Just add me to the list
Of
people who are pissed off at the Passport Authority- apparently they are able to assure a Senator's aid that something will be done (i.e. passport printed and mailed on Wednesday) and then just ignore that such an assurance was made. They are also able to give no rhyme or reason as to why this happened or why this choice was made and offer few to no solutions. I have also learned to never, ever, trust anything 'promised' to have happen by anyone in this whole process. Whether it be the simple return of a phone call or that one would actually be able to make the trip as planned...
I also love that somewhere in the process of putting through the new passport legislation, right before the summer travel season, no one in congress thought that there would be a huge push for passports. Way to have planning and forethought folks...
needless to say, I'm likely not leaving for Africa until at least a couple of days after the remainder of my group leaves. Any tips for traveling to Africa alone? Also any trips for keeping boredom at bay on super long flights?
Labels: congress, government ineffectiveness
calling all lonesomeswishdogs
"pimp that snack".
welcome to the post-snack era. will the snack champ of yore rise to the challenge?
"what lickety jackblog is about"
according to
technorati:
lickety jackblog is about "
cults, nerdcore and crotches".
i am beside myself with satisfaction.
No Country for Old Men
Those of you familiar with Cormac McCarthy (most recently known for his book 'The Road', which despite being an Oprah book club, is apparently excellent) will be excited to know that one of his most recent books 'No Country for Old Men' has been optioned to be a film....by the Coen brothers.
Holy hell.
Labels: books, film
a modest proposal
i say we pool our resources and buy a nice plot of agricultural land in
second life called "lickety jackfarm".
or do you have a better idea?
Labels: second life
the suspense is bone-crunching
buckeye state blog has had some awesome
ohio republican scandal stories in recent days. today the rumor alert is huge:
Sources close to the Flynt Hooker investigation tell me that they've zeroed in on one Republican, from Ohio's House Delegation, whose contacts appear repeatedly throughout the DC Madam's listings.
the question rippling through the multiblog is of course, which one?
as one of the twelve poor bastards with butler county residency to have voted against
"cabana boy" boehner in every congressional election i was able, none could give me greater joy than the minority leader himself...
...unless...
?
any way you cut it, america wins.
Labels: congress, mean jean, ohio
something rotten in the state of dogpatch
is it simply general malaise at the premature passing of the two-hour cheney presidency? might it be the result of premature celebration as the last days close in on my oppressive-if-magnanimous internship which has sapped my soul of precious soul-juice at the exact rate with which it has stacked my spreadsheeting biceps to mr. olympus proportions? or it could be that my extraordinarily unhealthy chili-and-booze binge on saturday has sapped not only several years from my life, byt also my will to blog?
whatever the reason, july has brought forth the winter of the jackblog. were it not for robots and crotches, we surely would be as useless as the cobwebbed, smegma-encrusted angerblog.
i have two more days before i kiss excramento farewell, another week of answering peanut guy questions, and then i shall be off on a two-week road trip through the pacific northwest, yellowstone and minnesota, and back to god's country by which of course i mean glorious ohio, where it rains from time to time and occasionally dips below 85 degrees.
thus, my postings shall be sparse at best during the month of august.
in the meantime, where are the long-dormant bloggers of jackblog past? give me your meatcoat, your doomgoblin, your dong hardbodied masses yearing to be free. send these, the blogless, tempest-tost to me. i lift my lamp beside the golden door.
Jackblog Traffic Report
i am pleased to report that after the main page, the two most frequented jackblog pages are "
Friday Night Football Lights" and the label search for "
crotches."
new google searches include "christi jacobs purdue cheerleader", "john nootz," and "
duncan". christ knows how many pages of duncan sites one must sift through to arrive here.
the
peanut guy was visited by seekers of "monocle guy falls", "holy undergarments", "pantsed in front of", "stacy pansted", and my personal favorite, "stay the hell away from love."
before you open your new potter book: beware!
perennial presidential candidate and full-time fascist cult leader
lyndon larouche has
a warning for all you muggles out there:
This past week, Germany's tabloid Bildzeitung printed some actual news. It reported a Vatican official's warning, that the British cult of "Harry Potter" is a specifically Satanic form of contemporary occultism. The reported argument to that effect stands on its own feet; to be specific, it identifies the current cult of "Harry Potter" devotees as in the same general class of pro-Satanic cults as the "Pokémon" cult.
