CULT OF THE DEAD COW

Deth Veggie? Is this you?

2004-07-19T14:38:00.000-07:00

I know Veggie loves ninjas, but I'm pretty sure he would have told us if he was starring in a web cartoon. This sounds so much like his voice!

Ninja Jeopardy.

-Lady C

Wired article

2004-07-14T23:40:00.000-07:00

Hacktivism and How It Got Here by Michelle Delio Nice little overview from HOPE.

The Raver's PHRACK Prophile

2004-07-14T16:52:00.000-07:00

Here it is, from 1998. Good read, check it out. The Raver showed up at HOPE 5 last weekend which was awesome, as I hadn't seen him in like five years! If we're lucky, he'll bless us with some new reprehensible bovine mythos stuff.

More texXxt? So soon?

2004-07-13T19:00:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's true. There's another new t-file up on the main site. Here it is: #393 - "Nightcrawler" by The BMC (of textscene.com and Neo-Comintern fame). A tale of love, friendship, Wheel of Fortune, late night strolls, and man's unending quest for noodles.

cDc: 20 Years of HOPE

2004-07-08T19:47:00.000-07:00

From the BRAND NEW Global Domination Update: "All hell's a poppin'. Bill Clinton has released his magnum door stopper. Dubya's learning to read. It's a great day for literacy. Michael Moore is promoting Fahrenheit 9/11, his meditation on Presidential facial tics. And not to be outdone, Al Quaeda lensmen are doing boffo in the blood and guts department. Kind of like a low budget Mel Gibson film, but we digress. The Washington press corps couldn't be more outraged. OUTRAGED we say. Normally the fourth estate is too busy reprinting Whitehouse bumf to notice reality. But hark, there's a stench of glory in the air. We're in an election year. Yay! Rock the vote. Free drinks. Ugly t-shirts. Kiss my blog. The right wants Tubby Moore's guts for lunch, and the left wants to light Ann Coulter's thong on fire. It's mourning in America, and Ronnie's all gone. Sniff. But who gives a stinking brownie? !!! BECAUSE IT'S THE CULT OF THE DEAD COW'S TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY !!! Now is the time to reflect on the things that truly matter. Like world peace, human rights, and kissing our Big Cow Ass." That's right folx, we're celebrating our 20th Anniversary this weekend at 2600 magazine's Fifth HOPE Convention in NYC. Y'all come on out and see us; that'd shore be swell. Uh-huh. We're sponsoring a HOT Hacktivism panel that SHOULD NOT BE MISSED. Also, in celebration of this glorious occasion, there are a plethora of new t-files. Several of the new files are translations of pamphlets by the White Rose, a passive resistance group from Hitler-era Germany. Inspirational.

gettin' shot at

2004-07-07T23:23:00.000-07:00

Damn. Here's a story. Earlier tonight, 'bout 12:30 I was up on the rooftop of my building, sitting down & leaning against a low wall, talking with xxxclusive on the cell phone. I noticed a few, 4-5 kids (teens) on the rooftop across the way in the low light. Heard a loud bang, didn't think too much of it. Then I noticed one of those gangsta kids moving to the edge of that roof towads me, pointing and I saw something in his hand. "Uh... surely that's not a.." Muzzle flash. Shit. "I'm getting shot at, hold on!" I jumped up and ran towards the door back into the hallway. BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! downthestairsrunrunrunholyshitintomyapartmentcallyabackgottago911hiyeahiwasgettingshotat... So NYPD came quick, but there was nobody around to catch and that was that. It sucked.

YIPPIE! cDc trading cards!

2004-07-05T10:33:00.000-07:00

What? They're from that other CDC? Ewww! Who wants crufty old cards from Control Data Corporation? What? They're from the other other CDC? EWWWW! Disease trading cards! Actually, they sound kind of cool... I'll trade ya two Anthrax for an Ebola!

history lesson 4 today- 'Great Hunger' era in China

2004-07-02T10:31:00.000-07:00

"Mao is not a dictator..." wrote Francois Mitterand in the Februrary 23 edition of L'Express, 1961. Mao, said the future president of France, is "humanist...a new type of man... with a vigilant realism." That may have been true. But what Francois Mitterand wrote next, after spending three weeks touring China, was a sin and a lie. "The people of China have never been near famine... I repeat, in order to be clearly understood: there is no famine in China." Yet, in the winter of '59-60...and '60-'61...Mitterand must have had to watch his step. There were so many corpses of the dead and dying - of starvation - lying around the Chinese countryside he would have tripped over them in almost any direction he took. "Natural causes," said the doctors' reports. They died of heart attacks. Or fever. Or something. Doctors had been ordered not to write down the real cause of death. There was no mass-starvation in China. Mao said so. Mao was a liar too. Historians and researchers believe about 30 million people died during what was known as the 'Great Hunger' in China. Famines that brought starvation to the entire nation were unknown. For that you needed more than nature; you needed man. And not just any man, a man with a vision. A man with a sense of purpose. A man who wanted to improve the world. A man like Mao. "As the famine worsened," Jasper Becker explains in "Hungry Ghosts," the peasants lost hope. The [communist party] cadres also found that they could only keep order by creating more and more terror. According to Fengyang [province] statistics, 12.5 percent of its rural population - 28,926 people - were punished by one means or another. Some were buried alive; others were strangled with ropes; many had their noses cut off; about half had their rations cut; 441 died of torture; 383 were permanently disabled; and 2,000 were imprisoned, of whom 383 died in their cells. Sometimes torture was used to force the peasants to give up their food supplies...sometimes to punish them for stealing food..." As people in villages died, thousands and thousands of orphans were left to fend for themselves. Others were simply abandoned by parents who couldn't feed them, but didn't have the strength or heart to eat them. "The worst thing that happened during the famine," explained someone who lived through it, "was this: parents would decide to allow the old and the young to die first. They thought they could not afford to let their sons die, but a mother would say to her daughter, "You have to go and see your granny in heaven." They stopped giving the girl children food. They just gave them water. Then they swapped the body of their daughter with that of a neighbor's. About five to seven women would agree to do this amongst themselves. Then, they boiled the corpses into a kind of soup." -Bill Bonner, Daily Reckoning -------------------- "When I hear the word 'culture,' I reach for my gun." - Hermann Goering

high-concept music: HATEBEAK

2004-07-01T22:35:00.000-07:00

from the website: "Face-crushing guitars, head-pounding drums, bass so low it’ll make you vacate your bowels, and vocals so scorching, so extreme, they can’t be human. They’re not. This death metal outfit with a parrot for a singer takes your head off with two stabs to the throat. That’s right, a parrot for a singer, coming at you without mercy, Hatebeak pecks your eyes out and assaults your ears in a flurry of pummeling riffs and grey feathers that leaves you lying in a pool of blood begging for more. The first metal band in history with an avian vocalist!" Yeah. So the music is really shitty generic American-style death metal. But they've got a parrot! So download their free tune, "Beak of Putrefaction" and... marvel.

that darn black hole

2004-07-01T12:10:00.000-07:00

Texas vending machine emits poison gas "A team of astronomers have found a colossal black hole so ancient, they're not sure how it had enough time to grow to its current size, about 10 billion times the mass of the Sun." "How Hitler Became a Dictator" "Passive Smoking 'Twice As Dangerous As Believed'" exciting new game: "John Deere: American Farmer" Didn't know this... Silas Warner, who programmed Castle Wolfenstein and Robot War, died in February. '23NLPeople', "The Resource Page for NLP and Neurology" -thx, xxxclusive

cDc texXxt #385 - "Black Collectors of White Memorabilia"

2004-06-30T01:13:00.000-07:00

Yo, here it is. Fresh from the text editor and ftp client, right to YOU. Not listed on the main site yet. This is the debut from Dark Sorcerer, check it out... it's quite a piece of work.

Chinese general spanks whore of apocalypse, eats peanut butter

2004-06-28T19:02:00.000-07:00

nice guide to Norse mythology New Information Shows Bush Indecisive, Paranoid, Delusional Top Chinese General Calls the US a 'Whore' about.com's guide to 'Paranormal Hotspots'

aliens have come to dip their space-pigs in our chocolate!!!

2004-06-26T20:42:00.000-07:00

"Scientists successfully amplified, cloned and sequenced mitochondrial DNA from four human hairs attributed to Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727)." chocolate-covered pork fat Interview with author Laurence Gardner: "We know that the Ark of the Covenant was a very powerful capacitor and, in conjunction with monatomic elements (the manna placed in the Ark), it could become a superconductor with its own Meissner field. Hence, as detailed in the Torah and Talmud, it would levitate above the ground. We also know from recent experiments with monatomic elements that they can be heat-triggered to move out of our space-time. Bringing these things all together, therefore, it is possible that the Ark is still at Chartres, but simply not in our space-time—maybe "yielded", for want of a better term, into another parallel dimension." free issue of UFO Monthly (PDF) "New species appear when genetic changes accumulate to the point that similar organisms can no longer mate with each other. Scientists were able to fit size, temperature and the rate of genetic change into a mathematical equation that shows that evolution is connected to metabolic rate." Sorry... I had this story a long time ago, but forgot to post it then: "The deeply weird coronation of Rev. Sun Myung Moon in a Senate office building -- crown, robes, the works -- is no longer one of Washington's best-kept secrets. Your newspaper probably didn't tell you that one night last March, members of Congress hosted a crowning ritual for an ex-convict multi-billionaire who dressed up in maroon robes and declared himself the Second Coming." Treasure Trove of the Knights Templar: "Having almost reached his goal, the Duke was struck by violent blows and cries emanating from below, balls of mauve fire encircling the room and strange odours and visions. When the water began to rise mysteriously, he decided to retreat as quickly as he could."

when bulldozers attack

2004-06-25T19:55:00.000-07:00

Somehow I had missed this story until Dark Sorcerer clued me in... in Colorado, this guy armor-plated a bulldozer and destroyed his small town, and them shot himself in the head. Gnarly stuff. There are a zillion articles 'bout it, so I'll just link to the Google News search. NASA's Solar System Simulator: pick a spot to be situated at, look at another spot... dope. "The superdollar is the name given to an almost perfect forgery of an American banknote. The money is thought to originate from communist North Korea. Experts believe that the money is being produced and flooded into the system, mostly by North Korean diplomats as they travel abroad. One school of thought is that it is part of a plan to try to destabilise the American economy by putting millions and millions of dollars into the system." powdered alcohol PokerCalc: online Hold 'Em odds calculator The Mysteries of the Great Cross of Hendaye: "Based on the work of the enigmatic 20th-century alchemist Fulcanelli, authors Weidner and Bridges show how the greatest alchemical secret is that of time itself and that coded into an obscure monument in southwestern France--the cross in the town square of Hendaye--is the imminent date of the apocalypse."

giraffes on my mind

2004-06-25T17:29:00.000-07:00

This guy dug a big-ass hole in his backyard. Kinda neet. fascinating info from Popbitch: "A reader who has been working with Jessica Simpson reports that Jessica, aged 23, 'has a wrinkly, leathery cleavage from too much tanning.'" "Listen to Ray Charles' Georgia On My Mind: When Ray turned up to record this he was at the height of his heroin addiction. He arrived late, accompanied by his girlfriend, and went to sit by the piano. Nothing happened. Ray just sat on the stool, rocking back and forth. Then the girlfriend knelt beside him scratching his legs until she drew blood. This went on for 20 minutes until the blood poured down his leg. Suddenly Ray sat bolt upright, pulled down his trouserleg and started singing, knocking out 20 amazing takes of the song." "Be glad you're not a giraffe. It's very hard for them to have sex. The boy giraffe has to penetrate his partner while balancing on hind legs. If he misses, he still ejaculates. San Francisco Zoo's keeper says, "If it's a windy day these strands of semen waft across the zoo." "Rent Star Trek Voyager DVDs in honour of Jeri Ryan. Jeri revealed her ex-husband Jack Ryan, Republican family values' Senate candidate in Illinois, took her to sex clubs. "Jack wanted me to have sex with him there, with another couple watching. I refused," said Jeri. "[He] became very upset with me and said it was not a 'turn on' for me to cry." Jack Ryan's website says, "As an elected leader, my interest will be in promoting laws and educating people about the fundamental importance of the traditional family unit...defending traditional marriage..." Let's Masturbate

cDc #384

2004-06-24T05:26:00.000-07:00

There's a new t-file up on the main cDc site. Actually, it's not that new; it was posted on June 3. It's a sneaky file, which is why its release is only now being mentioned. It's the paper that Oxblood delivered at the CyberCrime and Digital Law Enforcement Conference at Yale Law School last March. Check it out -- cDc #384: "Hacktivism, From Here to There."

