I was tempted to report yesterday afternoon that Colin Powell was going to step down, but it appeared to be hearsay at that point. It’s now official, and it’s also known that Condoleezza Rice will take his place as Secretary of State. I never liked ol’ Condi myself, but then again, I didn’t really like Powell either. I guess that, as our nation’s highest-ranking diplomat, I can imagine having a black woman handling that role could make a positive impression on other countries… but people are already familiar with her. I hate to even say such a thing, as it could be interpreted as some form of reverse racism… yet we have to look at it like that. If there’s one thing I’m concerned with, it’s improving our image in the eyes of the world. If this helps, even whilst Condi proves to be a die-hard neocon, I suppose that’s better than nothing.

Just as I’m preparing a second letter to the Director of the Cleveland Department of Health about the proposed smoking ban, the UK is about to announce a major, country-wide ban. All establishments serving hot food will become non-smoking, as well as many workplaces. They’re also looking in to implementing restrictions on junk food in an effort to curb obesity. My belief on the smoking matter is simple: in all cases, the decision should be left to the business owner and no one else. I’m trying to argue against the ban because it discriminates against smokers. In Cleveland, the ban would be particularly disdainful given that 6 months of the year are generally bitter cold. If anyone wants to read the full text of my letters, leave a comment and I’ll post them up here somehow.

I noticed a lot of news sources reporting the story of the man who lit himself on fire outside the Whtie House without noting that he’s an FBI terrorist informant. The Washington Post is not one of those sources, and they talk in detail about the Yemeni man who is terribly upset that he can’t return to see his family. The FBI is supposedly detaining him in the US so he can testify in court, but he is sick and his wife has stomach cancer, and he wants to be with his family. He was also demanding to hand-deliver a letter to Bush. So, that was plan A. When plan A proved to be a failure, why was plan B lighting himself on fire? That’s where my understanding of the situation slips away.

The European Space Agency used ion propulsion to position a small spacecraft in orbit around the moon. Kick ass! As noted in the article, ion propulsion at this time is rather slow, but because there is no resistance in space, it’s accelerating constantly. In this case, they may be studying the most useless rock in the galaxy, but I’m glad to see ion propulsion used in any scenario. When we’re all commuting to Mars, there’s a good chance our vehicles will be powered by ions.

I’m not sure this link will work, because I think I tried to do this once before, but Newsnet5 (local Cleveland station) has a poll on their site which proposes the following question: Do you think Browns head coach Butch Davis should be fired? The response so far is: 81% - Yes, 19% - No. Dayum!!! (Ok, really, let’s do this.)

A nude man jumps into the lizard tank at the Bronx zoo. Okay, while this story is obviously hilarious, there’s a journalistic trend I want to understand that’s exhibited here. When someone is suspected of a heinous crime, even with little or no evidence they were the perpetrator, they are openly identified and in some cases, publicly shamed without conviction. Yet, a naked man who jumps into a lizard cage somehow retains his dignity and anonymity. Perhaps law enforcement is the root of this phenomenon, but let’s be honest with ourselves here… is a guy who jumps into a lizard cage at a zoo, naked, really concerned with his public reputation? Does that kind of behavior lead you to believe he’s a noted physicist that stands to lose everything?

An 18 foot shark ate an elderly South African woman at a Cape Town beach yesterday. Yes, 18 feet of pure, unadulterated, great white shark. Oh, I mean, um, sorry for your loss. (Damn that’s a big shark!!!)

Oh yeah, I almost forgot! Now that I have statistics installed on my blog page, I can see what links brought people to my site. This led to the discovery that if you search for “animal hording and sexual abuse” on Yahoo!, my blog is the very first result! Really excellent job with your search engine accuracy, guys. The term ’sexual’ was about Bill O’Reilly, ‘animal’ was from the story of people who have sex while sleepwalking, and ‘hording’ was referring to my contempt for unreasonably wealthy people. Way to tie it together.

On Saturday, my bro and I went to the Great Big Food Show or some shit like that. It was at the IX Center, though only about 1/100th of the floor was used. Really, I just wanted to see Alton Brown, which we did.

Here’s a shot of the crowd watching Alton Brown make egg nog. They had two huge video screens up so you could see everything. My bro and I decided to sit down without following whatever rules they had for attaining a seat, and after they squeezed in about 100 or so more people standing in orderly rows in the back, we were quite glad we did.

Before we went in to see Alton, Mario Batali (or Molto Mario) was signing autographs. My dad and I think he’s a big dickhead, but whatever, there he is.

