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Sometimes a kind of existential perception of the absurd comes over me and I see with awful certainty the hypocrisies and posturing of myself and my fellow men. Carl Sagan commenting (circa 1971) on an experience he had while high on Cannabis over at Marijuana-Users.com. One of the only efforts (along with Cannabis Consumers) to get people to "come out" and help remove inaccurate stereotypes from the mind of the public.
comment posted at 10:36 PM on Sep-13-02
comment posted at 11:36 PM on Sep-13-02
comment posted at 12:22 AM on Sep-14-02

The LSD Blotter Art Gallery? The Moist Towelette Online Museum? The LED Museum? The Japanese Coffee Can Menagerie? Eighties LA Street Flyers? The Galley of Stakepark IDs? And my two favorites The Museum of Air Sickness Bags (check out those donations and swaps) and The Gallery of "Misused" Quotation Marks. What do they all have in common? They all can be found at the Museum of Museums. I've wandered through these galleries for hours.
comment posted at 8:46 PM on Sep-13-02

meshcap.com is, well, ummm, a gallery of mesh caps. You can almost smell the fried dough at the county fair as you peruse such fashion statements as this, this, this or this.
comment posted at 8:55 PM on Sep-13-02

Hunter S. Thompson's Advice to Bush: Quit! Political commentator, sports enthusiast and all around American treasure lets fly. When the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.
comment posted at 9:42 PM on Sep-13-02
comment posted at 10:55 PM on Sep-13-02
comment posted at 11:38 PM on Sep-13-02
comment posted at 3:00 AM on Sep-14-02

This week in 1978, the most bizarre and hideous of murders was committed. Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident was jabbed in the thigh with a deadly umbrella. The umbrella inserted ricin into him, killing him on September 11th, 1978. To this day, his killer has not been punished.

Question to ponder: Does the US CIA have their own 'deadly umbrellas'?
comment posted at 9:53 PM on Sep-13-02
comment posted at 11:21 AM on Sep-14-02

Why Aren't U.S. Journalists Reporting From Iraq? "This notion that the Iraqi leader is in cahoots with Osama will be easy to feed the American people. To the American people, one bad Arab is the same as the next, and Osama equals Saddam. People who wonder about the Bush war-urgency only need to think about this: there’s a blind spot that needs to be exploited now, before too many journalists get the idea to go inside Iraq and find out what’s really happening. As long as the Condi Rices, Dick Cheneys and other hawks are talking to journalists with no experience inside Iraq, they won’t get a raised eyebrow about this notion that the secular dictator is in bed with the jihadis -- even though [reports indicate]....the CIA has found no link between the Iraqi dictator and Al Qaeda."
comment posted at 2:23 PM on Sep-13-02

"Coz every girl crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man" [via The Smoking Gun]
comment posted at 2:30 PM on Sep-13-02
comment posted at 11:52 PM on Sep-13-02

Are you tired? Tell us why.

Michael, Don't you owe us an explanation ?

Explanation: I discovered this site in 1997, and have been mailing them regularly. They have never replied. I am profoundly mystified.
comment posted at 6:46 AM on Sep-13-02

Any links to the news being reported in New York. Just got off the phone with a friend (I'm in San Diego), and there are reports that 3 explosives were found on the Brooklyn Bridge and diffused. Also, that Bush is reportedly going to be at ground zero tomorrow for 9X11s ceremonies. Can anyone instantiate these claims with links? Sorry, not trying to start a rumor-mill post, but rather surprised there are not posts on this info.
comment posted at 11:10 PM on Sep-10-02
comment posted at 11:33 PM on Sep-10-02

Not In Our Name. "The signers of this statement call on the people of the U.S. to resist the policies and overall political direction that have emerged since September 11, 2001, and which pose grave dangers to the people of the world. . . . President Bush has declared: 'you’re either with us or against us.' Here is our answer: We refuse to allow you to speak for all the American people. We will not give up our right to question. We will not hand over our consciences in return for a hollow promise of safety. We say NOT IN OUR NAME. We refuse to be party to these wars and we repudiate any inference that they are being waged in our name or for our welfare."
comment posted at 10:17 PM on Sep-10-02

Mark Bingham, 9/11 'hero', honoured by San Francisco. "His presumed actions to thwart the terrorists' activities on board flight 93 helped derail the plan to crash that plane into a target in Washington, D.C."
On August. 15, the San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission voted to name the gym at the Eureka Valley Recreation Center in the city's Castro neighborhood after Bingham, a former nationally ranked rugby player. Mind you, it's a good job he didn't want to serve his country as a lawyer for the US Army, where gay heroes are not allowed - not even in the front line of Judge Advocate General's Corps of the United States military.
In the gay community, there is some dissent about the meaning behind a 'gay hero': would you have made assumptions about him, or other 'heroes', had you not known?
comment posted at 6:11 PM on Sep-10-02
comment posted at 7:08 PM on Sep-10-02

