Friday, May 04, 2007

Safe and Sound Review

Here's an excellent review of SAFE AND SOUND from Jon Jordan at the Mystery One Bookstore site.

Please go read it and then buy lots of stuff from Mystery One, and Crimespree Magazine while you're at it.

Thanks, Jon!


Thursday, May 03, 2007

Careful What You Ask For, Geek-Boy

WOW Player's Online Harassment Has RL Consequences

Bronco Carson, a World of Warcraft player from Mexico, reported to police on Saturday that three men broke into his home and beat his arms with clubs and totalled his computer. The reason? Carson had been repeatedly ganking the WoW character of the wife of one of his assailants.

Carson reportedly told police that he had been "making it hard for her to get far in the game." The woman had already threatened Carson online, and Carson said that he had already been constantly harassed in-game two weeks prior to the attack.

And then Carson made the mistake of giving the woman his address, telling the woman that "if her husband was man enough to just come meet me to settle this."

The result? Carson got two broken fingers and a fractured wrist during the assault. His computer and entertainment center were also totalled by his three attackers before they left. "I knew that I might be messed with in the game but I didn't really expect her husband to come looking for me," said Carson. "I couldn't have been more wrong."

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

We Are Being Led By "The Commander Guy'"


Bush: I'm the Commander Guy:

WASHINGTON, May 2–And you thought he was still “the decider.”

President Bush coined a new nickname for himself — ‘’the commander guy” — on Wednesday, as he criticized Congressional Democrats in a speech to the annual gathering of the Associated General Contractors of America, a construction industry trade group.

The man who last year proclaimed “I’m the decider,’’ in response to a question about whether he would fire Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary, came up with this latest moniker in explaining why he vetoed an Iraq war spending bill that dictated a timeline for troops to withdraw from Iraq.

“The question is, ‘Who ought to make that decision, the Congress or the commanders?,’’ Mr. Bush said. “As you know, my position is clear – I’m the commander guy.”

Sung to the Tune of: Theme from "The Family Guy"

Lois: It seems today
that all you see,
is violence in Iraq,
and Dems on TV.

Peter: But where's that corrupt Republican Congress...

All: ...on which we used to rely?

All: Lucky there's a Commander Guy!
Lucky there's a man who,
just can't bring himself to
give a flying fuck who...

Stewie: lives or dies!

All: He's

Our

Commander

Guu~uuy!

[BIG FINISH]


Tuesday, May 01, 2007

The Unluckiest Man in the World


The Blotter: An Afghan tribesman with an uncanny resemblance to Osama bin Laden has now been arrested twice, both times following reported sightings and massive manhunts for the al Qaeda leader, Pakistani intelligence officials tell ABC News.

Over six feet tall and with the same angular nose as bin Laden, Sher Akbar comes from an Afghan village, Bagh e Metal, in an area where U.S. officials believe bin Laden has been hiding.

Bin Laden is believed to be six feet four inches to six feet six inches tall and weigh 160 pounds. He is 50 years old.

The most recent arrest of bin Laden's near-twin came after Afghani officials reported informants saw bin Laden moving across the border into Pakistan, near the town of Chitral.

"We arrested this man as a result of this investigation, but it's not who you might think it is," a senior Pakistani intelligence official told ABC News, providing a photograph to make his point.

Click Here for Full Blotter Coverage. (link now dead-click on thread tile for full story)

Four Years Ago Today

May 1, 2003: President Bush Announces "Mission Accomplished": "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."

And the press went wild drooling over him:

Chris Matthews: "What's the importance of the president's amazing display of leadership tonight"?

Current NBC News Anchor Brian Williams: "Not all presidents could have pulled this scene off today."

PBS's Gwen Ifill: "Picture perfect. Part Spider-Man, part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan. The president seizes the moment on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific."

CNN's Lou Dobbs:
"He looked like an alternatively commander in chief, rock star, movie star, and one of the guys."

CNN'S Judy Woodruff:
"If image is everything, how can the Democratic presidential hopefuls compete with a president fresh from a war victory?"

And my favorite, from syndicated columnist Cal Thomas:
"All of the printed and voiced prophecies should be saved in an archive. When these false prophets again appear, they can be reminded of the error of their previous ways and at least be offered an opportunity to recant and repent. Otherwise, they will return to us in another situation where their expertise will be acknowledged, or taken for granted, but their credibility will be lacking."

