This is incredibly sad: Jam Master Jay, one of the pioneers of rap music with Run DMC was shot dead Wednesday night. He was 37.

Before anyone points to the East-West rap violence: this group well predates gangsta rap. They had no violence in their music, the group that brought Aerosmith back with their remake of Walk this way.

Correction from yesterday: the Quebec Minister who resigned was the Minister of Justice, not security.

The Parti Quebecois (PQ), Quebec's ruling seperatist party, is really on their last legs, in my opinion.

First they decided to bring back Jacques Parizeau - the former PQ leader and premiere who managed to ruin himself in the media every time he opened his mouth.

Now the party Minister of Security made a very public resignation - and essentially said the reason the party is currently in third place in popularity polls is because the party has been straying away from their stated separation goals.

There's a moron ignoring the fact that the majority of people here - myself included - are sick of that particular issue.

The Two Towers Protest seems to be gone, based on the fact that the URL doesn't work.

I guess enough people showed the folks in charge the ignorance of their belief so that they pulled it.

Two Towers Protest. Some people go too far in their PC views... these folks are accusing The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers of being so named to cash in on the September 11 tragedy.

Can't be the name of the book, written over 60 years ago or anything...

The news today was flooded about the arrest of two suspects who might be responsible for the sniper attacks in the US. They had the same caliber rifle, had a hole drilled in the back of their car...

Are these the people responsible? Maybe it's the paranoia freak inside of me, but I'm not so sure. It just feels too pat that the perpetrators of these heinous acts would be caught with all the evidence in tow.

Besides, the reports say they were caught in a blue car. The crimes were reported as emanating from a white van.

Far too often, I'm reminded again how life is unfair:

In Burlington, VT one of the closest friends to my family is Rose Greenblatt. I showed her Montreal's Chinatown many years ago, she came to my cousin Ellen's college graduation in Boston a few years ago too. She isn't a spring chicken at 87, but she's one of the closest people to a blood relation for us there.

Last week, she saw a doctor about a compound back fracture. When the results came back, the doctor suggested she come in with family. My aunt and a very close friend Joan Chernoff came with. The reason they were asked to come in: Rose has a major case of cancer.

Her doctor was good enough not to mention the c-word directly to her. Unfortunately, an idiot intern blurted it all out.

Here's a woman who diligently got checkups, pap smears, whatever... but American medical folks don't look for things diligently, so this has been building up for years untreated. Result: what might have been treatable is now terminal.

The doctor won't assign her chemotherapy. She has maybe 6 months left. Chemo would leave her sick and weak for maybe 3 months more.

Thing is, the doctor told this only to my aunt and the friend. Rose saw an Oncologist yesterday, and got the verdict. From what mom told me, after hearing this it was as if all the fight she had left drained away.

This sucks. DAMMIT, THIS SUCKS!! We'll all die some day, but fate can at least be good enough not to give us suffering too... especially this. Rose doesn't deserve it.

Sorry for the messed-up look on this blog the past two days. I've been playing around with the idea of CSS layouts. It's been a lot more challenging than the "easy change" the codes promised. I should have everything fixed up soon though.

I'll be trying a new template for this blog soon... one using CSS absolute positioning instead of [TABLE]s for design.

Hopefully, that will end my problems with journal shrinking text.

Tonight I cleared the final boxes from my living room heater. Just in time for the colder weather and the heat to kick in.

As a result I found my 2-CD edition of Miles Davis Bitches Brew. I'm not a fan of electronic jazz (I think you have to be into major psychadelic drugs to really appreciate it), but it brings me one step closer to gathering my entire collection of CDs.

This week's Friday Five:

1. If you could only choose 1 cd to ever listen to again, what would it be?

This would be a close tie: for sheer instrumental jazz brilliance, Sonny Rollins Global Warming. His musical riffs on this album are fantastic.

For song magic, Billy Joel's Glass Houses. This was the album that really launched him into the musical heavens, with songs like It's Still Rock and Roll to Me and Sometimes a Fantasy.

2. If you could only choose 2 movies to watch ever again, what would they be?

Let me see... my all time favorite film is Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. I'd choose the first Superman film as the second.

3. If you could only choose 3 books to read ever again, what would they be?

Isaac Asimov's I Robot, Robert H. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land and the combined Riverworld saga by Philip Jose Farmer. OK, that may be cheating, since that's 5 novels combined.

4. If you could only choose 4 things to eat or drink ever again, what would they be?

Food: tacos and vegiburgers. Drink: Dr. Pepper and chocolate flavored soy milk.

5. If you could only choose 5 people to ever be/talk/associate/whatever with ever again, who would they be?

That is a tough call to reduce the list. I'll stick to folks you may know: my Holy Trinity (Meg Ryan, Michelle Pffeifer and Jennifer Conally), Isaac Asimov and Forrest J. Ackerman.

Cold Fusion Video Reviews: Complete Reviews Listing I used to attend a group activity called the FFIF - Fast Forward International Federation. Essentially, we tried to find films in video stores so bad that you had to fast forward through most of them to avoid brain burn. This site is the largest accumulation of FFIF films I've ever seen!

The idea of the US declaring war on Iraq is becoming a greater possibility by the day now.

It seems that the only 'legacy' of the current Republican regime was shown initially during the party political convention... the entire event was a brag of all the battles they started and won. Social improvement, help for the needy? Screw that - we're all about having bigger guns and blowing things up!

In a few short years, Iraq will be the nucleus of revenge attacks on the US - putting friends and family at risk for me - and yet again they'll be problems brought on, created by the decisions made today.

On the news today, a big deal was made of an audio tape, supposedly by Osama bin Laden, warning about more terrorist attacks.

I don't advocate ignoring the message entirely (ignoring threats was a problem in the cause of the September 11th attack), but right off the bat I had this thought: why would a terrorist give a warning to prevent their attack, as opposed to taking credit after the fact? Warning before possibly gives their attack a high chance of failure.

I suspect this message was more a case of bin Laden scum supporters trying to spread more fear.