Go here, and roll over any of the links in the menu. How badass is that?

Great band, by the way.

Exxon Mobil posts largest quarterly profit ever - Earnings - MSNBC.com: "Exxon Mobil Corp. had a quarter for the record books.

"The world’s largest publicly traded oil company said Thursday high oil and natural-gas prices helped its third-quarter profit surge almost 75 percent to $9.92 billion, the largest quarterly profit for a U.S. company ever, and it was the first to ring up more than $100 billion in quarterly sales."

Supply? Demand? Bullshit. The real reason for high gas prices is greed, and I don't know how you can dispute that fact when you read stories like this one.

So here's something scary.

WNBA's Swoopes tells magazine she's gay - Other Sports - MSNBC.com: "Houston Comets forward Sheryl Swoopes is opening up about being a lesbian, telling a magazine that she’s 'tired of having to hide my feelings about the person I care about.'"

OH MY GOD A 6' 7" POWER FORWARD IS A LESBIAN?! MY ENTIRE PERCEPTION OF THE WORLD AROUND ME IS CHANGING!!!!

Disclaimer: I have no idea how tall Sheryl Swoopes is, or what position she plays. Nor do I care.

Bush expected to name Bernanke next Fed chief - After Greenspan - MSNBC.com: "President Bush is poised to name Ben Bernanke, chairman of his Council of Economic Advisers, to succeed Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, NBC News and Reuters reported Monday."

Just wondering.

Avenged Sevenfold - Bat Country
Avenged Sevenfold - Sidewinder (highly enjoyable and surprising acoustic guitar solo)
Trivium - Pull Harder on the Strings of Your Martyr
Killswitch Engage - The End of Heartache (title track)
System of a Down - Question! (even though 94.1 The Zone plays it now)

Any suggestions for some good metal?

Man foils carjacking with a jolt of hot java - Crime & Punishment - MSNBC.com: "The suspect tapped the car window Wednesday morning with a gun and motioned the driver to get out, Chief Deputy Roy Hughes said.

But the driver — who had just bought a cup of hot coffee — slammed the car door into the carjacker’s legs, threw the coffee at his neck and face and wrestled him to the ground, Hughes said."

Mom jailed for throwing her kids into S.F. Bay - Crime & Punishment - MSNBC.com: "A woman accused of dropping her three children to their deaths in the chilly waters of San Francisco Bay was arrested while pushing an empty stroller away from the pier and was jailed Thursday on suspicion of murder."

My mom never followed through on these kinds of threats.

There's something big coming in this city - Hardball with Chris Matthews - MSNBC.com:

"It's serious business.

It all begins with a big fight between the CIA and the White House, especially the vice president's office. Scooter Libby, his chief of staff, is also his WMD expert.

The vice president has made the case for war very effectively on programs like 'Meet the Press,' that we had to go to war with Saddam Hussein because he possessed the potential to make nuclear war against the United States - to somehow deliver a nuclear weapon to this country.

For a lot of people, that was the deal maker for the war. They had a lot of problems invading a third-world country, but they said 'Well, if he has a nuclear program over there that is threatening us, we have to act.'

Well, we got over there, and our troops took that country, and there was no WMD, no nuclear, no nothing, so there is a lot of concern about how we could have gotten into a war based on false pretenses.

All of a sudden, Joe Wilson comes up and starts leaking to the New York Times' Nick Kristoff, 'Wait a minute, they not only don't have any WMD to justify the war, they knew there wasn't going to be any WMD because they knew, based upon my trip over there, that there was no deal to buy uranium by Saddam Hussein in Africa.' That's the big picture here.

What happens (then) is that the president of the United States gets upset, apparently, and wants to know what happened with the WMD, why there isn't any -- the vice president's office had said there are going to be WMD, the CIA was going along with it, even.

So there's a huge problem for the vice president to justify his behavior. Why didn't he pay attention to this trip that had been made to Africa? Why didn't he see that there was no WMD before we went to war, no uranium deal?

That's the heat about this. What did the vice president and his people do, faced with the hot seat that they were sitting on, that they had somehow gotten accused of taking us into war under false pretenses.

That's the environment in which this whole thing may have been hatched. If there was law-breaking, it came out of the vice president and his people's determination to protect themselves against the charge that they led us into a corrupt war, a war based on false pretenses.

That's how hot this thing is.

If there are indictments, they're going to be probably in the vice president's office, they're probably going to come next week and they are going to blow this White House apart.

It's going to be unbelievable.

I think the people watching right now who are voters better start paying attention to this issue. It's not just about whether somebody's name was leaked, it's about whether we went to war under false pretenses or not, whether people knew about that or not, and what they did when they were charged against that kind of offense against the United States.

