The "Addicted to Lost" Super Bowl ad

In case you missed it, ABC ran an awesome one-minute promo for its show Lost during last night's Super Bowl. From the comments I've read this morning, it was one of the better ads that ran during the game. It's a well-edited series of clips from the show set to Robert Palmer's hit 80s song "Addicted to Love", but with audio fixed so he's now singing "Addicted to Lost". I think how they put this together and the elements they chose to use is going to really be a "what is this/wanna see" thing for anyone who watched the game and wasn't already a fan of the show.

Wanna see it for the first time (or as Locke says at the end of the promo, "We're going to need to watch that again")? Hit here to watch the extended 3-minute version of the promo, which is followed by the one-minute spot that aired last night.

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I've got a very bad feeling about this...

You're not gonna buh-leeeeeve what this picture is from:This is the cover of Star Wars Legacy #0, due out this May from Dark Horse Comics.

And so will begin the Star Wars Legacy era: a period set more than one hundred years after the events of the Star Wars movies.

Here's the ad they're about to start running...

No. No no no. No no no no NO!

Look, the Sith are dead. Bringing them back means that Anakin's self-sacrifice meant nothing. He died so that the Sith could be wiped out once and for all. And to restore balance to the Force by taking them out of the equation. It took millennia for the Force to get that off-kilter to begin with... and now a mere century later it's all back out of whack? You mean there's another Empire that asserts itself? Geez louise, a new Republic that can't hold itself together THAT long deserves to be toppled, if you ask me.

But wait, it gets worse...

It's Cade Skywalker: the great-great grandson or such of Luke Skywalker. Take a gander at that hoop earring and blood-red tattoos he's sporting. And Cade is a smuggler, apprenticed to the Dread Pirate Roberts or whoever. Yup, it only took a hundred years for the once-proud Skywalker heritage to completely go to pot. So lessee, in addition to heroic scoundrels, evil sorcerors, wise sages, faithful companions, and all the other real-world stereotypes represented in Star Wars, we are now about to get trailer trash.

I'm going to buy this issue. I'm going to probably buy the next few issues, just out of curiosity about where this is going. But I got a real bad feeling about this one. Re-hashing the Sith and the Empire seems too much like sheer desperation on Dark Horse's part. They should have projected this series five hundred, or even a thousand years after Return of the Jedi, and played around with that, just like they're doing with Knights of the Old Republic set four millennia before the movies. If I were running the show, I would make it five hundred years post-Jedi, give it enough time for a whole fresh threat to arise, and make one of the characters be Artoo-Detoo. Why him? He'd be the link to the classic era of the movies. As a droid he's virtually immortal anyway, barring accidents. It would be kinda through his "eyes" that we'd see how all of the history had unfolded. Artoo needs to be a part of Star Wars Legacy, if this is going to hold any legitimacy in my book. And Dark Horse needs to do something really, really clever to justify bringing the Sith and Empire back. I hope they can make this work... but seeing that picture of Cade Skywalker makes me almost cringe to wonder what's going to happen with my favorite saga.

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Steelers win!

Pretty good game. Don't really follow football too much but for some reason I've always liked the Steelers (and Denver, Atlanta and 'course Carolina :-)

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The V for Vendetta Super Bowl commercial just hit online

They ran it about fifteen minutes ago and DARN this movie is looking better and better. I almost screamed when they had the very quick shot of Natalie Portman in the little girl/ballerina outfit... and do you know why? 'Cuz that means the Bishop Lilliman death scene made it to the movie!! Truly an awesome commercial. Heck I haven't seen a "dud" commercial yet during this Super Bowl (loved the FedEx one) which is good 'cuz hey why spend $3 million for 30 seconds of a sucky ad? So far, am very impressed with this year's batch. Anyway about that V for Vendetta commercial: Watch it in Quicktime here if you missed it.

