Gar

It's not just for pirates anymore.

Build a better man-trap

There is a saying: If you idiot proof something, the idiots will astound you with stunning feats of inventiveness.

I am that idiot.

You see, I like to design and build things. It's part of who I am... Unfortunately right now it's cheaper to buy a pre-fab entertainment center than to buy the wood and build it myself. (Partially because right now there is a 12" mitre saw with my name on it; sitting on a store shelf somewhere... waiting for me to come up with the cash. So I would be down 500 bucks before I even got to the lumber.)

Unfortunately said prefab furniture was designed to be build on a perfectly level floor by two people inserting slot A into tab B. Unfortunately I'm one person.. and when I push my rolling chair across the floor I feel like I should have taken some dramamine first. So the edges don't line up perfectly.. Which would be an easy fix except that in order to get to the screws that are holding the offending pieces together, you have to take the whole thing apart. Since I want to play my PS2 before next week, I'm going to have to live with it..

Oh, And I'm missing a piece.

Getting around to do things

I'm a great procrastinator. I will put things off until I absolutely have to do them, especially laundry and dishes. I'm so good at putting opff these two things that I will often do something productive instead of dishes and or laundry. For example, right now I'm putting together a shiny new entertainment center for myself. Go me.

However I realized that if I am truly going to become a master of the procrastination craft, I must find something even more meaningless to do winstead of assembling pre-fab particleboard and plastic... so I wrote this.

Look an update!!!!

Isn't it cute? All these pixilated little letters strung together to to form nonsense in the finest tradition of the form.

The lack of justifiable margins.. brilliant! So much better than setting up a system where you have to already have a word processing program, and did the cut/ paste thing.

And the background... pull out my Bauhaus albums, it's time to whine and moan about existentialist dread and suicide. Fun!

And it's time to get dressed and go to work, so put your damn clothes on you pervert, sitting in front of your computer naked as the day you were born, what's wrong with you?

heh?

So I've sat down to write something two or three times this past week, only to give up halfway through my point and get some sleep. So to save myself having to type out everything I was going to say this week.. I'll just summerize the main points without any supporting arguments, fact checking etc.

1. Fantastic four, more like fantastic suck.
2. Gitmo tribunals ok'd by courts.. apparantly activist judges are ok if they side with Bush.
3. Live 8 just ended, farm aid is coming up.. when's the benefit concert for London?
4. People suck
5. I ordered a cd online and was shipped the wrong one, hopefully the problem is fixed before I have to start listening to albums I've heard before. ('cause I went on a cd buying binge)
6. Silverfish are a pain in the ass to kill and are my #1 argument against renting a basement apartment.
7. New Harry Potter book is darker, and oddly surprising in many ways. And Rowling is definately getting better as an author and storyteller.
8. I remembered what 8 is for!!! Gordon Gano can kiss my ass!!!

'dem kids be fine

So I was thinking about cookouts the other day. More specifically about how inner city kids never truly know the joys of roasting a marshmallow over an open fire while telling ghost stories with a flashlight under your chin.

Of course, this is me, so I started to picture somebody setting up some cones around a campsite in the middle of Flatbush. Bunch of kids running around, roasting marshmallows over an open flame, Dealers on the corner telling the crackheads and pimps to leave the kids alone. Sleeping bags spread out under tents in a city where you go inside for a breath of fresh air.

The hard part would be keeping some drunk from driving over the campsite. Because that would turn it from Whimsical little experiment into tragedy.

Ah London, let the finger pointing begin.

So, all the conservatives out there are waiing for those of us who are of the liberal persuasion to start blaming Bush for the Attacks in London.

Well, I'm not going to. The blame for those attacks lies solely on the shoulders of the perpetrators.

However, I can't help but wonder, if it was Part of Bin Ladens fellowship of future martyrs... Shouldn't we have continued to go after his fun loving gang of mass murderers and sychopants instead of diverting our resources to a country that could barely keep its power plants running? Much less its weapons development programs?

Freedom of what? A ramble.

