Perhaps because I've had some troublesome issues with my Direcway satellite internet service this past month which resulted in me becoming digitally-deprived to some degree, I noticed I had failed to make any entry addressing the familiar hallmark holiday of Father's Day.  Apparently, Father's Day is important to many people, regardless of their personal situation, simply because most of the entire planet lives under the notion of a paternal order for the sake of their gods, governments, and annual gift-giving.

Santa Claus is a man and so is God, according to many traditions.  That's why he's called God, the father.  Mankind's savior in many religious traditions is his son, not his daughter.  Even the devil himself is historically described as a hot-tempered man with pointy horns and bad hair.  Donald Trump might actually qualify under that depiction.  However, anyone who has been married, and then subsequently divorced might argue the gender of Satan based upon their own experience.

I'm not trying to argue some male lesbian point of view that would advocate God, Satan, or Christ should be a girl.  I'm just pointing out a societal given, and how deeply ingrained it is.  We all seem to accept that God is a man, Bush is the anti-christ, and despite religious and political leanings, no one really knows what is up with the Holy Ghost.

Perhaps the Holy Ghost is asexual, like the Easter Bunny.  No one has actually come out and told me that the Easter Bunny is a man or a woman.  If the Easter Bunny is a man though, he's obviously gay.

Some people think the religious concept of the Holy Ghost is simply your innate conscious.  I tend to agree.  1800 years ago, Marcus Aurelius described his conscious as a daemon, whose appetites are both ultimately good or evil.  It's a bit like that modern cartoon characterization of the devil on one shoulder whispering into one ear and an angel guiding you in the other ear.  Despite all the best interventive and profitable measures from the pharmaceutical industry shoving any number of anti-psychotic drugs onto the majority of the world, we still have some concepts of being normal and abnormal.

Even people that don't take any drugs can be a little crazy.  For example, I think Tom Cruise has been brain-washed about any number of things, including any of his beliefs about Brooke Shields.  I won't specifically mention the name of his religion because his church's leaders seem to be able to scan all the documents on the internet even better than the National Security Agency.  Then, they religiously sue people in court.

In addition to my fear of civil litigation in this matter, I am also keenly aware that John Travolta owns a house just a few miles away and I wouldn't want to make him angry.  I just saw Pulp Fiction again the other night.  Besides getting medieval on my ass, he could just accidently flip some switch in the cockpit of his airplane and dump his toilet on my house as he prepared to land at the airfield adjacent to his house.  I certainly wouldn't want to own a house that is stained blue with airplane toilet water.

As far as Tom Cruise, however, I feel he should try some Xanax or Valium to take the edge off his mid-life crisis.  Not to be glib about his career, but after his meltdown interview with Matt Lauer, I see something similar to Howard Hughes' fate for Mr. Top Gun.  Tom's career could be spiraling down and flaming out.  He needs to hit that [eject] button, fast.

Tom's already made a hundred million dollars being the heart throb for teenage girls and Mr. Apple Pie for years, now.  But, all of a sudden, he decides to have a cause-celeb and then be bitchy about it?  Puh-lease.  Go away now, Tom.  Go be that reclusive millionaire who washes his hands after he shuts the bathroom faucet off, after washing his hands.  I beg you.

But, having forgot about Father's Day, I thought I should take stock of my own male role models.  I never met my own father, so I've always had to surrealistically adopt my own male role models.  That might partially explain my own craziness, or not.  I'll leave that up to you to decide.  I do imagine that may be the reason why I completely forgot about the holiday last month, though.

I do have a number of personal and general favorites who could fill the shoes for my own picks for Father's Day role models.  I hesitate to mention my personal favorites by name, though.  I think I should save them the trouble of possibly being added to any federal law enforcement dossier by being associated with me.  Welcome to BushWorld, guys.  I'm so thankful and glad you guys went to WWII, Korea and Vietnam to defend the principles of free speech and privacy laid out in the U.S. constitution only to witness those cherished freedoms eroded away by your peers in the White House, Congress and Supreme Court nowadays.

So instead, I will just name some of my older male role models, heroes, or mentors that are already in the public eye.  In no particular order, they are: John Perry Barlow, George Carlin, Don Imus, George Lucas, and Steve Wozniak.  Hunter S. Thompson has been recently elevated to Holy Ghost status and his mortal remains will be shot out of a cannon.