My mostest favorite website in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD!

2004-06-17T12:52:00.000-07:00

HERE!
Buy stickers! Spread the word about the benefits to humanity that come from BABY SMASHING!
(This has been an unpaid endorsement.)

fun 4 us, no fun 4 u

2004-06-10T23:56:00.000-07:00

I forgot to tell this story. So on Tuesday afternoon, I was hanging out with my pal Texas Chef at Riverside Park, right on the Hudson River. At 79th St. there's a public boat dock, and so we wandered out there to check it out. Some nice boats all around. I dunno much about boats, but these were nice. So we're like, "Hey, let's jack one!" We crept up low around this pimp looking boat and see these guy standing around inside in his fuckin' bathrobe. Chef runs up and is all in his face, like, "Yo!" and I'm like "Yo!" and we just sort of pushed him over the side into the water! Ha, that was fun. Then I'm like "Yo, let's go to Jersey!" So we untied the boat and told that stupid wet guy to shut up as he splashed around, and we started the engine and got the hell outta there. Some navigation problems, but we finally managed to get going in a straight line, right across the river at Mainland, USA. Man, that engine was loud when we gunned it. So anyways, we're tearing across the Hudson, whooping and hollerin' and shit and there's some light traffic but we didn't pay it no mind. It just took a minute or so and the shore was coming up fast. Shore... ROCKS it what it was. Big ass rocks. So we're like, who needs a boat anyhow... we jumped outta that thing at the last second and it ran BAMMM right into those rocks! And we're splashing around in that dirty-ass Hudson, laughing like monkeys. Dead boat, we win again! Ha ha. Then we paddled up onto shore, climbed some rocks and made it to the EZ Mart payphone, and called my girl to come out with the Trans-Am. She showed up, we headed back to civilization and it was bacon cheeseburgers all around. Hell yeah. fun 4 us no fun 4 u (*some details slightly exaggerated)

Mmmm....owl crafts.

2004-06-10T01:08:00.000-07:00

A Treasury of Macrame Owls Bizarre Horse Mutilation in Northwestern Missouri: "June 5, 2004 - A pregnant mare had been seen alive the afternoon before and was discovered twenty-four hours later at 3 p.m., dead and mutilated. The unborn foal's back legs were still in the mare's abdomen, but its head seemed melted away by some incomprehensible force." Love really is blind: "Strong emotional ties to another person inhibit not only negative emotions but also affect the brain circuits involved in making social judgments about that person." “Five hundred years ago one might achieve Pure Land in one lifetime. In modern times our mind is disturbed by technologies, more time is spent on materialistic pursuits,” said Kelsang, one of 11 Tibetan Buddhist monks who have been touring North America since last August." We Weren't Made To Multitask Crop circles in Arkansas Satanic Ritual Blamed for Death of Italian Teens: "Witness statements showed two teens died during a cocaine-fueled ritual where Marino, a petite brunette, was killed under a full moon by knife plunged into her heart. Tollis, the lead singer of the band, was killed with a hammer blow to the head when he realized the other band members were going ahead with Marino's murder and tried to stop it." Sonora, California - UFO Caught On Film: "This object moves so fast, yet can stop of a dime and again from a dead stop move again at an incredible rate of speed." "A US doctor has claimed warnings about getting skin cancer from the sun may prevent healthy levels of exposure"

fantastic fantasy fan-fiction

2004-06-08T00:04:00.000-07:00

It was a dark and stormy night. Rapper Biggie Smalls stretched and yawned. He patted his Klingon space-cow on the head with his big sticky fat hand and sighed, remembering the tumultuous passion of the past few hours. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door! "Open up, B.I.G.! We are Imperial Stormtroopers, here to arrest you for a heinous crime!" The oversexed MC didn't know what to do, so he decided to play it casual. He set out a folding lawn chair, grabbed an alcoholic drink with an umbrella in it, and sat down in full-recline, sunglasses over his eyes. "Come in fellas, come in right now!" he shouted at the door. "I'm just chillin' with my space cow!" "Don't you mean... SEX cow?!?!" yelled the first Stormtrooper as the door burst open and 5 of the white-armored soldiers leaped into the room! "Inform Lord Vader we have a prisoner! Puff Diddy cannot save you now, pervert! We know you've been sex0ring that cow! In fact, it's not just a cow... it's your genetically-modified clone! Incestual freak!" "Dagnabbit, I may owe a fee! Well shucks, I guess you're onto me!" exclaimed the portly rhyme-sayer. "Take him away!" the enthusiastic Stormtroopers directed each other, as they handcuffed Mr. Smalls and led him outside to their space-police car. But what the Stormtroopers, in their great haste had missed, was a single orange hair on the floor. Which led to another hair. And another. In a trail. Under the bed. Out from which came crawling a large, orange cat. "Garfield!" shouted Encyclopedia Brown as he leaped through the door, followed by Sally, his lovely assistant. "Yes!" said the cat. "I'm in anguish. I can't handle the love triangle any more! And they've taken my MC away from me!" With that, he pulled a gun from his fur and blew his brains out! "Oh, how sad," lamented the busty Sally, through her bee-stung lips. "Yes, very tragic," agreed Encyclopodia, growing hornier by the second. The sexual tension in the room grew as the blood drained from the cat's body. "Hey, let's have sex!" they both shouted. And they did! And it was lovely. THE END. G. Ratte'/cDc

right temporal lobe - werdz from Dark Sorcerer

2004-06-06T20:22:00.000-07:00

Dark Sorcerer had this to say: "This morning I was on a conference call and had previously noticed that my cordless phone at home was making a sort of dead-battery/short-circuit/fire-hazard type smell (but had chosen to not do anything about it, of course.) Still, I chose this over my cell phone since I was way over my minutes, and sure enough, after about ~20 minutes on the phone there came that old familiar "numb extremities and anesthesized head" sort of feeling. I then proceeded to call in sick to work due to a migraine headache (kinda true), went back to bed, and proceeded to have a vision of my house being the center of vortex - you know, an Ark of the Covenant being lifted back into the Sky after melting Nazi faces off sort of affair - followed by yet another meeting of an ex-college girlfriend on a bicycle in the Astral Plane (weird, I don't think there's any Jungian "early 20-something upper-middle-class WASP female" sort of archetypal symbolism here, but chalk it up to some sorta animus projection... whatever.) This culminated by me having to slap myself repeatedly in order to wake up out of it all (just like the movies) after I'd realized that I could attack that dwarf that was behind the silver door with impunity since none of this was real anyway but still, that was not a very nice thing to do. The right side of my head done still feel not quite right. In fact, I feel as though a sort of peaceful feeling has washed over me. I am One with the Tao. Is this a koinkidink? Or some sort of inadvertent stimulation of the right temporal lobe that is supposedly associated with the near-death experience? http://www.melvinmorse.com/e-tlp.htm What about purchasing one of these for home use? Can U selectively target (or even semi-target) the right temporal lobe through ECV? Surely someone has tried this by now. "A PICTURE SAYS A THOUSAND WORDS""

old email, freed from the chains of context

2004-06-06T18:33:00.000-07:00

--- SolidiusSnakus@cs.com wrote: > Regardless.. they were cool in the 80's. I'm also highly aware of the fact > that I'm stupid and ignorant, thanks. I'M GLAD WE HAVE AN UNDERSTANDING. DON'T MAKE ME TALK ABOUT 'UDO,' THE LOVEABLE GERMAN HEAVY-METAL ELF SINGER FROM THE BAND 'ACCEPT.' THEIR HEADBANGING INSPIRATIONAL ANTHEM AND HIT, "BALLS TO THE WALL" (1984) HAS DEFINED MY AWESOME, DYNAMIC, OUT-OF-THE-BOX LIFESTYLE. . G. RATTE'/CDC/666 I got a letter the other day from the Council On Foreign Relations and was very excited 'til I opened it... they just wanted me to subscribe to Foreign Affairs magazine, not join their soooper cabal. Damn. At least I'd save $31.70 off the cover price, but it's just not the same as being in the sekrut shadow govt. and all. I'll get over my disappointment soon. Couple days ago I made this year's first trip to Rockaway Beach and waded around in the cold Atlantic. Yesterday I took a cheap bus to Washington, DC and looked at monuments in the rain. The American Shrine, always dope. Then my roommate's cat died, after spazzing out and trying to kill his own tail. The cat looked like he was out of his mind on PCP. Didn't know he was into the heavy stuff.

everyone in hell has wet socks

2004-06-03T21:35:00.000-07:00

from The Vice Guide to Happiness, by Gavin McInnes: "THINGS ARE SO FUCKING GAY Yes, things like TV ads are so bad they can be infuriating. Right now a Chili’s baby-back ribs ad is on behind me where this yuppie asshole in a Hugo Boss turtleneck is BEATBOXING and saying “barbuhquuue saaawce” in a James Earl Jones voice like a show-off from Shipmates—but I like it. You’d have to be a total Peter Bagge to get pissed off at things that are that bad. How about, “Ah ha ha ha, what a fucking loser! Hoo hoo, oh shit, man”? When Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter proclaimed, “Irony is dead,” he forgot about the part where shitty things are fucking hilarious. Am I not supposed to love it on Cops when the Vietnam-vet crackhead in an army coat gets caught with women’s clothes in his house and uses “I’m starting a plastics museum” as an excuse? (He even adds, “Is there something wrong with a man trying to better himself?”) I don’t know if I’m being ironic or just plain cruel when I enjoy that, but I don’t care. It’s like Showgirls—once you realize that bad is good the world becomes a smorgasbord of fun things to check out. See you at TGIFridays! (I’ll be the one in the cat sweatshirt drinking an Awesome Blossom). I’M NOT WORTHY In the words of Dr. Phil, “You are worthy.” I know sometimes you feel like a total loser, but if it’s anywhere near a Tuesday at ten p.m. why don’t you turn on a show called The Real World? You’re not worthy? Have you seen their bandannas? Have you heard them talk about being “scared” and “not being honest about needing things”? Ha ha ha ha ha. Just imagine how you would be on that show with your never-been-to-the-gym body and your balls-to-the-wall attitude. “Anger management!?” you’d yell at the black dude incredulously, “What are you, a fucking fairy!?” And get this, you low-self-esteem-having motherfucker: Those people are your average Western young person. Believe me. You’re worthy. I HATE MY JOB Everyone hates their job. Jobs suck. Do you think the singer of Korn likes his job? Touring is the worst hell on earth. Plus, being famous is like owing every shithead in the world “personality” money. That’s why models desperately foster those low IQs—their jobs are that boring. The only person who really likes his job is either a total fucking idiot or a store manager with a small dick. The rest of us are in the same boat." ------------------------- So I'm into mashed pototoes now, it's what I do. Boil 'em and mash 'em. This here is my second batch. With these, I dumped a can of tuna in there. Hmm. You fucks are fuckin' funny sometimes. Haha ha. I'mma just sit here with my pot of potatoes and laugh uneasily at your shenanigans, you towering fountains of snot and duplicity. A song you people should check out is "The Rhythm of Life" from the '60s musical Sweet Charity, as performed by Sammy Davis Jr. in the film version. I listened to it over a dozen times consecutively yesterday. Damn. Today on the block, I was doing the brother-man handshake with O'Neil, the oldest man ever and he told me, "God is good." I'm a simple person with not much to say. -G. Ratte'/cops doing crimes

Butter Dog porn

2004-06-03T17:31:00.000-07:00

From Popbitch: "2004 is going to be all about dog cunnilingus. Butter Dog porn is huge in Japan. Women put butter (or more usually non-fat yoghurt to stop the dogs getting fat) on their labia and are then licked, and shagged, by the dogs. Porn dogs, usually Labradors, earn 200,000 yen ($2,000) per film, but unfortunately face a lifespan shortened by half because of the amount of ejaculating they have to do. An article all about the phenomenon. dumb joke: President Bush gets out of his helicopter in front of the White House carrying a baby pig under each arm. The Marine guard snaps to attention, salutes, and says: "Nice pigs, sir." Bush replies: "These are not pigs, these are Texan Razorback Hogs. I got one for Vice-President Cheney, and I got one for Defence Secretary Rumsfeld." The Marine again snaps to attention, salutes, and says, "Nice trade, sir." ------------------- Speaking of which. Somehow the Republican Party has me on their mailing list, wanting donations. So I sent them back a response indicating I'd give them a big fat check. Then they wrote back with a 8x10 glossy pic of GWB and wifey, and asking again for that check. So I checked the biggest donation box and sent it back in their SASE. I wonder how long this will go on, with me screwing up their accounting and wasting their postage. Wee!

