Too bad I don't have a union to protect my privacy.

"The Police Department plans to equip its entire fleet with a new GPS-like tracking system that will give officers and dispatchers a global view of where cops are deployed at any given moment.

It should help route the closest officer to an emergency and be a safety net when an officer has no time to radio his position in a fast-paced scenario, police officials say.

...

One remaining obstacle could be cleared if police officers vote to accept a recent labor contract offered by the city. The Seattle Police Officers' Guild wanted guarantees that the AVL system wouldn't be used to spy on officers, so a policy was hammered out in the proposed contract.

In a separate Memorandum of Agreement, the two sides drafted a policy prohibiting AVL from being used to grade an officer's performance or monitor his or her conduct, unless it's part of a criminal misconduct investigation, said Sgt. Rich O'Neill, the guild president.

"It's a great officer-safety tool, especially if the officer gets out of the car and they can't raise him on the radio," O'Neill said. "But we had concerns that it could be abused.""

• It's raining when Emily Locke is hit by a car.
• Does Hurley's t-shirt symbolize tic-tac-toe (another game)?
• Did Keamy describe Smokey as a "white (or light) pillar of smoke"?
• Keamy seems frightened that Ben knows his name.
• Keamy's gun doesn't fire-more evidence that Michael can't die. Though he can be given a hurtful beating.
• Horace is in a loop.
• Why is Horace's nose bleeding?
• Richard Alpert is present in Locke's life from almost the beginning.
• Hurley's great question: "Why am I here?"
• Locke has stepsister and stepbrother.
• Boy Locke draws pictures of Smokey.
• Richard Alpert's test of Locke resembles how Buddhist Lamas (Tulkus) are confirmed:

  "...tests such as checking whether the child can recognize acquaintances or possessions from his previous life or answer questions only known to his former life-experience. According to the book Magic and Mystery in Tibet by Alexandra David-Neel, “A number of objects such as rosaries, ritualistic implements, books, tea-cups, etc., are placed together, and the child must pick out those which belonged to the late tulku, thus showing that he recognizes the things which were his in his previous life."

  Richard's Items:

  • "Mystery Tales" Comic , with "Hidden Land" cover story
  • Combat Knife
  • Grey Powder
  • Baseball Glove
  • Compass
  • "Book of Laws"
• What's the pattern of boy Locke's shirt?
• Ben is adamant that he didn't kill the Dharma Initiative. This is very strange considering what he's said in the past:

  "When it became clear that one side had to go, that one side had to be purged, I did what I had to do."

  "Not so long ago, Jack, I made a decision that took the lives of over forty people in a single day."

• Is Ben putting on a disillusioned act?
• Hurley found the cabin.
• Notice how Locke and Ben use "Hugo", not "Hurley".
• Was Locke surviving his crippling fall like Michael and his suicide attempts?
• Abaddon says a miracle happened to him.
• Abaddon sends Locke to Australia.
• Locke will owe Abaddon.
• Keamy has a dead man switch strapped to his bicep.
• And that's how the Doctor died.
• Why is Christian in the cabin and not Jacob?
• Locke: "I'm here because I was chosen."
• Claire is so dead.
• The scene with Hurley sharing a candy bar with Ben is classic.
• "Move The Island" indeed. But Keamy and friends are already on the Island.

Festo AirJelly
Via Beyond the Beyond (Bruce Sterling)

Lockeville-Locke's House

• Locke: "You deserve to know everything that I do, so...no more secrets".

  What a sad little scene. Once again the Losties are the most incurious and disconnected bunch one could imagine. Why are the Freighties after Ben? Why are they going to kill everyone else on the Island? What are we going to do to prepare for the coming attack? How did Ben get Michael to work for him on the freighter? What were the people on the helicopter supposed to do? Why did the Others abandon Ben? And those are just the questions that concern their immediate welfare. No questions for Ben about the hundreds of other mysteries. No more secrets my ass-Widmore, the guy behind the freighter, isn't even mentioned.

Freighter

• The ship's alarm sounds exactly like the Swan's.

Locke's House-Ben/Alex/Karl/Rousseau

• Did Ben hand-draw the Temple Dharma logo on his map or does he have a set of stamps?

  

• Comparison between Temple and Tempest maps
• Ben: "These people that are coming - they know who I am, Alex. They're here to capture me. They'll kill anybody that gets in their way. If they knew who you were, that you were my daughter, they would use you to get to me".

