I don't hate god
What follows is my response to
someone who obviously was referring to me, when he wondered why it is that people hate god. It may interest you to know he has now erased the post I refer to, so he might not have had the chance to read this, my comment. So now my valuable commentary will be somewhere for him to read, since we don't email any more.
I can't speak for all nonbelievers of the bible, as many of them also are believers in another organized faith based on a historical novel, but in my case, I think it will help to understand that you've got me all wrong.
I don't hate god. There isn't a god for me to be mad at. But you can't see that and therefore are confounded. That feeling you have is called cognitive dissonance, and it's what people experience when they find out that what they formerly believed was wrong. Like when they realize Santa Claus isn't real. Imagine the feeling you think I'm going to have on judgement day, when I am humiliated in front of god and feel all the horrible burning shame and whatnot. It's sort of like that, but real. You start to feel it when you really consider the biological impossibilities of a virgin giving birth, or a man building a boat that holds many (maybe seventy?) thousands of pairs of animals, which he then distributes carefully all throughout the world, careful to keep the kangaroos only in Australia, et cetera. And I don't like it. I don't want you to feel bad.
I'd be a lot happier if I felt like I could give you credit for being reasonable, and that's no lie.
So I'm not mad at god, and I am seeing your reaching for this as a means of your changing your thoughts to ones that you are more comfortable with. I'm mad at people, yes. People just like you, who, while on one hand spend time trying to convince people that bizarre psychedelia such as the cannibalistic fantasy of "drinking the blood and eating the flesh" of the leader is normal, and also claim that your religious view is the only legitimate one and that all other belief systems must be inferior.
It's this dogged determination to keep facts (reality) away from you that makes you a drain on the social fabric of America, which enjoys a waning reputation as the greatest country in the world in terms of liberty NOT because of god, but because of the secular nature of our constitution, which established a nation that respected the tension between two enemies, enlightenment rationalism and organized religion, and didn't try to combine them. And these people I am mad at, who you have come to represent for me, also have the gall to claim to be morally superior, which is the last straw. I would be delinquent in my duty as a conscientious human being, and a patriotic American, if I didn't speak to you honestly on this subject, and to question the basis of your faith because of its harmful fallout.
It's not dangerous on the level of one small congregation, but the grouping of people suffocates the individual spirit, the ability to ask questions, and what soon follows, as a direct result of group thinking, is political apathy. Once in the habit of following the leader, even the most grotesque self-deception is easily swallowed. Cheap lies from the leaders of churches and political parties (think G.W. Bush) who people like you are too sheepish to rise up and challenge pass unnoticed, and it is utterly frustrating to try to have a meaningful, rational discussion with you because what I am talking to is a collection of dogmas.
“There will never be world peace until God’s house and God’s people are given their rightful place of leadership at the top of the world, wrote Pat Robertson. I think you think it's true.
And because of party-line Christians such as yourself, because of your commitment to lap up whatever you're thrown by the church or its political associates, America is an increasingly ungly place, and that affects me every day.
I hope I've made it clear that I hate not god, but ignorance, and I dislike people who embrace it as completely as do conservative Christians.
Thanks.
PSA
It's my birthday! Yay, me.
Republicans defend DeLay as critics pounce - Yahoo! News"If the election were in six weeks, we'd be in big trouble," said Rep. Zach Wamp, a Tennessee Republican. "But it's not."
There's a guy who knows the mind of the American voter. All Delay has to do is save a blonde-haired child from dropping his lollipop and all will be forgiven.
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.
- Blaise Pascal
Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
- Douglas Adams
Anderson Cooper, windbag
Just now on CNN:
"In the calendar of sorrow, a month is the blink of an eye."
grumble
Yesterday, awesome. Today, piece of shit.
Whether I am describing myself or the world as it relates to me matters little.
Yesterday my wife took me to dinner and bought me a present for my impending birthday, which we will spend apart due to school and work obligations. Dinner was excellent and so forth; it made me forget the bad news given me by the dentist that morning completely. Even with the dental news, really a great day.
Today, I went to school, ruined a perfectly good oiling job because I wasn't paying attention (what is it when that happens? how can a guy fine tune his attention span?) which will take an entire afternoon to fix, partly because I'll have to change out the fluids in the cleaning machine because the rest of my class are lazy to do it. Oh sure, when the solutions are changed and nice and clean, there's a line out the door to clean watches, but try and get them to actually
do it. So that sucks.
To deal with my frustration, I ran home, snatched the fishing stuff that was my gift from my wife, and hastened to the lake to cast my troubles away.
Tobacco is an insidious substance. It takes the place of other things that I've long forgotten about, and I still notice when an action I take would be one of those covered by the restorative properties of sweet, sweet nicotine. No, I didn't break down and buy any god-awful cigarettes. It might have behoved me to stop at the gas station, but I didn't. Fishing was to be one of the things that, like sleep, mends the ravelled sleeve of care. The order of the afternoon was clearly to look at water for a while.
Inner peace had yet to arrive when after three casts, I decided to change lures. Upon doing so, I looked over my shoulder and who should be there but a representative of Minnesota's version of the SS, the fucking DNR. Yeah, the first time I have ever seen one of these people and it's today, when I have put off buying a license. Can a guy get a freebie on a crummy day like today?
Of course not.
At this point my frown compounded, and I had to deal with a short guy on a power trip. I'll explain.
Phouketong Le, or something very similar to this, was the officer sent to me by Fortuna's wheel, and he proceeded to usher me to the parking lot, where he asked me to place my stuff in the back of a truck that could have towed the lake, had it been frozen solid, to a new location.
When he said to go ahead and put the stuff in the back of his truck I made sure to ask him if by doing so I was entering in to some slippery limbo, where because I had put it there at his casual request, it now belongs to him, along the lines of some slightly extra-legal entrapment. He answered in the negative, but not content to leave it at that, he swaggered in the way only four foot tall Hmong men can, and as close, punctuationwise, as possible, the following issued forth: "Am I going to confiscate your stuff?No. Do I have the authority to confiscate it?Absolutely."
He just haaaad to make sure that got slipped in there.
Then, for a second round of rhetorical infuration, he said "I'm not the new kid on the block." He obviously had every intention at this point, of continuing his shpeel, but I interrupted, "Nor did I imply that you were."
He didn't care for this, but for the most part ignored it, and continued to rant on about how long he had been with the department, even though it said it right there on his name tag, "[on board or whatever] Since 2000".
Yeah, you're really in charge, very authoritative, and did I mention how official and in charge you look in that exceedingly authoritative uniform, mister, sorry, OFFICER Phuket Le? Impressive!
So it was a shitty, expensive day.
And I recommend the lobster ravioli at Palomino with the Kenwood sauvignon blanc.
I'm going to watch this.
