DL4

4:44:27 PM Wed, Dec 1, 2010

Anaphylactic Schlock Department -- Well, I'm always looking for things to write about, and always trying to find some time to write. For a change, I seem to actually have both of those today.

I've spent the past several days in the hospital, not for myself but at my girlfriend's bedside. She's all right, but she is afflicted with a chronic pain disorder called Crohn's Disease. Sometimes it requires a hospital stay. I've posted quite a bit on Facebook about this, and about our exploits here in the hospital. I suppose I could use this space to explore the sickness in greater detail, but there are far better resources on the Web to educate us about things like this. All I can really say for sure is that quality medical care can make all the difference between a sleepless night spent in screaming agony and a quiet, restful one. On the flip side, us loved ones/nexts of kin might spend a few nights of our own screaming in sleepless agony when we try to wedge ourselves into angular hospital furniture of varying shapes and sizes. I'm sure nobody out there in cyberspace (the modern equivalent of tv-land, I suppose) wants to hear about the many ways to harm oneself on an errant seat-bolt, so I shall instead use this space to write about something we can all enjoy: free BlackBerry apps.

As you can imagine, I've had to keep myself occupied during the past several days, and thanks to the hospital's complimentary wifi my BlackBerry has been a critical tool in the fight to stave off ennui. Under ordinary circumstances I could just turn to the usual distractions, such as Facebook or BrickBreaker. But an extraordinary case calls for extraordinary measures, and I had to ramp things up a little.

At this point, while I'm thinking of it, I want to mention that all of the apps I reference in here can be searched in AppWorld, and if you don't find them in there just head to Google and search the developer's home page. Ordinarily I'd post a direct link, but I'm typing this on the device itself so I'm gunna have to take the lazy way out. One exception I'll make right away is to post the link to the app I'm using to write this. I know I could type this into Memopad or use the included DocumentsToGo software, but I need a little more peace of mind than that, not to mention compatibility for when I get back to a PC. BlackBerry has, for some weird reason, no native support for simple .txt files. I don't understand this at all, and I'm not the only one. Somebody called Qin created a handy little app called BB Notepad that's similar to the text editor on your PC. The app is a small filesize and includes such handy features as a folder explorer, .zip extractor and the ability to convert Memopad files to .txt and vice versa. Files can be saved to your memory card for easy transfer to another device or any computer. You can download BB Notepad at http://krzysztow.com/BBNotePad/ .

The first thing I did was reinstall App World. Usually I don't keep it installed in order to save space on my device. App World in itself can be quite a little time vampire. With all the categories and subcategories, simply navigating your way through all the available products, reading reviews, checking screenshots and so forth can eat up a sizable chunk of your afternoon. The first thing I noticed is that in this revision they now require you to create an account in order to download anything. I'm not sure what the reason for this could be, but setup was simple, straightforward, and fast. Once I'd entered all my information and set up my login credentials, I took a screen capture in case I should ever forget my password or security question. If you don't yet have a screenshot app, we recommend CaptureIt or ZonaSnap (both free) and QuickLaunch (paid).

So now that the account is set up, it's time to find some crap to download. I like to find things that make my BlackBerry more useful, but of course I also need to keep myself entertained. What I was originally looking for was the popular game Bejeweled. Turns out they charge money for it. I'm strictly a cash customer, and unlike downloading apps from your carrier AppWorld won't let you charge it to your phone bill. Sorting everything by price allowed me to see the free apps first in the list, and it turns out there's a free version of Bejeweled featuring zombies. This game is called, of course, BeZombied. Lemme tell you, this game is addicting! It's no low-budget knockoff either. With its high quality graphics, it's every bit as much fun as the original version, if not more so. The idea is to clear out set numbers of various zombie parts. You can also arrange the parts in order, creating a "whole" zombie which not only counts toward your level but also unlocks super power-ups such as torches and chainsaws. You can post your high scores to the Internet and Facebook and compare your results to players around the world. This game is ad-supported, although they do provide an option to purchase an ad-free version. As somebody who despises advertising, I can be pretty intolerant when it comes to ad-supported software. That having been said, I can assure you that what they ask you to put up with is well worth it compared to what you get out of it.

We frequently hear the ability to track the stock market cited by advertisers as a selling point in technology products. Whether you're buying a smartphone, a laptop or even a pager the sellers often remind us that in addition to news, sports and email, we can use their product or service to keep tabs on the market. Sometimes, however, it's hard to decide exactly how to do so. You've got high-speed internet or a fancy new phone, but how can you harness that power to take Wall Street's pulse? I believe I may have found the answer. Blue Mobile is the sort of application you would expect to have to pay for, especially when you consider their target audience. Once you get a good look at what's included you will see these people would be completely justified to charge money for this. Amazingly enough, however, this app is free. Not crippled-version, unlock-the-premium-features free, but fully featured at the cost of nothing. Blue Mobile delivers real-time tracking for every major market around the world, including precious metals and world currencies. You can create custom lists of the stocks in your portfolio to track what matters to you with a single click. You can highlight any commodity and access a wealth of menu items including company information, 52-week history, news articles and so much more. For an app this in-depth and feature-rich, Blue Mobile is so easy to use that I was up and running within minutes and glued to the fucking thing for damn near two hours, despite having come to the table as a virtual neophyte. I was honestly expecting to be either confused, disappointed or both, yet I found myself navigating through the app like any seasoned bond trader in Midtown. I felt like I should have a three-piece suit on while using this app. Whether your livelihood depends on the world markets or you just like to while away the hours watching the price of silver rise and fall, look no further than Blue Mobile.


A simple little add-on I found for the arsenal of tools in my context menu is something called Role Call Reminders Lite. This app has no icon. It simply integrates with your BlackBerry menu as an option to automatically create a new task in your Tasks application from any email message, sms thread, contact or calendar item. I can't say this is the most exciting app in the world, but it earns its keep when you need to remind yourself to return a call or when flagging an email just isn't enough. Selecting the Create Task (or Create Reminder, depending where on your device you are) auto-creates a simple entry in your Tasks app using the sender, contact name, or calendar entry heading as the task itself and the message body or other details entered into the notes field. With only another couple of clicks you can add details, fine-tune the date and time and assign your Task a category. It's one app you'll hardly know is there, until you're 24 hours outside of a deadline and suddenly your phone goes off with that critical reminder you hardly even remember setting. For a chronic procrastinator such as myself, adding this deceptively simple functionality to the device may prove to be a lifesaver.

These days it seems GPS is everywhere. From that needless distraction in the front seat of our cars to location-based social apps like foursquare and Loopt, GPS integration is quickly becoming indispensable. With the preponderance of sophisticated apps using this technology, it's easy to lose sight of the fundamentals. I found a free GPS tool that fills this niche quite nicely, the cleverly named GPS Tool from TwoRoads Software. This lightweight powerhouse activates your GPS chip to quickly determine such mission-critical data as latitude, longitude, altitude, speed and heading. When the program locks in a signal, it can in a couple of clicks display a map of the satellites' placement in the sky along with color-coded signal strength indicators. Built-in integration with BlackBerry Maps and Google Maps means you can instantly view your location for navigational purposes, local search and more. The program is fully customizable, providing not only a metric option but also speed in knots for when you're at sea. Coordinates can be displayed in minutes, min/sec, or decimal degrees. Refresh rate is adjustable from one to 10 seconds, and input method can be set to auto, assisted, or default. Interestingly enough, "default" is not the default setting. Some of the options are set by adjusting graphical sliders which, while purely gratuitous, liven up the interface a little bit. That's a nice touch for an application whose bread and butter is cold, hard numbers. If you're into sailing, hiking or geocaching, this app will really help you get the most out of your GPS-enabled BlackBerry.


FaceClock is technically the app that inspired this post. It is the last app I've downloaded so far, because when I installed it I realized I had reached a critical mass of great stuff that I absolutely had to tell people about. FaceClock is really quite simple. When you're on Facebook you quickly lose track of time and somehow always seem to wind up staying on much longer than you intended. It's kind of like being in a casino, and as you know there are no clocks inside the casinos. The app gets its name from this premise, and what it does is place a clock in your BlackBerry menu. FaceClock is definitely a clever name as well as a great selling point, but this 3kb monster is for so much more than Facebook. The clock is in your menu everywhere! It's a ridiculously useful no-brainer that really does make life easier. If for some reason you need to know what time it is while you're, say, playing BeZombied, all you need to do is hit the BlackBerry key and there's the current time smiling up at you. This means no more backing out of apps just to check the time. I wasn't prepared for the rush of joy this simple little program brought me, but it turned out to be the breaking point that ultimately inspired this article.
I feel like I've gone on long enough for the time being. These aren't even all the apps I downloaded over the past couple of days, just a roundup of the best that you might not have heard of. I also installed a semi-bootleg Tetris clone called AbsoluteTris, as well as a device-reset application called QuickPull, and RIM's sorta-new Podcasts app. I didn't really look at RIM's other new app, BlackBerry Traffic, because although it does look useful I've never had a problem with the traffic reports in GMaps. Some or all of these other apps might be examined in a future installment, but for now I feel we've covered enough ground. Both the apps and this article have served their purpose for me, which was to help keep me occupied during the downtime while my baby is on the mend. If you read this all the way through, congratulations. You just unlocked a power-up of your own, and here it is. Protip: available podcasts include Daffy Duck cartoons and bikini babe photo shoots.

Here's another power-up for you, because this article just wouldn't be complete without it. If you're looking to freshen up the look of your home screen, head on over to the CrackBerry.com Theme Forums at http://forums.crackberry.com/f16/ and search for your device's sub-forum. You may already know this, but Tour, Bold2 and Curve 8900 themes are interchangeable, so if you use any of those models you essentially have three times as many choices as users of other BlackBerry devices. No matter which device you use, you will find no shortage of free themes available in the CB forums, along with a plethora of themes you can pay for. From personal experience I can tell you not to write off the free ones, because I have frequently found themes of higher quality or greater utility than many popular premium themes. Ultimately it's up to you, and you will find hundreds of possibilities in those pages.
I would like to thank everybody once more for all the kind messages and Facebook posts wishing my girlfriend a speedy recovery. It means a great deal to both of us to know how many people love and care about us. Thank you, all of you. For real.

Hope you've enjoyed the article. Thanks for reading. I've got to get back to my sweetheart now. Currently she is enjoying her first legal solid food in days. When she's done plowing through two trays of food that look so delicious I might have had to knock her out with a Macbook to the head and abscond with it had she not elected to handfeed me some of her pasta and meatballs (and poundcake and pudding) she will no doubt wish to return to her online frolicking in sqwishland.com, so I had better hurry up and pay attention to her while I still have the chance. Until next time, you stay classy, cyberspace.

All The News That's Fit To Not Print Department -- Well, this is certainly embarassing. I really thought I was going to post more in the past year, but apparently not. I can't even say for sure if the too-long dry spell is at an end, all I know for sure is that I'm posting this, here, now. That's going to have to be good enough. Mostly I just want to get back into it, pick up a little steam perhaps, and see what happens next. I've pretty much abandoned all semblance of convention or format at this point. That's actually a good thing considering the original incarnations of this tabloid did fairly well in the absence of any real structure.

I suppose part of the problem was setting impossibly high standards for myself here on the site. The original "Dateline 4:20" was the way it was because it pre-dated the Internet and thus had to look good in print, on paper. When I started this blog (and let's be honest, it's a fucking blog), I tried to adhere to that same style. It did look good in print, but in this modern era I'm writing for the online audience. I can't really expect anybody who doesn't know me personally to really want to print something out anymore. That's not how we do things in the future (and if you still don't think we live in the future, just look at those crazy Star Trek phones we all carry nowadays). The printed-out DL4 was meant to lampoon the print-journalism format, and conforming a blog to that same ideal was, while visually appealing, simply impractical. To my credit, I made it happen anyway, and got away with it for quite some time. At some point it finally dawned on me that under the circumstances the smartest thing I could do was simply to riff on the established modern blog format, not only for my own amusement and that of my readership, but also to be more tightly in line with the original vision of this paper.

I have also fully returned to the stream-of-consciousness style in which this paper has always been written. I sit down at the keyboard and pound something out, and then maybe - maybe - do a little monday morning quarterbacking after it's already been published. Kinda like what I'm doing now. Just as in my verbal communication, I find out what I'm going to say as I'm typing it.

The other nice thing about surrendering to the conventions of the blog structure means that I don't have to beat myself up trying to fill seemingly endless pages with content. What once would have taken up a single issue can today be stretched into several. This is due not only to the generally accepted de facto standard of the medium, but today's readers just don't seem to have the attention span to warrant much more than that. I can focus on delivering quality and not necessarily quantity, which is really what I've tried to do all along. When you get right down to it, the only reason this paper even exists is because I was bored in class one day back when Bill Clinton was President. But I digress. Then again, I can probably digress my balls off right now, because with today's attention spans I've probably already lost 99 percent of the people who started reading this from the beginning. What it comes down to is if I can fill up a Facebook news feed without even trying then by God I can for damn sure carry a blog, especially since I can do it from my "phone of the future" anytime I like.

Speaking of blogs, I don't know whether to be amused or appalled that the mass market seems to take online journalism so much more seriously if it's on a site like Wordpress or Blogger than if it's in a place like this. Personally, I like this website. I've never had a bad word to say against it. But somehow there seems to be this pervasive idea that one's choice of host directly impacts that writer's perceived legitimacy. Just so we're clear on this, it's a crock of bullshit. There's an awful lot of pretentious garbage out there on the so-called "respectable" blog sites and a lot of quality writing on these supposed "kiddy" sites. So I would encourage you to look past the url when you decide what brain food to heap on your plate for the day. For the record, I do have a blogspot.com account; I just don't use it.

Hey, I bet this post is gunna look a lot longer in its final form than it does here in Notepad, so I think I ought to shut it down for now. Remember, quality, not quantity (to which you reply, "when does the quality show up?"). Maybe I'll even go back over this later and boldface some shit like I did back in the old days. Until then, you might find obvious grammatical errors, typos, or run-on sentences, and you're just going to have to live with it. I'll cringe when I find these things, and change them accordingly, but it's always been my way to write things the way I would say them out loud. Try to keep that in mind as we move forward from here - and don't get it twisted, we shall indeed be moving forward. I MISS this shit.

Thanks for letting me share.

June 11th, 2009.
Roadwork on Memory Lane Department--Avast, Me Homies! Welcome back, after WAY too long. I find it ironic and slightly depressing that with both a laptop and a smart phone I spend so little time working on my passion and pet project. Well, hopefully the time has come to change all that. I don't know what it is, really. Maybe I was being too ambitious. Striving to deliver excellence seems to have been too big a load to carry, I suppose. It has recently dawned on me that if I simply aggregate all the Facebook notes, Myspace bulletins and random product reviews I post here and there around the Internet, that would pretty much comprise a typical and satisfactory issue of Dateline 4:20.

I'm sitting here in front of the laptop, with the DL4 Livejournal page open in front of me, yet I'm typing these words on the Sidekick. Lazy much? Anyway, the only real reason I'm posting this entry is to let you guys know I'm not dead and I haven't abandoned ship. It's been fifteen years this year since my first great digital undertaking, "Facts and Faults," a journal I used to keep on my old Windows 95 desktop (or was it the GeoWorks OS back then?). This year being the 15th anniversary of that old computerized journal had me thinking. Why not give the present-day incarnation a facelift? I've always shied away from embracing the standard "blog" format in favor of presenting a product that more closely resembled what this publication was when it used to be printed out on paper for public consumption (which you can download via the links in our 2008 Christmas issue). Now that we're "live" on the Internet, the only real requirement is quality. I've always been my own toughest critic. If I relaxed my standards, I'm probably the only one who'd notice. In any case, I just wanted to get you guys updated on what's going on here at our end, and let you know there are more great things in the works for the remainder of the year. In case you were wondering, the entire "Facts and Faults" journal does exist now as a painstakingly reconstructed PDF Document, unfortunately however it exceeds 50MB and as such I cannot upload it without making some adjustments. I really hope that in the future, I'm willing to go ahead and actually type on the laptop, because pounding this out on the Sidekick is frustrating as all hell. Keep your fingers crossed that the many good things I envision for this great publication soon come to pass, and check back here frequently for updates. You can add the Dateline 4:20 RSS feed to your browser's "live bookmarks" bar to keep tabs on us at-a-glance as we blog our way through the Summer of 2009. At this point I've quite had my fill of the LJ-for-Mobile experience, so until next time, you stay classy, New York!

October 2nd, 2009.
As it turns out, I didn't blog my way through jack shit.
Well, that may not be entirely true. If you consider the many photos I took this summer, I suppose I've been keeping pretty good records after all. Most of it's posted on Facebook, and as I mentioned if I'd take all the content I've uploaded to that site and put in even a fifth of the effort over here, I'd have a halfway decent publication. The fact is that 2009 has been a pretty busy year for me. Most of it's been good news. A new truck, a couple of intense adventures, some new friends. Sometimes webmasters, site administrators, or online journalists may have to take time off from the digital world to address the pressing concerns of real life. In the long run I guess that's fine, since it gave me an opportunity to reflect on things we've been discussing recently. I'm up later than I'd hoped right now, but it seemed important to check in and finally post this note that I began writing several months ago. I'm not making any mission statements or announcing any changes to the site. I prefer to let the content speak for itself. The past year has indeed been a time of adventure and of personal growth, but by the grace of God, the life I lead is an ongoing series of adventures and personal growth. What I want you to take away from all this is that I'm not gone, this site isn't dead, and I'm hoping to go live with a new issue sometime in the near future.

What I'm really looking at right now is a more thorough examination of something I got into last year, in an article titled "An Open Letter." At the time, I'd only just reconnected with the person to whom that letter was directed, and as it turned out she de-friended me for no apparent reason on Christmas Day. I'd last spoken to her in 1994, and I never forgot about her or the experiences we shared at summer camp. For fifteen years I wondered what had become of her, and carried with me the sense of unfinished business arising from the way things turned out all those years ago. When I wrote the article, I hadn't fully walked through the memory of those long-ago days, and the exact sequence of events, not to mention the leftover feelings and sense of urgency, had become clouded in my mind. It's been almost a year since my heart leapt into my throat the day I found her on Facebook, which also means her birthday is coming up soon. I can assure you I'll never forget her birthday, that's for damn sure. So I figured under the circumstances, in particular a recent event of which I'll speak more in another paragraph or so, it might not be a bad idea to revisit the entire process and see if I can't put these demons to rest once and for all.

I mentioned the old "Facts and Faults" journal. I hadn't yet uncovered that document at the time I wrote the "Open Letter." F&F was written in the days and months immediately following...please bear with me...the original Trail Of Tears raid in 1994. It's a little hard to explain it in what was supposed to be a short, simple article just announcing my not-dead-ness, but I'm going to have to try. Back in '94, there was a weekend at camp that began with a coed, which led to a raid, which led to a bust, which led to some drama. At the time, I was listening to Metallica's "And Justice For All" pretty regularly, and the lyrics to the last song on the CD, "Dyers Eve," were like some twisted letter home from camp penned by a nihilistic and troubled child. Thus, I began to refer to that time period, and that night in particular, as Dyers Eve and the name stuck. This year, in fact this past weekend, I made a sort of pilgrimage back to camp for an amazing and thoroughly enjoyable, drama-free reunion. During my time there, I had an opportunity to retrace the path of the journey I took that night fifteen years ago. As I was describing the process of re-enactment, I tried to compare it to other, more famous historical journeys that are sometimes faithfully re-created and all I could come up with was the Trail Of Tears. Ironically the name kind of fit, in the sense that it involves American Indians (because we all know that Summer Camp and Indian Lore go hand-in-hand), and in reference to the fact that this long-ago raid had produced quite a bit of anguish on my part (and this is in no way meant to disrespect the actual Trail Of Tears, which was a horrific tragedy). Thus I came to refer to the raid itself and its various way stations collectively as the Trail Of Tears. The "Facts and Faults" document contains some important details and insight into exactly how I was feeling at the time, and why. It would have been a great help to have found it before I wrote the Open Letter, but as I've said in the past (in fact, I said it in the Letter), everything happens for a reason.

