more random IMmery

enigmiac: I RANK ABOVE COCK!

when zombies take over the world

the money quote: "Believe it or not, this is a question I've been asked before. Many people wonder how key parts of civilized society might continue after a post-apocalyptic Dawn of the Dead / Night of the Comet / Omega Man / Teletubbies Go to Paris scenario. Your question has two possible answers depending on which scenario of zombie conquest you envision."


awesome

conversations about terducken

VanessaIAB: they should find a way to put some tofurkey in there, somehow.
VanessaIAB: then they could just call it
VanessaIAB: terwhatthefuckcken
RobertOoghe: that's more like it. I actually think it was Paul Prudhomme that invented it, but one time Jonathan Winters had it on the Superbowl
RobertOoghe: it was awful
VanessaIAB: a holocaust most fowl?
RobertOoghe: indeed
VanessaIAB: i bet it tastes like chicken.
RobertOoghe: and so much more...
VanessaIAB: ew! ew! ew! ew!
VanessaIAB: they should find a way to get some penguin in there
VanessaIAB: mmm
RobertOoghe: i think they should have a puffin too
RobertOoghe: i consider puffins to be the Penguins of the North...
VanessaIAB: awesome
VanessaIAB: then they can cram the whole biz in an emu
jodikiab: anyone for heron?
VanessaIAB: philistine.

make your own George W. Bush stump speech

quote of the day, from Tory:
a woman can fake an orgasm, but it takes a man to fake an entire relationship


apologies, all my nice male friends, but it was too good to ignore...

from MoveOn.org

President Bush has announced his plan to select Dr. W. David Hager to head up the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA)Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. The committee has not met for more than two years, during which time its charter lapsed. As a result, the Bush Administration is tasked with filling all eleven positions with new members. This position does not require Congressional approval.

The FDA's Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee makes crucial decisions on matters relating to drugs used in the practice of obstetrics, gynecology and related specialties, including hormone therapy, contraception, treatment for infertility, and medical alternatives to surgical procedures for sterilization and pregnancy termination.

Dr. Hager, the author of "As Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Then and Now." The book blends biblical accounts of Christ healing Women with case studies from Hager's practice. His views of reproductive health care are far outside the mainstream for reproductive technology. Dr. Hager is a practicing OB/GYN who describes himself as "pro-life" and refuses to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women.

In the book Dr. Hager wrote with his wife, entitled "Stress and the Woman's Body," he suggests that women who suffer from premenstrual syndrome should seek help from reading the bible and praying. As an editor and contributing author of "The Reproduction Revolution: A Christian Appraisal of Sexuality Reproductive Technologies and the Family," Dr. Hager appears to have endorsed the medically inaccurate assertion that the common birth control pill is an abortifacient.

We are concerned that Dr. Hager's strong religious beliefs may color his assessment of technologies that are necessary to protect women's lives or to preserve and promote women's health.

Hager's track record of using religious beliefs to guide his medical decision-making makes him a dangerous and inappropriate candidate to serve as chair of this committee. Critical drug public policy and research must not be held hostage by antiabortion politics. Members of this important panel should be appointed on the basis of science and medicine, rather than politics and religion. American women deserve no less.

There is something you can do. Below is a letter to be sent to the White House, opposing the placement of Hager. Please copy all the text of this email and paste it into a fresh email; then sign your name below and email to

president@whitehouse.gov

I oppose the appointment of Dr. W. David Hager to the FDA's Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. Mixing religion and medicine is unacceptable in a policy-making position. Using the FDA to promote a political agenda is inappropriate and seriously threatens women's health.

