So yes — we went to another SubGenius event. The Baltimore Devival #2. This time, we actually got a friend to join us: Tabbitha! I’ve always considered her the most latent SubGenius out of all of my friends anyway. (I’d say John The Canadien too, but he’s already found “Bob”!) I wore my psychedelic / optical illusion shirt, pimp hat, green sparkling smoking jacket, and camouflage pants. Almost wore a space-themed tie, but decided against it, despite the cold, by assuming the venue would be too hot for a tie to be comfortable, and too dark for space tie to be visible.
refrigerator podium – to be used for preaching later
We got off to a late start due to generally being punk-ass slowpokes. Baltimore is a long way away; over an hour’s drive. And poor Tabbitha had to drive to our place in addition to that. Then there was the whole detour on the way back to pick up my car, but I’ll talk about that later. We managed to blaze in town just around the opening time, so technically we were 15 minutes or so late. There was one good sign pointing out that we were in the correct place: A huge projectedDobbshead, obscuring a woman’s health advertisement. It was a sign from “Bob”:
The parking itself was really weird. You basically had to park in a lot that said you’d be towed if you parked there. But it was pretty much empty. And this seemed like a quiet neighborhood. Not a good neighborhood; but a quiet one. Not so busy that tow trucks were on the prowl. And since Baltimore is a city full of douchebags (I got a ticket for not feeding a meter at 11:30PM on a Saturday fucking nite!), we weren’t sure if we could park there. We finally drove away, circled around, and came back a second time when we realized there was no where else to park.
Dammit Janet and Tangent were asking us — “Have you seen a power tools band before?” … I really was totally clueless when they asked that. I finally learned the meaning of “power tools band”, and it was quite literal. And the great thing is, since SubGeniuses hate rules… You could walk right into the sparks if you so chose. And that’s what I did (almost)… I eventually wound up right next to the “sparks girl”, where I could get a good vantage of the carnage. At one point, she lost her spark thingies (they flew forward from the force of the power tools), and pulled these aluminum squares from her pockets to spark up in an emergency!
Anyway, here’s some crappy (because my camera sucks) video of them playing:
(Yes, it’s 2 copies of the same video, one on flickr, one on youtube, just in case the other goes down.)
Anyway, beer was a consideration for us. The first Baltimore SubGenius Devival occurred in a church, which obviously did not have a liquor license. Tons of people were drinking (and thus huge lines for the bathrooms), but they all had the foresight to bring their own. Not wanting to repeat the mistakes of last year, we bought beer on the way — part of why we were late. We also enquired about the beer when we arrived. Princess Pisces was outside, and I asked her, and apparently it was a donation to get beer — like at Art-O-Matic. Except without fixed prices. (I always wondered how ArtOMatic could “cheat” this by “suggesting” a specific “donation”.)
And what is the most slackful donation to make? $1. This seemed to be fine with everyone. We drank a shitload for $1.
The place it was at – Load Of Fun – was a very strange warehousey kind of venue. Not much of it was properly maintained. There were 3 bathrooms, but one did not have a working sink:
The Worst Sink In All Of Scotland
There was a lot of graffiti in various places as well:
charming
I of course decided to explore. There was no security in any form whatsoever, other than various locked doors upstairs. I managed to explore every nook and crannie that could be explored without picking a lock. And there was some neat stuff… like… Stairs?!?!?!?!:
yes, stairs
There was all kinds of weird things up there… Including a dilapidated cart that really did not look safe to move any amount of actual weight on….
Once I got 2 floors above the main level, things got even more sketchy. The light was pretty much just the city light that came through the windows. There was a long narrow hallway and things were in such bad condition that I walked slowly to ensure boards didn’t break beneath my feet. Eventually I wasdeposited me into this strange area with caged books. I found it very odd, as well as a seemingly accidental social commentary on free speech in America:
free thinking has no place in modern america
keep the children safe
I also found a rogue “OH!”, this time not placed there by me:
OH!
The various bands (Motor Morons, Fat Free, Amino Acids) played, with various preachers (Rev. Ivan Stang, Princess Pisces, Rev. Carter LeBlanc) preaching in between:
Stang speaks!