The cDc Grand Imperial Dynasty - "Who We Be"

2004-06-02T10:55:00.000-07:00

Myles Long just did a really good job writing a new "Who We Be" statement for the main web site. Here it is: "Based in Lubbock, Texas, the CULT OF THE DEAD COW (cDc) is the most-accomplished and longest-running group in the computer underground. Founded in 1984 and widely considered to be the most elite people to ever walk the face of the earth, this think tank has been referred to as both "a bunch of sickos" (Geraldo Rivera) and "the sexiest group of computer hackers there ever was" (Jane Pratt, _Sassy_ and _Jane_ magazines). The cDc is a leading developer of Internet privacy and security tools, which are all free for the public. In addition, cDc created the first electronic publication, which is still going strong. The cDc Grand Imperial Dynasty includes a former Presidential Advisor on computer security, a Harvard researcher, a former U.N. official, an assistant district attorney, a professor of logic, several published authors, a video game developer, an Eagle Scout, programmers of every sort, graphic artists, musicians, currency traders, and a Merovingian. And these are just the members who have chosen to make their association with the cDc known to the public. Rumors abound about the cDc: that it has disrupted communications by moving satellites; that it is at war with the "Church" of Scientology; that it gave Ronald Reagan Alzheimer's disease; that Slobodan Milosevic mentioned it while cross-examining a witness during his War Crimes Tribunal; that it meets in a secret bunker under an abandoned military base in the Nevada desert. These are all true. But there's so much more. For twenty years, the cDc has proven itself as an innovative force in the computer underground. In 1984, the cDc invented the e-zine. In 1990, the cDc's HoHoCon defined the modern hacker convention. In every U.S. Presidential Election since 1992, the cDc has run a candidate. In 1994, the cDc became the first hacking group to have its own Usenet newsgroup. In 1996, the cDc coined the term "hacktivism." In 1997, years before everyone and their dog had jumped on the file sharing bandwagon, it was distributing original mp3-format music on its website. In 1998 and 1999, the cDc's "Back Orifice" series was launched to open the eyes of consumers regarding the security of their computer operating systems. To this day, Back Orifice and BO2k are among the most popular remote system administration tools among both hackers and IT professionals. Since 1999, Hacktivismo (a special projects group within the cDc) has been at the forefront of the ongoing struggle for human rights in and out of cyberspace. In 2002, the cDc and Hacktivismo drafted their own human rights-friendly software license and earned further distinction as the only underground computer groups to ever receive U.S. Department of Commerce approval to export strong encryption in software. Nothing can compare to the money-throwing, stage-diving, crotch-grabbing, guitar-wailing, inter-species sex-depicting, computer-smashing & panty-wetting experience that is a live cDc performance. And that's just the beginning..." Peachy, eh? Myles also just got married, so h00ray for Myles! Also check out the 'Team Bio' part for more useful background.

Internet Fuckwad Theory

2004-06-01T17:36:00.000-07:00

"The Impact of Anonymity on Disinhibitive Behavior Through Computer-Mediated Communication." Also known as the "Internet Fuckwad Theory," as illustrated in this Penny Arcade strip. Fun interactive flash thing: Drain of Thought Thing about a recent academic conference at Yale that Oxblood spoke at: "The recognition of hackers at a function for digital law enforcement? At an academic function? That's unheard of. But yet, at a conference this past weekend hosted by Yale Law School - entitled "Digital Cops in a Virtual Environment." "Oxblood Ruffin" (Cult of the Dead Cow) had the rare opportunity to educate the hacker hostile audience about some of the meaningful work that the group has been engaged in." "The Ideal Boy" - safety pictures from India

"cDc is really nice"

2004-06-01T16:05:00.000-07:00

"cDc is really nice": everything2's entry about cDc I dunno what this is, but it looks & sounds neeto: oculart Male Control of Ejaculation The Clitoris During Intercourse That the strong might not injure the weak In order to protect the widows and orphans I have in Babylon... Set up these my precious words Written upon my memorial stone... -The Code of Hammurabi, 1750 BC From a Belgian legal case, "The defence team also urged the court to consider the disappearance, in sometimes violent or suspicious circumstances, of several witnesses they said could shed better light on the fate of two eight-year-old girls who allegedly starved to death in Dutroux's dungeon."

FunHi retardothon

2004-06-01T15:40:00.000-07:00

Tweety Fish lets us all know about... "FunHi: playa-themed friendster clone catering to english-speaking asian import tuner camgirl kids check out the gift shoppe, where you can buy "items" and have them sent as very special gifts to your friends, who will then have an icon. To look at. On a computer screen. An icon that cannot be transferred or resold. Some of the "most popular" girls on there (check the gallery) have hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of gifts." Wow. So the site makes its money from idiot guys buying icons for h0tt chixxx. My first inclination after absorbing this was to Google for "Survivalist Monk."

coffee grounds of the mad overlord

2004-05-24T20:34:00.000-07:00

Joseph Campbell foundation, tons of shared-mythology stuff. Flash-based emulated Macintosh SE running System 7.0 Expected value of all possible opening Texas Hold'Em Poker hands Hold'em Preflop Strategy According to Abdul The MoodGYM Training Program

Hell, YEAH! They ain't goin' out like punks!

2004-05-19T22:18:00.000-07:00

Alvin, Simon and Theodore serve rightious payback to that bitch David Seville. Do NOT mess with the Chipmunk crew when they are rolling hard.

more avenues of EXCITEMENT!!

2004-05-19T12:27:00.000-07:00

BananaGuard: "Are you fed up with bringing bananas to work or school only to find them bruised and squashed? Our unique, patented device allows for the safe transport and storage of individual bananas letting you enjoy perfect bananas anytime, anywhere." GasBGon Flatulence Filter Seat Cushions "mypetfat(TM) consists of a 1oz. replica of body fat and a set of thoughts that are called mind stretches. Together, they are the mypetfatTM program." ButtCandle: "ButtCandles are an exciting, and time honored, device for internal cleansing." VirtualStapler

Hello Kitty likes the raw fish

2004-05-19T10:34:00.000-07:00

Book review: The Radioactive Boy Scout: The True Story of a Boy and His Backyard Nuclear Reactor New York Times Reporter A Government Informant Creative food presentations Internet appliance by English people who obviously don't know any Spanish site about NBC's Monitor, a radio show that ran from 1955-1975. "What's Conservative about the Pledge of Allegiance?" from the Cato Institute. "From its inception, in 1892, the Pledge has been a slavish ritual of devotion to the state, wholly inappropriate for a free people. It was written by Francis Bellamy, a Christian Socialist pushed out of his post as a Baptist minister for delivering pulpit-pounding sermons on such topics as "Jesus the Socialist." Bellamy was devoted to the ideas of his more-famous cousin Edward Bellamy, author of the 1888 utopian novel Looking Backward. Looking Backward describes the future United States as a regimented worker's paradise where everyone has equal incomes, and men are drafted into the country's "industrial army" at the age of 21, serving in the jobs assigned them by the state. Though no one can be legally compelled to salute the flag, encouraging the ritual smacks of promoting a quasi-religious genuflection to the state. That's not surprising, given that the Pledge was designed by an avowed socialist to encourage greater regimentation of society. Why do so many conservatives who, by and large, exalt the individual and the family above the state, endorse this ceremony of subordination to the government? Why do Christian conservatives say it's important for schoolchildren to bow before a symbol of secular power?" "Parallel universes are no longer a figment of our imagination. They're so real that we can reach out and touch them, and even use them to change our world, says Marcus Chown."

skynyrd is the antidote

2004-05-13T22:56:00.000-07:00

The song for today is Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Simple Man." Sez it all. Don't trust anybody that doesn't like Skynyrd; that's my advice to you. the xxxclusive hunted up some background info on The NYC Anti-Hipster Forum which has been skewering those Williamsburg zombies for quite a while. Turns out that "Aimee Plumley," the person who writes on the site, is actually a pseudonym for a dude from Colorado who moved out here a couple years back (article 1 and article 2). Anyways, that CO kid Brian did the sensible thing and got the hell out of that Bklyn crapfest and moved to Morningside Heights in upper Manhattan. Good man. "And so I traded my coffee-soaked, bowel-gurgling, cigarette sucking mornings hocking luggies at the Verb Café for lap-swimming with senior citizens at the pool; I traded my Styrofoam Budweiser nights at the godawful Greenpoint Tavern surrounded by enough black-framed specs to put any 1955 college yearbook to shame for public radio and computer chess and speaking abstractedly to the cancer-stricken ghost of Ulysses Grant out by Riverside Park. And so, my life is different now - better by all practical measures..." Sounds like the kinda stuff I do. Anyways, check it out if yer into sociological studiez.

U R MY PINK FROSTED CUPCAKE

2004-05-13T05:35:00.000-07:00

This chick Krista has been running this Stumptuous site for several years now, all about women's weight-training. Most of the info is gender-neutral though and it's the best overall site to get you going with that stuff. The site kicks ass, full of solid info and the attitude is dead right. If you ain't been lifting, you should start. These Downhill Battle guys are doing some interesting projects with the concept of "Music Activism" and are mixed up with Lessig's stuff 'bout free culture. Check it out. This is an article on Islamic terrorism, with excerpts from a new book called Good Muslim, Bad Muslim. "In July 1979, Jimmy Carter, smarting from US setbacks in Vietnam, Iran and Nicaragua, decided to fight back against the expansion of global communism by providing secret aid to opponents of the new pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan. The Cold War was at its height. As National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinksi later recalled, he warned Carter that U.S. financial intervention "was going to induce a Soviet military intervention." He was right. In December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. And that set in motion a series of events that haunts us to this day." Ko-Gyaru: "They are the flamboyant high school girls of Shibuya; the mindless, fashion first automatons that see life as a pink frosted cupcake in a hot-blue brand name foil wrapper." The Astral Experience: pretty good intro site for astral projection. Ugh. Hey. I've been spending lots of time recently burning MP3s to clear off space on my HD to do some music work again. What's with all this lazy-ass tagging going on? Clean tags, yo. Clean tags.

We All Die Shitting

2004-05-10T14:17:00.000-07:00

"getting up and rocking out with the air guitar takes brutal honesty and an evolved sense of confidence." - Homeless Cop on Vice mag forums. Right on. Speaking of Vice, the new issue has a good overview of Texas rap from SXSW, "Pockets Dumb Fat.". That's my favorite style... you need you some UGK and the Swishahouse stuff is great. Satanists stalk Zimbabwe city: " Mutare villagers along the border with Mozambique are living in fear of a satanic activism group on the prowl in their areas who forcibly suck blood from targeted victims they leave for “dead.”" Big transcript of interview with Maurice Sendak, who wrote Where the Wild Things Are. Hentai dictionary: Japanese perversions, fetishes and AV slang.

Sasser worm...

2004-05-09T19:34:00.000-07:00

An 18 year old German kid was arrested for creating the "Sasser" worm. Does "Sasser" mean something in German? In English, it looks like it means "one who sasses," as in one who talks back. "Don't you give me no sass, boy!" "Unlike most outbreaks, Sasser does not require users to activate it by clicking on an e-mail attachment." Sure, that's pretty cool, I guess. But, if you guys could quit writing these worms that serve no real purpose, that'd be great.

A powerful argument against nudity!

2004-05-07T08:39:00.000-07:00

I GOTTA start wearing pants again! Go ahead, click on the link. I SWEAR it's safe to view at work. Trust me!

"You wanted the best, and you got it..."

