IT'S JUST A PIECE OF CODE!
Here's a Blogumentary clip of Carmela, my favorite adorable tatooed Brazilian blog philosopher, currently on day 5 without a cigarette. Conducted via webcam and the tele-phone. Sure, blogs are just a piece of code, but it's the person that brings them to life, that makes it "romantic" and "sensitive" as she says. I couldn't agree more.

Carmela talks good blog (Quicktime, 8 MB)

MAC FANS REJOICE!
First, check out Zim-Zam the undead zombie chimp icons and desktops. You're a-gonna love Zim-Zam! Created by my friend Chris. Chris likes to call himself a "conceptual theorist" but I like to call him "Chris."

Holy crap. The PowerMac G5 is here. Apple once again leapfrogs, we'll see for how long. Speaking of webcams, iSight and iChat AV looks like a pretty killer video chat/conferencing combo. Carmela couldn't get the mic input to work on her PC, which is why we used the phone. Somehow I don't think that'd ever happen on a Mac. Yeah you heard me right, c'mon! Panther on the way too. Space Waitress was just saying how she lusts after objects, like PocketPC cases and things, and I thought hmm... I'm not really that way. Who am I kidding? I'm a drooling Mac slut. Apple is like the hooker that grabs my crotch with new toys, and I just start salivating and fumbling for my wallet. Umm, not that I would know anything about that.

And... HOMESTAR RUNNER INTERVIEW! [ via Fimoculous Rex's Delicious LinkFarm ]

SMASHING, DAHLING
Just a quick update to note that tonight's screening of the 21 minute-cut of Blogumentary was a rousing success, in spite of my being about 20 minutes late to my own screening. Brian was nicely tolerant and juggled the festival schedule a bit to make everyone happy. It was really thrilling to see it on the big screen and see people's reaction in realtime, after countless hours watching it on my computer screen. Over. And over. While my friends went to the beach and frolicked. (Boo hoo!) But it was all worth it. So nice to see so many friends there, that's the best. I feel like I've really gotten somewhere and my blood is pouring into the right place. Namely, a tall frosty-cold glass with sprigs of mint. Mmm!

Plus, now I can be cool again cuz I got the new Radiohead (unnecessary but sweet marketing plot "limited edition" package) and Grandaddy, The Clean live tour CD, BrokerDealer, and a kickass 4-song French cd single by Them (you know, Van Morrison's 60's group – "Glooooooria"). All I want to do is listen to tunes, read mags, see flicks, and chill baby. Virgin mojitos until we expand our Atkins diet in a week. By the way... down to 518 lbs! No longer pooping - it's all used for body fuel now.

Can't wait to watch our new City Council Productions DVD. These guys are frigging geniuses.

THE HOUSE I GREW UP IN
...is for sale. A lot of huffy bike-fueled memories there.

<PERFORMANCE ART>
CHUCK'S BLOGUMENTARY CRIMINALLY OVERLOOKED IN INFLUENTIAL BLOG LIST
This is a somber day. Online Journalism Review has posted a list of bloggers rating the most influential bloggers. Oh of course, all the usual suspects are here: Andrew Sullivan, Dan Gillmor, Dave Winer, Jeff Jarvis. I just acquired TMJ from yawning too hard. But where am I, friends? Where am I.

Look, look at the near-Biblical sacrifices I make for the good of the Blogosphere. I put up video of Lou Reed singing with comedians. I, I link to things that seem important – sometimes going so far as to add my own thoughts on the matter. I put my ass on the line each and every day, no matter how much the SARS devil chokes my every breath. For what? To get crapped on, white gooey pigeon crap that taints the innocent child's eye when he looks up at a rainbow. That sweet delicate child is me, and that crap is a right royal swirl from the asses of blogging's most snobbish dilettantes.

Therefore, I must now announce my retirement. Good day.
</PERFORMANCE ART>

SENATE COMMITTEE VOTES TO OVERTURN FCC RULING
Good news, everyone! (imagine that in the voice of Futurama professor.)

