Swamped
I wanted to post something quickly, though it will be nothing more than filler. My manager is back after being on vacation, so I am insanely busy as she catches up on everything. Also, I need to spend a lot of time this week working on my resume, since I just saw a classified ad for a job I would like to have. As such, I may not have anything substantial to post over the next few days. I will return Wednesday night, or Thursday at the latest to rant about Bush's State of the Union Address. I'm sure that his speech will piss me off in one way or another.
Anyone want to start taking bets on which country he'll be declaring war on? I'm going to say Iran, but maybe he'll surprise us and add Canada to the Axis of Evil.
Oh, Chuck...
"I've developed a new philosophy . . . I only dread one day at a time."
-----------------Charlie Brown
I'm not sure if anyone cares that I stole the above image, but I'm pretty sure it falls under the "fair use" rule. Meh.
I am so glad this week is almost over. I have to pick Mary up from the airport tomorrow. She's been in Mexico all week, where it's 85°F all day. It figures that the day she left we got what they are calling "The Blizzard of 2005" (and I consider it extremely bad luck that they are calling it that. Now we'll probably get several more blizzards.) It's also been the coldest week of the winter so far, so I'm even more jealous that she's in a warm place.
I really miss her, even though it's only been a few days. We broke up several months ago, but we've remained good friends. Since I moved so far to be close to her, I don't have very many friends around here (I do have a couple of friends though, so I'm not a total loser). Here is where I might have started to whine about how I'm still in love with her, but I actually feel like I'm getting over her. Of course, if she were to change her mind...
At any rate, I need to start meeting new people around here. I'm not into the bar scene, so I don't know what to do. Maybe I'll become a born again Christian so I can meet people through church groups. They might have a problem with my worshipping Satan, however. Is it okay to worship both God and Satan? I figure I could hedge my bets that way so I'd be welcomed with open arms in whatever kingdom I end up in when I die.
On second thought, Christians are too screwy for me. Ha! Just kidding. Some of my best friends are Christian. I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to offend an entire group of people. I'm fairly agnostic in that I don't feel qualified to say if there is or isn't a God. I mean, who am I to say? It's sort of an unknown unknown, as Donald Rumsfeld might say. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Rumsfeldism I'm referring to, here 'tis:
"As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know."
—Donald Rumsfeld at a Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing
Okay, that's it for now. I just had to re-type this entire post. I had finished, then I highlighted it to copy it before attempting to publish it, and all of a sudden I lost everything. Very annoying.
Number 9
Work was somewhat slow today, so I had some downtime between tasks to play around on the internet. Using
Technorati, I found a site which linked to
my post on the SpongeBob absurdity (click
here, then click the number nine if you care to see where the link appears). It's cool to see that a couple more people may have read it that wouldn't have otherwise. I also discovered that my profile is
number 2 on Google if you search under skrambled. Pretty good for a somewhat randomly invented username.
Like I said, work was pretty slow today. My manager is on vacation, and most of the work I do comes directly from her. With her gone there is much less to be done. She'll be back next week, so I won't be able to spend nearly as much time surfing the net (I may not be posting as consistently as I have for the last couple of weeks either).
At any rate, I don't have anything profound to say at the moment. Tomorrow is Friday, and that is a good thing. This week's been going by painfully slowly and I'm ready for it to be over. I may return later if I have the same sort of insomnia that I've had all week.
A Few Observations (a.k.a., Still Ranting)
You can always tell if a person is a member of the Cult of Bush by their words. Any time you see a politician or right-wing hack speaking in support of Bush on the news, they all seem to repeat the same words and phrases over and over and they all speak as though they share a singular mind, like the
Borg (but without the intelligence). They hammer away at whatever their talking point for the day is, without ever answering the real questions. You do have to give them credit though, as they are quite good at manipulating American media by staying so consistently "on message." (even though the message is so consistently wrong, false, misleading, etc.)
There is one phrase which stands out in particular, as the Cult uses it relentlessly: "The President has said..." Any time they are asked to explain why Bush was so wrong about such things as WMD's and ties to Al Qaida, they dodge the question and say something like, "If you look at what the President has said, _____________"(and here you can insert whatever the party line is, such as, "the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power, and he still says it was the right thing to do.").
And even though members of the Cult usually fail to answer the question that was asked, the mainstream press and cable news reports the story as: "The President has said that he believes the world is better off without Saddam in power, and he still believes that it was the right thing to do." The constant repetition of such phrases by the Cult infects mainstream media to the point that they repeat the phrase without even noticing that it was planted there.
"The President has said
The President has said
The President has said
The President has said
The President has said
The President has said
The President has said
The President has said..."