2004-05-06T10:07:00.000-07:00

KISS guitar tablature, sorted by album. Skeptical Investigations - This is cool. It's a site that examines the "skeptic" movement of smarmy, dogmatic materialists. Dick Cheney got 5 student deferments from the 'Nam draft. Seventeen cows die mysteriously within hours on East Texas ranch. "New weapon uses ultraviolet laser beams to immobilize people and animals at a distance." Grow new teeth with stem cells within 5 years. Pac-Manhattan - real live Pac-Man game in NYC. Lion Roaming Neighborhoods In Central Ohio Secret Teachings of All Ages book reprinted The Valuts of Erowid - "documenting the complex relationship between humans and psychoactives." Tobacco stunts your grey matter, claim scientists: "Not only were there fewer thinking cells in smokers? brains, but they also had a lower density. Scans revealed abnormalities in the prefrontal cortex - an area at the front of the brain involved in "executive functions" such as decision-making, planning and judgment. It is also linked to poorer memory performance." "Findings show that the Jiroft civilization was older and more advanced than the Sumerian." I watched Rounders last night, which is a drama around underground poker playing in New York. Worth watching.

poker-playing Masons will consecrate your orifices to Satan

2004-05-05T12:58:00.000-07:00

Texas Hold'Em poker odds calculator Researchers bet on fruit fly fights to expose underlying biology of aggression Russian 'legal' music site offers songs for 5¢ Ohio Diocese Eye Satanic Slay Allegations: "The Rev. Gerald Robinson was arrested last week on charges of strangling and stabbing Sister Margaret Ann Pahl, 71, about 30 times during Easter weekend 1980. Her body, covered by an altar cloth and surrounded by burning candles, was found in a hospital chapel. Another woman described satanic ceremonies in which clergy members placed her in a coffin filled with cockroaches, forced her to swallow what she believed to be a human eyeball and penetrated her with a snake ``to consecrate these orifices to Satan.''" Violence Among Girls Increasing in U.S.: "BALTIMORE - Twelve-year-old Nicole Townes is out of a coma but still struggling to recover after being pummeled and stomped at a birthday party in a beating that was shocking not just because of its savagery, but because it was meted out by other girls. Nicole was scratched, pummeled, kicked and stomped by as many as six women and girls, police said. She was in a coma for nearly three weeks and is still hospitalized. Her family said she may have permanent brain damage. Charged in the assault were the birthday girl, 13; her mother; her 19-year-old sister; and three other girls, ages 13, 14 and 15. Police also charged a 24-year-old woman who lived with Nicole with child abuse and neglect for leaving the girl at the party." Train gropers join filthy hands to gang tackle victims: " Cops in Osaka, Japan's second city, are grappling with an alarming rise in the number of chifure, a contraction of "chikan friend," the word used to describe groups of men who gang up to molest female train commuters." The Vessel Of God: The Sumerian Origins of the Iconography of the Templars, Masons, and Merovingians

DVD of the Week!

2004-05-02T21:16:00.000-07:00

"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". Buy it. Watch it. Worship it.

Direct from UTAH!

2004-04-22T09:01:00.000-07:00

Bladeplay, for all your cheap, no questions asked, mail-order switchblade knife purchasing needs. The Italian stilettos are particularly recommended for their old school street cred.

"Drive It Like You Stole It"

2004-04-20T01:34:00.000-07:00

Actors Whip Easter Bunny at Church Show: "GLASSPORT, Pa. - Many parents and children got upset when a church trying to teach about Jesus' crucifixion performed an Easter show with actors whipping the Easter bunny. Performers broke eggs meant for an Easter egg hunt and also portrayed a drunken man and a self-mutilating woman." FDA Approves Human Brain Implant Devices: "Cyberkinetics Inc. of Foxboro, Mass., has received FDA approval to begin a clinical trial in which four-square-millimeter chips will be placed beneath the skulls of paralyzed patients. If successful, the chips could allow patients to command a computer to act - merely by thinking about the instructions they wish to send." Some gnarly art by Rev. Betty Nodezilla grid network - I don't know anything about this yet, but it looks interesting. Comments? Technology and Female Sexuality: A History of the Electromechanical Vibrator

Yeah, I'm a lazy mofo!

2004-04-15T21:56:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to messing with Blogger after a year or so to try and recover my forgotten password. After a few tries, I hit the right one. So here I am, back to share my wisdom and wit with all you lucky people. You may now shower me with praise, money and iPods!

fascinating werds from Popbitch

2004-04-15T14:02:00.000-07:00

"Iryou Fetchi is the catch-all term for an increasingly popular medical sexual fetish. Iryou Fetchi includes dressing up in nurse's uniforms, giving and receiving enemas or injections, inserting catheters or having sex while in gynaecological stirrups. Political journalists who accompanied Tony Blair on his visit with Colonel Gadaffi said the Colonel farted repeatedly through the meeting. Farting is an insult in many parts of the Arabian Diaspora so likely to be a deliberate provocation by the Colonel. The man who plays Tigger in Disney World is facing police charges of fondling women who get their photo taken with him. One of the complainants, 21 year-old Erin Rivera, said "Everybody who goes through my photo album says, 'Tigger is groping you.'" A man walks into a fish and chip shop with a fish under his arm. "Do you have any fishcakes?" he asks. "Yes, of course," says the fish shop owner. "Great," replies the man, nodding at the fish under his arm, "It's his birthday." Honest Abe's Neuro-Linguistic Programming Book Reviews Now Botox and trout pouts have been adopted by suburbia, celebrities have moved on to something far more flattering. Juvaderm, a synthetic collagen-like substance can be injected into the cheeks to give that perfect sculpted look of knife-sharp cheekbones. Another use for Juvaderm is to firm up ageing chins and jawlines. Now we think of it, Madonna's chin is suddenly looking very pointed and perky... Telstar Records recently went into liquidation. Co-chairman Neil Palmre claimed it "Reflects the very serious problems the industry as a whole is experiencing." But maybe it more accurately reflects a few other factors: 1. Telstar's A&R department spent a reputed ?22 million in the last three years. Who did they sign? Er... B*witched, Vinnie Jones, Claire Sweeney and Victoria Beckham. 2. The company car park was jammed full of Aston Martins, Porsches and Bentleys. 3. Telstar spent ?65,000 on a party just to mark co-chairman Sean O'Brien's 50th birthday last year. Sean wasn't even around for this debacle - he was off in Barbados for a couple of months."

Scientology meets Star Wars

2004-04-15T12:25:00.000-07:00

a little piece by Omega: "I was walking on the street today and two people had set up a table with a sign that read, "FREE STRESS TEST." An attractive, college-aged girl manning the table jumped up to intercept me as I walked by. "Hi, would you like to take a free stress test? It only takes a few minutes and I'm sure you would find it valuable," she said, smiling and standing in my way. I looked over at the table and there was some device about the size of a Playstation game console, that looked like an electronic drum pad. Right next to the drum pad were stacks and stacks of paperback editions of _DIANETICS_. I looked back at her and said, "Hokey religions and mystical energy fields are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid," and continued walking around her. Obi Wan, I think, would have been amused."

"I'm Rick James, bitch!"

2004-04-15T10:50:00.000-07:00

The man knows how to dress... but doesn't know the lyrics to his biggest hit. Heart attack survivors half as likely to suffer further attacks if they have love and friends Play '80s computer game Alter Ego online Teen Sentenced To 50 Years For Hitting Jogger On Purpose: "GREAT FALLS, Mont. -- A teen was sentenced to 50 years in prison for trying to kill a woman by driving up onto a sidewalk to hit her with his sport utility vehicle. Police say the teen tried to kill Patty Emanuel, 40, because he wanted to have sex with her corpse." Playfair strips Apple's DRM from the iTunes Music Store files. A 15-year-old Romanian altar boy fell into a coma after a church bell fell on his head: " The boy was standing in the wooden bell tower during the Easter service when the bronze bell broke loose and smashed onto his head, fracturing his skull and legs." Man bites dog to death: "A man has bitten a dog to death in Shanghai after it attacked him as he walked home with friends after a night out, a news report said. The man, who was drunk, pounced on the dog when it nipped him on the fingers and cheek. He repeatedly bit it until it died." Heavy Social drinkers show brain damage: "Heavy social drinkers show the same pattern of brain damage as hospitalized alcoholics -- enough to impair day-to-day functioning."

if you're gonna go, go big

2004-04-09T09:30:00.000-07:00

David Icke has a new book out, Tales from the Time Loop. Icke is a big proponent of the malevolent-interdimensional-reptilian theory. "Why I Hate Personal Weblogs!" The Hacker's Diet: "...a serious book about how to lose weight and permanently maintain whatever weight you desire. It treats dieting and weight control from an engineering and management standpoint, and provides the tools and an understanding of why they work and how to use them that permit the reader to gain control of their own weight."

zombies on the move

2004-04-07T20:54:00.000-07:00

Sir Dystic notes re: google sets, "Anyone played with google sets much? I'm still trying to figure out how things become associated in a set... for instance if I do a lookup on "Cult of the dead cow" and "legion of doom" I get some expected results like l0pht, 2600, slashdot etc, but "Male Supremacy"? "God is Dead"?" GO GO zombie movies!!: "A look back at the 'Dead' trilogy -- with its mindless mall-obsessed zombies -- as scathing critique of American consumer and media culture." The remake of Dawn of the Dead is awesome, BTW. This is a funny little Flash piece called "Right Wing Eye." On Sunday, April 25th there's going to be a huge march for reproductive rights in Washington D.C. The Unitarian church I go to is sponsoring a bus trip out there, so I'm going on that. Greyhound is cheap if you're on the east coast; think about showing up. Let's kick-ass to the oldies: "PHOENIX, Arizona (AP) -- Exercise guru Richard Simmons allegedly slapped a man who made a sarcastic remark about one of his videos, police said. The man "made the off-hand comment, 'Hey, everybody. It's Richard Simmons. Let's drop our bags and rock to the '50s,"' said Phoenix police Sgt. Tom Osborne. "Mr. Simmons took exception to it and walked over to the other passenger and apparently slapped him in the face.""

Scooby Doo 2 and Beef

2004-03-28T11:09:00.000-08:00

The new Scooby Doo movie was released on Friday. It was okay. More like the cartoon than the first one, in my opinion. Here's a related story by Walt Disney's Frozen Head: Hanna and Barbera were my bitches. Oh, and if you want cow-related news, check out U.S. fondness for beef nudges food prices higher: "The hearty American appetite for beef, unshaken by the first U.S. case of mad cow disease, may fuel the largest annual increase in food prices in a decade, U.S. economists say. Prices could climb by more than 3 percent this year, a much larger gain than usual but still modest enough to avoid becoming an election-year issue, they said. It has been three decades since food inflation excited political concern." Yeah.

'merican jobz

2004-03-27T07:44:00.000-08:00

-from today's Daily Reckoning: "Pandering to the lumpenmasses, the Democrats offer to "do something" to "protect American jobs." What they would do would be either futile or destructive, but that is to be expected. John Kerry's "Jobs for America Bill," for example, does a little of both. It would require employers to give notice before they outsourced anything. Other proposals limit the ability of U.S. companies to take advantage of less expensive foreign labor... or limit the ease with which consumers could benefit from lower prices. No serious economist would suggest such things, without at least having his fingers crossed behind his back. There are a lot of dopey things said to voters with the cameras running. But no one is going to look the American worker in the face and tell him that he earns too much money for what he does. A politician might as well pour gasoline over his head and light a match; the media would scorch him in a matter of minutes... his career in politics would be in cinders... and he'd have to go out and get an honest job."

ooh, shiny

2004-03-27T01:10:00.000-08:00

Q: I got my iPod about a year ago, and I noticed that it was starting to collect some scratches. So I got one of those iPod cleaners and I was rubbing it on my iPod... slowly massaging it into the surface... gently, yet forcefully... and... well... as will any situation involving ointments... things got out of hand and I just want to know... A: No, it's not possible for your iPod to love you back. Q: Oh. Oh. OK. Ha-ha! It's just that... the little thing's so darn cute and... smooth to the touch... oooh... A: Dude. Q: Oh. Right. Thanks. -Crazy Apple Help Desk

"Sharereactor" eDonkey hash site taken down by Swiss govt.

2004-03-26T20:35:00.000-08:00

"FRAUENFELD (kapo) Due to the suspicion of breach of copyright and trademark laws the cantonal judicial Inquiry department of Thurgau has taken down an Internet-Site that served as a link platform for filesharing offerings. A process concerning these matters against the 25 year old owner from Frauenfeld is underway. The Internet-Site located in Frauenfeld was online for about 30 months and last had over 220.000 hits per day bevor it was taken offline by the Thurgau officials. The in search engines toprated site worked as a anchorpoint for links to downloads of copyright and trademark protectet games and movies that were offered on the filesharing network." Here (sharereactor.revconnect.com) is a site with all the old content indexed, and here are a couple similar eDonkey sites: ISOHeaven, and ShareConnector. Looking to the future, MUTE is getting some external support sites now. (You're welcome.)

