geek empire

barf

2005-10-20T02:33:00.000-04:00

Rented "Kingdom of Heaven" tonite. Afterward, I thought it'd be cool to check out the historocity of the film. You know, did these characters actually live and die, how close is it to the truth.

Good luck finding that. I found a bunch of crusaders are good christian websites, and a bunch of crusaders are bad non-christian websites. Not much history involved in either.

oh, and by the way,

2005-10-15T02:40:00.000-04:00

Where the fuck have you been?

Well, busy. Working all the time, going to school when I'm not working. And still not managing to keep up with those two top priorities. Also, money stuff.

For entertainment, well, I saw Social D this week, and got completely wrecked afterward. And I had a blast, thank you, I woke up with injuries I didn't remember causing. Always a good sign.

Trying, and trying, to do some fiction. And reading alot. And computer stuff. And family stuff, both mine and the future in-laws. And car stuff. And so much more stuff.

Check out the Hard Case Crime series. Biggest hitters in the industry, doing 50's style pop-fiction. Great stuff.

But no, I haven't quit blogging. Just been otherwise directed for a bit. If Sadie ever deigns to acknowledge my application to her design service (that I hopefully actually sent, and didn't just hallucinate sending), and I put the hours into it, I'll be moving to moonoo soon, so I can not-blog over there. I am officially a moonoovian, as soon as I make the shift. God only knows why they let me in, but I'll be bringing down property values over there soon, with thanks to the currently (but hopefully not permanently) defunct Ilyka Damen.

Until then, take it easy, I'm going to go figure out how to drive MT.

"Staged"?

2005-10-15T02:29:00.000-04:00

I heard a quote on an hourly news blurb in which an Iraqi Soldier told Bush "I like you", and some other stuff before that that was complementary, in a broken English sort of way. Which is to be expected; If I remember right, he was confusing "Everyone" or "Everything" with "Anyone", which threw our ever-eloquent President into a loop.

The gist of it, though, was obviously positive, even if the exact complement wasn't. I was just trying to find the quote, and everything I can find is titled "Bush interview staged" or "Rehearsed". But, from the text of the articles, it dosen't seem rehearsed or prompted, as much as...organized. This person answers a question, then pass the mike to your left, then this person, etcetera etcetera. That isn't "Staged", that's just ordered.

So...what's the friggin deal? I'm surprised this hasn't been covered more by the right blogosphere, a complement directly to the President from an Iraqi involved in the war would be a great soundbite. But the only media coverage I can find is about some practice that seems, to me, to be pretty innocent.

zeros

2005-10-04T02:55:00.000-04:00

See, here's the key when getting a tatoo: Pay Attention. Know what you're doing, and what the artist is doing.

I don't get people that walk into tatoo parlours and request one off the wall. That is going to be on your body for the rest of your life, period. Shouldn't there be a bit more of a requirement than "Oh, that one's cool."

And, as I said, pay attention to what the person drawing a permanent mark on your body is doing. Part of this (a big part) is knowing at least something about the person doing the work. That means, No Carnie Tatoos. If the artist is known to you only as "Moose" and he smokes and drinks canned Coors through the process, you might want to turn him down. I have very stupid friends who didn't have the balls to say "Wait, stop that, that isn't what I asked for", who are now walking around with really dumb-looking shit on their bodies.

Also, if you're going to get something done in a foreign language, make sure you know what it says. I have a tatoo on my back that is the chinese glyph for "Faithful". How do I know this? Well, before we got the tattoo, we went to Barnes and Nobel and (ahem) ripped a page out of a Chinese dictionary. We had thought about it for a while, found that particular symbol and...ah, acquired an accurate version of it. Then we took it to a place where we knew the people and their work and had it inked exactly like it was in the dictionary. My next tatoo, which is coming very soon, is going to be in Arabic, also from a verified source.

I had a buddy in Basic that had his girlfriend's name in Chinese on his arm. Or at least, that was what he thought. And he told me, about halfway through basic training, that if she ever broke up with him he could just tell people it meant "Fearsome Warrior" or some shit, because who knew? Presumably that's what he's doing right now. The tat probably means "General Tso's Chicken", for all any of us know.

The point is, the understanding that whatever you're getting inked is permanent seems to be lacking with an awful lot of people. It's going to be there when your lover leaves you, when you aren't talking to any of your old friends any more, and when whatever pop fad is long passe. If it means something to you, even something fleeting, than great, but make sure it means something to you, and that it means what you think it means.

blather inspired here.

argggggggh

2005-09-28T03:06:00.000-04:00

I listened to Ace's radio broadcast (on repeat) tonight, and left the righttalk station on.

Right now, there's a woman named Phills Schafly hosting a show, about banned books. the show went right into a guest, a woman that has six kids (and has put them up for parochial schools, and home schooling, and presumably seminary at age 12) who is HYSTERICAL. Right off the bat, she described the books as "Radical Feminist, Anti-Christian, demaning of Traditional Roles", and whole bunch of other stuff. So far, she hasn't mentioned any actual titles (God forbid), except "To Kill A Mockingbird", which she described as being not particularly offensive. Who knows what is offensive, she dosen't say. She does say, however, that it's brainwashing, and that it somehow leads directly to drug abuse.

I can't even explain it. Go to righttalk.com, and see if her show is playing, and listen to the first five minutes. Stuff like this makes me miss Ilyka.

new reading list

2005-09-28T02:00:00.000-04:00

via ASV: Banned Books Week

I know this is old news to many, but it's new to me. I am, primarily, a book dork; more than any of my other geeky hobbies, I love to read. I still read at least one book a week, ususally more. I always have a book with me, everywhere I go, in case I get stuck having to wait for ten minutes at an appointment or something. I hate sitting and staring at walls (or, worse, reading Pimple magazine at the dentist's office) when I could be entertaining myself. Books have, at times of stress, been my refuge, my island in the storm.

And, while I understand the concern over having your eighth grader picking up a copy of Naked Lunch or a Chuck Palhunik novel, banning a book is not the way to go. The key, as usual (i.e. video games, music, movies) is keeping track of what your kid is reading. Somewhere in Jr. High, I found a copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and when I told my dad I was reading it, he said something like "Isn't that a bit...advanced for you?" Which translates from parent-speak as "Dosen't that have, like, sex jokes and stuff?" To a certain extent, it does, but he let me read it anyway, and, lo and behold, I'm not some kind of freakazoid pervert or anything. Or not so much as to be abnormal, anyway. In fact, books like that, that were probably above my reading level, were a big part of what engendered a love of books in me early on. English classes are important, but often, they don't introduce students to books they actually want to read; they make reading a task. Books like the Hitchhiker's Guide can demonstrate the fun that can be found in books, even if they aren't exactly literature.

The second key to keep in mind, when it comes to banning books, is for everybody to step back, take a deep breath, and get a friggin grip already. Huck Finn is not a racist work. Harry Potter is not satanic. Book banning is one of those fun issues that both major political parties are wrong on; they both scream when censorship is applied to something they like, while aggresively pursuing censorship on stuff they don't like. This is especially egregious, to me, when coming from the right: Who cares what the government-funded schools stock in their library? It takes a Family, right Mr. Santorum? So if your kid comes home with a copy of "Mary has Two Mommies", or, god forbid, "The half-blood Prince", maybe you need to talk to your kid. Tell them about what they're reading, explain the reality an ups and downs of the point of the book to the kid. If it's so bad, forbid your kid from reading it. But don't try to get the government to tell your kid what books they should or should not read. Everybody expects the left to call for legislation of what they think morality should be, the whole point of conservatism is that that isn't the government's job.

The craze over banning fantasy and horror books reminds me of people a decade ago that wanted to ban dungeons and dragons. R.L. Stine is not going to turn your kid into a satanist any more than Gary Gygax was.

Anyway, the top 100 banned books, with bold for ones I've read follows. As with the song poll earlier, I'm surprised just how few of these I've heard of, but in this case I plan to find out:

1. Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
2. Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
4. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
7. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
8. Forever by Judy Blume
9. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
10. Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
11. Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
12. My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
14. The Giver by Lois Lowry
15. It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
16. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
17. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
18. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
19. Sex by Madonna
20. Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
21. The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
22. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
23. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
24. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
25. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
26. The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
27. The Witches by Roald Dahl
28. The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
29. Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
30. The Goats by Brock Cole
31. Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
32. Blubber by Judy Blume
33. Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
34. Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
35. We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
36. Final Exit by Derek Humphry
37. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
38. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
39. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
40. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
42. Beloved by Toni Morrison
43. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
44. The Pigman by Paul Zindel
45. Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
46. Deenie by Judy Blume
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
48. Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
49. The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
50. Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
51. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
52. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
53. Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
54. Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
55. Cujo by Stephen King
56. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
57. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
58. Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
59. Ordinary People by Judith Guest
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
61. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
62. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
63. Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
64. Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
65. Fade by Robert Cormier
66. Guess What? by Mem Fox
67. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
68. The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
69. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
71. Native Son by Richard Wright
72. Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
73. Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
74. Jack by A.M. Homes
75. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
76. Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
77. Carrie by Stephen King
78. Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
79. On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
80. Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
81. Family Secrets by Norma Klein
82. Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
84. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
85. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
86. Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
87. Private Parts by Howard Stern
88. Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
89. Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
90. Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
91. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
92. Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
93. Sex Education by Jenny Davis
94. The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
95. Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
96. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
97. View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
98. The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
99. The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
100. Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

Hm. There's alot of great books on there. A few of my favorites. If I taught High School English, maybe five of them would be requried reading. And there's a few I don't get; I mean, I understand that you don't want your kid reading "Sex", by Madonna, but who's calling for the banning of "The Color Purple"? "To Kill A Mockingbird?" Who the hell is calling for the banning of that?

It's all nonsense. Like I said, there's several there that every kid should read, and several that would make for good wholesome entertainment. Any of the other ones, you should know your kid is reading, and be able to explain why they're good or bad.

That is, of course, assuming that the parents have read (and understood) the books at some point, instead of just firing off angry letters to their school districts, which I seriously doubt.

funniest photo of the day

2005-09-28T01:43:00.000-04:00

Was going to be this, via Ace:

Until I saw this, via C&S (link not safe for work):

there's a bar joke in here somewhere

2005-09-26T03:05:00.000-04:00

As you may have heard, the Catholic church is going to soon be looking specifically for celibate men to ban from the priesthood. That is, if they are gay, celibate men.

I guess that, somehow, I am once again landing as a moderate on this. Which kills me.

Alot of left-leaning Christians want to assert that homosexuality is not a sin, which is nonsense. Gay sex is specifically prohibited in the bible more than once. There's alot of wiggling and parsing going on there, but if you are a strict follower of the bible, it's wrong, wrong wrong.

Notice, though, that I said "Gay sex". Boinking another man is a sin. Wanting to boink another man but not doing so is called temptation. Temptation, of course, is not a sin, else we'd all be fucked. Even Jesus was famously tempted by the devil; I certainly can't quote the scripture, but there's a passage where Jesus is looking out on a city, and the devil tells him "Come with me, and this can all be yours". Jesus thinks about it, and eventually rejects the idea, but the point is that he thinks about it. He was tempted. He chose the righteous path, but as with any human, he was tempted. The point of the story is that temptation, or wanting somehting in your head that you know is wrong, is not a sin. Acting on it is.

Which makes the whole weeding out of gay priests thing nonsense. It dosen't matter if a man is attracted to women, men, or farm animals, so long as he maintains the dedication to remain abstinante. Once he violates that oath, with man, woman, or schoolboy, he's fucked. He can think about it, be tempted by it all day long, and it's no big deal. If you think there isn't a priest out there that has never thought "Woah, look at the boobs on that one", you're sadly mistaken. That's part of the programming. Virtue is overcoming that base temptation and living a sinless life.

In a way, I would say that the priesthood is good for a serious Catholic that discovered he was gay: from a Catholic perspective, he can either have gay sex and be doomed forever, or he can have a marriage to a woman that he isn't really interested in, or he can give his life to god and humanity. If you are a Catholic, and you honestly believe that being gay is to be doomed forever, then better to dedicate your life to abstinance in the name of doing God's work.

As for the idea that gay men are more likely to violate the rules...well, there's a pretty serious basis for that, but it's still wrong. There's the alter boy problems. Also, much cited is the idea that among non-priests, gay men are, generally, more lauditudinarian toward sex. That's a statistic, not an insult, and not a surprising one, much to the lament of many gay men who do not share that view. But I doubt that that attitude is shared with men willing to join the priesthood. You're there because you know you're a sinner, as is every other human being on the planet. You join the priesthood looking to repent, not looking to get laid. If anybody with loose attitudes toward sex of any kind makes it through seminary, then there's something wrong.

What they should be looking for is not people prone to temptation, but rather, people prone to give in to their temptation. Being attracted to men, while a statistically higher risk, is not a sin. Having sex, with anyone or anything, is. And for chrissake, when somebody does do something wrong, kick him the fuck out. That, I think, is really the biggest problem: not that there wre some guys that enjoyed buggering kids working for one of the largest organized religions in the world, but rather that the power structure of that Church passed on it. Not only ignored it, but covered it. Hey, kick the guy the fuck out. Tell the world: He's not one of ours.

But banning gay men for the simple transgression of temptation is silly. Every living human deals with temptation, daily. The character, and virtue, of a man is how he deals with that temptation; and that virtue is what should be the qualification to lead others.

the first! ever! gay horror movie

2005-09-26T01:53:00.000-04:00

Via the ads at ASV: The first ever offical gay slasher flick.

Two things: in the ad there, is the "Thrusting the knife at somebody's face" gif right below the word "Gay" incedental or intentional? Just curious.

Second, "First ever gay horror movie?" Have you ever seen a Clive Barker film?

the bettster, bette-o-rama

2005-09-22T01:48:00.000-04:00

Okay, I'm way to fuckin' lazy to go dig up the audio files, but I have a question: Has anybody heard the most recent Bette Middler speech?

Is anybody else reminded of the stupid SNL skit where whassisface would play an office dork sitting in a corner, making name plays on everybody that walked into the copy room? "The Danster. Dan o rama. Danalicious..." Etcetera etcetera, ad nauseum.

I don't know, maybe that's just how she talks. But the inflection was exactly the same: heavily enunciated, high at that the beginning, dropping and dragging at the end.

"The Bushsterrrrr. What an Assholllllllle. Ka-trinaaaaaaa. Lots of dead folllllks. Global Warminggggg. War in Iraaaaaaaaaq. What an Assholllllllle..."

phone sex in public places

2005-09-22T01:01:00.000-04:00

I have nothing important to say, so instead, I'm going to amuse (bore?) you with a fun story from my life:

For reasons I don't care to discuss, I recently had to buy a western union to send to the people that own the better part of my car. I don't really know where one goes to buy western unions, but I remembered seeing a sign about it at my local Giant Evil, so I went there.

A matronly black lady pointed me to the forms I needed, which I filled out and returned to her. I didn't have my account number on hand, however, because I do all my business with this company with my SSN. That wasn't good enough, but she kindly called up the company for me.

Unfortunatly, instead of providing a series of actual numbers for the telephone number, a helpful acronym was used, which corresponded to numbers on the telephone. Something like "1-800-I-OWN-YOU" or "1-FUCK-UR-KREDT" or "1-800-THANKS FOR THE PAYMENT, ASSHOLE, WE'RE KEEPING YOUR FUCKING CAR ANYWAY!!!! WE KNOW YOU CAN'T AFFORD A LAWYER! GOOD LUCK EVER SEEING YOUR CAR AGAIN, MOTHERFUCKER!!!". Something like that, I don't remember exactly.

So, the nice lady behind the counter dials up the Loan Sharks. This is a very long process, as she experiences some difficulty trying to translate the acronym into actual numbers. Why the loan sharks insist on using letters, even in their western union account, is beyond me, as all it does is create confusion.

Having finally consulted the Dead Sea Scrolls and translated the phone number, she hands me the phone to deal with the computerized voice I am sure to encounter on the other end. She sure as hell dosen't want to hear it. I, of course, am paralyzed with fear; talking to my car company on a supermarket phone makes me feel like a KGB officer placing a phone call from the basement of the Hoover building. Everybody is staring, especially the people in line, and I have to deal with the labryinth of computer-routed recordings before getting to a real person that, probably after considerable begging and maybe a ritual bloodletting, will give me my own account number. It's enough to make Kafka gag.

Anyway, I'm standing there with the grimy phone to my ear, when what should I hear: a sultry female voice. Not the impersonal "Dial one for German, Two for French, Three for Swahili, Three hundred and Pi for English" voice, but rather a sexed-up Jenna Jameson. Who has, by the time my brain catches up, thanked me for calling "Intimate connections", and is presently asking me to input a credit card number.

Ummm, unless there's been a policy change I haven't heard about, that isn't the right number. Of course, me being who I am, I can't just tell her to hang it up. I hand the phone back to the afore mentioned friendly, matronly lady behind the counter, explaining that I don't think that that's the right number. She listens for maybe ten seconds before her eyes go wide, she lets out an "OH SHIT" giggle and slams the phone down. I wish I had a photograph of that moment, her expression was priceless.

She offered to try the number again, but I declined and drove the ten minutes to home and back to get the proper account number, which I should have done in the first place to spare both her and myself the mysteries of telephone communications. She delayed her break to help me, and, thirteen hundred-dollar bills later, I had my western union.

Still haven't gotten my car back, but I wish I knew what number she had dialed. That chick sounded hot.

smells like...infantry

2005-09-21T02:01:00.000-04:00

"You are stuck on stupid."

Beautiful. Click through there, and listen to the mp3. I wonder what unit that guy was with, if he's 82nd or what. Sounds like pure infantry. Guy reminds me of one of my Drill Sergeants, except quieter. But that piece of speech is classic Army, even throws in a quick "Huah?", which I'm sure just confused the reporters. I'd say that I'd like to see politicians pick up on that, but they'd never be able to get the inflection right, the final, declarative tone of it.

And I like the poster idea, but it should be just the declarative form he uses second. That's perfect. Somebody needs to make an mp3 of just that line that I can keep handy and click on every time I read the news.

Ilyka gets a sex-change: Reminds me of a Chuck Palahunik novel

2005-09-19T02:55:00.000-04:00

I'm going to spare the tongue bath here; everybody who reads these stupid pages knows I think Ilyka is the Cat's Ass, as my grandmother used to say. All I can say is that if Ilyka finds herself a strapon and goes after the web from the other end of things (there's a visual for you), I better be getting a friggin' email. I don't think it'll work, if she actually does it, as Hubris pointed out, I think I'd probably recognize her writing from a mile away, as would alot of people. That's somewhat of a backhand compliment, but a compliment it is.

I had a whole long post here, but it went away. Instead, what it boils down to is a very smart thing some old guy told me one time: illigitimi non carborundum. Don't let the bastards bring you down. I've never been the subject of sexual discrimination, so I don't pretend to know, but I hope that some stupid remarks won't force a good writer to quit. There's alot more people saying complementary things than people saying discriminatory things; and even if I'm wrong on that, then that's all the more reason not to quit.

bring the hate

2005-09-16T02:22:00.000-04:00

I know big bloggers are constantly annoyed by people pooping all over their comments, but I love it when I get 'em. Every once in a great while, I get a sensible argument in my comments, which I usually acknowledge and appreciate. But most of them are...well, stupid. Not even arguments, really, just rants.

I have long held that stupid people are put on this planet for my own personal amusement, and blog comments are evidence of that theory. Every time somebody calls me a name, it makes me giggle. When some poor schmuck goes on for a half hour explaining to me exacly why I'm wrong, generally making little sense and often not even addressing the point at hand, I have to read it several times for pure entertainment factor.

I know I shouldn't spend my time "fisking" stupid comments, but hey, what the hell, I'm having fun:

Your an idiot...

I accept that premise, but I want the comment to stand, for the amusement of those of us that completed High School English.

Louisiana is too poor of a state as is the city of New Orleans... to try and think that the Mayor could have handled this problem on his own is ridiculous. Oh and lets just say they did spend all that time and money to evacuate people on the busses and then the levies don't break? Money of an already incredibly poor state just pissed away. The green makes the world go round and thats the end of the story.

