So how come Charles Manson doesn't get to be a Supreme Court Justice?

Antonin Scalia. Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Probably THE most powerful conservative-leaning jurist (along with Clarence Thomas) on the bench anywhere in America.

He said the following earlier this week while speaking at a forum at his alma mater, Harvard University:

"I even take the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged," Scalia said.

As noted by Vincent Bugliosi in his book Helter Skelter, encouraging orgies was one of the primary methods that Charles Manson used to re-program his disciples, even to the point that some of them would kill at his command. If I recall correctly, witness (and former Family member) Paul Watkins testified that Manson would get an orgy going and pass out LSD for everyone to use... except for Manson. He used a far less amount of acid so that he could maintain his faculties while controlling the orgy.

But I wouldn't really worry about Scalia's comments. At least, not until he starts playing the White Album over and over while claiming that the Beatles are sending him "vibes".

Mash here for more about Scalia at Harvard.

Read More

"It's made out of PEOPLE!!"

So, earlier tonight AMC was showing Escape from New York.

Then the tube was dominated by the Presidential Debate.

And now, right this moment, Turner South is running something I never thought that network would even know existed: Soylent Green.

There's a pattern at work here, I'm sure of it...

Read More

Kyle 'n Chris weigh in on the Presidential Deba... thing.

Oh geez... where to begin?

I logged into AOL Instant Messenger just before 9 p.m. EST and hooked up with my main man Kyle Williams, America's youngest political pundit and columnist with World Net Daily. He's also a really good friend and someone I can trust to lay out the truth, no matter how much I may not want to hear the truth sometimes. The kid's got wisdom beyond his ears. He's the coolest cat you can have in a virtual living room while playing armchair political analyst. We spent the better part of two hours doing a lot of play-by-play commentary on this thing.

Bottom line: Bush bombed. Bigtime.

There's no way this can be spun into anything good: a pile of doggy-doo is STILL going to be a pile of doggy-doo regardless of how many times someone claims that it's a gold nugget. Tonight's debacle makes Michael Dukakis look positively Churchillian. No one can ever again say that the '88 debates were the worst for any candidate ever. I mean... sheesh, if I didn't know any better I would have sworn that Jimmy Carter had all the eloquence of Saint Anthony of Padua.

Whenever a politician is talking on television, like giving a speech or doing a debate like tonight, I don't watch it. For the last hour and a half my back has been turned to the screen, so that I could only hear it. That's a conscientious choice that I make, because I want to hear the person out without the visual distractions. Try it sometime: whenever a political ad starts on the t.v., close your eyes or turn your back or whatever and don't look but only LISTEN to what's being said. When you do that, you realize that 99.99% of these guys... aren't saying a bloody substantive thing at all!! They have NO ideas, no grasp of reality, only soundbites and cheap shots.

So it was with tonight's debate: I wanted to listen to the arguments, and not be wooed by Bush's necktie or Kerry's hand gestures. Kyle watched it on his end, he told me some things about what was happening on-screen (like when Kerry laughed at Bush's joke, I couldn't see that). He also sent me some choice comments that the folks at Free Republic had to say: they ain't happy campers tonight, to put it mildly.

I thought that Bush sounded absolutely apoplectic. He was EXTREMELY flustered, even sounded perilously close to losing his temper a few times. I can't really remember anything that he said that weren't a variation of his usual soundbites and mottos.

Kerry was wildly different. Kerry SOUNDED presidential. He definitely came across as the more confident and assured of the two, despite Bush stating more than once that he was sure he would win re-election. Kerry seemed more of a gentleman in his countering Bush's policies. Bush was too defensive when he shouldn't have been, and too aggressive when a calmer tone was called for.

Truth be known... Bush sounded like a kid throwing a temper tantrum to an adult.

After it ended I asked Kyle what he thought about it. His reaction:

"Kerry won.

"Let me elaborate. Bush regularly talks about vision with optimism in his eye. This is how has captured the hopes of Americans. But tonight, he tried to force it. He talked about vision, but fumbled about. He didn't come across as confident and he didn't come across as peaceful. Kerry on the other hand, did better than usual. He had specifics and facts on his side, talking about vision, but more about reality."

Kyle's spot-on in his thinking, and at the risk of seeming biased I can't help but agree with him. I have never seen anything so lopsided in an election year in all my life. Somewhere in America tonight, Karl Rove is sweating bullets over this thing. There was nothing salvagable in this evening at all for the Bush camp, and they know it.

