www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DhQA_gorTM

I wanted to write a story for Kotaku.com (this website right here) about what it was like to go visit the Dragon Quest IX-themed “Luida’s Bar” in Roppongi. I couldn’t do this, though, because, despite their having nine empty tables, my friend and I weren’t allowed in! You know why? Because we had failed to reserve our table twenty-four hours in advance. Actually, we would have needed to make reservations more than twenty-four hours in advance: We could only reserve a spot between eight or nine PM on Wednesday between twelve and four on Tuesday. Dragon-Quest-themed bars in Roppongi aren’t the only places to do this. It’s a thing insecure Tokyo business owners do when they are afraid of their place being empty at peak hours. When you think about it, it makes some kind of marketing sense. People unable to get in are then forced to think really hard about getting in next time. In Tokyo, when consumers start thinking really hard, they end up spending more money: In the case of the Dragon Quest bar, that means they would buy more drinks. Don’t ask me to prove this, because it will extend this already bloated chunk of pseudo-prose by another six thousand words.

Some American (I think?) living in Japan, working for a video game company(ies), going completely insane from having had to live there for so long. It’s long, wordy, dense, interminable and I just can’t stop reading it. It’s fascinating getting an outsider’s insider’s look at a culture.

At first, Japan’s quirkiness amused him, but the longer he’s studied it, the madder it’s driven him.

There are so many reasons that frankly, it’s hard to pick a place to start:

First of all…..when 28% of you brain dead fucking morons give a blithering IDIOT like Sarah Palin positive approval ratings and think she ought to run for president in 2012, it really makes me sick to know I am lumbered with that many mouth-breathing Cro-Magnons I unfortunately have to consider as my fellow countrymen….trust me…..I don’t. You motherfuckers are beyond help.

And before you go thinking this is a “liberal” based rant…..that brings me to one more item on an ever-lengthening list.

This “Liberal” versus “Conservative” paradigm that so many of you simple dunces buy into…..as BOTH parties sell you out to the multinational corporations, banks and special interests that actually run Washington D.C.)…..you do this STUPID dance every day, blithely detatched from the reality that YOU YOURSELF are helping to DIVIDE AND CONQUER the nation, as you myopically beat your little Hannity/Olberman drum of FUTILE self -righteous indignation. PATHETIC.

THIS is a nation of PUSSIES AND FUCKING COWARDS. If this nation had any BALLS WHATSOEVER, there would be a trail of DEAD MEN SWINGING FROM THE ENDS OF ROPES leading from AIG, thru WALL STREET, the not-so “Federal” reserve, the 9/11 commission, and right through every other set-up con-job you people just buy into like a bunch of CATTLE BEING LED TO SLAUGHTER.

It’s not that Americans don’t give a fuck…..every misled, misdirected group that goes out and crusades for the “Grand Cause” they think is responsible for the decimation of this ONCE great nation proves that…..the problem IS that the problem ISN’T illegal aliens (i.e. Minutemen) or Democrats in Washington (i.e. Teabaggers) or conservative policies (i.e. Code Pink)…….the problem is …… AMERICANS THEMSELVES.

AMERICANS have sat on THEIR ASSES while Washington and the Pentagon have BANKRUPTED THE TREASURY and sent our sons and daughters into MEAT GRINDERS in Iraq and Afghanistan for WMD’s and connections to 9/11 that did NOT EXIST and even AFTER the overwhelming evidence that the intel was “swept all up” (doctored, falsified, unreliable) you STUPID SHEEP keep buying into the BRAIN DEAD notion that somehow, these wars are for the FREEDOM of America.

You’re an IDIOT. They’re wars for EMPIRE.

Your son’s and daughter’s BLOOD is being used as OIL to grease an evil, out of control WAR MACHINE….Your money and financial security is being DEVOURED by Wall St. and the Federal Reserve, with collusion from YOUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES, and your standard of living is slowly eroding into a two-class system as the middle class is being FORCED INTO EXTINCTION……

……and you do NOTHING to stop ANY of it.