Okay, that would be the meat (tofu?) of the argument. I'm not really sure where this guy's coming from, but I want to point out that I prefaced the post as such: "As I've said, I'm not following too closely to the various scandals around Katrina. I know some of the School-bus stuff, but not enough to pass judgement." From there, I went on to say that the assertion that they couldn't get anybody to drive people away in school busses is rather silly. School busses, friends and neighbors, are not terribly complicated pieces of equipment. The guy that drove me to Jr. High and back every day couldn't remember his own name without some help, but he seemed to manage okay. Note that I'm not arguing the plusses or minuses of evacuating the city. Apparently, though, the Mayor and the Governor both think it would have been a good idea, they claim they just lacked personnel capable of handling an oversized minivian, which, again, strikes me as somewhat silly, which was the point of the post.

For those in the audience that are not paying attention, such as the commentor above, please note that I did not assert that "the mayor could have handled this on his own". I do think that if the Mayor's best excuse is that they couldn't find anybody with a driver's license to help evacuate the city, then he should start looking for another job. The "Bus drivers weren't hanging around in the hurricane" argument is dumb, dumb, dumb. This guy seemed to manage okay, and from my understanding, he dosen't have a graduate's degree in bus management.

As for Louisiana being a poor state, yes, you're right. However, the poorest of American states is wealthy compared to an awful lot of countries out there. I'd say that calling them "Too Poor" is incorrect, but I'm not sure what they are suppossed to be too poor to accomplish, since there wasn't actually an argument in there to anything I wrote. Too poor to magically invent a transporter that will beam all the water out of New Orleans and all the people to Houston? Yes, you're probably right. But too poor to find a few people in a crowd of thousands that can negotiate highways with a school bus?

Somehow, I fail to see the connection. But thanks for visiting, and feel free to respond at any time.

money where your mouth is

2005-09-14T02:36:00.000-04:00

I can't believe somebody more important than me hasn't linked him yet, that I've seen, but Brian from Memento Moron actually put up and took the trip from Oregon to help out with Katrina relief, and is blogging the trip.

Stuff like this is what makes blogging so cool. I don't have to watch some news-dork on my teevee telling me what he's thinking or what he saw; he can tell me himself. Great reading.

will they dig up conrad veidt, as well?

2005-09-13T01:57:00.000-04:00

They're remaking the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari? Dear God, why?

I don't know a whole lot about art, or film as art. What I do know is that I am a big fan of the Expressionist movement. It consisted primarily of Germans that had survived the first Great War, and talked about the War and the aftermath through art. The result is surreal, disturbing work of an authentic nature that absolutely no one has matched since.

Caligari is one of the best examples of that art form. Everything from the plot, to the costuming, to the scenery reflects a reality that is...shattered. Broken beyond repair. Whatever adjectives you want to apply to it, it is a direct product of the world from which it was made and the lives of the people that made it. That can not only be replaced; it cannot be effectively mimiced.

So why the hell are they remaking it? I find it hard to believe that they will produce anything of artistic merit out of it; the very fact that it's an update precludes a whole lot, and, as I said, the original is very much a product of its times. There's alot to be said about "Right Now", but pirating an exemplar piece of art and trying to force it into a modern light dosen't seem like too clever of an idea to me. It isn't going to be a big blockbuster; Caligari means nothing to too many people for it to matter.

I'm not an artist, but I do consider myself to be something of a writer. And I would never try to take, say, Slaughterhouse-5 and rewrite it to make it fit into 2005. It's a work all its own, a product of its times, and wouldn't work today. I wouldn't want to rewrite "Howl". My girlfriend, who is a painter, wouldn't take Max Ernst's work and re-paint it, no matter how much she admres the originals.

So why does the film industry insist on doing it? We're not talking about remaking the Exorcist or Willy Wonka here; much as I love those movies, they can be spun off into new movies. But Caligari?

I don't get it. I can't find a whole lot of information about the new one, but I don't like the shots on the main website already.

I don't know. I guess, depending on what they do with it, I may get fairly excited about it; I may even like it. That depends very, very heavily on what they do with it. But my strong initial reaction is, Dear God, why?

Bad news via Michele, who also has a handy list of how we can stop things like this from happening.

spaceship drivers

2005-09-13T01:21:00.000-04:00

As I've said, I'm not following too closely to the various scandals around Katrina. I know some of the School-bus stuff, but not enough to pass judgement. Except, I love this one line I've seen a couple of times now; If this is the best defense the mayor can come up with, he better start thinking about what he'll be doing after his term is up:

Sure, here was lots of buses out there. But guess what? You can't find drivers that would stay behind with a Category 5 hurricane, you know, pending down on New Orleans. We barely got enough drivers to move people on Sunday, or Saturday and Sunday, to move them to the Superdome. We barely had enough drivers for that. So sure, we had the assets, but the drivers just weren't available.

Dude, bus drivers? You couldn't find Bus Drivers? It's not exactly a graduate degree, here. You aren't driving a space shuttle. I'm not CDL Certified, but I'm betting I could probably manage a school bus, if the alternative is sitting on my roof for a week hoping that a helicopter will come find me. I might bump some curbs along the way, but if I have to drive that thing on the rims all the way to Ottowa, you better belive I'm gonna do it. The gas is the long skinny one on the right, the brake is the flat one on the left, and the round thing in the middle steers it. I might need some practice with the door opening thingie, but I think I can manage.

(A)

2005-09-12T04:00:00.000-04:00

Inspired by Sadie, comparing relative viewpoints on sex and politics. I know there's a caveat to this, this isn't meant as an argument against her, but I think she pretty accurately captured something I want to talk about:

An Anarchist: You have two casual, non-exclusive dating relationships. As far as you're concerned, sex and dating are private matters to be resolved between consenting adults. In your opinion, the government has no place messing with your private affairs. You and the two women voice your dissent against the government's existence and then go form a loosely-organized orgy.

Once upon a time, I considered myself something of an Anarchist. Still do, to a certian point. (Somewhere I have a pic of my kevlar from overseas with the Anarchy pin I wore on it for a while, just to piss people off. And maybe to make a bit of a point) I had alot of friends that were Anarchists, and was invited, and intended to go, to to the Anarchist convention a few years ago. Nevermind the irony of the fact that I had to go to Army drill once a month, and that my days of attending anything on my own timetable would be ended shortly by 9/11.

As a starting point, let's define Anarchy: 1 a : absence of government b : a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority c : a utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government

That's the technical definition of Anarchy. The problem is, as with any belief system, there's Anarchy, and then there's the political Anarchist movement.

Anarchy, to me, is pretty much Sadie's quote above. Nobody, including the government, messes with anybody else's business. This idea, much like pure socalism, is unfortunatly contingent upon itself; that is, it only works if everybody agrees to do their part and not to fuck with anybody else. This is only achievable to a certain extent in reality, and, therefore, fails when applied to reality. When socalism fails, you get communisim; when Anarchy fails, you get warlords.

See, there is always somebody, usually a fair number of somebodys, willing to fuck with somebody else if they think they can get away with it. So when you have Anarchy, instead of everybody just agreeing to get along and live that way, what you get is a survival of the fittest society. In anarchist philosophy, this all balances out in the long run; in history, it leads to an opressive regime led by the most brutal player in the game.

That's a bit off topic, but you see where I'm going. Lack of some controlling authority leads to people doing whatever they can to grab that authority, from which the strongest emerge and dominate over everybody else. Not exactly utopia.

But the Anarchist movement is something completely differant, with is own sets of ups and downs. The ups, to my mindset, are pretty much everything everybody's ever said about government intervention in anything. Not only is the government generally incredibly inept at getting its stated mission accomplished, more often than not it has no business in trying to do so in the first place.

The downside of current, or, honestly, leftist Anarchism, is that it suffers from all the pitfalls of any radical movement these days. Life in these United States is too good for a radical movement, and radical activists generally come of looking like boobs for all their effort.

There's several problems. My first disappointment upon attending an Anarchist meeting (which has to be some kind of oxymoron) was the sheer lack of knowledge going on around the room. This is a common effect at any political protest I've been a witness to: There's the true believers, who at least know what they believe and why they believe it, which make up maybe a fifth of attendees. The remaining percent are there because it's cool to be a radical, or a friend invited them, or they have some vauge idea about fighting the police (facists!), or because they heard it would be a good place to get laid. These are the people that don't really know what the fuck they're talking about, but they enjoy throwing bricks through Military Recruiting station windows, so they're along for the ride.

The other problem is the bizarre, and often contradictory, nature of beliefs among what I would call the true believers, the other fifth. These people are generally educated, after a fashion, and can at least carry on a debate. But could somebody explain to me how higher taxes are a function of Anarchy? What about government Welfare? Government control of Corporations? What about state suppression of a belief the Anarchist finds disagreeable? Anti-Gun laws? For that matter, any sort of Anti-anything laws? Or pro-anything laws? All of which are popular among the so-called Anarchists.

And the ultimate: Cops are facists when they're chasing you through backyards for spraypainting somebody's store, but who are the first people you call when you have a problem?

A very good friend of mine, a regular participant at the Anarchy discussions, had a guy break into her house one nite, and attempt to rape her. As any sensible person would, she called the cops first thing. She gave a statement, all that stuff.

Now, these are the same cops she was calling every name in the book the night before. Cops, who, lest we forget, are for the most part just guys doing a job, and a pretty shitty one at that. In differant circumstances, she'd have been more than happy to spit on their faces and call them tools of whatever.

She didn't feel that they did their job as effectively as they should have, which may be true. The cops in that area were notoriously lousy, and had to deal with cases like this fairly often. On top of that, she was a known Anarchist, the same people that had caused the cops trouble all over town for various problems.

I don't blame her for calling the police after what she had been through...but dosen't it say something about the politics of Anarchy that the ever-despised state-run police were at the top of the call list when she needed help?

Anyway. Anarchists, these days, aren't really all that troubled by the Government. There's a few areas where it infringes on civil rights that pisses them off, but by and large, so long as it helps them, they don't mind it. That isn't Anarchy, That's communism, and it's a direct result of what I described above: in America, the government has comparitavely little control over what people do, so the more ambitious and vicious among us fight their way to the top of a corporation, and proceed to do everything they can to fuck over everybody else. Survival of the fittest, barbarian rule, with a polished veneer.

One of the political philosophies I've identified myself as is a "Constitutional Conservative", which, I think, is about as close as I've seen to a working Anarchy, or an ordered Anarchy, if there is such a thing. Which is unfortunate, because it still isn't all that great. The rise of big corporations is inevitable under those circumstances, and there's no doubt that those people are ruthless bastards. The differance is that they exist at our sufferance, whereas a government has the power to force its people.

For most of the Anarchists I've met, though, that paragraph by Sadie isn't really right. They'd go on boinking everything they met, while ruthlessly persecuting everybody who didn't agree with their lauditudarin attitude. The best character I can think of is Alex from Clockwork Orange. If you can fight them, you're allright. If you're faithfully married and dress in khakis for work every day, they'd laugh while kicking in your teeth, raping your wife and burning down your store. Because, see, this is Anarchy, dude, and you live by our lack of rules, or you die by them.

ummmmmmm...duh.

2005-09-11T03:10:00.000-04:00

Ace, reading a very worth your time first hand report of the disaster in New Orleans, has some thoughts to share:

1) The city will be in fair shape sooner than you think;

2) The death toll will be lower than some grandstanding politicians have suggested (although still painfully high); and

3) The response from local officials was just as woeful as you've suspected.

So...the damage isn't quite as bad as the news media reports. It's bad, have no doubt, but not as bad as it looks on the telly. That, in a way, is the media's job, or a direct result of the media's job; not privoviding information, rather getting viewers. Pumping the disaster for every set of eyeballs they can get is what they're paid for.

I'm not even going to try to criticise them for that; I don't like it, but that's the way it is. What that results in is series after series of photographs showing the city looking like a bomb was just dropped on it, and extremely high death tolls.

Just to clarify: New Orleans is still there. Not one hundred percent intact, certainly, but probably about eighty percent so. Maybe more. Parts of the city have electricity already, a service that requires massive amounts of infastructure, from power plants to lines, etc. I hadn't expected to see that for a while yet.

The newer buildings, especially the bigger ones, may have had their windows blown out, and probably flooded on the lower levels. But structurally, they are still sound. Some of the older buildings will have been hit pretty hard, but large sections of the city (the much renowned French Quarter is on the list, where alot of those older buildings stand) weren't hit hard enough to do much serious damage. There's a bar open and operating on Bourbon Street. Somebody must have forgotten to mention to them that Armaggedon is upon us.

Alot of the pictures I've seen are from housing developments along the gulf. In those areas, there's nothing left. Nothing, just a pile of driftwood. Matchsticks. That's what happens when you build a house on a concrete slab, with nothing sunk into the ground, and a massive wall of water washes over it. But that's the worst of the disaster: Not insignifigant, to say the least, especially to those who used to live in those houses, but it's not the end of the world, either.

And the number of dead...well, there's certianly too many. Lay the blame for that at the feet of those responsible. But please don't ever use the phrase "I heard on the news that as many as XXXXXXX people may be dead". There isn't. What were the initial expectations after 9/11? 10,000? 15,000? Those numbers, unfortunatly, weren't outside the range of possibility, but thankfully were nowhere near reality, either.

I'm not trying to downplay what happened here. This is, almost certianly, the single worst natural disaster to ever hit the US, and we live on a big plot of land. As I've said before, I'm doing whatever I can, my small bit, to help the people affected.

But hysteria dosen't help anybody. It's annoying, and counterproductive. This is not the end of the world, and it's not the end of New Orleans. The city has taken a serious hit, from which it will take years to recover. Some of the physical losses, and certianly the loss of life, will never be recovered. The city is changed forever.

But it's not "Gone". Construction will go up over what came down, the Saints will play football, drunk girls will flash their boobs on spring break, vampires will still haunt the cemetaries. New Orleans is many things to many people, and it still is, and it will continue to be. I prefer to focus on getting back to that, helping the people and the city heal, than bemoaning and exaggerating the wound.

props to the huffpo

2005-09-09T03:33:00.000-04:00

I haven't read a whole lot from the Huffpo, and I've tried. Every time I bring up that page, it's just nonsense from nobodys, which I can find anywhere. I want more Chopra posts. I liked his book on Merlin.

But I have to give serious props to Ariana for continuing to allow Greg Gutfield to write there. I'm pissed I never got around to listening to him on Ace's radio show, that guy is freaking good. And brutal. As a public figure, she deserves a pretty fair amount of respect for allowing him to keep using up her bandwith. As a token conservative, he's no Bill Safire. The guy is not only harsh, he's harsh with the blog he's writing on.

My favorites from his latest, an entry exam for joining the Huffpo:

-Can you work the phrase "tipping point" into a sentence, without actually
reading the book, "The Tipping Point," or even understanding what this
tipping point thing is? Can you pretend to know something without knowing
anything?...

-Do you believe that no one can voice support of the IRAQ war UNLESS they are willing to serve in it?
-YET when it came to the flood, you readily assumed an expertise in crisis management within hours of the disaster?...

-do you see "looting" as a function of poverty?
- brought on by Bush's policies?
-do you think you and a looter might get along over a beer?
-as you both agree over the point you just made about poverty?
-do you press charges after he stabs you?...

Do you assume all poor people loot when faced with crisis?
-Even though most, if not all, poor people hate looters?
-Even though most, if not all, poor people HATE YOU MORE- for excusing looters?...

-Do you think conservatives are stiff, humorless and mean?
-have you ever sat through a Tim Robbins play?...

-Do you hate authority?
-until you need a cop?
-do you try to have an opinion, even when you really have none?
-do you think googling replaces thinking?
-do you favor high drama over slow progress?
-do you like it when authority figures are "shown up?"
-do you cry for authority figures when you're "helpless?"

There's lots more. Two or three of those are post ideas I could expand upon. The whole thing is great.

judge roberts, lando calrissian, ted kennedy, and bukkake

2005-09-09T03:04:00.000-04:00

all in one post. Fuckin' hilarious.

I also want to note that I am currently at the very top of searches for "Tawney Kaiten", and I have no idea how that happened. I don't think that's how you spell her name, I don't know if that's the right name in the first place, I only mentioned that name once and it was just an offhand remark while I was riffing on calling Ace a dork and questioning his sexuality. Nothing unusual there, I'm about the eight millionth person to do so, right after the guy that did a blog post about Ace calling him "Drizzt" during intercourse. So, really, nothing remarkable there, and I'm sure it isn't what these folks are searching for.

I'll take it, but still, odd. Gotta dig up a still from that video somewhere.

object lesson, part deux

2005-09-08T04:36:00.000-04:00

I'm seriously hoping this dosen't become a continuing series.

A great spoof of the king of disaster porn and bad news, Geraldo.

winged rodent

2005-09-08T03:52:00.000-04:00

Last time I did a bird post, I actually got somebody that knew something about birds. All he did was lecture me, but hey, at least it was a response.

So here's a question: Anybody know how to keep a bird, specifically a cockatiel, from chewing on your shit? Especially housplants. He finds the bamboo plant on my desk very tasty, as well as the tiny little potted herb garden I've been trying to grow.

I've tried the sour-apple stuff used to keep dogs off of furniture; Syd seems to find it tasty. He licks it off before he chews the plant to shit. And these are teeny tiny little houseplants; once he gets ahold of them, they're done.

Is there a taste birds don't like? They don't have much in the way of taste buds, I know, but there has to be a smell or something that freaks them out. This little fucker will eat everything from fresh basil to his own dried poop. In fact, I'm yet to find anything he won't eat; I'm surprised cockatiels ever survive past infancy, mine would probably eat his own young just for shits and giggles. He's certianly not underfed, probably overfed, but I still can't wean him off houseplants.

I think I've finally taught him to stop trying to eat the beard stubble off my face, enough good shoves off my shoulder fixed that one. Is there something that works for defenseless bamboo plants? Do they make venus fly traps in cockatiel size?

A plant that bites back, that's what I need.

object lesson

2005-09-08T03:05:00.000-04:00

The reaction to this is the sort of thing I'm on about here with my lack of interest in the politics around Katrina:

Barbara Bush: "What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas," she was quoted as saying in an interview on National Public Radio...

"Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality," ...

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

Stupid thing to say? You betcha. Well, not even necessarily a stupid point, I don't think, but an incredibly stupid way to say it.

Even if you're homeless, it obviously sucks to have your entire frigging home town sucked out to sea. The upshot is that now, at least, you have three hots and a cot, and reasonable, if not idyllic, shelter.

If you're not homeless, but getting massacred by debt...well, that's mostly gone now. I have no idea how this will work out as far as insurance goes for people who lost homes and cars and such, but I'm betting that they won't be held responsible for those loans. Acts of God, and all that.

Again, is having your house and all your personal belongings suddenly at the bottom at the Gulf of Mexico a pleasant experience, or the preffered way to get out of debt? No. Obviously.

But, if you've ever been seriously in debt, just getting rid of it can be a huge plus. I have a car that I haven't been able to afford the payments on for a while now, and while I would much rather sell it than have it stolen, at least it would be off my list of headaches. I'd get about 3/4 what its worth from the insurance company, and be able to move forward.

That's pretty minor debt-wise compared to what alot of people have. Once again, not the best situation to be in, but, for some people, especially the very poor, there are pluses. Not the ideal way to get there, but there it is. Look around (no link, sorry, too lazy), there are stories of people saying exactly that. Sucks, but whereas before they were behind a boulder-sized eightball, the kind of debt that will ruin a person's life, they are now at a more or less blank slate. Sitting in Houston, looking around and doing the same thing they were doing: trying to figure out how to move forward, with added greif but minus a big stone around their necks.

So what Barbara was saying was an incredibly poorly phrased, somewhat rich-people ignorant statement of what at least some people are feeling. I don't know about you, but it dosen't come as a shock to me that the Bushes are rich people, and tend to think like them. So are all our illustrious politicans, not all of whom are Republicans. For that matter, the top several wealthiest Senators are Democrats; wealth is a requirement to play in politics these days.

