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our long national nightmare

February 06, 2006

 

news that doesn't make you feel like punching someone

An astonishing mist-shrouded "lost world" of previously unknown and rare animals and plants high in the mountain rainforests of New Guinea has been uncovered by an international team of scientists. "...The most remarkable find was of a creature called Berlepsch's six-wired bird of paradise, named after the six spines on the top of its head, and thought "lost" to science. It had been previously identified only from the feathers of dead birds."...
Posted by xtop at 11:48 PM | Comments (3)
 


July 05, 2005

 

Happy Birthday, Little Man!

Hey everybody, it's July 5th! And while we all know that July 4th is just another day that Thomas Jefferson used to have sex with his slaves, July 5th marks a much more important- if less somber- day in our great national history! It was on this day- a whole 30 years ago!!!- that the little man known here as x-top was born of a jackal. Wish the little European man a...
Posted by Jeff Whiteout at 09:09 AM | Comments (1)
 


June 14, 2005

 

how deep throat fooled the FBI

The recent dramatic revelation about W. Mark Felt--the former top FBI man who has confessed to being Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's secret source during the Watergate scandal — has yielded what seems to be the final chapter in the Deep Throat saga, and thus the conclusion to a three-decade-long whodunit rich in detail, psychology and irony. But Felt's role as the most famous anonymous source in US history was even more...
Posted by xtop at 08:32 AM | Comments (0)
 


April 01, 2005

 

the shrieking journalism of marvin zindler

Eighteen months after the Chicken Ranch closed, I went to La Grange to show that the business economy didn't suffer from the closing of the Chicken Ranch. But I never got to do that story. The sheriff broke my rib, ripped the film out of the camera, exposed it to the sun, but didn't know to destroy the audio track. "Sheriff! Sheriff! Sheriff!" Marvin could be heard yelling on the partially...
Posted by xtop at 01:09 AM | Comments (1)
 


March 31, 2005

   


March 18, 2005

 

prayerfully

"The family is prayerfully excited about their daughter going before the United States Congress for the whole world to see how alive she is." What the fuck? Prayerfully? Did he just say prayerfully? What the fuck is prayerfully? Can someone be described as prayerfully bored or prayerfully aroused? Is this what's gonna happen now that the jesus freaks control the white house? New words, new additions to the crazy goddamn born-again lexicon...
Posted by xtop at 12:23 PM | Comments (9)
 


January 26, 2005

   


November 02, 2004

 

obligatory post about election day

I never wake up before 8am these days, mostly because I never go to bed before 2am. A problem, to be sure, since I'm supposed to clock in at 8:30 and not fall asleep at my desk, two problems I'm still struggling to overcome. This morning, with prompting from only one of my three alarm clocks (a triangulation of alarms, all set to different times, in a domino pattern is about the...
Posted by xtop at 12:55 PM | Comments (5)
 


October 01, 2004

 

fact checking the debate

Full Disclosure: Bush is a pigfucking idiot who I giddily interpreted as getting stomped last night and I'm voting for John Kerry, who handled himself far better than anyone suspected. So look out for the slant on my part. But Annenberg's factcheck.org is a pretty great resource for sussing out truth from fiction on both candidates' parts without any ostensible bias. In the first of three scheduled debates between Bush and Kerry...
Posted by xtop at 10:32 AM | Comments (0)
 


August 17, 2004

 

someone else's tent

COVENTRY, Vt. — An autopsy is scheduled for a concertgoer found dead at this weekend's Phish festival in Coventry. Police say the person appears to be a man in his early 20s, but that he wasn't carrying any identification. They say he wandered into someone else's tent and died. insert your own dirty, sponging hippie joke here...
Posted by xtop at 10:36 AM | Comments (0)
 


July 30, 2004

 

DNC Polaroids

word to your mother, timmy...
Posted by xtop at 01:22 PM | Comments (0)
 


July 21, 2004

 

nixon vs. the world

yes! NIXON: I have the greatest affection for them [blacks], but I know they're not going to make it for 500 years. They aren't. You know it, too. The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like. EHRLICHMAN:...
Posted by xtop at 01:11 PM | Comments (2)
 


