Monet Coincidence

I was driving to Kevin's house and I was on Coal when I saw this car behind me that I thought looked like my ex-girlfriend's (monet) car. Then I thought "what would she be doing around here? she lives in the foothills" and figured it wasn't her. Then after another block I turned right on Amherst St. and I saw ANOTHER car that looked like Monet's that was stopped at the stop sign on Amherst. Then when I got closer it turned out that it WAS Monet! It was really weird! Especially since I never see her anywhere and I was just thinking I saw her. That was weird.

The Crazy Lady

Me and Kevin were at 66 Diner tonight and we were at the cashier to pay for the food when I noticed this schitzofranic lady behind me on a bench talking to herself. She seemed pretty crazy, she was laughing and talking to herself. So I gave the cashier the heads up "There is a crazy person in your restruant" "Where?" "Right behind me." As we were leaving we noticed that the cashier seemed to recognize the lady and gave her some ice. Then the crazy lady came out and yelled "you shouldn't say things like that!" I had no idea that she was able to hear me! I hurried and unlocked my truck and got inside. I felt bad. I really thought she was too crazy to understand what I was saying!

Change Machine

The lady at Hastings told me that "next door at Smiths there is a machine that can convert your change into money" and I told her that they take off like 10% for themselves and I work hard for my money. That would have been like $8 just for the machine to give me money in a different form... but the money I had was already perfectly usable! It's a scam, that machine. My idea is that instead of spending like 10 bucks on that machine (depending on how much change you have), you should go to a nice restruant with a friend and count it all out there and put it in rolls. You can pay for the food with the money you normally would have wasted on the machine.

Raiding The Piggy Bank

Yesterday I did some mad Christmas shopping with Luis. I spent nearly a hundred dollars.... probably about 80. But check it out, I didn't have any scratch on me so I just brought my big frog piggy bank that was full of change. Of course I had no idea how much money was in it, but I figured that it would be enough for anything I was gonna get. We went to Hastings first and I got some dvds for my mom. That cost about 40 dollars, so before we purchased them we went into the "hardback cafe" and busted out a bunch of the change and put stacks of quarters together. I put exactly 60 dollars together and poured it all into one cargo pocket. I figured that I should get about 60 together because I still needed to get Luis a present while I was there (I had him go to another part of the store while I looked). But then I realized that I could get him something even better at Titlewave Books, cos I knew some titles were there that he would most likely enjoy. So we went up to the Hastings line and got to the counter and I put down all my money and she didn't believe me that it was 60 dollars so we had to count all of it. Or at least 40 something dollars for the total of my purchase there. One of the people behind me was laughing, but I don't see why the idea of paying with change is so funny.
After that I had to get gas so I spent 7 dollars at the station and the guy behind me said "raiding the piggy bank eh? I do that a lot." Then we went to Title wave and I got Luis two books and one for myself that I had on my list of books I was wanting. The Titlewave people were really nice and when I paid with my change they even offered to help me count out a hundred pennies so they could give me a dollar. So then we went and dropped off some presents at people's houses and then went to this music store so I could find something for my dad. I got him a book on guitars and a random amount of a bunch of picks.
The total came to 29.49 so I went into the corner and dumped out some more change from the frog. I had about 28 dollars sorted out, and some dimes and pennies. But wait! I suddenly remembered about that dollar that I got from all my pennies at Titlewave! I threw that in the pile and I had enough money, and then like 30 cents extra. It was amazing how perfect it came out to be. I got everything I wanted without even counting the money or anything. I just spent it as I went along, bringing the frog in all the stores I went to. Imagine if I had spent eight dollars on gas instead of that random uneven seven dollars I shelled out. Or if the Titlewave people accepted my gracious tip of a handful of pennies that I offered. I wouldn't have had enough! But I did. I had exactly enough for the whole day.

Stolen Thoughts On Jesus

I stumbled upon this blog entry by a girl who's blog is lizspeaks.com. To be fair, I put a link to her blog, because I am copy and pasting the post I read. The only post I read. I'm a busy man. But here it is:
------------------
10.15.2001

Thanks, Gov. Davis, for recognizing that gay people are really no different than other folks. In fact, dare I be somewhat inflammatory and suggest that giving straight people different rights than everybody else is tatamount to special rights for straight people. I would think that any law that gives greater priveledges or accessibility to one group, singling out other groups who cannot receive those services is in fact special rights. But the allegedly good christian people who stand in opposition to compassion and to seeing people for who they are rather than who they love don't see it that way.

I had meant to do a long piece on this but for now, here's the short version. All these right wing Christians who stand up and say that Jesus wouldn't like gays or blacks, or any other group you can think of are full of shit. The whole premise of Christianity means relegating the Old Testament to a bunch of interesting stories making the New Testament, which focuses on the life and times of our savior, Jesus Christ, the defining book of the Bible. Which means that the one passage talking about the atrocities at Saddam and Gomorrah that says "God hates that" referring to men lying with other men as they lie with women is now part of that collection. And for what's it's worth, translations from the original acutally mean that God hates being inhospitable to your visitors, not the gay issue.

And yet, right-wingers, preachers of hate, stand there and say that anyone not like them don't deserve the same rights, the same compassion that Jesus preached. How the hell does that work?? Jesus hung out with lepers, prostitutes and preached that everyone is no better than the lowest among them, that in God's eyes, we all deserve love. So where do they get off hating? NOTHING in Jesus' stories speak of hate being okay, rather he reached out to everyone and preached kindness and compassion, the two values that I hold more and more dear with each passing day.

So I have two messages: 1. BE NICE! Jesus most certainly was and if you're going to hold him up as the messiah you may as well get his message right and 2. get off your high horse. No one person is better or worse than any other. We are all just different and if even if you don't 'accept my alternative lifestyle' it still exists. Just like me not accepting your hatred, your anger (though you don't know me, I'm really very nice and quite harmless, unless telling bad jokes is a crime) doesn't make it go away. But that doesn't stop me from hoping.

For what it's worth, I remain undecided on the religious issue but am clear that hatred is not something that Jesus preached. So if you're going to use religion as a platform for hate, you've just got it all wrong.
-----------------------

I really liked seeing that post because it is exactly what I am always telling people. Progressives, atheists, the people I generally hang out with, always bash on Christianity. I agree that what religious people do in the name of that religion (and just about any religion) is wac. But I do have to say that everything I know about Jesus seems to be good. He was a pacisfit anti-capitalist and hoped for the well being of everyone. It's just that Christians now days just ignore everything in the Bible* and make up their own "interpretations" of it. Of course everbody will come to their different conclusions about what the Bible means. Afterall, it has blatent contradictions** so nobody can take it word for word and believe BOTH. They have to come up with one interpretation. But how can these right-wing Christian "fundamentalists" turn things around so drastically? I have come to the conclusion that "fundamentalist" (of any religion) means taking the "fundamentals" and completely doing the opposite.
Take for example Bush Jr. One of Newsweek's top selling issues (aside from 9/11) featured a cover story on "Bush and God." It said that one of the two books that Bush recently studied was Acts. Now think about Bush's tax breaks for the rich and the whole laissez faire*** Republican wet-dream. Compare that from the passage from Acts which I will present for you (Acts 4:32-35).

And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all. Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, and laid them down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.

Indeed, the communist mantra "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is dirived from the same passage that Bush read.


*If they really read the Bible they would realize that God enjoys rape and plunder from time to time.
**Read the Disinformation Book of Lists for some of those contradicitons.
***Or "lazy unfair" as I see it.

Short Story Finished!

I finally finished the short story. Well, there is still some minor work to be done, but as a whole it is complete. You can pick up a copy at your local bookstore.... just kidding, but you can click the link below and read it. Tell me what you think in the comments... unless you are one of those people who just complain about how there aren't enough "quotation marks"; in that case, you should... not leave a comment... unless you really want to.

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

PS: I posted the first chapter of the story a long time ago, but I rewrote a bunch of parts of it and now the rest of the chapters are available as well. So if you are thinking "Hey, I've already read this crap, I'm not reading it again", then think again!

Band Name

I just thought of the best band name: "Death By Democracy". How do you like that sucka? If I don't use it in some sort of band way, I could always use that title for my upcoming book (target date: mid 2005).

What Every Child Should Do

One thing that everybody should do as a child is burn down a random house (not your own), complete with people inside. Make sure to do it at a young enough age so people will think "oh, he didn't know what he was doing. He's too young!" This way, whenever you do anything bad later on in life, your parents will just say "Hey, at least it's not as bad as that time he burnt down a house." And everything you do will look good in comparison.

Coleen and Ceece

Last night somebody text messaged my phone saying "how are you?" I don't remember what I wrote back, but then they asked me who I was so I asked them who THEY were and how they got my number. I kept saying weird things to them and they eventually said that they were trying to figure out their boyfriend's number and they dialed mine or something. And then they told me to quit text messaging them, and they put a lot of exclamation marks after they said that!!!!!! (like that). But then the next morning she sent me a message saying "are you a sleep" and I said "no" and she asked what I was doing and stuff. It's all really weird and random. Apparently it's some girl from Cibola who is 15 years old who says she is a thug "west side crip". I asked her if she stabbed anyone and she said that she stabbed two people for talking shit. I ate at Dion's with Luis tonight and got a phone call and nobody answered. And then I got a text message "you have a sexy voice" from her. She told me to call her tomorrow and gave me her number! It's super weird and random. Plus she said she had a 19 year old boyfriend. I asked "don't you have a boyfriend?" and she said "so" and "were braking up anyways." Me and Luis made a plan of saying that I'll meet her somewhere tomorrow and tell her to wear a red hat or somethign that I will know it is her when I get there. Then, we will go there to scope out the scene, but not actually tell her that it is us. We will see how that turns out.

