Your Inner European is Italian!

Passionate and colorful. You show the world what culture really is.

Via Julie

1:57:01 AM     leave/read comments []

An actual overheard conversation, rendered into a comic:

The usual rap about clicking and BiG-ness apply.

Made with Build Your Own Meat.

3:11:34 PM     leave/read comments []

Someone please explain to me why the people directly south of here are so bugfuck crazy and bigoted?

Random: BoycottKansas.com Encourages You to Boycott Kansas. First it was Phelps. Then it was Matt Limon. Now it's their hate amendment. It's time to boycott Kansas...

Kansas recently passed an amendment to their state constitution that not only makes same-sex marriages illegal, it also forbids same-sex couples from using other legal means to obtain any of the same benefits, including power of attorney and... [morons.org headlines]

So, don't visit and don't do business with companies from Kansas-

Kansas has decided that it's cute and amusing to attack gay people and their families. As long as they maintain this attitude, I'm boycotting Kansas. I invite you to join me. It's easy:

Don't travel to Kansas

It's not like Kansas is such a great tourist destination anyway. This one is especially difficult for some of us (including me) who have family in Kansas. So don't just refuse to travel to this land of hatred; tell the people you would have visited why you refuse to go there. The state has expressed a deep hatred of you or your loved ones, so you feel unwelcome.

Don't send money to Kansas

Don't do business with the following Fortune 1000 companies that are based in Kansas:

• Sprint, based in Westwood, KS
• Payless Shoe Source, based in Topeka
• Western Resources, also based in Topeka
• Yellow Roadway Corporation and its subsidiaries, Roadway Express, Meridian IQ, New Penn Motor Express, Reimer Express, and Yellow Roadway Technologies, based in Overland Park
• Seaboard Corporation, based in Shawnee Mission

Also avoid these well-known companies:

• Garmin, maker of GPS products, based in Olathe

If you know of other well-known companies that are based in Kansas, let us know!

12:50:27 AM    

I'm trying to not just repost all of Boing boing, but this is too good/bad to not pass on to folks who don't read BB. And you thought most of our taxes were wasted on Gubmint Internet Porn.

The Men Who Stare At Goats. David Pescovitz: I just finished reading Jon Ronson's latest non-fiction book The Men Who Stare At Goats and it was brilliant, absurd, scary, deeply freaky, and lol funny. The cover of the book says it's a story "about what happened when a small group of men--highly placed within the United State military, the government, and the intelligence services--began believing in very strange things." Some of those odd beliefs include: psychic spying (aka "remote viewing"), Jedi powers, subliminal sound weapons, and the ability to kill an animal just by looking at it (hence the title). As demonstrated in his previous book, "Them: Adventures with Extremists," Ronson has an amazing talent for seeking out individuals on the fringes of reason and enchanting the reader with their (truthful?) tales of high weirdness. Forget any questionable conspiracy theories about the US military--the truth is far stranger. From the dust jacket:

In 1979 a secret unit was established by the most gifted minds within the US Army. Defying all known accepted military practice - and indeed, the laws of physics - they believed that a soldier could adopt the cloak of invisibility, pass cleanly through walls and, perhaps most chillingly, kill goats just by staring at them. Entrusted with defending America from all known adversaries, they were the First Earth Battalion. And they really weren't joking. What's more, they're back and fighting the War on Terror. 'The men who stare at goats' reveals extraordinary - and very nutty - national secrets at the core of George W Bush's War on Terror.

Link [Boing Boing]

As Penn & Teller say: BULLSHIT!

12:49:09 AM     leave/read comments []

Bob on his kitty tree, San Francisco, 2001. Click to make BiG.

12:26:34 AM     leave/read comments []

Today, a thing of righteous anger and beauty from Ellen Fulton:

To various chain pharmacy companies (if you want to send your own, check out http://prochoiceaction.org/campaign/pharmacy_petition_web  (Italicized stuff below is part of the NARAL form): 

Dear [ Decision Maker ],

All over the country I have noticed a disturbing trend of pharmacies refusing to fill women's prescriptions for birth control. When a woman and her doctor decide that a prescription for contraception is in the woman's best interest, a third party has no right to override that decision. Pharmacies must ensure that patients get their doctor-prescribed medication without delay or inconvenience. I ask that your company assure me and your other customers that no woman seeking prescription contraception will be turned away by your company's pharmacies.

No doubt a majority of your customers take for granted that women should be able to receive their birth control despite the personal beliefs of the individual pharmacist. Timely access to contraception is central to women's health, autonomy, and equality. We must trust women and their doctors to make their own reproductive health decisions.

I thank you, in advance, for protecting your customer's health by ensuring your pharmacy will guarantee women have unhindered access to their prescribed medications.  

