Russia's energy giant Gazprom has signed a $2.5bn (£1.53bn) deal with Nigeria's state operated NNPC, to invest in a new joint venture.

The new firm, to be called Nigaz, is set to build refineries, pipelines and gas power stations in Nigeria.

I'm kind of fascinated that this year's bizarre mass culture meme is dead people. It's like Michael Jackson made us realize how important dead people are to our culture in the same way the Christina Applegate made us realize the importance of double mastectomies.

Bea Arthur and David Carradine were the outliers.

This death spree so far includes, in order of fame, cartoonist BN Duncan, filmmaker Joe Christ, musician Sky Saxon, Gale Storm, Karl Malden, Billy Mays, Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson. It's absurd.

On most weeks either Farrah or Ed would receive enormous attention. They are just statistics in the post-MJ death frenzy. The Titos and Jermains to Michael's Michael-ness.

To keep this news cycle going requires desperate and terminal measures. We've had the hoax cycle. The only culturally satisfying outcome of this is a telethon for celebrities that suffer from death that ends with a mass culling of the famed.

Call it a Popicide?

Anything less would be be a violation of the handshake agreement we have with the marketplace of ideas.

Mamie and I went to see Food Inc. today. I can honestly say that one of the film's contributors, Michael Pollan, changed my life last month. This film is an extension of his written work about the food industry.

I fully expect this film to have a revolutionary impact. In my opinion it is the most important documentary to come out this decade.

Just saying.

I know iTunes isn't Billboard or SoundScan, but I believe his has to be some kind of record. I mean, even Dangerous is on there. Dang.

It happened Derby Week, 1993 in Louisville, Kentucky in the scary Kroger's at 3rd and Oak. The one that with the fenced-in exit that prevents the poor from taking the shopping carts into the parking lot. The one where the hookers hang out, and the guy in seafood looks at you with confusion if you ask where the lox is.

I was on my lunch break from the radio station. Some incredibly old, incredibly tall fellow was in the produce section with his hot 50-but-younger-looking wife. He was wearing a blue track suit, and I was reaching for a fresh-squeezed bottle of orange juice. He pushed me aside, and grabbed the bottle I was reaching for.

It was Ed McMahon, in town for the Derby.

"Hey!" I exclaimed. He didn't look at me. Probably thought I wanted an autograph.

I just needed some vitamin C.

Bastard.

My old pal Joe Christ died. No details yet. He was living in Manila.

He stayed with me in Louisville a couple of times, and I've been out drinking with him more than once in Louisville and Austin. One of my favorite accomplishments in radio was getting an interview with him onto the classical music station where we talked about "Acid Is Groovy, Kill The Pigs" on a Sunday morning.

His films were short, low budget, crude, disgusting, and hilarious. Visceral.

Bye Joe.

Riding to the farmer's market is something I realized was just too damn hard when I was over 250. I went today and it was a breeze. Having 40 pounds less to carry really makes a huge difference. I'm now down to where I was at the end of 2004, right after I quit drinking and went on the all pie and steak diet. Mamie's never seen me this size.

I started buying button down shirts again in mid-May. My sexuality, long dormant, is starting to wake up. I am really glad I quit drinking when I did, but I was not prepared for the dietary issues that followed. I was always a little overweight after about age 19 or so, but I had never topped 200. It's something I don't want to experience ever again. Another month or 2 and I won't have to.

I think I've got a handle on this.

*Updated. The image was wrong. The "before" picture was much more recent that I thought. Holy shit I was large!

Letter to the editor to CNN.com regarding the article entitled Sharon Tate’s killer to get another hearing.

To whom it may concern,

This comment refers to an article written by Carey Bodenheimer about the possible release of Susan Atkins.

I can appreciate a need to remind readers that Charles Manson lead a group of people who did terrible, terrible things. In this capacity I can see referring to him as a leader or cult leader. These are inarguable facts.

The article published on your site strays from factual assertions, and delves into fantasy. Your author writes the following:

Charles Manson used his hypnotic powers to direct Atkins and other “family” members to kill seven people, including the pregnant Tate, in a two-night rampage that terrorized the city of Los Angeles in August 1969.

Ascribing superhuman powers to anyone, regardless of their actions, is both absurd and poor journalism. To the best of my knowledge no amount of LSD, pot, or free love can create a manifestation of extra-psychic hypno-powers in an individual.

This kind of fantastic writing simultaneously abridges Atkins' responsibility in the crime she personally committed, and indulges in hyperbolic superstition which obfuscates the brutality of the crimes.

Thanks for taking the time to consider these comments.

