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Posted April 16, 2007  It doesn't happen very often, reading a book and finding it so amazing you
immediately go out and read absolutely everything else by that author. Kurt
Vonnegut Jr. was my first but the list has grown, and he's now departed, leaving
room for someone else. Skipping the more recently dead
like Philip K. Dick and Truman Capote, and the REALLY dead like Dickens and
Cervantes, my currently top twelve novelists would have to be Christopher Moore,
Robert J. Parker, Tom Robbins, James Lee Burke, E.L. Doctorow, Tom Wolfe, Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard,
Dan Brown, John Irving, Neal Stephenson, and Stephen King. I've read every word, and that doesn't count skimming.
(Anyone who's read Infinite Jest without skimming some parts is either
a liar or David Foster Wallace.) In any case, there's
nothing anyone can say to stop me from reading whatever any of them write
next. Gotta keep my perfect record.
Not that I read them all to be influenced. I've never written a sentence
anything like Stephen King, and one reason I read him is that I'm in awe of his
ability to do something I could never do.
If I were Stephen King I wouldn't know where to
start, but if I were Kurt Vonnegut, I'd write a book about Sam Hill, another war
veteran who came back a pacifist, but instead of writing Slaughterhouse
Five, he decided to completely rebuild a full-scale replica of Stonehenge
in the Columbia River Gorge between the states of Washington and Oregon, not as
an ancient relic but the way it might have originally looked, a
re-imagining of Stonehenge much as Slaughterhouse Five was a
re-imagining of the fire-bombing of Dresden.
One comes across Slaughterhouse Five in
colleges and bookstores across the world, but one only comes across Sam Hill's
Stonehenge if you're driving from Seattle to Los Angeles and you happen to take
a left at the Oregon border, unless you're not me. It's important to reiterate
the difference between finding out about Sam Hill's Stonehenge in a ridiculous
newsletter and accidentally stumbling across the actual item in 1991 while
driving home one day. I mean you're bopping along, marveling at the splendor of
the gorge, debating the merits of the coastal vs. inland routes, snapping away,
little knowing the shots would disappear in a mysterious fire years later, when
suddenly, wham, there's Stonehenge. You don't remember crossing the Atlantic but
maybe you did. Maybe you're just a figment of Rod Serling's imagination. The
ghosts of future children in the car start crying "Dad, can we stop?" and I
listen. Anybody who wouldn't stop the car to look at Stonehenge is the all time
champion on "How Disinterested Can You Be?"
 Turns out Sam Hill built Stonehenge in the middle
of his hometown of Maryhill only for Maryhill to burn down one day - leaving
nothing but his Stonehenge standing. He built it to remind us that "humanity is
still being sacrificed to the god of war," mistakenly presuming that Stonehenge
had anything whatsoever to do with sacrifice instead of predicting eclipses,
therefore reinforcing the rumor that anyone who would do such a thing as rebuild Stonehenge is out of their goddam
mind.
Let's say you're reminiscing about the present,
looking back on your current situation. That's a good time to find yourself
equally impressed by Kurt Vonnegut and Sam Hill, who built their own magnificent
tributes to the victims of war by introducing random shots of beauty into our
lives.
I once spoke to Kurt Vonnegut and it went
something like this...
 CHAPTER 38
Vonnegut’s
Complaint
Hello?
Yes?
This is Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Am I speaking to
the author of The Wrong Bus?
Yes, and can I say what an honor and
privilege it is to be speaking to you. You’re one of my heroes.
Can the horseshit, dickwad, I just want to
say that you absolutely do not have permission to use the Tralfamadorians from
Slaughterhouse Five in your novel.
What are you talking about? I haven’t used
any Tralfamadorians.
Yes you have. They appear in chapter
65.
But this is chapter 38. I haven’t even
written chapter 65 yet.
Tralfamadorians are outside the time/space
continuum, as you damn well know. They experience all time at once. They can see
from this chapter that they appear in your book in the last chapter, and they
told me all about it.
