howdy all! we´re ın turkey now! ıt´s been really great. ı´m ın an ınternet cafe and have managed to get sun burned. as proof of our beıng here check ıt out! ş ç ğ ü ğ é
hope you all are good.

Dear America,
Things like this make you look CRAZY!

Florida Senate approves religious license plates
"What if someone comes next year and decides to vote on something that has the devil on it, and horns, horns on each side. I know that people are called the devil, but if the symbol of a devil is on it, I would not vote for that."

Meet 254 people who were arrested in the last 24 hours in Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco counties (Tampa, Florida area). The site has mugshots, arrest information and home address info available for all to see. Keep in mind that all of these people have been arrested but not charged, much less convicted, of any crime at this time. Their 'about us' has the ever so responsible disclaimer of:

"The booking mug shots and related information are from arrest records in the order and at the time the data was collected. Those appearing here have not been convicted of the arrest charge and are presumed innocent. Do not rely on this site to determine any person's actual criminal record."

Is this a hilariously awful R&B track or an absurdist masterpiece? I have to thank dansette for originally exposing me to this about a year ago. I made a 3 second ringtone of the part at 3:44. Here it is. I'd be surprised if more than ten people download it but in the odd event of that occurring comment and I'll re-upload.

velvetdahlia unfriended both me and Joanna a few weeks ago and I don’t know why. Joanna happened to check Semagic (an lj client) for friends list changes. That’s when I saw she’d also unfriended me and removed both of us on facebook as well. It was the first time I was told by a program that I wasn’t friends with someone anymore. I think that if you’ve hung out with someone a few times and they’ve been to your home then they at least owe you a sentence or two before they break off all relations for no obvious reason. I waited about a week for her to say something but she never did so I emailed her.

[her name],
I noticed you unfriended me and Joanna from your lj and facebook. The lj client I use said, “velvetdahlia has removed you from their friends list”. Care to elaborate any?
Eugene

A week later still with no response says that she doesn’t care to elaborate. This is particularly awkward because her husband, who’s company I do enjoy, hasn’t unfriended us and we have several mutual friends. Truthfully it would not surprise me if I found out that some of you dear readers know more about what’s going on with this than I do. I’m not asking anyone to take a side but I would like to say that if, due to this I’m relegated to some lame filter just because you don’t want to remove me then please, I invite you to unfriend me. If we have met though, I would appreciate a few words. It’s the decent thing to do.
I suppose I’ll go unfriend her now.

Remember the wireless keyboard/mouse combo I bought recently? Basically it never worked completely correctly but I was willing to tolerate that until the scroll wheel on the mouse broke. All this was within about five hours of using it for the first time. I was pretty annoyed. I had paid £25 for something that was a name brand (micro$oft) and had tons of good reviews. When I got it I realized it was designed poorly AND was broken. So, I went over to Ebuyer and left a non-favourable review on the item. Then I waited for my review to be approved. And waited. And waited. It still hasn't appeared. I googled this and apparently this is far from the first time ebuyer.com has vetted non-glowing product reviews! I don't know about you but a lot of times I read customer reviews and make choices based on (what I thought were) honest reviews. So, I'm none too pleased with ebuyer.com at the moment. I've never had any problems with them prior to this but the review thing really has pissed me off. I've called and left a message on someone's voicemail and I'll see if that goes anywhere.
In the meantime, I have mailed back the shitty £25 microsoft wireless keyboard/mouse combo and "upgraded" to a £15 Lidl brand wireless combo that both functions correctly AND has more features than the microsoft bundle.
( comparing the two and review )

I'm not sure what it was that reminded me of this but, when I was about 10 years old my mother used to drive us to one of my aunt and uncle's house to visit occasionally. He had some type of desk job in the Air Force where he made made early pirate copies of games. He copied that floppy. Anyway, as a kid I thought their house was boring but I would play games on his Commodore 64. One of the more strange ones I remember playing was Commando Libya. It is an overly easy, intentionally tasteless, low quality shooter type game. People run across the screen with guns. They can't hurt you but shooting them gets you points. There are barrels that do hurt you but they're very easy to shoot. Then the bonus stage is a shooting a number of blindfolded people standing against a wall. Then if you get the high score there are three people sent to the guillotine with your initials on their chests. It has a high WTF? factor. Here's a video of the game. It's far too long. Skip to 1:00 for bonus level and 2:00 for the high score.

Saw this and I couldn't pass it up. I think we're going to order a pizza.

and while I'm at it:
Thanksgiving Prayer - William S. Burroughs

We had been watching Blossom recently. I remember it being bad. It is worse than that. It is well into the territory of ironic delight. It airs at 10am on the channel Trouble so Joanna never got to see it so I started recording them. It was soon after that I realized that Trouble only has about twenty episodes but there are some magical moments within even those. There are guests stars galore on the show: Mr. T appears as a figment of Joey's imagination, B.B. King "jams" with Blossom's dad, David Schwimmer plays a married guy in his late 20s who begins dating Blossom's 16 year old bff Six, Phyllis Diller appears in at least two episodes as an ambulance crew co-worker to Blossom's older brother and Hugh Hefner plays himself in an episode where Joey goes to the Playboy Mansion. Then there's still the bizarre theme episodes such as: the Blossom goes to Paris two parter, Blossom goes to Disneyland and there is an exceptionally awful two parter where the cast of Blossom is inserted into a Frankie & Annette beach type movie. There is another episode that is done as a film festival with a short vignette for what each character "made" for their film and in that episode is the music video for Joey's song!!! Strangest, there is an clip episode that breaks the 4th wall throughout and the actors "talk" about the characters and favourite scenes.
If you, like me, haven't watched Blossom since the early 90s and remember it as a crap issue driven sitcom then give it another chance, it's terrible.

