BartCop Entertainment Archives - Tuesday, 5 July, 2005

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Issue #159
is brought to you by

Obscuradelia

My son just asked me what the book I was reading was about. This turned out to be a rather tough question since the book I was reading was Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler. I simply handed him the book and told him to read the first chapter, but if I had dared to attempt an answer, here's what I would have been obligated to tell him...

Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler is about you, the person reading Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, and chapter one is concerned with nothing more than your preparations for reading the book. "It's not that you expect anything in particular from this particular book. You're the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything," we are told about ourselves.

The next chapter, actually chapter two, is chapter one of Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, which begins like this: "The novel begins in a railway station, a locomotive huffs, steam from a piston covers the opening of the chapter, a cloud of smoke hides part of the first paragraph."

Chapter two, actually chapter three, is about you again. After finishing chapter one of Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, you discover to your horror that you've purchased a misprint, and that the volume consists of nothing more than the first chapter printed over and over.

You go back to the bookstore to trade it in for a good copy but the book is sold out. Luckily, there's someone else there returning their bad copy, which consists of nothing but another chapter reprinted over and over. You start reading their copy only to discover that it's a chapter from a different book.

The next chapter is chapter one of Outside the Town of Malbork, which has absolutely nothing to do with Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler except for the fact that you, the lead character in Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, are reading it.

The rest of the book alternates between your quest to get to the bottom of the mystery of Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler and individual chapters of all the other volumes you find, none of which have anything whatsoever to do with one another. Along the way you ruminate on the nature of the relationship between author and reader while falling in love with the fellow traveler you met in the bookstore. By the time you read a chapter from Leaning from the Steep Slope, a Hitchcockeyed thriller in which an innocent man gets caught up in a jail break, a chapter that ends on a moment of tension that makes you really want to find out what happens next, you, the actual reader of Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, are just as frustrated as you, the main character in Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler.

Most of us take the actual act of reading for granted, so it's fascinating and illuminating to read something that's about nothing more than the actual act of reading, in which the author shares with you the force of creation in the ultimate look at the man behind the curtain. This isn't a book that allows you to lose yourself in another world. You never, for one single second, can forget that what you are doing is reading Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler.

Might I mention that this book is never going to get made into a movie? Since the main character is you, no particular actor can play the part. You can't wait for the Tom Cruise version. If you want to experience Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, you're just going to have to read it because it is more a 100% pure reading experience than just about any other book ever written. If M.C. Escher were a novelist, he would have written just such a tour de force. It breaks absolutely every rule of civilized writing. I am in awe of this book, one of the most thought provoking imaginable, an unqualified masterpiece that I recommend whole-heartedly despite the fact that, as John Updike says, it is "a scheme designed to frustrate all reasonable readerly expectations."

The same can be said of Twenty Bucks, a film from 1992 that has just been released on DVD. In a multiple plot that is strangely similar to one that has passed through the brain of every screenwriter who has ever lived, the film simply chronicles the life of a twenty dollar bill from its start at an ATM to its ultimate demise as a sorry wreck of a bill to be burned by a bank.

Give that assignment to 100 writers and they'll all come up with completely different stories, so what's our criteria for judging this one? Does it touch rich and poor, generous and greedy, does it pass through the hands of those who barely notice vs. those whose lives it alters, does it get shoved up someone's nose snorting coke and eaten by a fish, does the film in its grand scheme elucidate man's relationship to money in a way that entertains and enlightens. Yes on all counts.

Twenty Bucks wasn't a hit, perhaps because, by it's very nature as a series of short stories, it doesn't have a single main character but a series of main characters who barely have ten minutes of screen time apiece. Luckily, they're all played by fantastic actors, among them Linda Hunt, Brendan Fraser, Elisabeth Shue, Steve Buscemi, Christopher Lloyd, Spalding Gray, William H. Macy, and Gladys Night without the Pips, each of whom you want to spend more time with, thus, to misquote John Updike, the film is "a scheme designed to frustrate all reasonable cinematic expectations," which is perhaps another reason you've never heard of it.

Originally written in the 50s by Endre Bohem (Gunsmoke, Rawhide), it was rewritten by his son, Leslie Bohem (A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child, Taken, The Alamo, bass player with Sparks!), after his father's death in 1990. Keva Rosenfeld did a spectacular job of directing, and the next time a twenty dollar bill passes through your hands, your mind is sure take you through a journey of your own version of this film.

"The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting."
- Henry James -

Confidential PBS Report

A confidential report to the Chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the honorable Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, on the influence of left-wing liberalism in PBS television programming.

A brief summation of detected liberal bias in PBS programming.

Sesame Street: Part of the name of this program comes from an Arab Muslim saying meaning "open the cave." Almost all Arab Muslims are terrorists who hate America, so this is clearly an inappropriate title for a children's show.

Reading Rainbow: "Rainbow" is a liberal code word for gay pride and acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle. Unfit for children or adults.

Teletubbies: A gay front group trying to hide their homosexual agenda of turning the nation's children into limp-wristed sodomites by pretending to be aliens from another planet. We must not be fooled.

