The world is your rorschach test.

Rule # 7.

"The game of life is hard to play... I'm going to lose it anyway."

This is one of the two songs I remember having to learn in music class. In Catholic school no less. Somebody was being subversive, though I can't, for the life of me, remember who.

[The other song? "Windy." Go figure.]

"Suicide is Painless..." What an amazingly morbid song to teach Jr High school students. I'd blame such crazy morbidity as contributing to my typical teenage thoughts of suicide, when confronted by such overwhelming tragedy as unrequited crushes and parental disconnect.

[Um, it was typical, right? I'm not just overwhelmingly screwed up and dysfunctional, right? I've read lots of teens think about the big "S." Let's just assume I'm not all touched in the head, kay?]

Still a great song though. Great movie. Great TV.

"The pain grows stronger. Watch it grin."

M*A*S*H Theme Song:

""Suicide is Painless"
Music by Johnny Mandel
Lyrics by Mike Altman

Through early morning fog I see
visions of the things to be
the pains that are withheld for me
I realize and I can see...

[REFRAIN]

That suicide is painless
it brings on many changes
and I can take or leave it if I please.

I try to find a way to make
all our little joys relate
without that ever-present hate
but now I know that it's to late, and...

REFRAIN



The game of life is hard to play
I'm going to lose it anyway
the losing card I'll someday lay
so this is all I have to say

REFRAIN

The only way to win is cheat
and lay it down before I'm beat
and to another give my seat
for that's the only painless feat

REFRAIN

The sword of time will pierce our skins
it doesn't hurt when it begins
but as it works its way on in
the pain grows stronger...watch it grin but...

REFRAIN

A brave man once requested me
to answer questions that are key
is it to be or not to be
and I replied 'oh why ask me?'

'Cause suicide is painless
it brings on many changes
and I can take or leave it if I please

...and you can do the same thing if you please."

Reality is a multiple choice question.

Rule # 6.

Doonesbury can still bring it.

Doonesbury, comics, editorial cartoons, email comics, political cartoons

I Need A Hero - The Browncoat Version.

I have actually loved the amazingly cheesy 80s song this is [deftly] edited to, ever since it was the theme song for the the very short lived 80s show Cover Up.

Which I got into because it starred the late Jon-Erik Hexum, who I first saw on the show Voyagers!

Which, to the best of my recollection, started my love of time travel scifi. I'm a sucker for time travel scifi.

Which explains my unabashed love for Quantum Leap to this day.

"Dr Sam Beckett never returned home."

Still makes me tear up, it does.

[The Quantum Leap finale, that is.]

Doctors, chopsticks, Japan & the funny.

It's all relative.

Rule # 5.

"Paradoxes and double standards abound."

Reason Magazine - Hit & Run > The Drug Raid Paradox:

"This is a common refrain from police in drug raids that turn into shootouts—be it with actual criminals, or with innocent people whose homes were wrongly raided. The middle-of-the-night timing, concussion grenades, and door-busting tactics are necessary, we're told, to catch dangerous people by surprise. But when surprised suspects then mistake police for intruding criminals, we're told that the suspects had to have known the intruders were police. Put another way, we're told these tactics are necessary to bewilder and confuse, but when people say they were genuinely bewildered and confused, we're told to assume they're lying...

By the same token, when police mistakenly shoot unarmed people in these raids, they're generally forgiven, due, they say, to the inherent volatility and dangerous nature of the raids.

Paradoxes and double standards abound."

Stop trying to hold on to things that aren't there anymore.

Rule # 4.

Your belief systems are how you bullshit yourself into thinking you know what's going on.

Be they political, religious, psychological or philosophical.

Belief systems are all B.S.

Rule # 3.

Figuring out Mitt Romney.

On the nose analysis.

Balloon Juice:

"He is so completely phony, so calculated and poll-tested and focus-grouped and rehearsed and plastic and totally full of shit. There is no emotion in his words, it is like an automaton spitting out the right ‘crafted’ response...

He thinks there is nothing that he can not charm or smooth his way through...