...ummmm, yeah, it's having a hypnotic effect on me...all of a sudden permanent tax cuts sound like a great idea, even though we are running
massive deficits...
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...Okay, so I had to get that out of my system. I usually try to switch it up from day to day so I'm not just ranting about politics constantly. I've kind of been in a winter funk, so it was either ranting about politics or whining about things in my life that I'm not happy about at the moment. I've decided that posting depressing pieces doesn't necessarily help me feel better when I'm down, and that trying to channel that negative energy into positive thoughts is far better for my well being.
Winter has been brutal here for the last couple of weeks. The chindchill has been hovering at -10°F to -20°F for a couple of weeks. We got two feet of snow Saturday night, then from last night to tonight we got about 8 inches more. I like this time of year, but it can be tough when the weather is this harsh. I think I just need to go skiing this weekend. Yes, that's the answer.
That's it for now, I need to clean my refrigerator out----especially the milk that expired on December 26th. Oops.
Just One More Thing...Seriously This Time
Okay, I thought I was done with the political rants for the day, but I ran into
this story (
this was the original story from last July) which makes it seem a lot less surprising that Prime Minister
Allawi would be involved in torturing prisoners. Last July he allegedly executed six insurgents inside a Bagdhad police station. Holy crap. The story barely got reported when it was first mentioned last year, but a Jordanian government official claimed last week that the story was confirmed to him by an American official.
I don't know much about Allawi, except what I've read, and I can't claim to understand what life is like in a warzone, so I'm not going to offer any comment on it. Maybe he's exactly the kind of leader Iraq needs (if in fact they need a gangster for a leader). Who am I to say?
Some Things Never Change
I don't mean to dwell on the subject of torture, but it's kind of hard not to these days. The US senate is about to confirm
Alberto Gonzales, whose legal advice led to the prisoner abuse (read: torture) scandal. There are all kinds of normally sane people trying to justify situations where it might be okay to torture a prisoner. How did the United Statesever allow such a demented logic to take hold?
Today there is
this report on MSNBC, which states that Human Rights Watch is releasing a report today which says that torture is still routine in Iraq, and that the government of Ayad Allawi is either actively taking part in torture or is "complicit". It seems that many Iraqi policemen, jailers, intelligence agents, and others are the same people that worked for Saddam. It should therefore be no surprise that they are stringing prisoners up by their wrists, giving out savage beatings, and using electric shocks on genitals.
As human beings, we should all be apalled that this continues to happen. Is this the sort of freedom and liberty America offers to the world? Even the FBI says that torture is not an effective way to gain information. There are better ways of extracting information than by torturing someone. You could torture an Iraqi to the point of him confessing to the Kennedy assassination, but it doesn't mean he did it.
Is it okay to torture 1,000 people if one of them gives up valuable information? What if that 1,000 people included your mother? What if the government spent hours applying electric shocks to your mother's genitals and she didn't have any information? The line has to be drawn somewhere, and as far as I'm concerned that line is drawn where torture begins.
So why does the Bush administration seem to have a fetish for torture? Because they rely on fear in everything they do, and they think that if they can continue to inspire fear, they can do anything they want to. Fear got Bush re-elected (you know, because the terrorists wanted Kerry to win, as Cheney said so many times), fear passed the Patriot Act, fear let people fall for the lies of the Bush administration on pre-war Iraq. The list goes on and on.
That's it for now. I'm disgusted. I'll return later with something non-political.
Shaftsbury Avenue
Gielgud Marquee
Gielgud Marquee
Stabbed at the Gielgud
I just read
this story, which says someone attacked Christian Slater with a knife outside the Gielgud Theater in London. Thankfully, he survived the attack. He's been playing the part of R.P. MacMurphy in a production of
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which Mary and I saw when we were in London for a week last September. Slater was fucking incredible in it. I can't imagine anyone better in a role played by Jack Nicholson in his youth. They did an amazing job with the whole production. I'll post a couple of pictures of the Gielgud that I took.
It's Fun to be Negative
Spooky
hmmm...let's see...I know I parked somewhere around here...
Buried alive.
Uh Oh
The forecast keeps changing, but as of right now it appears that the area I'm in could get up to two feet of snow by 6:00 tomorrow night. We're already buried right now, and it's only just begun. I'm glad I stayed in tonight, though I am a bit bored. I just watched UConn choke against Pitt after being up by almost 20 points, which was quite a disappointment.
I think tomorrow I'll try to get some pictures of the blizzard to post here. They've posted a blizzard warning until 6:00 tomorrow, which is kind of scary. Normally, if they aren't sure what will happen, they'll issue an "advisory". When they use the word "warning," it basically means they know that we're going to get slammed.
