TechgnosisWeb Prime

So, I’m noticing a sudden spike in hits and Google ad views. Not a huge one, mind you, but still fairly noticeable at the end of the month. So I go and take a look at my logs, and I see that most of the views are going here: the entry with pictures of the baby rats, a.k.a. kittens.

Apparently Google Images picked up one of the kittens.jpg pics in that article, and all of a sudden I’m being bombarded with visits from people looking for kittens. I’m sure those people must e fairly disappointed when they see baby rats instead.

Still, it did provide for some amusement: one of the web stats packages I use provides me with a list of the search terms that people have used to find this blog, and it reads like this:

1 15663 93.86% kittens
2 262 1.57% pictures of kittens
3 50 0.30% stick shift
4 49 0.29% ninjas killed my family
5 44 0.26% %22kittens%22
6 24 0.14% pics of kittens
7 22 0.13% kittens pictures
8 16 0.10% images of kittens
9 16 0.10% kittens%27
10 13 0.08% case mod
11 12 0.07% kittens!
12 10 0.06% half life case
13 9 0.05% kittens pics
14 9 0.05% photos of kittens
15 7 0.04% kittens%5c
16 6 0.04% captain jack sparrow
17 6 0.04% emma watson 18th birthday countdown
18 6 0.04% thumb kittens
19 6 0.04% violent video games
20 5 0.03% 2 kittens

So, with a 93.86% majority and nearly 16K visits, it seems that ‘kittens’ are the most important reason anyone visits my blog. Not my scintillating commentary, not my rugged, manly features, not even my rapier wit. No, it’s all random web searches for kittens.

Of course, now I have to pander to the kitten agenda. Expect a full redesign of the site within a week, with kitten graphics, kitten sounds, a kitten cursor, interactive javascript kittens, downloadable kitten wallpapers, and, of course, kitten dating services. My pageviews are gonna go through the fuckin’ roof!
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I’m about to pass out, gotta wake up at 5 AM tomorrow ’cause I have to be early at a client that’s on the other side of the friggin’ island, but I just wanted to drop a note to all my droogs for you to check out today’s episode of Rocketboom: stick through to the end, because the Cheney/Edwards debate at the end is easily the most beautiful thing I’ve seen all week.
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So, I was helping my good friend Monster out with her computer last night, and she asks me if I’ve updated my Amazon Wish List lately. I tell her that I haven’t touched that thing in years, to which she responds: “Well, update it allready! How else am I going to pay you back for all the free tech support you give me?”

I was truly touched by her generosity and selflessness, and realized that I have, indeed, been doing my many friends and readers a disfavor by not providing them with a wish list where they can go and easily see what I desire, and then buy these things for me. However, Amazon’s not my cup of tea, and, instead, I hopped on over to ThinkGeek and set up my Wish List there. So rejoice, my friends, my readers, and random internet strangers! I have finally provided what so many of you have been clamoring for! A way for you to buy me things that you know I want! Behold:

The Glory and the Majesty of my ThinkGeek Wish List.

Only 20-odd shopping days left till X-mas!
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Okay, you can file this under sappy, since I’ve always had a soft spot for Mr. T, but I pity the fool who dares to mock Mr. T, who is one helluva though guy.

“We are going to start filming Rocky VI soon, with me as Clubber Lang again, and we’re also starting work right now on my new show - which is called I Pity The Fool.

“Unlike all the other reality programmes, it is going to be about helping people. We’re not going to be eating worms or swapping wives.

“For example a lady might write to me saying she’s having trouble at a car dealership, because she’s the only female employee and the men are harassing her. So I’ll go in and straighten things out.

“I learn about the situation, observe for a couple of days and then call the guys into a meeting and give them the Mr T rap - ‘I tell you fools, you don’t disrespect no lady. My mum is a lady.’

“I don’t get physical with anyone but I talk to them man to man and brother to brother.”

Off-screen, Mr T is lending a helping hand to the survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

The tragedy deeply affected the 53-year-old Christian star, who was so moved by what happened in New Orleans that it convinced him to give up his trademark gold chains.

He said: “I watched my people, the black people, screaming, begging and crying just for water.

“They didn’t want diamond rings or new houses, they just wanted water, and they couldn’t get any.

“I knew that soon I would be going around visiting these people in homeless shelters and it would be a sin against God and a sin against humanity to go around there wearing a million-dollars worth of gold chains, rings and diamonds.

“It would be wrong for me to say ‘it’s going to be alright buddy’ and then go about my business. That would be a lie.