But what drives me crazy is the hours that people have dedicated to this single stupid remark, like the editorial above, and the blatant politicization of it. Rush, earlier today, was making light of it, minimizing it, like a good hack. I don't blame him, the reaction from that is pretty darn ridiculous. But you know that if a Clinton or Rockefeller had made those remarks, Rush and Hannity would be all over it; it would be interspersed with their commentary on...everything. They'd be playing that bit over and over and over and over, until even I was tired of hearing it.

The point is: It dosen't mean anything. Nothing at all. It is not indicative of anything that should come as a shock to anybody. It was a stupid, poorly phrased offhand remark that has blown up into this big huge thing, and that is the sort of thing that I am really, really tired of hearing about. I don't care. I fail to see why anybody should care. It has zero bearing on the very, deadly serious task at hand. It's just people screaming at each other about nothing: hot air, white noise.

UPDATE: What she said. Hate that, when somebody says exactly what I've been trying to say for days, and better. Drives me crazy. I should just delete the past several posts and put up a link to this.

gilligan

2005-09-07T04:11:00.000-04:00

A Classic.

politics

2005-09-07T03:37:00.000-04:00

Aprapo of my last comment: I've been listening to more music radio, reading more books. The political stuff out there at the moment is really leaving me cold. It seems...even dumber, and less relevant, than usual.

The primary news today is Katrina. I'm a man of very limited means at the moment, but we're buying stuff to send down there; Christ knows those folks are worse off than I am. I'm trying to do my little part because, as Ace used to say when begging money from readers, it's not the size of the donation, it's the size of the pool. If every person in America sent a few things, it adds up to an awful lot.

But the arguments around it are...frankly, disgusting. I've said before, I don't know what the hell people expect, but every level of government is throwing everything they have at it, from the President on down. Even that, however, cannot create a miracle. Moses is not going to step out of a FEMA office and part the seas around New Orleans. George Bush cannot make Manna fall from the skies. What he can do, and has done, is send money and people. And give stupid speeches on teevee that accomplish nothing except appeasing the true believers and pissing off the opposition.

Aside from that...it's all garbage. America, or Republicans, aren't doing enough...because we hate black people? Are you serious? That has to be one of the dumbest fuckin' statements I've ever heard. And it is, unfortunatly, everywhere. I refuse to spend an hour of my life writing up a post to refute that argument; I have better things to do with my time. Arguing theological dogma with my fucking cockatiel would be more productive.

Then, there's the flipside; that accuses blacks of more looting and stuff in the city. Dug. New Orleans is something like 60% black, hence, there are more blacks looting. Excluding any other economic factor, just the simple fact that there are more black people there period says to me that most of the folks looting will be black. That isn't racism, it's arithmatic.

See this? I'm getting sucked into all these dumb-assed arguments I promised myself I wouldn't. The point is, there was a disaster, and, for the most part, everyone involved is doing everything they can to rectify it, if for no other reason than to avoid giving the other side ammunition. That's a plus, I suppose: Much as I hate arguing about the stupidity of arguments here, the very fact that the arguments are so fucking stupid proves that there hasn't been any too-serious lapses. There's been fuckups, to be sure, but, as any emergency personnel can tell you, that's to be expected when something like this happens. The fact that neither side has found a serious, important bone to pick is promising.

I can't believe that Rehnquist isn't getting more coverage. Maybe it's a good thing; bless his soul, the media is actually letting someone die in relative peace.

i watched the news today, o boy

2005-09-03T02:47:00.000-04:00

I watched whatever channel had the big special on Katrina on Tuesday. I watched some of the Wednesday reportage.

My girl seems to feel a need to watch these programs. We have a special, if superficial, connection to New Orleans, which I won't go into here.

But the news specials...I don't know, don't do much for me. I mean, I have a pretty good idea what's going on there. Should I feel like a bad person, or a less concerned person, if I don't watch hour after hour of "This person lost their house. This person lost everything. This person is trying to get a bus. This person can't find a hotel room. This person watched their aunt drown".

Sucks. I know that. Sucks in unimaginable ways.

The news specials, though, are heavy on emotion and dramatic taglines, while light on information. I want to know what is going on there on the large scale, what are people doing to fix the problem. Not what people are doing to fix aunt Mathilda's house, but the big problem, which is certainly there.

Do I need to watch face after desperate face to feel the problem? Do I lack caring for switching the channel, rather than depressing the shit out of myself over what is an overwhelming, massive tragedy; a tragedy about which I can do nothing?

I don't know. I don't really get it. I feel bad for those people, and hope to christ they can find their way out of this situation. I hope like hell the city can be repaired; I plan to live there someday. If my driving to New Orleans tommorow would do a bit of good, I'd do it.

But here in my apartment in Pennsylvania, I don't see what is to be gained from crying over the news. I don't think I'm detached from the disaster, but I don't see what good will come from becoming more emotionally involved in it, either.

Tears don't help anybody, and for me, understanding isn't gained from the teevee. Understanding, and more importantly, helping is reached from inside.

The news programs seem like goosenecking at a carwreck. I know what a carwreck is about, and I have a pretty good idea what the people involved need. My heart goes out to them, but seeing their blood spewed across the highway dosen't lend understanding, and it dosen't help the people involved.

My heart goes out to the victims here, but I hope I'll be excused if I turn off the news vultures on the tee vee.

Instead, turn off the tee vee, put your eyes on the road, and go help, if you can.

no fuckin around

2005-09-03T02:32:00.000-04:00

My kind of people.

Donations go here.

"Out here a man settles his own problems."

2005-09-02T03:02:00.000-04:00

John Wayne
You scored 54% Tough, 14% Roguish, 19% Friendly, and 14% Charming!

You, my friend, are a man's man, the original true grit, one tough
talking, swaggering son of a bitch. You're not a bad guy, on the
contrary, you're the ultimate good guy, but you're one tough character,
rough and tumble, ready for anything. You call the shots and go your
own way, and if some screwy dame is willing to accept your terms,
that's just fine by you. Otherwise, you'll just hit the open trail and
stay true to yourself. You stand up for what you believe and can handle
any situation, usually by rushing into the thick of the action. You're
not polished and you're not overly warm, but you're a straight shooter
and a real stand up guy. Co-stars include Lauren Bacall and Maureen
O'Hara, tough broads who can take care of themselves.

Find out what kind of classic dame you'd make by taking the
Classic Dames Test.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 95% on Tough
You scored higher than 46% on Roguish
You scored higher than 22% on Friendly
You scored higher than 14% on Charming

Link: The Classic Leading Man Test written by gidgetgoes on Ok Cupid

That's right, bitches. John Fuckin Wayne. The Duke, piloting this keyboard. Heh.

I always figured myself more rougish than tough. I'm certainly not charming or friendly, that's for damn sure.

Test via Texas Best Grok, Quote from this worthwhile page here.

Pardner.

my small contribution

2005-08-31T02:44:00.000-04:00

to Katrina reportage: Click on the video link here, then on the "Mayor" link in that window. Straight from the horse's mouth; not much for trainwreck images, if that's what you're looking for, but very good for information. Simply amazing. My favorite city I've never visited has been set back years, perhaps decades.

Early on, during a list of damage, the Mayor mentions that the twinspans, the huge bridges coming into New Orleans from the north, were damaged. Later, one of the newsguys asks him just how bad: "Totally destroyed. Totally. It's gone." Pause. More pause. Nobody knows what to say, it's just dead, shocked airtime for a good five seconds while everybody stares at the desk and tries to absorb that.

Disasters like this, bad as it is, always make me glad we live in a country like the US, with the resources we have. Most of the people evacuated before hand, and those that stayed have the full force of the US trying to save them, which is nothing to scoff at. Same goes for the rebuilding effort: large portions of New Orleans have just been wiped off the map, but that won't last for long. Beats the hell out of hiding in your plank hut in someplace like Haiti or Cuba. Sucks, no doubt, but at least we have the ability to limit the human toll of a catastrophie like this.

Ace has a list of ways to make a donation, and some more news coverage.

And Michele has a growing list of positive stories out of New Orleans, as a reminder to the doom and gloomers out there. As Andrea Harris puts it: Man up, Nancy.

cleansing breath

2005-08-29T04:20:00.000-04:00

After that last one, I needed something to wash all the crappy music out of my head. If you do too, go check out Interpol. Good stuff.

One of my problems, when it comes to music, is that I don't really have, like, friends. We moved to the suburbs of Pittsburgh without alot of local connections, most of my high school friends are long gone or don't want to talk to me. Between school and work, I don't really have time to hang out with people. My girlfriend, who is my friend, isn't really terribly sociable and dosen't like many people I do want to hang out with. For that matter, I'm not overly sociable myself; I talk to people, but I don't go out of my way to try to get to know anybody either.

That's by way of explination, not whining. The biggest reason I don't have friends locally is that I don't much care to. We don't talk to people in our apartment complex, when we go out, its very much of a twosome, I don't try to get involved with people at school or work. I talk to people, I'm not a total introvert, but only at school or work. Three conflicts: I don't have time or energy to work my schedule around going to a bar or whatever, my girlfriend is my first priority people-wise, and I don't think I'm missing anything enough to try to change it. Interpersonal contact with my girlfriend and my dad and brother every once in a while is good enough for me.

But what I am really missing out on is good music stuff. I don't like a whole lot of the stuff they play on the radio 24/7. Most of it is just the same old crap, over and over. People out there know where the good bands are playing and what the good new albums are, but I don't know any of those people.

So the other day I was talking to a guy at work about music, and it turns out he likes alot of the same stuff I do. But when we drifted away from radio stuff into what he really liked, I hadn't heard an awful lot of it. It's not really obscure stuff, just stuff that you would have to be familiar with the scene to know.

So yeah, sucks to that. Again, the old tradeoff: I can go to school and keep up a steady relationship with a great girl, or I can know what the good bands are of the moment. Not exactly mutually exclusive, but there's only so much time in one's day.

where's my fuckin pumpkins?

2005-08-29T03:07:00.000-04:00

Meme via Ilyka: go to the webpage, enter the year you graduated high school, click the top 100 songs link.

Strikeout songs you hated, don't do anything to songs you don't remember or don't have any feeling about either way, underline your favorite, and bold the songs ~~you like~~ I just bolded songs I would leave on the radio if it came on. The ones that don't make me want to stick pencils in my ears are bolded. Scan the list, comments at the end.

Breakout the earplugs and Y2K hat; let's party like it's 1999:

1. Believe, Cher
2. No Scrubs, TLC
3. Angel Of Mine, Monica
4. Heartbreak Hotel, Whitney Houston
~~5. ...Baby One More Time, Britney Spears~~
6. Kiss Me, Sixpence None The Richer
7. Genie In A Bottle, Christina Aguilera
8. Every Morning, Sugar Ray
~~9. Nobody's Supposed To Be Here, Deborah Cox~~
10. Livin' La Vida Loca, Ricky Martin
11. Where My Girls At?, 702
12. If You Had My Love, Jennifer Lopez
13. Slide, Goo Goo Dolls
14. Have You Ever?, Brandy
15. I Want It That Way, Backstreet Boys
16. I'm Your Angel, R. Kelly and Celine Dion
17. All Star, Smash Mouth
18. Angel, Sarah McLachlan
19. Smooth, Santana Featuring Rob Thomas
20. Unpretty, TLC
21. Bills, Bills, Bills, Destiny's Child
22. Save Tonight, Eagle-Eye Cherry
23. Last Kiss, Pearl Jam
24. Fortunate, Maxwell
25. All I Have To Give, Backstreet Boys
26. Bailamos, Enrique Iglesias
27. What's It Gonna Be?!, Busta Rhymes Featuring Janet
28. What It's Like, Everlast
~~29. Fly Away, Lenny Kravitz~~
30. Someday, Sugar Ray
31. Lately, Divine
32. That Don't Impress Me Much, Shania Twain
33. Wild Wild West, Will Smith Featuring Dru Hill and Kool Moe Dee
34. Scar Tissue, Red Hot Chili Peppers
35. Heartbreaker, Mariah Carey Featuring Jay-Z
36. I Still Believe, Mariah Carey
37. The Hardest Thing, 98 Degrees
38. Summer Girls, LFO
39. Can I Get A..., Jay-Z Featuring Amil (Of Major Coinz) and Ja
40. Jumper, Third Eye Blind
41. Doo Wop (That Thing), Lauryn Hill
42. Mambo No. 5 (A Little Bit Of...), Lou Bega
43. Sweet Lady, Tyrese
44. It's Not Right But It's Okay, Whitney Houston
45. (God Must Have Spent) A Little More Time On You, 'N Sync
46. Lullaby, Shawn Mullins
47. Anywhere, 112 Featuring Lil'Z
48. Tell Me It's Real, K-Ci and JoJo
49. Back 2 Good, Matchbox 20
50. 808, Blaque
51. She's So High, Tal Bachman
52. She's All I Ever Had, Ricky Martin
53. Miami, Will Smith
54. Hands, Jewel
55. Who Dat, JT Money Featuring Sole
56. Please Remember Me, Tim McGraw
57. From This Moment On, Shania Twain
58. Love Like This, Faith Evans
59. You, Jesse Powell
60. Trippin', Total Featuring Missy Elliott
61. If You (Lovin' Me), Silk
62. Ex-Factor, Lauryn Hill
63. Give It To You, Jordan Knight
64. Black Balloon, Goo Goo Dolls
65. Spend My Life With You, Eric Benet Featuring Tamia
66. These Are The Times, Dru Hill
67. I Don't Want To Miss A Thing, Mark Chesnutt
68. I Do (Cherish You), 98 Degrees
69. Because Of You, 98 Degrees
70. I Will Remember You (Live), Sarah McLachlan
71. Chante's Got A Man, Chante Moore
72. Happily Ever After, Case
73. My Love Is Your Love, Whitney Houston
74. All Night Long, Faith Evans Featuring Puff Daddy
75. Back That Thang Up, Juvenile Featuring Mannie Fresh and Lil' Wayne
76. Almost Doesn't Count, Brandy
77. Man! I Feel Like A Woman!, Shania Twain
78. Steal My Sunshine, Len
79. I Need To Know, Marc Anthony
80. So Anxious, Ginuwine
81. Faded Pictures, Case and Joe
82. Back At One, Brian McKnight
83. When A Woman's Fed Up, R. Kelly
84. How Forever Feels, Kenny Chesney
85. Amazed, Lonestar
86. Sometimes, Britney Spears
87. Ghetto Cowboy, Mo Thugs Family Featuring Bone Thugs-N-Harmony
88. Out Of My Head, Fastball
89. Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem), Jay-Z
90. Jamboree, Naughty By Nature Featuring Zhane
91. Take Me There, BLACKstreet and Mya Featuring Mase and Blinky Blink
92. Stay The Same, Joey McIntyre
93. Lesson In Leavin', Jo Dee Messina
94. Iris, Goo Goo Dolls
95. Satisfy You, Puff Daddy Featuring R. Kelly
96. Better Days (And The Bottom Drops Out), Citizen King
97. Music Of My Heart, 'N Sync and Gloria Estefan
98. Write This Down, George Strait
99. When You Believe, Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey
100. God Must Have Spent A Little More Time On You, Alabama Featuring 'N Sync

You'll notice that there isn't a whole lot of bold. That dosen't surprise me, but there are a few things about this list that do. First, is just how few of these songs I remember. I think I hit the strikeout on a few I don't really know just on principle: Whitney Huston? Nah. 98 Degrees? Forget about that.

I mean, we're talking about 1999 here. I didn't graduate high school fifty freaking years ago. But there's an awful lot on there I don't recognize by title, and a pretty good many I don't think I've ever heard at all.

Second is the complete lack of any type of alternative music whatsoever. I see the Goo Goo Dolls made the list, as well as Pearl Jam, but that's about it. I can stand the Goo Goo Dolls, or at least could at 18, but neither of these bands are favorites of mine. Even Dave Matthews, who I'm pretty sure released an album that year, didn't make the list. I loathe Dave Matthews, but I can't believe he didn't have one of the top one hundred songs of the year.

No Radiohead? No Smashing Pumpkins? Rage Against the Machine? Blur? Green Day? Not even the Beasty Boys? Hello? How did none of the Alternative Grammy Nominees not make the list, over freaking Mambo Number Five, a song written to be sung by plastic frogs in the clearance aisle of your local department store? Or a song by Gloria Estefan, who was apparently still alive in 1999?

Give me a break. For that matter, look for rock songs period on that list. You know, electric guitars and singing and shit. I expected hip-hop to be heavily favored, they sell records like nobody's business. N'Sync and Brit'ny Spears sold alot of albums to people that were five years younger than me at the time. Country certainly has its following. But only one or two bands from one of the top music sectors out there? Nobody in the entire audience of Rolling Stone bought any albums that year? Music played by a huge number, perhaps even a majority of radio stations out there, and no representation in the top 100?

Anyway, enough ranting. If the list is correct, it's no wonder I didn't like High School. Jesus, look at what everybody was listening to. I'd prefer being poked to death 100 times by a dull spork than listening to all those songs in a row.

I never owned a single one of those songs. The only one I can think of the words to is the Everlast song, which wasn't half bad, and I'm sure the words to Iris are in my head somewhere as well. As you can see, the vast majority are songs that I was subjected to at school dances and functions.

I don't think I'm a music snob; there's alot of probably bad music I like. But holy crap, if there's anything to like about that list, I don't see what it is.

okay, alright already

2005-08-27T03:26:00.000-04:00

Sadie's new digs are...somewhat boring. :P

Heh.

Just a poke. Soon as I have the cash, I'm going to pay her to redo this shithole. Have I not yet mentioned her new design studio? Visit, and weep.

I've had offers from people to redo this place, but I keep turning them down, telling them and myself I'm going to learn CSS myself, dammit, and all the attendant bullshit that comes with running a blog. I'm starting to think that's never going to happen, or at least not soon enough to suit my tastes.

But I've liked Sadie's designs from the past, I think she could probably come up with something pretty cool for this dump. Right now, all my money is tied up in rent and PBR, but I figure good times are on the horizon, and then I'll have a wicked cool looking site with no visitors, instead of a halfass translation of a blogger template with no visitors. Grand designs, I know, but I think I can make it happen.

serendipity

2005-08-27T02:54:00.000-04:00

I put up a post pointing out that Nazis are not welcome at a border-security rally, and guess what? A week later, the Nazis are heading out to join Cindy Sheehan. In her fight against our "War for Israel", dontcha know.

Well, we all have our crazies. I've said it many a times. Trouble is dealing with them, I suppose.

But this one does raise some questions: What if Cindy was black? What if she was a Jew? I know the Stormfronters are okay with being on the same side as Robert Byrd and David Duke...but what if this particular protestor looked more like Al Sharpton or, god forgive...well, I can't think of a prominent liberal Jew right now, but there's got to be zillions of 'em, right? Can't take over the world without your name coming up in a google search. Is Arlen Specter Jewish? He isn't really a liberal, and I don't know if Specter is a Hebrew name, but I always thought he was Jewish. I'm sure the Stormfronters can fill me in on this one.

How will the Stormfronters deal with the rastafarians that are sure to be in attendance? Or the pro-Palistine Arabs? This is Texas, there's sure to be a few Hispanics in the mix, as well.

So...When the skinheads show up, what will be their reception? This is a Peace Protest, after all, so there can't be any violence. When the Stormfronters decide it's time to hang a doped out Rasti from the nearest lynchin' pole, they'll just...talk it out, right? Go for root causes, understand their hate, and all that.

Right. Good luck with that.

Link via Ace.

mars attacks

2005-08-27T02:41:00.000-04:00

Watch this, and tell me that maybe a dozen frames in there isn't a human shape in the dust devil.

The fuckin martians are attacking our rover! Git me my shotgun and break out the nukes!

a rose by any other name

2005-08-27T01:48:00.000-04:00

Should you blog anonymously?