Members of this important panel should be appointed on the basis of science and medicine, rather than politics and religion. American women deserve no less.

pod the friendly robot

feeling much better now after a long and relaxing weekend. got the new iPod set up, hung out with Patrick, jogged both days (7 miles), did a lot of cooking and even cleaned the apartment. last night's dinner was excellent: chicken stuffed with leeks, bresaola, manchego, lemon zest and parsley, wild mushroom risotto, grilled vegetable ratatouille and pumpkin custards with cinnamon ice cream and crystallized ginger.
there was a shooting on second street early on saturday morning. the gunshots woke me up. i'd never heard that sound before, and soon there were police cars whizzing by in every direction. some 22-year old kid, shot six times in the back and legs and died at Methodist Hospital up on 7th Ave a few minutes later. such a shame.
i've been bad about posting because of last week's Ad Week conference and guidelines launches and then getting such a bad cold i was totally out of commission on Thursday and Friday. all i have to say for myself is that i'm a happy girl and if my rent check doesn't bounce, i'll be even happier.

knock on wood...

funny articles two

sick today, very grouchy. thought i'd post two things that made me laugh:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2089630/entry/2089645/
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/foodmonthly/story/0,9950,834687,00.html

to summer

so it is.
in september, the seasons break apart in threads
first the air: a rising thinness cuts out leaf-shapes from the wet heat
age eating away at crisping blades of bleached grass
the slowly oxidating leaves of trees dressed in verdigris,
the exhausted sun, leaning orange and rose at dusk against the bricks and trunks
marks the veins of blue and brown and gold eyes set in paling faces
wreathed hands and arms weave closer or come apart.
sounds change -
this knife-air conducts words differently
sets apart each footstep
sets apart voices
sets apart each glad and difficult summer
from the semisweet decline into fall.
painted in memory colors dark, red and rust,
foreshadowing the gray of february, the lapidary green of june
but before those, the waning days
reserve a future-memory
holidays in november
bare branches and howling cold,
cigarettes on the stoop
the candles lit in december
the speeding year becoming years.
holy old things are lost
but like recurring dreams,
found, created, remembered, or discovered in the act.
the long white ribbon of clouds,
the lines and circles of stars
reaching through weeks,
to the first warm day,
to the tender cool of may,
to summer.

love, and thank yous

golly, i love my job. no cash, but daysfull of feeling very good about what i do.
and i love my friends, chantal and tory, gustavo, elma, and wilcox and mitch, who amaze me day by day.
i love my little family, miki and felix, who got me into the party, and keep turning up the good songs whenever i ask.
i love the people i meet, who surprise me by expanding, daily, all my expectations.
i love my house, which is temporary at best, for now, but puffs out sweet, cozy smells and keeps my treasures and welcomes me at night with books and my lovely bed.
i love this big mess of a planet, brimfull of grace and mess and moments of horror and love, which remind me that wherever i am, putting in a hand, or a breath, or even a thought, is better than not-being.
mostly,
i love love, marvel that makes everything sing.

State of the world: North Korea, God, Osama, the Axis of Evil, the White House, and other dubious sources of information

From George W. Bush's State of the Union address, January 29, 2002

Our second goal is to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction. Some of these regimes have been pretty quiet since September the 11th. But we know their true nature. North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens.
Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom.
Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens -- leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections -- then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world.
States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.
We will work closely with our coalition to deny terrorists and their state sponsors the materials, technology, and expertise to make and deliver weapons of mass destruction. We will develop and deploy effective missile defenses to protect America and our allies from sudden attack. (Applause.) And all nations should know: America will do what is necessary to ensure our nation's security.
We'll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side. I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons. (Applause.)

From remarks by John Bolton, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, 7/21/04

We live in a safer world today than we did a year ago. There are still regimes that support terrorism, but there are fewer today than before.
More than 40 nations are working together to ensure that Afghanistan no longer provides safe harbor to al Qaeda terrorists.
In Iraq, the coalition worked together to ensure as smooth a transfer of power as possible to the people of Iraq.
After years of isolation, the Libyan leader Colonel Qhadadfi came to the conclusion that his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction made his country and his regime not more, but less secure.
Sadly, North Korea has not made the strategic choice to move away from the destructive legacies of the past and place his people first.
The paths of North Korea and Libya have diverged -- Colonel Qhadadfi has made a strategic choice to put his people before his unjustified fears of a U.S. invasion. Kim Jong Il has not.

