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"Republicans are threatening to revoke Major League Baseball's antitrust exemption. Not because of the steroid scandals, or the numerous abuses of the monopoly to shakedown cities for publicly financed stadiums. No, the GOP is attacking baseball because George Soros, a liberal, might buy a team and he would be a 'polarizing figure.' Oh yeah, Fred Malek, a non-polarizing, competing bidder is a GOP fundraiser and a aide who compiled a list of members of the 'Jewish Cabal' at the Bureau of Labor Statistics for Nixon. This injection of politics into baseball seems eerily familiar to me..."


Revoking baseball's anti-trust exemption would be good for the sport. It would get rid of some of the dead teams...and, hopefully, somehow, it would get rid of Steinbrenner. I'm not sure how it would do that, but that's what I pray.

This is all because George W. owned the Texas Rangers.

It's all because the American league is a bunch of pussies compared to the National League. Designated hitter? Ha!

Here's the stats of the Rangers vs the Nationals. The Rangers are having a good year. I hadn't noticed, because they suck.

WFTV.com - News - Developer Wants To Seize Supreme Court Justice's Home

Is there any way I could invest in this business deal? I'd like to put up a few thousand dollars.

WFTV.com - News - Developer Wants To Seize Supreme Court Justice's Home: "WEARE, N.H. -- Following a Supreme Court ruling giving local governments power to seize private property, a California man has suggested taking over Justice David Souter's New Hampshire farmhouse and turning it into a hotel.


Souter, a longtime Weare resident, joined in the 5-4 court decision allowing governments to seize private property from one owner and turn it over to another if doing so would benefit a community.


In a letter faxed to town officials Tuesday, Logan Darrow Clements said that a hotel on Souter's property would bring the town economic development and tax revenue.

Souter could not be reached for comment.

Charles Meany, Weare's code enforcement officer, said he is taking the matter seriously. So are police, who posted officers outside Souter's home as a precaution Tuesday."

Yippie ki yea, motherfucker

Someone said to me about the writing they did on the web,

"Eh, but what am I selling?"



What everyone in media has always sold: advertising.

Everyone in the 90's got all hung up on silly shit like micro-payments and selling articles.

I mean, how does radio get paid? Either the begging method, like NPR, or by selling advertising, like every other radio station.

Think of it like this: everyone has a printing press in their basement. Some print things and try to sell them. Other people print things and then sell advertising.


Most people use it to write "Fart!" in 72 point type. Occasionally a Thomas Paine comes along.

Occasionally a William Randolph Hearst comes along. I'm trying to do that.

What the people in the print industry don't know about the web could serve 5000 gigabytes a day.

Despite the mainstream media moving in to the web, it's still the wild, wild west out here. No, it's not the other side of the universe like Mondo 2000 seemed to think it would be in 94, but it's still a place you can carve out a ranch and raise cattle.

Yes, there are stupid questions

This was a question from blogger,

Random Question:
Why does the taste of pennies remind you of losing a tooth?


Well you know, I would have had to have lost a tooth to know the answer to that, wouldn't I? I suppose my baby teeth would count but that was a long time ago and I never noticed that it tasted like pennies.

I think this question is geared toward a demographic of people with bad dental hygiene.

What makes a question a stupid one is that it holds a lot of assumptions that aren't necessarily known to be true.

Here are some of the things this question assumes I know.

1. What a penny is. Yes, I do know what a penny is but what if I lived in Japan or some place and didn't? Or what if the pennies there were made from some other metal, like steel.

2. That I have teeth. Ok, that's a fair assumption because most people have had a tooth at some point in their life.

3. That I think pennies taste like losing a tooth. I don't. Pennies just taste like pennies to me. The older ones tast like copper, the new ones don't taste like much of anything.

Also, pennies are very dirty and I haven't put one in my mouth since I was a child.

Plus, there is the whole issue of asspennies.

Google Earth - Home

Google Earth - Home


The company that sold the world.

They pretty much stole the idea from Neal Stephenson.

The 80's

I find myself likiing a lot of music I hated back then. The Pet Shop Boys, for instance.

Ok, I always liked Opportunities...I just loved that line, "You've got the brawn, I've got the brains, let's make lots of money." I never admitted it at at the time, though.

