Wierdest story ever, from Japan: Japan's most notorious killer is back on the streets. Apparently Issei Sagawa is a necrophiliac cannibal who never went to prison:

He freely admits to having slaughtered a Dutch woman in Paris, sexually violated her corpse, then literally butchered her so he could eat some of her remains... Before going any further, it's important to note that despite what he did to that poor young woman in Paris, Sagawa, for a variety of legal loopholes that space doesn't permit to be explained here, has never been charged for what he did.

Sagawa has resurfaced as an anti-war protester claiming "Murderers actually know more about the importance of life than any other people on Earth." He also said that Bush is using the "excuse of terrorism" to launch a war, which is "just like Pearl Harbor." I'm not sure what he means by that... More importantly, why hasn't somebody just whacked this guy? As far as I can tell, Japan is crawling with ninjas, thugs, murderers, and enraged monkeys. Does none of them desire to bring honor to themselves through such public service? Can the not only act in shame? Perhaps they are afraid the newspapers will expose their secret.

Linux fucking rules. I've become accustomed to some things just not working under Linux without a lot of effort. Today I tried two things, just for the hell of it, with my fairly new installation of Red Hat 8.0. First, I tried suspending my laptop. This didn't ever work before. Now it does. Perfectly. Then, just to see what would happen, I plugged in my USB drawing tablet, and it fucking worked. It doesn't even work in Windows right now. I know less and less about how my Linux system works (it's evolving pretty much without me these days). But I actually need to know less in order to use it. Red Hat 8 has, in my opinion, surpassed Windows in user-friendliness, ease of installation and variety of features. Fuck Microsoft, fuck them.

One of my professors mentioned the Elizabeth Smart news to me today, and said, "The Mormons must be really happy to get all this media attention." He also noticed that no one seems able to talk about Elizabeth Smart without somehow distorting it into an advertisement for their religion. "This is clearly an answer to prayer," "miracles do happen," "this is no doubt a miracle," and on and on. This is not a fucking exercise in confirming religious superstitions! A girl has been kidnapped by a religious nut, held for nine months, probably "brainwashed" and had God-knows-what done to her, and all anyone wants to talk about is how this validates their damn religion. Patty Hearst has made the only intelligent comments so far:

"You have absorbed this new identity that they've given you," Hearst said. Hearst, now known formally as Patricia Hearst Shaw, also said abductees become psychologically dependent upon their abductors. "Many times, people who have been held hostage say, `They really were nice to me,"' she said. "But what they really means is, `Thank God they didn't kill me."' She said Elizabeth's family should keep the girl away from the news media. "The experiences she's gone through have changed her," Hearst said. "She's never going to be the same trusting person. She's going to be very suspicious."

At least I wasn't the only one who noticed how soap-boxy everything was in people's comments about the abduction. I had wondered if I was being overly harsh on people who need a religious crutch during a difficult time. But then I thought, "No, there is a difference between using a crutch and wearing blinders." Maybe religion helped them have hope, but now it just obscures the situation. The Smart family seems pretty capable of handling things without expecting too much assistance from God. But I've known plenty of Mormon families that were so caught up in "prayer" that they couldn't even communicate with each other or help each other in functional ways. Everything is just mediated through prayer. Maybe it's my zeal for generality, and maybe it isn't altogether fair, but every time I see something like this, I am reinforced in my general fear of religious nuts. Most people seem to get reinforced in their fear of religious nuts excluding the ones they follow. "My spiritual leader isn't the crazy one," everyone says. "The Pope isn't nuts, he's wise and inspired." Personally, I define a religious nut as anyone who wants to teach you something on the basis of a message he got from God.

• "I've been called by God to the ministry" - nuts.
• "God spoke to my heart" - nuts.
• "I/we have the authority to declare truth on behalf of God by proxy" - nuts.

I got a message from God, too: He told me He doesn't exist. Now I'm nuts too. But at least I cancel myself out.