I just did a search on WhiteHouse.gov and turned up the following: in a search for the following keywords over the past five years, the only keyword that turned up fewer mentions in speeches and briefings than Osama Bin Laden (482 times in five years, last mentioned in mid-August in a 'Global Message' on the war on terror simply as being 'on the run') was John Kerry - 268 times. Even bad press is press, I suppose. So here goes:

John Kerry 268
Osama Bin Laden 482
Saddam Hussein 1532
God 1550
Al Qaeda 1886
North Korea 2222
Iraq 3727

I know this doesn't mean anything, since their search engine sucks like mad, but I'm amused that God (an uninvolved party at best, otherwise a mythological character) beat out Bin Laden, Hussein, and Kerry. Not a whole lot of mentions of Kim Jong-il. Less than Kerry, even...

why tory is my own personal salvatore

brother just fixed my horrendously broken iPod on IM. he said - just smack it on your hand real hard a couple of times. i was all, no way, and he was all yeah, and now- tunes.

love. tory. so. much.

:)

p-tricky

i don't really even know what to say.
awesome. totally deadpan, tender, beautiful, very funny, quirky. and,
oh, my.

what to live on, what to believe in

without that,
i hate the metallic bruises,
deep cuts of concrete,
the illusory consciences,
the yellow sky that comes and goes.

and how i hate to hear words
blunt, false and crass:
to hear them speak who fraction truth with names
and carelessly dispel mysteries
that harbor eternity in loops of white belief -
deeply harmonizing orbits
keeping breath and souls,
and bottomless- and beyond-ness
as surely twinned as music, ultraviolet, infrared and heat:
these are utter, inviolable and right.

here on earth, then,
let me kiss those words,
and breathe out paled old things,
selves husbanded and unwoven,
enshrined, and soon boxed up.
if i may, i will exhale suppressed
desires as inevitable as the moon's
designs upon the blue mantle,
unfathomable as all that deep water.
there are truths there so far down
that only our feet can reach,
while out above the waves
we still look up past the shifting sky,
you and i.

for a cure, i seek just such a kiss,
that understanding these, much could be won back
which had been lost.

John Kerry's Roger Mudd Moment

I posted this on Brother Lawrence's Blog, but I figured since I wrote it, that I might just put it up here, too:

At 5:12 PM, Vanessa Beatriz said...

Are these kids on crack or what?
Kerry strikes again. It seems to me that the problem with this guy is not so much the 'flip-flopping' Republicans keep accusing him of, as just not being able to think on his feet. It's clear that what he meant to say was that he felt for the families of all the people who have lost their lives to the war on terror, both on Sept. 11th 2001 and in the two wars and numerous attacks in the Spain, the Middle East, the Far East and so forth. This is not a difficult thing to express, if you're a human, right? But instead, he pulled a veritable George W. Bush (a John Kerry?!) and hedged that the war in Iraq is not part of the war on terror. Well, okay, sure, but that's not going to get his ass elected, is it? Nor was he adressing the issue very well, if that's what he was getting at.

Meanwhile, Asshole George and his evil minionate are performing more creative party tricks with reality, feeding us a line of pro-Iraq War bullshit that seems to go "Capturing Saddam Hussein is a victory in the war on terror, because he is a bad guy." Let's face it, that is the stone cold truth, isn't it, and how can you argue. But that might be because they can't say "we've spent two hundred billion dollars and sacrificed countless lives, and just over one thousand American boys, (Oh, but the war's over. Riiight.) and ignored Kim Jong Il's nukes and turned a blind eye on Iran's WMD program and mind-wiped the name Osama Bin Laden ("mastermind of the only attack ever on the US mainland"!) - or tried - from the public's memory. We are in more danger now than we were on Sept. 10th 2001, but let's not talk about that because, hey, papa needs a coupla more billions."

But isn't that what Kerry was getting at with the comment about "Wrong war, wrong place, wrong time"? Someone has to work on keeping him on-message or he's just going to be a more sensitive, less attractive, and marginally more pricipled GWB. That's not the paddle you need to back you out of shit's creek, and that's the truth.


Meantime, how's this for offensive?:
"That's why I went to the Congress last September and proposed fundamental—supplemental funding, which is money for armor and body parts and ammunition and fuel."— George W. Bush,
Erie, Pa., Sept. 4, 2004

From Slate.com today:

"A Thousand Killed," by Bernard Spencer (1936)

I read of a thousand killed.
And am glad because the scrounging imperial paw
Was there so bitten:
As a man at elections is thrilled
When the results pour in, and the North goes with him
And the West breaks in the thaw.