  If (and it's a big if) Ben's strategic prowess stems from knowledge of the future then he could have planted the idea for Alex to use her identity to save her life. But if he knows the future then he knows already that Alex tells the freighter snatch-team that she's his daughter-so he doesn't need to tell her. This is a hint of some of the problems associated with time-travel/precognition.

Freighter

• Sayid wants answers, bless his heart.

New York City

• Irony: The song playing in Michael's car is Mama Cass's "It's Getting Better"

  "Once I believed that when love came to me
  It would come with rockets, bells and poetry
  But with me and you it just started quietly and grew
  And believe it or not
  Now there's something groovy and good
  Bout whatever we got

  And it's getting better
  Growing stronger warm and wilder
  Getting better everyday, better everyday
  I don't feel all turned on and starry eyed
  I just feel a sweet contentment deep inside
  Holding you at night just seems kind of natural and right

  And it's not hard to see
  That it isn't half of what it's going to turn out to be
  Cause it's getting better
  Growing stronger, warm and wilder
  Getting better everyday, better everyday
  Ba da da da da da da da da da da da

  And I don't mind waitin', don't mind waitin'
  Cause no matter how long it takes
  The two of us know
  That it's getting better
  Growing stronger, warm and wilder
  Getting better everyday, better everyday'"

• According to the speedometer, the car hit the container going at least 60 mph. Assuming Michael never buckled his seat belt (and I never saw him), he should definitely be dead. His other suicide attempt is iffy, given that Tom could have messed with his gun, but I think the crash is good evidence that Michael cannot die.
• This episode's closeup of an eye opening is Michael in the hospital.
• Is Nurse Libby a guilty conscience, or Smokie , or like whatever Charlie is now, or something else?
• The Hospital room changes before and after Libby, suggesting either a dream or bad continuity.
• Libby is bringing blankets, just like when Michael shot her.
• If Michael had no ID, how was his note supposed to get to Walt?
• There's a Xmas tree in the hospital and a wreath at Mom's house=It's the holiday season, probably December 2004.
• There are red flowers outside Mom's house.
• Why did Michael tell Walt and not Mom?
• NYC Walt isn't as big as Tall Ghost Walt.
• The back of the watch says "Congratulations mutual cooperation business development Mr. Paik" in Korean
• There's a Xmas tree on the counter at the pawn shop.
• Why does Michael need a gun? New York City is full of nice tall buildings he can jump off of.
• Tom is pretty lucky Michael didn't press the issue, it's not easy defending yourself against someone who hates you and who wants to die.
• For the record, I think Michael can't die, but I remain skeptical of everything Tom says to him, including the part about the Island not letting him die. Michael's "invulnerability" could be due to some other factor that Ben is taking advantage of.

• "Also of interest: how Zeke said that Michael had more "work to do." This is what Taller Ghost Walt said to Locke at the Skeleton Pit, and it's the same sentence Zombie Dad said to Vincent in "So It Begins" (a Lost Missing Piece)--referring to Jack."

  Via S4Ep8 - I Was Happy to "Meet Kevin Johnson"

• Bob Dylan lived in the Hotel Earle, room 305, in the 1960's. There's a fictional Californian Hotel Earle in the Coen brother's film Barton Fink. Barton's next-door neighbor is a traveling-salesman serial killer.
• Michael's TV mentions Kurt Vonnegut as a game show answer.
• Who turns on the TV before they shoot themselves?
• Yup, Tom's gay.
• Tom's "evidence" is pretty weak. What kind of self-respecting evil billionaire leaves a paper trail of purchase orders with his name on them?
• Widmore says Ben staged the Indian ocean wreck, Tom says Widmore did it-my theory is that both of them are lying and neither of them is responsible for the plane that was found. I think that really is flight 815-we've seen duplicated bunnies, why not duplicated planes?
• "Kevin Johnson's" passport has the same number as Ben's "Dean Moriarty" one.

