Pity the Lawyers

Don't tell me that this is not some sort of crisis. Thousands of people are graduating every year with $100,000 or more in debt, and they are lucky to land jobs that make $50,000 a year and require a 60-70 hour per week commitment.

It all makes the other American dream look a lot better. (The other American dream is getting hit in the knee with a hammer and then faking disability for 30 years or getting paid by four different companies to spend all day getting drunk in a tunnel that was supposed to be finished 19 years ago.)

The Terror of Tinytown

I wanted to say something about likely nominees for Public Printer of the U.S. (really), but I suddenly felt compelled to see if this crazy video my uncle gave me once is on YouTube. It is. (Beware, it's really creepy.)



I don't think he really owned the midgets, I think they just performed under the name "Jed Beull's Midgets," but I might be wrong.

Transformers 2

Every year a couple of friends and I eat pot cookies and go see a summer blockbuster.  Our most recent viewing was Transformers 2 in IMAX.  

I thought that this movie was, in it's own way, amazing.  Because what else can you watch that is simultaneously:

a car commercial
an Army recruiting video
a Shakespearian drama
a Highlander-style sci-fi Scottish clan drama
a Ran-style Japanese clan drama
an alien movie
a movie about futuristic robots
a toy commercial

a bunch of crappy nostalgia for people in their 30's and 40's who will never ever grow up

a series of absurdly enormous explosions that almost succeed in giving Michael Bay an erection
a dragon movie

an allegory for U.S. involvement in the Middle East (I thought this was even more true of the first Transformers--because what else am I supposed to think is going on in a story where the U.S. military is thrown into an ancient battle over control of a powerful, mystical cube and I'm stoned?) 
and racist in a what-the-hell-were-they-thinking? Star Wars Episode 1 kind of way?  

Also, Megan Fox is pretty in a way that borders on pornographic even when she is mostly clothed.  I hope that the people who choose female leads for movies like this will now get off the treadmill of finding these girls using a combination of Mickey Mouse Club yearbooks, nepotism, the casting couch, and actual acting ability, and will start to make these decisions based only on looks.  And I no longer hate Shia Labeouf for not being Harrison Ford.  I've almost learned to live with him as a sort of Michael J. Foxish awkward kid who may someday stop looking like he's twelve and learn how to act. 

Despite all that, there apparently are people who enjoyed Transformers 2 on even more levels than I did. That's right, it was apparently also rife with Illuminati symbolism about events to come!!!! Haven't you noticed the all-seeing eye of Megatron on the back of the Sacajawea dollar?  (That website is actually kind of entertaining, because it's obvious that in about a year the guy who runs it is going to tell all his readers, "Fuck you idiots, I was joking. 'Fred Flinstone Was a Mason' didn't tip you off?")

Victor Claver and Mustard Gas

We need more dramatic music in our lives.

The Blazers first round draft pick:


And I'm not sure what to say about this.

Morbidity Pyramid Scheme

Just think of how many we can kill at the next funeral! If we can kill 45-50 at a funeral for just a few people, then we can be killing thousands at a time within a week at the funerals for the people who were killed at the funerals of the people who were killed at that funeral today, which was for people we killed when they were at someone's house or something. Everyone will definitely hate the Taliban after we do that.

Be Lazy in the Name of Revolution

Based on this, maybe many of our government employees have actually been protesting something for decades?

Yes, this joke completely writes itself. It's too bad that Leno's not around to repeat it 1-2 thousand times this week.

Al Qaeda Death Metal

Adam Gadahn is just kind of a fascinating character.

Courteous and Intelligent

This was left on my windshield a few weeks ago at a trailhead in the Catskills. What's really weird about this note, other than the almost absurd formality and politeness this person used to fully convey his anger, is what is on the reverse side.

It appears to be a scrap of a short story . . . about someone who finds a scrap of paper in a parking lot that has a plan to bomb a public structure written on it in purple ink. (You can't see it, but the note about my parking was written in purple ink.)

This was left on my car on the same day that "terrorists" were arrested in Newburgh, NY for plotting to attack part of the airport there. Newburgh is really close to where we were.

So, a reminder to everyone: When you're leaving a note on someone's windshield to complain about their behavior as a motorist, don't use the creepiest scrap of paper possible. He might as well have written it on an instruction pamphlet about how to register as a sex offender.

Iran and Bush

Needless to say, I've spent most of the week glued to news of the protests in Iran, including exactly what I expected to be reading one week ago . . . RSS feeds from Tehrani Twitterers.

By the way, did anyone else notice that before June, Persiankiwi's tweets were mostly about how knockoff designer sunglasses are so tacky and noticeable? (I'm sorry. I kid because I love.)

