I wanted him dead ever since I saw the clip of him interviewing Jack Kerouac on Firing Line years ago. He treated Jack like shit, and deserved to be kicked in the nutz accordingly. (Sorry no video link — can’t find it.)

By that time, Jack was on a downhill alcoholic slide but still deserved respect for some truly great and lasting pieces of work. I had just finished reading Tristessa when I saw the interview. Wanted to kick Bill in the ding-ding, I did.

Anyway, “perhaps you remember me from one of my many spy novels…” (kudos if you get the reference) Buckley was an asshole Ivy League piece of elitist trash whose only good idea, other than to shuck off his withered mortal coil today, was that America’s War on (some) Drugs needed to end.

Other than that, he was a snooty pig’s patootie. Celebrate with me, will you?

You can be a winner, too!

I just finished checking-out 1984. It’s odd that I’d never read it, considering I’m such a fan of the dystopian nightmare, but no one forced me to do so during my stint as a guinea pig in the American public educational system. Nor have I read Brave New World, though I have heard Aldous Huxley lecture. You can do so as well at the UC Berkley Online Media site.

To be honest, I didn’t actually read 1984. I listened to a fantastic reading of it after trying to read through a poorly printed paperback we have lying around. You can do the same by going here, not that it’s legal to do so.

Also, I found a film adaptation online starring the ever-talented John Hurt as Winston Smith which I followed along with during the days I spent listening to the book. Listening to the book. It turns out that my ears have much more free time than my eyes, and I’m now in the market for Brave New World as, I hope, an equally well-done recording.

I’ve an even greater appreciation for Bowie’s We Are the Dead (from Diamond Dogs), now that I understand what was meant when it was spoken in Orwell’s book. It’s first used by the character O’Brien as he’s explaining to Winston and Julia that none among them will live to see the result of their revolutionary acts. That is, that victory might not come for a thousand years, through countless acts of revolt by individuals whose names will not be recorded. Half a biblical age of the spreading of dissent might not even bring it about, but it is expected that their acts will have a cumulative effect. They just won’t be around to see it. They’ll also, more than likely, suffer miserably for taking part in this slow revolution.

Since both Winston and Julia are completely happy to do so, we are the dead could be interpreted as a positive statement. They are the victorious dead. The forgotten, but honorable and hopefully victorious casualties of the archetypal battle against tyranny.

That’s the way I’d like to see it; in the end though, Winston is broken completely and neither he nor Julia ever succeeded in tossing a wrench into the machine. They had great sex, though. Revolutionary sex. But this isn’t a book report. Okay, maybe it is.

I was struck early on by how many of Big Brother’s tricks and traps have come to be a part of our everyday lives. After only the first few chapters, I realized that the very term Orwellian could someday generate a warm and fuzzy apple pie feeling in all of us. That in itself is a part of Big Brother’s plan — to make you love it and crave it. Beg for it.

I’m going to go back through the book and mark it up. From cameras that scan your facial expressions to a mythological boogeyman being used to perpetuate an endless war, there are too many juicy parallels to our own little ‘topia to recall in one sitting. Oooh I’ve gotta go. The two-minute hate is starting on CNN.

I really like that humans have labels for everything. When two colors look alike, but are actually very different, there’s a word for it.

So, this banker is found dead in his swimming pool near Moscow, and RIA Novosti (state-controlled Russian Information Agency) reports on it. The bank the man worked for, by the way, is state-controlled VTB.

State-controlled news reporting on the death of a state-controlled banker, just to be clear.

Here’s the fun part: the article first mentions investigators having claimed he had been tied up and tortured, then claims one investigator stated “there were no signs of violence on the body.”

How can you tell if a person has been tortured without there being signs of violence on the body?

Then there’s the suicide note. I’ve seen a few translations of it.

“I am very tired of life. It is nobody’s fault.”
“I am tired of living. I ask you not to blame anyone.”
“‘Please, do not accuse anybody of my death’.”

He was found in his swimming pool. While RAI Novosti mentions that the pool was empty, a Reurters article has a quote from a police officer who says that it looks as if he was drowned.

Everyone is in agreement that his hands and legs were bound.

Fun part number two: a high-ranking investigation source told RIA Novosti that suicide was still being considered as a possible cause of death.

How do you say WTF in Russian?

If you’re wondering who might’ve wanted to off Oleg, the timber industry is getting the greater arc of the flashlight. (I’m trying to start a new cliché)

“It’s not the best way to resolve the situation by running around like a madman with a razor blade in his hand.”
— Russian President Vladimir Putin, talkin ’bout Dubya.

So this little study has come out that links chocolate cravings with a certain type of bacteria found in some people’s stomachs.

Peep this: the study looked at the stomachs of people who crave chocolate vs. those who don’t do brown. Since they found a different type of bacteria in the stomachs of chocolate fans they’ve decided that it must be the bacteria that crave the chocolate.

This looks like bad science to me. There’s nothing here to prove that it isn’t the chocolate that brings about the rise of the certain type of bacteria. Not one article I’ve read has mentioned that, and there are plenty out there regarding this tard-ass study.

As for what mechanism exists by which one group of bacteria could influence the desires of womankind, none of the articles wish to ask that obvious question.

I wonder if Jeffrey Dahmer had some sort of human flesh-craving bacteria within his belly that sadly forced him to crave human flesh? Think of the litigation. “Good people of the jury, my client was acting under possession of flesh-craving bacteria. Who among you has not done something under bacterial possession? Let he who hath not cast the first stone.”

Reports have come out that an automated anti-aircraft cannon in South Africa went absolutely bonkers and started strafing its fellow soldiers.

Maybe it’s a bad idea to automate a high-powered projectile weapon. What kind of lazy shit is that, anyway? A software glitch may be to blame. Noooo… think so? I really thought it just fucking hated people.

OMFG… I love this.
Monsignor Tommaso Stenico said he frequented online gay chat rooms and met with gay men as part of his work as a psychoanalyst.

Of course, since he loves god wholly and fully, and that god is most certainly male, well… Let’s see him wriggle his way out of that. Perhaps he’s also only pretending to believe in god! Enjoy the spotlight, sucka.

Bugs repair own DNA to survive eons in ice
Anna Salleh ABC Science Online

Scientists say they can at last explain how bacteria stay alive in ice for hundreds of thousands of years.

Bacteria slow down their metabolism to the point where they produce just enough energy to repair their ageing DNA, say Australian researcher Dr Mike Bunce of Murdoch University in Perth and his international colleagues.

“Were I living today, I would be serving time in one of your federal prisons. Yes, I ordered my gardener to sow as much marijuana as he could, for I found it to be a most useful botanical species.

Be it hemp for rope and sail, or the dulling of the ache of a tooth, this plant is a miracle of nature, and if it is to be deemed illegal in this contemporary society, I shall willingly submit to incarceration on its behalf, for I have full confidence that, in time, the citizenry of our great republic shall see the futility and absurdity of using tax monies to provide room and board, albiet behind bars, for those whose only crime has been the cultivation of a quite useful weed.”

General and 1st President of the United States of America
George Washington