“People need to see that Mr T has a heart of gold, not just the gold that drips around my neck.

“That’s my wardrobe, my uniform, but I will never wear it again.”

So, we’re losing the gold chains, but we’re getting Mr. T back, so.. it’s all good. Go read the full article, Mr. T is a true hero, fool!
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It’s exceedingly late, and I should have been asleep hours ago, as I have work tomorrow. But I cannot, in good faith, surrender to the arms of Morpheus without first sharing this beautiful, wondrous gem of eldritchness: The Cthulhu Circus.

Click on the link above for the rest of them, they are a horrendous feast for the senses which you can ill afford to miss!
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So, you’ve got one of those now-ubiquitous USB Flash keys. Maybe you’re lucky and it’s 256MB or higher.. or maybe someone gave you a basic 128MB one. Either way, you’re sitting there with your little tech-toy and wondering what to put on it. Well, you’re in luck! I have just the thing: the Portable Apps Suite. From the site:

Portable Apps Suite allows you to carry all your standard applications on a USB thumbdrive, iPod, portable hard drive or any other portable media. It contains a portable web browser, email client, web editor, office suite, word processor, calendar/scheduler, instant messaging client and FTP client… all in one package, all preconfigured to work portably and be easy to back up. Just unzip it and you’re ready to go. You can then plug your portable device right into any Windows computer and use all of the applications just like you would on your own computer.

It’s a beautiful thing: You’ve got Firefox for your browsing, Thunderbird for your email, Sunbird for calendaring and tasks, Gaim for IM’ing, not to mention a web editor, text editor, FTP client, and a full-on office suite with spreadsheet, word processing, presentations, everything. And it’s all completely free. I just set up this suite on my little 256MB key and it works like a dream.

The only thing I’m adding to this is TrueCrypt: a free, Open Source on-the-fly encryption software. It can create a self-booting encrypted partition in the USB key, and you store the Portable App Suite inside the encrypted partition. That way, your documents, IM information, bookmarks and site passwords are all safe in case you lose the key or someone else gets a hold of it, and it’s dead easy to set up. It can even be set to auto-boot so it automatically pops up a password prompt when you plug in the key, making it even easier. Hugely reccomended, go check it out.
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So, you may have heard that I recently got an iMac. And as I mentioned back then, I set it up in the bedroom, and due to a general desire to not have ugly Cat5 Ethernet cables strung from the bedroom to the computer room (and in the interest of retaining the peace in my relationship), I bought a Belkin F5D7050_V2 USB Wireless G Adapter (I already have a little D-link Wireless Router/Firewall/VPN appliance). Setting up this little monster was not an easy task: While Belkin does make drivers and a ‘Wireless manager’ applet for it, they only work on Mac OS X 10.3.. and I have 10.4, of course. Tech support was useless: no, they don’t have a 10.4 driver, no, they don’t know when, or even if, they plan to have one available. Some searching on Google and various message boards turned up an alternative driver, apparently made by the people who actually manufacture the chip set that’s inside the adapter. This one worked… to a point. For the past several weeks, I’ve gotten used to having to ‘re-activate’ my wireless connection on the Mac every 10 minutes or so. For some unknown reason, it would just lose the connection periodically, making web browsing, instant messaging, or file transfers very annoying, to say the least. I tried everything: checking to make sure it was getting proper signal, tweaking the type of authentication I used (From WPA with a max-sized key to low-grade WEP, to just plain old open access, and back), I tried tweaking the settings on the Mac and the Router both, but nothing worked. I would just keep getting kicked off.

But no longer. It was a fluke, one of those things I never would have thought to try: while going through the App menu on the Mac the other night, I noticed that the Belkin ‘Wireless manager’, the one I’d tried to install originally which was for 10.3, was still installed. On a lark, I decided to click on it and see what would happen. And lo and behold, it worked! It came up, pretty as you please, detected my wireless network, even used the WPA settings I had originally put into the other no-name ‘Wireless manager’. And 5 hours of random web surfing, IM’ing, and downloading later, it’s still rock solid. I’ve tested it all over the place, with transfers on the internal network, external net access, and it works like a charm. So, apparently, the secret to getting the Belkin USB Wireless Adapter that I bought to work is as follows:

• Install the Belkin 10.3 drivers and application.
• Install the RALink 10.4 drivers and application
• Insert USB Wireless Adapter, RALink Wireless Manager will recognize it and come up.
• Kill the RALink Wireless Manager, and bring up the Belkin Wireless Manager.
• Ta-dah! Working and stable wireless access on your Mac using OS X 10.4 and the Belkin Adapter!