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
print at work
Opiate of the masses
Dawkins
pictures of bands
Ostensibly very bad ones.
Rock And Roll Confidential | Your Band Sucks
The dorkiest thing I could come up with.
reminder
No one has time to read everything I post so I have to reiterate when something's really good. Half the time I haven't gotten the chance to read it yet myself when I post it here.
My favorite thing of the weekend was this argument against prohibition, which has striking parallels to today's moral crusade:
Percy Andreae Opposes Prohibition
I don't know if anybody got to see the UT game tonight, but they came back from 21 to 0 at halftime and kicked LSU's ass. Bad.
Out of Absolutely Nowhere they came up with an interception and two touchdowns. The crowd shut down and UT entered what I like to call full fuckin' party overdrive. Baton Rouge got rocked like a hurricane.
They showed the crowd after the final touchdown. Some of their mouths were hanging open and they were just staring out into space. It hadn't hit them yet. It had hit the guys in Knoxville, though, where over the phone it sounded like the inside of Ted Nugent's head.
Big ups to the Vols, who brought the pain.
How I keep it real with UT: my brass tweezers at watch school are engraved with GO VOLS.
blue cheese review
England. Neal’s Yard Dairy, Borough Market Stilton.
With flavors ranging from slightly bitter, through a period of powerful (not to be confused with intense) blue flavor, all the way through the pejoratively endless buttery finish, this cheese is not all that sharp, not exceptional and in my opinion not worth the asking price of $12.99 a pound. In two words, this cheese is hellaciously conservative; boredom gripped me as it melted on my tongue the way ice cream melts in a sad little glob on the sidewalk. An understated hint of nuttiness prevented any fireworks.
In the way that you might have expected the best apples in the world to taste two hundred years ago, before the trees were cross-pollinated with more exciting and exotic apple trees, this cheese was reminiscent of dusty old boring times. Not a bad cheese, just "traditional".
Good points. It's full-bodied. Far more depth of character than Saint Pete's select, a not-bad squeaky blue. And I get the sense that this cheese is consistent in texture and flavor and I am eating it exactly the way it's supposed to be.
There are two kinds of light--the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.
- James Thurber
It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true.
- Bertrand Russell
keep your shit off my car
Tonight I am taking revenge on someone named Ebony, who keeps leaving notes on my car, offering me a way to make EXTRA CASH. I'm using this
great little telephone torture tool to let her know I don't appreciate her shenanigans.
If you want to do it, too, her number is (651) 697-4135! Enjoy!
Somebody who likes recording random sounds has got some of them available here. Great for that webcast you need sound effects for.
Phonography Archive
cool
"Comprising 358 frames taken over 24 hours, the movie follows Earth through one complete rotation. The spacecraft was 40,761 miles (65,598 kilometers) above South America when the camera started rolling on Aug. 2. It was 270,847 miles (435,885 kilometers) away from Earth – farther than the Moon’s orbit – when it snapped the last image on Aug. 3."
sweet messenger spacecraft photography
'nother great cartoon
Sutton Impact Studio
Phil Donahue vs Bill O'ReillyI call this one for Phil.
page links to video
Hello?
I can't talk right now!
Why!
This stupid thing is biting me.
I got a boomerang!
...
Doctor Phil has to die!
Stupid damn kids!
Bring on the sex!
notes from our amazing world
When the guy by the highway holds a sign that says "Homeless -- Anything Helps", it turns out that telling him "Fuck off, Asshole!", doesn't help after all.
People by the highway often lie.
Yahoo: "A medieval bridge has emerged from the depths of the San Juan reservoir in San Martin de Valdeiglesias, 70 kilometres (43 miles) outside Madrid, as a result of dramatically low water levels, September 21, 2005."
counting is fun
How many?
Need to see something weird? Got you covered. Some guy lip synchs a bad song badly with black star makeup over his right eye.
Kiss Bobaloo
/qt
rawk!
Perfect for those moments when a public computer doesn't allow installs. IM your friends with no software installation. At least that's what it's supposed to do.
eMessenger
nearly forgot
I made a watch and it works, so I'm actually a watchmaker now, and not just a student of watchmaking. This brings me great pleasure.
the "anti-drug"
I don't listen to commercial radio often, though sometimes when I'm on a bike, tiring, and am looking for some music to get over the next hill, I'll switch to the rock station and through good fortune am usually treated to (is "music" too euphemistic?) rather than commercials for whatever carbonated corn syrup is at the peak of its media blitz. This arrangement works for me.
Anyway, I'm sitting here doing my maybe-too-usual morning internet thing, taking a day (Totally allowed! It's a lab day, optional.) away from watchmaking school, and listening to a show I've never heard, the Jerry Springer radio show as I drink my lazy morning coffee in the sun-warmed mess I call a nook, when the commercials begin. And I am ok with the selsun blue ads, and even with the barfy car dealership ads in principle. They're trying to break through the noise and sell some product. That's what keeps the whole media machine lubricated.
But then I hear something different. It's about chaperoning your kids to a party where there aren't any adults, where there might be "drugs!" It's unclear whether the kid goes after the end, now that the dad has said 'If you're going I'm going then.' And it ends with the words "Parents. The Anti-drug."
[Expletive deleted] that.
Number one, no kids who would bring their parents to a party would be welcome at one, and they know that, so this is a scenario which would never, ever happen. This kid is (thanks, parents who think teenage social interaction pivots on narcotics) so socially backward that he wouldn't have anybody to do drugs with anyway and wouldn't know about the party even if it was next door. More likely, he's sniffing modeling glue in his room, listening to some horrid schlock-metal band, carving things on himself, and posting pictures of his bleeding torso to various message boards.
Second, that this ad could even run describes how disconnected people are from their children and how tuned in they are to the imaginary conscience of the media, invisible, ethereal, nonexistent. Are parents closer to the voice on the radio than to their own flesh and blood? Observe! "Be afraid of the drugs at the party your kid might go to." And thereby the pompous implication, "Without us making this commercial, you'd never even know about the drugs, the parties, your child's level of emotional adjustment in his/her world." And by not shutting the stupid radio off, changing the station, or wincing in displeasure at this snide animosity, whoever listens to this complacently conspires against his kid, and demonstrates that he is a person addicted to his own paranoia whose role in the family is sadly as it is described by the media, which is the problem anyway, the cop who can trust no one.
And finally the real complaint, the ridiculous, postmodernist propagandist term "Anti-drug." This is third-hand car salesman talk, and its sloganry is confusing for a reason, which is that, although they'd rather you didn't think about it, there is a product for sale in this radio spot. It's a little bit the paranoia, yes, but it's also the media's credibility on the subject of your family, and all sentient beings know that commercially or (worse?) governmentally-sponsored morality has no place in a family. In this ad and others like it, there's an influence going on, an influence that is mainly subconscious, which changes attitudes and perceptions we were formerly familiar and comfortable with. Sort of like drugs.
Drugs exist to alter people's experiences, and so does the media. When I was a kid they taught us in school (I wonder if they still do, what with pages in the textbooks devoted to advertisements) that the three functions of the media are to entertain, inform, and persuade. Nowadays, in postmodern America, a modernist agenda (consume, conform, obey) is behind the assault on the collective consciousness that is the supergroup "America", and even the function "inform" has been subsumed by corporations who own the media centers, to perform the action "persuade". So what's postmodern about this?
The mere idea that a media outlet can perform a public service in the first place is truly bizarre, yet it glides by in the stream of ones and zeroes, the digital phlegm, that describes, or frames, or even suspends, our postmodern experience, our collective gooey ennui. It's not that we don't care, we just can't afford to notice everything anymore. There's too fucking much of it and it smears together, all that information about cars and celebrities and families and disasters, and foods and economies and gas prices and concerts and opinions themselves, into a dreamlike, soupy glob. Think amnesia. The cannibalism of thought itself, in the hands of the powerful.
Ironically, the only thing that will perform the action advertised by the "anti-drug" commercial is the one that no one can advertise for, the one that no conventional message can adequately illustrate. As long as you are addressed by anyone, your role in that relationship is pre-fabricated. You're a receiver of information, and in our time and place, the avalanche of information we subject ourselves to is beyond my ability to apply simile toward. You're still absorbing right now, and I encourage you to stop immediately (after reading this, of course).
There's some buddhist thing I heard once that, it occurs to me, comes closest to short, sweet, and correct for tying this up neatly. I have to get to work.
In "kill your parents, kill your god, kill your teacher", teacher means this message itself. I like this little saying, even though I think there's another version with something about killing yourself which is even better.
Have a nice day.
art
Welcome to Owltooth/semi-annoying embedded audio
wallpaper
Lots of really good ones.
Satellite Image Wallpaper (1 of 4)
Cable news talking heads! Look at 'em! Vote for 'em!
TVHeads.com - Cable News Message Boards
Guy builds and programs automatic
Sentry Gun
cheese review
Today I ate a hunk of harmony blue cheese from Iowa. It sells at the wedge for 12.99 a pound. I had it at room temp, and it was creamy and had more perforations per cheese than any other blue I have ever had. It's as soft and creamy as brie, but instead of that gooey butteriness that is the downfall of brie, you get a mild and clean and well-rounded blue, which is awesome. I had it with an organic honey crisp apple, which to my knowledge is the finest apple available anywhere, so that every bite of this cheese was like the first bite. This was a good cheese, definitely worth the price, hand milked in Amish country, and from the same people that make the colossal Shwarz und Weiss blue, an unforgettable powerhouse of a cheese that will kick your ass and take your lunch money. Harmony blue opens up nicely at room temp and there is no mouth paste. Bon appetit.
print at school
Take a good look at America around you now, because when we emerge from the winter of 2005 - 6, we're going to be another country. The reality-oblivious nation of mall hounds, bargain shoppers, happy motorists, Nascar fans, Red State war hawks, and born-again Krispy Kremers is headed into a werewolf-like transformation that will reveal to all the tragic monster we have become.
Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler : Another Country
print something from this at school
Edge 168
today in history
1692 - Last people hanged for witchcraft in the United States.
1776 - Nathan Hale is hanged for spying during American Revolution.
1949 - Soviet Union detonates its first nuclear weapon.
1951 - The first live sporting event seen coast-to-coast, a college football game between Duke and the University of South Carolina, is televised on NBC. Duke stomps them, 34 to 6.
100 Days remain in 2005.
It's the autumnal equinox at 5:23 CDT.
Democracy threatening photos!
Google Earth threatens democracy - again | The Register
No, not this kind of threat to democracy, silly!
Girl: Mom, how long do you think the turtle will live?
Mother: What do I look like, a fucking turtle connoisseur?
--Canal & West Broadway
Drunk chick: I had a boyfriend once. He wanted to stick a hot iron up my ass.
Sober guy: Well did he do it?
Drunk chick: I'm standing here, aren't I?
--- the always good to read
Overheard in New York
via somethingawful,
Another confessions site, on which we see how lame people can be.
2Secret
ugh
Somewhere, it's someone's job to make this awful flash. I bet whatever their favorite drink is, it's a strong one.
Biker Fox Video Clips
This woman is not a redhead. But that's about the only thing wrong with her.
safe for work, due to no evil nekkidness!
The bride and I went out last night for a bottle du vin et pommes frites au Barbette, avec the illustrious robinkisser and a girl who, in robin's temporary absence, is slated to receive his kisses. We were seated on the sidewalk to soak up all the delicious fumes and harley noise (Seriously, guys, what the fuck. Just carry a sign around that says "I need attention."), trying to figure out which wine to order, when who should ride up on his bicycle but Noel, merrymaker, wine consultant, raconteur. Per our request he proceeded to slice the wine list up into neat, easy pieces, recommended a bottle which turned out to be excellent, and disappeared. Rarely does something so perfect occur.
wow, again
CNN.com - With Rita strengthening, Galveston orders evacuation - Sep 20, 2005According to
NOAA, by Friday morning, Texas is going to be under heavy weather.
It adds up to good publicity for
a study done at Georgia Tech, that says the number of storms that reach Category Four and Five has nearly doubled over the past 35 years.
Sadly, most Americans aren't going to believe the earth is warming up until their preacher or right wing radio host tells them.
On the anti-religious front, after a much-needed break, I just finished things up with, and have washed my hands of,
this guy Todd, who isn't as bright as the pixels it takes to illuminate his emails. His level of commitment to reality suggests he needs a feeding tube more than he needs someone to ask him how it is he justifies his belief in the bible, and since I provide only the latter of these services, I'm finished. Pop pop fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is. Nice emailing you, Todd. Your sunny disposition was eventually backlit by your inability to carry on like a person who wants to be taken seriously, and revealed, to me, at least, your ghostly pallor. Although no one can save you from your obstinate reluctance to speak the language of reality, this story has a happy ending nevertheless. There are people who can pick up where I left off,
people who can help you.
good
Tennessee: 'Close Down Your Ex-Gay Ministry!':
The state Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities has ordered the closing of what it calls two unlicensed personal care facilities run by a Christian group that counsels gays to give up homosexuality.
so like, watch school
This week we're putting jewels in our plates. I, not understanding that it was a bad idea to get a plate ready for jeweling without the jewels, blew it, and now I have to order new, bigger jewels for my third, fourth, and escape wheels. Gah. So I'm waiting for the jewels, and putting a surface finish on the plate and a corresponding one on the balance bridge. I centered that finish on the third-wheel hole just to make it look slightly more interesting, and I think it worked for the most part. There's a nice swirly look to it right around the crown wheel that I think accentuates the positive, which in my watch needs accentuating. We covered end-shake in a lecture the other day but it would be nice to get our stupid pieces back so we can futz with them instead of shaking our heads this way and that.
