Not a bad, just a I’m-off-but-have-to-do-all-these-things-I-don’t-want-to-do. Responsibilities and what not. Did manage to join a fingerprint database though. It bothers me, but it’s more a philosophical bother: it’s so fucking stupid. Since I know my fingerprints are in the database, I know to be extra cautious when robbing that bank i.e. the smart people (the ones really motivated to beat the system) will find a way around this, as they always do.

I wonder how many databases my prints will eventually get into. Where they’ll go, what sort of crimes they’ll be cross checked for: high profile or baffling murders or that car ring that the cops just can’t crack. Naturally, I’m looking at this personally, but these searchs won’t be, it’s just a search.

No, I could not have gotten my license renewed if didn’t give them a fingerprint. I thought briefly of refusing, but then I couldn’t legally drive in the US. Which is kinda tempting at times, but that’s the point. The government put people over the barrel and most of us recognized the pratical aspects, said “fuck it” and went about our day. Nothing really changed when giving the fingerprints, I’m not suddenly a government guinea pig as they test new drugs, there are no men in suits watching over me, but, but, but….It feels wrong, like taking a brick from the wall and putting it in the road to hell.

Do I own my fingerprint? DNA? If so, how and when do I lose the right to it?

Why the American comic book industry is going to hell. and this too. Where’s a magic sterilizing wand when you need it?

The other reason is that people can find what they want. Case in point, my wife: She’s not a big fan of comics, but she doesn’t hate them either. Just never got intook, which is fine. But for some reason, she got interested in monthly comic book called “Girls”. No idea why she got into it, since it seemed to be all the stuff she disliked about comics, but she called it good fluff, and who couldn’t use some fluff every now and then. By sheer luck, the first 3 issues were in the store which she quickly read. Then she got annoyed that the4th issue wasn’t available and wouldn’t be for several weeks, in July. She felt gyped. So in July, we checked out at the video/comic book store where we got the first three issues. We never found the fourth issue. NEVER. I suggested she ask for it and she shrugged her shoulders, saying it wasn’t that important. She lost interest and moved on because it wasn’t worth her wild to hunt down a comic, when there were so many other forms of entertainment in easy reach. Can’t blame, you shouldn’t have to go hunting for people when you want to give them money. Even though I AM into comics, I’m not a collector, needing to get every issue. In fact, I hate monthly issues, preferring Graphic Novels which give me a chunk of reading that resolves itself when I’m done. No hunting down back issues, side issues or cross over issues. Just a (hopefully) good story at a good price.

On the upside, there’s plenty of reasons signs that comics aren’t going to hell.

Bathed in gold we’d plug into some kind of power
and connect with those days back before all of this went sour
-Cowboy Junkies, Come Calling from the CD Lay it Down


Soft dawn light is wandering into the bedroom, drifting from orange to yellow and back again. The ceiling fan pours and occasionally Lisa rustles in her sleep, but everything else seems etched in space, captured by some master artist. I was going to say something snarky about commercials in movies or the hate for our ghetto space shuttle, but it would destroy the mood. It’s early Saturday morning and the living is easy.

PS- no, theres nothing sour between Lisa and me, but the soft mood of the song fits the morning.

The real Batman lets the ladies know who’s boss.

South Koreans first to clone dog. Will this make Korean restaurants cheaper?

For those riding the London subway:
http://anextraordinarymachine.blogspot.com/2005/07/scary-notice.html

Keep an eye on this:

Webcomics Nation is meant to do for online comics what services like Blogger have done for personal journals, or Flickr for photo-sharing: enable anybody and everybody to reach a large audience with his/her ideas and creations — in this case, in comics form. WCN tames the latest and most complex online technologies (like, say, XML, RSS, and “web services”) and puts them to work for you, easily, invisibly, and in an automated way.

I miss being in love with a city. Walking it streets, surrounded by it’s people, falling in love with it’s women, knowing there’s a potential pal on the street with me and we could pop into one of those bars that are on every street, holes in the wall really, thats been owned for years by the same guy or the same couple, with the usual bar staff that don’t water down the drinks. It’s usually dark in there, with all sorts of stuff on the walls, a little dirty, a little grimey, but with character, you know.

Cities smell, both good and bad. The good smells are made by the cousins or brothers of the bar owners, cooking up the food of their people, gryos or fried rice, or Mexican or the hot dog vendor or bread and cookies, all of cooked daily, though maybe not sold daily. Sometimes it’s fresh flowers or fruits, opened up to the sidewalk.

The bad smells are dirt and pollution, concrete burned with the smell of piss from bums and drunk partiers, dank sweat and exhaustion from those who were born there and never left, no matter what their dreams were. But it’s ok, ‘cuase the bad smells make it all seem real, make the city seem alive, ‘cause you can’t love it all the time, not 24/7. No the bitch gets on your nerves sometimes, when it gets too cold or too hot, too wet or too dry, too noisy or too quiet. It’s ok. You love it because the city it sn’t your bitch, it does it’s own thing, but when you need it, when the bones ache for home, its there, a little different from years ago, but its heart still there, open wide just for you.

NASA officials said space shuttle Discovery was probably traveling too slow to sustain any damage when a bird slammed into the craft’s fuel tank nose cone seconds after liftoff Tuesday, according to Local 6 News.

Watched Over There last night, the new series from Fox. I’d link to the website, but it’s one of those overproduced Flash sites, so forget it. NPR had done a story on it Wednesday afternoon, including an interview tih series co-creator Steven Bochco that sounded kinda interesting and the premise itself seemed novel enough to check out, namely that it’s a series about a war while the war is going on it.

I couldn’t stand to watch the whole thing. It wasn’t bad per se, just uninteresting. We got brief glimpses of the soliders before they shipped out and then we’re dropped into their first firefight, which alternated between stupid, boring and intensely deadly. But it all felt flat, flushed, forced and predictable. While the series is purposefully staying apolitical and focusing on the soliders themselves, I didn’t care for the characters. I didn’t dislike them, I just didn’t care whether they lived or died. The one instance where a solider gets shot is easy to see from a mile off. and the soundtrack for emotional cues was annoying. No need to finish watching it and no reason to return.