More Meltdown

I can't seem to catch a break...electronics-wise. Last Sunday my entire desktop computer went DOA and I had to go into recovery mode...and wound up losing tons of precious info.

This Sunday...my barely-more-than-a-year-old LCD flatscreen monitor stops working.

What the fuck?

My theory is that defects are designed into the newer electronics. Technology is so rapidly advancing that the producers want us to keep up...so products are made to fail within a certain time frame. Since repair costs are sometimes equal to just buying an upgrade...well..you see where I'm going with that. My old, older technology monitor lasted 7 years without a single glitch. In fact, dad and brother are still using it...and it works just fine. But my new tech model....kaput after 14 months!

Gah.

Not a Word Strong Enough

One of the brood of neglected cats died Sunday night. I found him Monday morning...in the one place where he found comfort, compassion and care in his short life....under my back porch in the little village I built for them. He hadn't been doing well...but I brought some of the others back from the brink of starvation...so I thought he'd bounce back.

I'm fucking spitting mad at my neighbors. Fucking trash.

Fucking useless city animal agencies. After I found the body...with another of the cats pressed up against the frail corpse...mewling...I called Animal Control in a rage saying that I'd called 6 times already...only to be told "We don't handle cat issues." What the fuck? Animal Control...cats are still animals...right? Why didn't someone tell me this the first six times I called rather than say they'd follow up (which they never did)? And the people at ASPCA Law Enforcement...and the Animal Rescue League Code Enforcement...same deal. The people I spoke with were almost trying to talk me out of filing a complaint. I persisted and each said they'd send an agent to check the cat's body and go over and speak to the owners.

No one showed up. Fucking useless cunts.

So this morning I have to go bury that cat. I would have done so yesterday but the ASPCA officer told me to leave the cat so they could examine it. Well fuck them.

Computer Crashes Suck

That's all. They just suck...especially when you can't get the machine to reboot and have to do a complete recovery.

I lost so much stuff.

Big Dick

VP Cheney gave a rare non-Fox News interview the other day. The interviewer from ABC stated that more than 2/3 of the American people now say the price in blood and treasure (my words, not the interviewer's or those of the poll---the actual word choice was "cost") of the war in Iraq was not worth it.

Cheney's quick...and reflexive reply was "So?" Like a petulant boy.

That's so typical of the arrogance of this man. Of this administration.

And how did Cheney spend his day on the 5th anniversary of the start of this war of theirs? Fishing from the deck of a yacht owned by a wealthy sheik. Dicky knows who butters his bread. It's right in character though...he had "other priorities" when our kids were being ripped to shreds in Vietnam as well.

I'm surprised he didn't spend it wearing a toga and dancing on the south lawn of the White House while playing a fiddle. Scumbag.

==================

And our fine Prez-o-dent? He used family influence to get into the TX Air National Guard to escape the draft...and I think he's feeling regret over that.

Not regret over having missed the bugs and heat and danger...but the ability to reminisce.

"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."
"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks," Bush said.

Envious. Yeah...sure. You had your chance but you chose to duck & cover along with three quarters of the Dallas Cowboys players and other assorted rich kids and connected folks. Douchebag.

40 Years On, My Lai Massacre Recalled

Associated Press
March 17, 2008MY LAI, Vietnam -

Lawrence Colburn returned to My Lai on Saturday, March 14, and found hope at the site of one of the most notorious chapters of the Vietnam War.

On the 40th anniversary of the massacre of up to 500 unarmed Vietnamese villagers, the former helicopter gunner was reunited with a young man he rescued from rampaging U.S. Soldiers.

On March 16, 1968, Colburn found 8-year-old Do Ba clinging to his mother's corpse in a ditch full of blood and the bodies of more than 100 people who had been mowed down. Nearly all the victims were unarmed women, children and elderly.

"Today I see Do Ba with a wife and a baby," said Colburn, a member of a three-man Army helicopter crew that landed in the midst of the massacre and intervened to stop the killing. "He's transformed himself from being a broken, lonely man. Now he's complete. He's a perfect example of the human spirit, of the will to survive."

