Kiss my megatruck, dude

When the world is in perfect, ultra-macho harmony, you get a 9-foot-tall, 14,500-pound SUV

You just gotta love the fact that some semitruck company somewhere called International Truck and Engine Corp. is now coming out with what they claim is the world’s largest production pickup, called the CXT, all 9 feet high and 8 feet wide, a whopping 21 feet long

The PR for the truck pretends it’s for commercial big-hauling use, then hypes the luxurious interior and how studly you’ll look driving it. And it’s only $115,000! Uh huh, you bet this pricey toy will be used for actual hauling of stuff on gnarly off road sites where it’ll get banged up. It’s just more in the line of absurd vehicles that pretend to be used for serious work but never are, like the H2 and Cadillac Escalade pickupsI see here in LA that appear to have never been driven through a mud puddle, much less off road.

And here is LA, where we already have such wretched excesses as the stretch Hummer, you know some fool will just have to make this behemoth 42 feet long.

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Cat Stevens treated like a terrorist by US government

The paranoia of the Bush administration has reached Nixon proportions with singer Cat Stevens being treated like a terrorist and denied entry into the USA.

He is on the government no-fly list and was prevented from entering the country for reasons of “national security.”

In the 70s, Stevens changed his name To Yusuf Islam. He has been an outspoken opponent to the war in Iraq and last year re-recorded his 70s hit ‘Peace Train’ as a demonstration against the war.

First they came for the Muslims
And I did nothing because I was not a Muslim

Then they came for…

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A9 is watching you

The interesting thing about <Amazon’s new search engine> A9 is that you can search for references to yourself or anyone else in what appears to many or most of the books Amazon stocks. It should be obvious that Amazon not only has a record of every book you have ever bought from them, but every book you have ever looked at on their site. 

That is the digital equivalent of a bookstore recording every book you glance at one their shelves and has enormous privacy implications, especially given Amazon’s notice of a year or so ago that their databases are a business asset that could be sold with the business or a part of it. 

If anyone is concerned about the provisions of the Patriot Act requiring libraries to report what is borrowed by whom, think of what could be gleaned from Amazon’s records. Simply looking at the wrong book for an instant could come back to haunt you with Mr. Aschroft and Company.

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Ramones

This is the original lineup of the Ramones, circa ‘75-76. Now just Tommy remains. Joey and Johnny died of cancer, Dee Dee went down from too many good times. (l. to r. Tommy, Dee Dee, Joey, Johnny)

Photo by Norman Seeff. I did database work for him years ago and swapped for photos. I haven’t seen this photo in anything he’s released, so here it is.

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