Okay, I'm off to bed pretty soon. I half to make up for the two hours of sleep I got last night.
Another Snowy Day at the Overlook Hotel
Oh man, this sucks. We're supposed to get about a foot and a half of snow tonight. It's also the coldest day of the winter so far (it was -4°F this morning, without the wind chill). I'll be stuck inside all night, so I'll likely be posting extensively tonight.
I heard
this story and I had to laugh. One inch of snow caused the entire Raleigh-Durham area to shut down. The people there aren't used to it, so apparently it was a disaster. I went to school in Greensboro, NC for a year, which isn't far Raleigh, and the people there would freak out over the least bit of flurries too.
They handle the roads a lot better up north, but we definitely have our share of jackass drivers. My favorites are the SUV drivers who don't realize that four wheel drive doesn't help you stop when you're on a sheet of ice. There are so many people who've bought SUV's over the last few years because they're trendy. Most of them don't understand that the four wheel drive is helpful for not getting stuck, not for going 70 miles an hour on a snow blanketed road.
The safest thing to do in this crap is to sit home with some movies, PS2, coffee, wine, etc. I'm off to watch Taxi Driver now...
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...still stuck inside. Watched the movie. I forgot how awkward the first half of the movie is. It starts so slowly, until at a certain moment where DeNiro's character just starts getting creepier and creepier. It's such a weird movie.
At any rate, I am Charles VI of France:
Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.
You are Charles VI of France, also known as Charles the Mad or Charles the Well-Beloved!
A fine, amiable and dreamy young man, skilled in horsemanship and archery, you were also from a long line of dribbling madmen. King at 12 and quickly married to your sweetheart, Bavarian Princess Isabeau, you enjoyed many happy months together before either of you could speak anything of the other's language. However, after illness you became a tad unstable. When a raving lunatic ran up to your entourage spouting an incoherent prophecy of doom, you were unsettled enough to slaughter four of your best men when a page dropped a lance. Your hair and nails fell out. At a royal masquerade, you and your courtiers dressed as wild men, ending in tragedy when four of them accidentally caught fire and burned to death. You were saved by the timely intervention of the Duchess of Berry's underskirts.
This brought on another bout of sickness, which surgeons countered by drilling holes in your skull. The following months saw you suffer an exorcism, beg your friends to kill you, go into hyperactive fits of gaiety, run through your rooms to the point of exhaustion, hide from imaginary assassins, claim your name was Georges, deny that you were King and fail to recognise your family. You smashed furniture and wet yourself at regular intervals. Passing briefly into erratic genius, you believed yourself to be made of glass and demanded iron rods in your attire to prevent you breaking.
In 1405 you stopped bathing, shaving or changing your clothes. This went on until several men were hired to blacken their faces, hide, jump out and shout "boo!", upon which you resumed basic hygiene. Despite this, your wife continued sleeping with you until 1407, when she hired a young beauty, Odette de Champdivers, to take her place. Isabeau then consoled herself, as it were, with your brother. Her lovers followed thick and fast while you became a pawn of your court, until you had her latest beau strangled and drowned.
A severe fever was fended off with oranges and pomegranates in vast quantities, but you succumbed again in 1422 and died. Your disease was most likely hereditary. Unfortunately, you had anywhere up to eleven children, who variously went on to develop capriciousness, great cruelty, insecurity, paranoia, revulsion towards food and, in one case, a phobia of bridges.
"..all my brothers, sisters, and me..."
Many thanks to
Forgotten Machine for pointing out
this story (
here is an updated story). I just have to comment on this one. It seems that some bible thumpers are up in arms over the audacity a certain group had in declaring that we should tolerate and respect everyone regardless of their race, abilities, beliefs, or sexual preferences (obviously it was the sexual preferences that set them off). This "christian" (intentionally lowercase) group claims that SpongeBob SquarePants is being used in a video that promotes a homosexual agenda. What's really funny about this whole thing is that the group seems to have done some poor research which led them to their conclusions.
The group that produced the video is called the We Are Family Foundation (WAFF). The video doesn't have any reference to homosexuality (except that it has SpongeBob in it, and these religious kooks think that he's gay). WAFF has a statement on
their website which encourages people to accept people of all backgrounds, including homosexuals.
But here's the funny part: there are actually two groups using the name "We Are Family." One of them is a homosexual rights group who's website is
www.waf.org. They are not the same group as the WAFF, who's website is
www.wearefamilyfoundation.org. WAFF is more focused on racial diversity, but they want tolerance and acceptance for everyone. Whichever right wing nutjob started this controversy likely looked at the wrong web page as they did their research. I just did a search on Google and saw about ten "christian" web sites which attributed the mission statement of the gay organization to WAFF. Morons.
