Man, that's a great card.

Fightlinker » Blog Archive » Another DREAM coming right up!:

"OLYMPIA DREAM.2 Middleweight GP 2008 1st Round
Date: April 29th, 2008
Place: Saitama Super Arena in Saitama, Japan

Middleweight GP Participants:
Kazushi Sakuraba
Yoon Dong Sik
Yoshihiro Akiyama
Shungo Oyama
Kin Taiei
Masakatsu Funaki
Minowaman
Kiyoshi Tamura
Denis Kang"

Only in Japan.

Stoned man cleared of stealing vehicle due to mental incompetence - Mainichi Daily News:

"A foreigner accused of stealing a woman's car and injuring her and a passenger was cleared of the crime after a court found that he was under the influence of drugs and was mentally incompetent at the time.

However, the 34-year-old defendant, Jamshid Mohammadi, was found guilty of violating illegal drug and immigration laws, and was handed a suspended prison sentence in the ruling at the Gifu District Court on Monday."

See if you can spot the clever ruse here.

Unguarded hospital escapee yakuza dies in Fukuoka - Mainichi Daily News:

"An elderly yakuza who walked away from an unguarded Chiba hospital where he was receiving treatment last month while in police custody during an appeal against a life sentence for a drug smuggling conviction has died, prosecutors said.

Officials from the Tokyo High Public Prosecutors Office said they received notification from relatives of 69-year-old yakuza Atsunori Fukushima that he had died in a Fukuoka hospital on March 15."

The police are a trusting bunch here in Japan.

Why is this idiot sullying my family name?

Scotland Yard wants DNA samples from 5-year-olds in case they grow up to be criminals - Boing Boing:

"As reported in The Guardian: Gary Pugh, director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard, says primary school children should be eligible for the DNA database if they exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life. Civil liberty groups condemned his comments last night by likening them to an excerpt from a 'science fiction novel'. One teaching union warned that it was a step towards a 'police state'."

Gary Pugh, director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard and the new DNA spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers...

'If we have a primary means of identifying people before they offend, then in the long-term the benefits of targeting younger people are extremely large,' said Pugh. 'You could argue the younger the better. Criminologists say some people will grow out of crime; others won't. We have to find who are possibly going to be the biggest threat to society..."

On the other hand, my 13 year old inner child and Sherlock Holmes fan thinks it's cool that someone in my family tree works for Scotland Yard.

Wow, there are some idiots in the Alabama legislature.

Reason Magazine - Hit & Run > "What the Matter with the Beer We Got?":

"...Last year, a legislator proposed raising that limit to 13.9 percent, thus permitting the sale of craft beers, and the measure failed to make it to the floor. Again this year, the topic came up, and when it did, the chamber was graced with this deep, introspective, and wide-ranging declamation from state Rep. Alvin Holmes (D-Montgomery):

'What's the matter with the beer we got? I mean, the beer we got drink pretty good, don't it? I ain't never heard nobody complain about the, uh, beer we have. It drink pretty good, don't it? Budweiser. What's the names of some of them other beers?...'"

Hooverville, pt 2.

America's new subprime shanty-towns - Boing Boing:

"...one of LA's new shantytowns made up of people who've lost their homes in the subprime meltdown and now live in tents, improvised shacks or RVs on abandoned land. It's the contemporary Hooverville...

I wonder why I found out about this from the BBC and not US media."

Because, clearly, the BBC hates our freedom in Patriotismstan. And they're communists.

Disney World - The Police State.

A creeping nation of subservience.

Fingertip biometrics at Disney turnstiles: the Mouse does its bit for the police state - Boing Boing:

"The readers aren't very effective at stopping admission cheats. You can choose not to register your fingertip, and to use photo ID for admission instead...

What these readers are effective at is conditioning kids to accept surveillance and routine searches and identity checks without particularized suspcion. One morning at Epcot Center, as we offered our ID to the castmember at the turnstile and began to argue (again -- they're very poorly trained on this point) that we could indeed opt to show ID instead of being printed, a small boy behind us chirped up, "No you have to be fingerprinted! Everybody has to be fingerprinted!"

To all those parents who worry that Disney will turn their kids into little princesses, it's time to get priorities straight: the "security" at the parks is even more effective at conditioning your children to live in a police state."

"The White Slavery Panic."

The full article with all the involved history, at the link, was pretty fascinating.

Reason Magazine - The 'White Slavery' Panic:

"In 1907 a group of evangelicals visited Chicago’s Everleigh Club brothel, where they handed out leaflets that said, “No ‘white slave’ need remain in slavery in this State of Abraham Lincoln who made the black slaves free.” According to the Illinois poet Edgar Lee Masters, an Everleigh Club regular, “the girls laughed in their faces.”