A big part of it was during the 80's I was really into the metal. Ozzy, Motely Crue, Cinderella...I had every Van Halen album up until the the era of the hated Sammy Hagar. Although his solo stuff was good.

But there's other stuff, too. There are many bands that I liked then that I can't stand now. And many that I like now that I couldn't stand, then.

I think a lot of it was just overplay. They could play anything until you were sick of it in the 80's. Eternal Flame by the Bangles, for example. Every song by Whitney Houston. God I hated that "I believe the children are our future" song. I still hate that. I'm so glad she married Bobby Brown, because now we never hear shit out of either of them except when one of them gets arrested.

Anyway here's the lyrics to the Pet Shop Boys, "Opportunities".


I've got the brains, you've got the looks
Let's make lots of money
You've got the brawn, I've got the brains
Let's make lots of -

I've had enough of scheming and messing around with jerks
My car is parked outside, I'm afraid it doesn't work
I'm looking for a partner, someone who gets things fixed
Ask yourself this question: Do you want to be rich?

I've got the brains, you've got the looks
Let's make lots of money
You've got the brawn, I've got the brains
Let's make lots of money

You can tell I'm educated, I studied at the Sorbonne
Doctored in mathematics, I could have been a don
I can program a computer, choose the perfect time
If you've got the inclination, I've got the crime

Oh, there's a lot of opportunities
If you know when to take them, you know?
There's a lot of opportunities
If there aren't, you can make them
Make or break them

I've got the brains, you've got the looks
Let's make lots of money
Let's make lots of -
(Aahhhhh) Money
(Aahhhhh)


You can see I'm single-minded, I know what I could be
How'd you feel about it, come and take a walk with me?
I'm looking for a partner, regardless of expense
Think about it seriously, you know, it makes sense

Let's (Got the brains)
Make (Got the looks)
Let's make lots of money (Oohh money)
(Let's) You've got the brawn
(Make) I've got the brains
Let's make lots of money (Oohh money)

I've got the brains (Got the brains)
You've got the looks (Got the looks)
Let's make lots of money (Oohh money)
Money

Nietzsche

Nietzsche wasn’t wrong, he was just a liar.

He said one thing that was true, that man is a bridge between ape and the Uberman. That man would one day breed something better than himself. What the ape is to man the man is to the Uberman. Humans are nothing more than a transitional stage, like Homo Erectus or Australopithecus. The sooner humans faced their destiny and just got it over with the sooner the new species of man could be born.

The problem was that Nietzsche believed that man’s destiny would end in war and rule of the strong over the weak. This would then be man’s destruction and therefore the Uberman would be born.

So the better people killed themselves off the better for the new species, right?

So he “invented” fascism. I put the quote marks there because in a way it’s always been with us. The Spartans were most certainly fascists…and I think Hitler’s vision for the Third Reich would have been a new Sparta.

But, anyway, everything Nietzsche said that wasn’t about the coming of the Uberman, the new species of man, was propaganda. It was designed so that people who read it would think that the virtues of war were the only that really mattered. He wrote only to twist minds, so that human kind would destroy itself sooner.





Why am I talking about Nietzsche? When I was in college I was in a fraternity, ATO. Yeah, go ahead, mock me or whatever. But I was the weird guy that they let pledge because they thought I’d pull up their collective GPA. There was one of us every semester. We could do drugs, listen to weird music, wear all black, read strange philosophies; whatever…we were there for the grades and to bring weird art chicks to the parties.

So late one drunken night me and one of the former, now graduated, weird guys were setting on the floor, drinking Amstel or Bass or Oberdorffer Weiss or whatever…and you have to know that this was 1989 at the University of North Alabama…to be drinking an imported beer was akin to an open declaration of war against the status quo. Not to mention the other guy was wearing a black turtleneck sweater (in 80 degree weather, at that).

And there we were, sitting crosslegged on the floor, drinking weird beer, and with the prettiest girl in the place, at that….talking about, of all things, books!

It was treason, it was blasphemy.

So I’m talking to this guy and for whatever reason the Nietzsche comes up. At this point I hadn’t read anything by him. I knew some quotes and some summaries of his philosophy.