Scientific American Frontiers: Presents information at odds with the truth of Intelligent Design. Science is held out as the answer to mankind's problems, rather than praying to a Christian God. Host Alan Alda is a card-carrying Hollywood pinko liberal.

New Scandinavian Cooking: Most Scandinavian countries are run by socialist left-wing governments who favor drug use and pornography. PBS should not be promoting these warped anti-American nations.

Cooking with Jacques Pepin: Pepin is obviously French. Need I say more?

Barbeque University: Noted that they used the grill to cook shish-kebobs, which are among the favorite foods of our Arab Muslim terrorist enemies.

Rick Steve's Europe: My God, the man's praising Old Europe!

This Old House: Why aren't they promoting taking advantage of the Bush Administration's low interest rates and buying new houses instead of fixing old ones?

The McLaughlin Group: Discovered a flaming liberal on the panel, Eleanor Clift. She must be removed to restore balance to the show.

The Yankee Workshop: Host often talks about "getting wood" which is a code word in the homosexual community for the male penile erection. Other such code words noted: "screw," "pound," "drill," "nut' and "nailed."

Nova: Science programming that is contrary to God's irrefutable law as established in the Holy Bible. On a recent episode, they claimed the Grand Canyon was millions of years old when we know it cannot be older than 6,000 years and caused by the Great Flood that only Noah's Ark survived.

Nature: Frequently features programs dealing with the disgusting habits of easily-identifiable liberal animals such as the lizard, snake and woodpecker, and left-wing insects, such as the cockroach and dung beetle. More shows on manly and conservative lions, bulls, eagles, wasps, worker bees and army ants would help balance this presentation.

Mystery!: The British actors who appear on this show don't seem to be the sort who would support Prime Minister Tony Blair and his efforts, with President Bush's bold and firm leadership, to bring freedom and democracy to the people of Iraq. Many of them also sound very homosexual with their English accents.

Frontline: Liberal leftist anti-government propaganda, pure and simple. The producers of this show should be sent to Guantanamo for intense interrogation.

NOW with David Brancaccio: A front for the international communist conspiracy. Suggest firing Brancaccio and hiring Michael Savage as host to bring unbiased balance to this broadcast.

Cool Trick of the Week

Make a background picture for your computer screen that makes it look transparent.

Stupid Answers of the Week

Last week's stupid question...

What the hell is this guy talking about? (insane letter)

Salami to you, MD:

Allen was no doubt using GOP codewords to reveal the leaker of Valerie Plame's identity to Bob 'Dawn of the Dead' Novak and the name of Bush's next Supreme Court nominee.

By carefully running his words through my Imperial Total Information Awareness Encryto-Creep 91101 computer - reverse engineered from alien technology captured in Roswell, NM in 1947 (ask Xarvon about this) - here are the answers:

- Karl Rove leaked Plame's name through one of Michael Jackson's kids.

- Ten Commandments Judge Roy 'No Relation to Michael' Moore will be Bush's high court nominee. Since Moore would kill to be on the U.S. Supreme Court, and he's a poor shot, the posting will be posthumous.

Keep watching the skies,

- RSJ

Celebrate Albert Hoffman Day! Ride a bicycle!
- James and Katherine Allard

Mike mate

Nothing. He's republican, on drugs, in church, listening to Dubya in his head.

- Wal

Answer: You betcha.

- John Zutz, Milwaukee

It looks to me as though Allen's piece is computer generated with sayings taken from some unknown source. I Googled 'Na'j wetz comedian' and came up empty - imagine that - so I would guess that the phrases were taken individually from some database. "He who puts up with insult invites injury" is a Jewish proverb, and I believe "Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valor" is Churchill. If I had to guess, I'd say the source is the gnu archive.

Cheers,
- Charles (Sherlock) Watkins

I think he was talking about Mars being as big as the moon on August 27th

- johnny iguanna

It's not meant to be a coherent paragraph its lots of little quotes, but missing the punctuation. Stupid AnswerTalking of which, you completely ruined my last Stupid Answer by omitting the bold and the italics. I bet you do it for this one too.

- Nick Kent

Nick,

To protect all of us, I run absolutely every single piece of text I use in Disinfotainment Today, whether from a website or email, through a program called unwrap which removes all coding and formatting, before I ever post it or send it out. Then I go back and reformat, but inevitably some of the original formatting is lost. The price we pay for protection from strange coding.

Your stupid question of the week [two weeks ago] was definitely stupid. Impeachment does not mean to remove from office. It simply means to bring charges against. Clinton was impeached. Did his ass get removed from office? No! They only brought charges against him for obstruction of justice. So, if George Bush were to be impeached (for what, I don't know), he would still be president and Cheney would still be hiding in a bunker somewhere. (It scares me that none of your audience, except me, knows the definition).

- Al Pine

Heya Michael,

I'm one of many nuts who have written you before (see #108 for my email).

Regarding Ned's "Live Free Or Die" site, I wanted to let you know that it is probably not disinfo (although it may be - I am not certain). The fact is that I agree completely. Here is a link [where?] from my commie homies the international socialist organization (who, let's be real, promote a worldwide violent revolution, bless their red souls) which outlines precisely WHY any sovereign country has the right to resist against foreign occupation.