Eventually, Susie The Floozy passed out candy fangs. These were arguably cooler than the candy eyeballs we got last year:
We of course ran into several of the friends we made at X-Day, including 808 and Christie (with the Gashlycrumb Tinies tattoo). They may be at Assateague this year. The Asian chick in the background might be the subject of the “scrambled naked girl” artwork that I took back from this devival and put up on my wall. I’ll have to ask Reggie Zus.
Carolyn, 808, Christie
Eventually, Tabbitha had to explore the 2nd floor as well, since 2 of the bathrooms were on the “1.5th floor” (kind of a half-floor between 1st and 2nd floor), and most SubGenii are way too fond of slack to go up an additional flight of stairs without konwing for sure there is a bathroom. Anyway, it wasn’t long before she found a sign to disobey:
Even latent SubGenii are possessed with an urge to break any and all rules.
Finally we went out for a smoke break in the alley behind the venue, and checked out some of the cool graffiti:
“There!”
It got cold, so we went back in and resumed watching the bands / preaching:
watching bands
Stang’s jacket reminded me of my own, only silver instead of green:
Stang’s shiny smoking jacket
Stang preaching
Carter LeBlanc preaching
The last band to play is always the Amino Acids. They pulled Carolyn and some other females onto the stage…
Anyway… A good time was had by all. We got to experience preaching, music, intoxication, unique people, as well as reconnecting with some of the cool people we had met at X-Day this year. Plus, Reggie Zus let me take home a piece of art that he had on display there. He said he printed it for free at school, so why not give it away for free? I don’t have a proper picture of it, but you can see it in the top of this picture, behind our cats playing with bubbles:
To view all my pictures (basically the same pictures as this posting) on flickr (in case you want to individually comment), go to my SubGeniusDevival20081115 tag on flickr.
I've added this blog to Facebook's Networked Blogs page.
If you don't know RSS and don't have an easy way to follow my blog, this link may be useful to you if you are a facebook user. You can follow the blog on facebook, even if you're not my facebook friend. I think.
BAD STUFF: I suppose, technically, this could be considered a sequel. Not only is the Prince Caspian book not the first book in The Chronicles Of Narnia, but this is also not the first Narnia movie by director Andrew Adamson (who also brought us Shrek 3). And I actually don’t find the story of the book or of the movie to be as memorable as the “first” book/movie, The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe. (If you don’t understand the quotes around “first”, read this.)
CONCLUSION: As far as fantasy movies go, this is decent, but it could have been a lot better… I’d rather watch The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe (2005), Stardust, Labyrinth, Lord Of The Rings, Legend, Krull, The Dark Crystal, or Pan’s Labyrinth. Not epic, but decent.
RECOMMENDATION: Fans of the books should probably see this. People who can’t get enough fantasy should probably see it. People who just want to watch the very best fantasy movies can skip this.
MOVIE QUOTE: Aslan: “Things never happen the same way twice, dear one.” (more…)
Have I mentioned how much I love Atari Teenage Riot? They are tied for my favorite band, along with The Misfits and Ween. (Click their name to go to my old post, or here, and see the real riot they started in Germany.)
Never have I heard music that incorporates so many aspects of techno — that I could stand hearing more than 2 minutes of.
Never have I heard music that incorporates the energy level of punk — yet doesn’t even have a real guitar!
Never have I heard something so fast and hard-hitting that couldn’t be considered metal, punk … or In The Hall Of The Mountain King (which I’ve moshed to).
Never have I heard music that captures the visceral anger I feel at the way the politics of the world have been treating the people in the world. There’s a lot of bands I listen to that heavily support most of the politics I believe in — D.O.A. and most of NoFX for example — but none of them capture the proper anger level over the situation. The desire to literally destroy all forms of oppression.
I’ve talked about Atari Teenage Riot before, but my RSS feed for their YouTube videos just kicked in, so I wanted to repost a few items of their awesome stuff.
