Dear big O

The following is a letter I've actually sent (in email and by POST, if you can imagine) to Obama's campaign.

To: Senator Barack Obama and/or his campaign staff

From: Phobrek Taz, Worcester, Massachusetts

Date: June 4^th, 2008

NOTES:

I’m not actually crazy about boldfacing text, but I do it here to highlight the more important notes. Basically, if something isn’t boldfaced, someone wishing to skip over all my blather can just ignore it. Even though my writing and thoughts are simply a treasure to behold.

I imagine Senator Obama won’t be reading this himself, so if whoever’s reading this could add my name or vote (so to speak) on your tallies of comments that people make in such letters, I’d appreciate it.

Dear Senator Obama,

Congratulations! I’ve been rooting for you, and desperately want you to become the next president of the United States. And thank you – to you and all the people involved – for running a campaign that has genuinely inspired and excited people, unlike any other in my lifetime (I’m 38).

You’ve been my clear favorite over Hillary Clinton, and while so many felt she should have conceded, I’m actually content that she stayed in it. Somehow, for once, voters in every state actually got to have a say in these primaries (I think the Michigan/Florida debacle was handled as well as was possible). I think that this should be a talking point:

I’m glad we saw this process through to the end. To many, this process may seem unfair… in its scheduling of all of our states - and territories - causing them to have more – or less – impact on the results; and for the earlier states being able to create a perceived trend, that may feel limiting to those that come later. In 2004, the latter TWENTY-SIX primaries became largely moot, as candidate Senator Kerry became the presumptive nominee just after “Super Tuesday,” March 2nd. But this year, every state counted, even after the controversy surrounding Michigan and Florida, because: Senator Hillary Clinton stayed in the race, despite the badgering of the media, and the pundits… and she gave the people in every state and every territory the opportunity to have their vote counted… to have it mean something.

The important ideas here are:

To get people to understand that you desire due equity for all, regardless of their candidate, location, even their party. Right now, being inclusive is vital. You want absolutely everyone on board your train.

To, likewise, reach out to the Hillary supporters in particular, in a way even congratulating them, and her, for having the strength of will to never give up, and to make the full primary process mean something. People (understandably) love it when you tell them that they did the right thing, resisting the media’s demands that they do otherwise.

The most important thing of all, in my opinion, is to reconcile w/Hillary and her supporters. One way to do this is to return her support: as everyone knows, she will now do her duty by supporting the Democratic candidate, but this doesn’t mean that it can’t go two ways. This talking point would be especially useful if you do not choose her as your running mate. Talking point:

I know that this is easier to say, now that this process is over, but while I know Senator Clinton will be supportive of myself and our party’s campaign for the presidency, that doesn’t mean that the support needn’t go both ways. Senator Clinton is (insert compliments here). Her interests, her perspectives, are clearly shared by half of those who voted in our primaries, and her (and our other candidates’) causes must also be supported, and adopted, and reflected as well as possible, in our campaign, and in our future administration. To not do so, would be to deny so many of our supporters a continued meaning to the votes that they have cast in these past few months. These voices must continue to be heard, and heeded, for to not do so would disempower, and disenfranchise, our own people.

This kind of talking point would be something to use when you announce your Veep. If it’s Hillary, you’d use it to lead up to your announcement; if you pick someone else, you’d make a point of saying this afterward. Not on that same day, but very soon afterward.

However, I actually think that you should choose to take on Hillary as the Veep. I didn’t think this for the longest time, because I felt like you shouldn’t have to, just because so many are suggesting it, and I personally believe that she’s been somewhat “co-opted” in her eight years since leaving the White House. A specific example is that she was such a champion of health care reform as First Lady, and then ended up having to succumb to the industry in order to get elected. She had to play ball. I don’t particularly blame her, as this is how government usually works. She could either play ball and get elected, or not get elected at all (not just because of this one example, but because of the overall, corrupt process).

You, however, have been more able to maintain your integrity, and you haven’t had nearly as much time to become tainted by this process either; and people know it. I’m sure it’s been tried, to push you into undesired directions, and I am sure that these influences will continue to try to manipulate you and everyone else in government, forevermore. It’s a sad part of the process. But you are our best hope of operating against that machine.

That said, lately I’ve come to believe that you actually should pick up Hillary as Veep. I’m very wary of both her and Bubba, but if they can be reined in, they could be very important in getting things done. They’ve got clout.

But much more importantly: in the end, even after you became the presumptive-presumptive-nominee, Hillary supporters were still coming out in droves, down to the very last primaries. That’s incredible. The upshot is: half of the party and its voters are passionate about getting her into the White House. Not a small chunk; not a third; HALF. They will not be easily appeased.

So many have said that if their candidate didn’t get the nomination, they’d either vote Republican, or not at all. This of course is bullshit, most of the time. When a candidate is still very much in the running, most supporters will make this silly ultimatum in an (ineffective) attempt at coercing others into switching sides. Regardless, they don’t want to say anything that suggests that their candidate will lose. If they don’t end up backing the Democratic candidate for the presidency, they’re either mentally disaffected, or are actually Republicans (same thing).

But in the end, there is only one vital thing that must happen: there must not be a Republican in the White House. That has got to be the primary goal; everything else is of secondary importance. Taking on Hillary as Veep is the one move that will give you a huge increase in your chances of winning. To not do this is to risk losing a lot of votes. Hillary truly does attract voters of specific demographics, different from yours, in large numbers. These people often seem like more conservative voters than you and your supporters (so I believe), and they really are the ones that might possibly end up voting for McCain. That cannot happen.

Besides appealing to the needed demographics, the Clintons (as a pair) do have their legacy. To some (myself included) that legacy isn’t necessarily very appealing, but everything is relative. The facts are: the Clinton Era came right before this tragic, devastating eight years of Bush tossing our country (and others) into the proverbial shitter. There is an attraction to returning to better times, to undoing these eight years, and the Clinton Era is connected to that for many people. Bush has driven every aspect of the United States into the ground, after inheriting what people see as being the (tainted but forgivable) Clinton legacy (whether they realize they see it as this or not). Taking on Hillary will give comfort to those that fared better (read: almost everyone) before this current administration took over, while you – at the helm – will still clearly signal a brand new day that will build off of a recognizable, perhaps even nostalgic, foundation.

Last, but important nonetheless, and also in the name of inclusion: so many people have remarked that this year’s field of candidates for the Democratic nomination has been a surprisingly excellent collection of people. While people have only been supporting you or Hillary for the last few weeks, there were others who received support and represent voters’ interests. Most people that support other candidates end up not voting for them, because the candidate’s status of “unelectable” means that they’re throwing their vote away. You are my choice of candidate, but my first choice would have been Dennis Kucinich, who has some notably different positions. Many people end up wishing their favorite candidate, or a particular platform plank, would be included in the plans and directives of the eventual nominee, and they are far greater than the number of votes reflected as the amount actually cast for these “unelectables.”

Based on this thinking, I think it would be wise to give real consideration to using one or more of these candidates in your administration, whether it be an appropriate cabinet position, or something else of a substantial nature. If you found that using a previous candidate was appropriate for one position or another, that would be another excellent move of inclusion. For instance, Bill Richardson would make an excellent Secretary of State, in my opinion. Besides exciting his supporters, such an appointment would also appeal to those who like him and his ideas, and his general demographic support, even though they ended up voting for and/or supporting some other candidate. I know many people that are big fans of both Richardson and Kucinich, who ended up voting for you over Hillary, even before it fell down to just the two of you.

Besides the appeal to various supporters, there plainly are some excellent people in that original field of candidates, that would be appropriate for positions even if they’d never been a part of the primaries. One other factor: people know these candidates. They’ve been all over TV, during their campaigns as well as the endless debates. The public likes being able to identify and understand the top people in the administration; I think that the public is developing an increasing recognition of the other major players, mostly meaning the main cabinet/advisors, UN ambassador, etc. Using such a person to occupy a space in your administration will increase inclusion (obviously, this has become my mantra), and show that their perspectives and causes are being sincerely represented for them at the highest levels. Obviously, there are other well-known players that would be popular and appreciated at various posts: an example that most easily comes to mind is the fantastic Richard Clarke, for instance.

