OS syndrome begins to set in

today, at 6:16pm (pakistan time), Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. i personally wasn't a huge fan; i think she was pushing for too much too fast, and though it was most likely unintentional, i think she was actually making things worse rather than better. her death, i think, will only exacerbate that. for now, i think it unlikely--but certainly possible--that musharraf was behind it. only time will tell. pakistan would not be a fun place to live right about now.

h/t wizbang

as odd as this may sound...

i'm glad i'm not "the boss" all of the time. although if i actually got all of the perks that went along with being the boss, it might not be quite so bad. my supervisor at the bank got this week off, which leaves me in charge of... well, pretty much everything. the manager is in on occasion, but: a) he manages another branch as well; b) he's incredibly busy finishing up loan renewals for all the farmers/orchardists from both branches; and c) he's unfamiliar with and doesn't have access to much of the operations side of things since the merge. so while he is an excellent resource for banking knowledge, and more often than not can solve a problem when i'm not even sure exactly what's wrong, he's not a whole lot of help with the general day-to-day stuff. a lot of it is stuff i can handle: supervising the other tellers, making sure the cash balances, getting the day's work run through the imager and sent of to HQ, etc. unfortunately, i also got left in charge of several of the end-of-year audits, which i have absolutely no experience with. and on some of them, i don't even have access (since i'm not really a supervisor) to all the bits and pieces that i need to complete them, which means i get to bug someone higher up the chain of command. and while they don't mind helping, between their own audits and all the other people who are bugging them, they are quite busy and not always able to get back to me in a timely manner. which again makes me glad i'm not a boss all of the time.

so really, i guess, all of that was a really long way of saying that i'm looking forward to next year.

Merry Christmas!

To all, and to all a good night.

quote of the day

"Things will not calm down, Daniel Jackson. They will in fact calm up." --Teal'c, Stargate SG-1, 'Thor's Chariot'

ftl

jealousy for the loss.

whoa. they weren't kidding

i recently purchased the first two seasons of stargate: sg-1, and almost cracked up when i saw the following sticker attached to the front: "ADULT CONTENT - May contain nudity and adult situations." i had already seen a good chunk of the series--parts of season 1, and all of seasons 2-7--and while there were a decent amount of "adult situations," i didn't remember any nudity. so i figured there might be a few brief shots of someone's ass... not really necessary, but not a huge deal. i was wrong. in the pilot episode, there is definitely some full frontal nudity, which i'm fairly certain didn't make it to the tv version. had i read the "plot keywords" on imdb i might have been prepared, but it actually caught me completely by surprise. it was mainly surprising, i think, because two different characters were in the exact same situation at different times: on the first one i was expecting the nudity, but everything was covered up; on the second one, i wasn't expecting it any more, and then all of a sudden, "whoa, hey! flesh."

so, to cut a long story short, while the show is well worth watching, don't watch it with younger siblings.

open invitation

if any of you happen to find yourself in the waterville area on december 17th, you're more than welcome to come watch me get sworn at. or maybe sworn in. tomato, tomahto. the "ceremony" will take place at the waterville town hall sometime (i'm guessing at the end) of the town council meeting, which starts at 7:30. no beverages (other than the coffee they've usually got on hand) will be served, because i still have to get up for work in the morning. that is all.

except for when it does

quote of the day: "...Islam does not allow suppression of other religions...." except, you know, for when it does. granted, Christianity doesn't have a perfect track record in that area, but we've pretty well grown out of it by now. here's to hoping the gentleman quoted above sticks to his word, and serves as an example for some of his more extreme brethren.

cougars ftw

i meant to post this immediately following the game, but a friend and several greyhounds distracted me. cougars beat the huskies, 42-35. if jake locker could actually complete a pass every now and then though, it probably would have been a different story; that kid will be damn good in a few years.

political correctness gone overboard

which is really not overly surprising in this day and age, but this is all kinds of messed up:

Travis Grigsby loves playing drums, but he and his friend Alex Coday weren't able to play for two weeks after they were suspended. It started after the band's performance at a football game. Some kids on the drum line said they were talking about the best knots to use to tie up the drum equipment.

"Someone asked if anybody knew how to tie a noose and Travis did admit he knew how to tie a noose," Kim Grigsby said.

Travis' mom said her son is almost an Eagle Scout, he knew how to tie it, but told his friends he wouldn't because you could get in trouble for that. Later, a black student on the drum line told the teacher he was offended.

"Travis was accused of using a racial slur for saying the word 'noose.' Then he was suspended for 10 days," Kim said.

h/t tongue tied

those crazy spokanites

somehow, i survived this city for 3 years: children get repossessed.

h/t dave barry

leave of absence

or something like that. i'm headed to spokane for tomorrow and sunday, which should give me a decent excuse for a few more days of being lazy and not blogging.

whoops

muslim world: "we don't want your western culture! it will corrupt our youth!"

us: "um, dude?"

muslim world: "..."


h/t say anything

what about dads?

question of the day: why is it that if a woman chooses to abort her unborn infant, it's all fine and dandy... but if she wanted to keep the child and it's killed, it's murder?

see here for more. i had a whole long rant planned out this morning, but 9 hours at work drained it all away.

news of note

not quite as fun as the flying cow, but good news all the same:

1) as of yesterday, i am the sole owner of my car, having paid it off in just under a year.

2) as of right about now, you can click here to see how awesome i am (scroll about 1/3 of the way down the page), and then leave a comment to remind me that it's a small town/i was running unopposed/something to pop my ego.

no looking back

so, i'm guessing that this couple from michigan won't be making too many trips back to eastern washington:

Cow falls 200 feet onto van; Michigan couple escape injury Cow falls 200 feet onto van; Michigan couple escape injury
By Jaime Adame World staff writer
Posted November 05, 2007

MANSON — A cow fell about 200 feet off a cliff Sunday and landed on the hood of a minivan passing by Rocky Point about one mile east of Manson, officials said.

read the whole thing here.

staring at the sun

indirectly, at least. i thought this video of a solar flare was pretty dang cool.

this just in

your chance to be a great person for 2007 is now here:


child's play is a charity that i am proud to support. if you've got any extra money floating around this time of year, please do the same.

obviously

after multiple occasions on which i've made fun of friends for not updating their blogs often enough, it looks like i've become the guy who doesn't update his blog often enough. luckily, they either haven't noticed, or they're nicer than i am, because it has yet to be pointed out. hopefully it will be remedied soon.

