Secret Laboratory
Music, News, & Global Affairs
That’s exactly what he said when I showed him this picture; and while he might have wondered why anyone would marry a Megalodon shark, he kept his curiosity to himself. Apparently, you don’t ask too many questions when someone is paying you $200 an hour; instead, you just start drawing up papers and making...
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Anyone listening to Secret Laboratory Radio this weekend must have thought that they had tuned in an insane asylum, one which had been overrun by the patients and was being taken apart, piece by piece. It wasn’t pretty, nor was it professional, but sometimes three good friends owe it to themselves to get together...
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Huh. It’s been two weeks since I wrote my last column and I’ve accomplished very little, in either my professional or my personal life. Every day I think that I ought to write something … but then I find something to watch on Netflix, instead. And there’s YouTube, which is a vast wasteland of...
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UPDATE: Mental Illness Redux – Behaviorist Mike Samsa Responds. I was having a heated discussion today about the somewhat contrived nature of modern psychology – at least fringe psychology. You see, as I understand things (with said understandings relatively biased and, I’ll admit, somewhat limited in an overall general way, so definitely...
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It’s become almost commonplace to hear about mass shootings—they seem to happen all of the time, in a variety of settings ranging from schools to movie theaters to shopping malls. Friday morning, as I was getting a haircut, my barber mentioned that there had been a shooting in Connecticut, but he didn’t know any...
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It’s six o’clock in the morning here in Minnesota. Kim is sleeping and Josh went home hours ago … yet I’m haunted by our conversation from last night, which progressed from politics to religion to the events of 9/11. Josh, a man who introduced me to The Zeitgeist Movement, The Venus Project, and the...
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The last column that I wrote was churned out in a frenzy on November 6; it was started before the polls closed and by the time I was finished, Barack Obama had won a second term in the White House, seemingly without even trying. The whole thing was over by ten o’clock Central Time,...
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Editor’s Note: This column was written while states were still reporting and before Obama was declared the winner. Congratulations and here’s to another four years! When I started this blog in June of 2011, it was designed to be a website to promote my books. It didn’t take me long to realize that about...
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![Ed: “His [Romney's] visage reminds me of a cheap Halloween mask—the kind of thing that you could find hanging on a clearance rack in your local drugstore on the 31st as the sun goes down.”](http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/486796_10151088962303133_1907598490_n.jpg)
As you know, we streamed the second presidential debate live and will do the same with the next one. In case you missed any of them, we have all three debates available in their entirety—just follow this link. And the last one … well … it was worth watching. Mitt Romney outdid himself by...
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Editor’s Note: In case you missed them, here are the first four debates in their entirety. Continue checking in with Secret Laboratory for more 2012 political coverage. John T. Schmitz is the editor & publisher of Secret Laboratory; he is the founder of Maple Hills Press and has also freelanced as a writer and photographer,...
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The last few times I’ve had a wet dream, it was about me masturbating. Normally I wouldn’t mention this, for all of the obvious reasons—good taste, relevance, common decency—but I think that my strained libido and declining health might have to do with the looming election. Hunter Thompson described it as “campaign bloat”—and it’s...
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Watching the vice presidential debate on Thursday evening was refreshing after Butterfinger Obama’s disappointing performance last week. The president behaved like a three-toed sloth that had been drugged with Halcion, while Joe Biden smirked and sneered and called his opponent a lying skunk every chance he got. There were a few moments when I...
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Today is the one-year anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Many people believe that OWS ended—was crushed, really—months ago; they think that it never survived the winter. Those people haven’t been paying attention. Occupy Wall Street has grown, although it has become so commonplace that it no longer receives media attention … but...
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There’s a couple of videos that have been floating around recently that have gone viral and caused quite a stir. They’ve garnered much attention in the local Minnesota media, but the rest of the nation is beginning to take notice. The first video shows a St. Paul police officer kicking a man in the...
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The heat has subsided—at least temporarily—here in Minnesota and the first signs of autumn are becoming evident. As much fun as summer is, I’m always happy to see it go. I’m looking forward to the day when I can put on a sweatshirt and drink a hot cup of coffee on my balcony while...
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It’s hard to believe that another summer is over—even though it’s still 95 degrees here in Minnesota—and that school is in session, the beaches are closed, and winter is on its way. It’s also hard to deal with the fact that I’ve written almost nothing this year, but I still have a few months...
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It’s a tough old world—just ask our West Coast correspondents, Richard and Robert Martin (RJI and YDO, respectively). Disabled and forced to live on the street (albeit temporarily), they’ve been trying these last couple of days to report on the ridiculously-out-of-control homeless situation in Pico Rivera, California. There are dozens of people living in...
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Fall is in the air here in Minnesota—it has been for the last week or so. I know better than to assume that the raging heat of summer is over—we won’t see the last of that until September has come and gone—but at the moment, it’s 58 degrees outside and there’s a pleasant breeze....
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The 2012 Summer Olympics have been underway for a week now—and I have watched not one minute of them. No one here at Secret Laboratory has reported on them either, which is a painful reminder that our Sports Department is not what it should be. But so what? You get what you pay for,...
