Pro-choice = terrorist?

Why I will NEVER vote for George W. Bush or anyone who endorses him. Statements like this - equating being pro-choice with being a terrorist - made by his staff and proxies. This is from Karen Hughes:

"I think that after September 11, the American people are valuing life more and we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life," she said. "President Bush has worked to say, let's be reasonable, let's work to value life, let's reduce the number of abortions, let's increase adoptions. And I think those are the kinds of policies the American people can support, particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy and, really, the fundamental issue between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life."

The Fornispoo

I have been contacted by an agent of my parents (code-named "Mom") with a complaint about my recent coverage of our childhood My-T-Fine pudding debacles. Unfortunately, this request for me to cease and desist has just opened up a further cavalcade of repressed memories. I am always fascinated by the human mind, and how imprints of past events remain floating around for a lifetime. What happened to me the other day actually makes me think that there is enough information stored in a person's mind to someday be able to unwrap a person's entire memory from near birth. Let me explain.

I was dawdling on eBay the other day, looking for great buys on single airplane napkins. I typed in "napkin" and one of the hits wasn't an airplane napkin at all - it was a St. Labre Indian School camping salt and pepper shaker set. For most people, this wouldn't be cause for alarm. However, a long-buried synapse fired in the back of my mind. When I was young, we used to have a set of these. The pattern is unmistakeable - ugly colors, cheap plastic. Man with tepee represents salt, and deer with butterfly represents pepper.

But, as is often the case with a mind as utterly magnificent as mine, the sight of these crappy shakers touched off a second memory: the fornispoo. For at one point, we had a single combo fork-knife-spoon set, the kind that latches together so that you can take it...CAMPING. I searched my mind more deeply, but I recalled no time that we ever went camping as a family. Leaving behind the obvious answer - my mom was a compulsive crap-by-the-lot purchaser at local tag sales - I feel that there may be a far more sinister explanation. Growing up, I was part of a camping family.

But something so horrible, so unspeakable, must've happened on one of our frequent trips to the Adirondacks that I must've completely wiped it from my memory. What could it have been? It must've been something really bad, because my sister remembers things like being spanked and sent home pantsless by our former neighbors, the F------s. And I remember when Michael F---- stuck a marble up David's ass and they couldn't get it out, and it ended up with their little sister Erin being denied pants for the rest of the day to "think about what she'd done." So then, worse than a psychotic neighbor.

Then it hit me - the reason I don't recall any details of our frequent camping trips is that I used to have a twin brother, Joel. When we went to one of our frequent camping trips, using the St. Labre shakers and the fornispoo and some other tin camping stuff whose origins were shrouded in mystery at Chez Trup-ardle, I was killed and eaten by a bear. The bear snuck up on our campground at night, slashed through my tent fabric, and devoured my secret stash of Wacky Packages gum. He (and I'm assuming it was a he - my memory is a bit vague on this point) then spotted me in my "all 26 NFL team logos" sleeping bag and, enraged that they were using the older Chicago Bears logo, mercilessly slashed and ripped at me until I passed out from the pain. My twin brother, Joel, survived the attack and assumed my name, ghastly acrylic sweaters, fly-away hair, and overbite. I got a shallow plot in the middle of a KOA campground. The sleeping bag was the family's only remaining memory of me; it was destroyed in 1982 when "we" gave it to some of the boxers for a slumber party and they ripped it to shreds while fighting over a bitchy comment that Daisy made about Poppy's floppy left ear. The past 31 years of my life have been a lie. So, "Mom", if that IS your real name, I just want to thank you for this latest round of therapy.

Artik batacak banka yok

Congratulations, LIRR! I am sitting in car 9612, and it is the first hot car of the summer! Here's to so many more.

Headline of the newspaper directly in front of me: "Artik batacak banka yok." I suspect that tomorrow's weather forecast will be Scorchio.

