SOY BOMB

Somebody actually recalled one of my hobo books. Weird.

This diary at dkos traces the current iteration of the American right back to early colonization waves. I don't know if the research checks out, but it's certainly interesting and seems to make a lot of sense.

Of course, of course.

So it's apparently curtains for Sarah Palin's governorship and, reportedly, her political career. Rumors are already flying about an impending federal indictment concerning the possibility that she used building supplies purchased by the city of Wasilla for a sports complex in the construction of her home.

What do you think? Is this pre-scandal ducking, or does she somehow believe this will help her in 2012? Or something else?

...if a chicken bites you?

I don't remember where I saw this link, but holy shit. There's this whole range of fungi that do this really horrible thing to ants. Here's what happens: an ant picks up a spore from this fungus, the spore takes over its body and causes it to behave erratically, and the other ants carry the afflicted ant away from the colony and abandon it. This is because the spore grows until it fucking bursts out of the ant's head, at which time it emits other spores to zombify other ants.

Holy fucking shit.

Here's video of the whole process:

I'll probably post a thorough accounting of the last week or so (which included a fantastic visit from my brother and sister, giving a paper at IASPM-US, and an unbelievable evening at the Magic Castle with several of you) soon enough, but for now, here are some links you should look at:

This is the official site of Rex, the woman who got us into the Magic Castle (and these links are my returning of that favor). Her eponymous band features Emilio Estevez's daughter on drums and, in some unknown capacity, Ernie Lee (who a few of us know through our gaming group).

She also has a MySpace and is eager to add people to her friends list (or whatever it's called at MySpace).

What an asshole. What a disgrace to both New Hampshire and to the Democratic Party. Somebody damn well better primary his sorry ass.

Hooray for the good people of Vermont, and especially their state legislators! Screw their governor, though. That guy's an ass.

Wow, what a historic week!

Thank you, Iowa Supreme Court, for your UNANIMOUS decision!

I've never been so proud to be from Iowa (though last year's caucus is a close second)! The fight is obviously not over, but marriage equality will be realized in Iowa before the month is out! This is the moment when things start to turn around. When it was just Massachusetts and Connecticut all the rednecks could dismiss it as New England liberals being crazy. But now that a state that gave its electoral votes to George W. Bush in 2004 has done it, it could happen ANYWHERE! Except maybe Utah, but it'll eventually fall too. But this is where it begins! There's a lot more work to be done, but today is definitely a day for celebration!

This really ought to shut down all the people who still think of Iowa as a red state. First, Iowa makes it possible for Barack Obama to win last year's primary, and now it becomes the third state to recognize marriage equality. Last February I said something about the primaries showing that a fundamental shift had happened in Democratic politics, and that the traditional liberal strongholds were losing their position as the central fronts of progressivism. That seems to be holding up, especially since California biffed both the primary and a marriage equality referendum in the same year. I'm sure we'll fix that in a couple of years, but we've already fallen behind Iowa, of all places.

Clearly, I'm not coherent; I'm too excited. I can't wait to talk to my cousins!

UPDATE: A couple more things to note:

1. Iowa has no residency requirement for marriage, so hopefully the state will be rewarded with an increase in tourism income as people come from all over to get married!

2. Looks like I'm not the only one who thinks marriage equality is gonna last in Iowa. In this diary from Daily Kos an Iowa state senator explains that the fight is basically over because of three factors: Iowa's historic tendency to be a civil rights leader (a history I'll admit I didn't know about), Iowans' familiarity with and rejection of social conservativism in recent years, and the sheer amount of time it takes to amend Iowa's constitution. Two consecutive two-year legislative sessions have to pass a potential amendment before it even gets to the referendum stage, and apparently a marriage amendment was defeated in the legislature a few years ago while the Republicans were in power! Now that the Democrats are in charge, it looks very unlikely that a constitutional amendment will even be put up for a vote.

Just got an email from my cousin letting me know that the marriage equality ruling is coming down from the Iowa Supreme Court TOMORROW! Everybody cross your fingers!

Here's a juicy quote from some corporate tax lawyer from a recent AP story on how Senate Republicans are blocking efforts to tax the AIG bonuses. It appears in the context of a discussion of the possibility that legislation preventing bonuses will lead to corporations raising salaries to match what employees lose in bonuses.

Here it is:

"'If the vast majority of bonuses become fixed salaries that would harm the institutions because they would have higher fixed costs,' Willens said. 'What happens if the bank suffers through a poor year? It has all these fixed obligations they have to meet. That's the beauty of the bonuses.'"

Um, I'd say the bank has suffered through a pretty poor year. A year so poor that it needed to accept billions of dollars of government bailout money to stop it from utterly collapsing. And yet it still felt obligated to pay out these ludicrous bonuses. How is that ANY DIFFERENT from what he's talking about?

Seriously, how does this guy have a job?

Make it stop!

I was listening to NPR this morning and they were talking about Songsmith (which, if you're unfamiliar, is software that automatically generates backing tracks to whatever you sing into your computer). Apparently, people have been running the vocal tracks of familiar songs through Songsmith, and the results are fascinating. Billy Idol's "White Wedding" ends up as a madcap bluegrass tune, Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" ends up sounding kind of like ZZ Top, Oasis's "Wonderwall" becomes a souped-up house track, the Beastie Boys' "Intergalactic" gets the Randy Newman treatment, Radiohead's "Creep" is somewhere between Conway Twitty and Bob Marley, the Eagles' "Hotel California" vaguely resembles Kraftwerk, Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" heads somewhat Springsteenward, etc.

Here's my favorite so far: a Merengue version of The Police's "Roxanne"



I haven't been looking for these things for more than a few minutes, so you're bound to find even better ones. Post them below!

Doing a search for my old address on Google Maps brings up a familiar vehicle in surprising detail:

Somebody just crashed a U-haul truck into my building. I just peeked outside, and it looks like they thought they could drive the 12-feet-tall truck into the 10-feet-high garage. I can't tell if it's stuck. I also can't tell if there's any damage to the building.

WTF?!?

This is the holiday gift of choice for that hard-to-shop-for TA on your list.

Spelling "whoa" like "woah" seems to be becoming a lot more common. Same goes for spelling "lose" as "loose." I wonder why this is. Maybe it's the blogs' fault.

For ichbinkelsey: a bunch of lamps!