Texas Court Upholds Butt Search for Crack Peek-a-boo…. (thanks, Page)

Shatner’s ex-wife sues over horse semen Uh…. (this one’s from Reenhead)

The Dante’s Inferno Test has sent you to the First Level of Hell - Limbo!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	High
Level 2 (Lustful)	Moderate
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very Low
Level 7 (Violent)	Low
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante’s Divine Comedy Inferno Test

I took some Claratin for the first time ever yesterday right before I went to bed. So I don’t know whether or not it’s responsible for me feeling a bit better today than I did yesterday, but I think it is. Woo!

Anyone else have problems with sleeping on this stuff? I kept waking up throughout the night.

Self-Centered Blogging Continued…

Mike Sanders continues:

I think it is pretty evident that every human on this planet is self-centered to a great degree. This is how we are created. We see the world from inside our own heads, we are primarily concerned with our own (and our families) survival and we feel most vividly our own pains and pleasures. The question is how much we work on overcoming this natural tendency and demonstrate true appreciation and caring for others through thought, speech and action. On blogs the answer is - not much. Of course blogs are limited to the area of writing/speech and it is much more exciting and interesting to write with contempt, anger and rage. Let’s face it, being nice is to a great degree - boring.

Having a belief in G-d also helps overcome self-centeredness because we can work (and it takes a lifetime of work) on putting G-d in the center and reducing our own egocentric view. Of course that is not to say that all people who have a stronger belief in G-d are less self-centered than those who are less sure of G-d’s existence.

I think a belief in God could go either way, really, as is apparent from the actions of others. How many people do you know with the “I’m saved and you’re not” sin of presumption? That’s a self-centered belief no necessarily created by God because I think those people would be asses whether or not they had religion, but it’s simply something for them to grasp and flaunt.

And it’s not really just a belief in God, but any faith system that can lead to being less self-centered. It requires not only a belief in something greater than yourself or a set of rules that exist beyond you but most religions have the basic tenants of:

1) be good

2) be good to others

3) don’t do that

What more do you need?

It’s really just a matter of people truly believing and practicing their faith or simply following it because they feel a need to. Is your faith because you’re looking out for yourself or is it because it gives you the best outlook on others? When you go around asking people if they’ve been saved, that’s not for their sake but yours. You are reaffirming your own faith by pushing it on others, you’re trying to make yourself feel good about it as well as convince yourself that you’ve made the right choice.

I need to look it up, but there’s something in the Bible about practicing your religion with yourself, not flaunting it, because that’s not what God wants.

3 Racy Men’s Magazines Banned by Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the nation’s largest retailer, said yesterday that it had halted sales of Maxim, Stuff and FHM, men’s magazines that feature a mix of scantily clad starlets and bawdy humor but go to some lengths to avoid being labeled as pornography.

…

The decision to stop selling the so-called lads’ magazines is the latest in a series of moves by the company to limit distribution of entertainment products it judges too racy for its shoppers. The company has refused to sell CD’s that carry warning labels about explicit lyrics; instead, Wal-Mart Stores sell sanitized versions of albums, with some songs omitted or covers redrawn to pass muster with the chain’s buyers. The stores also ask for age identification from purchasers of video games with mature-audience ratings.

But they’ll continue to sell guns and ammunition to whoever wants it. Come on, people, it is up to parents to parent, not Wal-Mart to do it for you.

More quizes cause I’m bored…

Gay Bear

Which Dysfunctional Care Bear Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Crap.

Reporters Without Borders protesters beaten up by Cuban embassy officials

Reporters Without Borders activists were beaten by staff of the Cuban embassy in Paris today when they chained themselves to the embassy railings in the presence of several prominent cultural figures to protest against the imprisonment of 26 journalists in Cuba.

A dozen Reporters Without Borders protesters were attacked by Cuban embassy staff today after the ambassador refused to accept a letter demanding the release of 26 journalists recently imprisoned for up to 27 years. Cuba has now overtaken Eritrea, Burma and China as the world’s biggest prison for journalists.

After the refusal, the protesters chained shut the entrances to the embassy and handcuffed themselves to the railings outside. Embassy staff then beat up the organisation’s secretary-general, Robert Ménard, and the head of its Latin America desk, Régis Bourgeat.