I don't know what bible these so-called "christians" read, but I remember the version I read when I was growing up saying something about "love thy neighbor." The only chapter in the bible to say anything against homosexuality is in
Leviticus, which also says that you should be put to death for adultery, as well as for cursing at your parents, among many other situations.
Teaching children that gay people deserve the same respect as everyone else is not the same as encouraging kids to become gay. It's that simple.
Attack of the Blog
Oh, man. That's funny. To give credit where it's due, it's from
this t-shirt website. I stole the idea from
Daily Kos, which also had the picture posted today.
Okay, no time to write at the moment. I shall return later if I can find time to write before the season premier of The Apprentice tonight.
God Damn You Blogger!!!
Oh man, I am so annoyed. Blogger is really acting up today. It keeps freezing up on me and giving me error messages. I ran into trouble trying to post a comment earlier, and later I lost about 1000 words that I wrote for the below post. Luckily I had copied it halfway through, so I didn't lose the whole thing. I just tried to edit the post, but it froze up again.
If anyone reading this has had trouble today, please leave a comment and let me know. I'm curious if the problem has to do with the network I'm on right now or if the problem is on Blogger's end (which is far more likely).
My Lopsided Smile
Well, it's another slow day at work today, so I have been spending a lot of time reading through other people's blogs. I'll probably have to keep this post short, as I sliced one of my fingers open yesterday on a file here in the office and I now have a huge bandage on it which is making it difficult to type. Someone should try to market a brand of files with dull edges that don't slice your fingertips open so easily. I'd go out of my way to buy them.
I don't have too much to write about at the moment, so I thought I would tell a story about something that happened to me. I was just looking at a fairly recent picture of me, and I noticed that my smile is still a little bit lopsided. Most people wouldn't notice, but anytime I see my picture I can tell. If you were to cut my face down the middle, and you looked at either side separately, you would see that one half would be bright and smiling, and the other half would have a blank, muted expression. It's not as noticeable as it was a few years ago, but it's still there.
It happened when I was studying in London for a semester in the spring of 1998. I was at the
Barbican Theater watching a production of Hamlet by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Hamlet has always been one of my favorites from Shakespeare, but I was annoyed because I didn't know beforehand that it was a modernized version of it, set in the first half of the 20th century with a jazz / big band theme. I really hate Shakespeare plays set in modern times. Of all of Shakespeare's plays, Hamlet was the one I most wanted to see with classic staging and costuming, but alas, it was not to be.
They were using a smoke machine during the play, and the whole theater was filled with fog from it. As I watched the play, my right eye started twitching from being dry and getting irritated by the fog. As the show went on, it seemed to get worse. I wasn't feeling right, so when the play ended I quickly left my friends behind and got to the tube as quickly as possible to go home. On the train ride back, my eye was still twitching, and when I went to take a sip of bottled water I drooled all over myself. I knew something wasn't right, and I honestly felt like I was about to turn into a werewolf or something.
By the time I got home, I started freaking out because the whole right side of my face was paralyzed. I couldn't blink my right eye, raise my right brow, or crack even the slightest smile with the right side of my mouth. I couldn't believe it was happening, and I thought if I went to bed I would wake up and everything would be fine. Well, it wasn't. I woke up the next day and half of my face was still frozen. I was terrified, and being in a foreign country, I didn't know what to do.
It probably would have made sense to go directly to a doctor, but I wasn't thinking clearly. I went to a bookstore on Tottenham Court Road and began to sift through textbooks for neurology students. After a couple of hours, I found a description for a condition called
Bell's Palsey, and I knew that was what I had. (This was before the
birth of Google, mind you, and at that point I wasn't familiar enough with the internet to find it anyways.)
They don't know for sure what causes it, but it is believed to be a secondary effect from a virus or bacterial infection. I had a really bad sinus infection just prior to it happening, so it's likely that was the cause of it. I've also speculated that it may have been from eating some British beef from a mad cow, or perhaps from the absinthe that I drank while I was in Spain for a weeklong vacation. I'll never know for sure.
Basically, half of my face was frozen for about three months. I felt like the character Two Face from the Batman comics. I couldn't blink that eyelid, so I had to keep using drops to keep it from drying out. Also, the right side of my mouth would droop, so it affected my speech as well. It was an utter nightmare.
I saw a couple of English doctors who I would call "quacks," but there was nothing they could do. There is no treatment for it, other than facial massages and exercises to strengthen the muscles in the face once movement returns. After not being used for so long, the muscles in the right side of my face atrophied. It went away after a couple of months but it took years before the right side of my face was even close to being fully symmetrical with the left side.