In short, he reminds me of this guy:


Those of you who remember Diehard know exactly what I am talking about."

Funny American Gladiators Promo.

Outstanding news of the week...

Compound reverses Alzheimer's in minutes - Boing Boing:

"Researchers at the Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) gave an Alzheimer's patient an injection of a compound called perispinal etanercept and noticed a 'dramatic and unprecedented therapeutic effect' within minutes of the injection."

"...a prostitute is more likely to have sex with a police officer than to get officially arrested by one."

Reason Magazine - Hit & Run > But Whatever You Do, Don't Legalize It:

"A new study by Freakanomics guru Steven Levitt comes to some uncomfortable conclusions about prostitution in Chicago. First, Levitt finds that prostitutes are more likely to have sex with city police than they are to be arrested by them:

They estimate that roughly 3 percent of all tricks performed by prostitutes who aren't working with pimps are freebies given to police to avoid arrest. In fact, prostitutes get officially arrested only once per 450 tricks or so, leading the authors to conclude that "a prostitute is more likely to have sex with a police officer than to get officially arrested by one."

Cool House Made from 110 Tons of Steel.

Architecture: A House Made from 110 Tons of Steel:

"We're going to need hardened steel habitats after the zombie apocalypse. That might have been what Robert Bruno, architect, had in mind when he created this cool design for his own house in Texas. It took him twenty-three years to build and he used tons and tons of steel (110 tons, to be exact). The house, which has tons of crazy geometric shaped walls, skylights, and windows, sits on a river near Lubbock, Texas."

How I understand politics.

I don't care, makes sense to me.

The Dark Primary Knight at ComicMix

For Great Justice!

The Local - Victory for topless bathers:

"A swimming pool in northern Sweden has said it will allow women to bathe topless, following a campaign by feminists.

A spokesman for the pool, part of Sundsvall's municipal leisure centre, said that employees there had decided they would not act if women tried to bathe semi-naked.

"We're used to naked people. Nobody cares," Per-Erik Ulander told local paper Dagbladet, adding that women could still be asked to cover up if other bathers take offence.

The Bara Bröst network - which translates both as 'bare breasts' and 'just breasts' - last year started its campaign for women to be allowed to swim without tops by stripping off at a pool in Uppsala. The protesters were ejected from the pool. Since then, campaigners have launched protest actions across the country, which have usually resulted in them being asked to leave..."

Jimmy Carter lays the smack down.

Okay, not really. But it'd be funny if it was...

I Got What America Needs Right Here

Sometimes I'm a little stupid, maybe, a little slow in the head, so I'm wondering if you can help me get something straight....

"...But who comes to me, huh? Fucking nobody. Why ask old Jimmy anything? What the fuck could he know about peace in the Middle East? It's not like he fucking won the Nobel Peace Prize for that shit. You myopic pricks. Back in '79, I sat Sadat and Begin right down and made those two dicklicks shake hands. It was beautiful—I had all the pieces lined up and I smiled and waved in my best fucking suit and tie right there on TV. And what do you do, you pieces of shit? You screw the whole goddamn pooch.

Cocksuckers.

Oh, what's that I hear? The weather's all screwy? You got a global warming problem? Boo-fucking-hoo! I was telling you morons to turn off your lights and unplug all your shit at night to conserve energy in 19-fuckin'-75, for chrissake. Gee, I wonder what woulda happened if we'd all switched to solar power like I fucking did back when we had a fucking chance to do something about it. Think we'd still be sucking Saudi Arabia's dick like a five-dollar whore? I sure as fuck didn't get no fancy Oscar for that little spiel, though, did I? No. But Al Gore, that cum-sucking pig, steals the shit from me and now he's the greatest thing since Jesus Christ made a fucking sandwich.

Well, he can lick my asshole right after George W. Bush, that fuck.