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LEGO Slave I: The 2006 Edition

Two things defined my childhood: Star Wars and LEGO. And when the two finally came together in the spring of 1999, I was one of the first in line. I've bought or received dozens of Star Wars LEGO sets over the past seven years. No doubt my favorites have been the Millennium Falcon (the 2004 version), the AT-AT Walker, and the Imperial Shuttle (the original one, not the re-release). All of those were gifts from Lisa. I've got both versions of the X-Wing that have come out, Jabba's Palace, the Mos Eisley Cantina (also from Lisa, for my 30th birthday), bunches more. And as of this past week I also now have all three Slave I models.

Slave I is a weird ship to try replicating in LEGO. First of all there's the strange curves and angles of Boba Fett's ship. Then there's it's flight orientation: the ship rotates forward on its lateral axis upon takeoff, so that what is the "top" of the ship on the landing pad becomes the front of the vessel. And then there's all the detail - particularly the weaponry - that's boasted by the ship of the galaxy's most notorious bounty hunter.

To date LEGO has made three attempts to create a faithful rendition of Slave I in the building bricks medium. The first one was released just before Christmas 1999:

I bought this one at Toys R Us two days before that Christmas. It looked... okay let's not beat around the bush: this Slave I left an awful lot to be desired. Definitely not the best the company's done. It's tiny for one thing: the cockpit barely holds one LEGO minifig, and that's only if it's put in the sitting position. The guns aren't attached to the ship very well. The wings swivel too easily, for me anyway. As an attempt at a minifig-scale model, the first Slave I screams for a redesign. But for some reason I'm still quite attached to this one. If you ignore how ridiculously small it is compared to its Boba Fett minifig, it's really quite a nice model. I had this one proudly sitting atop my computer in my apartment when I lived in Asheville, and couldn't resist playing with it every now and then. One other thing this one has going for it: LEGO Slave I 1.0 was the first set to include the Boba Fett minifig. And it even came with a "minifig" of Han Solo frozen in carbonite that could be stored inside the ship. In its own way, this Slave I has charm... but I still wanted to see a ship big enough for the Boba Fett minifig to have room for hidden weapons, a real cargo hold, and maybe living quarters where he could sleep and use the bathroom. It didn't matter if those things weren't built into the model itself: it just had to be big enough for me to imagine that they really were in there somewhere.

Well, apparently a lot of folks weren't all that crazy about this first Slave I set. So a little over two years later LEGO took advantage of the build-up to Star Wars Episode II and released their second Slave I model...

Now we're getting somewhere! Jango Fett's Slave I was supposed to be released in late April 2002. But while I was spending the last weekend of that March with Lisa we found this set at the Wal-Mart in Buford, Georgia (the one near the Mall of Georgia). Wal-Mart let a lot of Attack of the Clones merchandise get sold before their intended street date. I heard that when they were caught doing it they put a "freeze" on the goods so that if you brought them to a register, they wouldn't take the sale. I nabbed this one (paying 'course) a few days before the hammer came down, and Lisa and I spent part of the following afternoon putting it together in her apartment. This Slave I was by far one of the toughest LEGO models I've ever assembled. I had to go back and "reconstruct" parts of it at least twice. But in the end I really like how this one came out. It's true to minifig scale (note the Jango Fett and Boba Fett minifigs). There's a concealed missile launcher and those cool "sonic charges" that Jango used on Obi-Wan in the movie. A cargo container holding several accessories is held in place by a clever magnetic system. Best of all the cockpit swivels along with the wings... and it's big enough to hold both Jango and Boba in a standing position! This Slave I is also one of my favorites. But nice as it was for Jango to get a quality bounty hunting vessel, I also wished that son Boba could also have one befitting the prime of his career.

So a few months ago it was announced that LEGO would be releasing another Slave I model, as part of its 2006 line. Which if you know LEGO means that it would probably come out just before Christmas 2005. That it did, and I had this box in my grubby little paws for about a minute a week before Christmas but decided to hold off on getting it at the time. Lisa gave me a gift card for Toys R Us, and every week or so since Christmas I've been going to Toys R Us to see if they had gotten anymore in. A little over a week ago on Thursday night, I found it and brought it home...

