[The following article, written by Bob Howard for Synthesis Weekly, was originally published in the print version of Synthesis on Monday, May 19th, 2008. He can be reached at bob@madbob.com]

Keep on Drinking
By Bob Howard

“Be it destiny or free will, there are those amongst us who might do the rest of society a favor by staying on the couch, taking bong rips and playing the latest version of Grand Theft Auto.”

A Long History of Stupid: I’ve just started reading a biography of long-time FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and as a result, I’m learning quite a lot about the history of this country and the tradition of our government cracking down on dissent. This latest episode of our history is far from the first time the Bill of Rights has been superseded and suspended in the name of “security.” I have yet to grasp the logic of suspending freedoms to ensure security when I thought that the whole thing we are trying to secure in the first place is freedom; but I digress.
Anyway, here are some interesting factoids I’ve picked up thus far: Remember when in protest of the French dissent against the “War on Terror” our Congress made the brilliant move of re-naming French Fries “Freedom Fries?” Seems like a pretty creative manifestation of nationalistic stupidity, right? Wrong. During World War I, our Congress re-named Sauerkraut “Liberty Cabbage.” Our current stupidity isn’t even original! How do you like that?

Think the threat of terrorism is a new thing? Wrong. Just prior to and then after World War I, the Red Scare developed. Anarchists and Communists were on the rise and there were actually a series of letter bombs and bomb attacks that riddled the nation’s capitol and industrial power figures.
These attacks lead to a complete abridgment of the freedoms granted in the Bill of Rights. Anyone suspected of being a communist, a socialist, or a sympathizer — essentially any Russian factory worker — was rounded up in mass arrests and many were unceremoniously deported so quickly that there wasn’t even time for an appeal.

More heartwarming thoughts after the jump. (more…)

While doing research for my last post (and, for the record, typing “jail rape” into a Google Image search counts as research here at Synthesis blog…hey, I just set precedent!!!), I happened to stumble on the best Web site on the internet.

MS Paint Porn (www.mspaintporn.net/) is just as its name implies: crudely rendered pornographic scenes drawn in MS Paint. Its categories run the expected (hardcore, softcore, oral, etc) to the more extreme (BSDM, anal, incest, etc.) to the TOTALLY AWESOME (Robot, Alien, Metaphysical, Pirate, etc.).

I know what I’ll be doing the rest of the day:Masturbating until I cum dust. More rad pics after the jump: (more…)

We here at the award-winning Synthesis Blog recently reached a milestone in our adventures in in blogosphere. Last week I beamed with pride as our blog hit its 500th page. In the tomes therein lie amazing pieces of journalism that we’ve linked to, awesome YouTube clips, memes, and Synthesis blog personalities proclaiming a litany of gross and otherwise widely inappropriate things. I decided, in celebration to see just what we were writing about back in July of aught 5.

7/7/05: In a display of the kind of forward-thinking to come, our first post was not merely the word “Test,” but the iconic image above. I like to imagine this guy still working at Pete’s coffee, listening to Crass songs on his iPod, thinking about and hating that his most punk rock moment sadly occurred at the Warped Tour… Then I rub my wiener. (A picture is worth 1,000 words, but a mental picture is priceless.)

Since no one save your news junkie uncle wants to read an 1,000-word-long blog post, we found it’s easier just to post pictures of punk-lite rockers and YouTube clips. SECRET OF SUCCESS!!! So here’s to us giving ourselves a pat on the back, and to another 500 pages of stoking out the Google Index.