Hmmm, so what the fuck is going on out in the world today? I wouldn't have known if the world came to an end, because I was too busy spending money on shit I didn't need but wanted nonetheless at the con. Import CDs, art books, toys... I'd say it was a good day. I didn't even have to use my AK.

So, what did I miss?

Shit drags on in Iraq. No surprise here, just another unfriendly reminder.

Isabel has come, done her damage, and died out. I am always amazed by people's ability to not only live in hurricane prone areas, but to stick around when they know a hurricane is coming. I'd be like "Hurricane? Toys and anime first! To hell with the women and children, get the good stuff the fuck out of here!"

This is just sad. More people needlessly suffering just because of bullshit ideology.

Wesley Clark's career as a politician is well under way. Sounds like Dean might be in decent shape, since they're taking the Clark threat seriously. Unlike John Kerry's campaign people, firing off bullshit cheapshots just like Kerry himself. "We'll withhold comment until the general's blue-ribbon team of consultants and advisers decide what his position actually is." Yeah, because I'm real sure jackass Kerry makes every decision on his own without consulting his team of consultants and advisors. Sounds like sour grapes, motherfucker - you and your people know you'll never be President.

Families of reservists and National Guard members are pissed, and it seems like it's not without good reason. Sure, their loved ones volunteered for this stuff, but it sounds like the government is being less forthcoming about how long people are going to be deployed, and they're changing rules to keep people out longer than they were initially told. Of course, the fact that they're making all these asshole changes just shows how much they've fucked up with their planning (if indeed any planning at all took place).

Okay, after scanning the headlines, it looks like that's about all I missed.

So the career fair turned out to be mostly a waste of time. It wasn't as horrid as last year - I give myself maybe a 3% chance of hearing something back. Hopefully if all goes well on Monday, though, I won't have to give a shit about any other companies, but we'll see.

My favorite excuse for not hiring this year: "We're looking more for people with undergrad degrees." Glad I wasted that extra year and a half to get my MSEE.

This year I went after a lot of companies and their "submit your resume online" mantra. Of course, I'm not the first one to do this. One company's rep actually came out and said that online submission "isn't a black hole!" before I even said anything about it. That's how you know it's just an abyss from which your resume never returns - if they're pre-emptively striking and trying to convince you that online submission is useful, when it really isn't. Another company rep said she actually submitted her resume online, and it led to her getting hired. Maybe it's not all hopeless, but I'm not holding my breath.

Once nice thing was that at least there are other people there besides engineers, which means a decent number of women running around. You can usually spot the business majors, because they're all dressed up. That's fine by me; I really like business attire, especially when women are wearing it. It used to be nice to wander outside the engineering building and next door to business, where there were lots of times gorgeous, well-dressed women running around even on regular (non-career fair) days. Sure, it's not like I was gonna talk to them, and they were business majors anyway, but it was something nice to look at.

You know Japan's economy has been facing trouble if it's a pain to find work in the sex industry. Gives me something to think about for tomorrow's career fair.

I am becoming more and more terrified of going to Japan and trying to pick up girls.

Anyone who's opened their eyes and thought about things for more than six seconds can see that this world is full of injustices. One of the most infuriating to me has been the tendency for people to feel ways that they don't deserve to feel. There are two sides: the people who feel good but shouldn't, and the people who feel bad but shouldn't.

Celebrities are most often in the first category. Untalented, unattractive shallow fucks who get attention and adoration that they don't fucking deserve. Attention that leads them to feel talented and attractive, and to feel good about themselves and as if they're somehow a cool person. I call this "Justin Timberlake Syndrome." I'm not sure why he's the one I always think of when this shit comes to mind, but he's most certainly not the only one. That little fuck totally got what was coming to him, though, when Ashton Kutcher and his show Punk'd went after him. I only wish the IRS would really come after him and break his guitar, right before shoving the wooden shards and metal strings up his ass.