[Fullscreen] :: Drive Up Experience - Zero Hour

A stream of conscious.  What does that mean?  Free flowing thoughts pour forth.  Unknown ideas and related concepts become strung together in some fomat.  If one has a train of thought, a stream of conscious must fire through the neurological pathways in the brain like a speeding, twisting and turning roller coaster ride.  When the mind pouring forth these ideas is as large as every thought expressed on every web page on the planet, just casually browsing the web can turn into a flash flood of the digital planet.

Last night, I had the opportunity to watch the 2004 International Emmy award-winning documentary by Patrick Collerton about Jonny Kennedy, "The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off," on the TLC/Discovery cable channel.  In my humble opinion, it is an amazing story of courage and strength that will inspire and bring a tear to the eyes of anyone who sees it.  Here is the TLC description of the documentary:

Thirty-six-year-old Jonny Kennedy was born with a terrible genetic condition called dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (EB), which meant that his skin literally fell off at the slightest touch, leaving his body covered in agonizing sores and leading to his final fight against terminal skin cancer.

In his last months, Jonny decided to work with a filmmaker to document his life and death.  The result is a film that tells the uplifting, confounding and provocatively humorous story of an amazing man on a mission to make his final days on earth memorable.  Even at his very final moments, Jonny was still working desperately to raise awareness of this debilitating condition and to help find a cure.  Jonny was also frank about his feelings on his upcoming death and practical about the arrangements. We join him as he chooses his coffin and has the symbols of his life etched into it.  Not shying away from the grim reality of a terminal condition, this film is a celebration of a life lived to the very brim.

The film starts with Jonny picking out his coffin.  He is very matter of fact about his own death.  He feels death is a part of life.  Because of his condition though, his life has been a continuous 24/7 stream of constant and excrutiating pain.  Jonny believes that "Earth is a classroom" and hopes he doesn't have to come back in the next life to learn the lesson he hopes he has learned this time around.

One need only to look first hand at Jonny's hands as he attempts to simply put his own hat on his head -- where his skin has fallen off and regrown so many painful times on his hands that they are literally fused into useless clumps.  His body is entirely covered in bandages, as if he had survived a surely fatal fire.  He can barely ever sleep, as his raw skinless flesh and sores stick to everything and his pain is never ending.

And yet, despite all of it, he has found the courage of a tiger to live on and even help raise funds for the DebRA organization.  He found strength to make his way to the British Prime Minister and was able to secure a pledge from Mrs. Blair to also help DebRA by attending fundraising events.  Jonny literally died the next day.  Mission accomplished, so to speak.

The final scenes of the movie bring us back to beginning.  It is Johnny Kennedy's funeral.  His brother and mother speak a few words, and as Johnny wished, the church is filled with the sounds of his favorite song, Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now."

TLC teamed up with the non-profit organization, DebRA, to air this documentary and brought some awareness to this debilitating medical condition through Jonny Kennedy's own personal narrative.  I'm not sure when TLC may show this again, but even the 30-second preview available at TLC may motivate you to want the DVD, available through debra.org.


[Headphones] :: Hypnophonic - ghost

What the heck is going on in the Bush administration lately?  Despite President Bush's assertions that he and his administration, "don't pay attention to public opinion polls," clearly they are paying attention to the eroding support of the Iraq War by the American people.  The Democrusader can use all the good ole boy, down home euphemisms he can remember to deny it, like "dogs chasing their tails," but something is going on in North Crawford, D.C.  Otherwise, why would Bush be getting TV time this Tuesday to remake his Iraq case using bleacherfuls of soldiers at Ft. Bragg as his backdrop?

I'm wondering how many times in Dubya's upcoming speech, he will have to invoke 9/11.  A little foreshadowing to this theme was given by Karl 'Herman Goring' Rove last week in a speech to conservatives in New York.  In his speech, Rove proclaimed, "Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.  Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war."

"Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country"

-- Hermann Goring, founder of the Nazi Gestapo

Perhaps the President's upcoming speech will speak to the detainee issues at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo.  I seriously doubt it, though.  Unlike the enlisted personnel swept up into the Abu Ghraib abuse slidehow of shame who are being prosecuted, the general officer in charge of Abu Ghraib at the time of the abuse is actually being promoted.

