note to self

shooting a .45 is really fun. and really loud.

a damn good idea

which means it will probably never make it through. but i can dream, can't i?

wait a minute...

i'm only going to anal-ize the first page or so of the article [ed. note: there is actually only one page two it... i saw the 1 of 4 at the bottom and got confused], but i would recommend reading the whole thing (free registration required).

recently, colin powell spoke out on the whole "domestic spying" issue. and the nyt's take on it is leaving me slightly confused.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 25 - Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said on Sunday that it would not have been "that hard" for President Bush to obtain warrants for eavesdropping on domestic telephone and Internet activity, but that he saw "nothing wrong" with the decision not to do so.

~~~~~~~~

"I see absolutely nothing wrong with the president authorizing these kinds of actions," he said.

Asked if such eavesdropping should continue, Mr. Powell said, "Yes, of course it should continue."

so it seems to me that, even if not whole-heartedly, mr. powell is still supporting bush on this issue. but then, further down the page, we see this:

Though Mr. Powell stopped short of criticizing Mr. Bush, his suggestion that there was "another way to handle it" was another example of his parting company on a critical issue with the president he served for four years.

wait, come again? this means that they're "parting company"? because to me, it looks more like two pitchers arguing whether its better to use a slider or a high fastball to strike a batter out. sure, they may go about it different ways, but their basic goal is the same: get the guy out.

and then, predictably, the "reporter" goes on to take some jabs at the situation in iraq, implying that the recent elections--which appear to have been very successful--were actually reinforcing the ethnic divisions in iraq and leading them one step closer to a civil war. because heaven forbid anything good should come out of iraq.

"word" of the day

jewmas.

Merry Christmas to all...

...and to all, a good night.

quote of the day

"There are only two girls in my major who shave their legs." --Rachel (rough quote; and no, she's not a womyn's studies major, whatever the hell that is)

another new hero

niel bryant, a former state senator from oregon. when filling out a form, which "asks for information on gender and ethnicity to assist the state in meeting its affirmative action objectives," he came upon a question asking if he had any disabilities. his response? "White/male." he did not, unfortunately, remain my hero for very long, since he apologized for the incident. pansy.

h/t tongue tied

someone should make a song out of these...

the twelve days of christmas: gifts for your liberal friends. start here, and work your way back.

christmas music: more overrated than elvis?

discuss amongst yourselves.

quote of the week: you and what army? edition

"Mexico is not going to bear, it is not going to permit, and it will not allow a stupid thing like this wall." --Luis Ernesto Derbez, foreign secretary to Mexican president Vicente Fox.

and i just have to wonder to myself, what the hell is mexico planning on doing about it? turn to the ap for help, by the tone of the article. note that anyone who supports the wall is part of a "growing tide of anti-immigrant sentiment," which, when you get right down to it, is a baldfaced lie. i am strongly in favor a wall along the border, and have been for quite some time. but am i anti-immigrant? no, i am not. i am anti-illegal immigrant. i consider those who respect our laws and enter our country legally a good thing, in fact. we are, essentially, a country of immigrants; but we are also a country of law. it is good to remember the former, but we must never forget the latter. laws (most of the time, at least) are there for a good reason.

also note that one mexican worker who was interviewed said it would "unleash conflict" in the US, due to small businesses losing out on labor. to which i would reply: any business which relies on illegal activity for its success deserves to go down in flames.

and here's another fun quote: "If people in the U.S. and Canada had an accurate view of the success of democracy, political stability and economic prosperity in Mexico, it would improve their views on specific bilateral issues like immigration and border security." that from Rob Allyn, president of a PR company the mexican government hired to improve their image. he conveniently (or ignorantly [is that a word?]) forgets that if mexico were as successful as he seems to think it is, we wouldn't have such a problem with illegal immigrants. that, and according to the article, the only thing that brings in more money for mexico than people up here sending it there is oil. that's right... immigrants, both legal and illegal, bring in an income second only to oil.

read the whole article... it's pretty ridiculous.

h/t say anything

semi-related: the immigration game

question of the year

more and more this year, we've been hearing about the "attack on christmas." while i don't think the people/groups behind the "attack" are trying to convert us to atheism/polytheism, i just have to ask... why? you don't see anyone running around telling people they can't say happy hannukah, happy kwanzaa, have a great ramadan, happy holidays, etc. i certainly don't do that. so why can people tell me that it's not ok to say "merry christmas" because i might piss someone off? if you can't ignore my holidays as well as i ignore yours, you're admitting that:
a) you're scared of the mention of my holiday, for some reason
b) you're not a very tolerant person, even though what you're doing is supposedly in the name of "tolerance"
c) some other things that i can't think of right now, since i'm typing this up before breakfast

on that note, have a Merry Christmas everyone. if you don't feel like having one, that's fine... go away and leave me in peace to celebrate.

a picture is worth a thousand words

or, in this case, a neat little graph from the NYT.

h/t say anything

my new hero

is morgan freeman, who says what i've been saying for quite some time now. only he had a bigger audience for it.

yeah, that's about how i feel too

hooray for the moral high ground...

wtf pwn3d!!!1!

this old lady rocks.

h/t say anything

not a bad day at all

picked up a copy of civ 4, which is installing right now, and got a free copy of office 2003 from a friend. and pat, i'll respond to your comments later, possibly tomorrow.

a few tips for writing a better book

while i am not an author myself, i am an avid reader. not to name any names, but in my opinion, some otherwise "professional" authors have a decent amount of room for improvement. so here's a few things i think would make books better.

1) don't make up your own swear words/terms. especially if you're not going to bother explaining to us why said words/terms are considered swearing. either stick to previously established swear words, or don't use any... for example, "character X swore profusely."

2) you don't need to redescribe the main characters in every single book. by the time a reader has reached, say, book nine of a series, they should have a pretty good idea of what the main characters look like. we already know how wide character A's shoulders are, and how expansive character B's bosom is... move on to something important.

3) implied sex is your friend.

4) enough with all the chicks running around naked already. any women reading the story aren't going to be interested (hopefully...), and if a man wants to see a naked chick, there are much easier places to find them than in books.

5) limit yourself to a single cohesive storyline, or at most two or three. more is just showing off (if you can even pull it off), and while it will extend your series nicely, it detracts from the overall trend of the story.

that's about it for now, but this post will probably be expanded later as i think of more.

two bits of fun

first off, why do the wealthy get more back from tax cuts? because they pay more. quite a bit more, in fact. h/t say anything

second, a great quote:
"...[I] think that it would be better to educate Muslims to respect the culture of the majority in Denmark, if they want the majority to respect their culture." --Bent Lexner, Denmark's chief rabbi

that was found in an article about cookies, of all things. but i have to agree with him. you could replace "Denmark" with the name of quite a few countries around the world, and it would still hold true.
h/t tongue tied

looks like some people have a clue

john mccain, unsurprisingly, is not one of them. oh well.

life is good

i probably just jinxed it, but oh well.

*yesterday, i got a $200 christmas bonus.
*today, i got a new/old monitor from work. not great, but not bad, and free. 17" flat panel dell. so i'll be hooking that up to my old compy.
*tomorrow, dad is bringing me liquor.
*at some point in the last day or so, a friend's dad just got home from iraq.
*in a few weeks, i'll have friends coming home from college.

i love life.

a simple prayer

that will soon be replacing "the prayer of jabez" at bookstores near you.

"Dear Lord: keep me safe, keep me sane. Amen."

i am a consumer whore

and how! last night, i decided it was time to expand my dvd collection. so i hopped on over to amazon, and did just that.

1) The Audrey Hepburn Collection
--Breakfast at Tiffany's
--Sabrina
--Roman Holiday
2) The Steve McQueen Collection
--The Great Escape
--Junior Bonner (i've never heard of it either)
--The Magnificent Seven
--The Thomas Crown Affair
3) The Jack Ryan Collection
--Clear and Present Danger
--The Hunt for Red October