Bush has a little over one week to get his act together. He'd better hit the books and lay off the caffeine in the meantime.

Read More

Pre-Presidential Debate Predictions

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Read More

One more sign that the end of the world is upon us...

Hurricanes raging.

Volcanoes erupting.

Earthquakes trembling.

Tornadoes blowing.

Conflicts escalating.

Resources depleting.

Cultures stagnating.

And now... this. What may be the surest indication yet that the Four Horsemen are mounting their saddles:

Kevin Smith may be running Star Wars after George Lucas.

I'm gonna go get good and liquored up now.

(Actually, Smith would probably do a pretty good job at it... but don't tell THAT to a lot of fans groaning at the prospect right now :-)

Read More

Sound and Fury

Volcanologists (scientists who study volcanos including taking samples from their craters and there'd better be some danger pay involved) are casting all eyes on Mount St. Helens this week. Seven days ago strong tremors started coming from the mountain: as of this writing there are now about three a minute. There's also been a buildup of the lava dome, meaning that fresh magma is coming in from deep underground.

It now looks like there's a 70% chance - up from 30% a few days ago - that Mount St. Helens is going to have an eruption in the next few days. Scientists are saying that it will be "a small one" but what that means exactly, I'm not sure. You can bet the good people of Washington State are praying (and we along with them) that whatever happens won't be a repeat or worse of the May 18th, 1980 eruption (pictured above). That one blanketed hundreds of square miles of surrounding landscape with ash and debris, obliterated the nearby wildlife, and took the lives of 57 people with it. One of them was Harry Truman, the cantakerous octogenerian who lived with his 16 cats in a cabin on Spirit Lake, at the base of Mount St. Helens (and was NOT related to President Truman). Despite weeks of warnings, Truman refused to leave. He was quoted as saying...

"No one knows this mountain better than me. This god-damned mountain doesn't dare do anything to Harry."

A few days later Mount St. Helens erupted. Harry Truman and his 16 cats are now buried somewhere beneath thousands of tons of and ash - averaging 40 to 60 feet deep - at the base of the mountain.

Anyways, keep an eye on St. Helens the next few days: along with everything else happening up and down the West Coast, we may see some neat geological forces at work... provided we stay back a safe ways.

Read More

From the people who brought you fugu, Godzilla and Pokemon...

Years ago for Christmas my sister gave me a cardboard stand-up of Princess Leia from Return Of The Jedi, wearing the infamous "metal bikini". It soon found a place of honor in my bedroom at our apartment. The "slave metal bikini" seems to be most fanboys' dream: I've a friend whose first glimpse of his future wife was when she was wearing one of these things (though he was in Stormtrooper armor at the time. And I heard this getup even made for an episode of Friends) but I never found it all that appealing or even attractive. The "simple, modest look" is what I've always gone for... though that didn't stop my college buddies from coming over to oggle at the carboard idol of their dreams standing next to my closet. Some even tried to buy it. I wouldn't sell because I love my sister and this thing represented her twisted sense of humor: "Now you get to wake up to a beautiful woman in the mornings!" she told me after I got it out of the box she'd wrapped it in.

Funny.

But NOT as funny as THIS thing. Leave it to the Japanese - those wonderful people who take EVERYTHING to the extreme - to come up with something like this. Now a single person doesn't just have to pretend waking up to someone... but can pretend SLEEPING with them too!




The Boyfriend's Arm Pillow! From Kameo Corporation, nestled away somewhere in Fukuoka Prefecture in the southern stretch of the Land of the Rising Sun. For $106 American a girl can have a contoured pillow with artificial man's arm (complete with pajama sleeve) to wrap around her as she sleeps. The Courier-Mail has an article about this lil' gimmick and the people that have come to appreciate it...

For Ms Suzuki, who is estranged from her husband, the pillow has definite advantages: It doesn't squirm or thrash in the night, and you know it'll be there in the morning.

"It keeps holding me all the way through," she said in her home outside of Tokyo. "I think this is great because this does not betray me."

Slam here for the rest of the story. A hundred-plus bucks for a pillow with an arm.. unbelievable. Then again, what else could we expect from a people who regularly spend two hundred bucks to devour narrow slices of a deadly neurotoxic pufferfish? Crazy I tells ya... which may explain why I want to visit there someday :-)

Read More