You ignorant FOOLS who send shotgun Emails to all your friends warning of “death panels” and other such HEALTH INSURANCE INDUSTRY PROPAGANDA, yes, you friggin’ GOMERS actually think the Health Insurance Industry has your best interests in mind, and it’s “dat mean ol’ gubmint” that wants to penalize you by providing your family health care that isn’t profit-based.

MEDICARE only got passed because it effectively REMOVED the highest-risk group to the insurance providers (the elderly) from the ‘pool’ of prospective insurees, thereby minimizing their financial exposure. It’s completely lost on most people that catastrophic illness is the main reason for personal bankruptcy….and that 75% of those who had to file HAD health insurance.

And this is the ‘status quo’ many of you are defending. You are BEYOND dense.

America has lost it’s HONOR, as well as it’s collective senses. I don’t wish upon America any malice or catastrophe…..trust me, this is happening with assistance and collusion from the top down, not from some Arab in a cave. I just want to leave peacefully and live in a place that doesn’t have leaders that hope for a “catastrophic and catalyzing event” to promote a war agenda that takes pride in kicking the shit out of unarmed peasants living in the dirt….then blames them for retaliating. Can’t wait to see this dysfunctional madhouse in my rear view mirror.

When you abide by a system of government that you FULLY EXPECT will side AGAINST YOU and WITH corporate lobbyists (MANY of whom represent interests that are not even from the USA) who BRIBE THEM WITH BALES OF CASH….and are working 24/7 to maximize their profits and minimize their potential competition in the marketplace…..all at the expense of you and your family….and don’t lift a FINGER to do ANYTHING TO CHANGE IT……you fucking DESERVE WHAT’S COMING. What might that be…..?

Think Germany and the treaty of Versailles…..when a wheelbarrow full of Deutschmarks is what it took to buy a MEAL.

WHEN the dollar collapses…..not IF, WHEN…..THAT’S when you’ll really begin to see the true definition of FASCISM. The unity of government and corporations to economically and militarily control it’s people. History WILL repeat itself….but if you’re like so many of the morons in the USA who think they’re so smart but don’t know SHIT…..it will all be NEW TO YOU. Good luck…..you’ll need it.

This is the most ARROGANT nation in EXISTANCE, second only to ISRAEL….and since ALL of our politicians are falling over backwards to kiss Israel’s ASS on a daily basis, fully knowing that exposing any inconvenient TRUTH about them equals political SUICIDE….that and the mass media in America that feeds it’s daily ration of BULLSHIT is controlled by individuals biased towards them as well….ANYONE who thinks they know what is going on because they read TIME magazine and watch CNN, FOX news OR MSNBC…..you are DELUSIONAL.

One nation under God….? What a JOKE.

MONEY is God here pal….even people who are reading this who hate the words I typed KNOW this is true. What does it say in your bible about the love of money? The root of all evil, no?

How DARE this nation question human rights abuses of other nations after Abu Ghraib and countless other bombing and torture campaigns, where it was stated it is passable to crush the testicles of young boys in front of their fathers to extract information.

How DARE this nation deign to be the world’s nuclear police when WE are the only nation to ever USE NUKES.

MOST of you actually consider Palestinians as TERRORISTS, when it is THEY who have been occupied, imprisoned behind 25 foot high concrete walls and denied basic human decency by APARTHEID ISRAEL. Those of you who get your info from American media REMAIN IGNORANT OF THE TRUTH.

You’re probably wondering if I’m some Arab, or other person hostile to “America’s Freedoms” lol…. Yeah, you’re really free here…….

Free to go BANKRUPT if you get sick, even if you HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE.

Free to vote on DIEBOLD voting machines that can flip elections and leave no paper trail.

Free to watch your life savings DWINDLE AND EVAPORATE into the pockets of the ROBBER BARONS you PATRONIZE.

Free to watch your JOB get shipped to CHINA….and then you fucking FOOLS buy the goods PRODUCED FORM THOSE JOBS at Wal Mart, further REWARDING AND ENCOURAGING businesses to CONTINUE this pattern. I have never bought a fucking THING from Wal-Mart, and if you have…..you are a simple, stupid FUCKSTICK.