--Patriot Games

total cost, after shipping and tax: $53.90
total cost per dvd: $5.39. not too shabby.

more perspective

here's an interesting tidbit: in california in 2004, there were nearly 2400 reported homicides. during the same period in iraq, there were just over 900 coalition deaths. you do the math.

via say anything

well, that sheds a whole new light on things

in a logical arugment, there are several different types of fallacies/fallacious arguments, one of which is the argument ad baculum, roughly meaning an appeal to force: i.e., agree with me or i'll shoot you in the face.

while reading today (nothing dirty, believe it or not... "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed," by Jared Diamond), i learned that the penis bone of a walrus is called a baculum.

going back to logic, i'll leave this as a third-order enthymeme, and let you draw your own conclusions.

it's about freaking time

winter is finally here. it was 18 degrees outside when i got home from work, and we're up to about a foot of snow on the ground now. let the good times begin.

--update: holy balls--
as of about 19:00 pst, the temperature is down to 9 degrees.

well that makes a whole lot of sense...

news flash! global warming causes ice age!

--update--
this is just going to be the links of the day page.

1) from Tongue Tied, a story about a woman who is pissed about a painting of the Pilgrims voting on the Mayflower Compact because there were no women or indians in the picture. Nevermind the fact that only white property-owning males could vote at that time. Who needs historical accuracy these days?

2) by way of Say Anything (you can go hunting on your own, i'm too lazy to go dig the exact spot back up), a mockumentary about the civil war.

3) and everybody's favorite jewish friend jeff goldstein, a look at the brilliance of the democratic leadership. or lack thereof.

cool beans

well, i finally broke down and got myself a cell phone today. which means either: a) i finally caught up with most of the rest of america, or b) i finally sold out; i guess it all depends on your view of things. i'm still not entirely sure which view is mine. i'm splitting a family plan three ways with my parents and my younger brother... "my share" of the time is 333 minutes a month. which is probably about 330 more than i spend on the phone during an average month. anyways, if you're interested, feel free to contact me for the number. i've gotta use up all those minutes somehow.

random historical fact: joseph smith, the founder of mormonism, was killed exactly 140 years before i was born. coincidence? i think not.

bummer dude

mr. miyagi is dead.

harry potter: final book, final paragraph

....
Harry regretfully takes one last drag from his joint, then swallows the roach and glances at his surroundings. No longer is he an angsty teenager. No longer is he a powerful wizard. No longer does he get to spend time with the foxy Hermione. Not that that had done him any good, what with her going after that fat bugger Ron. No accounting for taste these days. After relating his seven-year dream to his "mate" Tyrone, he dozes off to the sound of Tyrone saying "Man, that is some trippy shit. But if you wanna have some really fucked up dreams, you gots to try the hashish. Man, this one time...."

The End

why is there bacon in the soap?

i made it myself!

borrowing a page from jeff goldstein

movie review in five words or less. plus two more.

movie: batman begins

starring: christian bale, katie holmes, rutger hauer, gary oldman (as a good guy!), morgan freeman, and some other people i recognized but don't remember off the top of my head.

review: Liam Neeson as a Ninja. Hot stuff.

1 4m 73h u83r 1337

although i probably screwed several things up in the subject. oh well. i just ascended on my first try in guild wars. nowhere close to fast enough to get the bonus, but still not too shabby, i think.

immature? probably.

but still funny.

ouch. and yet strangely appropriate. and very funny.

so this morning at work, i was listening to the radio. some guy called in and requested the song "fat bottom girls," and dedicated it to his wife. the dj--a woman herself--pulled out a funny joke to go along with that. it went something like this.

so this guy forgets to get his wife something for their anniversary. when she finds out, she demands that he have something for her in the driveway that does 0-200 in under 5 seconds by the next morning. next morning she wakes up and looks out in the driveway... and sees a bathroom scale.

procrastination rules

i was introduced to this webcomic over the weekend, and i have to say i find it quite funny.

the weekend, part b

over all, it was a great weekend.
Friday
left for spokane friday morning after bible study, and got there a bit before noon, dropped my stuff off in ben's room, and then made my way over to dixon for corliss' crusades class. which i really wish i was in. then mark bought me lunch at the cafe, and then i wandered around visiting profs for awhile. didn't see as many as i would have liked, but oh well; i ended up talking with corliss, dr. migs, and briefly with my old advisor jim hunt. dale was supposedly "around" all day, but apparently "around" means "somewhere in the general vicinity of the campus," because i never ended up seeing him. after that i played some frisbee golf with nick, jason and mark, and then mark, ben and i went over to alison's place and started a game of settlers of catan. had dinner at zips, then back to work on my tripping character and watch mark play some san andreas, which is a horrible but very entertaining game. then back to alison's to finish the game of catan and play one more with a slightly faster set of rules. back to campus and bed around 1 or 1:30.

Saturday
woke up way the hell too early, went back to sleep, and finally got up around 9. chilled in the hub for awhile, read my email and some blogs, then back to arend to start tripping. good times were had. except for the battle when i got killed in the first round, and was completely useless. lunch at tomato street, where i had an awesome sandwich, and they forgot to charge me for my mozarella sticks. then more tripping. no real dinner, but i was still fairly full. watched josh trumpet's senior performance. it was... interesting. actually, had it not been for the last song (where he pretended to know about the political/world stage), it was pretty good. he organized/orchestrated/whatever a big-band version of "toxic," which actually sounded really good. definitely sounded better--and was easier to understand--than the britney spears version. then off to pat's place for some munckin with mark stevens and emily, and then all but mark headed off to the catacombs, where we met mark (schuldt), steve, and josh. and that stupid, useless waiter. he must have been an english major. we got back to campus around midnight, and i crashed into bed.

Sunday
got up h-early again, but for a better reason this time. left campus around 9 and headed down to pullman to meet kate-lynne for church. which was pretty interesting. they had a very enthusiastic black preacher, which on it's own was fairly cool. not something i'd want to do every week, maybe once every month or two, but it was an interesting change from what i'm used to. the audience was fairly enthusiastic too, which to me was annoying. it's a little tricky to focus on the sermon--which didn't seem that focused to begin with, but maybe i'm just not used to the style--with people around you suddenly calling out "hallelujah!" and "yes jesus!" and "amen!" or softly chanting "thank you jesus" during prayers. that one really bugs me. when you get right down to it, it's much like a family relationship. we may get annoyed at each other occasionally, and even throw a few punches every now and then, but when you get right down to it, we're still a family, and we're still on the same side. after church there was a potluck, where they announced all the small groups/bible studies in the area. there were almost more group leaders than there were people attending... it was pretty ridiculous. then back to kate-lynne's place to watch "run lola run," play a few games of star munchkin, and then the long drive home. other than the part where i got turned around for awhile after stopping for dinner in moses lake, it was a pretty good trip, and i made it home in just over 4 hours. the end.

great weekend

i'm on my way to bed now, so i'll say more about it later. for now, i'll leave you with the following thoughts:

~the catacombs + friends + irish carbombs = teh r0XX0r
~waiter from the catacombs named rich = teh suXXor. i think we saw him about 5 times over the course of two hours. it took 45 freaking minutes from the time we were done with our food to the time we got our bill. and then we said we'd like it split, and he handed us a calculator. because his time is obviously too valuable to spend it doing his job.

alright! maybe they still have some balls after all

looks like senate republicans, led by graham (SC), are not entirely useless after all. from today's NYT (free registration required):

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 - The Senate voted Thursday to strip captured "enemy combatants" at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, of the principal legal tool given to them last year by the Supreme Court when it allowed them to challenge their detentions in United States courts.
~~~
If approved in its current form by both the Senate and the House, which has not yet considered the measure but where passage is considered likely, the law would nullify a June 2004 Supreme Court opinion that detainees at Guantánamo Bay had a right to challenge their detentions in court.

the article notes that there is a possibility this part of the bill could be overturned later, but i'm hoping the republicans will actually stick to their guns for once and get something useful done.

roll out the red carpet

hey all. as a few of you know already, i'm planning on visiting whitworth this weekend. to those that don't, here's your warning.

and i thought new yorkers were crazy

but maybe not compared to this: people in london are using so much crack, traces of it have been detected in the river thames. considering how dirty the thames is, that's quite an accomplishment.

h/t say anything

yarrrgh...

i'm pissed at guild wars right now. mainly because i'm standing about 10 feet away from where i need to be to finish a 30-40 minute quest, and i'm stuck. i think it's on my henchmen. which would be really stupid, since i just brought them back to life a minute ago. oh well. here's a picture... some of you may recognize that as the end of borliss pass.

short thoughts

--but at least they gave me a cool pen: yesterday, i went over to seattle to try out for jeopardy. and got my ass handed to me by the first part of the test. in my defense, so did about 80% of the other people there.

--looks aren't everything: i picked up a sweet hammer in guild wars earlier today. sweet enough that i deleted my mesmer and started a hammer warrior. it doesn't look like much, but it does 19-35 lightning dmg., +15% against undead. i have to say i'm fairly happy with it.

--where have all the marbles gone?: when i originally planned this post, there were more than two thoughts to go in it. i'm not sure where the others went to.

--update--

--addicted? possibly: remeber that new warrior i started earlier today? yeah, i just got it to level 10. now it's time for bed.

prayer request

i'm headed to seattle tomorrow in what appears to be fairly crappy weather. though i'm planning on driving safe, i can't say anything about all those other crazy folk on the road.

partial review: the wheel of time

i'm near the end of book six right now, which means just over halfway through the series. here's my thoughts on it so far:

--the storyline is still good, but it takes too damn long to get anywhere. if the characters spent half as much time doing things that they spent talking about doing those things, the books could be several hundred pages shorter without losing anything.

--pretty much all of the female characters suck. the only exceptions in my mind are moiraine right before she died, at which point she was finally useful, and min, who seems to be the only one not trying to control or manipulate rand in some way. and maybe birgitte, who can occasionally talk some sense into elayne. the rest of them spend their time being pissed at men and trying to manipulate them, thinking that they know best. egwene, for example, spends half of her time complaining how big rand's head is getting (which i personally don't see happening), and the other half running around with a seriously inflated head of her own, especially now that she's amrylin, thinking that she and the "little tower" know more about what's good for him than he does. in some ways, they remind me of kim from 24: pretty to look at, but also pretty useless

--i'll still finish the series. i've made too big of a time commitment to it to quit now. and pat, now i think my vote counts for something. jordan's story, while good, is not better than tolkien.

--update--
potential spoiler alert. although i think that the only people who read this are either farther in the series than me, or really don't care what happens.

so. my guess, for the last half or so of the book, is that mazrim taim is demandred. that, and i'm tired of rand being such a pansy. he made it through this book without killing a single forsaken. in my opinion, he should pick up callandor and that ter'angreal that links him to the huge crystal-ball guy sangreal (literally "holy grail" or "royal blood", depending on where you split it... jordan borrowed bits from some interesting places...), and go out and kick everybody's asses.

bird flu

why, exactly, is it bush's responsibility to come up with a plan to deal with a problem that may or may not even happen? personally, i would think that sort of thing should be left to... i dunno... maybe medical professionals? you know, those folks who might actually know something about the bird flu. so how about we lay off the man and leave him to what he does best: talking funny and scaring the hell out of terrorists.

party at lion's arch

everyone is invited

--update--
the pumpkin helm:

that's what i said

only it sounds more official and impressive coming from teddy:

"There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation of all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities." --Teddy Roosevelt

h/t say anything

some potentially good news

harriet miers withdraws her nomination. i'm excited to see what real nominee bush will bring out now.

well, that sucks

houston just got swept in the world series. i'm not really upset that the white sox won--it's been 88 years since the last time they pulled that off--i'm just upset that the series didn't go on longer. that's 2 years in a row now that it's been over in 4 games, which is just not cool. oh well. there's always next year. maybe the mariners will finally pull things together, and, after making it to the post season, not suck. or maybe the marlins will be able to pull off another good year. because when you get right down to it, other than those two teams, i really don't care.

another comparison

democrats = sunnis. only with less beheadings and suicide bombers.

wtf mate?

so this morning when i turned on my computer, my chipfan decided to start working again after about 2 weeks on strike. i threatened to shoot it if it ever even thought about joining a union, and i've got a strike breaker on the way just in case, so it probably felt like it had no other choice.

something to think about

Militia Act of 1792

Sec. 1. Be it enacted . . .  That each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective states, resident therein, who is or shall be of the age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia . . . . That every citizen so enrolled and notified, shall, within six months thereafter, provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch with a box therein to contain not less than twenty-four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball: or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder. . . .

Sec. 2. [Exempting the Vice President, federal judicial and executive officers, congressmen and congressional officers, custom-house officers and clerks, post-officers and postal stage drivers, ferrymen on post roads, export inspectors, pilots, merchant mariners, and people exempted under the laws of their states.]

The currently effective Militia Act

(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and . . . under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.

(b) The classes of the militia are —

(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and

(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

found here; h/t in a rather roundabout way to say anything

historical quote of the week

"Now I've got Ho Chi Minh's pecker in my pocket." -- Lyndon B. Johnson

funny stuff

i like bush, and i still find this funny:

President Bush’s morning security briefing is wrapping up. Donald Rumsfeld is concluding his part and says, “Finally, three Brazilian soldiers were killed yesterday near Baghdad.”

“OH MY GOD!” shrieks Bush, and he buries his head in his hands for a seemingly interminable 30 seconds. Stunned at the unexpected display of emotion, the
president’s staff sit speechless, not sure how to react.

Finally, Bush looks up and asks Rumsfeld, “How many is a brazillion?”

h/t say anything

pissing off the feme-nazis, part 2: a comparison

a renaissance man, according to wikipedia:

A polymath (also known as a polyhistor) is a person who excels in multiple fields, particularly in both arts and sciences. The most common other term for this phenomenon is Renaissance man, but also in use are Homo universalis and Uomo Universale, which in Latin and Italian, respectively, translate as "Universal Man".

a woman of the renaissance, from book 3, chapter 6 of machiavelli's discourses:

... and to show that she did not care for her children, she showed them her genital member, saying that she had the means of making more.

because pissing off femenists is fun

"There was a woman who got lost in the desert. She stumbled across a lamp, rubbed it, and out came a genie. The genie offered her the traditional three wishes.

Her first wish was to be powerful, intelligent, and loved by all.

The genie thought a moment, snapped his fingers and turned her into a man. "

thanks dave.

my take on the miers nomination

it's probably not worth a whole lot, but now it's out there. from what i've read about her so far, it seems to me that the miers nomination is a perfect picture of the entire bush presidency: more good than bad, but it could have been so much better.

h2g2

watching the movie right now. and as different from the book as it is, it definitely came from the mind of douglas adams. they're on vogsphere right now, and the robot that played marvin on the original bbc series just had a cameo appearance.

yarrrgh...

damn you asus! your mobo is hot stuff, but the chip fan is teh suXXor. and apparently i'm not the only one with the problem (see here). less than two months after i got it, the chip fan died. so i'm trying to contact asus for a replacement, only i can't connect to their website. of course. murphy seems to be working against me as well. that bastard.

more bad "news" from the times

go figure. only this time it doesn't involve the war on terror, or even racism--though i expect that race will come up shortly. no, this time, it appears that we're all going to die of the flu or the riots that a shortage of flu vaccine causes. from the NYT:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 - A plan developed by the Bush administration to deal with any possible outbreak of pandemic flu shows that the United States is woefully unprepared for what could become the worst disaster in the nation's history.

A draft of the final plan, which has been years in the making and is expected to be released later this month, says a large outbreak that began in Asia would be likely, because of modern travel patterns, to reach the United States within "a few months or even weeks."

If such an outbreak occurred, hospitals would become overwhelmed, riots would engulf vaccination clinics, and even power and food would be in short supply, according to the plan, which was obtained by The New York Times.

sounds fairly gloomy, eh? and of course, if the flu "pandemic" ever does make it here, we'll soon have liberals complaining that not enough of the vaccinations are going to minorities, or old people, or children, or whoever their new group of the day is. and if president bush and vp cheney end up with shots, you can be damn sure that they stole that vaccine from some poor minority. in fact, it's probably all some evil scheme masterminded by karl rove to kill off as many potential democratic voters as possible.

were i more talented, i would photoshop a picture of beer looter guy with a supply of flu vaccine. any takers?

my new hero

i seem to be going through them rather quickly, don't i? oh well. my new hero is columbus, of sort-of-discovering-america fame. because he gets me a paid day off of work on monday. what a great guy.

prayer requests

if i have any clue what i'm doing here, this one will stay on top for a few days.

i realize that this will only reach an audience of about two or three, but more is better in this case. a friend of mine was in a car wreck yesterday, and is currently in ICU at harborview. she's had her spleen removed, her pelvis is fractured, and i think one of her arms is broken. if you think about it, please include her in your prayers.