The Senate Commerce Committee voted today to overturn a recent Federal Communications Commission raising the national broadcast ownership limit to 45 percent. Under the legislation approved by the Commerce Committee, the cap would be rolled back to 35 percent of the nation's TV households. [ via AdWeek and TelevisionWeek ]

Also: TNN is hemorrhaging dollars due to Spike Lee's injunction preventing them from becoming "SpikeTV".

WHITE HOUSE CENSORS E.P.A. REPORT
And now the bad news:

The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to publish a draft report next week on the state of the environment, but after editing by the White House, a long section describing risks from rising global temperatures has been whittled to a few noncommittal paragraphs. [ via New York Times ]

Here's the best part - they removed references to a climate report that the White House itself commissioned. They must not have liked the conclusions about the likely human contribution to global warming, because they replaced that with "reference to a new study, partly financed by the American Petroleum Institute, questioning that conclusion." Wake up everybody, the Bush Administration is a gaggle of deceitful bastards! Someone get Josh Marshall on the case... the blogosphere should keep this one alive.

BLOGUMENTARY IS MY WORLD RIGHT NOW
My man Pete Scholtes has some kind words for Blogumentary in a short City Pages review of the DV-CINEMA High Five Film Festival:

Another highlight, albeit still a work in progress, is Minneapolis filmmaker Chuck Olsen's "Blogumentary" (8:30 p.m.), which takes as its subject something you might consider to be hopelessly specialized even if you're familiar with it: the world of online web logs, or "blogs." (I should say here that my own blog appears for a second in the film.) But Olsen is too fast and funny an editor to get bogged down in self-importance. And the "blog couple" he discovers is the most compelling bickering duo since Mitch and Mickey in "A Mighty Wind".

Aww geez, dat's real nice. I'm sorry to say most of those web pages in the open, along with the cheesy Shatner voiceover, are going bye-bye. I'm going to try a more sincere approach, maybe a more PT Anderson approach or something. My mom and my brother will be in it too.

VIDEOFONE KILLED THE RADIO STAR
Carmela, my favorite Brazilian journalism student, handed in her blog thesis and was all ready to shoot some video for Blogumentary. But no, the University is nearly shut down in finals with no equipment to be had. Ahh, but she has a web cam and a telephone! So tomorrow I'm going to call her and record her voice from the phone, while she records video on her webcam. Somehow it will work. (Audblog apparently wouldn't work with her phone... hello Audblog, do you support Brazilian cell phones?) Stay tuned.

Oh... my friggin hard drive crashed again. Yes, just when I need it most. But with a little sweet-talkin' I got it back up again, and promptly bought DiskWarrior. Victory is mine. Mwaa-hahahaha!

Talk of the Walk... The Bay Colony Rag! (thanks for the Blogumentary donation, all the way from NJ)

HILLARY CLINTON ON LETTERMAN
Video over on Lisa Rein's blog.

STUART HUGHES ON EMBEDDED REPORTING
Stuart Hughes, a British journalist and blogger who lost his leg in Iraq, spoke to international journalism students at Cardiff University about embedded journalism. He rightly calls the system an "unholy alliance" in these two MP3 files: Part 1 | Part 2

JEFF JARVIS LINKS ENGLISH-SPEAKING IRANIAN BLOGGERS
Will Iranian blogs play a role in the push for democracy in Iran? I think they already are. Jeff Jarvis is doing his part.

THANK YOU!
Huge, huge thanks go out to Brent (awaiting his blog URL) and my own stepdad Jerry for their PayPal contributions to Blogumentary. It really made my day. I promise not to spend it all on booze. Can't drink on the Atkins diet, you know.

BLOGGING LITE THIS WEEK - PREPARING FOR THIS:


But here are a couple of "phun linxx".

Powergen Italia or PowerGenitalia?

People Against Fun Creating a better world without fun

WatchBlog - 3 party election blog created by Cam, a fine old-school blogger I chatted with at SXSW. What a fantastic idea. (via Matt and Rex)

ATKINS DIET, DAY FOUR
Current weight: 712 lbs
Today's food: 2 fried eggs with plum tomatoes and a couple of anchovies (a mistake), a wrap with fake turkey, mayo, mustard, sprouts, tomatoes, cheese, lettuce. Not sure about dinner yet.
Feeling: Much better. The diet is working better than I expected - not only am I burning fat for fuel, but I'm burning urine. By tomorrow I will have ceased urinating.

WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?
The Komedy Koven has a bitchin' new movie! For those not familiar with the 24 hour movie concept: After 6PM on Friday, we call the hotline to find out what "the sentence" is. We then have 24 hours to make a short film about that sentence, and they are all screened the next day at the Rogue Buddha Gallery. This has been the inspirado for nearly every Koven production. This time it was just me, Lori and Maggie and we managed to do it all this afternoon. No all-nighters, no wigs. The result is a pretty hilarious minute-long commercial, of sorts.

What Were You Thinking?

ATKINS DIET, DAY ONE
Current weight: 947 lbs
Today's food: Eggs, water, salad, shrimp, tofu, green beans, olives, cheese, an "Atkins truffle"
Feeling: Really weird. I think I'm going through sugar withdrawal and caffeine withdrawal. My body's like, "What the f---? Where's the carbs? I trusted you, man. I f*cking trusted you."

NEW PICS

Lifter Puller show pics

Blog friends and more featuring Tina and Lane at breakfast and Rex's party.

LAYNE IS BACK!
It's almost 5am. I haven't been able to sleep well the last two nights. Some combination of a sinus infection and stressing out. Only 8 days to put together a longer version of Blogumentary for the DV-Cinema screening. So I'm up having another cup of Sleepytime Extra tea with valerian root. 4 tea bags. I notice http://www.plainlayne.dreamhost.com/ in my referrer stats. Buh? Could it be? Yes! Layne has returned, with doubts and perseverance a house and that beautiful baby. Welcome back, we missed you.

I just found my Badly Drawn Boy CD. I really love this song. Yeah, and this one too.

Did you know blogs could be rock and roll?

A VERY PUSSY RANCH BIRTHDAY
Welcome to today's *WARNING* NOT WORK SAFE happy blog entry. Everyone wish Happy 25th to Darling Girl over at the Pussy Ranch. Give me a break, is that the best name for a blog or what? DG and her beau Jon are an unstoppable blog couple. I love DG's nasty Cathy-as-a-horny-lesbian cartoons. I've learned more about the life of a stripper from DG than any episode of HBO's Real Sex. Okay, I've only seen that show once, but still.

Reverse Cowgirl is better than HBO, too. I wonder if her blog TV show will be, assuming it gets off the ground. Sex and the wild west just seem to go together, don't they?

BASS STATION: A Community-Based Information Space
Chekkit out. It's a bonafide 80's ghettoblaster equipped with Linux machine, 180 GB hard drive and WiFi. Why? To share music, of course. "Anyone with a Wifi-enabled device and a collection of music can upload tunes to the Bass-Station, and then hit Play. It echoes the party-in-a-box pattern of the ghetto blasters of yore while turning every listener into a DJ and every laptop into the 21st century equivalent of a box of vinyl." Check out the hardware. [ via Many-to-Many ]


XENI JARDIN'S MOBLOG
I love this pic of a creature I never knew existed.
It's called an Axolotl ("water-dog").

Unrelated to this photo: David Brinkley and Gregory Peck, R.I.P.
Slightly related to this photo: Gollum's MTV Award Acceptance Speech

HANS BLIX SAYS 'BASTARDS' IN WASHINGTON TRIED TO UNDERMINE HIM
"Retiring chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix lashed out Tuesday at "bastards" in the Bush administration who he said consistently undermined his efforts to find Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and "leaned on" his staff to tailor their reports. " Fox News | Guardian

And now, blog commentary. This is really no surprise, is it? For all their smiles and handshaking, couldn't you imagine U.S. meetings with Blix behind close doors as a sort of hard-boiled cop interrogation scene? A solitary light bulb, water dripping in a corner somewhere... a shadowy figure with his back to Blix. "Listen Blix, you betta snappy up this weapons report if you know what's good for ya. Dese clusta bombs?" The shadowy figure turns toward him. It's Donald Rumsfeld in a zoot suit. "Weapons of Mass. Friggin'. Destruction." Rumsfeld delivers a harsh blow to the stomach – UNGH! "You get me, Blixy?" You can also imagine this as the interrogation scene from The Matrix. Oh no, Blix's mouth is all gooey! Rumsfeld is still in a zoot suit, however.

