Pancake City

I’m leaving town for a few days. It’s too bad, because I have a REALLY funny story to write about. But I don’t have time to write it now. Yup, no time at all. Absolutely no time. Can’t waste a minute. Every second counts. Well, actually, every third second counts, plus seconds divisible by 15, but that’s so complicated that I tell most people every second counts and they get the jist. Is it gist or jist? When a porn company has an unresolvable argument and splits into two, is it a jism or a schism?

Gotta go!

After visiting my sister Michele in New York, we drove home with my sister Tina and spent the last week with my Mom. A pile of mental notes I made during my stay are now either in the dark corner under my mental desk or mistakenly flushed down the mental toilet after watching an episode of “Rich Girls,” a show on MTV that provides the best argument in American history for a progressive tax system. These notes grow grander each day they are lost. I know I had the cure for cancer. It involved peaches, envisioning the cancer cells as those Tribbles from the original Star Trek, and a mass of white T-cells in the shape of James Kirk calmly firing a phaser set to “No More Trouble” at the cuddly masses of evil cancer cells.

I’ll be writing more soon. And to all my friends, from fundamentalist Christian to non-practicing Christian, Happy Holidays!

Obviously, the Bush administration can’t airbush the “Mission Accomplished” sign to read “This Mission Accomplished.” But what if government agencies wanted to edit out embarrassing comments in official records, or remove links to scientific studies that don’t support their policies?

This isn’t an academic question. The Washington Post has a good article where they summarize some of these changes made either under the direction of the White House or due to the agencies’ own impetus.

I am sure that every administration tries to revise its words to one degree or another. But although the Internet has been around for over a decade, its reach only became powerful enough to motivate information scrubbing on the web in the past 5 or 6 years. The Bush administration is the first administration to have to deal with this issue fully.

And what pisses me off is that, given a chance to set a standard that will make it harder or easier for future presidents to do the same, they are leaning towards establishing lax standards through a creation of a culture where this type of thing is acceptable. (Isn’t this the argument for more testing in schools and against Hollywood sex and violence?)

Sure, many top political appointees are replaced during new administrations, but the people actually removing the information aren’t the agency heads. They’re the web editors and the staff. The lower level people who tend to stay around from administration to administration and will do what they did before unless told otherwise. If the White House established a policy of “No content changes on the web for political purposes,” it would make it more likely for these workers to protest attempts by future presidents, many of whom will give in to the same temptation.

“Return of the Kink”

Starring:
* Araporn
* Grima Longtongue
* Handsoff

and…?

I think when Jesus said “Love Your Enemies” he probably meant don’t kill them.

I would like to see this on a bumper sticker:

(i’m a rebel with a cause, but no one has heard of my cause and i got tired of explaining it so i just call myself) REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE

“We know where you live.”

I put up a dry erase board in our kitchen today, and inaugurated it by witting this message. My roommates, one of who moved in a few weeks ago, haven’t come home yet.

…

Court’s Ruling Maddens Groups on Left and Right

Court’s ruling: Groups on left and right suck.

Gephardt Aims for Populist Iowa Win

Gephardt aims for more people to vote for him than Dean? Huh?

Rat-Borne Disease Kills Zoo Monkey

Death seen as retaliation for last week’s monkey-borne disease that maimed rat. Nobody screws with the rat.

Va. Plans Felony Spam Indictments

D.A. to send 1,000 indictments to each violator.

France Mulls Ban on Head Scarves

Finally! Another country that hates Muslims as much as we do.

New Antidepressants Warning Issued

Warning: assembling pills in pattern of frowny face mitigates pills’ effectiveness.

Beyonce, R. Kelly Win 4 at Billboards

Beyonce thanks family, fans; R. Kelly thanks parole agent.

Flu Vaccines Still Available in District

“Yup,” says jittery suburbanites. “They sure are.”

Although this fan trailer for The Hobbit is mostly existing LOTR footage edited together, it’s worth watching because it’s done so well, particularly the first half. Link from Boing Boing.

“High protein! Low fat!” That’s some of the ad copy on my five-lb. bag of Trader Joe’s Skinless, Boneless Chicken Breasts, written so shoppers will choose this five-lb. bag of skinless, boneless chicken breasts as opposed to one of the five-lb. bags of skinless, boneless chicken breasts sitting next to it.

Next to the announcement of these strange properties of chicken is “No hormones!” It made me feel relieved. And that worried me. Because if I saw “No hormones” on a box of Chips Ahoy! cookies, I wouldn’t feel relieved. I’d wonder what the hell where hormones are doing in cookies in the first place. But my reaction made me realize that I’ve been conditioned to accept a level of crap in my food, ingredients and treatments that would shock people from a 100 years ago, and likely people a 100 years from now, in the same way the old practice of using mercury in everything from medicine to lead paint shocks us.

It turns out that “No hormones!” is as silly of a claim for chicken as “Low fat!” The USDA bans hormones from being used in raising hogs or poultry, and requires manufactures that put “No hormones!” on the packaging to also put “Federal regulations prohibit the use of hormones in poultry” [or pigs].

And if you’re not yet convinced I need to leave the house more often, after I read this on the USDA’s web site, and mused about the interplay of all these messages while eating a Twix bar, I wondered if all of these messages were just a way for a subversive copywriter at Trader Joe’s to get people thinking along these very same lines. For if the package only had “No hormones!” on it, and the USDA disclaimer, I wouldn’t have given this a second thought. It was this message next to all these obviously silly messages that got me thinking.

