They told me if I voted for John McCain corporate criminals would get government hand-outs, and they were RIGHT!

Having solved all other problems, the mayor of NYC has decided 16 oz. is plenty for anyone to drink. Obviously the concept called "free refills" is a bit beyond Mr. Bloomberg's staff. This one is so ludicrous I'm suspecting shenanigans. Then again, this is a powerful Democrat from New York. I guess they really are capable of anything.

Megan McArdle, (emphasis original): "When skeptics complain that global warming activists are apparently willing to go to any lengths--including lying--to advance their worldview, I'd say one of the movement's top priorities should be not proving them right." If hard-core greens want me to stop seeing them all as a bunch of religious fundamentalists they need to stop acting like it. It will be a very long time before I trust any sort of "facts" or "settled science" from that bunch again. More details of the embarrassment are here...

Action: a giant software company provides a 501c3 non-profit organization with free software as part of a long-running program. Headline: Microsoft named in leaked climate denial donor docs. My old employer regularly took part in this program. All you do is fill out a form with your name, address, and proof of your 501c3 status, and you're set. No purity tests, no belief checks. I guess when they start the story with an anti-Semitic slur, I should know what to expect.

Having failed in all other ways to boost the economy, what's the Obama administration's latest idea? Debasing the coinage. No, this is not a repeat from the year 64, 525, 1100, 1449, or any one of the other thousand times a government has decided that making money cheaper will make it better. I'm convinced they've already done this secretly, since (to me) new pennies and nickles already feel lighter and cheaper than old ones. Hope and change, people! Hope and change!

Observation: The Navy's X-47B has started its final series of tests in preparation for an automated carrier landing. Conclusion: The X-47B marks a paradigm shift in warfare, one that is likely to have far-reaching consequences. It's been quite some time since I've seen such a stellar example of sensationalism. This article should be used in classes about it.

Ok, the actual situation: drones have been flying semi-autonomously for at least eleven years now, ever since the Global Hawk prototypes started tooling around. The biggest problem they face right now is the FAA won't let them fly anywhere near commercial airspace, because nobody wants to go down in history as the bureaucrat that let a Global Hawk run over an Airbus. Engineers talk big about how their drones will eventually be bright enough to shoot bad guys by themselves, but anyone who knows anything about engineers when they start talking big will understand it will be a very cold day in hell before we give their Frankenstein's monster a button it can press on its own. Hell, we don't even let pilots shoot stuff all by themselves.

So, after two years of literally epic snow storms, nature's giving this area a break with a winter that's (so far) much milder. What does the Post do? Bitch about it, of course. "If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast."

Great, now we have to watch out for "smishing." You know, this stuff wouldn't be so common if it didn't work. Wise up, people! Quit giving in to fear and out your information!

Now the White House is accusing the GOP of trying to cancel Christmas. Really? It's come to this? I get that Obama yelled, "shit!!!" and the press jumped up, dropped trow, and asked, "what color sir?!?", but cancelling Christmas? Geeze. If they're this frantic now, we'll have to hospitalize them all next year.

Via Instapundit.

Turn out the lights folks, the party's over: our favorite book store is officially shutting everything down. I guess Ellen will have to get her Pilates magazines from Barns and Noble now. End of an era, indeed.

It seems our favorite book store chain is quietly skulking toward outright liquidation. I guess the plan was to close the least profitable stores and sell the good ones to a different company. That's fallen through, so it looks like the whole thing may be going to the auction block. I think. This part of businesses, I don't understand that much.

I wanted them to wait until the end of March, but nobody would listen. Now they've called off the Bahrain Grand Prix. Two more weeks until the start of the F-1 season. Crap.

It seems The Closer's next season will be its last. While I've always thought Sedgwick's character's accent to be "Southern via Mars," I have liked the series from its start. It's always sad to see a favorite go, although 8 seasons is a very good run indeed. Ah well, they haven't even finished broadcasting this season yet. Lots more to enjoy!

I really am truly sorry for people that want kids of their own but cannot, but this takes it a bit to far.

There's no shortage of people who feel pain while scrolling through Facebook: Chronically single people may envy friends' wedding pictures, for instance, and those who've lost a spouse can feel overwhelmed by friends' wedding anniversary announcements. Infertile couples say they protect themselves by hiding most, if not all, Facebook posts from pregnant friends who can't resist hitting the site's "Share" button to show off, say, the latest in maternity ware.

Ignore button people...it's called the ignore button.

They told me that even thinking the likes of Christine O'Donnell might do just as well as anyone else would mean a slew of ignorant candidates would come rushing out of the gate, and they were right! All due respect, your side thinks government sucks because the wrong people get put in charge. My side thinks government sucks because, well, government sucks, and the only way to make it better is to take the power away.

Vote libertarian! We want to take over the government so it will leave you alone!

Via Instapundit.

Remember, folks, to have your options limited by circumstances means you cannot truly be free. Anything which mitigates those limitations is therefore desirable, no matter what the unintended consequences. Hey, here's a thought. Let's just try to make sure people are free to choose, instead of denying them the liberty to do so?

It's like they're working from the same page or something. Having seen first-hand how the release-driven MSM work during my days at a large non-profit, I can't help but think there really is a single press release out there driving this stuff. However, on balance I think it has more to do with laziness than with conspiracy.

And yes, that's what will help me sleep tonight.

Via Instapundit, who also links another article about the ridiculously biased and deceptive report on the event the Post ran all day. Every time I think I miss a "real" newspaper, my local one runs a story like that and I suddenly become glad I'm not supporting the Democratic party's DC-area mouthpiece anymore.

Remember the Iraq war? You know, the one the previous administration spent trillions of dollars on? Yeah, about that...

Yes, war is expensive. Just not, apparently, as expensive as progressive policies. See you in November!

Via Instapundit.

So, what happens when progressives are finally able to get their hands around the big hammer of government power? Justice for the little man, and a day of reckoning for the powerful! What's that? Overbearing bureaucracy, higher expenses for the honest and decreased access for the poor? Now, really. Because we have the best of intentions, you know unintended consequences will never arise. I mean, look at how well we've done before!

Credit at least one MSM outlet for noting John Kerry only wants to raise taxes on you. No, I don't call this a "progressives suck" issue. I call this an "elitists suck" issue. However,it does seem that most progressives and liberals I know feel government should be powerful, and the reason the government sucks is we haven't found the right people to run it yet. I maintain government attracts people who suck, and the only way to control them is to limit their power.

Vote libertarian! We want to take over the government so it will leave you alone!

Ok, so I even have an usher on the left side of the peanut gallery who will vouch for me that I thought it was ridiculous that Obama was being blamed for BP's big spill. I will now go on record that I think it's disappointing, but unsurprising, that he's now trying to take credit for them FINALLY sorting it out.

So, we've got one state with new laws to strengthen the border, laws which repeated surveys show a majority of Americans support. There are many states considering similar legislation. It's my understanding a majority of Americans want stronger enforcement against illegals. So, naturally, the latest trial balloon from this administration involves Obama granting amnesty to illegal aliens via executive order. That's right, folks, rumor has it he's mulling over turning thousands of illegals into citizens by doing an end-run around Congress, flagrantly trouncing what most of the nation wants. Every time I think this administration can't get any more cynical or out-of-touch, they go and prove me wrong again.

I was no big fan of Clinton, but I did admire how deft he was as a politician. Obama is quite obviously no Bill Clinton. If he really does take a stab at this before November, I think a Republican supermajority in both the House and the Senate is a real possibility. And it will be none to soon, as far as I'm concerned.

Looks like Pakistan's secret service has been caught handing cash to evil people. Again. The Indians have been telling us the paks are no goddammed good for, what, sixty years? I honestly can't pin this one on ridiculously naive progressives. These wily inheritors of of the Mughal dynasty have been practiced at the great game of deceit long before our country was even created. And they have nukes.

You all think the best solution is to build a wall around Afghanistan and just let them have at it. You all are flat wrong. Afghanistan is a lot like the US, sort of set on end. All they really want to do is go about their damned business in peace, and they'll sacrifice themselves, their children, and their children's children a hundred times over until they can. Their great misfortune is to be located next to one of the most meddlesome bunch of Mohammadans in history.

The point is, a wall is a good idea. It's just that it should be built a few hundred klicks to the right. Hell, the Indians will likely help us. Would that the Obama administration had the wisdom to let them.

Discovery: Afghanistan is sitting astride a metric shiatload of rare minerals. Conclusion: Conspiracy, Disaster, War, Pestilence, Famine, and Many Other Very Bad Things!

It's important to keep in mind that without justice, a justice they define, prosperity is worse than useless, at least to those on the left side of the peanut gallery. It's far, far better for a child to starve in the name of equality than for him to eat in the shadow of success.

I have to think this is a trial balloon leaked by a particularly clueless White House intern. How else explain the sudden rumors that the Obama administration is quietly putting the mortgage interest tax break on the block. In an election year. That they already know will be at least as tough as 1994.

Oh, that's right. It's Cheney's fault. Again. That must be one fuzzy blanket you wrap around yourself there, because it definitely seems to help you sleep at night.

Like the man says, "So when it comes to terrorists, understanding is the main goal. With corporations, it’s punishment." The thing is, this is a perfect expression of fundamental progressive beliefs. The fact that the left side of the gallery doesn't even understand why I might be upset speaks volumes.

An ancient gay couple is being torn apart in a way that makes everyone helpless. Because this is being reported in the media, you know how it turns out. The question is, does it happen in, a) a hospital in the ignorant, racist south, b) during a tea party of ignorant, racist white people, or c) In the heartland of progressive-ville?

Sorry, I can't hear all of your exceptions over the chants of the protesters on my front lawn, waving terrible pictures of things that happened fifty years ago. I keep forgetting it's only righteous anger when your side holds the torches.

In the real world, if a business decides to charge more money than people think a service is worth, people will go somewhere else for that service. The business will then either change its practice or cease to operate. I guess I shouldn't be surprised Democrats scream right past this obvious truth on their way toward a more powerful nanny state, but I am. People can't be trusted! Only decision makers can help!

The fact that the decision makers are people is, of course, ignored.

It's not just that public-sector employees have seen their wages grow substantially faster than those in the private sector. It's the details of just what that growth means that rankles. When the economic environment makes a practice untenable, in the private sector that practice stops. What progressives refuse to recognize is that when it happens in the public sector, the only real change is everyone's taxes go up.

But by all means, please do keep giving politicians more power. It's worked out really well so far, after all.

Via Instapundit.

They haven't even actually passed the damned thing and already the unintended consequences are starting to be seen: due to a feel-good progressive exception in the health care bill, expect an explosion of young Muslim and Hindu converts in the coming years. Of course, it's illegal to convert to a religion just to avoid a government law, so now we'll need to hire even more government employees to enforce the law, and converting or declaring a religion will now result in reams of paperwork to be filed with the feds, which will again require even more federal jobs to process.

For those of you who insist that government is the answer, it's all good. For the rest of us, maybe not so much.

The MSM is shocked, shocked, that intelligent, unemployed 20-somethings are taking advantage of government programs meant for the poor. News flash, sparky. They are poor. They're also smart enough to eat right and really make those subsidies count. Of all the bad habits the MSM claims not to have, this tendency to disapprove of people who are the wrong demographic playing by the rules I think makes me the angriest. Being on government assistance means filling out reams of humiliating paperwork weekly. Trust me, if these kids really didn't need it, they really wouldn't bother.

The fact the reporter seems to think otherwise speaks much more about said reporter's lack of experience of real poverty than it does of these clever kids "gaming" the system.

That Alfa return? For, you know, some time this century? Yeah, nevermind. I dunno. Conventional wisdom says Fiat's ego is too big to cut the marque loose, that they'd rather see it shuttered a-la Pontiac. If delaying a US return is what it takes for survival, I'm all for it. They'll make it back, when they're ready.

Or they won't be around at all.

Looks like this week's Android update has now become "some time soon". Ah well, soon is better than never, I suppose.

Leave it to the MSM to ignore things like the cataclysmic events of '45-'55 and the wrenching cultural upheavals of the '60s to declare "the 00's" the worst. Decade. Evar. Every time I think they can't be any more ignorant of history, I'm proven wrong.

Problem: The profligate spending and hyper-regulation of your progressive politicians has collided head-on with the biggest economic crisis since the 1930s.

Solution: stop that greedy corporation from "cheating" on its taxes.

Great idea, right? Right? So, let's do something politicians are genetically incapable of, and think past stage one:

Stage one: pass laws to force one of the richest corporations in the world to do something its leaders do not want to do.

Stage two: spend the next five years in litigation over the laws.

Stage three: Win.

Stage four: Said corporation, being flush with soon-to-be-taken-by-force cash, runs the numbers and figures out it will be far more expensive to stay and live under the point of a gun than it will be to move somewhere else.

Stage five: Corporation moves its entire operation to a friendlier state, cutting loose thousands of replaceable jobs and cratering an entire economy in the process.

Stage six: Nevada becomes even more successful.

But don't mind me. By all means, let's tax those greedy corporations until all their base belong to us!!!

Today's "since I know physics I know everything" demonstration comes to us courtesy of Pennsylvania State University:

A new take on the Fermi Paradox, though, changes the equation a bit. At Pennsylvania State University, two scientists suggest that the key to the paradox is the assumption that civilizations would colonize the universe at an exponential rate. Jacob Haqq-Misra and Seth Baum point out that finite resources preclude exponential expansion. Technology Review offers a look at the problem of exponential growth:

"The problem is that this kind of growth may not be possible, and they look at Earth as an example. For any expansion to be sustainable, the growth in resource consumption cannot exceed the growth in resource production. And since Earth's resources are finite, and it has a finite mass and receives solar radiation at a constant rate, human civilization cannot sustain an indefinite, exponential growth."