How was I supposed to know that? I’m still
writing chapter 38.
It doesn’t take a chronosynclastic
infindibulum to figure out that what you’re doing is plagiarism.
Come on. There is no difference between Time
and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness moves
along it.
So what?
Without the chronosynclastic infindibulum,
everything’s got to be in the right order.
And don’t use the chronosynclastic
infindibulum either. That’s from Sirens of Titan.
Hey, if it wasn’t for the chronosynclastic
infindibulum, you’d have no way of knowing now what comes up later in the
book.
Don’t get smart with me, wise ass. Just cut
my Tralfamadorians out of your last chapter.
How can I cut them out when I haven’t put
them in yet.
And you won’t either.
No Tralfamadorians in the last chapter?
If you know what’s good for you.
All right, I promise.
"I began writing because I found myself possessed.
I looked at what I wrote and I said 'How the hell did I do that?'"
- Kurt Vonnegut -
I still don't know how he did that but I'm going
to keep trying. I figure the best way to pay tribute to your favorite authors is
to carry on in their tradition. So it goes. Thanks to Kurt Vonnegut every writer
can safely ignore all constraints of time and space and convention as long as
they're smart and funny about it. We should all be plagiarists as long as
we're plagiarizing Kurt Vonnegut. The world doesn't have
enough kindness or humor, so the next time you're driving from L.A. to Seattle,
take a right at the end of Oregon.
I Feel So Much Safer Now
The US-appointed President of Iraq's Interim
Governing Council, Muhsin Abd al-Hamid, has reclaimed
Kuwait.
 Download of the
Week
Who'da thought everything Bob Dylan had done up to
this point was just preparation for becoming the best DJ ever? First he listened
to his record collection, then he wrote all those songs, and now his favorite
thing to do is play his record collection for you, along with cool intros by
Ellen Barkin and loads of stories and quotes from pals like Matt Groening and
Stephen Wright. Someone's posted every
Theme Time Radio Hour on Rapidshare. Here are links to the whole first
year. Each one's about an 80MB download. Playlists are here. There, now you've
got something to listen to for the next 52
hours.
Answers to Last Week's
Stupid Question
Those of you who knew it was an indoor ski slope wrote and said
so, complaining it was too easy. Those who didn't know, didn't write, which is
usually a good thing.
Another Stupid
Question
If not Kurt Vonnegut, who's style are
you plagiarizing?
Satan Doesn't Want You to Know
Hitler didn't keep the trains running on
time, he had Goebbels alter the timetables so it LOOKED like he kept the trains
running on time.
Don't Take My Word For
It
"Iraq was created by the victors of
World War I. Its Shia, Sunni and Kurdish peoples did not choose to be flung
together, and their antagonisms made the country a powder-keg. Saddam believed
that such a nation could be held together only by brutally effective repression.
Current events suggest that he may have had a point.
"Doubtless, Saddam's
security services killed many Iraqis. However, the 2003 invasion appears to have
resulted in at least 45,000 violent civilian deaths. Back in 2004, before things had reached their present
parlous state, a study published by The Lancet suggested that the risk of death
for a civilian in Iraq had already become 58 times higher than it
was under Saddam. Taking into account invasion-caused mortality from accidents,
heart attacks, disease and so on, it was estimated that Iraq had already
experienced at least 100,000 additional deaths
as early as September 2004.
"Saddam would have
had his work cut out to match these figures. So, why are the Iraqis better off
without him? The only answer available is that now they are
'free'...
"Saddam offered his
people a harsh deal. Yet, their lives were at risk only if they chose to
challenge his authority. Now, they die because of the sect to which they happen
to belong. Soon, their country may fall prey to a savage civil war. If that
happens, the Iranians will doubtless intervene, along, perhaps, with Turkey and
Israel. No one can predict where that might lead, but the outcome is unlikely to
be positive for peace, prosperity, justice or, indeed, human
rights.
"If Saddam were
still in power, he would have stopped this happening. Iraq's dissidents would
have paid a price, but the rest of us would be a lot better off."