And it wasn't only Washington giving him a hard time. Baghdad called him a "homosexual who went to Washington every two weeks to pick up [his] instructions". No no - not gay, Swedish. It's a subtle difference.

WAA? LOU REED, CONAN OBRIEN, JIMMY FALLON, JACK BLACK, ADAM SANDLER, DANA CARVEY
If you missed "Night of Too Many Stars" on Comedy Central, well – you didn't miss anything. Because the only thing worth watching is right here, my friends, for a limited time. What we have here is Lou Reed performing "Walk on the Wild Side" with a gaggle of comedians. For real. Probably the weirdest rendition of this song since he performed it on "Night Music with David Sanborn." I can't remember who he performed with, but that show featured such surreal pairings of musicians as The Residents and Conway Twitty. More of that.

Watch the clip (15 MB)

BLOGS AND JOURNALISM: OWW MY HEAD HURTS!
I'm struggling to understand the role blogs played in the downfall of NY Times editor Howell Raines, and beyond:

Andrew Sullivan, triumphantly: First Lott. Then Raines. And you ain't seen nothing yet.

Sunday Times (UK): Editor falls to bloggers’ rapid poison

Jeff Jarvis has higher hopes for the blogosphere: If all you do is destroy... you don't build, you don't contribute.

InstaPundit's constructive suggestions for Big Media

Dead Parrot Society: Blogging toward a better media

Cut on the Bias: Can Blogging Improve Media?

Right Wing News: Symposium on Media & The Blogosphere

Dan Gillmor: Blogs taking way too much credit

Alex Jones on PBS NewsHour: I think this story has been kept alive, in many ways, by the Internet

Online Journalism Review: Feeling Misquoted? Weblogs, Transcripts Let the Reader Decide

Jim Romenesko has much more, if you're masochistic.

UPDATE: Online Journalism Review, as usual, has the most level-headed analysis.

Whew! There's no doubt blogs played a role in this, but as these smart folks said what blogs are great at is driving a story. Keeping it alive, adding new information, connecting the dots. In this case, I think it provided a forum for those who had an axe to grind with Raines to do so publicly and pour salt in a festering wound, preventing it from healing and resulting in severing the limb for the good of the body. Is it for the good of the body though? Is it good for the New York Times and for journalism? I sure as hell do not know. I resonate with Jeff Jarvis and Anil Dash - I hope the buzzing swarming power of blogs can do more than decimate and destroy. However, destruction can be an act of creation. Paradigm shifts happen swiftly. Right now I think we're realizing what's broken with the old paradigm, but we have no idea what the new paradigm looks like.

GRAMMAR FOR REPUBLICANS
First in a series, over at Space Waitress!
For example: "Why don't you get _____ head out of ____ ass?"

This in response to yet another great Republicans vs. Democrats debate. I do surely hope Howard Dean kick's GW Bush's poopy butt. (Can you tell I have a Political Science degree?)

This was one of many conversations we had at blunch (blog-brunch) with Lane and Tina, the unstoppable husband-and-wife blogging team visiting from Iowa. I've really liked most bloggers I've met in meatspace, and Lane and Tina are no exception. They're super cool, super nice, and they dig Yo La Tengo -- dang, when are you moving up here guys? The Blogmobile will definitely be swinging through Iowa if we get the chance.

ROCK


Lifter Puller snippet 6/7/03 (3 MB MPEG)

More to come...

LIFTER PULLER DAMAGE

I offer the above photo of my severely scratched glasses as proof of Lifter Puller's universal ass-kicking rock power. I haven't moshed in I don't know how long, but if there's one thing that'll make me fling my body into a hoard of ecstatic pounding bodies it's a Lifter Puller reunion. I suddenly realized my glasses weren't on my face, got down on my hands and knees and scoured the spaces between shoes. *tap tap* "Looking for these?" My glasses! Thank God. At least I can replace the lenses. I'm bringing the camera to tonight's show, so more to come.