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Editor’s Note: What happened in Colorado today is a horrible and utterly senseless tragedy. It isn’t funny. Our hearts go out to the victims and their families. This column isn’t so much about this specific event as it is inspired by it. We’ll leave the real coverage to more reputable news sources. The following...
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Editor’s Note: This is not one of my typical columns; it is an example of an online dating profile. I think I’ll use it. Fuck it. This is just where my head is at these days. Have you noticed that as we make more and more technological advances, we become lazier and less likely...
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It’s about a thousand-fucking-degrees here in Minnesota—but that’s okay, because I’m safely holed up in my apartment, imagining the little wheel on the electric meter turn at a frantic pace while the air conditioners work overtime. The baseball game is on and I’m considering walking across the street to the gas station to buy...
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October 7 is Pulpit Freedom Sunday, which for four years now has meant pastors all over the U.S. will be giving sermons in which they endorse a political candidate—Mitt Romney, I imagine—in direct violation of IRS rules for a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. Last year, 539 pastors participated and organizers expect even more in 2012....
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The New York Civil Liberties Union has released a free smartphone app that will allow users to record and report incidents of police brutality and stop-and-frisk activity. Naturally, the NYPD lost its shit when they heard about it; they said that the application might prove useful for criminals … or perhaps it would just...
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I’ve been too depressed these last couple of days to crank out a column. Gov. Scott Walker won the recall election in Wisconsin on Tuesday, which just goes to show you how many people think nothing of getting up in the morning, eating a big bowl of Cheerios, and then hustling off to the...
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For those of us here in Minnesota, winter is not quite over. May is half gone and a few hours ago, it was 40 degrees outside. I had the fireplace on and the space heater going. Then the sun came out, the temperature jumped about 30 degrees, and I had to open the windows.
These days we hear a lot of talk about Global Warming. Whether or not there is any truth to it remains to be seen—and frankly, it doesn't make a damned bit of difference either way. Climate change is real—warmer, colder, whatever—but it has nothing to do with us and we're never going to prevent it. And since we got a foot of snow last week and it's going to be 90 on Tuesday ... well ... I'm not sold on Global Warming. The weatherman can't even predict rain, let alone tell us whether or not we're facing an inferno and/or an ice age.
This weekend is the fishing opener. This means very little to me, as I never bother with a license anyway. It's also Mother's Day. Recently I've been bombarded by emails from an online florist, suggesting that I send Ex-wife #2 a beautiful bouquet.
Never in hell. Maybe if they had an option to have the arrangement stuffed with angry bees; but barring that ... no.
To hell with holidays and bees and everything else. For the last 24 hours, Terencio and I have been plotting the future of this magazine. He even wrote his column and published a couple of articles. The next order of business is for me to write something.
And I might. I have plenty to say—none of it important, of course—but a meandering essay with no direction whatsoever is probably the best way to ease back into my routine. Politics? Not to start. Not today.
And ... meh.
—John T. Schmitz
Publisher & Editor-in-Chief
Founder, Maple Hills Press
editor@secretlaboratory.org
"I wanted my own column in the sidebar ... but now I don't know what to do with it."
"But sure you do! You write in it! That is what most people who claim the moniker of writer would likely do."
"But what do I write?"
"The resolution to that parable, my friend, lies upon the path that you must seek."
"Who are you?! And where did you come from?!"
"I am...the part of you that is, and will be, in all that we are..."
Hello Lab!
The voices are becoming louder and the cries ever more commanding. I hear them and I am working the best I can to whip myself into some kind of respectable shape and take back my claim to authorship.
So, I have been signaled to action from the Lab's headquarters. There has been much waking from many deep slumbers and now the drowsiness is fading and the challenges of the day are dutifully materializing before my conscience in their daily summons to contest.
No fear, Secret Laboratory! Power down the Bat Beacon, John.
John. John? Wherefore art thou? Come quickly and hear ye: The Lab is scheduled to receive a bright and refreshing burst of content! I have plans for at least one new category: Network Security
In the recent weeks I have become familiar with penetration testing software such as Backtrack and Kali Linux. These are Linux based Operating Systems that are used by network security professionals for white hat constructive hacking; and network exploiting operators for black hat destructive hacking. Writers of Secret Laboratory are free to show interest in this new category if you so choose. I will be producing content regarding how to crack WEP/WPA/WPA2 wireless encryption and how to protect yourself from such attacks, for starters. It only gets interesting from there.
For those of you interested in preparing yourself for this new world of fun and adventure, I recommend you go ahead and get the tools: Kali Linux
It can be downloaded at - http://www.kali.org/downloads/
The Secret Laboratory is in the grueling process of churning old gears and installing new ones to bring life into our world of journalistic comedy and tragedy. Sink or swim, this boat is headed out to sea.
I'm headed off to write a column now that the voices in my head have stopped...
But I can't seem to find John.
John?
Oh shit. Really? He's in the bathroom? Again? Geez, I'm glad I didn't have whatever he did. Must have been the pills. I'm glad I only had the purple ones...
"Hey John! Can you reach the mini fridge from in there? I think I need another beer!"
—Terencio Safford
Editor, Secret Laboratory
terencio@secretlaboratory.org
