Monthly Archives: March 2003

Some UK pix

Saturday, March 15, 2003

These pictures are actually all taken by Erik, which is why I've watermarked them for him, not for me. Anyway, if you're in the pix, feel free to snag them for your own page/use/whatever. Sorry I haven't posted these sooner!


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Orange + Red = ???

Saturday, March 15, 2003

As always, this entry will make people angry at me, even though I didn't actually do any of the things in the entry. Shoot the messenger, he might be a Marxist or if not, one of those red white and red undemocratic Canuk beaver-lovers! Yeah, that's right. Make fun of the guy that loves beavers.

I want to remind everyone of the last time America orchestrated “regime change” in Iraq. Do any older readers remember? Oh yeah, that was back in the 60's when the CIA overthrew Abdel Karim Kassem and replaced him with… yeah, you guessed it… Saddam Hussein.

I don't even know why I bothered mentioning that. The people who already understand that regime change doesn't work simply will say “yup”, and the rest will blindly say “I knew it! It's the Democrats' fault!” (That pinko JFK was in power at the time…)

These colours don't run: come on America! Do you not realize what dumb stunts like this make the rest of the world think? It's just silliness. Right up there with “freedom fries“.

Anyway, what does it matter? Have you seen the “contingency plans”? The US has accepted that in the case of a domestic WMD attack there will be no evacuations. They've instead opted for the “everyone will die” scenario. But we all know who has the bombs.

Well, Bush is off on a campout with his few remaining buddies this weekend, but don't worry. Before leaving he was sure to let everyone know that although he is “praying for peace“, the military is on “hair-trigger alert” and there's “little hope” that the US will avoid “bloodbath“.

The US has announced that they expect to occupy Iraq for 20-25 years (goddamn are taxes going to go through the roof in the US!) although many experts predict brutal civil war, plus a promised “100 year war” between the Kurds and Turkey.

As you know, the US initiated this war by using forged documents claiming that Iraq had nukes or was trying to aquire them… There have been calls for an investigation into the matter but I think we all know — cough! anthrax!!? cough! — that's not going to go anywhere. Afterall, lying is the American Way, as far as traitors like Bush are concerned. Don't care because this will bring democracy to the Iraqi people? Think again — even the US state department denies that outlandish claim.

Of course, all of this ignores the fact that war with Iraq is illegal under international law without specific approval of the UN (it's safer to attack an unarmed foe first; after all, they might get weapons in the future). Which means that the US is about not only to betray its own people (who have said no war without UN backing), but will also make itself a rogue nation. The US is moving itself into a position of such isolation that it won't be long — if it continues on this path — that it will find itself first in economic war, and then in physical war, with the rest of the world.

And as big as the US is, it's not that big, and it will lose.

And here's the real punch line: if that happens, and the US is destroyed, Bush et al still get to walk away outrageously wealthy and safe. They're protected. You — the American people — are not. So do you want to believe the lies and walk yourself to slaughter? I'm sure it'll make a good movie, right? Maybe a video game?

Someone please explain the following to me. After 9/11, 3% of people believed that Iraq had any involvement with the attacks… Now fully 45% believe that not only was Iraq involved, but Saddam Hussein is personally responsible. How is that even possible? Do people not remember last year's propaganda? Not only that, but thanks to the quite possibly faked (at a minimum deceptive) arrest of “al Qaeda leader” Osama bin Laden Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, we're now being told that al Qaeda has been defeated. Well, that was easy!

Put Up or Shut Up, Richard Perle: as you know if you read my page, the New Yorker got threatened by Perle for revealing that he was set to personally profit from war — that is, by encouraging war, he was set to become even wealthier. What kind of man profits from murder? To put it more simply, the US government is under the control of genuine evil, and there's proof.

And that's about all that I can handle writing about today.

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Tongue splitting

Saturday, March 15, 2003

Thanks to Rebekah for passing me this bit of legislation. Illinois is considering ammeneding their body piercing codes with the following bit of law, and I think it's safe to assume that other states are doing similar things:

   (720 ILCS 5/12-10.2 new)
   Sec. 12-10.2. Tongue splitting.
   (a) In this Section, "tongue splitting" means the cutting of a human tongue into 2 or more parts.
   (b) A person may not perform tongue splitting on another person unless the person performing the tongue splitting is licensed to practice medicine in all its branches under the Medical Practice Act of 1987 or licensed under the Illinois Dental Practice Act.
   (c) A physician or dentist authorized under subsection (b) to perform tongue splitting may perform tongue splitting on an individual only if there is a therapeutic or clinical basis for performing the procedure on that individual.
   (d) Sentence. Tongue splitting performed in violation of this Section is a Class A misdemeanor for a first offense and a Class 4 felony for a second or subsequent offense.

