One area where the Democrats have shown balls, something they're not used to doing, is with filibustering some of Bush's judicial nominees. It looks as if they may be poised to do it again.

The Republicans have no problem with filibustering when they can use it to their advantage but they cry foul when it's used against them, and now they're trying to change the rules. Naturally, anytime someone goes against them, the opposition is being "unconstitutional" or "unpatriotic." FUCK YOU, ASSHOLES.

This notion that the Democrats are being abusive is fucking nonsense - it's not like they're filibustering every bloody thing and completely deadlocking the Senate. No, they're using the only tool they have left to try and keep some of the more far-right nominees off of the bench. This is important shit, too, and for once I actually have to applaud the Democrats who have decided to man up and actually fight the Administration.

This, of course, is pretty much what the Republicans do anytime they can't get their way - they go into whiny crybaby mode and try and change the rules. They did the same thing in Texas - I can't remember exactly what rule it was they changed, but the Republicans changed something which allowed the redistricting to go through. I think originally, you needed a two-thirds majority to get a redistricting plan to go through, but the governor or lieutenant governor had it changed so that they only needed a simple majority. Hence, all the special sessions and all the running away by the Democrats in the Texas senate.

The fact that Republicans have to have their way with every single thing is yet another dangerous pattern, and it's scary. Single-party state - we're on our way.

So it goes. I find it kind of amusing that when I clicked that link only a couple of hours ago, there was only talk of the first two rulings, but now they've added a third. As such, that CNN article is a worse than usual cut-and-paste job.

I think we need a new t-shirt: "Abortion doesn't kill children, I kill children."

I just realized something. Now that Eli is 'blogging, him and I don't even have to talk to eachother anymore. This is great!

The second I saw this URL in my referral list, I knew exactly whose 'blog it was. Say hello to my good friend Elijah the Prophet as he informs you of the olfactory delights of his nutsack and whatever other stuff he sees fit to put in his 'blog.

Now that he's 'blogging explaining the joke, life's not worth living anymore.

Quote of the week, courtesy of Chow-sensei's archives and coming from a discussion of being able to buy Japanese DVDs:

Sure, I'd never watch them, but at least I could display them on my shelf so people can see what media defines me as a person.

Sadly, that pretty much sums up my entire life.

Also, some mad points for the Critic reference in the title of February 18th's entry. I'm expecting William Fucking Shatner to bust out of the room any minute now and start feeding on downed power lines.

Man, speaking of The Critic, there's yet another show that needs to be released on DVD.

Google search (which can be interpreted in a way that amuses me) of the day:

+"kim jong il" +asuka

Is Kim Jong Il making moves on my woman? If so, I'll fucking go over there and bomb the shit out that cocksucker. If Asuka doesn't just eat him alive first, that is.

Wouldn't that make a great headline for the papers or history textbooks someday? "Pissed off American kid incites nuclear war over cartoon character."

Bush was spewing more bullshit and unfounded conclusions in a speech today at the National Endowment for Democracy. Text of the speech can be found here.

Some quotes 'n' notes:

They will point to the role of technology in frustrating censorship and central control...
Just sit back and let the irony of that statement settle in.

Yet we also know that liberty, if not defended, can be lost.
Something Americans are currently getting firsthand experience in.

The nations of Europe are moving toward unity, not dividing into armed camps and descending into genocide.
Is he referring to the EU? I'm sure countries like Britain are real thrilled to hear praise that they've kept their shit together and haven't descended into genocide. I know; he was probably referring to places like the Balkan states, but this was still poorly phrased.

And we will stand with these oppressed peoples until the day of liberation and freedom finally arrives.
If we stand to profit from it.

After the Japanese surrender in 1945, a so-called Japan expert asserted that democracy in that former empire would, quote, "never work."
I'm tired of the continual use of Japan and Germany as examples as to how we are capable of democratizing nations. Although both situations degraded, Germany and Japan had experience with democracy not long before WWII. I went into this more in depth in a September 7th post, which was a long post with a bunch of comments on one of Bush's speeches (if you want to find the Germany/Japan stuff, just search the page for "Hitler"). I'm not saying that democracy is impossible in the Middle East (although I have serious doubts), but using examples like post-WWII reconstruction is a cheap attempt at making it look like it's going to be easy when it isn't.

