A special two-session Dear Brother, in which our heros undergo torture and brainwashing. Not for the faint of heart.

Matrix: Revolutions trailer. Available now. The site is so hammered it isn’t worth trying, though. Ah. Bittorrent link here. That’s better.

Baghdad Burning is a new addition to the blogroll; it’s written by a 24 year old Iraqi in Baghdad. It’s strong and angry and educated. No- I’m getting great at it. I can tell you if it’s ‘them’ or ‘us’. I can tell you how far away it is. I can tell you if it’s a pistol or machine-gun, tank or armored vehicle, Apache or Chinook… I can determine the distance and maybe even the target. That’s my new talent. It’s something I’ve gotten so good at, I frighten myself. What’s worse is that almost everyone seems to have acquired this new talent… young and old. And it’s not something that anyone will appreciate on a resume… ...

Another Monday, another mashup. What’s the Wayback Machine got for us today, Sherman? “Um, it’s something about ‘true believers,’ boss.” Right! Time to mash up the Fantastic Four! The Fantastic Four are notable among superhero teams for a) being a family and b) being the most blatant example of Jack Kirby’s “use the elements as inspirations” rule ever. It’s kind of a difficult mashup in that the characters are key to the concept, so you’d almost need to use pregen PCs. Perhaps we’re talking convention games, here. My mashup follows.

I don’t have anything really brilliant to say about the Baghdad bombing. What’s there to say? A lot of people died — a lot more people died, I should say, because it’s been a busy summer for terrorists in Iraq — and that’s depressing. The buzz is that it was an Al Qaeda operation. Oddly, Jay Bremer disagrees. “These are probably people left over from the old regime who are simply fighting a rear guard action by attacking Iraq’s assets.” I’m not sure what that means; the Bush administration has been pushing the theory that the US occupation will act as flypaper, and if the UN bombing was not carried out by Iraqis, that would support their theory. But maybe Bremer just thinks Bush is wrong. ...

Ah, those wacky politicians. The Bush campaign is very excited about their news feeds (original). You can now get a feed of the latest headlines from the Bush campaign site right on your blog! Exciting! You accomplish this by means of a Javascript include. You have the choice of two possible layouts. Enjoy. This is actually about right for a lot of people; just cause you keep a blog doesn’t mean you know an RSS feed from a hole in the ground. If I’m Howard Dean, which I’m not, I take notice and get something quick and dirty like that up on my site. But it also misses everyone who knows how to deal with RSS feeds, all the people who use aggregators, and so on. ...

This entry exists solely for the sake of pinging Flutterby. The automatic Trackback RDF stuff doesn’t work yet, apparently — we’ll see if the discovery works better. (Answer: nope. Trying a manual ping…) Testing again, now that Dan’s tinkered a little. And one more time! (It worked.)

I’m still braindead, despite any appearances to the contrary, but Jonathan Walton writes a mean campaign prospectus (original). I am not sure I’d want to play in it, but the prospectus makes me want to want to play in it, if you see what I mean. Also, it has the best tag line ever, which I won’t ruin for you. Read to the bottom.

Some good news, which seems awfully slim in the wake of today’s Baghdad bombing: Saddam’s vice president was captured. No idea what he was doing in Mosul — is there Iraqi resentment up there because of the Kurdish activities? Saddam’s sons were up there too. I wouldn’t have thought it would be hospitable territory for ex-Ba’athists. Anyhow. He was a bad person, and I’m glad he was captured. There are now two necessary tasks ahead of the United States… no, three. ...

Yeah, I’m pretty brainless today, so I’m just gonna steal something I said over at Mike’s LJ. You pretentious little punk. You Rebels make me sick, and the Imperials do too, so stop trying to involve me in your petty little wars. Listen. Your political arguments are obsolete, and you’re too calcified to realize it. We have achieved happiness, but because you’re running the Force meme, you haven’t noticed. The world is not what you think it is. The real fun — the real world — exists in the interstices between the planets. Starships are merely achingly slow vectors for meme infection. There is a very old AI in a sector you’ve never heard of; we think he’s playing a complex game of chess with himself using Star Destroyers as pieces, but we’re not completely sure. It doesn’t matter enough to find out. ...