SemiConscious Dot Org

Testing….testing…1…2…3…check, check….this thing on?

Sure has gotten quiet around the ol’ bloggy blog recently. Anyhoo, this is sure to spruce things up:

Build Your Own Red Meat Comic

I had all kinds o’ fun with this little toy yesterday. These are my first creations:

In One Ear and Out Your Mother

Tempus Fuggedaboutit

If Dead Clowns are Outlawed, Only Outlaws will have Dead Clowns

And here are a couple of beauties which I would swear were created by our very own Cardinal Ugenesis, although he won’t fess up to it:

Dairy Seed

Nate is Hummer

Yellowcake Birthday Party

Let’s see yours!

Of course, if you’ve never acquainted yourself with the beautiful madness that is the original Red Meat, you should definitely take a look at a few of those first to get a feel for the many-hued tones and textures that make it what it is, before attempting to create your own. I don’t know how Max Cannon continually comes up with this disturbing stuff, but he is a true master. Were I a member of the Church of the Uber Nixon (which, of course, I’m not) I would make this guy one of the Church’s Patron Saints.

Update: Here’s another new one: The Clouds are Full of Whiskey

I am thankful for one thing this Thanksgiving:

Outside, however, among the nation’s awakening throngs, gratitude and hope are beginning to swell and grow anew. Only three years left. It’s long but not that long. Every person in that gloomy room will be gone. History. Nothing left but an ugly stain, oily residue, scar tissue. The room will be refreshed. The turkey will be moist. There will be more cranberry sauce. This dark, warmongering chapter will finally end. Pie all around.

It is not, the world realizes, too early to be thankful for that.

Relax, folks. It’s almost over. The freefall is in full swing and is irreversible; the long-overdue political and cultural revolt is just beginning. Their time is coming to an end, and they know it. Before they finally join the ashheap of history, they’ll certainly do their absolute damnedest to destroy this country in the name of saving it. But in the deepest, darkest recesses of their squalid, shrunken hearts, they know their time is almost up.

Pass the turkey and gravy soda.

Update: And here’s another thing to be thankful for…not one, but two pairs of flame-covered Chucks.

I’m en fuego, baby.

Wellsir, it seems that all the cool kids in the blog world, when they aren’t too busy with their hopscotch and their maree-wanna, are passing their time with something called the Friday Random 10. Idea is, you set your iPod or your Media Player on shuffle, jot down the first ten songs that pop up (no matter how bad they are), and rate each one. Hit a song that’s so preternaturally embarrassing you’d rather die than try to explain away its presence on your hard drive to the entire world? Now you know how Scottie McClellan feels! (Bad music, bullshit wars based on lies and treasonous leaks by presidential advisors; same difference.) Spin, spin away!

1) North Mississippi Allstars, “Eyes”
These guys have almost singlehandedly revitalized the lagging blues-rock format. However, this song is from their worst album, Polaris, a horribly misguided attempt to broaden their sound with generic jangle pop. 4/10

2) Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, “When Big Joan Sets Up”
Not the best song on Beefheart’s magnum opus, Trout Mask Replica, but a pleasing slice of Dada-inspired ranting nonetheless. 6/10

3) Desert Sessions, “Screamin’ Eagle”
An ass-kicking RAWK instrumental from Volume I of Josh Homme’s long-running side project to Queens of the Stone Age. Dangerous to listen to while driving, at least if you wish to avoid speeding tickets. 9/10

4) Built To Spill, “Carry The Zero”
My favorite track from Keep It Like a Secret. 8/10

5) Beastie Boys, “Namaste”
Closing song on Check Your Head. Unfortunately, it’s the most boring of that album’s many faux-Santana instrumentals. 5/10

6) Widespread Panic, “Mercy”
Jam bands generally make incredibly boring and tedious studio albums. Widespread Panic, due to their ability to craft an actual hook and keep their songs under six minutes, are just about the sole exception to this rule. This ballad from their self-titled debut album earns bonus points for the lyric “I can smell your breath through a freshly-painted door.” 7/10

7) U2, “Sunday Bloody Sunday”
A long-ago relic from the days when U2 actually stood for something. Sure, it’s naive and pompous and painfully earnest, but it’s still light years better than anything they’ve done since they discovered drum machines and blank irony. 6/10