Freighter

• How did Ben get Michael a job on the freighter? Why would the freighter need a deckhand to come all the way from America?
• "Hi there, I'm the new lowly deckhand. Pay no attention to the crate I'm having loaded onto the ship, it's not like it's a bomb or anything. I mean, just because you're all going off to do bad deeds for an evil billionaire, there's no reason for you to have any semblance of security."
• Let's meet all the people who will be dead soon.
• Oranges:

  "Meet Kevin Johnson calls attention to another seminal modern tragedy that might serve as the model for the stories of Michael and other characters. In an allusion to The Godfather films, Miles calls our attention to an orange that he's eating, both visually and verbally. Oranges also serve as a famous recurring image in The Godfather film saga, always as a forewarning that death will not be far behind. Lost also paid homage to The Godfather as far back as the Pilot episode of the series, in which Terry O'Quinn mimicked Marlon Brando's famous orange peel smile. If The Godfather saga does serve as a major creative influence on Lost, then there is a strong reason to be concerned for its characters. The story of the Corleone family suggests not only that it might be impossible for an individual to atone for past crimes within one lifetime, but that future generations also will suffer for those sins."

  Via The Goodfather, The Badfather by Luhks

• Just throwing my cell phone into the harbor, nothing suspicious.
• I only see one helicopter. If Lapidus is needed to transport the science team, what did Naomi fall out of onto the Island?

  Where is Naomi's Copter?

• Naomi believes in going commando.
• There are only about 5-6 guys doing target practice.
• I think the combination to the bomb is 71776.
• There were whispers before Libby appeared in the engine room.
• Whatever Engine Room Libby was, why did she warn Michael not to set off the fake bomb? My theory: "Libby" didn't want Ben to get another hold over Michael.
• My first reaction to the "Not Yet" pop-up was "Oh my god, the Island is writing notes!".

• "Finally, on the subject of the King of Ka, I wanted to highlight a telling reference to the Shining. Recall that Mike is wasting time by bouncing a ball against the wall just like Jack Nicholson in the film version when Minkowski draws the comparison. I'm intrigued because the Shining strikes me as a perfect analogy for what's happening on Lost. Like the Overlook Hotel, the Island was once the site of some trauma that left a powerful psychic imprint upon it. Living and dead alike are driven by this imprint to repeat terrible events of the past.

  Of particular relevance, both the Shining and Lost feature psychic children whose powers are intensified by proximity to the Island/Hotel. This booster effect makes the children more sensitive to the imprint but simultaneously gives them the power to resist it. That's why Walt eventually soured on the Island in a way Locke never did, even during his crisis of faith after finding the Pearl. The former is little Danny Torrance, and the latter his father, Jack. Like the Overlook Hotel, the Island needs a new caretaker..."

  Via Meet Kevin Johnson...by Eye M Sick

• Michael's a lowly deckhand on a freighter on a secret mission for an evil billionaire, of course he can take a call from the mainland in private. It's not like he's a mole for an evil sociopath.
• Ben can radio the outside world from his secret room.
• Ben: "I will not kill innocent people."-Does Ben really believe this? How does he rationalize shooting Locke? Oh yea, Ben believed that Locke killed his father to join the Others.
• The question to ask is; Why doesn't Ben really want the freighter blown up?

  Possibilities:

  • Ben is prohibited from or punished for killing innocent people who are off the Island. "God doesn't know how long we've been here, John. He can't see this island any better than the rest of the world can. ".
  • For some reason he can't kill innocent people in the context of his conflict with Widmore.
  • Blowing up the freighter screws up the future.

• "In Ben's brief appearance in Michael's flashback, he makes his strongest plea yet that he is The Good Guy. He goes to great lengths to convince Michael that he is not a monster like Charles Widmore: "When I'm at war, I'll do what I need to do to win, but I will not kill innocent people." While Michael was convinced by the little farce that Ben played with him, Ben's track record indicates otherwise. It is difficult to put an exact number on the innocent people that Ben killed or tried to kill to fulfill his own desires. However, Ben is such a fan of listmaking that he probably has these names checked off somewhere: Roger Linus, Horace Goodspeed, another forty members of Dharma Initiative, the real Henry Gale, Goodwin, Charlie, Bonnie, Greta, any pregnant woman who wanted to leave the island, all of his own people who died on kidnapping missions, etc. You can add in his direct attempts to kill Ana-Lucia, Locke, and Charlotte, as well as the countless other times when he ordered other people to use lethal force. If you agree with my interpretation of this episode, then Karl and Danielle will be just the latest names in this ongoing series of victims.