You must understand that the years I attended this particular summer camp were some of the best summers of my life, and had without question a more profound effect on the person I've become than any other single thing I've ever experienced. I realize that may sound a little extreme, but hand to God it's the truth. That should tell you a lot, considering the magnitude of some of the adventures I've had the privilege of enjoying over the years. Also, I'd like to clarify that the girl to whom I wrote the Open Letter was, in and of herself, not so much the reason that Dyers Eve mattered, but rather it was the experience of meeting her, trying to see her, attempting to spend any time at all getting to know her, within the framework of being a 15-year-old kid at summer camp. The sequence of events surrounding my interaction with this person was what swung the majority of the weight; the person herself was little more than peripheral. It makes sense when you consider that more time was spent trying to see her to have a chance to get to know her, than was actually spent interacting with her. God, I hope that makes sense! I know in my heart what I want to say, but it's coming out all wrong. The experience of knowing her had the bigger effect on me than the person herself. It's kind of unfortunate, really. The way I remember it, she was pretty cool back then, even if she did ultimately turn out to be something of a lamer. For fifteen years I was under the impression she remembered a lot more of it than she later claimed to, in fact in 2008 she pretty much had next to no idea who I even was (or so she said). I don't fault her for that, after all, this is my journey, not hers. I'm going to maybe post quotes from our correspondence and from some of the messages I exchanged with a mutual friend of ours, ostensibly to clarify exactly what happened last year. It goes without saying that I'll be removing any names or personally identifying information. What's important is that you guys know what happened, not who did what and to whom. I'm not out to drag anybody through the mud. Lol, I think I dragged myself through enough actual mud for the both of us! Dragged, more like crawled, but at the end of the day it's all still brown and crusty.

I'm looking this over, and it seems to me that quite without meaning to, I've sat here and one-offed almost an entire issue. I really just wanted to give you folks a glimpse of what I'm hoping to put together in the future, but I guess that with me being me, I can't just allude to it without providing at least a little detail. Anyway, my point is that I now have the Facts and Faults document to refer back to, and while I'm still not sure if I'll be posting the document itself, I certainly intend to be quoting the everloving shit out of it. Now that I've had the chance to actually retrace the physical steps I took on that long-ago night, as well as to follow the route I would have taken had the raid been successful instead of ending the way it did, I've been able to get a few things sorted out in my head, places, time frames, and so forth. This should make it a little easier to really discuss the whole thing with objectivity and - dare I hope - a measure of clarity. I remember a little bit more than I did about who was involved and at which point, I remember where I went and when, and I've revisited the actual locations both in daylight and by the light of my little 21-LED flashlight in the darkness. It was even on a Saturday night, just like the original.

I understand that there is a vast gulf of difference between 1994 and 2009, and I have no problem accepting this. I'm not sure if that was even clear last fall when I wrote the Letter, but I'm hoping to reinforce for you that revisiting the past, or paying homage to it, is most certainly not the same thing as being stuck in it. The fact that as I'm writing this I'm listening to a playlist based on music we listened to at camp that year doesn't contradict this in the slightest. The person I am today simply wouldn't exist without the time I spent at summer camp, and I believe that deserves to be treated with respect, and shown proper tribute when appropriate. At this point in time, I feel that it is wholly appropriate to throw those doors wide open and step on through. Please come with me for the journey, if you wish. Your company will be welcome.



Stay tuned for more from the fifteenth anniversary of the DYERS EVE Summer of 1994.

 

The Dateline 4:20 Online
10th Anniversary Platinum Series
2nd Annual Advent Calendar
and Holiday Extravaganza

 

WARNING: Adult Language and Content. Not Suitable For Younger Readers.

RUDOLPH YOUTUBE PORN SCANDAL
SHOCKS NORTH POLE

Much Ado About Nutmeg Department -- Good evening, and welcome once again to everybody's favorite guilty pleasure, Dateline 4:20 Online! I don't know about you guys, but I've already had it up to here with the fucking snow. I mean, it's all right when people have their Christmas lights up. I can dig that. But once the lights come down, snow's gonna be just a big ole nuisance causing problems. Christmas lights and snow go well together, and the lights are great even without the snow, but snow without Christmas lights is just a pain in my ass. Maybe I'd feel a bit more charitable if I didn't drive for a living, but then again, probably not. Give me Hawaii any time. Even worse, Christmas music makes light of this. They make it sound like we should be happy about it. Oh yeah, all those songs where they're all la-de-dah, it's a fuckin' blizzard, Grampa just slipped on the ice in the driveway, broke his hip and froze to death, fa la la la la, and so forth? Yeah, shitty weather is really something to fuckin' sing about. Goddam right the weather is frightful. They need to be telling people to stay indoors, not to go take a fuckin' sleigh ride in the park. Baby, there's a moron outside. Thanks for setting such a fine example, Irving fucking Berlin.

Speaking of Christmas music, what the fuck is everyone's problem on the radio? First of all, they're a bunch of hypocrites for pretending to have the Christmas spirit, when they make no attempt to hide the fact that once December 26th rolls around, you couldn't pay them to play a fuckin' Christmas song. They just can't wait to get back to their regular, year-round crappy playlist. HELLO? It's still the fuckin' holidays. The weather outside is still fuckin' frightful, people are still doing the winter-break thing, the family-from-out-of-town-sleeping-in-your-fuckin-guest-room thing, maybe people would like to hear some fuckin' carols, ever think of that? Jesus H. Christ. They play it out, though. They wear people down all holiday season long with non-stop commercials from greedy fuckin' retailers desperately trying to sell you shit. Everybody's got you convinced that the holiday season is all about what you spend and what you get, when in reality, it's about showing people you care about them, spending time with friends and family, and sharing stuff with people without asking what's in it for you. It's like the broadcasters are physically allergic to playing less than ten minutes of commercials every fifteen minutes. It's like they've never heard of playing two songs in a row, let alone ten. Suddenly, the radio becomes wall-to-wall advertising, with a five minute break every hour so they can play half a song and then let some toolbag DJ come on and personally tell you which greedy merchant's dick he's sucking that day. They must be really fuckin' desperate to sell airtime, the way they act like convincing you to go out and spend, spend, spend is more important than playing fucking music. When the commercials come on, change the fuckin' station! Don't give your hard-earned money to these  people, I don't care how hard up for gifts you are. Give your money to their competition. Come December 26th, the DJ's are so burnt-out and jaded from convincing people the only way to do the holidays right is to run yourself ragged shopping all over town until the wee hours of the morning, that they can't wait to lock those fuckin' Christmas records the fuck back up until next Halloween, when they dust 'em off to get an early jump on reminding you that if you haven't died of a heart attack running up your credit card bills, then you don't have any Christmas spirit. Meanwhile, just look at these sad creatures. They're the ones who don't have any true Christmas spirit, because if they did, they'd give you twenty-four hours a day of uninterrupted carols and shit until January second at least, but apparently to them, it's only about the almighty dollar. Of course, you realize I'm only referring to the stations that even switch to an all-holiday format in the first place. Some stations don't play any Christmas songs, and some just pepper their regular playlist with 'em. This isn't directed at them. Hey, greedy merchants, hypocrite program directors, I got your fuckin' stocking stuffer right here, you heard? Jingle this, you fuckin' Scrooges.

I can't even believe it's Christmas already. It feels like it was only yesterday I wrapped up the Dateline 4:20 Homecoming Issue, and now I'm in a mad rush to get the last of my shopping done, finish up the Christmas issue, and generally run a bunch of errands that would be a helluva lot easier if I could only dig my fuckin' car out! None of this would be a problem if there wasn't an assload of snow on the ground fucking things up for everybody. I've been preparing the old issues of Dateline this week, the back issues from '97 that I'm posting as downloads for this year's Advent Calendar. Unlike last year, however, you won't have to wait for a new issue download each day; I'm putting them all up at once. Reading over some of them, I positively cringe at some of the things I said in print. I can't believe nobody went to jail for that shit (knock on wood!). I can't believe how far we've come, either. Sometimes I just stare at those words at the top of our Web page: "Tenth Anniversary." I swear I never saw this coming. Especially not the part about turning it into an online project. Who could have predicted? At any rate, it's much less of a burden on the paper and toner resources around here. I find it interesting also to look back with the hindsight I didn't have back then and see how things played out over time, like with school, or work, or the people I knew in those days. I look back as well at how I developed on a personal level, both within the span of the issue releases, and in the time since all that stuff transpired. Unfortunately, I don't seem to have developed as a writer. What I can say is that we seem here to be drawing on some hallowed traditions from those early issues, namely the concept of writing under a heavy deadline, as well as one-offing most of the content. DL4 always used to be written more or less in a sort of stream-of-consciousness as it came to me, with very little in the way of edits or proofreading. Usually this was due to time constraints...kind of like the one I'm under now (which nobody would even know existed if stupid toolbag me didn't bring it up, lol). I mean, let's be real, y'all know I'm probably gonna edit the crap out of this stuff, but for the most part this is all done in a single sitting, or perhaps two or three, just like the good old days. In keeping with another time-honored tradition, we actually have a show review for you this issue, complete with (admittedly crappy) pictures. Apparently they can give us expensive little telephones that fit in our pockets and operate without wires, phones that send email, browse this new invention called Teh Interwebs, and play 100 CD's worth of music at one time, but when it doubles as a film-less camera they forgot to design it with a flash. Fuckin' genius, I'm tellin ya, a goddam technological marvel.

Considering the economic climate in the world these days, I wanted to ruminate on a couple of things, just some random shit that bothers me. First, golf courses are perhaps the biggest and most unnecessary waste of land ever conceived, and I really think we should do away with them. I mean, golf isn't even a fuckin' sport! It's old men who can't run, whacking a ball into a little hole. HELLO! That's what POOL is for, except the old men are WAY cooler. Also, I've been thinking lately that auto racing should perhaps be discontinued in all its forms. Don't get it twisted, I LIKE auto racing, whether we're talking about NASCAR, Indy, the Dakar Rally, NHRA, you name it. I fuckin' love that shit. And yes, it is a legitimate sport. The problem is, it wastes assloads of precious gasoline for no good goddam reason, and I think for the benefit of society and future generations, organized racing ought to be discontinued. Not banned, I'm really not too big on banning stuff, I just think it should be discontinued until we figure out a better way. Some would claim that it's not a big deal because these race teams pay for the fuel they use, but that's quite beside the point. Where are we gonna get MORE fuel when they use it all up? I guess what I'm looking at here is something along the lines of preemptive rationing, I don't really know. But I think you see my point.

Moving right along, I want to put you on to a couple of things for your entertainment pleasure. If you like to watch TV online, you should be aware that there are a couple of sites standing head and shoulders above the others, namely hulu.com and liketelevision.com. On these two sites you can select from generous lists of programs, episodes, movies and even vintage commercials, for hours if not days of vegging out in high def. Also, if you use the Firefox browser, get yourself the Cooliris add-on. This plug-in allows you to turn your browser into a full-screen 3-D photo wall, displaying images from all over the Web. You can narrow your selection to certain specific sites' image galleries, or check out random feeds from all over the world. You can also select the "TV Episodes" or "Watch Movies" options from the menu to - you guessed it - watch movies and television online, in full screen HD, and completely for free. Just this week I've seen "Ed Gein" and "The Fifth Element," as well as "The Karate Kid," "The Russia House," "Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels," and "House on Haunted Hill." If you're interested, check out the Cooliris plug-in at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5579. You'll be glad you did!

Speaking of video, we have determined through extensive testing that if you want to use your webcam on an instant messenger, Yahoo Messenger is a very poor choice, while Windows Live Messenger will accommodate you nicely. We suspect that part of the reason Yahoo video IMing sucks has to do with their insistence on placing each video feed in its own separate window, which Live Messenger doesn't do, and also due to the streaming advertisements with which Yahoo chooses to emblazon each video window. Live Messenger doesn't do this either, making for a less memory-intensive, light-on-bandwidth messaging experience. In our tests, the Yahoo video instant messaging would run for an average of five minutes and then crash, while Windows Live video instant messaging ran uninterrupted for literally hours on end. The jury's still out on where AIM fits into the equation.

But as far as entertainment, few things have the presence or the ability to top good old live music...
 

Noise N Da Hood Department -- At the beginning of the month, the band No Vice held a show at the well-known local chill spot sometimes referred to as Rob's House. The moniker is of course a reference to one of the residents, someone who frequently misses vast portions of his own parties due to unconsciousness and occasionally due to poontang. The point, mi amigos, is that No Vice arranged for four or five kick-ass punk bands to stop in and play for us. This is precisely the sort of thing Huntington has been longing for. Back in the day, we used to have shows every week, at the Y or Old First Church, and there were other venues around the Island, like the PWAC and Common Ground, where one could catch all-ages shows from time to time. Those days, however, are long gone...or are they? This seemingly low-key location boasts a capacious basement area where the regulars have assumed responsibility for decorating the walls with spray paint, markers, bodily fluids and whatever else happens to be at hand, resulting in a gloriously rich, vibrant tapestry of colorful inscriptions and promoting a sense of unity and belonging. When the DL4 contingent arrived, it was well past 10 at night, and most of the bands had already played. Buddy Up and Kids on Strike, who appeared on the flyer, wound up having to cancel, but FX Zero came through and brought with them a crew known as Footage of a Yeti, so they played instead. Although we didn't catch the early part of the show, everybody confirmed it was phat as hell. Obnoxious Gas did their set right before the organizers, No Vice were to go on. Our sources tell us they had another show to get to on that blustery night, further out East no less. The first real snow of the season was beginning to fall, and as the departing band members loaded equipment into their car, this reporter said a few what-ups outside and went in to see the headliners. It should be noted that I used the door, although there was a window available for those who choose to forego traditional entry methods. Kids packed the room wall to wall and floor to ceiling, literally - even the staircase was filled. In some of the pictures below you can see that the window-slash-door was for a while used as an air-conditioned box seat, lol. People jammed the room elbow to elbow, craning for a look at the high energy performance. Pockets of shadowy figures rolled their own special blended cigars to enhance their enjoyment of the vibe, and hardly a hand was to be seen without a drink in it. People came from far and wide for this event. This wasn't just some people farting around with guitars in a friend's basement; the show drew crowds from schools upstate and in towns across the Island. Fans of the music came out to support the scene and to show their love for their favorite local bands. When you get right down to it that's what this shit is really about. Pure, uncompromised love of the vibe for vibe's sake, coming together as a community of participating characters to create an atmosphere of action, energy and success. No Vice were getting ready to play their set, to be followed by the balls-to-the-wall rhythms of Mutual Assured Destruction. The set kicked off with alluring vocalist RJ belting out the lyrics with an intensity not heard since Lana Barber and BOR graced the stage at the Y shows back in the 90's. The band played with all the passion you could hope for from people doing it for the love of the music, and their energy clearly had an effect on the crowd. Kids were dancing, laughing, having a great time, while RJ and No Vice devastated the sound system. Midway through the set, she turned the mike over to the charming and debonair B Love, who proceeded to get his game face on by giving himself a beer shower. With that out of the way, No Vice tore into a cover set of The Misfits, occasionally passing the mic to the crowd, who were more than happy to join in. As the set concluded, the torch was passed to fellow Long Island band MAD. As they set the levels on the amp, the beer pong continued on the far side of the room, while a continuous stream of people poured in through the actual door as well as the window-door. As I observed the crowd, I couldn't help but notice someone walking around wearing a fearsome-looking set of brass knuckles, with large studs on the top of each ring. This person stuck out from the crowd because he didn't appear to have shown up for the music, and for some reason he seemed to feel it was appropriate to have this weapon at the ready. In my opinion this sort of thing has great potential to distract from the momentum of the show, and in the event somebody had seen fit to challenge this guy, they might have wound up getting themselves seriously hurt. I've never been a big fan of real violence at shows, and it kind of bothers me that somebody would do this. It's not in the same league as slamdancing in a mosh pit, which as you know is a staple of any heavy show worth its salt. As m.a.d. settled into a furious barrage of punishing vocals and pounding drum beats, with aggressive guitar riffs that held nothing back, the crowd spontaneously erupted into a terrific mosh pit to the left of the "stage" area. In particular I noticed this one really big dude basically just pretty much owning the other dancers, but there had to be a good five to 10 kids in the pit at any given time, charging around and crashing into one another with wild abandon. It was clear from the look on their faces that they were having the time of their lives. Free from worries about concert security guards and arbitrary no-dancing regulations that some venues have instituted in recent years, the kids were able to let themselves go. As the code of honor in the pit is always rigorously applied, nobody who ventured in had anything to truly fear. If you fell down, the others helped you back up. It was the kind of reckless violence that can only be referred to as fun. MAD kept the party crankin, giving the crowd all the musical fury one basement could contain. They delivered a blistering set that went on for a good 20 minutes or more, although to be honest I'd quite lost all track of time by then. It was hard not to get into the excitement as the band blazed through song after song, much of it all-new material. I may be mistaken, however - it was all new to me as this was my first chance to catch MAD in action. As the show wound down and equipment was trucked to the car (trucked to the car, lol) the snow continued to fall, blanketing the neighborhood in a fine white shroud. Many kids chose to stay and keep the party going, while some made the choice to face the winter weather and haul ass back to whatever quarters whence they'd come. Personally, I had a bit of difficulty navigating the Town Car up the block and out of the neighborhood, and no sooner had I reached the reasonable calm of the main roads when I was called to return to the house as some partygoers required safe passage back to their respective neighborhoods. I busted an about face and back I went. Not for nothing but the snow we've had this weekend makes that night look like a light dusting by comparison. All in all, a great time was had by everyone in attendance, and the distance some people traveled to be a part of what went down that night is a testament to the strength of the scene and to the character of the people who make all this shit possible.

A word of advice: in the future, throw your goddam trash in the trash can, where it belongs, and don't touch water mains that don't belong to you. PERIOD. Or there might not BE any more shows. Got that? If you don't want this venue shut down, whether for shows, parties or just in general, show some fucking respect. Y'all know who y'all are. It may be complete pandemonium over there, but you're still a guest in somebody's house. Don't be one of those rotten apples that spoils things for the rest of us. Nobody needs that shit, and it won't be tolerated.

punkshow as listed on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=48065334488&ref=mf

m.a.d. myspace page:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=6195976

DL4 punkshow photo album on myspace:
http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewPicture&friendID=206124815&albumId=1525393

click on the thumbnails below to view the images full size, and as i said i apologize for my fancy-ass smartphone not having a fucking flash on the goddam camera. the pictures show no vice and m.a.d.; if you see a bassist in green stripes, it was m.a.d., if not, probably no vice. the blurry things are each band's respective vocalist.