I’ve only ever written a couple of letters to politicians – my senators, Kennedy and Kerry – but today, I have been so driven to write this letter, even knowing it will probably not make its way into the thinking of you or your campaign. But if it does, then this is the most important letter I’ve ever written. And I thank whomever for actually reading my long-winded notes.

Yours truly,

Phobrek Taz

Worcester, Massachusetts

Thou art a soiled condom, sir!

Slick Willie done apologized for calling some asshole reporter (actually, editor) a "scumbag." He's got to walk on eggshells to avoid screwing his wife... 's campaign, but man, show some balls. Do they all have to apologize anytime they say something that might make Grandma frown? For reference:

The article, by Vanity Fair magazine's national editor Todd Purdum, suggested that Bill Clinton's personality had changed since his 2004 heart bypass surgery and said that there were reports of Clinton "seeing a lot of women on the road." - CNN

If that indeed was the charge laid out by this guy, then sure, he's a fucking scumbag. I don't think people really equate the word with its original meaning (a used condom), do they? Maybe I'm wrong. If so, then yeah, apologize for the image, but my understanding is that it's just taken as a general insult these days. Am I wrong?

Meh. Meanwhile, reports are up and down on the idea of Hillary wanting the Veep position. I hope Obamarama resists the urge. After all, I've already decreed that he should take Dennis along for the ride. Kucinich 2016! Kucinich 2016! His wife will still be hot.

Quote of the Day

Regarding his very distant blood relationship to Barack Obama, our beloved Creepy Veep Dick Cheney said that the Cheney line on his father's side of the family dates to 1630's, and a Cheney family line on his mother's side dates to the 1650's.

Thus:

"So, I had Cheneys on both sides of the family — and we don't even live in West Virginia," Cheney cracked. After pausing for laughter from the crowd, Cheney added, "You can say those things when you're not running for re-election."

As the CNN item detailing this adds:

Afterward, West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd lashed out at Cheney for the "insult to all Americans." In a written statement, Byrd declared that Cheney showed "contempt and astounding ignorance toward his own countrymen" with the comments.

Sadly, that weird old Byrd just went into the hospital tonight. Damn. First Our (drunken) Man Ted, now the aged one (I had no idea he was 3rd in line to the presidency... can you fucking imagine?). If Kennedy has to retire, we're pretty safe (but not completely) with his replacement being a Democrat. But for Byrd in West Virginia?

On the Daily Show, they interviewed some random W Virginians on the day of their primary, asking why people weren't voting for Obama. Those made for some other great quotes (paraphrasing here): "I ain't votin' for no Muslim," and "his middle name's Hussein... I had enough'a Husseins."

Mind-boggling Article of the Day

From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/02/9373/

60 Minutes: Pentagon’s Raygun Demonstrated on Mock Protesters

by David Edwards and Muriel Kane

The Pentagon has been developing a raygun which can harmlessly repel enemies by causing a burning sensation in the top layer of the skin. However, according to CBS’s 60 Minutes, the military is unwilling to actually trust this weapon enough to deploy it in Iraq.

“We are now stepping into the Buck Rogers scenario,” explained Colonel Kirk Hymes, who is in charge of testing the “Active Denial System” at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia.

Hymes demonstrated the weapon by staging what CBS somewhat oddly called “a scenario soldiers might encounter in Iraq” — a handful of military volunteers, dressed as civilian protesters, who carried signs saying “peace not war” and threw objects at a small group of soldiers. A series of raygun blasts from half a mile away disrupted their chants and finally sent them running.

Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisiton Sue Payton calls the Active Denial System a “huge game-changer” which “would save huge numbers of lives.” She told CBS, “It could be used to read someone’s mind, in effect. … If they continue to come at you, then you’re fairly sure … they’re probably a terrorist or an adversary who wants to do you harm.”

(skipping a paragraph)

However, the failure to deploy the weapon as planned has raised suspicions that the real intention is to use it for domestic crowd control.

In 2006, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne was quoted as saying that the device should be used first on Americans, because “if we’re not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation. … If I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press.”

All together now:

WTF

Here's a brief article on the protection of uncontacted peoples: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/30/9303/

It begins:

These remarkable pictures of Envira Indians were taken by Brazilian government officials during several flights over a remote part of Brazil’s Acre state.

Painted a bright orange, two members of the tribe emerged from their huts to threaten the helicopter as it flew low over their small village.

Others could be seen in the background, apparently startled by the presence of the noisy machine in their skies.

“We did the over-flight to show their houses, to show they are there, to show they exist,’ said Jose Carlos dos Reis Meirelles, an expert on “uncontacted” tribes, who works for the Brazilian government’s Indian affairs department.

“This is very important because there are some who doubt their existence.”

---

I agree that it's important to prove their existence. But I have to ask... if you fly a chopper over these people, are they not being contacted? It's the old notion that if you're trying only to observe a situation in a disconnected manner, you're still interacting with and affecting it. "Uncontacted" doesn't mean that the people have never been contacted whatsoever, but I'm just imagining these people racing out of their huts to find this terrifying monster swooping down upon them from the sky. They have probably encountered outsiders at some point in the past, but I think it's likely that such visitors would have been on foot to get to what must be rather remote areas. I'd love to know what effect such an event would have on these people, though. D'oh.

Have I mentioned that I hate Windows Vista? Let me tell you why: first, th-



[This post has been edited by Windows Vista.]

teh

This morning I woke up w/cum all over my face. DAMN YOU WINDOWS VISTA!!!

I dair U 2 nock this canddiateoff mi sholder LOLOLLOLL!!!1

Yay Hillary! Keep going, girl. By my calculations, if you beat Obama 60-40% in the last few primaries, you can almost beat him! You done did it before - in New York, Arkansas, and American Samoa - you can do it six more times! And then maybe the super'gates can drag you across the finish line. Especially if they have extra primaries in those three states... uhm, places. NM.

Is it my imagination, or do the pictures of Hillary in the past few days have her smiling in a way that opens her mouth to an inhuman extent? Nice tonsils, babe!

LSD

Dr. Hofmann has left the box for good this time... the inventor of LSD died last week, and this article makes an admirable attempt at explaining what he'd unleashed. Having done a lot of acid in my life, I think his take is as good an encapsulation as you'll see. It's otherwise kind of frustrating trying to relate the experience to someone who's never taken it.

Yawp.

Originally published in the (London) Independent:

A Tribute To Albert Hofmann: My LSD Trip Down Memory Lane
by Tim Lott

Dr Albert Hofmann, who died last week, was the inventor of LSD. But he was not merely a chemist. He was a revolutionary.

Hofmann changed the way a whole generation looked at the world. This is the sort of statement that is customarily made about thinkers and scientists of the stature of, say, Marx or Einstein. But it is more directly and vividly true of Hofmann than any of these otherwise much more formidable intellectual titans. Freud theorised about the existence of the unconscious, but LSD made it an experiential reality, as tangible as touching stone or seeing light.

Hofmann’s discovery is still widely misunderstood. But those who have known its glory - and its agony - will also know that no one really comes back from the altered state of consciousness that LSD induces quite the same person that they were before. Like no other experience imaginable, it rips to pieces your understanding of what it is to be alive.

When you return from the unimaginable shore to which LSD takes you, putting those pieces back together can be a lifelong task. It can make you mad. But it can also make you understand that your life is not what you thought it was - that it is bigger, richer and, above all, stranger.

This epiphany-in-a-pill is an idea that makes us deeply uncomfortable for a raft of reasons - the lack of spiritual or moral effort involved in attaining the experience, the impossibility of explaining its effects to non-users, and the moral panic over its distribution and use in the 1960s and 1970s.

Nowadays, LSD has been quietly consigned to the medicine cabinet of history. It is no longer fashionable, nor widely available, nor especially potent. It has lost ground to gentler drugs such as MDMA or more violent narcotics such a crack, crystal meth and heroin. But it is in a different category from all these mind-altering substances, and ill deserves its lumping into the category of “recreational drugs: bad/harmful/dangerous”.