At first glance it looks very similar to the 2002 version. But structurally they are two quite different models, especially so far as the "snout" goes: the 2002 one has dual missile launchers that swivel out from concealed compartments. Slave I 3.0 has a trigger-activated "torpedo" that fires out of a spring-loaded launcher: meaning that this Slave I is potentially dangerous to anyone standing near it. As a ship belonging to Boba Fett should be. They're not that many that a casual observer would notice, but I did catch quite a few places where this Slave I differs from the previous one.

537 LEGO pieces, in several bags fresh out of the box:

The very first thing that all LEGO sets (all the ones I've seen over 20+ years anyway) have you do is put the minifigs together. Which meant opening at least 3 of the bags to find all the various pieces because LEGO never seems willing to put them all in just one baggy. But when all of that was done the set yields you FIVE minifigs: (left to right) Han Solo in carbonite, Boba Fett, IG-88 (first time in LEGO anywhere), Dengar (also new), and a Bespin Guard:The Bespin Guard is the very first minifig I've ever owned that is "dark skinned" (which is ironic considering the answer I got when I once asked LEGO officials why there was no Lando Calrissian figure). Also, don't you think that Dengar looks kinda cute the way his mouth is covered up by his bandages? Guess it woulda been pretty tough imitating that surly visage he had in The Empire Strikes Back, huh? Probably my favorite minifig though is IG-88: he replicates PERFECTLY into LEGO. Someday I may try and build his ship, the IG-2000 from scratch, just to put him inside it. Anyway, back to building...

30 minutes into construction: the 2002 Slave I had its body in two or so separate "pieces" that you had to build separately, and then put those together. The 2006 edition is all one solid unit from the base up:

Now we're about 2 hours into assembly. All the internal workings are in place, and the whole thing is starting to take shape nicely:About 3 hours after starting, and Slave I 3.0 was finally finished. Of the three Slave I sets, I felt after building it that this one is by far the most faithful to the spirit of the one we see in the movies:Boba Fett sitting in his cockpit (which also swivels into flight position along with the wings):Very, very sweet model to have, if you're into Star Wars and LEGO. Not too tough to build, but still a little bit of a fun challenge. And instead of having just the Boba Fett minifig, LEGO really showed class by including a few that weren't necessarily connected to Slave I. Which lent themselves toward my having the idea of re-creating, as best I could, the famous "bounty hunters assembled" scene from The Empire Strikes Back:Now if only LEGO will make minifigs of Bossk, Zuckuss and 4-LOM, I could do the entire scene in LEGO :-P

EDIT 3:04 PM EST: In regards to the Dengar minifig, FBTB.net (which stands for "From Bricks To Bothans") just posted a great cartoon about him...

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Bush did NOT really say this, right?

Didn't watch the State of the Union speech, as I promised earlier. I'm just now reading about it and hearing some reaction to it. A lot of people are saying Bush was slurring his way through this one: wasn't all that on-it verbally. But then again we've come a long way in this country from the days of William Jennings Bryan, haven't we?

But one thing that he said tonight that... I just can't believe he's become this brazen about it. I mean if this was Reagan, or even Clinton who had said this same thing, the animosity this kind of statement would generate would be positively furious. But "God's anointed man for America" George W. Bush says it and somehow it's okay... and it's downright scary to know that there probably won't be a backlash against it.

Here's what Bush said earlier tonight:

"We hear claims that immigrants are somehow bad for the economy – even though this economy could not function without them."

This very foolish man is letting millions of illegals flood across the border from Mexico... and he dares tell the American people that we need that?!?

Years from now, when America is without shred of doubt a third-world country, with an economy in shambles and being unable to feed even ourselves adequately... well you can thank the "brilliant" leadership of people like George W. Bush for making it happen.

