~ the road to linux* has been retread. while searching the planet hard drive for errors, we figured we’d make use of its monitor to try another attempt at a usable linux configuration on angry. back in january, when we swapped out the hard drive in planet, we temporarily stored some files on angry. in order to do this quickly, we had reinstalled windows 95 on a partition. now, we reformatted and fdisk’ed angry, and ran another redhat 6.2 installation. we found they same monitor problems as always during the set-up; we thought a ‘server’ installation might be fun, but this apparent occurs with no gui, so instead of the previous fragmented window, we find the first few letters of text appearing on the right of the screen. before the rest appear on the left.

*’the road to linux’ copyrighted rasterweb [w]

~ this would be a lifetime easier if each machine had its own dedicated display…

~ red, of course is doing – whatever it does – as fine as it can.

~ gore vidal always seemed to us to be too much of a tight-ass to be much of a liberal, which is why it is such a delightful surprise to find the wry iconoclasm throughout his american chronicles. however, in his latest novel, the golden age, he surpasses his usual irreverence; he is downright alarmist. i don’t know if he is cutting loose with what he knows is most likely his last novel before death, but he paints a terrifying picture of the post-war (ww2) united states:
a nation that intentionally terrifies its own citizens with the threats of predatory nations seeking to destroy them at any moment – a moment that lasts perpetually – so that the citizens will continue to voluntarily turn over a third of their income to a government-subsidized weapons industry which is, in turn, subsidizing the political class to perpetuate the threat – they appear as communism, terrorism, drugs, or, currently, ‘states of concern’.

from the golden age:
‘those rich boys daydream about vast armies and navies conquering all the seas and lands while we humble folk think of boys that we know – sons even – dying in a process that benefits no one but the international banks and their lawyer-lobbyists…the real political struggle in the united states, since the civil war, has been between the peaceful inhabitants of the nation, with their generally representative congresses, and a small professional elite totally split off from the nation, pursuing wealth through wars that they invent and justify and resonate for others to die in.’

-gore vidal

~ a few images of the final thesis work added to the angry red planet thesis section; find them in the ‘development’ section.

~ we just monopolized the first angry red planet fan.

~ we can’t stop waking up at 5am and falling asleep at 9pm. accept our monopoly challenge at games.com [w] look for ‘saucemaster’ in ‘reading railroad’, and whisper the phrase ‘angryredplanet’.

~ though it has been a couple of days, we are still tired of hearing the question of whether or not the grammy awards are given to acknowledge important contributions to music or just to acknowledge a high volume of sales. yearly, this question appears, in every corporate awards show; yearly, the people posing it feel as though they have discovered an original viewpoint. however, in a study unscientifically conducted by the angry red planet, it has been determined that the people who actually give a durn about the grammy awards – either watching them, worrying about them, talking about them – are exactly the same people that value the music that brings in lots of money. it is amazing that anyone is surprised when drollery wins awards, considering the award show itself is drollery. anyone who thinks that a freaking television show somehow should set higher standards are the biggest fools, because the show itself is an aspect of the low standards of entertainment. regardless, eminem is a punk-ass piece of crap.

~ well, certain members of the angry red planet have been unselected from their initial jury. of course, we can not speak of what we heard in the court room, so there is no verification that questions such as ‘does anyone on the jury have problems with figures of authority?’ or ‘does anyone feel that if they find a law to be unjust, it should be broken?’ were posed or answered.

~ after this temporary unselection, the very same jury-serving, civic duty-performing members of the angry red planet were driving through culver city and were pulled over and questioned by the police. the cop’s story was that there is a brake light out on the angry red mazda, and that the mazda was speeding down culver boulevard. upon our inspection, no brake lights seemed to be *really* out, so this seems to be a falsification – an exaggeration at least – on the officer’s part; we are currently unable to contest the accusation of ‘speeding’ as our speedometer has not operated since 1997. after a promise to leave the state of california as soon as possible, we were allowed to leave.

~ fifteen minutes after the altercation with the authorities, we were rear-ended on jefferson boulevard in culver city.

~ some of us from the angry red planet were called in to jury selection at the los angeles superior court, and, unfortunately, were subsequently selected for jury. perhaps something can be said for performing one’s civic duty, and that jury duty should be a pleasure. we find that this feeling of pleasure may only occur in cases were a great injustice may be avenged or that a terrible crime is ‘solved’. however, one can imagine certain civil cases arising over the most inane and superficial dispute. in this cause it should be okay to waste the time of the parties involved in the dispute, but the notion that two weeks of the busiest season at the angry red planet must also be wasted – along with county resources and the valuable time of eleven other citizens – is enraging.

~ we hope that you are enjoying president’s day; ‘surfing the interwebnet’ and abusing the dying napster [w] in honor of the fallen presidents of the past, and, perhaps, the immediate future. while you are out there, please visit aclu.org [w] and drop a line to your congressperson and let him or her know that you would rather they not try to restrict access to the safe and private option of abortion offered by ‘mifepristone’, and known popularly as ‘ru-486’. afterwards, to fully make president’s day into a choice day – since we didn’t have a choice about the current president – you can visit one of the sites mentioned in this week’s ‘project‘ to demonstrate your support to both them and to president bush. the second president bush.

~ due to some recent rearrangement of our pages, a visitor may occasionally arrive at an ‘404 error’ page’. if has been the case, and you think that the error has been on our end – a broken link at the angry red planet as opposed to a typo on your keyboard(!) – please do not be shy; you are welcome to inform us. if you do, we will happily send some free samples, dripping with our gratitude!

~ why hasn’t anyone fessed up to driving their submarine into the side of a boat and killing 9 people? perhaps they are waiting for the u.s. to bomb iraq, and divert some of the attention away from them. little did they realize, no one in the u.s. cares if iraq is bombed – again – anymore than they care if its navy kills japanese civilians. heck, the u.s. navy still has not admitted to shooting down a u.s. commercial airliner off long island way back in the 1990’s.

~ ‘all your base are belong to us…’ [w]

~ wish list: second-hand monitor and a lamp for treating s.a.d.