This isn’t to say it isn’t bad, harmful or dangerous. LSD can certainly be all those things. But LSD - like its natural counterparts mescaline or peyote - is not quite in the same category as any other mind-altering narcotic. It is potentially, I think, the only truly creative drug - that is, a drug which enables the mind to shake off the shackles of habit and conditioning and arrive at the heart of - for want of a better word - the human soul.

And it is the only “recreational” drug that has a real element of intellectual and cultural respectability, with thinkers and writers such as Aldous Huxley, Ken Kesey and Allen Ginsberg all affirming its uses, while the remarkable phenomenon we call “the Sixties” would not have happened at all without this psychoactive shamanic medicine.

Before I continue, I should make it clear that I am not a habitual or long-term user of the drug. I have taken it twice - both times when I was 15 years old. On one occasion, it gave me an experience of bliss, lasting some 12 hours, that lay far beyond words or images to express. On the other, I was cast into the darkest reaches of hopelessness and terror. I ended up running down my street naked, and being locked up in a police cell. It is not an exaggeration to say that these experiences, to this day, are always with me.

This will sound like hyperbole to anyone who hasn’t experienced the drug, so I will make an effort to explain what it was like, knowing that such an effort must fail. I wrote about it in my memoir, The Scent of Dried Roses. Here are two brief extracts:

“The tower blocks shine like mirrors and the blue of the sky seems to have concentrated and leaked out into the air, so that everything is soaked in aquamarine. There is a deep relentless and secret whirr within me, a dynamo that has been switched on to full power for the first time. I am so full of delight I want to leave my skin and melt.”

Then later:

“The panic begins to turn to unalloyed terror as I feel my very sense of self beginning to collapse into the swelling chaos of everything else… I am negated. I have gone completely mad, although everything is unmistakable, intensely real.”

The key fact of these accounts is that, whether in terror or bliss, “I am not seeing things that are not there. I am seeing things that are there…. The sensible world is merely a construction of my brain, and the brain is simply a filter that keeps unmanageable, too large information out.” LSD does not merely distort reality - it removes a filter on reality. And that is why it is such a profound experience.

I cannot in all conscience evangelise, or recommend to my children that they take it. I have suffered mental health problems much of my life - I doubt this fact is entirely unconnected with those very intense teenage mental epiphanies. But I cannot help but be grateful to have seen what I have seen, which is plainly and simply a religious vision, an a priori proof that there is more to the world than a dead material universe.

My personal experience aside, it fuelled decades of cultural experiment and output, much of it bad, but some of it good. (After Sir Paul McCartney claimed that “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” had nothing to do with LSD, I’m surprised the judge in his divorce case believed a word he uttered in court.) But the larger societal “effect” ‘ of LSD - be it in swirly-whirly graffiti, self-indulgent rock music, or tie-dye T-shirts - are a red herring, along with the appallingly dim-witted New Age movements it has left in its wake.

The art, culture and film that arose out of LSD did not have much worth - Zabriskie Point? Disraeli Gears? Journey to Ixtlan? and so on - but the fact that people took the intellectual experience of the drug seriously does speak volumes. There were even TV documentaries - one chaired by Malcolm Muggeridge - on which philosophers and academics were given the drug and filmed on camera. They spoke very highly of their experiences. LSD, they asserted, didn’t simply damage people; it changed them in ways that went beyond “good” or “bad”. This is its unique claim within the pharmacological lexicon.

Such a thing happening today is unimaginable. We live now in a world where all illegal drugs are lumped together as social evils. This represents a narrowing of our imaginations, a closing of our collective minds. Albert Hofmann’s discovery remains, I believe, of the greatest significance; and there are few mature adults - particular ones whose minds are limited by the environment in which they habitually exist - who would not benefit greatly from its prescription.

Gordon Brown would be a prime contender, I think. His dour materialism would disappear overnight. Boris Johnson has clearly had some already slipped to him in a cup of tea some time or other. But apart from him, the entire Tory and Labour front benches could do with at least one medically administered shot of acid.

That something which bio-chemically can open and even heal the mind (in some ways Prozac does something analogous though very different) is so violently proscribed speaks volumes of our times, when imagination and the spiritual itself are virtually taboo. Albert Hofmann’s great experiment was thus a failure. But one day, I still believe, both its therapeutic and philosophical uses will be rediscovered.

And one other thing. Old Albert lived to 102. What does that tell you about the therapeutic properties of lysergic acid diethylamide?

Lair Update

So, a while ago I mentioned getting a new computer, and I've had it now for quite a while. But I also had made a deal with myself, that before I installed it, I MUST clean my room properly, for the first time in eight years. Seriously - eight years. Someone once said - and since then, many have repeated it - that the cleanliness or order of your home is reflective of your psyche. This could not be more true for me. Here's a "before picture" of a small part of my room:



People who have seen my place have said "Well, ha ha, as long as you know where everything is...." No, I would have no idea where anything was, that was a big part of the fucking problem! And yet, I've been unable to get the place clean and ordered for eight years. Such has been the state of my state.

Still, as Quentin Crisp once said:

There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.

Of course, I should give you an "after picture" of the same scene in my room, but it wouldn't look very impressive, particularly since it never got to be perfectly clean (though the rest of my room did), and it's now concealed by tons of cardboard boxes from my new computer (I've been keeping them ready in case I need to send anything back, which has come true for my speaker system).

But here's the new beast, at last:



The case reminds me of a Cylon. The case's model is the NZXT Zero Aluminum, which I must say: don't get. It was actually a replacement for my desired case, by ThermalTake, and I wish I'd waited for it (it was back-ordered, and the thing was taking so long already... d'oh). This rig is from www.CyberPowerpc.com btw, and while I can tell you they'll give you great bang for your buck, they take forever to do stuff, and their technical support is ABYSMAL.

Quote of the Duh

Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that her comments that the United States could “totally obliterate” Iran if it made a nuclear attack on Israel had been an attempt to return the United States to Cold War style deterrence.

Does this mean we get more wars-by-proxy and a new Red Scare too? Or I guess it would be a Brown Scare? And hey, a further buildup of arms, and supplying the same to all the pawns?

"Woot!" yelps the war industry, as it slaps on a "Hillary '08" button.

New Buttons (and buttons for sale, yawp)

As usual, it's been way too long - a month and a day - since last I posted. I've had my ups, downs, sides to sides, and wibbly-wobblies. But enough about me, here's the recent additions to my buttons designs. The actual buttons are only 1.25" diameter; I really do need to get the 2" machine.







The last one - Edgar Rice Burroughs - is the same color as/and is replacing my Asimov button, below. I'm gonna come up with a new design for the margins of my sci-fi heroes' buttons (Asimov, JG Ballard, Philip K, Heinlein, etc.). As if you care.

Anyway, I'm hoping to set up a more pro page for this, but as of now I'm selling these things for $1 (postage included) to anyone in the US, and uh, more I guess for anyone overseas. If you want anything, check my buttons photo album for designs, and email me at phobrek@gmail.com - w/a mailing address, etc. Note that my buttons are all only 1.25" in diameter.

Oh! A disclaimer: if anyone has any issue with copyright of any images used, please let me know at the same address, and I'll respond, and probably cease and desist. No biggie.

Quote of the Duh

From the article on a woman killed by a manta ray that leaped out of the water into a boat:

"It's just as freakish of an accident as I have heard," said Jorge Pino of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. "The chances of this occurring are so remote that most of us are completely astonished that this happened."

Operative words being "most of us." Meaning there was at least one guy that said "Well yeah, I coulda told you this was going to happen sooner or later...."

My two year old nephew Aalam is already a frickin' rock star.

Status: FU

Order timestamp: 3/2/2008 3:28:33 PM (PST)
Shipping method: Fedex Ground
Order total: $1,886.45
Status: Order received

Status: Order received
Status: Order received
Status: Order received
Status: Order received
Status: Order received

GAHHHH gimme my computer! Every time I check - like every 4 or 5 minutes - all I gets is "Order received." FOKK.

Edit/add... I just called 'em and learned it will be shipped out this Friday or at the latest, Monday. Grumble grumble okay.