You’re free to be video monitored, photographed by the millisecond at traffic light traps, electronically surveiled, searched with no warrant, shaken down and partially disrobed at airports, free to be told how much shampoo you are allowed to carry in your luggage, free to buy processed foods that give you cancer, genetically altered vegetables that contain neat things like INSECT DNA, free to pay more than ANY OTHER COUNTRY ON THE PLANET for pharmeceuticals, free to be the pharmaceutical company’s guinea pig for drugs that have potentially catastrophic side effects, free to have PUBLIC POLICY DICTATED TO YOU by government ‘officials’ that have dual citizenship with ISRAEL, free to have ANY MEANINGFUL TRUTH WITHHELD FROM YOU by the mass media……

…..and free to be one of the ONE OUT OF EVERY HUNDRED AMERICANS living in PRISON.

Land of the free, home of the brave??

More like land of the SHEEP and home of the SLAVE.

It’s so sad that it’s true. The worst thing about being smart is knowing that above is almost 100% truth, and will be taken as nothing more than inchoate nonsense by almost 100% of the people.

GLHF.

The excellent article on infranetlab linked above is mainly about garbage islands created to solve inhabited islands’ garbage problems, but it has a little section on the Pacific Garbage Gyres. That’s right, there’s now two, they’re growing at a pace of 10x every decade, and combined they have a greater area than the continental United States now.

Holy. Fuck.

That’s a big ball of garbage.

So: a factory ship that collects, recycles and builds new objects out of the junk it scoops up from the ocean? Solar power, pescatarian crew, maybe some solar stills to collect water to run greenhouses? Or maybe totally remote operated, crewed by robots.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I do know one thing: if we turn the entire planetary ocean into a big wash of garbage, we will probably not long survive it.

edit: here’s my first story and second on the gyre, which includes a bunch of links and a TED talk.

“Four months ago, during the monsoon rains, we decided to set up this stock exchange. We started with 15 ‘maritime companies’ and now we are hosting 72. Ten of them have so far been successful at hijacking,” Mohammed said.

“The shares are open to all and everybody can take part, whether personally at sea or on land by providing cash, weapons or useful materials … we’ve made piracy a community activity.”

You know that tired old saying, “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em?”

Somalia’s Western-backed government of President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed is pinned down battling hard-line Islamist rebels, and controls little more than a few streets of the capital.

The administration has no influence in Haradheere — where a senior local official said piracy paid for almost everything.

“Piracy-related business has become the main profitable economic activity in our area and as locals we depend on their output,” said Mohamed Adam, the town’s deputy security officer.

“The district gets a percentage of every ransom from ships that have been released, and that goes on public infrastructure, including our hospital and our public schools.”

Shit man, maybe California needs to step up and pay attention? I mean, we’re fucking broke, so broke we almost went stateless. Think I’m joking?

“I looked as hard as I could at how states could declare bankruptcy,” said Michael Genest, director of the California Department of Finance who is stepping down at the end of the year. “I literally looked at the federal constitution to see if there was a way for states to return to territory status.”

One more interesting tidbit to throw in about school spending and criminals:

The chart … shows an almost ghostly parallel: adjusted for inflation, UC tuition has gone up 5x since 1980. During the same period, spending on corrections has also gone up 5x. As we spend ever more on warehousing prisoners, we’re forced to make students pay ever more for their education. The two lines track almost exactly.

Maybe instead of taxing our students because we’re going broke paying for our criminals…. maybe we should put them to use like the Somali’s have?

Mind you, that’s probably a terrible idea, but… I mean, if we’re actually trying to figure out how to de-state-ify our state….

To my absolute fucking horror this morning, Comcast does this:

Comcast is now hijacking your mispelt URLs to show you ads.

Now I have to go bother my landlord to find out if they even know their login to the Comcast website, which I doubt they do. So I’ll have to call in. All to get them to stop doing something they shouldn’t be doing in the first place.

