ran across this little 1970s gem from the National Lampoon...

Go placidly amid the noise and waste,

and remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof. Know yourself; if you need help, call the FBI. Exercise caution in your daily affairs, especially with those persons closest to you. That lemon on your left, for instance. Avoid quiet and passive persons unless you are in need of sleep. Remember that two wrongs do not make a right, but that three do. Rotate your tires. Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most souls would scarcely get your feet wet. Fall not in love therefore; it will stick to your face. Gracefully surrender the things of your youth: birds, clean air, tuna, Taiwan; and let not the sands of time get in your lunch. Hire people with hooks. For a good time, call 606-4311; ask for Ken. Take heart amid the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting enough cheese; and reflect that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be worse in Milwaukee.

You are a fluke of the universe; you have no right to be here, and whether you can hear it or not, the universe is laughing behind your back.

Wherever possible, put people on hold. Remember that in the face of aridity and disillusionment and despite the changing fortunes of time, there is always a big fortune in computer maintenance. Therefore make peace with your God, whatever you conceive Him to be; Hairy Thunderer or Cosmic Muffin. With all its hopes, dreams, promises, and urban renewal, the world continues to deteriorate. Give up.

...on the most current focus of world concern. pf.

( George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice and their servants in the American media have shown a curious view of democracy, never ceasing to praise the 'courage' of foreign leaders who obey not their own electorates but the White House. Perhaps this display of Spanish independence will contribute to the education of the American public, which has been told to believe that other nations are to be taken seriously only when they are appendages of Bush's policies. )

after a couple of days of tinkering, i can now report that i have successfully added a DVD-copying capability to my home computer. :-) in keeping with yesterday's big news story, the first movie i was able to write successfully to disc was 'Red Planet.'

i saw a news story a couple of weeks ago about 321 Studios' legal troubles, and acquired a copy of XCopy Xpress about a week before they were ordered to stop selling the product with its full 'ripping' capability. they're still selling the 'gelded' version of this until the legal stuff is thrashed out, but in the meantime i have a 100-percent legal and functional pre-lawsuit version of the thing, and it works like a charm.

it takes about 45 minutes to copy a single movie, so i'm hardly going to be in the mass-duplication business anyway. ::roll eyes:: but for those who know me well, you know i have a pretty sizeable collection, so... keep it in mind. ;-)

the whole thing set me back less than $200 (burner and software); DVD-RW drives are, like everything else gadget-wise, getting more affordable.

and as usual, i feel the mild glow of accomplishment that generally accompanies successfully taking the computer apart and putting it back together with improvements - without breaking anything. so the geek itch is duly scratched, for this month at least. pf.

truly diseased.

the Yoko 'imagine' business takes this one the rest of the way over the top, methinks.

from a review of RoTK in LA Weekly:

"Gondor (a sort of Zion with better fashion sense)".

indeed. LOL! pf.

i just had to reproduce them here as well for those on my friends list. pf.

A politico-blog watched by Chad held a contest for new mottos for the Bush administration to run with during the election. Here were the winners (the number one winner is at the top):

Bush/Cheney: Five out of nine Supreme Court Justices agree!

Bush & Cheney: Keeping America Terrorist-Free Since Sept. 12, 2001

Bush '04: Let's have a Greater Depression!

Bush/Cheney: We Will Never Forget the Lessons of 9/11. Meanwhile, Keep Shopping.

Bush in 2004: For Everyone Who Ever Wanted to One-Up Their Father

Bush - Strong enough for a man but made for a woman...No WAIT!!!

Are You Better Off Now Than You Were Four Y...Uh, I Mean, Than You Were Two...Um, Make That Six Mon...Well, Look, You're Doing OK, Right?

Bush/Cheney '04: Or the gays, teachers, and terrorists win!

Just Like Reagan - Only Dumber and Meaner

Bush 2004:Deeply disturbed by what gays are doing, ignorant of what he is doing.

George W. Bush: Not his father's wimp.

Bush/Cheney '04 - Not Completely a Fiasco!

America: Because Freedom is for Canadians.

Rainy Days Mean God is Crying for a Gay Marriage Banning Amendment

A Car in Every Garage, A Chicken in Every Pot; A Manufacturing Job in Every McDonald's

BUSH: A Man, a plan, a codpiece

America: Alabama Writ Large.

The Bush administration: Come for the pasty rich white guys, stay for the second term queer bashing!

No Bush - No War ... Know Bush - Know War

Liberty, equality, justice -- Yeah, we've heard of those.

"About our achievements... Look! Queers!"

Bush/Cheney: Because the truth just isn't as much fun.