This one I actually hadn’t seen before!!! The video to Sick To Death (lyrics HERE):
Maybe it’s fan-made — since there doens’t seem to be any part where you can see them singing the lyrics — but I’m still grabbing it. Of course, one can always see the same song live:
Too Dead For Me, one of their most aggressive (and thus one of my favorite) songs (lyrics HERE):
Heatwave, another of the top 5 or so most aggressive ATR songs (though I don’t like it as much as the others; maybe I should) (lyrics here, since you wont be able to understand them):
“As I left the supermarket two policeman grabbed me and they said:
‘You’re the cunt that we were waiting for…’
They didn’t need a reason…
They never do…
The state uses violence to keep everything in their order!
We don’t use violence to find a role in this society!
We use violence to beat this society!”
Moving on to something less aggressive (by ATR standard, anyway), here is the video for Destroy 2000 Years Of Culture. Slayer fans may recognize the background riff of the entire song as a slightly cut-up version of the riff 50 seconds into Slayer‘s song Dead Skin Mask. Lyrics here.
And for shits n giggles, here’s ATR member Carl Crack shooting Adolf Hitler, from a commercial for Digital Hardcore Records (13 seconds):
…And a fan-made video done by an Asian couple (?) for the super-aggressive Not Your Business, complete with incorporated lyrics (nice!):
And what are they doing today? Carl Crack died of a drug overdose. Nic Endo does her own thing. Frontman Alec Empire is still putting out good music — I don’t care for his experimental/jazz+elvis/nintendo stuff, but the aggressive stuff is 75% similar to Atari Teenage Riot. Hanin Elias is doing her own thing too. I don’t like it as much, but still… She’s worth watching, and she’s still angry:
And as for their recording sessions… Well, things are pretty crazy there too…
Anyway… It’s too bad I’ll never get to see them live. (more…)
Spice, or JWH-018, was first synthesized in a lab in 1995 by John W. Huffman, who was studying structure-recepter relationships. It binds to the same 2 cannabinoid recepters that marijuana does. (Of course, these receptors have no known purpose other than to get us stoned.)
So of course places are banning it. The irony is, it very well may be more dangerous than pot, because it's not natural. And the only reason people are using it is that pot is illegal.
Once again, prohibition doesn't prevent harm: It creates it.
If you are an 18-year-old female passenger in a car going 56MPH on a 55MPH road, a creepy fat pig can pull you over and touch your crotch.
Yay, America! Land of the free, except we have the highest prison population of any nation. We're such hypocrites.
And the excuse that they had a gun? Guns are legal. Pot should be legal too. I see no reason to do anything else than issue a speeding ticket, if that's really why you're pulling someone over. I'm tired of guns — something legal — being used as an excuse to take down.
Reminds me of sex — sex, which is legal, is used to repress people and business constantly.
Your purse still can't be legally searched, though. If you have drugs, put them in your passenger's purse, refuse a search, and the evidence will be thrown out. I hope.
Everytime you buy a CD or an iPhone, God kills a kitten. Oops. I mean:
Everytime you buy a CD or an iPhone, you fund organizations who want to take away our privacy, and monitor our private communications to make sure we don't do anything the corporations don't like.
And there's not a goddamn thing I can do about it, other than, say, write a virus that destroys every iphone, which would be fucking awesome, but way beyond my capability.
What a fucking asshole! No wonder he has to drive around in bullet proof glass! The liberal media was right when he was first elected — This guy is a fucking douche, more likely a spawn of Satan than anybody holy. And people revere him as the official mouthpiece to their fake fucking sky fairy!
Now, I'm all for Holocaust Deniers NOT BEING ARRESTED or EXTRADITED over exercising their freedom of speech. But at the same time, if you're running a fucking religion that is supposed to be a force for good — don't sit there and fucking honor these assholes.
It's a fucking douchey thing to deny the Holocaust. Say the numbers aren't accurate, but don't say it didn't fucking happen, because it did. My grandparents were THERE.
The Vatican recently said it will excommunicate woman priests (see links for 2008-05-30), thereby SENDING THEM TO HELL BY THEIR OWN BELIEFS. But deny the Holocaust? That's not as bad as being a woman priest!
It's like Obama has no knowledge of things like the Tulia, Texas scandal.
Ironically, Bush reduced funding here. But Democrats are spend-crazy.
