"Sea Monkey Fetish"...

...currently has no google hits. Let's try to change that, shall we? And by that, I mean. A fetish. For sea monkeys. Brine shrimp. A brine shrimp fetish; a fetish for brine shrimp. Latin name Artemia Salina. Artemiasalinaphilia, to coin a word. I don't know how long keywords take to register with google, but I noticed that, finally, this page shows up if you type in "inchoatia," so hopefully we'll get there.

Congraturation!

The following Senators have demonstrated that they don't completely fucking suck:

Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.)
Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii)
Richard Durbin (D-Ill.)
Evan Bayh (D-Ind.)
Tom Harkin (D-Iowa)
Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.)
John F. Kerry (D-Mass.)
Carl Levin (D-Mich.)
Mark Dayton (D-Minn.)
Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.)
Jack Reed (D-R.I.)
Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.)
Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.)

Where the fuck are Russ fucking Feingold and Barack fucking Obama? Jezus fuck. Goddamn spineless democrats. They should fucking all vote against every single bush nomination no matter what, just on principle. Oh, we'll be painted as obstructionist. Gosh, that would be SO MUCH WORSE than what we have now, wouldn't it? 'Cause you're just sitting so fucking pretty, aren't you? Incidentally, how the hell does fucking Indiana get a Democratic senator and we don't? NOT FAIR.

EAGLES

Word.

'Tis a simple dichotomy...

Zelda: The Minish Cap is good.

The United States of America is evil.

Even if Minish Cap isn't quite on the level of the previous GB installments, it's still bloody good fun. There's just something that 2D Zelda games have that 3D ones lack, I'm afraid. Although in general, I'd rather avoid the word "evil" and the religious connotations it brings with it, it's hard to know what other word you can use to DESCRIBE a country that supports, or at the very least is indifferent to, this horribleness. Godwin's Law is fucking moot, okay? If you voted for this, you're a Good German. Choke on it. I don't think I'm very close to beating MC, but I know that it only has five or six dungeons. This was the case in Wind Waker as well, and I find this troubling. Zelda games must have at least eight dungeons, dammit! This is non-negotiable. The ones I've played through so far are long and well-designed, but really, people. Come ON. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just lacking historical perspective. The US has done plenty of other monumentally horrible things in its history. But. But...have we ever had an executive branch as nakedly cynical and contemptuous of the people as this one is? Let alone one that fucking gets REELECTED? God save us all. The fact that, with the advent of the accursed DS, this will likely be the last 2D Zelda game really bothers me. I mean, fine, people like 3D games, you make 3D games. But why can't you at least make a token bow in the direction of the luddite audience? We're out there, dammit! And we buy stuff! Cater to us! What kind of president immediately starts talking about "wars on terror" after a massive terrorist attack? One that doesn't give a flying fuck about actually fighting terror, is what kind.

Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoset.

Here's a charming quote from an AP article about how car bombings are increasing in Iraq, as it appears in the Thursday edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

"They wouldn't dream of going at it head-to-head with us, because they know we would crush them. Instead, they use dirty tactics," said Marine Cpl. Jarred Crummley of the 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion at Camp Fallujah, west of Baghdad. "And our rules of engagement are so restrictive that we can't do what we would like and just light up every living thing in the area."

Ha-ha! It's like in Dirty Harry, where the criminal gets released because the whiny, liberal constitution is mad just 'cause Our Hero had tortured the shit of him. That was SO UNFAIR. Obviously, we, the viewers, knew that the guy was guilty, so why SHOULDN'T a violent, mentally unstable cop be able to do whatever the hell he wanted? Grrbah! Liberals!

C'mon! C'MON! Let's go pet bloggin'!

That's Celia (looking at the camera) and Sadie. Why Celia's tail is cropped is a mystery. Possibly she's part rotweiller.

"...By some transcendental entity or law."

If you have seen/read the anime/manga Berserk, you no doubt remember one of the most memorable sections: Griffith, having been tortured beyond all human endurance, is dreaming/hallucinating: he's a child, running around the deserted streets of the town in which he grew up. There's a sort of legendary, mythical castle above the town which he wants to get to more than anything, but it's hopelessly out of reach. Then there's a fortune teller who shows him a vision of an enormous pile of corpses stacked up and leading towards the castle, but only getting a tiny fraction of the way there. These, she tells him, are all the people you've killed so far. And to reach the castle, you'll have to kill an inconceivable number more. But, of course, it's not clear that any amount of killing would really be enough. Anyway, it's a chilling moment, and now I've spoiled it for you via my inept paraphrase. But the point is, it's also indistinguishable from current US foreign policy: to reach the mythical, terror-free castle, we have to keep killing terra-ists. See how many we've killed? Have patience. We'll get there. Eventually. Really--we will. Just you wait.

Holy shit. And lots of it.

Goddamn, man. You could spend your entire goddamn life here. Seriously, why did no one tell me of this site earlier? It's fucking unbelievable. By far the greatest thing on the internet. No exaggeration. I'm stunned. Flummoxed. Dazzled. Overwhelmed. Blown away. Buy the CD.

Technical Idiocies

Yeah...so as much as Firefox is superior to Explorer in basically every way, I am forced to admit that that image displays properly in the latter and not the former. Damn you, Microsoft.

"Like trees in November"

Tsunami

I know I haven't said anything about the disaster in Asia. I'm just not sure what there is I could say. It's awful, so go give money and write to the Bush people demanding they send more. Sure, $350 million is a bit more like it than their original feeble pledges, but they could always give more. I mean, if they're not concerned about pouring infinite money into the bottomless hole that is Iraq, you'd think maybe they wouldn't be so squeamish about pouring it elsewhere--somewhere where it can do some actual good.

One thing that bemuses me is various cynical individuals pointing out the news media's tendency to focus on white people effected by the disaster, when the victims were overwhelmingly Asian. Yes, in a perfect world, this would not happen. But...really, now. You'd have to be living in your own little world not to realize how incredibly tribal we are: the damn A-rabs caused 911. The damn Uurpeans won't support our quixotic crusade. The damn homos want to get married. The damn libruls want to take our money. And so on. The extent to which we are able to empathize with people is directly proportional to how much like ourselves we perceive them as. I have difficulty seeing how you could have lived through that last farce of an election cycle and still find yourself capable of outrage over a totally predictable reaction to tragedy.