Perhaps it was the copywriter pressuring management to put “No MSG!” and “Minimally processed!” on the package, each exclamation point a gentle nudge to consider why the lack of perversion of our food should make us excited. Perhaps this was his or her way to inflame the hearts of the buccaneers that patronize Trader Joe’s, to light the trick birthday candle in all our hearts, the candle that lights again ever after it’s blown out, unless you douse it in water, the water that melts from the frozen chicken after you put it in the refrigerator to defrost.

For the record, I was outside for 15 minutes today.

I felt an earthquake today! I am really excited. I always wanted to feel one. Several months ago, when I was in California, I jumped up and down for an hour but nothing happened.

Here’s my earthquake story. It was around 4:00 today. I was writing on the computer. My room shook a bit. I thought it was the trucks outside. Then I took a nap.

You can read more Earthquake 2003 stories in this article from The Washington Post, which is how I found out I was in an earthquake.

Update: The Washington Post put up a forum for people to post their earthquake stories. What struck me is that several people wrote something along the lines of “I was glad it was only an earthquake.” There’s still a lot of fear out there.

This is the first article I’ve read about false memories. I thought I read other articles on the subject, but after reading this one, I remembered the truth.

Wait a minute…

I hope the dependence on witness testimony in court cases is an artifact of the movies and not a practice in real-life. Sure, I’m aware that memory can be manipulated and fallible, but I don’t live my life constantly questioning their accuracy or wondering if the few memories I have from childhood are true. I doubt anyone does. Life has enough doubt as it is. But (read this guardedly) most of us can remember a time when we or a friend of ours was positive this happened that way, or we definitely parked here, but it actually happened the other way, or we parked over there.

But occasionally I’ll hear of a person wrongly imprisoned, usually based on the testimony of one or two people whose certainty in their false memories swayed a jury, and I wonder how often it happens. Is eyewitness testimony sufficiently doubted in today’s judicial system? Should it be trusted at all?

There’s no way I’m ending on such a pretentious note. This is one of the quotes from the article:
“In one study published last year, 50% of volunteers were persuaded they had taken a ride in a hot-air balloon when they had not. But when Kathy Pezdek of the Claremont Graduate University, California, tried to make people believe they had received a rectal enema, she met with almost universal resistance.”

Important:
If the link above is flashing, you have been selected as a Winner! Click here for your prize!!!

The AP says Gore will endorse Dean tomorrow. If it’s true, it is amazing that Gore would back a candidate weeks before the first primary, particularly because of the concerns of Dean’s electability. What did Dean promise him, to create a Department of ‘Bush Sucks’ if Dean’s elected?

You know, there are four or five candidates running for the Democratic nomination that would make a good president. It’s too bad they can’t join forces and assemble into a giant Voltron-like robot. At the debates, it would be 6-foot President Bush vs. 20-foot Demtron.

PRESIDENT BUSH: “I support our troops and what we did in Iraq.”
DEMTRON RIGHT-ARM (Kerry): “Don’t equate supporting the troops with getting us into an unnecessary war. I spilled my blood in Vietnam, jackass. “
DEMTRON WAVY HAIR (Sharpton): “While you flew the coop, he was one of the troops.”
PRESIDENT BUSH: “How dare you call me a jackass?”
DEMTRON HEAD (Lieberman): “That was a little uncivil.”
DEMTRON LEFT ARM (Dean) “You want to see uncivil?” [makes middle finger]
DEMTRON RIGHT-ARM (Kerry) [high-fives Dean] “Mission accomplished!”
DEMTRON HEAD (Lieberman): “Now, boys…”
PRESIDENT BUSH: “You either apologize or I’ll end this debate right now.”
DEMTRON LEFT ARM (Dean): “Sounds good. Clark, would you like to do the honors?”
DEMTRON RIGHT LEG (Clark): “Mr. President, if you could pull down your pants and bend over?”
PRESIDENT BUSH: “What the?”
DEMTRON HEAD (Lieberman): “Wesley!”
DEMTRON RIGHT LEG (Clark): “Say hello to Froggy for me.” [kicks Bush in butt. Bush sails across room and into the arms of a horrified Dick Cheney.]
DEMTRON HEAD (Lieberman): [sighs]: “Sometimes I wish I were just a head in a jar.”

From CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer:

BLITZER: Was it a mistake when the president appeared on the USS Abraham Lincoln May 1st, declared major combat operations over, and there was a huge banner, as you remember, saying “Mission Accomplished”? Looking back on the White House role, you’re the chief of the staff for the White House, was it a mistake for the White House to be involved in putting that banner up on the Abraham Lincoln?

And they were the ones who requested that slogan; their mission had been accomplished. And yes, the White House did produce the banner, but it was produced at the recommendation of the request of the sailors and the Marines that were on the ship.

SAILORS: “President Bush, can we have a ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner behind you on the ship?”
BUSH: “No, it wouldn’t be right. The military action was the easy part. We still have a long way to go.”
SAILORS: “Come on, Mr. Bush. Please?”
BUSH: “I’m sorry, but it would be premature at this point.”
SAILORS: “Weeee-neeeer….weeee-neeeer.”
BUSH: “My draft board called me worse.”
HARVARD MAN: “That’s right, guys. Don’t try to convince him. He’s a Yalie. The spirit of those foppers are as weak as their crew team.”
BUSH: “You crimson bastard! How dare you sully my alma matter? [slaps Harvard Man with fencing glove] Put it up! Put the banner up!”
SAILORS: “YEAH! Bulldog! Bulldog! Bow, wow, wow! Our team can never fail!”