awesome football play

i think some people must have been spending a bit too much time watching espn classic, but it worked, so who cares?

h/t dave barry

now there's a fun idea

maybe instead of invading afghanistan and iraq and pissing off liberals everywhere, we could have tried something like this to free the two countries.

h/t dave barry

quote of the day

"As for the climate, you could take every dollar spent on "global warming" and blow it on internet porn, and the Earth's climate in 2050 will be pretty much what it would be anyway." --Mark Steyn

not only that, but your money would be doing much more for the economy. i say it's a win-win situation.

w00t

we own other teams, indeed. with their 6-4 victory over arizona tonight, colorado continues their perfect record in the 2007 playoffs, and will face either cleveland or boston in the world series.

heck yes

the colorado rockies just beat the arizona diamondbacks in 11 innings, giving them a 2-0 lead as the series heads back to denver.

movie review, in however many words it takes

movie: Brick (2005)
starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Nora Zehetner, Lukas Haas, and some other folk
plot: guy gets a call from his ex-girlfriend, who sounds totally freaked out. she's hooked on drugs, winds up with the wrong crowd, and gets killed. guy enters a local drug ring to try and figure out what happened.
verdict: well worth watching, and worth paying to see if necessary. a rather dark and very strange movie, but well acted and incredibly well shot. the folks who put this one together definitely knew what they were doing.

hooray for juxtaposition

so wrong, but so funny:



h/t say anything

Best. Headline. Ever.

remind me again why we leave the government in charge of things? if a local government can be this stupid, imagine what it must be like at the federal level...

ronald reagan FTW!

h/t say anything

my thoughts exactly

finally, someone with the balls to tell it like it is when it comes to the poor people and money. of course, compared to him i'm poor people as well, but i'm working my way up the economic scale instead of bitching and moaning about how other people have more money than me.

also, this gives me a chance to bring up one of my favorite benjamin franklin quotes. it's going to be a longer version than I normally use, because some of it seems to fit perfectly with the article
i linked above:

I am for doing good to the poor; but I differ in opinion about the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is, not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. … I observed in different countries that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and, of course, became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. There is no country in the world where so many provisions are established for them…. Under all these obligations are our poor modest, humble, and thankful? And do they use their best endeavours to maintain themselves, and lighten our shoulders of this burthen? On the contrary, I affirm that there is no country in the world in which the poor are more idle, dissolute, drunken, and insolent. The day you passed that act you took away from before their eyes the greatest of all inducements to industry, frugality, and sobriety, by giving them a dependence on somewhat else than a careful accumulation during youth and health for support in age or sickness. In short, you offered a premium for the encouragement of idleness, and you should not now wonder, that it has had its effect in the increase of poverty.

available here, on pages 347-348. (you may need a google account to view the original)

Ooh! Ah! BJ!

phil ryan is my new hero, for posting the following video:



i make my appearance around the 1:54 mark... i'm the guy in white running in from the right and getting knocked down by vader. then i just kind of wander off. i should have been in the michael jackson scene as well, but i lacked confidence in my dancing abilities, and stayed backstage.

friend(s) + alcohol = awesome

enough said.

miscellaneous

1) gun control doesn't reduce gun crime. ummm... duh?

2) women: more violent than men?

h/t say anything

what, behind the rabbit?

it is the rabbit!

this is what the dems want us to "redeploy" away from in iraq:

fear the reaper

i want one of these...

questions of the day

1) how strict/stupid can people really get? about this much.

2) from the above-linked article:

"Under the policy, students are required to wear collared or polo shirts that must be tucked in. The shirts must be in a solid color of white, gray, green, pink or khaki. The shirts must be 3 inches below the waist, which is school board policy." (emphasis mine).

so... how exactly are you supposed to tell whether or not a shirt is 3 inches below the waist if it's tucked in? do they make students untuck their shirts to prove the length, then tuck it back in? do they have a series of stretches that would cause any shirt that did not meet the required length to come untucked? or am i just missing something here?

h/t dave barry

whoops

anybody else see a contradiction here? and if so, is anyone actually surprised?

note to self

playing F.E.A.R. right before going to bed is probably not a good idea.

why?

some things really bug me, because i really don't understand the point of them. if i didn't invade ireland or eat missionaries, why the hell should i be apologizing for it? everyone involved has been dead for quite some time now, so it should really be a case of letting bygones be bygones. just like slavery here in america. was it a bad thing? definitely. but nobody alive today was either a slave or a slaveholder, and i really don't think we should be apologizing on the behalf of someone who most likely would not have apologized for their actions (since there was a time that it was considered perfectly normal to own slaves) to someone who was not affected (at least not directly, though you could argue about disadvantages to being descended from slaves) by the actions. if you do something wrong, you should apologize for it; if someone else does something wrong, it is up to them to either apologize or not, as they see fit.

brilliant!

google mistakes its own blog for spam, and deletes it.

whoops

get out and drive, america: walking causes global warming.

h/t wizbang

if only i were rich

so, it looks like i've become the person who never updates their blog, which i always make fun of my friends for. but in my defense, i was busy doing this. or maybe just wishing that i was.

ow. just... ow.

this is why you never, ever, under any circumstances whatsoever, keep a gun tucked into your pants.

weird ad

this is probably one of the strangest things i have ever seen (warning: buttocks briefly involved).

miscellaneous bits and pieces

1) what an idiot
2) sweet fancy moses! this stuff is awesome.
3) this stuff? not so awesome. unless you're an illegal immigrant, of course.
4) ted kennedy will probably die peacefully in his sleep (or of alcohol poisoning), unlike the passenger in his car.

i could have told you that

this just goes to prove what we all knew already: weather forecasters are not exactly what we like to call "accurate."

h/t dave barry

who knew?

it's things like this that make me really look forward to becoming a medieval historian: underwear spreads literacy.

pwn3d! n00bs.

pwn3d by graffiti.

random thoughts

1) moths are attracted to light; so do they ever try flying at the sun or moon?
2) venom was incredibly emo. i would not have expected that.
3) sweet + creepy = sweepy
4) shocks are still surprising, even when you know they're coming.

hmmm...

some people, like me, work at a bank. other people, like this guy, mist topless women to keep them cool.

Happy Birthday!

