because i had way too much time on my hands today

a pinkeye haiku:

Having goop drain out
Of your eyes is a very
Strange feeling, I think

poetry, or something like it

a protein wisdom haiku:

Please bring Jeff back, as
fast as you possibly can;
you are not the same.

from the spambox

we've got two of them this time around... the second is definitely my favorite, but the first isn't bad either.

from: RulesYou may
subject: No RulesYou may
description: Whos Online General Rulesyou may am not threadsyou repliesyou is edit. Or Prince Edward Island or...

from: equivalent
subject: HouseCity Experts
description: Vehicle is the British spy or. Car hours deadline blueberry or muffins warm Sugar of Sweet. Tees...

almost, but not quite

man... if she weren't way out of my league and probably already spoken for, melissa theuriau would probably be worth learning to speak french for.

diamonds: you'll be paying for them forever

with Christmas coming up, you start seeing more diamond commercials than usual. so here's my question: do women like diamonds because of the way they look, or because it shows that a man is willing to spend obscene sums of money on her?

finally!

my travel journal from my recent trip to oregon and california is finally available for your viewing pleasure.

random day

today, george washington is exactly 274 years and 9 months old. in honor of this momentous day, i would like to present the following video. it's not overly accurate, and contains some crude/foul language, but it's pretty damn funny.

or i thought so, at least.

coming soon to a blog near you

i should have my travel journal up for perusal by this weekend at the latest, and probably sooner than that. it's five pages long now, and i'm just getting started on the most eventful day. luckily, that day was also the second to the last, so there shouldn't be too much more to go.

thought of the day

actually, this one has been rolling around for awhile. i can't really connect it to anything at the moment, though i'm sure there was some sort of context when i first thought it. also, for all i know, it--or something very similar to it--could already have been thought by someone else. but until someone can show me that such is the case, i'm going to go ahead and give myself credit for it.

Thought: "To truly control any group, you must make sure that they always have something to lose. The moment the population has nothing to lose, it's all one to them whether they die of starvation, the elements, or at the hands of the police (secret or otherwise) or military. At that point, you're one motivational speaker away from a revolution, which is never a pleasant thing."

i could probably expand on that, but i seem to have writer's block at the moment. plus, there's always a chance that the credit will end up having to go to someone else, in which case any extra work would be wasted.

good question

this one is for any catholics out there; originally (at least in my experience) posed by a character in Neal Stephenson's "The Confusion."

"What if you eat it [the transubstantiated bread and wine, i.e. the body and blood of Christ] and then you got sick and threw up? When it came out, would it be Jesus's flesh and blood? Or would it de-transubstantiate on the way out, and become bread and wine again?"

well that sucks

man, it's not even 9:30 and i'm already feeling like it's time for bed.

from the spambox

from: herevia MTexpress
subject: Expensive gesture Finger trouble
description: points Of will be. Super race showed what truly meant in. Walk into stadium holding lant...

delay of game

the "journal" post i'm working on for my vacation will probably be slightly delayed, since i'm going to crackima to pick up my car tomorrow. i do plan on doing some more work on it later tonight, and will hopefully have it up reasonably soon.

amendment

i need to amend an earlier statement i made, saying that 9 out of 10 terrorists want you to vote democrat. turns out it's actually more like 11 out of 10.

this is offset somewhat by iraqi civilians, who would much rather have seen you vote republican. or, at the very least, not for those "redeploy to okinawa" type democrats.

well, that was a fun thought

so, i've already given up on flickr, and created another blogspot blog, specifically for my pictures. it can be found here.

wow

so, i'm not going to comment too much on the recent elections, but i will say that waking up wednesday morning and seeing the results was rather disheartening. i blame the republican losses on several factors:

1) the fact that the republicans were basically useless as a majority party. about the only things they really did to set themselves apart from the democrats was pass bush's tax cuts, and be generally more supportive of the war on terror.

2) they did a really good job of making themselves disliked: liberals dislike them because they're republicans, and conservatives dislike them because as time went by, they started acting like liberals, especially when it came to government spending.

3) a biased media.

4) scandals hurt a lot of republican candidates; definitely those who were involved, and quite likely several who were not. see here for more on the various scandals.

also, 9 out of 10 terrorist leaders agree: vote democrat

i'm sure there are some other reasons, but those are the first ones that came to mind for me.

triumphal return

or at least a regular return. despite wearing my "whitworth college republicans [front] i think, therefore i am a conservative [back]" shirt on a drive through berkley and while walking through san francisco, i survived my travels. i've got a few pictures up over at flickr right now, and should be adding more later.

since a full writeup of the trip would be incredibly long in blog format, i'm planning on writing out the whole thing (probalby in word) and then posting a link to that for those of you who are interested.

tales from the road, part I

i'm writing now from beautiful (but ridiculously flat) davis, california, where the weather is still in the 70's. this is not a full post, just a brief update to let both of my readers know that i'm still alive.

portland was pretty dang awesome. it rained almost the entire time, but it was great to see geanna again, and to get to meet her family and some of her friends. i'm hoping to make it back sometime next year during a nicer season, to get a true taste of the city. more on that part of the trip later... probably this coming weekend, after i've gotten home and had some time to recover.

yesterday was interesting... i thought my flight left at 1:30, but it actually left around 1:05. which, unfortunately, was right about the time i was going through security. so that wasn't a whole lot of fun. but the folks from southwest were very helpful... i got on standby for the 2:55 flight, and luckily there ended up being an opening, otherwise i would have had to sit in the airport for another two hours till the next flight. although there was a margarita bar not far from where i was sitting, so it might not have been too boring.

anyways, rachel should be getting back from class pretty quick, and then we're off to dinner, so i'm off for now. i'll try to write again, but it probably won't happen until i'm home.

new york times helping republicans?

hard to believe, isn't it? but buried deep down in an article that basically argues that bush and congressional republicans are responsible for providing iran with information on how to build a nuclear weapon, we find this interesting paragraph:

Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq had abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away. [emphasis mine]

that's right... roughly a year before we invaded iraq, saddam was quite likely a year away from having a nuclear weapon. which means that had we not invaded, we could very well be facing a nuclear iraq and/or terrorists armed with nuclear capabilities.

on sort of a side note, since when has the new york times been concerned with keeping a secret [SWIFT, phone tapping/records, CIA prisons, "harsh" interrogation, etc.]?

see here and here for more posting on this.

time to blow this popsicle stand

woohoo! time away from waterville! first it's off to portland for geanna's birthday dinner, and after a few days there i'm headed down to sacramento/davis to visit rachel; she decided that visiting her boyfriend/fiance down in honduras was more important than coming home to see me, so i guess i'll have to go to where she lives.

a quick word of warning to any others planning on traveling: according to the TSA, it's not ok to bring dynamite or hand grenades onto your flight. you know, just in case any of you were planning on taking either of those things with you. i'm not sure how i'll get by without my dynamite, but i'm sure i'll figure something out. seriously though, who the hell would try to bring that with them?

happy birthday!

to my good friend geanna.

good to see that some people still have a sense of humor

john kerry, however, is not one of those people. i'm having trouble getting the embedded video to work, but i'm sure most of you have already heard his recent comment on our troops, as well as mr. kerry's blaming the whole thing on us right-wing nutjobs.

unlike mr. kerry, however, our troops do seem to have a sense of humor. thanks to lorie byrd, we now have their response: