Fortunately for me, I'm not *eating* crow, I just want to whoop it up a little bit. The reason for me breaking this long silence is because I swam, biked, and ran my first Half Ironman distance triathlon yesterday. Woo-hoo! The course was the Half Vineman Triathlon up in sunny Sonoma County. I finished in 6 hours, 11 minutes and 48 seconds, meaning I met my goals of both finishing and finishing in under six and a half hours.

For context: this was my second triathlon ever, my first being the 2004 Treasure Island Olympic Distance Triathlon. I was supposed to do another olympic-distance event before the race yesterday, but work got in the way something fierce this year and it has yet to really abate.

A lot happened running up to the race and a lot went through my mind during it. It was a great weekend, all told. Woo-hoo!

Tags: finisher, half-ironman, tired, triathlon
mood: happy

Ratfuckers. The rat bastards finally did it. Drilling in ANWR. Hooray.

Okay, I know there are a bunch of tarot lovers out there, likewise a whole bunch of children of the 80's. This deck is for those of you who are both.

Some selections that I love and think are particularly spot-on:

Annie Lennox as the High Priestess
Grace Jones as the Devil
Ferris Bueller as the Fool
Peter Gabriel as Judgement
Prince as the King of Wands
Anthony Michael Hall as the Page of Cups
Madness and Weird Al also feature as the six and seven of cups
Max Headroom as the eight of Pentacles

I'll admit that I know very little about the Tarot, but in my opinion the above choices were particularly inspired. The fact that Madness made it in was just really fucking cool in and of itself. Not to mention Max Headroom!

mood: bwahahahaa!

Well, you've seen the badgers, and perhaps you've seen the original bananaphone which was the source of an earworm that JUST WON'T QUIT but is not particularly interesting in and of itself.

But now, you can see the Badgers meets Bananaphone Remix! With the earworminess of the Bananaphone and the visual dadaism of the badger phenomenon, you too will be tearing your eyes out and stabbing your ears with pencils!

Oh, and in case you want to know how I feel about the stupid song, click here.

As seen on Monkeyfilter.

music: Bananaphone - Raffi

Old news, just posting this to keep track of where it is:

pictures of Abu Ghraib prison torture

I am extremely grateful for those who marched yesterday. I'm sorry I didn't go myself, and these articles about the DOD's policy on restricting abortions from being performed at military hospitals illustrate exactly how the Christian right have been eroding reproductive rights in this country and why it was so important to march.

Apparently, the DoD's policy is the direct result of a law passed by Congress in 1996 which was recently reaffirmed. Here are the details:

Story from NOW.

The Center for Reproductive Rights has more to say on the ban.

And the DoD is just following orders.

The good news, from the CNN article, is that the Senate has passed a measure to lift the ban, but it's now up to the House and the PotUS to make it law.

A moving synthesis of the recent storylines in Get Fuzzy and Doonesbury and a disturbingly familiar song/poem about the Australian dead and wounded at Gallipoli.

Excellent remix.

Don't mind me, just archiving my overcrowded mozilla tabs:

PC Mag's mp3 player reviews.

Slashdot thread regarding MSoft settlement claims.

Remix Fight - indie artists remixing each other's work.

This was from joedecker: Their beliefs are bonkers, but they are at the heart of power.

Dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori.

Atlantic Monthly article about the "wall" between the FBI and the CIA.

Another Atlantic Monthly article about the 9/11 commission and its effect on dubya's running as a war prez.

I don't remember how I came across this, but David Levinthal has a bunch of interesting work.

Salon article about this Sunday's upcoming Women's March on Washington.

Salon article about how we'll pay for the war.

The folks at The Memory Hole filed a Freedom of Information Act request for photographs of the men and women killed in Iraq arriving home in flag-draped coffins. After initially having the request denied, the ruling was overturned on appeal resulting in the 361 photos you can find on their site.

Of course, there's also the photo from yesterday's Seattle Times article which got the contractor who took the photo fired.

music: Minibosses - MegaMan 2

So the 47th Annual San Francisco Film Festival started this past Thursday and will be continuing for the next two weeks. This is the first year in which I'll be watching more than the occasional celluloid offering!

A good friend and neighbor of mine is a member of the film society, so we were able to get the programme and purchase tickets slightly earlier than the general public. Thus, I now have some fifteen movies to go watch over the next couple of weeks. In fact, I already went to watch one of them last night, about which I will write later.

That being said, I have two tickets to watch some pretty bitchin' movies but which my schedule will not allow. The first is The Newcomers, a stylish Chilean thriller featuring gangsters! The adult film industry! Hot Chilean women! Characters named Silvio and Don Pascual! Midgets on motorcycles! Okay, maybe there aren't any midgets, but there should be. This ticket is for the 9:15 pm showing on Saturday, April 24th.

The second movie is Gate to Heaven. This is a movie that begs to be seen! Please! It blinks its pretty blue eyes at you, wiping away a tear! It beseeches you for your attention with a story about the multinational microcosm of folks who do the actual work in the Frankfurt International Airport. Peter Graves, Leslie Nielsen and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar are in it! Okay, they aren't, but you'll laugh out loud when you see them! And maybe you will when you watch this movie, too! This ticket's for the 8:30 pm show on Sunday, the 18th.

Let me know if you're interested.