I spend a lot of time listening to Talk radio. Unfortunately the only consistant source of talk radio in this part of the country is religious broadcasting. Wait, I can't truthfully call it religious broadcasting. It is Conservative Christian radio. I have yet to hear a moderate voice, Islamic call to prayer, or even Hebrew prayer. (oy, lord, let the bagels be fresh!!)

What I have heard, and heard often, is a statement very similar to: "Things were better when we had religion in schools and in our courtrooms.", "They kicked God out of our schools", and the interesting term, "Northeast liberals". My favorite is the one about kicking god out of the schools, particularly when the speaker goes on to imply, if not state outright that students aren't allowed to pray before lunch, tests, athletic games, or whatever. Which is a complete and total fabrication. If a student is not allowed to do these things the school is in a state of clear and complete violation of the first amendment. (Unless the school is a private one)

What all of the court decisions have said is that a teacher or staff member cannot LEAD OR ENDORSE such actions while working in their official capacity. Because that creates a situation where a government employee is establishing and endorsing a specific viewpoint about everyones relationship to the almighty.

Christians in particular should be rejoicing and thanking the courts for this instead of attacking them. Why? Because what do you tell little Sally on the day after her Baptism and confirmation when her Teacher says it doesn't count because that sects views differ from the teachers own? Plus there is still all of that bad blood between Catholics and Protestants. Remember when the KKK hated Jews, Blacks and catholics equally? This way students, especially grade schoolers, are protected from early exposure to philosophical theological debates which they are not yet mature enough engage in. At least not in an informed and civil manner. Picture if you will the following snippet of a possible, theoretical conversation:

"Hey mom.. heaven sounds fun. but who would win in a fight, Moses, Abraham, Allah, Buddha, or Jesus? I think it would be a tie between moses and Jesus, because Moses could part the sea and have it crash back on everybody else, but Jesus would just have to walk a little faster, or turn it into wine because after all that time in the desert Moses would have to be thirsty., and then when he was drunk Jesus could just hit him with his own staff.. what do you think mom, huh huh huh?" A far cry from debating different translations of scripture and whether or not the death penalty is for or against the will of the almighty.

The current official ruling is a good one as it allows parents the opportunity to teach their children the complex relationships between oneself and the almighty without having that relationship mandated by our government. It also allows teachers to do their jobs without stopping the discussion on the relationship between pi and the circumference of a circle, to give a little inspirational message using the Pythagorean theorum to quantify the blessed trinity.

But what about the non educational aspects? Personally I think we have a better culture now than we did during the golden era the religious right talk radio callers get so nostalgic over. The 1950's. How are we better off? In list form for a change of pace...

1. I haven't heard of any lynchings this year.
2. We're not arresting Comedians and poets for using terms like "Cocksucker." (See Lenny Bruce and Alin Ginsberg for more details)
3. We've had the chance to learn from stonewall, Ohio State, and watergate to make sure they don't happen again.
4. I wasn't alive then.
5. Video games.
6. We're not fighting a "police action" in Southeastern Asia.
7. Two words... Color T.V.
8. We know that AIDS exists, its symptoms, and are actively working towards a cure. In the 1950's We didn't know about it, so treatment wasn't an option.
9. A D.A. Haircut now means you're going for a retro look, which sounds a lot cooler than going to the barber and asking him to make the back of your head look like the back of a duck.
10. If david letterman sues me over this list.. I'll make millions in talk show appearance fees.

To be fair.. send me some ways we're worse off.

News flash:

Christ has been spotted in Cedar Rapids Michigan.

Which means that the rapture has already happened and all of the true Christians have ascended to heaven.

So would the Conservative right please just come clean and admit they were faking it for the camera? Come on.. you didn't fool the almighty, you've got nothing left to lose.

Yeah, If pat Robertson is right, I'm burning in hell...

feel bad

You know I feel bad about merely complaining that my isp is horrible.. but I've lost my "always on connection" at least three times while attempting to write something witty. Unfortuantely frustration and wit are not good bedfellows, So I wrote this instead.