My opinion: YES, yes, a thousand times over, yes. I suppose, if you fancy yourself a serious political commentator who plans on recieving calls from CNN regularly, a real name lends credibility. Talking to Larry King from behind a mask, with a voice distorter, using the name "REpUbLiCaN MastiZOR" or whatever isn't likely to garner you much respect. But you better have the resources to back it up.

A name search can yield a million things to someone, and a bit of digging can yield a million more. And even if someone dosen't come looking for you, the fact that you are a real person on the web can damage you.

But here's my problem: finding a cool internet moniker. There's so few out there. There's a lot, a majority, of really, really dorky ones. I used to comment as "Francisthegreat", which has a long geeky history I may sometime share with you. But I'm bored with that, so lately I've been commenting with simply "Francis", which is my real first name. And is both dorky and boring. I kindof like my blog name, Geek Empire, except that I don't do a whole lot of posts on some traditional geek stuff (Video games, for example), and the domain was already owned by these folks, who are kind enough not to sue me for using it. But I'm at a loss for what to call myself here on Al Gore's Internets.

Waiting for my Muse on that one, I suppose. If there is a "Muse of Dorky Internet Handles".

Anyway, personally, I don't want to say something bad about a protestor I met in Oakland this weekend and have him show up at my doorstep. What do I think are the chances of that happening? Not likely, but possible, and I have neither the time, energy or cash to make myself anonymous against my full name. And once someone has your name, address, etc, they can cause other havok as well, none of which I feel like dealing with.

But there are other reasons. You'll notice that I did a considerable amount of bitching about a company I used to work for here. Never once did I mention that company's name, or any specifics of business conducted there, much to their dismay. Part of it, honesly, is respect. But largely, it's what's called Operational Security to the army. I can bitch about stuff, but as long as nobody outside the company knows what I'm talking about, it can't hurt them, and they can't hurt me.

If I say, "Gee, this company is run by a bunch of f'n morons and they're about to make a very bad decision", that's ranting. If I say "I'm a VP of IBM, and something's about to happen that will cause our stock to plummet", that's a liability, and, honestly, grounds for termination.

Frankly, I don't understand people that write bad things about a company, using both their name and the company name, especially on company time, and don't expect to be fired for it. If you're working for me, I'd fire you.

Beyond that, writing under your real name becomes a part of your resume, especially if you are a somewhat popular blogger. If there is anybody out there that you don't want reading your rants, be it a current or potential employer, a friend, or your dog, don't put your name to it in pixels. Because it will turn up.

Same goes for college: I've said bad things about profs here. What if one of them googled my name? That's not brownie points. Same goes for alot of other things. I like my blog to be a place to bitch when I feel like it; every time it's intersected with my personal life, it's been a pain in the ass. If I could take back ever telling anyone I've met that I blog, I'd do it, just so when I realize I said something bad about them six months ago it wouldn't come back to bite me in the ass.

Working under cover is definatly the way do go, in my book; now if I could just think up a nom de keyboard I liked, I'd be set.

Top link via Ilyka.

friends and hellspawn

2005-08-26T02:24:00.000-04:00

From the same article linked below:

Benedict, who had a meeting with Jews on Friday, is making good inter-religious relations one of the aims of his papacy.

How, exactly, does this work? I was brought up Catholic, and as I recall according to the Catholic faith, everybody who isn't a Catholic is going straight to one of the less pleasant parts of Hell immediately following their demise.

For some C&E Catholics, they find wiggle room there, but it's pretty clearly spelled out in Catholic Doctrine: Either you're with us, or you're going to burn for eternity. I used to argue about this endlessly. My non-Catholic friends would say, "But I still believe in Jesus" or "I believe Jesus was a prophet", and I'd say, "Not good enough, here's your ticket into the fire". No wavering, no forgiveness.

Unless there's been a huge change in dogma over the past few years, that's still the case. So how does one make reaching out to people that are destined to the fires of hell one of the primary points of your Papacy?

And of course, it has to complicate matters that the Pope isn't the only one in the room thinking "This guy's gonna burn". Jews and Muslims, not extremists but traditionalists (i.e., the leaders of their faiths) believe the same thing. The biggest common thought here is "If you don't believe like I do, no matter how you live your life, you're going to hell and endless torment". Dosen't matter what they say in press releases, that's the core of the faith, taught every weekend in church, mosque and synagouge: If you aren't a believer, you're going to hell. Just that simple.

So how does the leader of one of these faiths make gracious, accepting overtones to the leader of another? How does one say, "You're gonna burn for eternity, but I'd like to have tea this Friday"? How do you say good things about someone who is, daily, committing a sin so egregious it is tantamount to rape or murder?

I like to see these people getting along, on a political level, I just fail to see how one can stay ideologically faithfull and still sit down and have lunch with, or for that matter call for closer relationships with, someone who is a hellbound soul; a leader of a group of people that are calling others into hell before them.

To a strict Catholic, a Jew or a Muslim is no better than a Satanist. While it would make for great satire, I have a hard time seeing Benedict sitting down with the leader of the Church of Satan.

Don't understand. Maybe some good Catholic out there can explain it to me, but make sure you're a good Catholic first; someone who lives by the rules. Maybe there is a reason, beyond current events, that a Pope should be making nice to the Children of Abraham and the Children of Mohammed. I just fail to see what it is, and it seems to me like blatant, perhaps sinful dishonesty to do so.

learning from your elders

2005-08-26T02:14:00.000-04:00

Not to sound like a cynic, but the Pope should have some ideas on violent radicals within a faith. Learning from experience, and all that...If Islam suddenly turned into the Catholic Church as we know it today, cast off its midevil violence as the Catholics have, I think most of us would be pretty pleased. Liberal protestors would have to change their signs from "Terrorists are freedom fighters" to "Abortion makes the baby Mohammed cry", but I think we can deal with that.

email from the great beyond

2005-08-26T01:56:00.000-04:00

Every once in a while, I get an email from God. I think it's God, maybe some angel or just a dead person or something, but obviously they are a supernatural being, communicating the great secrets of life.

For example, tonite I recieved this one from "Farrell Colin" (Lim@Austraila.edu), as he is currently calling himself. It started out saying something about sperm, but he went on to give me the following message:

Inc se Yo xua ire and rm vol by 0% rea ur Se l Des Spe ume 50 SP -M e wes an e Saf y of rma UR is Th Ne t d Th est Wa Pha cy 10 Nat al and Si ect in con st to l-k n bra 0 ur No de Eff s tra wel now nds. Exp enc ee tim nge ga s eri e thr es lo r or sm Wor de ng wi n 24 rs ld Wi ppi thi hou BU W! Y NO Inc se Yo xua ire and rm vol by 0% rea ur Se l Des Spe ume 50 SP -M e wes an e Saf y of rma UR is Th Ne t d Th est Wa Pha cy 10 Nat al and Si ect in con st to l-k n bra 0 ur No de Eff s tra wel now nds. Exp enc ee tim nge ga s eri e thr es lo r or sm Wor de ng wi n 24 rs ld Wi ppi thi hou BU W! Y NO Inc se Yo xua ire and rm vol by 0% rea ur Se l Des Spe ume 50 SP -M e wes an e Saf y of rma UR is Th Ne t d Th est Wa Pha cy 10 Nat al and Si ect in con st to l-k n bra 0 ur No de Eff s tra wel now nds. Exp enc ee tim nge ga s eri e thr es lo r or sm Wor de ng wi n 24 rs ld Wi ppi thi hou BU W! Y NO Inc se Yo xua ire and rm vol by 0% rea ur Se l Des Spe ume 50 SP -M e wes an e Saf y of rma UR is Th Ne t d Th est Wa Pha cy 10 Nat al and Si ect in con st to l-k n bra 0 ur No de Eff s tra wel now nds. Exp enc ee tim nge ga s eri e thr es lo r or sm Wor de ng wi n 24 rs ld Wi ppi thi hou BU W! Y NO

Indeed. "wi n 24 rs ld Wi ppi thi hou BU W! Y NO" indeed. I'm not sure how I feel about that; it is, after all, illegal, and immoral. But that's what my friend told me to do, and I believe him, after all, he's the one who told me: "wi n 24 rs ld Wi ppi thi hou BU W! Y NO Inc se Yo xua ire and rm vol by 0% rea ur Se l Des Spe ume 50 SP -M e wes an e Saf y o."

It all makes sense now.

more "must"

2005-08-25T03:20:00.000-04:00

Read it. I don't know all the backstory, but it's one hell of an email.

mandatory writing

2005-08-24T02:12:00.000-04:00

Why do my nipples hurt?

more hoi

2005-08-24T01:30:00.000-04:00

Moonoo is down, so I'm linking Steve from Hog on Ice tonight. Steve has alot of haters out there, but for some reason I enjoy it when he offends me. He's good at it. There may be some form of masochism in there. Also because I made the brownies from his cookbook today on a whim, and after much trouble finding the recipie correction and the time to do it, they are f'n fantastic. My girlfriend was actually moaning while she ate them, something I hear precious little of.

He has a post about exercise, which I should do some time, but I wanted to share this completely unrelated bit about bicycle laws:

It’s funny. I can get a ticket for not wearing a bike helmet, but I can get on my motorcycle in a bathing suit and bare feet and no helmet and ride to the courthouse to pay the fine.

Also, I didn't know Johnny Depp was a Hunter Thompson fan, but there's a good piece at Huffington's Toast about the funeral, cannon, etc.

Speaking of Johnny Depp, I think he must have signed something somewhere that says he is entitled to be in every Tim Burton film from now to forever. Him and that Helena whatserface. Which is cool by me; I've never seen a Burton film I didn't like. A lot, in fact, the first Batman and Nightmare Before Christmas are two of my all time favorite films, and everything else he's done is at least very good, if not great.

The girlfriend and I saw Willy Wonka recently; it was playing at our local Imax. The Imax is neat to see big films at, rather than documentaries, except it is too long to be sitting at that angle, and watching conversations on screen like you're at a tennis match can get to be a bit trying.

The movie, though, was great. I don't want to say that it was better than the original; it wasn't. But as an updated spin on the story, it was very good.

I had expected more creepy scenes (This is Tim Burton we're talking about), but if anything the movie was less creepy than the original. The Oompaloompas were...something like "Menacing" but not that, in the original. Creeping. In this one, they're just goofy. It isn't dark at all. I don't know if he deliberatly avoided being dark or what, but I think that it led to a few missed opportunities. Most notably, the scene where they're in the boat, a great and freaky scene in the original, is almost bypassed completely in this one.

Depp does a really good job playing a slightly differant Wonka. They mostly use that understated, converstional type of humor that I love, like Kevin Smith's movies or the Snatch and Lock, Stock etc. movies, and he's great with it.

The resemblance to the original Wonka kids is amazing. If anything, I like the ones in this one more than the originals; their parts are written and played to better effect.

Really, there wasn't alot of Burton. With one exception I can think of, the classic Burton patterns were nonexistant. The film was mostly very bright, and ended on a very positive, cheery note.

Anyway, I recommend it, and if you've avoided seeing it out of fear of what they've done to the original, don't. They're both good, and one dosen't detract from the other.

I can't wait for Corpse Bride.

psa

2005-08-24T01:23:00.000-04:00

School resumed on monday. This, combined with working a job full time, means that I probably won't be staying up till dawn getting shitfaced every night, which will lead to fewer posts on this blog.

My traffic's higher when I don't write often anyway.

And if anybody can explain to me exactly what a class titled "Discrete Math" will involve, it would be greatly appreciated.

Don't quit your day job

2005-08-24T01:11:00.000-04:00

Steve H has a post up about making money from blogging. Do people actually do this? Does anybody get into the blogging biz for the cash involved? Writing a blog for ad money is dumber than joining the army for college money, which is saying alot.

Blogging is a growth industry. There's more readers, but from what I can see, the number of people picking up writing blogs is exponentially higher than people starting to read blogs every day. There's what, roughly ten gazillion bloggers out there now. Even if you take blogging as a full-time job, you are going to have to be incredibly talented and, probably, rather lucky to get anywhere with it. And even then, you'll be lucky to make a couple hundred bucks a month off it.

If I ever took this site seriously, and if I got successful with it, I'd probably put ads up. I'd expect to make enough to cover beer, which, oddly enough, is roughly the same amount of money I get from the Army to pay for college. Compared to what you'd make writing a few articles or stories a month for a local paper or magazine, it's peanuts.

Blogging is a fun place to vent, or to practice and refine writing. It's sure as hell not a career, especially these days when everybody on the planet is doing it.

noise

2005-08-22T03:22:00.000-04:00

I believe I mentioned that my cd's were all ganked from my car a while ago. I still haven't caught the bastards, although I have some ideas, and I'll make those fuckers eat my "Cabaret" cd in very small pieces if I ever get the chance.

In the interim, I've tried several internet music services. The free ptp ones gave me digital herpes; more bugs than I care to try to erase every day. The pay ones not only cost money, they generally suck. I now have a bunch of mp3s on my pc I can't play because I got tired of paying for the rights to them on a daily basis.

I'm trying streaming. Right now, I have Punk Radio playing. They play an awful lot of stuff I don't like, but it's better than silence, and I maintain hope that I'll find the Next Great Thing there. Too much whining.

When I get bored with that, I put on radiopower's punk 45. Classic punk, much more my style. Good stuff.

That's what a very little research has yielded; when I do find that Next Great Thing I'll be sure to share it. Until then, other suggestions are welcome.

strangest story of the year

2005-08-22T01:59:00.000-04:00

This'll be major news for about ever (or, then again, maybe not), but this is the first I've heard of it so I wanted to share:

Orange County Superior Court Judge John Conley ordered 26-year-old Skylar Deleon, who once starred in the "Power Rangers" TV series, and his wife, 24-year-old Jennifer Henderson Deleon, to stand trial for the murders after a two-day preliminary hearing in Santa Ana, south of Los Angeles...

Miles off the coast of Newport Beach, prosecutors say, Thomas and Jackie Hawks were attacked with a stun gun, handcuffed and gagged with duct tape. After signing over power of attorney to one assailant, they were tied to the boat's 66-pound anchor and thrown overboard.

I hope he isn't the Green Ranger, he was my favorite. I still have my Dragonzord.

UPDATE: Don't trust the mainstream media! It's all a pack of lies! SOMEBODY ALERT HUGH HEWITT!!!!!!!

I was tooling around to try to figure out when he was on Power Rangers and how big of a part he played (to protect the sterling reputation of Green Ranger, and because it's more interesting reading than Instapundit), but according to this bunch of dorks, who seem to, unfortunatly, know what they're talking about, this guy was never actually a Power Ranger. At best, according to them, he might have had a walk-on somewhere. I can't find him credited anywhere, so it would appear that they're right.

Score another one for the blogosphere!

tilting at windmills

2005-08-20T03:26:00.000-04:00

A post about the hypocracy of fat, drunken, filthy rich, rapidly aging political hacks. No, I'm not talking about Limbaugh here, this one's for old Teddy.

It's an argument so old, I don't even remember when I first heard of it, but I still love reading about it: hardcore environmentalist and the original limosine lib (after his driving privliges were revoked), Ted Kennedy dosen't want to save the planet if it will fuck up the skyline from his beachfront mansion.

Goldberg scores some good points in this article, which is very much to his credit as this issue is older than the moss in Michael Moore's undies. The pros and cons have been gone over a million times, we all know what's going on here, and yet I loved this line:

let's be honest, it's not a huge sacrifice. If Teddy really thinks his fat — or, if you prefer, "phat" — crib on the beach will be ruined by the prospect of having to look at some windmills 5-13 miles offshore, he can swap pads with me.

Okay, forgive the white-boy ghetto phrasing early on. I just want to suggest that if Ted thinks looking at windmills from his palace is so horrid, he can have my place.

My apartment makes Abu Garib look like the Hilton. I've got screaming babies nextdoor at all hours of the night, a gorgeous view of the apartment building beside me (Identical to my own), air conditioners that haven't worked since the Carter adminstration and a heating system that is even worse, hallways that stink constantly of sandals and curry thanks to the fifteen Indian families that live two apartments down, and a nasty letter on my door any time I'm a few days late with my generously inflated rent.

And I consider this place a bit of a luxory. It's nice. A bit aging, but clean, decent neighborhood, fairly well maintained, etcetera. Beats the hell out of everyplace else I've lived in my adult life, that's for sure. But hey, if Ted is so annoyed by the windmills he can barely see on a clear day from his ocanfront veranda, then he's more than welcome to come here.

Sacrifices of the wealthy, and all that. Just watch out for the guy in 13, he's a bit hinky and he dosen't like rich white people.

fiscal conservative/foreign policy hawk/social liberal

2005-08-20T02:47:00.000-04:00

Prepare the trumpets, I'm about to make a grandiose statement:

I want a new Republican party.

It's odd, there seems to be an awful lot of people that fit the description in the title of this post. They don't take it too far, but they are generally, and I mean generally: fiscally conservative, hawkish on foreign policy, and socially liberal. I've never liked the term "South Park Republican", I don't know where it came from, but it seems to fit the bill.

But so far, there have been zero politicians that have tried to cater to this group. Basically, its a socially liberal Republican. But all the "Liberal Republicans" out there are liberal on the wrong issues. I've refrained from joining the RINO webring because, where I come from, it reflects a politican who is either liberal on issues he shouldn't be, or is talking liberal to get media face-time.

Coniser the biggest RINO's: John Mccain. He led the campaign finance reform bill, certainly not a fiscal conservative. Rudy Guliani: anti-gun, off the top of my head, and a bunch of other stuff. Arlen Specter: I'm not sure why he still calls himself a Republican. He's the right's Zell Miller, only boring. He hasn't agreed with anything any Republican has said for years.

Why is it so hard to find a politician that fits? There's certainly enough people out there, why no national face for them. Essentially, what I'm asking for is a common sense, secluar, modern Republican party.

Such as:

-Thinks tax cuts are a good idea, but dosen't want to cut all welfare programs. Encourages welfare-to-work programs and stuff to help people who actually need it, but wants to cut the ties on a life-by-welfare plan.

-Cautiously pro-war. In a general sense, someone who dosen't want to go to war, but isn't afraid to if the need arises. In a particular sense, Able to criticize the war when fuckups are made, but supports the principle and, mostly, the execution of it.

-Generally approving of gay marriage, or civil unions.

-Strongly against censorship, of either the Politically correct variety or the "For the children" variety.

-Pro-gun for the general populace, but very hard on people that shouldn't have them.

-Very hard on most criminals, with the possible (emphasis possible) exception of minor drug convictions.

-Tough on border security. Not to the point of completely sealing the borders, but making sure that we know who and what comes across them. This alone will win you every southern state in the Union.

What else? I'm sure there's more. Basically, I suppose what I'm looking at is a blend of the Republican and Libertarian parties, with even a little Democrat thrown into the mix. The libertarians have some good ideas, but they often take them to the point of kookiness. The Democrats have very few good ideas, but their arguments against extremism make sense. Sortof a Libertarian Lite, I suppose.

Really, what I'm asking for is a generally right-leaning politician who is grounded in common sense with knowledge of how life is in this here Modern USA. I don't want a party focused by religion or ideology, or overt hawkishness or dedication to business, or longing to return to a 1950's society that never really existed and certainly never will.

Common sense. Respect for people, no matter who they are. Reality, not hopeful (or hopeless) guesstimates. Is that so much to ask? I suppose so, as there isn't anybody out there representing those qualities.

Christ, who am I kidding, he'd get crushed in the primaries.

tolerance

2005-08-20T02:32:00.000-04:00

A question occured to me while writing the previous post, but I didn't want to interject out of context: who is harder on the "Moderate" wing of their party? Or, who has a greater tolerance for dissention amongst the ranks of their base? I don't really mean among the party hacks and politicos and talking heads; for them, any misstep is equal to treason. I mean, among people, and around the blogosphere?