Probably the only justification for having spent $20 to walk around eating finger foods was spotting this guy’s rat tail. Fuckin’ kick-ass, brah.

Now, on to the actual important stuff… like, for starters:

We’re officially war criminals, guys. That’s right, there is absolutely no denying that we’ve violated the Geneva Conventions, and nobody seems to care, except the Iraqi people. Aside from the fact that we’re knowingly murdering civilians who have no involvement in the war, we’re denying water to any residents still in Fallujah, Samarra and Tall Afar. The use of starvation tactics is expressly forbidden, and rightfully so. My question for Bush, Rummy, and whoever else is in charge is this: how in the hell are these kinds of tactics supposed to show the Iraqi people we’re in this for democracy?! Or for any single positive reason? The answer is, despite whatever the fuck you want to think, is that it’s going to make the situation far, far worse. As said in Baghdad Burning, “Iraqis will never forgive this - never.” And why the fuck should they?! I don’t know how I could possibly be more disgusted with the way this is being carried out, yet I don’t even want to say that because it’s almost asking this administration to find a way to make that happen. Perhaps even more disgusting than that is the simple fact that this is all done under the guise of “spreading democracy.” As you can read in this article, we have a history of disguising our intentions in the Middle East, and this is no exception.

I still take offense to being accused of hating America, even after having written that last paragraph. There are plenty of reasons to love America, but embracing genocide and supporting an unnecessary conflict (read conquest) is not one of them. As a musician, I can name two reasons to love America right off the top of my head: jazz and blues. However, just because I am informed about the ways in which our leaders are taking advantage of us and are tainting our world image, does not mean I should just sit back and nod my head in agreement. No group on this earth is exempt from observation and punishment, and just because we’re American does not mean we have any more rights than any other world citizen. If an unquestioning supporter of America applied his same reasoning to the rest of the world, then Lybia should have the right to overthrow Canada and reap the benefits. There is nothing that exalts America above other countries and gives us the right to kill innocent civilians. Absolutely nothing.

Perhaps a lot of folks believe, however, that God gives us the right to murder innocent people. I personally don’t subscribe to the Christian theory of God, but I can’t imagine that if there were a God, he would want us to discriminate against one another, or kill eachother in his name. That simply doesn’t make sense to me, and I don’t have much respect for the kind of people who can hate others because their views are different from their own. Sadly, some people are driven by just that. Here’s a painting called Christ’s Entry Into Washington in 2008, which is a take on an old painting with a similar theme. I just noticed in the corner it says: “long live Jesus, the greatest political thinker.” This painting is terrifyingly sick. I could’ve sworn there were other religious groups in America… hm.

You may recall an article I found regarding the “outsourcing of torture”, or the methods the US uses to torture prisoners without actually having to take the blame for it. Well, a Gulfstream jet has recently been discovered to have been the means of delivery for a lot of these cases. It’s visited Guantanamo, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and other countries, and all flights appear to have originated from D.C. This is the kind of thing that I don’t want to hear someone on “the other side” justify to me. If you’re trying to justify your own country engaging in this kind of activity, then you’ve lost all autonomy and are no longer trying to make this country a better place.

Finally, something we can be happy about. Well, I guess it doesn’t really change much, and there’s no reason to rejoice… but dammit, it’d be pretty cool if it were true: an American claims to have found Atlantis! Apparently, Plato’s descriptions and details are strikingly accurate to what’s been discovered.

Now, a reason to mourn. (I’m taking y’all on a roller coaster ride, eh?) Old Dirty Bastard, aka Big Baby Jesus, aka Dirt McGirt, aka Russell Jones… has died. I know for a fact that never again will Brooklyn be fully represented without ODB around. With his grand use of profanity and complete lack of respect for women and basically anything around him, you couldn’t exactly say he was an intellectual, but there’s no doubt he was an entertainer. A lot of us can’t help but wish we could go through life with the same disregard for authority he did, but we’re caught up with morals and standards and shit like that. ODB, don’t take no bullshit from St. Peter, aight boy?! Rest in peace.

Now, a reason to vomit. A Wisconsin home was found to have 250 feces-covered cats living inside it, many of them already dead, yet undisturbed. Until the last sentence it doesn’t mention “the homewoner”, but says he/she took in stray cats and was simply overwhelmed by the situation. The article also says they were bringing out “bags of dead cats”. The homeowner is said to have been yelling “Bush/Cheney ‘04!” repeatedly. (Okay, okay, just joking.)