I also appeal to your sense of order from an employee management standpoint. This effort to protect employee consciences may create enormous headaches for you in the event your pharmacists continue to make these religiously-oriented calls for your customers. What happens when other employees make similar decisions on their own religion's grounds, refusing to stock shelves with ham, clean up aisles where menstrual products are sold, purge pages of "Maxim" or romance novels, sell alcohol, cigarettes or caffeinated products, or direct customers to pain relievers (encouraging prayer instead)? Will every employee have the ability to exercise his conscience to preach his faith to customers? While individuals should feel free to live their faiths without having to unduly betray their consciences, all of us, including businesses, have to make choices about our priorities and how appropriate it is to impose the dictates of our consciences into other people's choices.

If we open the door for pharmacists to impose their dictates of conscience in some instances, they may impose them in other ways that don't affect women (refusing to dispense Viagra, for example, or any product from, say, Merck, because of its testing history for Vioxx, or high blood pressure to smokers because they should instead quit smoking). And, as I stated above, if pharmacists can exercise their consciences to refuse to sell products, other employees may demand equal treatment. In either case, customers will end up very confused, not knowing when and where they can buy their products in peace without a person trying to impose his faith on our shopping experience. I hope that you will help make certain that all people can shop in your stores freely.

Thank you for your attention and support.

From Wal-Mart:

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for contacting us at Walmart.com regarding women's prescriptions for birth control. Your comments and concerns are very important to us as we strive to meet your needs. 

Wal-Mart does not carry emergency contraceptives. Our pharmacists may decline to fill a prescription based on personal convictions. However, they must find another pharmacist, either at Wal-Mart or another pharmacy, who can assist you by filling your prescription.

Again, we thank you for your comments regarding this issue.

Sincerely,

Customer Service at Walmart.com

My reply:

Dear Wal-Mart,
 
You have no need to refer to me as a "valued customer," as your terrible history of union-busting, sexism, censorship, patronage of manufacturers using slave and sweatshop labor and, most importantly, the destruction of our great nation's heartland businesses has made very certain that I will never be a customer of any of your stores.  It does not surprise me that you refuse to sell emergency contraception, as your practices have long demonstrated your ample willingness to talk down to and otherwise make patronizing decisions for your customers. 
 
Your lip service to having pharmacists recommend other places where a woman's prescription can be filled rings hollow when Wal-Mart has made damned sure that most people in small towns all over America have no other choice but to shop at Wal-Mart.  I'm sure a woman who's been raped is going to be pleased and satisfied to hear that she'll have to drive perhaps only a couple of hundred miles to have a prescription filled that she has to take within a few short hours of her attack.  No doubt that will be convenient enough for her, and your pharmacists need not sully their precious convictions by showing any genuine compassion for her situation.  As with all things Wal-Mart, I find myself clearly in the camp of "Thanks for nothing."  If only all women had the freedom to shop elsewhere that I so very happily do.
 
Very sincerely,
 
Ellen Fulton

And in a related story:

Wal-Mart nastygrams an amateur, Wal-Mart-themed blog. Xeni Jardin: Kevin Brancato, who maintains the "Always Low Prices" blog about all things Walmartian, just received a cease-and-desist from Wal-Mart lawyers after more than a year of blogging on the subject. Oddly, it's one of few blogs known for generally favorable posts towards the company. Link [Boing Boing]

1:31:22 PM    

You're Elizabeth Bennett of Pride and Prejudice by
Jane Austen!

Which Classic Female Literary Character Are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Cool.

Via Melpster

12:43:23 AM     leave/read comments []

Boing Boing and personal favorite Fortean Times brings us this tale of aerial mistaken identity:

Lanterns misidentified as UFOs. David Pescovitz: The grand finale of a wedding taking place near Felsted, Essex, UK was the release of dozens of Thai lanterns into the night sky to achieve an effect similar to the photo seen here. Shortly after, concerned citizens called the Stansted Airport and the police to warn authorities that aliens may be invading. From Bishop's Stotford Citizen:

(The bride's) father, Stephen, said: "It was very impressive. They float away slowly and create quite a stir. It was very good."

But he admitted that when the wedding was being planned no one considered the reaction the display might have caused.

"I hadn't even thought about it," Mr Lye said. Admitting that the lanterns could have been seen by unsuspecting people as possible UFOs, he said: "They did cluster in the night sky."

Link (via Fortean Times)
[Boing Boing]

Once again, Occam's Razor cuts to the truth.

10:44:21 AM     leave/read comments []

Perfect.


11:42:41 AM     leave/read comments []

From my files, an ad for a favorite toy of my own youth.

1:01:36 AM     leave/read comments []

A photo from 2000. Bob and a soon-to-be-unemployed friend:

Click photo, it gets BiG.

12:56:36 AM     leave/read comments []

No Pope. Pope John Paul II, the third-longest-sitting pope in the Catholic Church's history, whose many statements condemning homosexuality and the rights... [David E's Fablog]

12:30:46 AM