MEANWHILE: Secret fabulous developments with Blogumentary's Brazilian correspondent and videographer, Carmela!

Die Puny Humans rocks.

SAME <-> DIFFERENT

Exactititudes: a photo-project of members of a the same subculture in the same poses. "The effect is pretty striking: you quickly discover that in one's attempt to express their own individuality, one often ends up looking like a helluva lot of other people." [ via BoingBoing ]

Looking forward to a visit from canadian lane this weekend, not to mention Lifter Puller and Yo La Tengo. Lane and Daintily Dirty have some deep well-wishing thoughts on blog life, post-Plane Layne.

RECLAIM PUBLIC DOMAIN
Cyberlaw professor Lawrence Lessig is building support for the Public Domain Enhancement Act. "The act would require American copyright holders to pay $1 fifty years after a work was published. If they pay the $1, the copyright continues. If they don’t, the work passes into the public domain. Historical estimates would suggest 98% of works would pass into the pubilc domain after 50 years. The Act would do a great deal to reclaim a public domain."
>> Sign the petition here

I STRIVE TO MAKE SOMETHING THIS COOL
Opening credits to Six Feet Under [ via kottke ]

GASTRIC BYPASS SURGERY IS SUPER AWESOME
My friend Nikki produced an All Things Considered story on my friend Heather. Heather lost 156 pounds after having gastric bypass surgery. She sounds so happy! It's good to hear both of their voices. It's a great piece: Read and hear the story

ISP WOES
My ISP (APlus.Net) decided to suspend blogumentary.org. Okay, they got me back online pretty quick. I'm now upgraded to my own server to handle Blogumentary video clips bandwidth. Which is fine but hadn't really planned on the extra money. Hey folks, don't forget to donate via PayPal!

MONKEYS RIDING PIGS MAKE ME HAPPY

CONNECTIONS
Listening to The Clientele "Lost Weekend" EP, post-birthday celebration. I had a case of the mean reds, which sometimes happens on my birthday. You know? Just feeling reflective and melancholy, I think not feeling connected enough to the people I care about. Not that I didn't have a lovely time and all. Latin Carribean cuisine at Babalu, mojitos and caipirihnas, a little Family Guy DVD action. Good times.

You can feel connected to people through their blogs. Sometimes even more so than in person. I probably wouldn't be this confessional to most of you in person. Is this a real connection? I think so. Some of you might know about a beloved Minnesota blogger who recently went on hiatus for personal reasons. I think anyone who read her blog feels connected to her. I have and do relate to situations she's written about. Of course at some point I have to wonder, is all this advice in comments actually helpful or just adding confusion and noise? I hope it's been helpful. I'd like to know, though.

So here's a shoutout to all my homies, online and off. Old friends. My Mom. My lovely girlfriend. And of course, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Pics from Chollie's Bday

Pics from Lori's Bday in May

HAPPY BIRFDAY 2 ME!
I suppose I should reflect, or celebrate, or something. How's this: Lori is thinking we should check out the Atkins Diet that we used to make fun of. I sure have a lot of blog-fat these days. Any thoughts?

BEST THING EVER: MEOW-TV
Finally, TV for kitties and kitty people like me, on the Oxygen Network. I look forward to many hours of licking myself and purring, which is really nothing new. Thanks, Oprah!

I AWAIT THE BROWN BUNNY
Everyone's been raving about GreenCine Daily lately – and for good reason. It rocks. I've been gobbling it up since it appeared in Kottke's remaindered links. I'm becoming obsessed with Vincent Gallo's latest ego trip, "The Brown Bunny." Check out his spat with Roger Ebert and this story about what he did to a poster of Christina Ricci.

VENTURA SKIRMISH
You may have read about Ventura's so-called skirmish with Leslie Davis – a frequent candidate and protester. Davis' sign had this devilish image from the cover of his book, "Always Cheat: The Philosophy of Jesse Ventura." My understanding is that Ventura folded up Davis' sign, which isn't exactly "destroying" it, and Davis put the sign back up later. Of course, I didn't see it and even if I did I can't really say more.

