Dreamstate

 

Ok. Check out my weird ass dream from last night.

I'm on a family vacation type road trip/camp out. I remember my daughter, K and my mother being here specifically. The rest of the family members were all fuzzy like. Like looking through the eye thing at the DMV and trying to read the last line on the chart fuzzy. We are somewhere very green & forresty. Maybe North Carolina or Virginia. We spend most of our time on this voyage moving from one place to another because the wildlife will not leave us alone. That's right…we are being chased by buffalo and bears. There are other animals in tow as well but they are fuzzy too. The woodland residents don't wish to harm us. I just get the feeling that they are breaking our balls and that they enjoy toying with us. My mother asks me to take her car to the store even though she doesn't tell me why or what she needs there. I roll solo to this country type general store. I wander around in it. An Obama mug catches my eye and I go to pay for it. The cashier lady is some type of Peg Bundy rip off and she mentions to me that "I wish they would get rid of those types of people". She motions out the window. I see a house decorated with Obama campaign signs and some people out front enjoying a summer like day. I respond with "Whatever". I buy the mug. She acts like she is going to wrap it up nicely for me but she takes it and puts it on a shelf behind her. She goes about her business. I am annoyed by this. I go behind the counter and get it. As I'm leaving two younger men, teenagers approach me. They have been watching me since I entered the market. One of them asks me if "I speak English?". I quip with "Do I speak English? What do you think?" I'm REALLY annoyed now. I push past them. The other kid yells "well, I know you listen to techno-pop". I say "I guess then you have me all figured out". I leave the store. I walk around to the back of the parking lot. My moms car is hidden among the other patrons whips. I notice the door is open and the hood is up. I’m worried that the local bumpkins of this unknown place might have me stranded here for the day, maybe the weeks to come. Then I notice the stereo is blasting with some awful club song playing. Then I wake up.

When I woke up I made sure to write down as much of this as I could. I’m really not sure what any of this means? It left me feeling uneasy.

-DAG!

What is that old saying about remembering the past?

Sarah Silverman Says...

Oh yeah! and BIG UPS to the Salt Lake City Weekly. They are LOVING the new RM video and DISC. Tell a friend and some enimies...

www.slweekly.com

http://cityweekly.blogspot.com/2008/09/dungeons-dragons-rotten-musicians.html

In The Waves

 

So, the Yankees didn’t make it into the post season. October is going to feel a little different this year. The epic failure of the powers that be and the Economy have been in the news of late and while I despise most of the views and the philosophy of Ben Stein he wrote something recently that I stumbled on via Daily Kos that seemed VERY interesting.

Here is the link to it:
http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/yourlife/109609;_ylt=AihYXGa_2tf9PJDeCl.2G0S7YWsA

The part(s) that fascinated me…

"The crisis occurred (to greatly oversimplify) because the financial system allowed entities to place bets on whether or not those mortgages would ever be paid. You didn't have to own a mortgage to make the bets. These bets, called Credit Default Swaps, are complex. But in a nutshell, they allow someone to profit immensely - staggeringly - if large numbers of subprime mortgages are not paid off and go into default.

The profit can be wildly out of proportion to the real amount of defaults, because speculators can push down the price of instruments tied to the subprime mortgages far beyond what the real rates of loss have been. As I said, the profits here can be beyond imagining. (In fact, they can be so large that one might well wonder if the whole subprime fiasco was not set up just to allow speculators to profit wildly on its collapse...)

These Credit Default Swaps have been written (as insurance is written) as private contracts. There is nil government regulation of them. Who writes these policies? Banks. Investment banks. Insurance companies. They now owe the buyers of these Credit Default Swaps on junk mortgage debt trillions of dollars. It is this liability that is the bottomless pit of liability for the financial institutions of America."

*Many of us have already said this, including a LOT of prominent economists like Michael Hudson. These people knew the loans they were making were bad loans. They knew the money wouldn't be paid back. Which has always bothered me...why did they make bad loans on purpose? For short term gain? Well, yes, at least as far as some of the people involved go, like mortage agents in banks who worked on commission. But the people in charge were letting them make these loans. Why?*

I have been reading a book by Naomi Klein called “The Shock Doctrine”. Here is a synopsis…

The book argues that the free market policies of Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics have risen to prominence in countries such as Chile under Pinochet, Russia under Yeltsin, the United States (for example in New Orleans after Katrina), and the privatization of Iraq's economy under the Coalition Provisional Authority not because they were democratically popular, but because they were pushed through while the citizens of these countries were in shock from disasters or upheavals.

Sound familiar? I don’t want to put on a tin foil hat just yet but this is a very dangerous time we are living in.