Celebrities aren't always victims of Justin's Syndrome, and they aren't the only ones who are victims. There are plenty of other examples, like the asshole guy who treats his super-sweet and completely wonderful girlfriend like shit, yet thinks he's a total stud for getting the babes. Or the guy who gets through Yale on his daddy's and granddaddy's legacies, then flounders through life drunk and stupid until his family's influence leads to him being President (see, I told you I couldn't leave Bush alone for long). These assholes feel good about themselves and who they are, and they don't fucking deserve it. What they deserve is to feel like shit and - wait, I'd better not go too far, since I mentioned the "President." You catch my drift.

On the opposite end of this spectrum are the people who feel depressed, disenfranchised, and live with low self-esteem. For some reason, it's always the smartest, funniest, nicest, most interesting people who end up feeling bad about themselves in one way or another. It frustrates me to no end, because I just fucking know that they deserve better.

This seems to be a common theme with a lot (but not all) of the people I know and have known. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. "Hey, you know what? Maybe it's you - maybe you're the one who's doing it." No, even with as much shit as I give myself, I know I couldn't be totally responsible (although I'm sure my positive demeanor isn't exactly helpful). The few people who make life worth living for the rest of us lots of times end up getting the shit end of the stick.

It's not just people I know personally, of course. We've all heard plenty of stories about brilliant authors killing themselves, talented musicians dying, or something equally depressing. To paraphrase how Denis Leary once put it, why is it John Lennon getting shot, but nothing like that ever happens to Motley Crue?

This seems to happen a lot with smart kids. I'm no genius, but I'm decently smart, and I tend to surround myself with equals or superiors. As such, the pattern of intelligence coupled with this problem of unnecessarily feeling shitty has become painfully evident. I'm sure we can sit around and theorize a million different reasons as to why this pattern exists, so no sense delving too deep into that right now.

As I mentioned, I've seen a lot of these things with people I've known over the years, and I hate it more than anything. I hate it because it's so often due to events beyond their control or stupid societal bullshit. I so desperately want to do something about it, but I know that I almost certainly cannot. Of course, I have this problem with myself. For as down on myself as I can get, I know I'm not that fucking bad, and I deserve to feel a lot better. So why the hell don't I, if I have the confidence that I'm bettter than I feel? The fact that I can't solve the conundrum for myself makes it even more evident as to how hard it will be to solve it for others.

You see, this is just one of many, many reasons as to why I cannot believe in a benevolent god. Things like this are just too fucked up, too ass-backwards, to be the work of someone who loves us. I know it's something I can't bring an end to, especially if I can't figure it out for myself. As you may have noticed, though, just because I can't control something doesn't mean that it isn't going to fucking piss me off. Lack of control partly feeds the anger, of course, but that's negligible when compared to the contribution from seeing lousy fucks feeling good, and good people feeling lousy.

It's been a lazy day so far, as probably evidenced by the couple of random posts I've made. For some reason, I'm not motivated at the moment to go read the news and do the usual shit like rip into the Bush administration. Don't worry; that'll be back.

I've spent most of my time this afternoon deleting an abnormally infuriating amount of spam and reading Sarah's 'blog.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting here feeling like Babe Ruth, waiting for a call to go manage a pro team, a call that may never come. Meanwhile, I'm dreading tomorrow morning and a trip to this year's fall career fair at my alma mater. If I don't get the job for which I'm waiting for the phone to ring, I'm viewing the career fair as one of the last decent chances I'm going to have for finding a real job anytime soon. I just know that the career fair is going to be a bunch of depressing crap like it was last year, over and over again hearing "submit your resume online," which immediately signals to me that that the company either isn't hiring, or they're not interested in hiring recent college grads. They're just at the fair to keep their company name out there. Otherwise, it'll be the other thing I heard a lot of last year: "we're maybe looking to do some hiring in June." Of course, the economy doesn't pick up, and no one wants to hire anyone that doesn't have 5+ years of solid experience, June or otherwise.

After the fucking career fair, however, I'm totally stoked. This weekend is most definitely nerd time, as the big anime con for my city is going down. Even though my income stream may be drying up very soon, I've been preparing myself, and more importantly my bank account, for this weekend. I'm looking at this as one last hurrah for a dying regime, the regime of having some sort of job and being financially free to buy the shit I want to buy. On the non-materialistic side, I've been looking forward to this as a time to have some fun. Being the dumbass that I am, I have enough trouble enjoying myself in decently good times. Over the past several months, it's been even more difficult to find joy in this time of total uncertainty and diminishing sense of self-worth.

