There is a subversive group of architects in Southern California who are erecting mock guard posts in front of gated communities. They are doing this apparently to bring attention to this suburban phenomenon.

For those of you who do not know, gated communities are essentially taking over the country. They are housing/apartment complexes that are essentially their own little fiefdoms, and they are growing by the day. Most of the time, the gates close (to keep the rifraf out). But sometimes, the gates are just always open (which is even dumber).

How do I feel about gated communities? I think it is the most un-enlightened form of exclusionism yet. A way to keep 'that part of society' away from 'me' and 'my' loved ones. And given the history of our country, I can only assume that these are a bunch of rich, white families trying to stay away from any kind of pluarlistic culture. A neo-segregationism (essentially an escape from the evil minorities, gays, and metrosexuals of the world). I (like most liberals) despise this idea. However, I (unlike all other liberals) do not feel that it is up to me (or people like me) to tell these people to live differently. So the answer is that social mores need to be put into place to degrade the acceptance of this kind of behavior (kind of the same way that racism is no longer accepted, etc). It is through this social pressure that people will change behavior. It is through this change in behavior that they will change thinking.

But then again I may be wrong about gated communities. But I doubt it.

Every generation looks at the generation that comes directly after it with disdain and disbelief. Its human nature and its the way of the world. When you get older, you too will shout that the music is too weird or loud, and truly believe that the world has become a much worse place then when you grew up.

But 5% of little girls now taking anabolic steroids?

For centuries, science has attempted to answer the really big questions (and has failed miserably). That is, until today. Scientists have finally discovered why some kernels of popcorn fail to pop.

People in this country are fat (first reported here). They are fat because they eat unhealthy foods (notice I didn't say too much food. You never hear about the obese guy who eats 15 lbs of broccoli per day). Why does the government continue to spend money to tell us about this? Is there anybody over the age of 10 that doesn't know this? How many ways can they say it? The rule should be, if it's a preventable disease, and everyone knows how to prevent it, stop throwing money at it. Are there a lack of diseases to study? People know HOW to prevent it, they just don't WANT to prevent it.

The Republicans (known for their 'smaller government policies' [chuckle] [chuckle]) don't seem to mind spending tax money on these stupid studies. I'm beginning to think that when Republicans say that they think that "you should be able to spend your money the way you want", they don't realize that this means that they CANNOT spend your money. They seem to spend it anyway (hence the largest deficit in the history of the world).

"A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling" by M.J. Shields

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.

Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

Couple of new things here at Gnawfish. First, there is a new color fish in the gcolor section. Go orange! Also, I have added gnawfish art to the Dept of Homeland Security Terror Alert Extension for Mozilla Firefox. Right click here, download to your computer, then open it up and install in Firefox. Rock!

Dear Established News Sources,

Please stop reporting items that are not newsworthy as if they were actual news. Since this seems to be difficult, I will give some pointers.

1. If the words 'Britney' or 'Spears' are in your story, it is not news. Do not print.
2. If you are reporting about a global pandameic, make sure at least one person actually has contracted the illness first.
3. No one cares Michael Jackson is on trial. We stopped caring in 1983.

For future reference, if there is no news, please place the following headline on your media:
"Sorry, nothing newsworthy to report today, check back again soon."

In other news, cost of living now outweighs benefit of living.

Ironically, West Virginia announced English as the state language. Backwood Yokle'ese to be gradually faded out.

Ever wonder what your website looked like in 1999? Well some dude has been archiving the Internet for the last nine years. You can see some pretty cool stuff.

In case you were wondering, here are some reminants of my old websites:
1. Homepage
2. Sdmonkey.com
3. Gnawfish.com

So I had a small aneurysm when I checked my website (at by brother's bequest) to see if it was down. Not only was it down, the domain was gone!@#!@#

Frantically, I tried to get my brain to process and to think, but it was too busy thinking of worst possible scenarios. One such scenario involved some hacker infiltrating my domain login, and mirroring a 'bizzaro' version of my site. People would type in Gnawfish.com and would get almost the same exact content only with pr0n and vulgarity (or more pr0n and vulgarity than usual). People would think I had no taste or worse yet, that I had sold out! Another scenario involved someone mirroring my site and only slightly subverting my blog entries with opinions I didn't agree with. Not enough to give themselves away, but enough to get people to think that I was a jackass (or more of a jackass than usual).

I was able to gather myself long enough to call my registrar over at serversanddomains.com. I started to leave some blathering message about my site being hijacked or something. Luckily the guy was there and picked up.

Turned out that I had my domain on auto-renew with an improperly entered credit card expiration date. So the server was not down, but the domain was down Friday and Saturday. Moral of the story, Adam is a moron.

Want to learn about the latest in hard drive technology? Watch this cartoon and get perpendicular!

Daniel Craig has been announced to become the next James Bond. In other news, who the hell is Daniel Craig?

In still other news, Johnnie Cochrun died. He left behind a wife, three children, and a lot of guilty people who were free to attend his funeral.

Check your gmail accounts. Last week I noticed that Google raised the limit from 1 Gig, to 1.3 Gigs. Just checked again this morning, its up to 2.05 Gigs! Wowo, that's insane. Btw, i have plenty of gmail invites if someone needs one.

Sinalicous. One Conservative Christian reviewer gave Sin City this review. Just a nugget:

"gory, bloody violence includes many people being fatally shot with some body parts flying off, man dragged from car, crooked priest shot in confessional, people hit in head with sledgehammers and hatchets, men impaled, decapitations with a head that is bandied like a ball, cannibal keeps decapitated heads on his wall, dog eats at dead person, corpses are cut into pieces"

On a scale from 1-4, this reviewer gave the movie a rating of:
"-4 ABHORRENT: Intentional blasphemy, evil, gross immorality, falsehood, evil worldviews, and/or destructive, horrendous worldview problems."

He he. I totally agree. I thought it was great too!

'Sidd (short for Siddhartha) Finch was an aspiring monk who spent much of his orphaned youth in England, went to Harvard, dropped out after one semester and learned to pitch in the mountains of Tibet, flinging rocks and meditating. In 1985, he was discovered by a Mets minor league manager who watched in awe as the gawky string bean would wind up - he looked like Goofy in the old Disney cartoons - and throw pitches so fast and accurate that they vaporized soda bottles standing 60 feet away. The radar guns read an unfathomable 168.' -NY Times (Free Reg Required)

If you didn't figure it out, the story of Sidd Finch was in April Fools joke that was featured in Sports Illustrated back in 1985. Some people are so gullible. Yeah, like the Mets could get Sidd Finch. I guess some people will believe anything.