It should be clear to all that Islam, the faith of one-fifth of humanity, is consistent with democratic rule.
Yes, when we're talking about mainstream Islam. More of the hard-line fundamentalist strains of Islam, however, seems to have some issues with Democratic rule. That's what we're up against today.

Instead of dwelling on past wrongs and blaming others, governments in the Middle East need to confront real problems and serve the true interests of their nations.
Yeah, don't dwell on past wrongs and blame others, because that's our fucking job! It's gonna be hard to convince others to "confront real problems and serve the true interests of their nations" if we can't even follow that edict.

The great and proud nation of Egypt has shown the way toward peace in the Middle East, and now should show the way toward democracy in the Middle East.
Sorry, but Egypt isn't the best example. Take a look at some blurbs from the National Democratic Institute and the U.S. State Department (check out the sections entitled "From Sadat to Mubarak" and "Government and Political Conditions"). Also, I remember watching a special on Egypt when the war started where anti-war protests were being showcased. The protests were some of the most significant seen in Egypt in a long time, as political protest is frowned upon by Mubarak's government. Overall, progress has been made, but I don't think it's anything to really be bragging about. It shows potential, but shows that the fight is far from over, and it's going to take more work than this generation is used to if we want to get the job done.

As we watch and encourage reforms in the region, we are mindful that modernization is not the same as Westernization.
The problem, George, is that a lot of nations who we are pushing towards modernizing DO view it as Westernization, and as such, they're going to fight it. It doesn't matter what we think, it's all going to come down to what they think. You, your underlings, and a good deal of this nation all seem to be far from grasping this fact.

Successful societies limit the power of the state and the power of the military so that governments respond to the will of the people and not the will of the elite.
Again, this is not a credible statement coming from the President* of the United States.

Successful societies guarantee religious liberty; the right to serve and honor God without fear of persecution.
Or, you asshole, the right to not serve and honor God. Coming from Bush, there is no implication of this other side of the coin.

They prohibit and punish official corruption and invest in the health and education of their people. They recognize the rights of women.
Do you think he actually said this with a straight face?

The failure of Iraqi democracy would embolden terrorists around the world and increase dangers to the American people...
This is yet another false conclusion. Terrorists will be emboldened regardless of the success of Democracy in Iraq. Even if democracy takes hold, the terrorists aren't gonna be like "Well, fuck. I guess the infidels have won. Time to punt."

... America has put our power at the service of principle.
No, we have put our power at the service of us. And that's fine, but quit lying about it.

May God bless your work, and may God continue to bless America.
Thanks for once again driving home the point that we have a theocracy in principle.

* - as you may have noticed, I don't really like referring to Bush as the "president." Ignoring the questionable results of the 2000 election, it's just embarassing to me to have to acknowledge this dimwitted asshole as the leader of the most powerful nation in the world. As such, I'm going to do to Bush what they did to Roger Maris. With Maris, they added an asterisk to his record of 61 homeruns in 1961 since it took him more games to get that 61st HR than it did Babe Ruth to reach 60 (the length of the baseball season had been increased between the time of Ruth and Maris. As such, I'm going to add an asterisk to Bush's title because, whether or not he actually won that election, I don't think he deserves to be President.

Here are some specs and prototype images of Sony's upcoming PSP handheld. When they say "may incorporate mobile phone technology," I think they're just referring to the fact that it's cell phone strap ready.

Okay, you know what I'm fucking sick and tired of? This goddamn fucking Powerpoint mentality that we have nowadays. This stupid mindset where everything has to have a bunch of stupid animations and bright flashing colors. Fuck content, my site is made entirely in Flash!

Fuck flash sites. I can't stand sitting there waiting for what I know is going to be total shit to load. And it's not just because I'm on dialup, although it is extra irritating. However, Flash-based sites pissed me off whenever I had broadband, and will continue to piss me off when I have it again. Some amusing stuff has been done with Flash, but I am going to punch Flash-only sites in the face.

Another area ripe with egregious offenses of this type are of course Powerpoint presentations themselves. Once again, pretty colors and neat-o transitions are added to compensate for a presentation completely devoid of anything useful. Get some balls and make some fucking slides that are actually meaningful.

Does this mean that my class or work presentations are full of good content which informs my audience? FUCK NO. But my goddamn presentations live and die on their own (lack of) merit, just like any shitty website I've put together. I'm not embarrassed to show off my shit, and I won't try and distract my audience from said shit.

