Chasing Rabbits

Guilty

States' Rights FTW!

The long battle for states' rights has just gotten a notch in its belts with Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to yield jurisdiction to the States in terms of medical marijuana. This position calls off federal raid on medical marijuana dispensaries and allows states to govern their own medical marijuana policy. This yielding of the federal government to states is a good sign, but its doubtful that the Obama administration will expand upon this position. But for now I will give them the benefit of the doubt on states' rights.

Victory!

Jim DeMint lands his blow on the Fairness Doctrine this afternoon with a successful senate vote banning the Doctrine.

AP

How the West was Drained

A great article popped up on Bloomberg today describing the difficulty in maintaining a city in the desert, particularly Las Vegas. Prevailing wisdom is that society tends to prosper, and dare I say survive, where there is water. For thousands of years, people clutched to their rivers, springs, and oases as a vital element to their very existence. But recently, man's arrogance and foolishness has gotten the best of him.
Vanity has led us into the desert, building gleaming golden sky scrapers, reflecting daziling light to the dusty earth. Much like the housing crisis that has cut Las Vegas down at its needs, this development was highly leveraged. You do not need to look far to see the dropping water in Lake Mead, or the struggling ranchers outside of the city. Vegas was built on leveraged water, water that was never really there to begin with. Los Angeles also faced such a problem in the past century, and they have hardly begun to escape it.

My grandfather used to say that you start getting in real trouble when you move water between watersheds. This throws the hydrological cycle out of sync, jeopardizing the regions future water. But in Vegas they like to gamble, big, and this bet might not come through for them.

Original Untitled Dickenson-esque Poem

The darkness-enlightens my breath-
Stale reflecting against the grain-
Emerging from ignorance- the dusk
The sun kisses the clouds-

Passed beyond-chaotic masses-
Stepping from flag to flag-
Towering- yet susceptible to falling
I am balanced-currently

Ticketmaster/LiveNation Merger Senate Hearing

Today at 2:30 EST The Senate Judiciary Committee will be hearing testimony on the pending Ticketmaster-LiveNation merger. Ticketmaster, already in hot water with NJ Boss fans/legislators, has had to scale back its direct link to its secondary market ticket reseller, TicketsNow, after competitive questions were raised. It will be intresting to see how this unfolds, already many anit-trust issues have been brought forward, but if the money made it to the right places in the fall, then there is no stopping it.

Webcast @ C-Span3

ATAT Sound Blaster Comes to Life

No longer a mythic beast of rage, the ATAT Sound Blaster has entered our material world. Once, relegated to sweaty t shirts, the ATAT Boombox takes a bold step into the future of blasting dope beats and 808 claps. Live on Imperial Sonic Groov0pod.

Link

The First Salvo on The Fairness Doctrine

The chatter revolving around the fairness doctrine has been elevating as of late. Democratic congressmen have been piping up in ever increasing amounts, voicing support for the doctrine or a similar analog. Some of these representatives are clearly biased, one is even married to an exec at Air America, the AM failure of a decade.

Well now the issue is really heating up, this week Obama stated that he would not support a reinstatement of the doctrine, however this fell well short of what many are looking for, including Rush.

Now, Jim DeMint, the South Carolinian conservative stalwart has landed an early blow with a forced vote on The Broadcasters Freedom Act, essentially forcing legislators to pick sides.

With this line in the sand being drawn, it is hard to see how anyone could stand for the doctrine, a affront on our First Amendment rights. Whether you agree with the voices of AM radio or not, you MUST support freedom of speech and dissidence. If you don't you might as well plan to meet Goebbels in hell.

The Next Revolution: Rural vs. Urban

Continental thinkers and commodity traders alike are advance the idea of a fractured Untied States in the future. The question is, where would the cracks emerge. Many ideas have been advanced over the years as to how a theoretical revolution would progress, but most of these fall from favor as their decisive backbone either crumbles are falls from the forefront.