Symantix

(11:03) stonepauper: the symantix are confusing
(11:04) Grayson: symantix?
is that a religion?
(11:04) stonepauper: no
(11:04) Grayson: well, lets start it
(11:04) stonepauper: it's already a taken word
(11:04) Grayson: lets start a new zion to symantia
lets all move there
i'm doing it
are you thinking of "syntax"?
(11:05) stonepauper: yeah
that too
(11:06) Grayson: well i know the word, but not what it means
and you know what it means, but not the word
so together, we are unstoppable
(11:06) stonepauper: it's like gramatical structure
now we both know both
no
wait
not syntax
syntax means like context
i think
(11:07) Grayson: damn
you aren't holding up your end of the bargin
(11:07) stonepauper: the word i was thinking of is semantics
(11:07) Grayson: speaking of zion
(11:10) stonepauper: zion?
(11:10) Grayson: you've brought us back around full circle to my new zion idea
(11:10) stonepauper: oh
(11:10) Grayson: yes, semantics, zion
(11:11) stonepauper: wait if semantics were religous people, wouldn't they worship seman?
(11:13) Grayson: they do
hes what makes em tic
not semantics
semetics
(11:16) stonepauper: oh
(11:16) Grayson: man fuck this english bullshit
(11:16) stonepauper: semites?
like jewish people?
(11:17) Grayson: yes, but semetics isn't a real word
(11:17) stonepauper: might as well be
(11:17) Grayson: semites is a group of people that speak semetics
i'm going straight to the source
i'm callin em the semetics
(11:18) stonepauper: oh
(11:18) Grayson: like when you call english speaking peoples, when you call them "english"
or when you call farsi speaking people "arabs"
see, it all ties together
wait, that was a bad example
how about when you call swedish speaking peoples, "sweedish"
thats a good example
(11:19) stonepauper: i call theme sweedes
(11:19) Grayson: thats a good theme
we should have that theme for our prom
(11:19) stonepauper: yep
(11:20) Grayson: in fact, i think hannes is already pitching that one
(11:20) stonepauper: what is hannes?
(11:20) Grayson: hannes is that sweedish kid from our school!
(11:20) stonepauper: oh
i only know him as "that sweedish kid"
(11:21) Grayson: no no no, we went over that yesterday
he listens to millencolin and his name is Hannes
(11:21) stonepauper: yeah
i got the millencolin bit
i'm not very good with names
(11:22) Grayson: and he said kari was pretty
(11:22) stonepauper: i prefer catchy monikers
(11:22) Grayson: kari is the naked one
(11:22) stonepauper: haha
she sure was
(11:22) Grayson: that was funny
her plan coulnd't have backfired worse
well, unless your CAR backfired
and we were stranded and she was stuck naked in the middle ofnowhere
(11:23) stonepauper: well actually i think she kind of enjoys driving around without clothes on
(11:23) Grayson: thats true
so i guess you could say her plan "fired"
or could you?
(11:23) stonepauper: yeah but not very straightly
(11:23) Grayson: not very straightly indeed
the symantix is a little off

Chomsky Comes To NM

the Good: Chomsky is coming to Sante Fe in January
the Bad: It's already sold out
the Ugly: Chomsky is an ugly old man, but he is awesome.

Garageband Requiem

On my dad's new computer there is a program called "Garageband" where you can make beats and music and things. I made a Requiem For A Dream song/cover today. I posted it and you can listen to it here. I plan on adding more to it.

Movie Review: Amnityville Horror

The other day I watched this movie in which a supernatural force lurks in the building a family just recently moved into. Strange things start happening more and more as time goes on. The husband eventually goes completely crazy and chases the wife with an axe. When she locks herself in a room, he chops through the door. In the end, we find out the reason for these happenings. Apparently, a man who used to live there killed his whole family after he went insane. And here is the kicker... the NEW husband who moved in looked EXACTLY like the killer from years ago, although they were two seperate people. Sounds like a good plot huh? Well, that's exactly what Stanly Kubrick must have thought when he first saw the "Amityville Horror".
2 1/2 stars

MOVE Documentary Showing?

Remember that MOVE documentary I told you about last year? Well I've been writing an article on the MOVE lately and I thought to check into the film's website to see if it's out on video yet. It's not. So I decided to email the Guild and ask them if they are ever going to show it. They said that they were actually thinking about it. I hope they do.

Soap is For Losers

I am on a one man mission do disprove the idea that people need to use shampoo. I haven't used shampoo for over a week and I can't tell any difference! I guess my hair doesn't smell tropical or anything, but I can't smell my hair anyways, so it doesn't matter. Shampoo is a myth that the shampoo companies try to continue for obvious reasons. And another thing, soap isn't really a necessity either. For pretty much my whole life up until last year, I never used soap when I showered. It didn't matter. You don't really need soap. You just need to wash yourself off with water, unless you are REALLY dirty for some reason. If you wash with water everyday, you will be clean. The same goes with hair, just wash it with water and it will be fine. I only use soap nowadays from peer pressure.

My Car Accident

Sometimes my computer clock jams. For the last hour or so I've thought it was 7:32. By the time I figured out that it wasn't changing, it was actually 10:22.
Anyways, a kid from my school rear ended me while I was driving down zuni to Luis' house. It is times like this when I am glad I have a truck. My bumper was slightly tilted, whereas his car was pretty much totalled. It was steaming, the headlights were gone and the hood was completely crunched. I noticed much later this evening that when I turn my head to the right, it stresses my neck. But that might just be a coincidence.

Silent Fall?

There is a movie that I suddenly remembered seeing when I was younger. It had this autistic boy who only spoke by repeating things that other people said and I remember he was climbing on the roof and people were trying to get him down. Then I remembered that he also witnessed some type of murder and the police or somebody was trying to get information out of him. I did some "research" and I think the movie is called "Silent Fall" (which would mean that it isn't a sequel to "Silent Spring"), but I don't know. It's nostalgia just because I remember seeing it when I was really little and I kind of want to see it just to see how well I rememered it. Has anybody seen this movie?

Keller's Book

Damn. I wanted to read Helen Keller's book on socialism, "Out of the Dark", but it is out of print. As fellow socialist Zach de la Rocha said, "no need to burn the books, they just remove em." Hopefully I can find it at a library or something.

A Conversation of Epic Proportion

(1:24) Grayson: deadmilkmen bassist killed himself recently
(1:24) the fighting 303: liek, last year
(1:24) Grayson: dave blood
yeah
(1:24) the fighting 303: where wer you?
haha
(1:25) Grayson: i just found out the other day
i think he od'd on bleach
(1:25) the fighting 303: hahaha
actually, he was riding the tilt-a-whirl
and he was a daredevil
(1:26) Grayson: no, the mixer
the mixer goddamn it!
(1:26) the fighting 303: don't hit me!
(1:26) Grayson: the man said keep your hands and arms inside the mixer at all times!
but bill jr, he was a daredevil!
just like his old man
he was leaning over saying look at me look at me
POW!
he was decapitated
they found his head over by the snowcone concession
tilt a whirl? psh
nobody dies on a tilt awhirl
not even bill jr

Movie Review: Saw (new)

Saw is very reminscent of the movie Seven. In Seven, the bad guy killed people or put them in a situation where they would die because the killer believed that they had sinned. In Saw, the bad guy has some life threatening disease so he goes out and puts people in situations in which they will most likely kill themselves, that way they will appreatiate life more. Yeah, it doesn't make all that much sense, but hey, it's a horror movie. You pretty much have to expect a lot of randomness and plot holes in horror movies and just take them as they are. Otherwise, you will end up always being annoyed. It took me awhile to finally get to the point where I could accept "The Ring" as it is and not think about my mental list of problems the movie had with it's plot and random happenings.
Mainly, Saw is worth watching because it has some pretty cool scenes in it and is entertaining. It isn't really "scary" or anything (although one part did scare me), so don't expect to get scared. Like I said, it is kind of like Seven.
3 1/2 stars out of 5 (or 4 stars if you were to judge only within the horror movie genre)

Grayson's Believe it or Not

Dr. Dre once rapped these lyrics:
"I still express, yo, I don't smoke weed or sess
Cause it's known to give a brother brain damage
And brain damage on the mic don't manage - NUTHIN
but makin a sucka and you equal
Don't be another sequel.. {Express yourself}"

Evolution Pt. II

The college kid came and sat down at one of those green chairs we were all sitting on at hastings. He told us that he thinks that Christianity and science can work at the same time. It doesn't work when you take everything exactly word for word, though. One reason, he said, is that Jesus didn't speak the typical language of the time. He spoke something else -- the kid told us what it was called but I don't remember -- that was on par with the ebonics of our day. Jesus spoke what the poor spoke and not the exact language. Then the kid said, "imagine how much is lost in translating ebonics into, say, British english. They are the same language, but you can't know exactly what was said originally because of the great difference between the two."
We told the kid that the guy was a geologist and that it seemed that most of his case against evolution revolved around the absense of fossils of "transitionary" animals. The kid thought for a second and then looked at us and said "mudskippers". He was right, mudskippers are exactly a transitionary animal. Just look at the picture I've posted of one coming out of the water onto land, just as they did originally a long time ago when creatures were first coming onto land. Notice how it is half fish and half land crawler. Then the kid said something scientific sounding which I will make up something for because I don't remember exactly what he said: "And how about the north atlantic parabu porquipines? They lay eggs and yet they still give milk to their young." Then he told us about how a certain group of nomads once sailed and landed in Asia where they met some Pacific Islanders that they tried to breed with, but were never able to produce any kind of children. That is an example of a species breeding until they change enough to not even be able to breed with their original species, which is evolution in action. I told him that the creationist man told us that he believes in micro-evolution, but not macro-evolution, which means that he believes a species can evolve inside it's own species, but not have the ability to evolve into a whole different species. Then the kid started talking about the porqupines again and then he told us about how he is really interested in botony and talked about all kinds of different pine trees and their different needles. I don't really remember most of it, but he seemed to know a lot about trees and different animals and where they came from.
He also talked a lot about iceages. Apparently, humans have survived something like 8 ice ages, according to what he's read. And every time, all knowlege is wasted because everything is destroyed and small groups of survivors have to repopulate the world pretty much. Also, all major religions, aside from in Japan, people have a story of a great flood. He thinks that the people in Japan might have just been in a high area that the flood didn't get to and they might not have known about it or something. I think this is all I can remember from all the things he told us. Eventually me and Angelo had to leave Hastings.