… and here I thought having a Mac would make my life simpler.
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I just wanted to hop on here and drop a quick note congratulating my good friend Jancelot: As of yesterday, it has officially been one year since he logged onto World of Warcraft and was never heard from again on his blog. One full year without updating the blog… I have to admit, no matter how hard I tried, i could never go that long. Once upon a time, I could go a month or three in between posts… but a year? No way, man. I salute you.
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After my little thanksgiving speech, I received a couple of comments, and one of them, from my friend, Jose, stated that he wished I wouldn’t slam religion so much. I started composing a reply, and halfway through it I realized that this is something that I haven’t talked completely about on this blog before, and maybe it’s something I should share with everyone, if only so that you can understand a little better where I’m coming from and why I’ve come to the point of view I now hold.

Now, if your religious beliefs give you strenght and comfort, then that’s great, for you, and I’m actually happy for you. But in my life, religion has been almost universally a negative force. Religious differences tore my family apart in many ways, and I’m not just talking about my own teenage rebellion against the ‘Fuente de Agua Viva’ folks. My mother and my grandparents barely spoke for years over the fact that they were catholic and my mom was an evangelical. Then, later on, those same grandparents drifted apart to the point where they barely spoke to each other over the fact that my grandfather became obsessed with the ‘Virgen del Pozo’ thing, to the point where he became one of those crazy old coots that stands out in the town square with a bullhorn telling us all how we must repent or die.

Meanwhile, my mom’s religious fundamentalist beliefs led her to basically have 3 ‘exorcisms’ performed on me, simply because I did not agree with her beliefs. These were not pleasant, and, frankly, could be considered child abuse. I was physically restrained, pushed down, shouted at from inches away, terrorized, threatened, and all but beaten by these ‘holy’ people, not once, but on three different occasions. This caused me to basically want to leave the house and the island as soon as I possibly could, and probably changed the course of my life for the worse, as I made many decisions soon after turning 18 that were based solely on the desire to stay away from these people. I’m still paying for the results of some of those decisions today.

On my father’s side, he had become estranged with his own parents soon after marrying my mom, also for religious reasons. My grandparents on my father’s side are Mita, and my mother was a catholic at the time. My father converted to catholicism for her, which caused a rift between him and his parents that took many years to begin to heal. Years later, and one of the main reasons for the divorce was my mother’s conversion to evangelical christianity, while my father remained a catholic. After the divorce, he sought comfort in the church that he had dedicated over 15 years to, only to be told that he was now persona non-grata because of his divorced status: no communion, the highest sacrament of the catholic church, for him. This caused him a lot of pain, and he pulled away from the church.. but seeking other beleifs to cling to. Unfortunately, he fell straight into a lot of New Age bull, and lost quite a bit of money on ‘psychics’, ‘aura readers’. and other sorts of crap. It wasn’t until he took me once to an ‘aura reader’ and the guy told him that I had a ’special purple aura’ and was destined to be a ‘great spiritual leader’, and that he would take me under his wing and train me for only several thousand dollars a month, that he started to realize that it’s all one big scam. By then, though, a lot of damage had been done. These days, his point of view is closer to mine, though where I am an atheist, he’s more of an agnostic.

There are more examples, but I think you get the main gist of it. At least in my life, and in my family, religion and religious differences have been pretty much a completely negative force. And for some years, this was a serious problem for me: I had been raised to beleive that religion was neccesary to be ‘complete’, but every religion I had been exposed to was negative.. and as I tried to find other alternative religions to cling to, I found that they were all pretty much the same thing in that sense. And that is why I am grateful to have discovered, after years of searching, that I don’t need religion or superstition or belief in anything supernatural to be happy. Life itself, the world around me, the people I share my life with, the things I do, for myself and for others, all that is enough. I can live a complete and happy life without the attachment, dogma, irrationality and intolerance that religion breeds. And, to me, this is something to celebrate and be grateful and happy for.
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Hey there, ladies and gents. Just thought I’d drop on by and wish everyone a happy Turkey Day. Every year, we gather together, and in remembrance of that sacred time when the Pilgrims, deciding that they had gotten tired of being religiously persecuted, set off for the New World, so they could do some hardcore persecutin’ of their own. It was a grand ol’ time, and the Native Americans will probably never forget all the fun that was had as they were raped, looted, killed, infected with diseases, and swindled out of their land by those rascally Pilgrims.

