Yes, this is all truly impressive. Glorifying pedophilia with Lolita references is super cool, Marilyn. Why you didn't take it one step further and dress her up as Jon Benet Ramsey or Polly Klaas is beyond me. How about next time you impress us all with a "real" disappearing act, and take your trendy, pain in the ass, pseudo-nonconformist, Hot Topic shopping fans with you. Really, it would be a breath of fresh air if you did something different in your videos like, say, learn how to sing. At this point you should just suck it up and go on tour with Britney Spears.

Yeah, more crucial than any tastelessness (what are we to expect, afterall) is the degree to which this video, song and lyrics SUCK COMPLETE ASS. It looks like some retarded film student's sophmore project work. From a shitty school.

I can't even contemplate how bad this is.

IDontLikeYouInThatWay.com: Marilyn Manson is a Pig

I'll make this quick, as it incenses me to the point of wanting to fly out to El Reno, Oklahoma and throw my laptop at the first person who looks at me the wrong way.

It's within that quaint, Midwestern town that a scandal is raging which has attracted the attention of hack news managers from coast to coast. It concerns a local school teacher who's under fire after a topless picture of her began circulating among students. Parents are of course calling for her immediate death by immolation, and school administrators are trying to decide how to judiciously handle the situation.

Did I mention that the topless picture was tucked away among the digital photos on her personal cell phone, and that the innocent and wholly unimpeachable lambs whom the parents are so desperate to shield from corruption never could've seen the offending image without taking -- or at least finding -- the phone and going through it? Or that upon discovering the picture, they then text messaged it to half the school?

Deus Ex Malcontent: Learning Curves

In the good old days when print was king, nobody spoke ill of the dead, and if someone did, nobody else would know about until the obituaries came out the next day. As we all know, with the rise of the blogosphere things have changed; still, the death of Jerry Falwell today seems to have set new heights in terms of both haste and venom. Here is a sampling:

The friendly folk at Wonkette are typical: “At a time like this, people deserve sympathy and good wishes … except for Falwell,” the blog notes. “Over his long career as a vile televangelist building an empire of bigotry from the donations of poor people, Falwell has supported South African apartheid, called AIDS an invention of Jesus to punish gays, attacked Martin Luther King and U.S. civil rights, and blamed 9/11 on feminists and homosexuals.”

[ Could the NYT come off any more fucking stodgy and pretentious? "The good old days when print was king" my ass. I'm not saying I don't miss certain things about those days, like journalistic integrity and well conducted research, but crimony. Talk about self serving crap. I thought the Times was better than that. As for the premise, it's also stupid. People have always spoken ill of the dead in certain forums, particularly when the person who died was a fucking intolerant, hypocritical asshole. The fact that the web now shows us that hardly bothers me. I'm not saying everyone should just go free-for-all and toss respect out the window, but there's a time and a place for haste and venom, and I think the Times sounds antiquated when they argue for a return to a time when everything was better. Not to mention the fact that I don't think that time has ever existed. Everytime i hear "the good old days" utterered seriously I cringe. It's a myth, and it always has been. -k]

The Opinionator - Opinion - New York Times Blog

It is commonly agreed that the destruction of the ancient Library of Alexandria in Egypt was one of the most devastating losses of knowledge in all of civilization. Today, however, the digital information that drives our world and powers our economy is in many ways more susceptible to loss than the papyrus and parchment at Alexandria.

An estimated 44 percent of Web sites that existed in 1998 vanished without a trace within just one year. The average life span of a Web site is only 44 to 75 days.
...
Changing file and hardware formats, or computer viruses and hard-drive crashes, can render years of creativity inaccessible.

By contrast, the Library of Congress has in its care millions of printed works, some on stone or animal skin that have survived for centuries. The challenges underlying digital preservation led Congress in 2000 to appropriate $100 million for the Library of Congress to lead the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program, a growing partnership of 67 organizations charged with preserving and making accessible "born digital" information for current and future generations.