As far as Gitmo is concerned, we need only to listen to Vice President Dick Cheney's recent remarks.  He declared, "They’re living in the tropics. They’re well fed. They’ve got everything they could possibly want."  And old Porkchop Butt should know, too.  His buddies at the Halliburton subsidiary, KBR, were just recently awarded a contract to build more facilities in Guantanamo Bay worth $30 million.

And nearly everyone has heard Cheney's recent assertions that the Iraq insurgency is in its "last throes."  However, last week, in congressional testimony, General John Abizaid, the commander of the multinational forces in Iraq, told members of the committee that he believed "more foreign fighters (are) coming into Iraq than there were six months ago."

Here's my idea: Maybe George Bush should stop holding hands with the Saudi royal family on his Crawford ranch and instead insist their government start arresting some of the hundreds of suicide bombers streaming into Iraq before these terrorists even leave the kingdom?  That might be helpful.  What do you think, good plan, or no?

While I personally think both Bush and Cheney are actually in the last throes of their credibility, I can't wait to hear what comes out of the Democrusader's mouth on Tuesday.  It should be entertaining, in some sort of surreal way.


[Headphones] :: Democrusader - JfZ

Republicans complain that NPR and PBS need fairness or balance to their liberal bias in public broadcasting.  Social conservatives don't feel they should fund television programs that don't project their right-wing political world view.  Whining about political bias in PBS television programming is about as lame an excuse to slash funding as can be imagined.  The fact is that from 6am to 6pm, PBS broadcasts children's programming.


[snark] Maybe I missed the episodes of Sesame Street that outraged the socially conservative right-wing nutbags in America where Bert and Ernie must have revealed their homosexuality and promoted gay marriage, or when Miss Piggy got knocked up by living in sin with Kermit the Frog and promoted abortion, or when the Cookie Monster or Oscar the Grouch promoted drug use to toddlers. [/snark]

I must have might have missed those controversial Sesame Street episodes that surely must be behind the "not with my tax dollars!" mantra of these compassionate conservative nutbags.  I admit I haven't watched daytime PBS television shows since Kimba and Speed Racer were new cartoons.  I'm an adult now.  I thought I'd check out what the right-wing nutbags want to abolish. I use the term abolish because $100 million cut is just the start of their funding cuts, if they get their way with it.  The "not with my tax dollars!" mantra does not mean "not with some of my tax dollars."

Switching over to my local PBS station in Central Florida (WMFE) as I write this, I realize why I don't watch daytime PBS programming.  Children's television programming is like some over the crib auditory and visual stimulation for toddlers that can only be enjoyed by adults who still drop hits of acid.   To the murbled objections of my cat -- I had to turn it off -- after only ten minutes of persual.  I don't feel there is any need to stimulate a psychodelic flash back by watching Teletubbies, today -- thank you very much.  Besides, everyone knows that Tinky Winky is an agent of the vast gay agenda.  I wouldn't want to be brainwashed and I certainly don't need to deal with a brainwashed gay cat.

PBS television shows that I do enjoy in the evening are things like Nova, Frontline, and the News Hour.  Perhaps it is the professional investigative news journalism or science programming that somehow offends right-wing social conservatives.  Go figure.  Nutbags wouldn't want to help fund anything that disagrees with their political or pulpit propaganda, I guess.

At the end of the day, however, my Libertarian medulla oblongata makes me think it might be a great idea to slowly wean the federal funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the non-profit corporation that then helps fund PBS and NPR.  Despite my fondness for Mister Roger's Neighborhood, I think CPB will find other sources of funding.

But, fair is fair. If the government cuts the funding for PBS and NPR by 25% -- something that all people enjoy -- I think we should cut other federal budgets by the same amount.  For example: let's take a broad budget axe to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and other useless federal law enforcement and social engineering bureaucracies, whose annual federal budgets suck down billions (not millions) of tax payer dollars faster than a cop on crack.

If you were in charge, what program or agency would you eliminate in your government?

[Headphones] :: Boys and Girls (lo-fi stream) - RX

If about 60 million Americans voted for George Bush last November, why do people think that the 'After Downing Street' activism in the news will make some difference?  First, the Downing Street Memo is unlike catching the BushCo cohorts and syncophants in lies or conflicting statements given to the U.S. press.  If the Democrusader, or his boss Dick Cheney, gave (or continue to give) conflicting statements over time, they can simply claim that they are privvy to classified information of which the press has little access.