Alright, that's enough feeling sorry for myself. Shit sucks, boo fucking hoo. All the complaining, however, is a nice segue into my next post.

So someone came across Fuck Everything while doing a search for "HOW THE FUCK DO I GET MY LIFE TOGETHER."

Holy hell do I feel bad for that person, because this is the last place you wanna be if you're trying to get your life together. Of course, the search results yieled a blurb from my biggest "feeling sorry for myself" post, which included the rhetorical question "What am I gonna do, go and kill myself?"

To paraphrase the liner notes for one of Carlin's CDs: "Please! Try not to kill yourself after reading this weblog."

So you know what fucking irritates me? People who are so lazy, they will actually take an elevator to avoid one flight of stairs. Now, I can understand if you have some sort of physical issue that keeps you from being able to walk up and down stairs. Otherwise, what's the fucking point? What pisses me off the most is the fact that it probably takes longer to wait for the elevator than it would have to just hauled your lazy sack of bones up or down those stairs. That's like the guy who will drive around the mall parking lot for three hours just to find the closest space.

I realized I was getting too lazy one day as I was walking out of Target. I walked up to the exit, and to my surprise, the automatic doors didn't open. This was, of course, because they weren't the automatic doors I had walked up to. So you know what I did? I backed up, walked around the sensor thingys, and forward again through the doors that were automatic. For some reason, in my mind at that particular instant, it was easier to do that instead of continue walking forward while simultaneously putting out my hand and pushing the manual door open.

That was quite awhile ago, and I think I've gotten better. I will not circle parking lots or use elevators without good reason, and I will show my manual dexterity by pushing and pulling open non-mechanized doors.

On a lighter note, coprophiliacs everywhere will be happy to know that the Subway close to where I work has re-stocked their machine with chocolate nuggets.

Yeah, thanks for the confirmation, assholes. I'm holding my breath on the proof of al Qaeda ties. You see, this is why the Bush Administration has it easy. The American people will just make shit up for the president. Now they're just flaunting it in everyone's face.

"Hey America, you know how you thought Saddam was involved in 9/11? Thanks for believing that, and for using it to justify, in your minds, our decision to attack Iraq. Oh, and you know what? Saddam wasn't involved in 9/11. Even we don't believe that, you stupid fuckers!"

You may have already read it, but The Onion has another brilliant article this week.

Here's one perspective on how far we've come, or haven't come, in the past two years. Some of the Oxford Group's other papers have PDF links, but the one mentioned in that article doesn't seem to have one (as of yet). Hopefully one will show up, as I'd be interested to get a look at the study.

Again, this is more linking to support my opinion. However, I don't think anyone can deny that we haven't made any quantum leaps in TWAT (The War Against Terror). Does anyone out there really believe that we're any safer now than we were before? Yeah, actually, I'll bet lots of people do, and they'll continue to feel that way as long as we remain lucky and don't get attacked.

I can't be the only one, though, who thinks we're less safe in a lot of ways. All along, I've worried that this war in Iraq was just going to make things worse. And how could it not? There are plenty of people in Iraq and all over the world who may not have hated us all that much before, but now they do. That's to say nothing of the people who hated us to begin with. With all of the guerilla attacks we're facing day in and day out over in Iraq, I think it's pretty clear we've struck a nerve with those people. Iraq was not a serious threat before the war; now it is. This on top of the fact that groups like al Qaeda are still up and running, and managing to continually raise the body count despite the fact that we've "dismantled" a good deal of their operations. And of course, I'm not even mentioning all the shit that's going on here at home.

Obviously, one of the major issues is the Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz Doctrine of spreading fear of America through military action to bring everyone in line with our interests. The problem with this, as any idiot who's read history knows, is that fear and conquest just tend to lead to more and bigger problems. The arrogance of the Bush Administration really shows when placed under this light; they are convinced that they are so clever, so smart, and so powerful that they can defy history and human nature. I know Wolfie, Rummy, and the rest are educated men and women (except Bush - don't give me any Yale shit), but somewhere along the way that got buried in megalomania.