One option, and probably the most likely is Rural vs. Urban. In this scenario the pivotal factor is food and natural resources. This would unfold with scarcity becoming such a huge problem that vast tracts of land used for agriculture and minerals is nationalized by the nation, essentially eliminating all rural rights in the name of the greater, urban good. The difficulty of this scenario, and the likelihood of it being the most bloody, is that city dwellers, by large, are pussy. The land that gives the nation its inherent wealth is inhabited by hardened farmers, stubborn, ranchers, and crazy survivalists... essentially the last people who would go down without a fight. This is compounded by the fact that basically all the nuclear weapons in the United States are located on these lands... hmmm.

If this fragmentation would occur it would result in cites becoming city-states of sorts surrounded by lawless boarder lands. The rural elements would have a lot of leverage when it came to trade. The cities would need food, and they would pay handily for it, also any intercity trade would be taxed heavily by the rural lands that it would pass through.

The rural elements would most likely be a loose confederation of communities with no strong central governing body, leaving the populous to basically fend for themselves. This would structure would wear on many, causing them to sell their land to large, city based, corporate entities, who would in turn profit from the resources and the taxing of trade.

The cities themselves would shrink, population would decrease due to inadequate food and supplies, not to mention water which too would be an important bargaining chip for the rural people. Settlers would set out to rural lands to find a better life, and they would essentially be reduced to share croppers. Industry would grind to a crawl, reducing the numbers of cars and equipment, reverting the rural elements back to a more manual existence with the help of the escaped city folk.

This would only last so long, cites would band together with surrounding rural areas to form states in which power would essentially be shared between urban and rural. Yet, rural areas would still have leverage over the cities, creating a rural led plurality governing over the states. In end, the few would govern over the majority.

Not that this will happen, and I am not advocating it by any means. But, I would be surprised if these fracture points are not exposed in the near future.

Flo-Rida Appreciates the Text

Flo Rida responds to the Disco Biscuits cover of "Low." This is a great example of how a text, or in this case a song will live on, mutate, change, and become a new entity once it has left the studio. The kick is he likes it.

MTV Shows

On a scale of 1-Awesome: Dino-riders!

I think the word you are looking for is OMFG. Did the late 80's rock for cartoons and toys or what?

Le Cafe

le Café - Oldelaf (english subtitles)
Uploaded by Boebis

Breaking: Chimps and Xanax don't mix

This just in, if your chimp is about to freak out, do not, I repeat, do not feed it Xany bars. This "adorable" little primate was having a fit over wanting to go for a car ride, and in order ease his nerves the owner feed him the great American elixir, Benzos. Mauling ensued, primate stabbed and shot Rasputin style; all is well that ends well.

MSNBC

Did someone miss the Karaoke?

Japan's Finance Minister Drunk at G-7. What is "Rage" in Japanese?

Eastbound and Down: A study of sheer Epicness

HBO premiered their new half hour comedy this past Sunday, "Eastbound and Down," and it is a monorail ride straight to Spaceship Earth. It features North Carolinian Danny McBride as Kenny Powers, a washed up pitcher who returns to Shelby, NC as a PE coach. Laden with quick hitting one-liners and facepalming quips, this show might not gain immediate success, but it hits a home run with me (harharhar).

It might just be the cultural catchall that draws me in, or it might be McBride, but I have to say that any show that takes its name from Smokey and The Bandit's theme song is alright with me.In the everlasting words of Lavar Burton, don't take my word for it.

Whats the Deal with Dubai Addresses?

During work today I came across a PO from Dubai with a rather odd address.

Store NO.22
Al Quoz Industrial Area
Between Interchange 2 & 3
Dubai, UAE

From what I have read about the once modest, now excessive desert city, there was little planned development. Oil money poured into the nation as if from the breach hull of an oil tanker; instead of leaving greasy seabirds it left greasy ex-pats and ridiculous islands the shape of a palm. All the now famous development that has made Dubai so famous now is one of the elements that make it so difficult. The absence of any urban planning has left a shining city with no road names, no address to speak of, and no alcohol. The alcohol aside, it is times like this where the little regulation that we need is indeed very necessary for things as simple as the mail.

