“What they really want to see is, they want you to chop your fucking arm off, hold up your arm, wave it around spewing blood, and believe me, if you did that, the crowd would go fucking ballistic. You only get four good shows like that, though. Four good shows, and then you’re just a torso and a head, trying to get one of your band mates to give you one last hurrah and chop your head off. Which they probably wouldn’t do, which would really be hell.” Who said it? The answer is at the end of this post. Now on to the links! … “Tobacco products today are really the only human-consumed product that we don’t know what’s in them” … “This proposed military build-up, with our current political status, will result in the cultural and racial genocide of the Chamorro people” … “The figure of the U.S. president has been extremely popular and she expects the figure of the first lady to be a crowd pleaser as well” … “I think we’re due for another look at whether we’re doing the best we can to protect the public from pesticides in food” … “‘We have come here to die,’ the officer said, shaking his head” … “According to officials, Gen Re arranged to sell financial products to AIG and Prudential ‘for the sole purpose of enabling those companies to manipulate their accounting results and mislead investors‘” … “According to a Food and Drug Administration agent, Kay says he was trying to emulate Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup labels” … “A mysterious visitor who each year leaves roses and cognac on Edgar Allen Poe’s tomb missed his rendezvous for the first time in 61 years” … “Scholars say Poe looked far more vigorous, perhaps even dashing, in his earlier years than he does in the well-known series of daguerreotypes taken in the final years of his life” … “‘I’d always wanted to come,’ the Army staff sergeant said, ‘but I didn’t want to come in this way‘” … “We gave our employees a holiday the day of the announcement so that we could run tests and scans internally to ensure that the network is safe and secure” … “From their modest beginnings in an apartment in Brooklyn, Smith became a rock star while Mapplethorpe blossomed into an acclaimed and highly controversial photographer” … “There’s a new application for Apple’s iPhone and it comes from the White House” … “The ancient Indian custom of caste has made its way into the modern world of social media” … “But you can plainly see the weariness in Stevens eyes as he is forced to contend with a legal fiction that has come to life, a sort of constitutional Frankenstein moment when corporate speech becomes even more compelling than the ‘voices of the real people’ who will be drowned out” … “With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics” … “Kate was widely held to be a Canadian musical icon and the news of her death was greeted with sadness by her colleagues” … “The International Olympic Committee is recommending the establishment of special medical centers to deal with athletes who have ambiguous sexual characteristics” … “The government has tried to cover up those failings — keeping relatives and lawyers in the dark, deflecting blame, fighting rigorous quality standards, outside oversight and transparency” … “Researchers have turned to a slime mold for tips on work efficiency” … “A 9-year-old boy was found hanged in the bathroom of a Dallas-area elementary school in an apparent suicide” … “The Department of Justice is considering whether to open an investigation into the legality of the Bowl Championship Series” … “That morning, while trying to kill time, I had made the discovery that Discovery News called one of the top 10 science discoveries of the decade” … “It is almost impossible to obtain a public service in Afghanistan without greasing a palm: bribing authorities is a way of life” … “An unprecedented real estate boom is transforming Lebanon’s capital” … “Nobody is hiring journalists and that means nobody is hiring minority journalists, not even to replace the minority journalists who are leaving the business in droves” … “Classic arcade videogame Tetris has taken on new life” … “To what lengths should we go to try to protect ourselves from some asteroid or comet ‘going rogue‘ in the foreseeable future?” … “Foreign holdings of U.S. government debt increased by the largest monthly margin in over two years” … “Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned against the dangers of totalitarianism and despotism” … “Obama underscored his trademark theme with a chorus of ‘Yes We Can’ and sang a lover’s duet with his wife Michelle” … “The musical follows Limbaugh from ‘humble beginnings’ to his ‘ascent to conservative dominance‘ … “Singer Billy Bragg has threatened to stop paying taxes and called on others to follow suit” … “Nicolas Cage is determined
to pay the IRS all that he owes in back taxes” … This issue’s quote was from Eddie Vedder … And finally, “Odd the way that synchronicity pops up.” ∞