Which is all well and good, except like, well, all such predictions, the unspoken assumption is resources are consumed at an ever-unchanging rate. As anyone with the economic sense of a flat rock knows, when resources get scarce prices go up, and when prices go up efficiency goes up, which causes prices to go down.

Put it another way. People have been predicting the end of oil for what, the past hundred years? Take it from a different direction. People have been saying Moore's law has to be at an end this year. Ok. Well, definitely this year. Damn. This year for sure. Bah. You knock on my door, I'm not coming out.

I'm not saying there's no upper limit out there somewhere. I'm just saying we don't know enough about basic physics to really understand where it might be. Several of the physics models they're knocking around right now (*cough* string theory *cough*) could place the upper bound in a very high place indeed.

Via Instapundit.

... but all I got was this lousy T-shirt. In a nutshell:

• If you're into, around, or part of big government, The Stimulus is definitely full of win for you.
• If you didn't pay any taxes to begin with, well, here's some more of everyone else's money... go have some babies or something.
• If you work for the most expensive, least successful public school system in the world, cash is heading your way soon.
• We here in Northern Virginia would like to thank the rest of the country for (presumably) paying off the remainder of the funds required to get Metro to run the Silver Line out to Dulles. Next time you're out this way be sure to take a ride!
• If there's anything that's been bothering your liberal little heart, some corner of the country the government hasn't poked its finger in to do us all some good, well, celebrations are also in order for you... that seems to be the real purpose of the whole thing.

Don't fit anywhere above? Hey, welcome to the club, we have jackets!

Two women are fighting for their lives after cosmetic injections aimed at giving them 'J.Lo' style bottoms went disastrously wrong.

Andrea Lee, 30, suffered total kidney failure after being 'poisoned' with what is believed to be industrial silicone.

Her friend Zakiya Teagle, 33, is also in a critical condition in a Florida hospital after her internal organs stopped functioning.

Bottoms up!

Hey, remember that pre-Iraq war press conference Bush held? You know, the one that was completely scripted, the one where Bush already knew all the questions, and everyone knew who was getting called on and in what order? Remember how stilted and embarrassing it seemed when it was re-run, over and over again, on countless documentaries about the lies that led us to war? Remember how execrable everyone said that press conference was? How it was portrayed as the ultimate betrayal of the press, the people, the military, and even the very foundations of the United States itself?

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss:

As ferociously as we [the press corps] march like villagers with torches against Blagojevich, we have been, in the true spirit of the Bizarro universe, the polar opposite with the president-elect. Deferential, eager to please, prepared to keep a careful distance.
...
The press corps, most of us, don't even bother raising our hands any more to ask questions because Obama always has before him a list of correspondents who've been advised they will be called upon that day.

Hope and change, people... hope and change!

Ok, we here at AMCGLTD.COM really do not like MACS. Let alone MACS that our family has one and will not let you in on how they work.

Yes, yes, yes, for all you MAC users we are whiney. WEH.

BUT... when you have a site you need to update during the holidays and your family does not have wireless hook up for your laptop, life gets a bit tough.

Until then, we hope to bring you back to your daily dose of AMCGLTD by tomorrow.

In honor of Halloween go have some fun reading this Fark thread full of "scariest true stories". Just scroll until you see a lot of text, roll back, and read. Nothing of the sort has ever happened to me, probably because I don't believe in ghosts.

I do, however, believe in my own ability to scare the bejeezus out of myself, and in the ability of sneaky m-f'ers who are out to scare the bejeezus out of me. So just back off and leave the light on, eh?

Sandy Allen, the world's tallest woman, died yesterday at the age of 53. We saw several documentaries about her over the years, she seemed like a really nice lady who had been inflicted with a really weird condition. Our condolences go out to her family & friends.

It seems the on-again, off-again re-entry of Alfa to the US market is off again. Most disappointing of all is the new lower-cost MiTo does not appear to be slated for the US. Grr.

Roy Scheider, 1932-2008. I always thought he was an actor with immense charisma, someone with, whatever reason, I always identified. While I know he must've had his fair share of klinkers in his career, I can't think of any. 75 is a pretty good run, but it's a shame he couldn't have stuck around longer. Another one who will be missed.

Musician and songwriter Dan Fogelberg has passed away due to prostate cancer, at the age of 56. I always liked his vocal arrangements, thought the lyrics were quite interesting.

What? I like pop music. Whaddayagonnadoaboutit?

Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's. Details are pretty sketchy, but it would seem he's OK, at least for now.

Via Siflay.

Foiled again!

Briefly, SDV technology -- which is being aggressively deployed by Time Warner Cable and also by many other large and small systems -- requires two-way communications with the cable company servers to allow the customer to access all of the available channels. Without this capability, those channels on a cable system being managed via SDV would typically be inaccessible to the associated devices.

Since existing third-party CableCARD host devices of types including the new HD TiVo don't currently support the necessary two-way operations, users of these devices (including the new TiVo) could find themselves unable to watch or record channels of interest (the exact set of which will vary from system to system over time).

Looks like, instead of it being an actual interface issue, it's more along the lines of a pissing match between TiVo and the cable companies. Bah and humbug!

I am officially and completely fed up with the WYSIWYG (visual) web editor in Visual Studio 2005. There have been drag and drop "place the button anywhere you please" editors on the market since at least 1998. I know, I've used one of the oldest ones out there for years. And MS's latest visual web composing tool? I guess if you got a lot of formal training in CSS, the workflow might make sense, but it sure doesn't to me. All the crashes and bugs don't help much either.

I want to drag my control out and drop it on the damned page wherever I please. If I want to scoot it here, or scoot it there, I should be able to! The coding tools VS2k5 has are amazing. My coding productivity is through the roof. But their layout editor is a gigantic exercise in extreme frustration. If one part is that easy, the other has no business being that hard.

I know, I know. I'll eventually get my head around it and get over it. I'm just bitter that I'll have all this beautiful code with all these ugly interfaces sitting on top of it. I'm a better designer than this, but the tools won't let me show it.

Bah, I tell you. Bah.

Everyone's favorite loopy televangelist has stopped all cancer treatments, so it looks like she's on her way out. We watched the '04 season of Surreal Life, and as the article mentioned she came across as a quite warm and decent, if rather strange and unusual looking, person. Even then we both felt she'd more than paid for her past, so we wish nothing but the best for her and her family. It's a damned strange world, isn't it?

Another day, another "they'll never ever ever use it prediction about Windows Vista. Which is nearly identical to the stories they wrote when Windows XP came out, which were nearly identical to the ones they wrote when Windows 2000 came out, and on and on and on.

The truth is people don't buy operating systems. They purchase computers and then use the operating system that comes with it. While corporate users can (and will) specify which OS goes on their system after it's been purchased, home users won't, and so Vista, like XP before it, will slowly leach into the population through normal computer turnover. As people become more comfortable with it at home (and early adopters populate various documentation portals with advice), they will become more comfortable with it at work. Eventually someone will make the decision and the next big workstation upgrade in a company will be with Vista-equipped systems.

It won't happen overnight. It never has, and it never will. Long ago I took seriously the computer media's claims that the latest OS from Redmon was a complete flop due to slow uptake just after release. It was only after the fourth or fifth time they hailed that exact same OS as a crushing success a few years later that I realized they simply had no idea what they were talking about.

Microsoft's not called the Borg for nothing, you know?

The inventor of my wife's (and I think many others) staple college food has died at the ripe age of 96. He only retired last year! May the Top Ramen he finds in heaven be as tasty and cheap as it is on Earth.

You know your day starts off bad when someone who should have been here over a week ago to have their cat in intensive care, dies in the lobby.

Cynical, self-serving, elitist dirtbags with the morals of a meth-addled squirrel and the perspective of a goldfish is much better.

Actually, that's something of a slight on junkie squirrels and the goldfish nation.

Via Instapundit.

Population bomb: burst. Peak oil: purged. Fine! Fine! Laugh while you can, copper-boy:

Copper is used in everything from automobiles to ordnance ... So copper serves as an excellent metallic bellwether for potential future resource scarcity, according to a group of researchers who compiled data on its extraction, use, recycling and discard to estimate whether there is enough copper available to make a developed standard of living available to all the world's people. The short answer is: no.

The short answer is, as usual, misleading. The somewhat longer answer would be "not at present consumption levels."

As long as markets are allowed to work, we will not run out of copper. As copper becomes scarce, its price will rise. As its price rises, its consumption will decrease, reducing demand, and therefore price. If its price stays high, alternatives will be developed which will be cheaper than copper. This will further reduce demand, effectively increasing supply, thereby reducing prices even more.

The ultimate result? Over time, copper prices will fall. Not might, not should, will.

More neo-con pap? A fine example of what watching too much Fox News will do to a person?

Hey man, whatever helps you sleep at night.

Frey's book sold 1.77 million copies last year after being chosen by Oprah Winfrey's book club in September, but one investigative Web site now says his book was based on lies.

Read entire article here.

Ya know what. It was still a good book.

For proof of just how out-of-touch Washington-based journalists are, one need only look at this Washington Post article, wherein (in the print edition) the Post runs an above-the-fold headline and nearly two complete pages inside to the earth-shattering discovery that poor kids are more likely to enlist in the Army than rich ones.

The mind boggles.

I'm not sure who's dumber: the people in the story, or the people writing it:

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Oct. 25 -- For other hurricanes, Nate and Kelly Vedrani, 27-year-old newlyweds, fled their condo in a 16-story beach tower here to take refuge elsewhere.

But for Hurricane Wilma, authorities did not issue an evacuation order for the high-rises that line the beach here, so the couple and many other residents stayed put. It was a decision they regret.
...
"I kept thinking we wouldn't have been in that position if there'd been an evacuation order," she said.

That's right. Don't trust past experience, don't trust common sense, don't trust all the previous reports of fantastic devestation. Trust the government. Trust the weather service. It's not like they're ever, you know, wrong about anything.

The government is not your daddy, people, and I'm getting damned tired of everyone who thinks it is. The government is there to maintain infrastructure, maintain order, and ensure the stability of the currency. Expecting it to do anything else will at best ensure disappointment and at worst ensure a police state.

Naivete being the lietmotif of liberals that it is, I find it unsurprising they are the ones most often and most deeply disappointed by the failures and unintended consequences of government action. They're sort of like a cute but "challenged" child on a playground; as long as they keep the football helmet on, their continuous collisions with the scenery shouldn't result in too much damage. It's only when they get hold of the car keys that you should really start to worry.

Because, as demonstrated above, they require someone else to tell them to get out of the way of a coming storm.

Because Glen Campbell's Southern Nights is now officially 28 years old. Those of you tapping your toes, repeat after me: "GAH!!!"

All others: consider yourself smacked. Youngsters.

So, after spending three months wheedling management to get us a new server to host a mail group system on, then three days tinkering to get it all set up, guess what I found out?

Mailman, a sophisticated and popular mail list management software package, has a user interface that is an absolute horror. Absolute horror. My 2 year old could do better than that. I can do better than that. I would too, except the developers, as almost all open-source developers are wont to do, spent far more time building an elegant engine than they did an elegant UI. You can't change it without delving deep into a code base written in a language I don't know (Python). Utterly absurd.

But that's what you get when you mess with open source. Unfortunately, this is considered a "best-of-breed" list manager. I'm pretty sure it doesn't get any better.

I'm going to beat the next person I catch touting the beauty of open source software.

The good news: Halo 2 expansion coming soon.

The bad news: It's not going to address what we really want:

Call it Halo 2: Combat Expanded. After much speculation, Bungie today announced plans to release an expansion for its popular first-person shooter, Halo 2. It will not, however, contain a single-player portion that many hoped might wrap up Halo 2's abrupt campaign mode ending.

Basically, a pack of multiplayer maps. Which will be fun for the occasional Halo-day, but I'm not sure it'll be worth the $20 they're gonna charge.

Halo 3? No word on that, but Microsoft would be insane to use anything else to launch their upcoming X-box 2.

Damion gets a sad but tasty no-prize for bringing us news that Bubba the giant lobster has died:

The leviathan of a lobster died Wednesday afternoon at the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium about a day after he was moved from Wholey's Market, said zoo spokeswoman Rachel Capp and Bob Wholey, owner of the fish market.

Pardon me, I need to go tackle Ellen before she starts trying to clarify ten pounds of butter...

Problem 1: Maniacs running red lights cause thousands of injuries and deaths each year.

Problem 2: Law enforcement can't be everywhere at once.

Solution: Red light cameras, which leads to:

Problem 3: An increase in accidents at intersections:

[Nicholas Garber, a teacher at the University of Virginia] studied the best data available, from Fairfax County, and documented what for many is a counterintuitive finding: that the use of cameras at intersections resulted in more injuries. That's because while crashes from the side went down, rear-end accidents went up. His results, consistent with those of some other studies across the country, have poured fresh fuel onto the heated cost-and-benefit debate on the cameras in Virginia.

So essentially we've swapped one set of retards, the ones who think red lights happen to other people, with a different set who think trying to give the car ahead of them a proctology exam is a productive way to get said car to go faster. Listen up you mouth breathers: it doesn't work that way.

I don't want to mount a gatling gun on my car*, I want to turn my back bumper into a hydraulic battering ram. That way when Jonny Rocket and His Razzing Ricer screams up behind me and starts dodging around like his ass is on fire I can just push a button and WHAM!!!, his engine is now a passenger. But, since I'm sure somewhere in the Virginia state law books there's probably some sort of regulation that makes punching a tailgater's car in the face illegal, I guess I'll have to settle for the ol' "hit the brakes and smile" routine.