There are countless other WTF elements to Dubai such as the Sunday- Thursday work week. Really, how did they end up with all our money?

Robby the Robot: Damned through typecasting

Does it not pain you to see a marvelous actor restricted in work to certain archetypes. The cop, good or bad, the cowboy, the soldier all have their go to character actors, and the same goes for robots.

Robby the Robot was by far the most successful robot actors of the 20th century, but he could never break out of his typecast prison. Robby burst onto the scene in 1956 space colonial adventure Forbidden Planet. While his first roll was Shakespearean, he was never able to crack into mainstream parts. Robby continued to flounder around Hollywood doing TV shows ranging from "The Twilight Zone" to "Lost in Space" and "Columbo."
Frustrated with his stereotyped existence, Robby became reclusive in the 1990s. After nearly 35 years of acting work Robby could no longer be found on TV or Film. In his place were small models and toy versions that appeared in the background of SciFi films for film nerds to geek out over.
While Robby never was able to break into dancing like he dreamed, he will always have a place in the American heart.

Forbidden Planet OST

A bit of a new look

As I am finally shifting the blog into gear, I have decided to add some aesthetic elements. The title picture was taken in 2006 of Mt. Sheraton in Yellowstone. Enjoy!

A Glance: Cigarette Brands in 'Verse

One element that writers like to use to feed the intertext with their works is the transcendent brand. While soda, cereal, and other regular foodstuffs can be see bouncing around in films and tv, rarely is one as recognizable as the cigarette brand. These may be easy to spot for viewers due to an already entrenched sense of brand recognition or loyalty. Here is a quick look at some of the brands-

Nails- Kevin Smith’s Films

Red Apple- Tarantino’s Films

Morley- X Files, Millennium, Buffy, Malcolm in the Middle (yes, Malcolm in the Middle), The Outer Limits, Heroes, Burn Notice, and Spy Game among others.

Morley, more or less, looks like a prop room staple; it could though, unite all these works in the same verse with the same continuity. Who knows, maybe Mulder, Scully, and Buffy coexisted?

"...And I want my scalps"

The first trailer if Tarantino's Inglorous Bastards is out and it is awesome. It features Brad Pitt, Eli Roth, and the temp from "The Office" in the reworking of Quel maledetto treno blindato, a brutal Italian film featuring the disembowelment of various Nazis in WWII.

It looks like Tarantino made this one his own, expanding on the violence like only he can do. So watch out for this brutal, witty thriller coming in August. Anyone want to wager the under/over on trunk shots and Hitler barefoot scenes?

Lost vs. Fringe (The Scope)

Well "Fringe" finally hit its stride last night, and left us wanting. So now, in the natural evolution of the current SciFi-Drama, enter the "Lost" comparisons. I will begin with a post I made on this subject and expand upon it.

In its current form it is not better then Lost, however it has the potential to be. The main difference between the two is the limited scope of Lost vs. the Unlimited scope of Fringe. Lost will always focus on the island and 815, and it has enough there to complete its whole run without retracing its steps at some point. Fringe is limitless in scope, right now it is constrained to the FBI and the core team, but as this expands as we are seeing it, there is no telling where it can go. That being said, Fringe has much more room to work with and grow as a series and as a part of Abram's 'Verse.

Another element that both Lost and Fringe haven't even begun to scratch the surface of is quantum mechanics and parallel universes. Once this door is fully opened we could have a Sliders on our hands, but only better. Fringe has a lot of room to go even before it hits the maturity of Lost circa season 3.

