Sure, you want to slap these people, but then again… After the last two months of grueling 12-16 hour days with more coming, I think they’re starting to win me over:

A Swedish court has slashed the unemployment benefits of a married couple who say neither one can hold down a job because they don’t like working. “Conventional work is out of the question for me – both in terms of my conscience and on an intellectual level”, the husband testified.  “Emotionally, too, it creates unbearable pain.” The court, in rural Otergotland, was also unmoved by the couple’s claim that without benefits they might have to move back to the city, whose “atmosphere” they find unpalatable.

 from The Week magazine

Judging by the number of YouTube hits, I think I’m a little late to the Zonday par-Tay! Let it rain!

Vanilla Snow remix

Shaky Panties remix

Vader In Da House! – “My face got burned and now it’s not the same – Chocolate Rain.”

(FYI… yeah, that’s his real voice. )

After watching this, I’m starting to lean towards Michelle Obama instead.

In the past few weeks, after reading profiles on the three candidates currently in the lead – Obama, Clinton, and Edwards – I’m amazed and pleased at the embarrassment of wealth of experience and know-how and leadership and decency that we have in the Democratic candidates. I would be least comfortable with Clinton, I think, but in comparison with the current Republican offerings, there’s no contest. Any of them would make a stellar President – one that we could be proud of.

But, man… Michelle Obama is so compelling to watch, so self-assured and powerful and different. I can’t get over the feeling that Barack and Michelle’s tenure in the White House would be a transformative event for America, how we see ourselves.

I can’t believe that I missed out on Jurassic Five ’til now.  They have some seriously tight old-skool beats and lyrical flow.

Thanks, Sky!

If you’re hard up for something to do, you can read more blah blah blah from yours truly on a couple of old reliably controversial religious chestnuts. (Read the rest of this entry…)

Wonderful fired clay sculpture from Beth Cavener Stichter:

I Am No One
~ Beth Cavener Stitchter ~

From the artist’s statement: “There are primitive animal instincts lurking in our own depths, waiting for the chance to slide past a conscious moment. The sculptures I create focus on human psychology, stripped of context and rationalization, and articulated through animal and human forms. On the surface, these figures are simply feral and domestic individuals suspended in a moment of tension. Beneath the surface they embody the impacts of aggression, territorial desires, isolation, and pack mentality…”

Via Pixelsurgeon.

To those of you that check in semi-occasionally, sorry for the lack of posts.  I’ve been working 16 hr days and will continue to be all this month.  That’s what coming down off a long startup-company-bender will do for you.  (More on that some other time.) I’m burnin’ to write more, but until I can, here’s some more cool viddy-o…  I’m surprised this event hasn’t gotten to be Burning Man sized already. It looks hella fun…

Hey Maria, this one’s for you:

From the movie “Network”

Reading through the selection of right- and left-wing blogs that I peruse semi-daily, I get the feeling sometimes that the Iraq war is an abstraction. Right-wingers use “our men and women over there” for all kinds of mind-bending justifications of why we should continue to blindly prop up and blast the critics of our bizarre and flailing foreign policy and inept leaders. Left wingers use “our men and women over there” to rail against the same. Everyone’s scoring talking points off this war. But what’s it actually like day-to-day on the ground in Iraqi neighborhoods where our troops patrol, sweat, fight and die?

Sean Smith of the Guardian brings us video from his time embedded with various American units – so gritty and real that you can almost taste the dust and feel the adrenaline and fear. A must-see series:

Inside The Surge: Part 1 | Part 2

Granted, the daily work of the average grunt doesn’t always give a clear picture of the overall strategic reality, but it was instructive for me to ask two questions after watching this: 1) What would you do if this was happening in your neighborhood? 2) What is the point of all this – the objective – and when will it realistically end? What are we doing there?

The weariness that the American public has with this war, now running much longer than our involvement in World War 2 at a much higher cost, is mirrored and finds it’s source in these soldier’s faces. It’s clear that they, and we, were completely unprepared for what we found there. It seems to me that any foreign policy debate Americans have should only be done after sitting with and absorbing videos like this.