Apparently someone in the Taliban wants Jesse Jackson to come to Afghanistan and sire some children.

The Reverend says (on how the Taliban contacted him and not the other way around):

“So yesterday, Mohammed Soheil Shaheem (ph), spokesperson of Taliban embassy in Pakistan, called me and that’s where the quote came from. I couldn’t pick up the phone and call 1-800-Taliban.”

The funny thing is earlier this year, Jesse, an American religious icon had no trouble picking up the phone and dialing 1-800-PATERNITYSUIT or the slightly more embarrasing 1-800-ILLEGITIMATEDAUGHTER.

While calling on Afghans to cooperate against the Taliban, [Bush] said he was not interested in creating a government to replace the Taliban should it fall as a result of American military strikes or internal unrest.

“We’re not into nation building,” he said. “We’re focused on justice.” How it would be possible in practice for the United States to engage in military action that might lead to the downfall of a government without taking any interest in its successor was not immediately clear.

As I’m sure you’ve all heard, some radio organization sent out a list of songs which they suggest not be played for a while after the events of 09-11. “Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago” maybe would have been acceptable due to that one line, but some of the rest of these are pretty amusing.

all Rage Against the Machine songs
“Jump” -Van Halen
“Crash into me” -Dave Matthews
“Walk like an Egyptian” -The Bangles
“Ironic” -Alanis Morrisette
“Lucy in the Sky…” “Obladi Oblada”, “A day in the life” and “Ticket to Ride” -The Beatles
“Benny and the Jets” and “Rocketman” -Elton John
“Ruby Tuesday” -Rolling Stones
“Aeroplane” and “Under the Bridge” -Chilli Peppers

So let me get this straight. We can play the TV and Radio clips over and over. We can play tribute songs with the sounds in the background. But if we hear any song that mentions the word “Sky” “Plane” “Fire” or “Tuesday” we might have a collective breakdown? Protect us from ourselves almighty radio people, please.

I will never understand why Walk Like an Egyptian is on the list…

jacko /jak-o/ n.[f. the guy in the Energizer commercials who went "Oi".] any inexplicable fleeting craze, usually referring to a person. (Johnny was the jacko of the weekend, his popularity vanishing the next week.)

Today’s reader mail is definitely worthy of your attention.

From: MMaldre@Tribune.com
To: jerome@dank2k.org

Hey! I was just browsing the dank archives and i see that you know where to get Jacko stuff! Incredible! I’ve been combing the internet forever trying to find anything! Where can I get my hands on some Jacko stuff? I loved his Energizer commericials.
Matt Maldre

Well, Matt, I don’t know what to tell you. Our pal Mark the Animal may be the only assistance you encounter on your clearly drunken quest to aquire Jacko memorabilia. All I can offer you in the meantime is a look at this piece of craftsmanship.

I haven’t reached a point in my life where I can normally yell things at people without thinking…even when driving. A year ago or so, my girlfriend’s dad was driving us to the mall in Newton-esque fashion, a woman cut him off, and the next second I heard the sound of a window being rolled down and the word “turkey” being exclaimed. It was pretty scary. Sort of like an afternoon in bed with your brother, but not. Hmm.

I made up the driving us to the mall thing just so I could insert the Newton-esque thing. But the rest is real. I think we were on our way to St. Louis. Probably to a mall, but nevertheless! Wouldn’t it be sort of neat to collect something that no one else does? Like human feces or something. And it would have to be something repulsive such as feces, because as Robin Williams says, if you want to be creative, you have to take risks. Unfortunately, after all the risks you’ve taken, you’re not creative, and no one is going to rescue you from that giant hole in the sand you’ve fallen into, Martha. Tides out. Goodday.

No posts in a week? Did Newton give up on trying to be funny? In reality, he is in search of the last trend to make fun of. Stay tuned, it’ll be genius!

