to that effect, other than the one our own Foreign Affairs officials prepared for us, whose existence we officially deny. Oh, and one by Human Rights Watch. Also Amnesty International.

But really, you should go read the original.

This business is starting to look less like the Canadian answer to Abu Ghraib (though it should at least convince the Bushies we're not "soft on people who may not be guilty of anything"), and more like the flock-of-chickens display the Republicans are putting on around the Gonzales attorney firings.

By the way: found any of those "lost" e-mails yet, you bunch of scumbuckets?

Okay, Quick Li'l Question

Can you think of a reason it might be illegal for someone to post the following series of numbers?

0C 88 65 36 5C 65 14 8D B5 3E 47 D9 20 11 9F 90

Okay. Now what if that sequence was backward? Whereupon it might co-incidentally look suspiciously like the "secret" key to HD-DVD, fabled in song and story?

And blog.

No reason I ask.

Swarm, mofos, swarm.

Lord Browne's Body

Sing it with me:

Lord Browne's company has apparently had enough
He liked his mighty bonuses, but now he's £µ©λing off ...
'Cos sucking others' dicks is quite improper for a toff,
But killing's always on ...

Without his $30 mil in bonuses, no less.

And why?

Guilt over the 15 dead men at the Texas City explosion and fire, caused by his cheapness and willingness to cut corners on safety?

Nope.

Humiliation at the enormous bonus he got while BP crude spilled sweetly across Alaska?

Nope.

Lying to a judge about his sex life?

Yup

There's so much wrong with this it's impossible for me to offer further comment. So I'll let the Houston Chronicle's Loren Steffy handle the job.

Unlike Browne, he's clearly up for it ... the work, I mean.


There IS one thing that might be said here: George W. Bush is personally responsible for at least 500,000 deaths, personally organized the sale of America to Halliburton and co, and for some unknown reason is still allowed to decide what's going to happen next. I've been wondering: when the hell are we going to hear the word "impeach" from Congress?

Well, in a country where lying about having sex (gay or Clinton) is still a bigger crime than murder, I suppose it could take a while.

Wonder if Bush has any interns?

May Day

And pay day was yesterday. The two are linked.

The official Day of Mourning, for workers whose deaths were apparently neccesary to advance the growth of the economy, was Saturday.

I'm not asking you to run out and donate money to something, or to make a comittment to something, or believe in something.

Just today, look at someone you see in the hall all the time. Say "hi" to the silent woman who cleans your office. Smile to the kid who hands you your McBurger. And say "thanks".

Because really, it's all about respect. Most workers will stick around if they get more respect from management than slaves or prisoners.

Because that's what management wants. Consider the people who are rushing to hire chain gang labour wherever human rights law is weak enough to allow such abuse. Consider the fine state of Colorado, home of the Jesus industry in the USA and thus also one of the finest deposits of pure irony around. No need to work for it, it lies right on the surface.

Colorado "declared war" on illegal immigration (what the hell is it that in America, the solution is always another damn "war on" something?). So given that the whole country is screaming for labour, and that many states weren't stupid enough to actively declare war on their agricultural workforce, there was speculation that 40 percent of the workforce might by-pass the state. The farmers complained that they were $#!7 out of luck when it came to harvest time.

The answer?


A program someone should have called "Inside-Out"

The program has made headlines well beyond Colorado, and not because of the proposal to use prison labor. Rather, it's the scheme's easy equivalence between undocumented workers and U.S. citizens who've been convicted of crimes and stripped of their rights. Sure, nativists long have tried to persuade us that crossing the border without papers is equivalent to committing a capital crime. But the fact that a group of Colorado farmers has turned to prisoners to meet labor needs says a whole lot about why so many U.S. employers prefer illegal immigrant labor in the first place — it's cheap, dependable yet impermanent, and, well, they have no rights either.

--Gregory Rodriguez in the LA Times

So on May Day, look that working slob in the eye, and think for a minute about who he or she is.


A little respect. That's all.


Oh--and here's a better song, from the Pretenders.