I do worry that this may be worded so as to ban tongue splitting by doctors as well — is there a “therapeutic or clinical basis” for doing the procedure? I'm not sure you'll find any doctors willing to make that statement. Which means that the end result of this legislation is lots of underground work and self-splitting, meaning more injuries. If they had any sense they'd just tell doctors to “go for it”.

Anyway, there are always journalists asking piercers about tongue splitting. Many of those piercers actually do the procedure. My strong advice to you would be to not go on public record about it… Do you really want to get arrested and potentially lose your studio over a stupid newspaper article that will probably just slag you anyway?

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Quick

Friday, March 14, 2003

This is a totally unflattering picture. I apologize in advance to my vanity for posting it… But maybe it's kind of funny? It's me crashed out at the train station (waiting for our journey back to Tweed) after getting the forehead tattoo.

In January of 1995 (I think) I got my septum pierced at 14ga by a friend who was thinking about learning to pierce. It was literally his first piercing… It went perfectly though. I stretched it quickly, but grew tired of it and by the middle of that summer it was gone.

This morning — eight years after removing it — I popped a 14ga ring back in without any effort at all. So don't let anyone tell you piercings are temporary! If your body likes it, it's there to stay, jewelry or not. Not that a septum piercing looks good on me, hence the lack of photos. Maybe I'll stretch it again though, I do like septum plugs.

Profound Question Time

Is the spiritual universe — the place some people “go” when doing suspensions, meditation, psychedelics, etc., the place where Christians go when they're speaking with Jesus (a la 'that was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world'), the tao, whatever… Anyway, the first question: Is that world…

  1. A delusion brought on by extreme mental/physical states.
  2. A lie — anyone who claims to “see it” is making it up.
  3. The true representation of the true universe.
  4. A secondary universe that sits “behind” the one we experience day-to-day.

That's question one.

Question two is “can that question be answered definitively, or does it come down to a matter of faith?” That's a two part question in that it breaks down to (a) can you answer that definitively for yourself, and (b) can you answer that definitively for others?

(Original forum unavailable, sorry)*
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Thursday the 13th

Thursday, March 13, 2003

Well, as should be obvious the upload crashed last night… Not because of the satellite, but because there were so many dictionary attacks on the site yesterday (which the bots shut down) that the logs overflowed the drive! Anyway, I've restarted that process; my apologies for not having it online already. For some weird reason I seem to be getting 200+ kbps upstream right now, so maybe it won't take too long. Fingers crossed. This is I think my third attempt.

First I'll mention two links that were posted in the Whatever forum yesterday.

US Congress opts for “freedom fries” It's one thing when a bunch of dumb hicks start doing this, but when it's actually sanctioned by the US government, what message does that send to the rest of the world? That the US is run by five year olds? Are these politicians not even thinking about the reprocussions of their actions? No more French kissing! Here's my advice to congress. Go Taliban and open a can of whoop-ass on the Statue of Liberty!

I should mention that even though the US has been going over the top insulting both the French (“cheese-eating surrender monkeys”) and the Germans (“the pariah state”), there are six thousand French peacekeeping troops in Afghanistan and the Balkans, and Germany has ten thousand troops in place. And them not being warmongers is enough to petition Webster's to remove all French-related words from the dictionary? To petition schools to stop teaching French?

The other story from the forum is PayPal switches off indy news site account. PayPal not only yanked the account of whatreallyhappened.com for no reason at all (ie. they didn't like the content politically), but they also seized their assets and are holding them for half a year. Abuse of power?

Anyway, I was thinking… Let's pretend for a moment that Bush was legally elected; that he's the democratically elected President (that would be trippy, dude, I know!). Now, he's been told by the US people that they won't support this war if it's not UN backed. Since it's pretty obvious that there's going to be no UN backing, and if there is, it's going to cost a fortune in bribes, he's now considering just skipping the UN vote and going straight to war. At what point does it become unequivocally clear that the US is not a democracy?