 

 

All I Want For Christmas Is News:
Your 2008 DL4 Holiday Advent Calendar

Milk and Tracking Cookies Department -- For the second year in a row, DL4 is proud to present a reissue of the original, print-format Dateline 4:20 series from the late 90's. This year, we have had the technological wherewithal to produce much nicer reprints than what you were stuck with last year. We think you will find this year's PDFs quite attractive. This year, instead of posting them on Xdrive (which is being shut down anyway) we're uploading the series to Zshare, an anonymous and free-of-charge file-hosting service. [EDITOR'S NOTE: THE ZSHARE LINKS ARE NO LONGER IN SERVICE. THE FILES ARE NOW AVAILABLE ON WINDOWS LIVE SKYDRIVE INSTEAD. THE SKYDRIVE LINKS APPEAR BELOW THE DEAD ZSHARE LINKS. WE APOLOGIZE FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE AND/OR CONFUSION.] Since there are 12 files and 12 days of Christmas, we suggest that you download one a day for 12 days, beginning on Christmas Day with the first issue of the Volume 2 set. Needless to say, these downloads won't do you much good if you can't view them, so you will need to have a PDF reader installed on your computer. We recommend Foxit Reader, because it launches in like two seconds. Since all you're doing is reading a file, there really isn't any good reason to sit around with your thumb up your ass waiting for your reader to load. If you prefer, however, you can use the more mainstream Adobe Reader, which is probably already installed on your system anyway. With either of these programs installed, you can choose to read the issues directly off the Web without having to download any files to your hard drive, or if you prefer, you may save the files and read them at your leisure. If you do decide to install Foxit Reader, make sure you set the program to be your computer's default PDF reader. This way, all you need to do is double-click on any PDF file and Foxit will launch immediately and display your selected content in the blink of an eye. Adobe Reader does exactly the same thing, it just takes much, much longer to do it, and takes up a fuck of a lot more disk space. If you wish, you may print out a copy of each issue; after all, the original Dateline 4:20 was designed as a hard-copy publication. We hope you enjoy many hours of thoroughly disturbing reading enjoyment.

Dateline 4:20, Volume 2, 1997.
Issue #1 (0.18MB)
Issue #2 (0.17MB)
Issue #3 (0.22MB)
Issue #4 (0.16MB)
Issue #5 (0.21MB)
Issue #6 (0.23MB)
Issue #7 (0.21MB)
Issue #8 (0.17MB)
Issue #9/10 (0.30MB)
Issue #11 (0.23MB)
Issue #12 (0.18MB)
Issue #13 (0.24MB)

Because We Love You!
We're including an all-new package of the first volume of DL4.
Yeah, we stuck you with 'em last year, but this version is better!
Dateline 4:20, Volume 1, 1996 - All-New Reprints for 2008
Issue #1(0.10MB)
Issue #2 (0.07MB)
Issue #3A (0.12MB)
Issue #3B (0.16MB)
Issue #4 (0.17MB)
Issue #5 (0.15MB)
Issue #6 (0.20MB)
Issue #7 (0.22MB)
Issue #8 (0.23MB)
Issue #9/10 (0.18MB)
Issue #11 (0.16MB)
Issue #12 (0.19MB)
Issue #13 (0.14MB)

ATTENTION PLEASE: THE LINKS ABOVE DO NOT WORK.
PLEASE USE THE FOLLOWING LINKS INSTEAD.
VOLUME 1: http://cid-4606c14a6c4be5b8.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Public/DL4%20Volume%201%20-%201996
VOLUME 2: http://cid-4606c14a6c4be5b8.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Public/DL4%20Volume%202%20-%201997
Congratulations, you lucky bastard. Now you REALLY have the complete set.
Merry Christmas!

shout outs and thank you's (in no particular order): apipothory, october autumn story, raine has fallen, jesse zook mann, marvin serena moser, glenn andreiev and huntingtonactionfilms.com, steve 33, wilbur 27, al 81, tony 60, rob 20, josh 83, dave, ben, matt a., eric h., johnny pinball, good lookin dan, NvMe the fuckin' MILF, black jess, sceney chad, uncle andy a.k.a. syntax era (the godfather of dateline 4:20), drummerboy a.k.a. the dj naked slice, pete roome and mnuvrs.com, soul food the rap dealer, smellerific & the odortones, rj and no vice, brian love, pantie shields, erik s., emily m., fran minishoe, steve nash, rob & carlos @ the party house, my bastard son christian a.k.a. junior, rachele the awesome potato, little chris a.k.a. big chris (hang in there, big guy!) and most of all YOU for helping make DL4 what it is today. thank you all for being a part of my life, and thanks for making '08 a straight up banger!
if i forgot anybody, chill the fuck out, it wasn't on purpose.
peace out...see y'all in the new year.

IF YOU LIKED THIS ISSUE, tell your friends. If you didn't, tell me.

WORST VERSION EVER RECORDED of "Baby, It's Cold Outside":
The Rod Stewart version. Hands down.

ATTENTION FIREFOX USERS! If you're having trouble reading the text, press CTRL and the plus sign key to magnify the on-screen image. Press CTRL and the minus sign/dash key to shrink it down, and press CTRL and 0 (the zero key) to return your screen magnification to normal.
This technique may or may not work in other browsers as well.

YOU ALREADY KNOW THIS, BUT if it's underlined, it's clickable.

The Much Delayed, Long Awaited, Hotly Anticipated and Totally Worth It

DL4

2008 Homecoming Issue
and Back-To-School Rant-a-Thon

WARNING: Adult Language & Content. Not Suitable For Younger Readers.

 

POWERED BY NEWPORTS - THE GIFT OF TIME, PART II
"THE TiDE iS HiGH AND i'M HOLDiNG ON"
Originally Appeared in DATELINE 4:20 ON MYSPACE, September 24th, 2008

Get The Step In Department -- I am sitting on the beach right now. It's a beautiful day. The last day of Calendar Summer.
I am grateful to God for making the last Beach Sunday of Summer 2008 such a gorgeous day - but I missed most of it because I was sleeping. [EDITOR'S NOTE: I HAD GONE TO SLEEP AFTER WORKING 13 1/2 HOURS THE NIGHT BEFORE.] My shirt is off, my little feets are in the water and it is 77 degrees at 4:30 PM. [EDITOR'S NOTE: NOTICE HOW I TOTALLY DON'T BOTHER BACKDATING IT TO 4:20 ANYMORE?!! LOL] I am very disappointed with myself for sleeping through today. In my view it's irrelevant why I slept - I did wake up at 11:30 AM and went back to sleep when I could have been here. Sure, there have been other Beach Days, and of course there may still be more yet to come - I don't know. But that's exactly it - we don't know. There may NOT be any more. This could have been my last chance, for all I know, not just for '08 but also...well...let's just say that if tomorrow isn't promised then next year is for damn sure not promised. Do I have many, many lovely, wonderful memories of the Summer of 2008? You bet your ass I do. But today could have been one of them - and although it may yet still be, I could have done better, and for that I cannot forgive myself. [EDITOR'S NOTE: AS IT TURNED OUT, I TOOK ALMOST 75 PICTURES IN ABOUT 2 1/2 HOURS - MORE PICS THAN THE LAST THREE FULL-LENGTH BEACH DAYS COMBINED. NOT ONLY THAT, BUT DUE TO THE TIMING OF ALL EVENTS OF THIS DAY, I SAVED THE LIFE OF A CHICKEN - YES, FOLKS, A CHICKEN - WHO WAS - I SHIT YOU NOT - CROSSING THE ROAD. IN FACT I DELIBERATELY PUT MYSELF IN HARM'S WAY IN ORDER TO PROTECT THIS CHICKEN UNTIL HELP ARRIVED - WHICH IT DID - AND THIS WOULDN'T HAVE WORKED OUT THIS WAY HAD THE TIMING OF ALL EVENTS BEEN ANYTHING OTHER THAN WHAT IT WAS.]

 

I can smell the ocean. A guy in the canoe just rode by me. The tide is high and rising, and apparently now I'm sitting in it. I love seaweed. There isn't necessarily a "next summer" and there is no rewind button on today. I cannot forgive myself for missing this - even as I am grateful to have made it here at all. A dog ran up to me as I parked my car - in my usual spot. [EDITOR'S NOTE: HE ACTUALLY RAN UP AFTER THE CAR WAS PARKED AND MY FAT ASS HAD GOTTEN OUT OF THE VEHICLE.] He gave me doggy love. Why am I not swimming? Why the fuck did I stay in bed today? [EDITOR'S NOTE: SEE ABOVE.]

Fear of the unknown? Yes - you bet. Why?

Because right now I have the freedom and the wherewithal to get here and be here whenever I want to. I live right up the road, 8 miles/20 minutes away. [EDITOR'S NOTE: AND THAT'S BECAUSE I TAKE THE MORE PEACEFUL, SAFER "SCENIC" ROUTE RATHER THAN BE BOTHERED WITH THE MAIN ROADS AND THE MORONS WHO OCCUPY THEM.] Next summer? Next year I mean? We don't know. My job? Next year? We don't know. Money? We don't know. I don't know anything. Trust God. Yes. But. As we've seen from my seeming inability to recognize that 11:30 AM - when God woke me - means Get the fuck out of bed and go play outside, I can't trust myself. I don't know how to make my peace with that. I really don't. Even if God does forgive me. Maybe I'm being too hard on myself. But this is what's important to me, and I literally slept on it.

This is supposed to be my Fourth Step. That's why I'm sitting here writing. But it turned into THIS. Here in my head I'm thinking even if there is another 80 degree Sunday - or ANY day - in '08, there will still be only one Last Day of Summer. That's what I can't get past. And for some reason it matters - even the people here who I don't know are here for the last Beach Sunday of the Summer. The technical, official Summer, not that phony Labor Day Weekend "Last Day" when people run around like "it's over" when it's really not. I mean hell, I was here and swimming just this past Monday. Six days ago. I want to go swimming. I could, ya know. All I gotta do is runquick back to the car and change.
Then again there are some REALLY cool triangular waves right now. [EDITOR'S NOTE: I HAVE PICTURES. IN FACT - HERE'S SEVERAL.]

 

 

EDITOR'S NOTE (2): DUE TO SPACE RESTRICTIONS NOT ALL THE PICTURES ARE INCLUDED IN THIS VERSION OF THE POST. TO VIEW THE PICTURES PLEASE ENTER THIS URL INTO YOUR BROWSER:

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=206124815&blogID=435613444

YOU MAY ALSO VISIT THE ENTIRE POWERED BY NEWPORTS PHOTO ALBUM AT:

http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewPicture&friendID=206124815&albumId=1425283

 I wonder - and worry - if this might wind up becoming something I spend the rest of my life trying to reclaim. I've been mindful of this. All Summer I've been mindful of this. I've tried to make the absolute most of the gift I have been given - the gift of Summer. [EDITOR'S NOTE: I'VE ALSO TAKEN TO REFERRING TO 2008 AS THE "BEST SUMMER EVER," NOT BECAUSE IT SOUNDS PRETTY BUT ONLY BECAUSE I REALLY FEEL THIS WAY. NOTE THAT THE CLASSIFICATION OF "BEST" ALSO APPLIES BY DEFAULT TO ANY SUMMER SPENT AT CAMP, WHICH IS ANOTHER STORY ENTIRELY. TECHNICALLY THIS WOULD BE THE "BEST SUMMER NOT SPENT AT CAMP" BUT THAT TAKES TOO LONG TO SAY.]

 All things being what they are, and my faith in a Higher Power being firmly set, I have no choice really. I have no choice but to trust that this is not lost. Will not be lost. I have been granted the privilege of incontrovertible evidence [EDITOR'S NOTE: IN SPADES] that whatever the Higher Power is in substance, the fact of Its existence is concrete. I have been provided the luxury of proof, conclusive signs, indications, factual and otherwise inexplicable phenomena demonstrating conclusively and beyond all possible doubt that whoever or whatever He, She, It or They might be, They definitely exist and are paying attention. It is I who fell short today. Who do you think woke my ass up at 11:30, versus whose idea was it to stay in bed. That's not the proof I'm talking about, it's just how the day went. And even still, whatever I may THINK I've missed, I still had things happen, like who I bumped into and when, that suggest all may still not be lost after all. I have to have faith, because really, there is no other option.

 

LANDSCAPER MURDERS TREE
YOU SHOULDA CALLED A CAB, ESSE!

Tequila Surprise Department -- Earlier this summer, an alleged immigrant allegedly stole a Lincoln Navigator after a Saturday night of alleged drinking and allegedly crashed it into a tree on Depot Road in Huntington. The truck apparently rolled over driver's side to roof to passenger side, and the pudgy capitano climbed out of the driver's side window, unharmed except for a few cuts and bruises and some alleged disorientation. Lacking paperwork of any sort, and in the absence of even the most rudimentary command of English, the alleged miscreant was carted off to the hospital. It is worth noting that one of the first cars to pass the scene was a nurse on her way to work, who stopped to help and who called the police. Our cameras captured some of the carnage, presented below for your educational edification.

 

she hate me
AN OPEN LETTER TO A GIRL I USED TO KNOW
(EDITED FOR LENGTH AND CLARITY)

Digging A Grave Mistake Department -- This document is based on a true story. Names and places may have been altered for the sake of discretion. This document is being composed in part on a mobile device, behind the wheel and/or while at the author's workplace. Advance apologies are offered by the author for any grammatical or other inconsistencies, whether real or perceived.

Dear *****,
I'm writing this today because I never had a chance to see you one last time, and I've carried that with me for nearly a decade and a half. I don't know if closure is possible, and if it is I have no idea whether this is it. Perhaps I wouldn't know closure if it whacked me with a big wooden sign that said "Hello, My Name Is Closure." The last thing I remember from our time at camp together is that we had to meet up and square some things away, and that they wouldn't let us...wouldn't let ME. For all this time, I've been waiting, and wondering, and just kind of held on to that urgency, that sense of needing to get a message to you. Even as life carried on, as I lived and loved and lost, and went on living, I never forgot about that feeling, that message, that urgency. I never forgot about YOU. Now that I actually have the chance to do this, the bloody thing's long past its expiration date. In any case I think I've forgotten the damned punchline. This shit ain't no joke, however; it's been fuckin' me up for years. You might never even read this, but I've got to get this sorted before any more time goes by. All I ask is that if you do read this, please read the whole thing.

I ought to to start off by saying I'm not under the delusion that it's possible to pick up where we left off. Just gotta get that out of the way right off the bat. I believe in reality. I know the intervening years have taken us in separate directions. I'm not ignorant of your accomplishments, and I can see that you've worked very hard to get to where you are today. I did my homework. You've done pretty well for yourself. I respect the hell out of that.

I just figured I'd throw that out there. If I were on the receiving end of a letter like this, that would probably be the first thought into my mind, that the person writing it was under the impression we were still sixteen. Yeah, this ain't that.

All I'm trying to say is that I've been kicking myself for years because of something that I fucked up because I didn't know any better. I'm not looking for a second chance. That ship sailed a long, long time ago. I get that. It's cool. I'm not here to disrupt things in the present day, nor am I looking to rewrite history. 

I am genuinely grateful to have the chance to write these things tonight knowing that you will actually have the opportunity to read them, or even to choose not to if you prefer. It's the gratitude of knowing that you're there, somewhere, to be able to make that decision. Words don't do it proper justice.

When I first got online a few years ago, I tried looking you up, to no avail. After a while I had to give up, until I was able to connect a few dots late this year, and here we are. Nice detective work, indeed. How ya doin.

I freely admit that for a long time I carried the admittedly unrealistic hope that someday I'd run into you and we might be able to sort things out, maybe even spend some time together. Tell the truth, I'm not really sure WHAT I was hoping for. I think I just wanted to see you again, and I guess I figured we'd take it from there. You see, the last thing I know is that I had to talk to you at camp one more time and I never had the chance to. With every passing year, I realized that getting back in contact was increasingly less likely, and at some point it finally dawned on me that if I found you at all after this length of time, you might not remember any of this (or care), wouldn't be single (or interested), or maybe even have passed away.
At that time, the realization struck me like a ton of bricks. It just hadn't occurred to me. It was so obvious, yet it came as a total shock. Since then, however, I've had the chance to come to terms with it, long before I ever met up with you again on ********.

I think if I was going to regret anything, it's that we didn't even have a chance to really get to know each other before it was all snatched away from us. I've been kicking myself all this time for the way I handled things, always knowing that my own misdeeds were the reason for all the trouble that popped off. To be sure, I now believe that everything happens for a reason. I'll be getting into that in a little bit. Generally speaking, regret isn't in my vocabulary. But for chrissake I never even got your phone number or mailing address. God, I was such a DOUCHE! They never let us have the chance to get acquainted, so if we did "leave off" anywhere, I'd have to say it was at the how-do-you-do stage. That's the only reasonable place to pick up any of it. 

Every time I have a Marlboro Light or 100, I think about camp. Stashing my butts under the cabin, or hiding behind the chicken coop sharing a Marlboro Light with my friend B**** C**** and finishing it in under two minutes. I've never been pleased with the way I handled myself back then, not only with regard to how I related to girls, but also because I was so openly rebellious. OPENLY rebellious. Sure, I can chalk it up to general inexperience. At the time, I had only just started smoking cigarettes - which, may I add, are part of the reason for my sudden disappearance from camp in the first place - and had not yet been turned on to drugs. This whole sequence of events began and ended during the summer immediately preceding my first "real" relationship with a girl. So apparently I'm doing damage control for the ineptitude of a little kid. Nothing more than a star-struck child, and this is the mental Monday-morning quarterbacking of that child several Presidents later. [EDITOR'S NOTE: it's actually Monday morning right now, lol]

I guess what I'm trying to say is that for some reason, for reasons that I may not ever even understand, what happened back then changed my life. I don't know why, but it did. I'm sure I couldn't say why. If my life depended on it I couldn't possibly explain. Nevertheless, I have always felt that if somehow it were possible to go back in time and change just one thing, I know what that would have been. What the one thing is in all my life I would have changed. What I should have done differently, would have done differently had I but known better. But of course, back then I had my head up my ass.

I remember staying awake by doing hundreds of push-ups on the porch of the cabin. I remember getting all done up in black to avoid detection by the counselors out on Patrol. There were four of us, I believe, who went over that night. I know we had mapped out the best route for us to cross over from W******* to E****** and where each cabin was situated. I still can recall the shock of seeing someone moving around at the front of the cabin as I knelt in the shadows by the half-opened back door. Even now, I can remember how it felt. I can almost smell the wood and hear the slow, incriminating creak of the door spring. I hid under your cabin for over half an hour that night, waiting for whoever it was that I saw in there to bounce. Under the cabin, with my head resting on some nasty-ass pillow that just happened to be right there. Under the damn cabin, waiting for the counselor to go back to sleep. Had I but known who was in there at the time and what they were doing, maybe that block of time in that twelve-inch crawlspace would have been shorter, or eliminated entirely. I'd have just gone right in. You see, I know now who was awake in there and why. But of course, it's easy with the bifocals of hindsight to say that I should have gone inside anyway. My God. When I think about what went on instead that night it turns my stomach. Who I went to go see, and the price I paid, and I don't mean just the short term inconvenience of falling asleep in my breakfast plate with the aroma of horse manure still fresh in my nostrils.

And for what? So that I could get caught - and wind up shoveling horse shit until the breakfast bugle blew - trying to convince that juvenile, self-absorbed [Expletive Deleted] to sneak out with me instead. Thankless fucking person she turned out to be. It wasn't worth it, and back then I never even saw it coming.

This shit's haunted me for almost fifteen years. I know this is the course we were set to follow because all things are as God intends. I believe this, and I wouldn't change a minute of it. I wouldn't be where I am today if it wasn't for what happened in days gone by. What I'm on about is, I don't even know if that's a good thing or not. I suppose it is, if we are to assume the truth of the "God's Will" theory (see below), and I do assume that truth. As I've said elsewhere, I've seen it proven. Moving forward from here, I can't say. The future is an unwritten page in a book with no set end.

We had almost been able to sort it all out on that Sunday at the religious services, except that thanks to the counselors keeping me practically under lock and key I hardly had an opportunity to speak to you. I'm remembering as I write this that we were supposed to rendezvous on Visitor Sunday but that they wouldn't even let me out of the goddam cabin. As it turned out that was my last Sunday at camp. Ever.

What can I say? I didn't know any better at the time. I almost never talk about this, but I've thought about it almost every day. The time has come where I have to get this off my chest, and really, at the end of the day that's all I can do. The fact that I finally CAN is why I'm doing it. I believe in living as if each day were your last, and I'll be damned if I'm taking this to my grave.