Yeah, that was me that time you idiot. Did you really think I didn't see you trying to kamikaze your way through traffic? Thought that by getting as close as you could to my bumper you'd intimidate me into moving faster?

I'm your worst freaking nightmare you chimpanzee... I've got a cheap car, low insurance rates, wear my seatbelt, and don't really give a damn. I enjoy stabbing the brakes and watching your car dive forward under its own like a charging rhino that's taken a bullet between the eyes. Because you see if you'd been a civil driver, maybe had just a wee bit of patience, and learned that the two second rule wasn't some sort of basketball drill, it would never have come to that.

Yeah, I'm an asshole. But if you're following close enough that you can't avoid a simple braking maneuver**, I'll be an asshole with a fat insurance check. And I'll be able to drive away. So do us all a favor... spot a signpost up ahead, wait for my car to pass it, and start counting. If you pass it before "two mississippi", slow the hell down. My nerves and your front end will thank you.

----
* Well ok, no, I do want a gatling gun on my car. To, you know, impress chicks and stuff.

** Calm down people. I don't stab the brakes for fun and profit when it's just normal commuter congestion. Well, most of the time anyway.

Do you think this person had a really shitty childhood?

I think so.

Maybe if you are good mommy and daddy will let you out of the corner. WEH!

Problem: Overfishing of ocean stocks.

Solution: Ocean-based fish farms, aka "Aquaculture", allow you to grow your own stocks.

Problem: that's not the solution we wanted you to come up with:

Gerry Leape, vice president for marine conservation at the Washington-based National Environmental Trust, said U.S. officials see that "the oceans are in crisis, and what's their response? To allow the enormous expansion of this industry that's proven to have a negative environmental impact."

The farmers do seem to have some technical problems, primarily with diseases and the methods used to combat them. But these are almost certainly engineering issues, technical problems with technical solutions that will be found in time by the farmers themselves*.

But this, of course, will not please the enviro-weenies. They don't want us to satisfy our wishes in our own ways, they want us to cleave to their agenda and force people into their solutions (reducing demand by raising taxes, "convincing" people to eat less fish, etc.) I also wouldn't be surprised at all to find a bit of "wild" commercial fishing industry money flowing into their coffers somehow. Competitors are, after all, only looking out for their own interests, and as far as the activists are concerned the money's the same color, right?

Then again, I'm a cynical old bastard. I'm far more interested in finding cheap, sustainable ways to feed people and simultaneously protect wild stocks than I am in preserving someone else's definition of "pristine" oceans. I mean, if "saving" the oceans for the fish means a few more thousand brown babies starve to death, that's just mother nature taking care of overproduction, right? I can still afford to go to Red Lobster, why can't they?

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* A position that I'm sure will evoke mighty guffaws from those convinced the only way toward true enlightenment is heavy-handed carefully-crafted government coercion regulation. Government beuracrats in offices thousands of miles from the sea after all have such a stellar record managing natural resources. Just ask the Soviets!

Oh... wait...

Time to take down the black cloth from the mirrors and stop sitting in front of the T.V sobbing about "why Bush sucks" people!

I haven't seen you pack to Canada yet! Talk, talk, talk is all you are.

I'm sure many of the most extreme members of the gallery (no, not you, the other guy) will nod their heads completely off at this slick five minute video.

Ok, this one twanged a nerve. I'll preface this by saying I'm damned grateful to the sane Britons and Poles and all the rest who see the real enemy and are hurting and dying beside us to crush it. This is not directed at you. It's directed at the freak sitting next to you.

I'm sick of this crap. Ok, let's take the gloves off for a second, shall we? The world ain't our fault, and I'm getting damned tired of everyone trying to imply it is, or that we should do something about it (but only when the rest of the world thinks we should.) You see, for the past sixty years we've just been the freaking janitors of the world, cleaning up the mess that Europe made.

We didn't get to this position by cheating, lying, stealing or killing. Europeans (including the British) did that some two hundred years ago, carving up the entire world as quickly as their sharp little knives could hack pieces off. Oh, and in case you hadn't noticed, my country happened to be one of those pieces too, and a really old one at that. We just happened to be lucky and mean enough to chop your greedy fingers off when they squeezed too hard.

The rest of the world wasn't so lucky. Beijing, Delhi, Saigon, Tehran, Istanbul, all and more became part of your not-very "Great Game." Remember that one? Oh, I'm sorry, that's right. We're not allowed to talk about what your grandparents and great grandparents did to the world, are we? We're not allowed to talk about opium dens in China and mass graves in Algeria, concentration camps in South Africa and tiny bullet-riddled bodies in Amristar. No, we can't talk about those things now, can we? Ancient history. Nothing to see here, move along.

And when it all got too boring and too complicated you went and did it to yourselves. Twenty thousand dead in a day at the Somme. Eight million dead overall. Twenty one million wounded. And you know what? We really didn't think it was any of our goddamned business. We let you keep killing each other, and making your colonial "subjects" kill each other for you, until some of your agents started talking our neighbors into messing with us, and your navies started to sink our ships.

So when our manpower and our guns and our tanks and our goddamned money won your stupid little war for you, we sent our president over there with a decent plan to make sure it all never happened again, and what did we get for our troubles? You just went back and started the mess all over again, expanding the empires that had gotten you into that meat grinder in the first place, humiliating the people that nearly took over your corner of the world, and treating everyone except the Bolsheviks as beneath your contempt.

So round it all came again, the sequel, only louder and longer this time. Fifty million people had to die, and again it took our people and our stuff and our cash to make sure you weren't all speaking German or Russian and wondering where the hell all the Jews had got to. Even then, we were prepared to let you all have at it for as long as you wanted, and were it not for some idiotic Japanese and a lunatic German you can be damned sure we would have.

Almost every single big conflict we've gotten ourselves into since then did not have ol' Uncle Sam at its start. No sir, it's Captain Euro all the way, hiding at the base hoping nobody sees him picking his nose.

What's that? Don't believe me? I'm a victim of neo-cons too? Well then, let's examine...

• Iraq: a duet of Ottoman provinces thrown together by Britain in the hope it would make it easier to ride a train from Suez to Delhi.
• Vietnam: Oh good lord, where to begin. Possibly the last time a European managed to talk an American into doing them a favor.
• Israel: What happens when idealistic British Liberal leaders decide to facilitate a little bit of escatology while their anti-semitic underlings grumble and grouse? I don't know either, but after promising the same chunk of real estate to two different sets of people, Britain and France ensured we'd all find out.
• Saudi Arabia: Understand a people so you can understand a conflict? You gotta be kidding me. These were Arabs, they weren't really human. And there was a war on! Just pay both sides until a winner floats to the top.
• Iran: Hello? We're trying to build a railroad to India, remember? Can't do that without passing through Persia. And those cheeky bastards were actually making treaties with the Bolsheviks! Find a strong man and give him whatever he wants, include the title "Shah."

Are we perfect? Oh hell no, we stink at this. Most of our attempts at fixing it have just made it worse. But that was because, again, we were busy making sure you Europeans didn't start going at each other with nukes. Building up a nation in some godforsaken corner or another of the world is kinda hard when you're trying to make sure nobody blows the whole damned thing up.

Even then, even then, we were willing to just let it all sort itself out

God damn you all. When dipshits do things like this I just want to spit on you all and lobby my president to pull every single soldier out of your stupid little bloodthirsty countries as soon as possible, pausing only to sow salt into the earth as we leave.

Because what you all seem to have forgotten is:

Q: What's the difference between a European buried in Normandy and an American buried there?
A: The European was dying for his country.

And now you're going to accuse us of fascism? Listen up sparky, we're not the ones who invented the goddamned thing. We are the only country in the world left who knows how to defeat it.

I'm sick of you all. I'm sick of trying to make you like us. I'm sick of feeling guilty because you don't. There's not a man or woman in France who cares if the rest of the world hates them or not. The British just expect it. The Germans and Japanese at least have a reason for it. Fuck you. You want a piece of us? Come and get it. Like my mom always said, life isn't fair. Life isn't nice. The world is a nasty, ugly place, filled with people who'll think nothing of shoving you and your baby into a pit, laughing because the little flopping, bleeding rag doll still clutched to your chest is still holding the only toy they'll ever know.

We're trying to stop all of this. While you and your compadres are sipping tea and cooking up clever ways of accusing us of genocide, we're the ones trying to stop it from happening. We're the ones dying to stop it from happening.You think we're too powerful? You think we're trying to dominate the world? Stop us. Stand in our way while we bleed our last into the dust of countries that were stillborn or crippled because of your grandfathers.

But until then, please, for your sake, just sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up.

New York 26, Dallas 10

I guess God wasn't watching the game today.

See the game stats here

Instapundit links up a nice roundup of the reaction to the "but this guy, this guy was lying!!!" that the recent WaPo article unleashed:

Something I said there that bears repeating -- the reason why the Christmas-in-Cambodia story is getting the media cold-shoulder, and why what SwiftVet coverage there is focuses on the medals, etc., is that the Christmas-in-Cambodia story is clear, and has already been proven false. It's easy to understand, and devastating for Kerry.

The medal stuff is complex, and can be spun in a way that makes people's eyes glaze over. So that's what we'll mostly get, along with "political" stories that will treat the SwiftVets stuff as partisan hackery in a way that Michael Moore never gets treated by the same outlets.

Ok, three time's the charm... I don't think any of it is important in and of itself. What I do think is absolutely scandalous is that the mainstream media just flat ignored one "screwed up memory" story and jumped on a different one like a drunken sorority girl on the star quarterback.

The difference? One of the stories was pushed by a candidate for the presidency, the other by someone who's not even tangental to running, let alone making their service record a central point of their qualifications. Tell me friends, which story is really more important?

Feh. Why bother. All I do is rouse rabble, no better than those I criticise. What the hell do I know...

Doesn't make me any less right.

Well, contrary to previous predictions, we haven't run out of metals, haven't run out of oil, and haven't run out of food. So, let's all start worrying we might run out of water:

World water supplies will not be enough for our descendants to enjoy the sort of diet the West eats now, experts say.

Which is, as with all other environmental apocalypse predictions, complete and utter crap. In a world run by markets, as water for various uses becomes more scarce its price will rise, forcing its users to become more efficient or stop using it entirely. By allowing producers to keep more of their profits through reduced taxation and better manage their risks through properly-regulated futures markets, strong incentives will be created for water consumers to use technology and knowledge to come up with innovations that will reduce consumption by orders of magnitude. In the end, water will, like all the other commodities the chicken-little enviroweenies have latched onto during the past forty years, get cheaper.

In a perfect world, that is, which we of course do not live in. Because, you see, western agribusiness is not run by markets, it's run by government subsidies and various regulatory protection rackets. This removes market pressures from farming, causing it to be far less efficient than it otherwise would be. The US isn't as bad as some countries (Japan is probably the worst), but to this day we pay billions of dollars more for our food than we should.

But you won't hear Greenpeace start advocating the removal of farm subsidies. Not sexy enough, doesn't blame enough white people. Even if they did, our bucolic illusion of farmer Ted and his six kids having to sell his tiny family farm because of... well... we never actually get to the reasons, do we? We just see those little kids, some has-been rockers hold a few concerts, and away goes our tax money, straight into the coffers of gigantic and politically powerful farming corporations. Corporations that now have no reason to innovate or become more efficient, because we are all guaranteeing their bottom line.

We'll still manage to muddle through, because (to the great disappointment of technocrats all over the world) a commodity's supply cannot be increased by legislative fiat. Eventually the cost will rise beyond the point it can be hidden by even government accountants. Democracies around the world will play the politician shuffle until they get a set willing to do what needs to be done*, while socialists (*cough* France *cough*) and dictatorships will face yet another economic collapse.

It won't be pretty, but it won't be the end of the world either.

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* And lose their jobs for it immediately. I mean, those guys will be responsible for killing the family farm!

Nobody said democracies were rational, just that they work. Eventually.

Ok, all you "Bush lied" believers, please feel free to (as we are fond of saying around here) sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up:

Bush had spoken the plain truth. Did Saddam seek uranium from Africa, evidence of his continuing illegal interest in a nuclear weapon? Here is Lord Butler's nonpartisan panel, which closely examined the basis of the British intelligence:

". . . we conclude that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that `The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa' was well-founded."

Debate your beliefs, disagree with my positions, but leave your propaganda at the damned door. It makes you look feebleminded and small. And the rest of you, the ones who believe the media is not liberal... where are the headlines? The 24 hours exposes? The documentaries? The Hollywood acceptance speeches?

Yeah. That's what I thought.

Next...

Don't you just hate it when you volunteer your time to help others,(ie veterinary questions since most people out there are too F*&ING cheap to call their vet) and all the people do is bitch at you?

I have stated several times in my bio on the volunteer site that I DO NOT replace your vet, nor am I a vet nor do I give out FREE medical advice that your veterinary office should. I merely give suggestions and what questions you should be asking your vet.

So for all of you cheap asses out there, learn to budget for your pets! Can't afford the vet once a year, then rethink the type of pet you have.

iTunes just played What About Me?, a song from what I must guess is a one-hit-wonder by the name of Moving Pictures. Probably around 1982, but that's just a guess. Hadn't heard the thing since then, but when it came on just now I instantly recognized the melody. I remember being deeply moved by it when I was 14, but 35 36*-year-old-me thinks it's stoopid. Just bad. We're talking "oh-my-god-my-eyes-are-dripping-sugar" awful. And yet I remembered every single lyric, could sing along with it no less.

I get yelled at because I can't remember where I put my keys from one day to the next, yet I could instantly recall the lyrics to an idiotic song I haven't heard in twenty years. How many more brain cells are being wasted storing the lyrics to various Wham! and Billy Ocean songs? Someone please tell me, how can I get them back?!?