8 ) Faith No More, “What a Day”
Two and a half minutes of pure bile from their criminally overlooked late-period album, King For a Day, Fool For a Lifetime. Thundering guitars and the immortal chorus “What a day, what a day, if you can look it in the face and hold your vomit.” Mike Patton is God. 8/10

9) Tool, “4 Degrees”
Perhaps the most melodic track on their breakthrough, Undertow. Of course, it still sports riffs to shake the tectonic plates. 7/10

10) Train, “Drops of Jupiter”
EEEEEYARGH!!!! And we were doing so well!!! Where in hell did this drop of pseudo-Elton John schmaltz come from??? I have no knowledge of how this turd squeezed out onto the hard drive, but I suspect a certain ex-girlfriend. 0/10 (only because negative numbers aren’t allowed.)

So this shuffle started off with a distinct patchouli stench, veered into alt-metal territory, and then straight off the side of a cliff with the final track. Total: 60/100, or exactly 6.0 average per song. Train hurt us, man, no doubt about it. Hurt us bad.

Let’s hear yours. C’mon, don’t be shy.

As usual, the Rude One breaks down our current geopolitical reality via a simple, clear analogy: basically, the Bush administration is a bunch of drunken gang-rapists.

But more and more, the choice of the vast majority of Americans, a real mandate, is that this must end. That we’ve sat on the sidelines long enough. That those responsible must not only be told to stop, but they must be thrown against a wall, that they must be excised like a cancerous tumor, hoping and praying that it’s not too late, it’s not too late, to cease this before it drags us all down. And that those who enable it are complicit in the rape even if they keep their dicks in their pockets.

Can we castrate them yet? I mean that metaphorically, of course. Honest.

Update: The most recent rape victim of the Bush administration (with a little help from the US Senate, who had sloppy seconds), a little thing called “Habeas Corpus.” RIP, due process of law. We don’t need no steenking Constitution! (link via Fafblog.)

We warned you, didn’t we? Indeed, it was exactly one month ago today that we noted the first reappearance of the arisen Great Cthulhu in the remote waters of the north Pacific. We warned you that this was only the beginning, that soon the entire human race would be screaming forever inside the stomachs of the Elder Gods. And we harbored further fears: if one race of Lovecraftian monsters was awakening, might not other fearsome creatures also be arising from their long slumber? Specifically, we worried about a reappearance of the Great Old Ones, the ancient beings in Lovecraft’s work of “fiction,” At the Mountains of Madness.

From the master’s description:

”...Around equator, one at central apex of each of the five vertical, stave-like ridges are five systems of light gray flexible arms or tentacles found tightly folded to torso but expansible to maximum length of over three feet. Like arms of primitive crinoid. Single stalks three inches diameter branch after six inches into five substalks, each of which branches after eight inches into small, tapering tentacles or tendrils, giving each stalk a total of twenty-five tentacles.”

“At top of torso blunt, bulbous neck of lighter gray, with gill-like suggestions, holds yellowish five-pointed starfish-shaped apparent head covered with three-inch wiry cilia of various prismatic colors.

“Head thick and puffy, about two feet point to point, with three-inch flexible yellowish tubes projecting from each point. Slit in exact center of top probably breathing aperture. At end of each tube is spherical expansion where yellowish membrane rolls back on handling to reveal glassy, red-irised globe, evidently an eye.”

In spite of the overwhelming evidence, we clung to the forlorn hope that the hideous monstrosities might perhaps be extinct. However, we can no longer fool ourselves, for not two days ago, on a weekend getaway to the Oregon seashore with the Papal Concubine, we came across this abomination lying on the beach:

And there you have it: the evidence is incontrovertible. All of the fabled beings from the cursed pages of the Necronomicon are coming back to life. Soon, humanity will be driven completely insane by the tide of horror rising all around it. There is no escape! If the Elder Gods don’t eat you, the Old Ones will dissect you in the spirit of scientific inquiry. Ph’nglui mglw’nafh wagn’nagl fhtagn! Ia!! Ia!!!

By this time next month, we expect to have our first photographic evidence of a Shoggoth.