*DAG!*

Current likes: Going to the “Monet To Picasso” exhibit with K (we were “The Sneakers”), The Force Unleashed-Xbox 360, The Shock Doctrine & the Miami Dolphins CRUSHING the Pats.

Dislikes: My Zombie like state on the mornings I wake up for work (it’s early SON!), The BYU corner at my work & ignorance, even though it really IS bliss.

LUMDI

I'm feeling this...

Shanty: I really LIKE your music

Cheeba: Oh yeah, thanks mainnn!

Colbert Nation rules the school!

Hear ye, Hear ye...Shorty LONG! (thanks FISCH!)

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=130766
Great article...How the Music Business Spent the Summer Killing Itself.

Unleashed!

 

Metacritic gives this a 70 (users 7.7 out of 10). As long as I can throw some Stormtroopers around and the story is semi-solid (no way this touches K.O.T.O.R.) I'll be cool.

Keep RUNNIN'

So dope!

Elektra and myself are battlin' with action figures when she gets out of school today. She is going to be a force sensitive Jar Jar. I dont have the heart to tell her that the Luke Skywalker Jedi knight figure will "crushin meesa Binks neck"...

Remember...

Polar Bear ISHT!

See more Gina Gershon videos at Funny or Die

Party Like It's September 9th!

 

This is me. Today on September 9th 2008. If tomorrow comes today and human kind is erased from time…I guess we can all say (after the fact?). It was fun while it lasted.

One of the greatest science experiments ever built is set to switch on at around 3:30 AM (EDT)tomorrow.

After 14 years and $8 billion, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) plans to inject the first beam of protons fully around the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The purpose of the LHC is to help researchers answer some big questions about the universe: why particles have mass, what dark matter may be made of, and why matter survived its brush with antimatter when the universe was young. In a nut shell, trying to recreate the moments just after the “Big Bang”.

Will they find the "God particle", the Higgs boson that represents mass, and therefore inertia in all matter? I suppose its just abstract knowledge, since we won't be able to actually manipulate such forces for a LONG time to come. It’s like the answer to a question that has not yet been asked. Or even thought of.

To me there are three ways of looking at this…

One…It reminds me of a bit of “Galapagos“ (Vonnegut) where there are some people stranded on an island and all their water comes from a natural basin with a little hole which supplies a perfect continuous stream of all the fresh water they need. But people being people, one of them can't help but fiddle with it, trying to control and direct the flow, until the whole thing breaks and they end up with no water at all. And…if we do get swallowed by a black hole it would happen so fast that no one would be aware of it anyway. No hiding under desks or on tab tops when the rogue mini-black holes make there way to the center of the planet and feed on the core. How can you have a black hole without the mass of an enormous star anyway?

Two…LHC is at the leading edge of theoretical physics and is therefore as far as an idea can be from actual use without not existing in the first place. Who knows what the LHC will give us in the long term... anti-matter fuel, faster than light travel, micro-black hole pets?

Three…Maybe we should accept that there are some forces that neither Religion or Science should attempt to comprehend.

Peace-DAG!

Plagiarism?

"Things are really going to be different now..."

The Best Analysis Of The News On TV

The Dragon Backs Obama!

 

It's about time...as reported by Bryan Young (http://www.bigshinyrobot.com)

Former Presidential Candidate Savage Dragon announced today his intention to endorse the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama. Some of you may remember the Dragon's ill-fated 2004 run at the presidency in which he backed out when he discovered his running mate to be the evil Dreadknight, a supervillain with global domination on his mind.

Savage Dragon has come out to endorse the one major candidate he's sure isn't a supervillain, Barack Obama.

In a release sent out to the press, Savage Dragon creator Erik Larson said, "Fans have asked if he'll be running again, but given the importance of the upcoming election it seemed appropriate that he would back Barack Obama, the candidate whose politics most reflect his own. Savage Dragon will be giving Barack Obama his full support."

Issue #137 of Savage Dragon will be available for sale September 3rd at comic-book stores everywhere. One in five issues will have the above pictured Obama cover.

Aside from his failed presidential bid, this isn't the first time Savage Dragon has taken a swing in the political arena. Issue #119 (pictured below) featured the Dragon taking a swing at the 43rd President of the United States. Once again, another intriguing measure of the political landscape with the barometer of comic books.

"Honey"

Erykah Badu Honey
by I_m_First

I'm late on this I know BUT damn...so FRESH.

Peach

 

The peach rests on unconscience victims neck.

The Ultimate Political BURN

Another good speech from the DNC...

"Petro-Dictators"...