Category: General

Marwen’s Lantern of Jack, and mine.

All the Jo’Ls worth noting in Chilliwack:

The Bush Administration reversed itself and declared that non-Iraqis captured fighting in Iraq are not protected by the Geneva Conventions; such prisoners, it was reported, have already been transferred out of Iraq in recent months and could be taken to Egypt or Saudi Arabia where torture is more common than it is in the United States.

Just reading this is a form of torture.

President Bush suggested that the missing explosives from the Al Qaqaa military facility might have been removed before the invasion. Several news agencies confirmed that their embedded reporters were present at the facility with American troops and that they saw boxes labeled as explosives; KSTP Television in Minneapolis broadcast footage taken at Al Qaqaa of boxes of high explosives.
Congress approved a measure that will permit soldiers and their families to seek reimbursement for combat equipment, such as body armor, that they have purchased with their own money.

Osama bin Laden released a new video message and said that it was U.S. foreign policy, particularly U.S. support for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, that led him to plan the September 11 attacks. [CNN] Bush-Cheney campaign officials were happy to hear from Osama: “We want people to think ‘terrorism’ for the last four days,” said one. Another said that “anything that makes people nervous about their personal safety helps Bush.” [NY Daily News]

Ah, the perfect campaign policy.

Voter suppression campaigns were reportedly underway all around the country, though all indications were pointing to an historically high turnout. [Talking Points Memo] Wisconsin Republicans were trying to challenge about 37,000 voter registrations in Milwaukee. [Talking Points Memo] In South Carolina a letter purporting to be from the NAACP claimed that voters will be arrested at the polls if they have outstanding parking tickets or child support payments and said that voters must provide a credit report, two forms of photo ID, a Social Security card, a voter registration card, and a handwriting sample. [Associated Press] Broward County’s election supervisor said that up to 15,000 absentee ballots would be resent to voters whose ballots mysteriously disappeared. [New York Times]

The Bush Campaign was forced to withdraw an ad that had been digitally altered to increase the number of soldiers in an audience listening to the president speak. [New York Times]

This bears a larger rant but I don’t have time right now.

Fidel Castro banned the U.S. dollar

Scientists announced the discovery of a species of hobbit-like humans on Flores, an island 370 miles east of Bali, that lived as recently as 13,000 years ago. The adult hobbits, who apparently hunted pygmy elephants and Komodo dragons for food, were about the size of a three-year-old modern human child. [National Geographic, New York Times]

New research found that it is better to be bullied for the first time as a young child than as an adolescent. [New Scientist]

The very first Christmas-themed commercial I have seen this season made me actually cry “oh my god” out loud. Maybe you’ve seen it: Old grandpa opens his front door and on his porch/stairs is a little plastic snowman and a little plastic dog, side-by-side. The snowman sings some of the lines of ‘jingle bells’ and the dog musically barks the others. Additionally, they both vibrate and make a tinkling sound. The vision fades into a younger ‘mom’ type, who is in a store and daydreaming the whole scenario. At this point, I’m ready for the punchline. I’m ready for the lady to shake it off and buy something cool and extreeeeeeme for grandpa, or the Juicy Fruit nun to come in with the guitar and break it over the knicknack. But no – this santa-ized singing fish wall trophy is actually the product they’re advertising on television, I realize when the Hallmark “Jingle Pals” $12.99 blurb. You really have to see it to believe it.

“US to Canada: S.O.S” – That was how Jeff Curtis signed an email to me today. Poignant. Everyone knows how I feel about Bush so I won’t do a big rant on my blog. Instead I’ll just do a small one:

It’s just completely unbelievable how it doesn’t matter to (51% of the voting) American people what actions their president takes. As long as he waves the flag and has the rhetoric down (and even this seems a bit shakey) – that seems to be good enough. And it’s scary to think what this means for the future, now that the precedent is set. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but it’s just as likely that next time around they could make an even worse choice.

There. Under 100 words.

The Vancouver Asian Film Festival is coming. I have no idea what’s playing, but I bet I want to see something with you. Especially since Tinseltown will be partaking.

I shaved off half of my eyebrows for my undead Vulcan hallowe’en costume. They’re growing back. Take that CHRISTIAN SLATER!

Some lady at work yesterday said my (blue) hair was ‘gutsy’ to which I replied “woman you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” and I ripped off my shirt and french-kissed her.

Somebody stole the speaker from our building’s intercom system. Now if you want me to let you in, you have to yell “Oh Captain My Captain” from beneath the kitchen window. The building manager – Shaen – left a note on everyone’s door explaining about it, and another one about the recently refurbished garbage are. After Stewie saw them he took them off the door, but I suggested we leave them on the door, because they are funny. Also, it would bug Shaen. So not only did we put them back up, we put up an old one from a couple weeks ago that we still had. This was last Wednesday or Thursday. Today Shaen came by and ‘made sure we’d seen the notices.’ Mission: accomplished.

Marlo and Chris and I saw I Heart Huckabees yesterday. It was quite entertaining. Good performances all around. It was good to see Lily Thomlin in a high profile flick like that. Jude Law, who I usually see as nothing more than just another pretty face, exceeded my expectations. Everyone in the movie was memorable. Especially the guy (Kevin Dunn) from Ghostbusters 2 who was a guest (Milton Angland) on Peter Venkman’s “World of the Psychic.”

