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The Instapundit really likes the idea of taxing you and me so the federal government can spend more "foreign aid dollars on fighting that one common foe everyone can agree upon: infectious disease."
Sorry assholes, but my agreement that the horrible impact of infectious diseases on humanity ought to be minimized does not extend to someone pointing a gun at me and demanding 25% of my income.
Further proof Glenn Reynolds has little fidelity with libertarian ideals.
News8Austin: It's always happy hour at community-owned bar
Some Austin residents are working to create the state's first co-op beer pub in the European sense of the word.
The Black Star Pub is the brainchild of Steven Wyarak, who had lived in Belgium and liked the quality of beer and pub atmosphere there."We're starting up a community-owned bar here in town. I wanted to do something cooperative, something that would involve the community [and see] what options are out there, what can we do?" Wyarak said.
The idea was also inspired by co-op pubs in Ireland, and Wyarak said Austin is the perfect place for its Texas debut.
"If there is a place for this to happen, Austin is where it should happen," he said.
Through word of mouth and the Internet the idea of a bar owned by the regulars has gained a following. The group meets every Wednesday at Café Mundi and Saturday at a house on Cesar Chavez. Organizers are still trying to raise capital - the idea that if 100 people pitch in $100 they'll start with $10,000 in capital."You get a vote in everything that goes on from the beer we serve to the air conditioning," Wyarak said.
Wyarak envisions a beer bar where members pay happy hour prices all the time, and the choices will be discriminating, with a rotating selection of between eight - 200 beers on tap.
The location of the Black Star Pub is very important. Right now, all fingers point to East Austin, where Wyarak is looking at an abandoned building on Seventh and Lydia Street near the Texas State Cemetery."East Austin is really a resurging area of town and there's trying to be a lot of revitalization going on here and we want to be part of that," Wyarak said.
Copyright ©2006TWEAN News Channel of Austin, L.P. d.b.a. News 8 Austin
I'm going to drop in on one of their meetings and see things for myself. I have hope for people who want to "serve beer at right temperatures with [the] right glasses."
UPDATED 1/31/2006 12:45pm
The Black Star Pub Blog.
UPDATED 2/2/2006 9:08am
The meeting last night went fast. I counted 12 people included myself. Didn't take notes because my pen died at the scene. Discussion picked up near the end about fundraising, the many legal issues, and the as-yet-unpicked location. Steven had his shit together throughout.
UPDATED 2/7/2006 3:18pm
BlackStarPub in the News Again...and myself along with it. By the way, Steven's last name is spelled Yarak, not Wyarak.
News8Austin: City orders flea market to shut down
Some residents are worried the city could shut down a beloved weekend flea market.
The city ordered "La Pulga" on Pleasant Valley in Southeast Austin to shut down two weeks ago, saying it lacked the proper operating permits.
The market has become a tradition for shoppers because it's like street markets in Mexico and Latin America. It's also a main source of income for vendors.And that's why the owner, Mahmood Wadiwalla, said he's fighting to keep the place open.
"These families look forward for the Sunday and Saturday to come so they can all come out here and enjoy their cultural stuff here," Wadiwalla said.
Copyright ©2006TWEAN News Channel of Austin, L.P. d.b.a. News 8 Austin
This is one of the primary reasons I am not likely to start a serious business of my own. Sure, I've conducted economic transactions where I was the owner of something that someone else bought or I was the performer of some service that someone else purchased and in every case the transaction was conducted voluntarily. But to actually go to into business with the intention of being my own boss and generating my own income...that's a level of state attention I don't want.
UPDATED 1/31/2006 12:49pm
News8Austin: "On Monday, the city rejected the owner’s new operating plans because they lacked adequate parking."
...and it was a good one. When I heard about the Loompanics Unlimited going out of business sale, I thought to myself, "I oughta be able to find something in that kooky, oft-referenced, and yet never-perused-catalogue at 50% that I like."
