Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

So I was watching the Jon Stewart shows from the last couple days (Kucinich bombed last night in my opinion, unfortunately) and on Wednesday they had the editor of the NY Times crossword puzzle on… I admit I'm not much of a crossword guy, but while watching it, I had two ideas that I thought maybe were new. The first was three dimensional crossword puzzles (which I later discovered was far from new), and the second was “chaos crosswords”, where there's not a gridlock. For example, here's a simple one:

RED 1. Make me an ____. 2. Saturn has over 60 of these. 16a. Serbian National Radio. 16b. Blood _____.

BLUE 1. Holy sound. 5. Model T. 11. Do you have the whole ___? 14. Pay the ____.

GREEN 2. I hope one of these isn't under my bed. 3. Used to row a boat. 9. The oldest kind of plant (4 letters).

It's not particularly hard, just interesting as an alternate kind of visualization exercise. Especially if you add “letter locks” as in green 9, it becomes interesting in a geographical sense. I'm not really much of a “gamemaker”. Below are the answers, rotated ninety degrees. I may well have made errors in it, so I apologize… just illustrating the idea.

The Seattle Post (more) writes, It's time to fire Rumsfeld due to the massive problems he's caused for America around the world… I think that ought to be applied a bit more broadly in regards to this administration. After all think about what would happen if a private corporation treated its business and customers the way this administration has. Not only would they be out of business, but its board of directors would be up on criminal charges.

I haven't written a news entry in a little while, so please cut me some slack if it's not as polished as it should be. I'm seeing people (Yale University) suggesting that Iraq could cost the American taxpayer as much as $1.6 trillion, and next year's deficit is expected to top $500 billion (more), with a cumulative deficit of at least trillion and a half dollars over the next decade.

But still, the US is planning on sending more troops to Iraq (more) and those US combat troops that are there are going to be forced to serve consecutive one year tours (more)… Which is kind of scary, considering they don't even have enough rifles for the troops that are already there — US troops in Iraq are being forced to use confiscated Iraqi guns (50 year old guns that most of the troops have no experience using) instead of US issue weaponry (more).

“Blood spurted from his shattered legs and from dozens of small gashes all over his face and body, spilling onto the ground of a lot in Iraq's capital city. Army Pfc. Sam Ross was aware of only one thing: the wave of pain so intense he was sure he would not live through it.”

That (more), is the story that the US military doesn't want you to hear. Yeah, they're publishing the US death tolls (as if they have a choice), but ask yourself why they are not publicly releasing the numbers of injured troops — this is the first modern war that the US has hidden those numbers in (more). Could it be as Kerry points out (more, more), that the sad truth is that these kids are coming home with broken bodies and broken minds to discover that their pay has been slashed by Bush and their benefits and desperately needed healthcare eliminated?

Some of you reading this did tours in Vietnam, but I don't think most of us here can imagine what hell it must be… The story quoted below tells the tale of a typical encounter in Iraq, with US troops massively outgunned in guerrilla battles, not knowing who's enemy and who simply hates them (more), with women firing RPGs at them from their home windows, and children in the street firing AK-47s at them from alleyways (more).

“It was kind of sad. You see these kids who don't know anything getting shot to pieces because they're trying to shoot at you… We all have nightmares every night. We're in some combat scenario and it's always the same guys getting killed. Your memory's just like a damn camera. Especially when you're alone.”

“I'm still here… That's all I thank God for.”

Families continually speak of the deep depression they hear in the voices of their partners and children locked in this war (more), and US troops continue to be killed daily by a nebulous enemy that is impossible to identify (more, more), as well as “mystery illnesses” that families of the dead soldiers increasingly don't believe the official version of (more).

Bush responds to all this by simply saying, “stop flinching” (more), and some people still seem dumb enough to believe that this is about stopping terrorism. Clue in. Unless this is the dumbest government ever (which I'm not willing to believe), this is about increasing terrorism… After all, terrorism makes a lot of money for the murderous bastards currently in power — Cheney has landed massive contracts in Iraq (more), and just got the contract to build the new Guantanamo “suicide central” (more) prison facility (more) — whereas Saddam's Iraq, an isolated and repressive regime, did not make the US much money in comparison. So now that regime has been converted into an anarchial terrorist hotbed (more, more). The ethic wars that Saddam kept effectively under control are also now raging out of control (more), requiring the services of private military police corporations such as the ones that Cheney works for.

And who's paying for it? The US people pay the bills, and the young troops sent over pay with their lives (more) — not to mention the Iraqi civilians who are being killed daily both in combat and in “friendly fire” and “misidentifications” (more). US control of the region has been all but undermined (more), and the “major combat operations over” deaths are exceeding those while the war was still official (more). Iraq threatens to turn into Afghanistan, where warlords have taken over the country, US troops continue to be killed (more), the Taliban are taking back provinces, and, of course, civilians keep dying (more, more).

Or remember Iran? Remember when the US overthrew its democratic government (more)?

Ah, what it has begat…

Isn't it about time to reconsider this style of foreign policy and just go back to good old “don't tread on me”? America could be a great place, a place where people could live free and do their own thing in their own time. What happened to the American dream?

Anyway, in order to really guarantee that fundamentalists in the Arab world get worked up, the US is trying to open an oil pipeline from Iraq to Israel — which was of course turned off in 1948 when Israel was created (more). Seriously, I can think of no explanation for these actions other than actively trying to increase terrorism. But maybe I shouldn't make these claims too loudly — the US is trying to push through the “Victory Act” (aka “PATRIOT II”), to further limit the rights of its own citizens (more). Maybe secret prisons (more) and military courts are next (more), just like in Israel? Oh wait… too late…

Um… and wasn't this originally about WMDs (more, more)?

So I'm tryin to whip up the artwork for the 3D belt buckle. Basically I have to create a 3D version of the BME logos to be able to create the cast. The file I need is just a grayscale, with white representing “highest metal” and black “lowest metal”. Below is my first attempt, visualized as a bump map? Think you can do better? If you can, I'll gladly give you a few buckles in return if your design is run.

(Click it to see a lighting animation if it's not obvious).