The vilest of the vile and the biggest of the baddest!

Courtesy of the comicbooks LJ community and ComiXtreme.com's Blake Petit, a top-10 list of the all-time scariest, most heinous super-villains in comic-book history, just in time for Halloween, along with eloquent summations of why each malodorous malcontent is there. Some of the names will not surprise you terribly if you've read any comics at all in the past few decades...but one or two just might, thanks to recent revelations and/or new plot developments.
Yes, Lex Luthor, Dr. Doom and the Joker are here. But...Dr. Light?!?

Yet again, right-wing ideology trumps science in Junior's White House

As reported here in my local paper, where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (my Songbird's employer) is based, the following is a brief summary of what was redacted from written testimony on climate change and its impact on public health submitted to Congress this week by CDC head Dr. Julie Gerberding, MD:

The shorter version focuses on public health preparedness for climate change, including how the CDC is tracking diseases, doing heat-stroke modeling for cities to predict vulnerable populations and helping local officials plan for environmental emergencies. The draft version contained an additional six pages explaining why climate change is a public health concern. Deleted passages describe the expected impact of climate change, including new disease patterns and food and water shortages for some people.

The deleted testimony included predictions about the potential consequences of increased air pollution, the rampant growth of plants that cause allergies and the creation of environments that promote water- and food-borne disease. "Catastrophic weather events such as heat waves and hurricanes are expected to become more frequent, severe, and costly," the deleted section said.

Both Dr. G. and the White House hotly deny any censorship. But given the Bush Regime's quite well-documented history on climate change and other politically inconvenient science, where there's smoke...

ADDENDUM, 1:54P: Jay Bookman's column in the AJC today throws more wood on the fire by putting the lie, point by censored point, to Bush White House claims that the report was redacted because of conflict with the UN's recent climate change report. More proof of what filkertom has previously said in his blog, i.e., that these evil fucks don't even care whether they have clean air to breathe or clean water to drink as long as they have plenty of money to shelter from taxes.

A couple stoopid LJ questions for all you older paid users

How do you get to friends-of-friends lists? And how do you get those links to stuff you like (not other LJs) to appear alongside your journal? I can't find either of these in the Home page to save my skinny white Cajun ass.
ADDENDUM, 11:26a: Strike the 2nd question; found it.

Today's Editorial Cartoon: All you folks in GA, TX and CA

...you gotta see this one:

(click here to view)

Signe Wilkinson Philadelphia Daily News Oct 25, 2007 EditorialCartoonists.com

One of my favorite good ol' boys is finally on the Web

Tim Wilson, the Georgia-born comedian and singer/songwriter responsible for such Dr. Demento Show, John Boy & Billy Show and Bob & Tom Show hits as "1st Baptist Bar & Grill," "Hillbilly Homeboy," "Church League Softball Fist Fight," "The NASCAR Song" and "Chuck E. Cheese Hell," at last has a real, honest-to-gosh official website of his very own, after years of having no real presence on the Intarwebs other than his pages on Capitol Records' and Country Music Television's sites. It's called Tim Wilson America (evidently timwilson.net, which he mentions in "100 Things to Remember," was already taken), and it offers lots of goodies including ordering pages for all his CDs and his new DVD, Tim Wilson: Live in Atlanta.

If you're not yet ready to commit to buying whole CDs of Tim's, you can pull down lots of his songs à la carte off the iTunes Store for the usual 99¢ apiece and get a taste of his down-home lunacy. He's the funniest thing to come out of the City Too Busy to Hate since Jeff Foxworthy (with the possible exception of Tyler "Madea" Perry), and between his demented songs, his hilarious "Uncle B.S." stories and his general messing with the crowd, even if you're not a Southerner, you'll probably laugh.

This just in: California isn't the only place fire is breaking out

The offices where I currently work are close to Cumberland Mall, one of metro Atlanta's premier shopping centers. Today at around a quarter of 1 PM, I drove the half a mile there planning to enjoy a gyro for lunch at the Great Wraps in the mall's food court. Imagine my surprise and puzzlement to arrive at the mall's southern end and find Cobb County Police Dept. cars, motorcycles and uniformed officers blocking every single entrance to the mall's parking lot, all the way round.

Stopped the car at the first place I could near an entrance and got out to ask the fuzz what's the haps. Turns out the county fire department had closed the entire mall for the rest of the day due to a fire having broken out inside the mall. "You now have every piece of information I have," said the cop I asked after he told me this. The restaurants and fast-food joints in the vicinity enjoyed a resulting unusual midweek boom in business as all those of us who'd been hoping to use the food court were forced to seek nourishment, or some semblance thereof, elsewhere.

The local paper broke the story here about an hour ago. Seems a Finish Line store in the mall had a fire break out in its back room. Thankfully, it appears no people were hurt. But merchants in the mall lost a day's business, and some stores on the floor below the fire site will have costs from repairing water damage to budget in.

Wouldn't it have been possible to have at least one sign made up and put out by the road to explain to people why their shopping and eating have suddenly been curtailed? I wasted almost half my lunch hour driving around trying to find an unblocked entrance and then to ascertain why there were none, then finding another place to eat. Had there been a sign, I could have simply gone, "Oh, dear, hope no one was hurt," and drove on to another place to eat.

JoCoShow update: TicketBastards may win after all

Went down to Little Five Points after work to try and pick up tickets for Jonathan Coulton's upcoming show with Paul & Storm at the Five Spot (see earlier post here) so as to avoid both TicketBastards' taking a cut and the increase in price at the door on the night. The trip requires a nearly 14-mile, minimum 23-minute drive from suburban Vinings down to L5P over Interstates 285 and 20, and in this case, at the height of rush hour. This will be relevant shortly, trust me.

The bartender at Five Spot informs me that the tickets cannot actually be purchased at the bar itself, since the show was booked through the nearby Variety Playhouse as part of its concert series. One must go to the Playhouse's box office...which, it turns out, is only open for advance ticket purchases on weekdays between the hours of 12 noon and 6 PM. No morning, evening or weekend hours at all. And since I hadn't even left work until 5:45, due to lateness in arriving at work this morning and having taken an hour for lunch, I was too late to get the ducats tonight.

So in order to get there in time this week to buy tickets in person, I must leave work no later than 5 PM tomorrow (which, although this is supposed to be my normal workday end time, usually isn't due to lunches that run longer than the 30 mins. I am officially allotted) and hope and pray that commuters by the hundreds rushing to get out of the city and home to their cheaper suburban houses won't slow me down so much that I can't get to L5P, find a typically scarce street parking space there and reach the Playhouse ticket window before the clock strikes six and they close for the night...and the week.

Will try to get out on time tomorrow night, but it may end up being far more practical to cave in and pay TicketBastards' "convenience charge" for the sake of simply getting the damn things in hand well ahead of the show. Dammit. Like this weekend didn't already suck the Great Moose Cock in the Sky (as my pal darrenzieger likes to say) due to missing OVFF. Shitpissdamnfuckcraphell.