Subprime Tent Towns in LA - America's New Shantytowns

The dollar is in free-fall, the market is slipping, and foreclosures are hitting record numbers, to the extent that tent towns are now popping up in LA. So why am I hearing about this from BBC and not American Media? (via BoingBoing)

Ricky's Wisdom Today - 3/18/08

It does not matter whether you are a theist or atheist, what matters is sincerity, forgiveness, and compassion.

-His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Muhammad vs. Jesus - Fight!

Kottie Paloma’s "Jesus vs Mohamed"

You sign up for one lousy free PDF about how the Wingnuts hate Obama and end up with every nutjob, anti-science, "ain't Christian ain't right" email partner spam in the world.

Today's anger ball is a book layin' out plain that not only are radical Muslims in the wrong, but the whole frickin' religion is whacked and based on hate and violence. And since I've never met a Conservative who has read the whole Quaran (let alone the whole Bible), I guess it'll stick. But the headline quote stayed with me:

"I have been made victorious through terror."
-- Muhammad, founder of Islam

Why did this stick with me? Because through the terror of the fear of hell, by the terror of the fear for people's own souls, by the terror of torture or being ostracized or being set on fire, Christianity has also been "made victorious."

As soon as we stop demonizing entire swaths of inhabitants of our planet Earth based on their belief system, the sooner we might come to accept that we're not that much different - on a very human level - than other people, despite the color of their skin or who they believe God's Messenger was.

Your Giant Jang Will Rule the World

Sometimes I scan through my spam folder to make sure nothing important gets pushed through. This one made my morning:

Your giant jang will rule the world

No, I couldn't make that up.

Because I don't want to make this blog NSFW immediately and Photobucket even deletes the three-lobed elementary rendition of a "jang," imagine, if you will:

A titanic statue, Colossus, thirty stories to the crotch, where is attached a twenty-eight story jang, hung to sway in the wind and as thick as a redwood. Adorned with vines of ivy and berries, decorated with chains and jewels. The ground below is constantly covered with a worshipful congregation, chanting, bowing, tossing libations as high as they can reach to wet the jang.

At least, that's what I thought when I saw the subject line.

One jang to rule them all.

Davis Fleetwood Up for YouTube Video Award

Davis Fleetwood, everyone's favorite Hermit, is up for YouTube's 2007 Video Awards for his video Students: A Challenge For You:



Go to the YouTube Awards Page, check it out under Politics and unless you enjoy watching Huckabee and Chuck Norris cross swords, cast a vote for Davis.

Google Spams Job Boards

Google, the undisputed juggernaut of online search - and, frankly, most things internets - is, amongst those of us who wear the label Search Engine Marketing Specialist, well known for their constant prayer to the Goddess Relevance. This means that when you type a phrase, say "making delicious rhubarb pie," into Google's elegantly simple home page, the results will probably be recipe related because, based on your query, you want to make a pie. They pride themselves on this, with good reason: they're damn good.

I like to keep abreast of opportunities because in today's day and age, "uncertain times" does not so much make me think of terrorism as me being out of a job. So when I saw the following post on my Careerbuilder email, I jumped because, well, power makes me horny:



Woo-hoo! Work for Google if I live in Ohio? Hells yeah. And then I followed the link.



Bugger. Google is spamming the job boards and produced something that is completely irrelevant to me. Google: shame on you.

ACLU Watch List Counter

The American Civil Liberties Union is keeping track of the climbing number of Americans on the government's terrorist watch list. And if I wasn't there already, blogging about it probably just put me on that list.



Yes, that number is accurate as of Friday afternoon. See the Counter.

FOX Attacks: Obama (Part II)

FOX Attack Obama? C'mon!

From Brave New Films.

Happy Pi Day!

Every year, there are a couple days that I can never seem to remember until someone reminds me of that day. Case in point: Pi Day!



Seven or eight years ago I took a slow afternoon at work and memorized that wonderful number - the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter - to the 50th decimal place. I've been on and off with remembering it to the 100th, but that 50th has always stuck with me. I know: I'm a math-tard.

So now that I remembered, Happy Pi Day!

Note: another example of usually-forgotten days is International Talk Like a Pirate Day - That's September 19th.

Io Musik: Sofa King Hott

It's not every day you get to see a friend succeed. Today be that day:

Wooster-based band Io will release their debut CD effort "Hidden
Traces" worldwide on March 18th, available via global download from
ITunes, eMusic.com, Napster.com, and Amazon.com.

Io is the solo-project of local musician/producer Paul Hugon. Paul
performed, engineered, mixed, and produced the entirety of "Hidden
Traces" over a two-year time frame. The album's indie-rock-meets-abstract-electronic nine songs transition seamlessly together throughout the 38 minute disc, taking the listener down a meandering path of musical exploration.

"The genesis of the project is loosely-based on an old mental hospital located in southern Ohio.", stated Hugon. "..some bizarre and strange happenings have been going on there since around 1874--it was always a place I found mysterious and intriguing. All the tracks on the disc have passages... [that are] in reference to The Ridges".