- David Cox: Saddam: a tribute
-
"We are all mutants. But some of us are more
mutant than others."
- Armand Marie Leroi - "Call me quaint and
old-fashioned, but aren't reporters supposed to be watchdogs for the public
interest rather than lapdogs for the power establishment?
"Instead of digging into the juicy story of the White House hatchet job on seven U.S. attorneys, too many major media figures are clucking their tongues at those trying to investigate the scandal. A CNBC correspondent chastised Democrats for looking 'too political in exploiting this,' and Richard Stengel, Time magazine's managing editor, declared that the Democrats should back off their pursuit of truth 'because it is so bad for them.' "Excuse me aren't journalists
supposed to be hungry for truth, eager to uncover misconduct in high places, or
at least be mildly curious about who did what in the White House? Far from doing
their jobs, however, media figures are embarrassing themselves by rebuking
members of Congress for trying to do their constitutional duty."
- Jim Hightower: Media Companies: No Respect -
"You've been taken to the cleaners, and you don't
even know your pants are off."
- Melvyn Douglas as Bill Cole in Mr.
Blandings Builds His Dream House -
"A successful life is to go from one failure to
another without any loss of enthusiasm."
- Sir Winston Churchill -
"The Proof is In the Pricing. There are 42 gallons
in a barrel. It takes a rise in oil of $42 to cause a dollar increase in
gasoline. The Price of Oil has risen $10.50 in the last 6 months. This
corresponds to a 25 cent increase per gallon. Yet we see a $1.00 rise in the
price of gasoline. You see the Republican Party & Bush have allowed the Oil
Companies to Price Gouge the American People all along."
- Howard Scott Pearlman -
"A gallon of milk is probably about a $1.50, a
loaf of bread about a $1.25, $1.30."
- Rudi Giuliani
-
"Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own
shortcomings, they gradually begin to seem mild, harmless, rather engaging
little things, not at all like the staring defects in other people's
characters."
- Margaret Halsey -
"In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever
character composed, passion
never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason." - Alexander Hamilton & James Madison
-
"Anytime a bunch of holy people wanna kill each
other, I'm a happy guy!"
- George Carlin -
"Music is no longer just music
but a small subset of a corporation's properties. Property rights have become so
absurdly swollen that they now constitute a smokescreen hiding a corporate power
grab on a scale rivaling that of the great robber barons of the nineteenth
century. Instead of grabbing land or oil, today's corporate barons are seizing
control of culture. They are using the legal construct of property to extend the
reach of corporate power into parts of our lives that were previously beyond
their grasp...
"'Property rights' have bloated
to the point where they can dictate the content of freshman art projects. But
that is not all. Altogether more and more of what we do in our lives passes
through the Web. People invite friends to parties, view art, listen to music,
play games, have political discussions, date and fall in love, post their family
photo albums, share their dreams, and play out sexual fantasies - all on line.
Since corporate legal departments claim their copyright privileges extend to
anything on the Web, the result is a huge extension of corporate power into
private lives and social networks."
- Bob Ostertag: The
Professional Suicide of a Recording Musician - An
experienced musician explains why most musicians today would be much better off
sharing music via the Internet than signing standard industry recording
contracts -
"Perhaps the most powerful idea
to filter through from the universities to the streets was articulated by
Foucault, who adapted and popularised the Nietzschean idea that what passes for
truth is actually no more than power. There are no facts, only attempts to
impose your view on the world by fixing it as 'The Truth'. This idea is now so
mainstream that even a conservative like Donald Rumsfeld could complain about
those who lived in the 'reality-based community', arguing 'that's not the way
the world really works anymore ... when we act, we create our own
reality.'
"Most Anglophone philosophers
find this kind of hyper-skepticism absurd and pernicious. But although these
ideas were hatched by philosophers, they have gained wide currency in the
humanities and the social sciences, often in bastardized form.