(That fighting was a long way off.)

Forgetting therefore an election
Being fought with votes and lies and catch-cries
And orator's frowns and flowers and posters' noise
Is paid for with cheques and toys:
Wars the most glorious
Victory-winged and steeple-uproarious
... With the lives, burned-off,
Of young men and boys.

shiva in exile

the sun is hotter than i remembered
the sky rounder, and deeper blue -
a dome above the square.
the edge of fear brought by on sunday's cooling wind has blown itself out
for now. for now,
earthy smells rise up from the blacktop and exhaust -
through the farmers market, blows a wind that soothes out my knotted back,
smoothes my cinched scalp and clutched cheeks,
cleverly picks out my knotted stomach like a fine gold chain.
with peaches and bread and late snapdragons
with jams of Queen Anne's Lace and watermelon-rind pickle
with cloud-white onions and gaudy purple tomatoes and striped squash in smart wooden boxes
although darkness creeps in earlier each night
each respite from the familiar black magicks of the vernal equinox, the winter solstice
reserves shiva an exile of days
reaps hours, in the days of Reap,
when flight is possible
when hills and smells lens towards me
when some marvelous slaking, sloughing, racing pursuit, embracing desire
climbs to clear the walls
to flee the limits of the city, over the rivers,
floods the canyons of gray steel and blue glass,
to put down hands in the dirt of ten years, fifteen years before, the crisping grass,
without the grit-laced, guttering wash of time spent, and not well-spent at all.

This is great. How much do I love to see the prez make a total fool of himself?

http://homepage.mac.com/njenson/movies/lovedocs.html

Also, pics from Saturday night at MisShapes:

http://www.misshapes.com/pages/photos_sept7.php

SINCERE MEDITATIONS - ANNE LAMOTT
(full text, see http://www.davidroche.com/lamott.htm)