Similarly, if Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, or Condi Rice knew they had to lie for the benefit of their neo-conservative greater good -- they also knew they could get away with the lies -- by citing national security issues, or claiming that the intelligence they were given has now changed or was faulty, or simply invoking the phrase, "We're at war with terrorists, now."

The true value of the so-called Downing Street Memo, which are actually minutes of meetings between cabinet level officials of the U.S. and U.K. governments, is that they are outside source collaborative documents which more fully verify, in a legal sense, what we knew all along about the Democrusader to be true.

BushCo lied to everyone in the United States, the planet, and to humanity in order to invade Iraq.

The often distasteful analogy between Bush and Hitler has some valid ties to the similarity of the history of the German Weimar Republic.  Much of Hitler's rise to power was legal.  The German parliament gave Hitler emergency powers, just as the U.S. Congress gave Bush the go-ahead to invade Iraq, despite their current hand-wringing and much clearer hindsight now.

The Downing Street Memo means that no longer do Bush detractors and his political opponents need to rely on just Bushworld disgruntled employees who write a best-selling scathing account of Dubya's predisposition to right his father's wrongs, Dick Cheney's fixation on the second largest crude oil source on the planet that can only be compared to Cortez's maniacal search for the City of Gold in South America, or even the simple Karl Rovian fact that the powerful Israeli political lobby and the socially-conservative Evangelicals would do a Snoopy dance if we could do some remodelling in Iraq.

Saddam Hussein is a bad man. To my way of thinking, he ruled Iraq like Al Capone ruled prohibition-era Chicago.  However, he did keep the country intact for decades, all sectarian factions, the same way that Al Capone lead the mafia -- by fear of death -- and he kept the booze (oil) flowing.

My attitude toward the politicians holding office now at U.S. federal level can be quantified into the simple question, "What are you going to do, now that you know?" I don't care if they are Republican or Democrat.  Both parties seem to steal the best Libertarian ideas in moments of clarity, anyway. I just hope they aren't so partisan, or jingoistic, to rubber stamp the next pre-emptive strike, after Poland. (cough) I mean, Iraq.

If the United States plays its cards wrong in Iraq, it is entirely possible that the blue-stained fingers of Iraqi democracy could live in a hell worse than Saddam Hussein provided over the last several decades.  Here's my way of explaining it:

In many U.S. cities, it is the law that every dog owner who takes their dog for a walk around the block is required to pick up the dog shit that their dog does leave on the public sidewalk.  The U.S. is already in Iraq.  We can't go back in time.  We're there now.  Since the U.S. voted the Democrusader into office, it's our dog, and our dog shit to clean up in Iraq.

While BushCo may have put the U.S. in this growing foreign policy nightmare, it is up to the American people to show the same courage and belief in democracy that the Iraqi people showed by voting and make the situation right.  If BushCo lied and his underbosses in the Senate or his consiglieries in the House don't have the courage or will to show some integrity and devotion to duty to the constitution and the American people, it's time for them to go.  It's time for them to go at the next available opportunity, in 2006.

Of course for that to take place, you need to get off your ass and register to vote.  If you want the world you live in to change, you have to help.  Sorry about the inconvenience, but that's how the game is played.


[Headphones] :: Dick is a Killer (lo-fi stream) - RX

"I'm not trying to denigrate soldiers and I’m not trying to undermine morale, but I really think that when something like this happens, I really want American people to think about their support for the war.  And if they have this sort of unexamined support for the war, I want them to know there's all these horrible, nasty incidents going on, that’s taking place in their name, and that they should have a sense of ownership about all that, too, in addition to opening schools and bringing democracy to Iraq."  -- Aidan Delgado

The story of Aidan Delgado is interesting to me.  On September 11th, 2001 he was joining the Army Reserves for his own personal reasons and then watched the terrorist attack on World Trade Center later that same morning.  Bad timing to sign up for the idea of a weekend per month and two weeks per year Army Reserve duty.

Delgado ended up serving a year in Iraq, from April 2003 to 2004.  Being the son of a diplomat serving overseas, he had spent his school years in Egypt and other places.  He picked up a street level knowledge of the Arabic language.  He had only been in Florida since 2000 to attend college.

Just as tens of thousands of other patriotic, but surprised members of the Army Reserve and National Guard discovered, Aidan Delgado was soon deployed to Iraq.  First arriving in Nasiryah in southern Iraq on the heels of the Third Infantry Division, he got his first taste of the situation in Iraq.  In addition to being a Bhuddist, his arabic language skills allowed him to hear the souring of the so-called Iraqi hearts and minds, first hand.