Evolution

Battle: Is Evolution True?
Arena: Hastings

Angelo and I were talking at Hastings about Christianity and all of the things that have been proven wrong. We were talking about Noah's ark and how ridiculous the whole story is. Eventually the conversation evolved into evolution and fetuses and how they have tails and gills and are crazy animals. I was telling Angelo about the moths that lived on these light colored trees and they were colored lightly as well. When the factories came near by, the trees turned darker and the mothes were now visable on the trees. These were mothes that lived for a really short time and bred really rapidly, so they evolved quickly. Soon, more and more of the mothes were becoming dark colored to fit in with the tree. It was a really fast evolution that was completely noticed and documented.
So I was telling Angelo about this and I noticed this one guy smirking and I thought it was kind of weird. Soon enough, he came over and said "now you don't have all your facts right." I asked him how and he said "Those mothes started appearing brown during the industrial revolution due to NATURAL SELECTION, not evolution. The birds could see the mothes on the trees that weren't brown because they stood out on the brown tree, so those mothes were eaten.", "of course", I replied "natural selection IS evolution." Which is true, I mean, if somebody were to sum up Darwinism in one sentence, the sentence would most likely include the terms "natural selection" and "evolution" in it. But this guy kept saying that natural selection was different than evolution. So I tells em "evolution results from natural selection. That is how species evolve." and he says "no. Natural selection is when the stronger survive and the weaker die off." So I say something like, "Right, but in this case the mothes that were a different color than the tree were the weaker ones because they weren't apt for their environment, so they died off. Eventually the darker mothes will be more likely to have offspring because they live much longer than the other mothes. Those offspring will have the genes for being dark like the tree and they will blend in with the tree just like their parents. This goes on for so long until almost all the moths are dark." And I dont' know how he snaked his way out of this one, but he somehow changed the subject to something else.
He just kept on saying that there isn't any proof of evolution and told us that he was a scientist and how he used to believe in evolution also, until he "looked into it." Well, his whole arguement seemed to rest upon him saying that there aren't any "transitional fossils", by which he means that there haven't been any fossils found of a species in between the aquatic phase and the land phase of creatures. He also told us that evolutionists always contradict eachother and once he learned these things he figured out that creationism is the way to go because there isn't any proof of evolution. I asked him for proof of creationism and he said that there are fossils of all kinds of fish stuck together and there is no way this could happen without a huge flood and he looked at us and said "moses' flood." Then he started talking about a tree that grew through rock and how it couldn't have happened. He mentioned that tree twice, but neither me and Angelo understood what he was saying about it.
Angelo then told him "well creationists also believe that the earth is only 2 thousand years old." The guy then told us that there are "young earth" and "old earth" creationists. "Young earths" believe that the earth is only a few thousand years old, and that is what he believes, but sometimes other creationists say that it is a lot older. So I told him that creationists contridict eachother just like he said about evolutionists. To that he said something like "well, there are variances."
We ended up talking about animals and creatures again and the man told us that a lot of the time scientists don't even know how old fossils are. Angelo said "What about carbon dating" and then the man said "carbon dating only works for things with carbon in them"
"Doesn't everything have in it?" Angelo asked.
Then a college student behind Angelo said "only living things" and the man said "that's right." The college kid had only been nearby our conversation for a couple of minutes. He was looking at books with his girlfriend and I could tell that he was listening to our talk and eventually he turned completely towards the conversation when he interjected about carbon dating.
Throughout the talk, the creationist man kept on saying that it is hard to break out of the mold of being an evolutionist. "You have been taught nothing but evolution your whole lives, so it would be hard for kids like you to approach the subject unbiased and weigh the evidence equally."
"Actually", said Angelo "I've been taught creationism my whole life." Which is true because his mom is a right-wing christian fundamentalist. The man said "well, most people are taught nothing but evolution, so when they go out looking for answers, they will find the answers that they want to find and are taught to find. He kept bringing this up, so I had to keep reminding him that for thousands of years Christanity was the only thing ever taught and nobody even fathemed the idea of evolution. That would be a hard mold to break out of, so he can't talk about how people are always biased towards evolution and that is why people believe it, because the idea evolution completely a recent breakthrough and before then society was completely biased towards creationism.
The college kid starts talking again after awhile and told the man about how recently hebrew texts had been researched and the more correct statement in the bible is actually not "created" but "is creating", meaning that the Bible didn't necessarily mean to say that God straight up created everything, but that evolution works within what he did create. The kid started saying some more interesting things to the man. The college student looking kid obviously was a pretty smart guy and after talking to him for a long time I asked if he was a major in religion or history or anything and he just said "no, I just read everything I could get my hands on about the stuff." But that wasn't until later. Right about after he told the man about the hebrew scriptures and some other things, the man coincidentally had to leave right away. He said he needed to pick up his son, but his son actually called like ten minutes before he said he needed to leave. I guess it was a good moment for the guy to leave the conversation. I mean, it's one thing to argue with some highschool kids armed with nothing but sheer common sense, but it is another thing to argue with somebody who studies this stuff, as the college kid appeared to do in his own time. Tomorrow I will talk more about the college kid and what he told us.

I Against I

"An eye for an eye leaves the whole world with terrible depth perception" is my new quote that I hope will catch on. It is pretty deep and relates to a lot of life's problems.

Spoilers

20:11:34 punkorastropunk: dont john kerry and bush both take votes away from the "absense of votes" ticket?
20:11:39 punkorastropunk: they are total spoilers
20:12:00 stonepauper: what is absense of votes?
20:12:04 punkorastropunk: when you dont vote
20:12:18 stonepauper: oh
20:12:20 stonepauper: yeah dude
20:12:21 stonepauper: i agree
20:12:32 punkorastropunk: they both completely steal those votes because the absense of votes ticket has been around way longer than either party
20:12:47 stonepauper: yeah i know
20:12:49 punkorastropunk: and each american has been with that ticket for the first 18 years of their life at least
20:12:56 stonepauper: people have been not voting since the dawn of time
20:13:07 punkorastropunk: and then those two parties try to steal those votes
20:13:19 punkorastropunk: its sad that they have to resort to those tactics
20:13:35 stonepauper: sad indeed

Election 2000

Day 1
Today is election day, which means we will soon find out who won the most votes and who will become the new president (which are not necessarily the same person). I have my money riding on the same ticket that wins every election, the "none of the above" ticket. Although this mysterious candidate is not a real person and he wins by the absense of votes, I still have faith in him. But back to the real election. This year I am trying to see how long I can go without finding out who is president, which doesn't seem like it will be that hard given the amount of complexity and time it will take counting and recounting and arguing that will surely insue in the days to come. Nevertheless, I am going to try and stay away from the day to day media and tell friends, teachers and parents not to talk about the election near me.
Maybe I should care more about who wins, but then again, I have no say in it either way, so it really doesn't matter if I know who won. Also, I have a hunch that it will be either Bush or Kerry that wins, so either way we will end up having a conservative businessman in office.

Legal Psychadelic

Check out this crazy, vision-inducing herb that is actually LEGAL. It is called Salvia. I've never heard of it before but I read about it somewhere online and looked for more info. Apparently, it is legal in the united states and you can actually buy it; you don't have to grow it yourself. Another good thing about this "drug" is that the effects are pretty breif and nobody has ever over-dosed on it and there aren't side effects, aside from the obvious effects that you have when you are using it. This website has info on it. This website sells it and has videos of people tripping on it (although they didn't work on MY computer). I don't think I would try it personally, but it's still interesting. Tell me if anybody happens to try it.

