In heaven, everything is fine...

...you got your good thing, and I got mine."

Civilization by Marco Brambilla from CRUSH on Vimeo.

Wha??? Awww, Hell no!!!

Uhmmmm:

"...However, until Congress passes legislation repealing the law, the administration will continue to defend the statute when it is challenged in the justice system."

#($%ING God#$%&* and *#$%ing %*(#!!!! In otherwords, No comment.

Arts v. Letters

Sci-fi author Bruce Sterling recently had some compelling reasons on why the death of print is immanent, 18 to be exact. Some obvious (new media), some not... but the argument itself is as old as books vs " "(insert painting, theater, movies, tv, videogames - and in that order). Interesting because much of what he does say was kind of the utopian spin of Wired in the 90's... Now it's somewhat like a eulogy (as in gosh - we printed mags for a while and now our relevance is well... y'know... dwindling)... I do find it also interesting that it's Sterling who is delivering this eulogy as he was on the cyberpunk gleewagon end of things (while dystopian, i found his novels were somewhat macho in the embrace of technology, not the other way around...) but I guess not so ironic that technology he embraced would inevitably lead to worldwide ADD. But again, this argument predates electricity. At some point, i will become a grumpy old man of letters screaming at the youth... (Already am to an extent - don't get me started on Grand Theft Auto)

Dog Planet

I'm a bi-pet-ual, meaning I like both cats and dogs - I neither vacillate toward one over the other, but i often think about getting a dog over a cat simply out of their goofy aptitude and the fact one will stay in funny costumes longer than the other. I don't think either species is any closer to us in terms of intellegence, that is until I read awesome shit like this:

Russian scientists say that Moscow stray dogs became much smarter. The four legged oldest human’s friends demonstrate real smartness such as riding the Moscow metro every morning to get from their suburban places of living to the fat regions of Moscow center. Once they arrive to the downtown they demonstrate different new, previously unseen for the dog skills...Among some more amazing skill those Moscow dogs are the ability not to miss their stop while going on the subway train. Biologists say dogs have very nice sense of time which helps them not to miss their destination. Another skill they have is to cross the road on the green traffic light. “They don’t react on color, but on the picture they see on the traffic light”, Moscow scientist tells. Also they choose often the last or the first metro car - those are less crowded usually.

Pretty soon they'll be taking over, getting jobs and gentrifying neighborhoods (I say that because they'd opt for a lot more parks). However, maybe they'll all just fall victim to all-too-human stereotypes:

Summer Soundtracks, pt 1

I am absolutely in love with the new Erik Blood cd. Local lead singer of the Turn On's, he's done this amazing loving tribute to all things shoegazery (My Bloody Valentine, Ride, any soundtrack by Kevin Shields)... "To Leave America" is an awesome, running track that captures the sense of escape (*especially from about 4 years ago when patriotic sentiment was at an all time low and everyone was wanting to emigrate to Berlin). Other tracks have that driving wall of bending sonic distortion sound from MBV and makes me want to dance in a whirling dervish of plaid and self-referential irony from the early 90's...

In other music news - how awesome is this small-budget video from Peaches? I would love to have someone come clean with me in this fashion:

Winter Kisses, Summer Tears...

Well, even though the warmer temperatures bring about an explosion of flowering trees, beachy surf-inspired patterns, flip-flop casual optimism, I can't help but return to this series I kinda half-watched on Tuesday night (*Ok - big lie: i had it on with the sound off on because i was busy gabbing on the phone about other life-breaking issues such as expensive footwear, the state of my bedroom and the status of certain single guys in town)... But anyhoo, I am engaging in Enviroapocolypse Porn. It's known that if you present any kind of future dystopia with Sigourney Weaver narrating in the background, you've immediately got a buy-in. From here on out, I will shower less and recycle more.
And in my own ecosystem, my top floor dwelling is the fractional representation of the earth as it soaks up all the heat. I've taken to putting up a canvas tarp over the skylights so the effect is somewhat Bedouin. I wonder if I should actually put solar panels over the windows and start to generate some serious power for things around here...

Fearful Fringe

I'm always doubtful when someone calls something "the lunatic fringe", but as it was pointed out today on Huffpro, maybe that's what it takes to make a point these things are on the rise. The sad case of Dr Tiller actually started with his first mousy would-be assassin, Shelly Shannon, taking a crack at him in the early 90's. I recall this because working in rural Oregon at the time I not only was horrified by the local right-wing response from the community of 'reverse martyrdom' in trying to paint her like a Joan of Arc, but that she actually took vacation time to do this. Why hate so much when you can go to Maui for all that bellyaching? But as Wilde pointed out: The worst vice of a fanatic is his sincerity...
Rosanne Barr once had a great quote about the type of haters who took time to complain to TV guide about a recent cover of her - "Oh, you know - it was no one normal that wrote in to complain. I guess one good thing was that it took time away from them picketing abortion clinics"... Then it was the lunatic fringe. Now, it's practically a jihad of "Prayer Warriors" and people who are on the militant edge. Sorry to be grim, but I don't see much distancing happening on the right on this... Watching a frontline special on the Taliban in Pakistan training small children to run into crowds with bombs strapped to them is not a far cry from Shelly Shannon. I'm not breaking windows or disrupting marriages to get my rights, and the fact that now the freaks forming the human-fence outside of abortion clinics now have access to guns. The whole thing is tragic - and yet it somehow sickly resembles this film...