Simply put, the Island of "Lost" is an anomaly while "Fringe" is a pattern. The nature of a pattern is that it will reproduce it self endlessly while an anomaly is an isolated, random, instance. Therefore, the inherent potential for "Fringe" and its universe (I know chances are it is the same as the Lost universe) is limitless, even greater then "Lost"

It looks like this TV decade for SciFi is coming into its own.

Not pissed off? Not paying attention.

Personally, I have not been this angered in a while. First, the "stimulus" bill set me off. Then the Phelps incident. Now we have to deal with the emerging monopoly of Ticketmaster/Live Nation. I'm going to tackle these one at a time.

1) Pelosi's plan to dump eight years of liberal spending into a "Stimulus" bill is absolute trash, but that horse has been beaten enough, as has the bill. The problems I have with it are that some of the programs set forth in the bill will not create jobs or even spending in the first year, and that is, arguably, what we need. I like a lot of the proposal in the bill, environmental, wildlife, rural broadband, and neighborhood rejuvenation... but some of these simply aren't stimulative. Just wait for the appropriation bill for this stuff, that is if there is any money left over for them.

Also, what burns me up is that Obama just wants to revert to the House bill after careful compromises in the Senate. How about not even paying lip service to bipartisanship from here on out. A democrats spending bill, by democrats, for democrats, destined to faceplant right out of the gate.

2)Mr. Phelps and the bong, what a disaster. I, as a resident of Richland Co. SC, am appalled that our taxdollars are going to chasing down college kids smoking pot. We have much bigger fish to fry in Columbia and a budget crisis in the State house, this is not the way to do things.

Also, shame on Kelloggs and Subway for having the PR department time forgot. This is the 21st century, grow up! America can handle pot, most people have smoked it now, don't freak out about it.

The one positive thing to come out of this is the elevation of Marijuana to the national stage. America is finally mature enough to discuss the ridiculousness of prohibition and hopefully sane enough to talk about alternatives.

3)Ticketmaster/ Live Nation... are you kidding me. Here, kiddies, we will see the resolve of the mighty Obama administration. If it passes, same old same old, well placed campaign contributions and business as usual. If not, good for them, us, and Teddy Roosevelt. The core principle of the free market is competition, and this behemoth would corner the live music market like Ticketmaster did..... well last decade. This is a monopoly in its truest form and should not be allowed to pass muster. They pay lip service to the customers, and while I like the idea of market priced ticketing, I doubt the TM/LN will implement it with the full efficiency and transparency that it would require.

Update: Go here for a blog dedicated to this disaster in the making.

Well, that's all I have for this week. But if you have the time to waste reading this blog, then you have the time to cut/paste a few emails to your senators and congressmen about these issues. Make your voice heard and tell them that we won't put up with this garbage anymore.

Too Soon? I'll come back next week.

After the bitter partisan struggle over the "stimulus" bill and the facepalm that the markets did yesterday, is it too soon to say it? Rush has been saying it for a while now, well not saying it but praying for it over a Cohiba. But if you listen to Limbaugh you are an automatic racist, junkie, fatass... so lets not got there.

The Financial Times thought about it today. FT, despite being pink, is one of the last globally well respected papers still in existence, mind you not a hack sheet.

Has Barack Obama’s presidency already failed? In normal times, this would be a ludicrous question. But these are not normal times. They are times of great danger...
If Mr Obama does not fix this crisis, all he hopes from his presidency will be lost. If he does, he can reshape the agenda. Hoping for the best is foolish. He should expect the worst and act accordingly.

Well that sounds bright and cheery doesn't it? Well lets see where this takes us. I hope Obama doesn't fail, I hope that he can help to drag us out of the mess, but its not looking good. Good money after bad, generational theft, too little too late, what ever you want to call it... I don't think anyone is too happy with it.

So I leave you with the image that I hope will not come true, but if it does I will be there first. And it was so easy.

Update: Please don't sue me. I transformed the hell out of that image, both aesthetically and in meaning.

Twitter

I am succumbing to the tweet.