A conversation between me and you

ME: if i could vote, i would vote for nader
YOU: that's completely unrealistic. that is just throwing your vote away, our goal is to get bush out of office. voting for nader steals votes from kerry and could tip the scale towards bush end the end... like in the last election.
ME: first of all, turn off the tv and read a book, you'd learn that al gore actually WON the election and nader STILL got a good percentage. second of all, even if that WERE true that bush won because of nader, it really only mattered if the nader voter voted for nader in a huge swing state; ie, Florida in the last election.
YOU: well nader still took votes away from gore, and it would have been harder for Bush to steal the election if he had more people voting with the democratic party.
ME: it seems to me that you should take this arguement up with BUSH, not nader, as BUSH was the one who rigged the election. maybe your party should grow a spine and call for this nazi's impeachment, like nader has been doing.
YOU: our party DOES have a spine, thank you very much, gore took the issue of the 2000 election all the way to the supreme court.
ME: i am glad he did that back then, but by now it appears that your party has completely forgotten about the issue. in fact, i dont think i've ever heard your presidential candidate, john kerry, mention it once... and I have watched all of Kerry's lame ass commercials and debates.
YOU: you are taking this off subject, the fact is that nader is seriously doing no good for democracy by stealing Bush's opponate's votes.
ME: first of all, nader is more of an opponent of Bush than Kerry is. look at the similarities between Bush and Kerry. Kerry praised Bush's dad for such a good job during his presidency for god's sake... and that's not something Kerry said years ago, it's something he said MONTHS ago. now on the subject of democracy, it seems to me that YOUR party has a shameless disregard for democracy seeing how hell-bent they are on taking nader off the ballots by any means possible. do you get that? they are trying to take another candidate out of the race, another voice out of the race... this is democractic? and how democractic is it that they won't let nader in the debates?
YOU: it's not our party's fault that nader doesn't have enough percent to get in the debates.
ME: yes it is. your party controls half of the CPD which determines WHAT that percentage is. how about the fact that most voters (even if they don't plan on VOTING for nader) still want to see him in the debates?
YOU: well nader should still have to meet the 15% criteria like everyone else.
ME: well it is kind of hard when your party does everything in their power to silence him. and how fair is it that the 2 main parties get to decide what the criteria is for a third party to enter the debates? that is like giving two people power and the people who get to decide on if anybody else shares that power happen to be THOSE two people that already have power. a candidate only needs 5% of support to qualify for matching federal funds in the following election, so why the 15% hurdle on debates? also, the commision (of presidential debates) had only 12 criteria for a candidate to enter the debates in 1996, so why the sudden raising of the bar when nader goes all out as a candidate in 2000? also, nader happens to be the largest anti-corporate power advocate of our age, and the CPD just happens to be a private corporation, run by private individuals who fund their CPD with corporate sponserships from companies such as AT&T, IBM, Philip Morris, and Sarah Lee. Your party, of course, saw no problem with this, seeing as how this is the way that the democractic party itself operates... not to mention John Kerry being the most lobbied senator. Nader was the only one to actually speak out against this obvious misgrievance of democracy.
YOU: OK, well quit blaming me for the CPD, it's not my fault what they do.
ME: you just said that you think nader should achieve the 15% hurdle like everyone else.
YOU: that's right, he should.
ME: (sigh)
YOU: and why are you on your high horse? nader took money from the republican party!
ME: it's funny that the only arguement you have against nader isn't anything he says, anything he stands for or any way in which your candidate is better, it is purely that he is going to tip the scales towards bush by taking vote away from kerry.
YOU: he does take vote away from kerry which will tip the scale towards bush, and you are avoiding the question of nader's ties with the republican party.
ME: haha. first of all, nader doesn't have any ties with the republican party and has not accepted any money from the party. what you are talking about is individual donations from INDIVIDUAL republicans. keep in mind that it isn't only democrats who have voted for nader in the past, republicans have voted for him as well. there are certainly going to be less republican votes for nader than democrats, but republicans still vote for him, such as in New Hamshire in the 2000 election. how is nader going to know exactly what the intentions of his donors are. should he not take ANY money from ANY republican, even though there are many republicans that actually DO support nader when they donate to him? should he run background checks on every single person who gives him a donation? I understand what you are saying, and it IS a shame that the republicans are trying to help nader only so he will collect votes that otherwise might have gone to the democratic party, but the fact that the republicans are doing this isn't nader's fault. there isn't any conspiracy of nader working with the republican party. it's a really odd thing to assert, seeing that nader has spent his whole life battling the republicans and the corporate interests that control them. it would be pretty random of nader to all of a sudden abandon everything he has worked for in his entire life.
YOU: well he still shouldn't collect money from republicans.
ME: speaking of collecting money from republicans, how many of the corporations that fund your party are operated by republicans that are simply betting on both horses?
YOU: well they give the republicans MORE money.
ME: i'm not saying that the republicans aren't worse than the democrats, they are, but the democrats are corrupt corporate machine party as well. the only arguement that I can see that is pro democrats is that they aren't AS horrible.
YOU: whatever. well i have to go to bed now, i am tired.
ME: yeah me too. we will meet again...

Coincidences: American Psycho Again and Chocolate to Morphine

I guess this is the second American Psycho related coincidence now that I think of it. Well what happened was today I was in a bookstore and I was thinking of what book to look for, just for kicks. And I though, hey, how about "American Psycho" by Easton Ellis, so I looked for that and it was the first time I'd ever actually looked for that book before. They had it, but it was a new bookstore, so I didn't buy it, but I looked at it. Later, about an hour or so, my dad mentioned something about "Huey Luis and the News" and I said "where have I heard of that band before? It was in some movie...", then I realized it.... it was the favorite band of Patrick Bateman from American Psycho.
At this same bookstore, I DID buy a new book, it was the new Disinformation Book of Lists. I was reading the book and I came across a mention of book by somebody who took drugs and the book was called "From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything You Need To Know About Mind Altering Drugs." That seemed interesting so I tried to remember to check it out later. Just a few minutes ago I was at amazon.com, bored, so I looked up Hunter S. Thompson and wanted to see what other books people who read Thompson read. The second book on the first list I clicked on was that very book from my Book of Lists: "From Chocolate to Morphine." I thought this was weird because I had never heard of this book before today.

Old Conversation

I stumbled upon this old conversation I had with Luis one year and one day ago. I thought it was weird.

(23:56:37)auntiechrist88:man i'm all geared up for teh holiday movie season already
(23:56:56)auntiechrist88:fittin to get my hobbit on and my matrix on
(23:57:11)punkorastropunk:are you gonna rent the smash hit holiday classic 'jingle all the way'
(23:57:27)auntiechrist88:why would i rent a movie that i already own?
(23:57:42)punkorastropunk:cos its just that good
(23:57:51)auntiechrist88:yeah that's right
(23:57:54)auntiechrist88:just testing you
(23:57:58)punkorastropunk:whew
(23:58:30)auntiechrist88:i bought a mickey's fine malt liquor shirt
(23:58:39)auntiechrist88:do you think they'll get mad if i wear it at school?
(23:58:54)punkorastropunk:i bought 3 tons of cocaine packed in the shape of a moose
(23:59:12)punkorastropunk:do you think they'll get mad if i wear it at school?
(23:59:17)auntiechrist88:that's the way to buy it
(23:59:32)auntiechrist88:no, as long as you don't shape it into a cuss word

Movies To Review

I Need To Review These Movies:
Orange County
Desparado
Maniac
Big Lebowski
Way of the Gun
Spinal Tap
Return of the Living Dead
Jesus' Son
Memoirs of an Invisible Man
Footloose
Election
A Simple Plan
What the Bleep Do We Know?

The Many Hats of Revolutionaries

The Many Hats of Revolutionaries or: Hats off to the Revolution

To be a successful revolutionary, it is essential to constantly wear a cool hat. Sure, you'll need intellect, courage, a large following and all that stuff, but first off, you'll need a hat. Just look throughout history to see what I mean. The infamous Mexican revolutionaries Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata totally sported those big sombreros all the time. Many believe their success largely was due to the sombreros themselves.
Another fine example would be Che Guevera. Che's hair was going all over the place during his fight for freedom in Cuba. Luckily, one day he stumbled upon that cool beret with the star on it. From then on he was able to simply tuck some of his hair up into it, thus enabling the revolutionary to see even more clearly in his fight for freedom. Further along the line, revolutionist Fidel Castro won over the masses of a poverty stricken Cuba in a triumph over the tyrannic Batista government. I think we all know that Castro would be nothing without his cool little green hat and cigars. Which brings me back to another point; tobacco.
Tobacco also helps in being a revolutionary. Castro is a good example of this, but so is Subcommandante Marcos, currently the vanguard of the EZLN movement for worker freedom in Chiapas, Mexico. Marcos is rarely seen without a pipe in his mouth. He even has a special hole in his ski-mask to fit the pipe through. Oh yeah, did I mention that he wears a ski-mask? He wears a ski-mask alright. And as if that wasn't enough, he wears a hat on top of it too! That's my kind of revolutionary. Marcos takes the best from all worlds: his own signature ski-mask look, tobacco in a pipe, a Castro style hat and not one, not two, but three stars on his hat, reminiscent of Guevera (times three!). Talk about a man with ideas! He has definately raised the bar for future revolutionaries and future hats. I sure wouldn't want to follow that act.

Wind Below

I just wrote this essay on the song "Wind Below" by Rage Against The Machine. I had to analyize some lyrics for school for extra credit and I figured I'd post my analysis here as well.
Wind Below Lyrics by RATM
then
Analysis by Grayson Kilmer

Mr. 400

This is my 400th blog entry. I will use it to promote Oliver North's new book "War Stories: Operation Iraqi Freedom". For those of you who don't know, Olly North was one of the greatest large scale crack dealers of the 20th century. In fact, if you purchased any crack during the 80s, it was probably some or Norths' doing. Also this book is published by the leader in non-biased news coverage, FOX. I mean, who cares if it's owned by a staunch republican. And who cares if it's a huge conglomerate corporation? It's not like those things effect the coverage or anything...

Dead People

Horse-rider-kid asked me today "are you going to TSOL tonight?" and I said "yes". After a pause, I said...
"Jack Grisham isn't dead!"
"yeah, so?"
"you told me he was!"
then horse-rider-kid nonchalantly says "Well, I guess I was wrong"

Now let me tell you, it is not proper to tell somebody someone is dead when you don't really know. I haven't had this happen to me that bad since Stacy told me that (former childhood awkaintance) Charlie Logan was dead, and then when I mentioned it a year or so later, she was like "I never said that! I totally don't even know if he's dead! I didn't say that.... did I??" or something along those lines. We devised a plan on finding out if he's really dead, but we haven't gotten around to it yet.
But speaking of dead singers again, this girl told me the other day that Rodney Anonymous (I assume she was talking about, since she said "the singer of the dead milkmen") was dead from suicide. I didn't know that at all, and I still don't know it, because I'm not believing anyone when they tell me somebody is dead until I do some thorough research first.

The Things People Look Up

Do you ever wonder what people look up online to find this weblog of mine? Well here are the last 20 things people looked up that ended up having my blog towards the top of the list:

Last 20 Searchengine Queries
Unique Visitors

Yahoo: grayson movie trailer

Yahoo: "vegetarian to save animals"

Google: "fuck you fuck you fuck you you're cool i'm out"

MSN Search: shaven genitals

Yahoo: the intricates mp3

MSN Search: ambiguiously gay duo

MSN Search: Auschwitz tattoos pics

Altavista: merchendise flogging

MSN Search: http;//www.grayson.edu/grayson/di

Altavista: grayson movie

Yahoo: Seabiscuit burial plot

MSN Search: "fuck you fuck you you're cool, i'm out" - movie

Google: Klause Barbie

Google: movie "fuck you you're cool, I'm out"

MSN Search: pregnancy diarys

Google: grayson jepordy

Google: "grayson kilmer

Google: "fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you're cool i'm out."