I've gotten a couple of comments on the whole Linux situation, and thought I'd post a few more thoughts along those lines.

I really do wanna try Gentoo again, if nothing else because of their adaptation of FreeBSD's ports system. I've done a little bit of fucking around with FreeBSD, and the ports system was cool. Well, like most things, cool when it worked. But I really liked the notion of being able to easily build from source for new installs, because I fucking hate prepackaged binaries and package managers.

Apt-rpm isn't bad for RedHat users, in fact it's pretty fucking bad-ass as long as it can find the bloody package you want (which would probably have a higher success rate if I went out and found more apt-rpm repositories).

Of course, I could deal more in source RPMs, but even though I know it's easy to do that I forget how to use src RPMs every bloody time I try, so I end up needing to re-learn and usually just end up avoiding all of it. That's kinda how I am with classes and C++. My classwork tended me more towards straight C, so I used C++ and classes rather infrequently. As such, every time I had to use classes I found myself re-learning class-related syntax and shit. I find that so annoying that one time when faced with having to use classes I just learned OO Perl instead.

Still, I'm dreading dealing with the fucking Gentoo install, which I'm not sure if I ever even had the patience to get past. With Debian, on the other hand, I got past the install, but as I recall somehow a bunch of shit I told it to install didn't install. This may have been related to the fact that it downloaded packages to /var, but neglected to tell me this when I sized /var, nor do I recall an option to stick those downloads elsewhere. I probably just didn't play with it enough, but at that point I had already had it.

Mandrake was the first distro I installed all on my own and fucked around with for awhile. It was decent. I know that they're shooting for "user friendliness," which is great in terms of Linux advocacy. Linux definitely needs to be more user friendly if it has any hopes of being dominant on the desktop (which I don't see happening anytime soon for myriad reasons).

The problem I ran into was when I tried to compile a kernel, and the GCC that Mandrake installed couldn't handle it. I figured it was because of all the optimizations that went into Mandrake, but I didn't really care since it was not long after that that I switched to RedHat.

Ever since then, I've had a mental block of "Mandrake for newbies, and not power users," but maybe that's changed nowadays. There are some people I've talked to who have used it and loved it, but it's gonna be hard to get rid of that wussy feel Mandrake has for me.

Personally, I think RedHat quit the supported free desktop because they couldn't keep up with Mandrake's version numbers (along with the fact that it probably wasn't bringing in a ton of money).

I've got more to say on this issue, but I'm going to have to leave most of that for another time (I'm actually getting some packing done. Two boxes so far, one of them just a handful of Care Bears... Woo hoo!). Until then, am I the only one sick and tired of the Bush boys trying to play god?

I've known about this Evangelion disc for awhile, but I think this is the first street date I've heard. I'm just wondering if/when we're going to get an American version of that ultra-expensive "Revival" box set that was released in Japan this summer. I mean, really, can we just skip straight to the heavy spending and dispense with all the finger-fucking already?

You know, if I hear Shinji referred to as a "reluctant hero" one more fucking time...

And don't get me started on that fucking live action Eva bullshit. I think this one Slashfucker put it best when Assdot initially covered the live action nonsense:

I agree on so many lives. Live action EVA is bad, wrong, and stupid. Are they going to have a tall, busty Japanese woman playing Misato? Are they going to have fourteen-year-olds in skin-tight vinyl? Are they going to have a penguin? Are they going to have lots of Rei clones? Are they going to invoke the wrath of the Christian right with the decidedly mangled Christian imagery in Evangelion? Is Misato going to die in the second reel? How about Touji? Is Gendou going to cheat on his cute pregnant wife (who will almost have to be played by the same actress as the various Reis) with Ritsuko and her mom? Will Shinji be allowed to oedipally fantasize about all the-- again, fourteen year old-- girls on the cast?

Unless the scriptwriter, director, and producer are willing to portray this story in all its gory beauty, they shouldn't even bother. I can't see them doing *HALF* of the things I listed above, and you really need *ALL* of them to get the story right.

In addition to the obvious, direct ramifications for abortion rights, there's all the other shit lurking below the surface, and here's one of them:

"This right to life cannot be granted or denied by government, because it does not come from government -- it comes from the creator of life."