~ Carribean Queen... ~

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* I quit counting after I hit 25, and now usually have to ask Ellen how old I am. Pretty sad when such a common question has me standing there concentrating and counting on my fingers.

Remember "Baby Jessica"? You know, the toddler who fell down the well? All the drama, the coverage, the movies, the documentaries? Well, guess what. She graduated high school a few days ago:

"Baby Jessica," who held the attention of the nation as a toddler when she fell into an abandoned well 17 years ago, is now a high school graduate, The Associated Press reports.

Oh don't worry K, D, J, C, et. al., I'll have your canes ready at the door.

So close, so close and yet so far.

Do you think if I told the Virginia DMV it was a 1995 164 they'd know the difference?

And from the "a foil hat a day keeps the feds at bay" corner we have this worthy post from a clothing store that didn't much like who was searching for what on their website:

It seems that the anti-terrorist division of our government is spending its time (and our tax dollars) doing web searches on people who disagree with their politics and have the audacity to say so on t-shirts.

Which of course lead to one of the better examples of affirming the consequent I've seen in awhile:

Progressive clothing = potential terrorist?

No you paranoid hippy freak, it only means someone working at DHS (and other various federal organizations) took a look at your site. Last time I checked, that wasn't illegal. We get visits all the time from people in Saudi Arabia. Does that mean we're a terrorist target?

Of course, this isn't much different than what the right-wing loonies were shrieking about during the run-up to the "impeach Clinton" fiasco. It's like belief is a circle... if you place yourself as far in one direction as you can, you end up meeting people coming from the other direction.

To me, as an unabashed member of said Great Right Wing Conspiracy, the pattern looks like an idle (and ideological) intern was poking around one afternoon and stumbled across your site. They then forwarded the link around to some buddies in a "hey, look! Another milquetoast left wing looney who thinks buttons make a difference!"* kind of spirit. Said buds then took a look and were, presumably, amused.

I know it's a lot more fun to think a bunch of modern-day Plumbers are plotting to tape up your door lock tonight, but the sad truth is you have about as much proof for your scenario as I do for mine. To put it in a more hippie-compatible way: Nixon was the president who had the enemies list and gave Liddy a job. Bush is quite simply no Nixon.

Slashdot brings us the latest example of "everything looks like a nail" government:

Monday the New Mexico House of Representatives passed a bill that would require every car sold in the state to have an ignition interlock. This device is essentially a breath analyzer that prevents the car from being started if the driver is drunk.

Which sounds all fine and dandy, until you read how the things actually work:

Ignition interlocks require a breath test, which takes 30 seconds to complete, to start the car as well as random 'rolling retests' to discourage others from taking the test for you. These rolling retests require the driver to take the test as the car is moving.

I can only imagine my mom or Ellen in one of these things, driving down the road, when suddenly it shoots out a tube and says, "you have 30 seconds to comply!" I'm not sure who would rip it out faster.

I normally expect propeller-headed "gee whiz" propositions like this to come out of the Federal government or the People's Republic of California. It's total lack of understanding of how human beings actually work is an absolutely textbook example of why government should always be seen as the solution of last resort.

It would take exactly five microseconds after this became law for someone to figure out a way to bugger or bypass the things. It might take a minute or two more before someone else cooked up a "Sobe-R-Lung" rebreather gizmo to fit over the end of the tube. There are thousands of Americans (I happen to be good friends with one) who can make a Honda Civic outrun an F-16. Having a gizmo like this stuck in their cars isn't an impediment... it's a challenge.

"Well, if they do tinker with it they'll go to jail! It'll be illegal to tamper with these devices!" Anyone who thinks along these lines obviously has no memory at all of the 1970s. The only reason rednecks aren't still hacking out emissions equipment is because it's too hard to get the car working right once it's gone. I'm sure anyone who thinks car companies should be required to embed this device that deeply into cars meant for a single state will happily pay the extra $10,000 per car it'll probably cost to do it.

California of course proved that if you pass nanny-state legislation like this and then back it up with serious muscle and funding, it can be made to work. Of course, their multi-billion-dollar budget deficit is also instructive. Look, I'm all for getting drunks off the road. But I wonder how many detox programs, educational opportunities, and police officer salaries it's going to cost to make this Rube Goldberg contraption a reality?

When someone comes up with a gizmo that can passively read blood alcohol content through the palms of the hands holding the steering wheel, I'll be interested. Until then I'd appreciate the politicians doing something useful, like fixing the damned roads, making sure schools actually work, and the cops get paid enough to do their jobs.

Politicians doing something useful. My God, I think Joshua really is rubbing off on me...

Bob Keeshan died today, he was 76 years old. Captain Kangaroo featured prominently in my early days, as I'm sure he did in many other kids's. He influenced several generations of children with simple, entertaining, and (as I recall) educational fare not much seen nowadays. He will be missed.

On Christmas Eve no less, my perfect GTV-6 (non-expiring pictures are here) comes up for auction. '85, lightly breathed-on 3.0L V6, suspension goodies and very little rust. A rice killer in a brown paper sack... what's not to love? Yarg!

Ah well. Somehow I don't think Ellen would appreciate it if I traded one slightly drippy baby for this really cherry ride. Not even if it had OLIVIA on the license plate.

Oh sit down mom, it's a joke.

The Post is reporting on new developments in the Greenpeace prosecution case. I especially love this part:

Greenpeace, which argued Friday for a dismissal of the charges in a Miami federal courtroom, accuses prosecutors of attempting to suppress the age-old American practice of civil protest. Although it is common to levy criminal charges against individual protesters, Greenpeace says a criminal indictment of an advocacy group is unprecedented and politically motivated.

Now, as I recall, the whole point of civil protest is to break laws and get arrested. That way you can holler your slogans at the cameras and impress Birkenstock-clad members of the opposite sex. If prosecutors don't use the laws, then what's the point? Greenpeace got caught with their lawyers around their ankles and is responding the way most western hard-left organizations do nowadays... they're whining about it.

"Help! Help! I'm being repressed!" Please. When the US government wants to "stifle political criticism", it doesn't use laws that allow publicity-heavy trials, it uses groups of incompetent hacks and wannabes creeping around inside hotels at night. And that's only because we're no damned good at it. Governments who take shutting up whiney greens seriously send squads of efficiently violent men to houses at three in the morning. Which is why you'll never see a chapter of Greenpeace in the People's Republic of China.

And complaining the opposition is politically motivated? Excuse me, but last time I checked the whole point of Greenpeace was to make political points by risking the lives of gullible sophomores and hippies who haven't had the decency to die yet.

Oh wait, I forgot. How silly of me. It's only political when the people we don't like do it. What we do is justice.

Michael Kamen, dead at 55. Yeah, I know, his orchestrations could be a little over-wrought, but really, would November Rain be the same song without him? Would Elton John be the rich poofta he is today?!?

Oh sit down. It's a joke.

Anyway, serious suckage tonight in the not-quite-pop music world.

CNN, the yellow-dog peanut gallery's favorite news outlet, is at it again:

CNN, which has marketed itself as an outlet for serious news, planted a question about computer preferences at last week's debate of the Democratic presidential candidates, according to the student who posed the query and on Monday wrote about it in an online forum of Brown University's Daily Herald.

The summary sounds innocuous enough, but read the article, it's worse than you think.

I actually don't watch Fox News all that much, but considering this is, what, the second or third time CNN's gotten caught doing something stupid this year, I think I'm probably going to stop tolerating people who hold FN up for ridicule. They may not say what you like, and they may not report the way you like, but I have yet to see them make any claim to be other than what they are... news from a conservative viewpoint.

Marlins win.

Yankees win.

Baseball as usual wins. So much for an interesting World Series. Wake me up when next season starts. *snore*

I've gone on record many times stating I still want to know when we're screwing it up in Iraq, not just when we get it right. Pointing fingers and counting bodies ain't informing me, because it gives me no avenues for change.

However, articles like this are important:

US soldiers driving bulldozers, with jazz blaring from loudspeakers, have uprooted ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and lemon trees in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers who do not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops

There is almost nothing more counterproductive to a "hearts and minds" campaign than pissing off farmers, and nothing pisses off a farmer faster than destroying fruit crops that can take decades to cultivate & mature. This is such a basic tenet in a counter-insurgency war I am simply flabberghasted that anything like this could actually happen.

Some rear-echelon MF'ing officer has decided to treat grownups like playground kids, without once realizing he's not taking away toys, he's taking away food and money. Again, according to this report at least, they're not hacking down trees to deny snipers cover, they're hacking them down to prove just who's "in charge".

So now we have at least one village out there, probably more, that just boiled over with new Ba'athist and al-Qaeda recruits with nothing more to show for it than an action report covering some tin star's ass. Good job guys, hope a family who's kid gets capped by a sniper from this village mails his purple heart to the Mr. Commanding F-up who thought this one up.

Riverbend over at Baghdad Burning does an excellent job describing the magnitude of this screwup.

Of course the media says almost nothing, because finding out about this stuff requires leaving the Palestine hotel and actually doing research. And besides, if it isn't reported in their daily press briefings from the Pentagon, it can't be that important, can it?

Sometimes I think we learned a lot from Vietnam. A lot. Then I read things like this and I realize some folks, important ones at that, have learned nothing.

Comment blaming it all on Dubya in 3... 2... 1...

I think this is the third time in six or seven years that my brother's underhanded attempts at biological warfare have succeeded. Thanks for the cold you barstard! Next time you sneeze around me I'm going to put on a moon suit.

Instapundit eventually lead me to this illustrative discussion about almost everything I dislike about the left.

I'm quite aware of the power of symbols, and know very well that artists sometimes like to use shocking images simply to make us think about an issue. The problem I have with these images isn't that they're shocking, or that they're radical... it's that they're stupid.

Comparing a psychotic holding a knife to the US, who bled its own blood dismantling an oligarchy that thought nothing of shooting women in soccer stadiums and a dictatorship that gassed children and fed people into wood chippers is ludicrous. Simply ludicrous. Calling people who feel this sort of imagery is appropriate willfully ignorant of their own country and the world around them is about as big an understatement as I know to make. Moronic **cktard is probably more appropriate.

Placing the image of an elected official who might be gone in a year and will be gone in five next to the images of two of the west's worst modern dictators again demonstrates a complete and utter ignorance of what they're talking about. Sticking the caption "hate=war" underneath it just adds a cherry of irony to the top of that particularly clueless confection.

The other three illustrations, of the Statue of Liberty, a bar code, and a vaguely anti-semitic flag of some sort, only cement my opinion of these people, and prove conclusively that watching TV and surfing the web are no substitute for actually thinking.

Those funny looking heavy things that fill a library are called "books". Hard to imagine I know, but by opening them up you can actually learn things. Even more difficult to comprehend, most of those things aren't covered by an MTV expose or an E! True Hollywood Story.

Here's a tip to all these artists: try reading a few books on the issues at hand before putting pen to paper, brush to canvas, or mouse to photoshop. Maybe then you'll be able to make a cogent argument instead of flinging sh*t like the shrieking chimpanzee you seem to have become.

Well, probably not, but definitely leaning out somewhere to the right of Darth Vader. What brought this on? This story about fat and government:

The left's view is that the food industry and advertisers are big bullies that practically force-feed people with gimmicks and high-calorie treats. They say Ronald McDonald is the cousin of Joe Camel.

The right's argument has been dubbed: You're fat, your fault. They say people can make their own choices about food and exercise.

It's gotten so bad that some legislators are introducing legislation to protect the food industry from obesity-related lawsuits. And you know what? I support them 100%. I completely, utterly, and unapologetically believe the only reason you are overweight is because of what you voluntarily put in your mouth.

Look folks, there's only one absolutely guaranteed way to lose weight, and it doesn't involve fancy diets, weird pills, or meditation. I know it will be real hard for some to hear, but the ultimate secret to losing weight is this, and only this:

Eat less. Exercise more.

I really do think the only reason we're even having this discussion is a collision between trial lawyer greed and the permissive "nobody's fault" liberal culture foisted on us by left-wing academics, overpaid and undereducated entertainment celebrities, and a democratic party more interested in making sure every single individual is happy than in helping anyone actually take responsibility for their own lives.

You might think the next thing I'd write would be, "and if we'd all just turn to Jesus and go back to church this'd be a much better place." Certainly far too many on the right do exactly that. I'm not that kind of conservative. Just as I think government has no damned business determining who I sleep with or how I worship, I also think they have no damned business trying to protect me from myself.

Look, I don't care if you're considered overweight by this image-obsessed culture. I have good friends, beautiful people, who most definitely fall into the "botticelli" range of body types. I think that's just fine, not that they'd care (and good for them too!) As long as you're happy with yourself, and can pay your own way, they can use a crane to move you around and all I'm going to do is ask if I can work the levers. I only have a problem with people who are unhappy with the way they look and think someone else owes them an apology for it.

And don't give me any of this "oppressed poor" crap. The first two things I look at when a homeless person is standing on a roadside holding a sign is their belly and their shoes. If they have either, and most have both, they are not in need of my help.

There are people out in the world who really are poor, who watch their children's bodies consume themselves as they die because there simply isn't enough to eat, who walk the streets naked or nearly so because they cannot afford clothes. None of them live here. I think people who drive themselves to protests wearing pants with waists larger than their inseams to scream about their poverty and plight are obscene.

The only things I find more revolting than a three hundred pound woman suing McDonald's is the lawyer who talked her into it and the blathering wing-nuts who think it's her right.

If you don't listen very closely to this NPR story about "opposition to the Iraq occupation" you might feel a little down, a bit discouraged, when you're done because it sure does make it seem as if they don't like us, a lot.