After all, Vietnam was mostly ended because of the complete breakdown of discipline and steady killing of superior officers (by enlisted men) near the end of the conflict, paralyzing one of the greatest armies this world has ever seen.

As you well know, when the US is in the wrong, nothing of the sort will be admitted, and military victory after military victory will only bolster the civilian body count to the point where political victory is lost entirely.

After all, authorities do not respect justice, reason, or polite petitions. Much like school principals who harbor pedophile crossing guards (nudge wink), they only respond to pressure and threats. It's the only language besides Slick Bullschitt in which they are fully fluent, hence their full comprehension.

Born in the US, I consider myself primarily a citizen of the planet, despite what my drivers license says.

"We have dedicated our lives, our blood, to the freedom and liberation of our people, and nothing, no force can stop us from achieving our goal. If it is necessary to destroy the United States of America, then let us destroy it with a smile on our faces." - Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther

Keep the good coverage coming - Bravissimo!

- En Radicalavacado Commutardo,
Jason Sayre
aka Choobie LeBon
aka The Mule

Stupid Question of the Week

What is in the Money Pit?

Send your answers here.

History Lesson from Hell

Teaching Math In 1950 - A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?

Teaching Math In 1960 - A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?

Teaching Math In 1970 - A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80. Did he make a profit?

Teaching Math In 1980 - A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.

Teaching Math In 1990 - A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the preservation of our woodlands. He does this so he can make a profit of $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down their homes? (There are no wrong answers.)

Teaching Math In 2005 - Un hachero vende una carretada de maderapara $100. El costo de la producción es $80...

Press Release of the Week

For Release Monday, June 27 to New Hampshire media
For Release Tuesday, June 28 to all other media

Weare, New Hampshire (PRWEB)

Could a hotel be built on the land owned by Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter? A new ruling by the Supreme Court which was supported by Justice Souter himself itself might allow it. A private developer is seeking to use this very law to build a hotel on Souter's land.

Justice Souter's vote in the "Kelo vs. City of New London" decision allows city governments to take land from one private owner and give it to another if the government will generate greater tax revenue or other economic benefits when the land is developed by the new owner.

On Monday June 27, Logan Darrow Clements, faxed a request to Chip Meany the code enforcement officer of the Towne of Weare, New Hampshire seeking to start the application process to build a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road. This is the present location of Mr. Souter's home.

Clements, CEO of Freestar Media, LLC, points out that the City of Weare will certainly gain greater tax revenue and economic benefits with a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road than allowing Mr. Souter to own the land.

The proposed development, called "The Lost Liberty Hotel" will feature the "Just Desserts Café" and include a museum, open to the public, featuring a permanent exhibit on the loss of freedom in America. Instead of a Gideon's Bible each guest will receive a free copy of Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged."

Clements indicated that the hotel must be built on this particular piece of land because it is a unique site being the home of someone largely responsible for destroying property rights for all Americans.

"This is not a prank" said Clements, "The Towne of Weare has five people on the Board of Selectmen. If three of them vote to use the power of eminent domain to take this land from Mr. Souter we can begin our hotel development."

Clements' plan is to raise investment capital from wealthy pro-liberty investors and draw up architectural plans. These plans would then be used to raise investment capital for the project. Clements hopes that regular customers of the hotel might include supporters of the Institute For Justice and participants in the Free State Project among others.

Logan Darrow Clements
Freestar Media, LLC

Phone 310-593-4843
logan@freestarmedia.com
http://www.freestarmedia.com

Satan Doesn't Want You to Know

Pump gas early in the morning before heat expands it and get at least 5% more for your money.

Don't Take My Word For It

"When things get so balled up that the people of a country have to cut loose from some other country, and go it on their own hook, without asking no permission from nobody, excepting maybe God Almighty, then they ought to let everybody know why they done it, so that everybody can see they are on the level, and not trying to put nothing over on nobody.

"All we got to say on this proposition is this: first, you and me is as good as anybody else, and maybe a damn sight better; second, nobody ain't got no right to take away none of our rights; third, every man has got a right to live, to come and go as he pleases, and to have a good time however he likes, so long as he don't interfere with nobody else. That any goverment that don't give a man these rights ain't worth a damn; also, people ought to choose the kind of goverment they want themselves, and nobody else ought to have no say in the matter. That whenever any goverment don't do this, then the people have got a right to can it and put in one that will take care of their interests."

- H.L. Mencken: The Declaration of Independence in American -

"And I say that if a rhetorician and a physician were to go to any city, and had there to argue in the Ecclesia or any other assembly as to which of them should be elected state-physician, the physician would have no chance; but he who could speak would be chosen if he wished; and in a contest with a man of any other profession the rhetorician more than any one would have the power of getting himself chosen, for he can speak more persuasively to the multitude than any of them, and on any subject. Such is the nature and power of the art of rhetoric."

