Wake me up when the nightmare starts.

The howler monkeys have played their hand, we're going to war with Iran :(

*cough*

Sorry, I mean Anonymous Administration Officials have said that kinetic actions may be pursued to stop the TERRORISTS from getting nucular  weapons.

For Freedom.

I once got a hug from Boots Riley.

I once got a hug from Boots Riley.  Well, he put his arm over my shoulder.  We were posing for a picture!  Nothing creepy!

Then I forgot to save the picture on my cellphone and lost it forever :(

Anyways, this is why Boots Riley is someone to pay attention to, even if you don't care for the music:

Riley has been an activist since high school, when he spent a summer helping to organize migrant farm workers in central California. He says he was used to seeing twenty-five people show up at demonstrations, and in he past, he’s weighed his activism against what he might accomplish with his music, and generally chosen the music – so many more people could hear the message that way. "But with Occupy, I can’t use that same equation," Riley admits. "What we’re doing here gets a different message out, a stronger message out, to many more people than my music." 

By directly targeting labor and production through actions like the port shutdowns, Occupy Oakland has been different from other Occupy cities, Riley notes. He’s hoping the movement will grow to include elements of the working class who don’t normally organize, such as fast food workers. "There are a lot of companies in cities that are supposedly poor that make millions of dollars and pay people low wages," Riley says. "There’s no reason why McDonald’s can’t pay fifteen dollars an hour and still be turning a big profit. They have it set up where they sell their stuff to franchise owners so the owners have to say, 'I don’t have enough money.' But we if we wanted to, we could shut down all of the McDonald's in Oakland. We could help the workers renegotiate with those franchise owners. At McDonald's, at Wal-Mart, all of those places. We want to organize where people are actually working in the United States — places where people are not able to unionize because they’ll get fired. We can eliminate that risk because if they fire the folks who are unionizing, we can shut them down. Unions can’t legally organize in that way." Riley smiles. "But we can do stuff based on what’s right. Not what’s legal."

Also I've updated my post about AdBlock, check it out if you haven't seen it.

AdBlock, why you be so evil? (important update)

So I'm reading a hilarious* little article posted on the Guardian when suddenly I get a message from my browser (I use Chrome) stating that my AdBlock extension has been updated and requires new permissions in order to be enabled.

What permissions does it need?

>Your data on all sites
>Your tabs and browsing activity

Yeah, no.  Fuck that.

Update:  This was added to the appstore page for AdBlock:

** NOTE REGARDING PERMISSION UPGRADES, February 2 2012 **
A bug in Chrome is disabling AdBlock and asking you to re-confirm the permissions that you agreed to when you installed.  It was triggered when I tried to add popup blocking to AdBlock.
Don't worry, nothing nasty is going on, other than the fact that AdBlock wasn't supposed to be disabled!
You can safely confirm and re-enable AdBlock.  Sorry for the mess.  See chromeadblock.com/help/?disablebug for a little more detail.
If you've left a negative review before reading this, I hope you'll go update it.  It's killing me to see all these confused users!
Finally: if, once you re-enable AdBlock, you go to chrome://extensions and see that you have version 2.5.16 (not 2.5.15), PLEASE email me at adblockforchrome at gmail and let me know.  2.5.16 is supposed to fix the problem and I want to make triple sure that it has :)

And this is from their FAQ:

When I install, Chrome warns me that AdBlock will have access to all my private data and browsing history!
It's true. AdBlock has the ability to access to your private data, but it doesn't actually access it. In order to remove ads from every web page, AdBlock needs the permission to run on every web page; and any extension that runs on every web page has the ability to see everything you're doing and what URLs you visit.
In Firefox, the situation was worse: every extension had the power to access your private data, and you weren't informed. In Chrome, at least, those extensions that need to run on every page show you a warning before you install them!
It comes down to trust: you should not install extensions that ask for more permission than you are comfortable with, unless you trust the author(s). AdBlock is the most popular extension for Chrome, partially because we care so much about our users -- so we hope you'll trust us :)

Not entirely certain what to think about this.  I know Google collects obscene amounts of data about me in general, and yet I still use Google software.  So for now I'm going to re-enable AdBlock, but definitely keep an eye on what's going on.


Any thoughts?

*'hilarious' of course referring to the Greek debt crisis. (update: I find the condescending attitude of the bourgeois jerk from the 'troika' hilarious.  The asshole sounds like he's talking about a petulant child, not an entire nation of suffering people.)

Flaky randomness. (micro-update)

Just some stuff that's on my mind.

• Reading through Lenin's (yes, THAT Lenin) State and Revolution I am awestruck by how similar Lenin's rhetoric is to the GOP's when it comes to government bureaucracy (they are not in favor of it), though the similarities are on a purely superficial level of course.  More on this later.....
•  Kerbal Space Program is amazing.  Its a rocket/space-flight simulator that has no right to be as fun or addicting as it is.  Unfinished still, but they are pursuing something similar to the 'Minecraft' route for development where you can download the newest Alpha or Beta versions of the game for free, which I highly recommend.
• gggggrrrrrr bbboooo hhiissssssss
• Bethesda has a long way to go before I forgive them for turning the Fallout series into a spin-off of the Elder Scrolls games, but Skyrim earns them a surprising amount of credit towards winning my respect again.  (I'm trying to say it's fun.)
• New season of Metalocalypse starts April 29!

Update

• I have no idea what the lyrics are, but I'm still in love with this grindcore 7" (EP or LP?) that I stumbled upon.
• If you want something more laid back and trippy, this is for you.
• If you don't know about bandcamp.com go check it out.  You don't have to create an account to listen to the music, just scroll down a bit to the 'search' or 'browse by genres' options.

\o/ Electronically Induced Joy (wait... what?)

When I was much younger I remember spending a weekend playing an amazing RPG on the original PlayStation, but I never could remember its name.  Well, I figured it out, and the game is called Vagrant Story.

To  my joy it actually is as excellent as I remember.  Only 25% of the map cleared (that's the game's metric for tracking your progress) and so far it has beautiful (if hilariously dated) visuals, great sound design, engrossing gameplay, interesting story, etc.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go murder a goddamn Ogre.

............. holy shit.................

What the fuck is going on in the world?

That's not a rhetorical question.

For the record, I honestly support Stephen Colbert for president.  I have no evidence or reason to think he'd be good at the job.  The crazed madman who babbles incessantly in the back of my brain opines that Colbert's election who spark a second American Civil War, though becomes indignant when asked for a justification for that analysis and mumbles incoherently about 'fascists' and 'Citizens United'.

Still, I'd rather have a comedian than any of the other clowns.

Obama
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/washington/22bagram.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=bagram&st=cse
http://www.salon.com/2010/05/21/bagram_6/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/us/politics/23detain.html
http://www.aclu.org/national-security/creating-gitmo-north-alarming-step-says-aclu
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/us/22gitmo.html?hpw
http://ggdrafts.blogspot.com/2011/12/aclu-statement-on-obamas-signing-of.html
http://ggdrafts.blogspot.com/2011/12/human-rights-watch.html

Newt Gingrich
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqFvAyoaEoY
- "Fuck poor people and those goddamn 'urban' criminals you call children." (I'm paraphrasing)

Romney
- "Corporations are people my friend!  What?  Why is everyone cringing?" (ok, this is also paraphrasing)

Happy new year!

Oh, yeah, new year and all that.

Here's something for you to read while I try to think of something worth writing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-the-united-states-still-the-land-of-the-free/2012/01/04/gIQAvcD1wP_story.html