Oh yeah, found this story today about Bush's nephew George P. Bush making the "stunning" announcement that he's moving to Fort Worth, Texas. Only one thing a story like this screams to me (I mean c'mon why is moving someplace a big deal?): This is the guy the Bush clan is grooming to be the "next generation" of politician from their family. Some years after G.W. Bush is out of the White House, George P. is the one that the family will pin their hopes on for reclaiming it. George P. Bush: who campaigned for votes for his uncle while on the other side of the Mexican border. He'll be pimped and promoted as being some kind of "great man" who will save America... and there will be too many fools willing to buy into that, judging by how they fell for his uncle.

More than any other family in our history, the Bushes have betrayed America's future. And if nobody else will state the obvious, then I will.

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New blog bears a brimful of Brahms

Darth Larry - fellow Star Wars geek and wicked wielder of the cello - is the only person I know of who searches for Johannes Brahms collectibles on eBay. So he's taken his appreciation of the great German composer to the next level: The Daily Brahms. I'll let DL explain it...

welcome to my new blog. this is my little corner of the web on johannes brahms. he is one of my favorite composers and i thought this would be a fun and interesting project.

in the past year, i've had the distinct pleasure of playing quite a bit of his music. at times, it felt as though he was the only composer i was playing, which, frankly i didn't mind. i've been doing a lot of reading on him and the more i study him, the more fascinated i become of him.

which is where this blog comes in; perhaps a planting ground for everything that's been filtering in my brain about him and his music.

Pretty unique, ya gotta admit that. DL is a heckuva expert on classical music, so I'm gonna lend my ear to his keen insight on Johannes Brahms.

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$tate of the Union 2006: It's Christmas in January!

As usual, I will not be watching this year's State of the Union address tonight. I will either be watching a new movie that came in via Netflix, or one of the last episodes from the Lost DVD set that we haven't seen yet. If I'm even interested, I'll read it later.

Or if I do choose to hear it live, I'll do so with my back turned to the television, refusing to set eyes on the screen while Bush talks. Stripped of whatever visual appeal, you instead actually listen to what he's REALLY saying. And just going by my doing that during the past few State of the Unions, I'm not expecting any substance in tonight's either.

We know what's going to happen: he's going to make some empty rhetoric. And then he's going to start telling us how many billions of our dollars he wants to spend on social programs, No Child Left Behind(tm), foreign aid, etc. This is why ever since Clinton my nickname for the State of the Union speech has been "Christmas in January". The State of the Union speech has nothing to do with the actual state of the union, and it's not even a real "union" anymore either, is it? There is now one government that's grown too large, merely divided into 50 localized departments. It's not even legislated that the President has to do this every January either: the Constitution just calls for the President to make reports to Congress about the condition of the country "from time to time". That could be tonight or two years from now, or six months even. It doesn't even have to be a televised speech... but tell any politician that he shouldn't grab the opportunity for free airtime.

That's all tonight's speech really is going to be, sadly: an hour or so of television time that Bush gets to pitch whatever scheme he's got that's going to further put us in debt or deteriorate our Constitution, only because it's expected of him to do so. Dear God, has this country really sunk so low that we so readily allow an installed politician to tickle our ears?

(Yeah, he was installed. So is just about every politician in Washington. What, you think any normal Americans are going to be allowed to walk the halls of Congress?)

Anyone want my advice? Find something better to watch tonight, if you have to watch something. In all probability whatever you find will be a lot more sincere and edifying.

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Most underwhelming Oscars nominations ever

Read the complete list here. It's probably the least satisfying Academy Awards nominees list that I've ever seen. I just can't believe what didn't get nominated though. Walk The Line got snubbed for Best Picture. In a perfect world King Kong and Batman Begins would be up for consideration too. Horribly absent is Ian McDiarmid for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. In fact Sith only got one nomination - for Achievement in Makeup - and was totally dissed for Achievement in Visual Effects (but War of the Worlds got that, what the...?!). Heck, John Williams's score for Sith should have been nominated too. This list may appeal to some in the liberal-and-proud-of-it arts & croissants crowd, but not me. Just plain blah. My prediction: way too many politically-charged speeches - that no one who has a life will really care for - during this year's awards ceremony.