Buttonses

While the bunch of my button designs can be viewed in my album, here's my newest ones. The actual buttons are only 1.25" btw, although in time I want to get a 2" button press as well.





While these are all fabulous writers of yore, I'm also going to make ones of plenty of other favorite figures, such as Einsten, Nikolai Tesla, Orson Welles, favorite (dead) musicians (often composers) that you won't otherwise see on a button, like Aram Khachaturian, Edward MacDowell, etc.

And I'm going to make different background designs... recycling the one I've been using gets old.

Quote of the Duh

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept." - Geraldine Ferraro

Wow... I don't even need to try making a gag out of this one.

I forgot to add: my new niece is named Jameela Sophia Sulski. Niiice.

Buttonses

So, with the aid of my trusty button-maker I bought a couple months ago, I've been making... you guessed it! Buttons! I've made quite a few thus far, but here's my two favorites:





I've uploaded the other designs I've made at http://picasaweb.google.com/phobrek/Buttonses. Eventually I plan to sell such things (cheap), although I'll need to make (fairly) original designs so as to respect others' ownership of images, etc. (such as the Gygax painting here).

I'm working on a bunch of designs for favorite authors, like: Anais Nin, Henry Miller, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert E. Howard, Isaac Asimov, JRR Tolkein, CS Lewis, Robert Heinlein, Philip K Dick, JG Ballard, etc.

He done ascended....

While this news below - fuck yeah! - dwarfs this completely, I imagine most readers of this blog (all three of you) know that E. Gary Gygax died yesterday. I'll have more to say on this great man in the near future, and I was surprised to see that I felt more about him than I thought I would.

It's odd... I wouldn't have been surprised if Gygax had actually died long ago, and I'd just never heard about it. I can't say that I'll "miss" him, since I never followed his life and doings, really. Instead, however, I've suddenly felt a great, thankful acknowledgment of what he had done, and how powerful he affected my life, as well as the lives of countless others. In terms of role-playing games, and so many games that in some way have an ancient, distant distant or relationship to them, his impact has been massive.

This is corny, but I'll say it anyway:

Gygax has found the Amulet of Yendor, and ascended to godhood.

I'm such a geek. And proud of it.

YEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAH!!!

WOOWOOWOOWOOWOOWOOWOOYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAH!!!

As of this morning, I gots a niece!!! Anita, wife of my brother Peter, just popped. I'm so psyched! FUCK YEAH! YEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAH!!!

L33t

So, uh, it's been over a month and a half since I last posted, although there was a good reason, which I'll get into later (I mean, in the next day or so, not in another month, etc.).

But I'm too excited not to share this awesome news. Thanks to a loan from my godlike brother John, we just ordered me a new computer. The obsolete machine I've been using for the last 8+ years is a (refurbished, even) Dell Dimension 4550 and an even older monitor. Since then, I've come to hate Dell for their craptacular outsourced customer service (whereas it was excellent in my first years w/them) and have recently learned more about their inferior parts (although I guess they make top-notch laptops).

So after much research, I'm now getting the following!



CyberPower Infinity 8800 Pro SE

• CPU: (Quad-Core) Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.4GHz 1066FSB 8MB L2 Cache 64-bit
• CASE: Thermaltake Bach VX Mid-Tower 420W Case with Side Window
• FAN: Thermaltake MaxOrb Enthusiast CPU Cooling Fan (Slient & Overclock Proof w/ Highest Efficiency Cooling)
• MOTHERBOARD: (QX9650 Support) Asus P5N-D nForce 750i SLI Chipset LGA775 FSB1333 DDR2 Mainboard
• MEMORY: 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory
• VIDEO: EVGA NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 1GB 16X PCI Express
• HDD: 500GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM Hard Drive
• HDD2: 500GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM Hard Drive
• CD: 20X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW DRIVE DUAL LAYER (BLACK COLOR)
• CD2: 20X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW DRIVE DUAL LAYER (BLACK COLOR)
• MONITOR: ViewSonic VX2235WM ClearMotiv 22" TFT Active Matrix LCD Display (5MS) 1680x1050
• NETWORK: Onboard Gigabit LAN Network
• POWERSUPPLY: Xion SuperNova 800 Watts Power Supplies Quad SLI Ready
• SOUND: Creative Labs SB Audigy SE
• SPEAKERS: Creative Labs Inspire P7800 7.1 Surround Subwoofer Speaker System (BLACK COLOR)
• OS: Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Premium w/ Service Pack 1 (64-bit Edition)
• FLASHMEDIA: INTERNAL 12in1 Flash Media Reader/Writer (BLACK COLOR)
• MOUSE: Logitech Optical Wheel Mouse (BLACK COLOR)
• SERVICE: STANDARD WARRANTY: 3-YEAR LIMITED WARRANTY PLUS 24/7 LIFE-TIME TECHNICAL SUPPORT
• FREE ACCESSORY: CYBERPOWER WINDOWS VISTA HOME PREMIUM BONUS Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini STM900803OTA3E1-RK 80GB 5400 RPM External Hard Drive
• FREEBIE_VC2: FREE! Poker Set
• FREEBIE_CU1: FREE! CyberPower Multi-Purpose Carrying Briefcase ($19.99 Value)
• FREEBIE_CU2: FREE! Cyberpower Unleash The Power T-Shirt/Rag

Woot. It should arrive in about a week.

"I'm so excited I could plotz!" - Hawkeye, MASH

Stamps. WTF else, bitch?

So, my stamps from stamps.com came... they is teh best!



My next will be this design I just done made. Years and years ago there was a pretty prolific petition going on to get the USPS to issue a stamp commemorating HP Lovecraft. It never happened, so, take that, postal bitches!

Quote of the Day

In the "you just can't make this shit up" department:

"You cannot expect people to believe in the promise of a better future when they are jailed for peacefully petitioning their government. And you cannot stand up a modern, confident nation when you do not allow people to voice their legitimate criticisms."
- G W Bush

Housemate Wanted!

Hey all, one of my roomies is moving out at the end of this month. He needed to be closer to school... WTF. An hour+ each way is no big deal! Traitor.

Anyway, we need a housemate. If you or someone you know wants a place in a vegetarian household in Worcester, Massachusetts, send 'em my way. Hell, if you simply know someone in the Worcester area, tell them to pass this "must-see" offer along to all their friends.

The blurb follows:



Wanted: Housemate (Vegetarian only!)

When: February 1st, 2008

Where: Avalon Place, 6 blocks in from Elm Park & Highland St.
Very central, w/in walking distance to everything

What: Large 1st floor apt: 4 bedrooms, 2 large common rooms, kitchen
Big attractive house built in the 1830s

Who: We 3 housemates are ages 28 to a YOUNG (I’ll have you know) 40

Price: $385/month includes heat; internet/electricity is cheap.

Niceties:
- The room up for grabs is particularly nifty
- Use of free laundry machines
- Lots of storage space available
- Pets OK. Pets are great!

Call Phobrek at 508-755-8732, or email phobrek@gmail.com!

Location: if you’re not familiar with this area, know that:
- The stretch of nearby Highland St. has decent restaurants, bars, cafe, and many fun shops, making it one of Worcester’s few lively, popular areas.
- A supermarket is w/in walking distance near the lovely Elm Park, and across the park is (appropriately) Park Ave., with more restaurants, shops, and fun.
- Highland Street goes downtown and becomes Route 9, giving quick highway access; Park Ave is a main street which crosses the city: when you’re getting to places in or out of Worcester, this is an ideal location.

John loves Barack

I just watched CNN's clip of John Kerry stumping in South Carolina for Barack Obama, giving his endorsement in an emphatic and lively manner. If only the dumbass had had this kind of fire four years ago! Once Obama took the stage and thanked Kerry, he went on to espouse the former candidate's virtues, and so again I had to wonder, what if someone stumped for him in that dramatic, charismatic way Obama has about him? Obama defended Kerry better than he had when he was running back in '04. Well, I guess anyone defending Kerry back then would have done a better job, seeing as how the weakling just rolled over and died, not even trying to de-bunk the blatant smear attacks against him.