I only have one newish thought to add to all of this, and it's super-cynical. But you can tell people that you heard it here firstish.

You know how Bush and Cheney always answer their critics by saying that they'll be judged by history (and sometimes then adding the aside that, why even care about history because we'll all be dead then?), as though history will eventually ignore all sorts of idiocies?

Well, if this thing in Iran works out absolutely wonderfully, I guarantee that there will be a campaign to give Bush credit for it. (Yes, even though there never would have been an Ahmadinejad without W.) A successful democratic revolt in Iran is exactly the sort of subsequent historical event they were hoping would come along so that they could erroneously take credit for it and use it to help whitewash their actual record.

Long Beach

This was taken Monday evening in Long Beach.

Coucil of Experts

So is this where things get really, beyond electoral college, confusing?

Iran

Sad times. Good updates on the Times blog.

Palau

Palau may be taking the Uighurs.

I've been to Palau. It's not an island so much as an archipelago. Some of the freshwater mangrove areas get so intermingled with the sea that they have salt water crocodiles and freshwater sharks. Anthropologists use Palauan tribes as a reference point for the limits of how out-of-the-norm gender roles can become in tribal societies, or at least they did when I was in high school. I don't know if that has anything to do with the giant clams that live there.



I have a friend who knows the son of a Palauan chief. He told me that this guy once beat the crap out of someone there with a baseball bat and avoided prosecution by successfully claiming sovereign immunity. Everyone in Palau chews a shitload of betelnuts. At one point the U.S. decided that it was going to regulate this because betelnuts are considered a narcotic in the U.S. and Palau was then a U.S. trusteeship (quasi-colony). Palau was having none of that, but I don't know if this has anything to do with why it's no longer a trusteeship.

However, the thing that made me happiest about Palau was finding an Ed Grimley lunchbox for sale.

Albany

This shit is becoming extra insane.

Dean Skelos, NY State Senate Republican leader, represents my state senate district and it seems like he may have had some role in, well, what the fuck did happen? Did Republicans arrange to pay legal fees for a couple of Democratic senators who were about to be kicked out of the senate, carted off to jail, etc. in exchange for these guys switching parties?

Somehow I think this would have been better if Skelos had lost to his upstart challenger in November, Prof. Roy Simon, who is an expert in legal ethics. It's too bad that Roy did not seem to be a great campaigner.

I've only lived in this state for a few years, and I already think that Albany should be bombed.

Skanky Traitors

I saw this today while I was looking for something else. It's a public comment on regulations.gov about an interim federal regulation on "Reorganization of Regulations on Control of Employment of Aliens." If more people like this genius figure out that it's just as easy to influence federal regulations as it is to be completely insane in blog comments, we might have to rethink this whole transparent democracy thing.

Here's the full text of the comment by "American Citizen":

nobody i know wants to have any more aliens coming to america to take jobs from americwn workers. we want jobs for americasns. we want all visas revoked with aliens sent home to their own countries for jobs and medical care. we want all illegal immigrants deported. NONE OF THEM SHOULD BE HOLDING JOBS IN AMERICA. IT IS TIME TO FOCUS ON JOBS FOR AMERICAN CITIZENS. THE SKANKY TRAITORS IN WASHINGTON CORRUPT GOVERNMENT WANT TO LET AMERICAN WORKERS GO DOWN THE HOLE. THEY HAVE ALLOWED CORPORATE BIGWIGS TO TAKE ALL MILLIONS FOR THEIR OWN WALLETS AND MAKE SO MANY AMERICANS INTO PAUPERS. IT IS TIME FOR AMERICAN S TO TAKE BACK THEIR GOVERNMENT IN CORRUPT WASHINGTON DC FROM THE SKANKY TRAITORS WHO OPERATE THERE PRESENTLY TAKING CARE OF EVERYBODY ELSE ON EARTH FIRST. NO LEGISLATION SHOULD BE PASSED T HAT DOES NOT MAKE AMERICANS GET AMERICAN JOBS. AND THE ALIENS ALL GO HOME TO THEIR OWN COUNTRIES.

Kentucky Nachos

There is absolutely no rhyme or reason to this one.

Yes, that Lockerbie

Circuit Sends Dispute Over Lockerbie Fees Back to Lower Court

It's nice to know that our judicial system moves quickly.

In law school I had a professor whose academic career was mostly based on his having studied the Lockerbie cases extensively. Now he's nearing retirement but these cases will keep going forever.

Free Executions

This is not a good idea.

Reality?