I've seen alot of leftie bloggers castigated by the primary powers for getting out of line on a single issue. And I've seen alot of rightie bloggers make that same step, but the reaction seems...less angry? Maybe it's just the media I focus my attention on, but it seems that the leftosphere has no room for, say, a pro-life democrat, or someone who supports the war but agrees on all other points. Whereas among the rightie blogs, there is constant debate on the "South Park Conservative" vs. Traditional conservatives. That debate has gone around a hundred times, and is sure to come around again, but the fact that many of the major players on both sides of the argument are still popular bloggers among conservative readers speaks to...what? Tolerance? Laziness?

Ace is far from a traditional conservative. He dosen't talk about it much, but he is cautiously pro-choice. Goldstien and INDCent Bill both disagree with the party line on occasion, but I can think of only one instance of PW being seriously castigated for it, the infamous hundred percenter debacle, and the guy calling for fire and brimstone was pretty roundly criticised for it. All three of them, among other similar bloggers, are at the top of the charts.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see alot of that on the left. Again, maybe I'm just not paying enough attention to the leftosphere, but it seems every time a lefty blogger steps out of line he gets smacked, hard, by the big bloggers and majority of readers.

Am I off on this?

2005-08-19T03:32:00.000-04:00

This guy's getting alot of linkage because he declared himself a sudden Republican today. I wasn't going to link it; epiphanies, for some reason, tend to bore me. There isn't usually much to say.

But he's pretty good, contrary to my expectations. I've been trying to put into words my exact feeling on the "Kids" thing for days now, with little luck. I just rattle on. From Scott:

Guess what folks….they signed up to join the Army, not the boy scouts. Anytime your orientation to a new job involves an automatic weapon, you should be smart enough to figure out there’s danger involved

.

That isn't exactly what I've been trying to say, but its close, and its a clever way to put it.

Then, in the following post, he goes on to say that he isn't really a Republican true believer; he's just mostly so annoyed with the left that the right looks good by comparison. Join the camp, brother, there's alot of us here, and we can always use the company. Not a whole lot of people agree with either party 100% of the time, those that do are generally called "Ideolouges", and they annoy me also.

Really, I find it hard to believe this guy was ever a voting democrat. He makes too much sense to me. Look at this:

Was the war in Iraq waged under dubious pretense - possible. There were no WMD’s..as far as we know.
Did we unseat an evil dictator that was a threat to the US and the scourge of his own people - yes.
Has Bush and his administration dropped the ball a few times - it appears so.
Does the same administration believe that what we are doing is good for the U.S. , as well as the rest of the world? - definately.

Or this:

I think it’s just my personality that lead me to this decision. I think the left is too concerned with everyone’s immediate rights and needs, and refuses to sacrifice a bit of comfort and happiness in the present, for something that will make life better for everyone in the future..

I could've written those exact same statements, and I consider myself a pretty solid rightie.

Anyway, good work on a well written, thoughtful and fair post, and good luck to the author on his newfound republicanism; a lot of people with (R) after their name will probably still irritate him, but that's part of the deal.

the harsh reality of the American dream

2005-08-19T01:05:00.000-04:00

Editorial rewrite of this thoughtful column. Curtosey Ace's place.

Just beyond a stretch of grass where people lay with books and lovers, blah.

It turned out to be four men outside a cafe, blah blah blah.

The Starbucks logo of the cafe struck me as a little old-fashioned until someone mentioned that this was the first Starbucks ever opened anywhere in the world. That isn't really relevant to the column, just throught it was interesting.

I had come to Seattle because of a recent survey by the Centre for Economic Performance in London, on how easy or difficult it was to get rich in different parts of the world - or if not rich, at least move out of poverty.

"If you are born into poverty in the US," said one of its authors, "you are actually more likely to remain in poverty than in other countries in Europe, the Nordic countries, even Canada, which you would think would not be that different." This study shocked even me, as it flew in the face of all the facts regarding unemployment and creation of wealth. But surely, who knows more about life in America than the Centre for Economic Performance in London? I know that I, for one, am convinced.

Possibilities

The study, together with general anti-American sentiment which has become more prevalent since the Iraq war, raised for me a question about the American dream. Armed with this factoid, I ventured forth in to the hamburger joints and Wal-Marts of our inbred cousins across the pond.

I had chosen Seattle not only because Starbucks was created there, but also because Microsoft and Amazon Books and Boeing airliners all come from this small city. Dreams, if you want, which began small but are now global brands. And because they are probably one of the most European of American cities, so I wouldn't feel too uncomfortable, like I would, in, say, Texas. And because the pot is cheap here, and the girls are easy.

I wandered into the poorest section of town, looking for success stories. Surely, if the American Dream were to be found, it wouldn't be in suburbia, land of small business owners and up-by-your-bootstraps self-motivators. Instead, I focused, laser-like, on the people who, surely through no fault of their own, just couldn't make it.

"Great day, isn't it?" I turned to see the lined, and drawn face of a man I will call Dave. He was wearing a Che Guerva shirt and smelled of Patchouli; as American as Apple pie.

"Are you getting what you want?"

We had met a couple of days earlier when he was having breakfast at a charity for the broke and homeless, where he was protesting with some Communist party friends for higher wages for the homeless and unemployed. I had asked him if he believed in the American dream.

"The American dream," Dave said, eating a muffin and wiping his lips with a paper napkin.

"Well, it comes and goes. It will come again. As soon as we get rid of the Fascist right wing, and my communist brothers can begin creating Utopia."

Winners and losers

In a low-ceilinged eating hall, maybe 100 men sat side by side along trestle tables.

They had queued up since five, registered in case there was any work, then ate while security guards watched over them in case there was trouble. I don't know what trouble they expected from a bunch of drunk, drug addled, possibly insane homeless people, but I could feel the weight of their gun-toting eyes on my back as I waded into the smelly throng.

In Europe or just across the border in Cuba, they would get social security, but this was America, where society is starkly divided into winners and losers.

Strangely, though, there seemed to be little resentment or blame of government. This may seem a strange concept to educated Europeans, but American culture is about self-reliance and the individual fighting a way through. Weird, huh?

"The American dream," said one of the men, his eyes dartingly alive, his nose so skewed it must have been broken many times in different fights, a testament to his character.

"I guess you are talking about a home, wife, children and all that."

"Do you have it?" I said.

"No. No. I don't. I had my opportunities, but I lost." I wanted to ask him just how he lost those opportunities, but couldn't stand the smell of Thunderbird wine any longer, and moved on.

Pain

I ran across some construction workers, good blue-collar American types, and explained to them that I work for the BBC and asked them what they thought of their potential for reaching the American Dream. They called me a "Liberal Homo" and "Commie" and suggested I get myself back to Edinburgh, even though I'm obviously Welsh. They then gave me a sound beating.

Control

Just up the road in a small print shop, a fit, thoughtful former air force officer, Bobby Ray Forbes, was slotting calendars into envelopes.

In America, I felt a sentiment that the more say the government has over you, the more you carry a sense of failure. I considered the possiblility that this was obviously, blatently, patently true for a while, but didn't get far with that line of thought.

His life collapsed when his marriage went wrong. He had ended up on the street, but recently had managed to get a job and keep it.

"Oh sure, I have had the house, picket fence, two cars," he said.

"But I put myself in a position where the government could take control. Right now I am happy just being back in control. You see, what a lot of people do not know is that the key is not getting the American dream. It is holding onto it."

In Europe, the government is entwined with a lot of what we do, yet in America, I felt a sentiment that the more say the government has over you, the more you carry a sense of failure. My USAF friend let the government into his domestic life, and became a failure for it. This certainly couldn't mean that...no, no, nevermind.

Flag waving

At the landscaped Seattle centre, using cards and newspapers to shield themselves from the sun, rows and rows of immigrants at a naturalisation ceremony listened to local officials speak about various aspects of the American dream.

They came from everywhere: Britain, France, Iran, Iraq - the name of every country read out, to cheers, as if we were at the Oscars and, of course, the waving of American flags. I had to retreat to the lavatory to vomit, and when I returned it was thankfully over.

"Why do you want to live here and not in Europe?" I asked a young woman from Ethiopia, who tipped back her Seattle Mariners baseball cap and looked at me as if I were completely mad.

"Europe," she said disdainfully.

"What do they ever hope for in Europe? There they have laws prohibiting unhappiness. Here they have a law that you can dream to be happy. Now get out of my way, you dope-stinking hippy, before I give you another black eye. I plan to make that dream into a reality, and I have work to do."

five quirks

2005-08-18T02:20:00.000-04:00

A meme, via Ilyka. List five idiosyncrocies:

1. I can't spell "Idiosyncrzisnaiceas". Does that count?

2. I don't like people touching me. I'm very big on the personal bubble thing, in all circumstances. A little while ago, the clerk at my hardware store touched my hand while giving me my change. Drove me nuts. She flashed me a cute smile and let her hand linger, and I almost freaked out right there.

3. I carry a weapon everywhere I go. Everywhere, and the bigger the weapon, the better. If I don't have something I can kill somebody with in my pocket, I'll tweak like I'm on a five-day crack bender. Last Tuesday, I went to my local package store to pick up a 30 of delicious Pabst, and on the way out a homeless guy tapped my shoulder looking for change. I had just run out for my "Nectar in a can", and didn't bring anything sharp or that fires a bullet, so I had to kill him with a Kennedy Half-Dollar I had gotten in change. What a fucking mess that was.

4. When I bury a body, it has to be just so. The depth of the hole, the position of the corpse, even the brand of shovels I use. There's a special brand made just for gravediggers that is perfect, but that cute teenage hardware-store clerk gave me a funny look when I bought five of them (never know when you might need one!). I think she understood, though; after all, would she want me shoveling dirt onto her naked, mutilated corpse with an inferior shovel? Of course not! I'm sure she's thanking me for my refined tastes right now. Or she would be, if I hadn't cut out her tongue first.

5. Janeane Garofalo kindof turns me on. Not a lot, just, you know, a little bit.

che is just a pretty face

2005-08-17T03:17:00.000-04:00

I'm going to do this some time. Me, in all my German-bred glory, asking where the Nazi merchanise is; if they sell Che stuff, there must be a Hitler section around here somewhere. Somehow, I don't think that will go over so well.

I don't know how often Val's wife frequents head shops, but stuff like that is regular fare in the peace-driven market sector.

Sometime, I'm going to do a blog post on explorations into Pittsburgh's Southside. Our Carson Street is the blue-collar equivilent of Haight-Ashbury street. Lots of fun, lots of material there.

Unfortunatly for me, places like that sell a lot of stuff I like. Clothes and records, with all their attendant crap, are big ones. Artsy stuff and decorations are another. I'm kindof an artsy type, but once you walk into an artsy store, you are immediately confronted with all variations of far-lib propaganda. I just ignore it, but actually carrying a Che card to the counter and demanding an explination carries a certian appeal.

I'd probably just get my skinny ass stomped for my trouble. Those peacenicks, they can be unusually hostile to opposing debate.

But yes, there's alot of Che crap in every head shop, art shop, alternative clothing or record shop, even in some seemingly innocuous general purpose shops. I don't expect the clerk there to know what they are selling. From experience, a vast majority of people on both sides have no idea who he actually is or what he did. He's an icon, for whatever reason. Everything else gets swept under, and they won't listen to any other view.

more on those kids

2005-08-17T02:46:00.000-04:00

I just wrote about his recently, rather inelegantly unfortunatly. But the constant use of "Kids" and "Children" reffering to Soldiers really, really bugs me.

Phil Hendrie, who I have heard of somewhere before outside the blogosphere but I can't remember where, and who has a blog with the unfortunate title "George Bush is God", has a post about it:

To call the men and women who serve in our armed forces "kids" is typical of the Poseur Left. They know that by tossing this little emotional hand grenade into the discussion any hope there might be for a debate on fact, as opposed to hysterical rumor, flies right out the window. Who can not, at a moment like that, bow their head, and ponder ever so deeply, the meaning of children dying in a war.

Calling the adult members of the best trained and best equipped military in the history of the world, "kids" is an obscene insult.

And it's intended as one.

It implies that they are unable to decide for themselves their choice of career and unable to understand the very mission they're on.

Good answer. It goes on from there, but I like that bit.

blogger hearts me

2005-08-17T02:21:00.000-04:00

For some reason, my traffic went through the roof today. So, like any good little monkey, I tried to figure out who linked me. Dug through sitemeter, TTLB, and even bravenet, looking for who gave me this sudden flood of visitors. It had been so long since I logged into bravenet, they didn't even recognize me, I had to do an email verification to prove that, indeed, nobody else cares what my site stats look like.

Turns out, as far as I can tell, for the past twenty four hours everybody that clicked that random surf button at the top of a blogspot page landed on this POS. I don't know why. All of a sudden, I'm getting about twenty times what I usually get from those links. Of course, none of those people care what is on this blog, they read the first few lines and surf to the next blog. I've done it myself. So, as we used to say on weekend drill, I have a flood of paper people: They're on my roster, but aren't really participating. Which, hey, there's worse things in life; it works for the Army, then it works for me.

your kid

2005-08-16T04:35:00.000-04:00

I'm hoping I'll have time to work on this later, but...

There's another thing that is a spinoff of Cindy Sheehan's protests that annoys me, and it's pervasive.

I hate that the people killed there or serving there are constantly reffered to as "Children", or "Kids".

Yeah, they're somebody's kids. Strom Thrurmond was somebody's kid. I recognize that, at eighteen, they have not realized their full potential as an adult. They are still teenagers, and may be subject to the whims of adolescence. As many people are at 18, or 20, or, sometimes, 25 or 30.

But they are not children. They are well beyond the period where they need their parents to make every decision for them. They do not need to be coddled.

In many ways, they are more adults than many people older than them. They completed basic training. They showed up for deployment. They went out on the run that got them killed, because, for whatever reason, they decided to.

Reffering to them as "Kids" or "Children" is, in my mind, a disgrace. Saying they were "Sent" there, as lambs led to the slaughter, as preschollers are herded into the nap room, is absolutely wrong. It dimishes the sacrifice those people made.

They may be someone's "Children", but they are not Kids. Reffering to them in the diminutive is a ridiculous insult. They are not to be pitied as fools doing what they were told to do because they didn't know better. They are trained, intelligent adults, making the decisions they feel best, and they should be respected as such.

roaches

2005-08-16T02:06:00.000-04:00

I was just going to put this in the comments, but I probably shouldn't clutter them up, so it's going to get a post here instead.

The original post is about cockroaches, and, more importantly, killing them. I firmly believe that the only things to survive a massive nuclear war will be twinkies and cockroaches. My dad says they can live for a month off the sweat in your underwear drawer, which isn't a particularly appetising description, but it is an accurate one.

I can't describe how disgusted I am by cockroaches. I'm a firm believer that there is "Dirt bugs" and there's "Earth bugs". If you get a few earth bugs every once in a while, it happens. They're god's creatures, and all that. But dirt bugs survive on all the gross stuff humanity produces (garbage, poop, Michael Moore), and have an appearance and habits according to their natures.

I think the most disgusting thing on the planet has to be the hissing cockroaches, which I have fortunately only seen at the zoo. If there's anything more repulsive than a giant bug that screams at you as you step on it, I don't want to know what it is.

I used to live in an apartment that was known by me and my 15 roommates, affectionaly and accurately, as "The crackhouse". We had what you might call a cockroach problem. The fact that there was bunny shit all over the floor didn't help (different story), but generally, we kept up after ourselves and the bunny.

Dishes didn't sit in the sink for more than, oh, two or three weeks. We used borax, which the roaches laughed at and ate for dessert. Everything edible went into the fridge, which we figured was mostly safe. That included dry flour and our cigarettes. Fortunately, we didn't eat at home much, because literally everything that could be possible food for the fuckers had to fit into our fridge, along with the beer.

This is nasty: one of their primary entry points into our apartment was through a hole behind a broken tile at the far end of the bathtub. This meant that, every once in a while, you'd be taking a shower, the water backing up a few inches in the bottom of the tub, and all of a sudden a giant cockroach appears out of nowhere and does a slide down your bathtub like he's at a fucking waterpark and is swimming around in the water, trying to grab onto something not porcelain, like, say, your feet.

Needless to say, I usually jumped out of the shower at that point. I actually showered with a girl in there once, but somehow the constant checking to see if we had a six legged friend grabbing at our feet somehow spoiled the romance.

As I said, they laughed at boric acid, which we had a very attractive two inch line of along the entire edge of the apartment. They understood traps as nothing more than "Traps", and avoided them as such.

But see, we could've kept our apartment so clean that Martha Stewart would have been proud to eat fondue from our toilet. It didn't matter. Our downstairs neighbors were, to put it gently, at the low end of the white trash scale. It was a guy and a girl, the girl worked at a local adult book store, I don't know what the guy did except kick the crap out of the girl so often that the cops knew all the neighbors by name, they had seen us so many times.

They had a cat, and, if you were standing on the landing outside of their apartment, the smell of the litterbox was so overpowering some people actually vomited from it. I don't think they ever cleaned the fucking thing. I don't even want to know what the rest of their apartment looked like.

So, we'd find a temp home for the rabbit and bug-bomb every room in the house about once a month, and the roaches would take a nice little vacation in the shithole downstairs. A few days later, we'd have roaches swimming in our shower again.

On the average, I'd kill one per night. I tried to train the rabbit to hunt them. He was free-range around the apartment and didn't do much of anything useful, and he was bigger than them, so I figured he ought to earn his keep. Either that, or we could build a little chariot for him and the roaches could pull him around in it, which I thought would make for a neat trick.

No shit, I used to have nightmares in which the roaches crawled into my bed at night. Hundreds of them, crawling all over my body, biting my skin, all through the blankets, pointy legs in my eyes, streaming into my mouth, getting crushed by my teeth and seeping cockroach-goop onto my tongue, crawling live into my ears, nose and throat. Scurrying over every inch of my skin, climbing around inside my head, lungs and stomach.

I think, at one point, there was a King Cockroach, a man-sized bug. He didn't talk much, he just sat in the corner, where the roof had caved in, glaring at me ominously and directing his millions of subjugates to do whatever would gross me out the most. Of course, they didn't care about their own safety, there were millions more; I could kill them as long as I liked, and there would still be more, crawling across the floor from the darkness, up the bedposts, and onto my skin.

The solution? I moved. Then I got deployed, and eventually wound up in an apartment complex that would be appalled by the sighting of a cockroach, because the owners are big enough that a resident could write a letter to the local paper and do them serious harm. God bless the American suburbs; half the people that live around here only know of cockroaches from news stories, like coyotes or gangbangers. Something that only happens to someone else, and usually someone not as high on the social scale.

so wrong

2005-08-16T01:26:00.000-04:00

TIMMAY!

saw

2005-08-16T01:13:00.000-04:00

Didn't see this one in theaters, but I just finished it for the second time on dvd. Not really what I had expected, which is both good and bad.

I had expected yet another movie shooting for the title of goriest movie of all time. This one was surprisingly tame, by that standard; I had expected close-ups of people getting limbs hacked off and such, but they generally cut away from stuff like that. Low budget, perhaps.

Instead, this shot for a tension-type horror flick. It started out with what could be a great premise. The confinement theme has been done, but not overdone, I don't think. It requires fantastic scripting and acting to make it work; there's no distractions in that type of film. No fancy effects or tricks, just pure story and acting.

And that's where this one falls short. I give them an A for effort, but the final effect isn't so great. The acting by the supporting cast (including Danny Glover, as well as a wife and kid, and a crazy villian) was fantastic. Unfortunatly, none of that matters. The entire movie revolves around the two guys in the room. And that's where the movie falls apart, at the crux of the theme: Neither of the guys playing those parts were up for the task presented to them, and they weren't helped by whoever wrote their script. They didn't do a bad job, per se, but a rather mediocre one; and since the whole movie revolves around those scenes, it creates a rather mediocre movie.

I liked it, I enjoyed it to a certain extent, but I never got really into it. In a really good movie, the audience should forget they're watching a movie. In this one, the scripting and acting flaws never let me forget that I was watching a movie.

