rock over London. rock on, Chicago.

insurance kicks in on Wednesday. I got my card. time to cut my twin off my back.

also: tell cops no. Josh is covering his bases.

most importantly: apparently, 89 and 90 Dodge/Chrysler Caravans – yes, the ones with the wood paneling on them – have abnormally powerful engines. and as such, a subculture amongst drag racers has grown with them. the Chicago Tribune wrote a story and did a little audio/visual presentation on one such an enthusiast who has his own fucking website. this warms my heart. really. it just screams “I-57 south of Joliet.”

either way, from the Tribune story:

Sporting bib overalls, gnarly beard and grimy baseball cap, Paul Smith looks nothing like a champion of the thoroughly domesticated.
But he becomes their hero every time he works his stout frame behind the steering wheel of his dragster: a 1989 mini-van with rust bubbles on the fender, faux wood grain on the sides, 185,000 miles on the odometer and a turbocharged engine that rockets the van down the track at 106 m.p.h.

don’t forget to click on the slideshow.

Manassas, Va. land of hopes, dreams. and a hell of a lot of xenophobia.
take a bow, www.helpsaveManassas.org!
so there’s been an awful lot of hispanics moving to suburban Washington, D.C. suburban D.C. is fucking huge. it just goes on, and on, and on. Manassas, as I’ve always known it, is an awful congestion of sprawl. just superhighways and strip malls. and by God, the proud Americans who live there like it the way it is. and to make sure it remains that way, a lot of the local citizenry got the Prince William County board of supervisors to enact a resolution that makes local police ask about citizenship status and directs public services to withhold whatever they legally can from suspected aliens. that means don’t go to a park, don’t go to a doctor, don’t go to school and definitely don’t go to the library, Pedro; we don’t like what you’re doing to our community.
the most kick-ass thing about all of this is the fact that the measure was enacted under some veneer of public safety, take-back-the-streets bullshit. because crime has been dropping in Prince William for the last decade, just like in most of the fucking nation.
so, anyway. American Patriot Greg Letiecq talks a lot of shit and smirks at “yellow journalism,” and his blog (blogs are for assholes) has organized a lot of confused, suburban rednecks into focusing their vitrol on a new minority: the “Mexican.” he’s got a blog, Black Velvet Bruce Li, that’ll come up if you type that into a search engine. and he’s also responsible for Help Save Manassas, which is, sadly, what passes for community activism these days.
not a lot of this post makes sense, but I’ve been reading AP articles on this for the past month at work. PW isn’t too far from here. and these people are having a hard time reconciling the fact that the south is coming north, that it’s willing to do the work that it’s too lazy to do anymore, and there’s no easy way to admit that our communities aren’t static. shit changes. different skin colors may move in. and saying they’re raping, pillaging and spreading disease is desperate and pathetic, because it isn’t true. you don’t like Mexicans, you goofy assholes? write your fucking congressman and tell him you don’t like NAFTA. you might have to give up Always Low Prices at Wal-Mart, but it’ll stem the terrifying wave of construction workers and spanish-speaking grocery stores.
or, you know what? fuck it. just stay on your present course and create an obvious underclass. that’ll fix everything.
Virginia rules. oh, god, Virginia rules.

as a time killer, Wikipedia has no equal. that being said, I read about Yassa last night. Mongolian code of law.

1. There is one absolute God.
2. There are no taxes for religious leaders, doctors, or undertakers.
3. Emperors must be elected by the Mongol nobles.
4. Subjects cannot hold honorary titles.
5. Wars are all absolute (i.e. no treaties before absolute surrender).
6. Law about army organization.
7. Each soldier gets his weapons from his officer before battle and will be subject to inspection.
8. Pillaging may happen only after the general commands; all soldiers and officers are equal in their chances; a part must be paid to the emperor. Offenders get the death penalty.
9. Law of battues. Also, no one can kill any game from March to October.
10. Animals killed for food must be killed by having their hearts torn out.
11. Blood and entrails of animals can now be eaten.
12. Those who are not soldiers serve the empire otherwise, without pay.
13. Thieves of a horse or steer will be killed and cut in half. Lesser theft is punished by 7-700 blows, or the fine of nine times the object’s value.
14. Mongols may not be servants or slaves. All Mongols are soldiers, except in extreme cases.
15. Law against aiding an escaped slave, under pain of death.
16. Laws of marriage, including designating the children of the first wife as heirs, granting children by slaves the same rights as those by wives, and designating wives as the caretakers and traders of property, since men are to be occupied only with hunting and war.
17. Adulterers earn death sentences, which can be carried out by anyone at any time, without trial.
18. Marriage contracts are allowed for alliance purposes even when the children are very young or dead.
19. No washing of clothes or bathing during thunderstorms.
20. “Spies, false witnesses, all men given to infamous vices, and sorcerers are condemned to death.”
21. Death penalty for ineffective or disobedient officers of the Khan; lesser offences mean a trial before the Khan.

