arandia.net

kinda says it all

The band then struck up "Hail to the Chief" and their husbands emerged, with President Bush squeezing past Mr. Clinton out the glass doors of the library and Mr. Clinton giving him deference with a guiding hand at his back.

Morally Progressive

The real debate by Jim Wallis.

>>The single "moral values" question was a whole different kind of choice to the rest of the "issues," ignoring the moral values inherent in those other concerns.<<

>>Religion doesn't fall neatly into right and left categories. If there were ever candidates running with a strong set of personal moral values and a commitment to be pro-poor and pro-peace, it could build many bridges to the other side. <<

Katamari Damacy

Katamari Damacy

Okay, this is a kooky game recommended by friends and by the folks at Penny Arcade.

It's a weird assed game where, in a nutshell, you roll around a ball and stuff sticks to it. The objective of each level is either to get the ball to a particular size or roll up a certain type of stuff.

My, the Earth is full of things...
The long version of the story is that the King of all Cosmos got drunk one night and woke up having somehow gotten rid of all the stars. You, the Prince, must recreate the stars from stuff that is on Earth. The Earth is full of things. So, each level you roll up a bunch of things and the resulting ball of stuff, or katamari, becomes a star or constellation.

It is amazing the amount of stuff is in this game. Even more amazing is the change in scale as the levels progress. In the final level, you can progress from the hobbit realm rolling up small stuff all the way up to the immense ginormous ball that sucks up entire islands.

It was an enjoyable weekend to play this. The control takes a bit to get a hang of. And I don't feel like I ever mastered the "dash" feature. I finished the game very easily, but at the same time, not really "finished finished" in the sense that there could be more to do within it.

Stupid bear
The stupid bear level took up a lot of time. In this level, the point is to roll up a bear for Ursa Major. But, the first bear you roll up ends up being the constellation. And if it's a tiny bear, like a bear shaped figurine, your dad, the King, totally scolds you on the picayunity of the bear. So, you want to get the biggest bear you can find. The biggest bear, according to gamefaqs is the rocket propelled grizzly with a kid riding on it. He flys around the level. You must be at least 4 meters big before you can roll over him. Before that, he just plows into you and shoots you in some random direction that inevitable lands you on some small bear like a cub. That's the frustrating part of this level. The first bear ends the level. And then you get scolded. I never got the grizzly. The biggest bear I got was a medium-sized man in a bear suit. And well, after spending Saturday trying to get the grizzly, I felt satisfied at having gotten that far.

I just now realized that I play my ps2 through a video capture card. And that if I'm to do proper reviews, I should take screenshots. I will do so from now on. The game I'm currently playing is XenoSaga I. I'll tell you more about it later.

No more election whining!

Begin here: Help America Recount Fund

According to bev harris, who wants your money, in Ohio and Florida, citizens can order a recount if they just pay 10 dollars a county. Or something like that. So, give them some money. And let's have a looksee at what's going on there. For the good of Democracy!

Then write a letter to your congress critter to support these six Congressmen. That's up from three last week who want the Government Accountability Office to audit various strange voting anomolies that occurred during the last election. For the good of Democracy!

Then read this article, Was the election stolen?. It's Salon and you can get a free day pass or pay for a subscription. I've paid mine. It's a good source of news and columns that will make your liberal heart feel warm and outraged. For the good of Democracy!

The go to Fairvote. Read about Instant Runoff Voting. It's that wacky ranked-choice thing that they did in SF and is being done in other places in the world with success. Give them money. If more places do ranked-choice voting then third parties can exist without being spoilers.

For the good of Democracy!!!

buried election madness

I'm not attuned to tv news. Is it getting out that there are questions about the validity of the voting process this year? Are people getting it that in many counties with electronic voting machines that the total number of votes outnumbered the number of voters?

What about all these uncounted ballots that nobody will count?

And is anyone besides the left wing crazies talking about all the skeevy stuff that went on in Ohio? Like the super-secret ballot counting in Warren County? Or the reduction in the number of voting machines in minority neighborhoods where they had long waits to vote and the subsequent increase of voting machines in white suburban neighborhoods where they had no waits?

Is nobody besides these three congressmen going to stand up and see that the real vote totals come out?

9am cell phone weirdness

This morning my cell phone was called by six different fax machines one after another. And I called the verizon and they were all like, so what?

I just found it weird because I was of the assumption that automated dialing of cell phones was illegal. And anybody who does this should be shot.

I think this is some pretext for a cell phone telemarketer to start calling phones. How he got the number I don't know because I don't give out my cell phone number.

