Or maybe it’s just the hot air cloud over Rush’s studio…

Too big to nail?

Well, our natural world seems to be having its fun with us as a huge ash cloud erupts from Mount Eyjafjallajokull (Eye-ya-falafel-cul?) and cuts off Europe from air travel for several days. This is not the first time such a huge cloud has occurred: there was the famous Mt. St. Helens eruption back in 1980. The centuries have been dotted with darknesses “enveloping the whole of Europe” as the description of one 5th century eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that, curiously enough, signaled the start of the Dark Ages (although the Dark Ages could have been presaged by an eruption of Mount Etna in 417, on whose dating, I, in an earlier incarnation as an historian, wrote a paper on in 1990 (Olympiodorus’ Eruption of Mount Etna: a possible dating of 417. EOS: Transactions of the American Geophysical Union 71:329-334)). Rush Limbaugh has been having fun with it, calling attention to Obama’s statement on the passing of the health care bill that the world hasn’t ended yet. I certainly hope the Almighty has better aim than to punish Europe for OUR supposed transgression, so I shall assume that Rush-boy is being ironic, should he be capable of such complexity of thought.

But with such a global disaster, it might be better to look for a more global transgression, and I think we have our candidate at Goldman Sachs. Their financial manipulations–along with other august companies–managed to pull off a global economic disaster, yet their CEO Lloyd Blankfein had the effrontery to make a positively BLASPHEMOUS statement that he was “doing God’s work” while bankrupting the entire world. Now if I know one thing about Our Lord God Jehovah, you can kill millions of people and He won’t bat an eyelash, but say one thing wrong about Him and all Armageddon is gonna bust loose. On top of all, Goldman Sachs has the sheer CHUTZPAH to announce 5 billion dollars in bonuses to be paid to its executives–you know, the ones who bet short on the world disaster they themselves engineered–and you say, enough is enough.

The teabaggers have it all wrong–the cause of our ills is not the government–tho it’s not helping by spending 20 times the amount that could eliminate world hunger on a military that has gotten itself bogged down in the middle of a desert for 8 years. It’s these bankers who think God’s work consists of lining their pockets with our money. They’re no better than the guy who is going to the track and convinces you to bet on a certain longshot that he says he has a tip that it can’t loose. Then, when he goes to the track, bets all YOUR money on the favorite and after the race, picks up one of the losing tickets off the floor to give you with the lame explanation that he’s never gonna listen to THAT TIPSTER again. It’s beyond time that they should be sued for fraud. It’s about time that they should be INDICTED for it!

In the meantime, Europe is enjoying a slower pace and beautiful sunsets. Maybe Mt. St. Palin in Alaska will explode in a few years and we’ll be the lucky ones

I went to a small con this weekend in Alexandria called T-MODE and had a great time. The advantage of a small con is its size–you can meet everyone and do everything. Naturally, you have a bigger selection of activities at a big con, but you always wind up missing some things you would have enjoyed. The organizers of T-MODE called it “fun-sized” and that it was. I got to hear a lovely singer Emi Meyer (also on MySpace–beautiful woman, beautiful voice, beautiful music) and hip hop artist Shing02 and DJ Icewater. I had a TAIKO DRUM LESSON from Doug Manring (Power Kix Drum Team and Real School of Rock) as well as meeting the new voice of Haruhi Suzumiya and a great singer herself Cristina Vee. Also there were our friends from the webcomic Geeks Next Door, who gave sessions ON webcomics, and Interrobang Studios, whose artist Sarah Martinez, gave a great session on surviving Artist’s Alley. I didn’t get to meet the vocal artist Mega Ran (aka Random) or voice actor Todd Haberkorn, or Roland Kelts, author of Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has invaded the US–I did have to run home and feed the kitten occasionally LOL. Oh and I nearly forgot, I got interviewed for Vidgle and I hope to have up a link next week to my podcast with them Congratulations to the organizers–I had a great time. My personal photos will be up on my Flicker account later this week.

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Happy New Year … it should be better than the Old one?

Sexbot actual purpose: conversation--'We need to talk. Sometimes I feel you don't respect me as a person...'

