dang

i'm not sure what made me think of it, but i just realized that i missed the annual Eat an Animal for PETA day. by about a month. right now it's an annual event (march 15), but I really think it's important enough to become at least quarterly.

awesome

500 bonus points to scott, our bank president, for the following conversation at the end of our open house tonight:

me: hey, if there's any fat tire left, i'll buy it.
scott: just take it.
me: what?
scott: you don't need to buy it. just take it.
me: hey, thanks much!

i definitely walked out of the bank with a full case of fat tire tonight. good times.

poetry

Hillary Under Fire

Ode on Hillary in Bosnia

by Orson Scott Card

"We landed under sniper fire!
We ran for cover, terrified!
The bullets flew around my head!
I thought for sure that I was dead!"

She told the tale in hopes it meant
We'd vote for her for president.
Instead we looked for evidence
Of Hillary's experience,
And found that not a bullet flew.
Her thrilling story wasn't true.

Because we know she never lies,
I ask, how did this tale arise?
Was it a dream, and when she woke
She thought that it was real?
Or was the story just a joke,
And no big deal?

Did drinking too much mocha make her
Fantasize this tale?
Or was it from a line of coke,
A furtive toke of the kind of smoke
That Bill did not inhale?

Oh hush, right-wing conspirators!
Your reasons suck! Now here is hers:
She just misspoke.
She meant to say
She landed on a sunny day
And a little girl read a poem aloud
And Hillary waved to the friendly crowd.

But campaign days are oh so long,
And being a woman, she isn't strong,
So the story simply came out wrong.

How could you think that Hillary lied,
When it was such a small mistake,
The kind that anyone could make?
No joke, no toke of smoke, no coke,
No dream from which she never woke --
She just misspoke.

You've heard that what goes up comes down
And where there's smoke there's fire.
Well, when you visit Hillary Town
The word "misspoke" means "liar."

(Copyright © 2008 by Orson Scott Card. Please duplicate this poem as much as you like, as long as you don't charge for it; but include this copyright notice with it.)

yay money!

awesome! apparently i'm about to recieve a donation from mrs jenifer bruce. assuming she actually exists though, either she's none to bright or she thinks i'm not. a few key excerpts from the email:

• When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of $2. 5 Million (Two Million Five Hundred U.S. Dollars) in the bank here in Abidjan in suspense account. [whoops... that should read "Two Million Five Hundred Thousand." strike one.]
• Recently, my Doctor told me that i have serious sickness which is cancer problem. The one that disturbs me most is my stroke sickness. [as opposed to what? a serious sickness which is cancer solution? also, last i checked a stroke wasn't a sickness. strikes two and three.]
• I don’t need any telephone communication in this regard because of my health hence the presence of my husband’s relatives is around me always I don't want them to know about this development. [i'm not even sure what she's trying to say here. that's gotta be worth at least 14 more strikes.]
• Contact me on the above e-mail address for more information’s, any delay in your reply will give me room in sourcing another church or individual for this same purpose. [note to jenifer: adding 's to the end of something doesn't automatically make it plural. this is even more fun than john kerry's "our troops need more ammo's" back in the 2004 debates. i think we're up to strike eighteen now.]

also, she claims to be a kuwaiti writing from the ivory coast... apparently she was married to the some guy who worked at the kuwaiti embassy there. problems with that statement: 1) i am unable to find any credible reference to a kuwaiti embassy in the ivory coast; 2) jenifer isn't exactly a kuwaiti name... the closest i was able to come up with from a list of arabic girls' names were janvier and jenna; and 3) a google search for "kuwaiti embassy ivory coast" brings up several different versions of the same attempted scam.

so, time for a little contest. the person who guesses closest to the chance (expressed as a percentage) there is of me responding to the email wins a prize.

an interesting comparison

over at say anything, pilgrim compares organized crime with militant islam. it's actually a very interesting way of looking at them. key paragraph:

And that’s my point: If an organized crime syndicate did the same thing the entire might of U.S. and European law enforcement would come down on them like a ton of bricks. Will the threats against the Live Leak staff get the same treatment? Probably not. Islam gets a pass. I don’t get it.

read the whole thing.

laziness, or a shout out?

i've probably mentioned it before, but i'm a huge fan of the stargate: sg-1 series. i just finished season 8, and seasons 9 and 10 are sitting on the shelf begging to be opened. recently, i saw a name that i recognized from the show: kelowna, a country on another planet that one of the main characters was from. and i thought "wait a minute, why is the wenatchee rotary club doing something with people from a fictional location?" but it turns out kelowna is also a city in british columbia, a four hour drive from where the show was filmed in vancouver. which really makes me wonder how many other locations on the show are named after places on earth. so the question is: were they just lazy when they were coming up with names, or did they think highly enough of the area to decide to put it out there for everyone to see?

for old times sake

i found my journal from my trip to england and scotland back in 2004 the other day, and resumed the task of completing it. you read that right: almost four years later, and it's still not done. i actually remember quite a bit of what happened though, and when rereading it was even able to remember some things that I had left out when i was originally writing it. i'm hoping to finish up sometime in the near future, at which point i plan to type it up and put it online.

random side note: i just found a small feather between two of the empty pages towards the end. i have no idea what it's doing there, but i'll go ahead and leave it there for now.

Happy Easter!