Colburn, 58, now runs a medical supplies business north of Atlanta. He, Ba and hundreds of others are gathering this weekend to remember the My Lai massacre, a grim milestone that shocked Americans and undermined support for the war, which ended in 1975 with the fall of Saigon to communist troops.

Buddhist monks in saffron robes led the mourners in prayer Saturday outside a museum that has been erected to remember the dead. An official memorial program will be held on Sunday.
Among those coming to pray was Ha Thi Quy, 83, a My Lai survivor who suffers from anger and depression four decades after the slaughter. Soldiers from the Army's Charlie Company shot her in the leg and killed her mother, her 16-year-old daughter and her 6-year-old son.

Her husband later died of injuries from the massacre and another son had to have an arm and a leg amputated after suffering gunshot wounds that day.

Quy only survived because she was shielded beneath a pile of dead bodies.

"The American government should stop waging wars like they waged in Vietnam," Quy said. "My children were innocent, but those American Soldiers killed them."

Seymour Hersh, the journalist who exposed the massacre, said he sees parallels between My Lai and a more recent story that he has he reported on, the 2005 images of torture from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. But he says the public furor unleashed by My Lai was far greater.

"It's stunning how much impact My Lai had and how little impact Abu Ghraib had," Hersh said by telephone from Washington. "We'll have to leave it to historians to figure out why."
On that morning 40 years ago, Colburn flew over My Lai on a reconnaissance mission with pilot Hugh Thompson and crew chief Glenn Andreotta. After several runs over the area, they realized that unarmed civilians were being slaughtered by U.S. troops on the ground.

The members of Charlie Company were a "search and destroy" mission, trying to track down elusive Vietcong guerrillas, whose tactics had depleted the company's ranks.

The company's Soldiers began shooting in My Lai that day even though they hadn't come under attack. It quickly escalated into an orgy of killing.

Thompson landed the helicopter between the villagers and the marauding troops. While Colburn and Andreotta covered him, Thompson persuaded the members of Charlie Company to stop shooting.

The angry and frustrated troops had found themselves in a bewildering war where it was impossible to distinguish friend from foe, said Stanley Karnow, an American historian who wrote "Vietnam: A History."

Their actions shocked the American public, who had preferred to think of U.S. troops as heroes making the world safe for democracy, Karnow said.
Colburn and Andreotta, who died later in the war, found Do Ba after the shooting stopped.
"He was still clinging to his mother," Colburn said.

Ba's aunt raised him in My Lai. When he turned 18, he moved to the former Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City, where he is married with a 14-month-old daughter and works at an electronics factory.

He and Colburn were first reunited at the 2001 dedication of a new school in the village. At that time, Ba was single, haunted by memories of My Lai and eager to start a family.

So much has changed since the day they first met, Ba said. The United States and Vietnam, former enemies, have become allies and developed a booming trade relationship.

"I'm glad the United States and Vietnam have become friends," Ba said. "But I still feel hatred for the Soldiers who killed my mother, my brother and my sister."

From The Onion...

Funny where it sticks pins in the puffery of novelist's egos...yet sad because so much concerning Retard America's lack of interest in reading is true. And I think I'll drop a few thoughts later on reading...or, more accurately, the death of reading.

Novelists Strike Fails To Affect Nation Whatsoever
March 15, 2008

LOS ANGELES—The Novelists Guild of America strike, now entering its fourth month, has had no impact on the nation at all, sources reported Tuesday.
The strike, which scholars say could be the longest since 1951, when American novelists may or may not have voluntarily committed to a six-month work stoppage, has brought an immediate halt to all new novels, novellas, and novelettes from coast to coast, affecting no one.

Nor has America's economy seen any adverse effects whatsoever, as consumers easily adjust to the sudden cessation of any bold new sprawling works of fiction or taut psychological character studies.

"There's a novelists strike?" Ames, IA consumer Carl Hailes said. "That's terrible. When is it scheduled to begin?"