I'm thinking you lack choline in your diet

2004-03-25T08:25:00.000-08:00

Choline for super-babies: "That we will eventually use our burgeoning knowledge of genetics to create a new generation of super-intelligent humans is most likely a foregone conclusion. But researchers at Duke University may have already found a much simpler method to create superbabies. According to their news release, providing supplements of the important nutrient choline to animals in utero "super-charged" their brains, making their neurons larger and faster at firing electrical "signals" that release memory-forming chemicals." Here's another related article in Science Daily, which explains that if you don't get enough choline early on, you'll grow up stupid. This is a bizarre story about amazingly elaborate preparations being done to ensure that Bush's feet don't touch the dirt at a park fundraiser. What a puss. "The health threat from legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco is much greater than that from illegal narcotics, the World Health Organization said on Thursday." Here's a thing on remote viewing. Anti-virus article in Wired: "most e-mail programs, like Microsoft's Outlook and Outlook Express, have bells and whistles that allow malicious software to launch itself and easily alter the operating system, as well as spread quickly to other computers. If the e-mail programs were stripped down and had fewer hooks to the operating system and other files on the computer, much of the virus problem would go away." "Taurin and the Yiffing Machine" - this is a total freakshow video, of an anthropomorphic fox being penetrated by two sex-robots. and Re: defensive, insecure Canadians. You guys need to get a grip. Everybody likes Canadians! Jeez.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, now shut up

2004-03-18T14:50:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was St. Patrick's Day or whatever and there were these three stupid Canadian tourists on the subway, wearing plastic green top-hats and singing verses from different songs and clapping along. Making a huge racket. So I said, "Hey you dirty micks, why don't you shut the fuck up?!" And the guy came over to me, in his dipshit hat and smelling like beer and tried to push me, so I kicked him in the balls and he fell down. The two fat women were yelling at me, but I ignored them and took his wallet and then got off at the next stop. Happy St. Patrick's Day! * From a piece in the Daily Reckoning, some Iraq scenarios: "One scenario is that the U.S. grants Iraq independence. In that case, the Kurds will secede, which the others won't stand for because of the oil. Nor will the Turks, Iranians, or Syrians because it would be the beginning of Kurdistan, which is a whole other question. The Sunnis and Shiites will have a civil war. A second, more likely scenario is that the U.S. stays there for many years to come, in the face of a rapidly escalating insurgency. It could get more serious than Vietnam." Wow, so retarded; I'm sure the Taliban would be stoked on these clowns: "DAYTON, Tenn. - The county that was the site of the Scopes "Monkey Trial" over the teaching of evolution is asking lawmakers to amend state law so the county can charge homosexuals with crimes against nature. The Rhea County commissioners approved the request 8-0 Tuesday. Commissioner J.C. Fugate, who introduced the measure, also asked the county attorney to find a way to enact an ordinance banning homosexuals from living in the county. "We need to keep them out of here," Fugate said." (* this paragraph did not actually occur)

WOW! "Dead Cow Kicks Ass" song up

2004-03-15T23:48:00.000-08:00

"Dead Cow Kicks Ass" in the Tunes section on the main site. Thanks to Myles Long for finding and ripping it. We did this one live at 2600's HOPE 2000, with Macki in an orange jumpsuit and Sunspot doing a great job of working the stage. I debuted the incredible "Snake Mic" to fearsome effect. This was our last song of the event, and Jello Biafra (of the Dead Kennedys) got up on stage with us and Sir Dystic was picking me up in the air. It was totally fun! This song utilizes our "When I say 'dead,' you say 'cow!'" cheerleading chant that we've done for a long-ass time.

'cuz you're reading the blog, you get to know first

2004-03-13T21:11:00.000-08:00

New cDc grfx up: #8 "Amazing future-world of glory for you and cDc" by Myles Long. Teens Pledging Sex Abstinence Often Fail-says Study: "The study, funded largely by the National Institutes of Health, found that these teenagers were less likely to use condoms when they did have sex because they had not paid attention to sex education. Because of their ignorance about sexually transmitted diseases, "pledgers" were also less likely to seek medical help if they contracted one of the diseases, according to the study unveiled at a Philadelphia conference on sexually transmitted diseases, or STDs. Dr. Peter Bearman of Columbia University in New York, who headed the study, said the pledge movement failed to recognize the realities of adolescent sexuality. "Ideological programs designed to make serious interventions in public health programs tend not to work," he said." Speaking of health class, here are some not-work-safe pix of a medical oddity with two penises. Lecture to explore statistical corroboration of psychic abilities: "A professor of statistics from the University of California, Davis, will discuss the surprising degree that scientific testing corroborates the existence of certain psychic abilities, in a talk. Titled "Investigating Psychic Phenomena with Statistics," Jessica Utts' lecture at Bates is co-sponsored by the psychology and mathematics departments, and is open to the public at no charge. Utts is an expert on statistical issues related to parapsychology, the scientific study of purported abilities such as telepathy and precognition. In the mid-1990s, Utts took part in an American Institutes of Research evaluation of the Central Intelligence Agency's "Star Gate" program, which investigated possible intelligence uses for extrasensory perception. The panel's well-publicized conclusion was that experiments had shown statistically significant evidence that could support the existence of parapsychological abilities." The Gnostic Revival: "A recent issue of Time magazine discussed how many Christians are incorporating the 'Gnostic Gospels' - a group of texts uncovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt - into their belief system. The Gnostic Gospels approach Jesus from a different point of view, radically redefining the message of Jesus - and therefore the tenets of Christianity. Apart from denouncing some of the foundations of the New Testament (such as the virgin birth and the resurrection), a number of these gospels stress that the way to salvation is a personal one. These texts are only now beginning to be noticed by the person-in-the-street, after decades of being confined to discussions between Biblical scholars. They disappeared at the time of Emperor Constantine, when Christian bishops denounced them as heretical and made it a criminal offense to possess them." Right on; it's nice to see this stuff finally getting some mainstream attention.

crash and burn

2004-03-13T19:30:00.000-08:00

So all the contestants in the DARPA robot car project in the Mojave Desert blew it. What I found disturbing was the last line in this article from the Washington Post: "While no one won $1 million from DARPA, that didn't dampen the spirits of the hundreds of scientists, programmers and grease monkeys who grinned at the thought of being able to spend hours tinkering and toying with their creations. "It's the coolness factor," Axion Racing team member George Spalding said. "We're going to look back after the machines have taken over and say, 'How did that start?' And we can say we were a part of that." Yeah, that's cool, you TRAITOROUS LITTLE SHIT!! Have you not seen the Terminator movies? The Matrix? Real cool being the last of humanity, chased down by a jet-powered robo-bulldozer with frickin' lasers on its head!! Fucker.

The King of First Class

2004-03-13T17:05:00.000-08:00

From the new issue of Vice, by Chris Nieratko: "Have you ever flown first class? That shit is awesome. I just did it the other day for the first time, and I'll tell you what, I never want to go back to sitting with the peasants again. Everything about first class is so upscale, so classy––the leather seats, the free drinks, the REAL silverware. Holding the fork in my hand, all I could think about was how many motherfuckers I could stab in the neck. There were only 10 people in first class––I considered stabbing them all and claiming first class for my own. I'd drag their bodies back into coach and invite nine of the peasants to come and join me in the good seats. All that ran through my head was, "As king of first class, I could have all the beer on earth," but then I was like, "Oh shit! I'm in first fucking class! I don't have to stab anyone––the beer is already free." If you were in my head on that trip to L.A., you'd be wearing a lampshade on your head, because I was pretending like it was New Years Eve 2000 and shit. Of course there was one asshole, real smarmy, rich prick that knew I had no right to first class, that my being upgraded was only due to someone missing their flight, and he tried to call me on it. As the stewardess asked for my coat so that she could hang it up for me (yeah, they do that kind of shit for you in first class), I got flustered. I was all, "What the fuck do you want my coat for?" I'm not used to people waiting on me. All I could think was, "This bitch wants to go through my pockets." So I start emptying my things onto my seat: batteries, comb, cigarettes, lighters, bottle of Valium, keys, free-six-inch Subway coupons, the whole kit. She's all pressuring me, like, "Sir. Your jacket." I took it off and handed it to her but forgot that my iPod was in the left pocket and the headphones were around my neck. She yanked me and I fell to the floor and this cocksucker in the pink Izod says, "Must be your first time in first class." I was like, "This motherfucker doesn't even know I'M ABOUT TO BE THE KING OF FIRST CLASS!" I thought about stabbing him right then and there, because obviously he didn't know how we do it in coach. Then I thought I should say something about how I'm not used to being waited on hand and foot because I live in the real world. Then I considered saying something like, "At least my wife doesn't dress me like a bitch," but I didn't. My mind was reeling. I had only seconds to think of some clever retort, something that proved I was not one to mess with but also showed my coach roots. So I looked him in his cold brown eyes and said, "FUCK YOU, FAGGOT." His response? Scared silence. And you know what else? They had fucking hot-fudge sundaes! It was so cool."

like auto-fellatio, without the back pain!!

2004-03-12T00:34:00.000-08:00

cDc is on a whirlwind frenzy of releasing activity, 'cuz there' s a new t-file up! WTF?! DOOD. DilDog's tremendous accomplishment, a grand piece: "The Lineage and Development of the Modern Chopsticks Wrapper." You'll shed tears of pure joy. "WASHINGTON - Republican Sen. John McCain allowed a glimmer of hope Wednesday for Democrats fantasizing about a bipartisan dream team to defeat President Bush. McCain said he would consider the unorthodox step of running for vice president on the Democratic ticket — in the unlikely event he received such an offer from the presidential candidate." WOW. That'll prob. never happen, but it's fairly bad-ass that he'd even say that. If the Republican Party had any sense, they would have run McCain instead of Bush and things would be better. Interview with an auto-fellator: "Simply put, Al Eingang, the star of such films as "The Young Man From Nantucket," "Because He Can," and "Blown Alone," makes his living sucking himself off." Sumerian Mythology FAQ Oh, I'm back from London. It was super-cool. g/f and I ran around to a mess of museums and whatnot. We tried to go into the Temple Church a couple times, but it was closed. That was the English HQ of the Knights Templar, after 1185 and has these gnarly stone effigies of dead knights on the floor.

Steve Martin makes startling return to being funny...

2004-03-11T16:27:00.000-08:00

From The New Yorker, March 8, 2004: The Back Page By Steve Martin STUDIO SCRIPT NOTES ON "THE PASSION" Dear Mel, We love, love the script! The ending works great. You'll be getting a call from use to start negotiations for the book rights. -- Love the Jesus character. So likable. He can't seem to catch a break! We identify with him because of it. One thing: I think we need to clearly state "the rules." Why doesn't he use his superpowers to save himself? Our creative people suggest that you could simply cut away to two spectators: SPECTATOR ONE Why doesn't he use his superpowers to save himself? SPECTATOR TWO He can only use his powers to help others, never himself -- Does it matter which garden? Gethsemane is hard to say, and Eden is a much more recognizable garden. Just thinking out loud. -- Our creative people suggest a clock visual fading in and out in certain scenes, like the Last Supper bit: "Thursday, 7:43 p.m.," or "Good Friday, 5:14 p.m." -- Love the repetition of "Is it I?" Could be very funny. On the eighth inquiry, could Jesus just give a little look of exasperation into the camera? Breaks frame, but could be a riot. -- Also, could he change water into wine in Last Supper scene? Would be a great moment, and it's legit. History compression is a movie tradition and could really brighten up the scene. Great trailer moment, too. -- Love the flaying. -- Could the rabbis be Hispanic? There's lots of hot Latino actors now, could give us a little zing at the box office. Research says there's some historical justification for it. -- Possible title change: "Lethal Passion." Kinda works. The more I say it out loud, the more I like it. -- Is there someplace where Jesus could be using an iBook? You know, now that I say it, it sounds ridiculous. Strike that. But think about it. Maybe we start a shot in Heaven with Jesus thoughtfully closing the top? -- Love the idea of Monica Bellucci as Mary Magdalene (yow!). Our creative people suggest a name change to Heather. Could skew our audience a little younger. -- Love Judas. Such a great villain. Our creative people suggest that he's a little complicated. Couldn't he be one thing? Just bad? Gives the movie much more of a motor. Also, thirty pieces of silver is not going to get anyone excited. I think it'd be very simple to make him a "new millionaire." Bring in the cash on a tray. Great dilemma that the audience can identify with. -- Minor spelling error: on page 18, in the description of the bystanders, there should be a space between the words "Jew" and "boy". -- Merchandising issue: it seems the Cross image had been done to death and is public domain -- we can't own it. Could the Crucifixion scene involve something else? A Toyota would be wrong, but maybe there's a shape we can copyright, like a wagon wheel? -- I'm assuming "The dialogue is in Aramaic" is a typo for "American". If not, call me on my cell, or I'm at home all weekend. By the way, I'm sending a group of staffers on a cruise to the North Pole, coincidentally around the time of your picture's release. Would love to invite your dad! See you at the movies! Yours, Stan