The Athens, Ohio-based mental hospital has been closed since 1993.
"Roughly the time I started recording in my first home studio..",
Hugon recalls.

Artwork is in harmony with Io's music--to the tune of packaging design by Jennifer Hayes Art (www.JenniferHayesArt.com). Ridges photos by Julie Mims and sleek design by Jennifer Hayes Art combine to creepily and effectively illustrate not only the former state mental hospital,but also the fresh and unique rhythms of Hugon's compositions.

Downloads will be available via the web sites listed above by April
18th, at the latest [links to follow]. To purchase a CD, send an email to iomusik@gmail.com-- or visit Io's myspace page at myspace.com/iomusik where you can also listen to tracks from the band.

Holy shitsmokes! Click and click away. And click. And enjoy.

Ricky Shambles Naked

No, I will not be running for president of the United States or anything else now or at any time in the future (sans, of course, President of the World, after the Apocalypse), and for that reason - I decided, in the shower yesterday, it would be a good idea - I'll be occasionally posting some personally embarrassing piece of my life that may or may not be completely humiliating or even interesting to my readers.

Raise Your What?



At about 10 or 11 years old, the word "steam" conjured up stolen images of HBO or videos at a friend's house: a couple heatedly making out, enough to cause the windows of a car to steam up. Why did I relate such words to meanings? I blame it on HBO and wavy Skinemax (yes, I snuck viewings of it wavy).

So when I was - at that age - one day helping my mother fold laundry and watching the afternoon news, I remember the TV anchor throw out the teaser before a commercial: "Learn to Raise Yourself a Steam."

"Holy crap!" I thought. "The news is going to teach me how to get it hot and heavy with the ladies!" (or whatever equally-lame way my brain processed the information). The proof came seconds later when Mom asked me to run downstairs to get something for her. "Of course - she doesn't want me to see the story," I thought, and ran like hell.

Of course, I got back upstairs in record time and when the news came back on, I learned once and forever that some people are just sad and need help raising their "self esteem" - that measure that they personally don't suck.

_____
So, dear readers, two questions:

Is the slice of truth, the ability to see Ricky laid out on the slab and the hammer coming down, worth the post?

Is "Ricky Shambles Naked" a nice title?

Feedback is always welcome.

Planet Unicorn

Planet Unicorn

William F. Buckley on the Mothafuckin Cheeba

William F. Buckley did much more than begin the modern conservative movement on the radios.

He smoked marijuana.

Buckley famously smoked marijuana — after sailing his boat outside the U.S. territorial limits, where it would no longer be illegal. Finally at the age of 78, Buckley wrote an editorial for the National Review decrying the war on pot.

"Legal practices should be informed by realities," Buckley argued, citing 700,000 pot arrests each year, 87% of which involved only possession of small amounts. "This exercise in scrupulosity costs us $10-15 billion per year in direct expenditures alone."

But would America ever rise up and demand a change in marijuana laws?

It is happening, but ever so gradually. Two of every five Americans, according to a 2003 Zogby poll cited by Dr. Nadelmann, believe "the government should treat marijuana more or less the same way it treats alcohol: It should regulate it, control it, tax it, and make it illegal only for children". The Dutch do odd things, but here they teach us a lesson.

Buckley's position was unexpected, but it offered an honorable example of his real commitment to intellectualism. He began his essay by writing that "Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great."

(via BoingBoing via 10 Zen Monkeys)

Home Schooling: Bane of Reason

Holy shitbox stormfront! Ladies and gentlemen, we've got a full-fledged, four-alarm Conservative dichotomy!

Let's start by chewing on this from SFGate:

A California appeals court ruling clamping down on homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials sent shock waves across the state this week, leaving an estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution.

The homeschooling movement never saw the case coming.

I don't care about the abuse case that brought the issue to light; my initial and overall reaction is: it's about fucking time.

My first experience with a homeschooled kid was when I was working at a movie theater at 16. To all appearances, he was a normal kid. Unfortunately, 5 minutes with him showed him to be completely, socially retarded. When children are very young, they come to a realization that not everyone has the same ideas and thought processes that they do. I don't think he ever got past that.

Watch the movie Jesus Camp. All those kids? Homeschooled. Why? Because public schools teach the Devil's lies of evolution.

So back to the four-alarm dichotomy. I'm listening to Sean Hannity rail against the story and it hit me like a tire iron in the xiphoid process: Conservatives have been screaming about the quality of education for years (because NCLB itself is crippling America, in actuality) and screaming about getting rid of tenure and teacher's unions and making quality assurance a mandatory part of a teacher's life - who is paid dirt and works twice as hard as many full-time employees - to guarantee that our children are receiving the best education possible.

Amen: knock out the unions, pay them a minimum of 50K a year, and implement a fair rating system.

But how do you go from "We need full reform of the education system because teachers are not qualified enough to teach our kids" to "Moms with no educational background, formal post-secondary education, or accreditation are the best teachers evar?" Someone tell me how that fucking logic even remotely works!