When she decides they need time apart, her programming says, "Don't be upset, it's not you--it's me"

Happy New Year–Happy New Decade! Good Riddance to the Old one(s)! What a pile of manure the new century has turned out to be so far (as Bess Truman said to the people who complained about Harry saying “you need some ‘manure’ on these roses”, “What? It took me 25 years to get him to say THAT!”) Let’s start things off right with a really funny but hard-hitting cartoon. What’s been happening?
Hmmm, we’re still talking about the airliner bomb FAIL, the security FAIL and the “no intention of invading–I mean, sending troops to Yemen” (I hope) not-yet FAIL. That’s two weeks old and I posted an oldie-but-goodie over Christmas to cover it. Timmy Geithner and his magic “shhhh-let’s keep this a secret” emails? Not funny enough, that can wait for Thursday. Health Care? SOOoooo last year! Besides they’re hashing it out behind closed doors, contra Obama’s promise that it will be televised on C-SPAN. Transparency is becoming more opaque every day. What else?
All righty then, let’s check and see if Lindsay Lohan is having a meltdown. Oh wow, Lindsay had to fly–COMMERCIAL! How sad. Casey Johnson died–who was she again? Some rich heiress who was Tila Tequila’s ‘wifey’? Whose biggest claim to fame previously was turning down Paris Hilton’s offer to start a TV program called “The Simple Life”? And who’s Tila Tequila again? Let’s call this one too sad for SO MANY reasons and decide not to start off the new decade with such a bummer!
AH-HAH! I have it–someone’s exhibiting a sexbot at the Vegas Adult Entertainment Expo! Now there’s something you could get your teeth into! errrrrrr… Oh, she’s not REALLY a sexbot. Inventor Douglas Hines says “The sex robot thing is marketing – it’s really about making a companion.” Um-hum…sure. Well, not in its present state, she can’t even walk yet–has to be carted around in a wheel chair so far. And she kind of has the expression of the girl in the bar who’s had one too many when you passed that marker two hours ago. Actually from her rather limited set of capabilities, she looks like a “stripped-down” version of Aiko, the “not a sex bot” gynoid that Le Trung is making up in Canada. Although designed to eventually service as a maid, (Everybody ought to have a maid…) Aiko’s name is actually a Japanese word meaning “love child,” and she looks a heckuva lot more sophisticated than Roxxxy, the new robot, tho not as realistic as the computer generated photos from RealDolls (bet the real dolls don’t look half as good), life-sized dolls that are actually SUPPOSED to be sexbots. Oh, brave new world…
Anyway, since Roxxxy is actually supposed to have conversations like a real woman, I thought I’d give my take on one of the many discussions that might come up. Happy New Year

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Lloyd Blankfein, Vampire–Edward and Bella he ain’t, but he does suck something…

Nosferatu vs. New Moon--Lloyd Blankfein scares Edward and Bella into being even more clingy.

Now this is who the REAL vampire is...

It’s that time of year again–the time that we give thanks that the Christmas advertising season is finally 2/3 over. Remember when the Christmas season didn’t really begin until the kickoff at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. Or am I showing my age again. With the creep of the merchandising seasons, by 15 years ago, the Christmas season started showing up around Hallowe’en–Thanksgiving? what’s that–all we can sell is a bunch of turkeys that say fresh but are hard as the iceberg that sunk the Titanic. Now Columbus Day rolls around and all the stores have Kris Kringle in them! What with the Great Recession, I’m expecting for Santa to show up next year right after the BACK-TO-SCHOOL sales!
But sarcasm aside, we do have much to be thankful for. We can be thankful that Goldman Sachs was bailed out and used its money to pay the salaries of those poor starving executives who hadn’t had Beluga in over a week–CEO Lloyd Blankfein, you really are doing God’s work. We can be thankful that John McCain didn’t win the election–because by now some idiot would have shot him and we’d have Sarah Palin running the show. Those of us who HAVE jobs can be thankful we still have them and as for the rest, don’t worry, we’ll get around to you next year! We can be thankful that we can still pay insurance companies exorbitant fees for denial of claims because in 3 years they won’t be able to do that! Some of us can be thankful that NEW MOON is in the theaters and the rest of us can be thankful that we don’t have to go. And finally, we must be thankful for our celebrities, without whose stupidity, that’s right, I’m talking you, Lindsay “I don’t pay for fill-in-the-blank” Lohan, our lives would be so much less interesting.
AnimeUSA was a fantastic con, for those of you who might have an interest. I finally had the chance to wear my new tux at the formal ball, ran into all my friends from deviantArt who said they’d be there, actually had some nice photos taken of me that don’t make me look my age, ran into some people who’d actually seen my cartoons–YAY! and I found a FANTASTIC band. J-rock band QUAFF is KICK ASS! they are totally awesome–so awesome I went to both of their concerts at the con. The last one–at no’on on Sunday when half the con had left for airports and the other half were walking zombies–had so much energy that the 300 people in the audience were screaming as loud as 1000. I’ll update this with links when I finally get some sleep LOL.
Anyway a great time was had by all including yours truly and QUAFF will be at ANIME USA again next year. Happy Turkey Day everyone from me, Mr. Dymme, Fred and Bert–drive safely if you’re going out of town and we’ll be back Monday with a new dose of Intravenous Caffeine.