Islamic militants attack Masons

2004-03-11T08:49:00.000-08:00

ISTANBUL : Two suicide bombers, believed to be Islamic militants, who attacked a masonic lodge in Istanbul this week wanted to burn the freemasons alive with explosives and petrol, newspapers said. The attack on the lodge Tuesday -- the first here against freemasons -- targetted members of the Association of the Grand Temple of Free and Accepted Masons of Turkey. The two men, armed with automatic weapons, wore hunting-like jackets stuffed with 14 nail-filled pipe-bombs wired to electric batteries, and carried four bottles filled with petrol when they entered the ground-floor masonic restaurant where some 40 people were dining, on the Asian side of the city. They opened fire on the diners and one attacker blew himself up at the entrance to the restaurant, killing himself and a 47-year-old waiter." Stupid assholes. And this is about the motives of the train attacks in Spain today: "At least 173 people, according to official estimates, have been killed in a series of bomb attacks on Madrid commuter trains. Spanish ministers moved quickly to blame the armed Basque separatist group Eta. Eta wants to establish an independent socialist Basque state straddling northern Spain and the southern end of France's Atlantic coast. The Basques consider their culture distinct from those of their neighbours..." I'm thinking seperatist movements are generally a bad idea and a step backwards to a pre-WWI world. To make progress, a nation-state needs stability and a large enough tax base to support itself. You need strong, benevolent leadership and a population comfortable with Melting Pot theory in order to accomplish anything. People have to get over themselves & their little ethnic group and work together; broaden their concept of 'we.' Or else they're condemned to grub around like pigs, isolated forever on some crummy patch of dirt they can call their own. Here's a good piece on the evolution of cultures, Paleolithic through the Iron Age.

Insurer warns of global warming catastrophe, Microsoft keeping SCO solvent

2004-03-04T10:46:00.000-08:00

This is on Slashdot, but it's a big story so whatever. "Leaked memo appears to confirm Microsoft's alleged funding of SCO's anti-Linux initiative." And if you haven't read the 'Halloween documents', this is as good a day as any... if you're one of the people that doesn't understand the anti-MS venom, school yerself with these. related to the earlier story: "GENEVA (Reuters) - The world's second-largest reinsurer, Swiss Re, warned on Wednesday that the costs of natural disasters, aggravated by global warming, threatened to spiral out of control, forcing the human race into a catastrophe of its own making. In a report revealing how climate change is rising on the corporate agenda, Swiss Re said the economic costs of such disasters threatened to double to $150 billion (82 billion pounds) a year in 10 years, hitting insurers with $30-40 billion in claims, or the equivalent of one World Trade Centre attack annually. " I'm still in London 'til Sunday. It's pretty neat here. A lot like NYC, but with older stuff and the people talk funny. The best thing to do 'round here is look at that old stuff at the zillions of museums. The dollar-pound exchange rate is terrible, so you don't wanna be spending any money if you can help it. A movie ticket is running 15-18 bucks now... no thanks.

AIDS Pill and Satire

2004-03-03T16:16:00.000-08:00

From Wired News: " Hundreds of healthy people in Africa, Cambodia and two U.S. cities will begin taking doses of a powerful AIDS drug as part of a series of studies into the use of medicine to stop HIV infection before it starts. If the studies produce promising results, the world may end up with a daily pill to keep AIDS at bay. While researchers have plenty of questions -- Will the drug make people sick? Will it make them careless? Will it cost too much? -- there's plenty of hope, too. Considering that a vaccine may not appear until the end of the decade, if ever, this could be quite a leap." And here's an awesome satire of godhatesfags.com: "Shrimp, crab, lobster, clams, mussels, all these are an abomination before the Lord, just as gays are an abomination. Why stop at protesting gay marriage? Bring all of God's law unto the heathens and the sodomites. We call upon all Christians to join the crusade against Long John Silver's and Red Lobster. Yea, even Popeye's shall be cleansed. The name of Bubba shall be anathema. We must stop the unbelievers from destroying the sanctity of our restaurants."

new cDc tune just for YOOOO...

2004-02-26T01:47:00.000-08:00

h00ray. Check this out. By funnyman Hugh Gallagher, it's "Evil Clown." This is a cute lil' rap tune he and I did back in 2000. Hugh did all the writing and I did the tricknology stuff. So new content, there ya go. This is only listed here on the blog for now, 'cuz I gotta get to sleep and then catch a plane. I'll be in Dallas and then London for the next week, so hopefully the other guys'll do some posting on here. Eh. Tonight I saw my pals Anthony and Danny play their first show with their new band, Sangre. They were really good. These are the guys that did the live music during our cDc show at 2600's HOPE 2002 con. You could do a lot worse than to leech their MP3s. This is the biggest news I know of, about a Pentagon report on global warming: "A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world."

10 Years Ago in cDc...

2004-02-23T02:39:00.000-08:00

Actually, slightly more than 10 years ago... but I just thought this might be funny, like in Scientific American so here we go. This is Global Domination Update #14, from December 30th, 1993. There were ten text-files new for this release, and twelve BBSes added to our distribution network. We had a deal worked out with all the guys that run those boards, for them to be sure and carry all our releases in return for us promoting their systems. In the pre-Internet days, that really helped us out a lot. It looks like we'd recently gotten an Internet mailing list together too. What else, let's see. We were "named SASSY magazine's "Sassiest Underground Computer Group." That was pretty funny. Hoo. Then I went off on quite a rant. Here: So here's the new cDc release. It's been a while since the last one. It's out because I fucking felt like it, and have to prove to myself that I can do this crap without losing my mind and having to go stand in a cotton field and look at some dirt at 3 in the morning. cDc=cDc+1, yeah yeah. Do you know what this is about? Any idea? This is SICK and shouldn't be harped on or celebrated. This whole cyberdweeb/telecom/'puter underground scene makes me wanna puke, it's all sick and dysfunctional. Eat my shit, G33kW0r|d. Virus yourself to death. Go blind staring at the screen waiting for more wares/inph0 to come trickling down the wire. The more of that shit comes in, the more life goes out. Ooh, and you hate it so much, don't you. You hate it. Hacking's mostly a big waste of time. Fuck you. Stupid Telephone Tricks will never be on David Letterman. Fuck you. Cryptography? Who'd wanna read YOUR boring email? Fuck you. Interactive television is a couch potato trap. Fuck you. "Surf the net," sucker. "Ride the edge," you maladjusted sack of shit." I guess we're constantly trying to figure out how to live a happy, balanced, fulfilling life. I think I know some stuff and have some things figured out, maybe; I'm a pretty happy guy. it's funny though, I'm sitting here typing this to thousands of people I don't know and will never meet and that's like the most natural thing in the world 'cuz I've been doing it for most of my life now. My BBS went up in '85 and it was fun and did pretty well and was similar to this blogging stuff, but with more tech hassle. That was in jr. high. I've met some really cool people and learned a hell of a lot of things doing this stuff. Grown a lot. I'm a better person for it. Yeah, this is cool. I hope you guys are doing alright. I'm going to sleep now.

gauche... a fine word.

2004-02-22T12:08:00.000-08:00

Here's an awesome site called Medieval New York. "The city of New York is a great creation of modern American culture, but to the eyes of a medievalist the histories of the European, Byzantine, and Islamic Middle Ages are documented in its streets and buildings." Then it goes on with a run-down of different architectural styles and where you can see these examples. Lots of fun. Rockers pose as teens to hit charts: " LONDON (Reuters) - An ageing rock group gave themselves a facelift by getting a group of teenagers to stand in for them on the video of their latest song, helping them score their first chart hit for some 15 years. Convinced the music industry is prejudiced against wrinkly rockers, The Alarm gave themselves the pseudonym The Poppyfields and persuaded a group of fresh-faced youths to mime their part." Word of the Day for Sunday February 22, 2004 gauche \GOHSH\, adjective: Lacking social polish; tactless; awkward; clumsy.

Napster 2.0 & Ralph Nader in a bucket of suck

2004-02-21T15:32:00.000-08:00

"Napster 2.0 has lost 15 million dollars in the first 2 months of this year. Top executives such as the president, the chief financial officer, the vice president of programming and the head of corporate communications are leaving the boat." No surprise there, and it's kind of insulting Roxio thought the 'Napster' brand meant anything to people after it was just another pay service. Roxio should stick to making CD-burning software. "NEW YORK — Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate who ran for president in 2000 as a Green Party candidate, will enter the 2004 race for the White House as an independent candidate, advisers told Fox News on Friday." Hmm. In a related link, here's RepentantNaderVoter.com, described by the owners as a "liberating act of self-correction." There's a nice piece in the current Rolling Stone about MoveOn.org, partially funded by billionaire hero George Soros. From the article: "What Pariser, Boyd and Blades [founders] found they have in common is an emphasis on centrist, pragmatic messages. "Tactically speaking, polemical messages aren't going to get you very far," says Pariser. "They alienate swing voters. That's often how the left defeats itself. We win by appealing to common sense. I don't want to be part of the Great Martyrdom Story where we say, 'We fought the good fight and lost.' I want to win." Fuck yeah, sir. "...If they're so advanced, why don't they just come down here and show themselves?" "You're more advanced than a cockroach. Did you ever try explaining yourself to one?" -Mothman Prophecies

"My other car is a 200-foot yacht"

2004-02-19T22:10:00.000-08:00

Billionaires for Bush: 'Because the deficit is not growing fast enough.' This looks like fun. It's a group of people who go to Republican events dressed like the Monopoly Man and do protests/performance art; so hooray for satire. Here's a good interview with Jason Rohrer, the guy who coded MUTE which has been getting a lot of buzz in the past few weeks. MUTE is a P2P network that obscures IPs. Happy Presidents' Day! woooh! I celebrated by going to Grant's Tomb, followed by a nice bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 and a package of cheese crackers. A traditional holiday favorite. President Grant and his wife are entombed in a giant stone sarcophagus which you can see through a large round portal cut in the marble floor. Some visitors were in there laughing and making frivolous noises of merriment, which perturbed me. They weren't enveloped in the appropriate somber tone of the situation. Damn cretins.

I'm sorry Miss Jackson, but this post has nothing to do with your breast

2004-02-14T23:31:00.000-08:00

There's a lot of fuss right now 'bout this DJ Danger Mouse mash-up Grey Album, where he puts Jay-Z rapping over a bunch of Beatles loops. OK concept; but after hearing it, I can't imagine wanting to listen to it more than once. It's pretty dull. Funny cultural thing: I was at the local Angelika theater tonight, which is a national chain of art-house type places. Sitting in the lobby waiting for the movie to start, I overheard this guy in his early '20s talking to some chick. She asked him what he thought of the latest Outkast album. "Eh, I don't really like it. I like their old stuff though. Ya know, 'Miss Jackson.'" Yeah, waaaaay back on the immediately previous album. I wanted to kick him in his tiny little smug nuts. Watch out when guys say, "I don't like their new stuff, but I do like their old stuff," 'cuz they're usually 'bout to say something dumb. Especially if it's to a female they wanna impress. g/f gave me a bag of Hershey's chocolate kisses, which I finished in 2 days. I'm surely gonna get diabetes now, and my toes will fall off or something. Man. Gonna be hard to walk with no toes. Probably fall over a lot.

Those darn Pharisees.

2004-02-11T23:17:00.000-08:00

Messy news from USA Today: "As Texas Gov. George W. Bush prepared to run for president in the late 1990s, top-ranking Texas National Guard officers and Bush advisers discussed ways to limit the release of potentially embarrassing details from Bush's military records, a former senior officer of the Texas Guard said Wednesday." "Mel Gibson has come under fire for being hard on Jews in his film The Passion of the Christ, but apparently, he feels that Protestants are also doomed to damnation. In fact, it looks as if Gibson, a conservative Catholic, believes that his Episcopalian wife could be going to hell. Gibson, interviewed by the Herald Sun in Australia, was asked if Protestants are denied eternal salvation. "There is no salvation for those outside the (Catholic) church,"" Mr. Gibson, you're a stupid Catholic asshole. Haha. In unrelated news: every time Greenspan opens his mouth, the dollar takes a dive. He wants a cheaper dollar because it makes the Fed. deficit look less fucking scary if the dollar is worthless. 'If you need more money to pay off your debts, just fire up the presses.' pssh. How 'bout fixing the deficit instead? Oh, but that's hard and unpopular. Voodoo economics, indeed.