Elizabeth Smart found alive! I can barely believe it. They spent months plastering North America with flyers (I saw one not far from the Canadian border in October). She turned up in Sandy. Here's the Yahoo article about it. To top it all off, it turns out the Jesus Beggar* did it!!! Recognize this guy? * The Jesus Beggar is often called "The Moses Beggar" by dumshit Mormons who don't want to be blasphemous but who don't mind sounding blasphemous to conservative religious Jews. Althought he calls himself "Emmanuel," which is a Biblical name for Jesus... But what the hell do I know. I'm a gentile in both the Mormon and Jewish senses of the word, so I have no particular rights to express any opinions on the subject. Meanwhile, "Shandy Cushing said she brought her daughters Brynn, 7, and Demi, 9, down to the corner Wednesday to 'show them that miracles do happen.' " That's right, kids, God clearly intervened to bring Elisabeth home. He didn't do squat to keep her from being kidnapped in the first place, but at least He cleared things up this time. It's rare, but it happens.

Iowa congressman wants to redefine "sex act" (thank you Fark). The bill proposes an amendment to the current official definition, adding the following language:

1 19 This bill relates to the definition of a sex act. The bill 1 20 modifies the definition of a sex act to include the 1 21 penetration of any object into the genitalia or anus except in 1 22 the course of examination or treatment of a person licensed 1 23 pursuant to Code chapter 148, 148C, 150, 150A, 151, or 152. 1 24 If an object is in contact with the genitalia or anus, 1 25 current law requires the object be an artificial sex organ or 1 26 substitute for an artificial sex organ.[link]

At the risk of being snyde, wouldn't this amendment define use of tampons, home enemas, suppositories, or Preparation H as "sex acts"?

Dammit! The things you hear when you don't have your micro-cassette recorder on you! I just talked to the craziest man in San Diego. He wore a black leather hat, t-shirt, jeans, and Nike running shoes, and he had a windbreaker tied around his waist. He showed up in the courtyard of my apartment complex just a few minutes ago, carrying a black gym bag and talking to himself -- till I got there. I asked him if I could help him, and he asked me who the property manager is. We've had some crime recently, and he seemed like a nut job, so I was evasive. I said I didn't know, as it keeps changing. Then he went off about how my apartment complex fits in with the triangle that he's mapped with overlay maps from the late 1970s and early 1980s when the kid was scraped with rusty metal to make it look like it's a new disease, when it's really just malaria or something, and how this was used in conjunction with the rectangular pool over at a complex north of El Cajon Blvd. where they staged the Reagan thing in 1980, with James Baker, and it corresponds with a place in Mission Valley and has to do with a method of keeping someone alive in a pipe or tube-form, just like the tubes underneath the wooden stairwells in our complex (do you see them? see those there?), where you keep them in there, and he has an architect over on Adams Ave. who can vouch for it and if you go over to the complex on Mississippi St., and knock on the pipes, it sounds just like the pipe that the kid used to play tether ball, but it really is pathetic, it's pathetic is what it is, it's people not being held responsible, and they're using the kid now as a business guarantee, now that he's grown, and the James Baker situation was in conjunction with the fact that, back in 1974, they were using the kid, and they had their hands down his pants and it's provable, that's the thing about it, is that it's provable. I was only able to ask a few questions here and there throughout, and just as I was about to tell him I wanted to show him the pamphlet about The Pricker (during which time I would have grabbed my recorder and shoved it in my shirt pocket), he apologized for interrupting my reading, wished me a good day, and walked off. Damn damn damn! I coulda had an mp3 to post!

I can't figure out what school of thought the CNN commentators are from, or what delusions they operate under, which cause them to think that a 6-4 vote is a landslide. "The polls say that 58% of Americans think the UN is doing a poor job. That speaks clearly: America wants unequivocally to bomb Iraq out of existence." (slightly paraphrased). They always do that. They list polls in which no response even gets up to 50% and then "analyze" how much overwhelming support for this or that is revealed by the polls. We sane people from Earth look at those polls and see deep divisions and tenuous support, not a clear and strong public opinion.