He seemed to be amazed that anyone else there had ever heard of Nietzsche. Most of the other frat guys hadn’t. So we start one of those long, rambling, nonsensical, drunken talks about philosophy. Who knows what was said.

But then he gave me a nickname. He called me Nietzsche. It didn’t really stick, no one else called me that. I think my official ATO nickname was Roy Orbison. I looked like him, nothing I could do about that.

Anyway, I was sort of proud of the nickname, Nietzsche. It was intelligent, it was better than Kool-aid, the nickname I’d had in 11th grade.

Whenever I would run into that guy, 5 or 6 years later, he would call me Nietzsche.

Later I read Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Didn’t really understand much of it.

But in the 16 years since then I’ve read a lot of Nietzsche. Not all of it, not every essay, but at least part of every book.

I have problems reading it. Now what I feel is a sense of horror.

Here’s this miserable, lonely man. He was in constant pain. But, you know, he loved life. You can tell in his words. But he hated seeing the evil things that men do. So much so that he couldn’t see the good things anymore. So he started writing to change human nature. Then gave up and just decided to give them a little push over the edge. Not much. Just enough tip the balance. So he could do his part to hasten the coming of the new species, the Uberman, his child.


And it will come, this child. One day man will pass away and something better than us will take our place.

But it will happen no matter what we do. So we might as well live at peace with ourselves until then.

Even though peace isn't really part of our nature.

Stop British Slavery

Stop British Slavery: "Britons, backed by the military regime of (self proclaimed 'Great') Britain, abduct Gnomes and force them to stand in gardens for no pay. These gentle gnome laborers toil imprisoned, often in dangerous conditions. US law prevents companies from opening new business ventures in most evil regimes, but not in Britain. British imports -including clothes, shoes, shrimp, and wood - continue to pour into the US. America needs legislation to ban all imports from Britain.

I write to urge you to create legislation, which would ban all imports from Britain.

Britain is an international pariah. The sham democracy military regime has committed numerous gnome rights violations and - to this day, in the 21st century - continues to allow its citizens to enslave Gnomes. Worse, gnome forced labor in British gardens only makes the gardens - and the economy they decorate – more attractive.

This regime has repeatedly thumbed its nose at the Gnome Liberation Front and the International Gnome Labor Organization. Moreover, previous US inaction has proven to be disastrous. Imports from Britain have actually INCREASED in the past few years.

It is high time to impose a total ban on imports from Britain. A Banish British Imports Bill will send a strong message to the evil British regime and the reigning dictator monarch: You cannot have our money until you stop enslaving Gnomes.

Please introduce this legislation today.

"

Brits abroad out for booze, sex and a good punch-up

And the world thinks Americans are uncivilized.

Brits abroad out for booze, sex and a good punch-up: "Young Britons on holiday shun local culture for booze, casual sex and fist-fighting, said an official British report revealed.

The Foreign Office report, 'Project Holiday', surveyed 1,000 tourists aged between 16 and 30 and laid bare the startling details of young Brits travelling abroad to 'party hard and do things to excess'.

Gone are the days of sun, sea and sangria: bonking, brawls and booze are the new watchwords for young British visitors to foreign shores.

Over one third of Britons surveyed reckoned holidays are all about hedonistic behaviour.

Of those, 75 percent were looking forward to excessive drinking, 28 percent craved a quick one-night-stand, eight percent were drug-crazed and five percent were on the look-out for a good fight.

Holdaymakers from the west Midlands led the way, craving significantly more club action, drugs and sexual intercourse than tourists from any other part of Britain.

The Welsh were the least interested in sex with just five percent rating it their top reason for heading overseas, while voyagers from southwest England were the most likely culture-vultures.

Sunseekers from northwest England reckoned over-the-top boozing was the most important part of a holiday, while 20 percent of holidaymakers from eastern England were looking forward to swinging the fists.

Those from Scotland and northeast England were the most likely to have their collar felt by the local constabulary.

'You don't have to travel to Faliraki to have spotted this,' summarised the Sunday Telegraph which carried the report: 'any British town will do.'"