A friend said mournfully the other day that he'd lived his life like the professor on Gilligan's Island. While he found time to fashion generators out of palm fronds, vaccines out of algae, he never got down to fixing that huge hole in the boat so he could go home. How many people actually do? Sometimes, if you are lucky and brave, you can watch someone who's met with serious illness or loss, do this kind of restoration, this work that you may suspect we are here on earth to do. Or if you've ever seen David Roche, the monologist and pastor of the Church of 80 Percent Sincerity, you may have already witnessed this process.
David and I met years ago through a mutual friend. The first time we spoke was on the phone and we talked about God for half an hour. He mentioned that he had some facial deformity, and I thought, Well, whatever, and we talked some more, and then he came to my church, and it turns out he has the most severe facial deformities I've ever seen. He was born with an extensive and benign tumor on the bottom left quadrant of his face, which surgeons tried to remove when he was very young. In the process, they removed his lower lip, and then gave him such extensive radiation that the lower part of his face stopped growing, and he was covered with plum-colored burns.
He is 55 now, with silvery hair and bright blue eyes.
Last week I saw him in performance at a local community center in benefit for the refugees in Kosovo. He was wearing a dress shirt in plum purple, which exemplifies the kind of tender and jaunty bravery with which I have come to associate him. He stepped out on stage before a hundred grown-ups and a dozen children, and stood smiling while people got a good look. Then he suggested we ask him, in a conversational toe and in unison, "David, what happened to your face?" When we did, he explained about the tumor, the surgery, and all those radiation burns.
He told of wanting to form a gang of the coolest disfigured people in the world, like the Phantom, the Beast from Beauty and the Beast, Freddie Krueger, and Michael Jackson. They'd go places as a group--bowling, perhaps, or to one of the make-over counters at the next Macy's White Flower Day Sale.
"People assume I had an awful childhood," he continued. "But I didn't. I was loved and esteemed by my parents. My face may be unique, but my experiences aren't. I believe they are universal."
Wouldn't you think that having that thing on his face totally messed with his adolescent sex life? Of course it did, he said. And he was a little fat, too, a chubby little disfigured guy. But these things were not nearly as detrimental as having been raised Catholic; having been, as he put it, an incense survivor.
Telling his stories through a crazy mouth, a jumble of teeth, only one lip and a too-large tongue, David's voice did not sound garbled but strangely like a brogue; like that of a Scottish person who just had a shot of Novocain.
"We with facial deformities are children of the dark" he said. "Our shadow is on the outside. And we can see in the dark: we can see you, we see you turn away, but one day we finally understand that you turn away not from our faces but from your own fears. From those things inside you that you think mark you as someone unlovable to your family, and society and even to God.
"All those years, I kept my bad stories in the dark, but not anymore. Now I am stepping out into the light. And this face has turned out to be an elaborately disguised gift from god."
He spoke of the hidden scary scarred parts inside us all, the soul disfigurement, the fear deep inside that we're unacceptable, and while he spoke, his hands moved fluidly in expressions that his face can't make. His hands are beautiful, fair, light as air, light as a ballet dancer's.
He told of his first game of spin-the-bottle, when the girl who was chosen to kiss him recoiled in horror, and he said to her, debonairly, "You know you want me." Then he admits sheepishly that he didn't actually say that for twenty years, but that in soul-time, it's never too late. He told of loving a teenage girl named Carol, of how it took months to ask her out, but that when he did, she accepted. They went to the movies and then afterwards sat on a couch on his front porch, and he kept trying to put his arm around her but couldn't quite, so they talked and talked and talked. He wanted to kiss her but was too shy to ask, he was afraid it was like asking her to kiss a monster, and finally she said, "I need to walk on home now," and he said, "Carol, I want to kiss you," and she said, "David? I thought you'd never ask."
That was a moment of true grace, and from this experience, he built a church inside of himself. There is no physical church but his own life: Both his performances and his work teaching people to tell their stories, their marvelous, screwed-up and often hilarious resurrection stories. Voilà: a church.
"We in the Church of 80 Percent Sincerity do not believe in miracles," he said. "But we do believe that you have to stay alert, because good things happen. When God opens the door, you've got to put your foot in it.
"Look, 80 percent sincerity is about as good as it's going to get. So is 80 percent compassion. 80 percent celibacy. So 20 percent of the time, you just get to be yourself."
God, it's such subversive material, so contrary to everything society leads us to believe--that if you look good, you'll be happy, and have it all together, and then you'll be successful and nothing will go wrong and you won't have to die, and the rot can't get in.
In the Church of 80 Percent Sincerity, you definitely don't have to look good, but you are supposed to meditate. Following David's instructions, you sit quietly with your eyes closed, and follow your breath in and out of your body, gently watching your mind. Your mantra should go like this: Why am I doing this? This is such a waste! I have so much to do! My butt itches... And if you stick to it, he promised, from time to time calmness and peace of mind will intrude. After some practice with this basic mediation, you will be able to graduate to Panic meditations, and then sex fantasy meditations. And meditations on what you will do when you win the Lotto.
When David insists you are fine exactly the way you are, you find yourself almost believing him. When he talks about unconditional love, he gives you a new lease on life, because the way he explains it, you may for the first time believe that even you could taste of this; because, as he explains it, in the Church of 80 Percent Sincerity, everyone has come to understand that unconditional love is a reality, but has a shelf life of about eight to 10 seconds. So instead of beating yourself up because you only feel it fleetingly, you savor those moments when it appears. "So we might say to our beloved, "Honey, I've been having these feelings of unconditional love for you for the last eight to 10 seconds." Or, "Darling? I'll love you til the very end of dinner."
The children, mostly sitting in the front rows, get him right away. Maybe they don't have so many other overlays yet, of armor and prejudice so Spirit can reach out and grab them faster.
Maybe it's partly that they're sitting so close, but whatever the reason, they gaze up at him like he's a rock star. "I look different to you now, right?" he asked them when he was done, and they nodded, especially the teenagers. To be in adolescence is, for most of us, to be facially deformed. He makes you want to build a fort with him under the table with blankets, because it looks like such fun when he does it. He builds a fort with blankets and then lets you lift up them up and peek in, at him and at you. You laugh with recognition, with relief that your baggage and flaws are not vile, unmentionable. It's like soul aerobics.
"I've been forced to find my inner beauty," he said in closing. "Doing that gave me a deep faith in myself. Eighty percent of the time. And that faith has been a window so I can see the beauty in you, too. The light in your eyes. Your warmth. So thank you."

