McSweeney's can still bring it... here's a Revised Corporate E-Mail Signature that, with some edits, I'd love to use. Excerpt:

If you are not the intended recipient, you should not copy, distribute, or take any action. That said, keep in mind that there are no coincidences; you have received this, so let's just take it from there. Freud would argue you're absolutely my intended recipient, right? The long-dead coked-up thinker stuck on Mom would say that no matter how unlikely it was that you received this e-mail and read this signature, it was, in fact, no accident.

Ah, fall is in the air... must be time for some marauding youths to get up to their wacky hijinks.

Of course they are just youths, nothing special about them like a common religion or anything. Because that would certainly provide some interesting context in the news story, but since it isn't here we'll just assume they are simply expressing their concerns over, um, some statements made by, um, the Interior Minister, um, over a year ago. Yeah, that's it. Damn right-wingers.

Culver CIty News. Culver's football team is really good this year and has a big showdown with Samo High at Santa monica college today at 7pm (10/27). They are led by the #6 QB in the nation, and California yardage leader, Darius Banks. Sam coched Darius, which is why he's so good but also a mellow cat.

The kid really needs to go to Cal (right Glen?), because Tedford-coached quarterbacks get drafted in the first round: Aaron Rodgers, David Carr, Trent Dilfer, Kyle Boller, Akili Smith & Joey Harrington. That's an insane record, no one else is close. And of those guys, only Harrington was a prep star (Rodgers was a walk on), so you know Tedford is doing something right.

I posted a response to Sony's comment that I have no plan and am only critical. Actually, that was the most rational & least emotional of our exchanges so far, IMO.

Youtube.com. Wow. I spent the whole day there yesterday (since work was really slow). There's truly a TON of crappy videos, but there are some gems.

I'm tripping on some amazing slow-mo stuff that I'd never seen before.
Here's an AWESOME clip of a water balloon hitting a guy in the head in slo-mo.


Also a few other sick vids...
Water Balloon popping
Slow Motion Glock
ENJOY

Bubba Wells Update. For the Farragut CC crowd. At my book club on sunday, I mentioned CC and one guy asked if i went to school there. Turns out he is married to Barbara Wells daughter. I almost said, "BUBBA Wells?!", but restrained myself. She is now Dr. Barbara Wells, staff at the UCLA Graduate School of Education.

Just put up some videos onto youtube, but nothing special yet. Just basic stuff so far.

Just saw these Noam Chomsky comments on Youtube, and I'm still always impressed by his words. One highlight,

"What is needed in the USA is change so that public opinion plays a role in public policy."

GENIUS

Neave.TV's 'Gay Bar' video w/Bush & Blair video

Hilarious, and the Neave.tv 'remarkable' trick is full screen video.

Not that exciting to me, but the vid was funny. :)

I didn't know they could do this yet, but the tech makes sense -- just instead of firign bits they fire water drops.

Wow, this one is sick too! A mix of screens and voices -- give it a chance to go thru the 'prep' shots.

Humanism is the 'Left-Wing' perspective I subscribe to, if people keep wanting to pidgeon-hole me, not Liberalism. Can't you get that part correct at least?

In response to Sony's post quoting the unidentified friend bearing oodles of right-winger wisdom, I posted my reply in the comments.

My favorite line from my comment is:
I just disagree that money spent on socially positive things (helping poor people eat, live, etc) is "wasting money" -- and I don't believe CEO's (I'll specify for this argument only CEO's that took NO RISK in starting a company) should be paid 100 million +.

It's interesting b/c we really are communicating from different worlds. Most of my friends, family, and entertainment media that I watch (Daily Show, Realtime w/Bill Maher, Democracy Now, Link TV, Pacifica Radio, etc) are Left or Leftish. For me, what's happening today is straight from "1984" by Orwell, where double-think is now a virus that's out of control.

When I watch the right-wing media for too long, I honestly get ill. If Bush can get away with saying "They hate our freedoms" as he passes the Patriot act, and no-one in the Press says to him, "But it's you that is the one attacking American freedoms", I see that as a problem.