You want compassion? Somebody who's looking out for the little guy? Why don't you take a look at Jimmy Carter, 'cause unlike, oh, every motherfucking candidate out there, he spent the last fucking quarter-century building houses for the homeless. And what does he get for it? A fucking hernia. Some fucking gratitude, you selfish twats. You talk to me about compassion? I'll shove a crucifix so far up the Democrats' asses they'll be asking me to buy them dinner and kiss them good night.

Funny thing about me: I actually fucking know shit! Not like these goombas trying to weasel their way into the White House. I practically wrote the book on collapsing bridges, inflation, and the working poor, fuck-o. I even got a degree in nuclear engineering or some shit. You know how easy I could swoop down right now like a guardian angel and solve all your fucking problems? Snap. Bam. Do it in my fucking sleep. Just fucking try me.

So you want me to run for president again? Yeah, sure, absolutely, I'll do it. I'd be honored to do it—with my fucking dick in your mouth, you worthless scumbags.

You had your chance with Jimmy Carter, and you fucking blew it. So get fucked. Fucking country."

Gulf of Tonkin II?*

You'd think they'd come up with new fake bullshit for their new fake war, wouldn't you? Same old nonsense...

ABC News: Where Did the Mystery Voice Come From?:

"Just two days after the U.S. Navy released the eerie video of Iranian speedboats swarming around American warships, which featured a chilling threat in English, the Navy is saying that the voice on the tape could have come from the shore or from another ship.

The near-clash occurred over the weekend in the Strait of Hormuz. On the U.S.-released recording, a voice can be heard saying to the Americans, "I am coming to you. You will explode after a few minutes."

The Navy never said specifically where the voices came from, but many were left with the impression they had come from the speedboats because of the way the Navy footage was edited.

Today, the spokesperson for the U.S. admiral in charge of the Fifth Fleet clarified to ABC News that the threat may have come from the Iranian boats, or it may have come from somewhere else."

In case there's any confusion - Gulf of Tonkin:

In 2005, it was revealed in an official NSA declassified report[2] that the first alleged attack, on the destroyer Maddox, was in fact carried out after the Maddox fired first. In 2008, another declassified NSA report[3] revealed that no attack happened on August 4.

TSA searches, detains multiple 5 year old children.

Why we let these people tell us what to do is beyond me.

TSA searches, detains 5 year old because his name was on no-fly list - Boing Boing:

"A five-year-old boy was taken into custody and thoroughly searched at Sea-Tac because his name is similar to a possible terrorist alias. As the Consumerist reports, "When his mother went to pick him up and hug him and comfort him during the proceedings, she was told not to touch him because he was a national security risk. They also had to frisk her again to make sure the little Dillinger hadn't passed anything dangerous weapons or materials to his mother when she hugged him."

...You know, if you wanted to systematically discredit the idea of a Department of Homeland Security, if you wanted to make an utter mockery of aviation safety, you could not do a better job than this."

Another five-year-old on the no-fly list: meet Sam Adams - Boing Boing:

"Ted Adams -- the publisher of IDW comics -- named his little son "Sam Adams," a good, solid patriotic name. It's also a name on the TSA's no-fly list, and the five-year-old has spent his young life being harassed by airport security goons who think he's a terrorist.

...My son, also five, is on that same list and it's a nightmare. Every time we fly with him, we can't use the computer terminals to check in and the attendant has to call some never named government agency to make sure he's not a terrorist. Some attendants joke it off but some are insanely serious about it. His seat always goes unassigned (even if it was assigned when the reservation is made) which always causes problems.

I've tried everything that anyone has suggested. There's a TSA form that you can fill out for this situation, which I did, but they won't tell you if they've removed your name. We got him a passport -- that didn't work. We've tried booking the tickets with his full name (including middle name), that didn't work. We tried booking the ticket under Master Samuel Adams, with still no luck.

Yeah, and if you think that's funny, imagine this kid's life when he's an adult and Every goddamned flight he takes involves an extra hour of hassle, a search, no assigned seats, being turned away, being humiliated, being harassed... There's a special circle of hell that's being prepared for the domestic fear-mongers who've helped the terrorists make Americans so very afraid."