In Sin in the Second City, the Atlanta-based journalist Karen Abbott recounts how Minna Everleigh, one of the club’s proprietors, “explained graciously, patiently, that the Everleigh Club was free from disease, that [a doctor] examined the girls regularly, that neither she nor Ada [Everleigh, her sister and co-proprietor,] would tolerate anything approaching violence, that drugs were forbidden and drinks tossed out, that guests were never robbed nor rolled, and that there was actually a waiting list of girls, spanning the continental United States, eager to join the house. No captives here, Reverends.”

The Everleigh Club was an ornate mansion. Thirty themed boudoirs (“the Japanese Parlor,” “the Moorish Room,” “the Egyptian Room”) included absurd touches of decadence, such as hidden buttons to ring for champagne and a fountain that fired a jet of perfume. The city’s finest chefs prepared the women’s dinners. They read poetry by the fire with guests, who included the writers Theodore Dreiser and Ring Lardner. Sometimes Minna and Ada let swarms of butterflies fly loose throughout the house.

Some anti-prostitution activists nevertheless believed the Everleigh ladies were no different from slaves. Then as now, opponents of prostitution assumed that no woman in her right mind consensually exchanges sex for money.

...Karen Abbott’s book suggests that prostitution was better respected a century ago. While today’s high-profile johns hold press conferences at which they ask the public for forgiveness, Everleigh Club clients boasted of their membership. Perhaps prostitution was considered a necessary evil, keeping husbands from defiling their wives with their prurient fantasies. Or perhaps, as the Chicago Tribune suggested in a 1936 article about the Everleighs, people believed respectable women “were safer from rapes and other crimes if open prostitution was maintained and ordered as an outlet for the lusts of men.” Patronizing as that viewpoint might be, it is no more insulting than the implication that women never consent to sex work.

Just as feminists today rally around anti–sex trafficking measures, many anti–white slavery activists at the turn of the 20th century were politically progressive and believed in women’s suffrage. “White slavery gave women a chance to insert themselves in political discourse,” Abbott notes. “America’s women would best know how to protect America’s girls.” But such activism infantilizes women instead of promoting gender equality. Women don’t need protection from their own choices. "

Dayum. That's some party.

Via DoseNation: Here's how the next generation gets down-

"Oh sure, you think you know how to party. But every now and then, a 15-year-old comes along and steals the crown for a day or two. Presented without comment:

15-year-old Gemma Anscomb told her parents she was having a few friends around for a video night. But instead she had advertised a party on social networking site Bebo and invited everyone she knew.

When Robert and Julia Anscomb arrived home the next day they found their dog Bailey unconscious. He had overdosed on ecstasy tablets. Their dining room floor was covered in four inches of beer, their lap-tops, iPods and jewellery had been stolen and they found handcauffs and underwear in their eight-year-old daughter's bedroom.

...In her own bedroom the scene was little different. The walls were covered in black marks and there was evidence of group sex.

...Traces of cocaine, marijuana and alcohol bottles littered the house and the family estimates it will cost thousands of dollars to clean up.

But Gemma, who drank to excess and passed out at 7:30pm is not repentant. While she has gone into hiding she has managed to post comments about the party on her Bebo site.

"Yeahh it (the party) went wrong but it was well good. . . I mean it was f****** good," she wrote."

Apropos of nothing in particular...

...rumination from an earlier discussion.

Unhealthy or dysfunctional emotional compartmentalization is not the result of the recognition that there are different situations, contexts and meanings that require different approaches or uses of language. Or the recognition that other people frequently alter their behavior in accordance with them.

It is the result of personally attempting to manipulate those contexts and situations in such a way that you are attempting to maintain a [false] demarcation between them... usually due to your own insecurity, fear or arrogance. [Hi Jr!]

Obama Preacher Roundup.

Balloon Juice:

"...I guess now we need to sift through the political views of everyone’s minister and find out if they are acceptable and “patriotic” enough...

PS- There is no such thing as god, you fairy tale believing morons.

PPS- Can you jackasses stop pretending he is Muslim now that you are denouncing his Christian minister?"

Balloon Juice:

"...I don’t know George Bush’s minister’s name, but I know that whoever he is probably thinks I’m going to burn in hell for all eternity for the sin of being a feminist atheist.

Nothing that Rev. Jeremiah Wright said from the pulpit is, in an objective sense, any worse than damning the majority of the population to hell, which is a bare minimum requirement for the religious right assholes in this country that we’re supposed to show such great respect for because it’s their beliefs and they’re religious."

Crooks and Liars » Remembering another Jeremiah:

"...1. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson said America is damned — cursed by God, though not permanently — because we tolerate feminists and queer people.
2. John Hagee says America is damned — cursed by God, though not permanently — because we tolerate Muslims.
3. Jeremiah Wright says America is damned — cursed by God, though not permanently, suffering from hate and division, from bitterness and envy — because we succumb to hating one another.

For my money, my Bible, and my democracy, that last sentiment has the ring of truth, and I’m not even a religious man.

...mainstream media is telling us we must tolerate hate — Hagee — but not those who don’t believe we should tolerate hate — Wright."