Apparently, he didn't like what he was seeing and hearing.  He formally filed for Conscientious Objector status and turned in his weapon to his command.  After Nasiryah, he also spent time at Abu Ghraib prison and spoke out about some of the events there that were not part of the now infamous slide show of shame.  He continues to speak out.

The story of Aidan Delgado became part of the national public discussion last month, after Bob Herbert of the New York Times wrote his OpEd, "From Gooks to Ragheads."  Right-wing bloggers and pundits seem to read the NY Times regularly, and have called Herbert a hack and met Delgado's first-hand accounts of 'nasty incidents' with disbelief, incredulity, and even personal attacks.

Michelle Malkin called him a "moonbat darling," and characterized his experience in Iraq as "unsubstantiated shock-provoking claims."  That doesn't surprise me, as her latest right-wing suck-up book is entitled, "In defense of internment: The case for racial profiling in WWII and the War on Terror."  I would argue that the photos Delgado shares in his speeches are not photoshopped fiction -- and the fact that the military has opened two official investigations gives some credibilty to Delgado's claims.  Michelle Malkin should simply shut the hell up and visit Iraq herself, before spewing her corporate brown shirt bullshit.

I find Delgado speaking out about his experience in Iraq and his struggle to officially become a conscientious objector in the current jingoistic climate in the U.S. very courageous.  I can't even imagine the level of crap he must have taken while still serving in his unit in Iraq.  He was called a traitor and his commanders even took childish and petty punitive measures like denying leave and removing the protective armor plates from his flak jacket, even while Abu Ghraib was experiencing nightly hostile fire.

Whether you count yourself among the right-wing or left-wing political camp in the U.S. -- red state or blue state -- I emplore you to keep a little bit of military green in your hearts for those people serving in military service all over the world.  That includes patriotic individuals like Aidan Delgado, who do not wish to kill people.

Even the elite U.S. Special Forces motto is "De oppresso libere," which means to free or liberate the oppressed.  There are many jobs in the military; more than half of which do not involve killing people.  To blanketly denigrate courageous people of conscious, like Aidan Delgado, is simple minded and a disgrace.

[Fullscreen] :: Aidan Delgado interview - Democracy Now

A stream of conscious.  What does that mean?  Free flowing thoughts pour forth.  Unknown ideas and related concepts become strung together in some fomat.  If one has a train of thought, a stream of conscious must fire through the neurological pathways in the brain like a speeding, twisting and turning roller coaster ride.  When the mind pouring forth these ideas is as large as every thought expressed on every web page on the planet, just casually browsing the web can turn into a flash flood of the digital planet.

Recently, my mental attitude has been under the weather.  I've been depressed and grouchy.  I can't pinpoint one reason for it.  It's just that invisible malaise and frustration manifest by forty-two irritating things that make me feel like I'm struggling to swim against the current of the river of life itself.  It's not something so galant or rewarding as swimming upstream to spawn.  Nope.  It's just a keeping-my-head-above-water struggling swim and feeling like I may even be in the wrong river altogether.

I'm not going to bore you with a laundry list of melancholy.  However, the weather itself has made it problematic for me to post lately.  That irritates me because I had made a goal to post regularly.  The National Hurricane Center has predicted that this year will be another active season for dark skies.  So, I guess I should just get over it, and like anything else, problem solve and move forward.

Did you know that the names for hurricanes have already been established for the next five years?  That seems a bit creepy.  Think about it.  You name your newborne child, then a storm with its name kills a few dozen people.  There is quite a history about naming storms, apparently.  I'd check that list before bestowing a name upon a child.  It might save you some money for his or her therapy later on.

Speaking of child psychology, who wants to have a sleep over with me at Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch?  I'll bring the booze and pornography, you just bring your kid in footie pajamas.  Shudder.  Despite his acquital, I don't think parents should be dropping off their kids at Naughtyland Ranch.  Take them someplace else for monkeys and ferris wheels.

Speaking of parenting, I have been very lucky this past week.  I got a ride to the bank and the grocery store from an adoptive mom in the hood.  That was cool.  I also got some cool clothes from the thrift store -- designer named hand-me-downs.  And another adoptive mom showed up at my door one evening with a pair of new, blindingly white sneakers that she bought for me at Walmart for one dollar.

