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South Park hit a home run last night with a hilarious deconstruction of the economic crisis.

Part Two
Part Three

The bizzaro film ‘Holy Mountain‘ was playing at 529 last night after Marnie Stern played. A definite candidate for drug movie night.

Sadly, the worst part of Battlestar Galactica is what most people celebrate about it, the humanity, the overreaching emotions, the so very obvious, forced allegories. They way overdo it. If you watch the show and witnessed Adama’s 17th emotional breakdown last week you know what I mean. More Cylon trickery and less human-cylon reconciliation bullshit! But fuck it, maybe there is something the U.N. can learn from a TV show.

On March 17, there will be a “Battlestar” retrospective at the U.N. in New York and a panel discussion of how the show examined issues such as “human rights, children and armed conflict, terrorism, human rights and reconciliation and dialogue among civilizations and faith,” according to Sci Fi.
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The panel will be moderated by “Battlestar” fan Whoopi Goldberg.

LOST finds its perfect mate in the interwebs, where it receives unlimited psychedelic analysis from user communities around the world with way too much time on their hands. The show itself however, is perhaps just a comedic play on apophenia:

Apophenia is the perception of patterns, or connections, where in fact none exist. Most psychologists agree that this condition exists in everyone, to some degree; it is a bias of the human mind.

What Michael Phelps Should Have Said

Dear America,

I take it back. I don’t apologize.

Because you know what? It’s none of your goddamned business. I work my ass off 10 months a year. It’s that hard work that gave you all those gooey feelings of patriotism last summer. If during my brief window of down time I want to relax, enjoy myself, and partake of a substance that’s a hell of a lot less bad for me than alcohol, tobacco, or, frankly, most of the prescription drugs most of you are taking, well, you can spare me the lecture.

I put myself through hell. I make my body do things nature never really intended us to endure. All world-class athletes do. We do it because you love to watch us push ourselves as far as we can possibly go. Some of us get hurt. Sometimes permanently. You’re watching the Super Bowl tonight. You’re watching 300 pound men smash each while running at full speed, in full pads. You know what the average life expectancy of an NFL player is? Fifty-five. That’s about 20 years shorter than your average non-NFL player. Yet you watch. And cheer. And you jump up spill your beer when a linebacker lays out a wide receiver on a crossing route across the middle. The harder he gets hit, the louder and more enthusiastically you scream.

Yet you all get bent out of shape when Ricky Williams, or I, or Josh Howard smoke a little dope to relax. Why? Because the idiots you’ve elected to make your laws have, without a shred of evidence, beat it into your head that smoking marijuana is something akin to drinking antifreeze, and done only by dirty hippies and sex offenders.

You’ll have to pardon my cynicism. But I call bullshit. You don’t give a damn about my health. You just get a voyeuristic thrill from watching an elite athlete fall from grace–all the better if you get to exercise a little moral righteousness in the process. And it’s hypocritical righteousness at that, given that 40 percent of you have tried pot at least once in your lives.

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Until then, I for one will have none of it. I smoked pot. I liked it. I’ll probably do it again. I refuse to apologize for it, because by apologizing I help perpetuate this stupid lie, this idea that what someone puts into his own body on his own time is any of the government’s damned business. Or any of yours. I’m not going to bend over and allow myself to be propaganda for this wasteful, ridiculous, immoral war.

Go ahead and tear me down if you like. But let’s see you rationalize in your next lame ONDCP commercial how the greatest motherfucking swimmer the world has ever seen…is also a proud pot smoker.

Yours,

Michael Phelps

I always wonder what a space death would be like every time they jettison someone out the airlock on Battlestar Galactica. Dramatic and painful perhaps, similar to drowning…but just imagine the view. I’ve never thought of asphyxiation as an acceptable dramatic death for myself, but soaring through space may be an exception.

At most, an astronaut without a suit would last about 15 seconds before losing conciousness from lack of oxygen. (That’s how long it would take the body to use up the oxygen left in the blood.) Of course, on Earth, you could hold your breath for several minutes without passing out. But that’s not going to help in a vacuum. In fact, attempting to hold your breath is a sure way to a quick death.

Last week I watched Battlestar Galactica on my computer, full screen, 10 hours before it aired on the sci-fi channel. There were 3 or 4 Intel commercials that were really short. I think networks are starting to get the picture. TV is going away, like CDs are, and like radio is, like all traditional media is.. But then again nothing is going away, fools, it’s resurfacing in new environments, with updated, perhaps tighter business models. If a band like Vampire Weekend can get big overnight because some pretentious website says they are the new “IT” band, well, you can hardly blame the internet pirates for ruining the world. The media is the message, the message is free, but the resulting buzz is what people will make money off.

Going but not gone. Tonight I thought I’d kick back and watch BSG on Hulu, which has been putting up the episodes, but someone at corporate sci-fi gave millions of sci-fi nerds blue balls and decided not to let them post it. The Gods giveth, the Gods taketh away.

Words of wisdom, no doubt:

Or are they? Here’s a rebuttal from my favorite anger movie of all time, Falling Down:

I think blowing shit up wins.

Long, somewhat overdone, philosophical analysis of the cult of Rambo. I remember reading the book First Blood as a young boy scout, before seeing the movie, and really liking it. Had no idea back then that this book was originally published in 1972. Rambo was the coolest male survivalist role model for young boys with corporate dads. He’s a good loner that minds his own business…but if you fuck with him, whoa boy. Come to think of it, Stallone really does have a knack for playing the downtrodden loner. And I can’t wait to see the new Rambo movie, honestly.

Which of those two Rambos prevailed? When the Cold War ended, Sylvester Stallone’s movies lost their hold on the culture and decayed into ’80s kitsch. But that distrust of the government didn’t disappear; if anything, it intensified and crossed what used to be sharp ideological lines. (In the early ’90s, it wasn’t that unusual to hear left-wing radicals pondering the possibility of a POW coverup—or right-wing radicals touting the powers of hemp.) Since 2001, the balance has tipped back and forth. When the wounds of 9/11 were fresh, the outrage of the heartland populists turned outwards again; since then, the failures of the Iraqi occupation have driven many of them back to an anti-government stance.

I bring you…from the dead…a BBC documentary on Nietzsche. Haven’t seen it all the way through, but I love when Will Self describes Nietzsche as the first “punk” philosopher.