"on its own feet" indeed! but there's more:
That, however, is too narrow a view of the threat which "Harry Potter" represents to both those victims who are children, and also adults who regress toward infantile states of mind on account of their own susceptibility to such expressions of the wildly irrationalist occult.
dick! i think he's talking about me...
Both "Pokémon" and "Harry Potter" are fresh examples of epidemic forms of mental disease akin to the "Flagellant" cult which rampaged during Europe's Fourteenth Century "New Dark Age," and to the "witchcraft cults" which spread during Europe's Seventeenth Century, as a by-product of the Venice-directed, Habsburg-led horror of religious warfare over the 1511-1648 interval.
somehow you lost me, you crazy fuck.
next time you see those poor crazy-eyed larouche youth, think of this and shed a single tear - just don't get to close. i for one will be sacrificing at least four toddlers to St. Snape the Vicious in honor of their fallen souls. And one to St. Phlegm the Viscous, just because.
Labels: cults, nerdcore
this blog in crotch history
while applying the newly minted
crotches tag to old posts, i discovered that this blog is amazing.
Labels: crotches
i'm not saying the jackblog is the times square of internet traffic,
i'm just saying the pitiful "
angerblog" has one week to have some meaningful posts on it before it's dropped from the blogroll like an old sack of moldy tangerines.
the jackblog's frail, forgotten step-child must go.
This Week in Stuff Named After CrotchesCrotch Island - Crotch Island remains a working quarry of famous
Maine Pink Granite. The irregular pink stones paving the area around
JFK's Eternal Flame at Arlington National Cemetary were quarried on Crotch Island.
George Robert Crotch [1842-1874] - A little known
entomologist, Crotch nevertheless had profound effects on the field, corresponding with and earning mention from such heavy hitters as
Darwin himself, and inspiring
memorialization by the California Academy of Sciences. He was struck down by tuberculosis at the tender age of 32.
William Duppa Crotch [1831 or 32 - 1903] - Brother to George Robert, W.D. also found his calling in entomology, and also apparently corresponded with
Darwin. He must not have been as good as his brother, however, in that there's no Wikipedia entry on him. He eventually gave up on bugs in favor of
Norwegian Lemmings.
William Crotch (II) [1775-1847] - This
other William Crotch, also English, made his mark as a composer. Considered a child prodigy, Crotch was having his compositions played publicly by age 14. His most famous composition is the
oratorio Palestine (1812). He seems to be the most famous Crotch, and more can be found about him
here and
here.
Crotch Lake - Found in southeastern Ontario, Crotch Lake is a popular destination for fisherpeople and tourists alike. Home to many lodges and campsites, Crotch Lake has even inspired a
book,
Tales of Crotch Lake, by Harry George, Jr. Amazon.com's list of key, but statistically improbable, phrases for this title includes "sucker minnows," "boat dog," and "fish home." Sounds idyllic. Although, according to
Darren's Outdoor Page, "the water [of Crotch Lake] was very warm and did not taste good at all." Be warned.
And that's all for This Week in Stuff Named After Crotches.
Labels: celebrities, crotches, music, science
This week in Robots*Yesterday
Slashdot had a link to a
this story about the United States deploying the first every entirely unmanned attack squadron in the history of military conflict. The squadron, which arrived in Iraq sometime in the last 48 hours, consists of
General Atomics' Predator and
Predator B (also known as "The Reaper"). General Atomics, by the way, begins its mission statement by asserting that it was "conceived in 1955 at San Diego, California for the purpose of harnessing the power of nuclear technologies for the benefit of mankind." That's nice. Also from the euphemism department, one of the stated features of the Predators on those pdfs is "weapons delivery." How thoughtful! We built a nice little robot to deliver weapons direct to the Iraqis! No more hassle, no more fees, no more middle "man"!
