LO-fuckin-L

Be sure to scroll down to the diagram.

Oh. My. God.

"Larrupin'" is a piece of American slang (new to me) that means "tasty good." It's also a restaurant about five miles north of Westhaven. It is teh awesome. Went there last night for a little datey dinner and had one of the best meals of my life.

Food is one of the few things that I don't feel any compunction against spending big money on. I'm a relative cheapskate on most other counts, and I sort of have a reflexive aversion to "luxury" items. I hate shopping. But good food and good drink is always a go for me.

And to round out the evening we saw A Scanner Darkly, the new rotoscope movie by Richard Linkleter. It's allright. I enjoyed the first half of the film -- with Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey Jr. and Keanu being all paranoid and strung out -- more than the latter half. Keanu's too bland to really carry the rest, and while I really find the rotoscoping thing interesting, and hope it gets used more in future features, there were some choices made that I think were not so smart. It's entertaining and funny at points; definitely worth a rental when that time comes.

Great weekend coming up. Tommy, Chelsea and Greg are down for a visit from PDX, and Laurel's pug pup Frankie (video coming) is boarding with us/Hanna&Sarah for a bit, and I'm shacking up with The Peach to boot. Fun around the campfire, in the house. We're gonna hit up the Crabbies tonight too.

Also:

http://www.ihumpedyourhummer.com

Refused to turn over protest footage of Anarchists vandalizing a police car. Prosecutors make a tenuous connection to damage done to property that's partially funded with federal dollars as a means of getting around California law which protects journalists against a compulsion to turn over unpublished material.

This is kinda bullshit and kinda scary for a number of reasons.

• Vandalizing a police car is stupid. It's an egocentric act with null social impact, and it represents the worst-of-the-worst kind of black-bloc type activity. Stop it, kids. Your energy is being wasted.
• However, the prosecutor's contention that any act against local police is a federal crime which superceeds state law is creepy and tenuous. I hope the ACLU's appeal on this matter wins out.
• Finally, the worst is that jerk-ass federal prosecutors and DAs have this ridiculous hard-on for so-called Anarchists and are implementing police-state type actions and procedures in the hopes of locking some of them up. Almost as stupid as vandalizing a police car. You're supposed to be the grown-ups. Fucking act like it.

This is a conflict that doesn't need to escalate. Most importantly, the precident of these gestapo tactics -- that's not hyperbole: giving the State the power to force journalists to turn over their materials severely undermines the freedom of the press -- is very dangerous.