"A portrait of President George W. Bush using monkeys to form his image has led to the closure of a New York art exhibition over the weekend and anguished protests over freedom of expression." what the fuck country is this? i wasn't aware that we had sacrificed the freedom of expression along with everything else in the name of national security. i mean, isn't that what art is for? to evoke emotion? apparently that's no longer acceptable. i would love to find out who the idiot that threatened to take the artist to jail was and on what grounds he was basing his threat. boo to the art gallery (in new york of all places) for caving and closing the entire exhibit - stand up to the man you losers, you don't have to roll over just because they're bigger than you. read this too, that is, unless you voted for bush and don't want to know what's really going on in the world: A Sad State of Affairs (a little hint: this whole iraq thing goes back a lot farther than when osama and sadaam pulled off 9/11 together, so does iran, so does israel/palestine, and so does afghanistan. why don't you ask your government what made them think that they could install a government in iraq when it didn't work for them anywhere else?)

Hey, you know what's like September 11th? Would you guess another horrific attack? A nuclear explosion in an American city? Having your hometown destroyed by your liberators? Would you guess "not having a chapter in your high school biology book about 'alternatives to evolution'"? No? Then you're not Missouri State Representative Cynthia Davis:

[Davis] prefiled two bills for the next session of the Legislature that she said "reflect what people want." One would remove the state's requirement that all forms of contraception and their potential health effects be taught in schools, leaving the focus on abstinence. Another would require publishers that sell biology textbooks to Missouri to include at least one chapter with alternative theories to evolution. "These are common-sense, grass-roots ideas from the people I represent, and I'd be very surprised if a majority of legislators didn't feel they were the right solutions to these problems," Ms. Davis said. "It's like when the hijackers took over those four planes on Sept. 11 and took people to a place where they didn't want to go," she added. "I think a lot of people feel that liberals have taken our country somewhere we don't want to go. I think a lot more people realize this is our country and we're going to take it back."

"I want my country back"? What do you say when Republicans start channeling Howard Dean?

while researching material for my upcoming post, "you might remember me from your 'ignore list' part 2", i made the mistake of insinuating that mr. "relapse"'s (thats really his pic above, from his profile) e-girlfriend's incessant rambling about homemade peanut butter fudge was really street slang for opium. apparently, i've just experienced the equivalent of a homoerotic high school locker room wedgie by the jocks...ladies and gentlemen, i was banned from the entire chat channel tonight. i will recount, for you, in all of its ctrl-v glory, the sequence of events that led to this horrible injustice: Ivy: yes, i made homemade peanut butter fudge for everyone! *smooches* Ultra_Laser: peanut butter fudge? whats that? is that like opium? it must be "street" for opium Ivy: no it's not like opium you fucking idiot Ultra_Laser: i resent that, i am neither an idiot, nor am i fucking...that is, unless you're not busy...but i have to warn you, my herpes is flaring something fierce! Ivy: I don't give a fuck what you resent spongebob: ultra laser is the COOLEST nick ever. Ultra_Laser: thank you spongebob, i couldnt have been nominated by a more appropo person Relapse: you have no fucking clue ultra, go bug someone else Ultra_Laser: oooh...lets all air out our tampons here on the interweb Relapse: laser, knock it off Ultra_Laser: my name moron, as you can plainly see, is not laser, and is not ultra, its ULTRA LASER. what are you having a relapse of anyway? i'll bet whatever it is, that tramp Ivy gave it to you didn't she? well, apparently "relapse" is one of the moderators and doesn't take kindly to the bashing of his e-girlfriend (who is really an overweight, unemployed plumber named stan living in kenosha, wi), i'm sure. anyway, i'm off to bed, just wanted to give you something to look at since bil has been delinquent.

I hate my web host so so so much (yes, I'm shopping new plans). After almost 48 straight hours of downtime, I resorted to mirroring the site with Ultra Laser, mostly so I could get my email again, which has been bouncing back to people for 2 days now (please resend!) I also had a nice little index page greeting visitors to the mirrored sites (which no one had to see, thankfully) about how badly Mongo Hosting sucks. And so that Google knows how serious I am, I shall now reiterate my point in a <h1> tag:

Mongo Hosting Sucks Bad

I really do wish financial ruin on that company. Preferably after they refund some money they stole from me (it is stealing when you pay for a service you don't receive, yes?) And I seem to have missed an email about an expensive laptop I won from an eBay auction which has now disappeared from my "won items" list, likely due to some sort of fraud. Still I'd like to know what happened there. Yay! My first email... is comment spam. Yes, things are back to normal at A Cry for Help.

In case anyone is wondering, I'm ecstatic that Jason Giambi has been outed as the cheating biotch that he is. As if there was any doubt about his use of "performance enhancing" injections into his ass (must... fight... Jeter-bashing... joke... involving testosterone (a component of semen) injections in the butt) after he showed up to spring training this year looking like one of those Russian nesting dolls missing the outer layer. And now that there aren't any doubts about the unbreakability of a particular non-existent "curse", we can pretty clearly state that the two HGH fueled home runs Giambi hit off Pedro in Game 7 last year cost us a 2003 World Series berth. (Perhaps you've heard about that game? Aaron Boone hit a walkoff homer in extra innings. In case no one had mentioned that to you recently.) Toss his parasite infested body out of MLB, I say. Or better yet, force the Yankees to play Juiceless Giambi for the remainder of his ill-gotten contract.