And I did.
Some of them I bought because I'm concerned about the state of my knowledge regarding emergency and crisis situation survival (e.g., #6 and #10). Some of them I bought because I want to read direct arguments against ideas I think are faithful to reality (e.g., #3 and #5). Some of them I bought because the hype convinced me to check them out (e.g., #2 and #14).
Longtime readers are probably thinking, dude, you went out and bought *more* books when you know you've got a backlog of a few thousand pages to deal with already!?, and they'd be right to wonder what the hell I'm thinking.
Well, I can't pass up a good deal for curious things I'd normally never buy unless priced cheap, especially literature. I've also found a good reading rhythm and am actually actively cycling my way through lost-ignored tomes. I'll get to these some day and I'd rather have them now than later.
I have just learned that using the plastic US postal service bins for recycling (as many of us do, including me!) is a violation of the law. KS has just informed me that they are running short of the bins in the mail room and they would like to have them back. So if you are using the plastic bins for anything other than mail, please return them today to the mailroom. We don't want to be bailing anyone out of jail for misuse of federal government property!An e-mail from my boss's boss, a few days before we moved to the new building.
Not so bad I wouldn't have two.
The urge to taste different beer won over my urge to keep my distance from something that has "always been the number one beer in China." Speaking of the official Tsingtao website, check this out: a list of "Milestones" that skips from the founding of the Tsingtao Brewery (1903) to "Nixon Visits China" (1972).
Nearly seventy years and, oh, a few tens of millions of murdered Chinese later...
And by the way, yeah, fuck Google's owners for helping the Chinese government censor what the Chinese see on the Internet.
TASB moved to a new building this week and damned if they didn't stick me right on the main pathway to the Big Shots' offices. With my open-cubed back to that traffic and a much studier floor silencing sounds that would have normally alerted me to the presence of someone, I expect my non-business-related Internet usage to drop dramatically. Therefore, I expect to blog less often.
Of course, given the posting frequency of the last few weeks, this might not make much of a difference. Evening and weekend blogging should take up the slack when the urge strikes.
I have been running on the new PC for some time and haven't encountered any problems. Here is the reason why I couldn't get the damn thing to Power On Self Test a few weeks ago:
But the chapter preceding Chapter 3 (helpfully titled "Hardware Installation") dealt with inserting the CPU, memory, external storage, and peripheral connectors. It reminds the user to connect the CPU fan lead to JCFAN1. Not the barest of hints was mentioned regarding a separate power connection to the CPU from the power supply. Furthermore, here's what the manual says on page 13:
3.2 DETAIL SETTINGSATX Power Source Connectors: JATXPWR1 and JATXPWR2
JATXPWR1: This connector allows user to connect 20-pin power connector on the ATX power supply.
JATXPWR2: By connecting this connector, it will provide +12V to CPU power circuit.[table detailing the various pin assignments to each of the lines in the two power connectors]
It was immediately obvious to the Fry's technician what was wrong because he's seen many modern systems. I, however, have never built one from the ground up and have missed several product cycles. I've never heard of a mainstream consumer motherboard requiring a dedicated power connection to the CPU. Shows how out of date I am, but c'mon this is an oversight and the manual ought to be rewritten to reflect how important this damn plug is.
Thankfully, the Fry's tech said he would waive the normal $70 fee for diagnosing my problem if he could find it in less than 15 minutes. It took him less than five.
*bangs head on wall*
The small things get me all the time. Though there is the chance that single stick of dual-channel Crucial RAM might have tripped me up anyway, I obsessed over it so much I neglected to just step back and double-check everything again and RTFM a little harder.
Previous posts:
For such a diverse variety of reasons, I have zero fucking sympathy for any bin Ladinite Islamist.
The AP via News8Austin: Houston proposal would outlaw renting rooms for prostitution
The Houston City Council is considering a proposal that would make it illegal for motels to rent rooms knowing they would be used for prostitution.Houston police say the ordinance would help them stop motels from becoming prostitution hide-outs -- especially the motels that cater to such customers.