Other than that, things are good. They serve this awesome six dollar lunch at my school thanks to the culinary program, so I had swordfish steak, an oriental chicken salad, and pecan pie for lunch instead of my usual, lentil soup and cheese biscuits.* Then as I was walking out of the dining room I ran into my classmate, who said he saw some movie that made him not want to eat it any more because it's overfished. So later I got him back in class when I said "Hey Alvin", and then when he looked I said "Made you look! Ha ha haaa!" I think that got him pretty good. If you want people not to eat the endangered species, tell them BEFORE they eat. Damn.
Oh, I heard that one of my stepbrother's friends didn't bother to show to my stepsister's funeral so a friend of the family slept with his girlfriend in a sweet revenge scenario. ^5, dude, you know who you are.
*I wondered if I'd ever written about this since I eat it several times a week, and I have,
here. That means I have eaten
hundreds of cans of this stuff. I think it's probably the best soup out there for eating every day. The minestrone isn't bad, but even it has to bow down to progresso lentil. Biatch.
read the label. now with more lentils. recanize.
What Does FEMA Really Stand For?
Fake Experts in Mississippi Apocalypse
Federal Enemies of Mulattos in Agony
Fail to Evacuate Missing in Action
Forget Ebony Men Afloat
Frustration, Entropy, Mudslinging, Apathy
For Every Mistake an Affliction
more
died:
Simon Wiesenthal, Nazi hunter
link goes to bio
speech bubble art
Ji Lee Pleaseenjoy
"The world and the universe is an extremely beautiful place, and the more we understand about it the more beautiful does it appear. It is an immensely exciting experience to be born in the world, born in the universe, and look around you and realize that before you die you have the opportunity of understanding an immense amount about that world and about that universe and about life and about why we're here. We have the opportunity of understanding far, far more than any of our predecessors ever. That is such an exciting possibility, it would be such a shame to blow it and end your life not having understood what there is to understand."
- Richard Dawkins
via somethingawful,
Wet Cowboy
safe for work
great photoshop contest
If goths ruled the world
cowasaki
Rove
Karl Rove on Katrina: The only mistake we made with Katrina was not overriding the local government.
a la
Huffington
"news"
Girls in traditional Bavarian clothes toast with one-litre beer mugs during the opening day of the Oktoberfest in Munich September 17, 2005. Millions of beer drinkers from around the world will come to the Bavarian capital Munich for the world's biggest and most famous beer festival, the Oktoberfest. The 172st Oktoberfest lasts from September 17 until October 3. Some six million people are expected to visit 14 enormous tents, each capable of holding up to 10,000 people at a time, drinking some 5.5 million litres (1.453 million U.S. gallons) of beer in the process. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle
You probably don't remember when I asked for help identifying the word that meant "unintentionally funny", but I finally figured it out. Fatuous. Man, did that one drive me crazy, and not in the sense of
"crazy at home".NSFW
Bomb-A-Tron: "Use this tool to file your story about the latest car bombing in Iraq."
Wired News: Arianna Learns to Love the Blog: "we must (find) ways to give mainstream journalism what it most desperately needs: a spine transplant."
The Huffington Post
free, disposable email anytime, also
Spam Map:
mailinator
If there's one thing that we as culturally sensitive people can learn from the family of the poor misunderstood Chai Vang, it's that Americans don't have the kind of compassion necessary to understand that it's ok when a Hmong rifleman kills six hunters and wings two more. Therefore, we need to reach down deep within ourselves and muster up our best Whoopi Goldberg smile and nod with approval, with the knowledge that if you're from another part of the world, you should just get to kill whoever you want.
Mean, bad jury finds Vang guilty
repost from a long time ago
Internet Anagram Server
NPR : 'Hell on Earth' at the Convention CenterI think that eventually the dead body in the bathroom was established as apocyphal.
print at work
The entire world has been following with stupefaction the incredible performance of the U.S. federal government's response to the physical and human disaster of the hurricane Katrina. All the television networks of the U.S. and of many other countries plus all the major newspapers have been following the story in detail. The general reaction has been to ask how could the government of the richest and most powerful country in the world have reacted to this disaster as poorly as, or even much less well than, governments of poor Third World countries? The simple answer is a combination of incompetence and decline. And the results of this disaster will be a further diminution of respect for the president within the United States and a deepened skepticism in other countries about the United States' capacity to put action behind vacuous rhetoric.
I. Wallerstein, 169, Katrina: The Politics of Incompetence and Decline
pandering to feminism, bronze, by Mark Kostabi
making the world a better place
I love when Christians take their minstrel show on the road as much as the next totally indifferent fence post, but when they put up posters all over the place, including my school's bulletin board, my apathy subsides, and is replaced with whatever mood causes people to take down posters.
These people are a traveling show whose home base (if a p.o. box can be said to be that) is in Gallatin, Tennessee. Because the love of the lord and the love of groceries drives them out into the world to spread the great news, we are having their shenanigans in town here! It's going to be a great show, by the look of the glossy poster, which says this, in bright yellow letters:
"A POWERFUL DRAMATIC PRESENTATION THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE!
Earth shaking sound effects, brilliant lighting, creative costumes, and explosive pyrotechnics. The cast of over fifty will grip your hearts with contemporary scenes that hit you where you live. You will laugh, cry, and be on the edge of your seats."
I must be pretty out of touch if I thought that god was supposed to be enough without all the gripping, laughing, and crying, right on cue. Religion isn't about the actual existence of god and never has been. It's about the cycle of creating needs in people, and then meeting them, causing confusing emotional turmoil every step of the way. I'll bet my mother's eyes (don't worry, mom, they're safe) there's going to be abortion in this thing, and a heapin' helpin' of homosexuality. And the more graphic it is, the more "hitting you where you live" is going to drive the money right into the collection plate. Gay dudes butt fuckin' will put some coin in the righteous coffers, and if they play-act trying to abort a fetus, then fail, then have to beat it against the floor while blood sprays everywhere with the mom, the fetus, and the doctor screaming all at the same time, they're going to need a holy ATM afterwards.
Tricking people is the one kind of science that these frauds paid attention to in class.
Dear "Glory And The Fire Ministries",
You're shameless, hallucinating charlatans and you ought to keep your obnoxious bullshit out of my school cafeteria, and out of my sight. Rattle your tin cup at someone else, go pray in the closet, and shove your laser light show up your pious asses. Die and go to heaven already.
