As someone who’s flirted with the idea of “stop the world, I want to get off…” I have to say that this particular methodology of exiting stage left just gives me willies. Not only did he shoot himself in the head with a nail gun (Ouch that smarts!) 12 fucking times (involving one reload), but he wandered around for about 24 hours before going to a hospital complaining of a head ache (No? You’re kidding?). My understanding is that 12 nails is a new record. (I don’t think that this X-ray is actually the guy from Oregon… it was just the most interesting one I found on Google image)

Though I know that what’s listed below is a pipedream, but I copied the best parts (Washington Post) for your review. Seems I am not the only one with these ideas:

Two years ago, the European Union admitted 10 new members. Like Mexico, all of these nations were poor, some of them fairly backward and most recently ravaged by war and communist dictatorship.

To deal with the situation, the leaders of the European Union wisely created policies for fostering regional economic and political integration that make efforts such as the North American Free Trade Agreement “look timid and halfhearted by comparison,” according to Bernd Westphal, consul general of Germany.

Europe realized it had to prevent a “giant sucking sound” of businesses and jobs relocating from the 15 wealthier nations to the 10 poorer ones. It also had to foster prosperity and the spread of a middle class in these emerging economies and prevent an influx of poor workers to the richer nations.

So for starters it gave the new states massive subsidies — billions of dollars’ worth — to help construct schools, roads, telecommunications and housing, thus making these nations more attractive for business investment. The idea was to raise up the emerging economies rather than let the advanced economies be dragged down. It was expensive, but the result has been a larger economic union in which a rising tide floats all boats.

In return the 10 poorer nations had to agree to raise their standards on the environment, labor law, health and safety — and more. The incentive of admission to the European club was used as a carrot to pull the poorer nations toward acceptance of human rights and political democracy. There won’t be any border maquiladoras in the European Union.

Worker migration still is regulated. Immigrants will be carefully integrated so as to cause the least amount of disruption to the developed economies, with the goal of having open borders within a decade or two.

This bold yet carefully planned E.U. approach suggests the direction that policy between the United States and Mexico should take. Increasingly the demands of the global economy will push North American regional integration out of the realm of a shadow economy and flawed free trade agreement. But what might such an American-Mexican union look like?

It would start with massive subsidies from the United States to Mexico, a Tex-Mex Marshall Plan, with the goal of decreasing disparities on the Mexican side of the border and fostering a climate riper for investment. This would create more jobs in Mexico and foster a middle class, homeownership and better schools, roads and health care. Fewer Mexicans would then want to emigrate north. Instead, they’d stay home, becoming consumers of U.S. products.

Just cause it’s Friday and I had a professor love a paper so much that he wants a copy for himself (a paper that was mostly a cut and paste job of something I wrote here- how I love to plagerize myself). Since I am amused, I thought I would give y’all a songlist for your amusement. Feel free to post what you’re listening to in comments.

1. Elliot Smith: Son of Sam
2. Gang of Four: To Hell with Poverty
3. Death Cab for Cutie: Crooked Teeth
4. Calexico: Crystal Frontier
5. Arctic Monkeys: Fake Tales of San Fransisco
6. White Stripes: Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine
7. XTC: I’m the Man Who Murdered Love
8. Julieta Venegas: Casa Abandonada
9. Death Cab (again, I know, but Plans is a fantastic album) MArching Bands of Manhattan
10. Cab Calloway: Congo

Follow the link above for a video that amused me a great deal. I don’t know what’s more fucked up…the video, or the fact that these people are serious.

There’s a kind of creepy future history/speculation in the Guardian.

“In retaliation, suicide bombers trained by Tehran massacred civilians in Tel Aviv, London and New York… Total casualties were estimated at around 10,000 dead and many more wounded. The attacks, which included the explosion of a so-called dirty bomb in London, were orchestrated by a Tehran-based organisation for “martyrdom-seeking operations” established in 2004.

Dr Patrick Smith of the Washington-based Committee for a Better World, which had long advocated bombing Iran, demanded of the critics: “What was your alternative?”

So the RQ has been doing all the heavy lifting of late, & I’ve been a slacker (shame on me). In any event, there is a great article in the NYT on Google & China with lots of interesting consideration of the new cult of technology in China, details the government’s approach to censorship, highlights some of the cultural differences, etc.

“Given how flexible computer code is, there are plenty of ways to distort the universe — to make its omissions more or less visible.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/magazine/23google.html

Texas A&M College Republicans apparently saw no Irony in using this photo on their webpage…

‘Nuff Said

For Fursday Funnies- a mash-up of Don Knotts playing Dubya.