The lopsidedness is still there today, to a much lesser degree. It's not very noticeable anymore to anyone except myself. Every time I see of picture of myself I can still see it though.
Okay, that's it for now. This wasn't as short as I planned, but I do tend to be wordy. I may return later with a political rant.
from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
--------------by T.S. Eliot
...
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume? ...
...
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
The poem was too long for me to post all of it. If anyone wants to read the whole thing,
here it is.
Political Rant, Anyone?
Wow, I just read my earlier post. Whoops. Oh well, I guess it's good to get fired up every so often. It seems that over the last few years we've all become desensitized to the constant shit storm spewing from mainstream media. I have to vent periodically, but I do tend to get carried away. I just toned down the below post a little from what I first had up. It's probably still a little bit over the top, but that's okay.
Just Drink the Kool-Aid (edited version)
Is anyone feeling a draft in here? I said in a
post a while back that Iran would be next in line for the Bush war machine. There have been whispers of this for quite some time, and today there is
this report on CNN (and elsewhere), which pretty much confirms it. Iraq was less about spreading freedom and democracy than it was about establishing a launching point for attacks against other enemy states in the Middle East (I'm looking at you too, Syria).
The same neo-conservatives who told Bush that Iraqis would greet us with open arms are now telling him that, "a U.S. attack on Iran might provoke an uprising by Iranians against the hard-line religious leaders who run the government. " Yeah, right. We drop bombs all over Iran and the people will surely believe we are on their side. Jesus Christ. If the Bush administration really wanted to get rid of the hardline leaders in Iran, they would express their support for them publicly, because the people of the Middle East will desire the opposite of what Washington claims to desire, in any situation.
Bush said this past weekend that the election was an "
accountability moment" when asked why no one has been held accountable for the numerous and huge fuckups in the Iraq war. Barely half of the electorate "re-elected" him (I use that term loosely, since he wasn't legitimately elected in his first term), and he thinks that means everybody thinks he's doing a great job with the war in Iraq. If you can't admit that you made a mistake, how can you possibly correct it?
We'll likely be seeing more help wanted ads like
this one. I'm just thankful that I'm too old to get drafted under the current laws. Of course, they could always change the draft age when they reinstate it later this year. . .
It's the Little Things that Count
I don't have anything profound to write about at the moment, so I'll just write about something stupid. Yesterday I conquered the fax machine where I work. A couple of months ago, something happened in my office that became known as "The Toner Incident." Since then I have been unwilling to touch the fax machine anytime that goddamn red light has been flashing.
That incident taught to me the value of reading the instructions first. Now, mind you, I'm usually pretty good with various technological devices, and I'm not afraid to take the printer, copier,
et al apart if I need to. So when the toner ran out last time I was like, "Oh, I'll just replace it." Bad idea. To make a long story short, I didn't know what I was doing and I ended up spilling black, powdery toner all over the floor and walls surrounding the fax machine. It was quite a disaster, and I was more than a little embarrassed.
I was working late last night and I was waiting for an important contract to come in. I noticed that the toner was out, and I was like, "Aw fuck," because I was the only one left in the office. I was tempted to just pretend I didn't see that and go home for the night, but I had to get the contract that was coming in. So this time I followed the instructions and I actually managed to do it without fucking it up (that I know of).
As I was working on it I was reminded of that scene in Office Space where they take the fax machine out into a field and destroy it gangsta style with baseball bats as the music of the Ghetto Boys plays(I think that's who it was). Man, that would be awesome. I guess it's sort of pathetic that I can get excited over fixing a fax machine, but I'll take any victory I can get.
I Have GMail Invitations
If anyone wants a GMail account, please e-mail me at
skrambled@gmail.com . I only have a few at the moment, but if I think you're cool enough I might just send you one.
Moving Up in the World
I was looking at the referring URL's on my site meter and noticed that someone came here from Google (if I'm understanding the whole referral thing correctly). I'm not sure if
this link will continue to work, but I took a screenshot which I posted below.
I am such a Google geek, it's somewhat pathetic. I Google everything, so I find it extra cool to see my humble blog on there. It made me wonder who might have been searching Google with the words "mosques survive tsunami". Probably a potential religious wingnut who didn't find what he was looking for if he came
here.
I think I want to learn more about
Google Bombing so I can stroke my ego with my page one Google appearances. If any of you have never seen
this, I urge you to check it out now. Just type "miserable failure" into Google, and the top choice is the official White House biography site for President Bush. Oh man is that funny.
Oh yeah, page 25 baby!