--update--
things are looking pretty good. they operated on her arm, leg, and spleen (or where her spleen was... still not sure on that), and all the operations were successful. tomorrow comes the pelvic operation.

good ideas

i was actually planning on trying something very similar to this at whitworth, but i never got around to it. i wanted to start a white student union. i figured, if there can be a black student union, why not a white one? and a japanese one? and hell, while we're at it, why not one for all of the other minority groups represented by exchange students from halfway around the world? i think it's because, in my expereince at least, the regular old "student union" was good enough for them. why is it that blacks were the only ones who found it necessary to form their own student union? why is it that they seemed to have a harder time fitting in with everybody else than students from japan, vietnam, germany, france, tibet, scotland, and other foreign countries? maybe there's something here that i'm missing; maybe it's right out in the open, and i've just been overlooking it. but to me, this just doesn't seem to make sense.

Holla!

A DVD copy of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children now belongs to me. It also came with a bonus anime movie that explains what happened in the time between the game and the movie. Should be good.

i <3 ann coulter

wwrd?

a cause worth supporting

no pun intended.

hot stuff

so if you're ever looking for a good space-sim to play, this is it. x2: the threat is what freelancer should have been. i'm just getting started, but already i have many options open to me... assuming i can accumulate enough credits, that is. the game allows you to become a corporate mogul, buying and placing as many different production facilities as you want. if you start overproducing something, prices for that product will go down; not just in your area, but across the entire game universe. and if you get too successful, other groups may get jealous and start attacking your assets. again, given enough credits, you can build up a fleet big enough to take out an entire system. you can set your ships up to automatically trade for you, both within a certain area of space and within a specific price range. at any given point, as long as you're in the right sector, you can fly any one of the ships you own, from carriers to scouts to transports. and the space combat, from what i've seen so far, is not too shabby either.

there are a few odd bits. whether intentionally or not, it seems that the game was translated from japanese and that some things just didn't translate. for example, your character will occasionally be told to "wait just a mizura," or that someone has been looking for him for "trazuras." or they'll stick -sama on the end of his name. the names can be fairly interesting too... the first guy you get to talk to is named Ban Danna.

overall though, it looks like a great game. should give me something to counterbalance all the time i'll be spending on guild wars once i get that.

a good point

0% of polled Americans are in Iraq.

via say anything

wish me luck

i just got an email from the folks at jeopardy... i'm going to try out in seattle on november 4th. here's to hoping i can remember all the things i've picked so far, and maybe learning a few new ones before then.

--update--
that, and being able to beat the other folks to the buzzer... that was one of our biggest problems back in knowledge bowl.

finally, a legacy clinton actually earned

Chinese condoms named for Clinton and Lewinsky. NYT article here (free registration required), or you can read a short version at Say Anything.

wow, that was more impressive than i thought... i actually used capital letters.

well that was quick

via msnbc: north korea renegs

a home away from home... away from home?

or something like that. i just got back from visiting friends at whitworth this weekend, and it was fairly strange. every fall for the last 3 years, whitworth became my home (away from home). but now that i'm graduated, i'm having to adjust to not being back there. which could take some time. it was easy for me to fit back in there, but this week will seem strange now, and i probably won't see those friends again for another month at least.

the weekend itself, however, was very fun.

Friday
got to the campus friday night around 8:30. met pat, recruited herr schuldt and jason, and headed down to the catacombs, a pretty sweet bar/pub in downtown spokane (near the spaghetti factory), where we met mark stevens and dave brewster. had some beer and some potatoes, then headed back to pat's place to watch "final fantasy VII: advent children." that movie was amazing. it was a little hard to follow (but it's japanese, so that was to be expected), but the battle scenes will drop your jaw so far it'll take a week to get it back in place. got back to campus around 2, and crashed in ben's room.

Saturday
woke up way the hell too early, around 6... my body is way too used to getting up early for work. tossed and turned for awhile, finally gave up on sleep and got up about 8:45. ben and i headed to ihop for breakfast (because let's face it, once you've got saga to release it's hellish hold on your bowels, you never want it back there), and then back to the dorm to get started on the new fantasy trip. it was originally intended to have only 4 players, but mark (schuldt) is much nicer than i am, and let some more in. we played till around 12:30, and then andrew had to leave to pick up some stuff for cool whip (improv group on campus), so pat, mark, jason, emily, nick and i headed out to lunch at red robin. normally, i think red robin is overrated. but this time was different. both mark and i were wearing our whitworth college republicans t-shirts, and somebody besides us apparently liked them. when our waitress brought the bills, she said an anonymous customer had liked our shirts and paid for our meal. so, although the odds are very much against said anonymous person being a reader of my blog, i would like to give them my profuse thanks.
after lunch, we headed to a hobby shop and picked up some various flavors of munchkin, which is ridiculous in more ways than one. 2, at least, that i can think of off the top of my head: ridiculously fun and ridiculously funny. here are some examples of cards from the versions we had (munchkin, super munchkin, munchkin fu, and star munchkin). played a round of that, tripped some more, went to jack in the crack for dinner, tripped some more, then recruited briggs and hunter for some more munchkin, and then watched advent children again. and again, it was awesome and hard to follow. bed around 1:30.

Sunday
woke up around 7:30. gave up on sleep and read from about 8:30-11ish, finishing "deception point" by dan brown. went to brunch at saga... apparently, i am still a glutton for punishment. i blame briggs for that. spent most of the rest of my time there reading news and blogs online, while everybody else was working on homework. left campus about 3:15. stopped by the phonathon theme house to say hi, bye, and democrats suck to alison, then left for home. arrival at approximately 7:00. boredom ensued almost immediately.

so, now you know more than you ever wanted to know about my weekend. either that, or you were actually there for the whole thing, in which case you hopefully skipped reading this post, as it would be fairly redundant.

now there's a hot idea

ann coulter for supreme court justice! i like the way jay tea thinks.

my new job: photo captioning

probably not time to quit my actual new job yet, but i did manage an honorable mention in the wizbang weekend caption contest (that's me at #7).

what you probably won't hear about katrina in the msm

first, read this piece by paul, who was actually there. then read this one, pointed out by rob and others at say anything.

--update--
paul strikes again.

wow. just... wow.

well, this makes me feel a little better about our own government. not a lot. but a little.

who says nothing good ever came from france?

i do, usually. but that was before i saw her. shallow of me? probably. but that happens every now and then. now if only we could get rid of all those pansy french guys, it might be a pretty decent country.

alright!

good news (in my opinion) from the judicial front: the 4th circuit court of appeals has decided that the bush administration can continue to detain jose padilla. on a sort of side note, padilla lawyer sounds like a moron.

quote of the year

“Not only would we need American forces to fight against terrorism, we need some of them to frighten our neighbors and prevent them from interfering in our internal affairs.” -- Jalal Talabani, President of Iraq

w00t!

i am teh uber 1337! or something like that. i just got confirmation today that i'm getting hired at the bank for at least another year (i'm currently just seasonal help). the details won't be hammered out till next week, but it's going to include the full package; or, at the very least, the fullest one i've had yet, including medical, dental, and vision coverage, as well as more money than i'm making now. life is good.

on a complete side note, gaim doesn't seem to be liking msn messenger, and won't log on to that account for me. anybody else having problems with this?

now there's an idea

i personally think jay tea is being overly generous, but that's just me. and who knows, it might even work. which means that it will probably never actually be tried. if bush recommends it, all the democrats will automatically say no, and the republicans in congress seem more worried about staying popular and getting reelected than about actually getting something done in the country. between those two groups, any idea that i see as a good one is bound to get shot down.

where not to shop

i don't normally like using caps, but i think this is worth it.

DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, SHOP AT GAMESTOP.COM. THEY HAVE INCREDIBLY BAD SERVICE.

i pre-ordered dungeon siege 2 from them on august 5th. the game came out on the 16th. immediately, they put a note up that said it was back ordered. i kept checking in over the next few weeks, and it alternately said under status that the game was "backordered" or "usually ships within 24 hours." i finally gave up yesterday, and sent them an email saying that if i had not recieved my copy of the game within the week, i would be cancelling my order and telling people not to shop there. earlier today, i received a reply:

Dear Customer,
Thank you for writing to us at GameStop.com
Per your request, we have cancelled your order. We value your business and hope to see you again soon at GameStop.com.

