(link via Cardinal Ugenesis Nixon Thunderfawk. It’s not my fault!)

Some things, once seen, cannot be unseen. I will now go scrub my eyeballs with Brillo pads.

She’s awful purty.

Send. Karl. Rove. To. Jail. NOW.

Yes, fine, there are far worse criminals in the Bush administration than ol’ Turdblossom. No argument there. But this is such a clear-cut case of impudent, brazen contempt for the law that I don’t see how even the spineless wimps of the Democratic Congress can ignore it.

And hell, maybe if they do exercise their Constitutionally-mandated authority, and Turdblossom is facing the prospect of a few months as prison pussy, he might roll over and turn state’s evidence against his masters. Who knows? If the Democrats just do their jobs, it could be The End for the squalid war criminals of the Bush White House.

Hey, why’s everybody laughing?

It’s been an eventful year. Since setting up shop back on the East Siiiide, I’ve

• Gotten married
• Changed careers
• Reached the statistical halfway point of my expected lifespan
• Cheered for not one, but two championships by professional franchises from my general geographic area, which of course covers me in vicarious, unearned glory
• Been bitterly disappointed by a third. (Yes, I realize I’m ridiculously spoiled. It’s not as if anyone from, say, Seattle would have any pity for me at all)
• Posted treasonous, objectively pro-Elitislamohomoliberofascist insults of Dear Leader on no fewer than 19 occasions (ok, so maybe that’s not a big change)

After being away from my home state for the better part of a decade, I can say it’s changed quite a bit. I used to curse the place for being too conservative and claustrophobic, but an interesting thing happened while I was gone: Mainers have loosened up quite a bit. There’s state-run health insurance for the poor, every 8th grader gets a laptop, the Green Party has official standing, marijuana laws are fairly lax, and George W. Bush is staggeringly unpopular, even in Kennebunkport.

In fact, given its large size, low population density, large swathes of pristine wilderness, and odd mix of rednecks and hippies, Maine less resembles its urbanized, overpopulated Northeast neighbors than a large, Western state.

Except, of course, that here, the sun rises out of the ocean, instead of setting in it. As it should be.

In other words,

BWAAAA HA HA HA HA HAAAA! STEP ONE IN MY FIENDISH WORLD DOMINATION PLAN IS UNDERWAY!!!

For those of you not familiar with my Fiendish World Domination Plan™, it is as follows:

1) Grow massive food supply in back yard, becoming entirely self-sufficient
2) Set up turbines and solar panels on property, thus allowing removal of house from power grid
3) Build bio-diesel distillery in shed
4) Mount cistern, water purification equipment, hydroponic grow lab, and brewery in attic
5) Stockpile weaponry to protect all this booty
6) Take over the tattered, post-apocalyptic remnants of what was once America

And just in case George W. Bush’s destruction of our entire economy isn’t as complete as it now appears to be and America doesn’t disintegrate into series of warring city-states dominated by bloodthirsty warlords like myself, there’s a Plan B:

Steps 1-5: See above.
Step 6: Transport previously noted equipment and supplies out to Boon Island, secede from America, form own micronation with myself and the Special Lady Friend as King and Queen, respectively

So who wants citizenship in my future dystopia? I’m open to bribes, but it’ll cost ya. Don’t wait too long!

And if that happens…yeah.

We now return you to “Dancing With the Stars.”

(UPDATE: 7/16) It’s gonna be so much worse than we realize even now. Of course, given everything else our race has screwed up, total economic meltdown is probably the least of our worries.

Anyhoo, here’s the new music roundup. You’re welcome.

Opeth – Watershed
For over a decade, they’ve been perfecting their unlikely mix of death metal and Pink Floyd-y prog rock. This album tilts the balance noticeably towards the latter. I can’t say it’s as magnificent as either of their two acknowledged masterpieces, 1999’s Still Life or 2005’s Ghost Reveries, because I do like the thrashin’. But it’s still damn good, more of a “headphones” album than a “point the speakers out the windows and terrify your neighbors” album.

Boris – Smile
As with Opeth, Boris is faced with the daunting task of following up their magnum opus (in their case, 2006’s Pink.) And like Opeth, they come pretty close. Much like Pink, Smile mixes the monolithic walls of guitar drone from their earlier albums with shorter tracks influenced by 70’s hard rock and punk. They sing entirely in Japanese, so I have no idea what they’re saying. But with music like this, vocals are just another instrument anyway.

The Roots – Rising Down
Am I sensing a trend here? Here’s yet another veteran band following up their career-defining album. 2006’s Game Theory might just be the best hip hop release of this entire decade. Wisely, they chose to not try and duplicate its sound on Rising Down, instead going for a harder, darker edge. But while the music may be different, the lyrical viewpoint is not: these guys are the natural heirs to Public Enemy, and their music is a call to arms.

Sigur Rós – Með Suð í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust
Finally, a band not attempting to follow up their opus. Sigur’s best album, the awe-inspiring Ágætis Byrjun, was almost a full decade ago, and everything they’ve released since has unfortunately been boring, pretentious pablum. They obviously knew it was time to shake things up, because Með Suð í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust represents the most immediate, catchy, and uptempo music they’ve ever recorded. Check out the video for “Gobbledigook” to see the new direction. (Warning: nekkid people. Lots of them.)

The Black Angels – Directions to See a Ghost
And after all the veteran bands, we conclude with a young group whose best days are presumable ahead of them. This is their second release, following 2006’s debut, Passover. Like its predecessor, it’s a mass of reverb-drenched, Velvet Underground-inspired psychedelia. Excellent stuff, and well worth picking up, but I get the feeling they’re capable of even more. There’s a masterpiece coming from this band, and soon. Maybe next time out.

Sadly, it probably does.

God damn it.

A book bandit who checked out hundreds of books and DVDs from area libraries and then sold them online will be going to prison.

Thomas Pilaar, 34, was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay $53,549 in restitution. He pleaded guilty to theft in May.

(snip)

Denver Public Library last year estimated its losses at $35,000, while Douglas County reported that Pilaar had $11,000 worth of overdue materials, mostly pricey coffee-table books and DVDs.

We could spend a lot of time and burn many synapses trying to come up with appropriately vicious and agonizing punishments for this man, but why bother? The monks at the Monastery of San Pedro in Barcelona did all the heavy lifting for us long ago:

The Curse Against Book Stealers

“For him that stealeth a Book from this Library, let it change into a Serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with Palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in Pain crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no Surcease to his Agony till he sink to Dissolution. Let Bookworms gnaw his Entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not, and when at last he goes to his final Punishment let the flames of Hell consume him forever and aye.”

Damn, those dudes were not kidding around.

Octopuses belong to the same family as slugs and snails, but scientists believe they are far more intelligent than their relatives. The researchers will give the 25 assorted creatures food and toys to play with, and record which limbs the animals use.

Claire Little, a marine expert at the Weymouth Sea Life Centre, explained: “Uniquely, octopuses have more than half their nerves in their arms and have been shown to partially think with their arms.
————-

Previous work has shown them to have a capacity for learning and surprisingly complex memories. In 2003 an octopus in a German zoo wasrevealed to have learnt how to open jars of shrimps by copying staff. The five-month-old animal opened the jars by pressing its body on the lid and grasping the sides with its eight tentacles.

(above: your doom)

Today, Great Cthulhu’s minions are solving popular puzzles from the 1980’s; tomorrow, they’re building suitcase nukes to char broil us all for their Master’s lunch! Thanks a lot, you bunch of Commie Atheist Objectively Pro-Elder God liberals!

(link via Pharyngula)