This is one of my rare ventures onto the Babylon line these days. Green Acres Mall has really spruced up. They have a Best Jewelry - and really, who could doubt the quality of baubles purchased in a converted PhotoMat booth? They also have a new restaurant, Bronx BBQ. And it's really true. If you've grown up in the NYC area, you can leave for years, but one thing's always missing. There's nowhere else you can find genuine, traditional Bronx-style barbecue. I still think back to my days growing up in Connecticut. Sure, it was fun going over to get some Bridgeport wings or some Danbury clam chowder, but it was a rare treat when mom would pack the 12 of us in the VW van and take us to Grand Concourse to get some of that real Bronx BBQ. We'd top it off with some down-home Mamaroneck cream pie on the way home.

Oh no! Evidently, the newspaper ahead of me is the only media outlet covering "Onur'a virüs engeli." That's right, the ONLY paper with the guts to cover this topic.

I should check out Mi-T-Fine Gifts & Collectibles in Massapequa Park. Maybe they'll have some of that shitty pudding my mom used to make when we ran out of dairy products.

b

Great comedy scene - the government is arguing in favor of keeping prisoners at Guantanamo forever. Here, let me clip out my favorite passage from the Times article.

...Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson's opening declaration, "The United States is at war," appeared to rankle rather than persuade the skeptical justices. "Supposing the war had ended," Justice John Paul Stevens asked Mr. Olson. "Could you continue to detain these people in Guantánamo, and would there then be jurisdiction?"

Mr. Olson replied, "We believe that there would not be jurisdiction."

Justice Stevens then asked, "So the existence of the war is really irrelevant to the legal issue, is it not?"

Given the way the Bush Administration handles situations like this, I'm surprised that Olson didn't reply "How can you argue with me on this? My wife died on 9/11."

Boston vs. Montreal vs. The Head

In order to slake my need for more playoff hockey, I turned on the Boston-Montreal game tonight, thankfully fed into my home via CBC instead of ESPN. Montreal pulled out a close one, but they had a special assist from the crowd. Every time the play came down towards the Montreal goal, a gigantic woman's head silhouette popped up. The Head made some amazing saves in the third period, all caught by the CBC cameras. The Head didn't pop up at center ice, no. It was squarely positioned in front of the goal. Glean Healy kept saying "file that save away in memory!" But no one at home saw Theodore's save! The viewing audience's "memory" of the save consisted of Aunt Bea's huge hair bun bouncing up and deflecting the puck into the corner. The only thing that would've made it worse would be to have the play obscured by the silhouette of two Thundersticks slapping together.

Now I'm planning big things for all the money I saved tonight because there was no Game 6 of the Islanders series. I think I've settled on buying a steak dinner and a pair of slacks.

Mark Melberry

Tonight was the last game of the season for the Islanders. They lost in overtime to the Tampa Bay Lightning, and afterwards patted themselves on the backs for a good effort. Well, that's just peachy. We've got the end of the season, a potential lockout next year, an co-owner (Sanjay Kumar) in deep trouble, and whispers of contraction. There's a slight chance that this might have been the last game the team ever plays.

If not, there's always Mike Milbury to complain about. Sure, the team is back in the playoffs now after seven years wandering the sand traps at Bethpage Black. But there's still the nagging sense that he doesn't know what he's doing, a sense that's only enhanced by the fact that he doesn't know what he's doing. And he has a weird spell over Charles Wang, the team's major owner. When Wang finally does do something about this languishing team, chances are he'll ask Milbury for the name of a good replacement. Milbury will say "Mark Melberry," and then we'll have to suffer through five years of Milbury wearing a comical fake moustache and speaking in an exaggerated British villain accent.

Subway QOTD

Perhaps it's time to start providing the subway quote of the day. Today's entry, from a woman who can best be described as a female John Amos with a knit cap on: "Fuck, that shit's fucked up. That's some fucked up shit. That shit's fucked up. Shit."

My guess is that she had just encountered the mystical predictive powers of SOLLOG.