- Plato -

    "Announcing the staging of a series of concerts named Live 8, which will precede the G8 summit in Scotland, Sir Bob said: 'It is intellectually absurd that people die of want in a world of surplus.' Which again sounds good but completely misses the point.
    "Still, that may be the intention. For while Sir Bob laments over Africa's debt burden, he completely overlooks the fact that the debt burden for the entire planet is built on the same fraudulent principles.
    "In short, money is simply printed by privately owned national banks like the Bank of England or the U.S. Federal Reserve, then lent to the government of the day who must repay the loan plus interest with money collected from taxes. Thus money is not created by governments themselves but by privately owned national banks, the governments being no more than the bank's debt collectors.
    "That is bad enough but it doesn't stop there. Organizations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund work on exactly the same principle: money is created or more precisely, credit is conjured out of nothing at all. This credit is then extended to impoverished nations who repay it, not with cash, but with their natural resources, be they mineral reserves or the fruits of human labour. Either way the debt, created out of nothing at all, is settled with some sort of real, hard currency.
    "In plain terms it's fraud, a confidence trick that results in poverty, hardship and in some cases, starvation and death.
    "Don't expect Sir Bob to tell you about the real causes however. He's too busy drawing attention to Africa's debt problem, a detail if you will, that is only part of a much bigger problem. However by focusing on this one tragic detail, he diverts attention from the overall picture and the ultimate solution.
    "For even if Sir Bob gets Africa's debt written off, it won't stop further debts accumulating or help others with similar burdens."

- Rixon Stewart: Charity or Ruse? -

"In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell."
- H. L. Mencken -

"Capitalism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Capitalism leads to the enslavement of the sheep citizens by the greedy, selfish plutocratic class."

- Jacques Hardy -

"Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything."

- Bob Dylan -

"The history of the world, my sweet

Is who gets eaten and who gets to eat."

- Sweeny Todd -

"Consumers who buy popular cold remedies in Riverside County would be required to give their names, addresses, and telephone and driver's license numbers to store clerks for law enforcement inspection under a sweeping rule aimed at illicit production of Methamphetamine...

"Under the ordinance, customers who buy even one package of cold medication that includes pseudoephedrine, phenylpropanolamine or related compounds would be required to provide the personal information to a store clerk. Stores would be required to keep the logs available for law enforcement officials for three years."

- Stephanie Ramos and Hector Becerra: Buying Cold Pills? Fill Out This Form -

"Yeah, we all know that major Methamphetamine manufacturers buy their ingredients one at a time at K-Mart."

- the rational idiot -

"President Bush on Tuesday retooled his original argument for the Iraq war, justifying the U.S. military presence there as the solution to a problem that critics say the war itself caused."

- Ronald Brownstein: As War Shifts, So Does the Message -

"Patriotism in its simplest, clearest and most indubitable signification is nothing else but a means of obtaining for the rulers their ambitions and covetous desires, and for the ruled the abdication of human dignity, reason, conscience, and a slavish enthrallment to those in power."

- Leo Tolstoy -

"Although continued attempts are being made to establish access to the President of Iraq who has been held without access to a lawyer, only one meeting has been arranged more than one year after the detention began. This meeting took place with one of the lawyers of Committee under strict monitoring (both visual and audio) whereby two US military officials were present at all times. This meeting was not under conditions that meet the minimum standards for access to legal counsel provided by international law (e.g. in article 14 of the ICCPR). Neither has this meeting been followed up with additional meetings. It is estimated that counsel need at least several hours of daily contact with their client to be able to consult with him and to facilitate the preparation of his defense. Unless such access is immediately provided all charges against the defendant should be dropped because of the serious violations of his human rights.

"Furthermore, legal counsels inability to have access to evidence or formal charges also contributes to the irreparable violation of defendants rights. For more than one year, and despite statements by United States and Iraqi government officials that huge amounts of evidence exist, no access to any of this evidence has been granted to defense counsel.

"Finally, legal counsel for the President continue to dispute the legitimacy of the Iraqi Special Tribunal for the following reasons:

"1. The tribunal is the result of an illegal invasion of Iraq which unequivocally violated international law, namely article 2(4) of the Charter of the United Nations. Attempts to justify this use of force as somehow justified by Iraq's reaction to UN Security Council resolutions are inconsistent with statements of the majority of both the permanent members of the UNSC and the total membership of this body and are devoid of any legal basis. To satisfy basic principles of justice any court concerned with trials in Iraq that have resulted from the United States' illegal use of force must be able and willing to try Americans who have committed crimes against peace, including American President George W. Bush."

- Dr. Curtis F.J. Doebbler, member of the Legal Team representing Saddam Hussein: Update on the Representation of President Saddam Hussein -

    "You may remember that in 2002, the year before the Iraq War began, the United Nations Security Council ordered Iraq to produce a report detailing all of its biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons - past and present. Iraqi officials complied and produced an 11,800-page report on Iraq's weapons programs. The report described all the chemical and biological weapons the country once had - where they came from and what was done with them - as well as what had happened to Iraq's nuclear weapons program.
    "Although the report was prepared for the United Nations, U.S. officials intercepted the report, edited out 8,000 pages (over two thirds) of it, and delivered its Reader's Digest version of the report to the UN.
    "A German reporter managed to obtain a copy of the original report from Iraq, and then compared it with the truncated copy the U.S. gave to the UN. He found that the missing parts covered the Iraqis' acquisition of chemical and biological weapons from the U.S., the delivery of non-fissionable materials for a nuclear bomb by the U.S. to the Iraqis, and the training of Iraqi nuclear scientists at U.S. nuclear facilities in Los Alamos, Sandia, and Berkeley...