To my favorite country, America... 231 years and still going strong.

new beers

i had these last weekend at the taphouse grill, in one of those cities that runs together to form the greater seattle area:

* kilt lifter scottish ale -- good
* elysian stout -- pretty good
* mac & jack porter -- pretty good
* ayinger celebrator dopplebock -- somewhere between pretty good and good

i also had fat tire on tap, which might have been a bad idea... it will never feel right drinking it out of a bottle any more.

post #900

note to self, and anyone else who cares to read it: drinking a bottle of bawls an hour before you plan on going to bed is a bad idea.

happy birthday!

to me! tomorrow, i turn 23.

also, it's been confirmed that i will have a job with the new bank when they take over next month. my position will be "Teller III;" i think it has an actual title to go along with it, but i'm not sure what it is. personally, i liked "Customer Service Representative" better, but i'll be making about $3000/year more, so i think it was a worthwhile trade.

an anniversary, of sorts

as of today, i've been with the bank i'm working at for two years. normally this means it's time for a raise, which my supervisor is definitely in favor of. however, we're in the process of going through a merge with another bank, and we're still not entirely sure who's still going to have a job and who isn't, which throws a bit of a wrench into the gears. i'm confident that i'll be kept on, but i'm not sure in what capacity. my supervisor has also suggested the possibility of a promotion (which, aside from a nicer title ["personal banker," maybe? who knows?], really just means more money... the job itself would stay pretty much the same), but since we're not sure where that would put me in the new bank's hierarchy, we're not sure if we can justify a promotion. hopefully by the end of this week, and definitely by the end of this month, i should know what's going on... until then, i'm keeping my fingers crossed.

one more reason to like jessica alba

she's all american, not the hyphenated type. not that we really needed any more reasons, but i'm certainly not complaining.

but they're just doing jobs americans won't...

like, you know, intentionally starting forest fires and attacking border patrol agents. (h/t say anything)

which statement, i'm sure, along with my support for this guy, probably makes me a horrible racist. or something like that.

quote of the day

from here:

"Edwards said he's not sure why Koda ate the car seats, but it could have been boredom."

out of context quotes

which, oddly enough, seem to fit well with each other:

1) "Hey guys, take a look down. Pretty impressive, huh?" maybe i've just got a dirty mind, but i was relieved to find out it was actually a shoe commercial.

2) "For a man, it is natural to use two hands to assist in removing one's penis." --Sir Stephen Richards

that last one was discovered thanks to the tireless efforts of our next president, dave barry.

good pilot + good jet = awesome

after a midair collision in a training run, an f-15 piloted by an israeli air force officer is badly damaged. after hitting the afterburners (of all things), he is able to stabalize the jet and fly the 10 miles back to the airfield; he is prepared to eject, however, because a spray of fuel from the right side of the jet makes it impossible to tell how badly it is damaged. upon landing, he opens the cockpit... and discovers that the entire right wing is missing.

primary colors

i've been playing around with the "color accent" function on my camera... it's pretty fun.

getting my name out there

primary election is sometime at the end of august... the 27th, i think. if i remain unchallenged, you will be looking at the youngest member of the waterville town council. if i do have a challenger... hopefully you'll still be working at the youngest member of the waterville town council. i've got at two of the current five town "councilpersons" pulling for me, so i think i've got a pretty decent shot.

meal of the day

only in germany... and maybe south america. but it's normal there.

quote of the month, at least

"It is not pleasant to see an American thrusting his nationality forward obtrusively in a foreign land, but oh, it is pitiable to see him making of himself a thing that is neither male nor female, neither fish, flesh, nor fowl--a poor, miserable, hermaphrodite Frenchman!" --Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

Happy Memorial Day

To all the men and women who have died defending our freedom: thank you.

note to self

and to anyone else who cares to take it. when trying to recover from sickness, staying up till 3am and drinking tequila is probably a bad idea.

they do exist!

i remember seeing a poster for these guys while i was in glasgow, and just ran into them on youtube: eric and the bunny boilers.



i'm not sure if the pole dancer is actually part of the band, or just an extra. never can tell with those... glasgowites? glasgowians? or whatever they call themselves.

vote no on amnesty

sign the petition here.

on which note, it looks like france is paying their immigrants to go back to their home countries. i would certainly be willing to give something like that a try, especially with our "neighbors" to the south. it would be a huge boost to mexico's economy (france is paying the equivelant of about $8,000 for a family of four to go home), which would remove some of the reason for sneaking across the border. we would, of course, have to drastically increase border security, and possibly collect some other information--fingerprints, maybe dna, etc.--to make sure that they didn't just sneak across and collect again with a different name/stolen social security number.

you mean we were supposed to keep the guns after we took them away?

who knew? apparently not some pakistani U.N. "peacekeepers," who decided that giving guns back to militias they had just disarmed was a good idea. in their defense, though, they weren't simply giving the weapons away; they were trading them for gold.

cool by association

although at the same time, i'm feeling bad i didn't pay more attention and know sooner. i was at whitworth's graduation this weekend, and ran into one of my buddies from my hall freshman year, mike allen. we talked for awhile, and then i probably became the 8 billionth person that day to ask, "so what now?" and his response blew me away: "well, i'm headed to kansas city. i got drafted by the chiefs." i've never been a huge fan of the chiefs, but i'll definitely be watching their games now.

mental torture?

A Pakistani-born US resident detained at Guantanamo Bay has said he was "mentally tortured" there, according to a transcript released by the Pentagon.

however, here's a partial list of the things he considers to be "mental torture":

*taking away a picture of his daughter [mean, maybe, but torture? i think not]

*giving him new glasses with the wrong perscription [this one would qualify as mean if it were intentional, and rather stupid if it were unintentional (you'd think we'd be able to get that sort of thing right); again, i see no torture]

*shaving his beard off [if something as trivial as a beard is that important to you, it may be time to rethink your priorities; if allah is any kind of god worth the title, he'll love you anyways]

*forcibly feeding him when he went on a hunger strike [damn us for keeping him alive!]