SOLLOG

This morning, I stepped onto one of the 48 elevators that serve the six
floors on our side of the office complex. Each elevator has an LCD screen in it,
provided by the Captivate Network. The name itself is their way of saying, "Ha
ha, there IS NO ESCAPE from our factoid blasts!" I suppose there could’ve been
worse names for this – the In Prism System or the We’re Not Opening The Elevator
Door Until You Stare At This List Of Today’s Celebrity Birthdays Network.

And this is the point I’m getting to. When your entire purpose in life is to
blurp up pointless factoids to people who have little choice but to see them for
40 seconds, at least make some effort to get these celebri-bits correct. Today,
I looked up and was informed that today’s birthdays include:

52 – Marilu Henner, member of ABBA

I was pretty sure that Marilu Henner was too busy in Taxi to have toured with the 70s super-pop group, so I googled up "Marilu Henner Abba." She wasn’t in ABBA. She wasn’t even in "Mamma Mia," the fabulous Broadway play. The closest thing to a connection was that they both appeared on Midnight Special at some point in the 1970s.

Confused, I wrote to our friends at the Captivate Network. Surprisingly enough, they replied to me in 12 minutes.

Hello Joshua,

Thank you for catching that and notifying us of the error. There was an Abba member on the birthday screen yesterday, and the description wasn't updated as it should have been. We're correcting the error on the network.

Thanks again,

Christine Danko
Senior Editor
Captivate Network

So bravo, Captivate Network! But my Tuesday Email Fun was just beginning. On Saturday (4/3), we got mail from a PR agency that represents Sollog, who is apparently some guy in a room in Baltimore who makes predictions about the future. This mail said:

We are less than 48 hours from when the GREAT QUAKE of 04.04.04 will occur.
Sollog warned on 11/11/03 that April 4th 2004 would be THE DATE OF THE GREAT QUAKE

Note the dates on the mail, okay? The Great Quake of 04-04-04. Not the Average Quake of 04-05-04. The GREAT QUAKE OF 04-04-04. This should be pretty easy to prove true or false, I thought, reveling in my non-believer’s misunderstanding of Sollog’s true gift.

April 3 passed. April 4 passed. I forgot all about the grave warnings of a quake. Then on April 6, I got a triumphal warning. The subject was “MAJOR QUAKE STRIKES WHEN SOLLOG WARNED.” The press release continued:

You received a QUAKE WARNING the other day through this Press Release
Service

The quake struck in NE Afghanistan at 4:24:04 PM EST on 04/05/04

The TRIPLE FOUR appeared in the time of the quake using EST

The quake struck on THE FULL MOON of April 2004

Both of THESE FACTS where in the famous 1111 PROPHECY of Sollog that was
issued to usenet last year about the details of this quake

FACTS ABOUT THIS QUAKE

It was the first 6.5+ quake anywhere in the world since 2/21/04

The time had the TRIPLE FOUR in it using EST (all of Sollog's quake warnings use EST)

Okay, that’s mildly interesting. But then I looked back to the first QUAKE WARNING and it clearly stated that the quake was going to occur on 04/04/04. I did not know that all of Sollog’s warnings just happened to use Eastern Standard Time, but it would make sense because the world is controlled through a storefront in Jersey City. However, I felt it was important to warn Sollog that his original warning was not exactly accurate. (Leaving behind the fact that quakes are about as common as thunderstorms.) That’s right – couldn’t leave well enough alone. Poked
the rattler. Picked the scab. Made eye contact with the deranged wino. I wrote back a simple note:

This is incorrect. The warning that was issued was that the quake would strike on 04/04/04 - I have the press release. It did not. You're changing the terms of the prophecy after the fact.

The Voice of Sollog got back to me less than two hours later with a strongly worded correction. (It actually qualified as a “screed” because of ITS EXTENSIVE USE of CAPITALS to show that THIS WAS THE truTH.) The point was that Sollog was better than SCIENTISTS because HE was only ONE DAY off. And ALSO, he GETS PREDICTIONS WRONG on PURPOSE. Or SOMETHING.

-----Original Message-----

From: Press [mailto:press@adoni.us]

Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2004 7:37 PM

Subject: Re: MAJOR QUAKE STRIKES WHEN SOLLOG WARNED

You need to do a little research before you make claims.