The Wing Kong Exchange - Fan Fiction

The Wing Kong Exchange - Fan Fiction

The Wing Kong Exchange - Fan Fiction

Wow. There are people who write Big Trouble in Little China fanfic.

I suppose that shouldn't suprise me, there's fanfic for everything. But something about it does suprise me.

Maybe I should work on that script I had for Aliens 4...except it was good.

Radio Nigel - We dont do THAT 80s - Nuke-Cast

Radio Nigel - We dont do THAT 80s

Internet radios the way it should have been. Like if Whitney Houston and Starship had never existed.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | TV and Radio | Geldof expects 'glorious failure': "Bob Geldof has said his Live 8 protests will be 'a glorious failure' because world leaders will 'probably not' agree to all his demands on African poverty."

Am I the only one who thinks he's a big, pretentious idiot? What he actually cares about is making himself look good, not feeding the starving.

But, hey, don't let me harsh your buzz. Here's a pretty picture of a girl trying to relive someone else's youth.



She's probably feeding what? Ten people in Africa by showing up for this free concert. If she shows her boobs I'll send 10 bucks.

I'm writing a book!

I'm writing a book, "Learning Perl on Windows XP"

Chapter 1.

Click on your start menu, over on the left it says "run".

Type 'cmd' in that line.

It will open a window to the dos command line.

Then go to the directory where you have perl.exe. Type perl.exe....

blah blah blah, I could never do tech support. I'm already annoyed with this.

Look, just get a shell account for your webserver and learn perl from the command line. Any perl program you write for windows will have to be retranslated to run on your server, unless it's a windows IIs server...in which case you have other problems.

If you have a IIs server you should probably go check to see if it's crashed. No, seriously, go check now. It's probably crashed.

Look, just pay me a thousand dollars a month and I'll set up your site for you, ok?

The End

Scott Adam's new comic

See that? It's like Dilbert if he started doing steriods and got a job as a personal trainer.

Except it's not funny.

something from slashdot

Something I wrote over on Slashdot.

The story of the original Matrix was nothing new to most fans of sci-fi, as the concept of the Matrix goes back to the nightmare fiction of Harlan Ellison,

The problem is that your average "sci-fi" fan these days doesn't read at all. They watch movies, play video games and bitch at each other on message boards. The only books they ever read are novelizations of movies and horrible Star Trek books. The only thing they know about Ellison is that he wrote "The City on the Edge of Forever" episode of Star Trek.

So the philosophy of The Matrix came as a surprise to them.

The first Matrix wasn't bad, but it could have been a lot better if Keanu hadn't been handed lines like "What's an EMP?" to explain to the members of the audience what it is.

I mean, come on, any "hacker god" like Neo was supposed to be would know what an EMP was. A real hacker god could have built one in his basement.

Away witht he Pixies

Ben Lee AWAY WITH THE PIXIES lyrics
I'll cross your path
You won't let me forget it
You can change your name
And make me remember it
And they think that you're too much for words
But they don't know how to show it
They've labeled you most likely to succeed
Though you don't know how they'd know it
I don't want your stories anymore
They were fun when I was four
I'd do away with the Pixies
If you could give me something more
She's away with the Pixies
We'll work it out
We'll make it worthwhile
Cause you can't always change your name
Like your clothes go out of style
And they're jealous cause you know so much
They can't quite get a grip
You're everything they wish they were
You never miss a trick
I don't want your stories anymore
They were fun when I was four
I'd do away with the Pixies
If you could give me something more
She's away with the Pixies

I have no idea what the lyrics are about. When you hear the song it seems like you almost get it...it's this sort of wistful song about something lost. Like a lost time.

And then, in the chorus, Kim Deal from the Pixies sings, "She's away with the Pixies." (It really sounds like Kim Deal, but the version I downloaded says Liz Phair. Doesn't sound anything like her if you ask me. It's Kim Deal. But I can't seem to find any sources for this.)

I'm suddenly a Pirates fan

It seems that Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter for the Pirates in 1970 while tripping on LSD.

Some carreer highlights, "When baseball brass complained about his haircut, he wore hair curlers on the field. When a heckler called him nigger during a minor league game in Alabama, he entered the stands, sat among the hecklers and said, "What happened to all those niggers up here? All those niggers calling me nigger?" (In Ellis' version of the story, he also has a gun in his pocket.)"

