THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JARVIS SLACKS

I can never figure out why everyone else in the world is ready, willing, and way more than able to protest stuff, but us Americans don’t.  I think because we are fat, lazy, and stupid.  But I could be wrong.  Over in Iceland, yes, Iceland, people tried to free a guy who hung a flag over his grocery store.  Remember when we use to fight for stuff over here?  Yeah, me neither.

Don't worry. Mexico is still a great vacation spot. Really.

So, I hear Mexico is having a civil war right now.  They aren’t using the words “civil” or “war”, but when people who live in a country start attacking other people that are in the same country, it sure as hell sounds like a civil war to me.  From the Washington Post:

The attacks against journalists, which run from threats hissed on their cellphones to grenades lobbed into their newsrooms, form a new front in the larger war the drug cartels are waging against Mexico’s social and government institutions. The resulting damage is undermining Mexican civil society as the rich, powerful cartels compete for control of smuggling routes into the United States, which is consuming all the cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana the cartels can deliver.

So the war of drugs isn’t over yet?  Really?  Then why do I sleep with this huge break of cocaine under my bed?  Oh, right. Its not that type of war.  All right, got it.

They might be gross, but hey! They are saving the environment.

People in Spain have the right idea.  They know that dead people can’t complain, and if they do complain, it really doesn’t matter all that much.  From Wired:

Flat, open and sun-drenched land is so scarce in Santa Coloma that the graveyard was just about the only viable spot to move ahead with its solar energy program. The power the 462 panels produces – equivalent to the yearly use by 60 homes – flows into the local energy grid for normal consumption and is one community’s odd nod to the fight against global warming. “The best tribute we can pay to our ancestors, whatever your religion may be, is to generate clean energy for new generations. That is our leitmotif,” said Esteve Serret, director Conste-Live Energy, a Spanish company that runs the cemetery in Santa Coloma and also works in renewable energy.

It’s stuff like this that will either save our planet or cause the Zombie Rebellion.  I’m fine with either of those.

"What are we waiting for? Let's get deeper into debt! Come on!"

Unless you’ve been living under the biggest rock in the world, then you might know that the economy is in the crapper.  The toilet.  Like, all up in the toilet.  And we ain’t flushing it.  That thing is clogged up, junked up.  We keep hitting it with a plunger and that crap is not going down.  Can I end this metaphor?  President-Elect Obama spoke about this today.  I love the guy, and I can’t wait until he gets into office.  But, on the real?  On the real-real?  This mess has gotten me worried.  What makes me even more worried?  Black Friday.  This is the day after Thanksgiving, where people all over America usually goes out and buys everything that isn’t tied down.  I say “usually” because everyone is either broke, scared of being broke, or know that they should be scared of being broke and don’t want to be broke.  Black Friday is important, because it moves money around.  All sorts of money to all the places that need it.  There are two ways we can go with this.

1. People are going to shop this Friday:  People might have been saving their money up, waiting for the perfect time to strike.  These people know that all the retail stores will be begging for our dollars, and will be tossing down some sick-ass deals.  These people will buy whole shopping carts without even looking at what is in it.  You know what is in those shopping carts?  Joe vs. the Volcano DVDS.  Love that movie.

2. No one is going to shop this Friday:  People are broke, and sort of think that buying food and keeping the heat on is more important than buying crap for lil Billy.  If people don’t spend money this Friday, there will be a serious problem.  Money has to move around.  If it doesn’t, people lose jobs.  Alot of jobs, like what is happening now.  However, we can’t be blamed for saving money, when our jobs aren’t paying us anything because they know we have no place to go.

I’m not sure exactly what is going to happen this Friday.  But I’ve been stocking on on beans, lovely beans, just in case.  Let’s open this up for discussion.  Are you shopping this Black Friday?

I mean, if the World has to end, I want it to end with me fighting Robots.

So, it looks like we are well on our way of either creating Skynet, the Matrix robots, or that horrible iRobot nightmare (which is Kenneth Price’s favorite movie, by the way).  Just look what is happening over at IBM!

Part of a field called “cognitive computing”, the research will bring together neurobiologists, computer and materials scientists and psychologists. As a first step in its research the project has been granted $4.9m (£3.27m) from US defence agency Darpa. The resulting technology could be used for large-scale data analysis, decision making or even image recognition.  “The mind has an amazing ability to integrate ambiguous information across the senses, and it can effortlessly create the categories of time, space, object, and interrelationship from the sensory data,” says Dharmendra Modha, the IBM scientist who is heading the collaboration.

I’m going to have my nuke-bunker in the DC suburbs.  It is close by, and oh-so roomy.