Troubled Bridge over Water You s'pose this is the real reason we're currently on orange?
comment posted at 6:29 PM on Sep-10-02

Server suicide: A group of british artists have set up a webserver that also controls a crusher. The thing is, the webserver is inside the crusher and will crush itself on Thursday at 20:00 GMT. (via found)
comment posted at 6:50 PM on Sep-10-02

A Day in Radio. "On September 21, 1939, WJSV, an AM radio station in Washington, D.C., recorded the entire 19 hours of its broadcast day... Along with the news coverage, the station ran the standard stream of music, soap operas, sports, and other programming." Looks like you can listen to pretty much the entire's day's broadcasts.
comment posted at 7:29 AM on Sep-10-02

The Fuhrer stays in the picture. Max, a movie about Hitler's early years and his rise to power, premieres Monday at the Toronto Film Festival. The controversial project depicts the future dictator as an "emotionally poisoned man, but nonetheless human" rather than a simple caricature of evil, and owes its existence to the determination of star John Cusak (Noah Taylor of Shine plays Hitler) as well as its writer/director and producer. Many have already condemned the film, including Maureen Dowd (NYT link) and the Jewish Defense League. (Spielberg liked the script but bowed out early.) Is it possible, much less necessary, to portray the legendarily wicked as human beings without excusing their crimes?
comment posted at 10:16 AM on Sep-9-02
comment posted at 1:48 PM on Sep-9-02
comment posted at 5:22 PM on Sep-9-02

An Aussie defends Big Things. I love the idea of the Big Things. It all started in 1963 with an American immigrant so in love with his own banana plantation that he wanted everyone driving through to stop in and see it. So he built a gigantic banana. Soon there were lots of other imitators, like the Big Pineapple in Nambour, the Big Prawn at Ballina, and the Big Bull at Wauchope. (Bill Bryson writes in Down Under that the Big Bull has testicles that actually sway in the breeze.) There are now more than 80 Big Things dotted all over the country. Some people think they're tacky. Personally, I want to visit 'em all.
comment posted at 9:36 PM on Sep-8-02

So it's come to this. I don't know about you, but in the midst of various orgies (911, West Nile and kindernappings, to name but a few), I've never hated our media more.
comment posted at 7:01 PM on Sep-8-02

Is it OK to deface currency to "defend the First Amendment"? Putting aside for the moment your opinions on their agenda, do you feel that their approach is appropriate? Is placing slogans on U.S. Bills ever an acceptable act of civil disobedience? In what hypothetical situation would you be supportive of this unorthodox protest method?
comment posted at 1:05 PM on Sep-8-02
comment posted at 12:27 AM on Sep-9-02

This week, two boys in Florida were tried for the bludgeoning-murder of their father. With accusations raised of the actual killing to have been done by another, adult male with alleged sexual ties to the two boys, the boys were found guilty only of a lesser second-degree murder charge, claiming the adult must have done the actual deed... yet the jury was unaware the adult accused and being tried for that very idea was acquitted of all charges the previous week. The issue? Both trials were handled by the same prosecutor who presented completely different theories to each jury... in other words, not settling on a confident belief of who actually performed the killing, the prosecution tried to get both the adult and the pair of boys convicted for it. Isn't that risky? Or, if you like a different flavor of debate, isn't that completely unethical?
comment posted at 9:13 PM on Sep-7-02
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comment posted at 10:10 AM on Sep-8-02

Don't steal people's bandwidth for your auctions, lest ye be prepared to suffer the consequences of your actions.
comment posted at 5:14 PM on Sep-6-02
comment posted at 8:40 PM on Sep-6-02

Journey to Planet Prostate is an online (Shockwave) game created by the UK's Prostate Cancer Charity to help raise awareness and educate people about the importance of the prostate in men's sex lives, by way of a "pre-ejaculatory biological tour." It's also just the thing for a Friday morning. Are you one of the seven in eight who doesn't know what the prostate does?
comment posted at 9:17 AM on Sep-6-02
comment posted at 9:17 AM on Sep-6-02

Looking for a gift for that special child? A battery of reviewers at Amazon are just humming over the Harry Potter Nimbus 2000 Broom. Harry Potter toys aren't usually worth the buzz they generate, but the users of this one seem positively stimulated about the good vibes.
comment posted at 8:36 AM on Sep-6-02