Okay, this post is a little demanding, but it's entirely worth it. Thanks to my Uncle Brad, I'm now a full and complete 365 Days Project addict. Back in mid-February, Brad gave me a disc of mp3s and accompanying pages of the project in full at the time, and I've been hooked ever since. If you haven't already heard about it, it's an attempt to post a different bizarro mp3 every day for the entire calendar year of 2003. Fun fun fun. I'm not going to bother to describe a sample of what's already in the archives, just go and browse already. If you don't have the time or inclination to follow it daily, there are two selections that you MUST MUST MUST download:

Red Shadow (The Economics Rock & Roll Band) -- Understanding Marx
Alexandria Hughes Little -- Jesus Christ's Ring

The first is classic: "Freud's a fraud and / Skinner's of no use / Read Marx and Lenin it will really turn you loose!" And the second is absolutely baffling. It does no good to discuss what's wrong with it; the answer is everything. But what's right with it? Answer: nothing. Listen closely to the post-song notes, when she mentions what she sells for a living: Grit. I cried. I kid you not, I cried. I laughed so hard I cried. I cried for all the times I saw the successful pre-teen entrepreneur on his bike in the Grit ad in the back of Green Lantern comics and tilted my head and thought, "Hey, that could be me!" And this woman sells it. There are some great images to be found accompanying each mp3, as well. Here's one at random, as I know some people out there possess a fondness for the particular TV series being referenced:

One of the links on one of the pages led me to Show and Tell Music, where they have some incredible scans of album covers, like these:



The first is for all of us who used to watch Jack Van Impe after The Simpsons on Sundays, back in the day, and the second, of course, is for Chris. Apparently, Mr. Bat teaches kids about Jesus. Would you like to learn about Jesus, Chris? No? Look into Mr. Bat's dead eyes and say that! And I think Li'l Markie deserves his own post...

Newsflash: Congress is full of morons. French fries now to be called "freedom fries" in House cafeterias. Says Congressman Bob Ney: "the French government comes around we can get back to talking about french fries." Ney is also expected to claim that he is not making America look even more stupid than it already does aroud the world. Meanwhile, France is furious:

The French Embassy in Washington had no immediate comment, except to say that french fries actually come from Belgium. [link]

Americans are pouring their hearts out in thanks to Walter Jones and Bob Ney for taking time out of their cup-and-ball game to devise this cunning strategem. Surely France will be hours very soon...

Theme Song: Apparently there is some German techno group with a song called Corpse Divine. I'm not sure if its the name of the band or the track or what, but they have a logo:

Wierd:

Bed bugs also have an interesting sex life. The males have large, scimitar-like sex organs with which they pierce the females body wall, not bothering to use her sex organs. They fill the female's body with semen, some of which makes it to her reproductive organs. The rest is absorbed as protein by the female and used as nourishment. [link: HGTV]

Many of us have come in contact with Brittish consumer technology from time to time (things like phones and TVs), and we may have wondered, "why does this so profoundly suck?" The roots of techno-suck may be hinted at by Brittish policies such as TV licensing:

The BBC television license is a UK anachronism which would bemuse the citizens of most countries of the world. The BBC is State television, but State television which is run by an elite nebulous clique rather than directly by the government of the day (which fortunately changes often enough not to get entrenched). The BBC is funded mainly by the television license, which is just over 100 pounds per year for anyone who uses a (colour) TV, whether or not the BBC is ever watched. Even people who do not have TVs would probably prefer to have the BBC funded from general taxation. If you do not use a TV, and so do not need a license, you are often harrassed by the TV licensing authority, who do not believe you ("surely everybody must watch TV in this day and age"). To pay 100 pounds of extra general (e.g. income or sales) tax every year is surely better than being harrassed by the State.