Some of the crucial programs funded by NDIIPP include the archiving of important Web sites such as those covering federal elections and Hurricane Katrina; public health, geospatial and map data; public television and foreign news broadcasts; and other vital born-digital content.

Unfortunately, the program is threatened. In February, Congress passed and the president signed legislation rescinding $47 million of the program's approved funding. This jeopardizes an additional $37 million in matching, non-federal funds that partners would contribute as in-kind donations.

Well, i guess they needed that money to not buy body armor or adequate medical care for the soldiers.

Jim Barksdale and Francine Berman - Saving Our Digital Heritage - washingtonpost.com

New "pawn shop" laws are springing up across the United States that will make selling your used CDs at the local record shop something akin to getting arrested. No, you won't spend any time in jail, but you'll certainly feel like a criminal once the local record shop makes copies of all of your identifying information and even collects your fingerprints. Such is the state of affairs in Florida, which now has the dubious distinction of being so anal about the sale of used music CDs that record shops there are starting to get out of the business of dealing with used content because they don't want to pay a $10,000 bond for the "right" to treat their customers like criminals.

How outrageous is that!

Fuckers.

-k

Record shops: Used CDs? Ihre papieren, bitte!

This truely is an amazing place. These pictures cannot do it justice, but perhaps its a taste... (Yes we took these.)

[ Man, you're making me want to go back... what a great place... -k]

Pictures from Banff so far...

When the committees began to inquire into the firings of the U.S. attorneys, the official said, Congress had a right to know that the firings were part of an ambitious effort to install administration loyalists throughout the department. The official spoke on the condition that neither his position nor agency be identified, because he feared retaliation from his superiors and the White House for disclosing aspects of the program.

Referring to the firings of the U.S. attorneys and the broader plan targeting other Justice employees, the senior official said, "You cannot separate one from the other. They were one and part of the same plan by the White House."

Murray Waas once again showing why he may be the best political reporter in all of Washington (his only competition coming from Sy Hersh).

NATIONAL JOURNAL: Secret Order By Gonzales Delegated Extraordinary Powers To Aides (04/30/07)

This 40 story tall tower just outside Seville, Spain is actually a new solar thermal power plant. Operated by Sol�car Energ�a, the facility uses 600 mirrors on the ground to tightly focus the sun's rays on water pipes at the top of the tower. The heat converts the water into steam that drive turbines to generate electricity. It's the photo of the reflected solar rays hitting the tower that really impresses me though.

It really is gorgeous...

Boing Boing: Solar power plant looks heavenly

There's good news for those of us who were dismayed at the cancellation of "Dead Like Me." The dark comedy about the trials and tribulations of a group of grim reapers may come back to life -- briefly, at least.

"Dead Like Me," the popular Showtime television series starring Mandy Patinkin and Ellen Muth, is returning as a made-for-DVD movie. MGM told Moviehole.com that Stephen Herek ("The Mighty Ducks") will direct the new film. There's no word yet on who’ll be starring in the film -- but hopefully they'll revive the original cast.

Um, woot? I can't tell if this is going to be a good thing or not...

But here's hoping.

Science fiction news from SyFy Portal: Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, Doctor Who, and more

Matt was working as a contractor for a branch of the government. He made the mistake of being interested in the hobby of paper target shooting at about the same time as the VA Tech shootings and talking to someone about this hobby at work. Keep in mind he wasn’t even talking about those shootings, in fact he was discussing how he wanted a gun which would make it difficult to kill someone.

He was promptly fired and not allowed back to work because people were scared of him.

To top it all off, he was later visited by police detectives for making a comic about his experience, because it was a “borderline terroristic threat.” (Is “terroristic” even a word? Did they get that from the Colbert report?)

Wow. Welcome to the new america.

Diesel Sweeties Newsblog » Blog Archive » Webcomics = Terrorism? Whaa?