Fuck you, Dale
Poster 0, Me 1
this is so bad, you might have to scream. seriously
Troy's mix tape of love.This is the original tape Troy made to his girlfriend Melissa on their 6 month anniversary. She left him 3 days after.
I wonder what caused her to wait three days. This caused me to laugh out loud in the middle of the library. (Headphones)
igod: "repenting made easy"
It might have been funny in a small dose, but this guy takes things to the far edge of where it can go. I think he has some problems. The pages I link to do not reflect the views of the network or its sponsors.
Baby Recipes
did you know?
"in the right conditions, scientists have been able to slow light down to the speed of a bicycle, or even stop it altogether." And you know how? That's right, by praying about it!
cool
I don't understand this song. Here are the lyrics:
LYRICS - The Boy Who Wouldn't Hoe CornIs it supposed to be a lesson? Like that women don't marry lazy asses? What's up with the threat at the end? I appreciate a good ballad, bluegrass-style, but there ought, in my opinion, to be more clarity, even if the guy kills her at the end.
When there isn't more of a decisive point to the ballad, it seems to me to be no good. Like black chick vanity music, when the "divas" shift their voices all over the place with all the grace and purpose of diarrhea flying out a car window at sixty miles an hour. That unfortunately "black" music is an omnidirectional mess, and it's a shame that it's carried in such wide channels that you should even know what I'm talking about.
In case you're worried about what's going to become of the younger generation, it's going to grow up and start worrying about the younger generation.
- Roger Allen
cool
Rich Burridge's Blog : Weblog: "Favorite BoingBoing Links"
Bullshit.
the week thus far in watch school
So last week I turned in my ETA 6497 to have its guts inspected for proper lubrication, end-shake, etc. Now it is Tuesday and it remains ungraded. No big deal. After the school had to close down for two days, then a fire because of some janitor smoking in the closet, and now the elevator not working, I should probably feel lucky the place hasn't exploded or something.
So we're back to work on our school watches, which is fun. My 3/4 plate part 2 milled out quite nicely, which is on the order of miraculous, because the spacing between the index pins makes it almost impossible to use them; I wound up holding my piece steady by hand. Of course, the mill wants to do the things to my plate that toddlers want to do to birthday cake, so I had to hold it tightly, and as a result, my arm got tireder than it's been since we filed our steel cubes. After that I cut out the balance recess, and am ready to take down the plate to its final depth. There remains to be done a little shaping of the plate on the side facing the balance wheel with its back to the stem; the balance bridge we're going to be using is different from the one we started with because we can plate the new ones better. Raw brass or somesuch. I'll know what that's supposed to look like tomorrow when I get a new bridge, but tracing it is going to be difficult, and largely luck. It's hard to trace a line on metal, and impossible to do with precision with what we have to work with, and cutting it at a specific angle with what we're using is almost impossible as well. What I'm going to go for is a look of intentional curviness, because it's all I can think of. A nice straight line is out of the question because of the dial screws, and because of the aforementioned. I just don't want it to look like shit. If the watch works I'll be pleased. The lathes we're using are the most basic lathes that can possibly turn out a watch, so we're not going to wind up with anything like the sexy watches you see in the catalogs.
So tomorrow, we're going to learn jewel placement, and then I have to go to work, because Friday night I have a wedding rehearsal for a wedding Saturday. Jackie and Beege are next in tying the knot, which I'll be going to Saturday night. It's a wonderful weekend for a wedding.
End of the Bush EraLevees Made of Lies:
Rage, Grief, and the Chimera of the American Dream
There's something about this that makes me think. What would it look like if this were America's public space? Whose signs do we see each day? What companies advertise to us, and what else is there that we see, and how big, by comparison, is it?
The Million Dollar Homepage - Own a piece of internet history!
children: little angels
What good is a court if it locks up a man for sixteen years on the word of a lying
six-year old? I'll be honest, stories like this make me doubt my willingness to have offspring, at least in the United States, where children are holy and pure and can lie and have their fathers locked up forever if they feel like it.
Prison nightmare ends after daughter recants tale of rapeSomething very bad should happen to little children who lie.
New Orleans: "With gangs of rapists and looters rampaging through wards in the flooded city, senior doctors took the harrowing decision to give massive overdoses of morphine to those they believed could not make it out alive."
the Mail onlineMakes me wonder what the compassionate conservatives would have done. Something more humane, I'm sure.
When one frog just isn't enough.
we salute you
Earl Lloyd Biography:
the NBA's first black player!
My dad worked on this guy's teeth today.
best thing ever?
Cool telephone toy. Tell it who to call and what to say. Even tell it what caller ID information to give.
excellent.
tragedy vs. tragedy
Katrina hit New Orleans and killed thousands of people. I'm not saying it's not awful. Here's a photograph that yahoo is pushing to commemorate it:
Yep, a doll's head. I guess we're supposed to use our imaginations and think about the loss of innocence, a favorite theme of country music (always a female in coutry music losing her innocence. it's revolting. every half hour.). If it's not a loss of innocence then I don't know what it could be. A doll's head isn't as powerful an image as a city under water, or an obnoxious sportsplex, mecca of all-american good times, full of poverty, filth and misery. We, as consumers, demand more. We want our feelings validated by the news cycle. We want the loss of innocence,
our innocence, to be the center of our own attention.
Let Dale tell you where that image was really from. In a town called Bhopal, India, a company called Union Carbide opened a chemical factory. In 1984, some water got into a holding tank, causing the production of toxic gases, which escaped. Then, and this isn't debatable, ensued the worst industrial disaster in history. The leak killed thousands outright and injured anywhere from 150,000 to 600,000 others, at least 15,000 of whom died later from their injuries. And we're talking birth defects statistics beyond the dreams of epidemiologists. That's what pesticides do to humans, and that's why the factory was in India anyway.
Here's a picture of one of the victims:
Look familiar?
I admit it, I post a lot of stuff here that no one could possibly have the time to read. But the thing from yesterday was a very educational read, and I thought I'd repost it and encourage anyone who wants to know what the war looks like from al-qaeda's poinrt of view, to read it.
Hint: If you ever want to read a NYT story and not dick around with all the separate pages of the story, go to "printer-friendly", and it puts all the text on one page with no damn ads. It comes out to about twelve pages at ten pint times new roman, font of the gods.
Taking stock of the forever warNow here's bat boy jerking off.
I had the best nap in the world today.
BWAHAHAHAHA
Heck of a job, Brownie!
FEMA chief resigns
cool mechanical thing
10HP_Chevy
To All My Fellow Americans Who Voted for George W. Bush:
On this, the fourth anniversary of 9/11, I'm just curious, how does it feel?
How does it feel to know that the man you elected to lead us after we were attacked went ahead and put a guy in charge of FEMA whose main qualification was that he ran horse shows?
That's right. Horse shows.