If this were like, 1999 I could see this being useful as all you would have gotten is a “URL not found QQ some more bitch,” message. But this is 2009. When you misspell something, your browser automatically searches for it, or in the case of Chrome, puts what you typed into a search box and lets you click search if you want to, or lets you figure out what you did wrong.

Comcast, this should be an OPT-IN feature, not an OPT-OUT feature. Please stop hijacking my traffic.

Deceased Albatross Chick with belly full of garbage

Any questions? They’ll be answered if you click the pic.

Good to see the anti-iPhone ball get rolling.

“When she awoke the next morning still affected by the drug, she found her body naked and severely bruised, with lacerations to her vagina and anus, blood running down her leg, her breast implants ruptured and her pectoral muscles torn‚ which would later require reconstructive surgery. Upon walking to the rest room, she passed out again,” the papers say.

And in America, the details of this case are kept carefully hidden from the media spotlight. The hipocracy from the Republican wing of Congress should be shocking but sadly no longer is. The incapability of the Democrats with a Senatorial supermajority to even pass a bill dis-allowing rape should also be shocking but is at this point par for the course. They can’t even pass a bill the Republicans want.

One nation, with liberty and justice for all.

And I’m TOTALLY jobless. Nearest one is in Fresno though. :/

For the record, I think Moore’s kinda a douche and not always correct, but he has fairly good intentions and really pisses off people on the extreme right so I’ll probably attend a paid screening anyway.

Baucus explained that he liked much about the idea of a public option but that he knew a health care bill containing the provision would fail to win enough support in the full Senate to overcome a Republican filibuster.

I thought having the 60 members of the Senate gave them a filibuster-proof majority? I’m so sick of this. Democrats need to woman up and bust balls on this. I’m talking bigtime payback for being highschool-pranked by the Republicans for the last 16 disgraceful years.

But they, obviously, aren’t in the mood.

A friend of mine sent this for your consideration. Be prepared for the flood of free copies of “origin of the species” with 50 page rants as to why god hates you printed as a preface coming soon to your local college campus. Do as the girl says, get as many copies as you can. Then cut out the 50 pages of nonsense and hey, free copies of “Origin.”

Bonus: videotape your destruction and refutation of the 50 pages for youtube.

Quid pro quo, the market shouldn’t be free. Like regular humans, businesses should be ruled by laws for the common good.

Sen. Max Baucus on Monday pushed a new health care plan including an industry fee to help pay for covering the uninsured as President Barack Obama said insurance companies must share accountability for the troubled system.

Okay, there is only one problem I immediately see with this.

Insurance companies are for-profit entities. This basically amounts to a tax on people who currently can (in some cases barely) afford health insurance. EXCEPT: It’s more than just a tax, it’s a tax that has a profit margin built into it. Instead of a straight tax from the .Gov that would go into a low-overhead system like Medicare (3% overhead, or what the industry would term “profit” above and beyond the money needed for actual medical care), this would be a tax routed through insurance companies. Who HAVE to make money. They will be sued by their shareholders if they do not do everything in their power to turn a profit so the shareholders can profit too. That means any fee the insurance companies get, YOU will have to pay an extra 30% on so they can hit their profit targets.

That’s right, so not only will you be paying for the uninsured, you’ll be paying 30% extra for their health care. Fuck that, I’d rather have a tax.

Ex-Miss California sues over gay marriage comment

Ah yes, “beauty” pageants. I guess your soul has to be beautiful too, to win, and her was not.

Prejean, 22, made headlines worldwide when she said she believed only men and women should be allowed to wed in reply to a question by a gay celebrity blogger and pageant judge. She subsequently was named first runner-up. In the weeks that followed, she claimed the answer cost her the Miss USA crown.

So what if the answer DID cost her the Miss USA crown (for the record, it didn’t)? She was competing. When you compete, you are in a competition with others. If others do better and you do worse, you lose. Giving a horrible answer to a civil rights question, when others give better answers, will lose you a contest upon which that question and answer weighs.

It’s great that you have been and continue to be sticking to your guns, Ms. Prejean. It is your opinion and you have every right to it. You also had every right to lose that contest because of it.

