Electric Monkey Pants

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It has some very sweet graphics and animation and it allows you to test your connection to various servers all over the world (mostly in US, UK and Australia).

Been really busy lately. I have some potentially big news, but nothing that will concern 99% of you. Just tryin’ to get by.

Life is very weird sometimes…. and no, I shan’t elaborate. 🙂

Fidel Castro underwent surgery today, adding to the general sense of unease in the world. He is reportedly doing fine after surgery and in good spirits.

Fidel handed power over to his brother Raul during the operation.

What will Cuba be like after Fidel is gone? Only time will tell. Castro is 79 (soon to be 80) and in pretty decent shape for a guy his age. He’s a brutal dictator, but at the same time, he’s got a point about the U.S. wanting to swallow his country whole.

What does Fate have in store for us? I guess we watch and wait.

But Think Progress has the real scoop:

Ledeen makes a similar argument is his own response to Bramford, claiming “I’ve openly and consistently opposed military invasion.”

Actually, writing for the National Review on July 11, Ledeen said the United States should attack Iran:

“But one thing I do know: I would insist that my soldiers have the right of ‘hot pursuit’ into Iran and Syria, and I would order my armed forces to attack the terrorist training camps in those countries.”

Oops. Looks like Ledeen has been blabbing everywhere about his desire to invade Iran.

Should it really surprise us that a warmonger is also a dirty liar? He’s not even a very good liar, but we can give him points for boldness. He, like Hitler, understands the importance of The Big Lie. Getting us into Iran? That would be a really big lie.

Been really busy lately. I worked an 11-hour day yesterday so I didn’t have time to post. Sorry about that. Mostly, I’d like to apologize to myself for that shift. Anyway, I took the day off! Yay! In fact, I took Monday off, too. This way I can relax a little bit and get a 4-day weekend. I will also be concentrating on my house hunting endeavor. Wish me luck!

I’ll be back in a second with another post. Great picture I found, you’ve gotta check it out.

If you’re an old-school gamer geek like me you probably played and loved Super Mario Brothers 2. But the version that was released in the States is completely different from the Japanese version. Nintendo actually rebranded a game called Doki Doki Panic as a Mario game and released it in the U.S. In my opinion, it’s a much better game than the Japanese SMB2.

But don’t take my word for it. Check out both Doki Doki and Super Mario 2 (Japanese) at this location.

So says this blog:

Even more alarming, Dobson admits in one of his books that as a child he arranged a fight between two mismatched dogs. The battle involved a tenacious bulldog and a “sweet, passive Scottie named Baby,” and Dobson provoked it by throwing a tennis ball toward Baby. He writes what happened next: “The bulldog went straight for Baby’s throat and hung on. It was an awful scene. Neighbors came running from everywhere as the Scottie screamed in terror. It took ten minutes and a garden hose for the adults to pry loose the bulldog’s grip. By then Baby was almost dead. He spent two weeks in the animal hospital, and I spent two weeks in the doghouse. I was hated by the entire town.”

As any child psychologist will tell you, this type of cruelty toward animals is a sign of a serious psychological disturbance.

There’s a lot more. Check it out for the full tale of woe. Basically, his parents were complete hardasses and they treated him like shit, and he was a pathetic child who acted out and was violent towards others.

So now he’s some big shot minister, huh? Great. Can you imagine for a second, James, that maybe other people had fucked up childhoods too? And that maybe they reacted differently than you? Or even weirder — that some people didn’t have messed up childhoods? Maybe some of us don’t need your strict rules to behave kindly.

I have no problem with Dobson having weird beliefs and a strict interpretation of the Bible. That’s fine. But when he tries to push his beliefs onto others and tries to turn our great nation into a fucking theocracy, then we got beef.

So, sucks to be you with your crappy childhood, James. But leave the rest of us out of it.

But Skilling lives on. Well, it seems that Kenneth Lay, ex-CEO and Chairman of Enron, has kicked the bucket, just in time to avoid jail. What a slippery fucker:

Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay, who was convicted of helping perpetuate one of the most sprawling business frauds in U.S. history, died Wednesday of a heart attack in Colorado. He was 64.

I don’t normally piss on the graves of dead people, but for Lay I’ll make an exception. He represented everything that is wrong with America today:

When Lay and Skilling went on trial in U.S. District Court Jan. 30, it had been expected that Lay, who enjoyed great popularity throughout Houston as chairman of the energy company, might be able to charm the jury. But during his testimony, Lay ended up coming across as irritable and combative.

He also sounded arrogant, defending his extravagant lifestyle, including a $200,000 yacht for wife Linda’s birthday party, despite $100 million in personal debt and saying “it was difficult to turn off that lifestyle like a spigot.”

…Riiiiiight. Yeah, I’m sure that the good life is hard indeed to give up. But doesn’t that make it all the more likely that you lied and swindled in order to maintain your fortune?

His defense didn’t help his case with jurors.

“I wanted very badly to believe what they were saying,” juror Wendy Vaughan said after the verdicts were announced. “There were places in the testimony I felt their character was questionable.”

Hmmm…. I wonder if black people living in the inner city get juries who desperately want to believe what they are saying. Probably not many. So you can see how much of advantage Lay and Skilling had, but the jury still found them guilty.

Ding dong, the wicked witch is dead. I hope his creditors take everything; his family doesn’t deserve his ill-gotten gains, especially when there are so many ex-Enron employees with empty 401Ks and imaginary pensions.

100 million in personal debt? Man, his ruby-red slippers are soooo getting repossessed.

They got’er up safely. Glad to hear it; this was a bit of a nail-biter. They’re really gotta do something about those external tanks. They are just not realiable. Here’s hoping Discovery completes her mission and makes it back home in one piece.

Is there anything better? It’s past 7 but the sun is still up. Best of all, I don’t have to work tomorrow. I’ma head out to da beach. See ya later.

About time man. Yeesh. I’m looking forward to it, I dunno about you, but it’s been a long week. Didn’t work too much, but I’m recovering from weeks of stress and busy-ness. It will be nice to chill out a bit.

Hope everyone out there has a great weekend.

Just got back from my softball game. We won, 18 to 8. It was a pretty solid game; I had a double with 3 RBIs. But on the first play of the game, a guy who was subbing for someone led off with a grounder to third base. Our guy scoops it and throws it to first where I try to catch it, but the throw is wide; way too far out of reach for me to catch. But it hits the runner with a sickening “thwack!” He went down after that and dropped to his knees. We all came running. He had taken a shot to the face, and the third basemen has a gun – it was thrown hard. He had a huge bruise on his left temple, right around the eye. It was swollen an inch off his face in a matter of seconds and it started to turn black. You could see the laces from the ball, etched on his forehead. It was fucked up.

He had to go to the hospital, but he should be okay. He called from the waiting room to check on the score. I’m glad he’s okay, but it was freaky as it happened. Not something you ever want to see in a game.