Now, even when I was making fistfuls of cash, I still bought my work jeans for two or three dollars at the local Salvation Army thrift store.  When I initally scurried down to Florida to help out my dying mom, I brought very few items of clothing.  I ended up buying several items (like socks and boxers), but clothing really is last on my list of things on which to spend money.

Before I got the new tennis shoes, I primarily wore the stinky squeakies I had on when I drove down here from Detroit, almost four years ago.  Even worse, those tennis shoes were already several years old.  In general living, I'm fairly stoic.  I'm even less vain when it comes to fashion.

Somehow, walking around in my new tennis shoes cheered me up so much, I gave myself a haircut yesterday.  It was a challenge.  Your hand rocks back and forth in the mirror as your brain tries to figure out the mirror-image reality.  It's not a perfect haircut, but I feel much better.

It got me thinking, though.  I wonder.  On a scale from Me to Imelda Marcos, how many pairs of shoes do you own?  Not counting my beach/shower flip-flops, I have five pairs of shoes.  How many do you have?

Oh.  And I finally got around to creating that [topics] list for Dark Skies.  Check it out.

[Headphones] :: Hypnophonic - ghost

My first Digi-Chix entry included two truly digital chicks -- Hunter, a real bitchy bot from the video game Quake 3 Arena and sexy Six of One from the animated Sci-fi TV show Tripping the Rift.  Mainly, I was just having some fun.  I had cleaned up and digitally manipulated images of these two characters and thought I'd play with the mouse over animation possibilities of them.  It was just something to do on a rainy day.  More accurately speaking, it was something to do when I was totally unable to walk and leave the house on my own, regardless of the weather.

My second Digi-Chix entry, about six months later, was not so literal.  I thought it might be fun to highlight some of the woman on the web or in the media that I thought were cool.  Media is increasingly becoming digital anyway, so I figured I could keep the name.  This time, I decided to write about two interesting author/journalists -- Annalee Newitz and Mari Marcel Thekaekara -- both of whom do some great writing with 'tude.

This is my third Digi-Chix entry, which makes me think that I should make Digi-Chix a topic about which I should write more often than twice a year.  This time around, I decided to highlight two Digi-Chix in the radio business.  I listen to both of them on streaming net radio all of the time, and you can too.

Digi-Chix v03

Kim Komando does have the offical title of America's Digital Goddess.  Every computer geek in North America has probably heard her computer tech help call-in radio show at one time or another.  She is also quite the hottie. However, Kim has more than just a pretty face and pleasant voice.

Kim Komando is friggin' smart and talented.  She graduated high school earlier, moved out, and started college earlier than most kids.  One of the things Kim attributes her drive and love for computers on is the fact that her mom worked on a UNIX dev team at Bell labs in New Jersey.  She would go with her mom to work on occasion.  On Kim's bio page, she remembers playing "Hunt the Wumpus" on UNIX.

Now, when I finished reading about her early years, I was freaked out about some of the similarities between Kim and myself.  I graduated high school earlier, moved out, and started college early, too.  I remember I had to take a day off of work in order to go to the graduation ceremonies of my class.  Another similarity was her childhood experience with her mom's work place.  My mom worked in the fish bowl at Ford's Product Development center.  I remember playing a logic game called Cows and Bulls on a yellow paper teletype terminal to their system.  Cows and Bulls was just a game where you tried to deduce a random 4-digit number.

Another game that the programmers hid from their bosses was like "Asteroids" and played at a CAD workstation on a monochrome green $500,000 cathode ray tube. This was back in the day when they actually saved programming in data library boxes of IBM cards or on disc packs the size of truck tires. I'm not certain about the storage capacity of those disc packs, but I imagine they were about the same as a floppy, or two.  You're sitting in front of more computing power right now than Ford likely had in their fishbowl at that time.  I do remember sitting on the print arm and riding the full scale drafting printer as it inked out car prints on mylar.  That was fun, but enough about my happy childhood.

Kim Komando is not only the creator and host of a top ten rated radio show, but also a syndicated columinst and author of many books.  Check out her very cool web site at http://www.komando.com where you can find a live net radio stream to hear her show.