As a Berkeley professor recently said at a garage sale (we chatted in the street about this stuff), 'The Nazi's are back in power, they just haven't formally announced their racist plans yet' (although Bush did 'accidentally' say Crusade, briefly -- woops! There he goes again, that silly dumb President making those accidental comments. He just doesn't know what he's saying, right? ... Or maybe it's what he accused Bin Laden of doing, speaking w/code words).

The Professor thought that the racism of Nazis in WWII actually lost them the war, and this time the racism would be better strategized and propogandized. Perhaps the strategy is to make everyone FEAR the poor non-whites that are targetted? Maybe it's to make us HATE them for doing something horrible to us?

As I see it, the Neo-Cons are on the same campaign as the Nazi's of WWII:

• Global Empire of whites ruling over lower races.


• Lower the global net population, most preferably non-white population, to increase available wealth for white consumption.


• Utilize military for dominant power positions around the world, and esp use lots of force in non-white areas.


• Unite Business with Military with Government (and possibly Religion, although that's not really necessary).


• Keep the white wealth in power.

All this "Right-Wing Neo Con" stuff to me just advocates racial oppression and global empire / exploitation under white rulership.
Maybe you don't see it that way, or maybe that's acceptable to you?

But I for one am not going to say "Gee, what a great plan" as people are hyping this point of view under WHATEVER label, either "free markets", "free trade", "capitalism", or "pure supply demand economy".

I'm going to say, loudly, "that plan is crap" because PEOPLE are more important than concepts like supply & demand, capitalism, free markets or free trade.

And I'm not the only 'kook' that's saying this. There is a GREEN 'triple bottom line' that you might be interested in learning about: People, then Planet, then Profits. Once that limitation is established, I think I'll be ok with 'capitalism' doing it's thing.

master anton van thomas.wing chun kung fu promo 05

here's a LONG video promo for wing chun kung fu. The video revolution is on, y'all! Wow. What's cool about this video is ... a) it's long and you get to see some real stuff b) it's multi-ethnic (black, white, asian, etc) c) the woman near the end is AWESOME For those of us that studied under Hawkins. :) I don't think any of us did Wing Chun for that long, but it is a very effective Kung Fu style. this video and this video are awesome as well, showing all kinds of crazy aerial kicking and 'urban acrobatics'.

Pretty useful site for gas prices. Nice to know that my local station is the cheapest in Oakland.

Cool map too.

Less than a year ago we had some serious trouble with the numbskull Cal football players living next to us. In particular, one guy was just out of control, always yelling and screaming and challenging people to fights. I'm assuming he was an angry drunk, but I really don't know if alchohol played such a big part.

One late weeknight, he was making such a racket that Mike Rowe's wife Kathleen came out and started hectoring him, saying she was going to call the police and accusing him of dealing drugs (admittedly she was pretty annoying). He just went the fuck off, threatening to kick her ass, Mike's ass, saying we live in a ghetto, just on and on. The police were called out and we filed a report. Actually he accused Kathleen of assault because she tapped him on the head from over the fence. So yes, he was that kind of pussy to actually go on record as filing an assault charge against a 5'5" schoolteacher.

A couple weeks later, he got into it with some random guy passing by on the street, and that guy was ready to throw down or perhaps go away and come back heavy. That was the final straw.. we talked to the landlord and got him evicted lest he induces a driveby.

So, why am I telling this story? He was in the news yesterday for getting into a confrontation at a strip club, the details of which sounded all too familiar, especially the juxtoposition between his initial rage and his later "who me?" innocent act.

I showed some of the conversation we were having to a freind of mine and appreciated his response:

I respect your boy Rekz’ vision and motivation, unfortunately I don’t agree with his solutions. What he is advocating is that hard-working folk such as myself (or you for that matter) (who’s parents were immigrants and came to this country without a nickel and worked for everything they have), that busted my ass at every single level of schooling, didn’t get in trouble, worked numerous jobs, paid for school, studied hard, got a career, worked 7 days per week, 16 hours per day to advance and to get to where I am today, should split it with my poor buddies who slacked off, did drugs, failed in school, blah blah blah. The way I see it, a true capitalistic society is a meritocracy, just about everyone has the opportunity to succeed and if you work hard and deserve it, you will move up the ladder (of course there are exceptions like the truly disabled who I am ok with receiving government funded assistance).



