SemiConscious Dot Org

Well, it’s that time at last: we shut off the internet connection (and the cable tv) at our apartment yesterday in preparation for The Big Move. I tried to steal borrow various neighbors’ wireless signals, but the few that weren’t password-protected were too faint to be of use. An entire evening with no internet and nothing but free tv for entertainment. It was horrible, I tells ya!

Anyhoo, since this is the last day at work and we leave on Sunday, postings may be spotty in the next couple of weeks (Somehow, I’m guessing Wifi hotspots may be in short supply along the Lost Coast and Highway 50.)

I’ll post travel pics when and where circumstances allow, but for now, here’s some stuff to keep my legions of slavishly devoted five readers occupied:

Great news, kids! Only 46% of Americans are complete morons!

Since 1999, support for the idea of banning “books with dangerous ideas” from public school libraries has declined from 55% to 46% and has now fallen to the lowest level of support of the past 20 years…

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You, O college-educated, Blue State liberal Democrat, look at those numbers and assume that the book banners must be disproportionately comprised of backward, Bible-thumping rubes. Certainly, people like you couldn’t be so stupid. That 46% must be 90% Republican, right?

Wrong, Craphound!

Two-thirds of liberal Democrats (67%) disagree that dangerous books should be banned – and 52% completely disagree. By comparison, most conservative and moderate Democrats (56%) agree with the banning of dangerous books (and a relatively large proportion – 37% – completely agrees). Republicans are somewhat less divided, although 52% of conservative Republicans favor a ban on such books compared with 40% of moderate and liberal Republicans.

Not a whole hell of a lot of difference between “We” and “They,” is there?

Friday is my last day at the school. I suppose I should get rid of our library’s copies of The Anarchist’s Cookbook and The Necronomicon before I leave, eh?

Yours truly, April 21st, 2005:

The fortieth anniversary of the Summer Of Love is only two years away.

Dear god, what a wretched, wretched thought. Given the fondness of my parents’ generation for endless bouts of egregious, excessive, entirely undeserved orgies of middle aged self-congratulation, this could get ugly.

If you don’t believe me, just think back to 1994-95. Ye gods, what a double-whammy that was: the 30th anniversary of the Beatles’ arrival on these shores, coupled with the 25th anniversary of Woodstock. And then, less than a year later, the retrospective news specials on “Baby Boomers Turn 50: What Does It All Mean?” Every time you turned on the tube, endless replays of grainy, black and footage; endless tv roundtables featuring old bald bearded guys in ponytails and granny glasses blathering on and on ad nauseum about the historical and sociopolitical “significance” of Flower Power.

We had to smile and nod politely when they waxed excruciating about their long-gone youth; we had to feign sympathy when they turned the national stage into a forum for wading through their self-pitying emotional molasses. Sure, we could’ve told them “Nobody fucking cares, Gramps,” but really, what good would it have done? They’d just have kept right on talking and talking and talking. They always do.

As of June 20th of this year, that horrible anniversary is officially upon us. And, almost like clockwork, Jeffrey links to this fantastic rant on the squalid depths of useless self-parody to which many of my fellow travelers on the American Left have sunk:

We’re not actually leaving until next week, but this was our final weekend to party in Seattle. So, naturally, we spent the whole time at Golden Gardens Park.

(Obviously, the Space Needle picture was not taken at Golden Gardens.)

More photos here.

When I found out about the Rate Your Blog page, I could barely contain the squeaks of anticipatory glee. I figured that my propensity for potty-mouth rants against our Preznit and God-fearing conservative Republicans would earn me at least an R, right?

Imagine my horror!

(link via World O’ Crap)

This…this is monstrous. In all my life, I have never been so insulted. My character and my sacred honor have been besmirched, and I won’t stand for it! Something must be done to fix this grievous miscarriage of justice!

(Draws deep breath)

FUCKING FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKITY PIGFUCKER FUCKFACE!

There, that ought to fix my rating.

PS. Balls.

I’ve been a fan of James Howard Kunstler ever since I read his books Geography of Nowhere and The Long Emergency. While I certainly don’t agree with all of his conclusions on current geopolitics, and I often tire of his relentless “The World is Doomed” pessimism, I think he’s nonetheless serving an invaluable purpose. Whether or not Peak Oil is imminent, he brings much needed attention to the problem of our country’s crippling fossil fuel addiction, and his constant calls for a reorganization of of society away from suburban sprawl and towards more livable, walkable communities can only help us in the long run.

