1. Dude, we're so bad-ass sneaking into a documentary film.
2. I don't even know why I'm here. I already voted for Fantasia.
3. Well if you're already going to the gun check, thanks. Be careful it's loaded.
4. Why does this Moore fellow criticize our poor president? It's not his fault he's a sorry excuse for leader and had to lie to get us into Iraq but we're at war damn it!
5. I heard Bush makes a cameo.

Tomorrow's NYT will feature a full page ad taken out by Adbusters Magazine, which raised the $60,000, and will feature the Corporate Flag plus a message they hope acts as a catalyst from now until the November elections.

Update: here's the ad

Don't forget to vote tomorrow, or is that today... I know, five years and still have a hard time with that time difference thing. Participatory democracy is "in" say experts as well as being seen at elementary school gymnasiums and church basements across the nation.

Three weeks ago I read that the new Beastie Boys album ttfb was being released in Japan two weeks before the US. I've only bought a handful of new CD's in Japan but when something like this comes along I usually make an exception.

On the way home that day I made a special trip but stopped short when I saw the outragious price tag of 2,600 yen. To compound things the disc is copy protected, so listening on my iPod would be impossible. Okay maybe not impossible, there're always ways around copy protection but is it really worth the effort to play my music and put it onto my music player? With the so-called decline in music sales you would think the industry would welcome customers and not threating them with FBI stickers. And now the register is reporting that the CD installs a virus to computers by silently installing files that prohibit coping. The Beastie Boys were well known for having extensive creative control over their work in the past so I wonder what happened during their six year hiatus.

"The stories about journalists being murdered, tortured and arrested aren't true. Governments that curb press freedom are doing it for the good of their people. Above all, don't believe Reporters Without Borders when it says 31 journalists have been killed this year around the world and that 130 are in prison."

Photo: Jacob Langvad

New campaign from Reporters without Borders. Not to be confused with Doctors without Borders. RWB recently published a photo book by Dominique Issermann to help raise money to free imprisoned journalists.

Shaving cream, rice, dried yellowy substance from lip to bottom of chin, possibly mustard. Whiskey. Although not visible you could sure smell it, possibly Johnny Walker. Toothpaste, purple hair dye, in hair. This is a common one among women in the 55-70 year old demographic. Possibly on purpose. Umm, hair gel?

This election season the US is no different from any other. And with only two real choices for Americans it's like deciding between Coke and Pepsi. Sure, accept the Coke (that did Coke) is laced with arsenic and will fucking KILL you.

Too bad there's no juice on the menu. That's all, thanks for your time.

Saturday, Masako and I, leaving Baba to baby-sit, headed to the cinema to see the latest Hollywood SFX film. We decided to take the SUV as it was pretty hot outside and having to walk to the train station just seemed well, troublesome. Even if we got stuck in traffic we could just crank the A/C anyway.

Arriving at the theater we quickly confirmed our seating at the automatic ticket kiosk, ironically flanked by three theater staff. Two machines, three staff.

No trip to the cinema would be complete with out a visit to the snack bar. I went for the Big Freeze special set. That's a Large popcorn with double golden topping, Large "Brain Freeze" slush drink in limited edition collectors cup. The poster said something about collecting all five cups, and when I do I'll be happy as the boy in the poster seemed to be. Masako got the same.

I give the film two enthusiastic thumbs up. Lots of thrills and spills, including my 1.8L beverage during that timber wolf scene! *chuckle* no biggie, there's always more where that came from right.

If you haven't guessed already the film was The Day After Tomorrow and I did bring away a few important lessons. One, Will Smith is going to be in a really cool robot film sometime soon that will challenge the way we think about um, robots. And second, that kid from Harry Potter is no longer a kid. Those must have been some long filming days as Harry seemed to be sporting a five O'clock shadow in some scenes. Oh and the Vice President in the film reminded me of no one in particular. Especially no one in the current Bush administration that is.

Disclaimer: For those readers in which English is not their first language or for those without a sense of humor please know the following;

We don't own a car and haven't for the past five years. We take the train everywhere. Mostly everything else you can dismiss as poorly crafted sarcasm except for the ticket kiosk thing. That was just plain weird.

I received the most unexpected Father's day gift on Sunday, the sound of the word "Papa" for the first time. Frankie has been calling everything Dada for the past month or so making me wonder who this "Dada" character really is, sparking just a little jealousy. See I've never gone by Dad, Daddy or Dada so this mystery Dada is just that, a mystery. Now I understand why most fathers go by Dada as it's just easier for children to pronounce. Sunday, after Frankie's bath, she looked up at me with lips pushed together and with lots of visible effort spit out Pa-pa, Pa-pa. Those two syllables were a great gift to wrap up the weekend with my daughter.

Andrew Rasiej has put NYC's Giants Stadium on hold for September 1. Which is also the same day as the Republican National Convention in New York City, in hopes that Bruce Springsteen, an outspoken critic of Bush and the war will preform in VoteAid: "Concert for Change".

help draft Bruce.

via Joi Ito

I'm not sure how it happened but a co-worker and I got talking about speed eating contests and how blatantly discussing they are, and not for the obvious reasons you may think. We were referring to an article in CNN today on the Japanese champion speed-eater Takeru "The Tsunami" Kobayashi. This guy's face shows up on TV screens across Japan for approximately 10 seconds every year after he wins the forth of July hot dog eating contest in Coney Island NY. Most Japanese that I have talked to have an idea who he is and dismiss it as a stupid stunt.