If that's the case, then why is the government stepping in? If "the creator" exists and he gives a shit (two things I am far from conviced of), why the fuck doesn't he step in and say something? Huh? We're waiting, God.

Despite separation of church and state being a standard, we don't have separation of church and state. This is a government that supports and is supported by Christianity. The fact that the President is using "the creator of life" to justify laws like the abortion ban is just one more example in support of this fact to add to the already huge pile.

Mills Lane put it best:

Any questions? Any questions? Let's get it on.

RedHat is bringing an end to its free Linux distro and instead focus on its enterprise solution.

Well, the free distro is sorta ending. From what I gather, the successor will be the Fedora Project, whose development is being backed by RedHat. However, RedHat will no longer be offering support (tech support, RedHat Network, etc.) for the free distro as it did before. My guess, though, is that things will be rather similar to the RedHat so many of us have gotten used to. Something new to check out next week once I (hopefully) have a chance to download the ISOs.

That's fine by me, since I've never paid RH for support. I guess the question now is whether or no to use this as an opportunity to fuck around with some other distros. I've wanted to take serious looks at Debian and Gentoo. I experimented with both at one point, but their installers were a big enough pain in the ass that it wasn't long before I got to the "I don't care enough" point. Also, I've heard some good things about Suse over the years. And of course, I'll most likely be test-driving what Fedora has to offer.

Here's the latest sign that Playboy has gone downhill: Hef is now doing commercials for Carl's Junior. I can't totally rip on the ads, though, because the tag line is pretty good. "Carl's Junior: Because some guys don't like having the same thing night after night."

Also, they've got Shannen Doherty naked in the magazine this month. Why is she still around? She must be running out of money. Also, I'm now convinced that that Shannen Doherty chick has a dong.

Here's why. I remember when she was first in Playboy, back in like '95 or something. I had gotten a look at the issue, and this one friend of mine was asking me about the pictorial. To give you an idea as to the quality of this kid, his main question was something along the lines of "What color is her pussy?" I'm not really sure why he cared about the color of her pubic hair, seeing as how it's not like there's a question as to whether or not she's a natural blonde. The carpet most likely matches the curtains, or is at least fairly close.

Anyway, I thought about it for a sec, and I'm like "You know what? I don't even think they showed it." So he was disappointed to not get a description of Shannen Doherty's goodies.

The latest pictorial has a tagline of "Hollywood's hottest drama queen has nothing to hide." Ignoring the fact that "hottest" is debatable nowadays with Doherty, I think the tagline is a complete lie. Doherty has something to hide, alright, and that something is a penis. Once again, I could not give any sort of description as to what is or is not between her legs and what color it is, because, once again, it's all covered up.

As such, wherever this onetime friend of mine is now, he is still living in disappointment. Actually, considering that Shannen has man junk down there, he's probably going to be happier this way.

As promised, I'm here to send out big ups to fellow 'bloggers who have linked to the wasteland that is Fuck Everything.

First we have The Taxman who has a cool site name and, I could be wrong about this, likes sports.

Next is Tales of a Griffon savant. I just love this line in his colophon: "It is my sincerest intention that this website looks like shit in InternetExplorer 5.x since that particular line of browsers do not support common web standards that all other browsers adhere to." Preach on, brother.

Finally this morning is Lucky Eleven.com. Upon browsing this site, I saw some mention of Church, and not in the horribly derogatory manner as one would be accustomed to here. As such, I was kinda puzzled by the presence of a link to Fuck Everything, or at least a link that isn't in flaming red and says SINNER!!!!. Of course, not everyone is an asshole like me, and I'm certainly not complaining that my pathetic site has gotten recognition. Upon reading some more, I found that the 'blogmaster, Andrea, has an affinity for curling, which is so fucking cool that I can't even begin to describe.

I'm not being sarcastic, either. Curling is fucking awesome. I was totally getting into it when the Olympics were on last year. I was especially stoked upon hearing that one of the teams (I think it was Finland) was captained by this math whiz who could do a Rubik's cube in 27 seconds. That is bad fucking ass. Finally, a sport that people with math skills can excel at. That's something I'd like to get into.

