But I couldn't resist...

peep this yo

Why, oh why must I feed the trolls?

Twas the night before Fitzmas, and all through the land
Not a lefty could sleep with indictments at hand!
The bloggers were frantically cutting and pasting
With visions of the charges neo-cons would be facing

OK, I've embarassed myself enough.Merry Fitzmas, everybody.

This is Jacqueline Saburido on September 19, 1999.

This is her and her Father, 1998.

This is her on Vacation in Venezuela.

Birthday party as a child.

At a party with friends.

The car in which Jacqueline traveled. She was hit by another car that was driven by a 17-year old male student on his way home after drinking a couple of hard packs with his friends. This was in December 1999.

After the accident Jacqueline has needed over 40 operations.

Jacqueline was caught in the burning car and her body was heavily burnt during around 45 seconds.

With her Father, 2000.

Getting treatment.

Three months after accident.

Without a left eyelid Jacquie needs eye drops to keep her vision.

Now 20 year old, he cannot forgive himself for driving drunk on that night three years ago. He's aware of devastating Jacqueline Saburidos life.

Not everyone who gets hit with a car dies. This picture was taken 4 years after the accident and the doctors are still working on Jacqueline, whose body was covered with 60% severe burnings.

This is real, and if you dont re-post this, you're a jerk, seriously. Please send this to as many people as you can.

People I like and why I like them:

Anarcho-Goth (701004) - a personification of everything I don't hate about libertarians-with-a-small-l

BandwidthHog (257320) - intelligent and well rounded... and a bassist!

billstewart (78916) - intelligent, balanced... and his website links to weed-growing instructions!

capoccia (312092) - intelligent, informed, and almost always on the right side.

Catbeller (118204) - getting modded "flamebait" while saying things I think need saying is bonus points in my book.

ceejayoz (567949) - Strident, incisive, motivated and informed. The first member yet listed of a subset of my friends list hereafter referred to as the SIMI club, aka the Righteous Brothers. Big ups.

cyranoVR (518628) - Another member of the SIMI club. Not always right but always on the right side.

Eccles (932) - honestly can't remember why i friended him, but he's friends with Ethelred and Lithron and has a low UID... so I must have had a good reason at one point.

Ethelred Unraed (32954) - A true joy to converse with. Never lets his anger at what's wrong get in the way of his equal joy at what's right. Moral and intelligent.

FidelCatsro (861135) - Looking back over my life, many of the people labeled as "mentally not like the rest of us" tend to be some of the most interesting people, and those with whom I feel a deeper resonance. Fidel is truly courageous.

ForThePeople (774513) - Almost always right about almost everything. Unfortunately doesn't post very much.

gmhowell (26755) - frighteningly well-rounded. Righteous when appropriate. Always interesting.

Jeremiah Cornelius (137) - Paul is dead, man, miss him, miss him... Founding member of SIMI club. Sometimes blamed on malice what could be attributed to laziness.

js7a (579872) - Another member of SIMI club. Keep on keepin on.

kagemusha (87101) - my first and favorite bass player and a great friend. Wish he posted and keep him friended in the hopes that someday he will.

laughingcoyote (762272) - +5 insightful

lithron (88998) - He knows the difference between hardcore, happy hardcore, and digital hardcore, which is honestly more than I can say for probably anybody else on slashdot. Fellow southerner and a good guy to boot.

nizo (81281) - Intelligent, thoughtful. Good contributions to almost any topic.

Philip K Dickhead (906971) - SIMI club member. Proof that there is intelligence above UID 800000.

Profane MuthaFucka (574406) - I love a liberal who isn't afraid to race to the bottom.

revscat (35618) - This dude kicks ass. Again, not always right but always on the right side.

RobertB-DC (622190) - Used to be really interesting to read, but hardly posts anymore. Oh well, I like him anyway.

scrod (136965) - Shameless Apple fanboy. Like him anyway.

squiggleslash (241428) - Member of SIMI. Always thought-provoking.

Stargoat (658863) - Most recent addition to my friends list. Able to discuss topics of disagreement nicely, which matters to me.

the_mad_poster (640772) - If you have to ask, you'll never know. If this guy sold t-shirts I would buy one.

tomhudson (43916) - Heart firmly in the right place. Good thinker with a strong moral code, no matter how much he might deny it.

Weaselmancer (533834) - +5 insightful

XopherMV (575514) - another retiree. I keep hoping for a comeback, but it's probably not going to happen.

