Somewhat old news, but this is pretty fucking stupid. I'd expect this to stir up some controversy. But an arrest? Hey, Madison, Wisconsin police, how fucking stupid are you?

What happens when you say 'bomb' in an airport? That's free speech, isn't it?" he said. "And people are taken into custody for that all the time."

Oh yeah, that fucking stupid. I'd tell you to look up "clear and present danger" but you'd probably think I'm referring to the movie you dumbfuck.

Most likely this was a joke. Maybe not the best way to get your point across but whatever. And if it wasn't a joke? OK, fine, so they guy's a Klebold and Harris sympathizer. That's not a crime. And it certainly didn't sound like some kind of threat, either.

The comment disturbed at least one teacher, who called police in West Bend, 40 miles north of Milwaukee and home of the blog's administrator.

That's pretty awesome. You can get thrown in the can for "disturbing" someone. Jesus R. Christ, would some of you people grow a fucking sack?

Police traveled to arrest Buss at his home in Cudahy, south of Milwaukee, last week after the blogger gave them the anonymous poster's IP address.

Also speaking of needing to grow a sack, at least potentially, I wonder how much of a fight this blogger put up before he rolled and gave up the IP address? I'm guessing the cops threatened him and shit and he pussed out. I'm not saying that I wouldn't have too, but I'm a self-admitted coward so that's not helping this guy's case any.

I always hate for my most recent post to be one of those oh-woe-is-me despite the fact that I'm more fortunate than the vast majority of people out there pity parties, even though the better part of my life as been precisely one of those posts. So here's something funny to lighten the mood back up.

As I've mentioned before, I became a fan of the web comic Overcompensating. My enthusiasm for the strip has waned, though, just because I'm getting really sick of his preachy ass liberal bullshit. I'm like, dude, I get it -- and I agree with you on a lot of this stuff. But can you knock it off and just be funny? Or at least go back to doing Wigu on a regular basis?

He did have one really funny comic a couple weeks back though that involved no left-wing preachiness, and it was funny because it's absolutely true.

eMisery

So after all these years of blogging it should be pretty obvious that I'm, like, one of the loneliest motherfuckers out there (my new girlfriend not withstanding). If I'm a straight guy blogging about the guys I'd have sex with if I had to, I've gotta be pretty lonely. I know you're probably thinking "closet case..." but that's just not it. Despite the shopping habit, despite always wanting to dress nice, despite enjoying decorating, despite the Pinky Street obsession, despite taking an hour every fucking morning just to get showered and dressed, I'm still attracted to women and not guys.

And I'm sure most are like, well yeah duh you're lonely, have you paid any attention to what you're like? But c'mon, I'm not that bad. A handful of really good people have enjoyed having me around. And a bunch of total dooshebags haven't, but hey, that's life.

Or maybe I am that bad. I look back over the years, and only once has a friend even made a half-assed kinda-sorta attempt to set me up with someone. You would think that for a guy who is pretty smart, has a master's degree in something useful, has a good job, has a mortgage instead of a lease, is nearing his second new BMW in three years, and is actually a pretty caring and entertaining and decent guy despite all the sarcasm and bitching and other issues, that someone, at some point, would have thought I'd be a good guy for someone else and I'd have gotten some help. But apparently I have so much bad that it way more than cancels out all the good. So in the end that really tells me all that I need to know about myself.

Of course it's not everyone else's job to fix my solitude issues. It'd be nice, but the responsibility is still mine. Of course, being painfully fucking shy doesn't help much, either. I did start taking an anti-anxiety medication recently, so we'll see if that helps calm me in social situations. So far all it's managed to do is make me even more sleepy during the day than I normally am.

If things continue like this, though, I think I'm gonna end up a Type B Bisexual male. The way I see it, there are two types of bi guys: A) guys who are truly attracted to both men and women, and B) guys who are willing to settle. You know, some guys go out looking for pussy, they'll settle for dick. Unless if I'd rather stay alone, eventually I'm going to have to settle for something, whether it be dick or something else sub-optimal. Guess that would serve me right for all these years of being a spoiled prick. I've gotten damn near everything else I've wanted but no one can have it all.