Another huge problem is we don't understand the people who we're dealing with. We didn't two years ago, and we don't now. Think about one of the main reasons why Osama was pissed at us: because we had troops stationed in the Holy Land during Gulf War I. To most people, they would never imagine that as an egregious enough offense to bring down the Twin Towers or to set the Pentagon ablaze. Most people wouldn't view it as an offense at all. The problem is, none of what we think matters: what matters is what the terrorists think, and what is going to motivate them. Who knows what all we're doing now that are capital offenses, but I guarantee you someone is keeping a list.

Am I saying that America and all other nations should just start pussyfooting around the globe, not satisfied until the impossible goal of pleasing everyone has been met? No, of course not. But unless we want to continue fearing the mail or watching buildings crumble, we had better fucking wise up.

Iraq is a war that did not need to be fought to protect American national security. You can easily argue that it was a good idea to remove Saddam for the sake of the Iraqi people, but you and I know that the Administration could care less about liberating a bunch of people who aren't white. The enemy is indeed "nebulous" in struggles with terrorism, and it's hard for people to wrap their minds around that. Hard because there's no coherent enemy who is neatly defined by national borders, and as such, no clear way to define progress or victories. Iraq was perfect: wanted for regime change by PNAC and other Administration hawks, and a clearly defined nation vilified for years in the eyes of American citizens. A few ultra-weak links to September 11th, and suddenly it's the front line in TWAT, even though all it seems to be doing is creating more terrorists.

For like the 80th time, I know that it's all said and done, and we can't go back and stop the war from happening. I bring this up time and time again, though, to try and drive forth the necessity of getting Bush out of office. Mistake or not, Iraq will not be the last unnecessary war the Bush Administration gets us involved in if they have their way.

Okay, I swear to fucking christ that I've got some stuff I've been thinking about that people might find more interesting than toys. Of course, the primary purpose of this site is to keep me entertained, so oh well. Still, I've got at least two rants running around in my head, I just can't unravel it all into my normal, semi-coherent posts. How exactly to say what I want to say is key, since even though I've never held back on this site, one of my potential rants may be raising the bar a couple of inches. Wow, am I ever being a bullshit tease here. Things have slowed down to the point where I'm talking in vague terms about stuff that I may discuss in the future.

In the meantime, you'll just have to be satisfied with reading about how things seem to be looking up a bit for our friend Tony.

So everyone (well, not everyone) knows of the mental scars of childhood left by the Gadgetmobile, which were recently healed. In terms of toys, there were two other real sore spots for me when I was a kid.

One of them was when I was around ten, my family had a garage sale. In it, I sold nearly all of my cool 80s toys. MASK, Transformers, GoBots, Inspector Gadget, Ghostbusters, you name it. Tons and tons of cool shit that I let go for a total of like $60 or something. What did I do with that $60? I bought a NES Advantage, which I hated and returned, then Guerilla War for Nintendo. That was a cool arcade game; the NES version was a piece of shit. And I only traded my entire childhood for it.

Well, it turned out that selling all that stuff wasn't all bad. I regretted the Vietnam that was our garage sale for about a decade, but I got over that thanks to the magic of eBay, where I can buy individual items for three times what I made in that garage sale, even with constant dollars. Still, it's worth it. Few days were as magical as sophomore year of college when I got Outlaw, one of my all-time favorite MASK vehicles as well as all-time favorite toys, off of eBay. Then there was the Takara "New Year's" Optimus Prime which I got a little over a year ago that is an extremely faithful reproduction of the toy I had as a kid. The new Prime was so cool that I actually cried after opening it. Not like I was balling my eyes out like a sissy bitch, but yeah, I was a misty-eyed sissy bitch nonetheless. Had I not sold all of my good toys in that garage sale, I probably never would have felt the joy that I did when I got Outlaw, Prime, or any of the other things I've re-bought over the past couple of years. The feelings of regret are no more.

