Yes. Yes, we fucking can.

My results?
Obama: 273, McCain: 265

I’m not so optimistic, but I hope I’m right. Or better yet, I hope Obama blows them out of the water. I haven’t posted much about the idiots this election because everything is pretty straight forward and obvious and I’m basically typing to myself on here anyway.

I honestly thought McCain was an OK guy and then he came out with what is essentially a cheap trick: hey, women want to vote for someone? I’ll get a vagina on my ticket, that should make those stupid broads happy! Never mind that she’s basically an old white man in a housewife’s body, especially when it comes to women’s issues like abortion. It’s a sad state of affairs and if this country honestly thinks that old puppet McCain is worthy of leading the country, or worse, that the confusing and ignorant Alaskan “hockeymom”  deserves to be president should something happen to old Mick, this place is seriously messed up. 8 years, a needless war, and an economy that is falling apart. If that isn’t enough, this country doesn’t know what the fuck and it never will. I can’t claim I’ll be moving away to a foreign country if McCain wins, ’cause if I could up and leave without leaving people behind I would. That’s not the case for now, however, so here’s to Barack Obama and McCain’s weak campaign. Let’s hope people are awake this time.

Specifically, what we’ve found is an expanse of absolutely fucking nothing far, far away from here.

WASHINGTON — Astronomers have stumbled upon a tremendous hole in the universe. That’s got them scratching their heads about what’s just not there. The cosmic blank spot has no stray stars, no galaxies, no sucking black holes, not even mysterious dark matter. It is 1 billion light years across of nothing. That’s an expanse of nearly 6 billion trillion miles of emptiness, a University of Minnesota team announced Thursday.

Huffingtonpost.com

I’ll never hear that name — that word — the same way again. Bush. Just think about him for a second. Who he is and where he came from, what he’s done and how he’s done it. It’s amazing and grotesque.

It’s like humanity took its most polished log of fecal matter, something we’ve been working on for 250,000 years, and presented it to the world. The most evil bastards you can imagine got their hands on that chunk of shit first, and that’s not surprising. What is surprising is that we sat around and let it happen. I say we, and I want to separate myself, I really do. But it is we, after all. We did this.

Here is a reminder of who that man was… who he is, who we elected. This one man and the people that congregated around him affected your life profoundly, no matter where you’re from. And this man is an asshole:

And here is a reminder of what he’s done. If he had access to your actual asshole, there would be a global tracking device in it. All in the name of domestic security, our economy, our freedom! Why cut off your nose to spite your face when there are ample veins to slice?

Federal agents may take a traveler’s laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

Also, officials may share copies of the laptop’s contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“The policies . . . are truly alarming,” said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), who is probing the government’s border search practices. He said he intends to introduce legislation soon that would require reasonable suspicion for border searches, as well as prohibit profiling on race, religion or national origin.

DHS officials said that the newly disclosed policies — which apply to anyone entering the country, including U.S. citizens — are reasonable and necessary to prevent terrorism. Officials said such procedures have long been in place but were disclosed last month because of public interest in the matter.

Civil liberties and business travel groups have pressed the government to disclose its procedures as an increasing number of international travelers have reported that their laptops, cellphones and other digital devices have been taken — for months, in at least one case — and their contents examined.

The policies state that officers may “detain” laptops “for a reasonable period of time” to “review and analyze information.” This may take place “absent individualized suspicion.”

The policies cover “any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form,” including hard drives, flash drives, cell phones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover “all papers and other written documentation,” including books, pamphlets and “written materials commonly referred to as ‘pocket trash’ or ‘pocket litter.’ “

Reasonable measures must be taken to protect business information and attorney-client privileged material, the policies say, but there is no specific mention of the handling of personal data such as medical and financial records.

When a review is completed and no probable cause exists to keep the information, any copies of the data must be destroyed. Copies sent to non-federal entities must be returned to DHS. But the documents specify that there is no limitation on authorities keeping written notes or reports about the materials.

“They’re saying they can rifle through all the information in a traveler’s laptop without having a smidgen of evidence that the traveler is breaking the law,” said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Notably, he said, the policies “don’t establish any criteria for whose computer can be searched.”

Customs Deputy Commissioner Jayson P. Ahern said the efforts “do not infringe on Americans’ privacy.” In a statement submitted to Feingold for a June hearing on the issue, he noted that the executive branch has long had “plenary authority to conduct routine searches and seizures at the border without probable cause or a warrant” to prevent drugs and other contraband from entering the country.

Only the unimaginative could claim that they have nothing to hide from the government.  I love traveling, and if the opportunity presents itself, I suspect that in the future it will be on the top of my list. What I don’t suspect when I re-enter the country is that my laptop, digital camera, and cell phone will be seized and searched, possibly kept indefinitely with my personal data spread through out several government agencies to Joe Fucking America. I’m sure some out there would love to continue to leave their family’s best interests in someone else’s hands; have the government take care of it all, no matter how inept it is. It could get a little cozy after a while!

But this has been eight years of failure. I welcome change, even if it’s within the constraints that America and its politics allow. It would be hard to run a country as great as this into hell, but George sure tried. So it’s time to take that fork out of your skin and throw it back, America. Hopefully you hit the target this time.

God bless the United States of America.

I clicked some random link today whilst checking out the news and came across a Discovery article that was pretty cool.