Overall, not bad, not good. A C+ effort, ranking the "+" only for original concept rather than execution.

link to

2005-08-15T04:05:00.000-04:00

Fred Schoenman (whose name I may have just misspelled), on general principle. The motto on his blog is "Give War A Chance", and he regularly posts polls consisting of a photograph and the single question: "Would you hit it?"

Gotta respect that. Also, he's a real milblogger, and a talented one, unlike this asshole you're currently reading, who is constantly getting bitched at for not being military enough, whatever the fuck that's suppossed to mean. I didn't get it while I was in, and I don't get it now, but this guy does it pretty well.

open question

2005-08-15T03:25:00.000-04:00

Inspired by the reactions at this post.

Let's play the opposites game. I do this alot while figuring politial questions: What would I say if the situation were reversed.

Consider these scenarios: Sheehan is camping out at "Bush's Ranch of Make-believe" in support of the war. Or she has taken up residence on Howard Dean's front lawn, calling him worse names than even Sean Hannity has dared.

Obviously, her political allies would be the same. But how far would her allies be willing to go to defend her? And how far would her enemies be willing to go to defame her?

How similar would the reaction of the right be to that of the left, and vice versa? Both the moderate poles, and extreme poles? To me, there lies several interesting answers there.

how to win a debate on the internets

2005-08-15T02:20:00.000-04:00

This, my friends, is genius. Genius, I tell you.

bodybuilders are hot

2005-08-15T01:40:00.000-04:00

Don't get it. A poll for the ladies: while you're sitting around the house, watching soaps and scarfing Ben and Jerry's, fantisizing about the man of your dreams, does he look like this:

Okay, congrats to him. Really, he has a compelling story: first officially recognized Mr. Afganistan. So good for him.

But still, I don't get it. Is that the height of the male form? I'm asking the women here, because I don't terribly give a shit what the men think. (Side note: gyms are big-time hangouts for gay guys. I don't know why that shocks so many straight men. It's true: that guy watching you in the mirror isn't just impressed with your squat weight.)

And granted, waking up next to that guy is certainly better than this guy:

I don't know. I don't get it. Bodybuilders of both genders just gross me out. But, to me, it makes sense for a hardcore female bodybuilder to less generally appealing; men prefer curves and, not to be read into too deeply, a bit of softness in a woman. (This is, of course, all massive generlization.) Men are suppossed to be strong and hard, and that guy certainly epitomizes strength. I'm sure he could bench press my Toyota if he felt the desire.

Maybe it is, as with many things, about that happy middle ground. Everybody prefers varying degrees of a certain quality in a mate; be it physical strength, emotional dependance, mental prowess, whatever. But the vast majority are turned off by extremes: Extremely physically refined or extremelly unrefined, completely emotionally dependant or completely cold.

That is, of course, assuming that every chick reading this blog isn't saying to herself, "I reached for my vibrator the moment I saw that picture." I think he's goofy looking, but then, I'm not attracted to men. So for those in the audience that are, what's the verdict?

Christ, I'm turing this blog into "Hot or Not?". Nevermind, don't bother responding, I'm going to go kill myself now.

more parkour

2005-08-15T01:27:00.000-04:00

I'm actually embrassed that this is primarily a French thing. Not that I'm going to get out of my comfy chair and try it myself, mind you. All those dorkwads that are trying to emulate the pro wrestlers and slapping each other upside the faces with folding chairs and stuff should give this a shot.

I wish (again, if they weren't French; the accent would fuck it up) that they could get one of these guys to play Batman or, even better, Spiderman in a movie. Maybe it's just me, but I watch that stuff and say to myself, "That guy should be wearing tights and kicking the shit out of some evildoer's henchmen, while throwing off cheesy one-liners." The poses are even right. The guy looks like pictures out of a Spidey comic.

ring the wine glass

2005-08-14T04:22:00.000-04:00

Sadie is returned from her trip to Vegas, with a husband in tow.

Congratulations to her, and sorry about that nasty post. I'm sure she didn't have a threesome with the Elvis impersonater on her wedding night. I mean, as sure as I can be, since I wasn't actually there. Also, I apologize about speaking ill of her Irish hubby, I'm sure he's a very nice guy that would probably kick my ass if I said that stuff to his face. Deservingly.

Seriously, congrats and well wishes. I'd buy a present if I could; a tip of the beer can will have to suffice. To a happy day, and many more to come.

a message to cindy sheehan, from Iraq the Model

2005-08-13T00:49:00.000-04:00

Stuff like this kills me.

Maybe I'm just an emotional type. I don't know.

I worked for a while at a police station in the sector of Baghdad formerly known as "Saddam City", now called "Sadr City", after a cleric who was persona non grata under the Saddam regime.

From the roof of that police station, you could see this huge apartment complex. It looked like the type of thing built in America during the 70's, a set of gigantic, identical, ugly buildings, like the buildings my current apartment is in. The only differance was that it had a wall, concertina wire, and gunposts; the area around the buildings looked more suited to a fortress than an apartment complex. But I always assumed that was post-war, lots of places had concertina wire around them. But the buildings still struck me as out of place; I have pictures of it somewhere.

So one day, I was standing on the roof of that police station, and I asked my translator (a very good guy; an english major at Baghdad U named Quasay, of all things) what exactly those buildings are.

He told me: The Fedayeen Saddam and secret police used to take people there. Once inside those walls, you didn't come back out. Everybody knows somebody that had been taken there.

That's a short version, and one of several stories I have about that place. But that moment was a dawning realization, a dawning horror for me: those buildings could house hundreds, maybe thousands of people. Taken from the street, from their homes. No reason, just taken. Read Mohammed's post, and think about those buildings.

because the internets are so wide open

2005-08-12T02:29:00.000-04:00

Steve got burned on a personal post. Read that link before this post; he lays out a situation completely differant than mine with the exact same results. I don't really do personal posts as much anymore. Someday, I'll get pissed off enough to do one again, but it's caused me considerably more headeache than it's worth.

It's understood that these here internets are an open medium. What will surprise you is where they'll turn up, and how what you'll say in a moment of indescretion will come back to bite you in the ass later on. Sometimes much later on.

I avoid stuff related to my life, except in the most general terms, from experience. If I write something negative about a fellow student, it's going to burn me later on. Almost guaranteed, even if nobody within ten degrees of that person knows about this page.

A big part of it is the way I write...anyone who reads my stuff knows I don't write for halfway. If I'm going for criticism, it's full bore, especially when there's an emotional component to it. Anything less bores me and isn't worth writing. That sounds like a bullshit excuse, and maybe it is; it's not really me, my personality, but it is very much my writing.

I've pissed off family members whom I generally have no problem with; my family has its incompatabilities, which are intensified in stressful situations, but it's never intended as a general condemnation.

Most famously, I spent a very long post on someone I used to work for, who didn't deserve all of it. Some of it? Yes, I think so. I think that there was some seriously bad decisions made along the way there. Problem is, I don't really know who made those decisions. One of the biggest things that used to drive me crazy there was the lack of straight answers, the obfuscation of the real problem. I don't work for them anymore, but I still don't know who made what decision and why. I do know that I was well within company standards, and have the paperwork to prove it if I cared to try.

But the manager that I focused on at the time didn't deserve everything I fired at her. I used to say, when I worked there, that I had seen bad managers in that place, and she was far above them. There was a rumor going around for a while that her boss was going to get rid of her, and I was one of the most adamant protestors. I stand by that; she, flaws included, did a very solid job there; anybody else they got was guaranteed to be worse. Potentially much worse. I consistently defended her against many accusations; even, occasionally, where I thought she was wrong. Because I thought she was a good person and a good manager who shouldn't be tripped over stupid trivial bullshit.

Sucks for me that the same bullshit I defended her against is what led to my eventual departure, at her hands. I don't understand or agree with some of the decisions she made; but I also don't know what exactly was driving those decisions at the time. That, as I said, is what used to piss me off to no end: I didn't know who was saying what and why; I didn't know who was making what decision or what their motivations were. Part of that is company politics, but part of it, I think, is very bad business.

Anyway, I know some of those folks still read this stupid moronpage, so I offer a partial apology. I shouldn't have said many of the things I did, I was incredibly harsh, and I wasn't a model employee. I don't think I warranted the treatment I got in many instances, and I remain unapologetic about them. But I am genuinely sorry for a several of the accusations I leveled here. It was irresponsible on my part.

New disclaimer: What you read here is a personal rantpage. It is often written when the author is under the weight of at least a baker's dozen of PBR. If you are personally offended, write me and tell me so, so I can explain my thoughts. If you don't have the energy to do that, then my opinion obviously isn't bothering you that bad, so get bent already.

It's a simple philosophy, and one I've used both personally and professionally: Tell me what's wrong, or get lost.

visions of starship troopers.

2005-08-12T01:58:00.000-04:00

I gotta get me one of these.

Ace also has some links up about politics and shit, that you should probably check out. I just skimmed 'em to get the important stuff, like pvc flamethrowers.

the best thing to come out of france since port salut

2005-08-12T01:23:00.000-04:00

Actually, I think this is pretty fuckin' cool. Crazy? Sure. But hard as hell. Reminds me of some of the shit Army guys pull. Be sure to check out the video linked at the end.

needs work

2005-08-10T02:26:00.000-04:00

The shuttle is a hooptie. I actually had the idea for that incredibly bad p-shop before I read that post, but it fits too well to pass up. I just wish I could find cinder blocks to put under it. Also at that link is a helpful description of every car I've ever owned.

The shuttle we're sending into space today is running on technology that would embrass your Atari 2600. The thing is an antique. We're sending people into the most hostile environment imaginable in a piece of machinery older than what most of us drive to the grocery store.

Personally, I have no problem giving any funding necessary to the space program. For me, the mountain-climbing explination of "Just because it's there" is good enough. But beyond that, research funded by the space program has resulted in many, many uses in the civilian sector. Scientific applications and materials developed by the space program are used daily in many items.

The number of problems with this flight is ridiculous. One news story described the ceramic plates covering the shuttle for the heat on re-entry as "very delicate". What? They can, apparently, be cracked by a piece of foam coming off the gas tank launcher.

Why can't we solve this problem? Here's an idea: coat the entire shuttle in Kevlar. It'll burn off in re-entry, but until then it will protect the delicate re-entry plates from extraterrestrial foam, for chrissakes.

I try not to offer my opinion on stuff that is way beyond my comprehension, and I am certainly no aerospace phycisist. But it is obvious, by any measure, that it's time to update the shuttle. Astronauts should not be spending their time checking the caulking between the tiles that will seperate them from ten gazillion degree tempratures while they fall through the Earth's atmosphere.

This is America. We spend a billion dollars a day on Cheetos. I think we can afford to build a space shuttle that I wouldn't be embrassed to drive to my local Wal-Mart.

not f'n acceptable

2005-08-10T01:22:00.000-04:00

I am generally a supporter of the Minutemen project. I don't know a whole lot about it; I live in Pennsylvania, which, not counting Philadelphia, has a total Hispanic population of about 15. This state dosen't exactly have a huge illegal immigration problem (unless you count the West Virginians that keep sneaking up here).

But I do know that our border security is, largely, a joke. No shock there; as I've pointed out, Americans seem to love the appearance of security, they like knowing that somebody out there is working on it, but they don't much care for the actual imposition of real security or spending money to actually do something about it. Until a spectacular failure of the security system occurs, of course, then it's all anger and recrimination.

Anyway, a bunch of private citizens getting together to help out with patrolling parts of the border, if it's done in the proper manner, seems like a good idea to me. It wouldn't be, if it wasn't so obviously needed, but as things stand if people are willing to volunteer for the effort to improve the security of the nation's borders, good for them.

A big part of the reason I like the project is that the representatives I've heard, on news and talk radio, seem like pretty reasonable, sensible people. From my understanding, they sometimes carry guns, but only for defensive purposes, and possibly intimidation. There hasn't been a single incident of brutality or violence. They don't have anything against hispanics in general, and have no problem with proper immingration. The problem comes in massive amounts of people of unknown origin or motivation sliding in, with drugs or weapons or whatever. Stopping that is a noble goal, and it is one that our government isn't doing enough to accomplish. It isn't extremist to want to slow or stop people that are great big unknowns from coming into the country illegally in massive numbers.

But only in that format. This, on the other hand, is absolutly, unequivocably unnacceptable:

See that Confederate Flag? Trashy, not acceptable. But not half as bad as the one next to it:

Us right-wingers keep getting all pissed off when the nutjobs at DU call us "Nazis" or "Fascists". And rightly so: nothing I say bears any resembelance to Nazism. For that matter, nothing Sean Hannity, considerably to the right of me, says bears any resemblance to it.

But this is ridiculous. I don't care if they just suddenly showed up with those stupid flags, they should've been kicked the hell out. The only excuse I can think of is that this is somehow a less-than-honest story, as it comes mostly from indymedia, not exactly the world's most trustworthy news source. But if it is true, as it appears to be, there is no excuse for it.

The people driving that project need to put a lock on shit like that, and weed them out of their organization. It dosen't really surprise me that they'd try to get in, but all they will do is corrupt a good cause. That kind of thinking is damaging to and has no place in any responsible organization.

Links via Lab Kat, via Army of Mom.

how to be sexy wearing a full body condom

2005-08-10T00:44:00.000-04:00

Swimsuits for strict Muslim women.

The thing I find funny about those pictures is that the poses are mostly the same ones you'd find in a Victoria's Secret catalouge. They're covered head to toe, but they're pretty women striking poses that, if not explicitly sexual, are certainly intended to make the wearer attractive.

Dosen't that defeat the purpose? We aren't suppossed to see these people as attractive; from my understanding, we aren't suppossed to see them at all. The swimsuits should be displayed on a hanger, or a mannekin, or maybe a beefy woman standing straight up, like for a mug shot.

Every once in a while, we'd drive past an exercise field in Iraq. Women in a fundamentalist Muslim society are, of course, suppossed to stay covered head to toe when in public no matter what they're doing. Some, when they aren't busy mowing the lawn or being beaten by their husbands, like to get some exercise. So they'd go down to the local running track and do a few laps. With every square inch of their body draped in several layers of black fabric. In case you don't know, it is very hot in Iraq. I think maybe it was an attempt at suicide.

But you have to admire that dedication. I can't get my lazy ass off the couch long enough to go to the air-conditioned weight room in my apartment complex.

er...

2005-08-09T04:38:00.000-04:00

So, I've been a bit out of the loop. But Sadie is heading to Vegas, and she's getting married soon?

Soooooo, is Sadie eloping? Is Elvis, or perhaps Vincent Vega performing the rites?

Because, if so, I have a whole new respect for her. Nevermind her crushing my dreams of a beautiful 1000 mile internet romance. Really, I think a shotgun wedding performed by a guy who may have looked a bit like Elvis twenty years ago is just what she needs.

And, of course, she's marrying one of those damnded ferigners. Bastards come to this country, take all the hot chicks with their brouge and IRA toned muscles, and leave us USA bred dorks in the dust. Kill anyone with an accent, is what I say.

Anyway, good luck to Sadie, St. Patrick, and the Elvis impersonater. I hope they all live long, happy lives, and that the ensuing threesome dosen't fuck up their marriage.

(More serious wishes when Sadie actually does get married. Or, again, maybe not. Depends which seems funnier at the moment.)

I also want to point out that while everybody else is on vacation and calling in the pinch hitters, I have yet to be asked to guest blog anywhere. Just because I write once a week and never write about anything relevant to anybody, I'm being discriminated against. Blogism! Help, help, I'm being repressed!

crap.

2005-08-09T03:52:00.000-04:00

Christina from Feisy Repartee signed off today. Personally, I'm hoping this will be a temporary reprieve, which all bloggers need to take every once in a while, and not a permanent loss.

Christina is one of a select group of bloggers I read for talent, for writing power, more than for subject matter. To be brutally honest, I don't initially care about alot of the stuff she writes about. But I read her regularly because she has the ability to make that stuff interesting, relevant, and worthwhile.

She's a blogger with actual writing ability, which can be a precious commodity in this stupid hobby.

If she does actually quit blogging, I expect to see a book out with her name on it in the near future. I'll accept her quitting this as a hobby; I hope she dosen't give up on writing altogether. I hate to see talent wasted.

this one kindof irritates me

2005-08-09T03:18:00.000-04:00

New York Times can't seem to find any heros in the Iraqi war.

I don't buy into the nonsense that everybody over there is somebody special, or some kind of hero, as Ace says. The vast majority are just people doing a job; even dangerous jobs are just a part of a day's work. Only the truly unlucky become real heros.

But it's awfully short-sighted of the NYT to be completely unable to find a single "Hero", a single shining light, in this ongoing war. Every day, Heros, in the true sense of the word, are both made and murdered there.

Ace mentions Timothy Haag. I have a story somewhere around here about a guy who took on a squad-size element of enemy combatants with his freaking pocket knife, and won.

I knew a guy that was killed chasing a shooter in downtown Baghdad into hostile fire. A girl that dragged her gunner's dead body back to their truck, in the face of direct fire. A platoon leader that dodged mortar fire across open desert to try to find an unlocated team.

Not everyone that serves is deserving of the title of "National Hero". What makes someone into a Hero is the way they perform in the face of overwhelming threat. In WWII, it was the guy that singlehandedly charged an enemy pillbox and saved his team; in this war, it is the soldier that pulls a friend out of immemmediate danger. Or a hundred thousand other reasons. Nobody except the foolishly brave goes to war wanting to be a hero; in real life, the Medal of Honor is almost always posthumous. It's the people that, when it comes down to it, are willing to make that jump, to take that monumental risk to save themselves and their team, that are heros. And they should be honored as such.

The NYT should call me. I could give them a list of names of heros from Iraq; people who were demonstrably willing to sacrifice everything they had for their team, their misison, or the survival demands of the moment.

But I personally know a very small percentage of Iraq war veterans; certainly there are people even more deserving of the "Hero" label than I know. To say that you can't find any, a single one, is not only stupid, it's insulting.

quick site note

2005-08-08T05:06:00.000-04:00

Just on the off chance: Haloscan seems to have done me the kindness of deleting all archived comments. If it fixes itself and you're seeing comments, great. If not, and you've left one here in the past few days, it's probably gone forever, which sucks. If you feel like it, type it out again, or let me know what you said.

i don't want him guarding me

2005-08-08T04:13:00.000-04:00

Half the Sins of Mankind says that he is embrassed to learn of this story from a Boondocks comic, which is certainly understandable, but I just heard of it from his post, so apparently I'm even further out of touch.

Reader's digest version: A guy working security at an airport is also a rapper going by the nickname "Arabic Assasin", who writes pro-terrorist lyrics. That guy, apparently, is currently standing in the undemployment line. Color me shocked.

There is alot of room for debate about what one is allowed to say off duty when employed for the government, and what stupid people will say for that all-important tough-guy appearance without really meaning to act on. I don't understand why threatening to kill everyone who could potentially be a fan of your music generates a fan base, but there's alot of things about pop culture I don't understand. One of the biggest sources of contention between the US and Al Queda is our lax moral code, which is perfectly exemplefied by the hip-hop crowd. Rick Santorum bitches about the exact same thing on a daily basis.

Fundimentalist Islam rap is like KKK rap. We hate you for who you are and everything you stand for, and we're going to do everything we can to kill you and everyone who looks like you. Now buy my records.

Anyway, the author of the above linked piece doesn't seem terribly bent out of shape by this guy's termination, but he does make one analogy I'd like to disagree with:

if Khalaf rapped about getting an STD from Mandy Moore, but consistently said in interviews that he'd never even met her, he should not be liable for slander because his rapping was not a statement of fact. In this real life instance, he says that he's opposed to terrorism, he just raps about being pro-terrorism in his songs.