Here's a story for you:
Russian Expert Predicts 500,000 Iraqi Dead
in War Designed To Test Weapons

The Iraqi army will be subjected to very powerful blows. It will be physically annihilated. In order to impose a new puppet government in the country (and I am sure the Americans have already formed that government) and to give that government the opportunity to get on with its work, the United States will be forced actually to occupy Iraq. The occupation of territory within which seats of organized resistance could persist would lead to large losses among US Army personnel. Guerrillas, and in the context of the Arab world also shahid martyrs wearing explosive belts — naturally the Americans do not need this. Therefore they will totally annihilate the Iraqi army. Practically all Iraq servicemen will die. There will be terrible carnage.

Don't let anyone tell you war is beautiful or noble. This isn't self-defence. This is state-sponsored mass killing, and it's fundamentally wrong. Don't believe me? Look it up in the Bible — And I'm not talking KJV. I'm talking pretty much every holy book, every Book of Wisdom our species has produced. Almost universally they agree: thou shalt not kill.

And here's the punchline: there's no loophole.

It's not hard to understand, is it?

Musha rain dum-a-do-dum-a-da
Whack for my daddy-o
Whack for my daddy-o
There's whiskey in the jar-o

Let's see… what else wonderful is in the news this morning? I see the US has threatened to kill independent reporters in Iraq. The big news broadcasters — CNN, Fox, etc. — operate with Pentagon screening and approval. The smaller and independent news teams do not, and as such, their truths don't get scrubbed by the US government before broadcast. The solution is simple: kill them. Yay for freedom of the press.

This quote from Rick Mercer (This Hour Has 22 Minutes), one of Canada's more “Canadian” comedians, has been doing the email-forwarding rounds lately. I hope people think it's funny, I think this entry needs something funny, right?

On behalf of Canadians everywhere I'd like to offer an apology to the United States of America. We haven't been getting along very well recently and for that, I am truly sorry.

I'm sorry we called George Bush a moron. He is a moron but, it wasn't nice of us to point it out. If it's any consolation, the fact that he's a moron shouldn't reflect poorly on the people of America. After all it's not like you actually elected him.

I'm sorry about our softwood lumber. Just because we have more trees than you doesn't give us the right to sell you lumber that's cheaper and better than your own.

I'm sorry we beat you in Olympic hockey. In our defense I guess our excuse would be that our team was much, much, much, much better than yours.

I'm sorry we burnt down your white house during the war of 1812. I notice you've rebuilt it! It's Very Nice.

I'm sorry about your beer. I know we had nothing to do with your beer but, we Feel your Pain.

I'm sorry about our waffling on Iraq. I mean, when you're going up against a crazed dictator, you wanna have your friends by your side. I realize it took more than two years before you guys pitched in against Hitler, but that was different. Everyone knew he had weapons.

And finally on behalf of all Canadians, I'm sorry that we're constantly apologizing for things in a passive-aggressive way which is really a thinly veiled criticism. I sincerely hope that you're not upset over this.

We've seen what you do to countries you get upset with.

Thank you.

The emphasis was added by me, and I think it's important. I realize that people are taught in US schools the highly debatable notion that America won WWI and WWII for Europe, but the fact is that America didn't get pulled in to WWII until very late, and it did so on fraudulent grounds. America's role in that war was self serving, as it has been in all wars, as much as it trumpets its “savior” role (and has rewritten its history books so as to ensure that its young people take it for granted — the easiest way to rewrite history is by government control of schools).

Did you know that Cheney is still receiving a million dollars a year from Halliburton? Yay for war, it makes Cheney richer! It's so good to hear that every Iraqi killed puts a dollar in his pocket. It's not a conflict of interest, because Cheney is trustworthy and honourable, right?

To quote Buchanan from his “not yet published” March 24 column (yay for time travel you reptilian bastards), “a neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's interest.” I believe the correct response is “No shit, Sherlock!” Everyone can see that. It's called a coup d'etat. It just happened. Didn't anyone notice (anyone that's not gay that is)?

Let's go fuck with North Korea. At least that war will be “horribly funny”.

Finally, while Mike D and the boys are looking a little haggard, they're still damn cool.


In a world gone mad it's hard to think right
So much violence hate and spite
Murder going on all day and night
Due time we fight the non-violent fight


PS.

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