Bush/Cheney, Keeping Us Safe: Terrorists will not attack us and kill 2800 innocent people on our soil and destroy the WTC and smash the Pentagon more than once on OUR watch!

they're, um, "fighting the war on terror." Uh-huh.

maybe i should try this little dodge at my own bank; i'm sure there's laundered drug money or something similar there, as there is in every bank... i could say i'm "fighting the war on drugs." i couldn't prove it, of course, but after all, "it's not about proof."

nope, don't have any armed bullies to back me up. better forget it. but what a great scam, eh?

scumbags. of course, one has to read a Canadian newspaper to even hear about this kind of behavior by what is unquestionably the U.S.' most embarrassing and undeserving "ally." pf.

from a recent email exchange with my older brother, who is - to put it mildly - in a different place from me philosophy-wise:

"so why should I back Kerry, or Dean, or Madge the Palmolive Lady for that matter instead of Bush? It's very simple:

"I'm a liberal. If it's secular, if it's relativist, if it's protective of people who have the short end of the stick in this society in some way (like gays and lesbians at the moment, like blacks and women just the day before yesterday or rather, let's face it, still), if it involves multilateralism, if it's distrustful of traditional authority structures, if it celebrates complexity and ambiguity as opposed to certainty and simple-mindedness, and if it annoys fundamentalists of any stripe, I'M PROBABLY FOR IT.

"I'm sorry, I thought that was all clear at this point. ;-)"

sheesh. pf.

...myself included. i suppose in a practical sense, i could abstain from this one. my orientation doesn't happen to be same-sex, so why should i care?

as if.

no: as a civil libertarian and a social liberal, i could of course only applaud what's happening in Massachusetts (within the legal system), San Francisco (outside the same, but 'legal system' is a stretch in proposition-happy CA every day anyway), and now in New Mexico (where any resident bigots appear to have been caught napping when they could have been hate-legislating).

but what i didn't expect is this surge of excitement, of joy, in my soul. i'm not processing this as i normally would do with things like this - that is, as an MA grad in poli sci and a (self-designated at least) "Wise Social Scientist Guy." no, i'm not. instead...

i'm caught up in the romance of the moment. of Love, effortlessly supreme just like Coltrane said, winking and smiling and utterly triumphant in the face of bigotry and hatred and desperate, clutching, unmanning (and un-womanning, i guess?) fear. i wish i were outside San Francisco's City Hall right now... to cheer and clap and howl and blow my own kisses to all those couples. i don't know them, of course... some of them may be last-minute bandwagon jumpers or trend-chasers, sure, that's the way of all human events. but somehow, looking at the faces i've seen on Ephemera and on news pages, i think most of them aren't like that.

NO. i think they're people in love, that's all - just people, risking the loaded dice-roll inherent in any committed relationship whatever the gender(s). people raising families, making sacrifices, getting up too godsdamn early in the morning to work at jobs they put up with for the sake of their family, bitching about whose turn it is to clean the bathroom, griping about a million domestic irritations but persevering... people, dammit, blundering and arguing and gutting through the problems that all those in relationships face.

people. people loving.

people whose loving is now so sublimely putting the lie to all the hatemongers and fanatics and God-botherers who can, for their part, only wring their hands, shake their heads and not even begin to know what to think...

in the face of love. pf.

click on the pic for much, much more at Something Awful... and note that you can build your own; check the link at the top of the first page. my own first quick-n-dirty efforts follow the pic below. pf.

the LoTR cast discusses the Oscars (in mollyringwraith's journal).

thanks to blueingenue for the link. pf.

gacked from a Yahoo message board:

Dear Mr. Spirit,

I am Gauigsjd Ankronamana, Lord of the Northern Hemisphere of Mars. Recently my evil cousin, Baayido of Deimos, launched a coup and overthrew my rule.

I have 6,000,000,000 Martian sovereigns (1 M.S. = U$1.05) which I must remove from my account before my cousin can get his hands on it. This money will be used to finance a future revolution against my evil cousin. If you would kindly give me your U.S. bank account number and routing number I can transfer them out indirectly using your account as a middle route. Your reward for your effort will be 2,000,000 Martian sovereigns.

Sincerely,

Lord Ankronamana

it's amazing we've gotten this far as a species. on the other hand, it's oddly comforting to know that this is not a specifically American dysfunction... pf.

this is hysterical!!!

my own contribution: "The battle for Helm's Deep is over. The battle for pants is about to begin." pf.

strangely apt, though. pf.

LiveJournal Haiku!
Your name:	prufrock
Your haiku:	the long run if you define the long run as years this gap turns out to
Username:
Created by Grahame

...polarizing, i expect. oh well.* pf.
( hate mail to the usual place. )

"Think Dad would rather have a tie or be immortalized as a space pioneer?"

i don't know... think Dad would rather have some different choices?

think there are any limits on entrepreneurs' lack of taste? pf.

whoa.

this looks either really fun, or really aggravating. pf.

found at the 'Making Light' website (plenty of other funny stuff here). pf.
( these are hysterical... )