SemiConscious Dot Org

And I heard it in the wind
And I saw it in the sky
And I thought it was the end
I thought it was the Fourth of July
– Soundgarden

So, obviously I’m a glutton for punishment. Not one month after the Hell Weekend at the Gorge, I’m heading out there again on Saturday to catch Widespread Panic and Camper Van Beethoven. This time, however, we’re not camping out for two days in a campground filled with drunken idiot children. This time, we’re driving out the day of the show, and staying in a hotel afterwards. Ahhhh, the sweet sound of toilets flushing and the pleasant whrrrrr of the air conditioning unit switching on. I can hardly wait.

Not quite sure yet what I’ll be doing on the Fourth. Seattle has two major fireworks displays, and my apartment is roughly equidistant from both of them. In fact, from the Ballard Bridge, you can see both displays going off simultaneously. Of course, we could always bag the fireworks and go down to the beach and build a bonfire.

Or maybe I’ll sit on my porch with a sixpack and do some reading. Fafblog, for instance, has a selection of words and illustrations from our country’s founding (my personal favorite is “Yahweh Crossing the Delaware.”) I could also print out and post some of these patriotic posters, to inform and educate my countrymen about the wonderful new era which dawns around us.

Or perhaps, I’ll read this document instead. And I’ll wonder how the hell we got into the fucking mess we’re in.

Huge crack in the earth opens in Texas.

Geologists said Tuesday the crack was a joint in the earth’s crust. They believe the opening is the result of a weak point in the joint where one spot slips away from the other.

Needless to say, we were immediately skeptical that this could be the result of natural causes, so we started calling around. Our primary suspect, Cthulhu, strongly denied any involvement, stating “Look, buddy, R’lyeh ain’t exactly Club Med, but why would I want to move to a dump like Texas? I do have some standards.”

“Ph-nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!” he added before hanging up on us.

We next turned attention to our alternate suspect. When reached for comment, Satan replied “Yeah, I’m behind the crack in the earth. We’re running out of room in Hell, what with all the crazed Jihadists who think their god wants them to strap bombs to themselves and blow up strangers, and all the crazed Christians who think Jesus is fine with making up reasons to invade countries and holding people indefinitely in prison without charges and torturing them.

“This new flood of Damned Souls has made things very crowded down here, so I’m annexing Texas. Last week’s Supreme Court ruling states very clearly that I can take it via eminent domain. And besides, we’re talking about Texas. Most of the inhabitants are going to end up down here eventually, and most of them won’t be able to tell the difference anyway, so why not speed up the process?”

The GOP, realizing that the loss of Texas’ 21 Republican Congressmen and 2 Republican Senators into the depths of Hell would severely weaken its chances of holding onto control of Congress in 2006, sprang into action. A $666 trillion spending package to finance an invasion of Hell was quickly introduced into the Senate. When Senate Democrats, noting that Hell’s demons are immortal and thus impervious to any known weaponry, filibustered the bill, the White House joined the fray. Senior political advisor Karl Rove lashed out:

Conservatives saw the savagery of Hell’s annexation of Texas and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of Hell’s annexation of Texas and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.

Democrats responded angrily, pointing out that since Rove and numerous other high-ranking Republican war supporters successfully avoided military service during previous invasions of Hell, it was a little hypocritical for them to be questioning others’ patriotism now.

We expect the rhetoric on both sides to escalate in the coming weeks, as the Hellish crack widens across more of Texas, inching closer and closer to the President’s vacation ranch in Crawford and Tom Delay’s congressional district near Houston. “Oh yeah, I’m gonna enjoy this,” Satan was heard to say, cracking his knuckles.

Stay tuned for periodic updates to this developing story.

Um, it’s an honor to give ten thousand dollars. Especially now, when the rich mosaic of cable programming has made public television so very, very unnecessary.
– Homer Simpson

Though these stirring words were first uttered in February of 2000, they rocketed Mr. Simpson to the top of President Bush’s list to head the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in September 2003. When apprised by his advisors that Mr. Simpson was, in fact, a fictional character, Dear Leader quickly and decisively changed course. Shortly thereafter, board member Kenneth Y. Tomlinson was promoted to presidency of the board.

Mr. Tomlinson is of special significance this week, as the Republican Congress begins efforts to reign in the nefarious liberal indoctrination machine that is PBS. This organization is a veritable Maoist Fifth Column in our midst that must be stopped! How dare they use taxpayer money to fund the insidious idea that lesbians are people too? Thank Jeebus that Dear Leader’s handpicked Secretary of Education shamed those godless Reds into pulling the show before it warped fragile little minds!

