Listen while you can, kiddies: There are forces out there implementing plans to make streaming radio a thing of the past.

Radio goo-goo, radio gah-gah.

I’ve got something I want to do with you.

Just one time.

Agree to live long enough for it to happen, okay?

See my beard; ain’t it weird?

Introducing the new 4-cylinder, 4-wheel drive Darfour …… the car so subtle, you won’t even know it’s happening.

Darfur: You won’t hear about it ’til it’s over.

What is wrong with women?

How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence – is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. ( Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable.

You can read the entire post on the subject here and it is stellar, especially when he compares the movie trailer for Captivity and the recent “honor killing” of Dua Khalil Aswad in Iraq.

Here’s why his female characters always kick ass:

I’m not much of a Buffy fan. My favorites of his female characters are the women of Firefly / Serenity. They’re all strong, independent women who can kick your ass in a fight or simply outwit you, sometimes doing both simultaneously. Those are the role models we should have in our entertainment, don’t you think?

Aren’t we all a little tired of “damsels in distress”?

I don’t sign online petitions a lot, as I’m not terribly fond of the mostly-partisan tactics when a group asks for signatures. Both liberals and conservatives tend to play to the extremes, both use fear tactics to get people motivated, and neither side ever tells you the whole story.

Being a cynic and a skeptic myself, then, I have my doubts about how much good it really does to take part in online petition campaigns. Yet like most Americans I’m motivated by what affects me personally … and watching gas prices creep up over $3 a gallon while the oil companies are showing record profits - and giving giant bonuses to their top brass - makes me ill.

The folks at Moveon.org have started an online petition to let our Representatives in Washington know that the situation is NOT acceptable. You can sign their petition here.

No, what House Speaker Pelosi is proposing won’t stop the price hikes, regardless of what Moveon.org and other groups tell you. That’s the way capitalism works, but more than that, the dirty little secret about it all is that we’ll pay any price for our oil because we’re dependent upon it.

However, if there is enough response, it just might get the point across to our government officials that we, the American people, are very close to losing our collective minds about it. A population upset about something does tend to make them take notice.

Sign if you want, repost this message if you like, but get ready to pay close to $4 a gallon either way.

True pain is driving a car that only takes premium.

JUST ADDED (5-21-07): Pinstripe artist Rev, whose work was most recently at the Kustom Kulture Art Show / Mile High Shakedown; DJ Mike on the turntable; the Secret Servix Scooter Club has said they’ll stop by on their vintage rides; and witness the amazing bartending skills of Mr. Brian Clark.

The show also includes works by local artists Will Barnes, Beladonna, Richard Duggan, Jill Hartman, Jolyon Yates, Scott Hartman, and Orlando artist Johannah O’Donnell.

The styles for the show range from watercolors of rockabilly icons to stained-glass pinup girls to framed vintage LPs and beyond.

The Opening Reception for the show will be Friday, June 1st from 6pm to 9pm, with umbrella drinks, pupu platters, and swingin’ sounds on the hi-fi!

Click Here To View This Event on MySpace.

I really should get a degree in marketing.

The majority of our current society believes that all illegal drugs are bad; I believe they’re not all bad. I also do not believe in the God of the Xtian or Muslim faiths, a fact which puts me in the minority compared to the rest of the entire world. My sex life includes BDSM conventions, swingers clubs, and an open relationship with my current partner, whereas the majority of the US believes in monogamy, missionary, and monotony.

It follows then that according to a good majority of other people in our society (and a fair amount of people globally), I lack morals where drugs, God, and sex are concerned.

Yet to say I have no morals at all is a subjective position and assumes I lack standards of any kind.

Morals are based on one’s own upbringing, education, social class, religion, and myriad other ways a person learns to view the world. Therefore, your view of my morality does not take into account anything other than your own world view and belief system (BS).

To leave my actual values, ethics, and standards out of the equation means your view is only an opinion. Thankfully, it’s an opinion not shared by most people who actually get to know me.

But that requires more effort than just reading this blahg.

2007: The Year of Living Vicariously

This is why I love Christopher Hitchens.

The Truth - capital “T” - can seem crude and mean and hateful to anyone who isn’t ready for it.

Message to Mr. Hannity and Mr. Colmes: If you do not want the Truth do not ask for it. I guarantee Mr. Hitchens will not drive to your house and sit in your living room to give his opinion. You have to seek it out. To act upset when he gives it - and does not waver from his original opinion, regardless of your response - is ridiculous at best.

Further: Every death, including Mr. Falwell’s, does not require mourning. I never met Jerry Falwell, but I’m glad he’s dead. He spread hate in God’s name … the exact type of fundamentalist behavior that causes Islamic fundy factions to bomb us here.

He is also the first minister who brought Xtianity to politics, a truth which should have caused his tax-free, non-profit church status to have to face the IRS head-on. Also at the core of Mr. Falwell’s church was the belief that you should render unto God the things that are Caeser’s, a teaching in direct contradiction to the words of his own Messiah.

The difference between Mr. Fallwell and the myriad preachers who have fallen by the wayside is that he really, Really, REALLY believed what he said. So the nicest thing I can say about him is that he wasn’t a hypocrite and he wasn’t a crook.

Swaggart and Bakker et al. just took money and/or got laid. Mr. Falwell’s influence has done more damage to politics in this country than any other evangelical in history. Kudos to him, then, for blurring the line between church and state so effectively.

Mr. Falwell was only a fundamentalist and a demogogue, but it will take our country years, if not decades, to get beyond the superstition and bigotry he and his followers have foisted upon us. So I reiterate from an earlier post: If there were a hell, he’d have a special place in it.

True believers are frightening no matter which “side” they’re on.

i beg you … to have patience with everything unresolved
in your heart and try to love the questions themselves
as if they were locked rooms or books written
in a very foreign language. don’t search for
the answers which could not be given you
now, because you would not be able
to live them. and the point is to live
everything. live the questions now.
perhaps then, someday far in
the future, you will gradually,
without even noticing it, live
your way into the answer …

Poem by Rainier Maria Rilke; sentiment to who needs to hear it most.

This means you.

You covered what?!

Upon reconsideration, it’s better than listening to Fergie any day.

Just thought you oughtta know.