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U.S. government is borrowing $188 billion

An all-time record.

Funny... I remember the retroactive taxes introduced by the Budget Act of 1993, and a lot of us called our representatives in D.C. to not only ask them if this was even legal under the Constitution at all, but to pose the question to them about there ever being any country in history that taxed and borrowed itself into prosperity. Don't think I'll ever forget the hemming and hawing I got from Congressman Steve Neal's mouthpiece (and how come the actual reps and senators never talk to us on the phone like that?).

(I also called to tell him to support Penny-Kasich, if that one rings a bell with any longtime politicial aficianados.)

A little over a year later the party that was doing all the taxing and borrowing and spending was kicked out of power... and now the party that replaced them is doing the exact same thing, but to a far worse degree.

Debt - be it personal or public - is destroying this nation. Just wanted to say that in case anyone says later that nobody warned about it.

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Amazon recommended WHAT?!?

Lately I've been on Amazon.com a lot, either for casual browsing or placing some orders. Last month I used it to get the King Kong DVD and a really good book, also about King Kong. The Batman Begins 2-disc DVD that Lisa got me for Christmas also came in that order. She's looked on Amazon for materials to use in the music classes that she teaches, and in the past few days I had them ship some books to a friend going through a difficult situation right now. All things considered, we haven't used Amazon to look for anything really... unusual.

So tonight I go back to the Amazon homepage and was startled - before starting laughing - to see that it had this DVD "Recommended for you":

David Lynch's 1977 movie Eraserhead. I heard about this years ago (back when I was a fan of Lynch's Twin Peaks show) but have never seen it. Or done anything remotely near looking for it. I've no idea why the heck Amazon though this is something that would satisfy some dire need or burning curiosity of mine. Here's the plot synopsis that Amazon gives for it:

"Is it a nightmare or an actual view of a post-apocalyptic world? Set in an industrial town in which giant machines are constantly working, spewing smoke, and making noise that is inescapable, Henry Spencer lives in a building that, like all the others, appears to be abandoned. The lights flicker on and off, he has bowls of water in his dresser drawers, and for his only diversion he watches and listens to the Lady in the Radiator sing about finding happiness in heaven. Henry has a girlfriend, Mary X, who has frequent spastic fits. Mary gives birth to Henry's child, a frightening looking mutant, which leads to the injection of all sorts of sexual imagery into the depressive and chaotic mix."

HOW does Amazon think I wanna see this after only looking for some classic music CDs and a couple of Star Wars books?!

But I like Lynch's style (based on what I've seen of his anyway) and have a thing for black and white movies, and that DVD cover looks pretty darned whacked not to at least look into it sometime, maybe on Netflix. Maybe I will sooner or later. Anyway, I just thought it was pretty funny that Amazon would recommend something like that, considering we haven't done anything (that I know of) that would trigger that kind of connection from Eraserhead to what we usually look for on their site.

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Challenger: Twenty years ago today...

It was twenty years ago today, about this very moment, that I was sitting at the end of a long table at my old school. Two of my sixth-grade classmates joined me for lunch. And that's when Ashton told me...

"Hey Chris, the space shuttle blew up."

I thought he was kidding. Only thing I knew to reply with was "No it didn't." The only thing was, Ashton didn't really look like he was kidding at all. I don't know why I didn't take him at his word right then.

Now Shane spoke up: "Chris, yes it did! The space shuttle Challenger exploded after it launched!" And I was still in denial about it. This was all a joke... had to be. Maybe they wanted to see how I'd react to something like that. I remember silently thinking to myself "yeah sure", just sort of going along with them.

And then I happened to catch the table two rows away from where we were sitting, where the seventh graders were having lunch, and whatever the hell it was they were talking about they sure seemed pretty damned shaken up and upset about it. That's when I caught the words "shuttle" and "challenger" and "all dead".

Our teacher happened to walk past where we were sitting. "Miss Martin, I'm hearing that the shuttle blew up. Is that true?" She nodded and said "Yes".