What this guy is doing is testing some automation system by which he'll start mass calling people's cell phones. When people start picking up the calls and just hearing the "beep beep beep" of a fax machine they'll stop answering their phones. Next comes phase 2, now since people won't answer their phones, the machines will then get into your voice mail. From there, they'll just start leaving advertising messages.

What you have now is a voice mail spam operation. You'll be deluged by the same amount of voice mail spam that plagues email these days.

Imagine it, the next time you check your voice mail, you'll be confronted with ads for some drug or penis enhancement or diet pill. And you'll have to sift through all this voice mail spam in order to find the messages from people you want.

As far as I know, there's no filtering system for voice mail. It will be nearly impossible to discern a spam voice mail from a real voice mail. This troubles me and maybe I'm fanatical about this. But I think people should really be alarmed.

here are the numbers:
212-832-0274
212-832-9274
212-832-3976
212-832-0889
212-832-9582
212-832-0375

If anybody can trace any of these numbers back to some jerk who is setting up his fax machines to dial people's cell phones, could you shoot him and get back to me?

The freakiest election maps

click for big

From umich.

This one looks like something the cat threw up. the purple us map by county with the counties blown up by population.

But it shows that the country is mostly indigo or blue.

One can only conclude that the electoral system is unfairly skewed to weigh the redder counties more heavily.

Another pretty election map.

click to make bigger

From Electoral-vote.com, an election map by county.

So, I guess blue state secession is not realistic. Unless we can have blue counties secede with us. That would be cool.

Adam Felber's concession speech

From his website, Fanatical Apathy.
...
There are some who would say that I sound bitter, that now is the time for healing, to bring the nation together. Let me tell you a little story. Last night, I watched the returns come in with some friends here in Los Angeles. As the night progressed, people began to talk half-seriously about secession, a red state / blue state split. The reasoning was this: We in blue states produce the vast majority of the wealth in this country and pay the most taxes, and you in the red states receive the majority of the money from those taxes while complaining about 'em. We in the blue states are the only ones who've been attacked by foreign terrorists, yet you in the red states are gung ho to fight a war in our name. We in the blue states produce the entertainment that you consume so greedily each day, while you in the red states show open disdain for us and our values. Blue state civilians are the actual victims and targets of the war on terror, while red state civilians are the ones standing behind us and yelling "Oh, yeah!? Bring it on!"

More than 40% of you Bush voters still believe that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11. I'm impressed by that, truly I am. Your sons and daughters who might die in this war know it's not true, the people in the urban centers where al Qaeda wants to attack know it's not true, but those of you who are at practically no risk believe this easy lie because you can. As part of my concession speech, let me say that I really envy that luxury. I concede that.

Healing? We, the people at risk from terrorists, the people who subsidize you, the people who speak in glowing and respectful terms about the heartland of America while that heartland insults and excoriates us... we wanted some healing. We spoke loud and clear. And you refused to give it to us, largely because of your high moral values. You knew better: America doesn't need its allies, doesn't need to share the burden, doesn't need to unite the world, doesn't need to provide for its future. Hell no. Not when it's got a human shield of pointy-headed, atheistic, unconfrontational breadwinners who are willing to pay the bills and play nice in the vain hope of winning a vote that we can never have. Because we're "morally inferior," I suppose, we are supposed to respect your values while you insult ours. And the big joke here is that for 20 years, we've done just that.<<<

help me.

I was so sad about this whole election thing that I went out shopping and bought myself a Palm Tungsten T3. But for all the gadget goodness this brings, it doesn't help me deal with the fact that most of the voters thought appointing anti-abortion judges and preventing gays from marrying each other was more important than anything else.

We was robbed!

I said it four years ago and I'l say it again. We were robbed.

I voted!

Kinda nervous about it because I did it around 6:30am. I woke up and strapped on my rollerblades and made it .3 miles away to the school on Huber Street. It took maybe 5 minutes. Most of that time was trying to determine which district I am in. I think I'm district 3.

Anyways, they got these new fangled eeelecktronick votin doohickies.
It's got the same layout as the old fashioned kind. The ballot[pdf] looks exactly the same.

But instead of having these little levers next to the names and a big lever to cast your vote, you got little bubble buttons next to the names that light up a green LED 'X' when you push them. And to cast your vote you push this big red button labeled 'CAST VOTE'.

As I said, I decided to get up early and vote. And I hope I did it right because looking back it seems kinda fuzzy in my head. Hopefully, I voted right.

VOTE KERRY! I hope I did.