Sorry about the lack of posts lately. I've been real busy with this contest.

Who wants some stills from Star Wars Episode 3? Heavy spoiler warning, and no wookies as of yet.

This is really cool. John Wood, my friend and former band mate, scored a mention in Rolling Stone with his band, A Cricket in Times Sqare! Buy their CD. Seriously. You'll be glad you did. If you've seen Washington Interns Gone Bad, they're they band playing during the scene with Becky and Scotty in the park reading the note.

I was planning on scouring the web for lots of Hunter Thompson stuff to post in honor of his passing to the great gonzo party in the sky, but it looks like Rox Populi has beaten me to it with The Good Doctor is Out: A Hunter S. Thompson Random Reader.

Somebody hacked Paris Hilton's cellphone (NSFW) and got her pictures, emails and address book. Let the celebrity phone pranking begin!

HOLY SHIT! One of my favorite writers is gone. I always expected Hunter S. Thompson to somehow manage to kill himself. I just never thought he'd do it on purpose. I always figured he'd OD or have some kind of an accident or even go down in a hail of police bullets, but not this. I'm half inclined to hop into the car and drive to Vegas for a weekend of insanity in his honor.

I just read about a new open source app that will allow you to emulate any operating system on any other machine. Do any of my readers who are a lot geekier than me know if this means I could run Mac OSX on my PC? If I could do that, I'd be a cross-platform monster!

Here's another reason for Anne not to be too happy when I'm obsessively playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

Hate Fox News? Too lazy to just change the channel? Why not block it? For just under $10, you can screw this filter into the back of your TV and never have to see Bill O'Reilly's smug face again, even if just for a moment while you're changing channels. (via Francesca)

Check it out: The trailer for the new Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy movie is up! But it appears that Zaphod Beeblebrox only has one head.

When you're a union busting corporate criminal like Walmart, what can you possibly do to top the closing your first unionized store? How about building a new one right next to a union hall in Michigan? I don't think our UAW brothers and sisters are going to take this one lying down.

What's even funnier than seeing some right wing hack get busted for being a White House press pool plant? Finding out that the same guy who has written many scathing articles against gays is a male escort. Self loathing much, "Jeff Gannon?" The General has an uplifting letter to him. UPDATE: Oh look, his press pass is on Ebay!

Eeeeeewwwwwww!

The Death of a Playwright: Arthur Miller, R.I.P.

Despite my recent distaste for political postings, I can't ignore this story that perfectly illustrates just how sleazy this current White House is. They gave press credentials to a partisan hack using a pseudonym and allowed him to ask stilted questions to the "president." The blogosphere has been all over this. Although undoubtably nobody in the White House will be held accountable for this (or anything else they ever do for that matter), it gives me a tiny smile to see a right wing piggie like this fake reporter go down in flames.

Yesterday I had my first experience with San Francisco's traffic court, and remarkably, it was a positive experience. This whole thing started on October 1st when I was driving into the city from Marin to deliver something to one of the guys at work on my way home. I got to this intersection which was a bit confusing since there was a stop line and then a crosswalk further out. I stopped in the middle, saw the red light camera flash, tried to put it into reverse and go back, but nothing happened. I tried to put it into drive and nothing happened. So with the help of some very nice tourists from the Netherlands, I got it pushed to the side and called AAA for a tow. The drive axel had snapped. So a couple of months later, I get an email from my father-in-law who got a red light ticket in the mail as the car was still registered to him at the time. It took another month for them to re-issue the ticket to me. I had a minor scare when I called AAA to fax me some verification that I had called them and they initially told me that their records were showing that I had cancelled the call (which I certainly did not do!) but after talking to a few different people, I finally got the verification. With that and my Aamco papers in hand, I had tried to go take care of it on the Friday after Thanksgiving since I had the day off and didn't want to waste a work day dealing with it, but they were closed and I had to come back that next week and lose a day of work. After waiting on line for about an hour, I wasn't able to get it dropped, but I did get a court date for yesterday. So I get there plenty early, hoping to find the prosecutor and try to get it dropped before going into court. The clerk who was running the sign-in window told me that there's no prosecutor, just a traffic commissioner who you talk to in the court room. You have four choices, either signing up for traffic school which significantly reduces your fine and removes the point from your license, pleading guilty and paying the fine, pleading not guilty and requesting a full trial with the cop present, or pleading not guilty and waiving your right to a trial and having an informal hearing right then and there with the commissioner. It gets to be my turn, he explains all of my choices to me, and I request a dismissal before entering a plea so that I could still take the traffic school option if it didn't look good for me. I showed him the papers I had, answered some follow-up questions, and got my case dismissed! The comissioner also said that the particular intersection where I was ticketed is confusing to a lot of people since there appear to be two different stop lines. I wonder if the city has a camera there because they know they'll make some money from confused tourists. I'd think that if it wasn't just a shakedown, they'd put up some signs or something telling people where they should stop. I may just have to write a letter to somebody about this.

Ossie Davis, R.I.P. We just lost a greatly talented actor, a lifelong activist, and a great person today. He had quite an impressive filmography as an actor, writer and director and was working prolifically until the day he died. If you haven't seen him as JFK in Bubba Ho-Tep, go rent it right now!

Some of you may have noticed that I haven't really been posting as much political stuff lately. I, like many others here on the left, have been really burnt out on politics since the election. My political obsession has a perpetual cycle. I'll get very involved for a couple of years, then see things just continue to get worse and worse, then get a defeatist attitude about it and just sort of sit around the sidelines for a couple of years making snide and cynical comments (or angry political comedies) about the state of things. Then at some point I get the idea that people really can make a difference and get myself all involved again, only to be disappointed again a couple of years later. While the republicans never seem to fail at getting me angry, the democrats continue to be less and less of an alternative. Exit Stage Left has a great post on the state of the DNC. Having wasted spent a year of my life working for the DNC, the sort of nasty internal politics involved in choosing DNC leadership and even just the running of the DNC hits home. I started working there a few weeks after Joe Andrew became the chair. Apparently there was a large faction of the staff that were not too pleased with his transition. So a full staff meeting was called with a very special guest. The Ragin' Cajun shows up, starts things off like a pep rally, but he quickly moved to berating the staff for their grumblings and telling them to get behind the new chairman or else. I started a few days after that meeting, and everybody was still feeling a bit angry about it. Of course, watching them completely blow an election which was theirs to lose (2000, of course) really drove me from politics for the two years until I made Washington Interns Gone Bad. Other cycles of political activity involved a couple of years of being a grassroots organizer for various organizations from which I ran screaming, and getting laid off from a job with a large organized labor organization over political infighting between various factions that started in the 60's. I don't know what the solution is. Sure, a unified left would be great, but from my experiences, I don't know if that's ever going to happen. I just don't have any answers, and I wish that I, or somebody a lot smarter than me, did. So while I post less about politics, I'd like to ask you, my dear readers, what you would like to read about on this blog.

Ozzy gives a new meaning to the term "smoking a butt." Shaaaaaarrrrrrrron!

Anybody who engages in any online political no holds barred cage match style brawling debates is certainly familiar with the 14 points of fascism and how they relate to Bush's America. Now somebody has put it all into a handy flash presentaion. Check it out.

Who knew that getting drunk and making yellow snow could save your life?