Randi Rhodes is one of the jewels of the airwaves on Air America radio.  She is political wonk, like me.  And she can be sincere, yet sarcastic and funny.  It's a rare gift.  Sometimes, when the issues of the day are very serious, the best possible tone in which to communicate those issues is humor.

When humor fails, only outrage is left.  If you can temper the message of the outrages by the current state of monopolistic political affairs in the U.S. with a little humor, you get sarcasm.  Witness the "Targeting Elmo" topic.

Since I am a political blogdriver, I won't go into the Randi Rhodes Show very deeply here, but rest assured I will be tossing links to her website into my future entries for your perusal and entertainment.  Entertainment belongs to those who follow my off-blog links.  Remember that.

I just watched a scooped news item Randi Rhodes is breaking about the Patriot Act.  Despite Dubya's staged speeches in front of bleachers of law enforcement, there are sections of the Patriot Act which need some scrutiny, not permanent status as law and practice.  From the time I listened to it on the show to the time I wrote up this entry, Randi Rhodes' website congealed it into an understandable topic and issue.  Previously, I had gone through ten searches to the Florida Rep's site to find it.

I love smart babes. Yes, I do.

[Headphones] :: Psycho Sarah - JfZ

Dumb, or not?  Does the pop culture to which you are exposed in this generation make you smarter or dumber than the kids growing up having the television and PCs being used as their babysitter in the typical two-parent blue-collar home?  There are arguments that push both ways.  One intellectual Plastard, Stephen Johnson, has written a book in favor of pop culture enhancing intelligence and fine motor skills, to much snarkism at Plastic.  Just being a dumb-ass brickayer from Detroit, my expertise is limited on this subject, but I have ticked off PhDs on this subject in the past.

I'm a huge fan of id games and their titles -- hands down.  Not only because some of the games, like Doom or Quake rawk, but also because in the software world, those old school id games freaks have this open source attitude about game developers who take advantage of it, professionally and just as a hobby.

Drawing the focus of discussion out from the operations of one game company to the wider topic of digital gaming on all platforms -- or digital entertainment as media and also a pop culture learning tool, Johnson postulates that kids are smarter today because of the games they play, rather than the generationally driven common sense that they are less intelligent and would be better off if 'kids these days' chopped a cord of firewood and then hiked 7 miles to library to be enlightened.

Apparently, only weeks after 911, the military/industrial/research complex thought video games had some value and I published a quicky article on plastic based upon the odd news I had found about it:

According to SiliconValley (Reuters) News, the U.S. Army is teaming up with Hollywood and a major university to provide funding and technical advice two video games, C-force and CS-12, that aim to hone the skills of the next-generation of military field commanders," John Furie Zacharias writes. "C-Force will be released for next-generation consoles, while the Institute for Creative Technologies and Quicksilver Software will partner on CS-12 for PCs. Both games will have as executive producer Rob Sears, who produced the combat titles Mech Commander and Mech Warrior 3. I guess this lets Microsoft Flight Simulator off the hook as being any aid to prospective terrorists or could it label Quake clans as potential military cells?"

Remember the hullabaloo about the idea that 911 terrorists might have practised the flight plans for their targets by playing the realistic MS Flight Simulator?  Now you know why MS's XP SP2 upgrade sucked up to the federal government's concerns to their RIAA buddies on the Senate Judicial Committee, like Orin Hatch.  Hatch's hemhoroid's have Gate's lipstick rings on them for that politically-driven software release.

And MS got away from those pesky federal charges of corporate monopoly/racketeering with barely any headlines, or any federal fines larger than Bill Gate's daily increase in his net worth from simple interest.  Whatever!  It was mutual federal fellatio, I imagine.  Gates might have said to the government, "Your technical support contract is now null and void, you techno-illiterate government hypocrites," for all I know.  I think both parties had each other by the balls in that situation and decided that a mutual digitial masturbation was better than castration of each other.  But, that's just my opinion.

But, on a happier note -- do you think you (or your kid) is smarter and more capable because he can do the super-death move on Xbox and you can barely use a fork properly?


[Headphones] :: G is for Gihad - Soylent Gringo

One of the interesting C-SPAN features is the morning discussion and telephone call-in shows called "Washington Journal."  It's a morning show.  Unlike commercial media morning shows like "Fox and Friends," "Good Morning America," or even one of them that I like to watch -- "Imus in the Morning" -- Washington Journal's broadcasted segments are not hosted by band of giggling millionaire pseudo celebrities, not interupted every 12 minutes with advertising or flashing graphical bumpers, or operated under the presumption that its audience has the attention span of tree squirrels on crack.