So let’s all get together, as a family, and celebrate this grand tradition by doing what America does better than anyone else: gorge ourselves on food until we pass out. Hooray!

… and yes, I am thankful and appreciative for stuff today. I appreciate that I have a life that I’m happy with. I’m thankful to my friends, for being so good, and I’m thankful to my family, because they’ve mellowed out enough that I can at least tolerate them. I’m thankful to my girlfriend, for loving me and putting up with my idiosyncracies, and I’m apprciative that I’m healthy. I appreciate that I live in a fascinating time, and I appreciate that I live in a country where I am allowed to voice my opinions freely, even when (or especially when) those opinions go against what our ‘leaders’ tell us. I’m thankful for the work of people like Carl Sagan, Michael Shermer, and the Amazing Randi, who have helped me see and understand that you don’t need superstition and religion to live a full, happy, meaningful life, and that the universe around us is so much more fascinating when you look at it with a clear mind. And, finally, I’m thankful to my readers, all those silent people who I see coming in day in and day out on my logs, even thought they don’t comment, it helps to know someone’s out there, listening, and probably shaking his or her head repreachfully.
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We all know he’s a liar, a hypocrit, and a violent, depraved individual who advocates murder, opression, and intolerance worldwide. But now we have proof that he’s also a Satanist!

That’s right.. ’cause Jebus is fuckin’ METAL.
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Good to know that at least one judge can see what the rest of us have been saying for so long: Jack “I’m-a-flaming-psycho” Thompson is not fit to practice law. Click on the link to read the full article, btu basically, Jack had been trying to pull out of a case in Alabama where he was suing Sony, claiming that a cop-shooter had been inspired by Grand Theft Auto to do the deed. After making a complete fool of himself in court, he tried to pull out of the case, claiming, of course, that ‘his enemies were trying to use him to de-rail the case’.. hey, Jacko, the one who made a complete and total ass of himself in court was you, not ‘your enemies’.. but anyway.. the judge rejected his request, but only so he could have the pleasure of ejecting him from the case himself, handing in an 18 page long smackdown detailing why he was booting Jacko off the case, and forbidding him from practicing law in Alabama. Here’s a beautiful quote:

“Mr. Thompson’s actions before this Court suggest that he is unable to conduct himself in a manner befitting practice in this state.”

Read: j00 r t3h pwnz0red n00b ROFLWTFBBQOMG!!11!! 1eleven

Of course, he’s a Florida lawyer (doesn’t that just explain so much), so being disbarred in Alabama is more of an incovenience than any sort of real setback, but still, it sets a nice precedent: if one judge was willing to call Jacko out as the idiot he is, one can only hope that others will follow. Score one for the good guys!
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My gadget collection

Originally uploaded by Katsushiro.

I’m very late to the party, I know, but I figured I would finally post up one of those whatsinyourbag pics, since I do have a fairly crowded little bag. The bag itself is in the very back there, the rest is my collection of gadgets, gizmos, tools and gewgaws. Not pictured, unfortunately, is the Motorola v551 (KatsuPhone) I used to take the picture; I also left my USB-to-car-lighter adapter and my micro car-lighter-to-AC converter, as well as my mini FM transmitter, in the car.

(Click to see the full-sized pic on Flickr, it’s even annotated so you can see what each gadget is!)


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Greetings, people of earth. I’m sure you’ve noticed that, on occasion, this blog goes down. The culprit in the vast majority of these cases is the wily and resourceful ‘Error 28′, a nasty little bugger that pops up whenever the /tmp directory on my hosting server fills up too much. Why does this happen? Well, that’s because my hosting company kinda sucks ass sometimes (but, hey, they’re cheap!), and thus, the blog is mostly unusable for a day or so at a time while I report it and they get off their asses and clear out that directory for me.

Now, this has been happening more often than I’m comfortable with, and the really annoying part is that since we’re all hosted on the same server, when the error happens to me, it also takes down the rest of the Techgnosisweb Empire (A Glint in the Void, A Hatred of Beautiful Things, and Spiffy Japan… go, visit, check ‘em out, and tell them I sent you). So I got to thinking that maybe we should have some sort of backup blog, a separately hosted site that everyone could check for updates if/when the main blog inevitably crashes and burns.

With this in mind, I dropped by the brand new WordPress.com blog hosting service, and signed up a free account, snagging up the http://katsushiro.wordpress.com/ domain. So, without any further ado, I present to you: Techgnosisweb Epsilon. Go, check it out, not much to see, but it should get the job done. Bookmark it, and you can go see what’s up anytime we’re down. I also placed a link to it in the Blogroll over to the left, which is usually still visible when ‘Error 28′ hits.