Best regards,

Castle

since they cancelled the order, i'm assuming that they felt unable to meet my very reasonable request, and that if you check back on friday, the game will still probably be backordered.

and so, in closing: GAMESTOP.COM SUCKS. that is all.

western washington: where you can't see the forest for the tree-huggers

the title doesn't really go with the post--at least not directly--but i still thought it would be good to put it out there. anyways, my roommate from last year sent me this video, but conveniently forgot to send me a link. luckily, i have another friend who are on top of things. and unlike that other friend, i do mean offense. because if i haven't pissed off a liberal, my day feels somehow incomplete.

hooray! i think

so after about 7 hours of work and way more problems than i anticipated, i finally got my new compy up and running. i'm still having problems with some of the stuff i moved over from the old one, but i can worry about that later. for now, i'm glad to be back to having a good computer.

down time

i'm temporarily out of commission... should have my new computer up sometime later tonight, and everything should be back to normal. only it'll be a much better version of normal.

those crazy UPS folk

so now, they're shipping my GPU past my house again. as we speak, it is on it's way from spokane to wenatchee, which is on the seattle side of my house. it is getting closer, though. after this--just for good measure, of course--they'll probably send it back across to coulee city, then to orondo, then to douglas, and finally to my house. but as long as it actually arrives today, i really don't care.

cool, and not cool

jonah goldberg is cool beans. and a good writer to boot.

UPS, on the other hand, is teh suXXor. something about shipping my graphics card from seattle, and then across the state to spokane, and then back to the middle of the state where i live--adding an extra day to the journey--just doesn't strike me as very bright.

--update--
john bolton is also pretty cool.

oh well

i had been planning to avoid ever mentioning cindy sheehan, but this was too good to pass up:

media whores, unite!

we can only hope

that bush finally pulls his head out of the sand and takes a good, hard look at our southern border.

Bush Promises Border Enforcement.

h/t say anything

those crazy dreams

not as bad as the last one, though. in fact, not really bad at all. just really weird. it was one of those dreams where you're at a location that you know really well... only it's not actually that place. if that makes any sense. anyways, i was at whitworth, only it wasn't really whitworth. the layout was way off. i don't remember much of it. i walked into the beej, changed clothes, and then walked out into the snow in bare feet and across to dixon, which was somehow right next door. and then i went into a science class that was beign taught by dale soden (who, as history/poli sci and science majors can probably tell you, does not actually teach science); there were several other recent grads there. didn't make a whole lot of sense. oh well. i'm gonna miss whitworth this fall. for those of you still there though, i'm planning on making it back to visit as often as i can.

i had a dream

unfortunately, it wasn't very pleasant. i don't remember what it was about, but it inolved me frothing at the mouth. that, along with my bowels hating on me, made for a fairly unpleasant night and a very long monday at work.

on a slightly brighter note, my processor is due to arrive tomorrow, and my graphics card should be here by thursday at the latest. since i'm keeping my old hard drive for now, that means only 2 or 3 more days till i get to put the new compy together.

here's the graphics card i decided on. still looking for a good SATA hard drive, preferably 250+ gigs.

good times

how's this as a new logo for the democrats?

perspective

while listening to npr news this afternoon at work, i heard yet another person lamenting the fact that the iraqis had not met their deadline. it is, of course, unfortunate, as it gives the left-leaning media and the imported terrorists in iraq more fodder for the propaganda machine. but keep in mind that these people have not even had 3 years of saddam-free rule yet. it took us 11 years after declaring independence to get our constitution figured out, and another 2 before it was put into effect.

it continues

and today, some of those computer pieces should be arriving. i also get paid today, which means i can order the rest. so i am a happy camper right now.

yesterday, i finished The Count of Monte Cristo... it was an excellent book. I finished it in 11 days, at an average pace of 124 pages a day. next, i'm headed back to david eddings to finish "the mallorean" series... from there, who knows?

it begins

today, i start purchasing pieces for my new computer.

oy

what a waste of a day. i was planning on spending a relaxing day at home, sleeping in, reading, playing computer, maybe spending some time with the one friend i have left here. but then about 9:00, mom decided it would be a good idea to drive over to seattle and visit relatives. nevermind the fact that since we left our house at 10:00, and their house at 5:30, we spent 6+ hours driving so that we could see them for about 4 and a half. and by the end of the trip (actually, it was probably closer to the beginning), as usual, we were all tired of being stuck in the car with each other, and things went downhill from there.

so basically i ended up with a one-day weekend, and it's back to work tomorrow. not cool.

head cheese

i'm not entirely sure how the topic came up, but last night i started complaining to a friend about head cheese. it was while we were looking up information for her parents about canning apricots, which, to the best of my knowledge, has little or nothing to do with head cheese. anyways, for those of you unaware of the process, head cheese is basically processed pig head. literally. a pig head gets boiled, and then everything that's not bone gets scraped together into a sort of loaf. this loaf, instead of being fed back to other pigs--who will eat just about anything--is instead deposited in deli cases, where some really screwed up people will pay for it, and then eat it. it is incredibly vile stuff, and if left to sit for awhile, could easily be classified as a biological weapon. i had to slice three pounds of that stuff for some psycho back in my deli days... i almost gagged just from the smell.

if for some odd reason you feel like looking for it, it'll be the stuff that looks like a meat version of particle board.

on a complete side note, i'm looking for ideas for a good project for this fall, when all my friends are back in skool and i'm stuck at home working. last summer i made a fairly large RISK board, which was, in my opinion, incredibly awesome. so if you have any good ideas, feel free to let me in on them.

welcome to the family, as it were

my friend rachel just started a blog. she has basically no idea what she's doing at this point, but she has several computer-savvy friends to point her in the right direction.

hahahaha! n00b!

mat lauer got pwn3d. hard.

h/t say anything

the sad part is, this means that we're paying

bastard rats.

alright!

robert vasquez is my new hero.

h/t wizbang

final setup?

Ok, so now I have a fairly better idea of what my computer is going to look like. It'll still be awhile before I start buying, and I'm going to want to see some people when I visit Whitworth (probably in October) before I make the final decisions. So anyways... here's the list. It's fairly mixed and matched, so I don't even know if half of the stuff is the right size/pin number/socket/whatever for the other half. I'll worry about that when I get there.

MoBo: Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe -- $153.49 + $8.67 shipping = $162.16
CPU: AMD Athlon 3500+ -- $218.49 + $8.67 shipping = $227.16 (still not sure about this)
Case: Xion II Xon-103 Steel ATX Mid Tower -- $65.99 + $15.99 shipping = $81.98
PSU: ENERMAX EG465P-VE(FC) ATX 460W -- $52.99 = $6.99 shipping = $59.98
RAM: CORSAIR XMS 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel -- $276.00 + free shipping = $276.00
Graphics Card: ASUS Geforce 6800GT -- $269.00 + $3.50 shipping = $272.50 (not overly picky here, just want some flavor of the 6800GT)
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar SE 320GB Ultra ATA/100 7200RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer -- $136.90 + free shipping = $136.90

Total cost of current setup, including shipping: $1216.68
Fairly spendy, but from my point of view it looks like a pretty sweet system. Again, please weigh in, because I know there are several people who know more about this than I do.

holy crap! and other stories

so i ordered "The Count of Monte Cristo" from the library the other day, and it came in today. all 1365 pages of it. should keep me occupied for awhile.

also, i'm starting to look at putting together a new computer. i'm pretty happy with what i've been albe to find at newegg so far, and i've run it past some of my CS buddies (thanks guys!), but if you have any suggestions, let me know. it will probably be another month or so at least before i start buying the parts.

Motherboard: ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe Socket 478 Intel 875P ATX Intel Motherboard
Processor: intel Pentium 4 3.2E Prescott 800MHz FSB 1MB L2 Cache Socket 478 Processor
RAM: CORSAIR XMS 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Memory
Case: RAIDMAX Scorpio ATX-868WBP Black 0.8mm Japanese SECC Gaming Case Computer Case 420watts PS2 ATX12V Power Supply
Dave doesn't like standard PSU's, so here's the one i'm looking at now: ENERMAX EG425P-VE SFMA 2.0 ATX12V 420W Power Supply 95~135V or 180V~265V(Adjusted Automatically) UL (Level 3), cUL (Level 3), VDE, CB, NEMKO, SEMKO, DEMKO, FIMKO [i have no idea what about half of that means, but nate highly recommends enermax]

still looking for a good hard drive (120+ gigs) and video card (not sure whether to just get a 128 or splurge and go for 256), and eventually i'll want a dvd+/- rw drive to stick in it. i think i'm going to stick with the monitor i've got for now, and my speakers are still nice.

