Finally, a couple of pictures to spruce up the place.

Here’s my hop harvest this year, shown next to some apples to get an idea of the size. It’s normal for it to be pretty small the first year, so I was happy with what I got. Yes, some got scorched by the sun a little. Yes, they smell great.

A closeup. For you hop aficionados, they’re cascade. I figured that’s the most versatile variety, so I can use them in just about any beer I’d make.

This is the coveted Rhino with wings that my bro and Takeaway have been talking about lately. In fact, my bro took this picture. What it’s for, other than just sitting there being awesome, I don’t know.

Condi: We might be in Iraq for ten years, and we might attack Syria or Iran. If you were looking for the right person to divulge a worst case scenario, I think you’ve found her. I like how she carefully said “I don’t think the president ever takes any of his options off the table concerning anything to do with military force.” Had she been blunt, it probably would have come out more like “Bush really likes to command the army. You never know where his next violent whim may lead us.”

US soliders videotaped the burning of Taliban corpses; an act specifically carried out to offend Muslims, whose bodies are only to be buried. They even faced them towards Mecca, and apparently if you hear the dialogue in the video, you leave convinced they got some sort of pleasure out of it. The video aired in Australia last night, but hasn’t made it here yet. Sickening.

Want to have less boys in your city? Start pollutin’. A new study shows that babies born in highly polluted areas are less likely to be boys. Girls are more bad ass than we thought.

Want to have less kids in your city? Give them to this lady. A woman in San Francisco chucked her 3 children off a pier into the bay. Really, this isn’t the least bit funny. It’s actually made international headlines. She allegedly heard voices telling her to do it, and afterward she was in shock. One of them had a name similar to Bot’s favorite ghetto name: Trayshaun. I believe his fav is Teyshaun. Poor fellas.

Hockey coach teaches his school-age team to fistfight. Some of the parents say they’re glad he’s teaching them to defend themselves in a sport where it comes with the territory. Other, more wussy parents are saying they don’t like it. Nobody’s pretty in hockey, people. If you are, you’re overdue for gettin’ smacked into the glass. I say at least teach them how to block a little. I don’t necessarily condone gloves-off, mandatory fighting, however.

Astronomers discover extremely graphic galaxy.

Finally, road rage on Cleveland’s own deathrap, I-480, has led to gunfire. I’m glad someone got this inevitable occurance out of the way. I figure we’ve now got at least a year before it happens again. No one was hurt, thankfully. In fact, the incident happened when someone was waving another person into their lane, and the gesture was mistaken for, I’m guessing, the ol’ midfing. Of course, the sissies over at WKYC.com used the description “something else” rather than admit it was the bird. Christ, you can’t even mention the middle finger now? Real life is now worse than when Mr. Show parodied the idea of elderly people taking over the world.

It appears the Miers pro-life rumors are true. At least back in ‘89, she backed an amendment that would outlaw most abortions. I can somewhat understand why ultra-religious conservatives want abortions outlawed, but what does your average money-loving Republican stand to gain by banning it? Would they get some sort of grim satisfaction out of forcing a rape victim to give birth to their attacker’s child? You always hear these assholes whining about paying high taxes which support people on welfare, yet I’d imagine more unplanned pregnancies happen amongst the poorer than amongst the rich. You know what I’m talking about. The lady behind you in line at the supermarket and her 11 kids, all under 10 years of age. So at some point you’d think the greed would set in, and they’d see the ‘advantage’ in having fewer children in need of government aid. I guess the only reason I find myself searching for an explanation outside of the religious aspect is because I just can’t believe all those selfish conservatives actually give a damn about some poor woman’s baby. Shit, some right-wingers are so rich and twisted they’d probably eat babies if it were legal. Sometimes it seems like a few of the standard conservative beliefs exist merely to anger those of us with a shred of sensibility.

Fuck a horse, get off on trespassing charges. That’s what happens in a state where bestiality isn’t illegal. (Washington)

If you’re a fine woman who’s pushin’ 400 pounds, a career in squashing may prove to be quite lucrative. That’s right, once again men have humiliated their gender by dreaming up a quasi-fetish that defies logic. This article is about Queen Raqui, a UK lass who makes a living by sitting on men and giving them piggy back rides.

I can’t think of anything worth putting on one, but if you want to have your own silicone wristbands made (hopefully to mock the trend), here’s a site where you can have it done cheaply. I would wear one that said “Jerkstash” or “Traveshamockery”.

I’m not sure which is more important: that this escaped r3tr0’s attention, or that wikipedia keeps track of what’s going to happen in the future…

Trying to stay abreast of the very finest conspiracy theories, I’ve found the only article surrounding the Miers nomination that you need to concern yourself with. Christian insiders already have been assured that she’d vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Next in line for nomination? Pat Robertson.

Baghdad Burning has been updated. As she puts it, “Most educated Iraqis want to vote against the constitution.”

Last month was the warmest September since the beginning of reliable instruments. That would be 1895, for those of you who aren’t human encyclopedias. In the US, it was only the fourth warmest, but globally, we’ve been awarded the prestigious “Nice Hot September, Dude” medal.

