I’m psyched to see that over the holiday weekend a US branch of the Pirate party was established, or at least got their website up and running.

I first read about the Pirate Party after it was first established in Sweden and made news in conjunction with thepiratebay.org’s trials, travails and public snubbing of US corporate bullying. My first thought was “Hell yes, but this party needs to be in the United States, the source of all unfair media restrictions, ridiculous copyright laws and all evils in between”. Thankfully and with hope, it has now arrived.

There’s not much going on yet and hopefully this won’t be one of those lame-ass, never off the ground, dead in the water, psuedo non-projects started mainly to garner attention. I find that really don’t care for the name, “Pirate Party”. While I understand the use and recent history concerning the term pirate in regards to digital media, it’s use is still to grey to me and given it’s historical connections with murder, theft and a whole mess of negative things, I question whether it’s appropriate for a party mainly concerned with copyright and usage reform. Sure it’s catchy, but in today’s buzzword-dependant media, amongst the non-7337, perhaps older and less media and tech savvy population, it sounds bad. Isn’t the whole purpose about freeing media, liberating ideas and fostering creativity? If so, why chose a word that denotes thievery?

Looking at the site, I was suprised to see that the pirate party also has branches in Belgium, Italy and France as well, which is great. I’d really like to see more countries join as well.

In a fit of impulse geekitude, I’ve rented a dedicated server. It runs Ubuntu Linux, which is what I run at home and am currently writing this post with, so the ground is familiar, however I’ll have to get used to managing things entirely by command line. Something I should be doing regardless.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do about this website. Davebgimp.com is hosted on a shared server with BlueHost, who are seriously superb webhosts, IMHO. My account is paid in advance with them for another fifteen months, so probably I’ll just leave this website where it is.

For the near future, I’ll mainly be using this new-fangled server as a secure proxy host so I can get around redundant web filtering and also safely use open wifi spots without risking my passwords and data. I have a few other domains registered that I suppose I could move over to it, maybe even set up a mail server, I’m not sure. I’ve never really run a server before, so it’s all new shit to me.

I’d have to say that the funniest, balls-out, career-making/destroying thing I’ve seen all year was Stephen Colbert’s monologue at the White House Press Corps dinner on Saturday night. On Sunday morning, I downloaded a BitTorrent of the speech he gave and was locked to my monitor, slack-jawed, incredulous and laughing my ass off at lines like:

“Mayor Nagin is here from New Orleans, the chocolate city. Yeah, give it up. Mayor Nagin, I would like to welcome you to Washington, D.C., The chocolate city with a marshmallow center.”
“And a graham cracker crust of corruption. It’s a mallomar is what I’m describing, a seasonal cookie. Joe Wilson is here, the most famous husband since Desi Arnez. And of course he brought along his lovely wife Valerie Plame. Oh, my god!
Oh, what have I said. I am sorry, Mr. President, I meant to say he brought along his lovely wife, Joe Wilsons wife. Pat Fitzgerald is not here tonight? Dodged a bullet. And we can’t forget man of the hour, new Press Secretary, Tony Snow. Secret service name, Snow Job. What a hero, took the second toughest job in government, next to, of course, the ambassador to Iraq.”

The insults and and cracks go on and on and leave the President and First Lady red-faced and visibly offended. The audience seems fluctuates between muttering indignation and not knowing whether or not it’s too inflammatory to laugh along at Colbert’s jokes. It’s obvious that everyone in the room is extremely uncomfortable. This is one video that has to be seen. Stephen Colbert has plenty balls.

Here’s links to low-rez WMV and a slightly higher-rez QuickTime video file. For best quality, you should go for the BitTorrent file, but you’ll need to have a client installed. I recommend Azureus. Lastly, you can always try searching YouTube for clips.

So today may be Valentine’s Day, the world’s lamest holiday to throw money away on, but you may or may not know that this stupid-ass card and candy exchanging day was originally a replacement for a Roman holiday called Lupercalia.

To quote Wikipedia:

The religious ceremonies were directed by the Luperci, the “brothers of the wolf”, priests of Faunus, dressed only in a goatskin. During Lupercalia, a dog and two male goats were sacrificed. Two patrician youths were anointed with the blood, which was wiped off with wool soaked in milk, after which they were expected to smile and laugh. The Luperci afterwards dressed themselves in the skins of the sacrificed goats, in imitation of Lupercus, and ran round the Palatine Hill with straps, cut from the skins, in their hands. These were called Februa. Girls would line up on their route to receive lashes from these whips. This was supposed to ensure fertility.

