Good bye, 2002.

Classic Ads From the Comic Books

And did you know that Charles Atlas is still around selling his crap? Really! There’s even a website! They’ve trademarked the saying “97 pound weakling” too! Damn, Charles Atlas is the Man!

Thank God for Bacon! Sing along!

The Letter Project

The Free State Project is a bunch of wackos who want to take over a state and remodel it in their own image, the rest of the populace be damned.

The Free State Project is a plan in which 20,000 or more liberty-oriented people will move to a single state of the U.S., where they may work within the political system to reduce the size and scope of government. The success of the Free State Project would likely entail reductions in burdensome taxation and regulation, reforms in state and local law, an end to federal mandates, and a restoration of constitutional federalism, demonstrating the benefits of liberty to the rest of the nation and the world.

Gee, last I checked, 20,000 was not the majority in ANY state, so where the hell do you get off trying to take one over and force your bullshit on the other, oh, million inhabitants? Morons.

Redemption The #1 selling Christian collectable card game in the WORLD!!! (Probably because it’s the only one)

Mario Kart Fanfiction?

A Tribute to the Dog from Duck Hunt

Switch to Canada

A Ban on Hate, or Heritage?

At the beginning of the school year, Dixie Outfitters T-shirts were all the rage at Cherokee High School. Girls seemed partial to one featuring the Confederate battle flag in the shape of a rose. Boys often wore styles that discreetly but unmistakably displayed Dixie Outfitters’ rebel emblem logo.

But now the most popular Dixie Outfitters shirt at the school doesn’t feature a flag at all. It says: “Jesus and the Confederate Battle Flag: Banned From Our Schools But Forever in Our Hearts.” It became an instant favorite after school officials prohibited shirts featuring the battle flag in response to complaints from two African American families who found them intimidating and offensive.

The ban is stirring old passions about Confederate symbols and their place in Southern history in this increasingly suburban high school, 40 miles northwest of Atlanta. Similar disputes over the flag are being played out more frequently in school systems — and courtrooms — across the South and elsewhere, as a new generation’s fashion choices raise questions about where historical pride ends and racial insult begins.

Hey, nut jobs, HERE is your “heritage”:

Official Flags of the Confederacy

March, 1861- May, 1863

May, 1863 - March, 1865

March, 1865

The Stars and Bars folks love to fly to show their pride in their heritage is actually the Confederate navy jack, meaning it was ONLY used at sea. So unless you’re loving the CSS Virginia (aka the Merrimack), you’ve got it all wrong.

Get your learnin’ on!

Thanks to AmericanCivilWar.com for the pics.

Pregnant ‘Barbie’ pulled from Wal-Mart after customers complain

She is Barbie’s oldest friend, happily married and visibly pregnant with her second child ? and some parents think she is a little too real for their children.

The pregnant version of Midge, which pops out a curled-up baby when her belly is opened ? has been pulled from Wal-Mart shelves across the country following complaints from customers, a company spokeswoman said Tuesday.

“It was just that customers had a concern about having a pregnant doll,” Wal-Mart spokeswoman Cynthia Illick said.

So she can work at McDonalds, but her pals can’t have kids. Huh. I wonder if they’ll sell the lingerie Barbie. (There’s another one!)

This is pretty neat.

I can’t sleep

It’s fun to kill guys wearing acid-wash and Members Only jackets!

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City goes where no video game has gone before — into the dark heart of the 1980s.

I don’t give a damn what Donahue says: When a guy goes bouncing across the hood of your car and he’s wearing acid-wash jeans and a Members Only jacket, that’s pretty much justifiable homicide right there.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, the new video game for the PlayStation 2 from British studio Rockstar Games, is set in a vividly rendered South Florida metropolis in 1986 — it’s basically Michael Mann’s Miami — and somehow, the time and place make all the felonious mayhem seem much less shocking than was true for the game’s predecessor. (Last year’s Grand Theft Auto 3 was set, more or less, in present-day New York.)

You’re still playing a freelance thug for the criminal underworld, jacking cars, executing drive-bys, plowing over pedestrians, and so on. But none of this feels so horrible when it’s happening in the black heart of the Reagan ’80s, and the clothes are just so, so ugly. Vice City practically eggs you on to play like a murderous Mister Blackwell, barreling down bystanders on a bad fashion jihad. (”You call that a necktie?” WHACK! “Suspenders are for farmers, sweetheart, not arbitrageurs!” SQUISH! “So many zippers, so little time.” THWUMP!)

Hijacked trolley leads police on chase

A man boarded a tourist trolley that his ex-girlfriend was driving Sunday, held a gun to her head and led police on a freeway chase before he was caught, authorities said.

The incident began around 11:30 a.m. (2:30 p.m. ET) when witnesses saw Jayson August, 49, get on the trolley at the Coronado Bridge tollbooth, police said. Officers chased the trolley, which had no passengers on board, as it drove across the bridge and then north through San Diego before turning east.

Who Owns the Internet? You and i Do

Something will be missing when Joseph Turow’s book about families and the Internet is published by M.I.T. Press next spring: The capital I that usually begins the word “Internet.”

Mr. Turow, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, studies how people use online technology and how that affects their lives. He has begun a small crusade to de-capitalize Internet ? and, by extension, to acknowledge a deep shift in the way that we think about the online world.

“I think what it means is it’s part of the everyday universe,” he said.

