Author: Chris Barrus

OK, so I got a gmail.com account. Yay me. Please direct all your spam to quartzcity@gmail.com, if you have one of the other addresses, please keep using that. k thanks bye.

Back in 1983, the singer of the band I was in then spray painted “I’ll Only Be Happy When Reagan Is Dead!” on the wall behind a Pomona doughnut shop. Twenty-one years later, my sentiments really haven’t changed. This list is for him:

1. D.O.A. – “Fucked Up Ronnie”
2. Ramones – “Bonzo Goes To Bitburg”
3. Dead Kennedys – “We’ve Got A Bigger Problem Now”
4. D.R.I. – “Reaganomics”
5. The Crucifucks – “Hinckley Had A Vision”
6. J.F.A. – “Jody Foster’s Army”
7. D.I. – “Reagan Der Fuhrer”
8. The Minutemen – “If Reagan Played Disco”
9. The Damned – “Bad Time For Bonzo”
10. Day Glo Abortions – “Ronald McRaygun”

With special shoutouts to the Bonzo Goes To Washington “We Begin Bombing In Five Minutes” megamix and the video the The Minutemen’s “This Ain’t No Picnic”.

From the “this does not bode well” file.

Test subjects can’t see the invisible beam from the Pentagon’s new, Star Trek-like weapon, but no one has withstood the pain it produces for more than three seconds. People who volunteered to stand in front of the directed energy beam say they felt as if they were on fire. When they stepped aside, the pain disappeared instantly.

The long-range column of millimeter-wave energy is known as the “Active Denial System” for its ability to prevent an aggressor from advancing. Senior military officials, who plan to deliver the device for troop evaluation this fall, say years of testing has produced no sign it will lead to health effects beyond perhaps causing skin to temporarily redden.

Whenever possible, I shop at supermarkets that don’t have membership cards on general principle. The cards are invasive and have little to do with “savings” and are merely a way for supermarkets to charge much higher prices under the misinformed nose of consumers. Even just the name “loyalty program” makes my hair bristle and I get irritated whenever a checker tries to push a card application form onto me. I know I know, the poor checkers are ordered to do it, but still.

Now hotels are the latest industry to take to loyalty programs. So when you’ve just arrived somewhere after a long day of traveling, expect to get an aggressive hard sell.

In the past, properties pretty much limited their sales pitch to pamphlets at the check-in counter, and tended to emphasize the perks of membership, like upgrades and gift baskets. But in recent months, travelers say, they have become more vocal about the benefits of joining – and have begun punishing guests who refuse by putting them in less desirable rooms or saddling them with surcharges.

“If you’re not part of a hotel’s frequent-guest program, you’ll get a brochure pushed in your face when you check in,” said Frank Kwan, a communications director for the Los Angeles County Office of Education in Downey, Calif. “They strongly encourage you to join the program. And if you don’t, you pay for it.”

macnews.net.tc describes my dream laptop:

A notebook. Style: 12″ PowerBook. But smaller. 10″ widescreen display at, say, 1024*600. Display type would be active-matrix greyscale. Yep, greyscale. Those were the only displays one could use under any light-conditions. But they don’t make those any more. So: Transreflective colour TFT. Processor: 500 MHz G3. Or higher, if a more modern processor uses less power, that is. RAM: 256 MB. Harddisk: 4 GB flashdrive, as mentioned above. Optical drive: None. (No need. You’d put the thing in FireWire-TargetMode for synching with your main Mac and could also install the OS etc. like that.) Form factor: About the size of one of those old VAIO picture-books. And battery power for more than eight hours.

Sure, the thing wouldn’t run OS X like a king, but hey: What speed do you need for TextEdit? And it’d still double as an iPod that could also display DivX (erhm, MPEG-4, legally acquired in some or other way, *cough*!) movies. The harddrive, of course, could be replaced by a ‘normal’ notebook harddrive with up to 60 GB. You would sacrifice battery life for space then, of course. But that thing could still last for more than 6 hours. End of wishlist. – Oh, and the other nostalgy part: This could be called “eMate 500”. 😉

Speaking of Godzilla, it’s obvious no surprise that every country needed to get in on the “giant monster crushing city” game – Denmark had Reptilicus crushing Copenhagen way back in 1961, Hong Kong released Thunder Of Gigantic Serpent, and the Thai film industry is about to release Garuda .

Buried in obscurity is Pulgasari, the North Korean monster who eats iron, helps the farmers defeat their imperialist oppressors before turning against them by eating their farm implements. File it as an inadvertent must see along with the Turkish Star Trek.