Step one: Steal cargo of underpants
Step two: ?
Step three: Profit!

Here's a little...

Because contractors were paid on cost-plus arrangements, they had a powerful incentive to spend to the hilt. The undisputed master of milking the system is KBR, the former Halliburton subsidiary so ubiquitous in Iraq that soldiers even encounter its customer-survey sheets in outhouses. The company has been exposed by whistle-blowers in numerous Senate hearings for everything from double-charging taxpayers for $617,000 worth of sodas to overcharging the government 600 percent for fuel shipments. When things went wrong, KBR simply scrapped expensive gear: The company dumped 50,000 pounds of nails in the desert because they were too short, and left the Army no choice but to set fire to a supply truck that had a flat tire. "They did not have the proper wrench to change the tire," an Iraq vet named Richard Murphy told investigators, "so the decision was made to torch the truck."

In perhaps the ultimate example of military capitalism, KBR reportedly ran convoys of empty trucks back and forth across the insurgent-laden desert, pointlessly risking the lives of soldiers and drivers so the company could charge the taxpayer for its phantom deliveries. Truckers for KBR, knowing full well that the trips were bullshit, derisively referred to their cargo as "sailboat fuel."

Now, go read the rest!

If I'd known about this sooner, my entries would have been:

• Alice Cooper In Wonderland
• Go Ask Alison Krauss
• Curious Boy George
• The Grateful Dead Gatsby
• The Fountainheads of Wayne
• Sun Tzu's Art Of GWAR
• Big Starship Troopers
• A Confederate Railroad Of Dunces
• Ziggy Stardust and the Chronicles From Mars (yeah, they were softof a fictional band)
• Great White Expectations
• Steve Miller's Daughter
• The Story of O-asis
• A Portrait Of The Artist As Young-MC
• Philip Glass' Bead Game
• The Tragedy of Cassandra Wilson
• Lady Blacksmith Mombazo's Lover
• The Bridge On The River Styx
• Death And The Iron Maiden
• The Flying Burrito Brothers Karamazov
• The Ox Bow Wow Wow Incident
• The Wonderful Wizard of Ozzy
• Strawberry Alarm Clockwork Orange

alas.

(from Flux-Rad)

Social Cobweb Spider

Dear Theoretical Physicist...

Q: I met a terrific girl a few months ago, and things are starting to become serious. I like her very much, but she wants children quickly and I still don't feel ready. What should I do?

A: It might help to think of your girlfriend less as the potential mother of your child, and more as a swarming agglomeration of infinitesimal strings vibrating in 10, 11 or 26 dimensions. These strings would have length but not width or height, and they could either be closed, in which case they would look like squiggly ovals, or open, in which case they would look like shoelaces. The shoelaces would spin out “world sheets” through time, while ovals would make “world tubes”; and two world tubes could combine to form a single world tube, which would look like a pair of trousers!

Until I heard a piece on NPR a couple of weeks ago about this, I had no idea that there are people in Britain who think the 7/7 tube attacks were not the work of radical Islamic suicide bombers, but were instead the work of MI6, Britain's intelligence agency - just like the 9/11 Trootherz think the US government was behind 9/11. Fascinating!

Here's my favorite bit of "evidence":

What is the reason behind Alan Greenspan's decision to flush nearly $40 billion in liquidity into financial markets two days before the attack? Was this an attempt to preemptively head off a run on the markets? If Greenspan had information about a terror attack then why didn't the people on the trains and buses get the same warning?

There are tons of conspiracy-minded pages out there, if you want to browse around.

The Pompatus of Love

What Franklin Didn't Say re:Beer

For the record...

• The Jealous Girlfriends - The Jealous Girlfriends Do you like Beck, The New Pornographers, Blonde Redhead, and Broken Social Scene? Would you like to hear them all at once? So many of these songs sound identical to their influences and the whole ends up feeling a little like a mixed-tape. I like some of it, but I can't tell if that's because I like the bands they sound like or if they're bringing anything new to the mix. Needs more investigation.
• Adrian Belew - Belewprints, The Acoustic Adrian Belew Vol. 2 I bought this at last week's Belew show because I have a signed copy of his first volume of acoustic songs, and thought I'd complete the set. Most of it is good, but 90% of it is on his Salad Days compilation (which also has some songs from the first acoustic volume). I wish I knew it was the same stuff I'd already owned for the last 9 years.
• Boubacar Traoré - Classic Titles Acoustic guitar music from Mali. Can't understand any of the words, but the music, mostly melancholic, is interesting - it shares a common (though distant) root with American blues, but there are strong Arabic and African flavors in this that the blues doesn't have.