I've been saying there was only ever one thing about all of this I'd have changed if I could. You asked me a question at the co-ed that night, and I gave the wrong answer. It's as plain and as simple as that. If I had simply had the presence of mind to pursue what was right in front of me instead of letting my free will get shanghaied by that opportunistic gold digger, for all I know all of this might have worked out quite differently. For good or for ill, it would definitely have been different. I've heard it said that sometimes not knowing is worse, and that's more or less what's been haunting me all this time. I didn't make an informed decision, but rather an impulsive one. Possibly one of the most brainless decisions I've ever made. I gotta be real, though. I've never been able to understand why this one moment of indecision, or of poor decision-making, or whatever it was, has had such deep-seated and far-reaching impact. I know that it did, beyond question, but I'm not entirely sure why. I have to be upfront about that. 

While I may not have recognized it at the time, I had every opportunity in the world to do something about it back then. Hell, I had it handed to me on a fucking silver plate. That night, at that co-ed, I messed it up. Yes I did. It's like that old song, it's nobody's fault but mine. I own that. I own up to it. I've never shied away from my responsibility for that.

I realize, recognize and respect that everything that happens, happens for a reason. Everything, whether it was something we liked at the time or not, has all been according to the plan of the Being I choose to refer to as God. I like that word, "God." It's easy to spell and everybody gets it. Whoever or whatever you believe God to be is your business. My point is that everything happens according to God's plan. Way leads ever on to way, like the hobbit said. One thing leads naturally into the next. I get that. It's the way of the world, fluid rhythm and natural balance.

Camp was the only place I ever truly felt alive. I wonder if it's possible that God did the both of us a favor by causing us to part company. I think maybe He did, because if I know myself, I'm sure I would have found a way to fuck things up anyway. The way it all turned out, at least we can remember those days and the circumstances surrounding them with that sunlit, golden glow that camp memories properly deserve.

I don't even know whether apologies are in order, but I'd rather offer an apology that may not be called for than owe one I haven't tendered. Let's put all the cards on the table. I think what I did back then may have hurt you, even if only for a little while, and one way or another that's absolutely my fault. Whether I knew better or I didn't, I'm sorry. I really am.

I think maybe I owe myself an apology as well, not just for falling prey to my own ignorance and ineptitude but also for beating myself up over it. Honestly, I'm not really sure. Then again, if everything happens for a reason, then even my inexperience and resulting inaction, or failure to act on my heart's true intent [EDITOR'S NOTE: OR FAILURE TO DISLODGE MY HEAD FROM MY TUCKUS], can been seen in the light of retrospect as an opportunity in itself, and the basis for any real growth that may have taken place since then.

It's just that I never had a chance to say goodbye.

JACK DECLARES BANKRUPTCY,
SELLS BEANSTALK

Unreal Estates Department -- We are outraged. It seems the once-hallowed right to provide shelter for oneself and one's family has gone out the window in the relentless pursuit of riches currently dragging this country through the tar pits.

It's an insult to the working class people of this town that amoral banks (banks aren't even banks anymore, having adopted the pretentious euphemism "financial centers" instead) and greedy scumbag quote unquote developers see fit to keep erecting large, ugly houses, blocks and blocks of em at a time. They're doing it during an economic recession, when many people are out of work or scared of losing their jobs, and they're doing it at the expense of regular, ordinary and affordable houses which are being torn down by the boatload. Moreover, these giant so-called homes are big enough to subdivide into affordable residences for the working-class families that are the heart and soul of the community, yet in practical application it seems the only houses being subdivided are the smaller ones which are really better suited to being put to use as single-family dwellings. The streets they're constructing don't even serve any social purpose since none of them actually go anywhere, because heaven forbid there should be any actual traffic on the street. Apparently it would inconvenience the nouveau riche by reminding them that there are still people besides them in the world. They can't be bothered to open up both ends of the block because it might actually help some of the more pedestrian motorists, pardon the pun, to get somewhere without having to sit in traffic or risk their safety on busy main roads. You'll note they hide behind their children under the guise of safety, except that defense doesn't really hold water since there have been children living on through streets since the fucking things were invented.

I can't even begin to tell you how angry it makes me that in the middle of a recession these greedy, evil douchebags see fit to bulldoze precious acres of natural wilderness to make room for yet another one of their gated "communities," isolationist neighborhoods with the unmitigated gall to post an $8-an-hour security guard at the only point of entry to decide who is and is not fit to enter these areas. Strictly speaking, these are nothing more than the high-tax-bracket version of ghettos and housing projects. You don't have to take my word for it:

 

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ghetto

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/housing%20project

 

The problem, for the most part, is that there seems to be a widespread epidemic of "new home construction" and that many of these larger houses are going up at the expense of more affordable, reasonably-sized homes that are perfectly habitable at the time of their demolition. This is taking place at a time when working people are taking pay cuts, losing customers and in some cases losing their jobs altogether, and the economy as a whole is pretty much in the toilet. I see this as an insult to working people everywhere. If you're not insulted, perhaps you don't work for a living, or if you do then obviously you aren't working hard enough.

Not to mention the fact that every single last one of these fucking ugly, oversized abominations seems to be built (and hastily, I might add - since when does it take less than a month to erect an entire block of houses? *cough* cutting corners *cough*) from exactly the same set of blueprints, which appear to have been designed by a mildly retarded seventh grader for extra credit in some CADD class in an underfunded school district in the hood somewhere. In many cases, these thoughtless, arrogant assholes build their gargantuan eyesores directly in some other homeowner's line of sight to an otherwise breathtaking view. An example of this can be seen down on West Shore Road, just north of town, where several homes with waterfront views now have nothing to look at but crackhouse-vintage vinyl siding. In other cases, there are properties with abundant foliage on the property, giving the home a cabin-in-the-woods feel, and the house itself will frequently reflect this theme in the decoration and trim. The entire point of these layouts is to have that "rustic" look and feel, even while providing all modern amenities. Many such homesteads have grown to become local landmarks in the neighborhood, adding charm and a certain quaint appeal to the experience of home ownership on Long Island. Some of these greedy-scumbag developers and maverick do-it-yourselfers buy up those properties and proceed to cut down all the trees and completely reface the houses, as well as doubling and tripling the size of the structure with needless additions, fake turrets, and so forth. The end result is yet another bland, homogenized and totally charmless property with the market value of a mud hut.

In short, there are dozens of these newly constructed abominations sitting unsold and unoccupied as the economy continues to head south, where previous existing structures on the property might have been snapped up by law-abiding taxpayers who could have become contributors to the community but are now forced to relocate to more affordable climes, like Pennsylvania, m'Assachusetts, and similarly uninhabitable locales boasting of second-rate, mediocre has-been sports teams. What kind of fate is that to foist upon Johnny Wage Earner? An unconscionable demoralization, that's what.

It is also my opinion that whoever keeps green-lighting these abominations has it in their pretty little heads that they're going to somehow organize, arrange, control or engineer the population so that the affected areas are occupied only by people in certain tax brackets. I have long suspected there are back-room arrangements in place between the banks and lenders and the builders to force hardworking people off their family's land so that more expensive dwellings can be constructed, resulting in increased revenue for crooked town governments. When they fail to tempt homeowners with big dollar signs, developers go behind their backs to conspire with the banks and the town governments to artificially raise rents, mortgage payments and tax rates until they've priced people out of their own homes. Some selfish, shortsighted people do cave in at the lure of big money, only to see their beloved family homestead demolished to make way for several houses many times the size and many times the market value. You will note that some homeowners in these areas have no problem with the so-called "mansionization" of their neighborhoods (a term which itself is becoming more and more of a misnomer, as this isn't neighborly behavior) because in their avaricious self-absorption they've convinced themselves it raises their own property values, which suggests they have no interest in staying put for very long. There goes your sense of community. Of course, it also causes an increase in their property TAXES, but because many of these homeowners are of the moneyed 5% that signs the paychecks for the rest of us, they usually don't mind since they're in cahoots with the banks (and the aforementioned corrupt town governments) their ownselves. Likewise they have little regard for the struggling, working-class families down the block whose taxes have also gone up as a result of all this.

Bear in mind this is only a theory and I have no concrete evidence, but if you simply open your eyes to the world around you, it becomes unmistakably clear that if this isn't what's going on, then something like it most certainly is.

In any case the worst part about all this is the way there seems no end in sight. People are convinced that no matter what they have, it isn't good enough. We're losing many historic older homes to this blight, homes which were built in an era of quality materials, dedicated labor and true craftsmanship, all of which are becoming a lost art these days as many builders trim costs by skimping on materials and workmanship. Gone are the days of rounded corners (for your safety) and doors that slide into the wall (for your convenience). Gone too are the sprawling yards where children can run and play and pets can frolic among the wildlife. Today's ultra-manicured, landscaped equivalent is nothing compared to the garden walls and built-in hillside staircases of the golden age of housebuilding, a time in American history when banks and housebuilders would actually go out of their way to make sure that anybody who wanted one could afford to buy their family a nice house and still enjoy amenities like an outdoor kitchen for barbecuing. As the stock market declines, and people lose their jobs left and right, more and more "coming soon" signs sprout up around the countryside, adding further insult to injury by giving these ghettos-to-be uppity, condescending names like "the pines at" or "the polo grounds at" or "the colonial villages of" when in fact these are nothing more than mass-produced, cookie-cutter eyesores for insecure people to show off like a stucco badge of honor. Land is no longer a place to play and explore, it's been reduced to a commodity to be groomed and shown off as if to demonstrate the deedholder's worth as a person. I happen to know of at least one of these tumor-hoods build on land once designated a Federally protected wildlife preserve, complete with signage and fencing. Today, this "protected habitat" is nothing more than a bland, unremarkable, and remarkably overpriced "habitat" for overpaid second-string football players and Florida-hating retirees.

I have to admit it brings me no small measure of satisfaction (and amusement) every time I read about one of these self-appointed "Earth Liberation Front" operatives, acting independently, torching a construction site. However, i do not advocate violence, and it would be socially irresponsible for this publication to encourage vandalism. What we believe in here at DL4 is the value of information. We believe that part of the solution to this problem is to help educate people, to show them how wanton construction is causing the demise of true neighborhoods and the once-lustrous sense of community our parents and grandparents used to enjoy. People need to realize the difference between a house and a home. They need to become convinced again that land is more than just a commodity. Time was, people took pride in their yard. Now, they just hire some illegals to make it look pretty so their neighbors (aka the strangers next door) will become jealous. Its all about me, me, me these days. We need to show people that when we make it all about we, we, we, everybody wins. We lead by example.

We also feel that one way to subvert these attempts at population arrangement is to have Johnny Time Card buying up all the houses. More to the point, cooperating groups of Johnny Time Cards. Get enough wage earners to pool their money and we will see home ownership by the very people the banks, corrupt town governments, and greedy scumbag developers are trying to force out of here. And because chances are at least one or two of these people will be handy with tools, it will then be possible to subdivide these houses into reasonably-sized, affordable living units the way they should have been in the first place.

Needless to say, the guard booths will have to go. I'd say turn em into a Fotomat, but in the digital age Fotomat booths are pretty much obsolete. Maybe truck in a freezer and sell ice cream out of there.

We could also try to beat them at their own game by demanding a price for our homes commensurate with whatever the greedy scumbag developers think they're going to make as a profit from their bloated overbuilding. What they do now is offer, let's say, $600K for a house with a market value of $500K, then spend maybe $100-200K building four or five $1M homes (which, as previously noted, don't sell). You think you're making a hundred grand profit, yet the greedy scumbag developers are making a FOUR MILLION DOLLAR PROFIT (hypothetically speaking, of course). We propose that homeowners demand upwards of $1M or more for their $500K house, since we already know the builders expect to make at least three times that amount, if not more. Hell, why not demand two mil. Obviously these douchebags can afford it, since they expect to have this kind of capital just rolling in from all the contemptible giganto-houses with which they're propagating our countryside. If he's going to make a few million off of your property, why shouldn't YOU make a few million off of your property? If he wants it badly enough, he'll pay. (Except, as we've previously discussed - disgust? - if he really wants it badly enough he'll probably just go to your lender behind your back and have you fucked out of your own property for pennies on the dollar. Be vigilant, people.) We just hope you realize that these people maximize their return on investment by using cheap, off-the-books non-union labor, bargain-basement building materials, and cookie-cutter blueprints, as well as cutting every possible corner in order to minimize the hourly pay rate outlay. Sell the land for what they think they're gonna make on the sale of the house they haven't built yet.

I'm thinking it might be a good idea to include things like size caps in local construction regulations, so the greedy scumbag developers can't continue to drive people out of the area with their outrageously overpriced giganto fake mansion houses, and to place no-build clauses into land deeds, to prevent them from burning down your house in order to replace it with one of their own. Not that we really expect these people to abide by the laws like the rest of us, but it'd be nice to have some safety measures in place, in print, just in case. These would be legally enforceable in court, and would help to minimize the risk of somebody forcing you out of your home with ambitions of constructing a condominium megaplex.

Some of the moneyed elite have had the nerve to say that if we don't like it, we can just work harder and make more money. Well, down here in reality, we believe people are already working plenty hard and receiving far too little money for their trouble and their valuable time. We all know how quickly the money flies right out of our pockets again at the slightest drop of a hat. Surely you don't think this is coincidence? Things are structured this way on purpose to keep us poor, and to practically force people to throw away their entire lives at some thankless job they get next to nothing out of. Life is about so much more than just wasting time making other people rich. It's about exploring your world, learning about new things and enjoying life. Life is not about misery and suffering. It's about helping one another so that collectively we can grow and evolve as a species. You don't really think THIS is all there is, do you? This isn't the final stop on the evolutionary ladder. We've just hit a long plateau because some well-meaning tool bag had to go and invent money. We can begin to move forward again, but it's going to take all of us to do it. Remember that if each of us takes an approach of watching out for and helping his fellow man (or woman, if it do ya) then it logically follows that there will be people watching out for and helping you as well. When it's "every man for himself" each of us is in it alone.

Remember, please, this article is intended only to spark discussion and debate among civic-minded people and is not presented as a complete breakdown of the big picture, nor do we presume to offer a one-size-fits-all solution to the problem. This is an opinion piece and is not presented as fact. We just want to get people talking, because many heads are often better than one. Maybe you guys can come up with some solutions of your own. If we can get people thinking, if not talking, then we're doing our job. This troubling phenomenon has gone unchecked for long enough.

Information is free, and knowledge is power. If we can help to spread these simple principles of sharing and giving, helping and nurturing, then there is hope for our society.

Okay, so maybe objectivity went out the window on this one. Blow me.

RANDOM PSA TO OUR READERS IN THE HUNTINGTON AREA: DON'T BUY YOUR GAS FROM STATIONS IN OR NEAR THE VILLAGE! THEY OVERCHARGE BY AN AVERAGE OF 25 CENTS PER GALLON OR MORE! YOU CAN BUY QUALITY GAS FOR MUCH CHEAPER IF YOU FILL UP ALONG JERICHO TURNPIKE, ESPECIALLY IF YOU GO EAST TOWARDS GREENLAWN AND COMMACK. THERE IS NO GOOD REASON TO SUPPORT THE PRICE GOUGING THAT GOES ON AT STATIONS IN TOWN. YOU HAVE OPTIONS!

 

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portions of this issue composed in the field
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IF YOU'VE BEEN DRINKING OR USING DRUGS DO NOT GET BEHIND THE WHEEL.
PEOPLE WILL DIE IF YOU DO.
TRUST US - DON'T FIND THIS OUT THE HARD WAY.

 

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/ny-lidead1108,0,6813228.story

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/ny-liaman1109,0,4252739.story

 

this issue dedicated to the memory of Amanda Malloy 1979-2008 rest in peace

cursor (ker'-ser) (n.) Another term for a computer user.

Welcome to what may quite possibly be the lamest, dullest, most uninteresting piece of dreck I think I've ever written. I'm doing this whole issue on my Sidekick while I'm at work, because obvi there isn't any actual work to do. I've never bothered to post via Sidekick before, so I don't even know if I can spruce this shit up a little bit with pictures and big colorful typefaces. Probably not (update: definitely not). For the moment I'm not even going to bother trying, since experience suggests I will lose all my hard work if I do.

Is it possible, or even advisable, to write an entire newspaper from a mobile device? I mean, why the fuck not, but I've always enjoyed creating large headlines, changing the fonts, and adding all those little artistic touches that require either a traditional word processor or at least an encyclopedic knowledge of HTML. So for now I think I'm just going to let the ideas flow and see what happens. Perhaps I will have the opportunity to make some changes when I get back to my labtop, except I will more likely spend my time watching Turkish television on VLC Media Player than actually doing anything constructive.

That's something that bothers me, actually. No, not Turkish television, and not the VLC Player now that (I think) I've figured out how to keep it from crashing (use a skinned interface). No, what I mean is this seeming inability to rouse myself to do anything productive. Whether it's writing some copy for Dateline or organizing my sock drawer alphanumerically, it seems I'd rather prefer to while away the hours soaking up meaningless, inane content instead. I mean, I can't even waste time properly: my friend lent me Season 3 of Weeds yesterday, so what did I do? I watched fucking Family Guy, which I don't even like! I mean, there's nothing wrong with the show itself, in fact it's usually quite funny. It's just that a person to whom I'm no longer speaking used to be all over that show, so it reminds me of him, and of the ex-girlfriend who came between us (Kevin Bacon, as a matter of fact - who I actually bumped into a couple of times at her job and found to my surprise that I had no unpleasant gut reactions but rather a vague feeling of triumphant liberation). I suppose I should be glad I recognize the insanity of procrastination, and be grateful that I sometimes have an opportunity to go back and correct some of what I've done wrong, missed, or fallen short on. The problem is that everything feels like too much work to bother with, even things I know I want, and I absolutely fucking hate that. I suppose nobody can do anything about this but me, so rather than bore you by whining about it, I'll just have to try harder and do better. It can absolutely be done, and I know the rewards are far greater than my hopes can conceive.

Update: I think I've figured out part of the reason I like never get around to writing stuff down. It's partly to do with the fact that I have so much to say, and have so much emotion behind it, that once I open the floodgates I feel like I'll never fully finish.
I'm pretty good live and in person. I find that among certain people I have an amazing tendency to bust out with these long, convoluted oral essays on any topic imaginable, and that I can spin anecdotes out the asshole when properly questioned. The trick is really to exercise the self discipline necessary to transfer it all to the printed page, and not to stop till I've finished. Rather than wrestle with a keyboard, however, I seem to content myself with banging out a half-assed half-a-paragraph and then pressing the "next" button on VLC until I find that all-"Seinfeld" stream again. What really grinds my gears is that as time goes by, I find it harder to remember the important events that I'd really like to share with people, even as vividly as I could picture penning them at the time of occurrence. But sometimes even a genius prefers to work in the auto shop. Sometimes that's what the situation needs. Sometimes Johnny Learning Disability needs to be working elbow to elbow with a deep thinkin' smartypants. Sometimes that's just what's right, especially if it keeps people entertained or helps them break out of a shell. After all, next to enjoying oneself, helping each other is what life is all about.
I often thought I could make a great living as a famous entertainer, and I'm sure I still could (shameless plug: order a copy of the Deed To Hell DVD! I play the part of a ladykillin' rock star. Contact me at this publication or via the links in the righthand column) but sometimes it's enough just bringing a smile to the faces of my nearest and dearest. Entertaining your friends for free also doesn't invite half the trouble of being a pop-culture flavor-of-the-month anyway, and you don't have to deal with comedy-club hecklers. Maybe it's too cutthroat out there in showbiz, but then again where I work is pretty cutthroat as well. You never know until you try, and I hope I have the presence of mind to listen to my own advice.