If you tripped in the swimsuit contest, would you be suing over gravity?

Tell me, Ms. Prejean, what would you say to the question of whether or not marriage between a black man and white woman should be legalized? Because not all that long ago, that was the question. And it was illegal for a black man and white woman to marry. California was the first state to legalize that particular union.

Why is the ability to make a baby, not love, the deciding factor in a marriage? Should all the couples that are infertile divorce, because they can’t have a ‘real’ family, being defined as a man married to a woman producing offspring?

You were never and will never be my Miss California, Ms. Prejean, even if you do somehow miraculously win your frivolous lawsuit and get reinstated as Miss California. Should that come to pass I will not hesitate to make t-shirts emblazoned with your name, subtitled “Miss Hate” and “Couldn’t win Miss California, Won Miss Litigate.”

Dateline August 27, 2009
Paul Krugman: “Deficits Saved The World”

Dateline November 3, 2004
Paul Krugman: “[The Budget Deficit] is comparable to the worst we’ve ever seen in this country. It’s bigge[r] than Argentina in 2001.”

Deficits for War bad, mmkay, deficits to support an industry that would put me out of a job if it failed are FUCKING GREAT WOOHOO!

So a half billion dollar deficit (circa 2004) is the “worst we’ve ever seen.” A nearly 2 trillion dollar deficit is Woo-fucking-Hoo? Maybe he meant it was the “worst we’ve ever seen” in that “a democrat could totally quadruple that, hit a run right outta the park.”

He goes on to say that it’s not the amount of debt we have, it’s how it compares to our GDP. Guess what Paulie K, our current debt is almost equal to our GDP. Our debt is rising, currently, at a pace of 20% a year. Our GDP… is not… rising. It’s only not sliding backwards thanks to your economist friends massaging the numbers so we don’t have a giant panic in this country. If our debt rises another $9 trillion, that means we’ll have almost $20 trillion in debt. Nearly 2x our GDP. As we haven’t paid off any debt since the Clinton era (remember those social security surpluses we had, that we raided for our illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan?), and before that who knows when the last time we actually paid down debt vs. ran it up?

We’re a nation of minimum-paymenters. Our household debt vs. GDP is already astronomical, in the 300% plus range (last I heard was 350% but that was before a whole lot of write-downs and foreclosures so that money owed may have gone poof). And that’s crippling our country, it’s what helped precipitate this crisis. So the answer must be to get the government debt up to 200% of GDP, so we can have a combined debt of something like 500% of GDP. That’s a 5:1 leverage ratio. Of course, I do believe GDP is poised to shrink, we’re still leaking jobs, and the only reason the “unemployment rate” has gone down a fraction of a percent is people have stopped receiving unemployment, not gotten jobs.

Jobless recovery? Why assume that. I assume jobless fail. All our jobs are going overseas. Fuck man, I got back in touch with one of the Pakistanis that my last job used as their first line of outsourcing. I found out that not only did MY department get outsourced to the Philippines, the Pakistani office got outsourced to the Philippines as well. The pinoys, bless their hearts, did exactly what management wanted them to: blew through calls at an average of two minutes per call. They didn’t really fix anyone’s problems, but that wasn’t something management had to care about at the moment, they wanted zero call time and short calls. A year before, they didn’t care about call time as long as we fixed problems and kept customers happy.

You heard that? My American company fired its Pakistani outsourcees in favor of outsourcing elsewhere. Shit is that fucked up now.

Where’s my piece of the bailout pie, Mr. Krugman? Where’s my piece of my tax dollars I sent to your highly-paid friends. Oh, I know, it’s OWED to them as part of my credit card balance because I’m unemployed still. My former salary is paying 4 or 5 Philippine citizens. At least they’re not huffing glue while being child prostitutes, but that doesn’t help me eat. I don’t get paid for bitching about it either, unlike Krugman, despite the ads on this page. Yeah, I’ve made a buck forty from that in a year, not even enough to cover the transaction cost of getting paid, assuming I can get paid less than 10 bucks, which I can’t.