--update--
now that i think about it, i'll probably need a sound card too, eh? sound tends to make games a bit more enjoyable.

--update 2--
molson apparently prefers amd to intel for processors. it just seems odd to me that a 2.4 ghz processor would be better than a 3.2 ghz.

--update 3--
ok, so at molson's suggestion i have looked into an amd based system. i personally still prefer intel, so i'll probably end up mixing and matching from the two sets i'm looking at. or maybe getting something completely different.

MoBo
CPU
RAM
PSU
Graphics Card
Case
Hard Drive

Rough cost (before shipping): $1054.71. That's about half of what I paid for the Dell I've been using for the last three years, and this one looks a hell of a lot nicer. Especially when you consider the fact that my parents will be paying $300 of it. They wanted to buy me a new digital camera for graduation, but I convinced them that a new computer would be much more useful.

Again, feel free to weigh in.

--update 4--
ok... here are some more ideas:
CPU
MoBo

Discuss amongst yourselves.

i <3 jeff goldstein

but not in that kind of way.

The yin and yang of intimate interpersonal relationships post, 16" (from the protein wisdom conceptual series)

yin: “Do these jeans make me look heavy?”

yang: “The jeans? No. But all that extra fat on your ass is a whole different story.”

pw

--update--
how long before our politicians get a clue and start doing this?

he walks a lonely road

the only road that he has ever known. and he walks alone.

i wonder if he ever stopped to think that maybe if his music didn't suck so bad, he wouldn't be alone all the time.

hmmm...

now here's an interesting thought.

h/t powerline

perspective

here's a very interesting way to look at the war in iraq.

add it to the collection

so, as of sometime last night when the bidding ended, i am now the proud owner of an 1897 edition of Bram Stoker's "Dracula."

--update--
nevermind. i got an email from the seller that said "oops, it's actually from 1910," so i'm not buying it.

alright!

i just pre-ordered dungeon siege II today. hopefully it will work on my computer. if not... well, then i have an excuse to buy a new one. not a very good excuse maybe, but still an excuse.

pat! you need to post again

also, my diploma finally came in the other day. it looks nice. i'll try to have a picture of it up here someday soon.

book review, in part

Title: The Three Musketeers
Author: Alexandre Dumas

Excellent book. Dumas is a great story teller, and occasionally works his sense of humor into his writing. Well worth reading.

Current score: 11.3/11.2

i wish i had found this sooner

dean's screams

h/t michelle malkin

thank you

another good topic that i'm too lazy to write about.

phrase of the day

for better or worse, here is the phrase of the day: ego masturbation (scroll to the bottom of the post).

finally

bush uses his authority to give john bolton a recess appointment as our ambassador to the un. if only more things could work like that. not too many, of course... the senate is there for a reason. but more would be nice.

bwahahaha!

take this, you liberal buggers. a plan that will actually work (free registration required). and won't cost an arm and a leg. john writes about it much better here.

semi-related news items

first, rob over at say anything found this interesting article, which makes you realize how rediculous the government can be.

second/last, i saw a great sign today, also put up by the government, albeit the local one. it read: "Littering fines mean less beer money."

ouch

it just took me 12 minutes and 45 seconds (and, for the truly curious, 84/100s of another second) to run about a mile and a half. back in the good old days, when i was in shape, it took me a minute less to run 2 miles. oh well. someday, i will be there again. and some other day, i will quit saying "oh well" so much.

movie review

Title: The Aviator
Starring: Kate Beckinsale was the only one I cared about

Verdict: Not worth watching. It had a few funny moments, but didn't flow very well, and didn't explain the main characters mental problems at all. So unless someone else is paying for you to see it--or preferably paying you to see it--don't bother watching it.

Score: -15/42,000,000,000

yarrrgh...

so i spent all of yesterday downloading the beta for dungeon siege 2. when i tried installing it this morning, it told me i needed a key number, so i hopped online to find one. instead, i found out that the beta was already closed, and there were no more numbers. so unless someone decides they don't want to play the beta anymore and gives me their number, i'll just have to wait for the full game. oh well.

"oooh, pretty" part 2

so i checked up on dungeon siege 2 today. and it looks pretty. unfortunately, it'll probably have to wait until i have a new computer. which will hopefully happen before too long. anyways, here's a trailer and and a narrated demo video. enjoy.

dave would be jealous

so yeah. i was helping my bible study leader mike build a horse corral. and somewhere in the conversation it came up that he had met richard dean anderson. one of his past girlfriends was from yakima, and mike was visiting family down there. crazy, eh?

movie review

Title: Million Dollar Baby
Starring: Hillary Swank, Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman

Verdict: Better than I thought it would be. Clint Eastwood is awesome as trainer/crochety old man #1, and Morgan Freeman provides an excellent back-up as janitor/crochety old man #2. Hillary Swank is not the best looking actress out there, but she's not bad. And in this movie at least, she's got a personality that you can really get behind.

I'd have to say that this movie is worth watching, but probably not worth paying for. Unless you have a lot more money to throw around than I do.

movie review

Title: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Starring: Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet

Good movie. Incredibly strange, and hard to keep up with at times... definitely something that needs to be watched all the way through to make any sense at all. But Jim Carrey is a good actor, and Kate Winslet is just plain amazing. Especially with the blue hair. Or orange hair. Or any hair at all, really.

Final verdict: eleventy-four out of green

"oooh, pretty" and other tales

"ooh, pretty." i'm a fan.

a lot of the time at work, i feel kind of like marvin the robot. i've got a huge brain and a whole month or so of training at the bank, and half of the time there's nothing to use them on. i'm reduced to either sorting through files or playing minesweeper, depending on whether the manager is in or out at the time. it's pretty boring. other days, it's ridiculously busy. either way, i really look forward to the end of each day.

and then there's days like today. this morning, an unnamed customer brought in a deposit of $576 in quarters. which is fine, in and of itself. but later, i noticed that one of the rolls was 50 cents short. being curious, i went through the others in my drawer (i had a fairly large amount because a local merchant was coming in for change). out of $300 i counted, they were roughly $11 off. one had a dime in it, and another had a 10 "cent" coin from french polynesia. since all the offage for that day was in my drawer, i was fairly upset.

but now it's the weekend. time to relax. maybe go out shooting. if nothing else, i really don't have to think about money for the next 3 nights, which will be great.

and on a side note...

rachel lucas is dead. or at least doing a very good job faking it.

about freaking time

In Washington, at least, future voters will be required to show photo ID. now if only the rest of the country would follow suit, we could go a long ways towards eliminating voter fraud.

well, it's a start

dr. le roy would probably enjoy this news.

--update-- (22 July)
the new york times has more on the new policy (free registration required)

hmmm...

the sad part is, i think she's serious. if she's worried now, her head will probably explode when i get elected.

beautifully accurate

multiculturalism

h/t rob

awesome or crazy

so these last couple of mornings, i've been getting up at 6:00 to run. which makes me either a) awesome, b) both a and c, or c) crazy. i'm leaning towards c myself, but i could be wrong. that has happened on a few occasions in the past.

movie review

Title: Garden State
Starring: Zach Braff, Natalie Portman, Ian Holm, and some other people

Verdict: good movie. Very different, but good. It was a little odd to see Zach Braff in a serious role, but he pulled it off well. Probably helps that he wrote and directed. And it was very nice to see Natalie Portman acting well again after Star Wars. She basically kicked butt. This will definitely be added to my collection at some point.