But who knows, maybe it's not completely bleak. This past weekend ETP was trying to encourage me to sign up for an online dating site. Which kinda makes sense. I'm obviously not going to be able to find someone in the ways most people have for hundreds of years. Plus I'm good at spending money after all (which leads me to strongly consider a mail-order bride).

So the first two sites that came to mind were eHarmony and match.com. I go to eHarmony, and look at their "I'm an X looking for an X" dropdown boxes. The only options are a guy looking for a girl or vice versa. No love for the queers. Despite not being at the Type B stage (yet), I was still kinda put off by the implicit homophobia they showed.

So I go over to Match, and at the bottom of their front page is some kind of ad for Dr. Phil. So back to eHarmony.

And hey, why not? They do match you on 29 dimensions of something or other. And if there are three things I trust in this world, it's a soft-spoken but mildly creepy old man claiming that he can help me find the love of my life, psychology, and programmers writing code to match me up with said love of my life.

As far as the latent homophobia? Well, maybe with their supposed system they just don't feel like they have the expertise to be making matches for homosexual couples. Already an apologist, yeah, but at least I'm not aligning myself with Dr. Phil.

It's only been a few days so far, but not much luck at this point. Got a couple decent matches, like a girl who is around my age and is 4'8", but she wasn't interested. Today one of my new matches that showed up was a very cute Japanese girl who unfortunately lives in Canada. Still waiting to hear back from her but not exactly holding out a ton of hope there.

So yeah, that was probably ninety bucks wasted. If anything comes of this endeavor you will all be the first to know, because fire and brimstone will start raining from the sky and Jesus will make his long-awaited return appearance.

I really hate boxing. Yeah, that's right, I don't "get" the sweet science. That's because the sweet science is fucking boring. I saw live boxing once in my life, and that was during a horrible night in Vegas. I didn't think it was possible to have a horrible night in Vegas (at least, not with how I roll), but it is and boxing played a part in that.

About the only thing boxing has going for it is Oscar de la Hoya. How does a guy get to be that good-looking, especially when his job is to get punched in the head? He is definitely on my list of men I'd have sex with if for some reason I was forced to have sex with a man and had the choice of which man to have sex with. He's on the list with Clive Owen and Orlando Bloom. I guess I'll put Matt Damon on there too since I apparently go for that boyish look (Clive being the exception). Contrast this to ETP who goes for that more rugged look.

Anyway... Jay Mohr, however, did manage to make boxing amusing for a few minutes this week with his latest column.

Everyone knows that I hate explaining the joke (because when you do it's, just... life's not worth living), but if you're wondering about the origin of my new posting name, here you go.

Not to stupid teenage parents: if you don't want your kid, you either A) head that off at the pass with an abortion (while you can still have one) or B) go the adoption route. Dumpsters and Sterilite containers constitute an epic fail on your part, so don't fucking do it.

Sure, teenage pregnancy is hot until you have one on your hands, but there's no excuse for anything ending up this way.

Also, composite sketch artists should probably start looking for a new line of work. I realize the artist in this case was probably working off of a badly decomposed body, but that might be one reason to punt on the whole endeavor. I mean, c'mon, the real pictures show a cute little girl, and the sketches show Dakota Fanning. And we already know how I feel about her.

Boldly go back to where we just were

As a follow-on to that last post, here are a couple of links if, like me, you are inexplicably obsessed with the look of LCARS (either you know what that is or you don't) interfaces and their omnipresent Okudagrams. Well, what drives the obsession is probably not so much the visual appeal as opposed to just trying to pretend I'm living on Star Trek. You know, where I would be a total bad-ass with cool technology instead of being a huge pussy who blogs.

Here is a site that's a bit light on content at this point but still has some decent stuff that could end up as background wallpaper. On this page's "Download Gallery" section there's all kinds of cool shit, such as LCARS images, starship images, and (my fave) LCARS animations (some including sound!).