Well, what else can I tell you about that day: the whole class was in shock after we got back from lunch and she confirmed everything to us. That's all we were talking about the rest of the day, there was no more real class. She was a pretty lousy teacher but I gotta give her credit for not trying to focus our attention on lessons when there was a helluva lot more on our minds. I remember a lot of people asking me questions about what I thought about it, me being sorta the resident "space geek" at our school, but I didn't mind being that. Not that I had much to tell them: so far all I knew was what our teacher had told us. Mom picked my sister and I up a little after 3 that afternoon and she told us more about it, said that she'd been watching it on TV all afternoon and that it was "terrible". The car's radio was tuned into a Christian station and one of the announcers was asking everyone to "keep the people at NASA and our astronauts in prayer". We had to pick up something in town for Dad, and it was a little before 4 when we got back home. The very first thing I saw when I came thorugh the front door was a picture of Christa McAuliffe - the "teacher in space" - being shown on television. Then Dan Rather. And a few minutes later CBS ran what was for me the very first time I saw what happened a few hours earlier that morning...

I think I actually said "Dear God in Heaven" after seeing that.

Dad came in a little later from the barn (he was still a dairy farmer at this point) and we all watched some of the coverage together: as he often said about things like this, "this is what you'll be reading about in the history books years from now." CBS played the footage of the disaster maybe a half-dozen more times, before later that afternoon President Reagan spoke live from the White House. I remember that very well: listening to what has since been considered to be the greatest speech of his presidential career. You can read it here if you like, but if you ever get the chance to someday you really owe it to yourself to listen to a recording of it, or watch a video of him doing this. That may have been the last time we had a President who made a speech that sounded seriously presidential. When I went to D.C. a year and a half ago to pay my respects to Reagan as his casket lay in state at the Capitol, it was his Challenger speech that I most kept thinking about.

That's what dominated the rest of the night, and the next day, and the next few weeks after that. At 11 years old I'd already heard that people old enough remembered exactly where they were when they heard that Pearl Harbor had been attacked, or that JFK had been shot. Now it was my generation's turn to have something forever burned so indelibly into our minds. Everyone who was old enough on January 28th, 1986 will be able to tell you where they were and who they were with, and everything else that happened right after that, when they heard about the Challenger. This has been my own tale to tell.

I don't know what else to say with this post. There's plenty enough information on the Internet about STS-51L, the final Challenger mission, for anyone who's interested. Anything more that I could do here would just be reiterating ground already well-covered. But I couldn't let this day go by without doing what I could to take off my hat in respect to the seven who died that day, and acknowledge that day for the impact it had in not just my life, but that of just about everyone who was around back then.

I don't really know how to close this out: nothing I could write would ever do justice to the memory of the Challenger Seven. So I'll just let the following images speak for themselves...

Challenger launches on mission STS 51-L, January 28 1986

The crew of Challenger
FRONT ROW L-R: pilot Mike Smith, commander Dick Scobee, mission specialist Ron McNair
BACK ROW L-R: mission specialist Ellison Onizuka, Teacher in Space Christa McAuliffe, payload specialist Gregory Jarvis, mission specialist Judith Resnik

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Most bizarre video I've seen in awhile

Former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno sings Aretha Franklin's "Respect".

Somebody get this lady an Xbox and Karaoke Revolution, STAT!

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Greatest electronic games according to Vox Day

Vox Day has posted a list of what he considers the best "electronic games" of all time (but curiously they're all videogames: not a Simon or Electronic Stratego to be found in the bunch). I think it's a great list... for the most part. But I would have ranked TIE Fighter much higher. And did Vox ever play Pitfall II: Lost Caverns? That was easily the best game ever produced for the Atari 2600: it still holds up even today (and if you have a Gameboy Advance it's part of the Activision Anthology that was released a year or so ago for that system).