Anything is possible. Me turning this drivel into the DL4 Back To School issue is possible. I'm not saying that's going to happen, but it could.
You know what else is possible? The guy who writes a newspaper called Dateline FOUR TWENTY retiring from the party life. Actually, I shouldn't say the party life. I still party it up just as hard as I ever did, but I made a decision this summer to stop smoking trees, drinkin', and using whatever other chemical intoxicants I might have been into. Of course, I still smoke cigarettes, which is probably not the smartest thing in the world, but whatever. I'm also specifically NOT "anti-drug." It's every person's right to choose whatever they think is proper for their circumstances. Moreover, I still support marijuana decrim, because quite honestly the drug laws in this country are fuckin' retarded. The thing is that for me, I arrived at a point in my life where it makes more sense for me not to use drugs than to use them. I have to say, this is probably one of the best things I've ever done, and possibly the first "adult" decision I've ever made (though I'm still up in the air on that one). Every good thing that has happened to me this summer, every single one, happened after I took action on this decision.
This newspaper will not be changing its name, format or content. You may notice some differences in the jackass writing it, but to be perfectly blunt (pun intended) I've worked too friggin' hard to develop and promote the Dateline 4:20 Online brand franchise to consider turning my back on it now.
The bottom line is that I no longer drink or do drugs, and as you already know from Rule Number Four (www.myspace.com/dateline420 ---> "About Me" ---> "The Rules") I choose not to have sex anymore either, at least for the time being. But that's old news.
Don't get it twisted, I'll still eat the pussy like there was a prize inside. It's traditional man-lady relations I choose to forego, and believe you me, it's a hard choice to make and an even harder one to keep. But keep it I do, hot college girls be damned. It amounts to an overall reduction in the aggregate stress and drama levels that would otherwise permeate and punctuate my life, and now I'm clear-headed to boot. Well, reasonably clear-headed. I'm still me, after all.

As far as cigarette smoking, I had the opportunity to do the Pepsi Challenge at the beach this summer, pitting Camel Menthols head-to-head against Newports. In my opinion the Newports are the clear winner. Simply stated, they are the better cigarette for when you're on the beach. I don't know why this is true, but I swear it is. Point for point, however, you're better off not smoking at all. I'd like to see non-addictive cigarettes, so that we can still enjoy them when it's appropriate, such as after a meal or during times of stress, but without feeling the unwanted compulsion to light up right before, say, taking a swim. They affect your ability to enjoy the smells of the sea-side, for instance, and they thin out your blood temporarily, which causes you to feel colder than usual once you're in the water. But it is what it is.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I guess I'm a little slow on the uptake sometimes, because this only just occurred to me, but this issue may in fact be the first issue in the entire 12-year history of Dateline 4:20 to be written completely stone-cold sober.

My dispatcher has informed me there's finally some work to do, so I've got to go. Please stay tuned.

(This issue will be receiving periodic updates to content and formatting, from changing a question mark to a comma, to adding extra words such as this very message. The finished product, should there ever be one, will perhaps be recognizable only when an entirely new issue is posted following this one, but the truly astute will pick up the differences and the real fans won't mind either way.)

TO BE CONTINUED

 

Dateline 4/20 Online

Special Edition Multimedia Double Issue

Oven Fresh Summer Extra 2008

WARNING: ADULT LANGUAGE AND CONTENT.

NOT SUITABLE FOR YOUNGER READERS.

YES, VIRGINIA, THIS IS THE 4/20 ISSUE!

Petrotesticles Department – Here we go. With this sentence I am finally overcoming close to two months of roadblocks and writer's block, or rather, an act-of-writing block. It's certainly not from the lack of ideas. As radio shack's very wise new slogan states, “don't just buy stuff, do stuff.” what I take this to mean is, don't simply continue consuming content when you could otherwise be creating content. I think there's some wisdom in this that the folks at Radio Shack didn't see coming when they penned that slogan. Thus, it's time to act.

Here at the Dateline 4:20 Online World Headquarters, the past couple of months have been a period of transition. We've made some significant changes to our electronic toolkit, and as you know the migration to a new computer system is not always a quick and painless process. I'd say maybe a month's worth of delay can be chalked up to that. The rest of the delay can possibly be chalked up to Internet television ;)

There is, of course, the problem of this year's 4/20 being, well, anticlimactic. The beginning and end were great, memorably outstanding in fact, but the middle was underwhelming. To be fair, I did spend part of the day watching The CW 11's 5-episode Degrassi block, so obviously the day wasn't a total wash. Usually there are more actual events though; even without the helicopter in Washington Square Park I've never had trouble getting into trouble. This year it was more of a laid-back 4/20. The stroke of midnight going into the day, I was on the banks of Huntington Bay, bathed in moonlight and accompanied by a couple whom I hadn't seen in what felt like forever. They had called me up out of the blue that evening to get down on this cipher. As we blazed, I noticed that the full moon had the sky almost to itself, except for this odd cloud formation that took up the entire sky – which was pretty big since we had no overhead obstructions. Well, this cloud formation just happened to resemble a giant pot leaf! Right side up and everything, and through it we could see the Big Dipper, which as you may know is NEVER right side up. It was this time, though. I find the experience of connecting with good friends to be a reminder that there is much, much more to life than simply paying your bills (not to downplay the importance of THAT). The effect we have on other people, and the effect they have on us, is part of what keeps the cycle of growth and progress turning.

At the other end of the day was my good friend and co-worker Steve Three Three, accompanied by a girl who, as it turns out, I didn't wind up seeing much more of after that. Quite a pity, since she had a great set of cantaloupes, and you all know it takes one hell of a nice rack to get my attention – after all, I'm an ass man. The point is at the time she was a welcome sight, and me, Steve, and the girl baked the day down, riding the coattails of midnight straight into the morning.

To me, the meaning seems to relate to the details in life, the intricate minutiae that distinguishes one life from the next, one citizen from the next. There was no log cabin made of joints this year (one 4/20 there was) or a three day rave party in Brooklyn (another 4/20 there was). This was about focusing the attention on the human connection, because that's why we're really here. This is what makes life good. It's not supposed to be constant suffering. We enrich one another's lives, and collectively the race strives toward increasingly effortless problem-solving in a nurturing, team-oriented environment of genuine honesty.

At least, that's what I get out of all this. Your mileage may vary.

Gosh, I love living in the future. One advantage to having all this new technology is exploring the many things it can do. The trial-and-error process provides hours of digitized amusement. In that vein, may I present to you our first ever Dateline 4:20 video newsreel, a little op-ed piece on the state of women's fashion in the Year of our Lord 2008:

EXTRA!

Dateline 4:20 EXCLUSIVE coverage, local in-depth reporting you can't get anywhere else.

And the sort of regionalism that's actually almost a handicap on the Web, lol.

Follow-Up Report to our Spring Editorial on Requiring Hours and Hours of New Driver Training.

BREAKING NEWS! LIVE COVERAGE OF HUNTINGTON VILLAGE TAXI CRASH

This car accident happened in Huntington Village on Friday night, June 27^th at the height of grad party season and as, elsewhere, the final edits to Dateline were taking place behind the scenes and this issue was in preparation for posting.

I would never have imagined I'd ever have cause to issue an actual stop-the-presses order (so to speak), but this news item prompted exactly that.

It seems the people in the white Jeep came out of a side street, allegedly in violation of the traffic light, and plowed into my friend and colleague Wilbur (not his real name) in the notorious, beloved 69 car. They hit the taxi so hard it spun around 180 degrees and, as you can see from the pictures below, one of the wheels went flying about 30 feet or so. What you can't tell from the pictures is that the force of impact was also enough to completely dislodge the trunk locking mechanism and the cable that connects it to the driver's trunk release button. Came right the fuck off the sheet metal, it did. Latch and all, the whole fucking thing.

I was on the scene within minutes, not only because I was working that night but also because I'd already been on my way to the place Wilbur was located even before he wound up being compelled to stay put. Yep, we had a gay date, lol. Not!

I can't really comment further as it's still an open investigation (it happened less than 12 hours prior to me typing this sentence), but eyewitnesses have confirmed (on condition of anonymity) that the cab driver was apparently not at fault.

On behalf of the Wilbur and myself I wish to extend our gratitude to an off-duty paramedic who stopped to help and in so doing proved that paramedics, firemen and police officers are never truly “off duty,” not really. This guy was a hero and we say thankya.

Click the pics to view full size:

CAR SOMERSAULTS INTO BANK PARKING LOT

by Needy McNeederson, staff reporter

April 5^th 2008 – A Friday night. This reporter was on hand at the scene of a nasty two vehicle collision as rush hour gave way to the evening's drinking hours. Click on the thumbnails below to view the images full size. The people in the upside down car were speeding, according to witnesses and law enforcement sources. This was allegedly the cause of the accident, yet somehow they wound up hardly sustaining any injury. The person driving the car with no roof, however, he was just sitting waiting to make a turn, yet he will be spending the summer in the hospital having his legs glued back together. Evidently most of his lower half was crushed to powder. Sources report those involved were all college age and younger, and one of the people was a promising young athlete who now will have to forgo his sport of choice, perhaps permanently.

You will notice the s-shaped piece of metal in some of the pictures; that used to be the street sign. Also, keep an eye out for the remains of the paramedics' gloves and other biohazardous medical discards still littering the scene hours after the departure of rescue personnel. It reminds me of the time medicos left a pool of blood and bandages on the doorstep of Little Vincent's in the village. Good for the appetite, and sanitary as well. GREAT for business. Guess that's what happens in the secret life of Huntington.

My point, really, is that all drivers of all age classes should be required to take many hundreds of hours of in-depth training before they can receive a license. Make it harder to get a driver's license than it is to get a license to fly an airplane. More to the point, it won't be hard at all if people bother to learn how to fucking drive. Open heart surgery sounds pretty complicated, too, but I bet if I was going to medical school I'd study my ass off so I could graduate and go perform open heart surgeries like whoa. Same deal. If you're in training to drive, learn your shit, know your shit, and maybe then you won't drive like shit.

Remember, the paradox here is that the best way to become a good driver is through experience, which is gained by driving. Therein lies the challenge for the educators.

You may wish to utilize your "page down" key or the scroll wheel on your mouse for this section - it's longer than Ron Jeremy:

[EDITOR'S NOTE: LJ APPARENTLY HAS A POST SIZE LIMIT - SO WE'VE HAD TO TURN THESE INTO a SLIDESHOW, EVEN THOUGH IT DOES SEEM INAPPROPRIATE - WE APOLOGIZE FOR THIS.]

--->Drama Doesn't Follow Me<---

[[It Rides on my Back]]

A Reptile Dysfunction Department — Ever answer the phone, and the first thing the person on the other end of the phone says to you is, “well, the good news is I'm all right...”? I hate that. Not that I'm not glad they're fine, it's just that what follows usually isn't.

Something else I find uncomforting: a “for sale” sign out front of a police station. Or a “going out of business” sign in their window.

Some commercials are so goddam annoying that I go out of my way to encourage others to boycott the associated products, and I won't be afraid to name names here in the salacious pages of the Interwebs, either. Some commercials are praiseworthy and I may be naming some names there too someday, but I gotta get caught up on my TV watching first. On the radio, well, it seems to me nobody knows how to make a decent radio commercial anymore. At least not on the traditional AM and FM dials.

I saw an Easter commercial where this little kid overhears this girl at Sunday school talking about her Easter dress and how it's her fave color and blahsey blah. So he rushes out with his mom to get all this yellow shit to match this chick's dress. At the end you see him give her the basket and crap while they're hanging out in front of the church and she whispers to her BFFjill “it's beautiful.” For some reason I fuckin' love that commercial.

There's another commercial that first came to my attention one day when I was, well, I can't really say or I'll probably wind up being carted off somewhere that has high fences. Never mind all that. What I mean is I'm talking about the Riddex commercial. Oh my goodness what a piece of art this one is. It starts off with a dotty old bat talking about how happy and joyous Riddex makes her.

Hold up a minute.

Bear in mind that Riddex is, in this case, an electronic pulse generator that you plug into the wall to get rid of pests, like bugs and rats and such. Whatever lives in the walls, except for children that were bad and had their tongues cut out. It takes little black kids and Rayanne from “MSCL” to get rid of those. Just don't try going in the pool. It's filled with rocks and broken glass.

Anyway, I'm thinking this old lady in the Riddex commercial must be some hellafied cheap date. At one point, she's trying to describe her love affair with the product. She stammers for a moment before bursting out, “Riddex just makes me happy!” as if she's honestly just blown a load in her drawers. Just plug in a fuckin Riddex and watch bugs die all night, eh? Apparently this is considered romantic and exciting among the elderly and/or feeble-minded, not to mention great family fun for all ages and IQ levels. Riddex makes one hell of an aphrodisiac.

I can just see it: “Hey, let's go over to Grandma's and watch bugs die! Together.”

The announcer in the commercial, the guy's a real fuckin fear monger. What a douche. Seven or eight times throughout a thirty second spot, this peckerwood is on the voiceover talking about how Riddex means you no longer have to have strangers wandering through your house, “spraying poison around your children.” And I'm thinking to myself: who does that? I mean, okay, if they'd brought it up once or twice, I could understand that. But they keep going back to it. Strangers walking through your house, spraying poison around your kids. Poison. Not on 'em , just “around” em.

Why do I keep spelling it poinson there's only one N, jeebus crisps. I must be on some Riddex or something, I'm so pulsed out over here... goddam letter fuckin 'y.' Fuck you, letter 'y.' Goddam state of the art fuckin keyboard.

Back to our friend the voiceovering douche. His mission seems to be convincing you that if you don't buy Riddex, these fuckin strangers are your only other option, these child touching perverts with their Ghostbusters-lookin fuckin napalm-bearing backpacks tracking their fuckin muddy-ass kidnapper feet all over your nice fresh carpet, spraying their nasty tanked-up man sauce anywhere and everywhere your offspring might frolic.

Goddam you letter 'y!'

I mean really. Who the fuck is afflicted with strangers barging into their kid's room and hosing them with Agent Orange? If somebody tried that in my hood they'd get their ass beat, and then be hauled off to jail. Yet here are the Riddex people, front and center on your TV screen asserting that yes, there is a widespread epidemic of stranger-borne children-poisons in your own safe home. Watch for the creepy van, coming soon to a rat-infested roach motel near you.

Let me tell you something Riddex, if the day ever comes that some guy in hazelnut suit (actually a hazmat suit but the spellchecker made me laugh so I left it in) with a tank on his back points some biochemical Super-Soaker at my kids, I think at that point I've got bigger things to worry about than roaches in the fuckin' walls. And so does whoever's fucking with my kids.

Riddex also touts the “digital technology” that it uses, although they don't actually come out and say what sort of digital technology they're using. Last time I checked, the ads 25 years ago for a then-revolutionary device now known as the pocket calculator also used to boast of their product's “digital technology.” So for all we know Riddex is actually a stolen leftover, an expired patent from the Gerald Ford administration. This commercial fuckin kills me.

In other news, I'm wondering if anything can really be truly pudding-shaped.

THUNDERSTORM CAUSES BOOKSTORE ERUPTION

 

I had the dubious good fortune of being in Barnes and Noble in Huntington during a massive spring thunderstorm, which left some weird bookstore version of a fire alarm braying throughout the premises. Nobody seemed to know how to shut the alarm off, but it was jolly funny to watch people herding themselves outside, then in again, and back out in some endlessly repeating fire drill from hell.

I must congratulate the Huntington Manor Fire Department on the impressive turnout.

I should also perhaps mention that I risked severe water damage to the Sidekick in order to get a couple of these shots – never mind the lamp post I had to scale in the pouring goddam rain.

Shifting gears, ever wondered how New York's Finest (hot dogs, that is) stacks up against Jerusalem's Finest?

In a related story, McDonald's was found (by me) to have the better Angus burger but BK puts better toppings on theirs. Meanwhile, the Dateline 4:20 testing labs have determined that roasted garlic, although delicious and distinctively garlic-flavored, has a shape and texture almost identical to that of the human female clitoris. This may produce confusion when performing oral on one's girlfriend, as one may mistakenly begin chewing the action button thinking it is garlic, and perhaps at mealtimes as well, since one may begin to make out with one's food. Please exercise due caution, and perhaps eat with your eyes open if there is a present risk of interaction with clitori, garlic or both. Oral discretion is advised.

How Come In Your Supermarket, Everything You Buy For Home Cooking Is “Restaurant Style” But When You Eat Out Everything's “Home Style?”

Putting Money on The Table and Food in Your Pocket Department - This speaks for itself...there's a bird in the birdseed/birdhouse aisle of Home Depot. In some of these pictures he's perched on a box that says “Feed The Birds.” The box is, of course, a display of big-ass bags of birdseed. This fine feathered fuck must feel like King Midas with this fuckin haul. Think about it, you're a bird, and you just scored like ten thousand times the cubic volume of your entire body in birdseed. I mean god DAMN.

See, but here's the thing: how did he plan on getting all that swag out of the store and back to his fuckin nest? And where the hell was he keeping his money? Did he even HAVE any money? Gosh, I hope he wasn't shoplifting.

In at least one of these pictures he's looking straight at me and it's downright creepy.

 

WARNING: Contains strong language. May not be suitable for younger readers.

Weed 'Em and Reap Department -- This is not the finished product, FYI. This is not even close to the finished product. This is just a promotional blurb to let y'all know two very important things, one following from the other: that there is a new issue forthcoming in the immediate future, and that its hasty arrival is due in part to the fact that I apparently do have an expiration date after all. I don't happen to know when that is, but I assure you I do have one, and it is soon. I'm not suicidal, I'm not gonna kill myself, so get those ideas right out of your head. Suicide would be cheating, and although it does seem an attractive thought, I simply won't do it. It's dishonest. However, I'm kind of anxious to get the hell out of this body of mine already, this weatherbeaten, motheaten, dilapidated train wreck in which I am imprisoned is going to be my eventual undoing. That is basically why I'm writing this today, once again ahead of the perpetually postponed production schedule, I wanted to advise you that I believe there is at least the outside chance that due to certain incipient unpleasantness of a medical nature my time among you might be numbered not in months and years but in days and hours. I only hope and pray that if the end comes it is gentle.

You should know that I do have a decent amount of content for you guys this month, and I may or may not leave this section in the finished product, but at this point all I really need is for you all to just bear with me while I'm slowly falling apart. It is truly a terrifying time, and quite unfortunate given the topicality of our headline. I have to keep these pages public, and [pause] dammit now I forgot what I was saying. It had to do with leaving this all public because if I'm someday incapacitated this is gonna have to do the speaking for me, especially if I don't survive. I'm not saying that's gonna definitely happen, infact with my luck I probably will wind up living to a ripe old age, and then wouldn't the joke be on me! The problem is the problems are real and one way or another some very bad shit is going to be hitting a fan around here someplace within a very short time. I have to do as much as I can before then, because there are no guarantees I will be able to do any of it later. It's so bad, so tight, that I'm one-offing this instead of endlessly editing the sonofabitch as is ordinarily my way; I'm writing as would a gutshot man.

It has occurred to me more than once that the entire purpose of my life is and has always been the resulting effect I have on people. In other words, I'm not here for me at all. It's probably important to make my time here pleasant and comfortable, but ultimately I think that sort of thing has little to do with what actually counts, which in a nutshell is that I always seem to be in the right place at the right time to answer somebody's question, help with a task or provide information. As I may have stated elsewhere, the odd part about this is that it happens constantly, like I'll just randomly decide suddenly to go for a walk and then plot a route based on the reds and greens at the crosswalks, then wind up stopping a mugging or helping a UPS man find his customer's house. Repeat that ten times a day and there's my life. So I think everything I've done, seen, experienced, it shaped me somehow that I might be able to be useful to other people, because somebody's gotta do it and apparently one of those somebodies is me. Hence the paper here. Not a complete work, but a reasonable round-up of a substantial part of my legacy.

Please stand by for this month's news and notes, provided I haven't collapsed before I get a chance to post it all.