  Perhaps even longer than his list of names is his list of excuses. He somehow manages to keep persuading both characters and audience members that everything he does is justified. Ben has now convinced a new group of people that their survival depends upon their efforts to protect him. Make no mistake, though, Ben is a monster, and there is no other character more dangerous than him. He pursues his desires without regard for human life, and slaughters the innocent without conscience."

  Via The Goodfather, The Badfather by Luhks

• Ben's new orders to Michael don't make sense. If the freighter's radios and engines are disabled, those innocent people either take a smaller boat and try to get to the Island or they starve to death.
• Michael doesn't cover any of the time since Sayid and Desmond got on board.
• I'll say one thing for Michael, he didn't lie to Sayid and Desmond.
• Want to bet the Captain knew all along about Michael?

  "Watch Gault's reaction as they present Michael to him - he's not even the least bit surprised. In fact, he looks almost disappointed. I think he and Widmore knew exactly who Michael was from the very beginning, and were planning on somehow using that knowledge to find Ben. Sayid and Desmond just blew it for him. He intentionally called Johnson to "clean up this mess" to see if Michael's ex-friends would approach him. Check out how he watches them over his shoulder on the way back to his quarters. I actually think Gault expected them to secretly buddy up together... he had no way of knowing that Michael committed double-homicide and was totally hated. The captain was completely caught off guard by Sayid turning him in."

  Via Things I Noticed - "Meet Kevin Johnson" by Vozzek69

Island

• Wait a minute, what are the odds that the snatch-team from the freighter comes across the only three people wandering about the Island?

  On the other hand, the freighter heavies could have already been on the Island and scouting Lockeville and saw Alex/Karl/Rousseau leave.

• Karl's "I have a bad feeling about this" is a 6-way Star Wars reference.

---

Thoughts

• Does it seem like the whole freighter thing seems a little low-rent for a guy like Widmore? If I were him I would have at least 2 ships; one near, one far. And no crappy rustbuckets.
• The same thing that prevents Michael from dying could have intervened in Jack's attempted bridge jump.
• There are some serious issues with Michael's timeline. I'll just quote directly from BuddyTV:

  Also, we wondered, when did Tom find time to get off the island during that month before he died? To answer these questions, here is a simple timeline using the days on the island to try and pinpoint when the flashbacks took place.

  Day 67 (Saturday, November 27, 2004):
  -Michael and Walt are released in the boat get off the island.

  Day 67-Day 74:
  -Tom and the rest of the Others are at the Hydra Station, interrogating Jack, Kate and Sawyer. Tom is present throughout, including during Ben's surgery.

  Day 80-Day 81:
  -Locke, Kate, Rousseau and Sayid see Jack playing football with Tom.
  -The Others (Tom included) head off to the Ruins.

  Day 87:
  -Naomi lands on the island.

  This timeline results in some serious issues fans should have with time. When Ben calls Michael on the radio, he is in his home in the barracks, which means that scene takes place on Day 81 at the latest. In other words, two weeks after leaving the island, Michael is on the freighter coming back.

  Also, this means that Tom's visit to New York City must have taken place between the time at Hydra and the time he's seen playing football with Jack. This covers roughly a one week span that takes place one week after Michael leaves. This makes almost no sense.

  Michael left in the boat, he had to find help, come ashore, somehow explain himself, get on a plane back to New York City, drop off Walt to live with his grandma, find an apartment, get into a car accident, recover, and only then did he meet Tom. Either the writers are playing fast and loose with the concept of time, or Michael had the busiest week in the history of the world.

  I've gone over Lostpedia's Timeline and I can't argue with this analysis. Though Ben did send Michael on a different bearing than Faraday's "safe" heading-maybe Ben intentionally sent Michael and Walt back in time. Against this is Michael's mom not seeing him for 2 months.

• I'm completely in love with Jack's vintage Bronco, but does this seem like the car a hot-shit spinal surgeon drives? Yet it's so unique I wonder if there's a reason behind it.