Since it looks increasingly like insufficiently obedient Republicans may be swayed into restoring some of the lost funding for the 2008 fiscal year, we may be unable to put into practice the Holy Words of Saint Norquist and “drown it in the bathtub.” However, we can still do the next-best thing and turn PBS into the mouthpiece of conservative propaganda it was originally envisioned as…and Kenneth Tomlinson may be our instrument in this Godly endeavor!

Make no mistake about it: PBS as currently constituted is a nest of Trotskyites. Otherwise, why would they feature that objectively pro-Saddam America hater Bill Moyers? Never mind that Moyers doesn’t actually work there anymore, or that the network recently gave a right-wing magazine editor a public forum in which to trash Moyers. Never mind that William F. Buckley had a PBS show for 33 years, that The McLaughlin Group has been giving a national platform to the Pat Buchanans and Bob Novaks of the world for 23 years, and that the network recently hired Tucker Carlson and the Wall Street Journal editorial board to produce programs. Don’t you understand? This is just CPB’s cover to lull us to sleep!

But, into the breach steps our brave warrior Tomlinson. His noble efforts so far have included hiring an outside consultant to “monitor” the political leanings of guests on the politics show NOW ; hiring the White House Director of Communications as a senior staff member; and lobbying to have a former Republican National Committee chairwoman named as CPB’s next president. Sure, he also hired Republican lobbyists at taxpayer expense to fight a bill giving individual stations more representation on the CPB board, and he told an extensive series of teensy little fibs, including saying that he had prior approval to hire the “monitor” when he actually didn’t.

To this we say: big whoop. This is a war, people, and you go to war against leftist agitprop with the army you have. So sayeth Saint Rummy in regards to the war against Islamo terrorists, and it’s just as applicable in the war against the lib’rul terrorists at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. May his work hasten the day when PBS finally produces the kind of programming that the Homer Simpsons of the world would be proud of. Glory!

The war news is bad. Recruitment is down. Dear Leader’s poll numbers are plunging. Traitors such as Pat Tillman’s parents openly hate America. And, as previously noted, the 101st Fighting Keyboarders are suffering heavy losses. Something must be done, and quickly.

As usual, The General has the solution:

Operation Yellow Elephant.

(Update: 6/21) In the event that the preceding patriotic graphic doesn’t inspire the brave, beer-bonging hordes of America’s College Republicans to enlist in a war they so loudly support, here is another one from the General’s archives. Glory!

“Man is a giant,” Drake says, “forced to live in a pygmy’s hut.”

“What does that mean?” George asks.

“It means we’re all fools,” Drake says excitedly, smelling the old whore Death, “especially those of us who try to act like giants by bullying the others in the hut instead of knocking the goddam walls down.”

– Robert Anton Wilson, “Illuminatus!”, page 351

This past Friday, classes let out for the year at the school where I work. Tomorrow, I will reshelve the enormous pile of books that the kids returned last week; then I will print out a shelf list and begin the time-consuming task of deleting from the catalog the books that never got returned. (Even though we have an electronic catalog, we don’t have the budget to buy the kids library cards, so they check out books by writing the titles in a notebook. Thus, many titles never get recorded.)

Personally, I would just as soon let the kids keep the books, since many of them are facing a rather boring summer. In most schools, kids are elated to finally reach the end of the school year, but since so many of our kids live in homeless shelters and transitional housing, summer means three months of being cooped up indoors with nothing to do. Besides, even though we have no budget to buy new books, donations come in so frequently that I usually have more books than shelf space, and end up leaving the excess by the front door in a box for the kids to take home and keep. The school’s entire budget, in fact, comes from donations and charitable contributions.

While the generosity of the folks who contribute to this school in undeniable, it blows my mind that there is even a need for an organization like ours to exist at all. In the midst of the wealthiest society that has ever existed in the history of the world, there are schools for homeless children. Not mumbling, middle-aged men with drug problems, winos, or any of the other stereotypes we perpetuate in order to convince ourselves that the homeless are all lazy or crazy or addicts and deserve their plight.

Children.

And while we’re on the incredibly cheerful topic of unwanted children: those of you who know me personally know that, once upon a time, I used to work for a certain non-profit organization that gave free computers to libraries all over the country. Once, on a trip to install computers and train the library staff, I visited the library in a place called Colorado City, Arizona. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the place, it’s the headquarters of a rather “traditional” offshoot of the Mormon Church. In short, they’re polygamists.