July 15, 2004

 

slumber party

from here: If the trend continues, congressmen will have to stay up mighty late - or else awaken before the crack of dawn - to cast votes in the waning months of the 108th Congress. Sleepy-eyed Democrats aren't amused by the Republican-led "wee-hour" voting, including a groggy Ohio Rep. Sherrod Brown, who calls the previous five days "a bad week in Washington." "Never before when the Democrats were in control, or when...
Posted by xtop at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)
 


June 25, 2004

 

i love the world

TORONTO (Reuters) - A Canadian man, driving a car packed with weapons and ammunition, was intent on killing as many people as possible in a Toronto neighborhood but gave up the plan at the last minute when he encountered a friendly dog, police said on Thursday. The middle-aged man, who police said was mentally disturbed, had planned to carry out the shooting spree on Wednesday to ensure he would be put in...
Posted by xtop at 01:56 PM | Comments (0)
 


June 21, 2004

 

regrets to the apologists

My condolences to the staff and management of The Post. I had no idea you felt so deeply about Ronald Reagan. I was a reporter and editor at The Post during the launch of Reagan's "revolution," and we had a somewhat different take on his presidency then. Reagan nurtured the strong and punished the weak. He fostered the great regressive shift in economic rewards that continues to this day, while ignoring a...
Posted by xtop at 06:43 PM | Comments (2)
 


June 08, 2004

 

I HATE YOU, SMARTY JONES

it's actually very sweet. really. "After about two hours of non-stop Costas I was ready to attack the television set with a baseball bat. If Bob Costas is talking about a mountain, you can pretty much assume that in real life that mountain is just a molehill, and the man could not stop shoving his head up that horse’s ass. For hours all I heard about was Smarty Jones! Smarty Jones! Smarty...
Posted by xtop at 02:21 PM | Comments (1)
 


 

nixon velocity

President George W. Bush’s increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader’s state of mind. In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as “enemies of the state.” Worried White House aides paint...
Posted by xtop at 12:36 PM | Comments (0)
 


May 18, 2004

 

lost friend

George Willig's May 26, 1977, ascent of the south tower of the World Trade Center has been the great achievement of his life, so his reaction to the tower's crumbling, which he watched on television while vacationing in China, comes as some surprise. "My first impulse was, 'I wish I'd never climbed it,'" says Willig, 52. "I had this sudden thought that what I did called attention to the building and humanized...
Posted by xtop at 04:29 PM | Comments (0)
 


 

manufactured terrorism

Roughly two months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, a group of high-level officials met in Macedonia's Interior Ministry to determine how their country could participate in the U.S.-led war on terror. Instead of offering troops to support American soldiers fighting in Afghanistan, as other countries in the region had done, senior officials and police commanders conceived a plan to "expose" a terrorist plot against Western interests...
Posted by xtop at 10:22 AM | Comments (0)
 


April 09, 2004

 

from the tree

"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's gonna happen? It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" — George W. Bush's mother Barbara on ABC/Good Morning America, March 18, 2003...
Posted by xtop at 01:56 AM | Comments (0)
 


 

apocalypse now

Yitzhaq Hayutman holds the key to peace on Earth - it's on a floppy disk in his pants pocket. With his full white beard, bald pate, and well-pressed khakis, the 61-year-old Israeli cybernetics expert and tech investor looks like Moses done over for a Banana Republic ad. Right now, he's showing me how he wants to position an airborne hologram over the Dome of the Rock, a gold-capped shrine that's one of...
Posted by xtop at 01:52 AM | Comments (0)
 


March 25, 2004

 

btk returns

A letter The Wichita Eagle received Friday suggests that the BTK strangler was responsible for the Sept. 16, 1986, strangulation death of Vicki Wegerle, who was found dead in her home at 2404 W. 13th St. The crime was never solved. The letter contained a single sheet of paper with a photocopy of Wegerle's driver's license and three pictures that apparently were taken of her body. Each picture shows the victim...
Posted by xtop at 01:15 AM | Comments (3)
 


March 24, 2004

 

the armageddon plan

One of the questions studied in these exercises was what concrete steps a team might take to establish its credibility. What might be done to demonstrate to the American public, to U.S. allies, and to the Soviet leadership that "President" John Block or "President" Malcolm Baldrige was now running the country, and that he should be treated as the legitimate leader of the United States? One option was to have the new...
Posted by xtop at 01:04 AM | Comments (0)
 