Sincerely,

Patrick Joseph

Mamie and I went out for the first time on June 1, 2005. We had both been single for a while, and I had been sober just at 6 months. We were both hesitant but willing. I think if one of us hadn't been in a vulnerable place then it might not have taken off as well as it did.

Within a couple of weeks of our first date we were going broke driving across town to see each other. As soon as my lease was up, I headed to North Austin with a full U-Haul. From reclusive bachelor to responsible step-dad in one trip across town.

Four years have passed, and we've moved a couple of times. Our girl grew up and just moved out, and we are living alone for the first time. It's like our relationship is getting a fresh start. Life really couldn't be better right now.

Happy anniversary, baby. I love you.

Yes, this is about that kid who needs chemo. This is also a sort-of response to crowgoddess

Fake religious scenario number 1: If I were, for instance, a Murderfarian, and it was my religion to murder, the government would rightly shut down my ability to practice pretty quickly.

Fake religion scenario number 2: I believe that only God can provide water, and that tap water adulterated with fluoride is evil. I refuse to allow my child tap water, and we do all of our drinking from rain water. We live in Texas. Chances are, my child would die pretty quickly, and the government would be correct to intervene and lock me up for child abuse.

Fake religion scenario number 3: I beat my child anytime he does something that contradicts the bible. Willfulness, eating shellfish, money changing. He gets smoted but good. The government interferes and takes my child away for "abuse". This is God testing me, obviously. I didn't beat my child enough.

Fake religion scenario number 4: I believe that inoculation against the mumps is foolishness, and at 38 I have never known anyone with mumps. So I refuse to let my child get shots. I am evangelical about it, even though this is not a religious belief, I just don't trust the government. I organize other parents, and pretty soon 20% of Austinites aren't getting their children immunized. After all, none of us ever had mumps as kids. Why should our kids be different? Some kid gets the mumps. Soon, 80% of the un-immunised have them. Doctors are no longer trained properly for management of the illness, and 10% of the children die. Not my kid though. Mostly kids from the East side. See, I told you it was a plot!

OR

I've always described myself as a First Amendment absolutist. The usual baiting reaction to that is "what about child pornography!" Here is the answer I have given a dozen times. I think it applies here:

Child pornography laws do not abridge freedom of expression. Laws which are specific to child pornography are designed to punish anyone attempting to profit from the commission of child rape and child sexual abuse. The images are evidence of this intent. Child porn laws act to magnify the penalty and share the blame for other crimes, in a way similar to hate crime legislation increasing the penalties for other actions which are already illegal. As a result of this, the First Amendment in no way applies.

Let's say you have sex with goats. Not all the time, but maybe only when you go on vacation.

Back home you would never, ever have goat sex. But, if you're in a different culture, and you heard they had goat sex, maybe you'd give it a shot. Well, the folks back home find out and some of them are OK with that. Others are really angry about it, because they don't think goat sex is OK. Not only that, but they are really worried your town will get a rep for goat sex, and they don't need that after the incident with the cows.

One of the people leading the charge to condemn the goat sex you had is a co-worker. And back when you first discovered this magical place where you get to explore your wild goat sex side, you told her you were thinking about doing it to a goat. What's more, you described over beers what you might do to the goat, and sort of slipped up and told her that "hypothetically" you'd already actually sort of blown a goat. You didn't go all the way, but were just experimenting.

Six years later this person goes public with what you told her, and suddenly you're blaming her for not only not telling anyone in 2003, but for being culpable for all the goat sex you had, thereby relieving you of any responsibility in the goat sex. Furthermore, this is going to make sure your old boss doesn't get in trouble for telling you all that goat fucking was your civic duty.

Does that about sum up the last week in US politics?

Austin is known for being a politically progressive town. However, it falls short at local politics. The average voter turnout for a Mayoral election is about 11%. The prediction for this year is a less than 10% turnout. This is in a town with over 500,000 registered voters.

I have a theory about this that differs from the one circulating in the local media that blames overly-strict campaign financing rules. That one's just being floated by candidates with access to more money who want to outspend the competition.

When I moved here in 1996 the population was 238,000 according to the sign on the way into town. According to Wikipedia it's now 743,000. Now, all those new people didn't grow up here, are even in Texas. We're imports from California, Louisiana, Kentucky, New York, Mexico, and anywhere else people leave.

This means we not only lack a sense of local history, but we are also faced with what is a truly inscrutable election process. If you aren't from around these parts it is painfully apparent that the object of Austin elections is to keep people away from the polls.

You may argue by pointing out that Austin has early voting for weeks before elections which culminates in a Saturday election day. True, but to an outsider from a place that didn't have early voting, that just had a single Tuesday to get it done it is extremely confusing. Add English as a second language on top of that for a very large per cent of the population, and it just gets worse.