Well, the folks of this bizarre little town (which seriously creeped the shit out of me during the eight hours I spent there) are currently in the news. It seems they’ve been kicking teenage boys out of town and cutting off all contact with them – in order to lessen the competition for wives.

I no more understand a society that willingly casts out its own children than one that allows the children of others to fall through the cracks. It’s a disease, I think. I find it particularly infuriating that so many people who prattle on incessantly about the welfare of the unborn seem to not give a flying fuck about the welfare of the born. What causes this?

Perhaps we should turn again to our old friend, Mr. Wilson.

The philosopher Carlin’s three major types of public nuisances—the stupid, the crazy and those just plain full of shit—have changed proportions in my mind as I grow older. I used to attribute almost everything awful to stupidity and looniness, but now I more and more suspect the major problem is that so many people are full of shit. In fact, every time I see a man on TV wearing a suit and tie, I suspect he is full of shit, and if he has a flag hanging beside him I am almost sure of it.

– Robert Anton Wilson

I think it’s time for a vote! Are the majority of Americans (oh, who am I kidding, the majority of humans)

a) Stupid
b) Crazy
or
c) Just plain full of shit?

Discuss.

Despite my acknowledged status as an honest-to-Jeebus liberrian, I rarely if ever blog about liberry-related issues these days. The reasons for this are twofold, and can be summarized thusly:

1. I work in a school library now, rather than a public library, so there are no more amusing “Stupid Patron” stories to relate.
2. Library blogs are excruciatingly boring to read. The only interesting library blogs are ones by librarians who also happen to talk about what’s going on in the outside world, music, politics, etc.

However, a library-related issue which is currently in the news also happens to have national political importance. Today, the US House of Representatives voted to amend the USA Patriot Act, removing the section that allows law enforcement officials to spy on the reading habits of library and bookstore patrons. If the bill survives a threatened Presidential veto, The Man will have to go to court, show probable cause, and get a warrant before He gets to snoop around in what you’ve been reading…just like He had to do for the first 225 years of our nation’s history.

What surprises me about this vote is that it wasn’t even close; the amendment passed 238-187, with the help of 38 Republicans who risked the certain retribution of Tom DeLay and the White House by voting with their brains for a change. Considering that a similar amendment last year died after the House deadlocked 210-210, this is quite a sea change over 12 short months.

Since Republicans have done something praiseworthy for the first time since…well…ever, I may as well continue with the GOP lovefest, and send a shoutout to my home state’s two Republican Senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. In a recent SurveyUSA poll asking voters to rate their Senators’ performance, Snowe and Collins were the only Republicans to crack the top 10 in voter approval. They did so despite the fact that Maine is a solidly Blue state that has voted Democratic in the last four Presidential elections.

I wonder why? Hmm, couldn’t be because they were two of the seven Republican Senators whose compromise with Democrats derailed the “nuclear option,” thereby thwarting the Republican leaderships’ effort to throw two centuries of democratic tradition in the trash heap, could it?

Maybe these positive events herald a new era for the Republican Party. Maybe the continuing downward spiral in DubYa’s approval ratings will spur more Repubs to start thinking for themselves and defying the Christian Taliban wing of their party.

Oh, right. I forgot that we’re talking about a party which still has a sizable pro-lynching faction.

Never mind.

As regular readers of this site know, we maintain a healthy interest in the Rapture. Not because we think Jesus is coming back, of course, but because we harbor a forlorn hope that fundamentalist Christians are right: ie, that they suddenly will all be Raptured off to Heaven, leaving the rest of us behind to party and keep all their stuff.

Therefore, one can readily imagine the pleasure with which we discovered The Rapture Index: a sort of New York Stock Exchange ticker of End-Times tribulations. These industrious folks monitor worldwide news for stories related to any of 45 “hot button” issues, ranging from “Beast Government,” “Antichrist” and “False Prophet” to “Civil Rights” and “Drug Abuse.” Each category is assigned a rating of 1-5, depending on how dire the news in that area is, and the ratings are added together to produce what the site owners dub “The prophetic speedometer of end-time activity.”

Sadly for those of us who would like to see the deal go down with all possible speed, today’s Rapture Index is a mere 145, barely above the lowest daily number for this year. While such categories as Debt and Trade, Apostasy, and Arms Proliferation are enjoying robust highs, the “Big Three” evils of Satanism, Supernatural, and Liberalism are all at historic lows. This distresses us greatly, but rather than mope over humanity’s inability to bring about Armageddon, we intend to do something constructive; namely, contribute our own Rapture-related stories, in the hopes of getting these numbers back up and speeding the process along.