From an
Associated Press article:
"The arrival of these outsized U.S. “hunter-killer” drones, in aviation history’s first robot attack squadron, will be a watershed moment even in an Iraq that has seen too many innovative ways to hunt and kill."
*From a different, and perhaps weirder, end of the robotic spectrum:
Purdue University graduate student Christi Jacobs, a former cheerleader, has organized a summer camp geared toward high-school aged cheerleaders interested in technology. In order to get more girls interested in technology, Jacobs is blending the oh-so-synergistic fields of
cheering and
robotics. Who knows? Maybe she's on to something. More details on the camp can be found
here and
here.
Activities include (I'm quoting from the releases linked to above):
-Programming a 2-foot-tall robot to perform a choreographed dance. Students will mix their own music and will perform the same dance along with the robot. Jacobs said this activity will allow students to learn computer programming and the physics of sound.
-Of course the robots will need music to dance to. The campers will learn how to mix their own music as they also learn the physics of sound.
Cheerleading robots vs. weapon-delivering robots! Face off!
*Wired has an
article about
KASPAR, a robot that is being used in some British schools to help autistic children learn social skills.
"'Human interaction can be very subtle, with even the smallest eyebrow raise, for example, having different meanings in different contexts,' [Senior Researcher Ben] Robins said. 'It is thought that autistic children cut themselves off from interacting with other humans because, for them, this is too much information and it is too confusing for them to understand.'
With this in mind, the team designed KASPAR to express emotion consistently and with the minimum of complexity."
*The BBC is reporting that a more usable bionic hand invented by Scotsman David Gow has made it to market. The hand was developed by Touch Bionics (which has, for its logo, a terrifying image of the entire earth clutched in a robotic hand) and tested at the National Centre for Prosthetics at Starthclyde University.
*Also, some researchers at Carnegie Mellon have apparently developed a robot that can walk on water. The robot's design was based on the basilisk lizard, which I thought was a mythological beast that could kill you with a glance. Apparently it's also a real beast that can walk on water. Unfortunately this link also came from Slashdot and has been slashdotted to hell so I can't even look at it right now. Give it a while if you're curious.
UPDATE: Here's the Carnegie Mellon report on the basilisk-bot.
Sorry if that's too much about robots. The Jackblog had been a bit quiet.
Labels: posthuman, robots, science
because it's friday the 13th and this means something
fun with engrish
at
wittycomics you can make your own comics. today i found the .1% that aren't total garbage:
- is there some deeper social critique at work in "hello"? i say yes.
- "in class" synopsis: david is a teacher/pedophile. hawon will do anything to learn english. the next comic in this series will be terrifying.
- kyunghee2 synopsis: waiter offers rabbit coffee. rabbit is named "enjoy tomato", wants no coffee. waiter becomes rabbit too. rabbits stare at each other until dusk.
- eriko is a genius. i thought that "run away...!!!" was unbeatable until i read "the happenings in the moon!".
update: more
terror.
california's pets: down with barker
t'was an epic battle.
in one corner: bob barker. the retired jesus of game show hosts.
in the other: jon provost, TV's "timmy" of lassie and america's son/brother.
for one week their clash turned the regal california statehouse into the blood soaked antietam of the war on animal sex.
here in sacramento, at least 5-10 minutes per 30 minute evening news program has been devoted to the "spay-neuter" bill, leaving a meager 10-15 for sacramento kings coach search coverage and a paltry 5-15 for any area whale and or fire news. from the
sac bee:
About 300 people attended Wednesday's hearing, but more than 20,000 signed letters or petitions to press their case, Capitol officials said.
f"I've never seen this volume of mail," said Peter Detwiler, staff director for the five-member Senate panel. The committee's fax machine broke under the flood of missives, he said.
in the end, timmy and "laddie", the ninth-generation offspring of lassie, prevailed and raised the beating heart of barker over the assembly chamber to the celebratory barks and hisses of all.
this morning the streets of california were strewn with fur and scratch marks from what appears to have been a truly bone-crunching feline and canine caligula.
all hail lord laddie!