Gee, thanks
Many thanks to
Matt for the GMail invitation. I've been annoyed that I never got one, because I put my name on the e-mail list on Google when they first announced it. Now I feel like I'm one of the cool kids.
I'm trying to figure out how to forward my Hotmail to it, but the forwarding instructions that Hotmail gives in it's help screen tells me to click something that isn't there. I'm thinking Hotmail probably disabled it, because they want people using their service so that they can get advertising revenue. If anyone reading this has GMail and knows how to forward e-mail from Hotmail, please let me know.
...
False Alarm
Okay, so I'm feeling much better today. I'm still feeling a little sluggish, but I don't seem to be getting any sicker. When I woke up I really didn't want to go to work, but I dragged myself here anyways. I'm glad I did, because I'd rather wait until I'm really sick to miss work. It's really slow here today anyways, so I can just lay low and surf the net all day.
Being a news junkie, that means I get to read all kinds of stories that piss me off. Here are is one example:
If
this story isn't a sign of desperation, I don't know what is. It's being reported in Newsweek and other news sources that the US governement is considering creating death squads to kidnap and kill people believed to be involved in the insurgency in Iraq. This brilliant strategy is being referred to as the
El Salvador Option, after the terror campaign waged by American-trained death squads in Central America in the 1980's.
Doesn't anyone in the Bush Administration think it's a little hypocritical for the US to be engaged in state-sponsored terrorism? Well, I guess if you can defend torture you can defend terrorism too. Is this going to win the hearts and minds of the people in Iraq and the Middle East? No, it won't. Our government is behaving the way tyrants and despots do, and the people there will continue to see that.
The thugs in the Bush Administration are the kings (and queens) of hypocrisy. At the very moment that Bush was talking about how Iraq was better off because Saddam's "rape rooms" were closed, an American soldier or contractor was sticking a foreign object up the ass of a detainee in Abu Ghraib or Guantanomo. They might say that it is to prevent an imminent attack, but that isn't what's going on at all. It's just torture for the sake of torture. Torture as a policy is very un-American, and the damage it has done to America is incalculable.
Speaking of torture, it appears that Alberto Gonzales
will be confirmed as the new Attorney General. this will send the message to the world that America is willing to turn a blind eye to human rights abuses. Maybe the Democrats will finally grow some balls and oppose this nomination, but it appears unlikely.
This story gives me some hope though.
Okay, that's it for now. I will try to write more later if I have time.
Creeping Influenza
I think it's always best to avoid admitting to yourself that you're getting sick, lest you give yourself a
psychosomatic illness. However, denial can only get you so far. I have to admit that I am not feeling well at all, and my health seems to be deteriorating by the minute. The fact is, most of the people I work with and hang out with were just sick or are now coming down with it. I spent a lot of time hanging out with Mary for the last couple of days, and she had to call in sick today. Hopefully it's nothing, but my headache, body aches, sinus problems, chills, and swollen glands are telling me otherwise.
I'm sitting at work and I just don't feel like doing anything (other than writing in my blog, obviously). I have a project to do, but at the moment I just feel like sitting at my desk doing nothing. I can get away with it for now, as long as no one notices that the files laid out in front of me are only there so I can look busy.
Other than whining about my health, not too much to talk about right now. I saw Ocean's Twelve last Saturday. I give it a "meh". I didn't really like the first one that much, and there were a lot of jokes and plot twists tied to the first one. It just seemed like a waste of a really good cast. I guess it was supposed to be G-rated or something. Maybe if some people got killed it would have been better. You can't ever have too much death and destruction (in movies anyways).
I'm excited that Jack Bauer is back on 24. Last night's episode was great, as always, and I'm looking forward to the next two hours tonight. That show is just so intense.
Okay, that's it for now. If I have time I will post again tonight. If I get as sick as I feel like I'm going to get, and I have to stay home tomorrow, I will likely be posting extensively from home (unless I'm just laid out in bed, which is quite possible too).
So much for the myth of a liberal media
Okay, so basically, we the people paid
this guy $240,000 for a propaganda campaign thinly veiled as legitimate journalism. As a comparison, consider that we pay the Vice President around $187,000 a year. As a certified media whore, I am very bothered by this kind of crap.
***I just hit 500 visitors.***
Red Rum
I am stuck inside at the moment, since there is a minor blizzard outside. It just sucks driving in this crap. However, I think I might be starting to lose it from being cooped up inside all day. I'm heading out to see a movie in a little while, so that should solve the problem.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Outrage(ous)
In case anyone still has any misconceptions about who's side President Bush is on, consider this article from Friday's Boston Herald. Instead of looking out for the interests of the people, he is more concerned with the profits of companies who's asbestos has killed hundreds of thousands of people. Here is some good information on what exposure to asbestos does to a person. The main point is that if even a very small amount--mere fibers--gets inhaled, they get stuck in the lining of the lungs and remain there. Then, ten years later, you find out that you have lung cancer (asbestosis, mesothelioma, etc.).