First, the Bad News:

Astronomers now say that asteroid predicted to hit Earth in 2029 will miss us. The article says that, had the asteroid hit us, it’s big enough to “devastate an area the size of Texas.” Any chance we could gravitationally divert it to actually hit Texas? Just thinkin’ out loud, people.

Scientists report first success in effort to invent cold fusion. This is especially distressing to us, since we Nixonites intended to parlay our monopoly on Faith-Based Fusion into tremendous political and financial power in the post-Peak Oil wasteland world of the future. Damn you, scientists! You’d better not perfect this cold fusion to the point where it puts out more energy than it consumes, or we shall wax righteously pissed!

Ok, enough of those Gloomy Gusses pissing on our Rapture. Now for the Good News:

Rain of Frogs in Serbia! Nothing like a good “raining animals” story to lead things off in style. Rapture-riffic!

British plan to “solve” their nuclear waste problem by burying it for 1000 years and letting someone else deal with it! Ah, the time-tested “Bart Simpson Approach” to nuclear waste management.

Experts fear that a new killer flu strain could cause a worldwide epidemic! (“Paging Stephen King, we have a “Trips” on the phone for you, a “Captain Trips…”)

And, last and most horrible of all:
Pink Floyd reunites for a concert this summer! 60-something prog rockers kick out the jams! Oh god, the horruh, the horruh!

Well, there you have it: two anti-Rapture stories, compared with four that indicate it’s just around the corner, for a net Index increase of two. We’ll expect to see the number bumped up to at least 147 by the time tomorrow’s numbers are released. So get to it, there’s work to do! All that War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death ain’t gonna spread itself, people!

I may have blogged about this before, I can’t remember. My former website and all its associated posts have been lost in the mists of time, so there’s no way to know for sure. Regardless, let me now state for the record:

If I EVER find out who signed me up for a bunch of Christian email lists, I will rip out their still-beating heart with a dull, rusty spoon, and eat it in front of them.

Today, while perusing my spam folder, I noticed an email for something called “Christian Debt Relief.” The message invited me to “remove your debt the Christian way.” This officially replaces Christian Weightlifting as The Silliest Religious Foray Into A Non-Religious Area I’ve ever seen. What’s next? Christian pool cleaners? (“We get that pesky algae out of your pool by turning water into wine!”)

Correct me if I’m wrong here, but wouldn’t the Christian way to remove my debts be to forgive them? I currently have roughly $40,000 worth of student loans to repay. I will be sending $250 per month off to Uncle Sam every month for the next 20 years. This seriously cuts into the supply of available cash to spend on important things like hookers and cocaine. Therefore, I would really appreciate if you wonderful Christian debt relievers would just forgive that debt for me. Your God commands you to.

Thanks in advance.

It pleases us to note that, as we hurtle headlong through Year Four in our Global War on Terror™, things are going swimmingly. Sure, the Nattering Nabobs may bleat about every tiny little bump in the road, but Dear Leader says there’s nothing to worry about, and we trust him implicitly. In fact, things are going so well that perhaps it’s time we turned our attention to other Wars on Nebulous Concepts that have necessarily been neglected in the past few years.

Say, for instance, the War on Drugs™. What are we doing to ratchet up the laudable effort to throw people in prison for substances they put into their own bodies? Granted, we find it wonderful that, in so many parts of this great nation, the government can use the contents of your own bladder against you in a court of law; but what about those other drug offenders? You know, the ones who don’t actually use or sell drugs, but who might know someone who does? What about, say, those parents who find out their child is using drugs, but don’t immediately turn them in to the authorities? Why aren’t we punishing those people?

Well, have no fear! If our intrepid moral guardians in the Republican Congress get their way, we just might! Congressman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), the chairman of the US House Judiciary Committee, has introduced HR. 1528, the gloriously named “Safe Access to Drug Treatment and Child Protection Act.” This bill, if passed, will impose mandatory minimum sentences for virtually all federal drug offenses, thereby limiting the damaging effect of those dastardly activist judges. It would also impose a mandatory ten year sentence for anyone committing a drug offense in a house where minors live, regardless of whether or not any children are actually home at the time.

