“The Recording Industry Association of America’s Web site was unreachable over the weekend due to a denial-of-service attack.
“The apparently deliberate overload rendered the RIAA.org site unavailable for portions of four days and came after the group endorsed legislation to allow copyright holders to disrupt peer-to-peer networks.
“”Don’t they have something better to do during the summer than hack our site?” asked the RIAA representative, who asked not to be identified. “Perhaps it at least took 10 minutes away from stealing music.””
— CNET.com
This has all the maturity of a junior high girl complaining how boys act.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
“An eyewitness who identified himself by his first name, Konstantin, said that the plane had banked hard on its left-hand side, hit the ground and exploded.
“Vasily Nayuk, an official with the Emergency Situations Ministry, said that according to preliminary information 14 people were killed. Two flight attendants survived and were hospitalized in critical condition. “
— Salon.com
Okay… dead people = bad. But could someone tell me why there were flight attendents on a cargo plane?
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
You kind of get sick of the helicopcopters here. One reason or another, they’re always overhead. But sometimes the definition of overhead gets a bit ridiculous.
Last night there was something, presumably a helicopter, hovering at roof level somewhere in the neighborhood.
Quite a few neighbors were at their windows as well.
This, the night after a pair of F-16 fighter jets chase a UFO across the District.
………. “When the US goal shifts from one of moderating Hussein’s behavior to the openly expressed purpose of ”regime change,” what does Hussein have to lose? And when Hussein knows an invading US force is surely coming, does he not have to ”use or lose” whatever weapons he has? Isn’t Washington forcing him to respond with his worst?”
— Boston Globe
When we finally do take it upon ourselves to enter Iraq, (and believe me, we will eventually) we’d better all just kiss our collective asses goodbye.
It will be the surest trigger to someone or some country to launch a major attack on the US to teach us a lesson.
Americans didn’t seem to get that idea from last September. It wasn’t some mental deficient intent on causing meyham just for the enjoyment of it. This was an organized movement of people, with no intention of a prolonged attack. Repeated attacks would have meant they were interested in outright destruction in this country. Don’t believe it was our security that prevented such attacks from happening. As I’ve said here before, even here in the heart of the country, no one in power knew how to respond immediatly after the attacks, or even for days.
Those attacks were a message. The US has been behaving as an imperial force for better than a hundred years now. We justify our foriegn military assaults and occupations for economic reasons by declaring the need to spread our morality. I for one have never heard God/Allah/Jehova telling me to go forth and convert yon savages.
We armed Iran to fight our enemies. We armed Iraq to fight our enemies. We armed central american drug manufacturers to fight our enemies. We armed Afghanastan to fight our enemies.
Maybe if we stopped being the world’s arm supplier, these people would stop stabbing us in the back. We’re only lucky that the biggest countries on the planet have always been our enemies, or else we would really be sorry for arming them.
We have a Shrub in the Oval Office who is drawing lines in the sand and taunting the enemy. He is the worst possible person to be in office right now. His very nature is being a business man. And a bad one at that. Every decision he makes is based on a business point of view. He has neither the historical perspective nor the national morality to truley inspire his own people, much less the global audience.
He will get me killed. When we get bitch-slapped, it will be close to home. But don’t worry… you can be sure he won’t be in town that day.
………….
The Shrub, the man of perpetual vacations, is leaving on another. He plans to spend a month on his ranch. Does anyone wish to start a pool now on how soon we send forces into Iraq?
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
If you find yourself in a place where ‘yonder’ is an accurate measurement, ‘Old Man …’ is a proper title, and erecting an awning over your trailer makes it a house, then you know you’ve ended up in Robert Lee, Texas.
From growing up in New York, to working as an Art Director in DC, I don’t usually find myself having to carefully avoid rattlesnakes and scorpians. But that’s what I went through to see family. And, …
4 hours on a plane.
4 hours trying to get to the right gate.
4 hours on the Robert Lee highway.
144 hours scratching bug bites.
8 hours in a car with relatives
2 hours eating briscut
80 hours of sweat
2 hours selling raffle tickets
20 minutes turning off the AC again
I am greatly comforted by the fact that I had such a hard time coming up with even that list. I apparently had a good time in Texas. My family was in good spirits this year. While there was much manure spread, there were no major arguments.
In past years I really wondered about some of them. Some of them pissed me off. None of them could be accused of being sickly sweet. But each year I see them more and more as people who all want to do the right thing. They go to work every day, and try to raise their own happy families. Once a year they want to come together and restore what time almost tore apart.
In past years I think they were motivated by their own mortality. The older ones are much older. The younger ones never got to know a complete family.
Now they seem to be scared of what comes after them. As I’ve said for years, the next generation of Calder’s does not have the bond the older siblings share. There is no common history. No common trauma. The ones that do continue to show up are ussually the ones who had exposure to other parts of the family outside the context of the reunions.
But as much as I love going to Texas each year, I couldn’t give you the name of more than a handful of my cousins. I could name no more than 4 or 5 who would come to a reunion by ourselves. And it’s a much more diverse group than our parents. We come from many places. We range from small children to people in their 30s.
I have spent the last few years soaking up everything I could about my family; a family that didn’t exist to me before 2000. But I only hope that I don’t have to wait for the mortality of the next generation to catch up with it before it comes together.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
"The basis for the complaint was that they were believed to be reading Islamic newspapers," she said.
— Naples Daily news
They were whispering and reading a newspaper in a library? Well someone call out the fucking swat team. They sure have cahones, don’t they?