*denying him the opportunity for recreation; and even worse, when we did let him recreate, there were "half-inflated balls in the recreation room that 'hardly bounce'" [so, you plan to blow stuff up, and we're supposed to give you recreation time? not on my watch. also, when i was in elementary school, students were occasionally kept in the classroom during recess as punishment for misbehaving. were they being "mentally tortured" as well?]

this, of course, was just too much for the poor man to take: "This led him to attempt to chew through his artery twice, Mr Khan said." i bet we gave him medical treatment after that as well, horrible bastards that we are.

my favorite instances of "psychological abuse" are in the last paragraph:

*cheap, branded, unscented soap [cleanliness may be next to godliness, but does your soap really need to smell good to get the job done?]

*noisy fans [suck it up and deal with it buddy]

*the prison newsletter [is the writing actually that bad? also, nobody is forcing you to read it]

honestly, the article looks like it would fit better in a scrappleface post than on the bbc website. i had a hard time not bursting out laughing when i read it.

the importance of skin color

obama talks some sense on race. out of the whole article, though, this line jumped out at me: "In reality, colleges abandoned this concept long ago in favor of the "diversity" rationale under which Obama's kids would receive preferential treatment solely because of their skin color."

skin color is, unfortunately, still important in america. one of the RAs in my dorm freshman year was half-japanese, and spoke that language fluently, as did her younger sister. however, the other half happened to be black. her younger sister actually lost out on a job at a japanese restaurant because she didn't appear japanese, even though she was more than qualified for the position.

We Win, They Lose

I actually posted this awhile back, but had the script screwed up. So here it is again, still worth supporting... get signing.

First Name* Last Name* Email* Address City State select AL AK AZ AR CA CO CT DE DC FL GA HI ID IL IN IA KS KY LA ME MD MA MI MNMS MO MT NE NV NH NJ NM NY NC ND OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN TX UT VT VA WA WV WI WY ZIP Yes, I'd like to receive updates about staying involved. I'm a blogger and I'd like to help. Blog URL:

To: Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House
Harry Reid, U.S. Senate Democrat Leader

Congress has passed and President Bush has vetoed H.R. 1591, the Iraq Surrender Act of 2007.

This legislation, which you worked to pass, sets a timetable for surrender. It pulls the rug out from under our troops. That is shameful and wrong.

Your actions have already emboldened the enemy. Violent jihadists now know that the elected leadership of Congress would undermine the troops by holding their funding hostage to demands for surrender.

This Congress would bring us back to the dark days of the 1970s, when the world doubted our staying power. Except only much worse. Withdraw in April 2008, and on May 1, Iraq becomes an unchecked den of terrorism at the heart of the Middle East -- a new base for the same people that struck our homeland on September 11th.

I stand with our troops. I stand for victory. I support the President's veto and will urge my representatives to vote to sustain it.

There can be one and only one outcome in Iraq: We win, they lose.

they just want jobs and a better life, right?

wrong:

facts? we don't need no stinking facts!

at tufts college, such is the case.

more from card

this time, an article about mitt romney. like everything i've seen from card so far, it is well worth reading. card seems worried that anti-mormon bigotry will sink any chance romney had of winning the whitehouse, and that romney's running could actually hurt the mormon church. there are, of course, a lot of people out there who think mormons are a bit kooky; i'm one of them. but in my experience, mormons also tend to be excellent examples of "good people."

my complaint against romney is not his religious beliefs, but his continued support of "romneycare." that's one step too close to socialized healthcare--probably one of the worst ideas ever, even worse than american cheese--for my taste, so i'll have a very hard time voting for him in the primaries. giuliani lost my vote when he came out in favor of publicly funded abortions, and mccain was a no-go from the start, which pretty much knocks the "big three" in the GOP out of the race as far as i'm concerned. i like what i've heard from fred thompson so far, but i really don't know enough about him to decide to pull for him yet. and unless zell miller decides to run, and the dems actually nominate him, there's no way i'm voting democrat. there is, of course, over a year left before any of this really matters, so all of the candidates have plenty of time to either redeem themselves or dig deeper holes.

what about dads?

"Three-a-day of dairy, for healthy moms and healthy kids." what about dads? don't they need to be healthy too? i realize that the times, they are a changing, but in most families the dad is still the primary breadwinner. if dad isn't healthy, it makes it harder for him to earn said bread, which means mom and kid(s) will have problems affording their dairy products. so let's remember dads too, shall we?

liberal logic, or the lack thereof

from orson scott card:

Brod actually admits precisely what he's doing, when he says: "Fortunately, people finally seem to understand the fallacy of requiring proof."

Think about that. He calls it a fallacy to require proof.

read the whole article (on global warming)... i've always been a fan of card's novels, and he puts that same skill to use in his weekly column.

h/t pw

improbability

i never thought i'd say this, but the yankees got screwed. with two outs in the top of the eighth, willie bloomquist stole second. except for the part where he was out by about a foot. so either the umpire is a huge fan of bloomquist, or he had a really horrible angle on it. willie would go on to score on a single by kenji johjima, tying the game. the yankees were unable to score in the bottom of the eighth, and then with two outs in the top of the ninth, adrian beltre hit a solo shot to put the mariners up by one, and j.j. putz was able to shut down the yankees in the bottom of the ninth to give the mariners the win.

everything changed with "the stolen base that wasn't." if bloomquist was called out and nothing else changed, beltre wouldn't even have batted in the ninth, and the mariners would have lost. i'm glad when the mariners win (and when the yankees lose), but i much prefer it to be a legitimate victory.

Happy Birthday!

To my good friend Kate-Lynne.

huh. who knew?

guess which western country hates the french the most? that would be france.

h/t wizbang

We Win, They Lose

To: Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House
Harry Reid, U.S. Senate Democrat Leader

Congress has passed and President Bush has vetoed H.R. 1591, the Iraq Surrender Act of 2007.

This legislation, which you worked to pass, sets a timetable for surrender. It pulls the rug out from under our troops. That is shameful and wrong.

Your actions have already emboldened the enemy. Violent jihadists now know that the elected leadership of Congress would undermine the troops by holding their funding hostage to demands for surrender.

This Congress would bring us back to the dark days of the 1970s, when the world doubted our staying power. Except only much worse. Withdraw in April 2008, and on May 1, Iraq becomes an unchecked den of terrorism at the heart of the Middle East -- a new base for the same people that struck our homeland on September 11th.

I stand with our troops. I stand for victory. I support the President's veto and will urge my representatives to vote to sustain it.

There can be one and only one outcome in Iraq: We win, they lose.

Sign here.

i bet the wife was a horde character

because let's face it... those horde folk? they're pricks.