It's serious business."

For Iraq’s Sunnis, a day of raw emotion - washingtonpost.com Highlights - MSNBC.com: "When the Americans withdraw from Iraq, then we'll agree on a constitution. God willing, we'll scuttle this one."

What more clue do we need? You can't expect people to take their own government seriously when it still looks like we're in charge.

Bird flu reaches fringes of Europe - Bird Flu - MSNBC.com: "A strain of bird flu that can be deadly for humans has spread from Asia to the fringes of Europe and countries should prepare for a potential pandemic, Europe’s health chief said on Thursday."

Not to be Chicken Little here, but this is how these things start. They've been saying for a while that it's just a matter of time, and our leaders have done little or nothing to prepare. I have no idea what happens next, but it probably won't be pretty.

Taken directly from the FEMA web site, and as seen on the Daily Show last night.

If only because it reminds the rest of us that we're much, much smarter than some people. And that feels good.

Jon Stewart came to RIT Saturday night and put on a pretty decent show. I think my expectations were set a bit too high -- the Daily Show is a part of my (daily...) routine, and everything he does on that show is almost impossibly fresh and ingenius. So I guess I was a little let down that he repeated some material I had heard him use on the show and in some standup routines I'd seen before. However, in a surprising twist, I think Steph fell in love with him (SHE CAN'T HAVE HIM, HE'S MINE!!!!).

Back to my point. Just as Jon's wrapping up a segment on how stupid it is to be a religious fanatic, somebody runs up to the side of the stage and starts screaming about how "GOD IS LIFE" and some other stuff about Jesus... it got hard to hear pretty fast thanks to all the boos he got for his effort. Jon, looking completely baffled, watches security take the guy away, then says, "Now that's EXACTLY what I'm talking about." Huge ovation... personally, my favorite moment of the show.

6 U.S. Marines slain in roadside bomb attacks - Conflict in Iraq - MSNBC.com: "The American deaths brought to 1,950 the number of U.S. troops who have died since the beginning of the war in 2003, according to an Associated Press count."

In case you'd forgotten, Americans keep dying in a war we had no reason to fight. My question: If the number of troops killed in Iraq eventually exceeds the number of Americans killed on September 11, haven't we failed at the final supposed objective of this war - keeping Americans safe?

Baseball playoffs - exes & errors - Bloggermann - MSNBC.com: "Baseball is actually suing a scholarship pre-school, for four and five year olds, on a copyright claim. The school logo is the interlocking initials 'CA' - and baseball is worried that objects bearing that logo might infringe on its rights to the logo the then-California Angels used until 1996 - before they renamed themselves the Anaheim Angels (and redesigned the logo) and then re-renamed themselves the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (and re-redesigned the logo)."

If you're going to pretend you have a bomb, do not give the lady behind a counter a note saying the bomb is in your mouth. Robots HATE that.



Story

Tonight - Britney's toxic sex tape could be released: "Britney Spears and Kevin Federline reportedly fear a steamy home sex video is about to be made public. A member of the singer's entourage is believed to have copied one of the couple's personal video tapes - allegedly recorded while Britney was still expecting baby son Sean Preston - and is threatening to release it."

I figured this would have happened years ago.

A 3 walks into a bar and sits next to a 2 and a 4. The 4 turns to the 3 and says, "Get out of here, you're too odd to hang out with us!" The 3 breaks down in tears and heads for the door. Just before he storms out, he turns and shouts, "Just you wait - I'll get even!!!"

CNN.com - DeLay faces money laundering charge - Oct 3, 2005: "Money laundering is punishable by five years to life in prison under Texas law, with fines up to $10,000. The conspiracy charge carried a penalty of up to two years in prison and fines up to $10,000."

All I want for Christmas is DeLay behind bars, if only because his last name only has five letters and TWO of them are capitalized. How obnoxious is that?

Tom DeLay's House of Shame - Newsweek National News - MSNBC.com: "The only way to get rid of the termites eating away the people's House is to stamp them out at the next election."

That's the conclusion of this fantastic op-ed in Newsweek by Alter, who's almost as great as Alterman. Absolutely vicious from start to finish, and justifiably so.

21 die after tour boat capsizes in New York lake - U.S. Life - MSNBC.com: "A seemingly ideal day of sailing along a calm but busy mountain lake turned abruptly tragic Sunday when a tour boat carrying a group of senior citizens overturned, killing 21 people and injuring dozens more."

...my parents were in their kayak and fairly close to the same part of the lake when this happened (they didn't actually see it though).