ALSO: Remember to hold Bush accountable and watch out for those pesky T-rays! Oh, and Fimoculous Rex is having a party. I'm so excited about this. Midwest bl0ggerz repraz3nt

SUNDAY FOTO SHENANIGANS

Lori, Doc Chameleon and I ventured to Minnehaha Falls and snapped some fine photos. I haven't actually seen the falls since I was little. I was refreshed and dazzled. The falls have a rich history – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the famous "Song of Hiawatha" poem in 1855, and they came to be called "Laughing Waters" after a poem by Mary Eastman in her 1849 book "Dahcotah." I actually own that book from working on a PBS web site about Mary's husband Seth Eastman, whose paintings documented the daily life and sacred rituals of the Dakota.

The best part? Macro lens closeups of the tiny universes living on mossy rocks. My new banner blog photo is from a little mossy forest I discovered. I also captured a tiny spider and a waterbug, but I'm sure more treasures were waiting had I more time. Makes me want to see the phenomenal Microcosmos again on DVD, not to mention Winged Migration as soon as it finds us here in the Midwest.

SUNDAY FOTO SHENANIGANS: View the photos

And, until I get a linky sideblog, some linkage:

A Theory of Everything, NYTimes. Simplified but pretty right-on.

Blogs: The Next Big Thing by John Dvorak

If You Really Want to Know, Ask a Blogger in the Guardian. Like Dr. Weinberger says, blogs are about conversations. Sure there are experts and we need them, but there are so many smart people blogging and talking to each other on any given topic that they collectively become the ultimate expert.

TONY PIERCE IS FUCKING GOD
Tonite I wanted to see the robot band. Bad. By the way I'm drunk right now. Instead we went to see Mike Gunther and His Wailing Souls. Because I know two of those wailing souls, and they're all about purging that ol' devil from your veins. Robots don't know how ta purge the devil from yo veins.

Here's why tony pierce is fucking awesome:
today's bob hope's 100th birthday. fuck bob hope.
see, that is some funny, funny shit right there.

the question of the day is, how depressed can you really be if your fingers smell of nineteen yr old danish pussy?
this needs no comment. genius self-evident.

man, i just wanna hang out with tony piece and kate sullivan and moxie and all those guys, and rock out to tsar and get drunk. But, I do love Minneapolis. East coast bloggers love Fischerspooner, West coast bloggers tard out over Tsar. Who rocks the Midwest blog posse? I think it's Lifter Puller. Are you with me?

One of those wailing souls made my day. It was rainy and crappy today, but when I got to work there was a little ink drawing. She drew me a deluxe-mustachio'd ape wearing funky underwear called Mr. Nice-n-Tidy. She also drags chains over an oil drum and plays trumpet. But now my honey is sleepy and so am I. My birthday is Wednesday -- everyone give me $5 thru my paypal buttton okay? June 4, Gemini rocket power. Did I mention my ISP is trying to jack me into getting my own server, cuz the Blogumentary trailer and ancillary footage have eaten up gobs of bandwidth? It's true. I'll personally grab the crotch of everyone who donates $5!

Brittney's blog/webcam

FAST SPEEDBOAT, FUN SPACESHOWER

Happy Friday to ya. Here's a little 15 second commercial I did for the Speedboat Art Gallery, specifically for a show called Collaboration featuring these too-cool-4-school Japanese art kids. The dude is especially into American culture. He was wearing a shirt that said "WHO THE FUCK IS MICK JAGGER?" (we had to tape over the -UCK), he had a riff-rock band and apparently just bought a camaro. My hero!

Speedboat Art Gallery commercial (3 MB)

"I truly believe there is an opportunity for blogs to have an impact in Iraq. There should be blogs coming out of Cuba, there should be blogs coming out of China. It is a way for the people to say what is on their mind. It's the people's medium."

