SemiConscious Dot Org

In honor of (hopefully) the next President of the United States, our good friend Cardinal Ugenesis carved him up some pumpkin:

Not to be outdone, I carved myself a McCain pumpkin.

The likeness is downright eerie.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of this election season is the rapidly increasing deluge of industrial-grade lunacy emanating from the fever swamp of the American Right. As the McCain campaign enters its long-overdue death spiral, the loonies are waking up to the fact that they’re probably going to lose. Needless to say, they’re not happy about this, and it’s making them even crazier than before.

For instance:

Omigod, a young, white McCain supporter was mugged by a big scary black man! Will B. Hussein Obama’s thuggish supporters stop at nothing? Surely, this terrifying news will turn voters away from Obama in droves! Wait, it’s all a hoax? Hum dee dum dee dum…

Obama was involved in terrorist bombings, is not an American citizen, and had an affair with a gay pedophile.

Obama is exactly like Hitler, Mao, and Jim Jones.

Also, he’s exactly like Stalin, and the Negroes will riot if he loses the election…or if he wins!

Expect the tide of batshittery to increase exponentially in the next week. By election day, I fully expect to see “Barack Hussein Obama: Snake in the Garden of Eden?” to crawl across the bottom of Fox News’ screen.

Just call it “Progressive Music List Bloat:” my first Best Of list, covering the 1960’s, contained all of ten albums. The 70’s list was 20 items long. By the time the 80’s rolled around, I had expanded to 25 titles. Wellsir, for the 1990’s, we’ve blown it all the way out to thirty five.

It’s the curse of familiarity. After all, I wasn’t alive in the 60’s; I was a preteen in the 70’s; and I went to high school in the 80’s. By the dawn of the 90’s, I was Officially An Adult, a college student with a job and disposable income to spend…which I did, on music, music, and more music (a debilitating habit that continues to the present day.)

More music means more trouble narrowing down. Throw in the 90’s alt-rock explosion, which irrevocably split popular music into zillions of new genres, sub-genres, sub-sub-genres, and micro-genres, and winnowing the damn thing down becomes well nigh impossible.

Yadda, yadda, yadda. Here’s the list. As always, positioning is in no way indicative of rank.

Nirvana – In Utero
The Beastie Boys – Check Your Head
Radiohead – OK Computer
Kyuss – Welcome to Sky Valley
Dr. Dre – The Chronic
The Beta Band – The 3 EP’s
Soundgarden – Badmotorfinger
Uncle Tupelo – Anodyne
Fishbone – The Reality of My Surroundings
Slayer – Seasons in the Abyss
Neil Young and Crazy Horse – Ragged Glory
The Roots – Things Fall Apart
Sugar – Copper Blue
Alice In Chains – Dirt
The Black Crowes – The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion
Dr. Octagon – Dr. Octagonecologyst
Radiohead – The Bends
Sigur Rós – Ágætis Byrjun
PJ Harvey – Rid of Me
Pearl Jam – Vitalogy
A Tribe Called Quest – The Low End Theory
Opeth – Still Life
Masters of Reality – Sunrise on the Sufferbus
Grant Lee Buffalo – Mighty Joe Moon
Johnny Cash – Unchained
Tool – Undertow
Faith No More – Angel Dust
The Melvins – Stoner Witch
Wilco – Being There
Beck – Mellow Gold
Portishead – Dummy
Rage Against The Machine – S/T
Sleater-Kinney – Dig Me Out
Ol’ Dirty Bastard – N***a Please
Lo-Fidelity Allstars – How to Operate With a Blown Mind

UPDATE: I have no idea why this post published with comments closed. Consider it fixed.

Oh, well. It would have been awesome win back to back World Series titles, but it was not to be. Riddled by injuries, facing a deeper, healthier, younger team, the Sox battled their guts out (including the greatest playoff comeback in 79 years) but ultimately fell just short.

C’est la vie. It’s hard to get too upset when you’re beaten by a superior opponent, and you know your team left it all on the field. And truth be told, after the transcendent joys of 2004, it’s hard for me to get too upset about postseason losses. Sure, I’m disappointed, but nothing even remotely in the same universe as the way I felt in 1986 or 2003.

Besides, they’ll be right back in it next year: as this article points out, they have some holes to address, but the core of the team is signed, the pipeline of young talent from the minors shows no signs of abating, and with Manny and Schilling’s contracts off the books, they can spend $40-60 million this winter on free agents without even increasing the payroll over this year’s.

And hey, maybe there’s another silver lining. As Mark points out in his comment on The Goat’s blog:

One way to look at it; in ‘04, the Sox won but Kerry lost. Here’s hoping a Sox loss portends an Obama victory.

Amen to that. Nothing took the glow off the first Red Sox championship in 86 years faster than the awful spectacle, a mere six days later, of George W. Bush returning to the White House for four more years of destroying America. If a third Sox title in five years is the Karmic price that must be paid in order to put the adults back in charge of this country again, it’s a bargain.

Ladies and gentlemen, your 2008 Republican presidential candidate:

At this point, McCain could suddenly start speaking in a Dr. Strangelove accent, and he still wouldn’t sound much more unhinged than he does already.

Seriously, how is this still even remotely close? I’m gratified that the American voter seems to have finally come to their senses and that Obama is pulling away in the polls, but why has he not 20 been points ahead the whole time? I understand that the 23% dead-enders who still think George W. Bush is doing a dandy job as Preznit are going to vote McCain. There’s a reason for that, however: those people are bat shit crazy. What I can’t figure out is why, in the name of all that is holy and pure, would anyone else want to give the Republicans four more years in the White House, after the almost incalculable havoc they’ve wrought?

(all pics/links shamelessly stolen from The Goat)

Yes my favorite place to be
Is not a land called Honah Lee
Mentally or physically
I wanna be in New Orleans
– The Red Hot Chili Peppers

We’ve been back from our N’awlins honeymoon for a couple of weeks, and I just now finally got around to looking at all the pictures I took. (Mostly because I’m home in bed, sick, and can’t sleep.) Here are a few of my favorites:

The full set of pics can be found nyah.

Scientists confirm shark’s “virgin birth:”

In a study reported Friday in the Journal of Fish Biology, scientists said DNA testing proved that a pup carried by a female Atlantic blacktip shark in the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center contained no genetic material from a male.

The first documented case of asexual reproduction, or parthenogenesis, among sharks involved a pup born to a hammerhead at an Omaha, Neb., zoo.

All I can say is: if that baby shark suddenly grows a beard and starts turning seawater into wine, we’d best be getting nervous. I’m pretty sure that, in any scenario involving Shark Jesus, the human race would be playing the part of the Romans.