"Colin Powell dismissed the report, calling it a 'catalogue of recycled information and flagrant omissions.' Of course, as we now know, the information was recycled because it happened to be true, and the omissions were flagrant because U.S. officials had done the omitting...

"One of the tragic ironies of the decision to invade Iraq is that the Iraqi WMD declaration required by security council resolution 1441, submitted by Iraq in December 2002, and summarily rejected by Bush and Blair as repackaged falsehoods, now stands as the most accurate compilation of data yet assembled regarding Iraq's WMD programs (more so than even Duelfer's ISG report, which contains much unsubstantiated speculation).

    "Saddam Hussein has yet to be contradicted on a single point of substantive fact. Iraq had disarmed; no one wanted to accept that conclusion.
    "In other words, the Butcher of Baghdad was correct; the President of the United States of America was wrong. The Butcher of Baghdad will be put on trial for 'war crimes.' The President of the United States of America was reelected to 'lead' the country for four more years.
    "It's a sorry state of affairs in America when you can trust the words of Saddam Hussein more than those of your own President."
- Harry Browne, 1996 & 2000 Libertarian Party nominee for President: Can You Imagine?: Hussein Was Right & Bush Was Wrong -

"Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that police are not required to enforce restraining orders, even if state law mandates that they do so.

"It was a bizarre decision, and a terribly misguided one...

"The high court's decision also sends mixed messages to abuse victims, who have often been chastised for not seeking the help of the state when they feel threatened.

"But in fact, the plaintiff in this case, Jessica Gonzales, did exactly what she was supposed to. As soon as her estranged husband absconded with their three daughters in violation of a court's restraining order she called the Castle Rock, Colo., police. She called six times over an eight-hour period including numerous calls after she had reached her husband on his cellphone and confirmed that he had the children with him.

"She repeatedly begged the police to enforce the restraining order and retrieve her daughters, citing the father's extremely violent and unstable history to no avail. Over and over again, she was told to call back later. At 3:20 a.m., the father appeared at the police station, where he opened fire on officers and was shot and killed. The dead bodies of the three girls, ages 7, 9 and 10, were found in the back of his pickup...

"How can we begin to take matters into our own hands? Perhaps we need a website where women could post the names of unresponsive officers. Unfair you think? But what else can we do if the court won't stand up for us? How else can we sanction the Castle Rock officer who, on Jessica Gonzales' sixth plea for help, still refused to investigate? Instead, he went to dinner."

- Sarah M. Buel: Battered Women Betrayed -

"I trust that all of you will agree with me that the national security of the United States is at issue here, not the right of journalists to protect sources under 'normal' editorial circumstances. In this instance, a sitting President of the United States, via his top deputies, committed a major crime, solely out of vengeance against former Ambassador Joseph Wilson - Plame's husband - who had publicly noted Bush's deceit about 'significant quantities of uranium from Africa (Niger)' in his 2003 State of the Union Address in, ironically, a New York Times op-ed piece.

"Now, with Time considering doing the right thing under the prevailing circumstances, both for themselves and the country, it is important to bring massive and open public pressure upon them - and the NYT - to, in fact, do the right thing - under rather extraordinary and compelling circumstances.

"The VP of Corporate Communications at Time is Dawn Bridges. Her direct phone number is (212) 522-2494. Her e-mail address is: dawn_bridges@timeinc.com . Her deputy is Peter Costiglio. He can be reached at (212) 522-3927. His e-mail address is peter_costiglio@timeinc.com . I have already spoken with him, and he is a polite, professional person who thanked me for voicing my views. I am confident he will do the same for you. The New York Times can be reached at (212) 556-1234. The Executive Editor is Bill Keller. His e-mail is executive-editor@nytimes.com . Judith Miller's e-mail is jmiller@nytimes.com.

"In the case of Miller, I also trust you will heartily support her jailing if she continues to refuse to identify her source. Her horrible mis-reporting on the lead up to the war in Iraq, most notably her Ahmed Chalabi-inspired fabrications about the infamous aluminum tubes for a centrifuge suitable for making nuclear weapons, has unnecessarily cost countless thousands of human lives, including nearly 1,800 Americans, yet she has never apologized publicly, although the paper did - without naming her. She is, as you probably know if you have seen her on TV, one of the most arrogant occupants of the ivory tower in the history of journalism.

"The point is that she still has a job. She should go to prison for a long, long time - for what is, in effect, treason."

- John Buchanan: The Treasonous Demise Of George W. Bush? -

"No person shall be...deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation."
- U.S. Constitution, Fifth Amendment (1791) -

"There is an important topic barely mentioned in the Kelo opinion: The second of the two Fifth Amendment prerequisites to a taking of private property through eminent domain powers: the payment of 'just compensation.' The court seems to assume that all the property owners involved in this and other, similar cases, will get paid 'just compensation.' Nothing could be further from the truth...