 

Stunning Scientific Breakthrough

Reveals Bagels Are Wooden Doughnuts

Six Degrees of Degradation Department – Heyy, what's populatin'? What the fizzy, my nizzy? Welcome to Dateline! For some reason, I feel like the issue ought to have some sort of introduction. Welcome to the fuckin Spring Issue. Paint me red and you can call me Mr. Barnes. Satisfied? Y'all been fuckin' introduced. I think I can do better than a standard introduction this month, however. I have dozens of one-sentence articles just laying around the newsroom, complete self contained ideas that don't naturally flesh out into larger bodies. So I'm going to shoehorn them into one big ol' gefilte fish.

I'll start you off with a riddle. What's easy to break but can be dropped from the roof of a tall building or thrown off a bridge and suffer no damage? Give up? The answer is a ten dollar bill. Like it? I made that up.

Here's another one. What's the worst thing that can happen to you while you're having sex? When the person you're fuckin' wakes up. Boo yow.

The geese are back! Spring is officially in the air.

I've noticed that the United States is shaped like a sheep, and specifically the sheep in the Knitting on the Lamb sign in Huntington Village.

A sharp tongue is the only edged weapon which grows keener with constant use.

Stand by your words. Don't police your language. When you speak from the heart, you never have to backpedal because you believe in what you say. Don't apologize to anybody or shift your position just to give them what it seems they want to hear. You can't please everybody all the time, and if you try, then you're a fuckin' idiot. You're an idiot and I'll tell you to your face you're an idiot. Then I'll bitch-slap yo' mama for giving birth to you.

Here's something I don't like. This fixation with being semantically anal in the legal sense. Drugstores aren't drugstores anymore, they're “pharmacy department within.” Douchebag TV writers refuse to include the terminology employed by real people for fear of getting sued by the makers of Xerox, Frisbee, Kleenex and White Out, yet the fact of the matter is those are the words people use to describe these objects. Nobody asks you to throw them the “flying disc” and the last time I checked, the expression wasn't “instant pictures don't lie.” they blur out the logos on peoples hats and sweatshirts on newscasts, whether it's a sports team or a clothing brand or what have you. This is ridiculous. A drugstore is a fuckin drugstore, a Frisbee is a goddamn Frisbee, and these people need to fucking grow a pair and start phrasing things the way real people talk.

Remember in the beginning of the issue, I was blathering on about the usefulness of life. I figure a good way to express it might be that “God places our every footstep.”

Nobody's gone until they're forgotten.

Pictorial: mall security on wheels.

I followed this asshole around Walt Whitman Mall the other day. All I know is I never had an $8000 Segway when I worked Mall Security. However, I got $20 that says this jackoff has never baked out the bank manager's office, which is something I am proud to say that I have done. Oh, and for you prosecutors out there, I'm safe from the statutes of limitations since this happened LAST MILLENNIUM!!!

Heavyweight Title Fight

Pastrami vs. Corned Beef: Rematch For The Reuben

Harboring a Club Department -- I like how the St Pat's parade in Hton brings everybody together, male, female, old and young, black and white, hot chicks and fat chicks, people with families and little kids, firemen, non-Irish, non-English-speaking, everybody. Granted, they all seem to be there for the sole purpose of getting completely fucking shitfaced, but still. Togetherness is togetherness. It's really amazing when you think about it. I mean, people who've moved away to other states come back for this fuckin thing. Old wrinkled folks and high school kids stand elbow to elbow watching the fun. Hip-hoppers and headbangers toast each other with green beer. The St' Paddy's day parade in H town is amazing, the Great Unifier, and it really keeps the spirit of the holiday alive, just like St. Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland, his parade brings out all the snakes in huntington ;)

(the unity point was what i want you to bring away from this.)

 

This Is Not A Stop Sign

 

This just in: Rachael Ray has “crazy-girl” eyes.

Take a look and you'll see too:

 

 

Merrick, Freeport, Rockville Centre:

Haunting Reminiscences

Even The New Episodes Are Reruns Department -- For those of you who were there. Back in the day. Whether we mean 1996, 2002 or whatever - it don't matter. If you were there you know WTF I'm talkin about. What I wanted to say ... idk ... the sight of the old Freeport waterworks. Chatterton and the other Merrick spots. Guy Lombardo boulevard. South Ocean anything. The entire length of sunrise highway between seaford/wantagh and the rvc. It all brings back those bittersweet memories. I remember. I was there. And that shit MATTERED! And I will always remember.

 

 

 

 

turns out it was worth it.

When I had my heart broken, or been lied to, or betrayed, when I discovered who can and can't be trusted and why, when I had my bubble bursted. All these awful things provided insight into a greater wisdom which I am now able to parlay into useful, constructive advice in response to clear and specific relationship questions from others. Sumtotally this means all that hurt was worthwhile, because I can turn it around, build on it and put it to work for me. If I can draw even one thing from any of it, which is of good service to another person, it validates the entire deal and proves we don't necessarily suffer "for nothing." Perhaps I have lost my sense of optimism, and lost all hope in the idea that maybe I can have a piece of the classic romantic dream, but at least the price I paid has some civic utility value. I take the bullet so that innocents don't get shot. You heard.

Nobody is anybody's property.

Relationships, the ones that work, anyway, they're based on trust and the mutual understanding that the person you're with is free to leave at any time, but that they choose to stay. It's each persons responsibility to be worth staying with, which is not in any way the same thing as keeping the other person from leaving, which is totally different and completely wrong. Why would anybody want to be with somebody they had to keep around with threat of force, belittlement or intimidation? Principle? The false notion this is the best they're ever gonna get? I feel it's far better and more rewarding to hold out for quality. I had to learn the hard way that just because someone thinks you oughta be with em don't make it so. Those kind of people have tunnel vision, forgetting that the world is full of people and that if life is a buffet you don't eat only the potatoes.

Relationship math. People seem to think that entering a relationship makes one or both of these statements true:

1 + 1 = 1 and/or ½ + ½ = 1

Wherein one or both people erroneously believe that the other person somehow “completes” them or makes them whole, when in fact they should be striving for an equal partnership of two preexistingly complete people, thereby making true the following equation:

If ( 1 + 1 = 2 ) then ( 2 = ( 1 + 1 ) ) and

( 2 = ( 2 x 1 ) )

but ( 2 ) never = ( 1 )

A couple is a team, a partnership between “whole” people, not two “incomplete” people “becoming one.” You're not Frankenstein's fucking monster, you're a goddam hormonal drama wad. It's supposed to be all about having a reasonably fleshed out personality so that you can be good company to somebody whom you find good company, not using human spackle to fill some big empty hole in yourself. That's what butt plugs are for.

Don't prop yourself up on somebody else. They've got their own balance to worry about. Stand on your own two feet, have an original thought once in a while, and realize that it's their fuckin decision whether they stay or go and that if they go it only frees you up to see what else is out there, both romantically and non romantically.

Get The Memo Department –- Out of body experience abbreviated is OBX, not OOBE. Technicalities my ass. I'm tired of hearing dumb fucking illiterates getting it wrong.

The inevitable rant.

By Lefty Wright, staff malcontent

Save The Beast For Last Department -- Couple things I need to bitch about. First of all, I think they oughta make drivers' licenses a lot harder to get. It's not a hard concept. I don't think a strictly age-based system is realistic. There are just as many terrible drivers on the road over the age of 21 as there are under it, and there are likewise plenty of perfectly capable teenage drivers doing the demographic proud. In fairness, there are a lot of drivers of all age classes that SUCK! What I think they should do is make it experience-based. Require all new applicants to spend X amount of hours on the road under real-life conditions, but with restrictions in place and/or an observer in the car. I'm thinking something similar to the hundreds of hours they make a pilot take for a license to fly. You can't teach experience from a book. How do you get people in the habit of always looking over their shoulder when they change lanes, how do you train them to give utility trucks and delivery trucks a wide berth because of men working out of the sight line, how do people figure out not to gun it off the line at a green light because some jackass WILL run his red light and crash into you? That shit only gets ingrained through practice and experience. These new drivers need to spend many, many hours on the road gaining real life experience before we just hand them a license, and we have to make sure this experience doesn't come at the cost of people's lives.

The other problem I have is with good old “new home construction.” this really has gotten out of hand. It turns my stomach to see these ridiculous eyesores sprouting up like genital warts every time we turn around. It's one thing if they want to build houses, but they take perfectly good ones and tear them down to make way for these awful McMansions that look like some 12-year-old kid designed 'em on a fuckin' freeware CAD program and forgot to say “when.” Every single one of these fuckin things looks exactly the fuckin same, which not only takes the specialness out of having such a house, but also bespeaks the sad truth of conformist thinking which is unfortunately so prevalent in this country today. They then charge an arm and a leg for these unwanted intrusions, meaning that none of the working people who actually live in the area or would like to move here and make a start could possibly afford them. This results in an influx of unwelcome, big-money out-of-town douchebags who come bustling in here thinking they're better than everybody else and the “locals” are then subjected to these assholes' lousy driving and are apparently also expected to kiss their ass because of their precious fucking “shopping dollars.” meanwhile, perfectly good regular-people houses are routinely being subdivided into shitty one-room apartments that cost on average as much per month as the 24's on the aforementioned out-of-town douchebags' so-called SUV's. That is, when they're not being torn down altogether, along with precious acres of open land and wooded areas. These fuckin' people move to “the country” to live among the trees and then cut 'em all down, you ever notice that? The regular-people houses that go empty or on the market are the homes that should be remaining intact, while these ridiculous conclaves of conspicuous over/self-indulgence really ought to be subdivided into comfortable suites for people who can hold a decent job. You will also have noticed these so-called “estates” are responsible for the elimination of just about all of our precious historical spaces, old buildings and yesterday's farms. History is being irretrievably lost, history of architecture as well as the history of the Island. how if not from old buildings would a person know how nice it is to have a home where all the corners of the walls are rounded off so you don't hurt yourself, or that the doors to the closets open by sliding inside the walls elevator-style? You're supposed to be able to stumble across old artifacts like round-cornered appliances randomly in the woods, or find ancient marbles from long-ago kids in your yard, or even Indian paint rocks. That's all being plowed under. What cross section of history does the talking for us when the children of tomorrow want to learn about the intercoms of yesterday? (people used to have hard-wired intercom systems in their homes) Then you've got the dumbwaiters, a la the Spiderwick motherfucker, another increasingly lost artifact. Day in in and day out these greedy scumbag developers destroy such wonderful pieces of irreplaceable craftsmanship and devotion as a property bounded by a wall of perfectly lined up and spaced fir trees. They ignore the weedy, moth eaten vacant lots sitting here and there between the buildings. There are plenty of opportunititeses opportunititties, titties, titties. Titties. Sorry, I think I forgot what I was saying. All I know is that if you Google the Earth Liberation Front you'll find the amusing anonymous arsonistic antics of some people who feel almost as strongly about it as I do but who perpetrate some destructive acts of reclamation which are clearly in defiance of established statute, as there are of course plenty of laws against surreptitiously burning down hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of these construction project abominations. Illegal it may be, but I laugh my ass off at the brave antics of these ballsy, heroic and selfless people, fighting back against the greedy scumbag developers who are ruining the quality of life for hardworking Americans everywhere. Don't copy these people, folks, you'll go to jail. Just read up on their adventures in the news.

My point is, there's nothing worse than buying a home with a lovely view of the ocean, only to discover that some greedy scumbag developer has made a secret deal with the town government and your bank to raise your tax rates and mortgage in order to compel you to sell off your land, which they'd wanted but you'd refused to parcel out, and then they put up one of these dreadful new places, with its everybody-has-one turrets, and it completely blocks the view from your windows of the lovely lovely sea, or of anything for that matter. They come along and block your fuckin view. They have no respect or concern for true quality of life, yours, theirs, or anybody else's. These douchebags have the nerve to put up little toll booths too, with an $8-an-hour security guard to tell you the people on the other side of that $49.99 crossing gate are better than you and you can't come in here.

They have the nerve to call these “estates.” that's not an estate. An estate is one of those wonderful old rolling properties with two or three buildings on the land, maybe a system of roads to connect them, a barn, you know, that's an estate. What these rich assholes are living in is technically a ghetto.

Source: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ghetto

 

a quarter of a city in which members of a (minority) group live especially because of social, legal, or economic (reasons) 3 a: an isolated group <a geriatric ghetto>

Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ghetto

Call it what you want, at the end of the day your fancy fucking McMansions are just a fucking ghetto.

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Portions of this issue were assembled using the OpenOffice.org software. Download your copy for free at www.openoffice.org

Front Cover Art By PANiC! in my Pants [P.I.M.P.]

Shout out to my diminutive Italian princess. Here's to a lengthy adventure together, bella ;) In a world full of Hyundais you're a BMW.

Okay, now it's a finished product.

Dateline

WARNING: Contains strong language. May not be suitable for younger readers.

Y'all might be aware they do an IM thingy here on LJ. Well, I looked into it, and it seems pretty official. It seems to involve open source alternatives to traditional pain-in-my-ass AIM and crap like that, so I actually went ahead and got myself one of the IM clients they list (at http://www.livejournal.com/chat/ )
The one I grabbed is Psi, but you might want to do some looking around on the Web for others. I'm not sure how this all works exactly, but if you want to reach me on there, (ok here's the catch) you have to message me so I know to go online. I'm not really sure how it works but -- oh shit pizza's up! brb
(later)
I'm such a douche, I'll actually sit and type that shit while the timer's ringing. Like this was in realtime or some shit. ...omfg this pizza's so good. i'm just glad that recall didn't affect the sausage topped variety. oh who am I kidding, I'd eat it anyway. Visit http://www.jabber.org/ to learn more about the Jabber service and download a client. Don't make me throw away precious disk space for nothing.

In other news, I've just caught myself watching water drip slowly from a faucet. By itself that's bad enough, but it made me forget I'm in the middle of watching The Shield.

As part of the ongoing changes to the DL4 online empire, I've added a radio player from 181.FM to the Dateline 4:20 Myspace page. You can leave this open in its own tab or browser window and listen to live, streaming techno music all day long. In fact, I just used it myself for two straight days, and there was not one single repeat, and no commercials. Having tested this music under real-life conditions, I can further vouch these beats are 100% Head Friendly.

I had to replace my phone this month. I'd been using a Kyocera M1000 "Wild Card" on the Virgin Mobile/Sprint network. The phone had some decent features. My favorite feature was the hands-free voice dialing with the Bluetooth, which is absolutely a must-have for drivers. Never mind that it makes the experience of using a telephone almost pleasant again. It's the penultimate illustration of just how completely we live in the future. In addition, this phone had a 99-slot speed dial, GPS, timer, stopwatch, a full qwerty keyboard...but the camera infused all the pictures with blue static that made them look like air-signal non-cable television. After having to replace it three times in three months for things like static-laced camera pictures and a persistent powering-off problem, I finally had enough. It was sad, really, since Virgin Mobile's service is really, really good. After doing a little homework, I settled on a T-Mobile Sidekick Slide (pics below). It's the first Sidekick manufactured by Motorola, which made me pretty happy.
Take a look:

http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/phones/Detail.aspx?tp=tb2&device=11e9c7d4-94d1-4d79-bc4b-ec2cc238a4a9

Motorola, remember, is the company who, in the early part of the 21st century, had a well-deserved reputation for building the sort of phones that could be, for instance, dropped down a flight of stairs or submerged in a lake and still survive to make calls. I know both of those particular things for a fact. As it turns out, this thing looks kind of like a portable video game system, my first thought on seeing it was Playstation Portable but others have told me they thought of Game Boys. It's a great device, very powerful, and the screen is really nice. Coming as I am from the lower end of the consumer handset market the difference is noticeable. It looks like the screens on those high end Toshiba cell phones that once sold for $500.

In any case, the problem I had is that, for a device coming from the leaders in Bluetooth headset technology, this phone doesn't offer voice dialing! It's this slick, sophisticated, space-age smart phone and it doesn't have voice dial. It also doesn't seem to have GPS, and for chrissake it doesn't even have a flash on the goddam camera! WTF. However, it does support multitasking across the applications, meaning you can be in the middle of an IM and go look up something on the Web real quick, add it to somebody's info in your phone book, and then go back to the IM. All that plus you can set it to chirp like a birdy or ribbit like a frog and it really sounds like teh real animals. This setting is useful for the page load completion notification. For example. But hey, who am I to look for voice dialing in a gadget that does all this. A gadget that really does delivier realistic-looking Web pages. Realistic, because they're real. Where do I get off thinking they could build voice dialing into it too? Or put a flash and shit on the cam? Hmmm? What the fuck folks.
A Gizmodo commenter refers to it as "an iPhone for straight people"
 http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/zhiny/motorola-zante-looks-even-shinier-than-you-know-who-also-runs-on-edge-274943.php 
For information on all things Sidekick take a look at http://www.poweredbydanger.com

I've discovered an online presence that I can only describe as "Sidekick Elitists." A cliquey group which evidently takes issue with things like new Sidekicks not having a flip-around hinge for the screen, in fact some whiny puss actually declared it isn't a Sidekick if it doesn't flip. ( www.myspace.com/sidekick ) Uh huh. These whiny bitches also have the nerve to complain about the screen resolution, which to me looks like a goddam plasma screen TV, and they also nitpick over literally hundredths of an inch of screen size. Hundredths of an inch, I shit you not. I can't believe they refer to these things as "BlackBerrys for kids" ( http://elearningstuff.wordpress.com/2007/10/25/sidekick-slide/ ). Some kids we got, huh?!

Well, I think the real problem is the idea that these young "sidekick nation" people all seem to fit the same profile: spoiled, self-important under-18-year-olds with a ludicrous sense of entitlement indicated in such sentiments as the almost universal expectation, in pre-holiday posts, of these teens' parents buying them the "hot new" Sidekick for Christmas, which itself is bad enough, but then they go on to specify which models are and are not "acceptable" or "good enough." If I read correctly, I think some of these kids even expect their parents to replace the Sidekicks they already have with the latest models as they come out. Maybe I wouldn't notice this shit if I hadn't put in three straight days of work, thirty-six plus hours total, just to afford to bring my ass to the store and sign up for a decent plan. I can't even imagine what kind of parents these kids come from. Oh my bad, the kind that get pregnant in high school and marry people who cheat on them. Exsqueeze me for forgetting. It's not that I don't see the use, I mean I'm nothing short of tickled that we are officially a nation requiring the use of an always-on internet-enabled device of some sort 24 hours a day, no matter how young, broke or unpopular you are. I don't get how these devices aren't being constantly lost, stolen, broken or confiscated. I don't. And I cannot believe that in multiple-child households, EACH KID gets one. I know because some guy walked into the T-Mobile store while I was hooking my shit up, and I mean you could tell this guy worked hard for a living. Dude had like 4 kids with him, and they had like three friends with them. All them kids wound up gettin the $300 Sidekick LX's. These kids was like nine. W...T...F...America?!!! Look at what the kids are doing to the parents, look what the parents are letting the kids get away with. I guess I shouldn't say anything of a nation that lets its little 10 year old girls dress like whores but incarcerates any redblooded heterosexual who actually looks at them. Every married person cheats, then cries about the "sanctity of marriage" when a gay person wants to marry the person they love. Fuck You, Middle America. Idiots raising idiots to be self-righteously self-indulgent and greedy. Thanks a bunch for making this world a better place. Not to get off on a rant there or nothin'. And by no means would I suggest these things aren't useful as fuck to people of all ages. They are. It's a fact of life now, and this is because we live in the future. It is its own proof.
I'm worried we might be living through history again. More to the point, I have to wonder if Britney Spears is a dead man walking. The way they report on her behavior in the press and on shows like The Insider.com and TMZ.com, it looks like she's going to die early. It feels like the entire country knows it, in fact it's like she's already dead and we're just watching in helpless horror knowing the end has already come. But we aren't necessarily powerless to stop it. Well, some people could. Not everybody. She has bodyguards, you know. I'm not saying I think she definitely is, I'm saying it feels awfully fucking likely. This is like going back in time to when Belushi was alive, or Monroe, or Dean, or Cobain, Joplin, or any of the  many other great tragedies of our time who died young. She isn't actually dead yet, which means that there is still a chance to change the future, a chance to change history. It just feels like, with her, we're walking where worlds overlap, like a dimensional nexus point. It could go only one of two ways.
Now as for that sister of hers. What a whore. What kind of message is she trying to send? That it's okay to get pregnant while you're still in high school? That if you do, with all the unwanted pregnancies in the world and the general overcrowding of the planet, that it's somehow still OK to keep the baby? And that if you do, that it's somehow OK to keep it keep it, and raise it your own broke, unmarried, uneducated self (and force the people around you to raise it for you)? Last time I checked, wasn't none of those things OK. A confirmed epidemic, maybe, but acceptable? Never. Crucify this little hookerette. Role model indeed.