I honestly have no real preference at this point, when it comes to Hillary, Obama, and Edwards. I just want one of them to run and beat whatever sacrificial turkey the GOP offers us; any of them will be a big step forward. And once in there, I want whoever it is to appoint the mighty mouse DK (Dennis Kucinich) to a cabinet position. Get this fantastic guy into a place where he can do some good, because he's brilliant and would be great for the country. And this way we can also keep his wife in the spotlight (cough... okay, I mentioned DK, so by law I have to make note of his hot wife).

Abolish the Electoral College!

Supposedly, this month, Senator Dianne Feinstein is to lead the charge against abolishing the electoral college. In the past, what attempts have been made seem to have gotten nowhere fast. And, sadly, evolving our antiquated method of electing the "leader of the free world" has never been an issue of public interest. Which is rather ridiculous, seeing as how Gore won the general election in 2000, but lost the college's tally (although of course, had all things been fair, he'd have won Florida, etc.). I just have this slight feeling in my gut that things might have gone differently these past seven years had Gore been at the helm. Call me crazy.

I'll be resurrecting and revising my old article "Inequality of votes in presidential elections under the Electoral College system" soon enough and posting my plea anew soon enough. How to get it read, well, that's always a problem.

In Air America's first days, I actually got to talk to Al Franken for a bit regarding the (then-) upcoming 2004 election. I took the position that none of the existing problems (let alone the unjust EC system) would be fixed by that November; somehow he thought to the contrary. All I can say is... IN YOUR FACE, FRANKEN! And while I love Feinstein and hope for the best, I just can't imagine her getting the support she needs. Maybe I'm wrong. I'd definitely be happy if we could at least first address the torrent of inadequacies and "dirty tricks" abounding in our previous federal elections.

All yr liberties belongz 2 us

Just finished watching a great British documentary from late last year called Taking Liberties. Definitely worth watching, regardless of what country you're watching it from. And of course, lots of the last years of Britain's descent into madness is tied at the hips with ours here in the U.S.

A favorite part was Riz MC's video for The Post-9/11 Blues. Riz was actually one of the actors in the re-enactment segments in another great flick, Road to Guantanamo Bay. Ironically, he was recently detained shortly after attending a film festival featuring it, and thus was subjected to detention, abuse, threats, etc.

Anyway, check out the video and song; it kicks arse. And definitely catch Taking Liberties and Road to Guantanamo.

I see dead people's stamps

In the last three days I've been much the philately geek. Bidding tiny amounts for interesting stuff on eBay (I'm a total cheapskate, which is necessary because of my barren bank account), and getting a couple fun things in the mail. One package I got was an old, unopened bag of "mission stamps." Also called "charity stamps," I learned that these are bunches of stamps that are gathered by and/or for religious groups (hence the term mission) which are then sold to stamp addicts for charity. How odd... I can't imagine it turning much of a profit. But, the benefit to a stamp collector is that these are grab bags which are supposedly unsorted and unpicked by anyone, meaning you might get some rare stuff amongst the many commons. But at this point I'm not really capable of telling one from the other, since my DVD stamp guide hasn't arrived in the mail yet. This company Scott has a corner on the stamps market, and they release new catalogs every year, which feature not only a price guide for the stamps, but pictures of every fucking stamp ever. They're six massive phone book sized tomes per year, costing like $300. Crazy. The DVD I found was substantially cheaper.

But I've figured that the best way to get more interesting, older stamps would be to grab other people's collections... those of dead people. I've been looking for a while to see if any estate sales were in the area (yard sales are pretty rare in the winter), and last week I found one. It was on Friday and my friend Dave (also a hunter of bargains) got there about quarter to nine in the morning. It was a riot. People started lining up in the cold (well, we didn't, but most did) waiting for the doors to open, and at exactly 9 AM, in rushed about two dozen people, in the space of a minute. When we got in, it was like vultures ripping away at the previous owner's carcass! I immediately looked at the table of ephemera (my word of the week, meaning anything that's printed that isn't a book or magazine, basically), but only found a couple of old envelopes with stamps on them. In the end, I bought those and a small stack of neat looking (unused) envelopes for $2, and Dave got a big pot for $1. I'm sure we could have found this or that if we searched through everything, but meh! Screw it. But now I'm keeping my eye out for similar sales.

I should also give out a general plea here... if you get stamps from other countries occasionally, feel free to save and send 'em to me! I'm still trying to figure out what kind I really want to collect. For now I'm just getting a general mass of the things together (I should really get a stamp book), but eventually I'll pick a couple things in particular. I think I'd like to get a lot of French stamps (they actually put art reproductions on their stamps), and if there are many, stamps depicting mythological material, and legends, folklore, etc.

And to combine the two... well, these aren't French stamps, but it's a French painter, and his paintings have made it onto some commemorative stamps, which I've now ordered. It's my all-time favorite artist, William-Adolphe Bouguereau!

What... have I done...!

And this is only the beginning....

You've got mail!

So I finally got off my ass and installed the scanner I bought, like, a year ago. The thing that finally motivated me was this crazy service that lets you make real postage stamps with your own image on them! My first thought was to make baby Aalam stamps and then send some mail to Anita (the adorable guy's mum) using them. I'll scan in the stamped package once I get 'em.

OMFG

For years and years, I've looked online (eBay and other sites) whenever I remembered to, trying to find a copy of a poster I had when I was a teenager. Today, I found it:



I can't believe it... a brand-new copy of this obscure 80's work of art! Needless to say, I'm buying it. Then, to top things off, I found that the dealer had the other masterpiece from my teenage kid's bedroom:



I'm in heaven.

Woot.

I've got a huge fokking grin on my face. The mail just came, with three packages for me (you've gotta love getting presents from yourself in the mail). I've recently become financially solvent - all caught up on rent, bills, and other money I owed my brother (who owns "my" house). I even had money left over, so what did I do? Of course, I went on a shopping spree, virtual style.

So uh, if you read my recent post (Philately Fetish), you'll know I was considering following up on my nostalgia for stamp collecting. Well, I done jumped in with both feet. These three packages are full of stamps - the 500 common ones with duplicates, etc., for like $5 or less each - including ones from the company that I absently cheated as a kid! I thought the name Kenmore Stamp Co. sounded familiar. They've sent me little packets of stamps on approval... they're adorable. I'll send most of them back (they not meeting my approval, I guess) but some are too cheap to pass up (well, for the stamps that I actually like the look of)... they range from $0.50 to $3.50. I'll be returning the Princess Diana set, unless they're cheap, in which case I might buy them just so I can deface them as a piece of art or something. I've never liked her or found her to be at all interesting (like most if not all royals), and the massive cult that seems to adore her baffles me completely.

Anyway. Big drum grin on my face. I think I'm gonna like this. And of course... woops! Two of the little buggers just flitted out and under my bed before I managed to stuff them all back into a package for safekeeeping....

I got the idea to make this on account of me being in the mood on the right quadrant. I get this way when I'm tired, which probably has something to do with me waking up at 4AM today. I figured I'd cut people off before they endanger themselves or our friendship. Hopefully I can face the spinner I made toward the top of the ring increasingly more often.... And now, I'm going back to bed, and every time one of the little brats upstairs (at my friends' home daycare center) screams and squeals, I'll growl and mutter angrily, but no-one will see and hear me do it.

Best of 2007 Lists: Flicks

2007 (The List)
I used to make a “best of” list at the end of every year, and I’m resurrecting that tradition this morning. Not because I think you care, but I like making lists, and remembering good things. And if my list points you to wonderful things that you didn’t know were so dandy, that makes me happy. So let’s begin.


The List, Part I: Films, 2007
If may seem like I go and see a lot of movies, but I actually barely ever hit the cinema. I almost always pirate stuff. I wish going to a movie theater still gave the experience of “seeing it on the big screen, as it was meant to be seen,” but every time I see a flick at local megaplex Worcester Showcase North, it’s out of focus, partly off the screen, hindered by warbly sound, or all of the above. And it doesn’t matter if you complain multiple times. Even if they do correct it, by then we’re a fair way into the film and I’m too pissed off to enjoy it. That said:

30 Days of Night - I generally don’t like horror movies, because most of them are just bad movies with some gore on top. But I loved this film, its premise, the sense of (vampire) culture they give in the briefest suggestions.