The cuckoo is like the trailer park trash of the bird world. The girl gets knocked up and leaves the baby on another bird’s doorstep, only to turn around and get knocked up again. Screw it, let everyone else take care of them! Watching youngin’s takes up too much time – time that should be used to chainsmoke Camel Reds and buy more hot pants to strut around in.

But really, imagine walking back into the room with some Biter Biscuits only to find that all of your children have been thrown out the window and there’s now an illegitimate child with a nicotine patch in their place screaming “FEED ME! FEEEEED ME!” – albeit with a convincing accent. Terrifying, if I may say so.

Cuckoo Chicks Change Calls to Mimic Host
Stephen Pincock, ABC Science Online

July 22, 2008 — The chicks of a species of Australian cuckoo can adjust their call in order to fool other species into rearing them, despite never having heard the cry, researchers have found.

Like their European counterparts, Australian cuckoos are well known for laying their eggs in the nests of other birds.

Once the chicks hatch, they kick out the host’s other eggs and set about convincing their foster parents to feed them by imitating the calls of the host’s offspring.

But researchers from the Australian National University and the University of Cambridge, report in the latest issue of the journal Evolution, that one species of cuckoo can modify its call depending on which species it has hooked up with.

Females of the Horsfield’s bronze-cuckoo (Chalcites basalis), usually lay their eggs in the nests of fairy-wrens, but will sometimes lay them in the nests of other species including thornbills and robins.

Chicks that hatch in a fairy-wren nest are known to copy that species’ short “cheep cheep” begging call, while chicks that hatch in the nests of thornbills imitate the thornbill’s long, rasping whine.

Vampires! Why by golly. So they make us look like fools, do they? Here are a couple sad tales from France, including dung and an overdose:

And then we have this. Forget vampires, we got Bonnie & Clyde:

This isn’t even a scratch on the surface, and allah knows I’ll be clawing into this stuff for a long time now. The first mention of this, the first mention of that. Anything you can think of that relates to modern society is probably mentioned here somewhere. And it’s worth reading. Because as we all know, say it along with me kids, history — repeats — itself. Good job. Now if only Opium were still accepted. Search for the Opium Commission. Those English did not fuck around with their scag.

It’s like a schizophrenic designed Rapidshare’s software security or something. Seriously, cats? I don’t even see any fucking cats, and if there were cats there, why would they be binded to giant letters? As if regular verification isn’t hard enough. Half the time letters are so italicised that they’re just a blur of squiggles.

Screw you, internet.

Let’s look at the run down of Dubya’s 8 years as president of the United States of America

Pros:
$600 stimulus package check
Bad Speeches

Cons:
Recession
War
Horrible Foreign Policy Resulting In Worldwide Anti-American Sentiment
Bad Speeches

I guess it all evens out.

IMDB claims this movie averages 2.59 killings per minute, and I believe it. That is how it should be, bitches. Of course, half of those butchered are innocents, but what can you do? War is hell.

Despite John Rambo now looking like he belongs more in a WWF ring than the jungle (what with the steroids and face lift), the fact remains that he still knows how to kick ass. This is easily the bloodiest fucking Rambo movie ever made. There are throats torn out with bare hands, limbs severed, heads blown apart, intestines sliced from of the gut. You name it. In fact, it was probably the goriest action movie I’ve seen in a long time. Every fight scene looked like the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan, except it was a lot more graphic (and seemingly realistic) with very little CGI use. Right on, John Rambo. Right on. Organic violence is the best violence.

For those curious, Rambo is now hanging out in Thailand on his lonesome, capturing snakes and selling them for snake shows or something. That is, until a group of silly human rights missionaries show up and demand he boat them down the river to war-torn Burma to help the natives by reading them the bible and cleaning their teeth. The only solution to war is Jesus, baby! How wrong they were.

After their entrance into Burma, things go wrong and the mindfucking commences. That’s right, this movie is about a group of naive Christians being either tortured, torn to bits, or psychologically scarred by the Burmese military. Wholesome family entertainment. Rambo some how gets caught up in their attempted rescue and a blood bath ensues.

As far as I’m concerned, Rambo is the one and only sequel to First Blood, and that’s that. The rest in the series are great if you like stereotypical Russian and Vietnamese military being shot in a generic 80′s action movie style. Otherwise, they are best forgotten.

I salute you, John Rambo. Colonel Trautman would be proud.

The presentation itself is nice, you just roll your mouse over the video and it gives you options like “share with a friend”, “embed”, or “full screen”. Watching the video in full screen would be the equivalent to watching a crappy DIVX download of a show, I would guess. Compression is visible, but it’s still decent quality for a streaming video. It all really seems to depend on how much movement there is on screen. For instance, here’s Conan O’Brien with his pope staff from full screen:

Not horrible considering the subject matter. Mostly it lets me check up on whatever I’ve missed, as no matter how much I love Late Night with O’Brien or Family Guy, I never seem to have the TV on when they air.

One of the other nice things about it is that the only commercial you’ll be submitted to is at the start of the episode (unless you skip ahead too far in the stream). And the site itself kinda has a Google feel to it, pretty clean and easy to get around.

I would give you some Danza or Conan to enjoy personally, but WordPress.com doesn’t allow me to post Hulu videos yet, so you’re out of luck. But beware, reader, as you can avoid Tony Danza for only so long. I suggest you just head on over to Hulu, sign up for the beta and submit to him while you still can.

P.S.
WHILE YOU WATCH DANZA, DANZA IS WATCHING YOU