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.