JEFF JARVIS ON BLOGS, JOURNALISM AND DEMOCRACY
Carmela is a Brazilian journalism student writing her thesis about blogs, and using Blogumentary as a sort of recurring theme to illustrate her points. I can't tell you how flattering and gratifying that is. If the only useful thing to come out of this project is to help journalism students and researchers, I'll be quite happy. I also got email from a Brazilian journalist wanting to know all about my project, and do I plan to cover non-English speaking blogs? Jeff Jarvis would say I'm building a bridge, and "swimming the Brazilian blogger pond."

I offered to post some raw footage for Carmela to use in her thesis, since the trailer itself is more experiential than informational. I knew what to post first. Y'all think I'm an Anil-whore – entirely true – but really I'm all about the Jarvis. This is raw footage, but he's so lucid and fluent on various aspects of blogging you'd swear it was scripted and rehearsed. Nope, just straight-talk from a really media-savvy guy building blog bridges to Germany and Iran.

Jeff Jarvis on blogs, journalism and democracy (16 MB)

WHAT DOES AMERICA STAND FOR AGAIN?
Red Cross denied access to PoWs
"Up to 3,000 Iraqis - some of them civilians - believed to be gagged, bound, hooded and beaten at US camps close to Baghdad airport ."

US plans death camp
"The US has floated plans to turn Guantanamo Bay into a death camp, with its own death row and execution chamber. Prisoners would be tried, convicted and executed without leaving its boundaries, without a jury and without right of appeal." [ MeFi thread ]

This is sickening. We can't allow power-hungry rage and vengeance to steer us into Nazi territory. We're better than that. Meanwhile, we clearly we need an international involvement in establishing better human rights conditions in Iraq - Amnesty International has one possible plan.

Know Your War Profiteers card deck [via Something to Think About ]

MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING: SUCKS A BIG FAT EGG
Today – this lovely day – I shaved my fat cat, had beer and veggie brats at a BBQ, and rounded off the nite with a little on-demand video. We really wanted to see Far From Heaven but it was too late and we were in the mood for fluff. But my god, who knew fluff could be so painful? We may be the last people on earth who haven't seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding. I know I should be talking about The Matrix: Reloaded, but i'm in complete agreement with Doc Chameleon on that. Back to the Wedding. Okay, I'm sure my mom probably loved it. All moms everywhere are forgiven for liking this movie, as well as Analyze This and related fodder. As for the rest of you – what's your excuse? This movie is a steaming pile of goat crap. We were prepared for a feel-good sleeper hit. What we got was a feel-nothing sleeping pill. This piece of commercial pap had me fooled with it's indie-makes-it-big IFC Films pedigree, but you'd have a hard time finding a more generic Hollywood script in Syd Field's Screenwriting for Dummies. Andrea Martin, who is curiously absent from Christopher Guest's films, is a tiny salvation. She comes out of nowhere with the only line that really made me laugh. The rest of the film is aiming so low I have to wonder if it was improv. Nia Vardalos, the bride, did her Molly Shannon-best. Her groom is played by John Corbett – remember the DJ on Northern Exposure? – who you haven't seen in ten years for a reason. There was a single moment of genuine emotion at the end, a father-daughter acceptance moment. Then they move next door to her Greek family, repeat the past and live happily ever after. Great, I wonder what's up next on the Lifetime Network?

ON ELECTION DAY 2004, HOW WILL YOU KNOW IF YOUR VOTE IS PROPERLY COUNTED? 
ANSWER:  YOU WON’T. Rep. Rush Holt Introduces Legislation to Require All Voting Machines To Produce A Voter-Verified Paper Trail

ETERNAL LIFE GETS FIRST PRIZE
Awww yeah! We were pretty surprised, but the Komedy Koven's commercial for the concept of eternal life took the top spot at the Low Voltage Film Festival saturday nite. It prominently features Doc Chameleon as "Birdman" (pictured) and Space Waitress as the unstoppably perky "Pam." I handled the production and post-production, with a brief appearance as "I feel like 15 scoops of ice cream" guy. Maggie and Lorika round out this entertaining yet creepy little ad:

Eternal Life commercial
Eternal Life 2.0 which is more light-hearted and surftastic.

Also: the panoramic view from atop Mt. Everest is breathtaking.
NY Times article on photo blogs.