Interesting commentary on a Yahoo News photo of the former World Trade Center site. I wonder if this is some subtle hack or if it's just someone at Yahoo screwing around. The URL seems to be legitimate, but I can't find that photo with the same caption in Yahoo's regular photo rotation.
comment posted at 8:06 PM on Sep-5-02

What happened in the final days of the Gulf War? "The Battle of Rumaila was closely reviewed at the war's end by an analyst for the C.I.A., who confirmed that the Iraqi losses were great. The toll included at least a hundred tanks from the Hammurabi division. "It's like eating an artichoke," one colonel had said of combat.... 'Once you start, you can't stop.' One of the destroyed vehicles was a bus, which had been hit by a rocket. The precise number of its occupants who were injured or killed is not known, but they included civilians and children. One of the first Americans at the scene was Lieutenant Charles W. Gameros, Jr., a Scout platoon leader, who called in a Medevac team for the victims. At the time, he was "frustrated" by what he saw as needless deaths, Gameros recalled in an interview. 'Now I look at it sadly,' he said. Unresisting Iraqis had been slain all morning, but the deaths of the children troubled many soldiers."

What's happening in "the final days" of the war in Afghanistan? What will be happening in the upcoming war in Iraq?
comment posted at 5:16 PM on Sep-5-02

CNN Refuses to Run Connie Chung's Skull & Bones Broadcast - well, at least according to that article. I haven't found anything else about it, but the implications are clear. IS THERE something afoot here?
comment posted at 5:32 PM on Sep-5-02

''Am I proud to have served my country? Hardly. On September 11, I will awaken at dawn. I will retrieve all my variously colored medals from their little box in my dresser drawer. I'll put my robe on, go into my daughter's room and tell her I love her. I will unlock the deadbolt (my homeland security), and proceed out the front door, remove the lid to the trashcan, and throw my medals in the garbage, where they belong." (via yellowtimes.org)

Napoleon once said he could make men fight and die for brass, and bits of colored ribbon. There will be no more fitting memorial for September 11 than destroying the symbols of a way that contributed so mightily to the terrible events of that day....an American Waterloo.
comment posted at 12:12 PM on Sep-4-02
comment posted at 12:31 PM on Sep-4-02

"A format designed for Unabombers." Andrew Sullivan blasts Weblogs (odd, ain't it?) in a conversation with Kurt Anderson at Slate. Both Sullivan and Anderson rip on our own Rebecca Blood. I find it especially ironic that Sullivan refers to blogs' "supercilious tone." He also can't stand the idea that drives Metafilter, apparently: "Worse, [Blood] can write earnestly about a Weblog 'community.' Aaagghh. " *more inside*
comment posted at 1:02 AM on Sep-4-02

Wave your stars and stripes, hypocrite. I see more flag-waving media sheep every day, and the hope I had for American dignity is lost. Is it really that easy to control everyone? Does the social psychology that fueled Hitler and the arms race hide globalization from the citizens of "the greatest country in the world"? Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to my plastic hell.
comment posted at 10:32 AM on Sep-3-02

Friends and family help a dying boy celebrate Halloween a bit early. His costume? The Grim Reaper.
comment posted at 10:42 AM on Sep-3-02

Fading Ads (click thumbnails in lower right grid). If you look closely, you can probably find these all over the older parts of your town. Some border on the weird, most are nearly gone, while some are still going strong (about the project).
comment posted at 9:15 AM on Sep-3-02

Brooklyn Welcomes Romeo Beckham! The stuffy old Daily Telegraph heartily approves of Romeo, the name Victoria and David Beckham have given to their new baby, a brother to Brooklyn. So now an extra throne must be added to the happy parents' atrocious, unmissable website. I would have let this foolishness pass, had I not noticed with alarm that there already exists a bottomless resource catering to those who insist on giving their offspring Shakespearean names. If this is a trend, how bad can it get?[Please, no suicide jokes.] Or, to put it in Shakespeare's own words, from Romeo and Juliet no less, is this a case of "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by another name would smell as sweet"[Act ii, sc.2] or, rather, of "the children of an idle brain begot of nothing but vain fantasy"?[Act i, sc.4]
comment posted at 4:24 AM on Sep-2-02

This has disturbed me for a day now, and I feel compelled to post it here. There was an article on the front page of Kuro5hin (I know, but please bear with me) on revenge, titled "The Big Payback."

As I was reading through the comments section, there were some really funny , devious, and cruel tales of revenge. But this one continues to disturb me. I believe that this may very well be a confession to second degree murder. Some apparently agree with me, and has even gone so far as to have found a name and an address. What could be, or even should be done about something like this?
comment posted at 9:44 AM on Sep-1-02