Council members were receptive to the proposal at a meeting yesterday, but some questioned how police planned to enforce the law.
Now taxing the hell out of the Malibu Mafia to pay for improving healthcare for the poor emotionally hits the all the right notes for me (I'm the Armed Liberal, remember). But I'm grown-up enough to notice that what feels good emotionally doesn't necessarily make for good policy.There's much to gawk at in this post.
There could be no Google without an Internet. It's interesting to note that many of the public or pseudo-public layers, such as HTML and LINUX, arose in a European context, where the ideal of the Agora is more influential than in the USA.
-Jaron Lanier in The Gory Antigora: Illusions of Capitalism and Computers
For information on what "agora" means in a political context, see Endervidualism, Agoraphilia, or BlackCrayon.com. Simply put, an agora is a place or condition where freedom, openness, and tolerance for individuality are prevailing values. Readers, feel free to offer corrections or additions. The gist is quickly absorbed by reading the above links.Given that, consider the current state of European politics. I think Mr. Lanier has some 'splaining to do if he really thinks the broad European polity prefers the voluntary social interactions implied by an agora over the coercion necessary to maintain state functions and authority. It is true that the difference between Europe and America on this subject is one of ever-dwindling degree. However, I don't think the facts point to his conclusion here, unless he was trying to quietly reference utopian communism.
In which case, Mr. Lanier has bigger problems.
The AP via the Tucson Citizen: Gun-wielding middle school student shot by SWAT team
A suicidal eighth grader who pulled a handgun in class and briefly took another child hostage was shot by a SWAT team member today when he later threatened deputies, Seminole County officials said.Sheriff Don Eslinger said the 15-year-old boy brought the gun to Milwee Middle School in his backpack and briefly took a fellow student hostage during a classroom scuffle.
The student then ran from the classroom and was pursued by deputies into a restroom and isolated there, Eslinger said. The school was evacuated, and no one else was injured. Officials with the sheriff's office said they had not confirmed whether the gun the boy had was real or a toy.
Identifying it as a real gun should take anyone familiar with firearms less than a minute. Weight, materials of fabrication, presence of ammunition, a functioning hammer and action...these are the sort of things that can be checked and verified right there on the spot. Unless someone thought it would be best for the media to not get all the information or unless the info had just not been passed to the public relations staff, I don't any justification for not knowing and confirming whether the object was a real handgun or just a toy.
UPDATED 1/14/2006 8:41pm
Christopher Penley has died.
A reportedly suicidal teenager who was shot by police while brandishing a pellet gun in his middle school has died of his injuries, his family's spokeswoman said Saturday.Kelly Swofford, a neighbor who had been with the family all morning, stood outside their home and confirmed that 15-year-old Christopher Penley had died.
"They want to donate his organs because that is what Chris would want," Swofford said. "The family is devastated, just devastated."
Penley, of Winter Springs, was accused of pulling the pellet gun in a classroom Friday and pointing it at other students before forcing one into a closet, then leading deputies and SWAT team members on a chase that ended in a school bathroom.
When he raised the gun at a deputy, a SWAT team member shot him, authorities said.
Officers who had responded to the 1,100-student school in suburban Orlando believed the gun was a Beretta 9mm, and didn't learn until after the shooting that it was a pellet gun.
[...]
At a news conference following the shooting Friday at suburban Orlando's Milwee Middle School, authorities put the pellet gun side-by-side with a Beretta. It appeared to have black paint covering the red or pink markings on the muzzle that may have indicated to officers that it was a nonlethal weapon.
"As you can see, it doesn't take a professional to see how close this looks to the real thing. I would not be able to tell the difference," said Joyce Dawley, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement special agent in charge of the investigation.
Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All right reserved.