MSN Search: shaven genitals

Some of these things are alarming. Such as why so many people like that stupid half-baked quote, and also, why so many people look up "shaven genitals". And more importantly, why MY site came up when they did... On the plus side, I am looking forward to that "grayson movie". I wonder when we'll get to see the "grayson trailer". It's about time somebody made a movie about me.

Miiind Reeaader... OOoooh

Try the Mind Probe.

Try This....

While sitting at your desk, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles.

Now, while doing this, draw the number "6" in the air with your right hand.

Your foot will change direction and there's nothing you can do about it.

Free Books Online!!

I just stumbled upon an awesome website. It is a huge archive of books that are fully posted on the net. You can search for books or authors you like and sometimes they will have them. I find it works best with classic literature such as Thoraeu or even Orwell. But at the same time, they have new stuff, because when I looked up "Chomsky" it had a pretty big list of full texts of his, some of which I've read (non internet style). Check it out for yourself!

Viva La Revolution!

I've made my second conversion today... that I know of. Colin told me today that he decided that the thing to do that makes sense is to vote Nader this year. It was only a week ago when he told me that he felt that voting Nader was probably "throwing your vote away". I whipped out some progressive thinking from my mental bag of tricks and apparently it sunk in. Colin is the second eligible voter soul I have touched with my Nader ways, the first being Brian... although, by now, I havnen't talked to Brian in so long that he might have weened off of the Nader path that I righeously set for him. But, ye must haveth faithe.
Amen.

Lyrics I Just Wrote...

It's called "Straight Edge", it goes a little somethin like this....

straight edge

you can lace your lungs with vapors
waste your life away
or you can trace your veins with razors
waste it all today

mundanity, insanity we want to escape
theres always a limit to what we can take
hang from a rope and go underground
or lift yourself high and never come down

Party Of 2

8/16/4

The two-party system is flawed. On paper, it looks like it could work, but not in practice. The idea is that two parties will debate their opposing ideologies and the masses of America will ultimately choose the most appropriate one for the country; a natural “majority rules” situation. The elections are not completely limited to the two parties alone; a third party is allowed to vie in the competition if enough members of society disapprove of the original two parties. Like I said, it looks good on paper.
Over history, the two parties have shown their differences, but often without straying to far from the mainstream. The problem arises when the parties cede from debating and instead compete for orthodoxy. This is seen in parts of history and, most strikingly, today. The battle is no longer which party has the most qualifications or the best ideas for improving our nation, but who is more “moral” and who is more “American”. Democracy doesn’t function when the major parties agree in their political ideologies and the debate is over which party can fulfill the ideology best.
The answer, it seems, would lie within a third party ticker. Indeed, in most elections, there is usually some sort of third party that opposes the ideology upheld by both leading parties. Many Americans watch as the major parties agree on more issues than they disagree and recognize the opposition posed by a third party. Yet, they still insist that voting in favor of a third party is “throwing your vote away”. For this I largely blame the mainstream media.
I do not believe in a “media conspiracy”. Rather, I believe the media is following it’s natural course in a capitalist society. It is not as simple as saying the mainstream media has a “left-wing bias” or a “right-wing bias”. Any bias should ultimately be viewed as a “corporate bias”. This is due to the fact that our American media corporations are just that: corporations.
When you watch a commercial for a Mickey Mouse (Disney) movie or a Loony Toons (Warner) show, you understand that the companies advertising themselves are selling American commercialism as well. What you might not realize is that the media harbor these aspects as well. And why shouldn’t they? If a mindless TV ad can successfully instill the “wonders of American technology, shopping and expansion” in the public mind, imagine the power of this ideology, not only in the form of advertisements, but also through the respected media. For these reasons I consider the corporate controlled media a menace to democracy.
With this in mind, there is no reason to expect political issues to be raised other than the “issues” already brought up by the two parties (i.e.: who is more orthodox, American, moral, etc.). After all, this pseudo-debate fits perfectly in line with the status quo, largely preserved by the media’s corporate stratagem.
A third party, also, need not be given much airtime and when it is, it should be in the context of how “voters feel the party is stealing votes from the socially apt Democratic party.” The issues raised by the third party should not be mentioned. After all, why should the media feel obliged to cover a third party if it only accounts for a small percentage of votes? The problem with this thinking is that, more than anything else, the opinion the public has of a candidate is determined by how they are portrayed by the media and how much coverage they receive. Unfortunately, it is not the other way around. We live in a society in which reading is at an all-time low. The only “information” Americans are receiving comes either from the candidate’s mouths or from the corporate run media. Is this a true democracy?

2 New Shirt Ideas!

Tell me what you think....
Evil Dead
Skaface

Obey Marshie

Look what I made while listening to Slayer...

Books I'm Looking For

I just made a list of books I'm looking for at used book stores. I had to post it so I could print it off the internet on my parent's PC, so I might as well post it here too.

Name That Tune!

You may notice that there is a song playing in the background of my blog. If you want, you can pause it, it is on the left. I had this idea where I can replace a different song I like on the blog every once in awhile and see who can figure out what song it is. Just comment in the most recent post to say what song it is if you know. I'll keep track of who figured out the most songs. Today's song is really easy, I'll give you a hint: It's really freaking long.

John Kerry Speech

I hadn't watched Kerry's speech at the democratic national convention, but I know it felt like everybody was saying how great it was. Well, at least my mom. So I read it just now. It was the same dribble that politicians always use. No issues were raised except for the usual "I will put more cops on the street", "Americans should be able to afford health care" and "These are American values". Most of this speech could have just as easily been written for Bush. There is hardly a difference between the two in my opinion. The only times you knew he wasn't Bush was when he critisized the popular subjects that are related to Bush such as "I promise to not have an Attorney General who won't uphold the constitution". Well, that sounds well and good, but you fucking were for the PATRIOT ACT. Cunt.

Book Review: No Logo

No Logo - Naomi Klein

Over the last couple of decades, western society has been completely inundated with celebrity endorsements, billboards, commercials, and brands. Without even noticing, we have experienced a silent takeover of our public and private space. Festivals are now sponsered by car dealerships, the town square has been replaced by the mall and even our schools have been hijacked by the brands (Pepsico being the official Highland brand). In No Logo, Naomi Klein traces the history of corporate brands and their consistantly agressive tactics.
It's interesting to watch as more and more brand logos are popping up everywhere as fewer and fewer corporations own them (example: corporate mergers such as the recent Time-Warner). Klein points out that it has gotten to the point that most large corporations don't actually produce anything anymore; they simply own the "means of production", to quote Marx.
It used to be that corporations competed by producing the best quality product, or the newest innovation. Today, corporations like Nike simply hand down the task of production to the lowest bidding contracter. The contracter in turn searches for another contracter and again until the production ends up in a impoverished country such as Indonesia where the workers can be paid only a few cents an hour. The shoes that cost a few dollars to make are now marked up hundreds of dollars to sell to wealthy consumers in the west.
No Logo extensively covers all of this and what people are doing about it. Klein travels everywhere to the "free-trade zone" countries to parts of the west interviewing sweatshop workers, whistle-blowers and anti-globalization activists all the while writing in a modern get-out-there-muckraking style reminiscent of Eric Schosser (Fast Food Nation, Reefer Madness). While some corporate themed books I have read tend to have an underlying political theme (such as Corporateering and the Corporation), No Logo is more extensive (500 pages) and largely focused on the cultural aspect of the corporations and how the affect our daily lives.

Too Many Books!

There are too many damn books to read. I was so proud of my self lately because I havn't bought any books in like a week and a half and I didn't plan on buying any, and instead I would read some of the others that I have already. But today I walked into the BookStop, just because I was there, and I ended up finding Downsize This (Michael Moore) and the classic Manufacturing Consent. Tsk, tsk. I'm buying more books than I can read and my stack of unread books is growing. It's sad. It's hard to keep up.

TSW Shirt Anyone?

I have an idea for a cool t-shirt. It will be all 9-11 looking, but really, it won't actually be about 9-11. It will have a picture of the Triangle Shirt Waist building on fire (instead of the WTC buildings) and it will say something like "we remember NYC 1911", instead of "911". The first '1' on "1911" could be in a different color or something, for good measure. Eh? Eh? I doubt many people would get the joke, or if they did, purchase the shirt. But if you would buy one if I made one, comment that you would. If I get 5 people, I'll make it.

PS: Look at this gross picture of toe fungus... if you dare.

Pictures of Me

I just stumbled upon these two pictures of me at the "Deadmary" website.
This picture looks like it was taken right near the Woodstock festival in the hippie days... but it really wasn't. It was taken a few months ago... not near the Woodstock festival.
This picture also has a cigar in it. Which is not a prop for the picture by the way. This is actually how the specimen of Grayson acts in his natural environment. Actually, the only time I smoke "cigars" is when I am in Rio Rancho and my band takes a smoking break. Sometimes I get bored and refry a cigar, such as in these pictures. I was just about to leave in this picture, that's why I have Ian's copy of "Dawn of the Dead" in my hand. Then Tom's girlfriend came out of the house with a camera and BAM! she took some pictures. I don't like those cheap cigars anymore, so that is probably the last time you will see me with one, which is unfortunate, because they make me look cool.

Fuck World Trade! Review! MOVE!