Also, run-offs. It took me over a decade to find out what was meant when they would speak of run-off elections. I would get downright psychotic when the word was even mentioned. They further supported the feeling that Austin had elections all the damn time, and often featuring the same people again and again for no good reason other than obfuscation.

In the pre-internet days, poring over the Austin American Statesman and the Austin Chronicle failed to yield any hint as to what it all meant. You were on your own, and, as we have established, there was a 2 in 3 chance that anyone you asked to explain it to you wasn't from Austin either.

It created this feeling that if you weren't a member of a certain class that had been raised here, you were better off not voting.

Things I learned this week: The Austin Mayor is limited to 2 terms of 3 years each. I discovered this when trying to figure out what happened to Mayor Will Wynn, and why Brewster McCracken was being described as Mayor Pro-tem.

I voted last Saturday in early voting. The actual election day is today. I voted for McCracken for Mayor. There's a little push in the black community to vote for him also, as he apparently had a better reaction to the Texas relay/Highland Mall issue last month than the other candidates did. They think that the voter turnout is low enough that the black community could turn the election Brewster's way. I tend to agree.

Anyway, you've got until 7. Get out there and do it. Chances are, there's gonna be a run-off. Don't let that scare you. All that means is that there was no clear majority from the field of candidates, and they'll do it over with the front runners.

See? Easy.

This year began with a number on the scale that really freaked me out. Two-hundred and fifty-six. That broke a record for me. I was about 190 when I quit drinking and smoking in 2004. In 2005 I got into a relationship. In 2006 I started my first desk job. So that's where it all came from. My pants were a size 38 and I had known for a few months that I was actually wearing them low to avoid a 40. They were about to pop.

Yesterday I got on the scale. Two-hundred twenty-five. Thirty-one pounds down in 3 and a half months. Slow and steady.

This morning I was going for my 3 mile walk before work. The weight of the iPhone in my back pocket was pushing the pants downward to humiliation. A few texts were traded with Mamie, who emphatically suggested a lunch hour trip for pants.

I picked up 2 pairs of size 36 jeans. They are tight in the waist, but not as tight as the old pants were 4 months ago. Tight enough to remind me to keep going. I think the looseness of the old pants over the last 8 pounds has been lulling me into, ah, a lull. I was getting lazy and not walking as often. The tightness is motivating me to get cracking on the next phase of the Big Goal.

Half way there.

A new project went to open beta yesterday. It's called Dreamwidth, and it's built on Live Journal's open source archetecture. The intent as shared by the founders is to make a creators only space that runs parallel to LJ. Ad free, and started from scratch. Participant's do have the option of importing their old journals for seamless transition. Surveying the area last night from my "hecticengine" account, it appears people impoted a lot more than just their old entries.

Looking around the first migrants to the new Dreamwidth space, it looks like LJ circa 2003. It's like we came from the Old Country with bags of "BTVS" and "Hogwarts" fanfic and "______ is love" banners. It's kind of depressing really. Everyone's into BDSM and Joss Whedon as though these were remotely relevant to our new cultural condition. I'm guilty too, porting over interests precisely whittled down to suggest the shape of an Interesting Person.

The environment within the Dreamwidth space is the first manifestation I have seen of internet nostalgia.

It's the same feeling of disgust I used to get when I was 20 watching people 10-15 years my senior locked into the interests that made their lives interesting when they were my age. It's generational stagnation.

I know I spend a lot of time wrestling with the past as a creator and a human. Revisiting art and culture with a critical eye does have value, I think. Analyzing what made art speak to people living within the time it was produced, and extracting the hidden meaning and zeitgeist from something brings me enormous intellectual and emotional satisfaction. Alternately, I have found that there are things I can't look at from the past without them causing me intense pain.

X-Men comics from after 1982. They were my favorite then, and they saved my sanity at the time, but are unbearable now. Star Wars brings similar feelings of pain. Just the movies. I seem to be able to enjoy the comics, but then I quit collecting the series in 1981.

Live Journal circa 2003 reminds me too much of the malady I was using it to cure. Extreme alcoholism, depression, and chronic life destruction. Revisiting that past would just drag me back to it. It's psychically toxic, just like 1983 is for me.

What will work best is for me to continue to create my own environment, using the skills I've developed in my new happy wonderful life with Mamie. Keep building my own house and stay away from cheap rentals.

"Hurry up please, it's time"
William S. Burroughs

A Mamie and Patrick Production

So 2 weeks after throwing his support at the Teabaggers, rejecting Federal bailout funds, and threatening secession, Texas Gov. Rick Perry requests Federal aid for swine flu.

Way to go Texas!