Imprisoning non-violent people is just about the greatest revocation of liberty that exists. And the Democrats are going to give them 3 billion dollars to continue to wage a war against the american people.
Isn't it enough that we are fighting multiple wars abroad, and funding others (Israel, Columbia)? And funding the failed bailout corporations as well? And now we're going to fund the failed drug war?
This is why I voted for Nader, people. I will have NO FUCKING PART in this.
I asked my parents about some of the crap that went down at the parties they used to host, and these were their responses:
From Mom:
“Well, I definitely commiserate with you. And yes–we stopped having big parties, at least partially because our “guests” didn’t seem to respect the fact that our home was not a playground. Which actually meant that they didn’t respect us. We sort of-kind of tolerated this for a while but, when we got a little older, we cut down and finally stopped having big, blow-out get-togethers.
Carolyn’s right about our toilet being broken. That happened when we lived in an apartment, but it was still our home. I don’t think anybody ever copped to having broken it. There was another incident when a college friend got drunk and fell through our glass coffee table, totally demolishing it. He paid for the replacement, but our enjoyment of these shindigs was already winding down.
I felt a little deja vu-irritation at those parties Britt and Chuck used to throw. People stamping cigarette butts out on their carpets, breaking furniture, spilling wine all over…there’s a point where having fun becomes disrespectful. And it’s even more unacceptable when the people are 30 plus years old…grow up, jerks.
Anyway, I was really sorry to hear about what happened to you guys. And I think you’re in the right to tell everybody how pissed off you are. They all need to know that destructive behavior is abusive and unacceptable–destroying a friend’s property is like slapping them in the face. Unfortunately, it’s not surprising that nobody has admitted blame. Besides not wanting to accept responsibility, they’re probably also humiliated and embarrassed. I just hope that your reaction makes them realize that they need to behave more courteously in the future. The unfortunate thing is that many of your friends are probably innocent people getting stuck in the middle of all this. But isn’t that always the way?”
From Dad:
“yeah, i think a toilet was broken once — cracked the tank part and I’m thinking it was in our rented apartment so it really cost us.
sometimes you know who did it, sometimes you don’t. its the price you pay for having parties….something will always get fucked up. when we had our Christmas party here in this house, someone left the water running in the sink in the master bath and flooded it —- how hard is it to turn off water????? No one was drunk or anything, and these were mostly our “adult” neighbors, so go figure (though a few of them brought their pre-teen kids (suspects!)). Don’t bother blaming people for the shit they do…if you know who did something, just dont invite them again. [Hard to do when I don’t know. -Clint] Chuck’s friends trashed Britt’s house every party and broke stuff, spilled and left stuff, etc. Chris & Britt haven’t had any problems with guests because they have more responsible friends.
It kinda goes with the territory and the “types” of people you associate with. Not putting you down, just some of your “friends”.
Ask yourself, “are they really friends, or just slobs looking for a place to party and trash?” We’ve been down that road too and simply stopped having large parties.”
I don’t want to be the last person in my family to stop having parties. So if shit does down at a party, guests need to expect to face an investigation without getting pissy about it. (more…)
Nancy Cartwright, voice of Bart Simpson, is a filthy scion. She's leaving messages with Bart's voice (also a violation of the Fox contract which says they're not allowed to ever use the voice outside of the show without explicit permission) to talk about auditing for Scientology Level OT7 (is that where you finally find out about Xenu and the aliens?). Wow.
Wait — these camps aren't actually legal? They've been here forever!
step 1) build FEMA camps in the wilderness where nobody notices. Done many years ago, under Clinton I believe, or at least very early Bush, since many were in place prior to 911.
step 2) revoke posse comitatus (patriot act, Bush), allowing military to police
step 3) authorize the military to police civilians in violation of posse comitatus (Bush, 2008).
step 4) Get FEMA to build even more camps — this time on military bases. (Obama, 2009?)
Does this bother anyone else? IT REALLY SHOULD BE.
Is it going to bother you if Obama doesn't veto this? IT REALLY SHOULD.
Do you think martial law is for your own good? God I hope not.