... of the day

*unbiased statement [paraphrased] of the day: "you need 3 servings of dairy a day for strong bones, and lots of essential nutrients. this message brought to you by the diary farmers of washington."
*ummm... duh? statement of the day: "enraged wraith becomes enraged!"

i had a lot more of these when i originally planned the post, so i'll probably update it later as i remember them.

--update--

here's another one i remembered:

*statement (of the day) that most pissed me off: from a YWCA radio commercial: "imagine you're walking down the street, and you see a group of mexicans and another group of americans fighting, over something as simple as the color of their skin."
1) "another group of americans"? where was the first one? so far you've identified one group of mexicans, and one of americans.
2) odds are they're not fighting over skin color, but over the fact that the mexicans: a) are probably here illegally, and b) don't speak much english.

'tis mearly a flesh wound!

now, had john kerry come back with an injury like this, he might have actually earned one of his purple hearts.

h/t dave barry

hooray! for political incorrectness

the plank in your own eye, or something like that

so ladies, next time you catch a man checking you out or "ogling" some other attractive female, remember this article.

h/t dave barry

proofreading? we don't need no stinking proofreading!

from the "bizzare duck case" in lynnwood, wa:

The man jumped into the driver's seat of the car as the woman walked out of the store with her duck. Not knowing what was going on, she tried to stop him from driving away and was knocked down by the open car door as it backed up. She dropped the duck.

A Petco employee saw what was happening and "ran to save Peepers from the front of the car" just as Quinlan drove forward, Stern wrote. The car ran over the woman, inflicting serious injuries including broken bones in her foot and ankle, he said.

first off, who worries more about a duck than a woman? that employee definitely has some messed up priorities. but we can worry about those later. for now, back to the the proofreading bit. notice the bit about "serious injuries" in that last paragraph? two paragraphs later, we see this:

The girlfriend and guard were not seriously hurt. Mr. Peepers was OK.

so, we have a few possibilities here:

1) having "serious injuries" is somehow different from being "seriously hurt."
2) this reporter is a really crappy writer, and nobody is proofreading his work.
3) this reporter is a really crappy writer, and his proofreader sucks.

i'm sure there are some other possible explanations, but i can't think of any at the moment.

h/t dave barry

prayer request

for the victims of the shooting at virginia tech, as well as for their families.

i could say "i told you so"

but i'll let the video do it for me:

ummm... duh?

"buy your tickets now, seating is limited!"

maybe it's just because i don't get out much, but i have yet to see any venue where seating is unlimited. you could argue in favor of "the universe," i suppose, although the event would have to be big enough for people in any area of the universe to see. if not, you're probably better off watching it on TV, in which case you really don't need to worry about seating.

Happy Easter!

Thank you Jesus, for dying for my sins, and for continuing to put up with me.

good news, bad news

the good news: some people still have common sense.

ARLINGTON, Texas — Darrell Roberson came home from a card game late one night to find his wife rolling around with another man in a pickup truck in the driveway.

Caught in the act with her lover, Tracy Denise Roberson -- thinking quickly, if not clearly -- cried rape, authorities say. Her husband pulled a gun and killed the other man with a shot to the head.

On Thursday, a grand jury handed up a manslaughter indictment -- against the wife, not the husband.

i have to say, i completely agree with that decision. read the whole article for more context.

h/t protein wisdom

the bad news: unless he changes this position, rudy guiliani just lost my vote for 2008.

"There must be public funding for abortions for poor women," Giuliani says in the speech that is posted on the video sharing site YouTube. "We cannot deny any woman the right to make her own decisions about abortion."

When asked directly Wednesday if he still supported the use of public funding for abortions, Giuliani said "Yes."

........

"Ultimately, it's a constitutional right, and therefore if it's a constitutional right, ultimately, even if you do it on a state by state basis, you have to make sure people are protected," Giuliani said in an interview with CNN's Dana Bash in Florida's capital city.

wrong answer rudy! a woman, poor or not, has no right to use my tax dollars for an abortion. she made the decisions that put her in a position where she "needs" an abortion, she can come up with her own funds for it.

rob at say anything brings up another interesting point: gun ownership is a consitutional right; and unlike abortion, is specifically mentioned in the constitution. does that mean public funds should be used to buy me, and every other american (with the exception of felons, people who can't/don't want to use them for some reason, etc.), a gun?

i'm really hoping now that guiliani loses in the primaries, or 2008 is going to be a really crappy year.

play ball! (updated)

is there anything better than a couple of good bratwursts soaked in guinness on opening night? i submit that there is not.

--update--
except for the part where they wake you up with heartburn at four in the morning.

full meal deal

i posted a link to this awhile back; now we have the full song, along with a great extra:

overenthusiastic

well, that was unexpected. i had a few extra comments pop up in the "recent comments" section and thought, hey, cool. and then i looked a little closer, and realized that they were from last september, when i was using haloscan before the switch to blogger beta. i guess it's nice that they still have a record of my comments, but this definitely seemed like overkill to me.

listen to... well, not john travolta

because let's face it, a guy who owns five jets doesn't doesn't exactly have the "moral high ground" when it comes to global warming.

well, at least that part went well

update on my dysfunctional PSU: sent it in, and just recieved a brand new one from the company... took about a week and a half altogether. if i didn't have a backup PSU, that probably would have seemed like an eternity, but as is, i'm fairly impressed. i'll be installing it this weekend, and hoping it lasts longer than the first one.

because you can never have too many videos

i saw this one over at wizbang awhile back, and found it absolutely hilarious.

more proof that MKH is awesome

huh. cool.

via the seattle times (which doesn't even require registration for this article... kudos to them), we learn that maybe that whole "techno-fence" along the southern border isn't such a bad idea after all. we still need more manpower down there, but i'm much more optimistic than i was.

theater folk are cool

this weekend, rachel and i went to see a friend of ours (lauren) perform in the play "noises off," by michael frayn (description: "Take a second rate acting company presenting a really bad play and the result is a high-speed, frenzied farce as their on-stage and back stage antics spiral into total mayhem.") i have to say, i was quite impressed. it started to drag on a bit towards the end, but over all it was highly entertaining.