Final score: 7.8/8.2

i hate to say it...

but what the f--k kind of stupid idea is this? maybe it wouldn't be so bad if california broke off and sank. america's overall intelligence scores would probably go up.

h/t wizbang

again with the coolness

once more, mark steyn proves why i like him. now if only the stupid spectator webside wouldn't spread the article out over 5 pages...

h/t powerline

movie review

title: dark water
starring: jennifer connelly, camryn manheim, pete postlethwaite, and a bunch of people i didn't recognize.

the movie would make a lot more sense if they told you at the beginning, rather than at the end, that it was based off of a japanese novel. in my experience, japanese writing tends to make very little sense, which is about what this movie did. it was billed as a scary movie; it was fairly dark, but more startling than actually scary. and very strange.

verdict: worth watching, but not worth paying for. wait till it's out on DVD. [unless, like me, you like jennifer connelly, in which case it's probably worth paying for]

the benefits of banking

1) everything is pretty easy for about 5 or 6 hours out of the day. after that, 8000 mexicans who speak very little english will come in to cash harvest checks with me, who speaks slightly more than very little spanish.

2) entertaining coworkers. i think banking must warp their minds some how. most of the time, like at the last branch i worked at, that was good... everyone there had a great sense of humor. sometimes, like at the branch i'm working at now, it's not so good... the lady is spend most of my time working with is very paranoid.

3) as with most jobs, you occasionally have the opportunity to meet an attractive person of the opposite sex. today was a good day in that sense. i got to meet a very attractive canadian girl (by "meet" in this case, i mean i said hi and then the old lady i work with took over the conversation), a fairly attractive hispanic girl, and a very attractive farming girl.

4) that's about it, really. but it pays better than the last job i had, and having regular hours is pretty nice. now if we could just eliminate that whole morning thing, where pretty much nothing is actually happening anyways, life would be great.

cool

i'm not a huge fan of art, but i've got a friend that's pretty good at it. if you want to take a look, she's got some posters for sale.

son of a gun

i just learned the history behind that expression last night while watching "myth busters" on the discovery channel. great show.

anyways, the expression comes from a civil war myth. a man on the battlefield was shot through the testes. the bullet then hit a woman standing some distance behind him, striking her somewhere in the lower abdomen. 9 months later, she gave birth to several children.

the myth was, unfortunately, busted. they tested it using a civil war-era rifle, a pouch of sperm sandwiched between several layers of canvas etc. representing the guys clothes, and some sort of jello-y stuff under several layers of clothing to stand in for the woman. though the bullet passed cleanly through the "man" and hit the "woman" behind him, there was no trace of the sperm in or around the entry wound. they speculated that any that actually got caught on the bullet was fried by the heat.

don't you feel better about knowing that?

happy birthday, mr. president

I would like to wish a happy birthday to our President, Mr. George W. Bush. it's kind of late, in the sense that it's tomorrow on the east coast, but since he won't actually be reading this, i don't think it matters.

tomorrow: the origins of the expression "son of a gun"

thank you

thank you God, for this great country.
thank you for the brave men who helped to found it.
thank you for the men and women serving in our armed forces, fighting to protect freedom at home and abroad.
thank you that in spite of all our screw ups, you haven't decided to smite us.

happy 229th birthday, America. may you enjoy many more.

movie review

never, ever, watch the movie "the forgotten." or at the very least, don't ever pay money to see it. on a scale of 1 to 10, that movie lost hardcore... even with the help of alcohol, i'm going to rate it a negative 47 at best. it was very disjointed, it never really explained the bad guys, and julianne moore was a freaking psycho.

updated booklist

available here. unfortunately, i still haven't practiced any html stuff on the site. oh well.

stealing elections

or at least trying to...

hail to the chief

14 years from today, i will be eligible to become the president of the united states of america. you should probably start bracing yourselves now.

yeah, that'll fly

on a good idea scale from 1 to 10, i'd have to say that this one is just plain stupid.

check one two, one two, check check....

does anybody else wish that people would come up with something more creative to say when doing a mic check? on that note, i'm going to test out the new picture function blogger put in. picture taken from the APOD website.

impressive... most impressive

the dialogue could use some work, but over all i was fairly impressed. especially since this was done before the star wars sets actually came out.

surprise, surprise.

but only sort of. the "insurgency" in iraq is being funded by europeans.

i <3 british writersy

they often say stupid things. but than again, so do many americans. on that note, this article by mark steyn is, as usual, amazing. and even this one by some guy i've never heard of was pretty good. (free registration required, but i think it's well worth it).

finally, someone who agrees

and actually feels like taking the time to write about it. i've thought almost exactly along these lines for years, but a combination of laziness and a lack of education on the relationship between israel and the "palestinians" has kept me from writing about it. jay tea's piece is actually a response to a rather large comment, but i think it's a good read.

quote of the century

"It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there had never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded fact that we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of creation woutl start up and knock the whole thing over."
bonus points to anyone who can tell me who/what the quote is from.

on that note, i hate mornings. i've got my first day of work tomorrow, so it's time for bed.

Testing, testing

So apparently you can email updates to your blog. let's see if it works.

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted. --Missionaria Protectiva

ummm... duh?, part something

different brains

i may have already posted this

but it's still worth knowing.

h/t cd

this one's for nate

it has absolutely nothing to do with anything i care about. but the title of the post is the same as the name of nate's old city on sim city 4.

horrible, but funny

triumph visits the jackson trial

better late than never

happy belated birthday to my favorite actress, natalie portman. natalie turned 24 yesterday; now that star wars is over, hopefully she'll be able to land some better roles.

mr. bean on politics

sort of. he does, at least, have a complaint about a new law passed in britain.

h/t the rott

stupid moments

last night, i was playing trivial pursuit with some friends and had a rather stupid moment. a question something along the lines of this came to me:
"Which actor was the first to be a pitch man for an internet company?"
while i was contemplating an answer, one of the other players asked what a pitch man was; i gave them the example of william shatner doing advertisements for priceline.com. i finally gave up and threw out some random name, only to find out that the correct answer was actually william shatner. i stayed upset for the rest of the game.

logic that makes sense until you think about it:
1) Liberals want all people to be equal
2) The only time all people are equal is when they're dead
3) Therefore, liberals want all people to be dead

technically it's a valid argument, but it's far from being a sound one.

ok, now i'm off to do something else unproductive. later.

--update--
oh yeah, i put up a list of the books i've read so far over here; i'll be updating it as i go.

graduation, part zwei

well, sort of. my little brother just graduated from high school today, and he's off to whitworth in the fall. to those of you still there, look out for him, and try not to corrupt him too badly.

learning html

i'm going to go for it this summer, using this site as a basis. it will probably be quite some time before i get anything of my own up there, but oh well. it's free.

if you're bored

i ran into this the other day after clicking a link from PA, and i really like it. if you've got time to spare, i recommend giving it a try.

quote of the day

"IF GOD WANTED TWO GAYS TO MARRY HE WOULD HAVE MADE ONE OF THEM A WOMAN!" --Jeff Goldstein

hmmm...

well, i finally saw episode III, and i have to say i'm slightly disappointed. it was far better, in my opinion, than episodes I and II, but not nearly as good as it could have or should have been. there were far to many stupid attempts at humor and too much cheesy dialogue for it to be a truly good movie. the computer "assisted" lightsaber fights were more extreme, but less realistic than before. luckily, jar jar only had two appearances that i remember, and he never talked.

final verdict: worth watching. i wouldn't pay for it more than once, though (twice if you count the dvd). george lucas has redeemed himself for one of the first two episodes, but not for both. since i'm in a generous mood, i'll even let him decide which one gets to be redeemed.

huzzah!

my intorweb works again.

on that note, the word of the day is skellington. which actually doesn't appear in this strip, but oh well. its in there somewhere.

my intorweb is broken

so postings will be infrequent for the next several days, at least. in fact, there probably won't be anything more until at least friday. we'll see.

"Never give up, never surrender!" --Commander Taggert

i <3 my (former) roommate

i used to think i was a huge nerd. then, he showed me this. i think it means i'm just a "normal" nerd.

yarrrgh...

either my computer hates the internet, or the internet hates my computer. hopefully that will be fixed in the next several days.

on that note, i really want one of these.

still alive

i think. i'm getting over a pretty nasty cold right now, said cold being part of the reason i haven't been updating. i do plan on keeping up with this blog, but not as regularly as usual. definitely a few times a week at least, though.

on that note, tomorrow is the declaration of the bab, a baha'i holiday.

happy armed forces day

find a soldier and thank them for keeping this country, and others around the work, free.

this may end up double-posted, because either my computer or blogger was having problems. or maybe both. if so, oh well... have an even happier armed forces day. especially those of you in the armed forces. thank you.

it is done

for now, at least. as of around 17:00 PST yesterday, when i was handed a nice little case to put my diploma in, i am done with college. grad school will happen at some point, but for now i'm taking some time off, and hopefully making some money to pay back student loans.

on that note, or maybe one that's totally unrelated, mark steyn rocks. (h/t powerline)

oh, the hypocrisy

PETA kills animals

h/t conservative dialysis

end the flibuster!