Dorks with cash

So someone recently put together a home-theater setup designed to look like the bridge of the Enterprise-D from Star Trek: The Next Generation. It looks pretty decent, but for the size of the room their screen looks pretty small. And I've got some reservations about the seats that are behind the tactical rail:


All I can say is that I'm not getting stuck sitting back there.

The additional Trek-inspired bar and lounge areas are a nice touch, but still nowhere near as cool as Rob Zombie's pirate bar at his house (couldn't find a pic that did it justice, unfortunately).

While this is a pretty nerdy thing to do, some points are lost because

“We initially considered the original Starship Enterprise, NCC-1701,” says Hoover. “With a more updated look, Enterprise NCC-1701A was selected as it depicted a grander version of the ship.”

As I already mentioned, that's the 1701-D, not the A. I don't know if the owner of this installation looked over this article before it went out, but still, there's no excuse for that.

I'm sure I linked this before but in a similar vein there was a guy a ways back who re-did his flat in a Next-Gen theme. To me that looks pretty awesome, if for no other reason the Okudagrams all over the place. The style and design choices are pretty decent although questionable in some places. My biggest issue is that everything is so fucking dark.

Unfortunately for this guy he started a company to do conversions like this for other people but ended up going bankrupt. Probably just as well, the last thing I need is that temptation floating around out there. Of course, with enough money you can do pretty much anything you want, but maybe fortunately I'm not at that point yet.

Meanwhile, there's some fascist shit going on in Pakistan that's not getting a whole lot of run over here. No big deal; it's not like they have nukes or anything. I know, I know, they're an important ally in The War Against Terror (TWAT).

Diplomats said John Negroponte had delivered a very strong message for an end to Pakistan's state of emergency.

Yeah, when you're dealing with a dooshebag like Pervez Musharraf, send in another huge d-bag.

He demanded an explanation for his portrayal in the Western media in recent months.

"Did I go mad? Or suddenly, my personality changed? Am I Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?" he asked.

In recent months? This guy apparently pays as much attention to the news as Bush does.

"Have I done anything constitutionally illegal? Yes, I did it on 3 November," he said, referring to his imposition of emergency rule. "But did I do it before? Not once."

And he has a level of arrogance that would make Cheney proud.

Not that we didn't already know this, but Saudia Arabia is pretty awesome. Even Jack McCoy thinks that's fucked up.

So I made a made a discovery this week, and that is that one of Gorbachev's granddaughters, Anastasia Virganskaya Gorbachev, is one of the hottest girls alive. I'd like to introduce you all to my new girlfriend:

That last post, now with links

Yeah, just noticed that I fucked up the last -- and most important -- link in my previous post. I'm sure Cracked is devastated to have not gotten that link from a blog no one is reading.

It's a well-known fact that humor is one of the most under appreciated art forms. I'm not talking the shit that I try and pass off for humor here at Fe. I'm talking about the kind of humor that takes talent and maybe even some practice to get good at.

We can see how underrated comedy is just through Hollywood. Take a look at the best picture category at the Oscars. Comedies are in the minority, and pretty much always a long-shot to win. And then there's all of the dooshebag comic actors who start doing dramatic roles just to win an Oscar and validate their careers which in some cases shouldn't need validation. Comedy is just not taken seriously.

Yes, I know the Oscars are a yearly autofellatio event for Hollywood and are total bullshit, but that lame-ass awards show serves as a nice microcosm of what I'm complaining about here. Although the fact that Jim Carrey will never win an Oscar is pretty sweet.

To me, if you can be educational and funny, that's awesome. If you can be poignant and funny, that's awesome. I also think that it's much harder to mix comedy with these other things, and of course no one in history has ever espoused such an earth-shattering opinion. Courtesy of Cracked, here are a couple of articles that demonstrate what a bad-ass comedy can be when it's done balls-out.

First up is a list of The Five Biggest Badass Popes. Entertaining and informative.

As a quick aside while we're on the subject of the Papacy, while I was on hiatus these past nine months I had an important revelation. I finally decided what I want to be when I grow up.

