Build Date: Wed Nov 29 06:30:19 2023 UTC
If your 87 year old Aunt Edna all of a sudden started handing out fresh tabs of acid, would you complain about how embarrasing and un-hip Edna is with her rocking chair and Alzheimers n' all, or would you just shut up and enjoy this unexpected bounty...
-- Patient Joab
Billionaires for Bush (or Gore)
2000-07-08 10:47:20
"Calling all jammers, hackers, ne'er do wells, travellers, detourners, street urchins, lumpen, comedians, poets, singers, dancers, autonomists, anarchists, reformists, and insurrectionists! Billionaires for Bush (or Gore) is a mass, participatory media stunt designed to focus national attention on the big-money, corporate takeover of electoral politics, and the ramifications of this takeover for the poor and middle classes of America."
... or so goes the text of the e-mail spam currently circling the globe trying to whip up a frenzy of class-consciousness and grass-roots activism.
It just might work. The Republican and Democratic Party conventions are coming up this summer, and there are a lot of people out there who are not only mildly disgruntled, but they've also made enough money from the new economy boom that they can afford to take time off and protest the new economy.
Take feelings of envy, mix with a hatred of corporate welfare and a dose of class-consciousness, bake at 350 for 30 minutes and you get the "Billionaires for Bush (or Gore)."
From the SPAM: "Money dominates politics, this is nothing new. But the recent massive infusion of big corporate money into electoral politics has created a climate in which the only interests being represented are those of the economic elite. The policy agenda of this class - characterized by deregulation, privatization and incarceration - adds up to nothing less than a kind of low-intensity-conflict being waged on the poor and the middle classes of this country. It's a kind of class war, and the losers are the vast majority of the people of America, who work more hours for less pay, have seen their parks and schools lose funding as corporations recieve ever-larger subsidies and tax-breaks, who can't get decent health-care for themselves or their kids, who have seen more and more privatized prisons built as money is drained out of social programs, and whose information is provided by fewer and fewer sources, all corporate managed and owned. The winners are the rich, who sit in their taxpayer-subsidized luxury boxes drinking martinis while enjoying the longest peacetime expansion of the economy in history. New millionaires are popping up like weeds. The gap between rich and poor has become a chasm. The final demise of the democratic party as an alternative to the interests of the wealthiest was signalled by Clinton's signing of the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, an act of savagery which has resulted in thousands of poor single mothers and their children being put out on the street. We deserve better, and will demand better. One way to get these issues on the national agenda is to highlight the pointless absurdity of the months-long game of political charades we are about to witness. We can think of no better way to do this than 'BILLIONAIRES FOR BUSH (OR GORE).' So join up today, 'because inequality isn't growing fast enough!'"
T O P S T O R I E S
Gary Busey definitely involved in a hit and run accident
Gary Busey was definitely involved in a hit-and-run accident, but won't face any charges because he's rich and famous. (More...)
Gary Busey allegedly involved in Malibu hit-and-run
"Sir! You hit my car! I need your information!" the woman yelled at Gary Busey driving a battered Volvo station wagon before he sped off. (More...)
Health and Human Services officials spend a year on pot
After a yearlong, comprehensive, thorough, complete investigation into the effects of marijuana usage, Health and Human Services (HHS) officials recommended that it be moved from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act to Schedule III, meaning that the HHS no longer considers cannabis to be a drug with high abuse potential and no medical value. (More...)
If you've ever wondered what actual bullshit looks like, just check the back side of Lee Meyers' decommissioned police cruiser. Lee chopped the top of the passenger side of the car off so he could take his full-grown Watusi bull, named Howdy Doody, for joy rides around his home town of Neligh, Nebraska. Since the car doesn't have bathroom facilities Howdy Doody just craps all over the back and side of the car whenever he feels the need to let one go. (More...)
Self-righteous assholes block highway to Burning Man
A group of self-righteous assholes converted exactly zero people to their cause by blocking the highway to Burning Man this week. The group, which used a flimsy trailer, some lengths of chain, and a few folding chairs to block the road, put up signs including "Burners of the World Unite," but none of the burners stopped in traffic wanted to unite with them for anything. (More...)
How much force does it take to pull out nose hair?
Have you ever pulled out a nose hair and felt like part of your brain came with it? Have your eyes watered from the extreme pain? Did you wonder how much force it took? Would you pull out 50 more hairs afterwards, using precise measuring instruments, to determine the answer IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE? (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
Songs Of Love And Special Things
Well, dear reader, there's no denying it: Spring has sprung. The air is pungent with the fertile aroma of Romance. And you know what goes with Romance, don't you? That's right, Lover, porn. And not just any porn, but the kind you can sing along to. (More...)
A Day in the Life of a Beverotologist
It was starting to look like a very boring Saturday, trapped as I was in the suburban wastelands of the outer Bay Area, so I called my Able Assistant (AA) and proposed that we perform some Spocktail field tests. For some time I've been working on creating the quintessential cinematic beverage and even tho' SMRL does most of its testing during nocturnal hours, this seemed an opportune time to roll up the sleeves of our labcoats and get some science done. While the beverotology creation tested this day (The Neurotoxin) must be deemed a success, this article focuses more the journey of the experimenters, rather then the science of beverotology. (More...)
A Blast from the Past! Pao Tzu goes over and under the crucial variables in the production and consumption of Salvia Divinorum. A must read for psychonauts of all stripes. (More...)
Patient Joab's scientifick editorial discusses aspect of the space-time-beer continuum never before processed by sub-bush-robot minds!!! Too fabulantastic to contempulate! (More...)
My experiment is a failure. Rockstar-and-Robitussin tastes like day-after-Halloween bile. I'm trying to choke down enough to discover the effects, but no matter what those are one thing is certain at the outset: what I have discovered is not a Beverage, but a pale green and angry iced abomination.
You were right: science is not for the weak of will nor stomach. (More...)
The Innocent San Francisco Mule
Flesh and Abby have moved to an isolated rural location in the United States - equipped only with their sense of adventure. Recently they came down off the mountain briefly to file this report? (More...)