I really want to know -- and I ask you this in all sincerity and with all due respect -- how do you feel about the utter contempt Mr. Bush has shown for your safety? C'mon, give me just a moment of honesty. Don't start ranting on about how this disaster in New Orleans was the fault of one of the poorest cities in America. Put aside your hatred of Democrats and liberals and anyone with the last name of Clinton. Just look me in the eye and tell me our President did the right thing after 9/11 by naming a horse show runner as the top man to protect us in case of an emergency or catastrophe.
I want you to put aside your self-affixed label of Republican/conservative/born-again/capitalist/ditto-head/right-winger and just talk to me as an American, on the common ground we both call America.
Are we safer now than before 9/11? When you learn that behind the horse show runner, the #2 and #3 men in charge of emergency preparedness have zero experience in emergency preparedness, do you think we are safer?
When you look at Michael Chertoff, the head of Homeland Security, a man with little experience in national security, do you feel secure?
When men who never served in the military and have never seen young men die in battle send our young people off to war, do you think they know how to conduct a war? Do they know what it means to have your legs blown off for a threat that was never there?
Do you really believe that turning over important government services to private corporations has resulted in better services for the people?
Why do you hate our federal government so much? You have voted for politicians for the past 25 years whose main goal has been to de-fund the federal government. Do you think that cutting federal programs like FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers has been good or bad for America? GOOD OR BAD?
With the nation's debt at an all-time high, do you think tax cuts for the rich are still a good idea? Will you give yours back so hundreds of thousands of homeless in New Orleans can have a home?
Do you believe in Jesus? Really? Didn't he say that we would be judged by how we treat the least among us? Hurricane Katrina came in and blew off the facade that we were a nation with liberty and justice for all. The wind howled and the water rose and what was revealed was that the poor in America shall be left to suffer and die while the President of the United States fiddles and tells them to eat cake.
That's not a joke. The day the hurricane hit and the levees broke, Mr. Bush, John McCain and their rich pals were stuffing themselves with cake. A full day after the levees broke (the same levees whose repair funding he had cut), Mr. Bush was playing a guitar some country singer gave him. All this while New Orleans sank under water.
It would take ANOTHER day before the President would do a flyover in his jumbo jet, peeking out the widow at the misery 2500 feet below him as he flew back to his second home in DC. It would then be TWO MORE DAYS before a trickle of federal aid and troops would arrive. This was no seven minutes in a sitting trance while children read "My Pet Goat" to him. This was FOUR DAYS of doing nothing other than saying "Brownie (FEMA director Michael Brown), you're doing a heck of a job!"
My Republican friends, does it bother you that we are the laughing stock of the world?
And on this sacred day of remembrance, do you think we honor or shame those who died on 9/11/01? If we learned nothing and find ourselves today every bit as vulnerable and unprepared as we were on that bright sunny morning, then did the 3,000 die in vain?
Our vulnerability is not just about dealing with terrorists or natural disasters. We are vulnerable and unsafe because we allow one in eight Americans to live in horrible poverty. We accept an education system where one in six children never graduate and most of those who do can't string a coherent sentence together. The middle class can't pay the mortgage or the hospital bills and 45 million have no health coverage whatsoever.
Are we safe? Do you really feel safe? You can only move so far out and build so many gated communities before the fruit of what you've sown will be crashing through your walls and demanding retribution. Do you really want to wait until that happens? Or is it your hope that if they are left alone long enough to soil themselves and shoot themselves and drown in the filth that fills the street that maybe the problem will somehow go away?
I know you know better. You gave the country and the world a man who wasn't up for the job and all he does is hire people who aren't up for the job. You did this to us, to the world, to the people of New Orleans. Please fix it. Bush is yours. And you know, for our peace and safety and security, this has to be fixed. What do you propose?
I have an idea, and it isn't a horse show.
Yours,
Michael Moore
bush family photo
(thanks defective yeti)
september eleventh
That sounds familiar. Is it the anniversary of something? If only I could remember...
Of course! It's my mother in law's birthday! Happy birthday, Sue! How you remain twenty-nine year after year is both a bafflement and a cause for celebration!
Shifting gears, I recommend this post about someone else who is normally associated with today's date, a Saudi Arabian terrorist named Osama Bin Laden. It's called
Lost at Tora Bora.
Also, coming out in next month's Harper's is this article:
the uses of disaster, in which we read about the disaster of our government. I read it yesterday. It's ok.
I work with a guy... let me back up.
Yesterday on the radio as I was working among the shelves in a Harvey-Pekar-type capacity, the radio was on NPR and a woman was being interviewed. I don't know her name, but she was the director of FEMA from its inception during the Carter administration for twenty years and change. She came on and said, very nearly, "The federal response to the hurricane Katrina disaster is the worst response we have ever had." Not too hard to understand. At this point some guy I work with walks by and grumbles something about the liberal media, and how they're only representing one side of the story as usual.
Ok, guys, every story doesn't have two sides. There's such a thing as the facts, and these facts support that the federal response sucked like a remora, a mosquito, a vampire bat, and a black hole rolled up into a vacuum cleaner. It sucked the chrome off a trailer hitch, it sucked light past the even horizon, sucked so bad it altered the fabric of space time, and it sucked more than all the hookers in Times Square. Just for shits and giggles, let's try to imagine how the "other" side would sound:
"The federal response was good! We got in there right away and took care of business like Bachmann Turner Overdrive! The people got helped, and the government was there just like we promised! It's going to take more than a stupid Russian Hurricane to put a dent in our awesome disaster relief infrastructure, which is as strong as a lev-- I mean, as strong as the rock of Gib-- I mean, as strong as our good old American resolve!" Would that have made my coworker happy?
If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.
- Bertrand Russell
wow
This is the media's wake-up that the BBC was talking about.
Olbermann videomust see Katrina commentary from MSNBC
I found a good audio stream and don't know if it consitutes a repost, but
here's WEVL, which not only almost spells evil, but even more closely almost spells weevil, which IS evil, at least in Memphis, which is where the stream originates, because of the havoc weevils historically wreak on cotton fields. Not sure how much of the economy is still propped up by big cotton, but surely the villagers will be bringing torches to burn down the station next time there's a plague of exfoliating pests. It would really take a right wing media outlet though, to spell it out for the villagers who probably wouldn't make the quantum leap from the call letters to their near pronunciation, but those aren't exactly in short supply. See
"Terrist", my favorite news story of the last month. You know they have power, but you hardly ever get to
see it.
Last night I went down to
creative electric studios to see the art opening, which I enjoyed. It's graphic art, cleanly rendered, with messages pivoting on uneasiness, but instead of the usual concentric culture griping, this art tends to move in the direction of the absurd. If there's a lesson in it for me, it's that post-post-modernism might consist of an un-bemused detachment, but it can still resemble something familiar. I will have to inhabit an apathy that includes some activism on some level, but my current level of emotional involvement in society in general is unsustainable, much like society itself.