I was watching the news the other night when Jon Stewert* played a clip of outgoing Secretary of Scariness Tom Ridge talking about the months of planning that went into our famously ridiculed color-coded terrorist warning system. Now, I could go on a bit about how cynically politicized the rainbow chart is and has been since its days on the drawing board (seriously), but luckily for you The Onion has come up with a more amusing direction for this post. If Sec. Ridge and friends worked months on our five-color system, imagine what his Iraqi counterpart must have gone through coming up with this Iraqi homeland security advisory system! And while we have fun laughing at the parody of reality we call our lives, let's remember that 270 or so more of our neighbors are off to Iraq soon. That family-devastating news appeared in this weekend's ProJo, right above another story about November being the deadliest of months since we won the war last year. I can't believe this show's even still on, they say there are new episodes but they all seem like repeats. I'm bored with it, really. Who's winning the Amazing Race? * I think I am going to ride the idea of the D-Show actually being the news as far as she'll go. It's still better than a certain red stater I know who considers Talk Soup on E! the "news". I kid you not.

so the other night i was drunk and i decided to visit a chat room we used to play on back in the day. well, i've never been much into the chatting scene so i decided to just be myself - full of quips, axioms, and other assorted witticisms. evidently, the shelf life for my personality is about 10 minutes on the interweb (much longer than in real life), because that's precisely how long it was before i was on all 87 people on the site's ignore list. i decided to pull ten of my best quotes from my cache - the ones that seemed to lead to the most ignores, and share them here with you! keep in mind that all of these had a very low level of relevance at the time, but they still vaguely pertained to the conversation. 1. dude, this herpes thing is for the birds! itchy, itchy, itchy 2. does anyone want to buy any drugs? don't worry, i'm not a cop 3. if i were to invent something like the telephone, and let me just say that it is a long shot, but i would probably make it out of ky jelly and that borg dude from star trek 4. but it doesn't matter how many times you do it, they still say its illegal to try and impregnate the bag boys at winn-dixie 5. so my dog was licking me earlier - no, i mean, really licking me 6. so who here is circumcised? man, that hurts, eh? 7. so i was ditching a body in the lake last night...oh man, that thing was heavy! 8. so i met my girlfriend's parents today - while urinating on their daughter! awkward!!! 9. yeah she was four years old - but i swear she said she was 18 10. oh absolutely, but i don't think i can mail my sperm to geneva! do you? so if you want to mate friends and influence peeholes, feel free to quote me. drinking beer is funny. _{ultra laser officially endorses all forms of drinking.}

hello kiddies. time for volume 2 of the bootstrapper's unmanned aerial surveillance vehicle. i promise that the coming installments will be more interesting, but i just got rid of the "fam" and have had precious little time to work on my drunken project. so basically, goal numero uno is to free up as much weight as possible. seeing as how we will be adding a wireless camera/transmitter and several solar panels, we can't afford any excess baggage. in order to do this, i have stripped the plane of all of it's trimmings. no more shitty decals, unnecessary screws, etc. additionally, i have totally gutted the innards in preparation for the rewiring and retrofitting of the supplemental power system. these are kind of out of order, but fuck off, i'm drinking and its free entertainment: 1. the "thunderbird 400 top war king" in all it's glory. you'll never see it like this again, so enjoy. 2. the cockpit has been completely stripped of all excess styrofoam, hardware, etc. as you can see, we now have ample room for the gear we will add. 3. the fuselage, prior to debadging. 4. the only circuit board in the plane containing the rudder servo, speed control circuit, etc. we will "fix" this in the future. 5. The completely stripped fuselage. note the camera sitting atop it for a size comparison - the top wire is the power connector and the bottom one is the antenna. a rough (read drunken) weight comparison reveals that we have dropped several ounces from the fuselage just by removing the excessive decals and non-essential hardware. numerous quality control issues have been uncovered - literally, there was a sticker covering a big hole in the side that looks like it was melted in with a hot glue gun. keep in mind this was new, shrink sealed, and in the box. next installment we will be affixing the solar panels to the wing and making the appropriate modifications to the plane's power system. thanks for tuning in, see you next time. ^fuckers

Three years ago today, this was posted on the interweb, and A Cry for Help was born:

Here's a list of people who called/wrote/emailed me and said Happy Birthday to me on Thursday:

Emily, Jill, Erin, Mom, Dad, My Bro Mike, Whitney (no card!), Valerie, Lana. That's it. The rest of you are in trouble.

As you can see, even from the beginning we were tackling the important issues of the day. (This year's list is Em, Mom, Dad, my brother, Matt G., Erin, Ultra Laser and Steve. Obviously, I am still extremely popular.) In three years we've had 10 contributors, about 1000 entries (including a bunch that got eaten last February), not enough comments, four major design changes and even a name change. I hadn't even heard the term "blog" back then. From December 2001 to this day I struggle with all sorts of questions involving this site, should I post more? Should I stop altogether? Should I write more about myself? Less? Focus on a few things? Opine on everyone and everything? Still haven't found any answers, but I've really enjoyed doing this site and I am so grateful for all of you who keep coming back. Thank you, and here's to three more aimless years!