I think we can all agree on the pointlessness, not to mention heath risks, of speed-eating contests but have we ever thought about the message this sends to the 798 million people in the developing world that are undernourished. Or what about the 153 million children under 5 in the developing world that are underweight or the 11 million children younger than 5 that die every year, more than half from hunger-related causes.

Food is a basic necessity for human life, yet we glorify the waste of it while millions die every year from a lack of it. I mean, do we glorify the waste and burning of oil? A commodity that tens of thousands have died for in the past year. Wait, yes we do. It's called NASCAR, INDY, Formula One and so on...

So this Forth of July when your watching that "amusingly feel-good" 10 second segment on your local news channel with those big burly men downing tube steaks in record time, just stop and think to yourself. What impression would this have on a poor undernourished child in India if he happen to catch a glimpse of this "amusingly feel-good" segment outside an electronics shop in Mumbia. I don't know about you but I'm guessing he would a little less than happy about it. And maybe a bit vocal too, thought most likely would not have the energy to do so.

No this isn't another one of those "Man I really hate Spam" posts but simply a note for family, friends, acquaintances and the occasional internet stalker that sends me email. I'm getting sick of having to sort through my Junk email folder everyday (oops) so I've decided to heighten the level of spam filtering and automatically delete detected spam or even have it just bounce back to the sender. If I have not replied to a message and either the message has been bounced back to you or you feel it might have been detected as spam simply resend the mail but try to make it well, less spammy.

For example; If you want to tell me about this great herbal alternative to Viagra that you've been using don't call it "viagra" as this usually results in a flag going up. Instead spice it up a bit. You know, call it V-i-A-g-R-a or mix in some numbers or something. Don't be lazy, There are 600,426,974,379,824,381,952 ways to spell viagra people!

If you want to fill me in on a surefire investment you learned about try to refrain from using ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. I can't stress this enough people, it looks like your YELLING AT ME, and that tends to frighten the unsure investor.

Forget about all the whole "cheap online Canadian prescriptions" thing. I'm Canadian and I live in Japan so you�re really wasting your time on me. And puh-leeze just let me say the term "online" is so 1990's and makes you look a little desperate for adjectives.

That's all I can think of right now. So know this, just because I don't reply or your message is bounced doesn't mean I don't love you.

The United States gained yet another critic of its worldwide military empire today. Sources from home say that my 11 month old daughter Frankie reportedly pointed outside and "made a big frown" directed at a US military jet flying loudly directly overhead. She was not available for comment, mainly because she can't speak, at least not English or any other recognizable form of human dialect. But our correspondent on the ground said quote, "the finger pointing and frown spoke for it self."

We're really enjoying our little powerbook and after ripping almost every CD in our my music collection we've been using it as our stereo as well. For as small as the 12" powerbook's speakers are they produce some nice sounds but still don't compare to our home stereo. We pondered the idea of retiring our 15 year old stereo system and buying some USB or Firewire speakers for the notebook in turn reclaiming a large chunk of real estate beside the TV. But that would introduce the problem of more cables attached to the notebook making it, um, not so portable anymore.

Well, this changes everything.

With most of the 24 hour news cycle devoted to the 60th anniversary of D-Day, and also the death of former US president Ronald Reagan this weekend a newly released USA TODAY/ CNN/Gallup Poll shows that 76% of Americans feel that Ronald Reagan was personally involved and was a deciding factor in the June 6th 1944 invasion of France.

When asked for comment Vice President Dick Cheney was quoted as saying,


(file under satire)

If you happen to be watching CNN's International Correspondence last week you might have heard this interesting exchange between media critic A.A. Gill and climate campaigner for Greenpeace Rob Gueterbock regarding the seriousness of the issues brought up in the new Global Warming disaster film "The Day after Tomorrow".

With all the time I've spent over the last 4 years following American politics I've really lost touch with the issues in my country of citizenship, Canada. A general election has been called for June 28, so this morning I took a political quiz that asked questions on a range of issues from Heath Care to Missile Defense to Marijuana Decriminalization.

and these are my potential choices according to the quiz;

Layton Leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada (score = 100)

Gilles Duceppe Leader of the Bloc Quebecois (score = 86)

Paul Martin Leader of Liberal Party of Canada, Prime Minister of Canada (score= 45)

Stephen Harper Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada (score = 14)

There's only one problem. The quiz totally omitted the party I am somewhat leaning towards. The Green Party of Canada. This year the Greens have 300 confirmed candidates, and have plans to become only the fourth party in Canadian history to run a full slate of 308 candidates, and currently polling at 6% nationally.

Green Party leader Jim Harris has also been blocked from attending the upcoming political debate despite the widespread support the Greens are getting from all over the country, and especially in British Columbia where the party is polling at 14%.

The next Sundown Downtempo Session, this coming Sunday (June 6), will feature the photography of fellow photoblogger Kevin Cameron.

If you don't want to get lost in the rain trying to find the venue like me make sure to check the map for antena, or if you like getting lost in the rain feel free to use my rushed napkin-map.

David Crosby interviewed by PBS for the Frontline documentary "The Way the Music Died". Watch the entire program online. -link via kottke.org