March 21, 2004

 

the true fate of percy fawcett

It is an unsolved riddle which has inspired explorers and writers for nearly 80 years. Yet now, after a decade of research, one British writer and director has shed unexpected light on the murky fate of Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett and those who followed him deep into the Brazilian jungle. It has long been assumed that the missing colonel, a celebrated explorer who knew the popular adventure writers Rider Haggard and Arthur...
Posted by xtop at 10:43 PM | Comments (1)
 


March 18, 2004

 

extinction no. 6

A milestone study of British birds, butterflies and wild flowers has revealed the strongest evidence yet that we are on the verge of a mass extinction of global wildlife - the sixth mass extinction in the history of life on Earth....
Posted by xtop at 08:46 PM | Comments (0)
 


March 10, 2004

 

it's on

Culture War Go: "I’m going to reveal information to you that is going to be very disturbing. So disturbing that I woke up at 3 o’clock in the morning. I couldn’t sleep, because I am preparing myself to become Jesus himself. A sacrificial lamb. My friends who listen to this show on a daily basis, some of you for 20 odd years – and they have been odd – I’m telling you,...
Posted by xtop at 11:30 PM | Comments (1)
 


March 04, 2004

 

molasses strikes again

The interesting things to note here are 1) once again 21 people were killed, just like in Boston, setting a precise number of human lives that molasses requires before being sated and 2) these people actually recreate it every year, in the fashion of the running of the bulls except, y'know, they're running from corn syrup. Good times. At approximately 2 p.m. on the afternoon of December 11, 1932, a worker at...
Posted by xtop at 02:42 PM | Comments (4)
 


 

molasses

Along with the coffee smell was another, equally pervading. One could discern throughout much of downtown Boston, and especially around the North End, the unmistakable aroma of molasses. As a boy, I never questioned that odor, so strong on hot days, so far-reaching when the wind came out of the east. It was simply part of Boston, along with the swan boats in the Public Gardens and the tough kids swimming in...
Posted by xtop at 01:01 PM | Comments (1)
 


March 02, 2004

 

barbecue nations

And there, indeed, was Richard Butler, who holds the distinction of being the oldest active white power leader in the country at 85. Butler, a former aeronautical engineer during World War II turned founder of Aryan Nations, tottered into Aryanfest led by one elbow. Trailing behind him was a phalanx of imposing Volksfront security guards. Butler's attendants guided the octogenarian into a folding chair to the left of the stage and covered...
Posted by xtop at 10:10 PM
 


February 23, 2004

 

this about sums up my monday

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world. The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure...
Posted by xtop at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)
 


January 23, 2004

 

england's finest citizen

Her favourite sayings were "F*** Hitler" and "F*** the Nazis". And even today, 39 years after the great man's death, she can still be coaxed into repeating them with that unmistakable Churchillian inflection. Many an admiral or peer of the realm was shocked by the tirade from the bird's cage during crisis meetings with the PM. But it always brought a smile to the war leader's face. Churchill bought Charlie —...
Posted by xtop at 11:51 PM
 


December 31, 2003

 

happy

South African police will crack down hard on anybody throwing old fridges from high-rise buildings during the New Year's holiday, they say. Police and soldiers are on patrol in Johannesburg's notorious Hillbrow suburb, famous for the practice. Throwing heavy objects from balconies and firing guns have become something of a bad "New Year's institution," said police Inspector Kriben Naidoo. It is not clear why Hillbrow residents have taken to seeing in the...
Posted by xtop at 07:50 PM | Comments (2)
 


December 15, 2003

 

dear patience

A Natick man accused of beating his female roommate with a hammer last month has sent a Christmas card to her dog in which he claims to be the devil. Kathleen Powers, 49, formerly of 74 South Ave., said the card, sent by Michael Stuart, 49, disturbed her so much she had nightmares. "What's happening in my head now -- I'm having dreams, nightmares," said Powers. "I'm having the nightmares, it's bees...
Posted by xtop at 10:03 PM
 


