So… Is Michael Dell a terrorist? Look what his laptop did to a guy’s truck in Nevada:

From the NYTimes article.

Of course, not everyone leaves their laptop in the Nevada heat in July underneath a glove box full of ammunition…

Here’s how we all felt in Queens last week:

Let’s see if they can keep the lights on this week. It’s going to be over 100 tomorrow.

ConEd is basically a complete joke. In our neighborhood, we saw about 3 times as many workers sitting in air conditioned trucks as actually doing anything to fix the power problem. One of the tenants in our building lost their dog to the heat, and everyone lost much more to spoilage and grief than the piddly $350 they’re offering to reinburse individuals. Not to mention the local businesses. $7000 for a grocery store full of food? Please…

Our neighbors are still on a generator. They may be the lucky ones if the power goes out again.

Good luck to you all!

Watching The Twilight Zone last night on TV was a rather enlightening experience. The Episode was entitled The Obsolete Man, but it may as well have been titled Stranded in Gitmo.

You walk into this room at your own risk, because it leads to the future. Not a future that will be but one that might be. This is not a new world, it is simply an extension of what began in the old one.

It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements- technological advancements, and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom.

But like every one of the Super-States that preceded it, it has one iron rule- logic is an enemy and truth is a menace.

This is Mr. Romney Wordsworth, in his last forty-eight hours on Earth. He’s a citizen of the State that will soon have to be eliminated- because he’s built out of flesh and because he has a mind. Mr. Romney Wordsworth, who will draw his last breaths in the Twilight Zone.

What follows is the trial of Burgess Meredith as being “Obsolete”, as he is a librarian and books have been outlawed. His sentence is death, but he gets to choose how and when (within those 48 hours).

The rest of the story takes place in his apartment. The “Chancellor” (the one who sentenced him to death) is tricked into stopping by the apartment that night. His intention is to gloat at his victory, and to watch the comdemned man die. He is, instead, locked in the apartment, having a face-off with Meredith as they wait for a bomb to kill them both. They are on live TV, being broadcast around the empire.

At the last moment, the Chancellor pleads for his life, and Meredith lets him escape. However, when he gets back to the courtroom, he has been replaced, and ruled obsolete himself. He has shown cowardice and disgraced the state, and as such has no function.

The last scene could have been between Colin Powell and Shrub when Powell resigned, after lying to the entire world at the UN:

I’m not obsolete. I’ve worked for the State! I’ve helped give the State strength! How can you call me obsolete?!?

I have a function. I have a purpose. Please! I want to serve the State- please!

The mindless mob surround and attack him. End of story. But the closing words really pack a lot of punch:

The Chancellor - the late Chancellor - was only partly correct. He was obsolete. But so was the State- the entity he worshipped.

Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man- that State is obsolete.

A case to be filed under ‘M’ for mankind… in the Twilight Zone

Our current “Chancellor”:

If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.

December 18, 2000

See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.

May 24, 2005

Who sucks more than Hoover?

Who’s got a harder head than Harding?

Rolling Stone, methinks, is onto something…

This really eases my mind. I was really concerned about all the domestic spying that the Dubya administration has been doing. Does George really care where I’m going for dinner, or if I found the P-Touch tape at Staples?