For the next Cracked link, I'm not going to say much. Other than the fact that this is one of the most fucking awesome things I've ever read.

Reasons why Jews kick ass #112

I've pointed out on numerous occasions that if you believe in an invisible man in the sky then I think you're stupid. The Jews win some points back, though, thanks to their contributions to the world of comedy. The latest example of this is the Shmaltz Brewing Company, maker of HE'BREW: The Chosen Beer.

That is just too fucking awesome for words.

Looking at their list of places to buy HE'BREW, a liquor store right by my house carries their products. I don't recall seeing any of their beers but maybe I just wasn't paying much attention since I usually end up getting Guinness or Fuller's ESB. Hopefully they stock Messiah Bold.

If this guy is correct, then that's pretty fucking badass. A five-hundred-year-old painting and there's still shit like this that we haven't figured out about it? Hard fucking core.

Alright, so the thought of starting to discuss politics here once again kinda nauseates me, as it has done since the '04 election. But I still need to mention this, which is pretty much the final nail in the coffin of me backing Giuliani. I totally wanted to get behind that guy because I loved the idea of divided government with a Democratic congress and a Republican president who is socially liberal or at least moderate while maintaining some true Republican roots (i.e. not all this Jesus and big government crap). Plus there's a local sandwich chain (Deli Zone) which has an awesome sandwich they call "the Giuliani." Somehow I think that also factored in to me wanting to back Rudy because I'm dumb like that.

But yeah, Rudy just sucks. 9/11, 9/11, 9/11... Yeah, we get it. That's not so bad, though. What gets to me (and I know I've been over this before) is all the bullshit pandering. Kissing ass with Bush. Trying to convince the religious right that he's down with them. And of course, that scheme paid off handsomely with this endorsement. The best case scenario I could think of is that he's just bullshitting everyone to get support from Republicans who otherwise wouldn't support him and then he'll do whatever the fuck he wants after elected. But even then he's just another dooshebag saying whatever he needs to say to get elected.

Why can't we get another moderate Republican in the mix here? Sit your ass down John McCain. You phony fuck. I'm sorry, maverick. Seriously though, moderate Republicans are my favorite people in government right now. 'Cause think about it. Mid-right and far-right Republicans, you know how they're going to vote on everything. Party line, Bush, blah blah blah. In general the Democrats are gonna do the same on their side since they're doing what little they can to consolidate what little power they've managed to stumble into (gotta love those approval ratings guys and gals!).

Moderate Republicans, therefore, are the only ones we can hope for to shake things up a bit and not be 100% fucking predictable. Like usual with American politics, shit just keeps getting worse and worse, and we're not choosing based on who we want, but choosing based on who we don't want. And in the end everyone sucks anyway. Politics off.

Alright, I think the whole toy recall thing is getting out of control. Christ, are we gonna have to start recalling everything that might be harmful to kids? Like with most all these recalls (if not all of them), the only danger is through blatant product misuse.

Wednesday's recalls include about 7,200 "Big Red" Wagons imported by Northern Tool & Equipment Co. of Burnsville, Minn. Totaling about 405,700, the recalled children's products all had excessive levels of lead in their surface paint.

Although no illnesses connected to the toy car recall have been reported, lead is toxic if ingested by young children.

If your kid is ingesting his or her fucking wagon I think there are bigger issues. Shit, if they're just scraping paint off and eating it, that act alone is a fuckin' problem.

Scientists say a chemical coating on the beads, when ingested, metabolizes into the so-called date rape drug gamma hydroxy butyrate.

That is just fucking... Bizarre. I mean, what are the odds of that happening? I don't mean kids eating shit they're not supposed to, but the chemical coating getting converted to GHB after ingestion. I think this company deserves some kind of award. For something. Oh, and if you're expecting some kind of joke considering the GHB thing, forget it. It's too easy, and I need to cut back on that shit or I am gonna be the subject of the next recall.

Considering who I am and my opening to this post I know you're probably thinking that I'm thinking, to hell with these kids, if they're dumb enough to be putting this stuff in their mouth then just let Darwinism take its course. On one hand I'm like, yeah, kids should really be smarter. And if they're not, well, they might be doomed anyway.