The strike kicked off last fall when the NGA announced it had hit a roadblock in negotiations with the Alliance of Printed Fiction and Literature Producers, failing to resolve certain key issues concerning online distribution, digital media rights, and readers just not getting what writers were trying to do with a number of important allegorical devices.

After a press conference at the Massachusetts home of NGA president John Updike—who called the strike an attempt by novelists "to give both the sublime and mundane alike their beautiful due"—members of the guild began picketing their studies, desks, and libraries and refusing to work on any further novels until the APFLP and the American reading public agreed to their demands.

So far, sources say, no one has attempted to cross the picket lines, most of which are located in private homes. However, unconfirmed reports indicate that at least one novelist may be breaking the strike by writing under the pseudonym "Richard Bachman."

"We must, as a people, achieve a resolution to this strike soon," novelist David Foster Wallace said at a rally Monday at Pomona College in Claremont, CA, where he is a professor. "The thought of this country being deprived of its only source of book-length fiction is enough to give one the howling fantods."

"I thank you both for coming," he added.

While the strike has been joined by an estimated 250,000 novelists—225,000 of whom have reportedly stopped in the middle of their first novel—it has done no damage to any measurable sector of the economy, including bookstore chains, newspapers, magazines, all major media, overseas markets, independent film studios, major film studios, actors, editors, animators, carpenters, those in finance or banking, the day-to-day lives of average Americans, or anything else anyone can think of as of press time.

A report published last week by the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School for Communication found that the strike has thus far had an economic impact of approximately 0.00 to 0.01 percent. In addition, consumer habits remain unaffected, with 0 percent of those polled saying their reading habits had changed "significantly," 0 percent saying they had changed "somewhat," and an additional 0 saying they had changed "slightly." A significant number of respondents reported no reading habits.

Although some initially worried that the strike could affect Hollywood by limiting material for television or film adaptation, fears were quelled when studio executives announced in January that they would continue optioning comic books and graphic novels.

The publishing industry itself, which many believed to be most vulnerable, has nonetheless managed to weather the crisis. Publishers have reissued new editions of early, pre-union novelists—such as Robert Louis Stevenson and Jane Austen, both of whom have previously established successful track records—and have seen no no change in monthly sales.
Some members of the public attempted to express concern over the prospect of the strike going on much longer.

"If this situation is not brought to a halt soon, it could have serious ramifications for, you know, literary culture, I guess," said Kyle Farmer, a Phoenix-area real estate consultant and avid golfer. "It would be tragic if we had to go a whole year without a new novel from Kurt Vonnegut or Norman Mailer," he added, unaware that both authors died in 2007.

No high-profile, red-carpet, star-studded telecasts of the PEN/Faulkner Awards, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Awards, or the Man Booker Prize Awards were affected by the strike, since no such telecasts have ever existed.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

WASHINGTON — Fewer people know how many U.S. troops have died in the war in Iraq, even as public attention to the conflict has gradually diminished, a poll showed Wednesday.
Only 28 percent correctly said that about 4,000 Americans have died in the war, according to a survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

That's down from last August, when 54 percent gave the accurate casualty figure, which was about 3,500 dead at the time. In previous Pew surveys dating to 2004, about half have correctly given the rough figure for the approximate number of deaths at the time.

In the new poll, around a third said about 3,000 U.S. troops have died while about one in 10 said 2,000 deaths. Fewer overestimated the number of casualties: about a quarter put the figure close to 5,000.

Exit polls of voters in presidential primaries and many national surveys have shown the economy has displaced the war in recent weeks as the public's choice as the nation's top problem.
Iraq was the most avidly followed news story for most of the first half of 2007, but it has not been the most closely watched story in any week since mid-October, according to a Pew survey of people's interest in the news. The portion of news stories on the war has dropped in recent months as well, according to a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a nonpartisan group that evaluates news coverage.

The Pew poll was conducted from Feb. 28-March 2 and involved telephone interviews with 1,003 adults. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Hey Big Spender

I think I know what I'm going to do with my stimulus package money from Dubya ( received the letter today letting me know that kiss in the mail will be coming soon).

