Shooting the Bull

Lisa Sorg and (maybe) Joe Schwartz from the Independent Weekly stop by tonight to talk about the burgeoning Internet Sweepstakes Cafe scene, and the potential for separating poor people from their cash.

Tonight at 7:30 pm, WXDU 88.7 fm, or online here.

Continue reading Shooting the Bull

Why the fuck not?

Reader rh sends along the following news item:

Not so sure how the writer would have regarded this one, but efforts to create a Charles Bukowski postage stamp don't appear to be doing well. Arguably L.A.'s most famous writer, Bukowski worked for the postal service until he was 49, and hated every second of it. Using some of the more delicate wording this Fishie has seen in quite some time, petitioners to the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee call Bukowski's first novel "Post Office," "a wry portrait of the inner workings of the service" -- which is a bit like saying "All the President's Men" is a dry, clinical analysis of the inner workings of Nixon's White House.

Yeah, Bukowski would have likely bitched and moaned about being on a stamp. So what?

Go sign the petition.

Continue reading Why the fuck not?

True wonder

The true wonder isn't that morons like this want to rule us.

The true wonder is that Democrats can't figure out how to beat them in an election. He's up for re-election in 2011. I'd hope this video sees wide use in the campaign next year.

via phb

Continue reading True wonder

Truly sick people

I guess i'm not surprised that the AssPress would publish over a thousand words favorably quoting people who think that flying airplanes into buildings as a symbolic act of protest, and literal act of murder, is a good thing.

I guess what i am surprised about is that they can do so without mentioning that other time something like this happened, and how the same people who are bending logic into entirely new directions to find justification for murder were quite literally ready to hang people like Ward Churchill and Susan Sontag for saying, well, exactly what they're saying now about Joseph Stack and IRS employees.

As i've said before, the ability to take a position and understand what it actually means is beyond these people. They are only interested in their own power, and the only way to deal with them is to disempower as much as humanly possible. There's no negotiating with them.

Continue reading Truly sick people

Wonder if she burned her Dixie Chicks albums?

AP:

Joe Stack's adult daughter, Samantha Bell, spoke to ABC's "Good Morning America" from her home in Norway. Asked during a phone interview broadcast Monday if she considered her father a hero, she said: "Yes. Because now maybe people will listen . . .

"But I do not agree with his last action with what he did. But I do agree about the government,"

Norway.

The Norwegian healthcare system is public, and mainly free of charge for the patient. Since 2002 the government has organized the healthcare system into five geographical regions. These regions have their own budgets and are financed through the government. The hospitals provide the public with specialized treatment. In addition, research and training of health care personell is one of four main statutory responsibilities for the health trusts.

How fucking easy it is to sit back in your socialist paradise and say that US tax policies are responsible for someone flying a plane into a fucking building. I swear to God some people aren't capable of seeing that there's a world outside of their own living rooms.

Continue reading Wonder if she burned her Dixie Chicks albums?

Olympic names

I'm not going to do a list of great Olympian names for this go-round, but if i were, Magdalena Neuner would be at the top of the list.

Continue reading Olympic names

Domestic extremists

The tax protest movement has a long history in the U.S. and was a strong component of anti-government sentiments that surged during the 1990s. That wave culminated in the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people. Several domestic extremists were later convicted in the plot.

Sweet Jesus.

The same people who hounded Ward Churchill out of academé after his September 11 essay now demonstrate their moral compass by finding ways to justify the exact same act when performed by one of their own.


Disgusting.

Continue reading Domestic extremists

Deep thought

How long before that well-know moral relativist Rush Limbaugh tells me that flying planes into buildings to try to do harm to the United States is a good thing?

Continue reading Deep thought

Haiti benefit show

Tonight at Copa Vida Coffee. Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment is the sponsor, and all proceeds are going to Partners in Health.

Show starts at 7ish. Tea and Tempests goes on sometime around 9.

Continue reading Haiti benefit show

Ruh-roh

Small plane crashes into building housing IRS

UPDATED: Oy. I love the smell of teabagging in the morning. It smells like victory.

"It made me realize for the first time that I live in a country with an ideology that is based on a total and complete lie. It also made me realize, not only how naive I had been, but also the incredible stupidity of the American public; that they buy, hook, line, and sinker, the crap about their "freedom" … and that they continue to do so with eyes closed in the face of overwhelming evidence and all that keeps happening in front of them.”

Continue reading Ruh-roh

Your best entertainment value

WRAL commenters.

UPDATE: Actually, it's a tossup. The N&O commenters will also give you your money's worth.

Sadly, the Herald-Sun's commenters can do no better than this.

Continue reading Your best entertainment value

I believe

That i will not be spending any money in Virginia any time soon. That's a shame. I'll miss my annual trip to the Jefferson Pools.