See, that isn't quite right. Let's say I've suddenly become Mandy Moore. After spending a few hours staring at my newfound glorious naked body in the mirror, I am checking over my bodyguard staff. One of the guys has been writing rap songs under the title "The Guy Who Will Kill Mandy Moore". He writes lyrics supporting people who have tried to kill me, Mandy Moore, in the past. Specifically, he says "I'm gonna wait 'till we're alone / then I'm gonna cut her prissy head off / fuck her empty head / and the world will be better-off". Not only is that bad rapping, but it's just not kosher to say things like that about a person whom you are suppossed to be protecting. I don't care how much he swears he dosen't want to kill me, Mandy Moore, and claims that those (multiple) songs were just an act to look hard. That dude's looking for a job as of right freaking now, and he's getting a restraining order to boot.

Really, I doubt this guy is a serious terrorist. Terrorists don't run around screaming "I'm a Terrorist! Arrest MEEEEE!". But he dosen't have any business screening bags that are about to get on a plane I'm riding on, either. It's a standard part of government employment that you undergo a background screening; depending on the sensitivity of what you're doing, affiliation with certain groups is a big no-no. Specifically, telling people you agree with the people you're suppossed to be defending against is an huge no-no. Which, wonder of wonders, makes this seem to me a rare case of common sense breaking through the bureaurocracy.

viva le resistance

2005-08-08T03:57:00.000-04:00

I hope that's spelled right, my French is somewhat lacking.

This one goes out to all the wackjobs at DU, and most especially to the girl two semesters ago that wouldn't let me talk because my opinions are "Exactly the same as the Nazis'":

Der Resistance
Achtung! You are 38% brainwashworthy, 13% antitolerant, and 61% blindly patriotic

Welcome to the Resistance (Der Widerstand)! You believe in freedom, justice, equality, and your country, and you can't be converted to the the dark side.

Breakdown: Your Blind Patriotism levels are borderline unhealthy, but
you show such a love of people from everywhere and a natural resistance
to brainwashing, you would probably focus your energy to fight Fuehrer with furor, so to speak.

Conclusion: Born and raised in Germany in the early
1930's, you would have taken up ARMS against the oppressors. Or even
your friends' oppressors. Congratulations!

Less than 5% of all test takers earn a spot in Der Resistance!

Actually, I wasn't all that terribly impressed with the test; the questions are, perhaps by nature, awfully subjective. Having said that, I like that result, and hope I could live up to it in reality. Some of what they say is true; I am a patriot in the sense that I do think this country and what it stands for is the best thing going, I am willing to fight for it if need be (obviously), but there's only so much bullshit I'm willing to put up with. Really, I would be (and am) willing to fight for the ideas of America, the universal freedoms it stands for, more than simply for a flag and name. I hope that I would have the courage of my convictions when it came time to actually do something about it, under penalty of being ostracized, tortured and killed. Fighting in the German resistance is a truly scary thought, one that I hope I could pull off in reality but am terrified by just the thought of.

Test curtosey of Half the Sins of Mankind.

a few notes

2005-08-08T03:11:00.000-04:00

just found this blog: Half the Sins of Mankind. Tonight, I'm going to add a few leftie blogs to the blogroll. I've been meaning to do it for a while, I don't know if they'll get their own category (probably not, seems a bit...divisive, or something. Maybe great big "L" beside their name, or perhaps a hammer and sicle. Kidding, kiding). For, primarily, two reasons: One is that, in the conservative blogosphere, only the far-left wackjobs tend to get linked, usually in a sentance like "Check out these assholes". Really, we already know what Kos thinks. I don't have to read Kos or DU or Oliver Willis, I already know most of what I'll find, and it will either bore me or irritate me. Same goes for Powerline and some of the other right wing politicos, I don't read them much either.

But the vast majority (I think, or I hope) of lefties and Democrats, while they may agree with Kos on occasion, are not so angry and, well, disagreeable when it comes to talking about ideas. We may not agree, but at least we can disagree and throw childish insults at each other without anyone becoming seriously offended.

I used to work with a guy that was a hardline, far-left liberal and proud of it. He is, as he described it, a "European Socalist", in the grand tradition of Zapatera, and, I suppose, Stalin (heh). He was also a Poly-sci and Econ major, who had a much better idea what he was talking about than me on many issues, especially international economic ones. He respected America for what it is, not in a phony "I burn the flag because I love it" or whatever bullshit way, but as a country that had done alot of good but that he had a great many disagreements with; he was reasonable but we were often looking at a problem from two different perspectives. We had many conversations, nobody's mind was changed but they were interesting and we were still friends at the end. He didn't call me a Nazi, I only called him a commie pig a few times, and we both respected each other's opinions (at least, I think. He may have been going home and bitching about this right-wing dorkwad he had to work with, but it didn't seem that way).

Anyway, that's what I like to find. Someone whom I disagree with, on an intellectual level, that can keep it from becoming an emotional firestorm; and whose opinions aren't wack-job conspiracy-theory crazy. The two seem to go hand-in-hand, the more of a wack job a person is, the more likely they are to call you a Nazi or a traitor.

The other reason, and I'll try to keep this one shorter, is that I generally find interesting stuff to write about at these places. I enjoy reading right-wing blogs, but there isn't much to write about when I agree with the author. I don't have to do much. I simply say "Yep, that seems about right", and move on to the next post. But when I disagree with a post, I have to figure out why, then figure out if that's a defensible reason, and then, for my own ego, I want to tell him or her why I think they're wrong. Much more entertaining than just blithe agreement.

Anywho, it's a short list, for the moment: Talkleft, This is Class Warfare, and Half the Sins of Mankind. Two of those came from Protien Wisdom, the other from Sadie. Hopefully, I'll be able to add more as time goes by, I know I'm glossing over alot. And note that these folks aren't exactly Zell Miller; they're talented folks I enjoy reading with defensible opinions I happen to disagree with, and aren't likely to descend into name-calling within the first two or three posts. The biggest reason I'm adding them tonight is because I have some links from Half the Sins of Mankind I want to write about, which will be the next few posts here.

This also means I'm going to have to watch my drunken rhetoric. Or, then again, maybe not.

judgement day

2005-08-06T02:29:00.000-04:00

"Where the fuck am I?"
"Language, language. Most of our guests here don't really speak that way. It isn't exacly prohibited, per se, He only prohibits the use of His name in such a manner. But it won't really win you any points, I can tell you that."
The man gave me another few seconds of his tight-lipped frown, before turning back to some paperwork he had layed out in his desk.
In a way, I knew where I was. I had been here before. I was in bed, in the hotel room Melinda and I shared on our honeymoon, on the coast of France. The one that had cost way more than we could afford, but was right on the ocean and a short drive from Paris.
Problem was, that was almost ten years ago now. Melinda is dead, and a few minutes ago I was driving my car down I-76 in South Dakota on the way to work.
Since the man wearing the suit and speaking more at me than to me plainly wasn't about to tell me how I got here, I tried a different tactic: "Okay, then...Where am I, and who the fuck are you?"
That earned me another tight-lipped frown. He should patent that look. It was the perfection of exasperated patience.
In fact, everything about him spoke of perfection. A perfectly maintained suit, vest and all. Perfect power tie. Perfect haircut. Perfect teeth, that he had flashed at me often before I started pissing him off. Perfect articulation, vaugely accented. He was a blend of high-power New York attorney and tightass British accountant.
And he was still frowning at me. This time, I decided to wait him out, stare him down, see if I could rattle him.
"I already told you, my name is Azuvedizueial, and I am your defense Angel. Now, if you are through with the questions, I have some forms for you to fill out."
So much for getting him rattled. He pulled some sheets of paper and a pen from the stack and started toward me. I warded him off like he was about to hit me.
"You're my what?"
"Your defense Angel. I have been assigned to represent you in the High Court. Believe me, I wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea either. If you would like, I could have another Angel assigned to your case."
He had a gleam of hope in his eyes I didn't like. Of course, I didn't like much about this whole situation, least of all him. I still didn't really get what he was talking about, and I certainly wasn't about to sign anything until I did.
I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths. When I opened them, I wasn't back on I-76, or maybe in an ambulance after crashing while I was busy having this weird dream. They opened instead on this strange man, standing in my honeymoon suite in front of a gorgeous view of the French coastline, giving me yet another dirty look.
I tried for patience. "Okay, one more time, where am I, who are you, and what am I doing here?"
A look of sympathy crossed his face and he walked to the bed. Sat down. Put his arm around me. It was like he was trying to freak me out even more.
I jumped out of bed, when I realized that my work clothes were gone and I was completely naked. I grabbed the bedsheet out from under him, wrapped up it it, and sat down again.
This time he kept his distance, but he gave me a look that was all big eyes. Like the look cops give you just before they ask if you'll come ID the body, was my thought at the time, and it turns out I wasn't all that far off.
"John, my friend...You're dead. You were driving to work, when a drunk swerved across the line and hit you dead on. He was driving a Ford Expidition, you were driving a Saab. There was barely enough left of you to scrape into a bucket so the authorities could ID the remains."
Flashes: I was going in early to get a head start on a big project. It was still dark. Headlights in the other lane. A sip of coffee, and then had headlights in my face. A flash of pain. And then I was in this bed in France where what's his name was flashing his clean teeth at me.
"No, no, That can't be right. I have my daughter this weekend. The Ecktor account is due tommorow. I have to get in early to work on it, and I have to get home to feed the cat, and I'm suppossed to have lunch with my mom...and...and..."
"You're right, it's all a big mistake." My tight-assed visitor reached into his coat pocket with a perfectly-bored look on his face now, produced some sort of black pistol, pointed it at me, and shot me twice, dead between the eyes.
I don't know what I expected. What does one expect a gunshot to the face to feel like? But what I didn't expect to feel was nothing. Nothing at all. I flinched and tried to duck a full second after the bullets had passed through my head. I knew they had gone through, I had felt them, there were holes in the headboard where they landed, but I felt no pain. I slapped my forehead looking to find a wound, but found only forehead.
"Sorry to take such a direct approach with you, but I have a full caseload here, and I'm hoping to make a raquetball appointment with Gabriel later this afternoon."
I slowly pulled my hand down from the nonexistant gunshot wounds. I turned to look at my guest, and the pistol was gone. He was holding the papers again, with the same pen. He held them out to me, and said "Now, if I could just get your signature on this one, this one, and this one, and have you start filling out this quesionnaire, we'll be on our way."
Instead of taking the papers, I looked at my not-bloodsoaked hand. "So...then...I'm dead."
"Well, good job, Mr. Holmes. If there are any murders around here that need solving, I'll be sure to let you know. Until then, if you could just start on this paperwork..."
But I wasn't paying attention. Still staring at my hand, I asked "So if I'm dead, then this must be...Heaven?"
He actually laughed out loud at me. Slapped his knee, laughed like a jackass. "No, no, friend, this is a far way from Heaven."
"So then...I'm in Hell." I looked around, suddenly afraid, waiting for little red men with pitchforks to jump out of the walls and start poking my ass off a beach in France into a pit of eternal fire and torture.
My guest put on a serious face. "No, this isn't Hell either. If it was, you would know it, believe me. This is purgatory. This is where you are Judged."

...

I filled out the stupid forms. I read the first few, then skimmed the rest. "I submit my eternal soul to evaluation for entrance into heaven, blah, blah, blah." It was like the DMV. The worst was a two hundred question survey, consisting of personality-type questions scattered with questions like "Have you ever performed a Satanic ritual?" and "How many times in your life have you masturbated?" and "If you have not committed murder, please skip to question 68A". I wanted to kill myself, if I wasn't already dead.
I started calling my guest Az, because it irritated him. Every time I did it, he'd repeat his full name, and I'd ignore it. He explained to me what his role in my death was: I was in purgatory, and to be judged where I should spend my eternity; heaven or hell. The whole process reminded me of the one time in my life I had actually protested a traffic ticket. I was barely into the process and I already wanted to just say the hell with it, I'll plead no contest. Problem was, No Contest meant an eternity getting poked in the ass with tridents by demons with short-man disease.
Az was my defense counsel, it was his job to make me look good before the court. It wasn't a job he was terribly thrilled with, but he seemed competent enough. He told me he had been doing this job for almost ten thousand years now, which seemed a bit long (who was he defending before humanity was born?), but I wasn't about to argue with him.
"So...how does this work?"
Az smiled at me, a different smile I had already begun to recognize as one I didn't like. One that indicated he was about to do something that I really wouldn't like.
"Let's take the tour."

...

France was gone. In its place, I was standing on the set of "Night Court". The gallery was empty, the bailif (named "Bull" on the TV show) looked bored, the judge was trying to get the court reporter to pick a card, any card.
Az leaned over to me and said, "There's St. Peter, that blowhard."
I looked at the judge, whose name I seemed to remember being Harry on the TV show, and said, "Saint Peter does magic tricks?"
Az gave me a confused look at first, then laughed. "No, St. Peter isn't the judge, he's the bailif. The gatekeeper. A much higher authority actually sits on the bench."
Before I could try to striaghten this out further, a gentle looking woman shuffled slowly up to the defendant's table. I couldn't see much of the lawyers on either side, but there seemed to be some conversation. Az explained to me that she was a teacher, taught third grade for years, took time off to teach in Africa, for free.
Out of the blue, Az whispered, "Sick fucking sadist." I looked at him, but before I could ask what he meant all conversation stopped and the woman was lead to the left side of the podium. "Lead" is a kind word for it, "Dragged kicking and screaming" is more accurate. A door opened in front of her, and she was uncerimoniously tossed into it. Behind that door, I saw fire, and I saw darkness. I saw pain, and torment, and torture unimaginable. I heard the cries of millions of souls, crying for forgiveness that would never come, begging for mercy. Pleading for a glass of water. Screaming for the pain to stop. Millions of souls, damned for all eternity.
Az said, "Well, that was fun. Where do we want to go next?"

...

To be continued. Coming up: Heaven, and Hell, the Express Lane, and much more of the in between. Saints, sinners, and the other 99 percent of humanity. And maybe even some explination of what the fuck exactly I'm doing here.

more bird stuff

2005-08-05T02:53:00.000-04:00

This was going to be a comment to this post, but it was getting long so it's going to get a post all its own instead.

I've read alot about parrots. Right now, I would love to have one. But I have neither the time nor the space to bring up a full-grown bird, so I won't get one. I won't have one until I can do it properly. As the commentor points out, birds are not only much smarter than most pets, they can be much more difficult, and a few mistakes can be disastrous.

I actually have some family members that bought a parrot, an African Grey, in Africa, that had been caught in the wild. I don't know how old it was when they bought it, but man was it a miserable creature. It hated people, it had no feathers because it was constantly pulling them out, and eventually it died. I personally think that they were the best bird-parents in the world, but that's only my opinion, the critter may have been scarred before they even got it.

When I bought my cockatiel, I went all out. Bought the best cage, the best food and treats, and a plethora of books on how to treat the little bugger. Not only were the books, in my opinion, wrong on several points (after bringing one up), but a cockatiel is a much easier bird to raise than a parrot. A cockatiel dosen't have all that much brain-power, he'll learn to love you as long as you keep feeding him.

Anyway, that was sortof my whole point: the research is implicit. I've already read alot about them; I know that many birds that people call "mean" are only that way because of their owners.

Alot of people buy pets, especially birds and fish, as an ornament, a decoration. People buy them and then don't expect to do much with them; they are to sit in the corner and look pretty and play when their owner wants them to. Fish, generally, accept this; feed them every so often and they are happy. But a bird needs more, from bugees to Alex, they won't stand for being left in a cage all day long. Birds need interaction and stimulation, and the smarter the bird, the more stimulation they need.

Which begs the question, how would I treat a parrot? I already explained the lengths I went to for my cockatiel, which is a rather simple bird. But more importantly, around our house, the pets are treated extrodinarily well. The cockatiel is free from his cage 24/7. We talk to the chinchilla like he can understand us. The people in the house may be eating pasta for the tenth time that week, but the animals have good food. And they eat our food despite our buying them the good stuff.

The pets in our house are treated, really, like people; not like ornimentation but rahter like defenseless roommates. We take care of them as we would a relative. A relative that was completely dependant upon us for his survival and happiness; we research the topic and do everything we can to make them happy.

Occasionally, we may even go to ridiculous lengths. We have a tank of Sea Monkeys, AKA Brine Shrimp, that live like kings. We've read all the literature on them, and know how best to raise them.

I certianly wouldn't do anything less for an animal as smart as a parrot. If I ever was to buy one, it wouldn't be until I could give it what it needs. I'd read whatever I could get my hands on first, find a decent breeder, and do everything I could to make sure it is raised properly.

I hope I can focus that much attention on my children, should I ever have any. Birds are much more interesting.

god bless the us of a and, by extension, hooters.

2005-08-05T02:16:00.000-04:00

From Red State Rant:

BUXOM barmaids in Bavaria could be forced to cover up if a "loony" EU directive comes into force over levels of sun exposure, it emerged today.

They want their bar maids to cover up their boobs. Allow me to explain why this is bad for everyone involved:

Guys like boobs. This one's pretty obvious, but crucial.

Some girls have boobs. Some of those that do, don't mind flopping them around in front of guys while they bring them their watered-down domestic beers, if it means extra money. Generally speaking, they feel subjugated, objectified, and occasionally extremely offended, but they're making money off the deal, so what the hell.

The guy that owns said swill-house is making more money. Their swill-house has an extra added feature that others don't: not quite seeing boobs without a cover charge.

This, friends and neighbors, is the basis of capitalism: scantily clad women of loose morals willing to not-quite parade their gifts for men who are willing to pay to not-quite see them. Some of these people make alot of money; others lose all their money and wind up bums on the street asking twenty-something girls to lift their shirts.

That's what freedom is all about: freedom to waste your money, or your youth, or your decency (on both ends).

Well, maybe not really. I do think it's a damn stupid regulation; if men are willing to pay money to simply look at a girl's boobs...I won't say what's the harm, because I know there certainly is the potential there, but if anything it's indirect and within the control of the people, not the government.

There's a serious point in here. Honest. I wasn't just looking for an excuse to google pictures of Hooters girls faking doggy style (More of which can be found here, by the way.)

But the serious point seems to be somewhere else, so I'll just leave it at this: Don't let the government come between you and your boobies.

how to be popular

2005-08-05T01:19:00.000-04:00

Proving the theory, I'm going to link Ace's treatsie on how to garner links from important people, and stuff.

But his post is long. And rather boring. And, in Ace fashion, he has several extended caveates at the end that more blur the point than clarify it; just more blah-blah.

So here's the reader's digest version: Don't Be A Dick About It, Already.

Newsflash: If you run a rather small blog, big bloggers don't want your traffic. They don't care. They pretend like they care, to appease the little people, but they don't. The best you can hope for is a mercyfuck link until you write something useful.

Also, What you've written may seem to you to be the Greatest! Post! Ever!!! but it isn't likely they'll agree. So don't send them links every two days (Great way to get your email blocked!) to stuff you've written.

Much like in sales, target the consumer. For example, if I had a post proving Tawny Kaiten (or however the hell you spell her name) had a secret backroom session with Darth Cheney, I'd probably send it to Ace. Especially if all they did was rolled up character sheets, and assaulted "Mount Doom and The Villian That Sounded Alot Like Paul Anka", ending with Cheney, playing a 65th lvl Mage, casting a "Magical Nukulear Missles of Halliburton" spell on Tel Aviv.

That's Ace's niche, and I'd be almost guaranteed a link.

Having said all that, I've been blogging for what, a year and a half now, and my traffic is so far in the gutter that the hobo that opens the door for me on the way out of the bar won't even link me. My Grandmother, who has never touched a computer keyboard in her life, laughs at my sitemeter stats. So maybe I'm not the best person to be taking advice from.

Also, I've sent Ace some stuff over time that I thought he'd be interested in, mostly offbeat news articles related to stuff he's written about. Actually, I thought I sent him some pretty good stuff; Only once in a great while, never begging for a link, occasionally not even mentioning that I blog, just stuff I thought he'd like.