Do you see how the two parties work in tandem to gain an overall agenda of expanding government?
Obama still has time to prove me wrong, and is so far impressing me IN COMPARISON to Bush (as would my cat)….. But the time is rapidly running out.
Why is high-fructose corn syrup used? Because it's cheaper and makes the food corporations more money, ergo the capitalism tag.
Corporations almost have a duty to their stockholders to sell us the cheapest food possible, with new chemicals that have harms that have yet to be discovered by scientists (e.g. trans-fats, Saccharin, etc)
Granted, a socialist economy may very well use high-fructose corn syrup as well because it could feed more people — but a socialist medical system would most likely object to feeding people mercury far more than our capitalist-lobbied FDA has apparently so far objected.
Capitalism is a great system for prioritizing who gets what. But it breaks down when something everyone needs, like food, is only available from a few sources — like a few food corporations — and they all poison us.
And capitalism actually prevents Mom-and-pop unpoisoned local food from existing, by fosternig the very competition that put them out of business in the 1st place.
Police in every country on the planet probably murder someone and get away with it on a daily basis. But the problem is so bad they think they can do so in the middle of a crowded subway station in the US.
Of course, people document it with cameraphones, and now another cellphone video has been released, showing one officer punch Oscar Grant in the face right before Officer Johannes Mehserle shot and killed Oscar Grant in the back, point-blank. He has now been charged with murder.
…But will the Thin Blue Line protect the accessories to the murder? Officer Tony Pirone, who punched Oscar Grant and held his knee on his neck as he get shot in the back, and the female officer who observed all this and failed to report a crime?
There's a reason people RIOTED in Oakland over this — that is what is needed here. Revolution is not controlled by man, it is a force of nature. Some shit you just can't get away with. And that's a good thing.
Yup. They're prosecuting a politician for expressing his beliefs. You may remember the movie Fitna, which used tactics to make a statement that you could make against almost any religion. But he dared make it against Islam — and now he's being charged with a crime in a Western democracy.
Appeasement doesn't work. It didn't work with Hitler, and it wont work with religious crazies (of any particular persuasion). Somebody is always going to want to you for some reason — even if you silence the criticism (which is ridiculous).
Iran's P.R. department is a big FAIL, and this is a pretty damn funny example. Conservative Christians hate Harry Potter too! All of the above are silly idiots :)
I wonder if a crazy gunman took up a location in an American hospital in a crowded city (say, Georgetown Hospital in D.C.), and started shooting randomly — if we would send in our air force to bomb the hospital to smithereens with cutting edge military technology.
And if your mom was in the hospital getting back surgery that day, and just so happened to be bombed and killed because the crazy gunman was there… How would you feel about that(*)?
He was using human shields, by golly!! That makes your mom’s life forfeit. HUMAN SHIELDS..
1) If using human shields is such a dastardly problem, why is the solution to forfeit the lives of the humans that are being shielded as (which is what bombing their building is)?
2) Because of (1), if their lives are so worthless as to be forfeit, then why is using human shields such a bad thing? (Trick question. I don’t really know the answer, because the lives aren’t worthless to me, and it’s hard for me to be as objective as I’m asking you to be.)
Anyway… Chow on that for a bit, don’t answer me, and try to objectively pretend my question has no relation to any current events. I’m not really looking for answers or a big debate, just trying to encourage some objective thinking for a second. The questions are all rhetorical. I just needed to get this notion off my chest before it disappeared into a brain cell scheduled for imminent destruction. (more…)
Let us never forget that censorship is not limited in definition to the government. Most censorship that happens is between normal people like you and me. Government generally only censor with the tacit approval of the population.
It's not the government who stops obscenity — it's the people who rail against it.
It's not the government who stops pornography — it's the people who rail against it.
etc etc
This T-Shirt Hell guy? He's doing the right thing. Refusing to sell the business, and running it into the ground, as a big "fuck you" to all the people who constantly complain about their controversial t-shirts. Hopefully this arouses the ire in people who have a sense of humor and of freedom.