four more years?

one more thing, before i go to bed. i am starting to think that george w. bush is going to win the upcoming election. i said months ago to wilcox that if kerry won, i'd run down ninth street in the nude, singing out 'Mazeltov!' but then i realized that there was an implied opposite: what would i want to do if george won? America might be an ugly, unhappy place right now, but what will it look like on November third? i can't believe how soon it is coming up now.

the saddest thing is that really, there is nothing i love about john kerry - not that there is anything i dislike, either - but the lack of any really horrible philosophical or personal or political flaws is so, so, so much better than the greed and foolishness and selfishness and cynicism our current President and his advisors have shown. lawrence and i were talking about it this morning, about why kerry picked edwards, litigator extraordinaire, as his running-mate, about the undecided-margin-decimating bounce in bush's poll numbers after this week's convention, about why kerry didn't respond sooner to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. anyway, it finally dawned on me - took a couple of days - that things don't look very good at all, and that for all that has been lost, there's a lot more yet that could be lost if george and the republicans can hold on to the white house for another four years.

if anyone wants to buy me presents:

http://www.engrish-store.com/drsut.html
http://www.engrish-store.com/beofpet.html
http://store1.yimg.com/I/yhst-57934113789065_1808_1312281
http://store1.yimg.com/I/yhst-57934113789065_1808_983989
http://store1.yimg.com/I/yhst-57934113789065_1808_600259 http://store1.yimg.com/I/yhst-57934113789065_1808_761776
http://store.shopodd.com/10455.html

I'm a rapper. Who knew? Figures I'd go off, and it would be about Scrabble.

VanessaIAB: Sittin around with laptop smorking the occasional celebratory cigarette
VanessaIAB: note - 'smorking' on purpose, not spelling error -
http://www.engrish-store.com/nosmortshir.html
Monkeyrobot: You know, I always have had a problem with people smorking around me.
VanessaIAB: heh. not.
Monkeyrobot: That's such a great shirt
VanessaIAB: but not doking
VanessaIAB: oops
VanessaIAB: dorking!
VanessaIAB: i engrished myself.
Monkeyrobot: sometimes I think it would be better if we all spoke engrish
VanessaIAB: judging from you spelling...
VanessaIAB: *your
VanessaIAB: (and my typing, no doubt)
Monkeyrobot: Ha
VanessaIAB: you can front but it don't change nuthin'
VanessaIAB: you're addled at scrabble
Monkeyrobot: Twoo twoo.
VanessaIAB: you write like da rabble
VanessaIAB: hee
Monkeyrobot: whoa there sister
VanessaIAB: rappa i am
Monkeyrobot: and I'll challenge you to scrabble any day
Monkeyrobot: I am masterful at scrabble
VanessaIAB: my ass
VanessaIAB: will not be the kicked one.
Monkeyrobot: hmmm. much like Sen. Zell, I think I shall challenge you to a duel
VanessaIAB: i'll challenge, and you score will be victim
VanessaIAB: haaaa
VanessaIAB: having too much fun
VanessaIAB: with the rappage.
VanessaIAB: i will be cruel- you can't spell - hell,
Monkeyrobot: maybe we can try engrish or hip hop scrabble
VanessaIAB: hahahaaaa
VanessaIAB: dude. totally.
Monkeyrobot: ex: Yo Mamma is a word
VanessaIAB: yo mamma is two words
Monkeyrobot: but not in jive scrabble
VanessaIAB: yo logic is fallible, i cop triple words scores
VanessaIAB: bam!
Monkeyrobot: well, I am more McCoy than Spock
VanessaIAB: ...
VanessaIAB: bring it, doc
Monkeyrobot: I can't even raise the solitary eyebrow
Monkeyrobot: must be cause I got a unibrow
VanessaIAB: whereas my rhymes is the fly rhymes with timely vowels
VanessaIAB: aint got no trouble with my eyebrows...
Monkeyrobot: damn girl. i can't ev'n keep up
VanessaIAB: while my conjugations are stabbin ya in yo heart
VanessaIAB: kids just say damn, girl, you smart...
VanessaIAB: an i'm out
VanessaIAB: missy ain't got shiznit on me.
Monkeyrobot: you know, my friends call me the whitest guy in the world
Monkeyrobot: ain't got no soul