The third sore spot was my Micro Machines collection. I was there from the very beginning - I remember seeing the very first commercials, and I remember the day I got my first set from Wal-Mart. My very first set was set #1, "The European Collection." It had my all-time favorite Micro Machine in it, the red Lamborghini. I went on to collect several more sets, which I kept in this little zipper pouch that was made to look like a miniature duffel bag. I don't remember exactly which sets I had, with the exception of the Europeans as well as the very first military set.

My little duffel bag ended up getting stolen by this asshole neighbor kid. I knew he stole them, too, because I caught him trying to steal other shit of mine (barehanded trying to pilfer some of my Transformers cassette tapes for Blaster). He was an older kid, and being the little sissy bitch that I've always been, I never did anything serious to get my stuff back, and as such, never saw my original Micro Machines again, which were long since out of stores. Who knows where that kid is now, but if I ever meet you again, Josh, I'm going to slit your fucking throat. No, better yet, if you have kids, I'm going to steal some of their toys. Sure, the kids didn't do anything to me, but I've got to go with my Klingon brothers here and their concept of "sins of the father."

I went on to collect lots and lots of Micro Machines after that, but there was never another red Lamborghini. They made a white version of the original, and then there was another red one, but it was part of a Deluxe set (you know, the ones with opening doors and shit). In both cases, it just wasn't the same.

Occasionally, I search eBay for the European collection. Once there was a set up for bid, but I completely forgot about the closing time and was out with friends when the auction ended. I did a search a couple of days ago, and came across this. But I was like, fuck, I missed this auction by like three days. I got in contact with the seller, however, and it's now paid for and should be on its way soon.

I am so stoked to be on the verge of having one more wound closed. Yeah, if these are my big issues from childhood, that should go to show you that I had a pretty good childhood. Yeah, there are some real scars and real issues there, but it's not like we don't all have those. I had it pretty good, and things definitely could have been way worse. Also, I know that a lot of this is just because I'm a materialistic fuck. I won't deny that. I know that things like toys aren't important like friends and family, but those little plastic and metal cars and figures have kept me going all these years.

Well, okay, there are a few friends I would have traded for a MISB Fortress Maximus, but they were the shitty friends. And, c'mon, it's fucking Fort Max!

As you may have guessed, I never had a ton of friends. I can't imagine why with the attitude I've got. I wasn't a complete loner, but not exactly Mr. Popular either. All the while, though, I had my toys. They gave me something to strive for, something to look forward to, and most importantly, something to entertain myself with. That's how I've come to look at material goods in general - yeah, they aren't of paramount importance, but they are great pick-me-ups, and they give us shit to do. As long as you keep that in perspective, and don't let the materialism take total control, you'll be fine. Of course, if you want to be a total materialistic asshole, I suppose that's up to you as well.

So much for winning over "hearts and minds".

Yeah, I know, I'm only reading and posting stories that are supporting what I expected to happen all along. But it's not like I'm seeing a flourishing of stories saying how loved we are over there. Of course, if there is any of that going on and it's not being reportted, that's the media's fault. Still, the most I can really remember was some dancing in the streets when that fucking statue came down. If there were any other great displays of affection, some sort of proof that ordinary Iraqis were glad to have us there, you'd think the administration would be putting those on display a little more.

So it's all but official that Wesley Clark is joining the race for the Democratic nomination for President. Perhaps by the time anyone reads this it'll be completely official. Seems like this might be a guy for people to get excited about - I know I am. So far, Dean has been the only somewhat decent candidate for the D side, since Lieberman is a fuck and I hate Kerry.

Clark has some mad street cred - I think he's got everyone beat in the leadership and foreign relations departments. The quote in that Guardian article that he's an "expert in only one piece of the presidency" may be true, but that means he's already better off than Bush was when he was installed. He's probably still got Bush beat; it's all the people around Bush who have any sort of clue (which isn't looking like much as time passes). Someone who was supreme commander of NATO may go a long way towards repairing our damaged relations with our allies, and he may be able to steer the war on terrorism in a more effective direction.