300 - Simply outstanding. I was never a fan of Frank Miller’s original graphic novel, but I love the story itself, and this film captures it magnificently, frame by painted frame.
An Inconvenient Truth - Brilliant, from its message, to how it’s presented, in a simple and honest fashion. Gore & the filmmakers managed to make a film that is genuinely non-partisan (most things that are labeled “non-partisan” aren’t). It’s hard to make a successful call for action in our apathetic society, but this film managed to do it.



Crank - OK, this came out late last year, but I had to include it. The idea of this film was to make a non-stop, crazed over-the-top, frenzied action thriller, and it succeeds in (sometimes literally) leaps and bounds, each individual second. If you want a clever adrenaline rush like never before (well, in a film), you must see Crank. Oh, and it stars one of my male crushes, Jason Statham.

No End in Sight – The best of the scads of documentaries about the War on Iraq that I’ve seen, interviewing all the right professionals in the business (I choose this word pointedly) that once held positions in the Pentagon and similar large buildings. Voices of experience, speaking intelligently and without melodrama, in a documentary that is the same… unlike certain other films (coughMICHAELMOOREcough).

Spider-Man 3 – I was set up for a disappointment, based on early reviews, and so I was very happily surprised to see that this film was genuinely good, and capped off the (thus far) trilogy in a very smart way. Tobey Maguire and James DeFranco again delivered, Topher Grace did as well as he could, and Willem DeFoe again improves his performance over his original large role from Spider-Man 1. Thomas Haden Church (and the writing of a favorite character of mine, Sandman) did well, although my favorite villains of the series will remain DeFranco and Alfred Molina (Dr. Octopus). I really dislike Kirsten Dunst (and how Mary Jane is written in these films), but the other bit part regulars are still excellent supporters (J.K. Simmons in particular). My biggest beef was the handling of the origin of Venom. Bringing alien life into the picture (though this was the “original” origin of the alien symbiote) was distracting, and jumped the shark a bit… such is the otherwise splendid grounding to reality (well, plausibility) of this series, as far as comic book movies go. I really wish they’d adopted Venom’s (and the symbiote’s) origin from the outstanding Ultimate Spider-Man series, which involves Peter Parker’s discovery of his dead father’s life work. Much more interesting and character-driven.

Other notables include:

Bourne Ultimatum - There aren’t many decent “action thrillers” in which I care about the protagonist or his story, but this is definitely one of them, and the fact that they’ve maintained this level of quality for an entire trilogy is mighty swell.

Harry Potter #284 – Or whichever number this one was in the series. I know these films leave out a lot from the books (which I’ve not read, and never will), and I usually think that that’s a good idea (although Sin City was incredibly true to Frank Miller’s source material, and was f’ing brilliant). A film is not a book, and except for Sin City, it’s simply non-transferable. Although actually, the film version of 300 draws directly from many frames of Miller’s book to great effect. He has a genuinely cinematic style in his comics/graphic novels, and must have served as excellent storyboards for the two adaptations mentioned.

I Am Legend – A decent pop-film all around, and I’m a sucker for post-apocalyptic stuff.

Knocked Up – Like Superbad, this springs from the stable of and his Freaks & Geeks alumni & friends. Good fun, though not as entertaining as the other film.

Live Free or Die Hard – Still has the (acceptable) cheese factor of the franchise, but is probably the best sequel. There’s a great geek cameo, too.

Pirates of the Caribbean 3 – Like Spider-Man 3, I was surprised at just how good this film was; it’s a great example of a “popcorn movie” that gives “a rollicking-good time.”

The Protector – Another solid film from newcomer muay thai/parkour genius Tony Ja. Better than his first outing (The Warrior, which I still think is a decent film); there’s something truly groundbreaking in this film actually: in the middle of the film is an incredible slugfest of Ja vs. over a hundred assailants, all in one scene, with masterful choreography (of which the single, roving camera is an real part). It lasts almost five minutes… mind-blowing.

Ratatouille – another decent offering from Pixar, though not their best (which would be The Invisibles).

Resident Evil: Extinction – Definitely a guilty pleasure. This third film is much better than the second, although its ending sets up a possibly cringe-inducing premise for the fourth flick.

Sicko – Moore again needs to remove his melodramatic self from the film, which he did so well in Fahrenheit 9/11 (a truly great film). While Sicko is a good film and covers a vital topic, it was plodding compared to F9/11. It’s a shame that it so quickly vanished from theaters.

Smokin’ Aces – another fun pop-film, this with some truly great, wild characters.

Superbad – Again from the Freaks & Geeks alumni as well as bringing the adorkable Michael Cera aboard from the brilliant Arrested Development. Much better than Knocked Up.

TMNT – A new, CGI Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles flick that doesn’t serve as any particular sequel to the previous films, but doesn’t tediously re-hash their origin. This film was dumped from the theaters quickly, but is worth watching when you’re bored.

Transformers – Yet another good popcorn film; brought the classic icons successfully to the big screen, which is an achievement in itself, as well as pure fun.

War – A decent actioner, featuring two of my very favorites, Jet Li and Jason Statham. The gag of the film is a bit of a stretch (this film can be spoiled is you know it ahead of time), but it’s still much more interesting that the usual fare. Oh, and it stars two of my male crushes, Jet Li and Jason Statham.

So there we go. If you think that this was long and tedious, just you wait: I’ve got tons more reviews and recommendations and other lists…

Go me.

I just got off my ass and did the small amount of snow-shoveling required outside my house. It's basically my job, being the landlord and all, but due to my ever-present lack of energy, I usually fail on this front. Of course, it only being two inches of snow helped. And I have to admit, part of me was motivated by ensuring our mail carrier had an easy time with our path and stairs... I'm expecting a slew of packages (gifts for me, Woot) this week. Huzzah for conspicuous consumption.

Drugs

I take a lot of drugs… legal ones, that is; I used to engage in the illegal sort, in my early 20s, mostly, and I look back on that period of exploration fondly. But now, I take a lot of drugs, via prescription, for my medical/mental condition. The list (as I’m of a list-making mood this morning) these days is:

Cymbalta – antidepressant
Lamictal – balances my (barely-bipolar) mood swings
Androgel – not ingested, lest I want to die – a testosterone-enhancing gel
Doxepin – sleep-regulation
Adderall – legal speed

This also, until recently, included Bromocriptine, a drug usually given to people with Parkinson’s, which impedes the tumor in my pituitary gland’s stifling of natural testosterone production. We (my endocrinologist and I) have taken me off of it recently, to see if my years of taking this (heavy on the nasty side-effects) drug has indefinitely suppressed the tumor. I’m doing my usual schedule of blood tests over the next year, followed by an MRI, to see how this is going.

Anyway: I will address drug #5 this morning, the Adderall. It’s 4:30 AM as I write this, and it is partly to blame. Mind you, it’s a great drug to aid my otherwise zombie-like level of energy, it being a pretty straight-up amphetamine. Speed was never my thing during my drug years, but I need it now. For the past two weeks, however, I was without the stuff. Previous to that was just the first month that I’d started taking this drug, and that period was an elation, it giving me the energy to actually do things. I started cleaning my pig-sty of a room for the first time in eight years. Imagine how bizarre that sounds, and then apply it to eight years of 365 days. It’s been said that the cleanliness of one’s home speaks greatly of one’s emotional and psychological health, and I agree with that: I’ve been living in this state for about 3,000 days.

Like other speedy drugs (Ritalin, for instance, which was my motivating drug in recent months), Adderall is a tightly-controlled substance, requiring a new scrip every month. Unfortunately, my pharmaceutical company doesn’t deal well with our (my psychiatrist’s and my) attempts at dutifully submitting forms for pre-approval for controlled substances, and so I was off my speed for the past two+ weeks. It made a huge difference, but now I’m finally back on the stuff.