(Stolen from a post I made in TMP's journal...)

Number of Google hits for:

"bush blames" - 40,200
            "bush blames clinton" - 310
            "bush blames CIA" - 230
            "bush blames congress" - 226
            "bush blames locals" - 172
            "bush blames Democrats" - 161
            "bush blames media" - 149
            "bush blames Iraqi" - 147
            "bush blames Carter" - 88
            "Bush blames Reagan" - 16

"bush denies" - 33,200
            "bush denies" +drug - 9810
            "bush denies global warming" - 2490
            "bush denies" +drunk - 750
            "bush denies allegation" - 92
            "bush denies responsibility" - 72

"bush takes blame" - 240
"bush admits fault" - 108
"bush admits responsibility" - 32

Clearly, the President is infallible... right? Either that, or Google is a leftie, pinko, communist bunch of terrorist lovers.

9/5/05

I've been very reluctant to write this kind of thing down. I believe strongly that NOBODY - no matter where they might be on the political spectrum - should be trying to politicize this disaster. It's simply a humanitarian crisis of proportions seen in the US only about once or twice per century. However, I've been noticing so many things (thanks in large part to my friends on Slashdot and elsewhere) about this disaster that don't sit right with me (besides, obviously, the thousands of dead and thousands of traumatized), I've decided I'm going to start making note of them and compiling them.

I'd really like to be clear about one thing: I'm not pointing fingers. I'm not accusing anybody of anything. I'm not trying to place blame - honestly, I think the blame speaks for itself. All I'm doing is pointing out simple observations. I believe one of the best ways we can empower ourselves as citizens is to be aware of what's going on around us, and that begins with observing.

If anyone has direct observations which are in contradiction to mine, please make them known here.

Here goes:

- Thousands of people died in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, yet, as far as I can tell, not a single flag was lowered to half staff until Chief Justice Rehnquist died. (pointed out by Ceejayoz) CNN was saying today that, starting tomorrow, flags will be lowered for both Rehnquist AND the hurricane victims - many of whom have been dead for a week.

- Apparently, there was a lot of equipment any many workers moved into the flooded parts of New Orleans right before a Presidential press conference, most of which was removed afterwards. This was reported by a US Sentaor, German news agency ARD, and Dutch news agency ZDF. (pointed out by js7a)

- Halliburton has been hired to perform some storm cleanup in Mississippi.

- Evacuation of refugees from the New Orleans Superdome was halted so that the 700 people in the Regency Hotel, who were clean, dry, and fed, could be boarded onto busses ahead of those in the Superdome, who'd been wallowing in their own filth for days. (pointed out by CyranoVR)

- Refugees in the Superdome were locked in by authorities, and those who walked out of the stricken area on foot were forced to turn mack at a military checkpoint. (pointed out by CyranoVR)

- President Bush, FEMA Director Michael Brown, and Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff have all made statements to the effect that help was never asked for, or wasn't asked for appropriately. In fact, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco made this request a day before the storm made landfall. (pointed out by CyranoVR and gmhowell)

- The New Orleans Times-Picayune published a series of articles detailing how funding for Army Corps of Engineers projects to strengthen and rebuild many of the levees which have since broken was pulled in 2003-4 due, according to the Corps, to spending pressure caused by three things: the war in Iraq, Homeland Security, and the Bush tax cuts. (pointed out by CyranoVR)

- While disaster and tragedy unfolded on the Gulf Coast, President Bush apparently hung out with country singers, strummed guitars, went to birthday parties, and gave speeches about Medicare and the war in Iraq. The author of Hughes for America makes no bones about his political leanings, but all the photos and all the captions are from AP and Reuters, whom I consider to be credible sources. (pointed out by CyranoVR)

- FEMA has apparently retroactively changed its website to say that the date that Hurrican Katrina was first "declared" (whatever that means, it was a hurricane a long time before it hit the gulf) was August 29. Their page previously stated that it was declared August 27, as shown in this cache. (pointed out by Phillip K. Dickhead)

- Citizens of New Orleans were, at one point, chanting "where's George Bush?" The BBC was the only TV network to show it. (pointed out by Siva Vaidhyanathan on Altercation)

- FEMA Director Michael Brown, by his own admission, was completely uninformed of the horrific conditions in the Superdome and the convention center until he heard it on news reports. He also states that he was not aware that both buildings were to be used as "staging areas" until this same news report. It had been reported at least 24 hours in advance of Katrina making landfall that this was exactly what was planned. In fact, he seems to be completely uninformed about many aspects of this disaster.

