Build Date: Fri Mar 7 02:50:31 2025 UTC
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers [when what I really want is absinthe and lots of sex]."
-- Pablo Picasso
..but at the border they told me this was a free country.
2007-04-08 20:12:49
George W. Bush: glorify his name or we'll steal your luggage.
I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: "Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that." I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. "That'll do it," the man said.
After carefully examining my credentials, the clerk asked if he could take them to TSA officials. I agreed. He returned about ten minutes later and said I could have a boarding pass, but added: "I must warn you, they're going to ransack your luggage." On my return flight, I had no problem with obtaining a boarding pass, but my luggage was "lost." Airlines do lose a lot of luggage and this "loss" could have been a mere coincidence. In light of previous events, however, I'm a tad skeptical.
T O P S T O R I E S
The Future Ain't What It Used To Be
Ideas have taken horrifying shape and rooted into our modern reality. (More...)
The Once & Future King of Dust
Only The Onion could have acquired Infowarts. (More...)
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
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...)
We here in SMRL's Beverage Research Lab realize that there is more to life than just drinking spocktails. It's important to have other activities. One such activity that we wholeheartedly support is dancing six or more hours to Trance music. So we have designed a drink to accommodate this. (More...)
High Availability Guinness Stress Test
All too often we forget the incredible depth of technology behind the weekly ritual of TNiPN@*. We tend to only become aware of the strategy of High Available Guinness (HAG) when it rises to the forefront during a complete and utter venue failure. Yet we should all be super grateful that this system exists. (More...)
The Deep Dark Underbelly of the Star Wars Myth, or Ramayana Remembered
It's a fact: Star Wars is a blatant plagiarism of an ancient Asian legend, and the long lines of devout Star Wars freaks are really unscrupulous Asian copyright busters. From Indonesia to Thailand to Nepal, videos are available for sale or rent before they're even released in the US and UK due to this nerdy camcorder-clutching bunch. (More...)
Another Spocktail from the beverage researchers at SMRL: Home of The Deathwave Bar & Grill! (More...)
An innocent trip to the Central Market resulted in a severe attack of arachnophobia (and a meal) when a depraved street kid set her vicious pet spider on an unsuspecting shopper. (More...)
