Republicans See Edge From Early Voting

It’s not as bad as it sounds, but it’s still scarier than adults wearing costumes.

You may notice that we have an awesome new logo here at Brain Pan Online. It was developed by a guy named Mark Messiha, who rather than spending his time and considerable talent producing a high quality graphic for my site, should probably be trying to key my car, or should have at the very least soaped its windows.

That my automobile remains unmolested, and that I have to date found no bags of flaming dog crap on my doorstep, speaks highly of his character.

I have it coming.

Mark and I were friends in high school. We rode the bus together, and bonded over our mutual weirdness. He would describe Ren and Stimpy episodes to me, and we would laugh hysterically. I would develop various projects, and would draft him into helping me. I was for a long time convinced that I could produce a sketch television show, and Mark was enlisted as the cameraman. He excitedly told me about an invention called the Video Toaster, a device that would allow us to incorporate elaborate special effects into the show. It was many hundreds of dollars and well beyond our reach, but we had a good time thinking about it.

At one point I decided to start a band. I didn’t know how to play anything, but as gross incompetence had never stopped me before, I didn’t let the simple lack of any experience playing the electric bass affect my decision. Mark, as it turned out, played guitar, as did a guy in my English class, and I was already good friends with a drummer. Foundry was born.

We practiced a few times, made grandiose plans, and even got a gig playing at a birthday party. It was for the father of a band mate, but I felt it was a sure indicator of immediate stardom. In my view, it only took one ambitious young record executive birthday party attendee to discover our indisputable raw talent, and within twenty-four hours we would be hobnobbing with Sting and selling out Shea Stadium.

I was fifteen, and an incredible asshole.

The details of what happened next are a little sketchy in my memory. For some reason or another Mark couldn’t come to the show. There was miscommunication of some sort about the reasons why, and everybody wound up mad about it. We decided for the good of the band that he would have to be let go, and as he was my friend, the explanations were my responsibility. We were a barely functional high school garage band, and we were taking ourselves entirely too seriously. I was about to betray a good friend over it.

That wasn’t really the bad part. These things happen, and I’m sure if the situation had been properly handled, all would have been well. It was a time for candid honesty and frank, straightforward, immediate, action. I owed him that much.

Instead, I chose, not to deal with it. I simply didn’t tell him anything. I stopped telling him about practice, he stopped coming, and we went on like the project had just fizzled out, as my projects were prone to do. Everything was back to normal, except that I was lying. The band hadn’t broken up, I was just too cowardly to let him know.

I’m not sure how exactly Mark found out. It might have been from somebody who knew about the band. It was probably when we played at a talent show his sister was in. Maybe he found out some other way. All I know is that we stopped being friends. We never talked about it. Whenever it was, it must have been humiliating. The whole thing was my fault. I was a coward, and he deserved better from me.

The details are pretty vague to me now, as most of my irresponsible and damaging behavior tends to be in retrospect, so that might not be strictly what happened. That might not even be what he was mad about*. I have probably compressed and forgotten things about the incident, and that is a shame. I deserve to remember it. I owe him memory of the event I do not have. I was young, and mean, and hopelessly arrogant. What I do remember is that it was my fault, that everything that happened was my doing, and I am sorry.

That he would make me a new logo and send it to me to use, shows that he is a better person than I am, and so all I can do is apologize, and say thank you.

Find more of Mark’s excellent work at ASTROMONKEY.

*It wasn’t. I sent him this article to review before I posted it, and he mailed me back saying that: 1. He wasn’t mad about anything anymore. And 2: When he was mad, it was about something else entirely. The details of that event, another story altogether, will have to wait for a different time.

I have recently been trying to put up something more fun on Fridays, rather than the stock commentary and political invective found the rest of the week, and this Friday is no different. Today I present: CURVEBALL. I think it’s fun, though I start to get my ass kicked around level 6.

Enjoy.

Seminal heavy metal pioneers Black Sabbath have returned, with possibly the worst rock band name ever.

Ready for it?

Heaven and Hell

It was not clear at press time whether the name is Heaven AND Hell, or Heaven & Hell. Use of the ampersand has not, according to our research, ever been used in a rock band name before.

Here is a bit from the news article:

The Black Sabbath boys are back, as the new band Heaven and Hell. Guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler, drummer Bill Ward and singer Ronnie James Dio — former members of British metal supergroup Black Sabbath — are forming the band named after their 1980 hit, according to their publicist. They plan to launch an international tour next year.

The new group will have no effect on plans for the new Black Sabbath album, slated for next year.

Ozzy Osbourne said in a brief statement, (probably released in a brief moment of lucidity between screaming at his children and publicly humiliating himself):

“Tony Iommi and Ronnie Dio are working on a project together which has nothing to do with Black Sabbath. There is only one Black Sabbath,” Osbourne said in the statement released by publicist Lathum Nelson.

“Ozzy, Tony, Geezer and Bill will be touring late next year along with a new Black Sabbath album,” Nelson said. “However, Ozzy wishes Tony and Ronnie much success in their project together.”

Now it might just be me, but those do not sound like words that would come out of Ozzy Osbourne’s mouth.

Firefox 2.0 is out now. This brand new version makes a few great improvements to the old. My favorite is the ability to spell check text in any field just by right clicking the offending word.