And, "When the Cincinnati Reds taunted the Pirates after beating them in the 1972 National League Championship Series, Ellis decided to motivate his team by hitting every single batter in the Reds' lineup. He hit the first three and walked two before he was pulled."


Sometime in the fifth or sixth, he sensed someone next to him. Looking. He turned. It was rookie infielder Dave Cash.

"Dock," Cash said. "You've got a no-hitter going."

Cash, apparently unaware of the (insanely well-known) superstition that a pitcher never talks about a no-hitter until it's complete for fear of jinxing it, was immediately piled upon by several outraged teammates. Ellis, meanwhile, looked at the scoreboard.

Huh.

Yeah.

After the eighth, during which he'd watched outfielder Matty Alou snag an almost certain base hit, Ellis walked off the field and looked Cash straight in the eye.

"Still got my no-no!" Ellis declared.

The Braves never do fun stuff like that.

Koreans are a little confused

It seems they think Sailor Moon is one of them.



This is part of a children's art exhibition in South Korea. They want some stupid rocks back and have begun a massive propaganda effort, starting with telling the kids how evil Japan is. They think Sailor Moon is on their side.

It will all end in tears, I tell you.



From the B3ta mailing list.

The Paris Hilton of Japan

A young Japanese woman bites into a whale burger, a 380 yen ($3.50) slice of fried minke whale in a bun, which went on sale at Lucky Pierrot, a restaurant chain in the port city of Hakodate on Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido, June 23, 2005. With Japan under fire for plans to expand its whaling program, Lucky Pierrot is offering a new product aimed at using up stocks from past hunts.

The Onion 2056

The Onion 2056: "CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA—Following months of terror at the hands of hot-rod-piloting punks, Australian Prime Minister Kellen O'Neill handed power to Lord Humongous, nominal warlord of the leather-clad marauding barbarian horde Monday. 'Just walk away!' said Humongous, the official 'Ayatollah of Rock 'n' Roll-ah,' speaking through his vehicle's PA system from the smoking ruins of the city center. 'I will spare those of you who surrender your possessions and your precious juice. Just walk away, and live.' Humongous is expected to share at least a portion of his dominion over Australia with midget genius The Master, who several sources said 'runs Bartertown.'"

Chaos Magick

Every Chaos Magician is going to define it differently.

I mean, it's *Chaos*. We aren't the kind of people that are going to
just accept what someone else says as true.

And that's what I think Chaos magick is. It's figuring this stuff out
for yourself. It's taking a few simple axioms, like "as above so
below" and "like attracts like"...and some stuff about Quantuum
physics and fractals..then mix it all with hallucinogens and ritual
magick and it turns into some sort of coherent system of belief.

And if it doesn't make any sense, well you can always change it around
next week.

I'll come up with a different defintion tommorrow.

Thoughts on Spin

1. Radiohead - OK Computer
2. Public Enemy - It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back
3. Nirvana - Nevermind
4. Pavement - Slanted And Enchanted
5. The Smiths - The Queen Is Dead
6. Pixies - Surfer Rosa
7. De La Soul - 3 Feet High And Rising
8. Prince - Sign O' The Times
9. PJ Harvey - Rid Of Me
10. NWA - Straight Outta Compton

Some thoughts on Spin's top 100 albums....

Nine Inch Nails Pretty Hate Machine should have been number one...not even on the list.

Where's Tori Amos?

What year did Purple Rain come out? Because as far as Prince albums go, that one is better than Sign O' the Times.

The Smith's Meat is Murder is better than the Queen is Dead.

At least a Pixies album made it. I thought everyone had forgotten about them but me.

Pavement had one good album...only one.

De La Soul? What the fuck is that about?

#9.....PJ Harvey's Dry album was a lot better than rid of me. I think Rid of Me was probably her worst.

I need to see the rest of the list. Spin sucks, anyway. A blind monkey with a dartboard could do better.

Buffy in Alice

"Sarah Michelle Gellar is attached to star in a feature version of the Electronic Arts video game "American McGee's Alice," which is itself based on Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" novels."