Continue reading I believe

Deep thought

Why is curling only on my TV once every 4 years? I would so watch the Curling Channel.

Continue reading Deep thought

More snowy beach pictures

First two taken at the Atlantis early Saturday morning, the third on highway 70 in Morehead City around 11 or so Saturday morning. Someone knows how to drive a snow plow down east. Mardi Gras pictures below. The band is called the Haw River Rounders; they play out around the Triangle, so keep an eye and ear open for them. The seafood gumbo was as good as it looks, maybe better.

Continue reading More snowy beach pictures

Snowy beach pictures

These kinda speak for themselves. The last few are from this year's snow-covered Gloucester Mardi Gras. More mardi Gras pictures and a few others later.

Continue reading Snowy beach pictures

Silly me

I've got like 5 different interfaces between my camera and my computer, and not a single one is here with me at the beach.

So no winter wonderland at the ocean photos for you till i get home.

And i can guarantee you that the town of Beaufort doesn't own a single snow plow.

UPDATE: Sillier me. Roads, even the back roads between Beaufort and Gloucester (on Harker's Island, where 8.8" of the white stuff fell Friday night) were almost completely cleared by 11:30 Saturday morning. Photos when i get back.

Continue reading Silly me

Abortion

I don't usually wade into the abortion debate because, well, why? There's really nothing left to debate at this point, and it's purely a matter of power politics whether abortion remains safe and legal or not in this country.

The only relevant thing i might have to say is that most of the conversation about abortion is irrelevant; the only thing that matters is whether or not government has the right to interfere in private medical decisions made by a person and her doctor. It's amazing how many so-called conservatives are willing to give the government that right. All i can say is be careful what you wish for, you might get it.

Continue reading Abortion

Choices

N&O:

Wake County will no longer pay for elective abortions for employees, with leaders citing a 29-year-old state Supreme Court ruling which they say makes reimbursement for the practice illegal.

An agenda item for Monday’s Wake County Board of Commissioners meeting will address the change, but only to take note of it, not to ask permission, board chairman Tony Gurley said today. The change was made administratively Wednesday by county manager David Cooke, Gurley said.

“We don't pay for that any more,” Gurley said. “As soon as we were made aware it was illegal, we stopped doing it.”

. . .

After Apex dropped coverage recently for elective abortion for its employees, legal analysts from the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood of North Carolina said governments have a choice.

The two groups analyzed city and county insurance rights in the state. They said that state statutes allow local governments to provide whatever benefits package is deemed appropriate without specific restriction on abortion coverage, a finding both Gurley and Apex Mayor Keith Weatherly dispute.

Gurley is wrong. The Stam case does not make it illegal for municipalities to provide abortion coverage to their employees in their health insurance plan.

This being North Carolina, though, public employees have no collective bargaining rights. So Gurley and his lackeys can make unilateral decisions about the terms of employment of county workers with impunity.

But here's the Durham impact. Turns out that Tony Gurley is the owner of Gurley's Pharmacy on Main Street in downtown Durham. If the dude wants to be so cavalier with the health of women employees of Wake County, that's up to the Wake County voters to act on. Durham residents, though, aren't obligated to do business with him. I know i won't. And rumor has it that Gurley is in his shop several days a week. I hope to stop by and let him know why he'll never see any of my business. Maybe i won't be the only one.

Continue reading Choices

Uh, Roy?

WTF were you thinking?

"Massage therapist told me, she said, 'You know, coach, what happened in Haiti is a catastrophe. What you're having is a disappointment.' I told her that depends on what chair she was sitting in. Because it does feel like a catastrophe to me, because it is my life."

Dude needs some perspective, i think. Maybe when the season's over he can take some time off and do some volunteer work to clear his head.

Continue reading Uh, Roy?

Hell freezes over?

And not just in Philadelphia:

State highway officials have decided not to require the Triangle Veterinary
Emergency Clinic to add a turn lane and move a sewer line at its planned new
location on Morreene Road.

City Council member Mike Woodard said he and other city officials were informed
of the decision at 8:28 this morning, after a meeting of NCDOT engineers.

DOT's change of mind removes an unexpected cost that had jeopardized the
clinic's plan to relocate its practice to a renovated warehouse at Morreene Road
and Linden Terrace in western Durham. Clinic manager Sharon Zeigler said last
week that the lane and sewer move would add about $250,000 to the clinic's
estimated renovating and landscaping cost of $1.9 million.

My neighborhood's experience with NCDOT and turn lanes was decidedly the opposite. Don't know what's changed, but this is good news.

Continue reading Hell freezes over?

The inverse square rule of snow

The amount of fun generated by any snowfall decreases in accordance with the square of the number of snowfalls during the season.

To wit:
Snowfall #1 = Xfun
Snowfall #2 = 1/4Xfun
Snowfall #3 = 1/9Xfun
. . .
Snowfall #n = 1/n2Fun

So, how are things in Philadelphia these days?