I could be wrong, but I don't really get the feeling that most Americans care much about foreign policy. Or at least, they don't seem to know shit about it (this coming from me, who knows shit about it). It's all going to come down to domestic policy, and more specifically, the economy. If the economy is still shit - at least in terms of job growth - by this time next year, then a Democrat may have a chance. If Clark is going to get that nomination, he's going to have to pull together a solid economic package. Or, at least solid enough bullshit that people will buy into.

We'll see how it goes, and I'm looking forward to it. Maybe I wasn't just getting ahead of myself a couple of days ago - we may have a serious election next year after all.

Okay, so I've come across some fucked up fetishes in my time, like balloon fetishes or amputee fetishes (no, I'm no making those up). However, I have never heard of a "looking at women looking at themselves in a mirror" fetish. Until now.

This is nothing. Can you imagine just how apeshit people in Chicago would go if the Cubs won a pennant, nonetheless a World Series?

So Iraqis attacking the "coalition" forces in Iraq isn't very surprising. Guerrila fighters from neighboring countiries pouring across the border to attack us isn't surprising. I even remember one story where a group escaped Iraq, then came back to fight against us. Somewhat incredible, but not surprising in the end. However, you know shit is fucked when our own people might be hanging out in Iraq to fight against us.

Ahhhh, here we go. After speaking out against Israel's declarations to expel or kill Arafat, we have yet another instance of the U.S. being the lone member to side with Israel and vote down a U.N. resolution. I'm not saying that countries can't stick with their allies, but we have a long history of showing our favortism in Middle East affairs. Favortism is kind of a bad thing when you're trying to be an intermediary for peace. I've posted this link before entailing our dealings with Israel-related U.N. resolutions and the U.S. being the lone naysayer, but here it is again.

So for as much as Enterprise pisses me off, I have gotten tons of hits from people looking for shit related to the show. Well, "tons" by the standards of this site. People seem to have this huge hardon for the new enemy, the Xindi. People want transcripts, pictures, pics, downloads, etc. I guess I should make mention of T'Pol, her sexy new outfits, her catsuits, pictures thereof, or pics if you prefer. Jolene Blalock downloads, Hoshi Sato, MACO. Enterprise Captain Archer sex and action. Ummm, what the fuck else can I come up with to generate hits?

I think Enterprise may be the biggest hit generator in terms of search engines. It's up there with shit about masturbation and perverted military stuff. I guess Homer Simpson was right; all the Internet gave us was the ability to find out what some dork knows about Star Trek.

The battle over the new FCC regulations regarding media ownership continues.

The White House says that the new rules do an effective job "guarding against concentration in the marketplace." God, what a fucking bullshit lie that is. That's exactly the opposite of what these rules are designed to do. The new rules are just part of a wish list of major media companies so that they can concentrate more in the marketplace (which won't be much of a market if this shit keeps up). .

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Holy christ is Futurama a good show. I got the second season on DVD a couple of weeks ago, and finally got around to watching a few episodes of it tonight. There was this one episode with a plotline revolving around Nixon, which was just fucking brilliant. I laughed my ass of over the last couple of minutes of that one - harder than I've laughed in quite awhile.

Why is it that the good shows almost always get cancelled? Like Newsradio, which was brilliant. Or how about Denis Leary's The Job? God, that show was good. And how could it not have been? Leary plays an asshole NY cop who has a drinking problem, a prescription pill problem, and who's cheating on his wife. How long did this amazingly good concept and incredibly well delivered show last? A handful of episodes. Oh yeah, and Dianne Farr is bloody gorgeous, and she was funny as hell on that show.

I'll admit some culpability when it comes to shows like Futurama. I just never remembered to watch that show when it was on, even though I loved what few episodes I got my shit together to watch. Newsradio was similar, although I won't take the hit on that one. NBC had the best Tuesday night lineup for fall '97, which included Newsradio, Frasier, and Just Shoot Me when it was still good. I actually watched consistently thanks to that setup. So what did NBC do? They broke up the band by shuffling shows around. Thanks to that, I all but stopped watching Newsradio just because I didn't know when it was on anymore (and clearly, I couldn't just check the TV guide). As such, it got cancelled.