Let’s see… You got goat killing, dog sacrificing and pouring blood over rich young men. There’s some dairy in the mix, nothing wrong with that… Next you’re dressing the bloody dudes in goat costumes, forcing them to laugh and smile while they whip young women with animal skin. Hmmm.

Now that sounds like a fucking holiday.

Why on earth are people still sending cards, buying flowers and [gags on vomit] going to church on this day, when you could be covered in blood, whipping some chick? Where the fuck have our values and priorities gone?

After three years of not having any pets, I’ve sucked it up and adopted two cats. Pictured to the left is Gracie, a six year old attention whore who was rescued from a kill shelter in East New York. If you’ve never been to that part of New York City, just know that whenever it’s reported on the news that someone’s been shot, fifty percent of the time it’s in that neighborhood, the rest of the shootings are spread out all over the city. It’s a bad place and was no fucking fun at all visiting. Gracie’s a good cat, perhaps she realizes that she was basically on kitty death row due to her not being so young and everyone wants a kitten. Gracie hit the kitty lotto. Condemned to death, she’s been released to a fat life of good food and more attention that she’s probably ever had. She’s quite happy.

This little guy doesn’t have a name yet, well actually he does. When I picked him up, his adoption sheet said his name was Mazda. I’m pretty sure the people at the shelter name them as they bring them in. He most certainly will not be keeping that moniker but I’ll hold off naming him until he’s become a bit more social. The little bugger is a five month old stray that was found with his sister. Yesterday, he had his balls chopped off and is a little disoriented. He’s friendly and tame, but a little freaked out as anyone would be after being separate from family and testicles. He spent much of last night hiding under dressers and crying, but I’m certain he’ll come around soon.

I look forward to the next few weeks, spent searching for cat shit and desperately trying to coax the little bastards out from under furniture. It’s worth it. They’re both good cats. They’ll be acclimated soon and all will be well. I’ll admit to being a slave to gratuitous kittie porn and will likely be flooding my flickr account with gobs of photos. Here’s some I have already. Go ahead, get your cat porn fix.

I can’t say I didn’t see it coming. Michael Jackson was acquitted and while he didn’t exactly moonwalk out of the courtroom on the backs of naked little boys, he certainly skated away scot-free, back to Neverland. It’s good to know surreality has a physical form on the planet, but don’t think for a second that I feel like he deserves this get-out-of-jail-free card.

I don’t know Michael Jackson. I’ve never met him. Yes, I owned “Thriller”. Yes, I am embarrassed about this fact. No I did not fetch the Vaseline for him, nor did I see him behave inappropriately with someone else’s child. I am not a lawyer. However, I still think he’s a pedophile.

I have my reasons, which I will list shortly, as to why I hold this belief. While I think he should be in jail, I acknowledge that the case against him was in large part utterly pathetic. You have to wonder what Tom Sneddon was thinking when, after amassing the evidence and witnesses, he decided he had enough to connect the dots and get a conviction. The accuser’s family, especially the mother was just straight-up shady, unreliable and seemingly pretty unstable. Even with a truckload of serious evidence, showing Michael Jackson to be a confirmed child molester, it doesn’t mean shit unless you can prove that he molested the specific child that he’s charged with touching. The fact that the kid has a mother who’s crazy and the whole family has a prior stain of being grifters is going to really fuck things up. Blame really has to fall to Sneddon for rushing this case to reality on such shaky ground. This trial was about whether or not Michael Jackson molested a 13 year old cancer survivor. I have to say, I can’t blame the jury for acquitting him. I think it’s believable that he did not molest that boy. Do I think his sexuality, whether internalized or externalized, is wrapped up in underage boys? You fucking bet I do.

