Just because you can do whatever the hell you want with it, doesn't always make it "cool."

John August airs his MySpace complaints.

Visit any random profile on MySpace, and you're instantly beamed back to the Bad Old Days of web design, with flashing graphics, unreadable text and — worse — random songs that start playing unbidden. It's not that the underlying template is ugly. It's blah but inoffensive. The ugliness comes from how easily an individual user can modify it, cramming it with non-scrolling backgrounds and multiple video streams.

I just got a "call" from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich imploring me to vote for some GOP Dude as CA something-or-other. The only thing I remember is that Gingrich-endorsed GOP Dude has a Hispanic last name. (Gingrich you talk to fast!). Anyway, the mere sound of Newt's voice in my phone receiver was quite scary, as he at first sounded like a middle school principal who wanted to speak to my parents about me picking on that one kid in the back row.

After seeing a bevy of Superman Returns TV spots, my girlfriend has taken to calling him "Rubber Burgundy Man."

So much of my SR apprehension would be allayed had they just made his damn cape RED.

Well, think of it more like the end of the beginning. Not sure when it will get done, but Jesse and I are working on some animated Cash. We've already got Horny Bear built in Flash! Priorities baby. So there will be more Cash, no doubt. I just needed a break from comedy, which, as Alison will tell you, none of us at Psychic Bunny are very good at.

So starting next week, space drama. Every Thursday for the next 12 weeks: "Wrench"

I was sick this week, so it was time to go into KVN LeFleur mode. It got the job done though, and next week you'll all be seeing the final (for now) fate of one Cash Milliondollars. Fear not, though, for I am hoping to institute a new policy of weekly updates in which you get a whole page of a new comic every week. Brand new stuff, coming in June. Get excited.

Am I liberal? Yes, of course. I live in LA, America, and the West. I like private property, capitalism, being left alone, and voting in democratic elections. I don't like the Church (be it Catholic, Anglican, whatever) or really any authority for that matter, and I don't care much for codes (speech, dress, etc.).

But, like all things, the devil's in the details. 95% of Americans are classically liberal, but we then subdivide into conservatives, liberal-liberals, whatever. Now, some rightie bloggers are taking this "Are You a Liberal?" test that popped up on Atrios. I thought I'd take it too!

1) Repeal the estate tax repeal. First off, "What???" Secondly, no. There are more efficient ways to tax the rich than continuing this easily avoided Federal-State tax boondoggle.

2) Increase the minimum wage and index it to the CPI. And let's make it $30 an hour! But seriously, I side with Glenn Reynolds. "I see this as basically an issue of political demagoguery. It either does nothing (as now, when even most entry-level jobs are above minimum wage) or it does harm."

3) Universal health care. By expanding Medicaid coverage of the poor, making it easier for small and medium-sized business to pay, and increasing tax breaks for the self-employed, sure -- universal health care sounds grand. By federalizing it like Canada -- hell no.

4) Increase CAFE standards. Yes, but I don't know enough about it. Still, the only way we'll get over oil-guzzling is if it's ordered from above. I apologize for being so damn commie on this issue.

5) Pro-reproductive rights, getting rid of abstinence-only education, improving education about and access to contraception including the morning after pill, and supporting choice. Yes. Although, I weakly support parental notification laws, if only because they achieve legal consistency with other age-related laws.

6) Simplify and increase the progressivity of the tax code. Yes, but doing so by throwing out income taxes altogether and making a national sales tax. Now that's progressive because WE all pay based on what we spend.

7) Kill faith-based funding. Jeeze, I don't know. I'm not even sure I care.

8) Reduce corporate giveaways. I'm not sure what this means. It sounds like something positive, like "Do you support defeating cancer," so I'll say yes.

9) Have Medicare run the Medicare drug plan. I'd prefer we get rid of vast swathes of Medicare completely for those seniors that can afford independent insurance. Keep the hospital insurance portion of the program, though, and maybe raise the age on receiving benefits from 65 to 67.

10) Force companies to stop underfunding their pensions. Change corporate bankruptcy law to put workers and retirees at the head of the line with respect to their pensions. Don't know enough to comment.

11) Leave the states alone on issues like medical marijuana. Yes, I'm in favor of complete weed legalization for the simple fact that it'd open up new markets and create new wealth. And anything that makes more people have more money is good.

12) Paper ballots. Yes, and photo ID in order to vote. Generally, I'm in favor of making voting easier, but the right to vote harder to attain. Call me a "Republican Roman" on this one.