I think I'll take you up on that one, Cal.

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Because I Love It When Stuff Blows Up II

Die Hard: The Music Video (Hat Tip to Kung Fu Monkey)

Where's The Outrage?

Latest Newspaper Column:

A couple of weeks ago, I poked fun at the industry that seems to have grown up for the sole purpose of manufacturing faked outrage.

Michelle Malkin, Bill O'Reilly, Matt Drudge and the like have become experts in taking imagined slights and whipping themselves into a teeth-gnashing frenzy. I'm beginning to think that the real reason behind this is so that, when real outrages come along, we'll just be too tired and numb to notice or, more importantly, act on them.

Take, for example, the recent revelations being made in the cases of Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch. Tillman, you may remember, was the Arizona Cardinals linebacker who turned down a $3.6 million deal from the Cardinals to join the U.S. Army after the Sept. 11 attacks. Lynch was the pint-sized West Virginia girl who joined the Army, became a truck driver, and was captured by Iraqi forces during the early days of the war. Later, she was extracted from the hospital in a daring rescue by U.S. Special Forces, aided by sympathetic Iraqis.

As revealed in recent congressional hearings, both Tillman and Lynch have something in common: They were used in a campaign of lies to cover up Bush administration failings in Iraq.

First, Tillman. In the days after his death, the Pentagon spread the story that Tillman's Ranger unit had been ambushed by hostile guerrilla forces and that Tillman had died leading a valiant counterattack.

Only problem was, none of this was true. Tillman was shot by other Rangers in one of the tragic mistakes that have befallen warriors for centuries. And, as it turns out, the Army and the Pentagon knew this, and still continued to pump the Tillman-as-Rambo story for all it was worth. Witnesses to the shooting were ordered, under pain of court martial, not to discuss the actual circumstances of Tillman's death with his family, even with his brother Kevin, a Ranger in the same unit.

Lynch, for her part, had the circumstances of her capture inflated to mythic proportions as well. She had fought to the last, the stories trumpeted. She had emptied her pistol at her attackers and was overcome only after she ran out of ammo. From the news narratives, one couldn't help but see the mental image of the heroic Lynch, surrounded by heaps of her slain like a Viking warrior before the evil hordes overcame her.

In reality, as it turns out, Lynch never got off a shot. Her gun jammed, and she, as she put it, "put her head down and prayed." And her horrific injuries, which plague her to this day, were sustained in the truck crash.

One of the many really tragic things about the way these two young people were used is how unnecessary all the lies were.

There was no need to gold-plate the sacrifice of Pat Tillman. He was a hero when he walked off the football field and entered basic training. That sacrifice is in no way tarnished by his death from so-called "friendly fire," a fate that befell the South's own Stonewall Jackson. Tillman was certainly more of a hero than the dozens of chickenhawks who collectively make up what some have called the 101st Fighting Keyboard Brigade, sitting at their computers and cheerleading a war they have no interest in actually putting their own fat behinds on the line to fight.

And if you want a hero, I can give you no better example than that of Jessica Lynch. Not only has she endured months of agonizing recovery from her injuries, but she also found the courage to walk into a congressional hearing room and tell the world that "the story of the little girl Rambo from the hills of West Virginia who went down fighting was not true." Then she placed the laurel wreath on the heads of her comrades who died, including her roommate, Lori Piestewa, a Native American who didn't get a tenth of the press that Lynch did...until now.

That little girl's got cojones bigger than my head.

But, at the time Lynch and Tillman hit the front pages, the administration needed stirring tales to pump up the war fever. In Tillman's case, as his family points out, the Pentagon needed something to try to take the people's minds off the emerging story of the horrible abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. So Tillman and Lynch got drafted into the war they never signed up for: the PR battle.

With all that coming out, what is the Right outraged over? Well, Alec Baldwin made a nasty phone call to his pre-teen daughter.

And it seems that singer Sheryl Crow may have made Karl Rove uncomfortable at a party by talking about global warming. Oh, and she made a joke on her tour blog that one way to save trees might be to limit the amount of toilet paper one uses to one sheet. Now there's something to get your dander up.

For God's sake, people, wake up.