I'm going to put it towards and hour with Eliot Spitzer's prostitute. (Have you seen her picture? Smoking hot)

I just have to know what a $4,000 piece of pussy feels like.

Or maybe I'll send it as a donation to Ralph Nader's campaign.

Perhaps I'll donate it to IAVA. They are getting results.

Update on the Hooverville Cats

Well...all the cats have survived the worst of winter. And we had a really bad winter. In fact, the ones I was sure were not going to make it are thriving. The scrawniest of them have fattened up and are active...no more listlessness. I still feed them twice a day every day and have added some more boxes for shelters.

And some of them have taken to my dog. She merely tolerates their presence. The gray cat (the poor, sad, severely inbred one) is in love with my dog...follows her around the yard and stands up to hold on and rub her face all over Kelly. Kelly responds my grunting and trotting away...with an adoring cat following close behind. My poor pooch. She's dismayed over the utter lack of terror she's able to strike into this legion of felines.

The city animal control still hasn't done a goddamned thing. No surprise there. It took more than a dozen calls from me over several months to get them to send out someone to do something about the dog these trashy neighbors had a few years ago...a dog they left outside, just like the cats, in all weather, 24/7...but without even mobility. They kept it chained by the neck to the porch railing.

With the really bad weather this past weekend (torrential, prolonged rain and very high winds) I let some of the more skittish of the cats hang out in my basement for the night. And one of the friendlier ones got to come in and sleep on my couch while my Russian and I watched movies. The cat curled up behind my head on the back of the couch and purred until she fell asleep. I may have to adopt her as my own if I can't find someone else to do it...and if I can get Kelly to stay calm around her. The dog still gets upset if the cats come inside.

I Guess There are Worse Hobbies

Man Creates Radio Station For Cats Only

PHOENIX -- When you leave for work in the morning, do you ever worry your pets will get bored while you’re away?

A Valley man has dedicated a good portion of the past seven years to make sure his cats stay entertained.

Nohl Rosen of catgalaxymedia.com has created an online radio station for cats only.
He said the idea came to him seven years ago when he felt his cat Isis seemed bored. He put in a CD to see if Isis would be entertained. “The music started, Isis laid down, relaxed, and Cat Galaxy was born," said Rosen.

Rosen’s studio is based out of his home. He broadcasts to cats every morning and night for two hours each.
He makes sure nothing gets on the air that has not been cat-approved.
“We have to throw away the human way of thinking that everything is meant for humans. Cats, I think, know what they want to hear," said Rosen.

The station has daily features such as Meow Mixing Monday, Tuesday Night Cat Club, Wednesday Night Cat Attack, Thursday Night Purr Party, and Friday Night Feline Frenzy.
If you are one of the three million people who have visited his Web site over that past seven years, you may have noticed that Rosen has been off the air for the past couple of months.
"We lost our assistant station manager just after New Year's this year," said Rosen, referring to his cat, Jade, who passed away. "So, it was a big loss, it hit us hard and we are just now getting back into the groove again," said Rosen.

He and the rest of his cat staff said they are ready to move on.

Cat Galaxy is celebrating its seventh season. Rosen said he doesn’t make any money and he is just doing it because he loves it.

======================

I don't know about you....but I find it disconcerting that cats have a radio station. Everyone knows that cats are constantly planning and scheming and plotting the downfall of man. This radio station will allow them to organize and pass messages.

Mute Button

I believe this: If one is going to boast that they do not watch TV, then they can't do it while spending long periods of time on a website boasting such nuggets of wisdom such as "I sucked 39 black cocks!" and "What's your favorite Rush song?"

Seriously, I just get annoyed when I see someone boasting online (specifically someone you know spends a lot of time blogging) that they do not watch any television in an attempt to make themselves seem intellectually superior.

If you are going to brag about how little television you watch...then you'd better be out saving the world with all that free time. Or, at the least, building a better you.

You'd better be:
Performing volunteer work
Reading books
Taking classes
Exercising
Spending time with family

doing something constructive for yourself or your environment...something enriching, something useful.

Not fingerfucking around on the interwebs. That's just another way to piss away the days. It's replacing one simple leisure activity with another.