- Police in New Orleans are so overwhelmed that over 200 have walked off the job, and at least two have committed suicide.

- According to Republicans, the President's plan for dealing with any political fallout from this catastrophe will be to blame state and local officials.

Again, this is just what I see going on around me. It certainly isn't what I want to see. My thoughts and prayers go out to those poor, poor people. Words can't describe how much they didn't deserve this. Hopefully those still alive have seen the worst of it already.

I'm compliling a list of things about the Katrina aftermath that I find telling. I'm trying very hard to avoid pointing fingers because I believe strongly that nobody, including those who have a legitimate reason to, should make political hay out of a human catastrophe of these proportions. That list will probably be ready to post tomorrow. But in the course of doing some "research" (ie Googling), I happened to do a Google search for the phrase "Bush blames".

And this is just from page one of 10.300 results. Granted, some are satirical (so I won't quote those), and many are from left-leaning sites. But over ten thousand results?!

Bush blames Carter, Reagan and Clinton for 9/11.

Bush blames Congress and the GOP for underfunding anti-terrorism programs.

Bush blames the dot-com boom for the sharp increase in corporate crimes and scandals. (No, deregulation had nothing to do with it...)

Bush blames Palestinians for middle-east deadlock.

Bush blames China for surge in oil prices.

Bush blames Cindy Sheehan for bad polls.

Bush blames lawyers for rising health care costs.

Is there anything that he will ever admit is his fault?

-----------------------

UPDATE 9/11/2005: The same search now yields 40,200 results. Gee, I wonder why?

Please God
She owns me still... ...she owns me still.

How can it be?
Shouldn't six years count for something?
Why can't I at least start to get over this?
Why can't I accept that it's just too late?
Please let it mean something

Please let it mean nothing at all

Conversely
She already heard the mean ones
Shouldn't she hear the nice ones too?
Can the fact that I still dream
Still think about her every single fucking day
Can it mean nothing?
Nothing at all?

She lives there, in my mind, you know
Of course you know
Can't I please not dream?
Is this strength's reward, the payment for my newfound strength, my long lost wisdom?
A sentence to a prison of my greatest single regret
(I told her that once, you know... "I will go to my grave with this my biggest regret"...)
My single greatest loss
My single greatest love

When I made weakness my lover
(and I must admit I am tempted still)
My reward was simple
I never dreamed
Never
Having abandoned that lover
I choke on my dreams now
And wake screaming
Sobbing
From the dream where she tells me it's OK
From the dream where it all works out
From the dream of happy endings
My heart used to break again every time I woke up, you know
Now I'm almost used to it
Almost

Pull my skin off my bones before you let me dream again. Burn me in a car crash, bite me with an asp, take all my songs away from me. Tenfold. Oh God. Please.

I was all dressed in black
She was all dressed up in black
Oh God
She played Doolittle for me
I'd never heard it
Now every time somebody steals it I buy it
Almost as many times as 99%
She played me Doolittle
And I took her raving
And, for at least a little while
She liked it

Oh God
Be Spock for me now
Stroke my brow, whispering, "forget, forget, forget"

Torture me to death, God, before you let me dream again. Boiled in oil, choke me on foil, to the victor the spoils.

This blessing of the eternal muse
It sucks
I don't want it anymore
It's a blessing anyone would be lucky to receive
And so help me
I don't want the smallest piece of it
So help me

Kurt had one thing right:
I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you

I love you and I always will
There's nothing you can do
Whether you ever know it or not
Or accept it or not

I love you and I always will
I love you and I always will
I love you and I always will

------------

Dream 717 (by me)

        It begins in the coffeehouse. The warm, orange tones of her face are in stark contrast with the deep blue of the open, screenless window behind her. The whole scene looks like a music video, he thinks, which is appropriate because she's singing to him. With her braces that she's much too old for (she's in her mid-20's now, a "late bloomer" she always joked) showing, she's singing him a song of finding a love that's true, a song of promising yourself, a song of fuck what's normal and fuck expectations and fuck society. The first time she sings it he's too scared to move, can't possibly believe that this is real. She sees this, and after the song is finished, she keeps her eyes dead set on him and starts over with the same song. She starts over because she means it. She means it. He lets his head come down to rest on the coffeehouse table and looks up at her, smiling a smile of childlike innocence that's maybe not so innocent after all. She had been leaning in towards him during the first instantiation of her song. He having reciprocated, she leans back, momentarily taken aback at the change, then leans in again to continue the gentle seduction by proximity. He is holdilng his hands up, arms bent straight up at the elbows in front of his face. Her face weaves perilously close to them and he hopes his hands don't smell like he's been scratching his balls too much. The song and the seduction combine to affect him greatly. At one point he opens his eyes and the girl and the coffeehouse have been replaced by beautiful blue sky, complete with birds and clouds. His body is still in the chair, his nose still smells the coffee and his ears still hear the song, but he has been transported. He weeps with joy. She looks down in the coffeehouse, sees this man she loves wracked with sobs, eyes closed, and smiles.