But listen more closely. Did you catch who they picked? In order:

• An Iraqi colonel (well, former Iraqi colonel, one of the reasons he's pissed is we felt we had to disarm and disband the army. We do have a lot of nerve you see, taking away the guns of a defeated combat force and sending all their ideologically comitted members home. But I digress...)
• The wife of a man who was a part of Uday's personal bodyguard detail (oh, yes, dear, absolutely your husband had no choice. And if you're willing to believe that, I imagine you also believed he stayed a good Muslim and a faithful husband around what nearly everyone agrees was one of the most depraved and decadent men to walk across the world's stage in a good long time. It never ceases to amaze me what some women will insist on believing just so they can keep a nice house.)
• The leader of a rural tribe whose members were thought so loyal they were recruited into the Republican guard.

"Tell me Mr. Fallwell, just what do you think of Hillary Clinton?"

"If you have some time, Ms. Streisand, could you talk a few minutes about your opinion of the Bush administration?"

I'm not saying that Iraqis don't dislike our occupation of their country. I would be quite surprised to find if any "regular" Iraqi liked it one little bit. But by picking such obviously and totally biased subjects for this story I can't help but wonder what, exactly, Ann Garrels really hoped to accomplish?

I don't think any journalist is actually capable of outright sedition, the few who are smart enough to understand the term covet their careers too highly. Far more likely, I'll wager, these were people who were wandering near the al-Rashid hotel (because you know it's just too hot to walk around this damned city. The listeners back home will never know where they came from anyway. You know most can't read a map) and were willing to have a microphone stuck in their face by an Infidel too old to still work her original TV news beat.

While cruising this Consumer Reports article on child seats, I came across this illuminating tidbit:

Car-seat instruction manuals may be part of the problem [of children being injured in accidents even when in car seats]. Such manuals are written at a 10th-grade reading level, on average, according to a study from researchers at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md. As such, the study says, the manuals are too hard for many parents to understand.

So, let's let that sink in for a bit. The reason why kids are getting hurt and killed, according to this study at least, is because people can't f-ing read at a high school level?!?

The tragic thing is, I can understand this. 80% of the people around here expect me to read the manual so I can teach them how to use a piece of software (which I, of course, have no other use for). Studies everywhere are showing something like 75% of VCR users don't even know how to set the clocks on the things. Yesterday I actually heard this conversation at a gas station:

Chick: "You want me to do what?"

Guy: "Pump the gas in your car while I fill up mine"

Chick: "But I don't know how to do that! How do I do it?"

Open up a book people. Read the letters. Those squiggly lines mean something. If you get confused, that means there's something wrong with YOU, not the instructions. Stop being stupid and start figuring shit out. Ok, just so we can all be clear on exactly how this works, let's do a little review here:

How to learn to read baby seat instructions in 7 easy steps

1. Open package. Do not eat contents, do not place head in bag.
2. Remove paper marked "INSTRUCTIONS." Do not throw away, do not use to wipe ass, do not stare quizzicaly at them like a Planet of the Apes extra.
3. READ THE FREAKING INSTRUCTIONS one step at a time.
4. NO, REALLY, JUST READ THE FIRST STEP. It's not a novel, skipping to the end won't help you.
5. Perform the first step. No, really, just the first step. Don't decide you know it all just from feel.
6. If you get confused, you're probably trying to do 3 steps at once, or you're just stupid. GO BACK AND JUST TRY THE FIRST STEP YOU MORON.
7. Now repeat with step 2, then step 3, until you run out of things to read.

And don't give me any of this [whine]"I tried really hard but it just didn't make any seeeeeeense"[/whine]. You didn't try hard enough you mouth breathing sack of sh*t! Missing "All My Children" because you're holding the instruction sheet upside down is one thing, but this is your kid here. Go to the damned "Babies R Big Bux" and find out when the next car seat inspection happens. If you ended up with one LATCH hook in your ear and the other in your ass, they'll get you all sorted out for free.

While you're at it, go read a book. One without pictures this time.

This little ditty over at NPR was pitched by the hosts over at morning edition as an examination of ethics in this era of NY Times exposes and accusations of bias in the media. What is NPR's response? A look at how unethical everyone is. "See folks! We're not ambulance chasing elitists lying to you because we think you're stupid... we're just regular folks like you."

Nope, sorry, doesn't wash. Any time anyone does something stupid, or simply disagrees with their values, the mainstream media do the old "magnifying glass in the sun" trick. Now that it's turned on them, they start scrambling for cover like the roaches they purport to protect us from.

Stop making excuses and start cleaning house. I'm sure it's not you being unethical, and you're just trying to do your job, but obviously that's just not working. The people at CNN who thought it was a good idea to cover up the brutality of the previous Iraqi regime because they didn't want to lose access are still there and making decisions. The New York Times published an obituary about a dead guy written by a dead guy and all they did was make excuses about how "that's just the way it's done."

So far the Post has managed to avoid this mess, but I'm not sure if it's because they're clean, better managed, or simply better at covering it all up. Obviously the Gray Lady still hasn't figured it out.

Sometimes I think it's a really good idea to rely on blogs to get your news. At least there the fact checking is quick and to the point. No surprise Big Media thinks they're just toys.

People never cease to amaze me. There are people out there so nice you want to drown them in cat urine and there are people out there that are so miserable you want to be the one to end their existance just because they are annoying you.

I was out and about today walking with Olivia around the neighborhood putting up my 'Cat Sitting Available' signs on the common mail boxes when I thought it would be a nice treat to stop at the 7-11 for a slushie. The humidity was getting to the both of us and stepping in to some airconditioning for a few minutes would be nice. Plus I had my eye on the bench across the street in the shade to enjoy my slushie and to give Olivia a cold bottle I brought along.

Mistake. Something bad always happens to me.

I purchased my Tropical Sprite slushie and was on my way out the door when the guy behind me, skips to the front as I am opening the door. Ok, this dude is in a bad mood. Do I say anything? Nope. Should I have? Yup.

"Jesus Christ! You fucking women and these fucking strollers are always in the goddamn way!!" as he slams the door on my right hand with the slushie in it.

This is where it gets better. As this asshole skips out the door with his 3 cartons of Winston cigarettes, a hot dog and a Big Gulp, I'm staring at what used to be a 44oz slushie that has managed to explode in my hand, all over the front of the stroller and onto Olivia.

So now I have no slushie, a wet, sticky stroller and a baby covered in Sprite flavored slushie ice that is screaming her head off, and I have nearly a mile to walk home.

So much for a nice afternoon. Does anyone in the 7-11 help? Nope, they just stood and stared. I didn't even get offered paper towels to clean Olivia up with. I just tossed my cup outside in the trash next to the door and left what what left of my slushie on the floor and walked out.

Pat gets a no-prize for sending us this little ditty from a media wonk trying a classic "Who's Laughing Now?" maneuver.

I tried to address this in Casualties, but I don't think I made my point very well. Ok, in crystal-clear terms, as far as I'm concerned:

Your opinion of Bush is irrelevant. Your opinion of the war is irrelevant. Whether or not the administration exaggerated evidence or outright lied to get its way is irrelevant. I will repeat: NONE OF THESE THINGS MATTER ANYMORE. THEY. DO. NOT. MATTER! We won the war. We're there. Stop bleating and whining about "should haves" or "might have beens" because those things don't make a single goddamn bit of difference right now. Every time anyone mentions anything like this I just keep seeing empty horse barns with open doors and a kitchen with milk all over the floor.

Stop trying to get Bush out of the Whitehouse and start paying attention. Two entire nations are relying on us to help them back from the abyss. If your opinions, suggestions, or criticisms of Iraq or Afghanistan do not directly address this fundamental fact then please make sure the door doesn't hit your ass on the way out. I have no time for you, and I hope to hell the people actually trying to get the job done don't either.

Let's play a little thought experiment. A condemned house two blocks down gets bulldozed because it's a crack house, full of gangstas and thugs, a murder happening there nearly every week. A drive-by shooting from one gang killed your neighbor's kid. The house is gone; the neighborhood is peaceful again. But you know the dealers are still out there.

There's an abandoned house right across the street from the bulldozed one. There aren't any drug dealers there. It's just empty. Suddenly the city bulldozes that one, claiming it has turned into a crack house as well.

Would you really be that upset when the papers revealed the next day the house was still empty? Would you blame the mayor when drug dealers and homeless people started to sabotage construction equipment and kill the workers trying to build new, free, houses for them? Would you really try to claim that if the abandoned house had just been left alone the neighborhood would be a better place?

Time to do a little dance, because cursive is on its way out:

Handwriting experts fear that the wild popularity of e-mail, instant messages and other electronic communication, particularly among kids, could erase cursive within a few decades.

For as long as I can remember I've been a practical guy when it comes to learning. Even when I was in kindergarten the teachers had a devil of a time getting me to outline my coloring books. "Why?" I'd ask, "they've already got outlines!" It was such a colossal waste of time.

Cursive writing was another teeth-grinding exercise in redundancy. I already knew how to write. If the way I was doing it was right in the first grade but wrong in the third, why the hell did you teach me the first way at all? The books I was reading certainly weren't in cursive, they were in print, something I'd already been taught. I watched secretaries on TV type things for crying out loud. They printed things, they didn't "cursive" them.

I very rapidly decided that, like math (when was the last time you did long division on paper?), cursive classes were just another mind-numbingly boring and unnecessary thing grownups forced children to do because that's what their grownups had forced them to do. To me, grade school wasn't about learning, it was about various kinds of revenge.

I know there are parents out there smiling condescendingly saying "oh you just wait mister, you'll see." I mean, look at this:

Parents who pride themselves on their penmanship often bemoan their children's cursive ... Many adults pine for a return to the Palmer Method or even its fancier predecessor, Spencerian.

"Cursive was so character-defining when I was in school," says Amy Greene, whose 9-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son prefer keyboards to cursive in their Palo Alto classrooms. "The way you wrote something was considered part of your inner being, your core, your worth. ... Now it's considered an anachronism."

Pardon me while I polish up your rose-colored glasses, I truely am sorry the world is changing right before your very eyes. Cursive was an anachronism thirty-five years ago, probably more. It's losing ground, dying out, not because kids are lazy (it takes real balls for someone born between 1946 and 1960 to say that), or because the teachers just don't take the time. It's dying out because it's inferior to the new way of doing things. I know, I know, it's such a damned shame anyway, isn't it? Such a shame that we're losing one of the very cornerstones of classic public education...

You know, that what you write is less important than the way it is put on the page.

And before you try some snappy comeback about "what good is what you write if people can't read it?" I want you to please explain to me how this is easier to read than this.

How stupid is this kid?

Typical stupid kid playing with a BB gun, then gets shot himself. What do you do? Blame it on the family pet.

Maybe the cat didn't try hard enough to cull the gene pool.

Most in the blogosphere by now know about the CNN chief news executive's confession, so we didn't link it up here, but in this article Larry over at the "new & improved fresh & tasty" Amish Tech Support gave me a reason, an email address. Read the article, then be sure to write an email message to Jordan Eason to let him know what you think about his "confession."

When Trent Lott said stupid things the press gnawed on it until "a change was made". Now those same self-appointed keepers of the truth have admitted they were lying to us just to get a fucking story, and are expecting the consequences to just vanish in the noise. So I'm going to do my part by pouring our own humble capful of gasoline on this smouldering fire.

They provide a platform for people who hate in the name of equal time and we remain quiet. They employ people who have the ethics of a rabid gerbil and we say nothing. Their "best and brightest" make egregious errors and then hide them on a back page, when they admit them at all, and we are silent. As my brother would say, "the line must be drawn here."

ARRRG! Unlike most of the dream cars I talk about, this is one I could probably swing. If I had that kind of green around, which I don't. Plus, I don't have that much garage space, and it'd be a shame to leave it out in the rain.

I know I know "what-are-you-thinking-this-is-an-old-hunk-of-junk-you-better-save-up-for-that-kid-mister" kind of thing. So I present it to you out there. If you're looking for a modern superfun 2nd car and live nearby, it don't get no better than this.

Two no-prizes in one day! Jeff brings us this unintentionally amusing whinefest from the press about how reporters are "wary of pentagon promises" for better access in future conflicts. Some choice comments:

"We got essentially zip, nothing of any value, during [the Afghanistan campaign]," CNN's Christiane Amanpour said.

"It just isn't fair... the press conferences the general gives us don't say anything interesting, the soldiers aren't allowing us to hitch rides on their jeeps, and the coffee is cold!"

Gee, last time I checked it was called "reporting" and "journalism", implying you actually have to get off your ass and nose around. Since when is the military obliged to cart your overpaid careerist machiavellian kiester anywhere? This isn't the President, they're not required to give you free rides like you get on Air Force One.

Amanpour ... said the military needs to balance its security concerns with "what we the press need to meet our responsibilities."

No you dumb twit, the military needs to balance its security concerns with what it takes to win. Your function is literally parasitic to them. Again, get off your asses and take a risk or two. Get dirty, walk around, talk to people. Especially disappointing coming from Amanpour, who has risked her fanny more than once to get a story, and should know better.

Tom Rosenstiel, a professor who directs the Project for Excellence in Journalism at Columbia University, said journalists understand that in war they must decide whether the information they gather might hinder the military.

Ah. Now academia opens its bowls to voice a typical opinion. Last I checked, sparky, it's the MILITARY'S job to decide what information might help or hinder their operations. Remember, they're here to win, not provide you with career opportunities. You see, if you or one of your pressmonkey colleagues make the wrong decision and hamper, say, a politician's secret plans to get some legislation passed, you will hinder that legislation. With most politicians, this is usually a good thing. If you or one of your pressmonkey colleagues make the wrong decision and hamper a battle, people fucking die.