Labels: california
this week in jackblog history
in my seemingly endless romp through the bowels of jackblog past, i continue to unearth treasures untold.
as old timey jackbloggers may recall,
this was a found entrance essay to miami that somehow made its way into our clutches.
Labels: ohio
TOES on the RADIO
Hey Folks,
Love them or hate them, TOES was recently part of an online radio show at
http://www.thefeveredbrainofradiomike.com by up-and-coming radio host Gemryld Jamson.
Dude found Toes through a message board we both post on and asked if he could make us a part of his latest show. I suggest listening to the whole mix as TOES is thrown in all over the place during the show.
Check it out!!
-Sean Toe
furries terrorize NL central bigwigs
what's that image above, you ask? why it's clearly the annual fursuit dance at
Anthrocon, the world's largest furry convention held annually in pittsburgh: city of fur.
this year, it just so happened to coincide with the
brewers' visit:
Players and staff reported neighboring rooms generating loud animal noises, barking and other, deep into the night. At first it was kind of funny to see these people wandering around the downtown streets and filing into the hotel, but after the novelty wore off it just made everyone feel creepy.
in case you were wondering, the brewers lost 3 out of 4 to the shitty-but- not-reds-shitty pirates.
if all you con-types were real nerds, you'd have been there last weekend in your slothsuits.
oh, and what's that? you wanted to see a picture of bob uecker with his furry lover? well,
here.
Labels: furries, nerdcore
this week in congressional douchebags
have you met david vitter?
this strapping young rhodes scholar became a congressman in 2000,
allegedly with the help of famed klansman david duke, and went from shitty member of congress to shitty senator in 2004 on a campaign of "family values" (to which the chief threat was decidedly the homosexual menace) and not being a democrat. there's just one thing: all the
whoresex he was havin' at the time:
Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) apologized last night after his telephone number appeared in the phone records of the woman dubbed the "D.C. Madam," making him the first member of Congress to become ensnared in the high-profile case.
The statement containing Vitter's apology said his telephone number was included on phone records of Pamela Martin and Associates dating from before he ran for the Senate in 2004.
you can find an old family values press release and quote from his wife that begins "I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary"
here.
Labels: congress
No doi.David Frederick of the
University of California, Los Angeles has recently authored a
groundbreaking study that will surely shake our understanding of social and interpersonal relationships to the very root. Never again will things be the same. The ambitious study, beyond all comprehension, seems to indicate that--gasp!--women prefer muscle men to, well, the rest of us.
Shocking!
I love "research" like this. Tell me again why academics get a bad name? Is it because they spend their money so very wisely?
Next on the docket for UCLA? Trying to figure out whether men prefer that their ladies have breasts, or just patches of multi-colored reptilian scales.
update: the mighty fighter, Salah al-Din, has returned from the field of battle in the land of Cerroneth unscathed. With his trusty shield and shortsword, infused with the power of lighting, he hath slayed a sundry of characters for his Baron Thruk, Lord of Sundeer.
In other words, it was totally, balls-out sweet. Roleplaying will never be the same. So much shit went on, I think the easiest thing thing to do would be to email me off the blog with questions, comments: sargesays at hotmail dot com. Feel free to also give me a ring, if you so want.
I will also take this opportunity to invite anyone who might be interested in vacationing to come down and play. The first time is free.
doppelganger alert!
people of jackson: the time to revolt against the
jackson free press phonies is now!
there can only be one true jackblog.
