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.