Yes, this a fine, fine day for Freedom™ everywhere. We wish to extend our heartfelt thanks to the US House of Representatives for delaying a vote on the torture ban. Of course, we know that, as stalwart in the defense of Freedom™ as Denny Hastert is, the real architect of this heroic goal line stand against a measure that passed the Senate 90-9 is none other than The Dark Lord of Freedom™, our hero, Big Swingin’ Dick Cheney.

Let squishy-soft objectively pro-terror conservative Republicans like Chuck Hagel call the administration crazy for threatening to veto the anti-torture bill. Let John McCain vow to add anti-torture language to every Senate bill in perpetuity until it gets through the White House veto. McCain just doesn’t understand the simple truism that one must occasionally violate international treaties, American law, and every precept of common human decency in defense of Freedom™. Besides, what the hell does John McCain know about torture?

Big Swingin’ Dick’s heroic stance in favor of the right of American military personnel to beat, rape, and electrocute prisoners in defense of Freedom™ is a matter of long-standing principle. In fact, his entire distinguished career is a monument to that laudable maxim. What does Big Swingin’ Dick do when his top aide is indicted in the Plamegate investigation? Does he back down, perhaps rethink his strategy? Hell, no! He tells the entire world what he told Pat Leahy: Go Fuck Yourself.

We must admit that at first, even we, Big Swingin’ Dick’s biggest fans, were a bit puzzled by his dogged insistence on an exemption from the torture ban for the CIA. However, when the news leaked of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe, the wisdom of Big Swingin’ Dick was once again made clear, and we were duly chastened for our momentary twinge of doubt. Don’t you people get it? If we don’t allow secret agents of the United States government to squirrel away prisoners in Cold War era gulags where they may be held indefinitely without trial or charges and subjected to treatment that would make the site’s former operators proud, then the terrorists have already won!

Now, our veneration of The Dark Lord should in no way be construed as a lack of respect for Dear Leader. After all, every Palpatine needs a Vader to carry his jock, right? In that role, Dear Leader is truly inspiring, contributing to the pro-torture effort with this recent speech:

We are finding terrorists and bringing them to justice. We are gathering information about where the terrorists may be hiding. We are trying to disrupt their plots and plans. Anything we do … to that end in this effort, any activity we conduct, is within the law. We do not torture.

Sure, he probably wanted us to think he meant that they are following the law, but we all know what “any activity we conduct is within the law” really means, don’t we? And do you think that Dear Leader, as brilliant as he is, is really capable of composing a masterpiece of Orwellian Doublespeak that subtle? I think we all know who the real author is.

Cheney Über Alles! Glory!

Shocked, stunned, nay, outraged are we this morning! Trembling and quivering with barely suppressed righteous fury! The foundation of our understanding of the world has been dealt a scathing blow, and those responsible must be punished!

First, the revelation: the city of Washington, DC, which we had long naturally assumed to be the exclusive property of the Republican Party, in fact contains a second political party! (Known, we are led to understand, as “Democrats.”) But as if that wasn’t shocking enough, there’s more! Apparently these “Democrats” think that, rather than squeal with barely suppressed glee at Dear Leader’s every utterance and march in lockstep to his every political whim (which all Republicans and patriots know to be their sacred duty as Americans), it’s their job to oppose the policies of Dear Leader, and in fact to question the motives behind his sainted actions!

Just yesterday, in fact, they dared to close the Senate for several hours to ask why the investigation into the rationale behind Dear Leader’s Holy War™ has ground to a halt! Stupid Democrats! What part of “Holy War™” do they not understand? Unlike Republicans, they apparently don’t realize that when God appoints you to invade the heathen lands, he doesn’t care about such minor fripperies as the reasons you cite (or invent) to justify that invasion. The Republican God is a CEO God, and he wants results, so just get the job done! What is he paying you for, otherwise?

Because Republicans understand that God is cool with the Ends justifying the Means, they know it’s perfectly alright to ignore their Constitutional duty to exercise Congressional oversight. Stonewall, schmonewall! Harry Reid can blather all he wants about his “fear for the country’s future.” All it shows is that he hates America. If you’re not prepared to suspend disbelief and unquestionably follow your President when he makes up reasons to invade countries that had nothing to do with the terrorist attack on America, then the terrorists have already won!

America: dissent is treason! Glory!