EDIT: The Joey Lawrence video!

After someone on my f-list posted a music video I've been watching videos for about an hour now. There are a lot of things that I didn't know there were videos for.

Felt (MURS and Slug) - Early Mornin' Tony

Joanna's mom went to Germany a few months ago an brought us back assorted goodies from there. We ate everything long ago but had set aside the smoked beer or Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Märzen if you want to be fancy about it. Finally a few day ago it was decided that we had waited too long and opened one. I enjoyed it but it is certainly unique. It's not just a name, the smoke flavour really stay with it. I was told that it tastes like bacon and in a way it does. It also kind of tastes like a house fire in a nice but nearly overpowering way. I have a photo of the bottle which I took but I've yet to take it off the camera.

The election cost $4.2bn ($5.3bn if you include the congressional and senate races). 120-130m Americans voted. So that’s nearly $35 spent for every vote cast. (link)

There are several reasons. Also this entry is an expanded version of a comment I left when a friend of mine asked why I wasn't voting.

I don't really feel like I'm a part of American politics any more. America deserves whoever it gets in this election. I do think Obama is a marginally better choice but I don't feel as I have a place helping decide that. I kind of feel that if America elects another conservative then fair enough because that means that America is a conservative country. That's how democracy works. If for example the majority of Americans want to make it a law that everyone must kill their first-born child then the people have spoken.

I also think that the electoral college renders all individual votes irrelevant. The last two elections have shown that the popular vote doesn't really matter when choosing a president.
I also don't feel like it matters either way. There's not really a box to tick saying that I support a candidate under duress. I suppose I could vote for a third party but that seems like more a symbolic gesture than anything substantial.

Also I think that McCain and Obama are fundamentally the same candidate. They only differ on where taxes should come from and on abortion rights. Neither can "fix" the economy. Both support incursions into Pakistan. Both have given their support to Israel. Both are against gay marriage. Neither will give Americans nationalized healthcare. Neither are opposed to a war with Iran. Both support the Patriot Act.

Does it really matter than Obama is black? I genuinely don't care. I would say that those who support him purely based on his race are as racist as those who oppose him for the same reason. I've seem some people say some crazy shit this election. I was called a racist on lj recently. A lj user declared that white secret service people couldn't be trusted protecting the safety of Obama and I said that was in itself racist. I was "jumping to the defence of the white race". Also take this comment on a friend of mine's entry. So it is alright to use racist language as long as you're stereotyping a group you think deserves it? This election drove home the point to me that it is not sufficient for people to agree with me if it is for the wrong reasons. I would like to imagine that everyone thinks about the issues and arrives at the same conclusions as me but it seems far more likely that they just spout forth the rhetoric of their allegiance.

It is impossible to defeat any American presidential candidate that has mass advertising, brand psychology and massive funding behind them. If I vote for Obama I feel as though I'm casting a vote for my approval of the public manipulation that goes with all modern major candidates. My vote would go in the same pile with everyone who believes in 'change'.

Have you seen Network? Here's the clip I saw that made me seek out the film and I think it makes some excellent points.


In summary if I had a do-over then I suppose I would waste my vote on a third candidate. If your disagree with me or would like to say something please feel free. I won't get out my caps lock rage or anything.

My friend velvetdahlia attended the International Zombie Day in London a few days ago. I know how many of you love zombies and thought you'd enjoy this. It's one of her photos which actually I hope she doesn't mind me posting this. Ha, given the nature of the internet I'm accustomed to just taking what I want when it comes to images.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Garfield's Halloween Adventure (Part 1), (Part 2), (Part 3)
Fat Albert Halloween Special
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
Halloween Safety (1977)
Halloween Safety (1985)

I was just wandering about on youtube and found these two promotional videos for Southend! I'm not positive but I think both are from the 80s.

I would post the other too but they have embedding disabled! Grrr! Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y61CKD43vIg

Via this post from margann I was reading an article on the Independent (link) about the arrest of those wacky skinheads that had planned the Butch & Sundance style assassination of Senator Obama. In amongst the story of their plan I noticed an error on the story where it refers to Obama as "the first black presidential candidate". Wat? My memory isn't infallible but I recall voting for Al Sharpton in the 2004 Democratic primary and I remember Jesse Jackson running in the 80s. After thinking about it longer than I should've I decided they were making liberals look bad and I wrote them a nicely worded email. So, I've become a letters to the editor person. Seemingly I can't leave well enough alone when I think someone's clearly wrong. I also can't wait for this election to be over. All the hype and campaigning has whipped up people into a strange frenzy. Nearly anyone would be an improvement over the current US administration. Who thinks they can drive the bus better than the retard? As much as I would like to believe in "change" I just can't seem to swallow it. I expect business as usual from the future Obama administration. Foreign relations will change slightly and domestic affairs will be about the same. I'm not saying that there's a better choice. I also think it's really cute that America thinks it's edgy for supporting a moderate. I'm also not saying the politics here are any better. They're just crap in a completely different way.

The stuff of nightmares!

Absurd video is absurd. Excellent use of 9 to 5. I love that song.

Hey past and current Springfield people, it has been indexed by Google Street View! The only thing is that the google cam van doesn't appear to be a fan of one-way streets. It skipped the block of South Jefferson that our old apartment is on. Highlights of my virtual tour included: seeing willwarner's house, the dam on Lake Springfield and the now closed businesses like: Vista the gas station and the fire trap book store. All "Git N' Go" gas stations now seem to be "Kum and Go" now. Kum and Go? Really?