Ah, but since it's not going to be one of your sons or daughters that's OK with you right? I mean, what's a few dumb grunts between friends? Most of these kids've never even been to college. You've got tenure to worry about!

"We can hear things and learn things that we must hold close to ourselves," added Kevin Klose, chief executive of National Public Radio.

No dumbass. If you hear something sensitive enough that it can effect an operation someone screwed up. The military cannot rely on the discretion of untrained civilians to maintain the security of its operations. You might be trustworthy and wise enough to know that reporting a bunch of tanks disappearing in the night might tip off a surprise attack, but do you really think all your colleagues are? Even the young punks who're looking to make a name for themselves? Are you willing to risk your daughter's life on that bet, you elitist freak?

"[The Pentagon] are saying the right things," [CNN news chief executive] Jordan said by video link from Atlanta. "Whether they do the right things remains to be seen."

So, lemme get this straight. In order for you to "trust" the military they must:

• Give you free access to pre-attack, attack, and post-attack intelligence and planning, and rely on "your judgment" as to what is sensitive and what is not.
• Provide transportation, lodging to you and your crew to allow you to go wherever, whenever you like, and allow you to talk to whomever you like. Oh, and enough protection to ensure you and your non-combat-trained crew don't have their names etched on a piece of glass.
• Let you be the final arbiter of what constitutes a successful engagement, battle, or war.

Sound about right sparky? Pardon me, I need to go vomit somewhere.

There has never been a war in history that has been won by the press, but there are several that have been lost by them. The military has a job to do, and it involves killing people and blowing things up and getting killed and getting blown up and when you get yourself in the middle of it all you're just getting in the fucking way.

The military's job is to win wars any way they can. There are no rules, in fact the best skirmishes, battles, and wars are usually won by being the sneakiest, cleverest, meanest bastard on the field. Even you people know at least one colleague that's just a talking head, a pretty face who happened to blow the right producer (and they're not all women) to get their job instead of clawing to the top like you guys.

These are the people the military is protecting itself from, and I'm sorry to say I'd rather the military keep busy trying to win the freaking war than figure out which press monkey is a "good guy" and which is just a lizard looking to get noticed by Peter Jennings.

Should the press be out there? Damned straight they should be out there. If it weren't for the press we'd probably still be in Vietnam counting bodies as success on the battlefield. If a press monkey can find out about excess, abuse, incompetence, and neglect in our armed forces then I damned sure want to know about it.

But it's not the military's job to help.

Nell Carter passed away today. Nice lady, great voice. 54 is way too early.

Scott made me stay home from work today. I was in the process of getting ready for work, since I slept on the couch again, when I started to feel dizzy and a bit green.

You know you and your significant other love each other when one can be in the shower and the other one retching over the toilet. "You OK?", he says? "Yeah, I will be". (hangs head back in the toilet for the second round)

Being sick on an empty stomach is not fun at all. "I want you to call work and call in. You've been sick all week, and I don't want to have to take you home early."

This is my second sick day this week.

My obgyn said my immune system has dropped quite a bit due to being pregnant and it will take longer for me to recover.

I have no appetite whatsoever. But I did manage to make myself eat a piece of toast and drink some grapefruit juice. I have drunk so much tea this week that I think I may be dehydrating myself from it.

Hopefully I'll start feeling better this weekend.

Ok, I'm sicker than I thought. I first thought since Sunday, that I had a mild cold. Just some congestion, sneezing and achiness in my head.

This morning I have been up since 3 am hacking and gaging and unable to be comfortable. Good thing Mama is usually up at this hour surfing the net, since she is really a cat and only sleeps in 2 hour incriments. :)

First sign things are not going good. I took that damn Robitussin because I started to cough. What came up? Green nasty shit. Green=no good. Mama, of course said to watch for rust colored yuck- could indicate pneumonia. Eww.

Secondly, I told you all I yack from Robitussin. Did I yack? Of course. An hour later. Not only that, but being pregnant, I can't sneeze and hold back my bladder anymore despite all the kegals I do. So as I bowed to the toilet god, I managed to pee in my pants. Nice right? I also got banished to the couch (which I don't mind- I love my couch)since Scott drives to and from work so I can cat nap on the way in and back, so the compromise is not bad. I really don't like to wake someone else up being sick. The downstairs is much cooler. The big plus is all the cats come and congregate with me.

Bad thing about cats joining you in the bathroom while I was busy trying not to vomit up my baby, was that Goblin was trying to stick her head in the toilet at the same time to see what was going on. She has been peed on before by Scott in the middle of the night, so I'm sure being hurled on would be nothing special to her. No..I didn't puke on the cat.

So now I have to call my obgyn again this morning and tell them what is going on since they have the most control in the meds I can take. Hopefully they can just call in a prescription for me.

I still a have to go to work this am. I am the only tech on today until 1 pm. Though, I don't know about tomorrow.

Yup, as expected, they've finally come out with a "fart pipe" for Alfas. Of course you know this thing gives you an extra 40 horsepower, right? Following that logic, why don't I just weld a coffee can to my muffler, that aughta be good for another 20, no?

Gah. Ricers. Gah.

Update: Didn't even notice that you can make the tailpipe flash in time with your turn signals. Considering the number of times I've been rear-ended in spiders (2x), hell, maybe...

Nah...

For those of you wondering, yes, Salam has stopped blogging. Details are here. Summary: His blog got mentioned in a major US wire story, and suddenly he wasn't under the radar anymore. We wish him luck and hope he re-cloaks successfully.

Update: I forgot to say this was a bank-shot from Reflections in D Minor.

Jim noted that his site didn't look right in old versions of Netscape, to which Joanie replied "Who Cares?" I started this as a reply on Jim's site, but figured a wider audience might be interested.

Who should care? You should, and you should, and you should too! The netscape browser is making a comeback now that it's been revamped, is stable, secure, and has more features than IE. It also follows the CSS rules more closely, and doesn't have as many quirks as IE.

The old Netscape browsers (4.x and lower) were written when CSS was in its infancy, and as a result they don't follow style sheets very well, if at all. Because of CSS's growing popularity, increasing numbers of sites are gradually becoming unreadable to these early browsers. It will be difficult to get your site to view correctly in 4.x.

As a web site administrator I consider it a duty to make sure my sites look correct in at least the two "big" browsers. Luckily, the MT writers think so too, and so it's quite rare for me to find an MT site that doesn't display properly in Netscape 6+ (yours, Jim, and yours, Joanie, both look fine, for example). Unfortunately blogspot doesn't work that way, and so Maru's site, for example, is almost unreadable to me at work, and Larry's is unreadable to Ellen at home (although that might be because Ellen's computer is schizophrenic "quirky"). We don't check those blogs as often as we want to because of this.

It's a free download folks. Take the time out to get the latest version and at least glance at your site in both versions when you make changes. Sure, it's a pain in the ass, and yes, there's nothing quite as frustrating as having everything look "just so" in the browser YOU use but having it get mangled in the browser someone else uses. But until IE catches up with Netscape's (actually Mozilla's) conformity to standards, you still have to do it.

Do you have to make your blog look perfect in both browsers? No. Ours looks perfect in Netscape but there are weird little details in IE (the text in the sidebars tends to run off the margins at times, for example). But it's quite readable. One of the points of blogging is to allow as many readers as possible to check you out. I, for one, will thank you.

P.S. Also keep in mind AOL is still making noises about switching its default browser to a Mozilla-powered system, making it essentially the same as Netscape. If that happens we Netscape users won't be such a small minority!

So I work at a non-profit. One of the "new" fundraising ideas is to get employees of the non-profit to donate some of their own salary back to the company.

So, like, am I being a mean cranky bastard when I think if they really needed the staff to donate they should just garnish our wages up front? I mean, that way at least we know what it is.

Gah. I'm in a nasty mood today, aren't I?

Also-ran over at uppity-negro.com thinks that just because he's never going to link to us again we might ever link to him. I tell you, as soon as I can remember how to work blogroll again I'm droppin his so fast Whitney Houston would think it was her latest record contract!

<Undertaker Voice>And if uppity-negro.com thinks he's gonna get any links from us just because we don't know Buffy... well, hey, lookit that, looks like floppity-igmo.com doesn't even know how to fix his referral stuff, 'cuz we're still there!</Undertaker Voice>

Ok, I admit it, I screwed up. I didn't really follow Buffy the Vampire Slayer when it started out, even though it looked interesting enough. The guy from the Taster's Choice commercials as professor was always a hard one for me to take.

So anyway, everyone around the blogosphere keeps talking about this show. And talking, and talking, and talking, giving me a serious case of pop-culture and SF envy. I've been wanting to give the show a second chance for a few years now, but seeing as the whole thing is in its, what, seventh or eighth year, figured I'd miss nearly all the nuances and be mostly lost.

So my question to you, dear Buffy-fan reader (no, not you mom, sit down. I already know what you're going to say), is what would you consider the best way to get into this series from this distance? Should I start catching it in syndication? Rent episode compilations on DVD? Go to some website and read up? Just start watching the new ones and figure it out as it goes along? Advice needed!

Here we have yet another instance of the monkey press being fed releases instead of getting off their asses and doing their jobs. This is not "shocking". This is not "worrying". This is acceptable, even expected, behavior of a diplomatic corps, and has widely been known as "legal spying" at least back to World War II (where I first encountered the term reading history books of the period).

Here's how it works: in order to function on the international stage, Freedonia must send representatives to Sylvania. Freedonia informs Sylvania of the names, addresses, functions, etc. of all the people it's sending to Sylvania. Sylvania is assumed to now know who these people are, and if they think they must, follow these members of Freedonia around while they are living and, presumably, working in Sylvania (certainly the one in the trench coat with the horn would be suspicious).

Countries are specifically prevented from restricting the mobility of diplomatic staff by at least two international treaties. Therefore, if Trentino and Rob Rolland want to take a stroll there's nothing the Sylvania can legally do about it. The idea being since they've been registered as part of the diplomatic corps it's Sylvania's job to keep an eye on them.

If their stroll happens to take them by, say, Acme Arms Incorporated while AAI was having a show-and-tell of Sylvania's new "widget-o-wonder" death ray, Trentino and Rolland would be well within their rights to stop and listen. They could even take pictures if they liked, and as long as it was legal for any citizen of Sylvania to do this there's not a damned thing Sylvania can do to stop them.

Even if it wasn't legal... lets say Trentino and Rolland happened to get caught paying someone to break into AAI's offices late at night to take pictures of the plans of the "widget-o-wonder", all Sylvania can legally do is send them home. That's one of the points of diplomatic immunity. We are not barbarians here in this world of nations, and if a diplomat gets loose and sees something he or she isn't supposed to it's the host country's fault (now, the someone they were paying, that's a different story).

The Soviets and Americans were famous for these hijinks during the Cold War. Both embassies had many times the number of required staff working there. And you can be darned sure everyone was keeping a really close eye on everyone else.

That's why this particular "shocking" report is so annoying. The only reason we know the diplomats are doing this is because they are diplomats and sometimes that's what diplomats do. Some Pentagon weenie or a spook over at Langley decided to "send Iraq a message" that we know they're watching us, and they used the press to do so.

The monkies freaked because, even though this isn't illegal spying, it kinda sounds like it and gosh darned it there isn't anything else going on in the world so why not?

I was heading out to work this morning and found my car was gone from the parking lot. So what do I do? I head back in the house and ask Scott where did he put it. "Dumbass, it's in the same spot we placed it yesterday", he says. "NO it's NOT!" I screamed back.

Shit.

It has either A. been towed, or B. been stolen. Of course the homeowners association does not post the number of the towing company on the signs out front. My car is perfectly legal to park there. I have the HOA sticker on it.

So now I have to wait till 9 am for the offices to open and see if it has been towed, and who decided to have it towed. If it was towed, is it wrong of me to tell the HOA that they have to pay for the towing and impoundment of my car? I mean they towed it with an HOA sticker on it and I checked the bylaws of the HOA book and it was perfectly legal for me to park there.

All I have to do is wait till 9, and find out.

Update: Cruiser got towed, we're still not sure why. Some busybody probably didn't like us taking "their" space and didn't see the permit in the window. --Scott

Sometimes I feel a little envious when I read about the latest stuff Jim, Aaron, or Jason is listening to, because I haven't purchased a new CD in probably five or six years now. Then I read things like this, and then I start to think they'll be joining me soon enough.

Want you all to listen up: if AOL can give away millions of CDs, that means they can be manufactured essentially for free. We're already being charged a "tax" on both blank tapes and CDs which goes straight to the record companies. The record companies cleared billions of dollars in net profit last year. Now they're breaking compatibility with existing players, meaning "upgrade or else".

Enough already. Vote with your pocketbooks and stop buying music. BOYCOTT is an ugly word to any industry, because it works.

Dr. Smith is no more! 87 is a pretty good run, but sounded like a pretty sudden way to go. I had no idea he was the voice of the old toy repair guy in Toy Story 2!

Ok, this story has just taken the cake for me. There are obviously far, far too many morons out there who are scared out of their wits about this thing. I live right next door and I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE SNIPER. I'm afraid of all the rest of you twits who are too busy looking and dancing around to actually drive straight down the goddamned road.

So, to show just how dumb you all are, some relevant statistics:

Unless otherwise noted all statistics taken from The National Vital Statistics Report, 1999-2000 from the Centers for Disease Control

And as far as worrying about kids:

* The lightening statistic was pulled from this website, and the sniper statistics I got from today's Washington Post.

In other words, almost 11 times as many people are killed on our nation's roads EVERY GODDAMNED DAY, 365 DAYS A YEAR than have been killed by this psycho in two weeks.