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
“Do you and your fellow Muslims hate us because our women proudly show their faces in public rather than cover up like a shameful whore? Do you and your fellow Mulsims hate us because we drink wine with dinner, or celebrate Christmas? Do you and you fellow Muslims hate us because we have befriended Israel, the ONLY civilized nation in the entire middle-east? And if you and your fellow Muslims hate us, then why in the world are you even here? Are you here to take our money? Are you here to undermine our peace and stability? Are you here to destroy us? If so, I want you to leave. I want you to go back to your desert sandpit where women are treated like rats and dogs. I want you to take your religion, your friends, and your family back to your Islamic extremists, and STAY THERE! We will NEVER give in to your influence, your retarded mentality, your twisted, violent, intolerant religion.”
— Restore America
And you wonder why Americans are viewed as ignorant, red-necked, inbred, sheep-shaggers?
Note: A man using a radical, misleading interepretation of this country’s founding charter to assault people on the basis of a radical misinterpretation of a major religion’s founding charter.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
Disturbing.
I disturb myself sometimes.
When I heard reports about the Supreme Court’s rulings involving schools a couple weeks ago, I don’t like how I reacted.
I did manage to ignore the obsession people seemed to have with the more religious of the two. Timed to coincide with the Pledge of Allegience debate, I have a hard time disbelieving it wasn’t intended to overshadow greateer things.
But as for the ruling that legitimized random drug testing in extracurricular high school activities, I said “Why not?”
yeah.
Why is it permissable to require drug testing as a requirement to participating in extracurricular drug testing?
The ruling was based on ‘Special Needs’ exceptions. The idea behind these exceptions was that some people are in positions so critical and dangerous that they should be examined that they can complete their duties safely and not endanger the public. These people are allowed to quit their jobs rather than face examination.
What does your average high school student do that fits this description?
In professional sports, athletes are often tested to ensure that they are not recieving an unfair advantage due to drug or biologicals use. These people are allowed to quit their jobs rather than face examination.
Again, how does this effect high school students? Will millions of dollars be at stake if East Bumpafuck defeats West?
But participation in extracurricular activities is often considered in college admissions. Try making it through school without participating in something? Do you believe that the definition of extracurricular activities won’t eventually be extended to school dances and graduation parties?
If schools are meant to prepare youth for the real world, why are they subject to searches that no free person would submit to? Or is it more of a matter of time before you could be subject to such a test?
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
I swear to anything you hold holy, they get more stupid all the time.
Do the record companies believe they will engender any sympathy, support, or even respect for their fight by suing and/or jailing individuals?
Will the make annnnnnnyyyy money off these lawsuits? No? You say they are just trying to get a message across? See point A.
Does anyone else find it way too coincidental that shortly after Universal Vivendi announced they would pull their ass out of the dark ages and start distributing their music in the format people have been asking for for years, that they are forced to declare bankruptcy? That this new initiative of theirs would have gone directly against the goals and aims of the RIAA?
—
Does every member of the RIAA still take pride in their membership? Or has this organization become the stuff of science fiction stories? The beast that emerges from the collective consciousness of its constituents, so powerful it can no longer be controlled by those member parts.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
“The Israeli army has apologised for causing the deaths of six-year-old Ahmad Abu Aziz and his 13-year-old brother Jamil, but said the tank crew opened fire to deter Palestinians breaking a curfew and approaching them.
“However, the footage shows a tank firing the first of two shells, at close range, at a group of civilians who are running away.”
— BBC News
It’s not hard to agree with Isreal’s right to defend itself. Living here in Washington, we were given just one small taste of the unreasonable fear of death and the unknown. Try living under that every day.
And the Isrealis know who their attacker is. I have still yet to see the evidence that convicts anyone in the September 11th attacks.* Everyone including the attackers and their government admit Palestinians are implimenting their attacks.
So we feel bad for Isreal. They are trying to be the ‘bigger man’. They are trying to ethically fight back against an enemy willing to do anything to get their point across.
Bull-fucking-shit.
The isreali defense forces have razed homes of admittedly innocent people to send messages to their families. They have taken over whole cities; instituting cerfews and travel restrictions backed up with lethal enforcement, that can and likely will result in starvation for a majority of the Palestinian people living in those cities. Now they are caught firing on children running away with a fucking tank.
There is no bigger man here.
You have two governments, both being run by former (and current) human butchers, who will defend their people, no matter how many of their own lives it costs.
And the best the rest of the world can do is present peace plans that do little more than quote Rodney King and Reginald Denny? “Can’t we all just… get along?”
—
* The automatic assumption of binLaden’s guilt makes that hard to remember. The american government assured foriegn leaders it had damning evidence that convicted the Al Queda in the destruction.
I don’t remember them ever showing it to us, though. The american people they represent.
I saw video tapes. I don’t happen to know anyone in the area who speaks arabic who could translate for me. But even taking the government translations, (which took way too long to just ‘translate’) as literal, binLaden admits to nothing but joy over the success of the attacks.
That may be sick, but it is hardly evidence, and hardly shocking. I would be amazed to learn that at least a third of the world weren’t happy to finally see the US get bitch-slapped. We are not well liked people. And when I am forced to listen to Joe-Bob and Bertha telling me how they wished they could get out there and help kill those damn A-rabs in Aphgany-stan, I don’t have trouble understanding why.
Show me the fucking evidence.
Or was the evidence more in the nature of the US pointing out to these foriegn leaders that if they went along with this campaign, it gave them free reign to take out (translation: kill) every force they could declare subversive to their own beliefs?
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
HISTORY OF ART FOR AIRPORTS
what I wouldn’t give to see these in use at the National Gallery. do you think I could get arrested for taping them to the doorways in there?
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