"Some philosophers, such as
Bernard Williams and Simon Blackburn, have waded into the public debate in an
attempt to put the relativist genie back into the bottle. Books such as Why
Truth Matters, by my colleagues Jeremy Stangroom and Ophelia Benson, have
also tried to stem the tide. But this is not really a highbrow academic debate
about whether there is Truth with a capital T - it is about how abstract ideas
relate to the business of everyday life."
- Julian Baggini: This is what the clash of civilisations is really about.
Relativism has made liberal openness appear weak, empty and repugnant compared
with the clarity of dogma. -
"Small publishers
doing journalism have to think carefully about the risks they are willing to
take, especially since the legal definition of a journalist is subject to
debate. Of course, freelancers and small publishers who commit acts of
journalism have to understand that courts may not be willing, for example, to
extend state shield laws protections to them. It's also important to understand that federal
prosecutors have broad subpoena powers
when it comes to forcing the disclosure of information they deem important for a
criminal investigation.
"Nothing better
illustrates the risks small publishers take than the case of videoblogger
Josh
Wolf, who was released from federal prison
in early April after serving 8 months for refusing to turn over video outtakes
from a July 2005 demonstration to a grand jury. Wolf claimed that, as a
journalist, he was entitled to withhold the information under California's
shield law. However, the
court rejected his claim because Wolf was not employed by a news organization at
the time that he shot the video.
"Be
clear about your purpose. It's because of Wolf and other citizen-journalists
that Christine Tatum,
president of the Society of Professional Journalists, thinks that the definition of a journalist should be
expanded beyond those who are paid to report the news. 'We want to define
journalists as people who are gathering information with the purposes of
distributing it,' Tatum says. 'Rather than question for me being, "was that
person a journalist?" the question for me is, "was that person practicing
journalism?"'
"That view of
journalists was part of the reason SPJ donated $31,000 to Wolf's legal defense
and helped him obtain the services of top-notch legal counsel. But Tatum
acknowledges that the law has not embraced that definition, and neither do many
bloggers. Noting that many bloggers say they aren't journalists but want the
legal protections afforded to journalists, she said, 'I encourage people to
really take a long and hard look at what is it you are, really?'"
"Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens
who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation
of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to
consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom."
- John F. Kennedy -
"Fascism will come to this country and it will
come disguised as Americanism."
- Governor Huey Long -
"You don't appreciate a lot of stuff in school
until you get older. Little things like being spanked every day by a middle-aged
woman: Stuff you pay good money for in later life."
- Emo Philips -
"The enemy as well as innocent civilians must be
bombed into quivering terror."
- Ann Coulter - "Goddamn newspapers - they're a bunch of
sluts."
- Richard Nixon to Henry Kissinger
-
"On 1 March 07, I was scheduled
to fly on American Airlines to Newark, NJ, to attend an academic conference at
Princeton University, designed to focus on my latest scholarly book,
Constitutional Democracy, published by Johns Hopkins University Press this past
Thanksgiving.
"When I tried to use the
curb-side check in at the Sunport, I was denied a boarding pass because I was on
the Terrorist Watch list. I was instructed to go inside and talk to a clerk. At
this point, I should note that I am not only the McCormick Professor of
Jurisprudence (emeritus) but also a retired Marine colonel. I fought in the
Korean War as a young lieutenant, was wounded, and decorated for heroism. I
remained a professional soldier for more than five years and then accepted a
commission as a reserve office, serving for an additional 19 years.
"I presented my credentials
from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the
two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment:
'Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because
of that.' I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006,
given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of
George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. 'That'll do it,' the
man said."
- Professor Walter F. Murphy quoted in Mark
Graber's Another Enemy of the People? -
"The former commander of Iraq's
Republican Guard has accused the US of using non-conventional weapons in its war
against the Middle East country.
"Saifeddin Fulayh Hassan Taha
al-Rawi told Al Jazeera that US forces used neutron and phosphorus bombs during
their assault on Baghdad airport before the April 9 capture of the Iraqi
capital.