And in the meanwhile, he's putting all the shirts ever pulled off back up for production for the last 2 weeks — go buy them now. Maybe it's just a stunt :)
Just a montage of internet videos — many of which I've seen before — of people narrowly escaping bad fate via luck. A good lunchtime watch, esp if you haven't seen some of these close calls before.
Just another example of discrimination that happens every day in america, with tacit approval of the courts. Want to be a non-conformist with gender? Don't expect the courts to protect you from being fired, even after the Supreme Court already ruled on this.
We've got a long way to go to become an enlightened and truly free society. Sexual equality for all!
And as much as I like right-to-work states for being unregulated–being able to fire someone for "any reason at any time" basically means you are allowed to discriminate, and then frame your discrimination as a firing for another reason. I'm usually very pro business-owners' rights, but allowing right to fire at any time tacitly allows discrimination as well. There's no easy solution to this problem that doesn't impinge on the freedom of one party or another. But I tend to think employee rights trump employer rights, lest we fall into a fuedal system where he who has the gold makes the rules.
An altogether fascinating and educational sexual study. Men's heads and penises typically agree on what turns them on, but women's vagins get turned on even when their brains are. Interesting? Women get vaginally turned on during ALL porn, men don't.
Gee, looks like we bagged some terrorists, but it also looks like we held some (so far) innocent people there, without any rights, in violation of both domestic and international law, for 5 years in some cases.
I don't care what country you are — if you lock me up for no reason for 5 years, I'm gonna fuck you up. So I'm surprised that the recidivism rate is so low.
Nice going Monster. They also owe me about $1200 from an uncashed paycheck my asshole next-door-neighbors didn't give me until FOUR YEARS LATER. The company that owed me the money was bought by another company who sold their department to Monster.
So fuck Monster, fuck Monster.com's lawyers, fuck Monster.com's pathetic security for giving our name, email, address, username, and passwords, and fuck Monster.com for thinking they don't need to tell anybody about this.
Gee, it's a good thing they don't allow students to carry guns at Virginia Tech anymore. That sure makes everyone safe.. No wait.. Wait… Anyone can still go up to anyone with a knife and stab them.
Nope. Gun control doesn't make people safer. It just makes them more defenseless. Which means bad people who don't obey rules will always have an upper hand on good people who do obey rules.
Which just causes people to feel more helpless, and request MORE government control over their lives in the name of security.
It's a vicious cycle that pussifies our entire population.
Fox News tends to fearmonger, but this time they've got it right. If I was forced to live in a walled city, with human aid cut off, no rights, settlers increasingly stealing what land my people have — and then was bombed, with Carolyn and my family being killed — and had no proper military, air force, or navy… Then I'd take revenge via any method possible. And nobody would be innocent.
Cycles of violence must be stopped. Killing more people doesn't accomplish it. I'm still amazed at how many people understand this with America in Iraq, but then hypocritically don't understand this with Israel in Gaza.
Britian and The United Nations do not have the right to force people out of their homes. 60 years passing doesn't make a wrong right. Nothing short of full restitution and full rights to the people who WERE WRONGED will stop this.
The European Jews could have emmigrated anywhere after WW2, but their religion said they had to take Jerusalem! Stupid religions cause all of this.
[IMDB link] [Netflix link] I’d seen it before, but only as a kid. The 5-pointed weapon shown in the trailer made me want to see this right when it came out in 1983. (And was used by Jesus in the South Park Easter episode.) (Also, Peter Griffin in Family Guy saw this movie in an episode.) Anyway, Carolyn had never seen it, so it was time to share in this 25-year-old movie.
PEOPLE: This was probably the best movie the two lead actors (Ken Marshall, Lysette Anthony) ever did, and they’re both basically TV actors now. The director is some old director I’ve never seen any movie of other than “Breaking Away” as a kid. Liam Neeson was really the only name that rings a bell, and even that is barely.
QUIRKS: A fantastical adventure through a strange alien world, complete with many of the standard fantasy tropes and conventions. It really falls into a lot of the trappings of most fantasy movies. In that sense, it is generic. Yet, like any good fantasy movie, we are taken to a rich, unique world, encountering strange alien phenomenon. In this sense, I don’t think you can do much wrong, as long as your special affects are bearable. And while this movie was made in 1983, it still has a feel comparable to other fantasy greats such as The Dark Crystal. The story just isn’t quite as good, and there is little backstory to explain why things are.