"Ask any real estate agent, 'What's a piece of property worth?' Always, the answer will be, 'Whatever somebody is willing to pay for it.' There's the rub. When it's taken from you, nobody is bargaining to buy it, so its value never can be ascertained with anything approaching certainty. What if all the local appraisers are beholden to the developer? Or local government? Or..."

- Edgar J. Steele: Judicial Relativism (proof that even anti-Jewish maniacs can sometimes have a good point to make) -

"I have not and do not intend to announce the timetable for our program. And there are obvious reasons for this decision which I am sure you will understand. As I have indicated on several occasions, the rate of withdrawal will depend on developments."

- President Richard Nixon: November 3, 1969 -

"If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going."

- Professor Irwin Corey -

"Walking the spiritual path is a very subtle process; it is not something to jump into naively. There are numerous sidetracks which lead to a distorted, ego-centered version of spirituality; we can deceive ourselves into thinking we are developing spiritually when instead we are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques."

- Chogyam Trungpa: Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism -

"The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers."
- Lewis Thomas -

"It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous."
- Robert Benchley -

"People who have no weaknesses are terrible; there is no way of taking advantage of them."
- Anatole France -

"Before time was counted, long before the appearance of man, the gods and the demons put aside their eternal battles for a moment, and collaborated in churning the ocean of milk for the nectar of immortality. When this nectar was finally produced, and before any of the demons save one could taste it, the son of the chief of the gods stole the vessel or kumbh, containing the nectar and took off in the sky chased by just about everyone. During his flight four drops fell to earth. Those places where the drops fell are still today considered among the holiest of all pilgrimage spots in India. They are Hardwar, Prayag (Allahabad), Ujjain and Trambak (Nasik). At those times of Jupiter's return in the heavens to its position when each drop was spilled in each locality, a Kumbh Mela is held for at least 30 days. During this period, there are several auspicious times, based on the sky, for religious bathing, ritual, and most important, initiation. This is by far the largest gathering of human beings on earth. On the most auspicious bathing day in Prayag, 1995, sixteen and a half million people gathered at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers for a holy bath, and over 45 million people visited the place over a 30-day period. In Haridwar, 1998, over 8 million pilgrims bathed in a single day."

- Rampuri: Naga Sannyasis -

"I say this frankly, I say it without exaggeration. It must be said, and I am the most likely bloke, as they say, who will say it: The President of the United States, George W. Bush, is clinically insane. He is not only clinically insane, but he's clinically insane in ways which have rendered him technically impeachable. When the President of the United States, a United States whose dollar is still the denominator of the world monetary system, says not once, but repeatedly, and reasserts it defiantly against all criticism, that U.S. government bonds are merely IOUs which are intrinsically worthless, that man is clinically insane. He is irresponsible. Because, if anybody believes him, that the policy of the United States government is that its bonds are worthless, with the amount of dollar obligations outstanding around the world, as an integral part of the monetary system, the system is doomed by the fact alone."

- Lyndon LaRouche -

"Every crowd has a silver lining."
- Phineas T. Barnum -

"Let's kick their ass and get the Hell out of here."

- General George Armstrong Custer -

"A witty saying proves nothing."

- Voltaire -

"Tradition is what you resort to when you don't have the time or the money to do it right."

- Kurt Herbert Alder -

"It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them."
- Mark Twain -

"It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do."

- Jerome K. Jerome -

"You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it."
- Art Buchwald -

"Summer vacation is a powerful anachronism that dates back to agrarian days, when farm families needed young people home during the summer months to replace the three R's with the two P's - plantin' and pickin'. Today, now that fewer family farms remain and agricultural mechanization is standard, students need to be harvesting knowledge year-round.

"In the Internet age, information is more accessible, and learning should happen during and after the school day -- nights, weekends, and summers. As dreamy as a long summer break may be, unless a kid is flipping burgers six days a week, it's education downtime we can no longer afford. More than 10 years ago, the U.S. Department of Education organized a panel with an unusual title: the National Education Commission on Time and Learning. The panel issued a report that began, 'Learning in America is a prisoner of time. For the past 150 years, American public schools have held time constant and let learning vary. Some bright, hardworking students do reasonably well. Everyone else - from the typical student to the dropout - runs into trouble.'

"The problem, according to the commission, is not just the length of the school year but also the lockstep 'gridding' of the school day. The report emphasized that American schools have been operating under the tyranny of time; the length of the typical school period (45 to 50 minutes), the school day (8 a.m. to 3 p.m.), and the school year (180 days) is remarkably rigid across the nation. Middle and high school students, especially, are required to march in assembly-line fashion throughout the day, where bells still ring to signal the closing of books and the flooding of hallways. The unchanging schedule prevents students from working in depth on projects and venturing into the community to gather data or talk to local experts. Teachers are also isolated in their classrooms by this rigid schedule, so they miss out on opportunities to learn from other teachers and share ideas."

- Milton Chen: Go Year-Round - Kids aren't helping plow the fields anymore, so why are we throwing away three months? -

"After more than four years of fighting the Bush Administration's efforts to pollute good science with politics, I thought I'd heard it all. Then I learned how they were deciding to test new pesticides.