The demonstrators wore masks and t-shirts bearing pictures of the journalists and carried two banners, one reading “Cuba = prison” and the other showing a quote by one of the jailed journalists, Raúl Rivero, saying : “I don’t plot, I write.”

…

The Cuban government took advantage of the imminent US invasion of Iraq to launch an unprecedented wave of repression on 18 March, arresting nearly 80 dissidents, including 26 independent journalists, and accusing them of undermining the country’s “independence and territorial integrity” in league with the US Interests Section (diplomatic representation) in Havana. They were jailed for between six and 28 years.

Raúl Rivero, 1997 winner of the Reporters Without Borders / Fondation de France Prize and Ricardo González, the Reporters Without Borders correspondent in Havana, received 20-year sentences. All were given sham trials, in secret, at high speed, with no right to defend themselves and involving pre-prepared evidence from undercover agents and neighbours accusing them solely on the basis of their opinions.

Yeah, why is the world silent on Cuba’s recent crackdown on dissenters? I mean, there was brief media mention back in March and then nothing. No lasting effect. And there’s a movement to lift the embargos? Hell, if Castro’s still doing this there’s no way in hell the international community should welcome him with open arms.

Over at Metapop Charyl makes a good point on the upcoming Homeland Security drill:

…wasn’t it Seattle’s City Council that passed resolutions critical of the Patriot Act and “asking Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell to oppose President Bush’s resolution authorizing a unilateral, pre-emptive strike in Iraq”? And not only Seattle, but Chicaco’s City Council also voted (46-1!!) to formally oppose a unilateral, pre-emptive strike in Iraq. So it’s interesting that these two cities, who were very high-profile in their opposition of actions in Iraq and who obviously didn’t concede that our national security was threatened enough to initiate military action, should be the host cities for a Homeland Security Drill.

Particuarly interesting is their eagerness to participate now.

Interesting indeed.

I have a great concern about these drills in that they’re really going to do nothing. Never, ever will a real attack and the following response happen like you prepare for it. Because you can’t anticipate the reaction of the populace should a terrorist attack occur. Okay, yea police, fire and rescue quickly responding and the hospitals being fully staffed, but what about the roads clogged with people freaking out and running like hell, possible looting should the panic grow large enough, etc. I’m not saying we shouldn’t drill, we should do what we can to be prepared as possible, but you really aren’t going to be completely ready when the shit hits the fan.

And Belerus helped Saddam? Huh.

Report: Man Charged in Foot-Licking

A man convicted of licking the feet of three female shoppers in Rhode Island is facing a trial in June on charges he allegedly licked a woman’s foot in a Massachusetts supermarket.

Raymond C. Dublin, 35, of Rhode Island, is finishing a one-year sentence for simple assault charges in connection with the foot-licking complaints in Rhode Island.

He will appear before a Milford District Court judge for a bench trial on the Massachusetts charges on June 2, The MetroWest Daily News of Framingham reported.

Dublin allegedly sneaked up behind a woman last year at a Bellingham supermarket and licked her feet and toes. He faces charges of assault and battery and lewd and lascivious behavior, the paper reported.

Dublin also has run into trouble for other sex offenses in the past.

In 1991, he was convicted of first-degree sexual assault and sentenced to 15 years with 10 to serve; in 1998 he was convicted of second-degree sexual assault and sentenced to 15 years with five to serve, the newspaper said.

I hope she kicked him in the face. Cause, you know, it was right there.

I think ‘wild’ is the last term that could even remotely be used to describe me, but….

Congratulations, you’re New Orleans, the wild city.
What US city are you? Take the quiz by Girlwithagun.

A Survey of Blogs and Bloggers

The purpose of this survey is to examine the uses and users of Weblogs. We ask that only those individuals who access Weblogs participate in this survey.

This study is being conducted for academic purposes by researchers at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. The survey has been approved by the UT Institutional Review Board. All responses will be kept confidential and no identifying personal factors will be used in reporting the results of this survey. Your email address is used only to check for duplicate transmission.

If anyone’s interested.

And the big problem I’m seeing off the bat is the political focus of the questionare. Not all blogs are punditblogs, so why are you questioning bloggers as if they are?