this is more or less how I remember the United States, from Oct. 01 to May 03.

I went up to my dad’s house in Alexandria last night.
he’s not there. he and Heavy D are driving out to see Mar in Minnesota, and I have a key, so I figured, what the hell. a real house. away from Charlottesville for a little while. cheaper than a motel, more comfortable than the back of the truck.
so I rented a DVD. “Barely Legal #76.” some quality porno.
no. not actually. I rented “an Unreasonable Man,” about Ralph Nader. and I know it’s a documentary, and it’s biased and whatnot, but there are a few things I’ve taken away from it; Ralph Nader is owed an apology, Democrats should be ashamed of themselves, and Eric Alterman is a giant asshole. we’re all entitled to our opinions, afterall.

alright, break. I’m watching one of the greatest films ever made – fuck you, it’s true – “Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior,” so let me set the scene:
the Hummungus is giving his speech to the oil refinery, and the feral kid takes a shot with his bladed boomerang at Wez, the main biker, because Wez just savagely head-butted a captured refinery-worker that was tied to a post on the Hummungus’ car. Wez ducks, and the boomerang catches his bitch (seriously, his bitch) in the face and gets embedded in his skull.
stay with me.
Wez becomes enraged, and he yanks it out of the bitch’s head, using his boot as leverage, and whips it back at the feral kid. and then the Hummungus’ toady tries to catch it bare-handed and it cut all of his fingers off. and everyone laughs at him.
this is a scene, in a movie, with Mel Gibson. so. awesome.

so Ralph Nader. I really felt this way before the documentary, and I actually expected it to be more critical of him, but I don’t but the Democratic argument. he’s hurting the left. that Kerry would have been astoundingly better than Bush. or Gore would have been, for that matter. I find it incredibly pompous that they say Nader lost the election for the Gore in the 2000, as if that talking cardboard box had any right to those votes in the first place.
and the idea that Nader should wait; that things are too important right now, that Bush is so incredibly fucking evil that he had to be defeated in the last two cycles at all costs, rings hollow too. because I have a hard time believing that the Democratic party would give its all-important blessing in 2008, or 2012, or any other election, for that matter, to a leftist third party candidacy. fuck, it’s not like the Republicans like it when Pat Buchanan starts his own campaign. there’s two parties, and they like it the way things are. they have it wrapped up.
they represent everybody! so stop thinking, fuckstick, and vote! A or B. hate fags? well god damn, then vote red. saving the whales? vote blue. and if you happen to mix and match your political beliefs – say, you’re an angry bigot who really cares about the environment, then either weigh your options or stay home like most of the country. because we’re not allowed other colors in national politics. its not. fucking. allowed. Eric Alterman says so, and he’s a realist. so why would either party support anyone who hasn’t been blessed by the imbedded political establishment in the future? change of heart? next year, Ralph Nader, they won’t need “your” votes, so it’s probably cool. go ahead and run.
so.
the Democrats lost the election because of Nader? no. the Democrats lost the 04 election because they’re a national collection of pussies who don’t know how to beat the Republicans. they didn’t even beat the Republicans in 2006; the Republicans only managed to be so awful that the American public stopped watching E! long enough to notice that everything had gone to shit, and the Democrats stopped talking long enough to be swept in on a wave of disgust and indifference. the Democrats didn’t really stand for anything for the first half of the decade. but how can either party stand for anything? there’s two parties in a nation of over 300 million people? so please, read this, or this, and tell me if you agree with it. or half of it. or whether or not you feel comfortable calling yourself either of the two.