I found out (Thanks to Marmar) that the complete Challenge of the Superfriends series (it’s called ‘Season One” but it’s misleading since there was no season 2) has been released on DVD. Add that to my ongoing wish list. Which, since nobody seems to be doing a very good job of stopping me, I’ll post again (and update!).

CDs:
The Desert Sessions Volume 9 & 10
Lord of the Rings soundtrack (any)

DVDs/VHS:
The DVD with 8 Abbott & Costello movies including A&C Meet Frankenstein.
Complete Superman Cartoons: Diamond Anniversary Edition
Jonny Quest Season 1
Kiki’s Delivery Service
Spirited Away
Princess Mononoke
My Neighbor Totoro
Big Kahuna

Books:
Monster Manual III (3)
d20 – A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe
Tome of Horrors (1 not 2)
d20 Toolbox (AEG)
Any ALIAS or POWERS graphic novel.
Unearthed Arcana (Dungeons & Dragons)
Tales of Freeport
The Diamond Throne (Arcana Unearthed Sourcebook)
Hellboy: Chained Coffin & Others
Professor Wormbog and the Search for the Zipperump-a-zoo

Misc:
Practically any miniatures that look cool – especially of monsters that I don’t already have and “rare” minis like female gnome monks, that sort of thing.
Those black plastic VHS tape cases
Nyarlathotep and/or shoggoth plush doll
Sripey socks (not sports socks)

I’ve been neglecting my friends and my blog-readers. And for that I apologize. Stupid work.

So here’s not one, not two, but three week’s worth of selected (by me) news snippets courtesy of Harper’s.

The Labor Department reported that the economy created a mere 96,000 jobs last month, thus failing to keep pace with the expansion of the nation’s work force and confirming that George W. Bush has the worst job creation record of any president since Herbert Hoover. The White House reacted to the bad news by declaring that the poor job numbers prove that the president’s tax cuts have been working.

double ewe tee eff?

The Iraq Survey Group issued its final report and concluded that Saddam Hussein dismantled his nuclear weapons program in 1991 and did not attempt to revive it. The inspectors said that there was no evidence that Iraq continued to possess chemical or biological weapons, and they concluded that Hussein refused to admit he had disarmed because he wanted to maintain a deterrent against Iran. [New York Times] President Bush said that the report proved that Iraq was “a gathering threat.” [New York Times]

double double ewe tee eff.

A Washington, D.C., policeman arrested, cuffed, and jailed a woman for eating a candy bar in the subway. [Associated Press]

Republicans in Michigan were calling on authorities to prosecute Michael Moore for offering to give clean underwear to college students if they would promise to vote. [Associated Press]

Cheney claimed that he had never before met Senator Edwards; newspapers then published a photograph of the two men smiling and speaking together at a prayer breakfast. [New York Times]

Chicago experienced its first murder-free night in five years,

Britain suspended the license of the factory in Liverpool that was supposed to manufacture almost half the American supply of this year’s flu vaccine. [New York Times] Public health experts have long warned that it is insane for the United States to depend on two companies for the country’s flu vaccine. [New York Times]

Mexico declined to stop the construction of a Wal-Mart next to the ancient ruins of Teotihuacán, and paleontologists [Reuters] in China discovered 130-million-year-old fossils of Dilong paradoxus, an ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex, with impressions of feathers all over its body. [New York Times]

Korean and Italian researchers developed a tiny robot with multiple legs designed to crawl through a patient’s guts. [New Scientist]

Scientists with NIZO Food Research developed an artificial throat that breathes, salivates, and swallows. [New Scientist]

A nineteen-year-old Singapore man set a world record for the number of hamburgers he could stuff in his mouth. “I’m on top of the world right now,” he said,” because everyone’s going to know that I can shove more than three burgers in my mouth.” [Associated Press]

United States military personnel who worked at Camp Delta, the largest prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, revealed that many prisoners there were tortured by being forced to endure strobe lights and cold temperatures and extremely loud recordings of Limp Bizkit. [New York Times]

I wonder if they got royalties.

A senate candidate in Oklahoma warned of “rampant” lesbianism in the schools. [Associated Press]

People in Detroit were debating the wisdom of creating an “Africa Town” district, where the city would give special loans to black businessmen. [New York Times]

A quadriplegic man succeeded in checking email and playing computer games via a microchip embedded in his brain. [Nature.com]

The federal government reached its $7.4 trillion debt ceiling and was forced to delay contributions to pension plans. [Washington Post]

Police in Burlington, Ontario, were searching for someone who glued shards of glass to playground equipment. [CBC News]

The Global Amphibian Assessment announced that 1,856 of the 5,743 known amphibian species are at risk of extinction

Absentee ballots missing the names of John Kerry and John Edwards were mailed to Ohio voters. [Cincinnati Post]

Two Polish doctors and two ambulance workers were charged with murder for killing patients in exchange for kickbacks from funeral homes. [Associated Press]

Boston police killed a woman with a non-lethal pepper spray projectile after the Red Sox defeated the New York Yankees to win the American League Championship Series. [Associated Press]

Six Buddhist monks from Ratchaburi, Thailand, were arrested and defrocked for holding wild drug and alcohol parties. [New York Times]

The British Armed Forces officially recognized its first Satanist, a sailor on the HMS Cumberland who will now be permitted to perform Satanic rituals on board. [BBC]