I've been listening to Fuck World Trade by the good Leftover Crack a lot lately. It is a pretty good album. Almost every song is of excellent quality. There are even two songs about killing cops. Personally, I don't believe in killing cops, because so many are decent people, but I do believe in destroying the police; the corporate protection institution as a whole. I think that's where they are coming from. Also, they have a song about the M.O.V.E. radical black group. Now there were some fucked up police in THAT incident.
For those of you who don't know anything about it, in 1978 nine members of the radical group were somehow sentanced to life for the result of one bullet that killed a cop in a standoff. How do 9 people get sentenced for the result of one bullet without even any evidence convicting any of them? Well, if that wasn't enough, in 1985 the police force of Philadelphia, now under Mayor Goode, dropped a bomb on the radicals' home after a 24 hour standoff. The fire department was forbidden from putting out the fire and the police had their guns trained on the exits of the home ready to fire. The police shot off thousands of rounds of ammunition and something like 60 houses were burnt to nothing before the fire department was able to put out the fire. No police were ever convicted of anything. I love the mayor's description of his strategy: "perfect, except for the fire". Of course, all this information is purely from memory, so minor details could be wrong, but I suggest reading up on it yourselves.
Clearly, you can understand Leftover Crack's motto of "Kill Cops, Because Cops Kill". I know that I'd shoot off a round or two if the city made WAR on my fucking HOME. The "Operation MOVE" song is a really good song and has an awesome violin buildup that really makes you feel the situation somehow. I'd written a song about the MOVE along time ago, but I think I lost it in some notebook that ended up getting trashed. Also, Howard Zinn narrates a documentary on the MOVE incidents. I really want to see that, but it's only in super underground, big city, theatres. The site for that is www.movefilm.com.
I had already heard about half the songs on the cd from either bootleg recordings (from the Live In Reading cd) or from different 7"s such as "Rock the 40oz".
The album has an awesome name/cover art (of which I have a poster in my room of) that features the twin towers burning and the president and other republicans happy and helping burn it down. World Trade is a death machine, as the cd suggests. This cd is excellent in terms of making you want to destroy things. On par with RATM in that sense. I saw an article about how chain stores (of course) refuse to carry this cd because of the artwork. That article is here.

Movie Review: Collateral (new)

Collateral is better than the trailers make it look. It is somewhat of one of those non-believable action movies, but it's better than most of them. I thought the directing/cinematography was way better than most action-type movies and this made it a much better movie already. The plot was also pretty good as well. It is about this guy who murders people by having a cab driver drive him to the places where he kills the people (there is also this same idea in this book by Hubert S. Selby called Waiting Period... I wonder if that's where they got the idea). The movie gets better because it has this big gang conspiracy thing that builds up and ties together... don't worry, I'm not giving anything away because you pretty much learn that from the start, but you just don't know how it ties together... Well, at least from what I remember, I saw it a few weeks ago. This movie probably deserves 4 stars.
4 stars

Movie Review: White Oleander

I'd never heard of White Oleander until a few days ago when I saw it on HBO. Apparently, it's somewhat of a popular movie, because everybody I ask has heard of it. Well, I watched it and I thought it was good. It's like a "coming of age" movie, but it's not a comedy. It's more of a drama about this girl and her relationship with her mom who is in prison for murder. The girl is thrown around from foster home to foster home and a lot of bad things happen to her. It's kind of a sad movie in some ways, but it is pretty good. I recommend seeing it if it sounds interesting to you.
4 stars

MK-ULTRA

Remember the classic SNES/64 game, Mortal Kombat Trilogy? Well, now there are much better graphic systems such as the PS2 and Mortal Kombat can be greatly enhanced by this. The old game is great, better than the new "Deadly Alliance", but it would be awesome if they made a "trilogy"-esque game for the PS2. I even have a name for this new game: Mortal Kombat Ultra, or, MK-ULTRA. It will attract video game fans and hippies alike.

Coincidence: Corporate Hands

OK. First of all, I should say I've been on some sort of corporation-themed books binge lately (the Corporation, No Logo, and now Corporateering). Awhile ago, I had the idea for a t-shirt design that showed how the two parties are controlled by the same organizations (corporations). The picture would be of these two hands with strings coming down from them and one hand would control the elephant and one would control the donkey. At the bottom it would say "Enjoy the show!". So today in my art class I sketched that out on paper. Then, this evening, I walked down to the used book store a couple blocks from my house (Bookstop) and I saw a book I'd never seen before "Corporateering". The cover had a picture of a hand with one of those wooden plus ( + ) signs that has the strings coming down. The hand had a cigar and a diamond ring, which mine lacks. Also, mine didn't have the wooden plus sign... the strings were kind of just tied onto the fingers for some reason, but I did think of putting some bling bling on one of the hands. Aaanyways, in the picture on the book cover, all you see is one hand and you don't see where the strings go, but I still think it was pretty crazy that I was just drawing something so close to that today. Plus, I'd never even heard of the book before, but I bought it.

He could still run...

On the Olympics TV thing, some announcer said that a runner got in a motorcycle accident. "He could still run, but his training was in question" the announcer said. What the hell does that mean? What kind of training IS there besides running? The training for track is this "here, go out and run a lot, tomorrow there is some running on the schedule. Maybe on friday we will spice it up and let you run in place for a little bit, but then its back to training you to run around more".

Movie Review: Bourne Supremacy (new)

First off, I need to say that I have never seen the Bourne Identity, so the Bourne Supremacy is probably different to me than it would be to somebody who saw the first one. I will explain the whole plot of the Bourne Supremacy: Matt Damon is running and hiding from the CIA which is trying to catch him because they think he killed some people. That is the whole plot. It was an amazingly simple plot, not to mention the fact that that is the formula for 1 out of every 20 hollywood movies. The directing and everything I didn't have a problem with. The fact that it felt like I have already seen this movie about 15 times in other forms (not including all of the James Bond movies) bored me a bit. My parents really liked it though, so maybe you will. Also, keep in mind that I havn't seen the first one, and maybe there is some amazing piece of information that I don't know that would have made the movie perfect... but I doubt it.
I will not rate it since I haven't seen the original.

Strongbad Zone Shirt

The StrongBad Zone shirt is cool. You shall spend your money to buy it for me.

Idiot 'Liberals'!

I found this "liberal clothing" website. In ACTUALITY, it is ridiculous. It has a bunch of blind sighted contradictions and even has a whole section to bash on one of the few actually real liberals we have, Nader. The site calls itself liberal, yet in the John Kerry section among countless stickers proclaiming "so and so's for Kerry" it has a sticker that says "Conservatives For John Kerry". That sounds pretty fucking liberal to me. Then, later, it has a sticker that says something like "Register Green. Vote Kerry". You know what would be closer to the truth? "Register Republican, Vote Kerry." Low and behold, there is actually a sticker you can buy on the site that says "Republicans For Kerry". And like I said, there is a whole section devoted to hating Ralph Nader. There are stickers like "Ralph Nader for President... of Indonesia!". What a clever sticker. Oh wait, Nader would be a much needed improvement to Indonesia, seeing as how the Democrats don't seem to give a shit about human rights and the sweatshops contracted by Nike and the other American corporate land rappists. Hey, maybe we should give Kerry a chance. I bet he'll change things like that and help the world... oh, what's that? His campaign is funded by these same criminal corporations?

Naughty Nader!

Ralph Nader has accepted money from the Republican party which wants to see some of the Democrat votes "stolen". How terrible!... oh wait, this doesn't change Nader's platform at all and simply helps counter the damage done to Nader by the Democrats and their various tricks. It sounds like a bad thing to accept money from the conservatives and corporate elite... but then again, that's what Michael Moore does when he makes his movies on major corporate productions. The thing is that it doesn't CHANGE what he says in the movies. It's the same thing, yet nobody seems to have a problem with Moore. It is also the same when Rage Against The Machine produced their obstensibly socialist marxist records on a Sony record label. People did have a problem with that, though. I never did, but some people did. Then Tom Morello summed up what some of us already had figured out: Rage Against the Machine sold fourteen million records of totally subversive revolutionary propaganda. The reason why is that the albums were released on Sony and got that sort of distribution.
I think people should worry less about the fact that the Republicans gave Nader donations (ignoring the fact that the Democrats have consistantly tried to sabatoge the man) and more about the fact that the Democratic party is funded and controlled by the same big-wig multi-national corporations that fund and control the Republican party. Sorry for the interuption. Please, continue enjoying the puppet show 2004.

What Is George Talking About?

OK, could someone please explain to me what the hell our president is talking about in his commercial? He says "I can't imagine the great agony of a mom or a dad having to make the decision about which child to pick up first on September 11"... actually, I think I just figured it out. Maybe he is saying picking them up from school (assuming that they don't go to the same school?). Hey, I am an only child and I wasn't picked up on 9/11! What's the deal? My parents had no great agony making the decision of who to pick up, they never even thought about it! And why would they? Why would you need to pick up your children when something happens that has nothing to do with their school or anything they are involved in. Maybe that's not it at all. Maybe he is saying which one to pick up as in physically. Perhaps, which one to hold in their laps and explain to them the wonders of racism and eurocentrism and how other nations are bad and western nations are good, so good that the bad nations get SO jealous that a few of them decided to go on suicide missions to attack our country just to get their message across: "hey, we are jealous of you! watch how we risk our lives and kill ourselves in order to show you how jealous we are."........ Maybe that's what George was talking about in the commercial. Which child to put in your lap first and explain how simple global conflicts are. Either way, the fact remains that George Bush is a twat. I should add that John Kerry is a twat as well, but at least in John Kerry's commercials you can understand what the fuck is going on and don't have to ponder them for like 13 minutes only to come to the conclusion that our president is a twat and there is no point in listening to him in the first place.

T-Shirts

I've taken up the responsibility of making cheap t-shirts for the world to buy. The company name is Ruminant Clothing and I should call it "a non-profit organization" because there sure as hell isn't any profit. Maybe eventually I will make some sort of profit, but I have a lot of money to make before all my supplies "pay for themselves". It's probably worth it once I get things going. Today I just got some new paints in the mail and a new screen. I already had paints and a screen, but I found out there were better kinds for printing onto dark colored shirts. Anyways, this should be good and people should buy the shirts. I already .have some shirts made of two different designs if anybody wants to buy one. They are both white ink on black shirts and I have a few different sizes. If you like the cow one, you should get it soon because I only have like 3 or so made and I'm not printing any more. Here are the two designs. Click em:
The Cow One
The Flag One

I plan on making many more hella tyte t-shirts and a website for them.