Labels: doppelgangers
onward, sarge the valiant dwarf!
to the fields of camp wilkes on the wings of the valkyrie!
let the nonbelievers taste thy steel on the blood soaked fields of biloxi!
america's atheists: stupid?
this newsweek poll is pretty dated - it's from march, 2007. how did it slip through our radar?
among the usual questions about bush, iraq, and the presidential hopefuls, questions 12 through 22 deal with religion. worthy of note:
- when asked "Which one of the following statements come closest to your views about the origin and development of human beings?", 27% of atheists/agnostics said god guided the process and 13% said god created it in its present form. at least 40% of atheists/agnostics apparently don't know what "atheist" or "agnostic" means.
- when asked "Do you think the scientific theory of evolution is well-supported by evidence and widely accepted within the scientific community?", 18% of atheists/agnostics said evolution was horseshit.
- big surprise: 26% of americans believe someone can't be a "moral person" if they're an atheist.
- still, the godless, making up 10% of the population, could take out all the rest of non-christianity (5%) in a fight and have plenty of juice left for the mormons(2% despite their myriad children)
Labels: religion
this morning on the way to work a large american flag magnet - the billiowing kind - was tumbling westward against oncoming traffic on eastbound I-80. priuses and pickups swerved dangerously to avoid it. though catastrophe appeared to be avoided among my bunch, i could see it in my rear view mirror surging out towards berkeley.
beware, baydwellers. the flag comes for thee.
Labels: california
jackblog site work todayunless i get really busy at work, i'm going to be messing with a new layout for the jackblog today. be forewarned: things could get weird.
UPDATE 6:47pm: if you're viewing this on internet explorer, you had to scroll down to see this. after far too long troubleshooting, i haven't the slightest idea why that's the case. safari and firefox both work fine, though firefox is prettier. i know most of the site's traffic is firefox/safari, but if this is an inconvenience to anyone i can go back to the old setup. you can now email me at the very bottom of the page if you ain't got my digits already.
So, this weekend I'm going on a D&D-themed LARP at an 80-acre camp in Buloxi, Ms. I'm told hundreds will be there.
Thoughts?
Labels: LARP, nerdcore
am i the only one who was in the dark about the host of top chef being married to salman rushdie?
anyway,
not anymore:
British author Salman Rushdie and his wife Padma Lakshmi, host of TV show "Top Chef," are getting divorced, his spokeswoman said on Monday, just two weeks after he was awarded a controversial knighthood.
Rushdie, 60, is best known for his novel "The Satanic Verses," which outraged many Muslims and sparked death threats that forced him to live in hiding for nine years.
He married Lakshmi, a former model born in 1970 in India, in 2004. She was his fourth wife and the couple had no children.
Labels: books
jesusfuckingchristhe didn't even have
the decency to wait:
President Bush commuted the sentence of former aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Monday, sparing him from a 2 1/2-year prison term in the CIA leak case. Bush left intact a $250,000 fine and two years probation for Libby, according to a senior White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision had not been announced.
Bush's move came hours after a federal appeals panel ruled Libby could not delay his prison term in the CIA leak case. That decision put the pressure on the president, who had been sidestepping calls by Libby's allies to pardon the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.
here comes the obama trainsorry h8rs, looks like
obama is back in the saddle again:
In a statement Sunday, Obama said that 154,000 donors had given to his campaign in the second quarter. The freshman senator from Illinois raised $31 million solely for the primary, with the remaining $1.5 million available for use in the general election if he wins the nomination. (Clinton raised $21 million for the primary, with the remainder for a general-election campaign.)
the best part is of course the 154,000 individual donors
just in the second quarter, and 258,000 overall. i'm told he now has more individual donors than any other presidential campaign in history before the primaries. the clinton gang of course kept silent on the number of donors question. obviously it's a pittance compared to barry o's.
the
IEM still has obama's stock at record lows after all that lame anti-obama press over the last two weeks. buy, buy, buy!
Labels: election 2008