In fact, a friend of mine and I were totally going to get into curling. But like the 843 other great ideas we've come up with during the 10+ years we've been friends, we never did shit about it. Yes, 843. Probably 5 to 6 of those ideas were to start a pay porn site, which obviously never happened. Oh, and then there was when we were freshmen in college, and we were totally convinced that we could bust out "the college guy card" and easily get with some high school chicks. How this worked was we were going to start going up to high school girls and say "we're in college," and they would immediately be on their knees and going to town.

Of course, we were totally full of shit, so it's just as well we had next to no social life and never tried this idea out. Now, this friend is dead married. And me? I'm still fantasizing about high schoolers, because I... Am a sexual predator. Fuck.

Oh, and as for the dead/married comment, I kid the wife. I really do like 'er (unlike some people's wives I could name...), and I don't want my throat slit. You got Noir disc 7, right?

Ooooooo-kay, so it's been a fucked up couple of weeks for me, and I think it's really starting to show, so I'll be going now. I'm sure the fine 'bloggers mentioned above were not expecting this when they linked to me. So, sorry about that, and thanks.

You know what I just realized is the biggest bullshit sales scam ever? "Supplies are limited!" No fucking shit, douche. Of course supplies are limited. Lotsa luck on that whole "infinite supply" thing. Seriously, if someone could create unlimited supply of a product, I'd be willing to pay for it. I'd give the guy five bucks. And just to clarify, it would be a guy, because only a man would be stupid enough to go through all that trouble for five dollars.

I didn't read this, because I didn't need to. Gideon, or that Asian girl, or what the fuck's his name (Sway?), don't know shit about shit. Fuck, I haven't watched that assfest in so long that I don't know if those stupid fuckers are even still doing the "news" or not, but I don't care. No one from MTV should be telling anyone about anything at any time. Except maybe Loder. Mainly because Kurt Scroter is about a hundred years old. Or at least he's older than everyone else on that network by at least 40 years. Is he still on MTV? Is he even still alive?

Rock the vote? How many of your viewers can even spell "vote," MTV?

MTV, please put your people to sleep, and just go back to playing whatever total bullshit you're playing nowadays, and quit trying to do anything important, because you can't.

Of course, all this is to say nothing of the fact that CNN for some reason is actually talking to MTV assrammers. Why don't you fuckers come talk to me? I'm not cute or famous (I don't think Gideon's all that cute, either, for that matter), but I guarantee you I know more than anyone at MTV.

John appropriately refers to JList as a "financial drain." It can take no time at all to quickly put together a shopping cart that will put you in Chapter 11. And if your order isn't expensive (which it will be, and not because their prices are outrageous), shipping will be if you choose EMS. EMS stands for "Expensive Method of Shipping." It's trackable and fucking fast (I've gotten orders from fucking Tokyo shipped via EMS that took less than a week), but you take it up the ass for it. A recent order had nearly 25% of the cost in shipping alone.

However good/bad shopping there can be, you don't have to spend any money to look at their glossary of terms, presented in usual awkward JList fashion. Still, you haven't seen "awkward" in terms of written communication until you get their newsletter. A recent example had the guy who primarily runs JList talking about his daughter in Japanese girl scouts in the beginning of the message where he has a blurb about life in Japan, and then talking about DVDs with girls "fucking up a storm," bukkake, and whatnot in the second half of the e-mail dealing with webstore stock updates.

Interesting news for anyone thinking heart problems might kill them (like me).

Most unnecessary and inappropriate use of rhyming:

Have you seen ads for those flashlight-looking sex toys that are supposed to be a fake vagina/pussy/snatch/cunt/twat/cooter (choose whichever word you prefer; I try to keep everyone happy)? I think there's one even called the "Fleshlight." Anyway, hit enough pr0n sites, and you'll find ads for 'em.

Anyway, I came (no pun intended... Okay, maybe a little intentional) across one tonight, the ad reading "Super Tight - Just Like Prom Night."

A little somethin' for 'ya before bed.

This guy left a comment, and upon checking his site, I think I may have found someone just as if not more irritable than me. As we all know, that's really saying something.

I really wish there would be a serious investigation of intelligence and the Iraq war, just like I'd love to see a real CIA operative leak investigation or 9/11 probe. In all cases, I'm not holding my breath.

I can already see drug companies getting huge erections just ready for anal rape at the mere sound of this.

Look, I understand that the drug companies are in business to make money. But for christ's fucking sake, they're already loaded. Do they need to be so nauseatingly evil just to make even more money all the time?