13) Improve access to daycare and other pro-family policies. No, taxpayers shouldn't have to subsidize people/single mom's who have big families and make stupid mistakes. We have too many people as is (see my support of #5).

14) Raise the cap on wages covered by FICA taxes. Raising the FICA cap seems like it would make SS fiscally solvent, but it also seems like it's the SS-saving equivalent of drilling for oil in ANWR. Short-term solution to long-term problem. Qualified no for me.

15) Marriage rights for all, which includes "gay marriage" and quicker transition to citizenship for the foreign spouses of citizens. I'd prefer marriage be a purely religious matter, and civil unions between any two consenting adults be the norm. Just grind marriage down to being a personal contract between two citizens and problem is solved for everyone.

16) Undo the bankruptcy bill enacted by this administration. Yes. While making it easy to file for bankruptcy discourages personal financial responsibility, it also encourages people to take financial risks and start enterprises.

Ah, Chavez. So wacky.

"Our Bolivarian revolution is very Christian and I have a friend who isn't Christian, but lately has said he is a Christian in the social aspect: his name is Fidel Castro," Chavez said Wednesday evening after arriving in Italy.

"I talk to (Castro) a lot about Christ each time we see each other, and he told me recently, 'Chavez, I'm Christian in the social sense," Chavez said.

I want to get "Chavez, I'm Christian in the social sense" printed on a tee-shirt. Oh, and can we please get a sitcom with Castro and Chavez living together? I'm looking in your direction, Telemundo. And they don't have to be gay or anything. (Although it'd be even funnier if they were living in one of Castro's AIDS patients leper colonies. Zing!)

I've always wondered, haven't you?

Anthony, my old high school chum and co-editor of the local paper teen page I worked on (we were so cool) has discovered our awesome popularity twisted for evil ends. Someone has invented an entire paragraph that I didn't write:

"The best quality a good editor for a teen page can have is patience. Teens often have good ideas and simply need time and gentle guidance to bring them to fruition as ideas become stories and concepts become page designs. Too much interference can make teenagers feel like they aren't doing anything, and they will lose interest. Given time and help with tweaking and editing stories, teens will not only produce a good page, but will become better and better at what they do."
Asa Shumskas-Tait,
Blue, Centre Daily Times, State College, PA

That's right everyone, I'm just hear to give my fellow teens some gentle guidance. Anthony also remember nothing of this, and I can't imagine either of writing this stuff. Best of all, we never worked for anything called "Blue." This is madness I say! The Nespaper Association of America is not teaching good newspapering skills to the Youth Of America, I can tell you that much.

Battlestar Galacticsimpsons

Frank Miller gets schooled for his ass fetish and general chauvinism. Frank Miller style covers featuring the big boys (if you know what I mean).

The CA Legislature approved the Strategic Growth Plan to renew CA's infrastructure. Four bonds totaling 38 billion will go on the ballot in November. The plans looks pretty good to me. It doesn't have any of the truly cool stuff that Asa and I have talked about (magleve trains, desalinization plants, solar powered stuff), but it has some interesting stuff for affordable housing, retrofitting school buses to be environmentally safer, and repairing bridges and ports.

Oh man, Cash's bed is so big. You can fit a bear in there!

If you live on Earth, you like your news as biased as humanly possible.

Asked to name the news source they most trusted, without any prompting, 59 percent of Egyptians said Al Jazeera, 52 percent of Brazilians said Rede Globo, 32 percent of Britons said the BBC, 22 percent of Germans said ARD and 11 percent of Americans said Fox News, each leading their respective nations.

Lost Coast, totally amazing, photos here

So, the pro-illegal immigration protests are in full swing. Or are they pro-immigration protests? Or are they simply protests for Latino pride? Ah, it's all so confusing. Anyway, my girlfriend said she couldn't get her car's oil changed because the place's mechanics walked-out.

I, however, ran my errands with no problem. Traffic was pretty great. That is to say, very, very light. Is this what happens when two hundred to five hundred thousand illegal immigrants get off L.A. roads??? Perhaps we don't need to spend 100 billion fixing the infrastructure. We could spend a quarter of that on securing CA's southern border and cracking down on illegals and their employers and the infrastructure might fix itself! It's harsh, but I think there's a lot of truth to this.

Anyway, over at Instapundit Glenn Reynolds is wondering if extremist groups like ANSWER -- who co-organized/sponsored some of these protests -- are using the protesters as much (or more) than big business.