Something positive for a change,

2004-01-29T16:40:00.000-08:00

Here is an interesting article I found about some positive policy that the Democrats could use as a foundation for the party platform. I haven't checked into things further, but it looks like a cool idea to me. TOMPAINE.com - Democrats' Moon Shot

RIP - Captain Kangaroo

2004-01-25T16:14:00.000-08:00

Man. Bob Keeshan died on Friday. He hosted Captain Kangaroo, which ran for 30 years every weekday morning. I was a huge fan, and had a pair of green Toughskins as a kid, inspired by Mr. Green Jeans (the right-hand man). The guy was a national treasure. Here's a good link from the Clown Ministry, and another one. Last night I learned about an acquaintance who died last fall back in Texas. He had a weird heart condition, and dropped dead waiting for a Bright Eyes show to start. Steve was a great guy. We had a bizarro plan to start a fake Christian hardcore band, so we could gig at those cushy 'youth center' places which are common in the South. My new hobby is Dance Dance Revolution. I'm terrible at it, but it's fun. Running Stepmania on the PC with a USB-to-Playstation adapter for the dance pad. Last night was also the first time I did karaoke. Sang "Beat It" all falsetto, knocked a fat chick over, and humped some furniture. That was ok.

Republican dirty tricks again.

2004-01-22T17:40:00.000-08:00

Just goes to show you that they didn't learn much from Watergate. LINK

Resources

2004-01-17T09:29:00.000-08:00

There are a couple of places that I go for news these days, but one of my favorites is cursor.org, they've got a really good selection of interesting news stories every day. Another site that I like to support is punkvoter.com. I think that the drive to get the kids mobilized is probably our greatest hope. And as history now shows, when the fix is in and the Republicans are trying to steal the presidency, the only thing you can do is make the vote numbers overwhelming in favor of the good guys. Every vote counts, especially when Republican operatives are doing their best to make sure they don't.

Holy Fuckin' Shit!

2004-01-15T16:49:00.000-08:00

Remember Child's Play's Chucky? This doll is so evil that it makes Chucky look like a choirboy. That's right, it's everyone's favorite right-wing whore, Ann Coulter, in a TALKING action figure format.

Good News

2004-01-15T16:45:00.000-08:00

According to THIS story, there is corroboration out there for Paul O'Neill's account of Dubya's drive to Iraq. Enough for you? Nah, here is a story about a former director of the Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs office at the US State Department, who also says: “I’m afraid I think the American public was seriously misled.”

Dislike the war? So did they.

2004-01-14T16:52:00.000-08:00

Guess what? Our troops hate the world, and want to die. According to this story, our troops are killing themselves in record numbers. Could it be because they are fighting what is looking to be a losing war, based on lies from the highest level of government, liberating people who hate them? Maybe. It's really a sad thing. I say that we take the crooked bastards who sent them over there and send them to prison.

Terrible typo...

2004-01-14T04:04:00.000-08:00

10 points if you can find the typo in this caption (pointed out by Michael Duff).

2004-01-13T12:51:00.000-08:00

As it becomes more obvious that the President and his staff knowingly lied to the American public in order to get into the war with Iraq, why aren't we hearing more calls for action? The scale of deception makes the Tonkin Gulf scandal seem like a little white lie. The kind of deception committed by this administration is criminal. We should be writing our representatives demanding a Congressional investigation, as well as an impeachment for President Bush. It looks like the White House is trying to stall the reports of its bungling of 9/11 until AFTER the election. LINK The White House is already starting to come down hard on Paul O'Neill for Ron Suskind's new book "Price of Loyalty". It's amusing how they've had all of their flacks on all the news stations saying that the guy is insane, a loose cannon, murders babies, and drinks human blood. Riddle me this, if this guy was such a psycho, why did they hire him in the first place. Being that Rumsfeld, Cheney, etc... worked with him in 2 other administrations, and have been friends for almost 40 years, you'd think that they'd have noticed. Also, the guy was CEO of Alcoa, which is somewhat higher on the corporate ladder than the insane typically get. (cough cough) His big character flaw appears that he has a big mouth and didn't toe the party line. Good for him. LINK Even though the war "ended" months ago, our ammo factories can't keep up with the demand. LINK

Political Action in 2004

2004-01-12T14:24:00.000-08:00

I've spent many years being disgusted with politics. I've always voted, because I felt I had to have at least some legitimacy for my complaints. (If you don't vote, you don't count. Remember that.) However, as I get older I've found that the world of politics has been affecting me in more visceral ways. In the 2002 election when the Democrats lost the House and Senate, I was so physically ill that I had to call in sick to work. In the 3+ years under the Shrub, I've seen this country get to the point where I can recall my years under Reagan as a positive and free time. When I pull out the old Dead Kennedys records, I find myself amused by the anger generated by far less nasty times. In response, I've found myself being dragged into a more active role in politics. I've started sending money to groups I believe in like the ACLU, EFF, Public Citizen. I think that the best chance that we have for getting the Shrub and his filthy ilk out of the White House is to support Howard Dean. As soon as I get some extra money, I'm going to be sending it his way. This will mark the first time I've ever contributed money to a political candidate. I have doubts about being able to prevail, but I think that we have to try. All we have left is hope. We have to take our despair and turn it into hope and anger. We have to learn to counteract the conservative smear tactics, and figure out some new way for the people of America to respond to a positive vision.

More bad taste...

2004-01-11T12:22:00.000-08:00

No one laughed much at my last joke, so I decided to try again: What's red and has more brains than Kurt Cobain? The wall behind him.

'Wake up to danger!'

2004-01-07T00:24:00.000-08:00

Pretty awesome idea for an alarm clock, by kulakovich. "1) hook a powerstrip to a timer. 2) plug in a bright lamp to the strip. 3) plug in a stereo with a cassette player, FF to the middle of a song, and press PLAY. 4) plug an electric drill into it, pull the trigger, and lock the trigger. 5) put a paint-stir bit on the drill 6) put the drill down in the bed with you. When the timer goes, you had better wake up. It is very unplesant. I only did it once, and it worked perfectly. This music blared, the lights went on and off, and this thing, which got bigger and bigger as it gathered more sheets, was jumping around in the bed and starting to restrict my motion. My plan now is to pattent this device that gives you immediate access to your fight or flight subroutine."

"Spammers tried to kill me!"

2003-12-30T23:33:00.000-08:00

Said edalytical, on Slashdot: "Spammers have attempted to kill me on at least two occasions. Once with the subject "loose 100 lbs." I only weigh 135 lbs., that would kill me. Another time with the subject, "become 20 years younger." I'm only 20 years old, WTF; that would kill me too." "Actually, if you used both the products at the same time, you'd probably survive. But you'd be one fat infant," replied miracle69. Speaking of spam, I used to manually spam our 'press releases' (announcing GNU T-FILEZ!!1) out to any media-related email address I could find in the early '90s. I was taking classes in advertising and public-relations in school and cDc seemed like a fun outlet for that sort of hijinks. Here's a good example of an early informative release: "COMRADE SWAMP RATTE', FOUNDER OF THE INTERNET, A GREAT MILITARY STRATEGIST AND EVER-VICTORIOUS IRON-WILLED BRILLIANT COMMANDER, SHOULDERING THE HEAVY BURDENS OF THE HARD-FOUGHT FATHERLAND LIBERATION WAR, ROUSED THE ARMY AND PEOPLE IN A HEROIC STRUGGLE FOR VICTORY IN THE WAR, DROVE BACK THE INVASION OF THE FASCIST ALLIED FORCES AND CREDITABLY DEFENDED THE INDEPENDENCE AND HONOR OF THE COUNTRY." Old Atari industrial design art. Right on... join the jet-set for a quarter. Our pal Seth the Man of GwD just got engaged. To a woman! And I always thought he was gay. Just kidding! Though he does often gaze longingly at my ass. Just kidding! Ah. Anyhow, that's awesome. Yay for them. Hope you're having a swell holiday time. Got stuck working each side of the 25th so I couldn't split town, but tomorrow I get to go to Texas with the gf and visit my folks. Get to see Franken Gibe and Myles Long too. Deth Veggie and G.A. Ellsworth are supposedly in The City but those punk-ass bitches ain't been lightin' up my cellie, yo. Is that enough name-dropping for one post? Eh. That Lord of the Rings movie thing rules. It was funny, the theater had an usher waiting by the door at the end, directing people to the bathrooms as they filed out. I, for one, was definitely feeling a lot of pressure on my bladder. Went to a Unitarian church service Christmas Eve, then grabbed a bagel at the Jewish deli, ya ya. Got a subscription to The Economist as a gift, I'm stoked. Also stoked about audiobooks at work via headphones and the Science, Industry, and Business Research Branch of the NY Public Library which I've been skulking around at. So hooray for every wonderful thing in this world, damnit, amen. How are you? What's going on? Would you say your emotional needs are being met? Please share with the group. cDc is here for YOU. G. Ratte'/cysts Don't count recycled bonus holiday penis haiku from me to you: PENIS, PENIS, WOW YOU ARE SO HAPPY TODAY YOU LIGHT UP MY LIFE

The More You Know: colored vs. white Christmas tree lights

2003-12-21T20:56:00.000-08:00

from some guy (anwyn) on Slashdot: "They are a presumptuous affectation of those who style themselves too sophisticated to make a strong primal statement using color. Children, whose tastes are uncorrupted, prefer colored Christmas lights. Religion is a red herring. The Christmas star was said to be a single star in the sky, not a thousand stars in the shrubbery. The Christmas tree is a pagan custom from Germany, and there are no evergreens in the mid-East! The problem of white Christmas Lights originated when the producers of movies and television discovered that colored lights are difficult and expensive to photograph. (Lights are the brightest thing in the picture and tend to be overexposed. When colored lights are overexposed they turn into a washed out white. When white lights are overexposed they just look white.) This caused white lights to be used in movies and television because of expense considerations. Then the "people" especially the people who wanted to style themselves sophisticated, began to decorate their houses with white lights! They were slavishly following what they saw in movies and television unknowing that those media were motivated by expense considerations! Well, sophisticates, I have this to tell you: Your white lights are ugly and you are a bunch of low taste idiots!" Well! There you have it, eh.

damn dirty robots

2003-12-16T18:31:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting article by Blay Whitby and Kane Oliver - "How to Avoid a Robot Takeover: Political and Ethical Choices in the Design and Introduction of Intelligent Artifacts." Physicist Hopes to Use Laser Technology to Develop Time Machine: "Sometime next year, in fact, he hopes to produce the first piece of technology that eventually will allow him to build a time machine. It will be a device that employs lasers to actually twist space. And he plans to build it right here, at the University of Connecticut." What have YOU done to prepare for The Singularity? I plan to hide in a big bag of dog food.

2003-12-03T01:01:00.000-08:00

Nader Raising Money for Possible Campaign "WASHINGTON (AP) - Ralph Nader has not yet decided whether to make another run for the White House, but he's authorized a new exploratory committee to raise money for a potential bid. The Nader 2004 Presidential Exploratory Committee was formed in late October as part of the consumer activist's effort to gauge support for a run, said Theresa Amato, a committee director. ``He is using it to test the waters,'' said Amato, who served as Nader's national campaign manager when he ran for president on the Green Party ticket in 2000. She said the organization is part of Nader's overall strategy of ``talking to people, calling people, seeing what level of support there is.'' Nader won about 3 percent of the vote as the Green Party's candidate in 2000, but many voters blamed him for taking votes from Democrat Al Gore, paving the way for President Bush's narrow victory." --------------- Yeah, no kidding. You want to see a level of support? How 'bout this... STAY THE HELL OUT. Grandstanding jerk. In the last few days before the 2000 election, the top people in his organization were asking him to bow out 'cuz the margins between Bush and Gore were so thin. But he wouldn't do it. Fucker. When I was standing around waiting to vote in that election, a young woman came up to me. "Nader is the guy that's like, for the environment, right?" she asked. Cripes. Poll: President's approval on the rise after Thanksgiving. GWB went to Iraq and 'carved the roast beast' and got a huge bump in his approval rating. Man. So if I were to say, go around the city petting puppies and handing out candy canes, I could be President too? Unbelievable.