Speaking of changing the nights shows are on: sometimes they do that, and even though the show doesn't get cancelled, I forget to watch it all the same. Like Law and Order: Sport Utility Vehicle. Man, that was a good show - all the ideas that were too fucked up for regular Law and Order. But they moved it to Fridays, when even I'm often out doing something. As an added insult, what did they put in SUV's place on Monday night? That awful Third Watch.

So, to conclude, fuck the networks for never leaving good shows in consistent time slots, and fuck all the stupid people for not getting the brilliance of shows like Futurama.

You're complaining about thwarting "the will of the people" and efforts that are "politically motivated"? You've got to be fucking kidding me, Darrell!

Couldn't you also say that ramming this recall forward is an attempt to overturn the will of the people who re-elected Davis last year? Look, Californians dug their own hole by buying into this shit, but Issa has no right to complain on this front.

Even if the 9th Circuit was just playing politics, so fucking what? Someone else should be complaining about this, Darrell. You are on no high horse that allows you to criticize that kind of behavior, seeing as how you're the one who blew a shitload of money in hopes that you could one day soon play governor.

Face it, Darrell. You're just pissed off because you spent all that money, then the Terminator stepped in and stole it all away from you.

So over on one of MSN's pages (which I embarassingly catch glimpses of thanks to my Hotmail spam-collecting account), they have a headline about Ben Asslick and his Ugly Ex-Fiancee which reads "What went wrong?" My answer? Who the fuck cares?

Lots of people care, unfortunately, which surprises me for zero point six eight seconds (for an android, that's nearly an eternity) before I rememer how stupid the average American is. What, like anyone expected them to live happily together, forever? They both need to be dropped into a vat of nondescript green goo, Joker-style.

Oh, cool, because I was worried about us running out of sperm.

Seriously though, stem cell research is neat, useful, and there's no reason not to do it. Of course, the right-to-lifers get all pissed off about it, which doesn't make any sense since scientists are using discarded embryos when it comes to human stem cell research. Some of which they've already lost on, because those embryos were aborted. But whaddya want from the fetus fetish people? Logic? Common sense? Support for something that could help thousands of people down the road, a truly Christ-like endeavor? Fat chance.

God fucking damn it, I am so pissed off right now. Yeah, I know, what else is new. I hate soulless cocksuckers on eBay, both buyers and sellers. Today, four auctions closed for still-sealed issues of Megami from last year. I didn't win one of them, because these two pricks were willing to pay between $26 and $100 for the June-September 2002 issues. Megami is fucking great, but I just can't be paying $100 per back issue right now. Maybe not ever. So thanks, eBay assholes, for once again stripping me of that tiny joy of acquiring new material goods. There's a chance that I might be able to find some back issues this weekend, though, and if I do I'll be able laugh at those stupid fuckers on eBay who are dropping C-notes for them.

Again, all of our economic problems are China's fault.

"American manufacturers can compete against any country's white collars and blue collars..." Yeah, that's why we used to spend so much time bitching about Japanese cars and electronics. Yes, the Japanese played dirty, but they also made better products in those markets. I don't know enough about econ, but I'm sure the Chinese are playing dirty as well. You know what, though? Everyone plays dirty, including us and the rest of the world. So maybe it's time to quit being whiny bitches about the whole thing and concentrate on things we can do at home to re-gain an edge. I'm real sure other countries will just be falling all over themselves to do what we tell them to fix our economy. They'll be just as excited for that as they are for the prospect of financing our mess in Iraq.

Of course, in traditional Bush administration fashion, it's not even clear if China's doing what we tell them to would have any effect if they did it. In fact, it's probably just a ploy - instead of blaming ourselves, we're passing the buck. Furthermore, we know China isn't going to do shit, so when the economy doesn't pick up, the administration can just point the finger back at China. It's a pretty obvious ploy, so it's kinda stupid of me to act all smart by pointing it out.

"The speech is the administration's latest attempt to show it is working to restore the 2.7 million jobs lost since President Bush took office." What? I haven't seen any attempts to restore jobs by the administration. No, I mean real attempts.

Continuing with the theme of bullshit GOP power grabs...

The California Vomiting saga continues.