Some of his ideas are classic liberalistic robin hood theory (quite frankly I don’t think that today’s bright young democrats believe in such extreme left wing ideas b/c they know having studied history and economics that they sound much better in theory than in real world practice). Again, I appreciate the end goal and I respect his desire to help people but what he fails to realize (and the reason I am not a democrat) is that his ways of achieving it does not work -- (10x cap on exec salaries etc)?? Does he think that anyone will ever become entrepreneurial? That anyone would ever take a risk (I sure has hell wouldn’t have left my job, gone into massive debt, risked the future of my wife and children to start a company that today gainfully employs over 40 people). That people would invent new technologies? That our society would continue to thrive? Human nature simply does not work like that – I don’t mean to oversimplify, but this is exactly why the USSR fell apart. Its been proven all throughout history that purely socialistic concepts don’t work. Again, great in theory, terrible disasters in practice.



Again, I respect his vision and motivation, but I don’t think he has ever studied economics (or definitely doesn’t understand it if he thinks being Republican means you are only for the wealthy). I am simply a capitalist and believe that true capitalism is the only cure for what ails the poor. Supply Side economic theory is not to make the rich richer it is to make everyone richer (Democrats are completely disingenuous at every election when they talk about the tax cuts only benefiting the wealthiest 1% - What they fail to mention is that 95% of what they call the wealthiest 1% are actually small businesses, which is exactly what drives and keeps the economy healthy – If small businesses are not healthy and prosperous, the economy will not be healthy and prosperous, and obviously this leads to unemployment, lower wages etc). Entitlement programs actually hurt the economy b/c the money is not going to good use (it’s the old give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats forever), it is not an investment in infrastructure that will pay off long term, it’s simply money thrown down the drain. I think any economist worth his salt will tell you that a strong economy must be built off of supply side principles and not Keynesian principles.

I am rambling just to ramble, b/c what truly irritates me is that somewhere along the line being a Republican became a bad word amongst people that don’t understand or aren’t truly educated about economic theory. Are their racist and elitist republicans? Of course there are, but there are just as many that are democrats. I make the point that Erik makes below all of the friggin time, I am just as good a person as my Democrat friends, and I want the same exact goals as they do (help the poor succeed etc – I am an active member of 3 charities) but I just believe there is a better way to reach the solution. Unfortunately, conservatism doesn’t sound as good in the 10-second sound byte at election time as liberalism does b/c it takes a more sophisticated understanding of economics than your buddy Rekz has.

And that is why most people vote for justice and fair play. Its in their interest and their children's interest.

The Nietzsche Family Circus

Budgetary Analysis Discussion Con't.

I don't think any right-thinking person believe that bush has been anything but a fiscal disaster. People dismiss "mandatory" spending as somehow not his responsibility, but he and the GOP passed the first new entitlement program since Lyndon Johnson and it is an unmitigated, wide open disaster.

His apologists also try to exclude "Homeland Security" spending from the discussion as if its pseudo-mandatory, but its not. Placing a SWAT unit in every Midwestern town, invading Iraq, even invading Afghanistan were choices and if you make those, you can justify cuts elsewhere. But they requested and legislated no offsetting cuts, which is irresponsible.

As far as discretionary spending, let’s start with numbers.

The 7.9 percent of GDP spent on discretionary programs in 2005 was not far off the historical average. Discretionary spending topped 10 percent of GDP from World War II through the early 1980s, before falling to 6.3 percent in 2000, and then spiking back up to 7.9 percent in 2005.

Defense spending has driven much of these fluctuations. From 9.3 percent of GDP in 1962, it typically remained over 5 percent until the Soviet Union fell in 1991. Then, after dropping all the way down to 3.0 percent of GDP in 2000, the War on Terrorism has pushed it back up to 4.1 percent.

Non-defense discretionary spending has remained more stable over the past few decades. After dropping to 3.2 percent of GDP in 1999, it has since surged to 3.9 percent in 2005.

…

Overall discretionary outlays rose 2.3 percent annually under President Clinton, compared to 9.7 percent annually under President Bush. Defense was virtually frozen in nominal dollars under President Clinton, and has averaged 12 percent annual growth under President Bush. Non-defense discretionary outlays rose 4 percent annually under President Clinton, versus 8 percent annually under President Bush.

