Happy Memorial Day...

...and a sincere thank you to all the men and women who have fought and died in the name of freedom.

haloscan problems?

or maybe i just broke something. i can see comments in the "recent comments" bar, but not in the comments section of the actual post they go along with. any thoughts on why that might be?

poetry, or something like it

both of these just sort of popped into my head at work today. at some point, i may try and complete the color wheel. or maybe not, since i'm not a huge fan of poetry, and it's not something i'm overly good at.

If I Were Blue
What would I do,
If I were blue,
From lack of breathing air?

Wherever I wandered,
My humor would be squandered,
The people would just point and stare.

I can't say I'd blame them,
And I'd wish I were like them,
Living my life without a care.

But I am not blue,
So who cares what I'd do?
I'm off to go breathe some air.

If I Were Yellow
If I were yellow,
I'd be quite mellow,
But not the beverage of that name.

A treasure of gold,
If you could get a hold
Of me you'd win fortune and fame.

By now you are thinking,
"This writing is stinking,
This poem is really quite lame."

So I must digress,
And go join the protest
For the "outing" of Valerie Plame.

thoughts on california's gay marraige ban...

...that was struck down today by the california state supreme court.

1) gays already have the same marriage rights we do: the right to marry someone of the opposite sex. they're not pushing for equal rights, they're pushing for special rights.

2) is it just me, or does it seem like the process got less and less democratic as it went along?
a) 2000, california voters (or at least all those that bothered to vote) passed a resolution banning gay marriage
b) following this, the legislature--elected representatives, but still a smaller number of people than those who voted on the resolution--attempts to legalize gay marriage, but governor schwarzenegger vetoed their bills. proving his RINO status however, he said that it should be passed on to the courts.
c) in a 4-3 vote, the state supreme court overturned the law banning gay marriage. unlike the US supreme court, these judges were at least elected, but still... 7 people getting to make the decision on something as important as this?

whoops

the trend continues

with more conservative governments being elected to power, this time in the UK. the tories picked up quite a few council seats (+256), as well as winning the mayoral race in London and taking control of the city assembly. i still have very little idea of how the election system over there works though, so i have no idea what this means for the long run.

yarrrgh...

damn... how come i didn't find out about this till 20 minutes ago?

who knew?

one more thing we can blame on global warming: AIDS. who knew?

h/t say anything

hooray for nerds!

rachel lucas = my hero.

whoops

when you're trying to make an analogy, make sure you proofread it before going public with it.

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.