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Sarah Palin’s New Book: Should it have been called ‘Ramblin’ Rogue’?

Parody of Christian Serratos' 'Go Naked' ad for PETA using Sarah Palin and flogging her book, Ramblin' Rogue.

Christian Serratos She's Not!

Does it seem to you that the single most important talent for young actors and actresses is the ability to take their clothes off? Not that I’m complaining, nubile pulchritude is an important aesthetic consideration of mine (I’m afraid the guys don’t do much for me). As I said a few days ago, any sweet young thing (of legal age) who wants to send me photos of herself, just send me an email. Actually right now I’d rather have money–year end is coming up and the squirrels are getting frantic wondering if they can afford any Christmas gifts…and nuts. I rather enjoyed that shot of Christian Serratos posing nude for PETA–she waited a whole YEAR after her 18th birthday! It could ALMOST get me to go see NEW MOON–except that in my world view, vampires don’t sparkle–but these are Mormon vampires who wait until marriage to put the bite on their loved ones so I guess they’re different. (Interesting, when I go to google images to find this picture searching on “christian serratos PETA naked”, I go through about 10 pages and still can’t find the photo–Google doesn’t censor… so here’s the PETA page on the poster).
Of course, Sarah Palin is another story–although she doesn’t sparkle either. This former beauty pageant contestant where she paraded her bathing suited body in front of a bunch of ogling judges and an audience, is extremely modest these days and objected strenuously to NEWSWEEK using a photo of her dressed in short shorts, calling it sexist (even though she posed for the photo in the first place–I guess posing isn’t sexist but showing the photographs is). Now it seems the photographer may have broken a contract by licensing the picture to Newseek–but whether that contract was with Runner’s World (for whom the shoot was intended) or with Sarah isn’t being mentioned. Could it be that Sarah, former governor and mom doesn’t want publication to sully her image? No no no! The pic was supposed to be withheld from publication until August 2010–just in time to heat up the off-year elections with an image of Republican MILFdom!
What was SUPPOSED to be the only thing keeping Sarah in the public eye, besides her incessant twittering–excuse me, I meant tweeting–was her not very long awaited book about how wonderful she is, “Going Rogue”. Yup, she’s just a rogue elephant, mavericking around, you betcha. I hear it’s marginally more coherent than her normal writing–I’ll have to get back to ya on that one–since it was actually written by somebody else. In the meantime, I’ll stick with my own title, Ramblin’ Rogue. Never fear, Sarah comes across as self-loving and responsibility-shedding as always. She HAS probably made an enemy for life in Katie Couric, who, Sarah claimed, is so lacking in self-esteem that Sarah allowed her an interview out of pity–I’ll bet Katie would love to meet her in a dark alley without any witnesses! But that’s OK, now that the election is over, Sarah’s new BFF is none other than Oprah herself! Especially since Sarah’s appearance gave la Winfrey her best ratings in two years. And we must not neglect the ever fair and balanced Faux News which demonstrated the size of the crowds waiting for Sarah’s book by using a clip from last year’s presidential campaign.
Palin-Beck ’12? Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
I’ll be attending ANIME USA in Crystal City VA this weekend–look for me in the purple Intravenous Caffeine T-shirt (for sale over on the right) and say HI!

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