It is fun to be in the same decade with you.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
our rights don't exist any more
Happy now, "freedom first"ers? Bet you never thought totalitarianism was going to look like this.
FT.com / World / US - US can detain ‘enemy combatant' indefinitely:
"President George W. Bush was handed a major victory on Friday in his effort to assert sweeping presidential powers in the war on terrorism as a US appeals court upheld his authority to imprison indefinitely a US citizen captured on American soil."
Lack of money is no obstacle. Lack of an idea is an obstacle.
- Ken Hakuta
damn commies
What Is Cuban Fidel Castros' Secret? : SF Bay Area Indymedia: "Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died."
print at work
TomDispatch - Tomgram: Iraq in America: At the Front of Nowhere at All
my, what horrible images you have!
First,
a black death metal band.
Second,
a stupid drawing of animals having sex. Probably not safe for work.
print at work
Riding out the storm, eyewitness inside the superdome.
part 1
part 2
part 3
FEMA: obey
"The U.S. government agency leading the rescue efforts after Hurricane Katrina said on Tuesday it does not want the news media to take photographs of the dead as they are recovered from the flooded New Orleans area."
Reuters
radio transcript telling how the homeland security people kept hurricane victims safe from the red cross
Radio Bloggermore from cnn
katrine timeline
reading this will make you mad:
the government is pathetic
how American nationalism got hijacked by the loonies and morons:
eXile - Issue #220 - War Nerd - American Nationalism - By Gary BrecherJust compare the two Bushes: Bush Senior engineered our greatest victory since 1945 in Gulf War One-and he was voted out. He was a real vet, a pilot who'd been shot down in WW II-but he didn't know how to strut, how to woof. People didn't take to him, and didn't care that he brought us a glorious victory. He couldn't woof, so we got rid of him.
Whereas people still love his worthless son, even though that fool has led us into our most disastrous military failure in history. They'd rather have a noisy chickenhawk than a quiet hero-they'd rather have Dubya than his dad.
The trouble is that guys who are good at woofing generally believe their own noise. So Dubya actually believes all that "bring it on!" crap. His dad, the real hero, warned him not to occupy Iraq. Dad was an old-style paleocon; he was thinking about keeping America strong and safe during and after the war. Dubya and his handlers don't give a damn about America, never did. They're in love with their own noise. And we're in love with it too, following it right down the toilet.
no school
The stupid water supply at my school got tainted somehow so there isn't school today. The website:
"Propylene Glycol CAS# 57-55-6 leaked into our water supply system early this morning which required us to cancel all day and evening classes on Wednesday and Thursday to flush the lines in the building."
I like going to school. It's what I do after my morning coffee. Now the whole routine is messed up. I had just received a bunch of watches from ebay, and was going to take apart and clean them yesterday when they made us leave.
So today, laundry, etc. Whee.
My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven now, and we don't know where the hell she is.
- Ellen DeGeneres
grief counseling
The entire concept of grief counseling assumes that the normal state of affairs doesn't include grief. Grief counseling says: feeling bad isn't normal, so we'd better get over there and get people feeling normal again.
What is the normalcy that grief counseling steers people back towards? Or have I got it all wrong?
governator vetoes in 5, 4, 3....
Legislature approves gay marriage
"so poor, so black"
You can't hide the racism.
thanks, wolf blitzer/video
use the bandwidth
Want to think the president's a great guy? Don't click here.
Must see daily show videomore
God Outdoes Terrorists Yet Again
Once again the onion gets it right.
Louisiana National Guard Offers Help By Phone From Iraq
staged?
"the open air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was torn down immediately after the president and the herd of 'news people' had left"
Bloggerheads (UK) - The 'staged' relief event in New Orleans
print at school
A note to our conservative friends:
WE TOLD YOU SO
THE NEWS BLOG
shit for brains
groan
If you've ever wanted to see fat people anime, seek no further. But like most of the rest of the internet, it's going to make you dumber.
Animexpansion - Premiere Anime Weight Gain
Daily Kos: Olbermann, Limbaugh, Sharpton and the GOP Mindset:
"This is the culture of life. The culture of life wants to save brain dead white women and unborn children. The culture of life wants you to watch endless non-news about the disappearance of one white teenager in Aruba. The culture of life wants you to support your nation as it kills tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians in its Quixotic quest against a non-threat. The culture of life wants a zero-tolerance for looters policy to sound authoritative as babies die of dehydration. The culture of life expects you to take care of yourself, and if you can't, then it is your own fault for getting into that situation in the first place. Fuck off. You had your shot. Station in life, where you hang your hat, and whether you have the $40 at the end of the month to pay for the overpriced gasoline to get out of that home in time is all up to you."
some guy named Silliman:
"It’s not just the politicians here who are to blame. It’s the fearful, greedy, inner tyrant in every one of us. Every politician – and every voter – who ever voted for a tax cut has blood on their hands this week."
And Robert Scheer asks if government doesn't have a place in the lives of citizens, if it means building levees, in this article:
The Real Costs of a Culture of Greed
dead
Barbara Bush: It's Good Enough for the Poor
Finally, we have discovered the roots of George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism."
Sadly, not unbelievable
Just in case you don't click this, I want you to see her actual words so you don't think I'm making it up:
"so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them"
class break
Here are some google searches that have been done on this computer:
asswatcher
fat guy in a little coat
why is important having friends
Anna nicole
Jenna Jamison
Pamela Anderson
Today the first thing I did was drop my watch on the floor. I was already bothered that I would have to spend my morning replacing a jewel after I busted the incabloc casing last Friday, but when my hairspring started to resemble silly string, I entered a higher state of agitation and winced a wince normally reserved for those who are thinking "that wasn't insured." Then I had some tea and calmed down and came back and everything went more smoothly.
yard sale
Yesterday on our way out of Duluth I drove us across the sand bar and showed J the houses where I've always thought it would be good to live. They're run-down looking except for a few; for anyone who's never been there but has been to the outer banks of North Carolina, it's very similar house-wise, meaning the actual houses and not the row-condo troll containers where the gray garbage can provided by the city looks like a miniuature version of the dwelling itself, prompting the thought that if the former could contain the latter, the scenery would be much improved.
One of the good houses was having a yard sale. A lady at the yard sale said she and her husband were moving to a warmer climate because he was retired now, and the house was for sale but that no one had bought it yet. I asked what was beyond the fence in the back and she said the beach. I went back there for a look and it's literally between three and five baseball throws away from the port, for someone with a good arm. Dude. Right there. [insert valley girl mouth noise that I can't devise adequate onomatopoeia for.]