As I’ve been painfully short on go these recent days, when I finally got the new scrip filled, I popped one immediately upon getting the pills, though it was about 4PM (two days ago), and they’re supposed to be taken in the morning. Then I went over to my buddy Todd’s house to watch the big game (Pats vs. Giants), but omitted the standard beer/drinky-drinky from my diet, since I’m still dealing with post-cold effects (phlegm, anyone?). So instead I drank something I never drink: Dr. Pepper. Over the course of the night, like, 1.5 liters of the stuff. I finally went to sleep at 4AM that night.

For the rest of that day (yesterday), I was hung over from my binge, though I still managed to be somewhat productive (I installed me a new, digital thermostat… now I have to figure out how to program the fucking thing). But, here I am, writing this at 5AM, and I’m about to take another hit of speed. Still, even feeling hung over, this is miles better than not having the stuff in me.

Which brings me to a happy memory.

During Saturday morning cartoons (the classic 80s era), they used to actually run PSAs, and my favorite one was the following. Everybody sing along!

This is serious (serious)
We could make you delirious (delirious)
You should have a healthy fear of us (fear of us)
Too much of us is dangerous (no, no, no, nooooo!)
Doctors tell the pharmacy (pharmacy)
Types of pills that you will need (you will need)
And he knows the harm that we can be (we can be!)
If we're not taken carefully (no, no, no, nooooo!)
We're not candy (believe us!)
Even though we look so fine and dandy
When you're sick we come in handy
But, we're not candy (ooooh, no!)

FUCK YEAH.

Just got back from watching the Patriots recover from their biggest point deficit in a game this year to beat the Giants, 38-35. It was an incredible game with tons of drama, great plays, and several huge records being broken. Of course, if you are aware of football in general, this is no news to you.

I love that this game was "meaningless," in terms of it not affecting either team's standings in the playoffs. The Pats had already secured their #1 position with home field advantagein the AFC, and the Giants had already secured their wild card spot in the NFC. The real meaning of tonight was just about two teams, playing the game we and they all love, at their very best. The Patriots were gunning for a perfect season and broken records, and the Giants were the ones that were fighting to stop 'em. There was never a dull moment, every play being full of intensity, pressure, and victory and loss. Yeah, I'm getting near-poetic about it all, but it really was the best game I've seen this year. While it was pure candy watching the Patriots demolish teams for the first half of the season, this unending, full-on struggle, with a truly great team that matched up well against our lads, was easily the most exciting.

Hell, I even watched all of the post-coverage and press interviews afterward. I love how Bill Belichick has no interest in doing these, and how he says - in an absent monotone - that he's happy with the team (and how they need to do better, of course). When asked about the game being "meaningless" in terms of their standing and position in the playoffs, Belichick gave a great quote from his former mentor, Bill Parcells, which again speaks of why football is a game, which is played, always intensely (or, it should be); which I can only paraphrase as: "for a player, any game you're playing in is meaningful."

It's always great listening to Tom Brady being interviewed, on account of him being one of the coolest guys on the planet. Watching Randy Moss be interviewed was interesting enough, but the intriguing part of his conference was when someone mentioned that the New England Patriots are "big in Japan." I love the Japanese. You never know what idea or icon or character they're suddenly going to adopt and go nuts over.

If you didn't see the game, you should download it via torrent (where you'll see it commercial-free), the best site being www.tenyardtorrents.com (although it will be on any major torrent site, it being the be-all end-all of this year's NFL games, thus far).

'Twas the Night before Christmas

Well. See, I play Dungeons & Dragons with some fellow geeks, and well, uhm, see, I, uh... Okay, I made the following for them.

All you need to know is that the "St. Nick"-like character, a gnoll (actually a Flind, which are a tribe of gnoll limited to a certain stretch of mountains) is a lowly courier that works for an angel named Gabriel, who runs a curiosity shop in the bowels of a dungeon, which is actually a long-forgotten prison created by the gods to forever detain demons, devils, and other infernal creatures captured during the Mana War. Uh... anyway, Flint is a character of one of our players, and he's a priest, and he and the other players' characters are traveling through the dungeon because it's a shortcut to Colossus, the fabled city of the frost giants, because they desperately need their aid in fighting off the evil ice giants. So, yeah, and uh right now the party of adventurers is camped just outside a tomb filled with water.

Anyway.

Philately Fetish

Or, Passing Fancy #23,346.

Lately I've renewed an interest - which will almost certainly pass - in philately, the collecting of postage stamps. An odd, sudden fixation, but it doesn't surprise me in the least, because I have a favorite Christmas memory involving stamp collecting.

I was probably around five years old. I'm pretty sure my mother's sister Ann (who is nucking futs) was over for Christmas, or it may just be that she had sent us all presents (this was probably the case... she lived in England). In any event, the day before Christmas, I couldn't resist but to sneak over to the tree and yoink! a present and open it. Inside was a beginner's stamp collecting kit. Being a fetishist for collecting things, and an admirer of pictures (and design, though I'd no clue of such an art form at the time), I was delighted. It was easily my favorite present received that year!

I immediately set to work and began licking the used stamps from many different countries and sticking them into their places throughout the album (I'd no clue what the little gummy slips of film were for, but knew that stamps were licked and placed). However, the guilt of stealing a present a day early did gnaw at me, and I - with appropriate shame - tried to hide the gift, messily thrown back together, with individual stamps flitting out and about, under my bed.

Amusingly, looking back on it now, I can recall that our bed frames were high above the floor, and our bedroom (which I shared with brother John at the time) had no carpet, and so anything "hidden" under the bed could not have stood out more to even the most casual eye. My memory here is vague, but I don't think I was punished for this; in fact, soon after, we were allowed the unwrapping of one gift each on all following Christmas Eves. So even then, I was a revolutionary, that through civil disobedience, brought me and my fellows one step forward toward... well, getting whatever it is that I wanted at the time. A true leader among men!

My brothers had actually received the same gift from Auntie Ann, and we three ended up subscribing to this service which seems peculiar and antiquated to me now: every week or so, some company would send us small transparent envelopes containing a small set of stamps, and each envelope was printed with a description of the set and its price. The deal was that one would either keep the stamps and send the money, or return the stamps. I have to admit... we often just kept them and didn't pay. Well, the company didn't actually have any means of recourse, since they were operating on an honor system. I imagine that they stopped sending us our "trial" envelopes after some amount of loss on their part.

Our grandfather - my mother's father - was a mighty philatelist, and this fetish was passed on to his three daughters, so it was inevitable that, in time, the stamp collecting bug would bite we three boys. I remember our grandparents' living room (this was in Hove, England, a suburb of Brighton), with its many musty old books, which included Grandpa Jack's stamp albums. It must have been a summer in the late 70's that we were there (me being perhaps seven or eight years old), and we boys had all brought our stamp collections along with us. I remember sitting with my granddad in his library/living room, he showing off his stamp collection, and I mine. I remember vividly how he reacted when he saw that I had a full sheet of new, mint condition stamps of portraits of each of our U.S. presidents (not licked and pasted onto a page... for by now I was no novice!). They were actually only stickers, and not stamps, I said, but my grandfather contradicted this determinedly. I remained adamant in my assertion - for I couldn't see any numeric value on the things - but, seeing as how he was a bit older and more experienced than I, I guess he was probably right. With great fondness and amusement, I remember how, not only did he insist that these were stamps, but that he wanted them! I have no idea whether I gave them to him or not. I hope I did.

Grandpa Jack was a great and gentle man. The classic "kind soul." He had various jobs when he was alive; one of them I know to be that of furniture mover. He was one of the select few that owned a van during the war, and my mother has told me more than once about how he and his van were always there to help people relocate or otherwise get out of danger. I wish I had a picture of him from that time. My mother has also mentioned her own recollection of that time, albeit only briefly. Perhaps many of her memories were left forgotten as a survival technique for moving on after the war, but she has stated more than once her memory of hiding under the kitchen table, terrified, as the sirens blared.