Perhaps I’m jaded but I just can’t accept this “saintlike” painting that’s been put forward concerning Jackson and children, that he’s childlike and a “pure” person who’s love for children is all-encompassing and unconditional. His behavior, his mental state, lifestyle, company (as in children), his reclusive habits and the fact that he lives in an amusement park and models himself as a real-life Peter Pan all point to an obsessive interest in children. When was the last time you saw a photo of Michael Jackson with a little girl? If you stripped away the fame and the name and then asked anyone to look at the details of this man’s life, who wouldn’t come to the conclusion that there’s something seriously wrong going on in Neverland?

It is possible that Michael Jackson is not sexually active with children. His deviate leanings could be very well separated from his actions. While he can’t resist surrounding himself with young boys, he may be sane enough to understand that while he is sexually attracted to them, touching them is verboten. While it would be fortunate that he could control himself, it doesn’t make it okay for him to surround himself with boys and sleep in beds with them, however platonic.

However it may work out in his world, what it boils down to is a extremely rich man (regardless off his current debts you see in the news, Jackson still has major bank) who is very ill, mentally and is surrounded with people who are enabling his behavior instead of controlling it. It makes me wonder where his family’s and especially his employee’s motives lie when they allow him to pursue his interests with young boys. If you had a relative who is mentally ill and could possibly be hurting young children, would you stand back and allow him or would you assume as much control as needed to keep him from hurting himself and other people? That’s what stands out to me. This is a guy who is most definitely not self-sufficient. He requires handlers, employees and his family to oversee and run his little empire. What were they thinking and why aren’t they culpable as well?

A small part of me feels sorry for Michael Jackson. His private life was just dragged out and trashed for all the world to see. It really has to be hard to moonwalk a mile in his shoes. But the pity I feel quickly dries up when considering the dearth of evidence, much of it disallowed from the trial that makes it near impossible not to come to the conclusion that Michael Jackson’s sexual identity and history involves underage boys. A pedophile is back at his amusement park compound, essentially free to continue molesting children. Whether he or his handlers are going to be smarter about it in the future remains to be seen, but one thing is for certain, pedophiles do not have an off switch. He’ll do it again.

I just read this article about how a Houston family visited a relative’s ashes in a mausoleum, only to find the remains missing and in it’s place, a can of Pringles Sour Cream and Onion potato chips.

How the fuck did that happen, you might ask? I think the better question is, did they eat the chips?

Yet another sign that America as we know it is going to moral and litigious hell. What kind of country do we live in where you can’t even sue a bitch for busting your jammy? WTF?

You know, as much as Saddam Hussein is a dick, daveb was a little disappointed when he saw the news of his capture, bearded and hiding in a shallow pit. All that build up for nothing. He figured, c’mon, this is Saddam “gas me some Kurds and pop me some crystal” Hussein! Fucking Iraqi gangsta shit. You’d think he’d roll up on a convoy, strapped to the teeth with WMDs, blasting Americans to high hell before hitting paradise with all it’s attending virgins. But no, he was caught hiding in a hole with a briefcase of cash. Fuck that. Saddam, what happened kiddo? Where’d the balls of steel go? Why’d you go out like a bitch when it could have been a blaze of fucking glory?

But wait! Daveb read this morning, an account by a former marine that Saddam Hussein’s capture was bullshit. The marine, who was present at Saddam’s capture said the hidey-hole scenario on the news was a total fabrication, staged a full day after he had been apprehended. As part of a 20 man team, this guy encountered Saddam and a few of his baddies held up in a house.

“We captured him after fierce resistance during which a Marine of Sudanese origin was killed,” he said.

He said Saddam himself fired at them with a gun from the window of a room on the second floor. Then they shouted at him in Arabic: “You have to surrender. … There is no point in resisting.”

“Later on, a military production team fabricated the film of Saddam’s capture in a hole, which was in fact a deserted well,”

You go Saddam. That’s more like it. Evil dictators need to keep the standards up. If you’re going to be a tyrant, go out like a tyrant should go out. If this is true, Saddam, you’re a bastard, but you get props for keeping it real.

Now why the whole capture was falsified, who knows? Probably to paint the picture of him as a coward and thief, fleeing his country with the cash instead of defending it. That is, assuming this story is true. If it is true, what’s going to keep it from being mentioned at his trial?

While it’s unfortunate that someone actually had to die to make daveb laugh this morning, reading about the boy that was crushed by a giant snowball, if you have any kind of imagination, you’ve gotta admit it’s pretty funny. The mental picture is just to silly. Splat!