afterwards, we hung around for awhile and talked with lauren. she was doing well... work was crazy, but she loved it, and really enjoyed being able to act as well. we got to meet a few other actors as well, and they turned out to be pretty cool people. they even shared their booze with us (it was st. patrick's day), even though we were basically just "groupies." we took off shortly after that though, because they were having a birthday party for the guy who designed the set. he also seemed like a cool guy, but we didn't really know him, so it would have been a bit odd.

the mission creek players--the group who was acting that night--also give free acting classes; or at least they will, once they finish building their permanant location. if i'm still around when those get started, i think i'll be tempted to give it a go. i've never seriously acted--the closest i've come to it was a brief performance for my shakespeare class, when i was moonbeam in the 'play within a play' in a midsummer night's dream--but i definitely enjoyed it. i don't think i'd have much problem with the "grunt" work (memorizing my lines), but body language, voice inflection, etc., might be a bit trickier to pick up.

yarrrrgh... (updated)

so, i think it's time for me to start looking for new computer pieces. when i came upstairs to brush my teeth last night, everything was fine. when i got back down a few minutes later, my computer had shut itself off. i tried starting it up again; it flashed a few times, then went off. i haven't been able to get it going since then.

it looks like the power supply has power--the power switch on the back lights up when it's turned on--but i get no response whatsoever when i try using the power button on the front of my case. right now i'm trying to get ahold of a friend who might be able to help me check the various pieces of my compy, so i know if just one piece is fried, or if i have to start all over. wish me luck.

--update--
looks like truckin' knows his stuff... the problem was with the power supply. so i pulled it out, popped in my old one, and for now i'm functional. i'll be sending the dysfunctional PSU back to the manufacturer, and hoping that whatever the problem was is covered under my "limited" warranty.

man, i need to start playing that again

nethack is probably one of the greatest games ever. even though it could potentially make you hate life, or at least various letters of the alphabet. for those who haven't played it before, nethack is considered a roguelike game, where everything is represented by keyboard letters and symbols: your character (@) fights his way past grid bugs (x), orcs (o), dragons (D), and vampires (V), quaffing potions (!), reading scrolls (?) and spellbooks (+), and picking up gold ($) and gems (*), watching out for traps (^) on his way to the staircase to the next level (>). see the link above for a more complete description.

this post was inspired by something i found while cleaning out my email inbox, a "theme song" of sorts that a friend sent me a few years back:

Play Nethack
By Francisco Rangel


(To the tune of Paint It Black by The Rolling Stones)

I see a red D and I want to play nethack
Go down to Gehennom and bring the trinket back
I see the grid bugs bite, the Kop runs with a hose
I light my magic lamp and so the darkness goes

Drop stuff on altars but they're cursed so they glow black
I stash my scrolls and potions in an oilskin sack
I see corpses all around, I'll eat them right away
Hope I get intrinsics, hope my god will let me pray

Sit on a throne and get to genocide some L's
The Oracle will speak, and the shopkeeper sells
Get a prize from Sokoban and then on to clear the quest
Kill Medusa, find the castle, open up that chest

The Valley of the Dead, and David's Treasure Zoo
I'll visit Vlad and get the Candelabrum too
If I look hard enough for the vibrating square
I'll kill the wizard, get the Book, and I'll be there

I'll get the amulet and make a run for it
With demons on my tail, I hope I don't get hit
Go through the planes and reach the altars at the end
I'll sacrifice the amulet and I'll ascend

I wanna beat this game, it's so hard, cannot save, can't restart
I'll go to Gehennom, with my pet by my side
Don't eat the food that's tainted, tainted, tainted, or you'll die, yeah!

for something so simple, it gives a very accurate description of the gameplay... much like weird al's "the saga begins" did for star wars: episode I.

also while checking back on the main nethack page, i found another theme song, which not only has lyrics, but also some music to go along with it.

on which note, it's time for me to get back to greek. but i see the length of this post as a good thing; it means i still have some procrastination skills.

ouch

The Pelosi Plan for Iraq

It makes perfect sense, if the goal is winning votes in the United States.

that's a bit larger than i intended it, but oh well. it's sad, but true: the democrats (with a few exceptions, like joe lieberman) don't want to win in iraq, they want to win in the polls here at home. read the rest of the article here.

site maintenance

as you may notice, i finally switched back to haloscan for my comment system... this way there won't need to be any more anonymous comments from people who don't use blogger/google accounts. this means that i lost existing comments (again), but there weren't enough of those that i'll be mourning the loss. hopefully blogger doesn't go through any major maintenance that would require me to switch again.

too bad he'll probably never get elected

because john cox sounds like someone i could vote for.

few stood against many

this friday, 300 hits theaters. if you are a man, and you don't think that movie looks f*cking awesome, there is definitely something wrong with you. i expect all of my readers (which i think is pretty much just me at this point, but oh well) to go see it this weekend.

quote of the day

"I for one think it's high time that we recognise the important contributions that lepers make to our cultural landscape."

found here, h/t protein wisdom

quote of the day

mel gibson was right! the jews are apparently responsible for pretty much everything bad that happens, including the destructive acts by "palestinians" on what used to be jewish land:

Mr. Abir blamed the Jewish state for the desecration of the Gaza synagogues by Palestinian Arabs, claiming the decision to leave the structures intact was part of an Israeli conspiracy.

Israel "left the synagogues behind so the world would see the Palestinians destroying them," Mr. Abir said.

which is apparently why israel also decided to leave all of their cities intact, since according to the article linked above, "...the area in which the synagogues once stood is now used to fire rockets at Israel." (sarcasm) damn those jews for leaving all their cities standing! they should have burned them all to the ground and then run themselves into the sea! this is all part of a conspiracy, using our rocket attacks to make us look bad! (/sarcasm)

so far as i know, the jews have yet to be blamed for global warming, but i wouldn't be surprised to see that pop up sometime soon.

h/t say anything

definition of the day

expiration date: when she dies while you're at dinner, a movie, etc.

i think i just made that up, but feel free to prove me wrong.

hahaha! (updated)

“The Prude’s Haiku, 2”

Winter’s end brings thoughts
of girls in summer dresses.
The filthy strumpets.

for some reason, it reminds me of spring at whitworth.