"'The enemy used neutron and
phosphorus weapons against Baghdad airport... there were bodies burnt to their
bones,' he said.
"'The bombs annihilated
soldiers but left the buildings and infrastructure at the airport intact,' he
added."
"Iraqis who once celebrated and even participated
in pulling down Saddam Hussein's statue four years ago when US tanks rolled into
Baghdad in a heart-breaking scene for many Arabs and Muslims are now lamenting
the good old days under the late president."
"You know how whenever there's
a major Bush administration scandal it always traces back to some incompetent
political hack appointment and you think to yourself, 'Where are they getting
these screw-ups from?' Well, now we know: from Pat Robertson. I wish I were
kidding, but I'm not. Take Monica Goodling, who before she resigned last week
because of the U.S. attorneys scandal,
was the third most powerful official in the Justice Department of the United
States. Thirty-three, and though she had never even worked as a prosecutor, she
was tasked with overseeing the job performance of all 95 U.S. attorneys. How do
you get to be such a top dog at 33? By acing Harvard, or winning scholarship
prizes? No, Goodling did her undergraduate work at Messiah College - home of the
'Fighting Christies,' who wait-listed me, the bastards - and then went on to
attend Pat Robertson's law school.
"I'm not kidding,
Pat Robertson, the man who said gay people at DisneyWorld would cause
'earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor,' has a law school. It's called
Regent. Regent University School of Law, and it shares a campus with Robertson's
Christian Broadcasting Network studios. It's the first time ever that a TV
network spun off a law school. And that's all America needs - more Christians
and more lawyers. You see, years ago Pat became concerned that our legal system
was coddling criminals, forgiving them instead of meting out that Old Testament
'eye for an eye' justice Jesus Christ never shuts up about. So Pat did what any
red-blooded, Hindu-hating, gay-baiting, glue-sniffing Christian would do: He
started his own law school. And what kid wouldn't want to attend? It's three
years and you only have to read one book. The school says its mission is to
create an army of evangelical lawyers, integrating the Bible and public policy,
and producing graduates that provide 'Christian leadership to change the world.'
Presumably from round back to flat.
"U.S. News and World Report,
which does the definitive ranking of colleges, lists Regent as a tier-four
school, which is the lowest score it gives. It's not a hard school to get into.
You have to renounce Satan and draw a pirate on a matchbook. This is for the
people who couldn't get into the University of Phoenix.
"But there's more! As there
inevitably is with the Bush administration. Turns out she's not the only one.
Since 2001, 150 graduates of Regent University have been hired by the Bush
administration. And people wonder why things are so screwed up. Hell, we
probably invaded Iraq because one of these clowns read the map wrong. Forget
religion for a second, we're talking about a top Justice Department official who
went to a college founded by a TV host. Would you send your daughter to Maury
Povich University? And if you did, would you expect her to get a job at the
White House? I'd be surprised if she got a job on the 'Maury' show. And then it
hit me: This is why Bush scandals never catch on with the public - they're all
evangelicals of course, and nobody is having sex.
"So there you have it: It turns
out that the Justice Department is entirely staffed with Jesus freaks from a
televangelist diploma mill in Virginia Beach. Most of them young women with very
little knowledge of the law, but a very strong sense of doing what they're told.
Like the Manson family, but with cleaner hair...
"And by the way, the lawyer
Monica Goodling just hired to keep her ass out of jail went to a real law
school."
- Bill Maher: Say it loud: I'm elite and proud! -
"Had Enough? Am I the only guy
in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our
outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless
bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate
gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much
less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and
nods their heads when the politicians say, 'Stay the course.' Stay the course?
You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you
a sound bite: Throw the bums out! You might think I'm getting senile, that I've
gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly
recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a
free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a
pack of lies.Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for
the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are
not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the
Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is
waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of
America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for.
"I've had enough. How about
you? I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not
outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have. My friends tell me to
calm down. They say, 'Lee, you're eighty-two years old. Leave the rage to the
young people.' I'd love to, as soon as I can pry them away from their iPods for
five seconds and get them to pay attention. I'm going to speak up because it's
my patriotic duty...