Here's the logic: It's okay - in the conservative world of rainbows and unicorns and intelligent design - for conservative parents who don't want their kids to learn actual science - to keep them home and teach evolution instead. This, in and of itself, is a root problem; if you can't pass a general science test because the teachings being tested were written by the Devil, there is a serious problem.

Which is why this whole issue is long overdue. If you want to teach your kids at home, more power to you, but you better be held to the same bullshit NCLB tests that every other kid is held to, and you better damned well have at least a college degree.

If not, regardless of how this story is labeled or ignored by the media, we are dis-servicing the future of America and guaranteeing a continuance of idiocy and ignorance.

But maybe that's the plan. Ignorance breeds complacency breeds compliance. And that's what those in power would like to see every day; they love it and kiss it and dry hump their tailored-pants-clad chubbies all over it.

Amen.

Bumblebee Beats Optimus Prime

This is very high-qual stop-motion animation showing Bumblebee kicking OP's ass. Color me impressed.

Marine Motari Tosses Puppy Into Ravine

Our armed forces kill human beings every day of the week and we just shrug our shoulders and watch the number get bigger - if we even care to look at the numbers. U.S. Marine David Motari chucked a puppy into a ravine and everyone flips their shit.

Haven't seen the video? Here you go (looks like original came from www.puppytoss.com):



On one hand, it screams "gimmick!" On the other hand, some fucked up shit can happen during war time. Maybe they really thought that was funny. When you put justifications on lowering the value of human life so you can fill people with bullets, would the value of puppy life remain the same?

Either way, the canine community was not pleased:


http://view.break.com/466312 - Watch more free videos

Keepin' Out Those Canucks

From DVICE:

The Department of Homeland Security is moving forward with plans to erect a virtual border fence between the United States and our docile neighbors to the north.

Rather than use solid walls the Canadians could breach with a Zamboni, Secretary Michael Chertoff from the the Department of Homeland Security outlined the following measures: "We currently have a combination of infrared seismic sensors which are in the ground, remote and local video surveillance systems, and then of course at the ports of entry we have radiation monitoring devices." Unmanned aerial vehicles may also patrol the area. Similar tech, developed by Boeing, is employed along the US-Mexican border and has met with heavy criticism for the sensors' poor results.

Let me get this straight: Congress passed a law to build part of a big-ass fence on our southern border which we have not built and now we're looking at blocking the Canadians and their funny accents and absurdly-clean cities with unproven technology? With that thing above that looks like it was built by a meth-head in their garage with Gorilla Glue?

Hells yeah! This is 'Merica!

Separation of Church and State Event

From First Freedom First, safeguarding the separation of church and state, protecting religious liberty:

Actors, musicians and comedians will join church-state community members across the country on Wednesday evening, March 26, 2008 to put church-state separation on the national agenda during the 2008 election season.

In movie theatres in 25 cities across the nation, interested citizens will gather to learn about the threats to church-state separation and to demand that candidates for elected office answer questions about key issues dealing with individual freedom. Ten questions to ask candidates that have a direct impact on Americans’ lives will be featured.

You can see a map of locations at that link. I hope someone is going to webcast the event - Columbus is relatively close, but I don't know if I'll be able to make it on a Wednesday.

Rock Out With Your Clock Out

Just a reminder that Daylight Savings Time begins again this Saturday, March 9th, at 2:00am. And if you remember Spring forward, Fall back, you will realize that this is that dreaded day that at 2am it suddenly becomes 3am, so the bartender will be taking your beer at 1:30am (in Ohio, last call is usually at 2am and legally all bottles must be out of customer hands by 2:30).

You'll have to wait for November 2nd for that magical evening when at 2am it suddenly becomes 1am and bars are open that extra hour.

How is it I didn't have an alcohol tag until this post?

Update: I have a "drinking" tag. Wii Taw Dead.

Which reminds me of one of my favorite Onion articles: I'm Like a Chocoholic, but for Booze.

In Short: That Whole Darn Bible Thing

That big man, Jesus H. Christ (middle name Hussein...?), once said something that defined Christianity - yeah, the Big C - for all time when asked about the greatest law of all in Luke 6:31: Do to others as you would have them do to you.

Wow. That's deep.

So deep, in fact, that it's been a theme of all civilized time, many years before Jesus himself:

Try your best to treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself, and you will find that this is the shortest way to benevolence.

Confucianism. Mencius VII.A.4

Yeah, that was way the hell before Jesus.

And yet, despite this as one of the most sacred laws/guideposts of Christianity and beyond in all of history, no candidates on either side will immediately cease all war.

So do all the candidates for President of the United States denounce Christianity or simply accept that by doing unto others - killing them in a war - do they accept that others will be trying to kill us?

Fuck excuses, fuck examples, fuck postulates and sidewinding. This is basic belief stuff, basic action stuff.

Where are our candidates on this?