There's the pellet gun ( WXIA-TV Atlanta)
Community Tax Centers offer free income tax help
Community Tax Centers will offer free income tax preparation to individuals and families with low incomes at six convenient locations in Austin beginning Jan. 21, 2006.Last year, Community Tax Centers prepared more than 7,400 tax returns that brought back nearly $10 million to the local economy and the wallets of Central Texas families who need it most.
This year, the program plans to nearly double this effort by the time Community Tax Centers close on April 17, completing 14,000 tax returns and bringing back about $18 million to the local economy.
The Community Tax Centers are made possible by major underwriting from the Silverton Foundation and tax center sponsorships from JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation.
Additional major funders include: City of Austin, Citibank, Bank of America, Washington Mutual, United Way Capital Area and Frost Bank.
Community partners include: 2-1-1 Texas, AISD Family Resource Center, City of Austin-Dove Springs Recreation Center, Community Action Network, Dolores Catholic Church, Financial Literacy Coalition, Goodwill Industries of Central Texas, Internal Revenue Service, Travis County, and WorkSource.
In-kind support was provided by Castleview Productions and Travis County.
Government forces us to pay taxes to pay for those services.
Poor people tend to rely on those services more than others.
People begin to realize paying taxes is annoying, expensive, and a pain in the ass.
People hire specialists to help in the preparation of their taxes.
People also realize that poor people are hit hard by taxes, especially the sales and property variety.
Special exemptions, deductions, and credits are written into the tax code to ease the burden on the poor.
The poor now face a very complicated tax-calculating season but have trouble affording professional help.
People start demanding tax help services be more available so the poor can claim their legal tax privileges.
Government begins lending tax-financed resources to efforts made to that effect.
Now the poor can better claim their tax exemptions, deductions, and credits.
*pause*
Thus, in order to provide services to the poor, government imposes taxes on everyone. But since the poor have trouble affording their taxes, the government decided to grant them certain privileges. But the poor need help in preparing their taxes to get these privileges and might have trouble hiring specialists. So the state's services expand to include tax assistance, thereby guaranteeing the tax revenue generated off the labor of the poor will decrease. But the state's services need to be paid for, so the share burdened by everyone else increases.
Please forgive this individualist propertarian for thinking this system is hopelessly, hilariously flawed.
...I just can't stand the fact that our media which can't seem to understand that people who support groups which try to reduce women an minorities on campus, who rule in favor of warrantless searches of 10 year old girls, who will likely declare the uterus state property...Allow me the courtesy of doubting the sincerity of Mr. Black's disinclination to make other people state property.
Really doubting.
...but the bastards' system rejected a perfectly good check of mine today at the VW dealership.
MEMO TO TELECHECK:
When you decide to deny a "conversion of my check to draft or Electronic Funds Transfer ('EFT')," how about providing a little bit more information on my denial than it "fell outside Telecheck's risk guidelines" when explaining why I can't pay my bills at the dealership, thereby condemning me to another motherfucking day without my car. It's bad enough I have to bug my friends for rides; bad enough that my car broke down; bad enough that what would have been a great nest egg of cash to start the year has been blown on fucking car repairs.
I don't need this shit right now and your process might have provided me with the knowledge of how to resolve the problem on the spot rather than delay everything another day. It isn't your fault I made it out to the service bays at 5:15pm on a weekday and it isn't your fault Wells Fargo didn't set up a branch within 15 minutes' walking distance. It is your fault that your system offers zip in the way of insight to the denied.
Listening to some bullshit helpful-tone machine tell me I'll have to wait six days or write you a fucking letter doesn't resolve shit and in fact makes things worse. Was the problem a bad account, phone, or driver's license number? Has someone ripped off my identity and gone about the nation buying BMWs, luxury cruises, and cashing checks? Why am I being denied access to my money?
How about a little customer service, you asses?