CONCLUSION: It’s still a fantastical voyage, even if the story isn’t quite as fleshed out as it should be. There are some parallels between this and Legend (Speaking of Legend, the director’s cut is finally available), what with being trapped by the lord of darkness while he tries to make you marry him (a common fantasy trope).
Anyway, I rated Krull 7 on IMDB (where it is rated 5.9 on average) and 3 stars on Netflix, though I wonder if that is too low.
RECOMMENDATION: Fantasy lovers should see this. It’s one of the better fantasy movies of the 1980s. It’s along the same lines as Legend, Labyrinth, and the The Dark Crystal.
MOVIE QUOTE: “I am Ergo the magnificent. Short in stature, tall in power, narrow of purpose and wide of vision.”
Another case of pathetic children-based fear-driven hysterical politics.
Remember crack babies? They don't exist. Or rather, they are indistinguishable from normal children.
How many times are the authorities going to make shit up, and people will allow themselves to be programmed with falsehoods?
Remember the LSD tattoo flyers that used to circulate? Also bullshit.
Americans are fucking crazy. Muslims stone people for breaking sex rules in Sharia; we just drag them through a system where they suffer less (not dying) but for a longer time (children now appear on sex offender registry lists in some states).
THE AGE OF FUCKING CONSENT IS 18. Neither of them were over the age! WTF!
Brent never does anything online, so I figured I’d share his view here for him.
I tend to pin the blame on the current crisis on most everyone:
– Lack of regulation was big, but some of those securities got so complicated I’m not sure anyone could regulate them.
– Greed from the banks: they lowered underwriting standards to bring in as many new loans as possible, then bundled up the mortgages into new securities and passed much of the risk down the line.
– Any entity (insurance company, hedge fund, etc) that held a lot of assets: returns on mortgage backed securities (MBSs) were good, most naively thought they’d always be good, so they put pressure on the banks to issue more mortgages so that they could buy more MBSs
– Community reinvestment act (started under Carter, expanded under Clinton?) encouraged / forced banks to loan to more risky people – definitely led to increase in subprime loans
– Broker fraud: I tend to think it’s less a cause than some do, but there were definitely cases of people being stuck with a mortgage other than the one they thought they were getting.
– Homeowners: Gotta say this is the root cause. Many got way more house than they could afford. When I hear about a single-mom waitress buying a $500K home, someone should have had the sense to ask “can she really afford this?”. In order to help get a more expensive house, many relied on adjustable mortgages, figuring they could refinance leveraging the home equity into a loan they could afford once the rates reset.
So, all those forces led to people buying more & more homes w/o much regard for cost. Higher demand shot the prices up, esp in some areas. Fast forward a few years – the subprime borrowers start defaulting, since they had a house they couldn’t really afford to begin with. That effect starts levelling off house prices, as foreclosed homes start hitting the market. And then the adjustable mortagages started resetting at higher rates. Because of the lower home values, these people weren’t able to refinance into a low rate fixed mortgage, and started defaulting en masse. So now the foreclosures are really flooding the market, and values start plummeting (mainly in certain areas CA, NV, FL, essentially the markets that had shot up the quickest in the bubble).
Here’s where the broader market starts feeling the pain. Since most of those mortgages were bundled up into MBSs, the MBSs are now bringing in far less investment income than they were supposed to (an MBS pays the investor as the underlying mortgages get paid off. When someone defaults, the MBS investor doesn’t get paid). This means banks & insurance companies aren’t getting enough income to meet their liabilities. Some banks fail outright, and most others dramatically tighten up their lending – they simply don’t have the money to loan out. So now businesses across the country can’t get the loans they need to stay in business. Employees start losing their jobs, and businesses everywhere start going bankrupt. Of course, as people lose their jobs, they often need to sell their house. And with a non-existent housing market, many have to sell at a big loss, or end up defaulting on their mortgage. These actions further flood the market with unwanted homes, so values decrease further, MBSs pay less, companies go under, and the whole death spiral really kicks into gear… Housing crisis -> Credit crisis -> Business crisis -> Unemployment crisis -> Housing crisis -> …etc… -> everyone living in cardboard boxes and eating squirrel meat b/c they can’t afford real food.