1. The 1111 Prophecy was released to Usenet on 11/11/03, this is a link
below archived by Google with that date

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=PBgsb.19783%248x2.7897523%40newssrv26.news.prodigy.com

2. The prophecy states TRIPLE FOUR and FULL MOON of April 2004 are the KEY

3. The quake struck 1 day from the TRIPLE FOUR date of 04/04/04 on THE FULL MOON and at a time when the triple four was present

4. Sollog is known to use a few SIMPLE CODES in his prophecies that his fans have discussed all over the net, he INTENTIONALLY issues dates usually ONE DAY OFF and he puts KEY INFO in his prophecies in CAPITAL LETTERS. That being said, the prophecy was exactly as many of his past prophecies have been ONE DAY OFF from the date clearly given and the capital words FULL MOON gave the exact date which was 04/05/04

Now if you think being ONE DAY OFF (16 hours actually) is no big deal,
SCIENTISTS CAN'T DO IT

If you think Sollog isn't KNOW TO USE ONE DAY OFF EXACT DATES I can give you links to hundreds of posts where his many fans discuss THIS KNOW
FACT

If you think the fact that the quake struck at 04:24:04 PM EST is not big
deal, the exact time had THE TRIPLE FOUR in it, and it's a fact all the
Sollog quake warnings usually state an exact time and date using EST

Anyway, if you want links to verify these facts, I can supply them, or you
can stop by the Sollog forum where thousands of people visit everyday and
you can ask his many fans in the forum ARE THESE KNOWN SOLLOG CODES, there are many discussing these FACTS now at http://www.theparanormal.net/forum

That forum is ranked in the top 50K at Alexa

The reason is simple SOLLOG HITS EXACT INFO ABOUT QUAKES ALL THE TIME

Do you deny his Xmas 2003 Prophecy stated MANY TO DIE IN QUAKE?

Here's a TIME STAMPED prophecy about the Xmas 2003 quake that killed 50K in Bam Iran, the prophecy was released 9 days before it hit

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=f2967f4e.0312161736.30a9ca3c%40posting.google.com

Do you deny the FBI harassed our offices after 911 since Sollog gave a clear WARNING about DC and tragedy on 911 three years to the exact date of the event?

Here's a TIME STAMPED WARNING about 911 that was issued on 9/11/98 three
years to the day of 911

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=6tb7rp%24gvr%241%40winter.news.erols.com

Do you deny that both the Madrid Massacre and the Bali Bombing both occurred on dates connected to 113 that Sollog gave in this TIME STAMPED WARNING about terrorism and certain dates with 113 in them

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=9dca61bc.0203072305.28bb8518%40posting.google.com

So before you say stupid stuff about something being changed GET THE FACTS

The warning was based on the 11/11/03 issued PROPHECY, it gave an exact date that was 16 hours from when a rare quake struck

If you don't think 6.6+ quakes are rare, then you need to do some research, there have been no quakes anywhere in the world that large since 2/21/04

Here's a list from the USGS to backup my claims, NOT ONE QUAKE 6.5+ since
February 22nd this year

http://eqint.cr.usgs.gov/neic/cgi-bin/epic/epic.cgi?SEARCHMETHOD=1&FILEFORMAT=4&SEARCHRANGE=HH&SYEAR=2004&SMONTH=01&SDAY=01&EYEAR=2004&EMONTH=04&EDAY=06&LMAG=6.5&UMAG=9&NDEP1=&NDEP2=&IO1=&IO2=&SLAT2=0.0&SLAT1=0.0&SLON2=0.0&SLON1=0.0&CLAT=0.0&CLON=0.0&CRAD=0&SUBMIT=Submit+Search

What backs up your claims we changed something?

NOTHING

You failed to search the 1111 Prophecy it was issued last year and it pointed to the event that occurred

Anyway WE WARNED YOU that Sollog issued a quake warning about THE TRIPLE FOUR

It was based on the 1111 Prophecy

NOTHING WAS CHANGED