Thursday, July 20, 2006

Several weeks back ETP and I got into a discussion of Super Mario Brothers 2. We're cool like that. Anyway, anyone who's moderately hard-core knows that SMB2 started out in Japan being called Doki Doki Panic. Now, I know that "doki doki" is used as kind of a written sound effect (if that makes sense) to describe a beating heart, especially when a character is excited in some way. Now, as to what the fuck that has to do with Mario Brothers, I had no clue. As it turns out, it has nothing to do with Mario at all. Interesting to note that The Lost Levels, which was part of Super Mario All Stars for the SNES, still wasn't SMB2 as it was released in Japan. Arrogant fuckers.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Well, this is fucking weak, but not unexpected. Still, Ignorant Man Walking™ Bill Fucking Frist was on board with this one. But still, no, Bush is living in some bullshit world of black-and-white morality, except for the whole "black" part of it. Ahem.

"It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect, so I vetoed it," he said on Wednesday.

"Moral" and "decent" pretty much have no place with reference to our society or this decision. Decent? Yeah, alright. And where is the morality in fucking with something that could help improve millions of lives? Again, we're not sacrificing live babies for this shit, just goddamn embryos.

Mr Bush announced his decision at the White House in the company of 18 families whose children were born after using embryos "unwanted" by other couples seeking fertility treatment.

Oooooh, such a shrewd move, Bush! You sure showed me! And how about those embryos that will never, ever do anything but take up freezer space? I know we just went over the whole "potential for life" thing with the birth control debate, but that does not make this shit any less stupid or simplistic. They are doing something immoral while hiding behind the curtain of morality. Note to James Dobson: that's hypocrisy.

And even if (IF!) we are killing something that could potentially be alive, so what? What ever happened to the notion of making sacrifices for the greater good? Bush might understand this concept had he ever been in the military or served his country in some fashion. Hell, he just needed to listen to Spock when he said that oftentimes the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. If you want to throw any of that Star Trek III shit in my face, spare me.

Then there's the fact that it's really stupid (slash hypocritical) for this man to be so obsessed with saving something that merely could be a human life while being totally cool with throwing away actual human life by sending it off to die in an unnecessary war. Of course, Carlin put it best, as he so often does: "These Republicans are looking for live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers."

One encourages stem cell research using cells from sources other than embryos, and the other bill bans the growing and aborting of foetuses for research.

Oh, that's great. I'm glad to see that something useful was accomplished today. A side issue to all this shit:

In waiting until the fifth year of his presidency to veto any legislation, Mr Bush became the first president to complete four years in office without a veto since John Quincy Adams in the 1820s.

This is also fucking sick, and shows what a bad bloody state we're in. This shows that over the past five years, there has, effectively, been no debate and no dissent between two out of three branches of government, with the third really not far behind. The "checks and balances system" has effectively just been reduced to checks. Yeah, that sounds pretty healthy. And, of course, this is no startling revelation -- anyone paying attention to anything (which is, maybe, a couple dozen people) already know this, but having it really laid out in a little fact like that just helps to drive home how much this blows.

Monday, July 17, 2006

Random tidbit: we all know I keep getting search hits about imitation crab and pregnancy, but I never knew what the fuck the relation was until a few days ago when I was enlightened via the guestbook:

Oh, one last thing: I don't know if you ever found out, but the whole imitation crab sticks/pregnancy thing is because some imitation crab sticks contain shark, which (like lots of predatory fish) has high levels of mercury.

Big ups to Kyle for posting something in the guestbook that was not a bunch of rambling crap (as opposed to most other entries) in addition to being educational.