        It ends in a tenement hallway. There are newspapers and assorted debris on the floor, which appears to be made of sheetrock where the filthy grey carpet it pulled back from corners. She is bicycling slowly down the hallway as we walks beside her. They are both taking their time because they both know this is the end. He is delivering her here to her new lover, the famous rock star. Their affair is published in trade mags.

        "Hey," she says at some point, "at least we made it six months." They both nod in agreement that that's pretty cool. In a final gesture of his futile love, he puts his arm around her waist. Which you wouldn't think would work with somebody riding on a bicycle, but it somehow, strangely, does. They reach the apartment and she dismounts from the bicycle. The door is open, though the room inside is empty of people, and they can see that the floor within drops at least three feet from the floor in the hallway, without any visible stairs or means of ascension, like an elevator stuck between floors. They pause silently for a long time. Her hair is pulled back into a sleek ponytail. He turns her head to the side and studies her face. For a moment it seems to him as though her face is painted white with a clownish base, and a brief paragraph is written on her cheek. It is the story of their brief, strong love, from the extended psychic tendrils of connection through first lust at her parents' house down to the end, the disillusionment that he could be the nicest guy in the world and still not be able to hold her attention. He can never hold their attention. He reads this paragraph through once, twice, three times and she lets him have his closure. She is unsure that she is doing the right thing, but she would be more unsure were she to stay with him, and so she has resigned herself to accepting the more exciting of her two uncertainties. They kiss gently, one last time.

And then the dream is over.

------

"Nice Dream" (by radiohead)

They love me like I was a brother
They protect me, listen to me
They dug me my very own garden
Gave me sunshine, made me happy

Nice dream, nice dream, nice dream

I call up my friend, the good angel
But she's out with her ansaphone
She says she would love to come help but
The sea would electrocute us all

Nice dream
Nice dream
Nice dream
Nice dream
Nice dream
Nice dream
Nice dream

If you think that you're strong enough
If you think you belong enough
If you think that you're strong enough
If you think you belong enough

Nice dream
Nice dream
Nice dream
Nice dream

Remember when we were young
And the days would pass
Remember when we were terror-strung
That it wouldn't last
Remember when we would drive around
Evenings in the grass
And then the nights
And then the prize we found
And the days would pass
And the days would pass

Remember nights you spent wondering
When I would come home
Entire days I spent slumbering
And left you alone
Can you tell me where the time has gone
Cuz I miss it now
It's not easy getting a grip on
You not around
You not around

Do you remember the day you knew
You were going to go
The day you realized it came down to
What you want versus what you know
I still remember those steps you took
Down old Town's end road
While all I could seem to do was stare
At angels in the snow
Angels in the snow

I sent this letter to MySpace tech support today. We'll see what the answers are, if any. If the worst proves to be true, I might just have to pull my music from there. Which would suck, cuz due to lack of bandmates it's the only place I can have my music even heard. If anybody else here knows anything about this I'd love to hear it. I'm really hoping these are just rumors. Here's the letter:

Hi there. I'm writing from my personal accout, I have one set up for my band as well (the instant winners). I'm writing because one of my friends recently sent me a message containing this text: "Due to recent fox changes to myspace music, i know alot of ppl wont do the myspace music since it allows for use of their music without consent".

I know there's a lot of rumors that go around on sites like this. So I figured I'd ask the people in charge, for the record, the following questions:

1) Who owns the music I upload to myspace?

2) Does myspace, or any of it's corporate affiliates or parents, sell or allow the use of its users' music?

3) How may I contact myspace's legal department, or the legal department of Intermix or NewsCorp, with any further questions regarding the use of my music?

4) US copyright law and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act say one thing about who owns my music. Does the myspace user agreement say another?