--update--

although, now that i think about it, the second Lapsed Prude's Haiku is probably more accurate:

Winter’s end brings thoughts
of girls in summer dresses.
The hot, hot strumpets!

now there's a fun thought

buying your way to kyoto compliance. i think it would be awesome if we actually went for it; though i would prefer to see the funds to do so raised by cutting spending in some area, rather than by raising taxes on gas.

point, and counterpoint

*point: white americans are probably the most "powerful" (for lack of a better term) people on the face of the earth.
*counterpoint: white american cheese is probably one of the worst inventions ever.

how do we reconcile those two things?

a faulty analogy

"one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." that, or something like it, was a fairly popular expression among the left near the beginning of the war in iraq. i believe michael moore even compared the suicide bombers and militia thugs we're facing in iraq to our own minutemen during the revolutionary war... which i'll forgive him for, because when you're thinking about twinkies, it's hard to think about anything else.

you could, i suppose, define both terrorists and freedom fighters as very similar things, but their methods are very different. both groups tend to be weaker than their opponents, and as such would rely mainly on guerrilla tactics; which, while cowardly, are effective. plus, in their defense, attempting to stand toe-to-toe with the american military at this point is pretty much suicide.

the most noticeable difference between the two groups is the target of their guerrilla attacks. both will attack military targets; and while i regret every soldier lost to the barbarians we're fighting, i do consider soldiers to be a legitmate target for attack. but the terrorists don't stop there... in fact, they really don't spend much time there at all. instead, they attack the civilian population... the very group that freedom fighters would be working to liberate, terrorists are trying to blow up. there's no "cultural relativism" or "gray area" here; intentionally targeting and killing civilians is always wrong.

do as i say, not as i do

seems to be how algore rolls. as in, his home uses roughly twice as much energy in one month as the average american home does in one year. bush's ranch at crawford, however--and this actually surprised me--is incredibly eco-friendly. who knew?

h/t wizbang

yarrrgh... (updated)

so, i'll be out of commission for awhile... my computer is currently hating life (windows won't load, which makes anything else a bit tricky). i can use the family computer (which i'm doing now), but since that's shared, i'll be spending much less time online.

on those notes, how tricky is linux to pick up? and if i decide to switch to that, will i have many compatibility issues?

--update--
well, i feel stupid. i called a friend of mine who's fairly good with computers, and when i turned my computer back on (this is after it had been restarted at least dozens of times) so i could tell him what the problem was, everything worked just fine. so for now, my goal is to not turn my computer off, ever again, unless absolutely necessary.

America, f*ck yeah!

U.S. seniors fight off muggers, killing one

how's that for a headline, eh?

h/t dave barry (some of the comments are well worth reading)

spin

the media loves to do it. rob is basically making the same point i would have, but his is already written and sourced, so you can just read it instead.

weeha

with a little help from william d. mounce, i am attempting to teach myself greek. biblical greek, specifically; it doesn't really differ from "regular" greek, but is completely focused on the new testament. so it won't make me fluent by any means, but it should give me a pretty decent grasp of the language, which will hopefully free up some time in grad school (which is still "somewhere, some time") for all the other reading i'll have to do.

i'm just starting on it now, working on the alphabet and pronunciation. most of it isn't too bad, but some of the letters don't sound anything like their transliteration looks. wish me luck.

amen, brother

i never thought i'd see this day, but i find myself agreeing with steve jobs over michael dell. dell seems to believe that unions are for the protection of employees from their employers (which seems an odd stance, given his position as company CEO). jobs, on the other hand, realizes that unions--at least in the case of teacher's unions (not sure what he thinks about the rest of them, though i'd assume it would be similar)--are bad for education.

and the economy seems to agree, at least according to this LA Times article. somehow, even though union membership has shrunk drastically, workers are better off than they were before. this doesn't mean lower union membership leads to the workers being better off, but it does mean that we can get by just fine without them.

h/t say anything for both stories

well, i'm never eating there again

"there," in this case, being arby's. partly because i don't like it, and partly because of one of their latest radio commercials. in it, a man comes home and is surprised to find his wife wearing fishnet stockings... which causes the little voice in his head to remind him that fish sandwiches were on sale at arby's. in my case, however, i was reminded of a rather disturbing sight from the glasgow train station back in 2004, which definitely ruined my appetite.

awesomeness of the day

the "opening a beer bottle with a helicopter" contest, USA vs. Japan.

h/t dave barry

a valentine's day haiku

inspired by jeff goldstein, who pretty much rules at them.

eating valentine's
candy makes my dentist hate
me. poor, lonely man.

i think those last four syllables could have been better, but i'm feeling lazy. and tired.

huh. that's cool, i guess.

apparantly capital one is pleased with my early payments every month, because they've jacked my credit limit up by $5k. which sounds pretty nice, but i really don't need it. the only times i've ever even come close to my limit were when i bought my new camera, and when i was buying pieces to put a computer together. this would have been nice to have last fall, though... i could've got hellas air miles for putting the down payment of my car on the card. oh well.

we have the technology...

the only question is, do we have the money for it? i've been looking at computer pieces lately, partly because i'm hoping to build a new computer (probably sometime this summer), and partly because, lets face it, looking at computer pieces can be really fun. right now i'm mainly focused on the case; these two are some of my top picks. i'm hoping for the latter, but thinking my budget will probably put me somewhere closer to the former. my RAM and possibly PSU will be migrating to the new system, and i think looking for a mobo, CPU and graphics card this early is fairly pointless, since those will probably have made several advances by this summer.

do i really need a new computer? no, not especially. i've had this one for about a year and a half now, and it's still treating me fairly well. but i would definitely like one.

oy

i'm starting to agree with jim gaffigan about hot pockets:

it's more than just the way you say it

as defined by Jim Cannon of wenatchee valley college:

"Naked is when you have no clothes on. Nekkid is when you have no clothes on and you're up to something."

hahaha!

Al Jazeera got WTF pwn3d.

**update**
wow, the comics that people have written on that article are... interesting. it's amazing to me, a) how little people actually know about the various groups they're writing about, and b) how pitiful the grammar/spelling is. that may seem a little odd coming from someone who types almost exclusively in lower case letters, but i'm actually a fairly good writer when i put my mind to it. those comments are just plain sad.

Groundhog Day Press Conference

Reporter #1: So Phil, let me get this straight: you voted for a longer winter, before you voted against it?