The Golf TDI just passed 90k miles. The check engine light has been on for about 2,000 miles and the airbag light has been on for many thousands more. The airbag light has been traced to a bad driver seatbelt sensor and the dealership can not guarantee the driver's side airbags will deploy in an accident. I've been putting that one off.
Monday night, my battery light came on and flickered while I was running some errands. I figured I'd go by NTB the next morning and get a new one since it was more than four years old. Unfortunately, the TDI wouldn't start yesterday morning. A friend gave me a jump but on my way to work the ABS light came on and the engine ran rough for a few hundred yards. I reluctantly took it in to Charles Maund Volkswagen and let them examine it.
The results:
And some people wonder why dealership service departments are generally disliked!
I refuse to pay the dealership that much money for a freaking brake job (and I can get 4 lifetime-warranted ceramic pads for way less), so I'll get that done elsewhere. That leaves the bill to $1,507. I'm going to suck up that absurd alternator bill because I need the car back sooner rather than later and screwing around with buying the parts elsewhere and handing everything over to an independent mechanic is a load of trouble I don't want to deal with.
The assy thing about all this is I deposited a check worth $1,200 in the bank just before the ABS light flipped on and the car started to run bad. My father is pitching in some cash but that check was spent before the damn thing could even be registered in the bank's computers.
The brake pads, glow plugs, and alternator are all original parts and have never been replaced. I was under no illusions that VW uses invincible parts, but all that shit breaking down at 90,000 miles is frustrating. This is the only major problem I've had with the TDI besides the catastrophic clutch failure of 2004, a beaut of a repair that set me back more than a grand.
This is a book about six decades of battles over wealth, power and fairness that led to one of the most important progressive achievements in the making of modern America - the establishment of the income tax.At its core, the story of the origins of the income tax revolves around the rise of the great American fortunes. Picture, if you will, one of the few places that this history can be experienced: the great citadels of wealth of the Gilded Age - the gothic and the beaux arts mansions...the wooded estates, gardens, mirrored ballrooms, libraries and vaulting corridors...fortresses against the great social upheaval that accompanied the accumulation of the vast wealth behind them - the protests, the strikes and demands for justice by farmers, workers and the poor...
The tension between these two forces is at the core of this book's narrative.
[...]
The purpose in this book is to write not so much a history of taxes as a history of how we think about taxes and the way that Americans, from the beginning, sought to strive toward different standards of equity and justice for society and its individual citizens.
-Steven R. Weisman, The Great Tax Wars, pages 1-3
I'm in the middle of At Dawn We Slept but I only read that during lunchtime on weekdays. I need something active at home to which to turn in case the time is ripe.
...almost, but I did get past my POST problem and the system boots perfectly fine now. I don't have the time to describe it at this moment but it was a damn annoying simple thing that took an experienced tech less than five minutes to figure out.
Only major thing left to do is get the system to recognize the wireless network adapter. That won't take long so I'll make a bold prediction: this is the last time I blog from my old computer.
Sayonara:
Guess where I found this bumper sticker?
If you trust in Jesus, what the hell are you doing in the patient section of a hospital parking lot?!?!
So I'm at St. David's hospital this morning, getting ready to have a small cyst and accompanying calcium deposit removed from my left index finger. The little bump has gotten in the way of everyday activities and recently became pressure sensitive to the point of pain.
I asked the attending nurse, anesthesiologist, and surgeon the same question: once cut out, could they hold on to the cyst/calcium build-up and return it to me afterwards? Each one of them had the same answer:
Sorry, but it's against state law to do that.
I wasn't going to argue with the people to whom I had handed my life for the next few hours. Given their reactions, they've had that request made plenty of times. What's the point in going off on them?
I did a brief search of current Texas statutory law to see if I could find the relevant text to quote, but came up empty. Maybe they were right and its buried in there or in some vast regulatory manual. Maybe they're wrong and mistook hospital policy for Texas law. If it's the latter, then it's a silly policy that should have been explained better before surgery.