"In violation of routine ethical standards, the Bush Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is using studies that deliberately expose humans to dangerous pesticides to decide whether those pesticides should be legal.

"This decision flies in the face of scientific practice and the sound policies of past Republican and Democratic EPA Administrators including Carol Browner and Christie Todd Whitman."

- Barbara Boxer: Stop Human Pesticide Testing! -

"The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should therefore be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated. If the doctrine be admitted, rulers have only to declare war and they are screened at once from scrutiny."

- William Ellery Channing -

"Anytime a person goes into a delicatessen and orders a pastrami on white bread, somewhere a Jew dies."

- Milton Berle -

"The press does not want to inform the reader but to persuade him he's being informed."
- Nicolás Dávila -

"Support for the Iraq war is at an all-time low, and some Republicans blame the media and its '24/7 news coverage of car bombs,' which 'tends to leave a certain impression.' You know, that's so true. You never hear about the cars that DON'T blow up."

- Jon Stewart -

"One who is not acquainted with the designs of his neighbors should not enter into alliances with them."

- Sun Tzu -

"God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and
religions."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson -

"A new survey of wind power around the globe has found there's ample energy for all humanity blowing around us.

"By gathering together more than 8,000 wind records on every continent, researchers Christina Archer and Mark Jacobson of Stanford University in California have created a set of world wind-power resource maps that reveal a barely tapped 72 terawatts of power - 40 times the amount of electrical power used by all countries in the year 2000.

"If just 20 percent of the estimated 72 terawatts of wind power were tapped, said Archer, it would satisfy all the world's energy needs.

"A single terawatt is enough power to light up 10 billion 100-watt light bulbs."

- Larry O'Hanlon: Study: Wind Could Meet Global Energy Needs -

"How many thousands of cards would you need to store a typical MP3, anyway? Hmmm... 3 minutes of music at 1 MB per minute is 3 MB. A standard ('IBM') punch card holds 80 columns of 12 bits each or 120 bytes. So 25,000 cards should be sufficient for a single song. With compression, you could reduce that by about zero percent."

- David Schachter -

"A friend of mine is stationed in Iraq and is totally flipping out. Can you possibly guess why? Maybe he's tired of following orders that routinely involve blowing up babies? Well, for whatever reason, the doctors there are trying to feed him anti-psychotic medications. '"A bottle of pills is their answer to everything over here,' he e-mailed me.

"Guess what? A bottle of pills seems to be the answer to every problem over here too. I bet half of America is on anti-depressants. But I digress.

"'I am afraid to take the anti-psychotics,' my friend wrote me. 'After everyone got so sick from the anthrax vaccinations they gave us, no one trusts ANYTHING the Army medical corps gives out any more.'"

- Jane Stillwater's blog -

"You can stand tall without standing on someone. You can be a victor without having victims."

- Harriet Woods -

"Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson -

"The same stream of life
that runs through the world
runs through my veins
night and day in rhythmic measure.

It is the same life that shoots in joy
through the dust of the earth
into numberless waves of flowers."

- Rabindranath Tagore -

    "[T]he living world is shot through with imperfection. Unless one wants to attribute either incompetence or sheer malevolence to such a designer, this imperfection - the manifold design flaws of life - points incontrovertibly to a natural, rather than a divine, process, one in which living things were not created de novo, but evolved. Consider the human body. Ask yourself, if you were designing the optimum exit for a fetus, would you engineer a route that passes through the narrow confines of the pelvic bones? Add to this the tragic reality that childbirth is not only painful in our species but downright dangerous and sometimes lethal, owing to a baby's head being too large for the mother's birth canal.
    "This design flaw is all the more dramatic because anyone glancing at a skeleton can see immediately that there is plenty of room for even the most stubbornly large-brained, misoriented fetus to be easily delivered anywhere in that vast, non-bony region below the ribs. (In fact, this is precisely the route obstetricians follow when performing a caesarean section.)
    "Why would evolution neglect the simple, straightforward solution? Because human beings are four-legged mammals by history. Our ancestors carried their spines parallel to the ground; it was only with our evolved upright posture that the pelvic girdle had to be rotated (and thereby narrowed), making a tight fit out of what for other mammals is nearly always an easy passage.
    "An engineer who designed such a system from scratch would be summarily fired, but evolution didn't have the luxury of intelligent design."

- David P. Barash: Does God Have Back Problems Too? The illogic behind 'intelligent design.' -

"#7. You will need: 2,500,000,000,000 tons of antimatter.

"Antimatter - the most explosive substance possible - can be manufactured in small quantities using any large particle accelerator, but this will take some considerable time to produce the required amounts. If you can create the appropriate machinery, it may be possible - and much easier - simply to 'flip' 2.5 trillion tons of matter through a fourth dimension, turning it all to antimatter at once.

"Method: This method involves detonating a bomb so big that it blasts the Earth to pieces.

"How hard is that?

"The gravitational binding energy of a planet of mass M and radius R is - if you do the lengthy calculations - given by the formula E=(3/5)GM^2/R. For Earth, that works out to roughly 224,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Joules. The Sun takes nearly a WEEK to output that much energy. Think about THAT.

