My politics, charted... sort of.

And one with a bit more detailed questioning:

You are a Social Liberal (80% permissive) and an... Economic Moderate (50% permissive) You are best described as a: Democrat Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid.com: Free Online Dating Also : The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

HT to http://stonekettlestation.blogspot.com/

Both of these claim to measure the same things, but the second one has a longer and more detailed quiz attached, and i suspect that both say as much about the biases of the quiz designers as the quiz takers.

Because the LHC is perfectly safe....

I'm posting links to their webcams to prove it. See? No reason to panic.

Drugs! Or, why i love Big Lots

Hi, my name is Michael, and i am a caffeine fueled raging motherfucker.

I'll drink coffee, and if it is good coffee i will even enjoy it... especially if someone else is paying for the good coffee.

I'll drink tea, even though not enough of the caffeine seems to get into the finished drink unless i brew it so strong that anyone drinking it with me turns whiny about it.

I'll guzzle soft drinks, diet or regular, Coke or Pepsi, brand and flavor don't much matter as long as it is not flat out nasty, and has my drug of choice included in the recipe.

And energy drinks? Whoa, bonus, with their additions of various dosages of herbal speeders and B vitamins, few bevvies work on me nearly as well. Never mind that a few of them break my not nasty tasting rule, the rush is worth it... The price, on the other hand, not so much.

Which brings me to Big Lots... at least locally, their beverage aisle is about 50% energy drinks, ranging from 8 ounce glass bottles of blackcurrant weirdness in the shape of a grenade, to 24 ounce cans of heart asplodey goodness... A riotous mix of familiar brands in unfamiliar flavors and mixes you might not want to know are in the marketplace... Including i remember a drink that claimed to be sex fuel... From the amount of dust on those cans, i guess no one else wanted to try it either.

Which brings me wandering eventually to my latest fix... Howling Monkey Energising Cola... the bevvy with the creepiest and least informative promotional site i have ever viewed. The flavor is close to bog-standard cola, with some slightly odd side notes, i have been getting this stuff in 6 packs of 16 oz cans for $3.60 with about the same boot to the head factor as the more common Red Bull, Monster etc...

And i have never seen this stuff anywhere else! I love this stuff, but apparently the same marketing geniuses who screwed the pooch with their entertaining but non informative web site were in charge of distribution of this speedy ambrosia.

And that sucks, because the biggest problem with Big Lots is that all too often, once a product is gone, it's gone. **sigh** And then i will have to find another way to feed my monkey.

Whiskey tango foxtrot...

Or: more fun with Adsense:

Ads by Google

Silent Partner Body Armor Point Blank Body Armor Level IV Body Armor Second Chance Body Armor Bulletproof Vests Helmets

Heh, these must have come with either mention of "security" or "paranoia" in the previous post... The thing is, i don't see myself as the type to wear a chicken suit... Not even the nifty class IIIa armoured trench coat a friend showed me being sold years ago.

The fact is, neither i, nor most people live a life of danger... And most of us who do, are generally in jobs that PROVIDE such gear.

Shit can and does happen, but security is a trade off... Something that folks like Bruce Schneier point out all the time. Without having done any clicky clicky on those ads, i am willing to bet that few of them go to sites sellong to folks who get shot at for a living.

I bet that most of them go to links selling to frightened people. And i am just not that scared.

So, is it a bad idea to occasionally make posts poking fun at the ads i get served?

Paranoid? Me? Did THEY tell you that?

I am not really a paranoid, at least not in the sense that a professional headshrinker would use the term.

I mean, assuming that i remember Psych 101 correctly, from back at the dawn of time, there are three main diagnostic criteria for clinical paranoia:

1. Delusions of Grandeur: Ummm, not me, i am just some random John Q. Asshole who writes a blog to amuse himself and maybe anyone else who stumbles on it... Hell, i am even too lazy to check whether my dimly remembered diagnostic criteria for paranoia is right. In the general scheme of things, i know that i am not hugely important, except to myself, and my friends and family.
2. Delusions of Reference: I am not, in general convinced people are talking about me... Hell, i sometimes fail to notice when people actually ARE talking about me.
3. Delusions of Persecution: This one is a little harder to deny. While I am quite aware that THEY are not out to get me, and that THEY pretty much don't really exist... I am security conscious and I own several guns. I have a carry permit and don't like going places where through law or rules i am not allowed to use it.

The reason for this is simple, though the odds of getting caught in the middle of a shooting spree are probably similar to those of any given individual winning a lotto jackpot, when they DO happen, it seems to happen most often in places where law abiding types are not allowed to be able to shoot back.

I am not the sort to pay my tax on people who don't understand math. But when facing similar odds of losing it all, i want an ace up my sleeve.

Nope, THEY are not out to get me, but i do want to reduce my odds of being collateral damage.

Anyway, a professional would probably not see me as paranoid... but a shit pot of amateurs do. And it isn't just because of the "gun thing."

I have, in the past, been accused of being a crackpot conspiracy theorist. Not because i am one mind you, but because it is a convenient label for someone who sees a greater threat to this nation coming from the erosion of civil liberties than i do from Islamic terrorists.

Fuck the god-monster of Abraham and all the assholes it inspires. And this includes the "good guys" of the bunch who are nice and friendly and tolerant... but do nothing to stand up to the psychos in their midst... Until the psycho commits an atrocity or three, then they weren't a "real Jew/Christian/Muslim" according to the moderate god botherers of the matching sect.

And it is the psycho god botherers who are driving the reductions in civil liberties. Because the psycho religionists who get into the positions as shot callers in one country give order to do shit that gives the shot calling psychos of other religions and nations the excuse to retaliate.