Continue reading The inverse square rule of snow

Deep thought

If football is a metaphor for politics, do the Democrats have the balls to start this electoral campaign with an onside kick?

Continue reading Deep thought

Puppy growth

2/8/10


1/25/10

Continue reading Puppy growth

Deep thought

The world will not be right until Grand Funk Railroad play the Super Bowl halftime show.

Continue reading Deep thought

So

Who won the Puppy Bowl?

Continue reading So

Good choice

Continue reading Good choice

Blast from the past

My friend Emmanuel Goldstein writes to tell me about his archive project from our days at WUSB. He's been posting broadcasts of his old show "The Voice of Long Island" up at the 2600.com website. The January 30, 1982 episode features one of my first audio projects. It's at around the 43:50 minute mark, and runs for about 6 minutes.

I can still remember slicing and splicing the tape to put that one together.

http://www.2600.com/voli for those of you following this on Facebook.

Continue reading Blast from the past

Bad news for The Beaver

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Tip/Wag - Waterboarding & Canada's History
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy

Continue reading Bad news for The Beaver

His Republican friends

Dude - they're not your friends.

"The next step is what I announced at the State of the Union, which is to call on our Republican friends to present their ideas. What I'd like to do is have a meeting whereby I'm sitting with the Republicans, sitting with the Democrats, sitting with health care experts, and let's just go through these bills. ... And then I think that we've got to go ahead and move forward on a vote," Obama said Thursday.

Continue reading His Republican friends

Bodice ripping winds to follow

Continue reading Bodice ripping winds to follow

Deep thought

If you thought the potholes were bad last year, wait until you see what this round of precipitation and freeze/thaw cycles brings in a month or so.

Continue reading Deep thought

Deep thought

The reason for turning your headlights on in bad weather is not so that you can see better, it's so that the rest of us can see you.

I thought they knew that in New Jersey.

Continue reading Deep thought

Deep thought

Have they canceled classes for Monday yet?

Continue reading Deep thought

Roccoco, you sleazy weasel

News & Observer:

Former Gov. Mike Easley used a private, secret e-mail account to conduct state business, his former communications directors said in depositions. The e-mail address: "NickDanger" spelled backward.

Nick Danger is a fictional private eye character featured in radio performances by The Firesign Theatre, a troupe whose 1960s Los Angeles-based act was heavily influenced by The Goon Show, a British troupe that included Peter Sellers and was also a major influence on Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Easley's spelling "Nick Danger" backward could come from a joke on the show in which Danger, sitting in his office, read his name on his glass office door: "Regnad Kcin."

Sherri Johnson, Easley's communications director, said she believed the backward spelling was Easley's own.

"The governor wrote backwards. I mean, when he wrote, he wrote backwards," she said. Which is it? Sounds like a case for Nick Danger.

As a Firehead from way back (founder of the Dog Star Esquadrille - Another Cocoon for Papoon - "We're Sirius About Papoon") it sounds like the ex-governor has been caught with his red hand in Barbara Bobo's gym shorts.

All i can say to Easley is "Eat it. Eat it raw!"

Continue reading Roccoco, you sleazy weasel

Mythical creatures

Spotted in Durham today.

Note the trail of sand left behind by the nocturnal yellow crawler seen slinking away in the distance.


I believe this one was scurrying back to its den after sucking up a meal of dirty slush on Roxboro St.

Continue reading Mythical creatures

Seriously?

Schools are closed again on Wednesday?

Wonder what the total cost in lost wages, productivity, and sales happens to be from this little six inch snowfall on Friday?

Continue reading Seriously?

School access fail

Leon Street, in front of Brogden Middle School, 5 pm Monday.

From city of Durham press release prior to winter storm, 1/29/10:

The City’s plan of action for clearing or reducing hazards on city streets is prioritized in the following order:
• Bridges and overpasses throughout the city.
• Major arterial streets within the city.
• Streets to essential health facilities, police and fire stations and critical community facilities.
• Routes to two City fuel sites.
• Streets within the central business district.
• Clear access to Durham Public Schools.
• All residential areas with priority initially to passage of emergency vehicles and then to all traffic.

As a friend noted, if we get any kind of weather the rest of the week, it'll be next Tuesday before the schools open. My understanding of DPS policy is if there's any ice on a road that has to be traveled by a school bus, all schools are closed.

I couldn't imagine being a working parent with a job that didn't pay me for my time off this week. Even with paid time off, having to use your vacation or sick leave in the middle of winter just to watch your kids because the schools aren't open would truly suck.

Continue reading School access fail

Congratulations!

To Durham (and Duke Park) resident Mamadou Diabate for picking up a Grammy last night for Best Traditional World Music Album.

Rock on.

Continue reading Congratulations!

Awwww

Continue reading Awwww