Ya gotta have a goal...

Translation: They Have the Best Coke

Dude #1: So, whatever happened to that stripper you were dating?
Dude #2: It's over. I think it's a bad idea to date strippers. You realize there's a good reason they're strippers, then it fucks it up every time you go back. It's like, you look at these hotties and imagine all the possibilities, but now, after dating enough strippers, you realize the possibilities include consoling her drunk ass as she cries about being abused as a child while she lines up another rail of coke, then tells you her secret fantasy is to see you get nailed in the ass by another dude!
Dude #1: I still want to date one.
Dude #2: ... Yeah, they're fun.

--LaHaina's, Mission Beach, California

Overheard by: sean

via Overheard at the Beach, Mar 14, 2008

The Invisible Hand of Governement Bailout [+Hypocrisy.]

Balloon Juice:

"The companies said that the Federal Reserve would provide special financing in connection with the transaction and that the Fed had agreed to fund up to $30 billion of Bear Stearns’s “less-liquid assets.”

Bailouts suck. The GOP should do something about welfare moms with widescreen televisions and Cadillacs."

You know, I had family in Okinawa this weekend...

Hmmmm...

3 foreigners rob Okinawa taxi driver of 8,000 yen - Mainichi Daily News:

"Three foreigners robbed a taxi driver of about 8,000 yen near a U.S. base in Okinawa Prefecture over the weekend, police said."

Truth.

LA Times: why you should care about wiretapping - Don't Tase Me, Bro!:

"It's tempting to say, 'I'm not a terrorist, so the government should be given whatever powers it needs.' ...But in actual point of fact, when the government is allowed to spy on people without oversight, history shows us that it always uses these tools to suppress dissent.

Governments aren't inherently evil, and on the record, I don't even think the present Administration is evil. But government is made of fallible human beings, and it's all too easy for human beings to see themselves as necessary for the good of the nation, and to see all their enemies as a threat to the nation. But when their 'enemies' include their political foes, it gets tough to draw that line -- and the result is fiascoes like Watergate and, now, probably, the Bush Administration's adventures in crime even before 9/11."

As good a reason as any, I suppose.

So I Never Get to Use Them

Hoochie: I do have good morals, I'm just really drunk all the time.

Washington and Lee University
Lexington, Virginia

via Overheard Everywhere, Mar 16, 2008

Oh, the irony.

Blog@Newsarama » Quote, Unquote:

"“Media content has gotten more graphic, more violent and more sex-based… Currently, nothing under New York State law prohibits a fourteen-year old from walking into a video store and buying… a game like ‘Grand Theft Auto,’ which rewards a player for stealing cars and beating people up. Children can even simulate having sex with a prostitute…”
- Soon-to-be unemployed New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, showing off his campaign skills back in 2006 (Thanks to JK Parkin for the link [by way of GamePolitics.com])"

So... Spitzer played Grand Theft Auto then? Always blame the media, the games, the TV, the movies, the rap music... you douchebags.

What I've Read - The Question, Vol. 1: Zen and Violence by Dennis O'Neil and Denys Cowan.

First published back in 1987, this was probably [along with Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns] the formative comic book of my burgeoning adolescence. In the very first issue, the hero The Question/Vic Sage [portrayed as kind of an S.O.B.] is beaten half to death by the martial arts mercenary, Lady Shiva, and some thugs, shot in the head with a pellet gun, and thrown into the river to drown. Then he dies. That's the end of issue #1.

Hooked, I was. Sold, all the way.

Of course, he lived. And then the series got really good. Deeply infused with eastern [mostly Zen] and western philosophy, it started me down a path I remain, for good or ill, to this day. The monthly recommended reading list in the letters column lead me to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Way of the Peaceful Warrior, The Tao of Physics, A Scanner Darkly, Invisible Man, The Art of War, and Shambala... my mind was warped appropriately, and the rest is [my] history.

And plus, there was lots of martial arts and kicking people in the face.

Awesome.

The Question, Vol. 1: Zen and Violence: Dennis O'Neil,Denys Cowan,Rick Magyar

A weakness for women who play acoustic guitar.

I blame my collegiate Tracy Chapman indoctrination.

This first vid is from festouverture, who's apparently a young lady named Joanna Wang. She's an American who had some pop music success in Taiwan. Her YouTube channel is, I guess, really a departure from her Taiwan career. Hell of a singer, I think.

People Are Strange [The Doors Cover]

This next singer is actually an English teacher here in Japan. I caught her video a while back on Japan Probe and watched a bunch of others this weekend. She came over as a NOVA teacher right before NOVA went bust. This first song is her lyrical tribute...

My Nova Song- You Still Owe Me


She Will be Loved (Maroon5 cover)

Joe Rogan smacks down a heckler in Columbus, Ohio.

Just destroys the dude. Why, oh why, do people think it's a good idea to taunt the professional comedians? It's the alcohol, I tell ya...