All in all, I’m pretty pessimistic about it all – we truly are facing something on par with the great depression. If this isn’t resolved in time for the upcoming energy crisis, it could literally be lights out. (more…)
McCain promised to end these raids too, as Republicans often believe in States' Rights more strongly than Democrats. But McCain didn't get elected, which makes Obama the liar here. Hopefully it's just a case of him not reigning in the DEA yet, because this is not "change", and a lying president is not "hope".
And as much as the MPAA whines about camcording, 20 out of the 25 released movies were dvd screeners — which the MPAA distributes to the academy, film critics, etc. So the joke's on them.
1) offer your stuff to people who hang out when they’re over
2) if that doesn’t work, list the stuff in an email and send email to your friends asking if anybody wants it
3) if that doesn’t work, try CraigList (or even Ebay) and see who wants to buy those items — those worth selling, anyway
4) if that doesn’t work, try Freebootr, which looks like a more modern Freecycle, with maps and what-not.
5) if that doesn’t work, try Freecycle.org, and see who responds.
6) if that doesn’t work, throw a yardsale.
7) Fine! I’ll throw it away goddamnit! But I’m at least going to smash it into pieces for the fun of destroying something! (more…)
Someone posted something similar several years ago. He stopped signing his name, and just started writing weird things in the credit card machines. I often draw pictures or sign something other than my name myself, because it's just security theatre. They don't really check these things.
Unless you draw a cock and balls on the machine. They'll notice that. lol
Funny how the Geneva Conventions say you can't use White Phosphorous in civilian areas. Funny how the UN gave Israel the location of all it's buildings. Funny how the UN has now supplied a picture of what looks like white phosphorus raining down on one of it's compounds. 37 schools bombed? 6 of which were being used as emergency shelters?
I suppose Hamas infiltrated every one them all and used everyone as human shields, and those peoples' lives became forfeit. Is that what we're expected to believe?)
And what about Dense Insert Metal Explosives and Depleted Uranium? Both of those basically continue to kill people after a war stops. It's a way to extend the harm you do years past a cease-fire. We used depleted uranium to fuck up Iraq's health situation as well, so you wont hear our media complaining about it because we're just as bad. (Hey, we nuked civilians once too — that was apparently "okay" [no, it wasn't!]).
Other people have been arrested — for making out in a plane. Or for putting your head in your wife's lap (that guy lost his clearance for awhile). Let's remember that the ONLY terrorist these laws have been used against is the shoe bomber — and the reason those people lived was NOT the law, but because he failed to operate his lighter correctly. The law has saved NO ONE, only made peoples lives worse for being annoying.
And why does this happen in America? Because we are such cowards that we need "security theatre" to make us feel safer, even though it actually fails to do that. GROW SOME BALLS, people.
And check out how cunt Amy Fleming managed to get Tamera Freeman's children taken away from her. She plea-bargained guilty to see her children. It didn't work. The govt lied, and now her children are being adopted by foster parents. Because she dared to argue with someone IN THE SERVICE INDUSTRY, and then made the 2nd mistake of believing the government and taking a plea bargain.
Just remember — people who support smoking bans support the government's right to prohibit consensual behavior between consenting adults in private establishments based on the fact that such behavior has an element of harm. (Employees are consensual too, unless they are literal slaves.)
But guess what's really more dangerous? Having sex with strangers (esp unprotected), or being around secondhand smoke for a few hours? One of those can kill you — that night — infecting you irreversibly (until HIV is cured). The other, secondhand smoke, takes much longer to kill you.
If the government is allowed to regulate safety issues between consenting adults in a privately-owned establishment, then say goodbye to any sort of freedom for consensual adults, other than in your own HOUSE.
Want to make a club where people like you (be they smokers, swingers, strippers, adult toy vendors, or something I haven't thought of) do what they want? Too bad; the govt wont let you.
[
Claire's blog 