"So here's where we stand.
We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving.
We're running the biggest deficit in the history of the country. We're losing
the manufacturing edge to Asia, while our once-great companies are getting
slaughtered by health care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in
power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are
like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every which way. These are times
that cry out for leadership.
"But when you look around,
you've got to ask: 'Where have all the leaders gone?' Where are the curious,
creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction,
competence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think
you get the point.
"Name me a leader who has a
better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports
and throw away our shampoo? We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new
bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already
happened. Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina.
Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane,
or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial
hours after the storm. Everyone's hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it
doesn't happen again. Now, that's just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make
a plan. Figure out what you're going to do the next time...
"I have news for the gang in
Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain
silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced
with mediocrity. What is everybody so afraid of? That some bobblehead on Fox
News will call them a name? Give me a break."
- Lee Iacocca: Where Have All
the Leaders Gone? -
"I'd like to point out that
nobody has ever entered my house and said to themselves Gee, this place could
use some more junk in it. I'd also like to point out I just took a five minute
break between the last sentence and this one in order to go outside and look at
a rainbow, perfect, end to end, not a cloud in the sky except for the hills
to the west, remnants of rain, unobstructed view of nothing man-made for a
good 40 miles, insanely clear, a celebration of something, don't ask me what,
the garbage? If I had a camera I'd snap it, if I had watercolors I'd paint it,
and if I had a philharmonic orchestra in my basement I'd write them a symphony
about it, but all I've got are words at my disposal, and how can I ask you to
imagine a perfect rainbow without sounding like a dipshit? So forget the whole
thing. I have no link to give you proving this rainbow exists anywhere but my
head, so please delete everything after the first sentence of this paragraph, up
to and including the following period.
"Am I expected to do everything
around here? I found an empty box of cereal in the middle of the living room and
just left it there to see if anyone else would bother to pick it up. How
long do I give it to make a point? Weeks? Months? What do they think when they
see the box? Only two possibilities. 1) I see it and I don't care, or 2) Dad'll
get it.
"They don't understand that
every time there's something that needs to be done, I see it as something THEY
haven't done. Who didn't fill the ice cube trays? They didn't. It wasn't me who
didn't do it, it was them.
"Or even worse, maybe they
didn't notice something in plain sight. Is there something wrong with their
eyes? Apparently my life is a gameshow called "How Lazy Can You Be?"
"I'm so lazy I'd rather get up
and get another ashtray than empty the full one in front of me."
"Oh yeah? Well I'm so lazy
I'd rather walk half a mile into the desert
to pee than do it in the bathroom and have to go to all the trouble of flushing
the toilet."
"There's no way to get ahead in
life without noticing things, and don't think I haven't noticed. People are only
impressed by things you notice and never by things you didn't. People are even
LESS impressed by the things you didn't DO than the things you didn't notice.
Has anyone ever said to you Wow, it's so cool you didn't do anything? You'll
never move forward with proud declarations of what you haven't done or noticed.
Notice things! Do things! That's my motto."
- guess who -
"For the first time since the Great Depression, the U.S. personal savings rate has 'gone negative.' In 2005 and 2006, U.S. citizens spent more than they made. Economists disagree about just how ominous this is, but they generally agree on why it's happening. Americans are 'overspending.'... "If I said to you, 'You can
have $10,000 to spend now - or $9,500 to spend in 10 years,' which would you
choose? Probably the $10,000 now. And in doing so, you would be making the same
choice many Americans make when deciding whether to save or spend their
hard-earned cash."
- Henry Blodget: Spend
Every Dime! Why U.S. tax policy makes saving a sucker's game. -
"You can fool too many of the people too much of
the time."
- James Thurber -
"To hell with the advances in
computers. YOU are supposed to advance and become, not the computers. Find
out what's inside you. And don't kill anybody."
- Kurt Vonnegut in his last
campus lecture -
"It makes you realize what a helacious shithole
Indiana must be."