I never got the capital “I” myself. It’s the internet, in my opinion.

How to Write Like A Wanker

No matter what Flash-blinded web monkeys would have us believe, the Internet is a text-based medium: especially its major discussion forums (IRC and Usenet) where people from all over the world can interact and share information. A popular misconception about text messages on the Internet is that, to be an effective communicator and earn the respect and admiration of your peers, you must be able to write lucid prose; that your messages, articles, posts and pages must be easy to understand and pleasant to read.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Popular sites filled with cutting-edge Internet cognoscenti (such as Slashdot and ShackNews) give the lie to this harmful and destructive myth: they are brimming with horrific grammar, atrocious spelling, gratuitous abbreviation and childish, arrogant attitude. To be “in” on the net, you must write like a wanker.

And with the feeling I’m getting from Jer’s latest post, he could use this site.

Some naked boob love was sent to me (WARNING: not for children or mothers. mine in particular.) Thanks, Zoe! Not that it’s Zoe in the picture, mind you.

And it seems I’m not the only blogger near McPherson Square. Jerry Brito and Jenn Doppelganger are close by too. Neat, neighbors. Thanks to the DC Metro Blog Map for pointing them out.

I’ll admit it. I’m a dork. I write comic fanfiction. I also run an e-zine dedicated to the coverage of comic fanfiction groups, HEROES. And now, on top of that, I’m starting to heavily promote the Fanfic Alliance. It’s a mailing list where you can get a bunch of fanfic series straight to your inbox. What better way to keep up to date on what the groups are churning out (other than HEROES, that is). And a lot of this stuff is good readin’. Really. It’s also heavily used by Artifice Comics, a group I write for that specializes on original comic prose series. Check it out.

For more information on the Fanfic Alliance, visit their website or the Yahoo Group.

Al Jazeera gonna penetrate the American media market

Coming to a screen near you: Al Jazeera in English.

The Arabic-language news network, notorious for broadcasting the statements of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda colleagues, plans to open an English-language website in early 2003 and begin distributing English-language news programming by satellite and cable late next year.

Interesting and cool, definately worth watching. And a smart move on their part. The last year and a half has been free advertising for them and they get the scoop on everyone else with most of the “War on Terror” stuff, so this is a logical step towards WORLD DOMINATION!!!!!! Or a larger market share. Either or.

Kevin Mitnick is getting back on the net. Bet his website’s gonna be popular as hell.

Group claims first cloned human born *cough*cough*bullshit*cough*cough* It’s a publicity stunt. Dolly wasn’t even a “clone” after all, so if they’re basing this off of those results, they’re lying.

Holy poop on a stick!

U.N.: North Korea has violated DMZ agreement

The North Korean army has brought light machine guns into the Demilitarized Zone, the United Nations Command on the Korean Peninsula said Friday — a violation of agreements signed in 1953 at the end of the Korean War.

A U.N.C. Military Armistice Commission investigation revealed that the North Koreans had brought into the DMZ automatic weapons, the kind that can be operated by crews.

They were observed transporting, setting up and manning Type-73 light machine guns on six days between December 13 and December 20.

North Korea has been observed breaching the Demilitarized Zone from time to time over the years but this incident comes at a particularly sensitive time diplomatically.

Okay, uh, that stuff I said about Korea before? Yeah, it’s probably bull because if this is the crap they’re pulling, they’re trying to start a war.

And, really, let’s think about this here. Iraq is just sitting there, doing nothing and under our thumb really. Yet North Korea’s been watching its people starve while actively thumbing their noses at us and no violating terms of a ceasefire in a war we were in volved in 50 years ago.

Maybe they’re gearing up to do something on the anniversary?

Jason solves this whole North Korea nuclear power plant “crisis”:

If you’ve been paying attention to the news as of late I’m sure you’ve heard about North Korea moving to start up it’s nuclear power plant who’s byproduct can be used to create a nuclear weapon. The lates development has North Korea expelling the UN inspection team that was watching over the site.

Now, part of me is amazed at the hypocricy of this. I mean, let’s see, Russia, many European countires, the United States, all of us have nuclear power plants. Hell, the Bush administration is pushing for more to solve any sort of energy crisis that may pop up. If it’s good for us, why can’t it be good for North Korea?

But I digress. Here’s a solution for this whole mess.

Why not let North Korea build its power plant, but the United Nations takes posession of all spent radioactive material after it is used? I mean, what does Korea need with it? I’m sure they don’t want it lying around, and this would help them stave off an international incident by simply saying, “hey, we just want the power, you can have the left overs later.” Okay, maybe they won’t agree to that, but has anyone tried?

Same thing with Iran. Why are we so against other countries getting nuclear power plants when we’re trying to pop them out like we’re breeding rabbits? Countries like North Korea, who’s suffering a food crisis still, if I’m not mistaken, can put more power to use, or, if they don’t need all of it, they can sell the energy to neighboring countries, getting them money to purchase more food (which they might not do, but a guy can dream, can’t he?)

Hell, maybe all of this has been tried already and I’m just talking out of my ass, but it’s a thought.

When you just can’t get enough of that spam there’s Spam You Silly!

Nostradamus predicted Wynonna’s shoplifting charges!!!!

Human Clone to be announced today? I doubt it, but we’ll see what these folks have to say.

The New 7 Wonders of the World Wha? Dude, these selections suck.