I got this sick CD handed to me in the cab last week.  This is some real underground hip hop done the right way. this is officially that raw. the title of the CD is "Movie Ty presents Hustler's Hope" and the CD features the lyrical assault of Movie Ty, Soul Food the Rap Dealer, Drezy, and Purdie the Street Don. This CD is a straight up banger.
It honestly boggles my mind these cats don't have a record deal yet.  The artists' credo can perhaps best be summed up in their lyric, "We do this for love while you do it for cake." Obviously this is a commentary on the sad state of commercialized, popular hip-hop today. The implication here is that regardless what field you're in, when you do something not for what you think you're getting out of it (or because you think somebody's looking), but because you enjoy doing it and because you truly want to do it, then you have the winning formula. I can't say they're wrong. When you do what you do for the pure love of doing it, your end result is a much finer product than when you're all caught up trying to please everybody. The result here is a CD any fan of true hip hop can proudly play at high volume in their car. The East Coast style is reminiscent of Supreme Clientele-era Ghostface, a lttle bit. The beats utilized here are booty shakin, toe tappin floor fillers from start to finish.  The first track "Who Me?" gets your head nodding right away, a warm-up leading into this joint, which tears the roof open. The second track on the CD, "Lyrical Content," is the real opener. This is a hard hitting hood anthem.  From there the music flows towards the group track "Presence of Greats" which will have even the most antisocial wallflower looking for a square of parquet. In the fifth slot we have a banger called "Fuck You," which illustrates simultaneously the group's skill at deployment of samples, as well as the ability to craft an intelligent lyrical scheme on the foundation of a crude sentiment. The way this song rolls out makes you wanna play this when you go on an important car ride. More ingenious samples kick off the seventh track, "I Did It," which opens with the audio from a classic scene from the Scorsese picture "Raging Bull." The eleventh song features a gritty "New York State of Mind" beat and a dark lyrical theme concerning the focus on one's goals despite seemingly insurmountable adversity. Track 9, renamed "blakoutmagazine.com" from "incyun.com," features a laid-back, old-school computer lovin' groove sure to delight any mature listener.
Check out this line from Track 10, a freestyle by Purdie the Street Don: "I ain't down with the slappin and the punchin, I'm comin back shooting like Ilena's cousin" Pure brilliance.
If you want to check out Soul Food The Rap Dealer, Movie Ty and their music, log on to http://www.blakoutmagazine.com www.officialsoulfood.com or http://www.myspace.com/soulfoodakaburnsbr
The contact number provided on the CD is 1-718-838-2587
You gotta respect their hustle, and for all their hard work these artists are making the sort of quality music that should truly appeal to listeners across a broad spectrum of lifestyles. Apart from the fact it sounds like it was recorded in somebody's basement, the overall quality of the musical product is nothing short of professional. 
In the words of the artist: "I like glamor but the fake shit bores me/Real respect real, get treated accordingly..." 

_______________________________________________________________
You heard it here first:
The next big thing in free PDF creation software is PrimoPDF as described in our Christmas issue. Get up on that, while it's still free.

_______________________________________________________________
Officially Dead: 
Rhyming "again" with "rain" "pain" "Spain" "great Dane" etc. Not in print and not out loud. Dead means dead. Now you got the memo.

_______________________________________________________________
DL4 Top Christmas Songs 2007 (continued)
12. Mary's Boy Child - Boney M
13. Step Into Christmas - Elton John
14. White Christmas - Bing Crosby

_______________________________________________________________
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=97612&blogID=274410052   

Toker's Terminology
Current mood: high
Category: Parties and Nightlife

Acapulco Gold
A rare type of marijuana plant.

Aluminum pipe
A smoking utensil made from aluminum.

Apple pipe
A smoking utensil made from an apple.

Aqua lung
A gravity bong in a bucket.

Ash
1. The solid waste left in a pipe after the combustion of useful marijuana. 2. The act of clearing waste from a smoking utensil.

Ashed
An empty bowl.

Auto
A smoking device consisting of an aquarium pump and an oxygen mask.

Babysitting
Holding a smoking apparatus excessively long.

Baggie
Any size plastic bag used for containing marijuana.

Bake break
To take a break from all activities and smoke marijuana.

Baked
To be heavily "inspired" by the consumption of cannabis.

Bake sale
A marijuana smoking session.

Bale
A compressed brick of marijuana.

Bing
Water pipe / bong.

Binger
Water pipe / bong.

Biz-ong
Water pipe / bong.

Black
Hash.

Blazed
Very high on marijuana.

Blitzed
Very high on marijuana.

Blow-back
To exhale smoke into someone's mouth. AKA - "shot gun".

Blunt
A cigar-sized joint usually rolled using cigar paper.

Bogart
Taking numerous hits before passing the smoking utensil without the consent of the circle or group.

Bong
A water pipe.

Bongmaster
Keeper and "packer" of the bong.

Bong rip
To take a hit from a bong.

Bong water
Water used in a water pipe to filter smoke.

Bootie
Another word for pirate treasure.

Bowl
1. The end of a pipe in which weed is loaded. 2. A small amount of marijuana. 3. A packed bowl of marijuana.

Braindead
Loss of mental acuity.

Brainfart
Temporary loss of mental acuity.

Brick
A kilogram-sized slab or cube of compressed pot.

Bubblegum
1. A term used to describe the smell or taste of marijuana. 2. When the weed is so sticky you have to cut it with scissors or a knife.

Bud
1. The part of the cannabis plant you smoke. 2. The fresh or dried flowers of the female marijuana plant.

Buddha stick
A potent strain of grass from Thailand, usually wrapped around thin bamboo splints or Popsicle stick slivers.

Buds
A natural cluster of smokable marijuana.

Bucket bong
Any pipe using water and gravity to force the smoke into the "toker's" lungs. AKA - Gravity bong.

Bunk
Poor quality weed, usually containing numerous seeds.

Burn
1. To act of smoking weed. 2. The sometimes exhausting after effects of smoking marijuana

Burner
One who smokes marijuana then becomes complacent to do nothing.

Burnout
To suffer physical and mental exhaustion when coming down from a "high".

Burnt out
Complete physical and mental exhaustion.

Buzz
A mild cannabis high.

Buzz kill
A person or event that lessens the state of one's "high" in a negative manner.

Cannabis Indica
The scientific name for a species of marijuana plant.

Cannabis Sativa
The scientific name for a species of marijuana plant.

Can pipe
A smoking utensil made from a can.

Carb
A hole in a pipe or bong that allows the smoke to clear from the chamber and into your lungs.

Cashed
When the marijuana in the bowl of a smoking utensil has become primarily ash.

Chamber
1. The longest section of a bong that holds smoke. 2. Pipe pieces formed to store and resonate weed.

Cherried
A continuous burning of the weed in a pipe, bong, or joint.

Cherry
The burning portion of weed that stays lit without further ignition.

Chillum
A cone-shaped pipe made of clay, the earliest form of smoking, originated from using a horn.

Chronic
An excellent quality marijuana.

Chronie -slang
See chronic.

Circles
Circular groups formed by multiple pot smokers during a session.

Clogged
When it becomes difficult to suck through a smoking utensil.

Colombian
The most common type of grass on the black market.

Cool
1. High 2. Awesome 3. Thanks

Cornering
Lighting only a portion of the bowl at a time so that more than one person can get a green hit.

Cottonmouth
A lack of saliva brought about by smoking marijuana.

Crash
To lose your energy fast and hard after smoking marijuana.

Creeper
Weed that takes time to alter your state of mind after being inhaled.

Dank
High quality marijuana.

Deal
A cannabis purchase.

De-childproof
To remove the child-safety devise.

De-seeding
Removing all stems and seeds from a quantity of marijuana.

Dime
A quantity of weed costing ten dollars.

Dirt
Poor quality weed, usually containing numerous seeds.

Doobie
A joint.

Dope
1. Marijuana. 2. Name given to any illegal substance. 3. Cool, awesome.

Dry
When you and/or your hook-up run out of marijuana.

Dub
A quantity of weed costing twenty dollars

Eighth
One-eighth ounce of marijuana.

Elbow joint
A pipe piece that connects the chamber and bowl.

Euro-style
Taking multiple hits before passing the smoking utensil with the consent of the circle or group

Faded
1. A term used to describe a state of being high. 2. Feeling too high.

Fatty
A very thick joint.

Fish-lipping
Using excessive saliva while smoking from a joint or pipe.

Five-O
Police (as in Hawaii Five-O).

Four-twenty
The pot-head's New Year; where day meets night. The international time to smoke pot.

Fuzz
Police.

Ganja
Indian and Jamaican term for marijuana.

Grass
Marijuana, weed, pot, etc.

Gravity bong
Any pipe using water and gravity to force the smoke into the "toker's" lungs.

Green
1. An excellent quality marijuana. 2. The basic color of marijuana.

Green hit
The first hit: refers to the color of marijuana

Half "O"
A half ounce of marijuana.

Harsh
Herb that is too dry and burns too fast.

Hash / Hashish
Hash is formed by scraping the sticky resin from the leaves of the marijuana plant.

Head change
The mental change that occurs from smoking marijuana, usually accompanied by an altered awareness of time.

Head shops
Any shop that sells marijuana-smoking paraphernalia.

Hemp
Cannabis stalks and stems, especially those used to make rope, fabrics, etc.

Herb
Jamaican term for marijuana with Biblical connotations; Rastafarian sacrament.

High
The mental change that occurs from smoking marijuana, usually accompanied by an altered awareness of time.

Hit
The act of inhaling pot smoke into your lungs.

Hookah
A hashish waterpipe with four long stems to accommodate four smokers at once, originates back to the Middle East.

Hook-up
The person from whom you get your weed.

House rules
Rules set by the host to be followed during all gatherings and parties.

Hot box
To smoke weed inside a vehicle with the widows rolled up.

Hydro
Hydroponically grown marijuana.

"I'm Cool"
1. "I have had enough to smoke." 2. "I do not wish to smoke." 3."I'm high."

J / Jay
A joint.

Joint
A marijuana cigarette

Kaff / Khayf / Kif / Kief
Golden pollen hash from Morocco, Lebanon and other Arab/Middle Eastern nations. Common forms are Red Lab and Slate. Also the smokable hash powder collected from THC crystals dislodged during stash cleaning.

Kind
High quality marijuana.

Lagger
A person who seemingly takes forever to do everything.

Light
A lighter or match.

Light up
The act of lighting marijuana.

Lip burner
A pipe that is too short for practical use.

Lit
The state of being high.

Load a bowl
Loading a pipe or bong with marijuana.

Lung-cookie
A coughed up ball of phlegm.

Marijuana
The smokable leaves and buds of the female cannabis plant.

Mary Jane
The female cannabis plant. Male plants have almost no active THC.

Mex
A description of poor quality weed often imported from Mexico.

Mexy
See Mex.

Mooching
Always smoking other people's weed, but never supplying it.

Mouthpiece
The end of the pipe which is placed between your lips as you smoke.

Munch
To eat without thinking.

Munchies
The hunger sensation associated with being high.

Nipple
The mouthpiece of a pipe.

Nug
A bud from a marijuana plant or a part there of.

"O"
One ounce of marijuana.

Oil
The purified and concentrated resin from hashish or marijuana.

O-ring
Small rubber rings that help create an airtight seal between pipe pieces.

"O"-"Z"
One ounce of marijuana.

Ounce
One ounce of marijuana.

Pack a bowl
Load a smoking utensil with marijuana.

Party foul
A breaking of basic house rules, such as knocking over a bong or loading a seed.

Peanut
What is left of a joint after it has become so small that it's difficult to smoke. It is strong because it catches and concentrates the resin of the joint.

Piece
Used to describe any smoking utensil.

Pinner
A very thin joint.

Pipe</B>
A tubular implement used for smoking marijuana.

Poker
Any device used to clear a smoking utensil of ash and resin.

Pot
Marijuana, hash, grass, cannabis, etc.

Pot brownies
Brownies laced with marijuana or THC.

Pot-butter
Butter infused with marijuana.

Pound
One pound of marijuana.

Pretendo
1. Marijuana that looks and smells excellent, but does not deliver a great high. 2. Prematurely picked marijuana.

Puff-puff-give
Taking only one or two tokes before passing the hit.

Puff-puff-pass
See puff-puff-give.

QP
A quarter pound (four ounces) of marijuana.

Quarter
1. A quarter ounce of marijuana. 2. A quarter pound of marijuana.

Reefer
Marijuana.

Resin
A sticky brown residue deposited in smoking utensils via combustion of marijuana.

Resonate
To strengthen and concentrate your weed.

Roach
What is left of a joint after it has become so small that it's difficult to smoke. It is strong because it catches and concentrates the resin of the joint.

Roach-clip
A device for holding a roach.

Roller
A device used to facilitate joint rolling.

Rolling paper
Thin paper used to form marijuana cigarettes.

Sack
Any measurement of weed contained within baggie.

Salad Bowl
When you pack a bowl beyond the lip of the bowl itself

Scale
Any of various measuring tools used to weigh out marijuana.

Score
1. A 70's term for a quarter ounce of hash. 2. To receive and / or purchase marijuana.

Screen
A metal or glass filter designed to let smoke through and keep ash out.

Seed
The seed from a fertilized marijuana plant.

Session
Two or more pot-smokers gathered for a common purpose: to get high.

Shake
The very small and dry pieces of marijuana used in the joint rolling process.

Sinsemilla
The flowering tops of seedless plants.

Sinker
A bowl that usually does not require a screen.

Skunk
1. Aromatic and potent sinsemilla. 2. A term used to describe the quality or fragrance of marijuana.

Smoke
1. To light and inhale marijuana smoke. 2. Pot, reefer, grass, etc.

Smoke break
To stop what you are doing a smoke weed.

Smoking circle
A gathering of persons smoking pot.

Smoking utensil
Any device used to smoke marijuana.

Snap
To completely empty the bowl of a water pipe by sucking though it.

Spark it
Light up.

Spliff
A Jamaican term for a large cone-shaped joint.

Stash
A personal supply of marijuana.

Stem
1. The cylinder on a bong that connects the chamber to the bowl. 2. The stem from a marijuana plant.

Stoned
The state of being high.

Stoney
1. Cool 2. A nice quality weed.

Stress
Poor quality weed, usually containing numerous seeds.

Stuck
Being unaware and unable to process complex thoughts.


Tetrahydrocannabinol / THC
The psychoactive cannabinoid element in cannabis that is responsible for the "high".

Thai stick
A potent strain of grass from Thailand, usually wrapped around thin bamboo splints or Popsicle stick slivers.

Toke
Taking a hit from a smoking utensil.

Toker
One who smokes marijuana.

To your head
1. "Finish the bowl yourself." 2. "You took a really big hit."

Triple beam
A type of scale with great accuracy.

Utensil
A device such as a bong or pipe used to smoke marijuana

Vaporizer
A device that heats your < font>marijuana to the exact "vaporizing" temperature of the active chemicals.

Visine
A brand name eye drop.

Visual
An hallucination.

Wake and bake
To smoke weed upon waking up.

Wasted
Stoned beyond rational thought.

Water pipe
A device used to filter marijuana smoke through water before it is inhaled.

Weed
Marijuana

White Widow
A name given to many varieties of great marijuana with a white crystalline appearance.

Yellow Taxi
A yellow-haired weed grown in Amsterdam

Z
1 ounce of cannabis.

Zigzag
A name brand rolling paper.

Zoned
A loss of the ability to focus on more than one thing at a time.



Special Thanks to Towelie for...oh who am I kidding, he ain't gonna realize I ganked this from his high ass.

WARNING: ADULT LANGUAGE & CONTENT. NOT SUITABLE FOR YOUNGER READERS.



Deja Yule Department -- Remember this from the summer: "Here is your winner, and NEW Mental Cement Nasty Day Champion, FULL CIRCLE!" No? I'm not surprised. It happened, and it does mean something, but I haven't found a way to properly translate that into something sufficiently accessible to be able to explain it. I may not be able to construct an academic definition of the situation, but I think I can illustrate, perhaps perfectly. One of these days, hopefully soon but more likely on my deathbed (assuming I'm granted the luxury of one) I will try to explain what, exactly Camp Throwback vs. Full Circle means. It has something to do with Nasty Day, obviously, but I have explained that even less.

Here is the point.

Today is Thursday, December 13th, 2007 and I am sitting down to write the Dateline 4:20 Christmas essay, in preparation for the release of our original first edition series in .PDF format. As many of you know, we released a promotional version of the final issue from that series a week or so before our Thanksgiving special came out. The issue in question was the thirteenth and final issue of the original series, and besides being issue #13, it came out on Friday, December 13th, 1996, exactly eleven years ago today. While I did pick up the original print series with a Volume 2 in the winter and spring of 1997, those issues are not currently "in play" and thus do not count as interference with our neat little Full Circle phenomenon. It's kind of like I'm picking up exactly where I left off a decade ago, but at the same time it isn't. It's kind of like time travel in a way, and I mean in both directions. But rather than continue trying to interpret, I'd prefer to let the facts and figures speak for themselves, and you have all that now. I'm doing what I'm doing with what I'm using and the dates are what they are. You do the math.

It's fucked up, I must say, that I can't go join the Five Towns College "network" on Facebook if I wanted to. You see, they require a school email address, and I can't really blame them, but I'm trying to join as an alumnus, and they weren't giving students email addresses back in the late '90s. Hell, the PC's on which I wrote those original Datelines weren't even hooked up to the Internet, because in those days the Web wasn't what it is today, that blazing-fast pantheon of freebies, malware, info and porn that we all know and love. The reference to "Plucky Online" in the very first issue ever is a thoroughly ironic self-fulfilling prophecy, as I had no idea whatsoever at the time that it would ever lead to this. Those computers certainly weren't "online!" When I originally wrote it, I didn't think I was doing much more than simply fucking around randomly and writing a bunch of nonsense words to be printed for use as scrap paper. How that evolved and led us to where we are today, I've no clue, but then I had no inkling whatever there would even be a second issue. You can see that I've kept the original name almost intact, while taking the spirit and idea of it all and raping it over hot coals. No typo.

Sidenote: As the original Dateline ran from 1996-98 we are celebrating our 10th anniversary from 2006 through 2008 inclusive.

Wellnow. I think we've plowed through the numerology section quite capably; let's move on to the Calendar then. In theory, I was going to add a new .pdf download of a new reprinted issue every day for 12 days, since there are 12 days left till Xmas and I have 12 remaining unreleased re-releases. You follow? I'm not sure how well this is going to work, though I'm sure I'll figure something out, but in any case if you're reading these words and you ain't me, I obviously fixed the problem and probably look like a dick for not erasing this paragraph. You know what? Fuck you. LOL JK, but let's just start over.

