~ while we can appreciate the feelings of rumsfeld’s hecklers and others who call for his resignation/firing, we don’t see who would be served by this course of action. if he was fired, it would look like the administration was ‘doing something’ in response to the human rights violations that are occurring under its command; if we want opinion to continue to turn against the bush administration, it would be best if he continues to do nothing about this debacle. besides, if rumsfeld is ousted, it isn’t like the new secretary of defense would be an amazing bleeding heart; chances are absolute that the next guy/girl also would be despicable. maybe a chant of ‘castrate rumsfeld’ would serve better.

~ we have used eudora for five (5) years; should we switch to thunderbird?

~ also, we have to disagree with g.w.bush, j.lieberman, and d.rumsfeld that the sadistic behaviour of soldiers like l.england does not reflect the true nature of americans. from where did these morons arise? in what environment were they reared? the answer is america, the same one that produces a mother who beats to death her children on god’s command or ‘powder puff’ football girls who deliver concussions to their classmates. fishing on craigslist will inform one that america’s core values are sadism and brutality; perhaps we can be thankful that we follow a social contract that, by and large, keeps this localized brutality in check, but let us not pat ourselves on the back just because we can point to pictures of some fool and declare that we are heroes only when compared to villains.

according to the policy detailed yesterday, we have scraped the ‘United States Marine Corps’ sticker from the rear window of our company truck.

we have been enjoying bblean [w]. Back during version .41, we tried bb4win [w], but at the time our enthusiasm was not great. almost two years makes a big difference.

~ like any liberal who wants to preempt the accusations of a lack of patriotism, we have tried to follow the advice of ‘hate the war, honor the warriors’, or similar homily, that is usually displayed somewhere along the line of the peace marches. we understood that the economic conditions which some men and women face make a job in the military unfortunately seem to be a reasonable option. we understood that the job, while unpleasant, was a necessary feature of the nation. we understood that the injustice of the war that they fight is not always clear to those who place their faith in an administration rather than a nation.

waking to a photograph of west virginian woman in a u.s. uniform holding a naked prisoner on a leash has completely cleansed us of this seemingly dichotomous policy. taking a look at the policy that we follow for the police [+, that is to say, all things being equal, we harbor distrust and animosity towards all officers, until evidence to the contrary arises. henceforth, we shall have unswerving skepticism and contempt for anyone at every level and job of the military; rather than giving any one the benefit of the doubt, it is best to assume the worst, until it is proven to be otherwise by individual cases.

whereas we previously might have nodded approvingly to the banner, ‘support our troops; bring them home’, we now demand that the first phrase be excised from the slogan.

~ we have no problems with the fact that disney is refusing allow its miramax stepchild to distribute michael moore’s [w] new film, ‘fahrenheit 911’, as it will relieve us, when we do see it, from paying any money into disney’s coffers. if the film was distributed by disney, we would have to find some avenue for viewing it for free; that road would likely lead down bittorrent [w] and arrive with a letter in our mailbox [w], and you can be sure as shit that we would never take that route.

~ due to excessive spam, we have recently blackholed any email not sent to a specific angryredplanet.org address. if you have been sending mail to an old address or something you made up, like ‘proust@angry…’, your mail has been getting trashed without anyone looking at it. if you have sent a missive and have been futilely awaiting a response, you can use our contact form, instant messaging, or an address that you have gotten directly from us within the past two weeks; otherwise, it will disappear unseen into /dev/null.

~ to the iraqis who are whining about the top-down approach for determining your nation’s flag and wondering if your ‘council’ has nothing better to do: there is a democracy in the state of georgia, and – when they are through trying to prevent two men from getting married – the gov’t there finds time to churn out a new flag almost every two years. so, if wasteful activities of a deafened assembly are hallmarks of democracy, then you are closer than we all might think.

to the iraqis who are whining about the design: the two stripes for your rivers are much more clever than the stripes on the recently served georgian flag, which don’t mean anything but that the designer had seen them on another flag. on the other hand, we don’t think it was too clever to base the rest of the iraqi flag on religion, separatists, and the israeli model.

~ we knew that the issue of not shying away from the consequences of war was put more plainly than we could put it. sixty (60) years ago, when printing the first image of american troops who died in the pacific, life magazine pointed out, regarding the challenge to the soldier, if he “had the guts to take it, then we ought to have the guts to look at it.”

~ major media peddlers seem to be telling us that the death of an american solider who turned down millions of football dollars to join the army is somehow more poignant or heartbreaking than the death of hundreds of men and women who were forced to join because of dearth of other economic options. we say that it is not.

~ regarding the pentagon vs. the memory hole [w]: if you are going to be ‘brave’ enough to send americans to their deaths, you should be brave enough to face their images when their remains are returned home.

~ a coffee bean and tea leaf can be seen in the latest ‘spider-man 2’ trailer. there are no coffee bean and tea leaf establishments in new york city.

~ congratulations to the angry red planet for taking our 10,000th digital photo. here’s to another 3 years.

~ after cursory research, we have determined that the .cbr/.cbz format is superior to .pdf for the purposes of digitally archiving comic books. .cbr/.cbz files are simpler to create, there are free software options available, and they are less cumbersome to view.

Update: How to create a cbr/cbz file.

~ judging from the trailer [w] released today, spider-man will have more screen time in ‘spider-man 2’ than he received in the previous movie. it also appears that they are still using los angeles for some of the street web swinging scenes; maybe sam raimi does not know that eucalyptus trees don’t grow in manhattan? nevertheless, ‘the amazing spider-man’ would have been a better title for the 2nd movie than the one chosen.

~ cat lovers, acquire a ‘pill plunger’ today; if you ever need to medicate your cat, it will save you hours and one (1) index finger.