New At Artifice Comics

Anthology 2: Bush43/Isiah Rowe: A Friend Indeed

By Jason Kenney

I grew up in Pacific City because I had to. Son of an American woman and an Australian man, she had met him here and opted to stay so they could be married. My mother held on to that damned American culture and fed me on it, took me stateside whenever she went back, but those were one month getaways at a time. I always came back to Pacific City.

It’s not that it’s a bad city. It’s large enough and still growing at a fast enough clip that you can never really know everything about this place, it’s always changing. Sometimes when it doesn’t want to.

Caverns torn into the city months ago are refilled and built upon, new stores, new apartments, new offices, new blood to the city that has seen so much.

New blood. Christ, why does this city attract so many people?Okay, its size can be a curse as well. You’re never alone in a city like Pacific City. Even in your apartment, in the dark, in the middle of an empty room, the paper thin walls do nothing to separate you from the other apartments, the world outside, the other people.

And with large numbers of people come those that are our ‘betters’.

Heroes dance around the rooftops with the villain of the month, putting on a free dramatic show for the teeming masses of the city whose fate rests upon the outcome. No matter how many times this happens, day in and day out, the town never tires of these sights, these events. Not usually.

Sometimes it tires of the plot and throws in its own twist.

Like a trigger happy mayor or a fancy new robot.

A change in main characters, the old thread is forgotten, the old flavors switched for the new, the soap opera continues.

But you can never be rid of characters, no, you keep them in the wings for dramatic comebacks and resurrections and flamboyant, dramatic reentries into the tale that keeps being told.

Everything old is new again, the more things change…

And sometimes the saga becomes an audience participation number.

I experimented with the second person and a semi-serious Bush43 story.

Caped crusader saves the day in English town

A masked and caped do-gooder has been sweeping through an English town, performing good deeds and scattering terrified bad guys, a local newspaper reported on Friday.

The Kent and Sussex Courier said it had received letters from “stunned residents” of the town of Tunbridge Wells, southeast of London, who saw the man in a brown mask and cape scare off hooligans and return a woman’s dropped purse.

“To my great surprise,” the paper quoted 21-year-old psychology student Ellen Neville as saying, “a masked man wearing a brown cape rushed past me to assist a woman who was having a bother with a group of youths.

“He swept in, broke up the commotion and ran off, leaving myself and the woman in a state of shock,” she said.

A man wrote to say he was being chased by some youths when the hero appeared and “shocked the gang so much they ran off.”

Another woman wrote to say the crusader had tapped her on her shoulder to return her purse.

“If only there were more people around with this kind-hearted spirit,” she said.

Uh…. Okay. I guess. The guy’s lucky guns are illegal.

I missed it then, so I’ll talk about it now, but on Friday, Mike Sanders commented on four main personality traits of bloggers:

If you read enough bloggers you can see that they primarily portray four character traits, two positive and two negative.

The positive blogger traits are:

Intelligence

Kindheartedness

The negative blogger traits are:

Self-centeredness

Mean spiritedness

What is fascinating amount the human experience is how we all possess these positive and negative traits. In ourselves we tend to accentuate the positive and ignore the negative. In others, we often focus on the negative and ignore the positive. One of the most famous ethical/religious directives is to Love your Neighbor as Yourself. We might try to get closer to this goal by focusing on other people’s positive traits and overlooking the negative. The spiritual pleasure achieved from this is much more subtle then the negative rush that comes out of contempt, anger and rage but it is well worth it.

Have a nice weekend.

I’m curious as to what specific sites he’s referencing, and I can see where he’s coming from, but I don’t completely agree.

Intelligence, sure, lots of bloggers have that, at least the ones that are worth paying attention to, because that’s what makes them good. Their ability to be thought provoking and avoid looking like an idiot.

Kindheartedness, eh, sometimes, like with the Blog-A-Thon and, hell, even just giving people props when you take links from them.

Self-centeredness, of course. A blog is a personal site about the person writing it, of course it’s going to be self-centered to an extent. But when that expands beyond their site and into a simple state of being, well, then we start having issues.

Mean spiritedness is a trait common on the net. While a lot of it occurs through the joy of anonymous posts or comments that the net enables us to do, sometimes you have a blogger going to far. This is possibly just an extension of Self-Centeredness which may be derived from the Intellegence aspect. The three can (but do not necessarily always) relate.

