Monthly Archives: November 2002

Hats Galore!!!

Since we started making stuff, we've wanted to do nice toques. Problem is, every sample we'd seen was pretty crappy quality. Anyway, we finally got some back and they are awesome. They turned out so well — click on the photos below for some closeups or click here for their page on BMEshop.

Anyway, they're slick. Neither of the two models particularly wanted to model this morning, but pretend they're as thrilled about these hats as I am. We also have the skull (the one that was on the rock t's) design on its way… And, courtesy of Danielle's clothing company (I don't even know what it's called… BME: The Beazer Manufacturing Empire?), here are two prototypes for a new line of hats based on the BME Kid's Club characters:

Those will be available in a limited edition run later this winter. The toques above are in stock now; they'll move quickly though so you might want to grab one.

Finally, an update on the scrapbook: as you know, they're at the bindery. The softcovers, barring catastrophe, will definitely be done by week's end, and the hardcovers (which take more time as the covers are sewn not glued) should be as well, so they should all ship on Monday. The print house is aware of the time constraints and is doing everything it can to go as quickly as possible.

I'm the nice housemate

Jason is the person here that's not on IAM (no mods). He's a nice guy, but kind of annoying at times so he tends to be the butt of jokes… I walked into the TV room a couple days ago at the end of a Rachel-makes-fun-of-Jason session.

Jason: You know, it seems like she kind of hates me.
Rachel: I'd say "hate" is too weak of a word.
Shannon: I'd say "she" is too specific of a word.

The only thing he really does that annoys me is leave a lot of garbage lying around the yard for me to clean up (if I don't, the dumb dogs eat it). Anyway, Rob left the note on the left for him. I thought it was maybe a bit harsh, so I lightened it up so as not to hurt his feelings.

Winter mornings

Well, I was supposed to go to Jonny's radio show this morning, but the snow isn't gone like the forecast said it would be, and in fact predicts freezing rain for the morning. Given that my only car option is a Porsche with wide summer racing tires and about 2″ of clearance, I'm not going anywhere until I either fix the truck or the snow thaws.

(Yes, the trees are coated in ice in the left photo, and some of you may remember about three years ago when I smashed the TT in similar conditions.)

Bushisms

No matter what your political leaning, most of us have chuckled over Bush's various goofy statements (“Dick Cheney is my sounding rod, not my lightning rod”), but worry more about his non-funny ones. When Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward was interviewing Bush during the “war on terrorism” (click here for a summary), he asked him why he was ignoring the experienced experts on his team, even though he personally is extremely inexperienced in international issues of this (or any) sort. Bush's answer:

"I do not need to explain why I say things — That's the interesting thing about being the President — Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."

So not only does the current administration feel that it does not need to be accountable to the public, but the current leader feels he does not need to be accountable to his advisors. Many of the other statements are worrying as well, including his freak-out when the military told Bush that it would take more than a week to launch an assault on Afghanistan, as well as his push for absolutely unrestrained CIA actions…


I just got off the phone with the printer for the scrapbook and the book currently at the bindery. I've told them that I have to ship by week's end so they're making it the top priority. If anything changes (I'll talk to them next tomorrow) I'll definitely let everyone know.

Salad Days

America labeled Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. North Korea almost immediately said, “oh yeah, well we have nuclear weapons and biological weapons, so fuck off” and America has left them alone for the most part. Iraq on the other hand said, truthfully or not, “we have no nuclear weapons, or weapons of any kind.”

So Iraq became the target. But then it got a bit goofy. Israel, which is very public about its nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare possibilities, has said that if Iraq attacks Israel, it will respond with a nuclear strike, which will of course throw the entire region into utter chaos. Israel bets that out of the inferno will leave the entire Middle East region under US and Israeli control, whereas Iraq bets that it will destroy Israel and financially destroy America.

Even if Iraq has WMDs, they probably don't have transcontinental deployment tools and probably don't have weaponry already in place in the US (but you never know). So while Iraq can quite possibly defend itself from being conquered in urban warfare, it can not effectively launch a counterstrike on US soil (that'll be left to unaffiliated terrorist groups). But it can attack Israel, setting into motion the apocalypse described above.

I choose that word “apocalypse” for a reason. If you don't remember my previous entry on it, I'll briefly quote the relevant section here:

While the liberal churches are on the whole opposed to the war, as well as of America's extreme support of Israel (another $10 billion was just pledged for "support of Israel", right?), the far Christian right are extreme supporters both of Israel and of war in the Middle East. If you want the answer why, read Revelations (ie. the "conclusion" of the Bible).

For the apocalypse to happen, Israel must be rebuilt as a Jewish state, which along with war in the Middle East will bring about the second coming of Jesus and the triumph of heaven. (full story*). The crazy punch line is that Bush's extremist Christian team has been quite publicly saying this since day one... Does no one care that the country is in part being run by religious lunatics who are doing their damndest not to bring about world peace, but to bring about the apocalypse?

Anyway, so once we step way back and look at everyone's statements, the potential sequence of events is quite clear. Now read this story: “Baghdad warns that a US strike will lead it to hit back at Israel”. Couple that with the pole shift which is going to happen inside the next ten years, and the world becomes an unpleasant place (the pole shift probably won't irradiate the earth according to the geological record, but it probably will diminish the magnetosphere enough to destroy most satellites — no communications, no weather prediction, no GPS navigation, etc — don't underestimate how important they are nowadays).


* I don't know why, but this article appears to have been taken offline. I'll put reconstructing its evidence on my to-do list… It's a very scary set of facts.



Well, I've got to get to work and my internet connection isn't doing so well (because of problems with their satellite, not because of weather-related signal strength), but I hear through the grape vine that there was a “Shannon sighting” in an old friends portfolio in Sweden. If that was you, drop me a line… Anyway, I'll have an update on the scrapbook shortly.