Bum Wines Redux

2003-12-02T20:04:00.000-08:00

Well, now I'm sitting here with a nice cold glass of Thunderbird and a 25-cent package of cheese crackers. Classical on the jambox. Since, ya know, I'm a highbrow sort of guy. White wine & cheese, aw yeah. It's what I do. It's my lifestyle. This crap is pretty nasty. I live in Harlem, 151st St. and there's a liquor store down a block that's all plexiglas everywhere and you shout what you want through it. It was $1.62. Earlier this evening I went to the Lincoln Center tree lighting. They had a kids' choir, circus people jumping around, and the brass section from the NY Philharmonic which did a medley of Christmas toons. Then some old Texas ex-pat friends came around and we got some dinner. If you live in Texas, you should move to The City ASAP. We've got a little colony, come on up. Haven't read any news today. What's going on? I wore two pairs of pants tonight at the same time, that was pretty awesome 'cuz it was freakin' cold. Posting is fun!

Bad Taste

2003-12-02T16:42:00.000-08:00

Here's a joke for you. Bad taste abounds. Q: "What's the opposite of Christopher Reeve?" A: "Christopher Walken." Yes. Fine, it's not original and you might've heard it before. Oh well, it's still funny.

"radio message from HQ / Dance Commander, we love you"

2003-12-02T13:47:00.000-08:00

gah... this new Federal drug bill is a disaster. More short-term sellouts to get re-elected and ruin the economy later on. Assholes. Here's a nice review of "Bum Wines. DID YOU KNOW: Night Train and Thunderbird are both made by the Ernest & Julio Gallio Winery? "If you like to smell your hand after pumping gas, look no further than Thunderbird. As you drink on, the bird soars higher while you sink lower. A convenience store clerk in Show Low, AZ once told me that only the oldest of stumbling indian drunks from the reservation buy Thunderbird. Avaliable in 750 mL and a devastating 50 oz jug. The history of Thunderbird is as interesting as the drunken effects the one experiences from the wine. When Prohibition ended, Ernest Gallo and his brothers Julio and Joe wanted to corner the young wine market. Earnest wanted the company to become "the Campbell Soup company of the wine industry" so he started selling Thunderbird in the ghettos around the country. Their radio ads featured a song that sang, "What's the word? / Thunderbird / How's it sold? / Good and cold / What's the jive? / Bird's alive / What's the price? / Thirty twice." I had a great Thanksgiving weekend and my gig's over so I'm chillin' for a while. Girlfriend came to town and we went to the Macy's Parade which was dope. When the Charlie Brown balloon went by, people chanted "Charlie! Charlie! Charlie!" I felt a tear well up, it was so beautiful. Man, Electric Six has some great lyrics. Observe, "Naked Pictures (Of Your Mother)": "I dropped the bomb on Japan I was a hostage in Iran I'm the ugly American Now, I'm a government man A government man! I make lots of money, I make more money than you I drive around in my limo, that's what I was born to do And I might like you better if we fuck together But if its not to be noted I got somethin' better for ya: Naked pictures, of your mother...." rock'n'roll

The KKK and dog meat

2003-11-25T15:09:00.000-08:00

Klan initiation gone bad (from cnn.com): "Participant at KKK initiation wounded after shots fired into sky." Ha-ha. Vietnamese junkies (from bbc.co.uk): "Vietnamese boy 'sold as dog meat'." The addicts tied up the boy, put him in a sack and sold him to a restaurant for 300,000 dong ($19), the report said. The restaurateur released the boy, fed him and told the police." That's fucked up.

Karl Rove is a dirty SOB

2003-11-07T19:57:00.000-08:00

"The history of the last three years has demonstrated that the Bush strategists will stoop to any level to get their way. They are the masters of the last minute smear campaign. When Republican Senator John McCain posed a threat to George W. Bush's nomination for President in early 2000, dark suggestions were planted in the press that Senator McCain, the highly decorated Vietnam war hero, might have committed treason in the Vietnamese prison (where he languished for five years), and that he had fathered a child with a black prostitute (Senator McCain's adopted daughter, Brigitte, is from Bangladesh.) As the race for Senator from Georgia was tightening, President Bush's political strategist, Karl Rove, ran TV commercials accusing the sitting Democratic Senator Max Cleland of being soft on national security. Interesting, because Senator Cleland is also a much decorated war hero who lost both his legs fighting for his country in Vietnam. President Bush, on the other hand, avoided service in Vietnam through his father's influence, enlisted in Texas Air National Guard, which he left eight months early, and where his attendance was erratic. For Karl Rove, there is no shame in character assassination; the only shame is in losing an election." "Responsibility has been overcome quite a bit by market forces." -Buzz Aldrin

It's an AK-47, Charlie Brown!

2003-11-06T15:10:00.000-08:00

Hussein's Weapons of Mild Destruction: "In the aftermath of the war, Hussein's vast armaments were looted... The sudden surge in supply released onto the Iraqi market has caused prices to crash, making small arms available to anybody. Man-portable air defence systems (MANPADS), such as the Soviet SA-7 or the US Stinger, can be bought for as little as $5,000; a year ago, prices ranged from $150,000-$200,000. The main reason why the airport of Baghdad has not been reopened for commercial flights is that there are simply too many MANPADS in Iraq to guarantee the security of flights. The crash in prices has also turned the US buy-back programme into a subsidy for terrorists. A soviet made AK-47 can be sold to the Americans for $300, money often used to repurchase on the black market 20 to 30 identical items sold for as little as $10 to $15 each, including all the ammunition that one can carry." Here's a little thing on amino acids in meteorites. More information has been produced and stored in the past five years, than at any time in human history: "I think you are going to see more rapid production of further information," says Keith Kendrick, head of neuroscience at the Babraham Institute, Cambridge. "What you might not necessarily see is the answers to the really big questions." In science, Professor Kendrick says, the vast amounts of information researchers now have to wade through means they are focusing on ever-smaller areas of expertise. As a result, there are fewer "big thinkers". It has become harder to see the bigger picture, because it has simply become too big. And, he argues, if your ideas are constantly reviewed against everyone else's, there is arguably less room for idiosyncratic and original thinking. "The big thinkers who try to make sense of a whole area of science are fairly rare." Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center

wednesday action

2003-11-05T13:09:00.000-08:00

Why we're going straight to hell: "A majority of Americans cannot name a single department in the President's cabinet." 8 out of 10 staff 'useless': "Eight in ten workers are no good at their jobs, a survey reveals. But many don’t realise — and nor do bosses, because they avoid making any huge blunders. The three-year study looked at 40,000 employees in workplaces ranging from banks, to shops and call centres. Almost four in ten skilled staff are hopeless, despite being the most confident in their abilities." funeez: Coke Educates on Morality of Drinking Tap Water: "Cleveland, OH - As part of its campaign to thwart liquid piracy, Coca-Cola is now reaching into school classrooms with a program that denounces water sharing and offers prizes for students and teachers who spread the word about liquid theft. ?The program, "What's the Diff?: A Guide to Consumer Liquid Citizenship," launched last week with a lesson plan that aims to keep kids away from underground liquid services like wells and modern plumbing. These services let users share water without paying anything to bottling plants or syrup producers. "This is an issue of intellectual property," said Soft Drink representative Bob Shruggers. "By drinking water, these pirates are stealing from the hard workers who developed such drinks as Ramblin’ Root Beer, Sprite Tropical Remix, Vanilla Coke, and Vanilla Lemon Coke.""

be kind to your DNA

2003-10-24T09:27:00.000-07:00

"Israel plans more homes in West Bank settlements." 'Roadmap,' hello?! That's why people are mad; how are they not grasping this? Researcher: X-Raying Halloween Candy A Waste Of Time: "For the last 30 years, police and medical centers have been donating their time and X-ray machines on Halloween to examine candy for razors, needles and pins. But that's useless, according to "Skeptical Inquirer" editor Benjamin Radford. He's done extensive research on x-raying candy and says there have been only two reported cases of sabotaged sweets. Both times, the parents were the culprits." Most women 'hate their bodies' : "Most women hate their bodies and would go under the plastic surgeon's knife if it was free, according to a new survey. Six in 10 of the 45,000 women questioned said they could not stand the way they looked, while just over one in three were "fairly happy" and only one in 25 was "completely happy". " ATLANTA -- Two types of DNA damage that frequently befall most cells on an everyday basis can lead to the creation of damaged proteins that may contribute to neurodegeneration, aging and cancer, according to research by scientists at Emory University School of Medicine.

The Amazing One-Handed Fitness Plan!

2003-10-23T14:02:00.000-07:00

"In one of the most credible studies correlating overall health with sexual frequency, Queens University in Belfast tracked the mortality of about 1,000 middle-aged men over the course of a decade. Its findings, published in the British Medical Journal , were that men who reported the highest frequency of orgasm enjoyed a death rate half that of the laggards. A study recently published by the British Journal of Urology International asserts that men in their 20s can reduce by a third their chance of getting prostate cancer by ejaculating more than five times a week."

scary voting-system maker Diebold thwarted

2003-10-23T13:39:00.000-07:00

"Swarthmore, Pa. -- Defending the right of a fair, democratic election, Why War? and the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons (SCDC) announced today that they are rejecting Diebold Elections Systems' cease and desist orders and are initiating an electronic civil disobedience campaign that will ensure permanent public access to the controversial leaked memos. " Big news, Diebold sent out cease & desist orders to get their memos revealing evilness on their part removed from some web sites, and people are ignoring their C&D's and making a fuss. Now there are BitTorrents of the files. Get 'em while they're hot.

Elliott Smith post #2

2003-10-23T13:34:00.000-07:00

[oops... wrote this before I saw Myles' post] He's the only singer-songwriter I've heard in the past few years I've thought was worth a damn. His tunes have helped me out when I'm getting dumped or something. Mr. Smith came to Lubbock in '97 and played a show at our "Motor 308" skatepark/warehouse club place for about 40 kids and was awesome. I didn't realize he was only a year older than me; he looked about ten years older than he was. Supposedly had lots of drug problems. Sad deal. Article 1 and Article 2.

R.I.P. Elliott Smith

2003-10-23T08:30:00.000-07:00

Elliott Smith committed suicide yesterday. Here's a good article about him and his death. He died of a single stab wound to the chest. I saw him play right before he became pseudo-famous and got his Oscar nomination for the song from Good Will Hunting. He played a show at Motor 308 (Grandmaster Ratte' and Franken Gibe's warehouse/club/skatepark/venue-thing from mid-1990s Lubbock). That would have been...late 1996 or early 1997. A band called the Softies opened for him. He was good, but his music was horribly depressing, if I remember correctly. Alas.

Bush replacing scientists with ideologues

2003-10-22T09:15:00.000-07:00

"The scientific community usually keeps above the political fray. But lately it has begun to shore up its own defenses after it came to light that HHS had been purging scientific advisory committees of scientists whose research might undermine the Bush administration's political goals. Prominent scientists have been replaced by ideologues with weak credentials, who, for example, agree with raising permissible levels of lead in drinking water and oppose workplace ergonomic standards. According to the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972, committees must be "fairly balanced" and "not inappropriately influenced by the appointing authority." Donald Kennedy, editor of Science magazine referenced this law in rebuking the administration: "It would be a good idea for HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson and the White House Personnel Office to read the law, and then follow it." "I don't think any administration has penetrated so deeply into the advisory committee structure as this one, and I think it matters. If you start picking people by their ideology instead of their scientific credentials, you are inevitably reducing the quality of the advisory group," wrote Donald Kennedy, past president of Stanford University and editor of Science in the December 23, 2002 Los Angeles Times."

Well that does it then... he's fucked.

2003-10-22T09:08:00.000-07:00

"(AFP) -- The spirit of US President George W Bush has been trapped in a clay pot and tossed into a river in northern Thailand after being cursed by hundreds of farmers protesting US agriculture policy. A photograph of the US leader was sealed inside a pot amid black magic mantra chants, then tossed into the Ping River on Friday by demonstrators after they rallied at the US consulate in Chiang Mai, a farm group leader said. "This is a traditional northern Thai ceremony aimed at keeping his spirit down on the riverbed so he could not come and exploit our natural resources or suppress our (farming) brothers with his superior influence," Weerasak Wan-ubol, an executive of the Northern Farmers Alliance, said today. The 300 protesters, claiming to represent 20,000 members from seven northern provinces, railed against imminent plans for a free-trade agreement between Thailand and the United States."