Pigeon Kam

This is Pigeon Kam
it is very insightfull

Movie Review: PCU

PCU is another one of those Animal House type knockoffs. This perticular one is about this college that is really politically correct and all the different groups always protest eachother. One perticular group doesn't care about any of the PC type things, but they end up offending all the other groups. This group has to raise 7$K in one night in order to keep their house, so they plan on having a party, but there is no way for them to have all the different groups come without fighting eachother. Overall, it's a pretty mediocre movie and I don't encourage seeing it or not seeing it. It's like one of those movies that's alright if you are tired and have the day off and are bored and are half paying attention to it. It has David Spade, but more importantly it has George Clinton.
2 1/2 stars

Rock, Paper, Saddam

This site is pretty funny. I reccomend going to it, old school.
Rock, Paper, Saddam

Book Review: Savage Nation

Review of The Savage Nation, by Michael Savage. This is my review I put on the Amazon.com website.

First of all, this book provides absolutely no notes, stats, or any type of documentation to back up anything he says. Believing almost anything in this book is to forget an AWFUL lot of history. On top of that, there are COUNTLESS contradictions in the book. Especially when he proclaims that he loves the freedoms of this country (which he proclaims often) and then two pages later he says that radicals who oppose the war should be locked away at war time for national security reasons! another example is when he talks about how he hates "hate-free zones" because he says that it's "his right to hate who he wants"... two pages later he says "look what terrorist nations have accomplished. Racism. Sexism. Hatred. Religious intolerence." then he goes on to bash Islam.
The book reeks of Stalinist-type propaganda:
"They come to kill us. They come to poison your daughter's lunchbox. They come to fly planes into buildings. These snakes pretend to be one of us. They might blend in as they await their orders to stab America in the back."
Savage is ostensibly racist and doesn't try to hide it. He even has a section of his book that celebrates the "fact" that "most important and consequential inventions have come almost exclusively from white males". Again, this overlooks an AWFUL lot of history.
He is critisizes Americans of not racial profiling enough. It's amusing when he speaks of middle-eastern nations: "We are facing a battle of civilization versus one-thousand years of darkness." Could he be MORE eurocentric? This is also amusing because scientists have proved that civilization CAME from that area of the world (the fertile crescent)! In refering to Bagdad, he proclaims that "one American child is worth more than your entire, rotten, stinkin city".
But there is more ignorance! Savage LOVES to use "clever" sayings on almost every page of this book. One example is "Commu-Nazis". This is especially funny because using this term requires forgetting all knowledge in the feilds of nazism and communism. Nazi fascism is the extreme OPPOSITE of Soviet communism. In fact the Soviet Union considered Hitler's fascist Germany even more of an enemy than America did! Savage either ignores the fact that Russia and America allied together in fighting Germany, or he just doesn't know much about what he is talking about... I assume the latter.
The funniest part of the Savage Nation is probably when he talks about Christianity and he states the "problems" with relying on science: "I'd have to say most of the scientists that I have met were amoral." But it gets funnier when he says that you need a lot of religion to keep a society working because with only science, people would have no morals. "science is not conerned with right or wrong. Take the Germans. For the first half of the twentieth century, the Germans had the most advanced society on the earth at the time. They were great scientists. They also gave us death camps."
Conclusion: Michael Savage is an idiot. Germany had Christians as well and Hitler even tried to appeal to many of them. A quote from Hitler's 'Mein Kampf': "I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord"
Clearly Nazi Germany needed MORE religion... And what about the KKK? They probably needed more religion too. How about the Islamic fundamentalists? They probably just aren't religious enough!
The book is full of amazing examples of ignorance such as this. I still have much more to critisize about this book, but I'm going to stop about here.
A section of the book is called "how to pick up liberal women". Savage says: "Here's how it works. Go to a bookstore. That's the place where most liberal women congregate, for reasons unknown. I don't know why books are associated with liberalism, but they are."
Maybe Savage should spend more time at bookstores looking for BOOKS, not women.

Doh!

If somebody isn't answering you, be careful...

00:53:51 punkorastropunk: hey, slutdick, why don't you answer me
00:54:22 dmbdrummer11: slutdick is not here...just DAD of slutdick....MAYNARD
00:55:43 punkorastropunk: hey, i dont know why he always makes up weird nicknames for himself. i just go along with em tho


luckily I quickly fixed the sitution with a clever ploy

Paranormal Book Found!

The book is called "Unexplained Mysteries of the 20th Century". I've seen it before, but I guess I didn't look close enough in it to realize that it was the one that I remember from my childhood. I looked in it and saw some pictures that I remembered, but they aren't really that scary now that I'm older. There is a picture of these two faces following a boat in the water, which is interesting, but the scariest one to me today is probably this one of this woman sitting in the grass. It's a completely normal picture, but it says she is dead, I don't know why that one scares me the most. I also remember that one from when I was a kid. You should check out the book when you are in a bookstore next, they have it just about anywhere. I saw it at Birdsong used books for $7 also.

Movie Review: Stink Of Flesh (new)

The Stink Of Flesh is a locally made, low budget zombie movie. I guess they only showed it for TWO nights at the Guild. It was packed and sold out on both nights, on both showings per night (I think). When I saw it, there was this drunk girl that was REALLY annoying who kept on talking about chickens and trying to make jokes all loud that weren't funny at all. Like in Seinfeld (see: "that's GOT to hurt!").
The movie was pretty weird. It was about this kinky couple who looked for men who were still alive so the wife could screw them and the husband would watch. Some scenes were.... uncalled for. But overall, it wasn't bad. Also, there was this one lady who had a sister who was built onto her body... and it wasn't like a real person, it was like this weird ass clay thing... I didn't really understand what was going on for awhile... and it never explained it... but aside from that, it was a pretty cool movie. It was excessively violent too. I'm not going to rate it, because it's not really an officially produced movie, so I can't put it up to official movie standards. But it was interesting.

Movie Review: Manchurian Canidate 04' (new)

I havn't seen the original Manchurian Canidate, so don't expect me to compare the two. This one was alright, I guess. I wouldn't recommend seeing it, but it wasn't something I hated either. It was about an election in which this corporation, Manchurian Global, was trying to steal and control the president with mind control. They injected these weird bugs into people's shoulders to control them. It's funny that people would be all scared and appaled if that happened in reality, but they seem to have no problem with the fact that it already does happen; the difference is that instead of injecting them with bugs, the corporations just give the politicians lots of money and get what they want that way. But at least there isn't mind control!
3 stars

Movie Review: Elephant

Jessie Abbot told me to see Elephant and I heard about it a few other times after that. So today I watched it. I was dissappointed. It is an indy movie about a school shooting, which sounds good on paper, but when they made this movie it wasn't very good in my opinion. First of all, most of the movie had nothing to do with anything... and not in a GOOD David Linklater type way either, it was random boring stuff that kids do. For example the camera made you watch as a student went through the whole process of developing film and it showed another kid play the whole Fur Elise (sp?) song on the piano... the whole thing! It was interesting at first how the director used really long takes that could be even 10 minutes long at times. That got boring afterawhile because the plot was really boring and nothing was happening. All this put together makes a very slow boring movie to watch. I could have gone out to the store and came back and not missed anything important or interesting at all. Also, the movie shows you the perspective of a bunch of different kids, so when they interact you are forced to watch the interaction take place over and over and over again from different views. I think they went a little overboard with their "independant techniques", but then again, it probably wouldn't have mattered if the plot was good... which it wasn't. Like I said, it had nothing to do with anything until about the last 20 minutes. Another thing that annoyed me was all the different examples of bad acting. On top of that, a lot of the things they said and did weren't realistic at all. There were a bunch of kids that didn't even really mind there being a school shooting it seemed like, they just stood around taking their time leaving and such. Especially this one jock type kid who goes around looking for the shooters. What the hell? Nobody would do that! He was all non-chalent about seeing dead bodies on the ground as well. There was also a ridiculous scene in which the two shooters were shooting off some rounds in their garage, and the gun shots were so incredibly fake. There was this big blast and it looked really cheesy. I don't care if it was low-budjet or anything, they should have never used those weird cheesy gun effects. As if all this wasn't enough, there are no, I repeat NO elephants in the whole movie! That was the final straw for me. I recommend not seeing this movie.
2 1/2 stars

Terrorism Alert!

Apparently, Washington has come across some "strikingly alarming" evidence for a terrorist attack on America. Wait, on America, or on certain American institutions that go against everything that Americans should stand for (see: democracy)? Indeed, two of the main targets for attack are the IMF and World Bank. I think we should all hope and pray (if you are into that) that nobody gets hurt and the buildings are evacuated before the attacks; but it is also important to pray that those two buildings are bombed to hell. Talk about destroying terrorist bases.

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers told Congress in 1995 that, for every $1 that the U.S. spent on the World Bank, it got back $1.30 in contracts for U.S. corporations.
Summers called this "enlightened self-interest." He should have called it extortion.

A few Terrorist Activities of the WB and IMF (random order):
1. the number of people in the world living on $1 a day increased to 1.3 billion as a result of the East Asian financial crash of 1997-98--and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) austerity policies that followed
2. In South Korea, a country whose income was approaching European levels, unemployment skyrocketed from approximately 3 percent to 10 percent
3. In Indonesia, the worst hit country, poverty rates rose from an official level of 11 percent before the crisis to 40 to 60 percent in varying estimates. (hey, at least we can wear Nike shoes! that probably evens things out)
4. The state of Orissa, in eastern India, received a $350 million loan from the Bank in 1996 to restructure its electricity industry. But the condition was privatization of the state electricity board, which was taken over by the U.S.-based power company AES in mid-1999 for $10 million.
After privatization, power rates in Orissa jumped by 500 percent--despite the fact that only 20 percent of households could afford power when the industry was run by the state.
5. In October 1999, Orissa was hit by devastating cyclones that killed thousands and made millions homeless. Even as the state government was struggling to cope with the disaster, Dennis Bakke, the chief executive of AES, demanded to be paid $60 million for the cost of repairs to the electricity system.
6. Since its creation, one out of every four trade disputes that came before the WTO involved one country challenging another’s laws on health, safety or the environment. In each case, the WTO has ruled against such regulations--on the grounds that they amounted to an illegal trade barrier and had to be removed or modified.
7. Indonesia’s Suharto–the vicious tyrant who ruled for four decades until he was toppled in 1998–was especially notorious for funneling money to himself and his family. But the World Bank had nothing but praise for Indonesia under Suharto.