The Kindheartedness is the fluke. Well, maybe not completely, as it can be created from Intellegence allowing one to have more insight into just the way things are and how they need to be kinder towards others, but unless one gets prideful about their kindness, we’re not likely to see it lead to any of the negatives.

Overall, I think the ‘Love Your Neighbor as Yourself’ ethos has gone the way of the dodo, unfortunately. Look at the world, the hate and the way people treat each other merely because of minor differences in opinion, philosophy, lifestyle, sexual preference, skin color, etc. You continually have people treating others poorly because they feel they are right and that they should not be treated the same because, well, they’re right! The Self-Centeredness destroys the chance of that mindset existing. When one becomes the center of the universe, it is no longer about your treatment of others coming back to you in kind. It is simply about you. Disappointing, really. Lots of good folks have been lost to that kind of thinking.

And I did have a nice weekend, Mike, I hope yours was dandy as well.

Gangsta bluegrass fans set to attack?

Shaun points to an excellent column by Free Lance Star’s Mike Zitz about the wonderfully diverse and open minded Mary Washington College:

Mary Washington’s rule of thumb seems to be that if there’s a lot of interest in a band, shows generally shouldn’t be open to the public. Because, you see, if there’s interest, people might actually come.

Rigel, a member of Giant, the student entertainment committee at MWC, e-mailed me to explain that safety is the reason.

“I am not implying in any way that the people of Fredericksburg would harm anyone on campus, but if tickets were to sell out at the door and if we were forced to turn people away then what you would have is a lot of ‘townies’ with nothing to do wandering around on a college campus,” Rigel wrote. “In any town, in any city, in any suburb, no matter how safe, this is not the wisest of decisions.

“If we had the police staff to escort such a number of citizens off campus, then I’m sure we would do so; however, as that is not the case, we decided to close the concert to the public. This is in no way a commentary on how the college regards the city of Fredericksburg, nor is it some elitist way to shut you out of our activities.”

Uh huh. So let’s review. If there was a big enough MWC police force–if, say, an officer could be assigned to every “townie,” then it would be safe to have the public on this public school campus.

Not that “townies” would harm anyone. Not to imply that “townies” are some kind of threat. No, no, a thousand times no.

But maybe if the college police were mounted on horseback and had really big nightsticks, that would make it easier to contain roaming “townies” foaming at the mouth because a show is sold out.

…

Remember that this is a public school.

And remember that there are concerts sold out all over America every single night without a whole lot of rioting and pillaging.

Mary Washington does the community a great service by bringing in speakers like Ken Burns and by hosting many high-brow cultural events. And it always opens those events to the public and always does an excellent job of publicizing them.

But then, the college is perfectly comfortable with the graying, middle- and upper-middle-class outsiders those events attract.

MWC seems to become uncomfortable when big-name rock and hip-hop concerts promise to bring in young, diverse crowds from outside the campus.

It may seem odd to say that a college worries about young, diverse crowds on campus. That is, until you consider the fact that The Princeton Review rated MWC the “Most Homogenous” campus in America for 2003. The publication meant that Mary Washington is so lacking in diversity that its student body looks like it was stamped out with a cookie cutter.

Maybe that’s why “townies” seem so foreboding.

See, I hate this crap. It’s in every college town, I know, the college kids versus townies, but I don’t have to like it. Look, you snottly little brats, you are here because we let you come here. You are our guests. You are here MAYBE eight months out of the year, don’t pay taxes, take up parking, crowd our streets, get in our way, and all because we don’t mind it too much.

And now you want to bar us from ‘your’ campus?

This type of stuff pisses me off almost as much as when the students were demanding a right to vote in city elections. YOU ARE NOT RESIDENTS OF THE AREA! So don’t even BEGIN to think you have a right to dictate to anyone who lives here what they can or can not do in their town, with their politics, and especially on the beautiful campus that exists because of their tax dollars.

If a band comes to the area, great, I understand selling tickets to the students first, but any left over should be given to the public, for many reasons. For starters, the more money this band makes, the more likely they are to come back and the more power you have in pulling future shows. Also, hell, this is our town.

And what’s so wrong with people being on your campus? It is public property, therefore we the public are allowed on it. If the entire city of Fredericksburg decided to take a stroll through your campus, there’s not a damn thing you can do about it, especially if they aren’t doing anything wrong.

So get over yourselves and go home for the summer already.