Canada has similar (though much weaker) techno-suck laws: I am not allowed, for example, to build my own satellite dish and see what I can hear with it. They call that "stealing a satellite signal." All dishes in Canada must be licensed. I have always had a visceral disgust for the notion that someone can bathe me, 24 hours a day, in my home and at work, in a battery of electromagnetic signals, and then have the nerve to say it's "stealing" if I want to have a look at that signal without PAYING THEM for the privelege of "viewing it." Policies like this raise very grave questions about what "technology" is and who is allowed to benefit from it. As far as I'm concerned, when you send something out into the air, it isn't yours any more. No one is ENTITLED to profit from the LIMITATIONS of others. Just because I couldn't detect this or that signal when you started transmitting it doesn't mean I have no right to it.

From the annals of science: why shower curtains billow inward.

War Brewing:

Some interesting news items... First, Iraqi soldiers are already surrendering. According to the Daily Mirror, a group of Iraqi soldiers slipped across a heavily fortified border in order to surrender to Brittish troops. "The Iraqis found a way across the fortified border, which is sealed off with barbed-wire fencing, watchtowers and huge trenches.... The stunned Paras from 16 Air Assault Brigade were forced to tell the Iraqis they were not firing at them, and ordered them back to their home country telling them it was too early to surrender." In other news, I've been reading Bush at War by Bob Woodward, which covers the Bush administration's decisions after 9-11. I'm getting the impression that the Iraq war has really been a Rumsfeld job from the start. Woodward recounts numerous early meetings regarding Afghanistan in which Iraq is brought up by Wolfowitz and/ot Rumsfeld but immediately dismissed by everyone else. I haven't got to the part where they actually decided to go to war. Meanwhile, Oprah says it was Rumsfeld who was the Defense Department liason to Iraq in the 80s. His role during this time was to broker military aid to Iraq -- weapons, money, and training. Oprah also says the Garden of Eden was in Iraq. I'm more inclined to believe the Rumsfeld story because she had photos. Perhaps Rumsfeld knows what kind of weapons are in Iraq because he knows what he gave them... Finally, the scathing letter of resignation from a US diplomat (this is actually from a couple of weeks ago). Here is an abridged version:

   The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America’s most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security.     The sacrifice of global interests to domestic politics and to bureaucratic self-interest is nothing new, and it is certainly not a uniquely American problem. Still, we have not seen such systematic distortion of intelligence, such systematic manipulation of American opinion, since the war in Vietnam. The September 11 tragedy left us stronger than before, rallying around us a vast international coalition to cooperate for the first time in a systematic way against the threat of terrorism. But rather than take credit for those successes and build on them, this Administration has chosen to make terrorism a domestic political tool, enlisting a scattered and largely defeated Al Qaeda as its bureaucratic ally. We spread disproportionate terror and confusion in the public mind, arbitrarily linking the unrelated problems of terrorism and Iraq. The result, and perhaps the motive, is to justify a vast misallocation of shrinking public wealth to the military and to weaken the safeguards that protect American citizens from the heavy hand of government. September 11 did not do as much damage to the fabric of American society as we seem determined to so to ourselves. Is the Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a selfish, superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction in the name of a doomed status quo?     I urge you to listen to America’s friends around the world. Even here in Greece, purported hotbed of European anti-Americanism, we have more and closer friends than the American newspaper reader can possibly imagine. Even when they complain about American arrogance, Greeks know that the world is a difficult and dangerous place, and they want a strong international system, with the U.S. and EU in close partnership. When our friends are afraid of us rather than for us, it is time to worry. And now they are afraid. Who will tell them convincingly that the United States is as it was, a beacon of liberty, security, and justice for the planet?    Mr. Secretary, I have enormous respect for your character and ability. You have preserved more international credibility for us than our policy deserves, and salvaged something positive from the excesses of an ideological and self-serving Administration. But your loyalty to the President goes too far. We are straining beyond its limits an international system we built with such toil and treasure, a web of laws, treaties, organizations, and shared values that sets limits on our foes far more effectively than it ever constrained America’s ability to defend its interests.    I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent the current U.S. Administration. I have confidence that our democratic process is ultimately self-correcting, and hope that in a small way I can contribute from outside to shaping policies that better serve the security and prosperity of the American people and the world we share.