And, of course, if I’m gonna name the backup blog ‘Techgnosisweb Epsilon’, this blog is now known as ‘Techgnosisweb Prime‘. Worship the blog!
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I figured I should bring it up before any of my readers and friends do: I like money. I do. I’m a filthy capitalist, and proud of it. Buy low, sell high, all that stuff. Of course, I also appreciate community efforts and the commons, witness my love for and dedication to Open Source initiatives, Creative Commons systems, the EFF, etc.

I bring this up, because it’s likely that any of you who click on the comments or the ‘more’ link in my posts from here on (and I’ll be slowly editing the archived posts as well), will have noticed something new: ads. Yup, I finally broke down and stuck some Google AdSense blocks in my blog. All the cool kids are doing it. Some of them even make a tidy profit with it. I’ve had an AdSense account sitting there, unused, for over a year now, and I figured I might as well try and make some use of it (it was originally for AniGaming, but since that site’s pretty much undead now, I figured I’d plop ‘em in here instead).

Why? Well, I sat down and did some budgeting this weekend (I even dusted off Excel to help with the calculations), and while I’m not broke, I could always use a bit of extra cash. I’m not expecting to make thousands of dollars a month with the ads or anything, but any bit 0f extra scratch I bring in, from anywhere, is a bit of money that can go towards the ‘let’s get my girlfriend back to school’ fund. This fund is in no danger of running dry, mind you (or else I would never have dropped the cash for Guitar Hero), but it doesn’t hurt to bring in a bit more if I can, right?

I’m trying to be as nice and unobtrusive as I can with the ads, so you shouldn’t see any on the main page. I’m only putting them in the individual entry pages themselves, and only at the very end of the entries, not in the middle or mixed in with the text. Yeah, I know I’m ‘leaving money on the table’ by not being more aggressive with them, but I also hate it when i see ads plastered all over an otherwise useful site, so I’m not going to do that to my readers. They’ll only be placed in the individual entry pages, and at the very end of the entry, just above where the comments start. Click the ‘more’ or ‘comments’ links on the previous entry (or on this one, for that matter) to see what I mean. (EDIT: And, no, I’m not sticking them in the RSS feed either, so you can always just subscribe to the feed in your favorite aggregator and get the full entries with no ads as well.)

Hopefully you guys won’t hate on them (and me) too much, and if you see anything in an ad that actually looks like it might interest you, go ahead and give it a click. Doesn’t cost you a thing, and it’s a nice way of helpin’ a brutha out, y’know? Makes me feel appreciated, and gives you the warm and fuzzies all over. Win-win.

And if you do hate them too much, I’m gonna go ahead and assume you’re using Firefox, and point you at the AdBlock extension: there, now you don’t have to see them anymore.
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So you’re all wondering if I went to the doctor today. Yes, yes I did. It was not a particularly pleasant experience, but neither was it as fraught with horror and death as I imagined and feared it would be. Overall, I would sum it up thus: meh. I had some labs taken, some antibiotics prescribed, and now I have to wait till next week for the lab results to come in and see what the next step is.

This is all boring.

Rather than drone on about the intricacies of filling out medical forms and handing my health plan card to about 40 different people, I will tell you the tale of something my dear, wonderful, and loving girlfriend just bought me today, as a reward for being such a good boy: Guitar Hero. Go, click, check it out. I’ve got time.

This is a game where you play guitar. Rock guitar. Like those other rhythm games, such as Donkey Konga, Dance Dance Revolution, or Kareoke Revolution. Except, it’s with a guitar. An electric guitar. For playing rock. It brings a controller. The controller is shaped like an electric guitar.

Holy. Freaking. Crap. This is so insanely cool.

The guitar/controller has a series of buttons on the frets, and the idea is that you hit the buttons on the frets in time with the music and the signals on screen, and strum the guitar in time with the notes. Simple idea, but the execution is out of this world. Once you get a couple of songs under your belt, once you start getting into the rhythm of the music, you’re no longer playing a game. You’re rocking out. This is a good thing.

I’ve been playing it for a few hours now, and I’m taking a break. Not because I want to stop playing, mind you. It’s because my fingers are too tired. And I’m still on Easy. There’s three more difficulty levels. 30 songs. I’ve barely finished the first 5. Excellent.
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As the X-mas season approaches, bringing joy, good will, and crass consumerism to all good boys and girls, I want this to be the image that shapes and informs your every holiday thought:

Happy Holidays!