In an MSNBC poll that must have been very well downplayed, it was discovered that only 2% of black Americans approve of the job Bush is doing. So, not only does Bush hate black people, but they hate him back!

Toledo Mayor: Neo-Nazis Had Right To March. I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about this story already, but I agree with the mayor. Everyone has a right to march. I wish the Secret Service would remember that before they place Bush protesters miles away from every public appearance he makes!

The Journal of the American Medical Association has discovered a new physiological system called the Endocannabinoid System. I can’t say I understand the implications of this finding, but it appears that it validates some of the claims made by supporters of medical marijuana. (ie. its ability to reduce nausea associated with chemotherapy.) Interesting.

You can have these wallpapers printed out at nearly any size… and they’re cool looking! Too bad they’re expensive.

Homeless, or Jesus? That’s the question you’ll be posed in this quiz.

Pictures taken with long exposure, and tossing the camera into the air. Sounds like a club for rich people, if you ask me! I wouldn’t repeatedly take that risk just for results like these.

PassedOutWookies.com. By wookies, they mean hippies. Why can’t they just say hippies? There is only one definition for wookie, and it has nothing to do with hippies. If you want to argue the definition, talk to my posse. The site is semi-funny, though.

Comic.

Hey hidey ho. I’ve been at a work-related camping thing, though the only camping we did was in the Holiday Inn.

Howver, I came across a few tidbits on Metafilter that you might want to look at.

New York City Skyline. Yep, that’s her. The Big Apple.

For that punked-out rodent hunter in every family.

I’d really like to see someone try and use this - sound clips to get you off the phone.

Theodor Adorno’s 1957 study The Stars Down to Earth traced the link between astrology & late capitalism, irrationalism, and the drive toward fascism; Denis Dutton offers a not unfair review, in which he points out that the revered cultural analyst dances around but never manages to let slip the phrase “opium of the masses.”

For us secular humanists, it really is comforting to throw that one around, eh? It’s almost as if pseudointellectual maxims are the opium of our proverbial mass. Then again, one might conclude that Marxism itself is the opiate, creating a vicious feedback loop for future cultural theorists to deconstruct. (In researching Adorno’s piece, i’ve come to the conclusion that, of the 4% of the internet that’s not pornography, 89% is academic nonsense.)

In any case, i stand by Daniel Quinn’s assertion: Opium is the opium of the masses. Just ask the CIA.

I’m getting more and more frustrated with editorials these days. Elaborating on the obvious has somehow become a profession. With the wide variety of news sources available these days, people can have their news pre-spun in their preferred direction. I’ll admit, I can’t stomach having my news delivered by FOX, and most of what I read originates from outside the US. But, these customized editorials seem increasingly trivial to me, and as a result, I really believe people are becoming more segregated by adopting permanent stances on issues where they might previously have been exposed to alternative viewpoints. Tolerance for other perspectives is at an all time low. Yet, what could be done to reverse this trend? I’m sure the neoconservatives enjoy having their news filtered for them just as much as liberals and independents appreciate not having to be subjected to the rhetoric of the right-wingers. Then again, you could also trace it back to each individual’s propensity for open-mindedness. I just wonder if debates fueled by misinformation on both sides will continue to take us nowhere, and how this tug of war will eventually impact us. Writing that somehow caused me to think of the Buffalo Springfield lyric: “Nobody’s right, if everybody’s wrong.”

Boy, Bush seems awfully sure about this confirmation. “Harriet Miers will be confirmed,” he said on the Today Show. This is further proof that Dick Cheney has implanted every member of Congress with mind-control chips. I hear he can even control them from his hovering weather-control machine. You laugh, but when the Bush Cheney 2012 stickers are staring you in the face, I’ll be the one laughing. Hopefully from somewhere far away.

An al-Qaeda letter was recently intercepted, which states that the US will exit from Iraq. Someone, perhaps just a single CNN employee, is calling it “chilling”. You can read the entire thing right here. I was somewhat surprised by how successful they perceive themselves to be. There was even mention of evolving their movement into a sprawling caliphate, which had me thinking… do they think Bin Laden is Muhammed’s successor?? Either way, these fools are crazier than I gave them credit for. I can still safely maintain that the US leaving Iraq would not grant them any sort of victory, and that the vast majority of Iraqis (and Muslims for that matter) aren’t behind al-Qaeda one bit.

MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger will now be able to communicate with one another, after the two formed a tag team to take on AOL Instant Messenger. For those of us who are using a product called Trillian, this means nothing. However, for the bulk of the herd, this could be a mighty tag team. I’m continually surprised to see how much weight voice-chat functionality carries in these software wars. Have any of these folks ever tried to use it? It fucking blows. We have phones for a reason! Until everyone has broadband delivered by optical lines, I’m not even looking for an alternative to talking on the phone.

How many FUCKING TIMES has your banana been violently mushed to pieces, when all you wanted to do was sneak it into the movie theater? Fear not, my brethren, for the Banana Guard is here!

Cockeyed.com did a survey on people’s favorite TV networks. Of course I voted for the Food Network. This was before John and I got rid of HBO and ordered the hockey package, though! I can watch every single Flames game, whether it be in Ottawa or Nashville! However, I don’t think that counts as a network.