When I first saw the headline for this I was like, well, another sign that Playboy has gone downhill. Then I remembered the whole bullshit about banning men's magazines in Wal-Mart, and realized how much this is going to piss off Wal-Mart. The quote from Playboy that they're looking for women to "roll back their clothes" is just priceless.

God fucking damn it, will you people make up your goddamn minds?

Even though, slowly but surely, more and more people have protested the Patriot Act over the past two years, that isn't stopping the Administration from attempting to further ram that particular dick up America's ass.

I guess we're making some progress if the Administration is spending a bunch of its time doing PR because they know even the feeble-minded American populace is starting to feel uneasy about the whole Iraq mess. Of course, let's not forget all this on top of Ashcroft's recent "Patriot Act Tour '03" to try and indoctrinate people on that shit. If this keeps up, we may have ourselves an election next year. Whoa, I'd better slow down.

Let's talk Dick Cheney for a minute. Yeah, I know, it nauseates me to think about him too, but it can't be helped. I'll try and keep it as painless as I can and just hit some of the quotes from that article.

"It's all that we think we'll need for the foreseeable future, for this year." The $87 Billion is supposed to cover the rest of this year? Holy fucking shit, it's September. Is it going to be costing us this much per quarter? When he says the rest of the year, is that calendar year or fiscal year? To be honest with you, I've never understood that fiscal year bullshit. It seemed like an asshole marketing tactic to me. "Hey, check it out, guys! It's 2003 for you mere mortals, but we're operating in fiscal 2004! Aren't we clever?" It's shit like that which has caused me to really hate business and economics.

Cheney "misspoke" when he said that Iraq had "re-constituted nuclear weapons"? And now he's confident that it'll be shown Saddam had a weapons "program," which of course means nothing in terms of having anything to threaten us with? It's both infuriating and satisfying to see the Administration's top officials doing all this backpeddling. I would have said "richly satisfying" if it wasn't for the fact that we had to be lied to and end up in this mess just for the satisfaction. For me, the satisfaction is not worth the price of admission.

"I think the majority of Iraqis are thankful for the fact that the United States is there, that we came and we took down the Saddam Hussein government." Okay, dick, why don't we head over there and ask them just how thankful they are?

"And whatever the cost is, in terms of casualties or financial resources, it's a whale of a lot less than trying to recover from the next attack in the United States." That might be OK, again if not for the fact that Iraq didn't attack us. It's embarassing that enough people aren't standing up to that excuse. Which might happen, except for the fact that stupid fucking Americans - to the tune of 70% - still think Saddam was involved in September 11th, which has never been close to having been proven. Bush's administration is nothing but a bunch of opportunistic lying fucks - you don't need a linguist to make that clear. All of that is just feeding into the public's "instinct," which they get from the media. Don't pay so much attention to the media, you fucking idiots. Your "instinct" is actually deeply ingrained ignorance.

Yeah, Halliburton or one of its subsidiaries gets contract after contract both in Iraq and otherwise, including a $7 billion contract that was given out without soliciting other bids for the job. I'm sure that Dick's being their ex-CEO never played a part in any of those dealings.

A friend of mine's dad put it best with regards to our VP: "Cheney's so crooked that if he died, they'd need a corkscrew to put him in the ground.

Phew, and just when I thought no one was going to offer up any rational ideas to calm things down over there. You kjnow the Israelis are really pushing things when the United States is openly speaking out against them. I'm not saying I'm an Arafat fan here, but it's pretty clear that if he were killed, there'd be hell to pay. However, I'd say it's pretty clear that neither side really cares that much about peace at this point; it's all about one-upsmanship.

Speaking of Arafat, it sounds like his compound is the place to be right now. Marching band, dancing, all kindsa fun shit. You know what else I'll bet they've got there? Cocaine... Tons of cocaine.

Okay, so at least one person was A) interested in seeing my annotations to the gay marriage article and B) unable to read my notes. I've set up an Angelfire webpage that I'm going to start using as a shit repository for images and whatnot, and I've put the full-size images up there. You can find it here, and hopefully at least some of what I wrote will now be visible and legible. Apologies in advance for any banner ads or pop-ups.