… wakin’ up the neighborhood.

Well, not so much, actually. In fact, I’ve been passing out relatively early lately, and just feeling generally exhausted most of the time these days. I’m pretty sure it’s all mostly related to the fact that I seem to be suffering from some sort of thyroid disorder or another. Hypothyroidism, most likely.

Yeah, I haven’t gone to get myself checked out yet. Yeah, I know, I know. Before, my excuse was that I didn’t have a health plan, and so wouldn’t be able to afford the doctor’s visit, much less any treatment. But now I do have a health plan. So there goes that excuse. Then I had to wait until the health plan actually kicked in (for the first month or so I still wasn’t eligible for even so much as a standard doctor’s visit, but I gather that those waiting periods are standard among health plans). But it’s been a month and a half now, and the plan is in full effect. In fact, they even have a clinic close to my job where I don’t even have to pay the deductible for doctor’s visits, lab tests, scans, and most medicines: it’s all included in the basic plan cost. Sweet.

So, why haven’t I gone yet? I could give the standard litany of excuses: work’s been keeping me busy, no time, too much other stuff to do.. and it’s all true, as far as it goes. But the real reason is a certain amount of fear. Yeah, big bad Katsu’s afraid of the doctor. Hear me out, though: I’m one of the lucky ones. I’ve been uncommonly healthy all my life. I’ve been to see a doctor maybe 5 times in my entire life (and I’m 28 now). And most of those visits were just standard physicals so I could get into school or college. I’ve never had to take medication for anything (except the lithium I took for a very short time during the Dark Days after coming back from Cornell, but that shrink was a complete quack: I was never in need of medication, but that psychiatrist was one of those that will prescribe a pill if you’re sad, and another if you’re happy). But I digress: I’ve never had major diseases, never even broken a single bone. I’ve been fortunate enough to spend my entire life doctor-free, and, frankly, I like it that way. But, now, I seem to have developed a condition. One that requires treatment, and is quite likely to require me to take medication for the rest of my life. It will mean regular doctor visits, check ups, tests, etc. It’s not immediately life threatening, but it does need to be treated. And I’m terrified. I’m scared that I’ll go into the doctor’s office and he’ll find a million things wrong with me. I mean, I never really did go to the doctor much. They never had many chances to find out if anything was wrong with me. But now they’ll see that not only do I have this thyroid problem, but I’ve also got high blood pressure, soaring cholesterol, male pattern baldness, inflamed organs, and my ass is on fire. I’m afraid that after being so lucky for so long, I’ll turn out to be horribly broken after all. Mostly, I know that going to the doctor now will be the first step in being forced to, most likely, take thyroid medications for the rest of my natural life (at least, until I can finally download my consciousness into a new, superior robot body and then proceed to CRUSH ALL HU-MANS). I just hate the thought of being forced to depend on medication from now on, not just for a short while until the problem is fixed, but forever. And, yes, I know that my friends out there who have diabetes and other life-long conditions are currently playing the world’s smallest violin for me as they read this, and I know it’s an overreaction on my part and I just need to suck it up and be a man and get the treatment I need to be healthy again, but.. I’m just scared. I’ve been very lucky, for very long, and now I’m terrified of what’s to come.

I’m going to the doctor’s on Friday, I’ve already set the day apart at work just for that. I’m dreading it, but I’m going. I’ll find a way to make light of the situation so I can deal, promise.
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katamari-toyota.jpg

Originally uploaded by kolkkaaja.

And so I inflict my sushi cravings on the lot of you once more. But you have to admit, this is adorable: Katamari Damacy-themed sushi. Don’t you just wanna eat the little guy up? Click and check out the full-sized one, and then go check out the full set of ‘freestyle sushi’ photos, they’re pretty darn neat.


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Well, at least we’re making some progress. News just came in that 8 out of 9 members of the Dover Board of Education, all of them proponents of so-called Intelligent Design (a.k.a. the poor man’s Creationism), have been replaced with new members who support the teaching of actual science in science class. Not only that, but the dumbass astrologer that actually sued NASA for ‘messing up her horoscopes’ when they slammed the Deep Impact probe into a comet, had her case summarily thrown out of court.

Unfortunately, not even these points of brilliance affect the dense cloud of idiocy that covers Kansas: the Kansas Board of Education approved science standards for public schools Tuesday that cast doubt on the theory of evolution. Apparently they want ‘disclaimers’ placed on books and said before class that point out that Evolution is ‘only’ a theory and that they should consider other options, such as the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
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