  

---

Recaps

• Lost: Michael's Promotion , by J. Wood

Fishbiscuit and The Ack Attack! are the yin and yang of Lost photo-recaps. Both are brilliant

• Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, by Fishbiscuit
• Lost Recap 4x08: Meet Kevin Johnson, by The Ack Attack!
• Things I Noticed - "Meet Kevin Johnson" by Vozzek69 , by Vozzek69
• The Goodfather, The Badfather , by Luhks
• S4Ep8 - I Was Happy to "Meet Kevin Johnson", by Long Live Locke
• Meet Kevin Johnson..., by Eye M Sick
• Lost: Dad Man Walking, by Adam B. Vary @ Entertainment Weekly
• Lost Episode 4.08 - "Meet Kevin Johnson" Easter Eggs and Screencaps, by Get Lost Podcast
• Lost Episode 4.08 "Meet Kevin Johnson" - Screencap Recap, by Get Lost Podcast
• Initial Thoughts: Meet Kevin Johnson, by Gitsie Girl
• 4 X 08: Meet Kevin Johnson, by Gitsie Girl
• Lost Dueling Analyses: Meet Kevin Johnson, by Celebritology
• Lost: Michael goes to a pwn shop., by Tubular

"False identifications based on a terrorist no-fly list have for years prevented some federal air marshals from boarding flights they are assigned to protect, according to officials with the agency, which is finally taking steps to address the problem.

Federal Air Marshals (FAMs) familiar with the situation say the mix-ups, in which marshals are mistaken for terrorism suspects who share the same names, have gone on for years — just as they have for thousands of members of the traveling public.

One air marshal said it has been "a major problem, where guys are denied boarding by the airline."

"In some cases, planes have departed without any coverage because the airline employees were adamant they would not fly," said the air marshal, who asked not to be named because the job requires anonymity. "I've seen guys actually being denied boarding."

A second air marshal said one agent "has been getting harassed for six years because his exact name is on the no-fly list.""

"Tetrodotoxin can cause a pleasing numbing sensation when eaten in tiny amounts, but if you ingest too much of the substance, nothing pleasant at all happens. The symptoms of tetrodotoxin poisoning include dizziness, exhaustion, and nausea. Eventually your muscles begin to freeze--first your lips and tongue, then the tips of your fingers, then your hands, then your arms and legs, and finally your heart and lungs. Victims typically remain conscious, but are eventually paralyzed and can't move or speak. (In parts of Japan, legend has it, the bodies of fugu-overdose victims were once laid beside their open caskets for several days to ensure that they were not being buried alive.) The amount of tetrodotoxin required to kill a man can fit on the head of a pin. Tetrodotoxin poisoning has no known cure.

Blowfish bones have been excavated in shell mounds in Japan going back more than 2,000 years, and the Japanese remain by far the world's largest consumers of the fish, eating an estimated 10,000 tons of it each year. The country's ravenous appetite for fugu is, in part, a simple function of taste. Connoisseurs say that fugu, an extremely lean fish, has a pure, almost pristine freshness. "Cleanliness," says chef Masa. "That's the special fugu umami." (Umami translates literally as a savory Japanese flavor, but the term connotes a kind of mystical deliciousness.) But much of fugu's allure, of course, comes from its air of danger. As the owner of a fugu museum in Osaka once put it, "Human beings are funny. They want to eat what is forbidden." Japanese poets have penned tragic verses referencing fugu ('I cannot see her tonight / I have to give her up / So I will eat fugu,' goes one work by the eighteenth-century haikuist Yosa Buson), and the dish was once so popular that during the Tokugawa and Meiji periods (1603-1912), Japanese authorities banned people from eating it. In modern Japan, it's still illegal to serve fugu to the emperor. "

I did have to futz with Thunderbird to get it to open links in Firefox. TBird thought Firefox was called "mozilla-firefox". And I'm beginning to think that they shouldn't have gone for Firefox 3 beta-half my extensions don't work and it's like my thumbs have been cut off.

P.S. Arrrggh!! FireFTP doesn't work! If I can't use FireFTP to update the blog I'll have to fall back to using the command line. I've been using FireFTP for years and I've totally forgotten what to do.

P.P.S. Scrounged the newest beta of FireFTP. It works, so here's to untested software.

"Since 2004, the Pentagon has spent roughly $16 billion annually to maintain and modernize the military's business systems, but most are as unreliable as ever-even as the surge in defense spending is creating more room for error. The basic defense budget for 2007 was $439.3 billion, up 48 percent from 2001, excluding the vast additional sums appropriated for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to federal regulators and current and former Pentagon officials, the accounting process is so obsolete and error prone that it's virtually impossible to tell where much of this money ends up. While the department's brass has made a few patchwork improvements, billions are still unaccounted for. The problem is so deeply rooted that, 18 years after Congress required major federal agencies to be audited, the Pentagon still can't be.