Anyway, I do actually have a photo of my grandfather from when I knew him at my young age, and I should scan it in, along with many other photos. I'll post it once I do; it's a great, sweet picture of this elderly fellow showing off a magnificent - large and pink! - flower in his well-kept English garden. Grandpa Jack died just a couple of years later, and my brothers and I visited him in his death bed shortly before he passed. We were beginning a year-long stay in England (a very formative experience in my life), and he lay there... gently, as was his manner. I never knew my grandfather on the other side, my dad's dad (and from the sound of him, I'm better off for it), but Jack... he's a great figure and a great memory.

Should I play sentimental and grab up a stamp album? Or will this be a passing fancy (one of many, all my life)?

Well, that's my Christmas memory: my favorite one. Even better than the time I got a scientific calculator, complete with a pouch that I could hang from my belt (and oh yes, I did)!

So, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Jolly Kwanzaa, Sweet Solstice, Happy Holidays and all of that business.

And now, I will listen to Yello's version of "Jingle Bells," just to be a cheesy bastard.

Christmas Fun!

Spread some holiday joy with these fun new pictures!










Weird. People say I have no "Christmas spirit."

NTodd Storms the Castle

Please check out the excellent blog by my good friend NTodd. He's been in our capitol for the past few days trying to get arrested for being right about things. Complete w/blurry pictures!

Onward Pagan Warriors!

There was an amusing commentary on CNN's website yesterday by Roland Martin on "putting the Christ back in Christmas." It's tripe, but it pleased me greatly to read the peanut gallery's comments: about half or more of them went on about how the Christians co-opted the Pagans' wintry celebrations in the first place. Of course this is representative more of computer users that happen to browse CNN and bother posting in such places, rather than our nation, "but... still."

"I'm not ashamed to tell people who I am with Merry Christmas. I will not stop saying it even if you throw me in jail." - a proud CNN reader fighting the good fight in the War on Christmas

Hot'n'Heavy GOP-on-GOP Action

"It's another example of the administration's failure to treat global warming with the seriousness that it actually demands." - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger

Ahnold's probably my favorite Republican these days. Read about him suing the federal government here!

Good Doggie.

R moved out the other day, taking her cats and dog with her. Lexi here was the dog I've loved most in life (I'm a cat person). I think I liked her so much because she was such a cat stuck in a dog's body.

Kitschy Kitchen

For years I've been thinking... "I should clean out our cutlery drawer someday." That day came. Yesterday I unearthed everything and washed it. For pictures, check out my new photo album at http://picasaweb.google.com/phobrek/Kitschy

The tally is:
15 forks (no two of which alike)
a large serving spoon and fork
38 spoons (I did find THREE of one type)
a straining server spoon
4 wooden spoons
2 large Chinese soup spoons
2 ladles
a pasta ladle
20 knives
2 cleavers
5 carving knives
8 bread knives
a cake knife
a cheese cleaver
17 steak knives (in a vegetarian household)
3 fillet knives
a nice pair of chopsticks
10 sets of disposable chopsticks
2 plastic spatulas
2 rubber spatulas
a metal bbq spatula
a set of bbq skewers
large bbq tongs
2 sets of tongs
3 set of measuring spoons/cups
4 can openers
a whisk
a huge egg beater
a peeler
a garlic press
a vegetable grid cutter
a wine bottle opener
a tea ball
2 tea straws
several extra long straws
a metal rolling pin
a potato masher
a cheese grater
2 pizza cutters
kitschen scissors
2 rubber jar grips
and a paintbrush.

"Now THAT was a shopping experience." - The Bots

(This entry is actually two days old.)

I just returned from That's Entertainment (thatse.com), my favorite store in like, the world, which is New England's largest comic store. It sells a myriad of other things geek-related. Anyway, by using credit (for comics I'd traded in), a holiday coupon, and an employee buddy discounting some old D&D figs (for the uninitiated: diminutive metal figurines one paints and uses in playing Dungeons & Dragons, and other related games), I got a shiteload of merchandise for cheap. All in all, I gots:

1. three new funnybooks (Incredible Hulk, Mighty Avengers, and my favorite, Captain America)
2. a new X-Factor hardcover
3. NINE blister packs of figs

:for only $30 cash. Fuck yeah. Geekasm. I love a bargain.

I walked through the cold snowiness, but had to because I needed to deposit rent $ in the bank across the street from That'sE. I wasn't cold, except for my neck, which made me think that, since I was sick, I should have worn a scarf. But, I then realized that since I already had a sore throat and coughing nastiness, well, it didn't really matter, right?

Eulogy for Spot

I recently had to fill in my friend JennyLisa about my previous kitty, Spot. I did so w/these words, elsewhere:

Poor little sweet Spot never returned one day. I stalked the neighborhood for a number of days, did the whole poster thing, but nothing. I'm hoping that he got lost and someone took him in, rather than getting run over. Such is the risk of having an outdoor kitty.

I really miss the guy, he was such a riot. I like to imagine him traveling around the world: dining fine dining in Paris, prowling castle ruins in England, investigating Berlin's catacombs, finding secret passages (yay D'n'D!) in Egyptian pyramids, warning children away from IEDs in Iraq, carrying medical supplies to inaccessible areas in Malawi, searching for woolly mammoths in Russia, fighting for workers' rights in China, hunting giant rats in Indonesia, going on a vision quest with the Kiwis, guest-illustrating a manga graphic novel in Tokyo, climbing to the edge of volcanoes in Hawaii, advising Chavez in Venezuela, leading Mexicans across the border, trying his hand at goalie in Canada, and maybe, just maybe, visiting me before he makes a full frontal assault on the White House.

In any event, to me, Spot is a martyr in the struggle for fun and the absurd.

BTW - anyone that likes to look at pictures of precious little kittens can do so in my new photo album, yawp.

Cats'n'Dogs

So, two days ago, one of my housemates very suddenly moved out. She (R) and J (I feel reluctant to name other people in my journal, for whatever reason) finally broke up at one o'clock that morning. She'll be missed, but, I guess this was a long time coming (though it came as a surprise to me, because I was never quite familiar w/the state of their relationship).

Unfortunately, she's also taking her dog and (three) cats. Oddly, her first two cats seemed never too friendly with me, whereas usually cats and I love one another. The third cat, a rescued stray, was absolutely adorable, and I'll really miss that one. Also, the dog was my favorite dog ever (I'm not much of a dog person, otherwise). The dog, Lexi (I guess the anonymity habit doesn't carry over to animals), was kind of ridiculous and mentally defective. When she heard the first rumblings of a storm approaching, she would hyperventilate and hide in the bathtub or under my desk (she wasn't a small dog, btw, making this clumsy accommodation particularly amusing). With the cats, she would occasionally remember that she's a dog, and that she's supposed to dislike and chase them, so every once in a while she'd growl and maybe even woof at one, totally at random. Oh, and she liked to help people watch TV or movies, so whenever we turned on our A/V devices, she'd trot in and lie on the couch.

Now I'm thinking of getting a cat, but, I'm not the most responsible person and have difficulty even taking care of myself, let alone others. Meh.

Bible Humper

I love my Bible. It's beautifully printed, designed, illustrated, and the pages are even edge w/gold leaf! But the reason I love it is because every once in a while, I think to lift it up and see if there's anything that I've previously stuck there w/the intent to flatten it. This is by far the biggest and heaviest book I own! I just now found my once-warped copy of The Incredible Hulk #109 under there, and now it's nice and flat. I must have put it under there a couple of months ago. I love my Bible!

Re-boot #23

Otay,

My favorite webbed curmudgeon and college buddy NTodd just sent me an email suggesting that when one has a blog, there's some kind of expectation for the blogger to occasionally write something in it. So I decided to try it again.

For the uninitiated that somehow work their way here, I'm a 38 year old layabout with a medical condition that leaves me a bit of a zombie. Like most zombies, I will die if you shoot me in the head, so, I ask that you don't. Ha, ha, ha. Anyway, I live in a nice house in Worcester, Massachusetts, with housemates consisting of a couple of great friends and my brother (also a great friend). I'm a bleeding-heart liberal near-vegan atheist. I live off the government (screw you, taxpayer!) and manage a handful of apartments (two of which make up the second floor of my nice house).

Hopefully, I'll maintain this blog. Or, I'll post here a couple of times and then abandon the whole thing for another 3-6 months.