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But they had a rough weekend so I gave them the day off. As such, I’m just going to throw a list of interesting links at you. Enjoy:

• Prewar Intelligence Investigation by Senator Robert Byrd : A passionate plea for more information regarding the intelligence presented to Congress (and the public). Byrd actually makes many good points, points that should be made. Personally, I feel a lot of people have gone over the line with accusations Bush’s “lies” (at points, its debateable whether or not Byrd crossed said line). There are a lot of good questions to be asked about the affair, but they won’t get answered if those who are supposed to be asking them are frothing at the mouth (at, say, the prospect of running Bush and/or Blair out of office). Byrd inadvertantly brings up another point:
  

  It is in the compelling national interest to examine what we were told about the threat from Iraq.

  Indeed! But, um, Senator Byrd? Shouldn’t you have examined what you were told about the threat from Iraq before you voted on it? That might have been a good idea. If the President did lie, what does that say about how well our Congress is representing us?

• The View From Above: An Imagery Analysis Tutorial : A brief tutorial on military imagery analysis by a former CIA analyst. Fun! [via Punchstack]
• William Gibson’s blog: For those that enjoyed the other day’s post about 1984, check out William Gibson’s blog for more of his spiffy writing (I seem to remember him giving it up, but the most recent entries seem, well, recent)…
• When being chased by CIA trainees, don’t mention Belgium to the waffle house physicist : Our tax dollars are well spent. Heh.
• Seinfeld: The Boyfriend : This classic Seinfeld episode with Keith Hernandez contains a brilliant parody of Oliver Stone’s JFK (scroll down about halfway), in which Kramer and Newman contend that Hernandez spit on them after a game. Jerry hilariously reproduces the courtroom scene from JFK, demonstrating that there had to be a “second spitter” (interestingly, as the page notes, Wayne Knight plays the same position in both JFK and this episode).

How to Be a Sarcast in Modern America by Blueberry Jane : From the nonfiction section of that spiffily redesigned echoing darkness place comes this interesting piece that is either new or that I stupidly passed over at an earlier time. Its about sarcasm, where its come from, and where its going. And its relation to irony.

Now you’re just going to have to excuse me, as I’ve been spending entirely too much time blogging of late. I realize you all hang on my every word, but I simply cannot maintain this heroically prolific pace. Beyond that, I shouldn’t be giving away such brilliant commentary for free.*

* If you don’t understand this paragraph, then you either don’t know me, or you haven’t read the article.

The hierophant by Mark Ciocco : I guess its a little corny to post a story I wrote, but its Halloween and I like to give everyone a spooky story to read… I wrote this story several years ago as an homage to H.P. Lovecraft (specifically, the story Pickman’s Model, which also dealt with a strange artist…) I cringed a couple of times while reading it, because I am certainly no H.P. Lovecraft, but it held up better than I thought it would, so posted it in its original form. Someday, I may revise it, but this will have to do for now…

I won’t be around much for the next week or so, for I have courageously volunteered to brave tropical storms, typhoid, cholera, dengie fever, tsetse fly disease, and those worms that drill into your leg and grow to a length of nine feet in order to investigate the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle (aka, the Devil’s Triangle). There are lots of theories on the mysterious phenomenon, but I intend to find out what really goes on there (my favourite theory: Cthulhu “lies not dead, but dreaming in the under water city of of R’lye” which is probably somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle).

Anyway, while I’m gone, you can entertain yourselves by conversing with the “friendly” folk of the Kaedrin Forum, or even by contributing to one of the four ongoing Tandem Stories (a form of interactive storytelling in which each successive paragraph is written by a different author). If you like those stories, try this Choose Your Own Adventure story, which is also quite fun.

Some assorted links for your enjoyment:

• Bill Hicks – A comedian who tried to make people laugh, but usually ended up pissing them off, or drawing blank stares.Born in 1961, Hicks died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 32, just as he was peaking. His thoughts on advertising: “By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself. No, this is not a joke: kill yourself . . . I know what the marketing people are thinking now too: ‘Oh. He’s going for that anti-marketing dollar. That’s a good market.’ Oh man, I am not doing that, you fucking evil scumbags.” He’s funny.
• Lego: a Machine for Living – Interesting article proposing a lego-like, modular system for building houses. It makes sense, too. Can a modular system give you more freedom than something that is totally custom (considering limited resources)?
• The Eye of Argon – Reputedly the worst science fiction story ever written. I concur. Check out this page to see if the story got any better when translated back and forth by a language translation system
• Just who WAS Dr. Strangelove, really? – “Strangelove is such a potent character – twisted, coldly rational, his mechanical arm likely to spring into a SEIG HEIL at the slightest provocation – that many people have speculated on who Strangelove might be ‘based’ on.”

Its getting harder and harder to find good links. Of course, it doesn’t help that I’ve also been getting more and more picky when selecting what to post. That, in addition to many happenings in my personal life, is why the updates have slowed considerably in the recent past. Just so you know, I think posting good entries is more important than posting every day, so don’t be suprised if I go a week without updating or something…

In this interview with Mike Patton, the frontman for the now-defunct Faith No More talks about his other band (Mr. Bungle), his fans, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and more. At one point, Patton proclaims that “we make music for ourselves first, then record it onto a record, and then hope it makes sense to other people,” which is the sort of thing that usually makes me cringe. However, given Mr. Bungle’s last album, California, which I liken it to a musical representation of schizophrenia (and this is downright peachy compared to their last album, Disco Volante), I think I can safely say that Patton really doesn’t care what anyone thinks. Not to mention some of his… less accessible work (he refers to them as “operettas or jazz improvs or, you know, noise pieces–whatever the hell you want to call them”). I still miss his glorious days with FNM, though. I stumbled upon this list of songs they played live; I find the covers they chose to be fascinating. They actually performed “barbie girl” 7 times, and FNM had the range to pull it off, too. When I saw them in Philly, they played the Rocky theme. Damn, I miss those guys…

Write Your Own 13th Story is a branching interactive story, sort of like those choose your own adventure books I used to read when I was a kid (which were awesome, btw). Also check Xmark’s Interactive Story Forum, and, of course, there’s always Kaedrin’s very own Tandem Stories for interactive story goodness!

There’s not really much I can think to say about Hats Of Meat other than that I want a “Base-Bull Cap”. Since I know you want to know more about this bold and innovative fashion statement, check out the MeatHelmet page. Fascinating.

Some random links for your enjoyment:

• Head Hunting Firm Decapitates 250: Funniest article I’ve read in a while. Another one that sends waves through the blogging community: Link Whore Arrested
• Evolution of a Weblogger: I think I’m doing allright; hopefully this blog will never evolve like that (you’ll never see it turn into a sappy journal, thats for sure). In fact the whole Torrez.org site rocks. Thanks grenville!
• Another Color Schemer: This ‘un uses flash…

Ask Jesus is a pretty funny page which gives an option to “jesusify” your page (similar to, but not as good as, Rinkwork’s classic “Dialectizer“, ). My favorite language is still “Jive“. Thanks to DyRE for ‘da link (posted via the Kaedrin Forum)