Tonight listening to this woman almost have her boyfriend, children, and car taken away by the state because she has no money while she's prepping for surgery (her story should be about ten min into the audio file linked on this page) was a hell of a lot more suspenseful than seeing if Blagovich's wife would get voted off Celebrity Death Island, or any other thing on any reality show, for that matter.

Although the real reality of watching people try to struggle through life is much more dramatic than watching stuff like supermodel wannabes bitching at each other, people probably wouldn't want to watch much of it because it's too real. Maybe instead of calling reality shows "reality shows," we should just call most of them game shows, because that's what they are.

Or have they turned existence itself into a game?

Balochistan/Baluchistan Coverage

After seeing the story about the first of the recent terrorist attacks in Iran (see this post from Saturday), I spent, oh, 10-15 hours over the last week reading articles related to the Iran-Pakistan-Afghanistan border situation (obviously this is not a great way to spend your time). This ended, as this kind of inquiry usually does, with me throwing up my hands and wishing that oil did not exist.

It's endlessly complicated. The Zahedan attacks were done by Jundallah, a Sunni religious and separatist group in Iranian Balochistan that the U.S. supported as recently as 2007 and probably still supports even though they are now supposedly allied with Al Qaeda. (On some level, you have to appreciate our blatant refusal to ever learn anything.) Iran has a seriously contested presidential election in about a week. They are an observer in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which is a Chinese-Russian NATO, and they desperately want to be made a full member at that organization's meeting which is a few days after the election. (This won't happen just in case there really is an Israeli or American bombing.) Iran and Pakistan just inked a deal for an oil and gas pipeline that will really benefit China and Houston apparently hates this. It just gets more and more complicated from there. Besides the U.S. Iran Pakistan Afghanistan and China, Saudi Arabia India Israel and Russia also each have a stake in this mess. And that's not even to mention other Central Asian countries that would benefit from the oil and gas pipelines.

Anyway, there's a lot of good coverage in Asia Times Online, if you discount their assumptions that the U.S. is trying to destabilize Pakistan so that we can send tens or hundreds of thousands of troops we don't have into Pakistan to support Houston's favored oil and gas pipeline (which can probably never exist regardless) and prevent China from securing a Pakistani seaport, because that is, I guess, supposed to be more important to us than giving Al Qaeda a region full of black market nukes where they can operate freely. (But know that the idea that we are trying to destabilize Pakistan to do this is apparently a very popular and growing meme in much of the world.) This article in particular gives a good explanation. (But note that it's written by a former Indian diplomat and Pakistanis accuse India of supporting terror attacks going in the other direction--from Iran and Afghanistan into Pakistan, although these accusations seem to be about 25% true and about 75% paranoia.)

What the articles don't get into as much is the drug trade/narco-terror element.

Also, I can't resist mentioning that Zahedan apparently figures pretty heavily in Zoroastrian prophecy.

That's all.

Treachery

From now on I hunt raccoons with brandy, kick them out of the house at a young age, and I am going to stop lending them money.

Glenn Beck Comedy Tour

I kind of thought I was hallucinating when I saw an ad for this before Terminator (the new Terminator is terrible, by the way). Alas, it is real.

I don't know what to say--it's just too insane.

Feral Bacon Madness

Last weekend I tried some of this wild boar bacon. It was amazing. And the friends who tried it with me would agree, there is something about the taste of boar that awakens a relatively unused and primitive pleasure center in the human brain. (If you are a neuroscientist, contact me so that we can write the best grant ever.)

This boar is apparently raised on a ranch in Saskatchewan, where they root around eating thistles and such.

(Here is some related video of Obama's visit to Saudi Arabia.)

Gog, Magog

Stranger still are new accounts emerging from France describing how former president Jacques Chirac was utterly baffled by a 2003 telephone conversation in which Bush reportedly invoked fanatical Old Testament prophecy – including the Earth-ending battle with forces of evil, Gog and Magog – in his arguments to enlist France in the Coalition of the Willing.

"This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a New Age begins," Bush said to Chirac, according to Thomas Romer, a University of Lausanne theology professor who was later approached by French officials anxious to understand the biblical reference. Romer first revealed his account in a 2007 article for the university review, Allez savoir, which passed largely unnoticed.

No One Saw it Coming

A $1 million skateboard park, the first phase of the development, will open in July. Parts for 200,000 skateboards and materials to build ramps will be shipped from America to Iraq for assembly at state-owned factories and distributed free to Iraqi children along with helmets and knee pads.

U.S. soldiers have even encountered crude but innovative insurgent bots, Singer explained in his book — such as a remote-controlled skateboard rigged with explosives that scooted along as though pushed by the wind.