Sometimes these retaliations come in the form of terrorism.

Terrorism is the excuse du jour for the further erosion of our civil liberties.

This is not due to a conspiracy, despite what i have been accused of believing... This is because religious extremists across several nations got into positions of power. And these fuckers can't get along, so they kill CIVILIANS in each others ranks, because they can get to each other.

Which of course keeps most of us civilians scared enough to fail to notice how OUR religious whackjob shot callers are power mad motherfuckers.

So freedom of speech gets whittled away at, as does freedom of assembly, and forget about freedom FROM religion.

And freedom from unwarranted search and seizure has been pretty much fucked, as has the right to privacy that was inherent in it.

The bastards are wiping their asses with my bill of rights... some few of them out of powerlust. But mostly out of fear. This is NOT a conspiracy... the scheme is too fucking stupid to be part of a successful conspiracy. Because rights stolen help the NEXT motherfuckers in power just as much. And Obama's vote on FISA tells me it will not be getting any better under him. And unlike the current assholes, he wants to disarm the citizenry in general not just the poor folk.

There are no conspiracies that matter... just a long line of fuckups.

At least there is some small hope for privacy... If i ever have to cross national borders with my laptop again, i will be using that software from a live cd, with my HD backed up at home and freshly scrubbed before i set out. Not because i have done anything wrong, not because i have something to hide... because it is none of their thrice damned business what i do with my machine.

Blasphemy!

Wil Wheaton is pissed off. And i can't really blame him. Some movies should probably not be remade. But the thing is... Is Rocky Horror one of them? I mean yeah, it eMpTy V, so they are likely to fuck it up, but that doesn't mean it can't be done right.

Oh, but all remakes suck anyway right? The original is always better. Of course, in the case of John Carpenter's "The Thing" the remake is more of a classic than the original, but hey, this is John Carpenter we're talkin' about... Even if I actually did prefer Rob Zombie's version of "Halloween"...

**ducks the various heavy, sharp and occasionally flaming objects thrown my way**

No! Really! Rob Zombie's version actually tries to examine what can turn a kid into a monster, a mix of bullying abuse, and perhaps screwed up genetics. Carpenter's version only provided an "explanation" tying Michael to a Celtic death god called "Samhain" (and pronounced as Sam Hane).

Problem being, the Celts never worshipped such a Deity. Samhain (pronounced Sow-ain) is a harvest festival, the final of the year, and a night when the land of living and dead are closer than usual, thus a good time to celebrate friends and family who passed on before you.

Zombie skips the supernatural explanation, Michael Myers is just a big, tough, crazy, homicidal son of a bitch, who really loves his little sister.

Isn't that enough?

Remakes don't automatically suck, even when the source material is widely and properly considered classic.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show, probably can be remade in a way that would work. One way may be to play it straight.

Well "straight" may not be the right word, but deadpan. Dump the music, have some maniac like Warren Ellis redo the script. Keep the story, but present it as a sci-fi/horror thriller with both homo and hetero-erotic overtones.

Make it serious and creepy on the surface, with almost subliminal references to the original thrown in.

Heh... Who am I kidding? I am probably the only person in the world who would like that...

Yeah, eMpTy V is likely to screw RHPS up badly... but hell, it just might regenerate interest in the original.

Hell, the news got me checking online for the local cast... Alas, the info shown is for the theater that closed a couple of years ago.

Plastic surgery disasters, where the surgery went well.

Well, this has me seething. A teen girl being interviewed on The View because the year before she went under the knife. And those shitheels on her left are supporting this decision.

The breast reduction i can almost understand, a 15 year old girl with a DD cups and a small frame is probably going to end up with back problems unless she hits one hell of a growth spurt. But that isn't why she did this.

She got the breast reduction because she was often in trouble at school for "creating a disturbance."

Newsflash, SHE was not causing the disturbance, horndogs and bluenoses were causing the disturbance. The kid was just existing.

But i can understand it. I would rather fix the actual source of disruption with a clue by four, but, hell it is her body, and she had parental support.

The LIPOSUCTION on the other hand enrages me. A tiny amount of fat was sucked out of her belly because it seemed unlikely she would grow out of it... Fuck, what little fat she had on her belly was the sort i find attractive in an adult woman. She was definitely no where near obese, or even anything passing for overweight. she just didn't fit the ideal drummed into her, and what the hell, she was already mutilating her tits anyway to get teachers and other kids off her case.

The girl was starting to eat less and less to try to get rid of her tiny belly and make if flat. This is something that can be a major fucking issue, potentially deadly if not treated properly in fact.

Proper treatment is psychological, or at worst psychiatric... NOT surgical, not when she is unlikely to be finished growing especially.

I don't necessarily have a problem with plastic surgery. If you have a limb cut off and saved, it was a plastic surgeon who reattached it, if your nose was broken, a plastic surgeon may have been involved in setting it. Car accident? Assault? Psycho Ex setting you on fire?

All handled in the aftermath by plastic surgeons.

It's the assholes who cut on both men and women to make them fit into some cookie cutter "ideal" of artificial beauty who piss me off.

I have scars on my body that likely could have been avoided with the help of a plastic surgeon, likely many could still be removed. I'm keeping my scars though, because they serve to remind me of times i screwed up, or was jacked up by someone else's screw up.

I am also keeping my gut until or unless i work it off myself as a reminder of my imperfect will. I am going bald and will continue doing so because transplants would ruin my tattoos, my scalp already itches, and i don't like the sound of "Irreversible sexual side effects."

Besides, as anyone who has seen how i dress can attest, i am not good at vanity...

But fashion is a whole other rant.