I have no doubt you’ve heard of the Jones’ Soda Holiday Pack, consisting of: Turkey & Gravy, Cranberry Sauce, Green Bean Casserole, Mashed Potatoes and Butter, and Fruitcake flavors. Well, I guarantee you don’t want to try them, (neither do the executives at Jones) so here’s a review of them on X-Entertainment.com. Live vicariously.

The Browns were annihilated by the Pittsburg Steelers, our most detested rivals. This was a serious beating, and I watched every second of it somehow. The one moment worth remembering is when Kelly Holcomb stepped in as quarterback and promptly marched us down the field for a touchdown. Is there something to be said about this? Does he really connect with the team better than Garcia? Who knows, but that sure was some pretty good evidence.

Lastly, Omar Visquel has left the Cleveland Indians. Other than Coco Crisp, he’s pretty much the only player whose name I even know. He’s moving to the San Francisco Giants, where he’ll be making $12.25 million on a 3-year contract. Well Indians, it was nice knowing ya. Maybe you should stop by sometime for dinner so I can get to know the new team. I’ll make prime rib.

Anonymously received a link to this surprisingly well-researched take on the red-blue conundrum. Incidentally, it raises a number of questions we’ve all been afraid to ask too loudly in recent years…

Last night I was given a receiver, sound processor, amplifier and Bose speakers for really no good reason. A very generous man I work with just got a new surround sound system in his house and said he wanted to give them to someone he knows would use it and enjoy it. Well, I already have an extremely loud system in my living room, so I got this thing home and I’m thinking “what the fuck do I do with this?” After some measurements, Kenny and I determined that I could stack yet another folding table on top of the two I already have for my computer, and by lowering it using the adjustable legs, we could fit the speakers up there with about 1″ to spare! It took some serious wiring and standing on a rickety chair, but I managed to rig it up to my computer with a 1/8″ stereo jack to RCA cable. I still haven’t connected the sound processor, but with the amp this thing is so god damned loud I’d have to leave the room to appreciate it.

Well, Bush already filled Ashcroft’s position. See, that didn’t take long, did it? Now, the question is, who’s worse? He chose Alberto Gonzalez, a man who some sources are saying has very little respect for the Geneva Conventions and may have in some way contributed to the permission of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. He supposedly referred to the Geneva Conventions as “obsolete” and “quaint.” Wow. I’m not going to assume anything, but I’m pretty sure they managed to find someone who’s worse than Ashcroft, despite my previous belief that that would be impossible.

Yasser Arafat has died. It’s official, the man is no more. What does this mean for Israel and Palestine? Nobody knows yet, so quit fucking reporting about it. One thing is for sure, the guy looked fucking awesome in sunglasses! (A lot like Donald Fagen, actually.)

A man in Ireland has come down with CJD, aka Mad Cow disease. Could this be the very beginning of what John Titor predicts will happen to the world? I don’t know, but let’s definitely get really damn paranoid about it! Seriously though, I think we need to devote an awful lot of resources to finding a cure or treatment for it, because no matter what, this is one terrible disease. Not to mention, it can sit dormant in your body for a very long time, or so I hear. Stop eating fast food people! You don’t know where that feces came from!

I don’t need to bother explaning why this is both outrageous and hilarious: Rush Limbaugh claimed that nobody ever said there was a connection between Iraq and the 9-11 attacks! Of course, Media Matters for America caught the slip. Thanks guys.

What is the deal with escaped animals lately? I just posted the story about a lion escaping, plus there were others I didn’t bother posting, and now there’s this: a monkey escapes in Girard, Ohio and gets on the roof of Bob Evans! Read the article for a shocking turn of events. (Then, accept my apology for the pun.)

Here’s something interesting… some folks on this blog discovered you can run shitty vodka through a Brita filter and make it taste way better! I might have to try this.

Make your own Picasso painting with Mr. PicassoHead!

Oh, and yes, I did hear Ashcroft singing! haha What a freak of nature. \/\/\/\/

If you’re as sorry about the election result as I am, I know you’ll appreciate this site: Sorry Everybody. It’s an attempt to apologize to the rest of the world for failing to get Bush out of office.

Finally, FINALLY I’ve got the comments working properly. Dammit that was a pain in the ass, but I hope you all take advantage of them! No longer do you have to follow some inane instructions.. just click on “post a comment” and that’s it! I look forward to getting input on all this stuff!