Why Firefox? First off, it’s because Internet Explorer is a nightmarishly outdated security risk, only suitable for prisoners or the willfully ignorant. The second reason would be Firefox’s Tabbed Browsing feature. If you need more reasons, you can find them here.

Do yourself a favor, and go get this high quality web browser RIGHT NOW.

Go on. Git.

“Weird Al” Yankovic, one of the greatest minds of our time, is continuing to ride his “Straight Outta Lynwoood” juggernaut straight into the Top 10. His first single from the album, “White and Nerdy”, has reached #9 on the Billboard hot 100, restoring my faith in humanity.

“I literally danced a little jig (when I found out),” Yankovic says. “It’s just a number, but I’ve been obsessing over it for a long part of my career. Even with, you know, millions of records sold, I’ve never been in the top 10, and it’s always been a goal of mine.”

Awesome. I couldn’t be happier for him. Here is a good article about it:

‘Weird Al’ Yankovic finally hits the top 10

I love Barack Obama. I doodle his name on my notebooks. I would babysit his children for free. I would wash his car if he asked me to. I am from Illinois, and I couldn’t be happier that he gets to be from my state. This man is not only the brightest star in my wayward but much beloved Democratic Party, he is one of the best politicians I have ever seen. Ever.

I am pretty cynical when it comes to politics. Six years of Bush-Era Doublethink will do that to a person. Bush makes me all at once sad, angry, and frustrated beyond measure. He is a bad man. Dishonest, intellectually lazy, mean spirited, and small. He is an egotistical, pandering, right wing zealot, who if left to his own devices would destroy this country and everything that makes it great. When I hear him or any of his slimy minions speak I get a sick, putrid feeling in my stomach. I would trust a crack smoking degenerate over this man and his depraved entourage. They are awful, awful people, and are not under any circumstances to be trusted.

Not to labor the point.

I say that to say this: When I heard Barack Obama speak at the Democratic Nation Convention, I forgot about all that. It was the only time, during what was an extremely nasty campaign season, that I actually felt something other than disappointment and anger. I was, in a word, inspired. I got chills. I became, in one moment, a lifetime Obama Supporter. I felt hopeful, and positive, and good about my country. I have never heard the values of the Democratic Party expressed so well. It appealed to everybody, Republican and Democrat, and was impossible to argue with. Even Rush Limbaugh, in his angry, hateful little way, could only be positive.

Rush, in his July 28th radio broadcast:

“It was a good speech. I mean, all right? There — there’s no question — the guy has got it. Now, he may be Left as Mao Tse Tung, you know, with his — with his policies, but his speech last night [was good].”

Mao Tse Tung. What an asshole. Throwing that little bit in there is like shitting on a birthday cake. Regardless, even the king of the right wing bobble-heads only had positive things to say about it.

So when I heard that Barack Obama was considering a run for the White House, something I think this country desperately needs, I was understandably excited, if for no other reason than that it would be a joy to get to listen to him talk for about eight months. With that in mind I thought it might be nice to replay the moment when Barack Obama came to national prominence.

Part 1

Part 2

I understand that it’s hard for Republican candidates to find a way to frame the war in Iraq in their campaigns. It is a total unmitigated disaster, and everybody knows it. What was once a sure fire political weapon has become a rancid decomposing albatross around the necks of Conservative candidates everywhere. What’s worse, the issue is impossible for them to abandon. They are constantly called upon to justify and explain their little mess, and why they are unable to clean it up. It must be very, very hard.

I do, however, think that Pennsylvania Senator and flailing Republican candidate Rick Santorum may want to rethink his approach. Listen to what he said in an interview. From the National Review:

“As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else,” Santorum said, describing the tool the evil Lord Sauron used in search of the magical ring that would consolidate his power over Middle-earth.

“It’s being drawn to Iraq and it’s not being drawn to the U.S.,” Santorum continued. “You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don’t want the Eye to come back here to the United States.”

OK. This is a great example of what I’ve been talking about. We need SERIOUS people to be senators. People who can understand complicated international issues without the aid of classic fantasy literature. Also, and just about any geek can tell you this, talking about The Lord Of The Rings to people doesn’t make you popular. Just a thought.

This is a demonstration of something called Rag Doll Physics, and is a modified version of something I found on the internet. In this version, you can throw me around like a rag doll. You can click me and drag me around the screen, and I will fall onto the balloons and bounce around. Enjoy.

BENJAMIN PHILLIPS RAG DOLL PHYSICS

This is one of my favorite numbers, from an article by Susan Milligan of the Boston Globe.

Back in the mid-1990s, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, aggressively delving into alleged misconduct by the Clinton administration, logged 140 hours of sworn testimony into whether former president Bill Clinton had used the White House Christmas card list to identify potential Democratic donors.

In the past two years, a House committee has managed to take only 12 hours of sworn testimony about the abuse of prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.

This, in my opinion, is a great example of why it’s so important that we elect a new congress next month. When it comes to pointless political maneuvering, the Republican controlled congress is all action. When, however, it comes down to actually overseeing something, truly trying to get to the bottom of an important and explosive issue, one that requires real work rather than partisan political hackery, they are totally incapable of delivering. They live in pretend land, where the only thing that matters is trying to destroy Democrats, and there is no issue too big to ignore.