He is rizzle fo shizzle.

happy birthday!

to my younger brother bud. he turned 21 today, and told me he'd redeem the day from some of the other interesting folk who were born on march 12. in no particular order:

mitt romney
darryl strawberry
ron jeremy
some others i forget

it was also the day the jews were expelled from syria (1496); cesare borgia was killed (1507); the US post office was established (1789); the girl scouts were founded (1912); FDR gave the first of his 'fireside chats' (1933); the truman doctrine came into being (1947); hawaii became a state (1959); wonder woman made its television debut (1974); hungary, poland and the czech republic joined NATO (1999); and the color coded terror warning system was established (2002). i think bud has quite a bit of redeeming to do.

event dates courtesy of on-this-day.com

hey, they got one right!

or mostly right, at least. my favorite microbreweries are actually located in washington and oregon. so maybe i'm not as white as i thought?

... yeah, i am. oh well. and though i have no plans to open my own microbrewery, i have made my own beer before, and we do have organic golden hops growing in our back yard.

oooh...

yeah, i want one of these too.

various bits and pieces

here are a few things i've been meaning to post on for awhile, but kept getting distracted. if i don't give anyone credit for them, either i found it myself or it came from one of the other blogs i frequent, most likely wizbang or say anything.

1) hooray! for socialized medicine. if you like being shipped to india for your health care, that is. (wizbang)

2) liberals are insane. we all knew that already, but now we've got a psychiatrist to back us up. although much like the "global warming" debate, you could probably find people with all sorts of facts on both sides of the issue. (wizbang?)

3) governor spitzer of new york wants to tax illegal drugs. either he's incredibly stupid, or he thinks all of the dealers in his city are. who the hell is going to claim that they've got crack, and then pay a tax on it? surprisingly, 21 other states have tried this or something similar. maybe they're taking their cue from britain, where polygamy is illegal, but you can still get extra welfare benefits for your multiple wives.

4) my vote might be making it's comeback. if obama & mccain end up as the nominees, i may vote for mccain just to be voting against obama, who wants to send more money off to the UN to fight global poverty. i've got no problem fighting poverty, but don't do it through the UN. they're much more likely to deface historic sites, rape the locals, or take bribes from dictators. and on the off chance they get something right, why should they get credit for something when we're the ones putting up the funds for it? if you want something done right, do it yourself.

5) i'm not sure what to think of this site. i've gotten through the first 10 postings, and for the most part it's fairly entertaining. but at the same time, if they had called it "things black people like," it probably would have been shut down for being racist.

6) on a more positive note, i want one of these.

thought of the day

from dostoevsky's crime and punishment (wordsworth classics edition, pg. 204):

"I do not believe in another life," replied Raskolnikoff.
Svidrigaïloff remained pensive. "supposing we found there nothing but spiders or such-like things?" asked he, all of a sudden.
"The man is mad," though Raskolikoff.
"Men always represent eternity as an incomprehensible idea, as a something immense--immense! But why should this necessarily be the case? Imagine, on the contrary, a small room - a bathroom, if you will - blackened by smoke, with spiders in every corner. Supposing that to be eternity! I often conceive it to be so."

i've had several different ideas of what heaven would be like over the years, but none of them come close to a darkened bathroom full of spiders. i'm with raskolnikoff... that guy was completely insane.

whoops, our bad

remember that whole "global warming is going to melt the icecaps and kill us all" shpeil? turns out that it may actually save lives. who knew?

brilliant!

i never knew how incredibly intelligent our speaker of the house is. she's figured out a way for our troops to be successful, even though their mission has apparently failed:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said twice Sunday that Iraq “is a failure,” adding that President Bush’s troop surge has “not produced the desired effect.”

“The purpose of the surge was to create a secure time for the government of Iraq to make the political change to bring reconciliation to Iraq,” Pelosi said on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “They have not done that.”

The speaker hastened to add: “The troops have succeeded, God bless them.”

so Nan, fill me in... what exactly are our troops succeeding at over there if not the surge? i realize we've got the best military in the world, but still, it seems a bit beyond their capabilities to succeed and fail at the same time. it's like that question some athiests will ask to "disprove" God: "Can God create a rock so big that he can't move it?", or something along those lines.

h/t say anything

fortune cookie say

"A blonde from afar has something interesting for you." ... [you know what comes next]

better late than never?

russia is finally beginning to see the light. after iran launched a long range missile on monday, russian deputy foreign minister alexander losyukov noted that "It increases the suspicion of Iran regarding its possible desire to create a nuclear weapon." yes, yes it does. although a better time to notice this sort of thing might have been two years ago, while russia was busy helping iran with its nuclear program.

remind me again...

why do we still send money to these people?

UN peacekeepers in the disputed African territory of Western Sahara have vandalised ancient rock paintings, a UN official has told a UK newspaper.

~~~~

Graffiti, including the spray-painting of UN personnel's names, can be seen at Lajuad, an important archaeological site, Mr Harston said.

According to The Times, an area there known as Devil Mountain is regarded by the local Sahrawi people as a place of great cultural significance.

you'd think that after having been there for nearly 17 years (remember that number next time someone complains about how long we've been in iraq or afghanistan), they'd be able to find something better to do with their time. in theory at least, the united nations mission for the referendum in western sahara (MINRUSO) is tasked to "monitor the ceasefire and to organize and conduct a referendum which would allow the people of Western Sahara to decide the Territory's future status." 17 years later, the issue is still up in the air. we've spent less time in iraq and afghanistan combined, and have already overseen several successful elections in both countries. things are far from perfect, but at least we're making progress.

who knew?

to paraphrase hillary clinton, it's like the middle class squeeze, only without the squeeze.

h/t say anything

picture of the year

both accurate and absolutely hilarious, this picture has got my vote:


h/t: wizbang