I’ll leave you with a final gem from the article:

Influential economist Paul Krugman says the US will face a severe downturn before the end of the decade unless the $500 billion fiscal debt is rectified.

And now $2 trillion fiscal debts are the ONLY way to save us from the downturn he predicted based on $500 billion in fiscal debt.

The tree of crazy is an ever-present aspect of America’s flora. Only now, it’s being watered by misguided he-said-she-said reporting and taking over the forest. Latest word is that the enlightened and mild provision in the draft legislation to help elderly people who want living wills — the one hysterics turned into the “death panel” canard — is losing favor, according to the Wall Street Journal, because of “complaints over the provision.”

Good thing our leaders weren’t so cowardly in 1964, or we would never have passed a civil rights bill — because of complaints over the provisions in it that would enslave whites.

Sometimes, I want so badly to just say “fck this place, I’m outta here” and just flee to any other country.

Then I remember that this place has all the guns, and if I leave it will be one less intelligent person fighting the good fight.

On the other hand, the crazy, yes CRAZY things that people are calling ‘political discourse’ these days shocks and frightens me. The culture of ignorance that’s been cultivated by conservatives is very, very effective at allowing them to rule through fear, even when they have no political power. A living will is something many, many people get. It tells people your absolute legal wishes should you be mentally or physically incapacitated. You need to have a lawyer draft it, and the health care idea (there’s no plan in the Senate yet, stop calling it a health care plan) wanted to help seniors get access to that without the crippling fees of lawyers.

The conservative media turned that into “Obama’s gunna kill gramma.” And that was the end of logic in the health care debate, and absolutely nothing is going to be done except make it easier for insurance companies to fck you while taking your money for health ‘care.’ I can just about guarantee you, this health care reform will end up a total cock-up nightmare.

Okay, so you’re now ready to think that the NHS is a pile of shit and valiant Britains have to go to INDIA and PAKISTAN, the place we get our shitting online tech support, to get new organs and face lifts (it’s cheap and you can get a kidney no-questions-asked, or just show up with one on ice in a shrimp cooler).

But wait, this post isn’t actually about how the NHS sucks balls. This post is actually about statistics.

100,000 people traveled out of Britain for health care in 2007. About 0.0017% of the populace. Not a shocking amount, and that mental rant you were busy emailing to one overweight, obnoxious documentary director is starting to fizzle.

In 2007, 750,000 US citizens traveled out of the country for healthcare. Or, about 0.0025% of the populace.

In summary, socialized healthcare will kill you, and you’ll have to flee the country to be able to afford care.

Our political discourse is at a level where a headline like this doesn’t stand out as outlandish, just another groan-about-and-shake-your-head sad day to day repetition of water-cooler and CNN twitter chats.

So what if you end up financially ruined and on the government health care plan. The one seniors are already on, mysteriously without being killed off. You could end up financially ruined right now, and on the get-fucked HMO. You could end up like Bernie Madoff, living on top of the world to not a cent left.

Only Madoff has health care. Because he is in prison. He stole more money than anyone else in history, and he gets free healthcare.

That’s right, our government treats CRIMINALS better than 49 million of our brothers and sisters who work.

Oddly, mainstream media are ignoring this alarming revelation that Bush may have been half-cracked when he started his Iraq war. My own paper, The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia, is the only U.S. newspaper to report it so far. Canada’s Toronto Star recounted the story, calling it a “stranger-than-fiction disclosure … which suggests that apocalyptic fervor may have held sway within the walls of the White House.” Fortunately, online commentary sites are spreading the news, filling the press void.

The mainstream media in America ignoring the voice of the Freedom press? You don’t say.

Now out of office, [Jacques] Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

Of course, he’s the French leader that pussied out on the Iraqi invasion (and subsequent bloodshed), so he has nothing to say but slanderous lies.

Honestly, this is something I read about ages ago, and I still believe it. Sarah Palin believes believes it – she said we had to hope to God that we sent our troops over there on His mission, for His purpose.

update: uckin ell, forgot the link to the story