But on the other hand, kids do stupid shit sometimes since they're, well, kids. Everyone makes mistakes and not all of them should carry the death penalty. Like did I ever tell you all about the time I spray painted my ass brown? I know I've told ETP 'cause it's like his most favorite story ever of mine but I can't remember if it's come up here or not.

I had to have been like four or five at the time. A neighborhood friend of mine and I got a hold of some spray paint somehow at my grandparents' house. And we proceeded to spray paint the fences, the shed, and, for some fucking reason, our asses. Lemme tell you, it was pretty awkward for my grandmother to have to be soliciting advice from others on how best to remove spray paint from a child's ass. I think I deserve some kinda bonus points for using the ever-appropriate color of brown.

Then there was another time that, for some reason, I had a pair of keys. And I was sitting there looking at an electrical socket. It had those two perfect slits, and I'm looking at the keys, and I was like hey, these must go in there. I got a good jolt from that, naturally, and this nice big blister on my hand. I remember crying my eyes out -- not so much from the pain but because I was worried the blister would catch fire. Why was I worried about that? I dunno, I'd just stuck two keys in an electrical socket, what the fuck do you want from me? I'm not sure if this incident played a part in me eventually becoming an electrical engineer or not. To this day, though, I really do not like working anywhere near 120V AC.

So yeah, I'm kinda torn on which way to go here. I suppose for these kids who end up hurting themselves, if they don't die the first time and they don't learn their lesson and they do the same stupid shit again, then fuck it, let 'em die. But if not they might still grow up OK after all. I, for one, never spray painted my ass again or stuck keys in an electrical socket again. And what if I had died? What kind of travesty would it have been for the world to miss out on me?

In closing, I am of course obligated to link to this.

Why can't they ever bring back good shows?

So I've discovered a new webcomic: Joe and Monkey. I'm not sure if it's consistently good or not, but there is this one, which is fucking awesome.

Defective Junk Hero

No, this isn't some kind of Viagra spam post. I picked up Shitty Cover Band III (AKA Guitar Hero III) this past weekend. Twice. On Friday I pick the game up after work, head home, get my wireless network shit set back up, and fire up the game. I start playing "Slow Ride." I'm a bit rusty since I haven't been practicing my fake plastic guitar skills in awhile, but I'm doing OK. Not stellar though, as I realize my timing sucks because I just cannot hit a red+green combination.

After awhile I realized the issue wasn't me (for once), but the shiny new wireless guitar. You know, the one us 360 owners get jacked an extra ten bucks for thanks to Microsoft's proprietary wireless interface (at least, I'm guessing that's why it's $10 more than the PS or Wii versions). Upon further investigation I found out that it actually worked when I would strum up, but not down. I was about to call ETP and ask him if this was some new dumbass feature they'd added to make the game more challenging.

Playing some more I further realized that doing a red+green+down worked, if you consider red+green+down registering as yellow to be working. At this point I'm like, probably not a new feature. Oh, it's a feature all right, the kind that plenty of other people are having. It didn't take much searching through forums to see that I was not alone in my wireless guitar woes. Yay for quality control and product testing.

I started to take the guitar apart but got to a point where I felt like a circuit board wasn't gonna move without me breaking it so I was like, fuck it. Back to the store for an exchange.

My second one seems to be working just fine. I haven't put in a ton of time on the game yet (and you know there's the looming spectre of my video game ADHD), but it's not bad. It's Guitar Hero. It looks a bit different but pretty much plays the same. My biggest complaint is the extra shit it puts up on screen while you're playing, like when you hit a note streak. That always fucks me up because I think it's telling me I have Star Power when of course I don't. I'm busy paying attention to shit at the bottom middle of the screen assholes, and it used to be useful for the game to tell me up top about Star Power. I'm not actually gonna read it douchebags, but when it popped up I knew what it was without looking away from what I was supposed to be playing.

