MY WORD!

Here's an addictive vocabulary tester you can play and help feed the world at the same time. Try to beat my high score of 44.

BOMBERMAN, START!

Every time I think Bush has completely lost his mind, he proves he had just a little bit left to lose. The evidence continues to mount that an attack on Iran is imminent. G-Dubs was pounding his war gong loud and clear at today's press conference where he declared that if Iran continues its nuclear program, it is essentially starting World War III.

Yes, my fellow Americans, George Bush threatened World War III today. I think I can hear Ozzy cackling somewhere: "All aboard!"

We're definitely headed off the rails on a crazy train. Dubya's war fetish is far worse than Hoover's cross-dressing tendencies ever were. And almost as expensive. There's simply no longer any defense left for the man. He's off the charts out of his fucking mind. It makes me seriously question the intelligence of anyone still making excuses for his policies - all of the brainwashed lemmings unwilling or unable to remove their blindfolds as the lying piper leads us all off the cliff.

Is there anything we can do to prevent the inevitable? Or are we truly paralyzed and helpless? Democrats will badmouth the President to the press over and over again - but when it comes time to pass a war budget, they line up and sign on the line that is dotted. There's dissent coming from every corner of the globe and every state in the nation. Yet a handful of powerful neoconservatives have managed to hijack America and they are now driving all of us, hostages in our own country, to the brink of yet another war we don't want and can't afford. This is absolute madness - and if you aren't outraged, you haven't been paying attention.

The writing is on the wall, and it's in the broken English of a bumbling American dictator.

NOTES ON BEING, ON TIME

Sometimes, in my private moments, I find myself speculating about really important things. Not things about me and my insignificant little life here in a small section of a big city in the middle of a large country that's part of a much bigger world - but important things. Like how to tell time in space.


Thinking about it made my head hurt.


Let’s say you’re floating about in space. Maybe you’re flying in a ship of some kind, or taking a nice, relaxing float in the tightly swaddled comfort of a boundless, black cosmos.


Whatever.


Now let’s say your watch stops. Batteries die or something. You tap it a few times, but nothing. It's done. Digital instrumentation and communications with mission control back on earth would help you keep track, but what if those too failed. What if you're out there and you have no idea what time it is. Does time even matter? And if it doesn't really matter out there, does it really matter down here?

Imagine being alone in space. Time as you know it would come to mean less and less. Sunrise and sunset really don’t apply in the way that they do now. Way out in deep space you’re surrounded by tons of flickering little specks – none quite so helpful as our own flickering little speck, the sun, at giving us the time. So drifting about in space, I imagine, isn’t a whole lot unlike spending a week inside a casino…minus the clanging jackpots and flashing lights.

No clocks. No windows to the sun. No sense for time at all. Just two hands in front of you and a laundry list of biological needs and urges.

And that’s when it dawned on me. Time as we know it – the 24-hour cycle we have neatly broken up into morning, afternoon, and night – is irrelevant in space!

Of course, we would still experience the linear passing of time from now to now-again-but-later to now-again-but-later-than-later, and so on. But without a clock or a sun to set and keep time by, there would be no way (or need) to schedule anything. No meetings to miss. No appointments to keep. No dates to circle on the calendar.

Because there's nothing to keep track of passing time. Even talking in terms of the increments we use today would be pointless. Seconds, minutes, and hours are all derived from a 24-hour day, which only matters here on earth. Out in space, everything is now or never. What is natural here becomes synthetic and man-made as soon as you leave orbit.

***

Interestingly, a recent 60 Minutes report on an indigenous tribe in the south Pacific made note of the fascinating fact that the natives did not have a word in their language equivalent to our word for “when.” They had no need for one because they don't project things out in time. Everything is now. They don’t experience time in the same way that those of us in the hustling, bustling “civilized” world do. Marooned in space, they’d probably far a lot better than we would.

I’d go insane. I am all about time. It drives me up a wall to be late to anything. I would rather be an hour early than a minute late. Wow. Read that again, will ya. Seeing that in print made me realize that maybe I already AM insane. And maybe my relationship with clocks has made me so.

So here I am, thinking about very important things, and I just realized how much time I’ve spent doing it. Was it too much time? Too little? Just enough? I guess when I put things in perspective and remember that I’m really just floating around in space on a spinning chunk of matter, time isn’t the important thing.

The important thing is that I’m floating around in space on a spinning chunk of matter.

And that's pretty cool.

FUN AND GAMES

Just in time for Halloween, here's a great time-waster called Cat Bowling. Entertaining and addictive. Start a league at work and cackle with delight with every pumpkin toss.

PRIMARY SCHOOL

So you're weighing your Presidential options and thinking, this sucks, I'm surrounded by Democratic milquetoasts and Republican war mongers. You don't want another bought-and-paid-for corporate sponsored politician to do the bidding of big business, catering to the very same lobbies currently running our country, from AIPAC to the American oil cartel. You don't want 9/11 profiteers, scarecrows or sissy-ass pander bears. You just want a

If I didn't feel obligated to vote against our nation's growing bureaucratic machine (Hillary) in the February Primary, I'd likely register as a Republican and vote for Ron Paul. He's the Republican version of Dennis Kucinich and only Republican candidate for President with testicles.

Seriously. If you're voting Republican, he's the only one who upholds the true values the party was built upon. He's the only one who understands the consequences of our foreign policy decisions (You Tube recent debates for evidence of this scary fact and pay special attention to the things that come out of Giuliani's mouth). And when he's alone in a room with Mitt Romney, he's the only one with an IQ over 80.

Given the lackluster crop of candidates we're stuck with, the dream card for the general would be a Kucinich-Paul smackdown - America couldn't lose either way. Not even the poised optimist, Obama, can take down Hillary's lobby money, so Dennis is out. But Ron Paul may have a shot yet. Give him a look.

FAMILY VALUES

Hilarious.

LOST IN TRANSLATION

Thanks to Steve for sharing this lovely reminder that men are not very good with the phone.