From: Elle
To: Erik, Vanessa
Subject: Republicans
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004

During Ron Silver's speech at the Republican National Convention, he said (regarding 9/11) "We will never forgive." Anger is at the root of so much that is happening in the Republican Party. Watch these people closely: these are people who do not know forgiveness. They are not able to forgive, and yet they call themselves Christians.

Quote of the day:

"Oh, we're just pickin' the scabs of love..."

you
swell me with yawns of pleasure
slithers of pleasure
anchors of pleasure
unsettle staticky laziness in my nerves
raise my arms in shivers
compose me in blood-heavy waves
in shapes of snakewalks, shoreline erosion,
hula hips, banana curves,
the fluted clouds at the edge of a storm
the depth of those
implacable hour-hands
minute hands
second hands
a mill of time to grind
until i can be beneath your hands
or help up by them
or trapped by them
until what is called up
can be set by again

What's the first website you look at every day?

Okay, quick poll as intro for my new 'Comments' capabilities:

I figure maybe we'll all find something cool to look at. Also, if you have any really great ones, feel free to put those in, too.

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- An unexplained radio signal from deep space could -- just might be -- contact from an alien civilization, New Scientist magazine reported on Thursday.
The signal, coming from a point between the Pisces and Aries constellations, has been picked up three times by a telescope in Puerto Rico.
There are other explanations besides extraterrestrial contact that may explain the signal. New Scientist said the signal could be generated by a previously unknown astronomical phenomenon or even be a by-product from the telescope itself.
But the mystery beam has excited astronomers across the world.
"If they can see it four, five or six times it really begins to get exciting," Jocelyn Bell Burnell of the University of Bath in western England told the magazine.
It was broadcast on the main frequency at which the universe's most common element, hydrogen, absorbs and emits energy, and which astronomers say is the most likely means by which aliens would advertise their presence.
The potentially extraterrestrial signals were picked up through the SETI+home project, which uses programs running as screensavers on millions of personal computers worldwide to sift through the huge amount of data picked up by the telescope.

Yesssss!

if you want to help, download this: http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/download.html
The SETI@home program is a special kind of screensaver. Like other screensavers it starts up when you leave your computer unattended, and it shuts down as soon as you return to work. What it does in the interim is unique. While you are getting coffee, or having lunch or sleeping, your computer will be helping the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence by analyzing data specially captured by the world's largest radio telescope.

cat

i can almost feel you there, sleeping.
rooftops identify your windows,
and cars go right by.
let me go, dear,
and don't call me love anymore
and don't answer when i call
and never, ever, write again.
that is an order.
in the periphery
the world is flying by.
yet life offers you rubies and you will draw blood?
what is your name?
what is the color of the darkness i found you in?
and why won't you reach a hand up to us? you want it so-
and moreover, where is your other face-
the one that could see ahead,
and not only back into the black,
back to the moment after birth
when you were passed like a gift
from hand to hand to hand
until you had gone too far to be brought back?
you are wailing in the face of the world.

as a memory,
you can live in my walls
like an army of stinking roaches,
reduced to spidery legs, and whispering antennae
and the glossy brown secrets of insect wings.
you cause me to shiver from time to time-
i will only see you in the dark, but i remember you.
beneath my pallid skin,
sequined with rainbows and port wine stains,
the blood in me isn't red,
and it isn't yet black.
i am the font of the unarticulated horrors of the day.
i bleed fragile mirrors, and white light like stars
i bleed thin air, and nightmares
i bleed pure, frigid, hope.
oh, rubies,
your lessons aren't lost on me-
and i am lost more each time.

So my idea for a good protest is the following:

Get as many people as possible to wear Osama Bin Laden! tee-shirts, carrying Osama Bin Laden! signs and chanting Osama Bin Laden! to get together and stand outside of Madison Square Garden.

It really requires no explanation.