In his latest column, he turns his rhetorical guns on those poor deluded fools who still think we’re currently enmeshed in the Iraqi quagmire for any reason other than oil. I disagree strongly with some of his wilder conclusions (the idea that “if we leave Iraq now, the Iranians will invade the next day” is ridiculous) but I like that he’s basically telling the American people to grow up: either we accept that American blood and treasure must be spent to ensure access to a substance that our entire way of life is built on, or we find a way to stop using that substance.

Alright, I’m shamelessly stealing this link from The Goat, and what’s more, I don’t feel even slightly guilty about it.

For those of you who may have been living under a rock, Robot Chicken is perhaps the most important, profound, and essential television programme of this or any other generation since the beginning of recorded time.

And now they’ve turned their powers of snark to Star Wars.

Here it is, scene by embeddable scene. Or, if you don’t want to click on a new video every twenty seconds, in larger chunks.

You’re welcome.

In a year rife with conflicts over freedom of access to information on the interweb tubes, I suppose it was only a matter of time before yet another one erupted. This involves Flickr, the online photo hosting site.

I’ve had a Flickr account for two years, and have, for the most part, had nothing but good things to say about it. Sure, I was annoyed when Yahoo bought Flickr and forced paying customers to sign up for a Yahoo account in order to keep using a service we had already paid for, but like many members, I made my displeasure known and suffered no repercussions for it. It looked like Yahoo might be that rare internet conglomerate that bought out a smaller, more innovative company and didn’t squeeze the life out of it with toxic corporate culture and asinine rules.

Yeah, you probably know what’s coming next:

But, overall, things continued as before; until a few days ago, when Flickr users in Singapore, Germany, Hong Kong and Korea noted that they were unable to alter one of their account settings: the ‘safe search’ option, which allows them to specify whether they want searches for images to filter out certain types of content. Under the new dispensation, Flickr users in these territories could only find images that had been flagged as ‘safe’ – which meant, as one disgruntled protester put it, ‘only flowers and landscapes for Germans’.

Shocking, I know.

It’s always been hard to make a living in my home state, so this article isn’t particularly surprising. It’s still depressing, though:

Fishermen on this rocky, pine-studded peninsula have felt a creeping unease in recent years, as real estate prices leapt skyward and stories circulated up and down the coast of fishing piers sold to make room for million-dollar vacation homes.

Two years ago, in response to growing concerns on the coast, state officials and researchers set out to map the waterfront access of Maine’s working fishermen. What they found was more alarming than anyone expected: Along Maine’s 5,300-mile coast, only 20 miles of shoreline remain open to commercial fishermen, according to the study the Island Institute released last month.

With our move back to Maine less than two weeks away, it’s sad to realize that the only reason we can afford to go back at all is because our house is inherited. The state’s traditionally poor economy, combined with the skyrocketing property values, mean that we’d never be able to afford to buy a house on our combined salaries.

Of course, most people aren’t lucky enough to have a relative will them a house.

And, at long last, we come to it: the Last Day of School. But lest anyone think that this weekend may be an occasion to relax and unwind from a long, exhausting school year, far from it! Tonight, the Special Lady Friend has her bachelorette party, while I will most likely spend the evening on the couch in a fetal position, swilling gin and desperately trying not to imagine her stuffing dollar bills in male strippers’ g-strings.

Most people know that Sunday is Father’s Day, but did you know that not one but two equally important holidays occur tomorrow? Bloomsday is a holiday dedicated to James Joyce’s acclaimed novel, Ulysses, in which all events take place on June 16th, 1904. Tomorrow, people in Dublin and in college towns all over the world will dress up like Joyce, drink Guinness, and pretend to have both read the novel and understood it.

Here in Seattle, tomorrow also happens to be the day of the Fremont Solstice Festival. A friend of the SLF who lives in Fremont is throwing a party to mark the occasion. We’re planning on attending, despite our almost certain mutual hangover, as our impending departure from Seattle means that this is the last time* we’ll ever be treated to the retina-burning spectacle of naked hippies on bicycles.

*Hopefully.