If it's the former, I'm not particularly angry and I'm not going to explode into a rant. I'm just disappointed. A value so personal and intimate as the one I sought is gone, sitting uselessly in a bio-medical waste bin a few miles from where I now sit. I can't even really explain why I wanted that tissue to keep. It is beyond words, beyond the comprehension of a judge or legislator.
Something so simple and easy.
Gawddamn, this system sucks.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden can't take Cylert (pemoline) any more because the FDA banned it. She, her husband, and their commenters are outraged. I am not.
This isn't some Bush-specific FDA thing. This is what that agency does. It decides whether the benefits of the drug's availability outweigh the risks of that availability. There is no rational standard for such a decision. Whether pemoline causes 193 or 193,000 people to have "serious consequences" as a result of taking the drug, the agency is still treading upon territory that absolutely is not theirs. The choice to take drugs belongs with the individual; the prudent consult experts and consider the potential impact on their health.
The Food and Drug Administration has no right whatsofuckingever to tell Teresa Hayden what drugs she can take; her doctor what drugs to prescribe; and Abbott what drugs to produce. This follows whether a racist warmonger elitist Republican or a pussified gun-grabbing welfare Democrat is in office.
...god knows how many other people with narcolepsy, ADHD, and other tricksy neurochemical impairments are looking at THE END OF OUR FUNCTIONAL WORKING LIVES.
Emailed to Sen. Kennedy and Kerry:
============================A friend of mine, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, is a narcoleptic. She is functional ONLY because she takes drugs. Cylert has been essential for her, to stay awake, alert, functional, and a productive citizen earning a living and paying taxes.
Ralph Nader's successful campaign to get the FDA to ban Cylert banned is making her a hapless, angry victim and someone who sees dyfunctionality staring her in the face. She's furious. Her husband is furious. Is there ANY way that the FDA's decision can be reversed, to keep her and other who are dependent on that drug to be able to function in society as competent adults with jobs and lives?
From Mrs. Hayden:
Cylert and liver failure: After twenty-plus years on Cylert, my liver is just fine. I don't see why I shouldn't have the option of self-monitoring for symptoms of liver failure plus regular tests. I'd sure like to know whether they've identified any common risk factors in the handful of people who did have liver failure.By the way: Cylert is old and cheap, a backlist title among drugs. Modafinil is new, heavily promoted, and very expensive. And Modafinil is indeed a swell drug; but it doesn't do what Cylert does.
Fragano, I know all about the FDA's pigheaded attitude toward potentially recreational drugs. Amphetamines are a major component in narcolepsy's pharmacopia. The bleeping FDA gives us and our neurologists a tremendous amount of grief -- this, when a month's worth of the highest dose of Dexedrine I've ever been on is still less than the amount a former speedfreak friend of mine used to take every day.
I've been a fully diagnosed narcoleptic since the early 1980s. I'm a respectable middle-aged editor. All you have to do is take one look at me to know that I haven't been taking speed recreationally. They nevertheless make it damned near impossible for me to get any. Meanwhile, amphetamines are a major industry in rural America.
But abstract that argument and think about it. She's claiming her individuality trumps the collective political will as established by the state because she doesn't meet the criteria that the collective political will has set. Yet, I have no doubt at all that she has taken openly, directly opposed positions to that stance. Ralph Nader and Public Citizen used the political process (threatening lawsuits and going public with "links to" and "risks of" is part of our wonderful system) to screw 10,000 people over. How many thousands and millions are screwed by the other Federal Acronym Monsters with numbing routine and regularity? Do Mrs. Hayden and her sympathizers realize there is an elephant sitting in their living room with ".gov" stamped on its forehead?
No sympathy from me. When the inevitable consequences of your ideology bite you in the ass, you either deal with the pain or change your ideology. Still not convinced?