Try your luck! Who knows, maybe you could finally get ol’ Lefty McLopeye to return your calls. Or she could return your fan letters. Or the kickstand from your mom’s wooden leg, Takey. A world of opportunity awaits each of you. Each of you. Ichiro. Each of you. Ichiro. Similar.

What better way to round out this post than to insert some serious content? I can’t think of anything, so I’ll take off my hip sunglasses and get right down to it. It’s been quite an interesting outpouring of thought happening not just on Dank but across the globe when it comes to religion and institutions and all that sort of stuff. I really agree with IDQ when he talks about not relying on a institution to justify a system of beliefs or to make one set of beliefs superior to another set beyond question. And maybe the italics begin the sharing of my opinion. Here goes:

I’ve had quite a time lately because I’m extremely anti-death penalty, it really disgusts me, and even someone such as Timothy McVeigh I wanted kept alive. I have a problem with the government saying, “Okay, this is the end of your life. Be still while we inject you.” I feel that life should be an uncompromised gift to each person, and cannot be taken away by a government or ruling party in a country. I’ve had quite a time lately because I’ve never felt so stirred up. If I was a little more Southern, I’d seriously git up on top my trailer and shout, “Kills the Bastards!” that planned this, financed this, and had anything to do with this. (To me the South is a place where adding an “s” at the end of a word isn’t just smiled upon, it’s normal)

The bottom of this for me is justice. What is justice for the people that did this? Is it bombing their country? Is it rooting them all out and torturing them until they tell everything they know? Is it peacefully coming to an understanding with them? I have no idea, but it is something I encourage you to think about. Write any one of the Dank contributors, we’d love to hear your thoughts…or at least read them. Goodday.

So there have been tons of tribute songs on the radio lately.. Popular songs with sound bytes from the news added in.. I’m sure you’ve heard them.. Creed..Live..U2, etc.. Here is a line from a news story I just read in which a station manager complains about them:

“I think [the tributes] are cheesy,” Oedipus, the rock station’s program director, said Friday. “I am not putting Bush on my station. He doesn’t like the music we play.”

Let’s all just take a second to soak that in. A guy with the name “Oedipus” thinks something is cheesy. I’ll give him all the cheese he can eat if that is his real name.

No, the Son of Sam case does not mean dogs are bad.

However, here is the difference: there are not worldwide insitutions and communities that suggest there is some validity in your dog giving you orders to do something irrational.

I don’t mean to suggest that god is bad. I don’t mean to suggest that there is a problem in one’s individual belief that there is a higher power. What IS bad is the fact that a person can get a fucked up idea in his head that god wants him to (insert reprehensible act here), and there is a system of religious power that allows that notion to be justified, and worse, allows fuckers like Osama to brainwash people of dire circumstances/low intellect to BELIEVE that is the word of god.

You wanna believe in God? Go ahead. Wanna believe Jesus saves? Sure. However, believe it of your own accord. Don’t rely on an institution to support you and make you believe that your beliefs are superior to the alternate beliefs of others — especially if that is going to make you think it’s justified to kill people.

Religion as an institution is (one way or another) behind almost every war in history. What is the constant struggle over the “holy land” in israel? It’s fucking old-school imperialism that the most of the world has given up on already. However, because religious institutions tell people that god wants them to live EXACTLY on that particular “holy” land, and nowhere else, these fuckers will kill eachother repeatedly for over 1800 years just because they’ve been brainwashed by their (pardon my overwhelming irony here) GOD-DAMNED churches.

And, in response to the sidebar link regarding the Qu’ran, I’m perfectly aware that this particular act and mentality does not reflect the ideas of most muslims. This makes the whole thing MORE fucked up, and here’s why - in a system of rational religious people vs. psychotic religious fanatacism, look who controls all the power and resources in Afghanistan: the fucked up fanatics. Damn, is that institution ever working properly!

The Son of Sam said his dog told him to kill people. Does that mean dogs are bad?