I have drafts of four things I want to sit down and write about, but when I am actually at my computer I don’t feel like doing it. Now I have to sleep. I had a pretty fun weekend.

blame it on the black star

and if you get too far inside…

I had to sit through an awful video four times today. I subbed for a health class and I had to put on an anti-smoking video each period. It was such propaganda. I’m not in favor of smoking or anything, but I hate demagogues.

The bulk of the video was this self-righteous Australian doctor. It starts out with him getting arrested for “maliciously injuring private property,” in his own words. He was defacing a cigarette advertisement on a billboard.

The video was full of manipulated statistics that were used in just the same way to influence people as the tobacco advertisements he was decrying. It was also full of quite a bit of vitriolic opinion such as, “Let’s face it, the tobacco industry is full of bad guys.”

About his repeated arrests, he claims that judges were lenient on him because they told him that they were sympathetic to anyone trying to remedy the situation. His solution to making people quit smoking was to “push our governments to ban all forms of tobacco promotion.”

Earlier in the video he called smoking “a lifestyle illness” and while he was describing these “lifestyle illnesses” images flashed of people ingesting alcohol and drugs, but also soda and french fries. This can only go to show that people of his ilk do not trust anyone to know what is best for them.

I can get past the phony numbers and the name-calling, because that happens every day in every industry, but when he openly admits to destruction of private property, manipulating the courts, and encouraging nanny-state government policies, I think he needs to be called on it. The video even went so far as to promote purposefully killing another person. There was a little song at the end which included the lyrics, “If I ever meet the guy that invented this here cigarette, I’ll murder that son of a gun.”

I’m so happy schools teach this stuff.

this machine will not communicate

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no swimming, originally uploaded by mrwilloby.

I finished a book today and I promised Jessica that I’d write up a little review. I made that little page of books that I’ve been reading and she complained that I didn’t say anything about them. So I will.

In other happenings, I found a solution to my problems with my new burner. I love free software. Check out burnatonce, a GUI for the open source cdrdao, it works like a charm.

“What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?”
“You ask a glass of water.”

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late afternoon, originally uploaded by mrwilloby.

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late afternoon, originally uploaded by mrwilloby.

gooster, by request