"To liberate that much energy requires the complete annihilation of around 2,500,000,000,000 tonnes of antimatter. That's assuming zero energy loss to heat and radiation, which is unlikely to be the case in reality: You'll probably need to up the dose by at least a factor of ten. Once you've generated your antimatter, probably in space, just launch it en masse towards Earth. The resulting release of energy (obeying Einstein's famous mass-energy equation, E=mc^2) should be sufficient to split the Earth into a thousand pieces.

"Earth's final resting place: A second asteroid belt around the Sun."

- Top 10 Ways to Destroy the Earth -

"Blogger Andrew Sullivan coined the term 'South Park Republicans' and described them as people who 'believe we need a hard-ass foreign policy and are extremely skeptical of political correctness.' Anderson claims he found such people. 'Talk to right-leaning college students,' he writes, 'and it's clear that Sullivan may be on to something.' He quotes an Arizona State undergrad who describes what being a South Park conservative entails: 'The label is really about rejecting the image of conservatives as uptight squares -- crusty old men or nerdy kids in blue blazers. We might have long hair, smoke cigarettes, get drunk on weekends, have sex before marriage, watch R-rated movies, cuss like sailors -- and also happen to be conservative, or at least libertarian.'

"Forgive the skepticism, but finding college students who drink, smoke, fornicate, and watch Quentin Tarantino films is like finding sand on the beach."

- Simon S. Maloy: Oh My God! They Tried to Steal South Park! -

"The administration should clarify its intent in Viet Nam. People lack confidence in the credibility of our government. Even our allies are beginning to suspect what we say. It's a difficult thing today to be informed about our government even without all the secrecy. With the secrecy, it's impossible. The American people will do what's right when they have the information they need."

- Donald Rumsfeld: Chicago Tribune, 4/13/66 -

"In World War II, the Italians lost civilians at about the same rate as Iraq is losing Iraqis now. The war there lasted just over six years. Waging it, on the part of the Allies, was a key element in a strategy that succeeded in unseating three dictators, among them Hitler. The war in Iraq will lead to no comparable world victory and so will never have been worth the lives civilian and military that it is taking.

"The case for the war in Iraq rests on the premise that a great good the ouster of Hussein justifies a great sacrifice. Supporters of the war ask, 'Do you want Hussein back?' But Hussein was not on the march when we invaded, he was on the run. His weapons program was under crippling scrutiny. The existing no-fly zones had ended his ability to massacre Kurds and Shiites with impunity. He was not immortal. His downfall would have come eventually without the catastrophic slaughter set in motion in a country that had never attacked the U.S. militarily or supplied weapons to even one anti-American terrorist."

- Jack Miles: Only Death Will Win. The Iraqi war will never be worth the lives lost. -

"While there has been measurable progress in Colombia's internal security, as indicated by decreases in violence, and in the eradication of drug crops, no effect has been seen with regard to price, purity and availability of cocaine and heroin in the United States."

- Congressional Research Service -

"The Bush administration and congressional allies are gearing up to renew a plan for drug eradication in Latin America despite some grim news: The $5.4 billion spent on the plan since 2000 has made no dent in the availability of cocaine on American streets and prices are at all-time lows."

- Sonni Efron: Drug War Fails to Dent U.S. Supply. Despite $5.4 billion spent since 2000, coca growth in the Andes is high and prices in America low. More money is on the table. -

"Generosity, kind words,
doing a good turn for others,
and treating all people alike:
these bonds of sympathy are to the world
what the lynch-pin is to the chariot wheel."

- Buddha: Anguttara Nikaya II, 32 -

"Anger that has no limit, causes terror. Kindness that is inappropriate, does away with respect. So do not be so severe with others, as to terrify them; and do not be so lenient with others, as to make them take advantage of you."

- Sadi: Gulistan 8 -

"And that's the world in a nutshell, an appropriate receptacle."
- Stan Dunn -

Ever seen an ad and said to yourself, damn, I could come up with something better than that? At adcandy, you can win prizes for coming up with slogans or ad photos for already existing brands.

Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg interview each other. (Warning: asks you to install the AOL Media Player plug-in.)

The John Lennon Songwriting Contest is now accepting applications.

Giant list of credible people and their testimony that the US Government's Official 9/11 Story is a Fraud.

Joe Wilson raked in over $500 on E-Bay for a jar of air.

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Acknowledgment

dIsInFoTaInMeNt ToDaY is free and may be reproduced in any form, preferably parchment. It consists of information from dozens of sources, cut up, thrown in the air, and recycled randomly. It is sent all over the place, so I apologize if you're seeing the same thing twice. If you see a joke, graphic, or news item that came from or through you, thanks, send more, and please accept the fact that much of dIsInFoTaInMeNt ToDaY is unacknowledgeable, and if I sought permission from everyone whose bastardized material showed up here, I'd never get anything else done. Please note that I don't even put my own name on it. If you're still pissed off, hey, it's either satire or fair use.

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Mike Literous

http://www.disinfotainmenttoday.com

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