I asked her the asking price and she said 459. That's so much money that in order to fight off the depression that was coming I started having to fantasize about all the ways I could make 459 thousand dollars. I decided to look up automatic transmissions when I got home and see if I could come up with a way to improve them. Little did I know how totally fucking ingenious the planetary gear system (that's what it's called. maybe you knew that but I didn't.) is.
So I basically need 459,000 dollars. That's not all the money in the world by any means, but it sure is a hell of a lot for a broke-ass like myself. If anyone knows where I can get that much let me know.
I really want only a few things in life. One of them is a boat at my house. Someday I want to walk out my door and get in a boat and read the paper out on the water. And I want a cup of coffee in a little cup holder on that boat. And if I think the fish might bite, and I decide to take a couple of casts, that option will be there as well. And yesterday I saw where I can do that. There was even a boat lying in the sand behind the house, not being given a shit about. Ugh.
It gained the impressive distinction of most depressing yard sale ever been to, and I've seen some doozies. A stinky, cramped car load of screaming children nursing corn syrup beverages, faces masks of tears and panic, many stains on each of their stretched, hand-me-down shirts while mom obliviously dawdles with the other partial-denture-candidate cigarette cows in front of a bin of broken toys? Nah. Try your dream house out, for far more than you can possibly pay. I wonder who's going to wind up in that house. I hope it's not some asshole. Rest assured, I'll be looking into it some day.
Duluth is the city I can't forget. It's like my strange twin, and while the time on my life runs out, I feel it pulsating from far away, wondering where I am.
But enough of that. Time for the funny internet garbage!
President Bush: Sell the Ranch: an open letter
unbelievable the finger speed this guy has.
FAZED - Video Viewer
frickin' sweet
THUNDERCUT
I thought it was a joke, but now I'm not so sure.
Extreme Racist takes on the mexicans
Duluth
The lovely J and I decided to take a trip up to the zenith city of the unsalted seas, the world's most inland seaport, and here we are. Right now I'm looking out the window at Lake Superior and the lift bridge, and thinking of how much I'd like to live here. Sure it gets cold, but that just keeps the wimps out.
Yesterday morning as I was in the shower a bolt of lightning popped right by my bathroom window and the flash and crash made me get the hell out of there. Almost getting struck by lightning no es bueno, amigos. Fortunately, I had rinsed off already.
Katrina's real name
global warming
Big oil's bigtime looting
PRESIDENT BUSH yesterday told ABC-TV, ''there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this, whether it be looting or price-gouging at the gasoline pump or taking advantage of charitable giving or insurance fraud."
Zero tolerance is meaningless when the White House lets the biggest looters of Hurricane Katrina walk off with billions of dollars.
link
why
would anyone want to look at this brunette?
NSFW
this guy must be crazy
The Extreme Racist
Katrina: the batshit crazy christian take
“New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion -- it's free of all of those things now," Shanks says. "God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there -- and now we're going to start over again."
News from Agape Press
Hurricane exploitation - the quotes:
Chrenkoff
Bush administration officials "fanning out"
Why? For full Bush administration official coverage? So they can say "sure, our response was a disgrace, but now there's a Bush administration official every ten miles across the disaster area"?
Bush officials visit, New Orleans nearly empty
Some people I work with told me about this one, a site with various funny videos, etc. The great thing about this one is the network at the hospital doesn't block it.
Compfused.com - Your Online Entertainment Haven
DVD Jon hacks Media Player file encryption | The Register:
"Norway's best known IT export, DVD Jon, has hacked encryption coding in Microsoft's Windows Media Player, opening up content broadcast for the multimedia player to alternative devices on multiple platforms."
the idiot king: always good for his word
Well, maybe not ALways... where did that Karl Rove story go?
Bush Vows to Fix Flaws in Recovery Effort - Yahoo! News
"Dear Mr. Bush:
Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers?"
the rest of it
White House Backpedals on Flood Control - Yahoo! News:
The White House scrambled Thursday to defend itself against criticism that it has consistently proposed cutting the budget for Army Corps of Engineers water and flood control projects — including several that could have mitigated the disaster in New Orleans.
Just in February, President Bush proposed cutting the Corps' budget by 7 percent. The year before, Bush proposed a 13 percent cut.
Kanye West, my new hero
On live network television:
"George Bush does not care about black people."
NBC hesitates, cuts to Chris Tucker.
Awesome.
The hurricane relief telethon on NBC is what's on TV at the Shipley household tonight. It's a great place to hear songs about how great the lord is, which no one seems to find ironic but me, and a great place to see footage of the disaster area. The lovely J and I are donating an unspecified amount, both through our taxes, part of which goes to FEMA, and through the red cross, which is what's telethoning on NBC.
It shouldn't be too much of a surprise that the Internet has evolved into a force strong enough to reflect the greatest hopes and fears of those who use it. After all, it was designed to withstand nuclear war, not just the puny huffs and puffs of politicians and religious fanatics.
-- Denise Caruso, (digital commerce columnist, New York Times)
The lovely J and I went to Tryg's last night down by the lake and it was great. We were celebrating her first day on the actual floor as an R.N. I'm proud of her. It's strange that after all that school there's actually the job you went to school for waiting at the end. I'm sure that as a watchmaker I'll be just as surprised. (Some of this sentiment is likely a holdover from my adolescent and young adult belief that I wouldn't live to see tomorrow, every single day.)
She had the gnocchi and I had a steak. (There are three steaks on the menu, a Kobe, a Kansas City steak, and a steak on top of a salad.) The food was great and not unreasonable. A friend of mine has actually made it far enough up the chef-ing ladder to get his name on the menu, which is cool to see. The one night we go in there and he's got the night off. Even a rising star must take time off.
Their bar menu is the way to go for economy. That one's got some dishes I recognize from the bar menu at Lurcat. Ahi tuna tartare, and the miniature burgers, and something else I think. The service was exactly what you want. Not obseqious but not pushy, not overfriendly, but not unengaging. Servers have a hard job. They have to figure out where to fit into the lives of the people they're waiting on after not having long to size them up. Carrying the food to the table is cake. Knowing what kind of distance to keep from the over-lipsticked, "kept", boob job bimbos, high maintenance personified, that's no mean feat, and since those women have lots of money and free time, they wind up getting waited on a lot.
Today school and work and tomorrow work and the next day work and then school all week but wait! Reprieve!
Monday (rare holiday, unrelated to war... must remember to catalog all the American holidays with the war-related ones in one column and everything else in another for size comparison) J and I are going up to the best damn town in America, Duluth, to drag our heels through the gravel lakeside. I love it up there and want to convince her it's great, too, so that we can live there someday. Pipe dreams, of course; no major watch manufacturers have offices or factories there. But I love it. It's a litte cold for her*, she says.
*Not the exact words she employed. Use your imagination.