when I woke up this morning, I watched me some Bob Ross and went to the pool. I haven’t been to the Waynewood pool in about a decade, but it was like a trip down memory lane. until I was ten, I spent just about every day of summer there. not kidding. every day. I was on the swim team. I was awful, but I have a shoebox full of ribbons somewhere in a closet in Valparaiso. most of them read “6th place” or “good effort” (which meant I got seventh), but I’ll be god damned if I wasn’t proud of them. after that, I walked home, and the dominican maid who cleans the house weekly scared the living shit out of me. no wonder the house is so clean. the yard’s manicured too. there’s a crack team of Mexicans all over it. you know, there’s a reason Washington looks so nice. it’s because the third world gets paid to keep it that way.

alright. the showdown’s coming up. Max is going to bust some heads. and remember, the obvious antidote for a Republican is a Democrat. those motherfuckers get things done. and don’t vote Nader. you’ll throw your vote away.

I’m watching a documentary about jealous siblings. jesus. they’ve found an amazing collection of dipshits. thank god for MTV.

okay, about the dogfighting.
I read about Robert Byrd blasting off all crazy about the evils of it. “Barbaric!”
oh, what the fuck ever. this is the flavor of the month. dogfighting? is anyone going to really tell me they didn’t know this was going on? we all knew. we all know about the death factories that bring me Wendy’s on my lunchbreak. but Robert Byrd didn’t have a cow tie, so that’ heartfelt cry on the Senate floor against evil will have to wait until a gofer finds him one.
this is a marginally-important national news story that got a shot in the arm of celebrity what with the Vick story. and suddenly all of Washington is talking about it. it’s the national pastime when we aren’t mesmerized by the Iraq bloodbath.
so. well.
fuck you, you crazy old asshole, and fuck the national holier-than-thou attitude. you aren’t. I’m going to sleep.

next post is going to be about dogfighting. I’m at work, breaking the cardinal fucking rule I hold for this thing, but next up is dogfighting. oh lord, is it going to be about dogfighting.

I’m watching “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.” it’s fucking awesome.
best line: “we’ll need your designs for the giant crossbow.”
second best line: “the ship’s hold is filled with the giant crossbow. there’s no more room.”
seriously, it’s a big crossbow.
it’s one of those claymation movies. there’s a cyclops. and right now, Sinbad is putting down a mutinous crew with his motherfucking fists. man, I didn’t know this is how things were done!

I bought “Enter the Wu-Tang” today. and I’d have to say, that was a good call. I don’t know what listening to early 90s hardcore rap says about a person, but say what you will.

okay, now the mutinous crew is being driven mad by sirens. and I’ll say, this movie didn’t hurt for a lack of enthusiasm. I’m totally buying what they’re seling here

I’ve had a weird couple of days. but I no longer care to write about that. instead, I’m going to listen to “Wu-Tang Clan ain’t nothing to fuck wit” and watch this Ray Harrhausen flick. cause with that, I know it won’t disappoint.

Sinbad again. this dragon Sinbad is fighting is looking tough as hell. everyone’s getting smoked, but Sinbad. this is the most dangerous motherfucker on the block, man. this is how it was done! I had no idea!

maybe it’s a boil. maybe I got a boil on my back.
I don’t feel comfortable about that either. because now I’m just an asshole who doesn’t wash enough and gets a boil. so instead of affected, I’m a slob. son of a bitch! it’s not how it sounds, god damn it …

whistling. Eric Clapton. Winamp. The Postal Service. 2005 at Dagwoods!

… annnd on from that, nothing. motherfucker. I’ve got so much I want to say and this can’t be the venue to say it. it’s compromised, man. people read this who want to hear different things. and I can’t say everything to everybody. and if I write it out in pencil, it ends up all over my hand. the left-handed curse. so again, son of a bitch.

I have a growth on my back.
I think it’s a growth. maybe it’s not. either way, there’s a spot on my back, about the size of a quarter, that’s red. and all around it, it hurts.
apparently, my health insurance doesn’t kick in until the first of the month after 45 days employment. which hasn’t happened yet. and it really hurts. really.
I should have had this taken care of beforehand, but it didn’t hurt, and was only a bump that I was mildly concerned about.
god damn it.

I had this image published somewhere on today’s front page. yes.

also.
I’m watching “Roseanne” right now. because it’s no secret:
I love “Roseanne.” and fuck you if you don’t.