Peter Lurie did his residency in Family Practice and Preventive Medicine. The fact that he's got the Narcolepsy Network screaming in protest over this action should tell you how wrong he is when he dismisses Cylert as "an outmoded drug." That man has no idea what he's talking about. He can't have asked the narcoleptic community; they'd have told him right off that for many of us, there's no other drug that substitutes for Cylert. This is gross professional irresponsibility. Lurie ought to have his license yanked.
Just some individuals.
And because some screw up, all must be punished via the licensing process.
It doesn't help that she's said something that pissed me off regarding public education and the NEA a while back.
No, Teresa Nielsen Hayden's explosive hypocrisy on this matter isn't going to garner any sympathy from me. I hope she finds a solution to her narcolepsy that allows her to live well.
I also hope she feels this pain sharp and hard, perhaps permanently changing her attitude towards the State in general, rather than just an Administration.
UPDATED 2:33pm
Eric S. Raymond has similar thoughts:
Teresa, even as I feel your pain, I'm wondering if you're going to learn the right lesson. The Cylert ban isn't an accidental failure of the system, it's an essential one. It wasn't perpetrated by villains, but by well-intentioned people working the levers of a system designed to elevate "public safety" above individual choice. That system functioned as designed; it's the design that’s broken.I may have your politics wrong, and if so I apologize…but my gut reaction when I read your enraged post was "those who live by regulation get to die by it too". Welcome, Teresa, to the ranks of those who have been royally screwed by "good government". You’re now one with every homeowner who’s been raped by eminent domain, every gun owner, and every overtaxed working stiff in the United States.
I'm going in for minor hand surgery very early tomorrow morning so I'll be delayed again in getting new material up here.
However, I have received my property tax assessment. That oughta provide material for at least one big pissed-off post, eh? I have also given up the hope that I can figure out what's wrong with the computer I've tried to build, intending to hire pros to take a look at it. More details to come.
The holidays this year were great fun. I spent Christmas with my immediate family near Canyon Lake and New Year's with my friends at my house. Simple and easy relaxin', even though I'm still waiting on the last gift to arrive for a friend. I'm not making the stupid mistake of ordering 60% of my presents to others from Amazon.com nine days before Christmas.
Best gift I received this year? If the computer ends up working, then it might be the money my parents gave me to put towards it. However, I'm not sure even that can top the 22-pound-plus, 1440-page, three-volume Complete Calvin and Hobbes hardcover collection two friends gave me. I'm going to build a bookshelf around this monster.
One of my buddies got me hooked on Naruto (damn you, Tim!), I'm knee-deep in Samurai 7 (very nice!), and I bought Now and Then, Here and There (finally!), so perhaps 2006 will be Drizz's New Year of Anime. Discovering a relatively nearby rental store with complete box sets at reasonable prices does help. On the other hand, I've been burning up my thumbs on the Xbox version of Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, so it is equally possible I'll simply get nothing done anime-wise and use all my free time trying to pull off a switch 540 boneless + Japan air + BS revert + nose manual + 720 madonna + FS revert + manual + 180 pogo + heelflip + fandango + smith grind + 180 hardflip + bluntside +... My currrent high score for a single combo is in the high 500,000s. Lots of room for improvement.
I did try to avoid checking on the news while on holiday, but I let my guard down a few times. Hard to avoid those top stories when checking your Yahoo e-mail! Lots of heat is being generated without much accompanying light. Pleading lobbyists, an executively-privileged Big Brother, and all the local stuff; I see this stuff after forcing myself to back away for a few weeks and I almost hesitate to get back to it. I've been slow to get back and active on MySpace as well.
There are nicer things to talk about and nicer things to keep one focused upon. Grinning nieces, partying friends, and new technology are preferable to discussing robbery, assault, murder, and their systematic integration with society. However, I'm not shy to say I stare at wreckage with fascination whether it be the result of human intention or error. Intentional wreckage, as profoundly malignant as it is, is more interesting to me than accidental.
The neck-craning will commence.