Please let me know as soon as possible what the answers to these questions are, and who I can attribute the answers to these questions to. If you are not able to reply immediately, please let me know when I can expect a response. Unfotunately, the allegations that are spreading about music ownership and usage right now will make the lack of a any kind of timely response appear to be in support of these rumors. I'd like to be able to tell all my friends and fellow musicians that these rumors are just that. I'm confident that you will be able to help me with this.

Thanks very much.

Florida's embrace
My strangeness in a strange land
Kodiak and spit

Monster pickup trucks
Whose cargo beds are empty
One sole occupant

Leather lycra moms
There's something wrong with those not
Pregnant by fifteen

Hopeless and friendless
A sea of red state zombies
Turning to the screen

A cry in darkness
Then, distant others' echoes
I am not alone

And here's why. I got a compliment on my rebuttal (to wit, "nice rant"), so I thought I'd throw it out there. Trophy number... fuck I can't keep track any more...

UPDATE 8/8: Troll modded. Yeah. I'd like to take an opportunity to extend a big middle finger to whoever did that, and another to whoever m2-ed it. I refuted the guy's points. I didn't call him any names. Just because I say something you disagree with doesn't make it a troll. *Sigh*..

Wow, I actually had time to log in and check my messages and even reply to some people today. Good to see my favorites are still plugging away.

That said, got another 60+ hour week coming up at the hotel, and that usually means that when all is said and done it'll be more like 70-80. So y'all might not see me for a bit again (I can read /. from work when it's slow, but prefer not to log in or post since I'm trying really hard not to be involved in any political or moral discussion at work).

TMP, js7a, fidel... keep on keeping on. Just because you don't see me doesn't mean I'm not here.

eeeeeeeeYYYYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrr

mateys

I'm sick and tired of self-styled "conservatives" crying about how shuttles are unsafe, how manned space flight isn't worth the risk, and about how we should just let Hubble fall out of the sky rather than spend the paltry ONE MILLION it would take to fix it as we're throwing good BILLIONS after bad every WEEK in this pointless Iraq war. this is just part of their relentless anti-science, anti-knowledge agenda. Honestly, it terrifies me. If we abandon the concept that there is researchable, verifiable, testable truth that science can discover, we are truly lost. One of my favorite quotes of all time, from that genius "anonymous", reads:

When truth stands in your way, you're headed in the wrong direction.

a) manned space missions have a higher risk. they also have a higher reward.

b) every shuttle pilot/astronaut ever (except for Krista McAuliffe) were trained test pilots. They had taken risks much greater than this in the course of being test pilots.

c) Every person ever lost in a space accident was well aware of the risks and chose to accept them. To say that they are not capable of making that decision, and that we should just terminate any and all manned spaceflight based on what YOU consider an unacceptable level of risk, not only disgracefully dishonors their service and sacrifice, but also their decision making ability. And for anybody to question the decision making ability of test pilots and astronauts from their slashdot armchair makes me physically nauseous.

d) when we've made anywhere near the quantity of manned spaceflights as we have commercial airline flights, you'll have a right to bitch about shuttles not being as safe as airplanes. Practice makes perfect, and we haven't had anywhere near as much practice at manned spaceflight as we have commercial air travel.

e) unmanned spaceflight, whenever it would serve the needs of the mission and the needs of science just as well as a manned mission, is an alternative that should be pursued. This alternative should be immediately abandoned if it ever impacts mission viability.

f) should we likewise abolish all fire departments and tell firemen they don't have the right to take a dangerous job that they believe needs to be done just because that job is risky? Fighting fires is a job that needs doing. So is scientific research and superatmospheric astronomy.

g) We're very overdue for a major impact disaster from an asteroid or comet. When, not if, this occurs, the only warning we'll have to all move to Kansas won't come from ground-based telescopes - it will come from space-based ones, which need to be serviced by manned spaceflight.

h) america, from the cotton gin to the internal combustion engine to the atomic bomb to the polio vaccine to the microchip, has been ever based on scientific evidence and rational thought. Our superiority in the marketplace of world governments has not been maintained by our security staff alone, but mainly by our incredibly effective R&D department. This is one of many things that make me fiercely proud to be American. And for self-proclaimed "conservatives" to toe this knee-jerk anti-science line is about as clear a declaration of intent to sacrifice everything that's ever made America great as one could ever hope to see (or dread seeing, in my case). Next you'll be trying to dismantle checks and balances... oh wait...