Washington Journal has an initial segment where the calm-speaking host goes through some of the headlines of newspapers of the day.  As with every segment, telephone call-in comments are encouraged.  The only editorial control or screening placed on viewer participation is the seperation of the call-in numbers and rotation of taking the calls, usually segregated into Democratic, Republican, Others or International.

It's quite amazing that this balanced, in-depth, and totally uncensored programming even exists in today's commercial and social conservative atmosphere.  Many callers start their comments with the appreciative phrase that embodies this freedom of expression by saying, "Thank you for C-SPAN ..."

After newspaper headlines of the Pentagon's own report of abuses and respect for the Quran in G-block were discussed, C-SPAN had three interesting guest segments Saturday morning.  First, they had two bloggers discussing and taking questions about the "Downing Street Memo",  about which I had previously blogged here, but just called it the "Blair memo."

The last segment was also about a fairly controversial topic: sex education for kids.  There is this battle between the social conservative policy makers whose BushWorld faith-based funded programs teach abstinence and try to subtract the efficacy of condoms to the outrage of world AIDS groups.  Also, it's a given that the ruling and funded evangelical bible-thumpers want all sexuality education removed, post haste.

The overall message of publicly funded sex education is an important morality topic to Christian Fundies, once removed from gay marriage disapproval, once removed from the pinnacle abortion topic.  In the ruling monopolistic political, legislative, and funding environment in DC, social conservatives can reach down the priority list and have effect.

As adrenaline-raising as G-town prison abuse, Bush lies about Iraq, and sex education to kids might be -- the middle of the Washington Journal show was very interesting to me.  Unlike the other segments, it only had one guest, John Gizzi, political editor of Human Events.

Human Events, self-labelled as a National Conservative Weekly since 1944, recently published the article, "Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries."  Here is their list of books:

1. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels, 1848
2. Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, 1925-1926
3. Quotations from Chairman Mao by Mao Zedong, 1966
4. The Kinsey Report by Alfred Kinsey, 1948
5. Democracy and Education by John Dewey, 1916
6. Das Kapital by Karl Marx, 1867-1894
7. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, 1963
8. The Course of Positive Philosophy, by Auguste Comte, 1830-1842
9. Beyond Good and Evil, by Freidrich Nietzsche, 1886
10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by John Maynard Keynes, 1936

Human Events is a conservative magazine.  So, this list shouldn't be a surprise.  The L.A. Times published one opinion piece about it by Jonathon Chait.  However, the list pushed hundreds of comments on Reason and Plastic.  As cordial as John Gizzi was in this C-SPAN segment, I agree with one point in the Chait opinion article, "The Right's Wrong Books," in which Chait said:

Possibly even more amusing are the explanations for each book's inclusion. They read like 10th-grade book reports from some right-wing, bizarro world high school.

However, I think he cited the wrong quote from the Human Events article.  I found more humor in the write-up about Das Kapital by Karl Marx in which it was said, "[Marx was] portraying capitalism as an ugly phase in the development of human society in which capitalists inevitably and amorally exploit labor by paying the cheapest possible wages to earn the greatest possible profits."

[snark] Yeah ... that's not happening now, is it? [/snark]

While I find that one thing hypocritical, ridiculous, or delusional in defense of the Democrusader by this conservative publication, I must say one thing about the list.  I think it's very telling and sad that conservatives in the U.S. have dribbled down the drain of socially conservative judgementalism.  Two years ago, Human Events published a related article conversely entitled, "Ten Books Every Student Should Read in College."

This basic switch from the positive promotion of reading books by Plato and Aristotle to some negative idea of Tom Delay's Fahrenheit 451 is a style of journalism or government that is just pathetic.  I would fully endorse John Gizzi's advice.  Go out and read these books for yourself.  I have to give him credit for that advice.  He seems like an honorable guy, even if I think he is working for the wrong people.

I would only add that you read the books in their 2003 'good' list as well as their 2005 'evil' list.  I don't think the popular bible is evil, I think there are evil men in positions of power in the U.S who hide behind it and exploit it.  And, I don't think the Quran is evil, I think there are evil men men in positions of power who also hide behind it and exploit it. 

[Fullscreen] :: Washington Journal 06.04.05 - C-SPAN