- The Daily Show's Aasif Mandvi, on Rep. Mike Pence comparing the Baghdad marketplace to summertime in Indiana - "I don't believe anybody. Even the most
knowledgeable person on any subject has only a small fraction of the big
picture. Whatever anyone says, you add it or subtract if from the big picture.
Multiplication and division are out. As soon as you start multiplying and
dividing the big picture by individual pieces that happen to fit together, you
end up with a sum that's far from a summation."
- Kilgore Trout -
"There's only one thing more powerful
than evil, and that's us."
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
-
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The Best of Disinfotainment Today - 2006 A Year of Journalism with the Crap Removed  Or The Best of Disinfotainment Today - 2005, you slowpoke. |
My website Emulsional Problems was chosen as the
 Cost of the War in Iraq (JavaScript
Error)
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Who am I?
and so is Issue #214.
Random
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Don't Let This Happen to You_( (~\ _ _ / ( \> > \ -/~/ / ~\ :; \ _ > /(~\/ || | | /\ ;\ |l _____ |; ( \/ > > _\\)\)\)/ ;;; `8o __-~ ~\ d| \ // ///(())(__/~;;\ "88p;. -. _\_;.oP (_._/ / (((__ __ \\ \ `>,% (\ (\./)8" ;:' i )))--`.'-- (( ;,8 \ ,;%%%: ./V^^^V' ;. ;. ((\ | /)) .,88 `: ..,,;;;;,-::::::'_::\ ||\ ;[8: ; )| ~-~ |(|(888; ..``'::::8888oooooo. :\`^^^/,,~--._ |88:: | |\ -===- /| \8;; ``:. oo.8888888888:`((( o.ooo8888Oo;:;:' | |_~-___-~_| `-\. ` `o`88888888b` )) 888b88888P""' ; ; ~~~~;~~ "`--_`. b`888888888;(.,"888b888" ..::;-' ; ; ~"-.... b`8888888:::::.`8888. .:;;;'' ; ; `:::. `:::OOO:::::::.`OO' ;;;'' : ; `. "``::::::'' .' ; `. \_ / ; ; +: ~~-- `:' -'; `: : .::/ ; ;;+_ :::. :..;;; ;;;;;;,;;;;;;;;,; Subscribe to Darenet |
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Iraq Body
Count
Contact George W. Bush - president@whitehouse.gov
Contact the Freemasons - president@whitehouse.gov
Contact Skull and Bones - president@whitehouse.gov
Contact the Carlyle Group - president@whitehouse.gov
Contact the Illuminati - president@whitehouse.gov
Contact
Satan - president@whitehouse.gov
Contact both houses of Congress -
president@whitehouse.gov
Contact the Supreme Court - president@whitehouse.gov
Contact Dick Cheney - vice.president@whitehouse.gov
Contact Halliburton - vice.president@whitehouse.gov
Contact Bechtel - vice.president@whitehouse.gov
Contact Saddam Hussein - tightywhities@whitehouse.gov
Contact Osama bin Laden - thetwins@whitehouse.gov
Contact Jeb Bush - jeb.bush@myflorida.com
Contact Fidel Castro - jeb.bush@myflorida.com
Contact Kim Jong Il - eng-info@kcna.co.jp
Contact Jacques Chirac - france-presse@un.int
Contact the new Pope - accreditamenti@pressva.va
Contact the old Pope - thirdlevel@hellfireanddamnation.com
Contact God - president@whitehouse.gov
Disacknowledgment is Better than
Any Other Acknowledgment
Any Other Acknowledgment
Disinfotainment Today owes a great debt to
Kurt Vonnegut which is why we're glad he's dead. Now he can't sue us, no matter
what the fair use laws say.
Thanks,
Thanks,
Kareem
Oliver DeBelli
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boldly going !=! / ../
where no website !=! / ../
has gone before *'!.!''''''''''''L !
('' .. ... --->=I(!-
'''=..... / !
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