Bush says he wants to put a low cap on legal claims from victims of asbestos, becasue, ``It's not fair to those who are getting sued and it's not fair for those who justly deserve compensation." Does he think we're fucking stupid? He's basically saying, "I'm doing it for you're own good, so instead of getting a million dollars for your family (after your life was cut short by maybe fifty years), you might get $150,000." Jesus Christ people, we have officially stepped through the looking glass, where everything is the opposite of what it should be.
(WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH)
Praise Jesus, Bush is going to save us from the lawyers. This has nothing to do with the interests of the people, and everything to do with the profits of big business. Bush says, "These asbestos suits have bankrupted a lot of companies and that affects the workers here in Michigan and around the country."
Ummmm...Mr. President...Do you know what else affects workers in Michigan and around the country? Getting cancer and dying a slow, agonizing death. These companies are not suffering. No, they are not suffering at all. Here is some information from one of the links above, which you may want to read:
--Bodily injury begins with the first inhalation of asbestos fibers, yet lung damage from asbestos cannot be detected by X-ray until an estimated 30 percent of lung capacity has been lost. Inability to detect damage via X-ray does not mean that a person does not have the disease.
--Asbestosis is a progressive disease. Twenty-eight (28) to 38 percent of persons with the disease progress to a more severe classification within 2 to 10 years (Markowitz 1997).
--People with early stage asbestosis, many of whom would be classified as unimpaired in the proposed Senate legislation, are at substantial risk for lung cancer or mesothelioma. In the definitive study of asbestos insulation workers, 30 percent of workers with no X-ray evidence of lung damage (a zero classification on the ILO system) died of mesothelioma or lung cancer within 27 years of the initial diagnosis. Those with "minimal X-ray change" fared even worse. Nearly 40 percent (39.9 percent) of individuals initially diagnosed as ILO classification 1, died of these two cancers within the 27 years analyzed.
Ah...Sweet, Raging Jealousy
I just wanted to post something quickly here. Work is somewhat busy, so I'm a little short on time. Last night I was organizing some digital photos I have on my computer from my trip to London last September (from which the below portrait was taken) and from New Years Eve in NYC.
The pictures from London were taken by Mary (aka, the EX), and she put them on a CD for me. The files were on the disk, but there was also a folder with a random name, so I clicked the folder and a few more picture files appeared. I clicked one, and the giant face of the punk-ass bitch that Mary hooked up shortly after we broke up was on my computer screen. There were a few other pics of him too. Oh man, did that get me into a jealous rage. She and I are great friends, but I've only once seen what he looks like, and I didn't need to see it again. He ended up breaking her heart, so I hate him even more.
I let her know that those pictures were on there, since she clearly made an attempt not to put them there. She reminded me about the time last fall when I accidentally forwarded her an e-mail I was attempting to send to a girl I had just started dating. There were about 15 e-mails included in the history that were attached, and Mary read all of them. I don't think I've ever been so embarrassed in my life.
Mary was sure that I did it on purpose to make her jealous, but I swear to god it was an accident. I sent it by Hotmail, and I must have clicked her name in my contact list as I was writing it. I hit send, and a message appeared stating that my message had been sent to the girl I was dating and Mary as well. There was nothing I could do at that point to stop it. It was probably a Freudian slip or something, because I obviously wasn't over her at that point, but who knows.
...I'll be back later...
"I'm a people person...who drinks."----Homer Simpson
On Poetry
Sometimes I think I've become too cynical. My cynicism affords me an outlook on life that I consider to be far more realistic than that of idealistic fools, but it has also had many negative effects (aside from the crippling depression, which goes without saying).
I used to write poems when I was younger (perhaps if I can dig some out from my closet, I'll post them here). I don't know if they were good or not, but they meant something to me. It was a sort of release, and it made me feel good to write them, even though they tended to be dark, or angry, or whatever. Lately I've grown too cynical to even try to write poems. Sometimes it seems pretentious,
as if spacing lines,
and making stupid rhymes,
makes a piece of writing
a work of art.
See what I mean? That's all you have to do to call yourself a poet, and the blogospere is littered with talentless hacks trying to call themselves poets. I have also found some good poetry (like yours, Hansy, if you're reading this), but it is such a rare thing. I especially hate cheesey, happy poems with rhymed couplets. They make me want to gag.