And, unlike our friendly neighborhood psycho, THERE ARE LOTS OF THINGS YOU CAN DO TO KEEP FROM GETTING KILLED IN OR BY A CAR. Easy, simple things like fastening seat belts, not getting drunk, and just paying the f*ck attention to the world around you are all proven extremely effective at preventing you from being killed by something 11 times more likely to off you than some wacko with a gun.

So, if you actually live in this area and actually have done something different in your life or even thought about doing something different in your life to avoid the sniper, I want you to say this (with me, because I catch myself doing it too):

• I'm a moron for being afraid of the sniper
  
• I'm a moron for fearing for my kids because of the sniper
  
• The people around me are morons for being afraid of the sniper
  
• Two tons of steel hurtling down a highway at 70 miles per hour with a person combing their hair, drinking coffee, and talking on a cell phone at once as a pilot is far, far, far more dangerous to myself and my children than any single crank with a gun and a grudge.
  
• Today I will be a more alert, but unfearing, driver and citizen not because of the sniper, but because being in that state of mind helps keep myself and my children out of real, ever-present dangers like drunks and morons and falling objects and other things which actually can do me and mine harm.
  

Say it again. Now.

While the ultimate thrust of this article, that DVD-Audio and SACDs are new formats beginning to catch on in the audio world, is probably true, a whole raft of assertions are a really pure example of what happens when a marketroid and a particularly clueless press monkey get together to hatch a story.

So, being the resident audiophile here at AMCGLTD (I know Jim is probably at least as knowledgeable, but he has his own site to run), I'm here to separate the facts from the horse-hockey:

• I remember when CDs came out. The only people who fussed about the sound quality compared to vinyl were pop artists. You know, the people who multichannel and overproduce the hell out of everything? Want to know why? In the 1980s, when these things came out, all the pop recording studios were still analog from end-to-end. Analog mics, analog mixers, analog tapes, geared toward an analog medium. So it was no surprise they thought their stuff sounded bad, because the CD showed every little screwup, cheat, and limitation in their very expensive but completely obsolete equipment.
• The folks who really cared about recording actual performances, mostly classical guys (is Telarc even still in business any more?) had been making digital recordings for several years when CDs came out. Digital mics, digital mixers, digital tape recorders, and the skills to use them. Unfortunately at first they had to mix this all down into an analog medium, the album (cassette tapes sounded too crappy to be worthwhile. No surprise most pop music was sold on cassette by this point). When the CD came out these people could give you exactly what they recorded. No surprise the classical music world switched to CD and never, ever looked back.
• Lots, and I mean lots, of people have home theater rigs nowadays, and more are adding them every day. Now that you can get an AC3 receiver for less than $300, you have very little reason not to. CDs don't have the ability to take advantage of these new developments because of the way their standards were written back in the late 70s. DVD-Audio lets you leverage your existing home theater investment.
• Because of this, Sony's attempt to set yet another standard will fail just like Beta and those minidisc recorders.
• "A good vinyl setup will get you a little better to the real performance than a compact disc set up". What a buttmunch. Aside from the clicks and pops, which were of course present in the original recording, the specs of the CD standard are far and away better than what vinyl will ever be able to produce. This is like someone saying a painted portrait of a person is a much more accurate representation than a photograph. Easy to say when commissioning a $10,000 portrait is in your price range (or a $50,000 stereo rig, which is what he means when he says "good"), but the result will still be an interpretation, an interpolation through a medium with clear limitations on just what can be represented. Mere mortals are quite happy with crystal clear photographs, which for all their bourgeois tackiness are still an actual, and perfect, image.
• "if you're working around the house, then it (the enhanced sound) doesn't really matter." More buttmunch goodness. File this one under "duh". The enhanced sound of CDs didn't make much difference over a cassette tape either. No surprise that they stayed a stero rig-only device until they got so cheap and so small you could nearly give them away. DVD players cost $1500 when the came out, $500 three years later, and now can be found for $150. I give them three years until they are every bit as ubiquitous as the CD before them.
• Record companies are still completely out of touch with their own customer base. DVD audio costs more than CD audio?!? When you can already buy DVD movies for less than their CD soundtracks?!? I'll stick to DVDs thank you. They're more fun and don't cost as much.

I've already decided to start my own little one-man boycott of the recording industry until someone figures out a way to force them to charge realistic prices for music. If they were $8 each I'd buy two a week. The ones I want are usually $18, and I think I've bought two in six years. This from a guy with a mid-four figure stereo system sitting in his living room!

So for now if I want music I listen to the radio. It may not sound very good, but at least it's free.

Yeah ok no piccies tonight. Can't say we did not try though.

We followed all the instructions in the book for the cam and docking station, still no piccies. Software installed, yet the computer does not recognize the docking station and cam. Good thing Scott is off tomorrow and can mess around with it. *HINT HINT*

So all of you people on strike can continue to picket outside ect... We will attempt this picture thing again.

We painted the main living room Sunday night and today. Well, I painted it. Scott unscrewed light plates and such.

We have painted the main living room a green color. Moss green, Grey green ect., however you see it. Scott made fun of me 'cause I was like the lady in the *Sandy beach or Sahara* paint commercial. If you have not seen it, it is a lady that is literally holding up the same or very close to the same color paint chip up to a wall and can't make up her mind. That was me. Do I go mauve, green, white ect... ARGGHH!!! Then you have to pick the SHADE! GAHH!!!!!!

I also have a lot of trim in this place. Not just trim at the bottom of the walls, but fancy crown molding. Got to paint that too. I picked the whitest of white. Yeah apparently there is an ultra white out there.

This house also has a chair rail in the dining area. One problem-- it only goes around 2 of the walls. We have a funky half wall with a column on it to brace the ceiling. PLUS, who the hell thought of the idea to make one part of the chair rail on the 3rd wall facing the kitchen and under the bar 12 inches long!? How the fuck do I paint that? Do I paint the wall the green or Kitten white?

I didn't. I yanked that bastard of a chair rail off the wall and got out the trusty spackle can. I am a professional with spackle. Give me a hole any size and I can fix it with spackle and other handy stuff.

Ok, so decided to paint under the chair rail and the half wall and the area under the bar a color called "Kitten White". Yes, that's the color. Kind of a dirty grey white.

Oh yeah, the chair rail will be the ultra white too.

So now I have a sophisticated living/dining area that is functional, yet a good area for having guests over.

We finally get the furniture on 10/9. YAY, a couch! A dresser for our clothes! We are currently living out of bags. I can't find half of my clothes.

One day we will have this place fixed up nice enough to have people over.

We held our annual veterinary tech program for the group I belong to here in VA yesterday. The whole thing was a FUBAR from beginning to end. Many of us thought it should be cancelled, but we did it despite the goings on. (this is why we need committees for handling this, not one person)

Of course I get stuck helping out in registration. Yay. This is probably the worst area to get assigned to. You never know if they are on the list, have they sent in their money on time, what is their license number ect.. People get ugly.

Yes, I ran into 2 problems. But they were rather funny. Funny to the point I had to turn around and do the silent laugh and then regain my composure and start again:

A group shows up for the conference and they are NOT on the list. What does one girl do? She literally STOMPS her foot and spins around with her arms in the air yelling " I KNEW IT!! I KNEW IT!!" Me? I raised an eyebrow and told her to calm down and attempted to look through other papers for a reciept of some sort. PLUS I told her that her group just might get in for free so CHILL! (did I mention I was not in charge of all of this? I just got stuck helping out in that area)

The girl proceeds to cross her arms and tap her foot as if the world had ended (this is where I start to lose it). I turn to the other tech at the table with me and tell her the situation. Her eyes got real big and then she says, "I know who they are!! Hang on! I have their folders! They're just not on the list." (phew)

Now what made me laugh at this situation is that I could not take the girl seriously. Why? She had a moustache like Scott. Only it was so thick in the middle of her lip, right under her nose that I caught myself wanting to stare. Then I felt rather ill after. Um... ever hear of waxing? Elase? Bic? Yeah, she was probably from a remote area of VA. *shudders* Or a least the missing link.

My second encounter was 5 people behind this group. An older gentleman come up to the table and I hand him his folder. He looks at his folder and with an irritated voice goes: "My last name is spelled wrong. It only has ONE 'M'".

"Um, ok, that's nice", I say.

"YOU need to fix it", he says. So I take his folder from him and scribble out one of the "M"s and hand it back to him. "All fixed!" Big smile from me. "Enjoy the conference!" (grin)

People just get to me that are like that. But yesterday, I could not help myself but look past it and laugh.

Yeah ok, moving sucks. It's not the actual moving part of it. It's the part that you want to wring each other's neck for stupid little things. Most of it is personal tension.

My cats are upset. Upset so much that Coconut got lost on the steps last night. She has never seen stairs before and could not figure out where to go. Getting up at 2 am going "COCONUT!!! Up here!!!" is not fun. Not to mention that the house is so damn dark that Scott fell down the steps this morning ass first. *bumpity, thumpity THUMP!*

I can't find Ajax tonight. He needs his pills. Ted wants to eat Ajax's pills for him, but I told him no.

The Oscar is mad at me too. He got banged up in the move. He has a nice new 36 gallon tank, and has taken refuge between 2 large rocks. Not in the cave I made him. Damn fish. Not only that, but I managed to pack my fish net before moving the fish. Smart move right? So sunday I had to catch this fish with a glass measuring cup. It wasn't easy, but it got done.

Goblin has decided to take over the entire house as hers. She is the queen right now. Ted is cool with things. It took him 6 hours to get out of his cat carrier, but at least he is out and about now.

The apartment still as so much crap in it right now I have no idea what to do next.

Scott has made my computer 'wireless' which is soooo cool. I have such an awsome husband words cannot describe it cause my computer is now wireless and I am totally helpless with computers and he is such a computer god and I must worship him day and night. (phew-say that all in one breath!)

*He told me I had to post kudo points for him :)*

But yeah, moving sucks. I don't plan on moving for several more years again.

Gotta love the press. Jason Mewes, the actor people thought was dead? He was in Malibu just last month, and is going to be in W. Va next month. AMCGLTD would like to take this time out to express these thoughts to all press monkies everywhere:

YOU! Yes You! Get off your f*cking ass and step out of your f*cking office and go out into the F*CKING world some time before you print something. We know that to you the library was just a great place to score dope and hit on chicks when you were working on your journalism degree, but now you got a job that requires RESEARCH. You know R-E-S-E-A-R-C-H? Those funny oblong things actually open up and TELL YOU THINGS.

We know it's very, very hard to realize, but sometimes you can't just wait for a press release to feed you the news. We know this will come as a shock to you, but sometimes the people who put out those press releases have agendas. Yes, they can sometimes even lie. Oh stop crying. We know that lying to you, as guardians of Ultimate Truth, is an unforgivable sin, but there it is.

In spite of what you tell each other at your stupid little parties and preppy little bars, you are not smarter than we are. Many of us are quite a bit smarter, and we are deeply annoyed that you seem to be trying to make the rest of the world stupid.

Buy a clue. Do some goddamned research. Quit picking your noses and regurgitating press releases and actually DO YOUR F*CKING JOB.

MMkay?

Ok. I want every blogger out there who reads this site to go right now and download (then install) the latest version of Netscape's browser (I think it's 7.2), and then test your site against it. Some of you will find your site doesn't display properly, and others not at all. I tend to use IE at home, but at work I'm a Netscape guy, and it bugs me when my favorite blogs make me go and open a different browser window. It's a free download, so what's stoppin' ya?

We test against the two major browsers (and if anyone out there running Opera or some other "one-off" is having trouble, let me know), and you should too!

3 days to go till we are home owners. Final calls,letters ect.. are being made.

I'm ready to pull my hair out though. At least the mortage broker and real estate agent are making this transition totally smooth for us. (thank god!)

Hopefully everything will be fixed(gas leak) by friday for us so we can start moving in!

5 more days till Scott and I and 5 cats become home-owners. It's getting exciting. I've already started to pack. My living space is loaded with boxes to the point it's kinda uncomfortable to move around.

I've also started to purge the clothes. Do I/him wear it? If not, TOSS. ect... you know how it goes.

I have a cooler in the car to move the oscar, and a real small cooler for the other fish in the closet.

My goal is to have lots of stuff moved out this weekend. Pack shit up, drive it over, and set minor things up.

I'm excited. Scott even FOUND the Target one exit down from us using back roads. Holy HUGE Target!!! We can't find our way back to the new place yet, but we will eventually get it.

I will keep you all posted.

So far just a rumor, but an awful one if true. It would appear some wingnut at SciFi has decided to cancel Farscape. Easily the most entertaining show on that network, and arguably the best SF show on TV right now, the decision is just amazing. Write your letter today!

Update: Fixed the link. Looks more and more true. Browder says "they're gonna take a chainsaw to [the sets]" no later than next week. Co-incidence this hits the fan on a weekend? I don't think so. Let's all show 'em not to dink with rabid nerdy fans. Mention it on your blogs if you have them and Write! Write! Write!

An interview with the family of a suicide bomber from Imshin (found via Yourish), puts a very human face on a horrific tragedy.

Filed under Angst, because death is never Cool. I need to get an "interesting" category worked up.

Just found out this morning that Pat Braden died last night, apparently of a heart attack. Braden authored "The Alfa Romeo Owners Bible", the very first how-to book I ever found on Alfas. He personally gave me encouragement and insight while I was authoring my own Alfa "magnum opus", The Alfa Romeo Spider FAQ. He was a real stand-up guy, and was always willing to contribute and help folks out. He will be missed.

No matter how big of a crisis you may think you're in, something like this always puts it in perspective.

Yeah, Ok, I turned 26 today. Shit! Where did the time go? I remember being in high school, college ect.. When I look back, it does not seem like a long time ago, but it is. College was 6 years ago! *ack!!*

I did have a good B-day. I got cards of course, some phone calls, and of course PreSSies!! I LOOOVE pressies.