...

"In the Defense Department, what you have now are material weaknesses that are in every single area, in every part of the department, so deep and so wide you do not really have any way of figuring out where money is being spent," says Linda Bilmes, a federal budget expert at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

Every year, the Pentagon tries to justify its budget request to Congress by submitting three years of financial data: "actual" performance for the past fiscal year plus projections for the current year and the next. But because of the lack of reliable accounting, these totals are largely fictional. That, in turn, raises major questions about whether the government will be able to meet skyrocketing commitments for future spending on ships, planes, and high-tech ground weapons, especially given the expected growth in spending on Social Security and Medicare, and the impact of tax cuts.

According to David Walker, who recently left his post as head of the Government Accountability Office, the failure of the Pentagon's outdated and incompatible systems to keep tabs on expenditures-even as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan eat up an ever-bigger chunk of the federal budget-puts several Defense Department agencies high on the G.A.O.'s list of federal programs that are mismanaged and prone to fraud, waste, and abuse."

• YouTube: Customize your player
• Featured Linux Download: Build desktop wikis and outlines with Zim
• INFEST WISELY | watch the trailer
• Don't Go There: Top 20 Taboo Topics for Presidential Candidates - 10 Zen Monkeys
• Bad Signage
• Pratchett's Discworld: a reading-order guide
• Welcome to Street Tech
• Liquid Rescale GIMP plugin: Installation Instructions
• The Year's 10 Craziest Ways to Hack the Earth
• War on Terror Over in the UK
• Tom Waits on his cherished albums of all time | OMM | The Observer
• A Sea Anemone Whose Genes Could Turn It Human [Genomic Speculation]
• Lost Recap: ALL of Season 1!
• Bandai Ultra Kaiju - a photoset on Flickr
• San Fernando Valley Illegal Soap Box Federation
• YouTube - My Dog Talks About Mukasey and Torture
• US CODE: Title 18,CHAPTER 113C---TORTURE
• White House Defends Interrogation Method - New York Times
• Howlin' Wolf on the YouTube and related links
• music mashup charts - Led Zeppelin vs. Beastie Boys Black Sabotage
• The Great Gall of China
• Phun - 2D physics sandbox
• Found: I Can't Read!
• budweiser clamato - Google Search
• Slip of the Tongue
• LOL theorists
• MonkeyFilter | Stealin yr awra

"...David Byrne's booking agent at William Morris Agency, Mark Geiger, has been soliciting offers from a number of different promoters around the United States for Byrne/Eno live shows, promising the set list will consist of at least 40% Eno-era Talking Heads material. No word yet on if he's had any takers. Most of the tour is already booked."

Russian rocket-jockeys have many preflight superstitions:

They sign the Visitors' book in Yuri Gagarin's office.

Technicians put coins on the tracks that carry the rockets to the pad.

They get a haircut 2 days before launch.

The night before launch, a viewing of the 1969 movie "White Sun Of The Desert" is compulsory.

They sign their room door at the Cosmonaut Hotel.

"A Green-Grassed Lawn", by the band Zemlyane is played as the crew leaves the hotel.

On the way to the cosmodrome, the crew stop to relieve themselves on the left rear tire of the bus, just like Yuri Gargarin

A small toy is hung from a string in the capsule to indicate weightlessness.

This guy is a monster:

"Top Bush aides, including Vice President Cheney, micromanaged the torture of terrorist suspects from the White House basement, according to an ABC News report aired last night."

"Oh sure, it's easy to look back now with our twenty-twenty hindsight and our armchair quarterbacking and whine and moan about how it all went wrong. But what about the case for blowing up the moon at the time? For literally dozens of years the moon had menaced Western Civilization with its eclipses and its werewolf hordes and its sinister seduction of our seas, all the while dangling its massive stony bulk above us with nothing but universal gravitation standing between the free world and a cold and moony end! Oh, the usual crowd of peaceniks and anti-kill killjoys would have had America stand idly by and do nothing, leaving frightened children and Brookings scholars to tremble under their beds at night while our nation's nocturnal nemesis threatened once again to plunge from the heavens and squish us all, but 9/11 taught us that we can't wait for danger to become dangerous before we pre-re-endanger it back! And by defeating the moon America would ensure not only its own security, but the destruction of al Qaeda's deadly space laser, the liberation of the moon men from the terrible tyranny of the Crater King, and the second coming of Astro-Jesus!