It only took a few minutes of searching and reading online to find these examples. There are many more if you actually go out and read a book on them, such as (as I have mentioned before) Greg Palast's The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

FIGHT TERRORISM, FIGHT THE WORLD BANK AND IMF!

Movie Review: Corporation (new)

I saw the Corporation at the Guild movie theatre a couple of blocks from my house tonight. The movie was very interesting and well made. It is a documentary on "the corporation" in general. Countless interviews are displayed in the documentary, in fact, that's what about half of the movie was. The interviewees range from various authors, such as the one of No Logo*, to Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, to various corporate CEOs. I especially liked the CEO of the largest carpet manufactuer (I can't remember the name of him or the corporation), I agreed with just about everything he said, I would never expect some one like him to be a big time CEO. The Corporation evaluates corporations as if they were people (as they claim to be to obtain certain rights) and comes to the conclusion that they would be diagnosed as medically pyshopathic.
A lot of the movie focused on another problem that stems from the problem of corporate America; milk. Milk isn't bad, but the chemicals that are given to cows are. The movie showed how the American FDA had no problems with the chemicals which ended up doing great harm to cows and resulting in puss coming out of their utters, along with milk. Canada on the other hand, never accepted the chemicals as decent and banned their use from the begining.
There are dozens of dozens of examples of this type of corporate reign that goes unaccounted for. Many examples are in the movie, but the overall problem with corporations would take many massive book volumes to cover and not just this one 2:30 hour movie. The movie did do a great job in addressing a wide array of corporate abuse from oppressive dictatorships in other countries (funded by US tax money for the sheer purpose of protecting corporate interests in the countries) to pollution and sweatshop labor. Also, this movie is a great source of footage of corporate caused mutations, such as a child with backward feet and a kid born with eye sockets... but no eyes.
FEAR the CORPORATION
and see this movie (ends August 5th)

*of which I plan on reading soon. Kevin got the book awhile ago, I looked at it and it looked very interesting.

Put-Putt

There is a movie called "Schwarzhuhnbraunhuhnschwarzhuhnweisshuhnrothuhnweiss oder Put-Putt". I recommend seeing any movie with a name that is over 50 letters long... oh, and also any movies with the name "put-putt" in them.

Book Reviews: 1984 and the Anti-Communist Impulse

1984- Orwell
1984 should be in the NON-fiction section. Everything that it says has so much truth to it. There are a million examples of this. In the society in the book, there is the "Two Minutes Hate" in wich the "telescreens" show the national enemy and show you just how evil he is for you to hate him, then the screen shows "Big Brother", who is the nation's national symbol. People then will run up to the screen and cry because they love Big Brother so much for protecting them. Also, the history books are controlled and leave out important things, such as the fact that the nation was ONCE allies with their NOW enemy. Can anybody relate this to Iraq? My favorite aspect of the book was probably the "doublethink". "Doublethink" is a word for conciously possesing two contradictory thoughts similtaneously. When I was reading this at first, I was thinking to myself "there is no way that America or any other nation will get so ignorant that they will believe in two contradictory things at the SAME time without having a problem with their way of thought". Then later, I started realizing that we ALREADY have it here. A really good example is of the majority of American's thoughts on Communism.

Anti Communist Impulse- Parenti
I've been reading The Anti-Communist Impulse which reminded me of this. Americans similtaneously beleive that the Soviet Union was a great threat to America with all their missles and their super-power. But at the SAME time, they believe that communism, such as in the Soviet Union, would never work because the economy is terrible and very poor and could never get anything done. Therfore, people go on believing that it was a super-power, but at the same time it was super-weak somehow. Also, while reading the Impulse it is observed how politicians during the cold war constantly say things like "We can't trust anything the reds say, we must only judge what they do" whenever the communists talk of how the want peace. But when the communists cut back on military and try to make peace negotiations the news/politicians will say "we can't trust their communist ploys, they mean nothing, after all they did say..." and then they'll name an instance like the infamous Khrushchev "We will bury you quote" to 'show' that what communists do is just a plot when you think about the terrible things that they've said they will do. As you can see, these two things obviously contradict eachother, yet the people who say them and the people who beleive them seem to not have a problem with it.
The Impulse is a pretty good book, provided you are interested in the subject of the reaction to communism. It names a lot of inncidents that I don't even know about. It is pretty detailed and hard to read at times, but you get a lot of good information out of it. A lot of it is summed up in Parenti's later book Inventing Reality, which is a good book that deals a lot with how the media handled the cold war.

Movie Review: Secret Window

I wasn't expecting to like Secret Window. I don't usually like those Stephen King movies. For one thing, they always are about a writer and usually involve some aspect of children or childhood memories*. Secret Window followed the usual "writer" path... to the max. But it didn't involve children. It is the story of Johnny Depp** who wrote a story a long time ago, and somebody came to his door saying that they wrote the story, not him. The person then goes on to harass him a bunch and make threats and such. The movie is about how Depp deals with such threats.
I thought the plot was pretty good, and the movie was definately well made. The only thing that kinda sucked was the ending. It seems that too many movies use that same ending. I won't tell you what it is though. But then again, the ending kind of fit. I just wish that another ending could have happened that fit just as well.
4 Stars


* I bet you are thinking of a movie of his that you feel is THE movie I'm talking about, but really, all of you reading this are probably thinking of all different movies.. that's why it's funny.

** Not a character played by Johnny Depp, but ACTUALLY about Johnny Depp himself if he wrote books. I say this because he doesn't even seem like he is acting. I've seen videos of him hanging out and stuff and he acts exactly like that in Secret Window.

Movie Review: Limey

The Limey. I really like the directing and how the movie was made overall. It had some really great scenes and cinematography. The plot was a cliche "dad looking for revenge on his daughter's death" type thing, but they somehow made it into a good and intresting movie. The movie seemed like it knew it had a simple plot and left it at that and didn't drag it out into some big annoying adventure. I think this is a worthwhile movie to see. I would recommend it. It won't do anything like "change your life" or "make you laugh and cry" or anything, but it is a entertaining well made movie that should be watched.

Movie Review: Rounders

Rounders is a movie about people that play poker to make money off of people who aren't good at it. Well, more specifically, it's about how Edward Norton and Matt Daemon do that. The movie seems like it's good, but really it's just fooling you. If you sit there and think to yourself, "is this a good movie?", you will probably won't see it as one anymore. It was pretty well made and the cast was good, but the movie didn't really say anything or have a purpose. It was also predictable. It's like a good comedy movie, without any comedy.. at all.. making it not such a good comedy. Imagine Lock Stock And 2 Smoking Barrels without any comedy or irony. Or even Boondock Saints without playing up the whole Irish angle. You are just left with a movie, but a movie without any purpose.
3 1/2 stars

Will Smith Stars In An Exciting New Hat!

I, Robot would be nothing without the hat.

Fuck World Trade

In late August, one of the coolest bands still around, Leftøver Crack, is going to release their newest cd, "Fuck World Trade". The album is pictured above. How did they get away with a cover like this with such a "shocking" title? Well, first of all they are hella tyte (I definately, agree when they say "fuck world trade"). Secondly, the moved on over from the more and more crap infested 'Hellcat' label over to the hella-tyte label of Alternative Tenticles. LOC's last album's artwork, Mediocre Generica (the album of which was coincidentally released on 9/11/01), was of a school shooting and Hellcat forced them to change the cover. Jello Biafra is very familiar with being hassled over censorship and gladly let the band use whatever artwork they chose for their newest album's cover.
About the subject matte of the cover art... Of course, the band doesn't approve of the killing of innocent people. They are vehemently against it. Originally, "Fuck World Trade" was actually the name of one of their old band's, Choking Victim, songs which came out years before 9/11. When they say it now, their meaning hasn't changed. World trade isn't a bad thing in principal, I mean with it you can get exotic fruits and things, but that's not what they are talking about. They are talking about the IMF, World Bank, and WTO, which are essentially legal American terrorist organizations by the definition of the word. They do much more damage than Osama Bin Laden could ever hope to do. Terrible things happen with this kind of capital warfare, for example, NATO launched the bombing of innocent people in Yugoslavia for 78 straight horrific days. This was under the "liberal" Clinton... and you probably havn't even heard of such a bombing, have you? Well, world trade works as secretly as it can. Still, some people wise up everyonce in awhile to oppose it, such as in the Seattle WTO riot not too many years ago. These organizations simply work like this: Country X needs money, American groups such as these will loan money IF Country X does favors for corporate Amerika; privatize their health care and anything else the organizations want done (it's 111 policies on average that country X will need to change). But, let's not forget the good parts of massive capital world trade. I mean, as Greg Palast pointed out, they did make great strides in the cure for AIDS. Tanzia has a large AIDS infested population of poor people, but the problem is that the silly nation was giving away health care for free! Can you believe that? Well, the World Bank stepped in and gave a helping hand by ordering for their to be no more trade barriers, and instead, deregulation and privatization for the savage country. Needless to say, this helped the country and it's people when the health care industry was privatized and now cost money for the people to get their health care. And wouldn't you know it? It started working right away! A whole 53% of the citizens of Tanzia quit coming in for AIDS treatment!
If you don't learn about this stuff, such album cover's as this will make you "scared" and want to wrap yourself with a flag for protection. But unfortunately, the flag you blanket yourself with has been purposely infected with ignorance; just as the blankets given to the Indians were purposefully infected with smallpox. Both are equally fatal.
But again, if you want to, you can look the other way... But you'll be no better than George W. up there torching innocent people with his (haliburton) capital gas flamethrower.