Say for the sake of argument this actually does wind up working. What I'd like you to do is check back in with this specific page every day between now and Christmas, because - again, provided I can get this fucking thing to work - I'll be adding new content on a daily basis. For 12 days leading up to The Big Day, you will receive each day a new copy of a classic issue of Dateline 4:20 in .pdf format, totaling 12 in all and comprising the original Volume 1 set from back in 1996. If you have our November 20th, 2007 issue then you probably have already seen the aforementioned Dateline 4:20 Volume 1 Issue 13 in .jpg format, which our readers are welcome to download and print. This issue will be reproduced along with the other 12 in .pdf format for inclusion in the holiday series. The release date of that issue will most likely be Christmas Day, to coincide with our other big surprise for you. Actually, as it turns out since today was the actual eleventh anniversary of that issue, I couldn't help but put it out there. It's available now, no waiting.

As I may have mentioned, we need for you to check this page on a daily basis because in addition to the Christmas reissues, there will be additional holiday content posted which you will no doubt wish to see. Read it around the fireplace with loved ones.

My God, I've typed a lot of words. I'm probably going to type a lot more, but not just yet. I have to go back outside into the cold and return to my "other job."

Happy Holidays!

PLUCKY aka PANiC! in my Pants [P.I.M.P.]
Official Santa's Helper
Deputized by Authority of the North Pole

December 13, 2007 2:03 AM




Viewing The PDFs
For starters, you need a pdf reader. You probably have Adobe Reader installed, since everybody has that fucking thing. If not, you can get it here. You should be aware, however, that there is a better free PDF reader out there: Foxit Reader. It's smaller, lighter, and quicker. You can download Foxit Reader here.

Okay. Now you've got a PDF reader installed, if you didn't already. Let's see what's good with these files.
(later still:) After hunting around on the Web for a while, I've found exactly one site that hosts PDFs for free, and I think we use just way too goddam much profanity to be in compliance with their TOS. Especially considering the way I had next to no idea WTF I was doing back in the day and ran headlines in really big fonts that said shit like "Who Fucked Pavarotti?" You'll see. In any case, they only hold the files online for sixty days. Maybe they keep em longer and maybe they don't, but they only promise you sixty days. I can't really argue with it, but it won't do me any good to send people over there for a download three months from now if they don't find my files.

What The Hell Am I Doing?
Near as I can tell, I've got three options, apart from searching around on the Inertnet some more:
Choice A: Use the free service, and take the risks.
Choice B: Use Xdrive, because pain in the ass as it is, at least I know it works. Or
Choice C: Post them as JPG's.

The route to go is the one that doesn't require me to create any new user accounts, although it's possible you guys might have to. I'm actually at the point right now where I'm ready to just pass the fuck out. It's now three in the afternoon, and I've been working on this article all goddam day and part of last night, as you've seen. Why wasn't it already done? Hell, if I hadn't just asked myself that, I'd still be the only one aware I was ever even working under a deadline.

The hosting site responded to my email, and I think I might be able to use their service after all. If so, I shall include both the links to Xdrive and those to the other site.

Put Up Or Shut Up
So here's the deal. For the advent calendar itself, I'm going to add a link a day for twelve days, just like a real advent calendar. You may need to input your AIM screen name to get the PDFs from Xdrive, which is where I'm sticking them, or at least the first one. I'm still going to hunt around a little, but for the time being this should work just fine. It's been a while since I've shared files on Xdrive, but if I recall I think they ask you to log in at some point. Again, don't be afraid. It's harmless and you may even find them useful. This isn't supposed to be a plug, it's just that this is the service I'm using and that's how they operate, so I'm just givin yall the heads-up. I mean think about it, I want you guys to read these old back issues, how is it helping me if I make it any harder than it has to be, you know what I'm sayin'?



This is a momentous occasion. Full Circle is vindicated. Here, for your reading pleasure, we proudly present our Christmas gift to you: a complete reissue of the historic first Dateline 4:20 series ever.
Personally, I find some of what I wrote back then to have been kind of embarassing looking at it today, but who gives a fuck? It was ten years ago. Oh yeah, and so you know, the files will be around 2 MB each, unless noted otherwise. When you click on the link, follow the instructions onscreen, even if it asks you to sign up for Xdrive. I forget whether they still do that, but if so I assure you it's perfectly safe. Google it if you need further proof, but unless and until I find a better way this is it.
Joy to the world, Dateline is come.

FYI: I have now officially spent as much time in a single day working on this one article as I normally spend working a full shift at work. In fact I wrote part of it while at work.

Without further ado, your
Dateline 4:20 Advent Calendar
DAY 1: Thursday, December 13th, 2007
The First Issue Ever.
Click Here For Volume 1, Issue 1 (1.42MB)

DAY 2: Friday, December 14th, 2007
Click Here For Volume 1, Issue 2 (1.81MB)

DAY 3: Saturday, December 15th, 2007
Click Here For Volume 1, Issue 3 (3.80MB)

DAY 4: Sunday, December 16th, 2007
Click Here For Volume 1, Issue 4 (6.63MB)

DAY 5: Monday, December 17th, 2007
Click Here For Volume 1, Issue 5 (8.79MB)

DAY 6: Tuesday, December 18th, 2007
Click Here For Volume 1, Issue 6 (10.56MB)

DAY 7: Wednesday, December 19th, 2007
Click Here For Volume 1, Issue 7 (9.82MB)

DAY 8: Thursday, December 20th, 2007
Click Here For Volume 1, Issue 8 (10.49MB)

DAY 9: Friday, December 21st, 2007
Click Here For Volume 1, Issue 9/10 Double Issue (8.18MB)

DAY 10: Saturday, December 22nd, 2007
Click Here For Volume 1, Issue 11 (5.60MB)

DAY 11: Sunday, December 23rd, 2007
Click Here For Volume 1, Issue 12 (10.27MB)

And the one you will remember from just before Turkey Day:
The December 13, 1996 issue, republished on the World Wide Web on December 13, 2007.
Click Here For Volume 1, Issue 13 (2.02MB)

Congratu-fuckin-lations, you now have the complete set. You lucky bastard you.
I would like to point out that while "eggnog" is certainly an amusing word, and "dillweed" is by now infamous, I think one of the most overlooked of the funny words is "nutmeg." Nutmeg for your eggnog, right next to the dillweed. Roffle mayo.
If I didn't have to handle some elf business here at the North Pole, I'd be ... um ... shit, I can't even seem to get my thoughts in order. Ahhh, good ole' stream-of-consciousness. Anyway, I guess while you're busy playing connect-the-dots with the thirteen Twelve Datelines of Christmas on your workstation by the fire, I'm returning to Santa's workshop now. The elves seem to have wreaked havoc, and I'm about to go midget bowling, dwarf tossing, whatever the fuck they call it...those fuckin elves, you gotta watch em every second. There's some good shit coming though, it should arrive under your digital tree when Santa Claus makes his rounds, or shortly thereafter.
Well, now that we've got that sorted, hopefully you will find enough here to keep you occupied until I'm able to step back and let Santa Claus lay a fat stack of gifts on you.
It's now Christmas morning, well, 6 AM, that counts. I, for some reason, am able to find the time to add to this fucking silly-ass tangent even though I'm busy doing Santa's bidding.



Who Is Santa Claus, Really?
A Dateline 4:20 Special Report
Over The River And Through The Woods At $1.50 a Mile Department -- Who or what exactly is Santa Claus? Is there a Kris Kringle? What is the Christmas spirit all about then, anyway? Well, I can't say for sure, but I can tell you what I think. This is what I believe based on Christmas season after Christmas season of opening up to new experiences while still embracing the old traditions, and when the whole thing is said and done playing Monday-morning quarterback about the whole thing. I've made some observations about the nature of Santa Claus, and the Christmas spirit as a whole. The magic of Christmas is that there really is magic at Christmas. It isn't exactly dripping from the chandeliers, and it most definitely isn't rabbit-in-a-hat magic but at the same time it is very real and it will appear unexpectedly when and where it is needed the most.

As for the rest of us, it is us that makes most of the Christmas magic. Is there really a fat guy in a red suit who flies around the world dropping gifts off one night a year? I don't know. What I think is that regardless whether the man Kringle himself exists as a separate entity or not, the idea of Santa Claus is a symbol that represents the true Christmas spirit, both figuratively and literally. I believe that when people remember to try to be nice to each other, when they give of themselves without thinking what's in it for them, when they take five minutes out of their day to pause and be grateful for whatever's good in their life, these are the kind of things that really embody the true spirit of Christmas in action. I'm not talking about running around being a doormat, going out of your way to constantly take one for the team. No, I just mean that what we talk about around the holidays, and the values we see demonstrated in the old movies and TV specials we constantly watch, is worth more than simply paying lip service a month out of the year.

Have you ever noticed that once the day itself is come and gone, there are no more Christmas songs on the radio, nobody likes being wished a Merry Christmas, people point out nastily to you that "Christmas is over" and you should take off your Santa Claus hat. These are not people who have the slightest idea what Christmas is all about. In particular the radio stations that had been doing wall-to-wall carols for the month since Turkey Day, and on the 26th won't even throw one on by request. Their defense? "Christmas is over, nobody wants to hear that shit." Ditto the morons who in general tire themselves out from Turkey Day through the big night, then are so thoroughly over-exerted they have no focus or energy for the holiday spirit. They think it's all about what did you buy, what did you get, how much did everybody spend and um, oh yeah, how big was your light display? People, that's not what it's about. Obviously these things are going to be part of the package, but they're not being treated as incidentals like they should be. The December holiday season has grown from the Festival of Lights, Jesus Christ's Birthday and the ...um... whatever it is that Kwanzaa's about, and become this amalgamated national institution. That's a good thing. What it means is that everybody gets to get a little piece of the action, but it's gotten to the point that you can't even sit around sipping eggnog, playing with your gifts on the day after because people throw things at you for having the Christmas CD's on. The Christmas spirit isn't there, Charlie Brown. They see not the error of their ways.

So what is it then? To begin with, we need to get rid of this pervasive and ludicrous idea that Christmas is only for the kiddies, at least as far as visible decorations, trappings, parties, general excitement and et cetera. Likewise for the merchants: get over yourselves. It's not about you, never was, and most of you people in retail really ought to have killed yourselves long ago. Do the world a favor. I'm sorry, it's just that I've worked in retail, so I know how it is. I think it goes without saying the foregoing un-Christmaslike sentiment was directed largely at management and ownership, not the average clock-punching working stiff. I feel bad for you guys, because around the holidays those people who were born big enough assholes to become managers then become disgustingly greedy and stupid once their alarm clocks ring on the Friday morning after Thanksgiving, and generally stay that way until, um, February or so.

Shit fire and save matches, I think I've strayed from my point. The Christmas spirit lives inside all of us. Every single one. If you choose to bury it, to ignore it, shame on you, and I feel really bad for you because you will get what you deserve. Likewise, those among us who are willing to make just that extra bit of effort to be kinder, gentler, more helpful and tolerant, not just in the crappy-ass wintertime but all the time, to those people, you are the real Santa Clauses, each and every one of you. If you have helped somebody out whom you didn't know, if you've ever done something just to make a child happy, if you're extra kind to elderly people and veterans, you are Santa Claus, you are the living embodiment of the Christmas spirit. I mean I guess technically what I ought to be saying is that it doesn't make you Santa Claus, it makes you one of His Helpers. There really is only one Santa Claus, and he lives at the North Pole.

Told ya not to go anywhere! There's more underneath your tree.
It is Christmas, after all.



1. Baby It's Cold Outside - Mulato Beat Remix - Louis Armstrong & Velma Middleton
2. Christmastime is Here, from A Charlie Brown Christmas.
3. Mele Kalikimaka by Jimmy Buffett
4. Where Are You Christmas, Faith Hill, for the 2nd year in a row makes our list.
5. We Need a Little Christmas, Percy Faith & His Orchestra. ...never gets old..
6. Wattaya Doin New Years Eve - any version except the Barbra version
7. Here's your sign Christmas - Bill Engvall.
8. 12 Pains of Xmas. again!
9. There's another 12 things of Xmas, I forgot who it's by, but when they get to One, each time it's like, "and a beer. ...in a tree."
10. Three Way Tie. The other Peanuts Xmas song, the boogie one with no words. Tied with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra CD and the Christmas music channel on 181.FM



i'm tryin to smoke and i keep losin my lighter on my shirt cuz its the same colour as the xmas tshirt i'm wearin

NO ROOM AT THE INN? BEHOLD, TIDINGS OF COMFORT AND JOY!
Field Note: the most burnt thing ever. sticking the cellophane from a tv dinner into my cig pack to get rid of it. wtf. there was even still steam n gravy n shit. and i didn't realize till much much later i'd done this. and it didnt register at the time, at all.
____________________________________________________
It turns out some well-paid Swiss government engineers have determined that former Soviet republic Krzykstan is the actual geographic home of Santa Claus. It has something to do with how it's ideally situated to reach all the children of the world in a single night. Switching gears, I fuckin' hate, what's their name, Jet? That's them? I can't fuckin' stand those no-talent pop whores. Ugh, gag me. Lock em all in a room with that cunt Adam Levine from the formerly not-that-bad Maroon5 and let em all kill each other...please. Merry Christmas to the recording industry, or the dusbigtry as it were. (That's "big-in-dustry," lol)

DL4: IT'S NOT A BLOG. IT'S A E-ZINE!
Best Of 2007 Collector's Edition (full/print)

The Bluto Issue - Click Here - 213.73KB/112.71KB

The Thanksgiving Issue - Click Here - 310.87KB/137.07KB

Triangulation '07 - Click Here - 252.69KB/100.11KB

Triangulation on Myspace - Click Here - 422.35KB/234.29KB

Homework - Click Here - 1.44MB/1.27MB

Nasty Day: Throwback vs. FC - Click Here - 357.13KB/167.53KB

What You Missed - Click Here -  305.67KB/111.42KB

Myspace Christmas Issue - Click Here -  723.24KB/540.92KB/335.21KB

THiS iSSUE - COMMEMORATiVE EDiTiON - GET iT NOW! - CLiCK HERE
Yes, I mean the issue you're reading.



______________________________________________________
FWIW, I'm finally wearin' my Xmas PJ's again. The catch is that I haven't worn them since two Christmases ago because in 2006, when that girl "Kevin Bacon" lived at my house, she used to wear em a lot, and for the longest time I was reluctant to interact with any of the objects she'd tainted. But this year I took the power back.
______________________________________________________



Information:
If you want to share a document on the Web convert it to a PDF (Portable Document Format) file. This is the standard format of documents transferred on the Internet. PDF files have the advantage of

    * being opened with Adobe/Foxit Reader from any Web browser on PC, Mac, or Linux,
    * showing the document as you intended it to look, and
    * being approximately the same size or smaller than the original file. PowerPoint slide show files, in particular, are smaller in the PDF version.

(Source: http://cit.information.unl.edu/info1106.htm)

______________________________________________________
Summary of conclusions regarding PDF-related applications.
PrimoPDF - best PDF printer, free or paid. Period.
Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional - Far and away the best all-around PDF creation/editing program and my new best friend. It is prohibitively expensive, but it's like fuckin Photoshop for PDFs.
Best free PDF reader: Foxit Reader.
Worst PDF anything: CutePDF. Sorry, but even their least impressive competitor will completely embarass this app in a head to head faceoff. (That was too anatomical) You wouldn't notice a diff if you didn't know any better, but it's just like the sailboat: once you know, you can't un-know. For real,  if you're gonna use a PDF program, don't fuck yourself by getting Cute. Trust me - I know this the hard way.
Best all-around application: OpenOffice.org Totally free, fully featured office suite that includes a PDF converter. This app does everything. Pics, graphics, spreadsheet, word proc, PDF, you name it. All FUH REE.
Also available for U3 Flash Drive.
And that's all you need to know about your PDF software choices.

Random software fact that you probably shouldn't read while high:
"Project Dogwaffle has an optipustics menu."



Keep an eye peeled, there will be more updates. It's gonna be a new year soon, you know.
I must really love doing this. I was mad shot from all the Christmas adventures and sleep seemed like the best option. But instead, I refused to cave in, and here I am, spending practically the whole goddam night on this silly thing - and I bet you nobody even sees it for weeks, the lazy fucks. Fuck 'em, this shit looks mad good and I like it. Go me. Shooooooooes!
_______________________________________________
Afterword: For one thing, if you're having trouble with the Commemorative Edition download, please be patient. We're on it. Also, I discovered that this issue prints out to be thirteen pages, which I thought was interesting considering that it took 13 days to put this issue together in its current form, and the original jumping-off point was Issue Number 13 on the 13th of December, both in 1996 and in 2007. And since it's the eleventh anniversary of that issue, we've added



Special Thanks To NvMe, Rooster and Sisters Of Mixing for their invaluable support.
Godfather of Dateline 4:20 : Syntax Era 
DL4 Imaginator of the Year: Tairyfale

(C) Copyright 1996-2008 Dateline 4:20 Online

WARNING: Contains strong language. May not be suitable for younger readers.

Dec. 01, 2007
08:40 AM

I'm feeling blue today. Sad. Melancholy. Not killing-yourself sad, but more of a someone-has-died kind of sad. Part of it has to do with summer, and how much I miss it. I started thinking about Summer before, while I was at work, and it brought tears to my eyes. The simple beauty of the beach, the absolute and undiluted pleasure of laying out in the sun. In fact I can feel my eyes misting up as I write this.

Part of the way I feel has something to do with the past. Nothing I can really get a handle on, but it pertains in part to how I've recently been doing a lot of cleaning and in the course of so doing unearthed many ancient artifacts. There are also a lot of items I had previously relocated which remain wherever I'd put them, thinking that at some point I'd return and sort them out. Well, that never happened. Temporarily placing an item on top of another item virtually assured that all vector layers were blended into the scenery. Time doesn't pass at the normal rate here. To keep looking at a stack of mail day after day takes on a whole new level of meaning when you finally stop and actually open that, only to discover they're all dated three and four years ago. When you find a check in one envelope made out to you, and it's been so long that you no longer can cash it, that drives the seriousness home.

Looking at all my history took my breath away. Sort of reminiscin like, but also it was the enormity of what exactly was there, some of it brought back crazy fuckin memories that I had not even remembered knowing I had. Unfortunately the original ending of the previous sentence isn't one of those things. I'd stopped typing when my mas delicioso oven pizza was ready for devouring, so I removed it from the oven and said to it, "Hello, breakfast, prepare to die." Then I promptly inhaled the son of a bitch. As I slowly assimilated dozens of unbelievably wonderful meat pieces the DVD unspooled in front of me like a thought provoking piece of cinema.

Semi-random random thought. Definitely the most effortlessly browsable website: urban dictionary.

Shifting gears, I really don't like the ending of "The Goonies." I mean the part where they're all gathered around on the beach is cool. I'm sayin' there was no reason the Fratellis had to run the kids' pockets. There was plenty of treasure for everybody. They could have called it even and gone their separate ways; they'd all have been too rich to need to care. Worse, when the kids left and the ship got free, you know it either got stolen by grownups and pillaged right after the movie ends, or else it sinks and then it gets pillaged by grownups. What a waste. The Goonies should at least have made off with more treasure than they did, but for the bunch of em letting that ship get away was such a fuckup I can't even get over it. Blech. That's even worse than trusting Chunk to fetch the police, for a variety of reasons. I'd sooner climb down a fireplace.

Speaking of, jolly old St. Nick will soon be making his rounds. I'm pretty happy about the whole thing, and I'm not looking too hard at any one particular outcome. I know from experience that because it's this time of year things will more or less sort themselves out the way they're supposed to. I just keep on trying to carry the spirit of the season - the real spirit of the season, that abstract concept people love to talk about but never act on - in my heart all year round, so in the homestretch here I'm staying the course instead of pulling for a late-inning rally. You heard.

Because this sentence appears in a public entry I should remind you to click on our RSS feed. kthxbye.