He goes on the emphasize, that the GOP, party of small, limited government increased spending on education 62 percent, or 10 percent annually; International affairs up 74 percent, or 12 percent annually; Health research and regulation up 57 percent, or 9 percent annually; Veterans’ benefits up 46 percent, or 8 percent annually; Science and basic research up 40 percent, or 7 percent annually.

Each party tends to think that everything would be manageable if their guys made it into power, but I just think its structurally unmanageable. How can 566 people oversee an $11,000,000,000 budget that is funded by everyone (including the unborn) but them? It can’t be done without violating laws of human nature. Give someone access to someone else’s money and them make it his job to have people like him and reelect him. Its over. Its all hopeless absent some cataclysmic event.

Cool article by the most recent nobel laurete in economics. Synopsis of book analyzing how progress occurs ("the true enemies of humanity's future are those who insist on prescribing outcomes in advance, circumventing the process of competition and experiment in favor of their own preconceptions and prejudices"). One method of making people act like you want them to ("press the button, and deliver a painful two-second electrical shock into the student at the end of the wire"). bird brain?.

I'm impressed! I had to comment on Sony's comment re: the 'cunning poor' that vote intelligently and believe in Republican Party & free market capitalist empirical expansion?

I had no idea that the poor could be seen thru such a lens. "They're smart and know what they're doing" when they vote for Bush/Cheney. This lens looks into a different dimension than this one, but it's still impressive. I doubt I could believe a statement that outrageous in the middle of a massive acid trip! (Well, probably then, yeah. I'd be just far out enough...)

Wow. All the 'discussion' with Erik and Sony had me asking myself, 'Did we grow up in the same Earth?'. But then I realized, I'm a Jewish guy that's lived all around the world since I was 3, and I believe in the ideals of peace, freedom, equality, and justice. I have my undergrad in left-wing US History from UCSD, where I focussed on the legacy of US covert military strategy & policies. My parents are both left-wingers, and I was raised to challenge authority and question imperialism.

So maybe that explains things? It's really interesting the differing viewpoints that show up in this Blog -- in many ways it's a microcosm of the USA. It's like speaking different languages that neither side can even accept as linked into reality at all.

What's most amazing is we're still speaking English, it's not like we're speaking in foreign languages... but we are.

Posted the radical left song lyrics to Dark Chomsky, a speech R·E-mix song I created, a long time back.
FYI -- I don't just sample the speech & go w/it, I totally re-phrase most of the speaker's sentences. If I didn't have backing music, you can hear much more clearly the awkward way the sentences sound. Funny that the music 'flattens' the speech to sound more natural.

I made a myspace.com musician account, R·E (aka myspace.com\realityenhancer), which is now online, and it's cool b/c it just starts streaming a random song.

It wasn't that difficult to setup, so if any other musical types are posting tracks, please post them? I'd like to hear what you're doing?

I remember the rap trio, Javan, A, and Sam, that was around for awhile. Anything go anywhere w/that? No mp3's to post online, just for kicks? :D

Attn: Sam & Rick, not sure why but the havenauts.com website is kinda ... well, open to being hacked. I followed the Lemons for Lemonade Blog link into that site, and it's ... sitting there wide open.

Did Sam ever put out a CD? How'd it sell? I'm asking b/c I'm planning to print up a couple hundred before the end of theyear.

I was clicking the 'name links' on the right, wondering why so few peeps reg'd w/Blogger. Thought maybe I'd find some cool stuff posted, music or something? If you guys are minorly blogger savvy, you can give yourself an ID here and have links pop from there.

For Erik (& everyone) here's some ripped tracks --
I mean 'information sharing' -- of a couple hilarious bits:
FIXED THE LINKS

ENJOY! David Cross is truly one of the amazing
Left-Wing comedians of today.
On Bush's 9/11 response
On Tax Cuts and Capital Punishment policies

And just a general, non-political, humor
(+ the true PERFECT Pope impersonation):

on Priest's molesting boys

This is hilarious stuff... and offensive too.
SHAKING THINGS UP!!!

Sorry, but they'll only be up for a few weeks.
Grab 'em today and you can replay for hours of laughter. :)