But we’ve saved the most wonderful part for last. Under HR 1528, if you witness or even hear about someone under the age of 21 (or someone with children under the age of 18) using drugs, you are obligated to report it to the authorities within 24 hours – or face anywhere from 2 to 10 years in prison! And if you refuse to assist the police in the apprehension and/or prosecution of that person, you also go to jail! And no exceptions are made if the person in question is a family member. Don’t want to snitch on your brother or your kids when you catch them toking up? You are officially part of the problem. Enjoy the hoosegow!

Now, I know what you’re saying: “Pope Horatio, this sounds waaaay to good to be true. There’s no way this bill could possibly do all you say it does. Those whiny liberals and civil libertarians must be overexaggerating, like they did with the Patriot Act, right?” To which I reply: don’t take my word for it, read it yourself!

Sec. 425. (a) It shall be unlawful for any person who witnesses or learns of a violation of sections 416(b)(2), 417, 418, 419, 420, 424, or 426 to fail to report the offense to law enforcement officials within 24 hours of witnessing or learning of the violation and thereafter provide full assistance in the investigation, apprehension, and prosecution of the person violating paragraph (a).

“(b) Any person who violates subsection (a) of this section shall be sentenced to not less than two years or more than 10 years. If the person who witnesses or learns of the violation is the parent or guardian, or otherwise responsible for the care or supervision of the person under the age of 18 or the incompetent person, such person shall be sentenced to not less than three years or more than 20 years.

Truly, we have entered a glorious new phase in the War on Drugs™. Our intrepid leaders have seen that this war effort is flagging due to a lack of footsoldiers, so they have introduced a law that will effectively draft all Americans into the effort, whether they want to be drafted or not. Such measures are necessary, if we are to ever reach the time foretold in Prescripture. I speak, obviously, of The Time of Pee. Pray that we see it brought to full fruition in our lifetimes. Glory!

First order of business: a quick recap of last weekend’s trip to the Sasquatch Festival. To be blunt, it was a giant, steaming pile of suck. The reasons are many: the fact that I managed to forget my sleeping bag and ticket; the four hour wait in line to get into the campground, only to find they had jacked up the prices on us even though we had a reservation; drunken idiot children who tried to climb into our tents because they were too shitfaced to realize they weren’t at their own campsite; near-100 degree temperatures the day of the show that turned it from a concert into a Darwinian struggle for survival; subpar performances by many of the acts (take a bow, Wilco); campground bathrooms and showers that were smeared in shit, piss, and various (thankfully) unidentifiable bodily fluids by aforementioned drunken idiots, thus rendering them unusable; and the sanctimonious lecture by the campground owner upon our departure about how he hoped our campsite was clean, which prompted a deadpan “Shut up” response from me as I peeled out of the parking lot.

Whew, that’s better. Glad to get that off my chest.

Anyhoo, we have a far more pressing issue to address in this post: blog memes. Specifically, I’ve been tagged by Brenda Hough. And when Brenda Hough tells you to do something, boy, you’d better snap to it. She may be closer to achieving the Buddha Nature than anyone I know, but I wouldn’t want to get on her bad side. She’d kill ya just as soon as look at ya.

To the questions, then:

Total volume of music files on my computer: 24.2GB (I’ve only ripped a small portion of my cd collection so far, but now that I have a 160GB external drive to play with, that number will rise swiftly)

Last CD I Bought Was: Aha Shake Heartbreak by Kings of Leon

Song playing now: “Miranda, That Ghost Just Isn’t Holy Anymore” by The Mars Volta

5 Songs I listen to a lot or that mean a lot to me:

• “Summertime Rolls” by Jane’s Addiction
• “Redemption Song” by Bob Marley
• “Dry The Rain” by The Beta Band
• “Maggot Brain” by Funkadelic
• “Fake Plastic Trees” by Radiohead

First concert I ever attended: Ronnie James muthafuckin’ Dio. Yeah, you heard me. It was 1985, I was 14, and that shit blew my friggin’ mind. Dude had a ten-foot tall crystal ball onstage showing creepy videos, robot knights shooting laser beams out of their swords, the requisite flames and explosions, and even a fire-breathing dragon. Sure, the music was terrible, but I loved it at the time, and to this day, I have never had more fun at a show than I did at that one. (And to think, at that age I hadn’t even discovered the wonders of hallucinagenic drugs yet.)

And now, to tag someone else. But who? Most of the people I know who have blogs have already been tagged; I was one of the last. I don’t seem to remember MP or Tracey or Luke posting anything like this, though, so they’re up. And as for the blogless among you, drop your musical choices in the comments.