December 10, 2003

 

when the pot calls the kettle

Talking politics with White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman at Camp David in August 1972, Nixon switched the conversation to two Republican governors, Reagan of California and Nelson Rockefeller of New York. Both men unsuccessfully sought the 1968 Republican presidential nomination that Nixon received. "Reagan is not one that wears well," Nixon said. "I know," Haldeman agreed. "On a personal basis, Rockefeller is a pretty nice guy," Nixon said. "Reagan on...
Posted by xtop at 02:52 PM
 


December 05, 2003

 

the malvo diaries

Posted by xtop at 05:16 PM
 


December 02, 2003

 

watch him dance

"Reports that say something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know," Rumsfeld told a press briefing. "We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. "But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know."...
Posted by xtop at 01:51 AM
 


November 29, 2003

 

6 am americana

Authorities said that Patricia Van Lester arrived at Wal-Mart at 3 a.m. for an early sale on a DVD player for her mother. When the store's doors opened at 6 a.m., Van Lester grabbed the DVD player but was quickly overcome by hundreds of shoppers rushing into the store. The woman was knocked to the ground, slammed her head on the ground and suffered at least one seizure, according to Local 6...
Posted by xtop at 02:40 AM | Comments (1)
 


November 21, 2003

 

line the line

Posted by xtop at 11:08 PM
 


November 11, 2003

 

brilliantly crackers

Jurors who on Tuesday acquitted eccentric New York millionaire Robert Durst in the killing of his 71-year-old neighbor, Morris Black, said they had to put aside the defendant's admission he dismembered Black's body and then fled because it was not part of the question they were told to decide. Prosecutions said Durst, who admitted walking around Galveston smoking marijuana and dressed as a woman, wanted to become Morris Black as a way...
Posted by xtop at 06:35 PM
 


November 05, 2003

 

one cold fish

Ridgway had been a suspect as early as 1984, when the boyfriend of victim Marie Malvar reported that he last saw her getting into a pickup truck identified as Ridgway's. But Ridgway told police he did not know Malvar. Later that year, Ridgway contacted the King County sheriff's Green River task force — ostensibly to offer information — and passed a polygraph test....
Posted by xtop at 08:59 PM | Comments (2)
 


October 31, 2003

 

the butcher of kansas city

Just two blocks down from my apartment is the house that Bob built. 4315 Charlotte is where Bob Berdella murdered six young men, dismembered them in the tub and then put their bagged remains out on the curb for Monday morning pick-up. He apparently did all this on weekends, so that he could make trash day and have no remains left around the house. Of course, like all serial killers, he had...
Posted by xtop at 11:16 PM | Comments (17)
 


October 09, 2003

 

it's all happening (again)

American intelligence recruited numerous top Nazis to spy on the Soviets during the Cold War. Many established connections to the Bush family that had helped finance their original rise to power. In 1988 Project Censored, in its top award, noted "how the major mass media ignored, overlooked or undercovered at least ten critical stories reported in America's alternative press that raised serious questions about the Republican candidate, George Bush, dating from his...
Posted by xtop at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)
 


October 03, 2003

 

the falling man

There is, however, one fact that is decisive. Whoever the Falling Man may be, he was wearing a bright-orange shirt under his white top. It is the one inarguable fact that the brute force of the fall reveals. No one can know if the tunic or shirt, open at the back, is being pulled away from him, or if the fall is simply tearing the white fabric to pieces. But anyone...
Posted by xtop at 01:58 AM | Comments (0)
 


October 02, 2003

 

electoral archiving

The focus of other collectors is in cyberspace. Employees of the California Digital Library here in Oakland and the Online Campaign Literature Archive at the University of California at Los Angeles are working to capture snapshots of the election as it plays out online. On Election Day, one of the digital archivists, Scott Martin, will be up early and in bed late - downloading a bevy of Web sites. Mr. Martin, a...
Posted by xtop at 08:48 PM | Comments (0)
 


September 11, 2003

 

america: and how we got that way

new category! bad news! good times! just saving them here until I can get my head clear enough to slog through the bad times of the new usa. Similarly the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into "tomorrow's dominant force" is likely to be a long one in the absence of "some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor". The 9/11 attacks...
Posted by xtop at 12:57 PM | Comments (0)
 


an empty telephone Products


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