Patriot Petitions

and i'm spent

which is fairly good timing, because i am definitely done. finished my last final at about 10 this morning. it kind of sucked. we had to write about what the different paradigms of IPE (such as rational choice, liberal, feminist, structuralist, mercantilist, etc.) would view porn. it was interesting, to say the least. but it's done now. and i think i'll get at least a B in that class, so i'm happy. the end for now.

about how i feel

about illegal immigrants

--update (13 May 2005)--

Illegal Aliens To Receive Free Health Care At Citizens' Expense

more pleasant thoughts

just got this from the new college republicans state president and thought it was pretty funny.

Gregiore gets "punk'd"

disturbing thought of the day

geriatric porn. it's out there.

what are the odds?

every time i think i'm done with quizzes, somebody--in this case emily--pulls out another one. which means that i'm doing those instead of homework. oh well. i'd be doing something other than homework anyways... she just made my job easier.

Your Political Profile

Overall: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal

Social Issues: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal

Personal Responsibility: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal

Fiscal Issues: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal

Ethics: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal

Defense and Crime: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal

How Liberal / Conservative Are You?

on that note, you should all go pay pat's site a visit, and keep pestering him with comments until he updates again.

backstab!

is a great ability. or random thing to do to the other group in a role-playing game. which is what we did last night. more on that later... i'm going to procrastinate now and watch more 24 with my roommate.

this one's for you pat

eye to eye

yarrrgh...

because of course, Hookah Fest 2005 is a much better way to spend my time than writing a paper that's due tomorrow.

like and don't like

i really like mark steyn. he's a british columnist who has a very humorous style of reporting the news, something i wish more american writers had. anyways, here's his latest article.

i really don't like writing papers.

crazy logic and weird dreams

"Teachers are either enthusiastic or unsuccessful. Teachers are not all unsuccessful. Therefore there are enthusiastic teachers." that statement can be expressed and proven in symbolic logic as follows, using Tx to represent Teachers, Ex to represent Enthusiastic, and Ux to represent Unsuccessful; also, pretend that the 3 in (3x) is actually a backwards "E", and that the greater than symbol is more of a horse shoe:
1. (x) [Tx > (Ex v Ux)]
2. (3x) (Tx * ~Ux) / (3x) (Tx * Ex)
3. Ta * ~Ua 2 Existential Instantiation
4. Ta > (Ea v Ua) 1 Universal Instantiation
5. Ta 3 Simplification
6. ~Ua * Ta 3 Commutation
7. ~Ua 6 Simp.
8. Ea v Ua 4, 5 Modus Ponens
9. Ua v Ea 8 Comm.
10. Ea 9, 7 Disjunctive Syllogism
11. Ta * Ea 5, 10 Conjunction
12. (3x) (Tx * Ex) 11 Existential Generalization

fun stuff, eh? and that's one of the shorter ones... one of the homework problems is supposed to take 26 steps.

on that note, i had a very strange dream last night. have you ever had one of those dreams where you're at a location you know, only not really? for example, you're your house, but everything about it is different? i definitely had one of those last night. i don't remember the whole thing, unfortunately, because it was fairly interesting. it took place at whitworth (only it wasn't really whitworth), in Mac and BJ (only they weren't really Mac and BJ) and the space between it (not real either). and it involved several characters from the show "boy meets world", and some other people that i knew but don't remember now. and i didn't even have anything weird to eat.

also, a belated happy 21st birthday to ben tkach, a quality individual, and to my mother, whose age shall remain unspecified.

hooray for hookahs

they are fun. especially when used in conjunction with either apple or pomegranate tobacco. which taste really good. one of the guys from security came down to hassle us, but once we had established that what we were smoking was, in fact, tobacco, he told us a story about how he had lived in seattle for six years. i'm not entirely sure of the significance of that, if there is any. and now it's time to brush my teeth and go to bed, so i can get up and do homework tomorrow.

the end.

hilarity ensues

along with some general entertainment.

h/t red

that's weird

spontaneous combustion is one thing, but spontaneously exploding? apparently that's what's happening to a bunch of toads in germany. now if only all the other frogs in europe would start exploding, the world would be a much nicer place. that seems unlikely, but i can dream, can't i?

h/t the rott

the die has been cast

well, its official now: i'm graduating this year. it seems like people are normally excited about graduating early, but i'm actually kind of bummed. most of my friends are graduating next year, and it would've been fun to walk with them. and to have an extra year to figure out what i'm going to do with my life. and to finish up the 9 freaking credits i still need for the poli sci major. but oh well. i may have no clue what's going on in my life, but as long as God does, everything is ok.

happy birthday!

to a cool girl and a good friend, emily.

i like being able to edit pictures

i'm still not up to photoshop yet, but my camera came with some decent software. for example, here is me, frozen in carbonite. or embossed, or something:



one of these days i need to learn how to host my own pictures, so i don't have to worry about max filesize and stuff.

news from iraq

this is so much easier when somebody else does all the work. like in this case. thank you powerline, for working hard so that i don't have to.

i hate my life

it is now nearly midnight, and i just got back from the library, where, with the exception of a short break to get some food, i spent the last 6 and a half hours. i was working on my brief for law & society when i got to library. i'm still working on my brief. my partner and i have different ideas of what research is, so splicing the part that he did into what i've got is going to be a little tricky. i can't blame him too much though... he still put quite a bit of work into this, and the class isn't even in his major. anyways, the brief is due at 8:00 tomorrow morning, which means i need to get back to typing.

i'll leave you with the following statement, to balance out the hatred expressed in the title: i love caffeine.

--update--
it is approximately 2:49 in the morning. my brief is finished, and i no longer hate life. although i'm sure that i'll be hating it again when i have to get up at 7:15. oh well.

because really, i should be doing homework

so instead, i'll take a quiz. darn you emily. and darn my procrastinatory tendencies.

Your Linguistic Profile:

70% General American English

15% Upper Midwestern

5% Dixie

5% Midwestern

5% Yankee

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

hmm...

its been an interesting sort of day. i got my IPE midterm back... i had been really worried about it. but i rocked it hardcore. on a 4.0 scale, i got a 4.3. i also got my digital camera in today, which will be fun to play with. i'll try and get some pics up before the weekend is over.

on the other hand, it looks like i'm going to be getting squat for financial aid next year. i'm going to try and do some tweaking with stuff, maybe switching one of my classes from upper- to lower-division so i don't have enough crap to finish the first degree. we'll have to see how that goes.

bummer

well, i didn't get the RA job that i applied for. it's kind of a bummer, but i wasn't really expecting to get hired, so its not a huge letdown. it just means i need to look that much harder for the money i'll need to stick around at college.

anyways, time to finish rewriting a paper. and then run. because lets face it, i am a glutton for punishment.

curiouser and curiouser

this morning, i found out that one of my professors reads, or at least has read, my blog. i'm not entirely sure how he found it. i completely forgot to ask, because i was tired and had just finished a test. hopefully i'll remember to ask him later this week. if inquiring minds are as curious(er) about this as i am, i'll update once i find out.

hooray for the left coast!

wait, that's a lie. especially considering some of the crap the 9th circuit court of appeals has been churning out of late. if i were feeling more energetic, i would go out and find more examples, but i have a test to study for and a schedule to plan, so you can go look for yourself if you feel so inclined.

on that note, life is incredibly stressful right now. i'm still waiting on my financial aid information to decide if i can stick around for part or all of next year... since there's only about 5 weeks left till graduation, i'm starting to freak out a bit. on a semi-related note, the college opened up the resident assistant applications again... apparently they didn't get enough qualified applicants after the first go. i figured what the heck, that will take care of room and board if i get hired, and it'll be a good experience. so i'm working on the application for that now. basically, i have a bunch of crap i need to get done between now and may 15th. wish me luck.