I am back at a point in my life where I can read poems and enjoy them. That's why I've been posting poetry here periodically from poets I enjoy, rather than attempting to create one of my own. The one's I've posted have meant something to me at the time I posted them, as a reflection of my mood at that moment. Perhaps one of these day's I'll overcome my cynicism enough to write some poems of my own again.
I was just reading a special section of today's Portsmouth Herald which included some letters home from soldiers who were killed in Iraq (shortly after writing the letters). Just before I saw the article, I had been searching for a good poem to post, and I found myself drawn to the excerpt below, which I am now inclined to post:
from "War is Kind" --by Steven Crane (1871-1900)
Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
And the affrighted steed ran on alone,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment,
Little souls who thirst for fight,
These men were born to drill and die.
The unexplained glory flies above them,
Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom --
A field where a thousand corpses lie.
Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.
Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches,
Raged at his breast, gulped and died,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
Swift blazing flag of the regiment,
Eagle with crest of red and gold,
These men were born to drill and die.
Point for them the virtue of slaughter,
Make plain to them the excellence of killing
And a field where a thousand corpses lie.
Mother whose heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
December 26, 2004
I was just watching 60 Minutes II. Dan Rather is reporting from areas devestated by the
tsunami of December 26, 2004. It's still hard to understand how huge this truly is—in human history. According to the
most recent reports, the estimate for the number of people killed is over 155,000.
As the images start coming in, the scope of the tragedy is becoming more clear. As a people, we've become dependent of such images to understand tragedies in the world. We've been conditioned by television and movies. The United States government has suppressed the media to keep images of the war in Iraq from the public for this very reason (this post isn't about that, so I'll stop there).
I don't like to admit that I couldn't begin to understand it until I saw some images, but it's true, and I'm sure it's true for people all over America and most of the world. An example: I just saw a video clip in the final segment of 60 Minutes which showed ten children clinging to a fence as the water raged. The wave took seven of them under and undoubtedly to their deaths. I saw them die.
My god. Holy fucking shit. That really affected me :-(. I think it's important that we all take a good look, with eyes wide open, even though it hurts...
Rather made a comment that in many areas, the only buildings to survive were mosques. I thought to myself, fanatics of various religions throughout the world will try to cite such things as proof it was a message from god, allah, jehovah, buddha, shiva, the big empty nothingness, etc. People will say the end is near.
Zealots in each group (except maybe buddhists) will twist their explanation to suit their own beliefs. Religion can help people cope with tragedy, and it's fine if the explanation is healthy. However, history has shown that such thinking often leads to more religious division, conflicts, and "holy" wars.
Instead of delving into such apocalyptic thinking, the best thing people can do in the coming days it to help where they can, and to do whatever can be done that might save more lives the next time something like this happens. The images of people trying to help the survivors are starting to come in too. I'm pretty sure
Mr. Rogers first said it (or at least the first time I heard it), and it is cheesy, but you need to look for the helpers to find the good in the world. Right as always, neighbor.
...okay, I'm done for today...
C'mon guys, lets go. We have to get down to Times Square so we can get trampled to death.
Eric and Erica (I know, the name thing is pretty lame) shortly after midnight
Ringing in the New Year in an open air human sardine can
Tom standing in what passes for a kitchen in an $1800 a month single bedroom apartment in NYC.
Eric and Erica a boardwalk by the East River
Dog park by the East River
The Human Constrictor
I'm at work at the moment, and things have finally slowed down a little bit. Yesterday was really busy, and I didn't have time to write last night. I had a good time over the weekend, and I'll have some pictures to post within the next couple of days, or as soon as I can find time. New Year's Eve in NYC was fun, but I will never attempt to go to Times Square on that night ever again. Holy shit, what a fucking mess.
We could only get within about ten blocks of the festivities, as the police had started closing streets off to pedestrians. We would be in a sea of people all pressed up against each other trying to move forward towards Times Square, and all of a sudden the police would be pushing people back in the other direction. In addition to this, there were groups of juvenile urban thugs who were trying to plow through the crowd in either direction, but were only succeeding in creating panic. The effect was what I would imagine it feels like to have a 20 foot python wrapped around your whole body. I honestly thought I was going to get trampled.
The rest of the time in New York was fun, though. I got to visit with a bunch of friends I haven't seen in a while. I didn't get as many pictures of sites in the city as I wanted to (we got there much later than expected and left earlier than expected), but I did manage to get a few good pics. Oh well, I'll be back there soon enough.
Okay, that's it for now. If I have time later, I will post something regarding current events (probably something about the victims of the tsunami in Asia. I feel sort of shallow focusing only on myself when there is so much suffering in the world right now).