Punxsutawney Phil: That is correct. See, I really enjoy snowboarding—that is, as long as some son of a bitch isn’t busy knocking me over and making me look bad in front of reporters—so I figured a longer winter would be great. But then I saw Al Gore on TV and remembered global warming—which, by the way, happens to be caused by humans—which would obviously cause the snow to melt off sooner than usual, leading to an early spring. Not wanting to look like an idiot, I changed my tune.

Reporter #2: Some folks have noticed that you’ve done this sort of thing in the past, Phil. How do you explain your flip-flopping?

Phil: I prefer to think that I’m being nuanced.

Reporter #1: Prominent black leaders Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have also come out in favor of the early spring position, claiming that winter lacks diversity. Snow, they argue, only comes in white, and is thus inherently racist. While Jackson has admitted that yellow snow “could possibly represent Asians,” and snow that has been blackened by exhaust, while “more like an Oreo” and “not as good as chocolate snow,” could potentially “represent people of African descent,” they are sticking to their position. It has also recently been espoused by none other than the “first mainstream… articulate, and bright and clean and… nice-looking” African-American, Mr. Barak Obama. What’s your take on this argument?

Phil: I agree completely. Just like the white man, winter has oppressed the colored people—or, in this case, the colors—of the world. It’s long past time for the workers of spring to rise up and show their true beauty, casting off the oppression of the West. I mean winter. Because let’s face it: if you study hard, and apply yourself, you can find yourself surrounded by flowers, rainbows, and happiness. And if not, you end up stuck in a snowbank.

~~~~

There was originally going to be more to it than that, but somewhere between the fact that I started writing it at about 09:00 this morning during a slow moment at work (after which it got put off until now), and the rum & coke I had a little while ago, I kind of lost track of where I was going with it.

i love math

well, not really. because i usually manage to find the hardest method for solving any problem, which means i'll get the answer, it just takes about five times as long as it should. but every now and then, math proves itself to be quite useful: an indian economist has proven that putting down the toilet seat is inefficient.

at home, i usually use slightly different arguments, but i think we agree in principle:

1) look before you leap. i have to look to make sure the seat is up before i begin urinating; why is it so hard for you to see if it's down before you start?

2) majority rule. when everybody is home, the "balance of forces," as it were, stands at 5 guys to 1 girl. said girl should either: a) put the seat up when she's done, in consideration of the five guys who would have to do so, or b) at least not complain when we leave it up. in case of a tie, the advantage should go to the female, out of politeness.

i've said it before

and i'll say it again: unions are bad for the economy. especially, as should be obvious, in the auto industry. read the full article here, and/or see a breakdown of it here.

multipurpose

not only is it a fairly accurate picture of what's running through the dems heads, it also doubles as a surrender flag!

not so bad after all

after reading this article, guiliani actually looks like a pretty decent choice for 2008. definitely not perfect, but up to the point where i could vote for him as a little bit of good, rather than the lesser of two evils.

h/t powerline

sad, but true

the difference between the "palestinians" and the israelis:


h/t say anything

man, i'm glad i don't live in romania

because in my opinion, it's really not cool when a doctor, who had been "suffering from stress at the time," flips out and does the following:

Grabbing a scalpel, he sliced off the penis in front of shocked nursing staff, and then placed it on the operating table where he chopped it into small pieces before storming out of the operating theatre at Bucharest hospital.

he later claimed it was a "temporary loss of judgment due to personal problems." which it might have been, but still... doesn't that seem just a little bit overboard?

h/t dave barry

Congratulations!

To my friend Emily, who just got engaged. I haven't met Brent yet, but he sounds like a great guy, and Emily usually has pretty good taste, so I think they'll be quite happy together.

who knew?

i knew you could buy anything on ebay, but i didn't realize that they literally meant everything:


for some reason, say anything has taken to highlighting random words in the posts (generally "north dakota") and turning them into external links. rob may have mentioned something about it earlier, but i haven't seen an explanation yet, so it may just be something funky on my end.

fun: it does exist!

just spent a weekend in spokane, and it was definitely fun. even when the brits and americans (the russians died off early) were getting our asses handed to us in axis & allies. through a combination of a few bad moves and a lot of bad rolls on our part, the forces of fascism controlled the globe. oh well.

it was good getting to hang out with ben again after his semester in europe, drinking good beer and attending "classes" in brno. it was also good to see clayton again, even if he was playing as the japanese. i also discovered that most of my friends still there (ben and clayton, as well as paul, liz, and jess) have no souls, at least while playing apples to apples.

and, perhaps most importantly, i was able to pick up a few cases of bawls before leaving spokane, since i can't find it anywhere in my area.

damn that global warming

it was negative 4 degrees when i left my house at 7:00 this morning, and according to the weather channel, it's currently about positive 4 degrees right now. which, let's face it... that's just a little bit chilly.

who knew?

no longer content with describing the bush administration as nazis or the anti-Christ, one democrat has come up with a new title: klingons. faux klingons, to be precise.




h/t say anything

is it wrong...

...that i find this shirt absolutely hilarious?

have you ever had one of those days...

...when, over the course of nine hours at work, you help nine customers? i just did. unless you enjoy being bored, i would recommend against it.

hero of the day

wesley autrey, for jumping onto the subway tracks to save a man who fell onto them after having a seizure.

proud to be a majority

thanks to the fine folks at howmanyofme.com, i now know the following:

1) There are 1,468,346 people in the U.S. with the first name Daniel.
2) [Daniel is] Statistically the 16th most popular first name.
3) 99.49 percent of people with the first name Daniel are male.

of course, they also say that there are zero (0) people in the US with the name Daniel Bareither, including me.

google, on the other hand, seems to think that there are at least two of me, one of them being myself, the other a doctor with an MS and a PhD in human anatomy.

there comes a time...

...when, despite all your previous protests to the contrary, you must finally break down and start playing WoW. i never denied that it was a good game, i just always felt that the $15/month could be spent better elsewhere. but no more. my little brother got the game for christmas, and i'm hooked. i'm currently working on the 10-day free trial that came with it, and i'm headed into town this weekend to pick up the full version.

right now, here are my characters:

*Menoichius: Human Paladin, level 15. I believe the server is Eltrigg, or something like that. But that's on my little brother's account, so I'm going to be re-creating him in Boulderfist.

*Klavicus: Undead Warlock, level 6. Just started this guy tonight, on the Hakkar(?) server. I know, I really should pay more attention to the server names. But he's not going to be my primary character, and it was the first "recommended" one that didn't have a queue.