Of course by now everybody thinks they're an expert on every little accident that's happened in the moon war. Oh, we didn't send enough troops, oh, we didn't plan for the aftermath, oh, the explosions launched millions of tons of radioactive moon rock into the atmosphere and killed hundreds of thousands of people. Well, boo hoo hoo! Nobody said this war was gonna be perfect. It's true, if Giblets had to blow up the moon all over again he would have made some changes, like firing Donald Rumsfeld and putting more boots on the ground and getting more international support. But would he oppose the moon war altogether? Well that's the kinda crazy talk we were only hearing from namby-pamby pot-smoking puppet-wielding moon hippies like Al Gore and Zbigniew Brzezinski and their Stalinist fellow travelers at International ANSWER! And what was their solution to the rapidly growing moon crisis? Nothing but peace songs and patchouli smell and nothing!"

The 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time

#41. "Chicken Lady at the Strip Show," Kids in the Hall, 1991

Via Boing Boing

Black-clad long-haired teens ripping through Maggot Brain in a big-box chain store:

Cue the red codpiece and Levar Burton rocking the trenchcoat....

STNG totally should have had a Cameo cameo.

"Listen. And understand. That terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. "

I'm in awe of this video.

""Screw this dump!" says Giblets. "This universe is old and fat and smells like smelling and Giblets is busting out!"
"Should we go over the wall or take the tunnel?" says me. I been diggin a tunnel.
"Nuts to the tunnel!" says Giblets. "What we do is we make like we're sick. Then when God comes in to check on us we punch im in the liver an run out the door!"
"They'll be on the lookout so we're gonna need disguises if we wanna make it the resta the way," says me. "If we bop Europe an Australia on the head we can sneak out in their continent costumes!"
"Then it's only three hundred eighty thousand miles to the moon. We can swim for it!" says Giblets. "Giblets's crater friends can smuggle us to the border from there."
"We'll haveta travel undercover if we wanna stay aheada the law," says me. "By the time we reach the checkpoint I'll be Henri DuMarche, international financier, socialite and diamond thief, an you can be NGC 5024, a mild-mannered globular cluster.""

"The most outlandish of these devices was the Rocket Drag Axle, which connected mechanically to a car's differential and, when ignited, surpassed the engine's motive force by upwards of a thousand horsepower and launched the vehicle forward at a truly mind-numbing rate of acceleration. The infamous Black Widow Volkswagen Beetle, a basically stock Bug fitted with a Turbonique Rocket Drag Axle, instantly became a drag racing legend by leaving Tommy Ivo's four-engine Showboat dragster in its dust with a 9.36 elapsed time at 168 mph on Sept.19, 1966, at Tampa Dragway.

Built by tobacco heir Zachary Reynolds of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco fame, the "Tobacco King" 1964 Ford Galaxie was as wild an example of a Rocket Drag Axle-equipped car as one could ask for, and certainly reflected Reynolds' daredevil personality. Playboy, pilot, Ham Radio enthusiast and all-around enfant terrible, Reynolds specifically wanted a car that would terrorize everyone with its appearance alone..."

"Never do I want to hear again from my conservative friends about how brilliant capitalists are, how much they deserve their seven-figure salaries and how government should keep its hands off the private economy.

The Wall Street titans have turned into a bunch of welfare clients. They are desperate to be bailed out by government from their own incompetence, and from the deregulatory regime for which they lobbied so hard. They have lost "confidence" in each other, you see, because none of these oh-so-wise captains of the universe have any idea what kinds of devalued securities sit in one another's portfolios.

So they have stopped investing. The biggest, most respected investment firms threaten to come crashing down. You can't have that. It's just fine to make it harder for the average Joe to file for bankruptcy, as did that wretched bankruptcy bill passed by Congress in 2005 at the request of the credit card industry. But the big guys are "too big to fail," because they could bring us all down with them.

Enter the federal government, the institution to which the wealthy are not supposed to pay capital gains or inheritance taxes. Good God, you don't expect these people to trade in their BMWs for Saturns, do you? "