As an aside, dontcha love how when you've been playing for awhile and then you finally look away from the screen, everything around you seems to be moving upwards? That was rather unsettling the first time it ever happened to me. And now it's just normal.

The only new feature I've come across is the whole boss battle thing, which I found rather annoying. Partly because it took me a buncha tries to beat Tom Morello since I'm retarded. Then there was the time I was trying to attack and I tilted the guitar up so quickly and violently that i hit myself in the head, also because I'm retarded. And now more so. But in the end I beat Morello, and afterwards we had a nice discussion on geopolitics and he pointed me in the direction of a communist bookstore for references to support his dumbass opinions.

I was under the impression that a good deal of songs were the actual songs by the original artists, but no, most (so far for me at least, and I'm too lazy to go look it up right now) are just performed by shitty cover bands. Hence my nickname for the game still stands. And yes, I'm full well aware that Shitty Cover Band would be a better nickname for the impending Rock Band, but I started referring to GH as such a ways back and it's too late to change now. Maybe I'll just refer to Rock Band as Shitty Rock Band.

So while the track list is pretty badass, I'm rather disappointed in all the crap ass cover bands. I was especially pissed when I heard "Barracuda," one of the first songs I can ever recall listening to and enjoying (can't fuckin' believe that song is actually two years older than me). I was looking forward to playing that song, and while fun, the whole shitty cover band experience kinda took off some of the lustre.

Speaking of Shitty Rock Band, I can't say I'm all that enthused for the game. It's like, I can already be mediocre at playing the fake plastic guitar. Am I really that stoked to learn to play the fake plastic drums? Because I sure as hell will not be doing any singing. I have a good voice and all, but singing? Fuck that shit.

Paging Tom Hung

I guess you could say that the following link is mildly not safe for work (NSFW -- does anyone not know that acronym by now?). Well, that depends on where you work, and also your gender and how you want your sexual orientation viewed by others, I suppose. Either way, I just could not pass up on posting this. Found via The A.V. Club's Tolerability Index.

Be sure and check out the t-shirts they sell in the store, too. I like that some of them come in "dutch oven brown." Isn't a "Dutch oven" something dirty, like a Dutch treat or a Dutch surprise?

If you don't check Cracked.com regularly, you should.

Being me this is late, but here are two lists of interesting Halloween costumes from two of our favorite fucked up countries: Germany and Japan.

New look

Alright, so the last time I changed my template was probably June of 2003. That's... Pretty awesome. I never wanted to change it because I'm not anywhere near strong enough with web page coding to come up with a decent layout on my own, and all of the templates suck balls. Plus if I use one of the lame-ass templates it's gonna take forever to get all of the customization shit I've added into the template.

Well, an hour or two after deciding to take the plunge, I see that I was exactly correct. The new look is ass. Like, it wouldn't be so bad if there wasn't all this useless blank space to the left and right of the blog. What the fuck is that about? I gotta figure out how to fix that because that shit is annoying. The parts where I've written shit are a waste of space as it is, we don't need more completely useless space here.

And of course getting all the shit I want in the page back in there has been a chore. Like for the most part it wasn't bad, until I got to comments. At first I was thinking, fuck it, I'll just start using Blogger's commenting system. And I quickly saw that those suck, so I had to get HaloScan up and running. Which was also a pain, but I guess I'm there now so I'll let that rest until something turns up broken.

So, there you go. I changed my look. I did that for you. And what do I get as thanks? Probably not even a comment after going through all that fucking trouble. Yeah, why the hell am I blogging again?

EDIT: Okay, so I changed to a different template, which also blows. But at least it stretches the width of the page now.

I don't know what ended up happening to his SI column, but it doesn't matter since Jay Mohr has a new colum now at FOX Sports.

CNN occasionally posts articles from Mental Floss, and yeah, there's a site with tons of trivia shit that could be a real time-sink. Courtesy of that site I just found out that The Daily Show has a new video archive online.

Don't ask why, but the link from this post partially inspired me to blog again. Came across this 'blog, which for some reason amused me, at least in principle: Hot Chicks With Douchebags.