Vox also puts Wing Commander on the top ten list: if there's ever a videogame series that deserves a return, that one is it. I just wish I'd been able to play Wing Commander III when it came out... ahh well maybe someday :-)

So what do you think of his list? There's some good comments being left there. I may have to do my own "top ten best videogames" sometime.

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57% of those polled want to attack Iran

So says a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll. Which according to the story it's 57% of all Americans who want to go to war with Iran, when it was really only that percentage of those who happened to be polled.

Let me say this from the getgo: the guys running Iran are bad people. That does not mean that the Iranian people are bad. The population by and large must not be punished for whatever their whacko leadership is doing.

I do wonder if we are justified at all in trying to beat the wardrums for attacking Iran now though, three years after getting bogged down in the quagmire that is Iraq.

Yeah, there's no other word for what it is happening in Iraq right now. The moment we pull out our own soldiers, that place is going to collapse like a house of cards. Over two thousand of our best men and women are dead... and all that we've got to show for it is a rising Islamic fundamentalist government. Like we used to say on the basketball court: "Smooth move Ex-Lax".

So we're committed - oh yes, we are definitely committed now, with no easy way of leaving - to Iraq. And now those people from the "neo-conservative" mindset - the ones who believe that it is a virtue for government leaders to lie to their people - are gearing up the people of this country to want to go to war with Iran. A war that could only realistically be fought by large-scale strategic bombing, since our conventional forces are stretched so thin. Some here in America are even suggesting the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

Like, isn't this the very same thing we're claiming now that we are trying to prevent Iran from doing?

How is it that the United States is now doing the very same thing that the Soviet Union did: invading countries and setting up puppet governments?

Is this really our problem to deal with at all? Is America now and forevermore going to be the policeman over the rest of the world? Were we even right to assert that role to begin with?

George Washington was right: we should have avoided "foreign entanglements" completely. Over two hundred years later another George thinks he knows better, and mucks us into whatever strikes his fancy.

And the damned thing of it is, there will be lots of politicians and pundits and preachers and the like faithfully falling into line right behind the President as they tell us that yes, we must go to war, because our government knows what's best for us.

Well damn them. Damn them all.

Until Iran presents a legitimate threat to the United States, we should butt out. Let Israel handle this... it seems to be their fight they want anyway.

We should have stayed out of Iraq, and let the people of that land hash things out on their own.

Fortunately, I doubt that 57% of Americans really want to go to war with Iran. I really hope so anyway. Because if that many do want it, it will definitely damper my belief that the American people are still capable for the most part of thinking for themselves.

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Disturbed minds can rationalize anything

President Bush is defending warrantless snooping again:

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush again defended his program of warrantless surveillance Thursday, saying "there's no doubt in my mind it is legal." He suggested that he might resist congressional efforts to change or expressly endorse it...

Yeah, but there wasn't any doubt in Charlie Manson's mind that what he was doing was okay either. Hitler was fond of noting that his activities were "legal" too. Didn't that lady who bothered David Letterman for years honestly believe that she was married to him? Wasn't John Hinkley totally convinced that he was impressing Jodie Foster when he shot Reagan?

Ya see, these kinds of disturbed individuals do believe something, beyond any self-questioning or doubt. Nothing can or ever could deviate them from that, or else their entire fragile little worlds would be at risk of coming crashing down on them. To one degree or another they did some pretty bad things and it never entered into their minds that what they were doing could in any way be bad. This is narcissism in its purest form...

...and that's not a good state of mind to have when one is anything, much less President of the United States.

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7 myths about what happened to Challenger

Tomorrow will be the twentieth anniversary of the first real event that burned itself permanently into the minds of my generation: the Challenger space shuttle disaster. Highly respected space historian James Oberg has a very good article at MSNBC about what really happened that day. Oberg brings up seven "myths" that have become rarely reconsidered in the two decades since. Among other things he discusses how the Challenger didn't "explode" in the actual sense, how long the crew survived after the event and the fact that very few people were even watching it happen live. It's a good article, and in my opinion addresses the most major misconceptions that I've seen come up over the past twenty years.

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