And has he linked me, or mentioned stuff I sent him? Nope. But that's okay. I have twenty four friends here to keep me company, all labeled Pabst Blue Ribbon, and they all say screw that Ace O Spades guy, he's a fuckin' loser anyway. He's what, a "Scriptwriter", with a blog? You know what a scriptwriter with a blog is? He's the guy asking you "Would you like fries with that?", just before he takes the meathammer from his boss hoping to be promoted to "Big Mac Manager", a fake title made up for the boss's boyfriend that offers the same pay but the POWER of being Big Mac Manager.

Oh, and also, like that stupid homo hamburger slut said, use trackbacks. One of these days, I'm going to start using trackbacks again, just to let people know I'm writing about what they said. But it is a royal pain in the ass, it takes almost two minutes I could be surfing the web for more stupid flash games to play. But you can bet I won't start using them with this post.

Stupid Lame Caveat: It's sarcasm, and a little bit of parody. Please don't leave links, comments or emails of sympathy or counseling on how to popularize this blog. I've never tried to popularize this blog, I don't particiularly care to try to popularize this blog, I may someday, but as of right now I don't feel like putting in the energy. I appreciate the readers I have, and if I sound bitter, it's because that's the way I write, and I like it that way.

Having said that, Mr. Ace O Spades is, right this moment, taking it in the pooper from some Hollywood exec that swears to him that Ace's screenplay will start production tommorow, but who only flew out to New York because he heard about this talentless hack of a wannabe writer with the tightest ass this side of a Hanson concert.

Like a Viking, indeed.

naughty little monkey

2005-08-05T01:02:00.000-04:00

I don't know why, but I love stuff like this. Bob Novak, on some talking heads program, told James Carville, after some really rather gentle ribbing, that "This is Bullshit" and stormed off the set. I don't know what the spin here is going to be, but Carville's jabs, given the forum, were certainly within bounds; much less than what any visitor to Sean Hannity's show is likely to recieve.

Actually, I've watched several clips with Carville, and for the most part I'm impressed. I thoroughly disagree with him, and I think he looks like a space alien (why dosen't that dude grow some freaking hair already?), but despite that he has been very smart and very personable. He does what all talking head strive for and so few can actually manage: to be both entertaining and forcefully informative, knowledgable but not condescending, self-effacing but still confident, he has a sense of humor but still gets his serious points across.

Mind you, this is all based on a few clips I've caught on the web, so I could be completely off target, but I like what I've seen.

very bad ideas

2005-08-04T01:18:00.000-04:00

What asshat advertising person came up with the idea of "We'll just stick our product out there, and let people write whatever they want all over it"?

The most collosial failure of this idea was Oliver Willis's "Brand Democrat" idea, where he let people type whatever they wanted into a poster for the Democratic party, with (bonus!) a picture of a donkey. Stupid, stupid idea.

One stupid idea begets another. At least this, unlike the Democratic party, is a universally loved subject: Digital toaster pastries.

cats and dogs

2005-08-03T03:26:00.000-04:00

As Sadie rightfully points out, the argument of cats vs dogs as pets has become somewhat overinflated. Pets are not People, people.

Having said that, I am going to bloviate on the subject anyway.

I think I'm more of a "cat person". We had one cat and a whole slew of big dogs growing up. A dog is the perfect sycophantic, prop up whatever loser happens to feed me type. I get tired by undying loyalty. Cats, as everyone knows, take a much more "Fuck you" attitude toward life, they consider themselves the royalty of their domain. Of course, they're just as likely to starve if their owner dosen't feed them as a dog, but at least they maintain some dignity about it.

Having said that, there is something to be said for an dog that will love you, literally no matter what. A cat will condone to let you near it, if you're lucky, but a dog will be by your side always.

I think I'm a bird person, actually. I like both cats and dogs, but neither are my sort of pets. The thing about that is, if you know birds, there is a wide variety of kitty vs. puppy types just in the avian species.

For example: we were at my local pet store lately, which had a pile of new baby birds. My girlfriend fell instantly in love with a bright white baby Umbrella Cockatoo, and it loved her. Cockatoos are the teddy bears of the bird families. They're ridiculously friendly; it not only sat on her finger for quite some time, it wouldn't let her put it down when we wanted to leave. Very friendly, maybe needy, pretty bird.

I, on the other had, was most interested in the single remaining African Grey. I think a Grey with a red tail is a very pretty bird, but they have a heck of a reputation. They are as smart or even smarter than many primates, learning not only to mimic words but apparently tell the differance in shapes, colors and other physical characteristics. They can also be very mean. They tend to bond with one person, and they choose who that person is. They can be notorious as either fantastic or miserable pets.

But if I were to buy a pet, that's what I would get: A baby grey. I'm currently in negotiations with my girlfriend to buy a Cockatoo for her and a grey for me, as soon as we have the space to keep them. Of course, we already have a cockatiel, who spends exactly zero time in his cage and can be very territorial, so we'll see how that works out. He didn't get the name Sid "Vicious" for nothing, even if he is a tiny thing.

Really, if we had our way, we'd have a whole menagerie: a dog, probably a shepard; a cat or three; the cockatiel, chinchilla and fishes we already have, and two parrots. And who knows what else. We can only hope that that indoor food chain can learn to get along.

in nomine

2005-08-03T02:09:00.000-04:00

Topic of the day: best movies of __________ genre.

This is the kind of thing that would be great to do if I had readers, because I'm sure there's a ton I'm going to miss, but I want to put together a top (at least) ten of Catholic/demon movies. That is, movies of old-school religion against some sort of massive evil force. Or, any movie with demons or the antichrist with heavy religious/ritualistic overtones. There's some that stick closer to the topic than others, but they all have alot in common. Probably not much commentary, at least right off the bat; let's see if I can come up with ten. In no particular order:

11. Hellraiser? Maybe?

10. Rosemary's Baby

9. The Omen

8. Bless The Child (Or is it "Bless the Children"?)

7. End of Days

6. Constantine

5. The new Exorcist flick, whatever it was called.

4. Amityville Horror, just because of the scene with the priest.

3. Salem's Lot. It was vampires, not demons or the antichrist, but a Catholic-driven movie against pure evil, so it counts.

2. Se7en, or, as I call it, "Seven". Again, not a demon, but any movie with a wicked evil serial killer based on the seven deadly sins qualifies.

1. And, of course, the top of the pile; the holy grail of Catholic/Demon movies: The Exorcist

Suggestions and comments are, of course, welcome to this rather scant list.

oh, canada?

2005-07-30T03:31:00.000-04:00

I was actually surprised to find that first-world countries still bicker over who owns which island.

How very...Victorian.

go figure...

2005-07-30T02:48:00.000-04:00

You scored as Punk/Rebel.

Punk/Rebel

88%

Goth

56%

Loner

56%

Geek

50%

Drama nerd

44%

Ghetto gangsta

31%

Stoner

31%

Prep/Jock/Cheerleader

What's Your High School Stereotype?
created with QuizFarm.com

I'm kindof a punker. Go figure. Who would've guessed, eh? Actually, in high skrewel, I think I was more of a loner type, or just a generic dork. I started acting more punkish toward the end of it, but I was more of a goth/industrial type: dressed dark, kept my mouth shut.

I was once asked to stereotype myself shortly after I graduated, and I said "Goth poser". As in, I think it's fun to dress up like a vampire sometimes, but I don't actually think that I am one.

I've changed a bit since then. I don't know what my answer to that question would be now...It is currently in determination. Here's my options: Corporate whore, Weekend rocker, or total white trash. We'll see where that goes; each has their benefits and pitfalls.

Scientific stereotyping: I forget exactly what my four-letter personality type is suppossed to be. I've also figured it out on more than one occasion. The latest one was through a book about doing what you're suppossed to be, which went something like this:

I answered a bunch of questions, and basically said I'm more of a loner type, that likes working with computers and logic problems. I get off on taking a complex problem, breaking it down, and solving it. I have very little patience for personal issues. I'm a very hard worker when I'm involved, but kindof a slacker when I'm not.

So this test, which I'm sure took gazillions of dollars to develop, told me: "You're more of a loner type, that likes working with computers and logic problems. You get off on taking a complex problem, breaking it down, and solving it. You have very little patience for personal issues. You're a hard worker when involved, but kindof a slacker when you're not. You should look for a job that fulfills these natural predelictions."

Well, thanks for that. An hour of my life I'll never get back.

Another post that reminded me of the same story: I'm sure the incredibly misnamed "Career counselors" are a total fucking waste of time. You would expect them to help you get a job, but they seem more interested in finding which type of job you should have. Problem is, if you go to them to help you get a job when you actually know what you want, they're useless.

I actually went to one at my school, but I went in knowing what I wanted. He gave me a few helpful tips, but nothing I wouldn't have done on my own and a few that I ignored as stupid. Again, he seemed more geared toward counseling, helping young heads full of mush figure out what to make of themselves, discovering what their Personality type is; than actually, you know, starting someone's career. Like I said: misnamed. They should be called "I'm fucking stupid and perhaps clinically retarded and don't know what the fuck to do with myself-counselors". That would be an accurate description. "Career counselor" implies that they will counsel you on your career, which is the total opposite of what they do.

credit where credit is due

2005-07-29T01:46:00.000-04:00

First: Oh, so you what, sit on your ass and keyboard all day? And you get paid for this?!?

Kidding, kidding, I wouldn't want this job either:

But do you have any idea how boring it is to transcribe a list of every conceivable risk associated with carpal tunnel surgery?

Christ, take me now.

Also, I've linked pages found via Ilyka a few times here, occasionally without credit. Because I'm lazy. And I know she's missing those one, maybe two hits. I know it's ignorant, especially to someone who has been very good to me. But, like I said, I'm lazy, and "Rude" follows "Lazy".

Really, I don't want to link her in every post, because then I just look like a follower, or perhaps a stalker. Only one of which is a cool thing to be. I make a point of keeping her webpage open on my browser, so she dosen't get like ten hits a day all from me. Sometimes, I sit outside her house and...well, you don't really need to know about that.

Here's something that's weird: she posted some text from something I wrote, and I didn't even recognize it as my own writing. I read through the post on her page, then went to see the text of the post she linked thinking "I think I wrote about this too", and it linked right back to my own blog. On which she had left a comment, days ago. Guess I should check those more often.

Anywho, many thanks to the authoress who calls herself Ilyka Damen for all the times she's linked me or I've linked her and I've been too much of a prick to acknowledge it.

I know this linking stuff is important, it's votes in the popularity contest that is the blogosphere. But I read Ilyka, generally daily, because she is really one of my favorite writers out there; not only does her head seem to work alot like mine, she's better at putting it into electrons.

So if you visit this blog, then visit Ilyka as well, and save me the trouble of linking her, already.

Cry Havok

2005-07-29T01:06:00.000-04:00

Okay, I'm on the topic of fiction. What I really want to write is a fictionalized version of a soldier's time in Iraq. Ideally, it wouldn't really be a story so much as a series of snapshots. If anyone has read Tim O'Brien's "The The Things They Carried", then you know what I mean. It wouldn't be strictly factually accurate, but mostly. And it wouldn't be a narrative so much as a series of scenes; jumping from critical moment to critical moment.

Start probably in mobilization, or maybe even in basic training. Then follow one soldier, jumping through the lengthy periods of nothingness to the key points, or key days, maybe a dozen out of a yearlong deployment.

There's several things that make it complicated: keeping the pace up, of course. Communicating the boredom that comes in the skipped weeks or months without actually describing them. And most importantly, making the reader feel the story, put him in the experience. Combat, conflict, service, the lifestyle; not only the big points, but the minor details. Especially the minor details, in fact. The minor stuff is what makes it so real both in my memory, and in a story. Getting across the small victories and defeats of life in a combat zone (or, really, life anywhere, but it's amplified in such a situation) is what seperates a hack from the great.

Unfortunatly, this project is probably beyond both my attention span and my writing talent. I am a moderately talented author, but I don't have the time or the talent for something like that. People have done it: Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, and Tim O'Brien come to mind. Their books communicate not only the things that you would expect, but the stupid shit that is so very real.

Anyway, I liked the title. If I ever do get around to putting some of my war-stories to paper, the title will come from Mark Antony's speech in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "Cry Havok...And let slip the Dogs of War". "Cry Havok". That single line, even taken out of context, is so evocotive; it brings to mind not only a literal image, but an emotional one.

That is exactly what I want to write: A book full of literal imagery, but also full of fury; a story that communicates not only the mundane aspects of life in the desert, such as, say, incoming mortar fire; but also the chaos, confusion, and havok of it:

The first blast was drowned out by Evanescence and Madden Football, playing on the bunk next to me.

The second took off the end of our building; spraying through the thin warehouse walls we were bunked in. A piece of it hit Jennet, three bunks down.

I had no idea what was actually going. We set up tents inside the warehouse, to create the illusion of a living space; I couldn't see the shredded metal or fire at the far end of the warehouse. The second blast shook me out of my Clancy novel. I marked my place, grabbed my helmet and rifle, heading to the tent door as a matter of habit.

"Not a-fucking-gain." That was Ritenour, who bitched every time we took fire. Outside the tent, the walk we usually took to the bunker was on fire. Fuck.

The truck. The HMMWV was safe. I headed to the close end of the warehouse.

Well, see, that's not really it either. The idea is that it moves fast, but still creates an emotional impact, hopefully even moreso because of the blunt, swift syle. I'm not really doing either here; too much explaining, too impersonal.

But damn, do I like the idea. I like the book. Now I just have to hope I can pull it off.

more fiction I'll never write

2005-07-29T01:02:00.000-04:00

Dark tales is accepting submissions for horror stories. I ran across this link, and immediatly stopped surfing the web and tried to start writing.

Nothing. Eh. Writing on demand apparently isn't my thing. Still, I'm hoping to come up with something before the deadline, and I wanted to share it with all you aspiring crappy-fiction authors in the blogosphere.

Good luck.

blogburst?

2005-07-29T00:38:00.000-04:00

"Blogburst" That's a new one by me.

Anywho, Judith at Kesher Talk is issuing one. Read her post, I don't pretend to know enough about the topic at hand to be able to explain it fully.

Actually, pretty much everything I know about the destruction of the first two Jewish Temples and the creation of the third comes form Joel Rosenberg's action novel "The Last Days". I think the author is Jewish, but being as it is a Clancy-style political thriller, it isn't exactly an authoritative source. (Actually, if there is anyone out there who has read the book and actualy knows what they're talking about, put me in some information here.)

My complete and total ignorance has never stopped me from writing about a subject before, though. I have to do at least some research, but this is an area that would be greatly served through further examination in the general public, fictional and nonfictional, from Believers and Non-Believers. I would like to write a piece of short fiction around the event, if I have an opportunity, and alot of the other more talented writers around the blogosphere should at least look into it. It is both filled with potential material and a current, relevant event, making it ripe material for fictional examinations from several points of view.

in answer to the question,

2005-07-29T00:31:00.000-04:00

I'd hit it.

officially one of the cool kids

2005-07-26T22:50:00.000-04:00

Another thing I should've mentioned long ago: I have officially been welcomed onto the Conservative Punk links page. I, like a dork, sent an email asking if they'd link me, first and hopefully last time I do that, and they were kind enough to add me.

Actually, the dude that emailed me was very cool about it. One of these days I'm going to send him a thank-you email, but I'm as bad at emailing as I am at blogging. Or worse, even, which is kindof a scary thought.

If you're a regular reader to this page, you will have noticed the link to them off to the right. I've also mentioned them several times; my little Johnny Ramone tribute comes to mind. There's other times, but I dont't remember when; I think the first time I linked them was when Graves called into Sean Hannity's show. Hannity kindof cut him off, I thought, but that's what he does, and the name caught me. Since then, they've been one of my favorite websites.

I think I've explained why I like this page so much; and why I like the movement even more than the webpage; I'm too tired to do it again. But check it out, especially if you're a Bush voter that thinks that Sean Hannity is kindof a douche-bag, or one of those few Republicans that listens to the Sex Pistols but can see the point of thinking differently than your favorte band.

a striking resemblance

2005-07-22T02:54:00.000-04:00

Smaller beak, add a crest, but the exact same noise:

adopt your own virtual pet!

The real life version, who is currently pooping on my desk, was trying to carry on a conversation with him.

I guess the pooping is maybe a comment on the duck's conversational style.

kids these days

2005-07-22T02:25:00.000-04:00

stolen from Ace, this bit of prose just won an award from a group of alleged educators in Australia called the "Multicultural Educational Services" :

I waken to the sounds of bombs. Women and children crying. Rubble. That is all there is to see.

Baghdad: once filled with beds of flowers and happy smiling faces. Now destroyed homes: destroyed families -- no peace, no hope ...

I miss my ma and papa so much. Images of their mangled bodies lying in pools of blood will never leave my mind ...

The back door opens. Two American soldiers. The enemy. The destroyers, who say they are here to save us. I hate the Americans ...

"Get them to the camp," the gruff one orders ...

A prisoner of war with nothing to live for except maybe to uphold the memories of my beloved Allah, my parents and my country.

To truly show the world what it means to be Muslim, I reach under my salwaar kameez and release the catch of dynamite strapped to my chest. Two minutes. Silence. THEN!!!!!

This kid needs treatment, not an award. Nevermind the bizarro fantasy of Baghdad before and after; fantasy is what kids do. But I thought we were suppossed to be keeping track of kids with violent tendancies and giving them the help they need, not rewarding murderous role-play.

People keep bitching about Grand Theft Auto, or whatever the violent video game du jour is, but acting out your violent fantasies on your own is considerably more likely to lead to actual violence.

If a kid wrote a passage of skinhead literature, he'd be sent to the shrink, possibly kicked out of school, and his parents would be getting a call from social services. Same goes for any social outcast that gave the slightest indication of violent fantasies, much less actually turning in a paper full of them. A kid who wrote a paper role-playing as a soldier in the desert blowing away every muslim in his path certainly wouldn't be given an award. The passage "I hate the Iraqi People" wouldn't be allowed to stand.

And rightly so: violence and murder fantasies are not tolerable subjects for school papers. That goes for all situations; "I hate muslims" and "I hate American Soldiers" are equally unnacceptable; either one should be punished or, at the very least, questioned closely. Certainly neither should be rewarded, and any educator who smiles on that kind of writing shouldn't be allowed anywhere near any children.

this is what we mean when we say "far left"

2005-07-11T17:50:00.000-04:00

I haven't looked around the webpage that much, but I don't think this is a parody. It seems like this guy is for real:

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- (OfficialWire) -- 07/05/05 -- America, for some reason perhaps only known to its own people, if at all, possesses an unhealthy fascination with aggression, violence and destruction. Not merely limited to television programs, attacks against defenseless sovereign nations and the torturing of innocent prisoners, Americans yesterday unleashed their hostility on a comet—Tempel 1—which the nation of soccer-moms and menacing war-leaders has had ‘their eye’ on since 1867.

If it's a parody, it's a good one. If not, and it dosen't seem like it is, this guy and most of the folks that write there should seek professional help, the sooner the better.

Link curtosey of that Great American, Liberal Larry.

suggestions for a temproary bachelor

2005-07-09T05:18:00.000-04:00

My girlfriend, who is also my roomate (read: unofficial wife) just left on vacation for over a week with her family. She will be alternately miserable and relaxed: trapped in a house with her entire extended family, but hanging out on a beach with absolutely no work or other real-life responsibilities. It isn't exactly idyllic, but it is, at least, a vacation.

I, on the other hand, can't go. For the next week, it's just me and the pet bird, keeping each other company.

So, what are some ideas for activities for a sudden, temproary bachelor?

When the cat's away, the mice will play, right? Well, I would really like to work some playtime and relaxation into my looser schedule, but I still have a full time work schedule to keep up with, and a killer school schedule. I'm hoping I can get caught up on some latent schoolwork over the next week, actually.

Other than that, my plans basically involve alot of drinking. That's about it. I may spend one night at a bar alone, looking like the lonely dork in the corner. That won't last long. I'm actually considering buying a new video game, just to occupy time. Hang out with my dad, maybe visit my brother.

But other than that, I've got nothing. So what's a guy supposed to do, when faced with a week of empty hours, but not enough of them to add up to real time? Time consuming and interesting suggestions are welcome in the space below.