GET RIGHT WITH GOD

According to MSNBC an Israeli rabbi has written a prayer for devout Jews to overcome their guilt after visiting a porn site on the internet. The rabbi recommends recitation of the prayer when logging on -- or having it flash up on the screen -- so they've got some coverage if they enter a porn site accidentally or even intentionally. The prayer: “Please God, help me cleanse the computer of viruses and evil photographs which disturb and ruin my work... so that I shall be able to cleanse myself of sin.” I ask myself, would it work for the contents and godless ideas of this weblog?

HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM

Yesterday I was complaining how no one seemed to be posting any comments even though the numbers of incoming hits were starting to look quite healthy. Then natalien informed me that she had attempted to cheer me up by posting a comment only to be confronted by a formidable column of error messages. The same was also confirmed by jfabiani (who decided the comment tech obviously hated him.) Thus it seems that we don’t have the technology, or, to be more precise, the technology we do have needs fixing. Life is always a work in progress. Right now I’m clueless, but help is on the way. (Thank you, Rich.) In the meantime, if you have something to say, you can always email me at byron4d@aol.com.

BUT ANOTHER PROBLEM SOLVED

Since Jan 8, I’ve wondering about Godzilla’s 50th birthday. Finally I asked Yukiko in Tokyo and her response was succinct and immediate. “Godzilla's birthday is an easy question to answer. It's 3rd November, 1954, when they released the first film. On 3/11* every year, various events are organized in Japan to celebrate his birthday.” So we have a lot of time to plan a huge, scaley, radioactive-breathing, building-eating, motherfucker of a wingding, friends and neighbors.

(* That’s 11/3 to you Americans. Right around the presidential election. Which brings us super-neatly to...)

FROM THE EMAIL

From Charles Lewis (The Buying of the President 2004) via Greg Palast

Our electoral process is broken, with about half or more of America's eligible voters not voting in every federal election cycle. After the Florida recount debacle, in which the likes of Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe lectured us on how to conduct democratic elections, we still do not have a single, standardized system of voting throughout the nation. The campaign process has become so expensive that it limits the talent pool available today to only millionaires or those willing and able to raise substantial sums of cash from wealthy and powerful interests with business before the government. Forty members of the current U.S. Senate are millionaires; less than one percent of the American people are millionaires. And big money mixed with irregular and high-tech redistricting help explain why the incumbent reelection rate in the House of Representatives the past three elections has been more than 98 percent. These are the kind of numbers we expect to see in countries like North Korea or China, not the United States.