Hrmmm..."what did you get Ellen?" Oh! such a question to ask me! I will tell you.

I got money! *thanks to all the relatives that sent me a few bucks to add to the cat fundage! :)*
I got a gold bangle from my Southern Mama! *bangles are neat things...the more the merrier!* This is my first real gold bangle and it is a NICE one :) I also got a card from the "Grumpy Old Man"-aka Corky the wiener dog!

Now I will say I am spoiled by many people. 2 of which are very guilty of it *you KNOW who you are :)* I am so spoiled that I got a pair of diamond earrings (of course from Scott) for my B-day. *sweet huh?* Nice big diamonds too. Nice enough to see that it is ALL diamond on a small post. Not a set that you are like " is there a diamond hidden in that silver bracket placed on the gold post?" This is a sweet set. I love sparkley stuff! I was a crow in my former life* Everyone needs a husband like Scott. Everyone I know always wonders how I make out with such neat pressies. Ok, my secret: I got a Southern Mama that will STEER her boy in the right direction and give him no other option, PLUS I tell people at work *to see their eyes bug out* that marrying an older man makes you all set for you personal "sugar daddy". ** EvIl Grin!** Everyone NEEDS a Southern Mama. Especially one that loved you from Day 1. XXXOOO *Thanks Again Mama!!!*

My cats did not shit on my carpet, which was a nice B-day gift. :) Thanks P.U.S.S.!!!! :) Oskar is also behaving today too. *sigh of relief*

All in all, thanks to all that wished me a Happy B-day. It gives me a warm fuzzy!

Apologies for the tech-heavy angst, but here goes:

So I managed to keep IIS off my network for a good four years, but eventually <pachino>they pulled me back in </pachino>. Now the boss wants to track traffic on the bloody, git-spawned (did I do that right robert UK? :) ) thing. If this were apache, I'd pick up any one of a dozen different freeware analyzers and have fun. But this ain't one of those. Anybody out there got experience with traffic analyzers for IIS? This is a server we own, I'd prefer an analyzer that just serves web pages that contain traffic analysis. Cost isn't *much* of an Please comment below. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!

Well, looks like we're losing a cast member on West Wing. The nice thing about this is since it's an ensemble cast, the show definitely won't go down the tubes. Still, considering how much money NBC is making on this thing you'd think everyone would be walking out and demanding more money. Dinky-assed Friends castmates get XX million bucks per show nowadays, and I think West Wing is lots better (even funnier).

Now if they can just keep Sorkin from snorting coke at the airport...

I have decided to self tan myself tonight. I have no idea why I picked today, but I cannot sleep. I just finished exfoliating in the tub, so why not give it a go.

So I am trying Coppertone "Endless Summer" Sunless Tanning Lotion. You can go to Coppertone and check their stuff out.

I have decided NOT to real tan this year only because it will fade my tattoo and Scott says I'm going to look like a leather sack in 30 years. I have debated WHAT kind of self tanner I wanted. I KNOW I did not want any that was dark in color (I want a tan, not a whole new ethnicity) so I went with a light/medium tan.

So now I have slathered myself silly with this great smelling tanner. * Scott had to do my back cause I can't reach it*.

Now I have to wait 30 minutes.

So we want to go on vacation, see? We haven't been anywhere other than this area and family areas (New York [scott sez UGH!], Arkansas [ellen sez UGH!]) since our Jamaica-mon wedding in 99. I'd like to go to Rome, see where the emperors used Christians to light their gardens. Ellen says "no, no, you want to see where my ancestors tossed your ancestors into pits with lions". This is Ellen's version of humor. :)

But the problem is that Rome is $$$. We're talking $2500+ easy, not including airfare.

So Ellen wants to go to an island. Any old island will do. As long as it has a beach with which she can do her imitation of a lizard and bask all day [blink... blink...] I say that's a cool way to get lots of fun skin cancer, plus we did that already. And it's not a heck of a lot cheaper than Rome.

So we thought about Iceland, but just for a bit. We can't find packages that are all that cheap, and I'm not so sure traveling somewhere cold for the summer is all that great an idea. Still, they advertise cheap packages on the radio every once in awhile, so this one's still on the short list.

Then we turned to Disney World. No, we don't have kids, but my mom thinks we're just barely grown up enough to take care of cats, so I guess we count as kids. Ellen hasn't been there in 10, 12 years, and I haven't been there in 25 years (yup mom, jeff, that was in 1978). So we did some serious research into that bit.

But then we both realized that we're trying to save up for a house this year, so now it looks like we may end up piggy-backing off a cousin's wedding in New Jersey. Ellen is happy because she gets to wear makeup and jewelry on the beach (Ellen: "what the hell is wrong with wearing makeup on the beach?!?") But it's in October, so not much beach fun then.

So we're kinda stuck. Looks like vacation is next year, but then Ellen has decided next year is baby year dammit (Ellen: "you have also agreed that next year is baby year" Me: "Yes mistress, whatever you wish mistress" [genuflect]), so traveling may be out then too.

Ah well. Enough navel gazing for today. Just wanted to vent for a bit :).

Thank the gods Scott comes home tonight! I'm sure you all are SICK of my stupid shit postings this past week. What can I say, I didn't want all of you to hear me boo-hooing that I was lonely and had no other human contact in person outside of work. I got cats, they are good company. But, they don't talk back. At least they don't get bored by my conversation and wonder when I am bringing out more tea and crumpets to munch on while I blow my nose into some tissues. *Thanks Magrat for being ultra supportive to the only human that feeds your fat little black cat ass when you demand it*

I don't like to sleep by myself I found out. I need a heating blanket. Scott could generate so much heat I would have to toss a leg out of the sheets just to cool off some. Yeah, yeah, Ajax slept with me. * I think it was mostly his new medication making him so friendly-buspar does wonders*

I exercised my self sick this week that I'm ready to take a week off from it. Though I probably shouldn't. My diet this week consisted of oreos, soup, cheese sticks, cheese and crackers, water, water, water, oreos, water. * I RAN OUT of soda- and of course I was too lazy to go to the store* Oh yeah, and grapes.

Did I mention I LOST the flight info. Though now that I think of it, its probably not that important. Its most likely the only flight from Cincinnati flying in on a Delta plane. I know he comes in like 8 somthing. OOOOPS!

This day has gone on too long. I totally cannot wait for him to come home *awwww- sick isn't it? and people think I'm so nasty to him*

I am going next year. I NEED a vacation. I want to go on a trip. I need to get out of here.

This was an interesting bit I found today. Basically it takes several bible entries and compares them to other entries from other authors of the bible. *cause all the bible entails are a compilation of stories from that were written down by a select few that decided to finally write down stories that were being told for centuries.

But it is rather interesting on how different people read or rather interpret the same situation differently.

Bible Contradictions

Did you know that 60% of the US population is overweight? Thats just adults. Kids run from 10-30% overweight. So whats wrong with us? Is it our diets *yes*, is it our hate of exercise *yes*. Lots of factors contribute to it.

On my street alone, there is 2 McDonalds, 4 Starbucks, 2 Icecream shops, and 2 grocery stores. Lots of temptation. I will FULLY admit I am a total snacker. I'd rather snack 50 times a day than eat full meals. I can never finish my meals as it is, they are too friggin big. * Scott has seen me inahale a very large meal before. Usually only if I have not eaten ANYTHING all day. Yeah, I have a very bad habit of running on empty all day then eat one huge meal at night*

They say the cause of fat is your genes. Is it? I don't think so. Well, what about the fat virus? Nope,sorry. If there is a fat gene or a fat virus, what about the thin gene or the thin virus? Most of america is so bent on obesity. What about the people that are already thin that don't think they are thin enough? I'm a size 5 and to me, thats not small enough. I met Scott when I was a size 3. The biggest I have ever gotten was 140 pounds 4 years ago. I have been a consistant 120 pounds for the last 3 years. Still not small enough. I want to see my 110-115 pound self.

But then again, why am I bent on weight?? I always preach, "don't go by the scale, go by how your clothes fit". Oops! Should I admit I weight myself daily at work on the dog scale in the front lobby?

I have 30 exercise videos and DVD's. My living room is my gym. I have 2 aerobic steps, 2 barbell sets, a yoga ball, and a large variety of dumbells. Ok, is there somthing wrong with me? Is my desire to be thin wrong?

Ok, I just don't want to be thin, I want to be thin and muscular. I love the look. Most people don't, I do. One reason WHY I am not there yet is a complete weakness for chocolate. Especially M&M's. * goddamn little candy coated chocolate demons!*

I will admit taking a belly dance class has taught me to appreciate the body I have. I just cover the parts I DON'T like. Yes, I have parts I hate. *legs legs legs- I hate them. Too short, too chunky,too stocky, elephant knees, olive branch toting ankles..shall I continue?* I've come to appreciate that it took me 3 years to get where I am now. It will probably take me another 2 years to get where I want. I'd rather exercise all day then work.

I have this horrible feeling of guilt when I eat pasta now*actually most of my food I feel that way*. I am fucking italian, and I am not nuts about pasta. I can't stand spaghetti anymore. I'm sick of it. I don't see a meal. I see strands of simple carbs that star back at me saying they are going straight to my ass, and all the calories I burnt earlier working out are going to hop right back on board. But I don't feel bad when that ice cream comes out of the freezer. I could eat that stuff all day.

So yeah, somthing is not right in my noggin. I never said I was perfect. I am far from it. Is it MY fault that I am this way? Should I blame society for making me neurotic over food? Everyone else does. Should I just sit back and take everything in stride and not worry as much? Should I eat WHATEVER I want, but only in small amounts so I don't wind up doing my signature binge and purge?

I think it is rather funny how you can watch TV on a saturday morning and its NOTHING but informercials. All FITNESS and WEIGHT LOSS oriented informercials. You have the FIRM *which is a frigging hard exercise program*, and all of the gadgets you can imagine up for sale. There is even a new exercise program designed for the shape of your body.

Scott hates to work out. He does not like to compete with me. He will go for a 2 mile walk with me. *I still don't feel very accomplished at the end of the walk and will work out for another hour after the walk* We also will bike. He likes the fun stuff. Now don't get me wrong, I like having fun when I work out, but I want every fiber in my body hurting to tell me that I did some muscle damage and that it is going to repair itself bigger and better than before.

So is it all my fault? Probably. But I can be like everyone else out there and blame somthing else.

WOW! I've got such a wonderful husband! Not only can he manage to put a post up on the web, BUT he doesn't email his wife. Clever guy. Must be that convention muddling his head. He tends to get sticky at these times. Though I will say I am upset that I don't get to watch people run a registration desk again that have no idea what customer service entails. Too bad I couldn't get off work. I probably won't get a phone call either tonight.
1. its too expensive
2. who the fuck knows when the hell he will be in his room, cause he is either A. dorking with convention shit. or B. out having a good time and just forgot.
As Scott would say, "poor Ellen, no one loves her". Well the small things count when somone is alone and is dependent on somone else for company no matter how annoying they can be. Gee, would be nice to have a email or virtual kiss-not alot of work ya know *HINT!*

You owe me big time buddy. That 'key' cost $30 bucks to send out. I'd better get somthing 'cat like' in my hands when you come home.

Not only do I have to find stuff to keep me busy, I can't seem to get any of my friends to go out to dinner with me this week. Nice right.

Hrmm....how many times CAN I listen to the ABBA album tonight? So far we are up to 3 times since I've been home. Catchy.

Must come up with more things to do... already waxed eyebrows almost all off *got carried away* and did the brazilian wax thing * no pool to sit next too in a tiny suit cause the pool cost $100 fucking bucks this year*

I know. I'll just exercise till I drop, that works. I like sleeping on the floor. Can a person survive on just oreos and water?

I have a cat that is being TOO affectionate ever since this new anti-anxiety med has taken effect. *side effect in pharmacology book- can cause extreme affection* I will have to say, I DON'T have to close the bathroom door this week. This means I don't have to 'announce' I am using the bathroom and have 2-3 cats come in with me, and get outright upset when I don't invite them in.

How many days left? 5? Shit. I'm already bored. I don't have anyone to yell at.

Should have mailed the wrong key. That would make his undies turn inside out on their own. - yeah,ok I'm depressed.

Ok, I officially hate the TIVO right now. It won't let me change the channel while recording. BUH-BYE recording. YEAH, YEAH, I called Scott and left a message. Plus I know better than to override the Farscape show on friday.

The house is quiet, except for the cats that have a hissy-spitty with each other on ocassion. Ajax in NICE and quiet. He has a new medication! *WOO-HOO* I know, not nice of me to rejoyce. BUT, if he was pissing on your carpet just because, you would feel the SAME way. He is now on Buspar! Yes, the anit-anxiety drug.

I get to walk around the house naked without getting jumped. I get to practice my belly dance stuff over and over again. I get to do lots of stuff.. got lots of time...yeah, thats it.

One thing that does change when Scott goes off on convention, is that ALL of the cats will sleep with me on the bed. Cat extacy!

But yea, I am lonely. I have no one to yell at Scott would say.

I'm still miffed about the TIVO though.

Why do directors and producers feel they have to remake a movie?? Was it not good enought the first time?

My favorite italian movie SWEPT AWAY starring Giancarlo Giannini is being remade by Madonna's husband. Of course, with her starring in it. So far it has been dubbed as a flop. Mind you this is from a tabloid, so think about it before you go racing off to tell your firends!

Why change Swept Away in the first place? The whole charm of that movie was 2 very angry italian people beating the shit out of each other on a deserted island.

Another plus of the movie was that it was in italian.

Why put poor Madonna in it also? Ever since her first movie critics have hated her just because she couldnt act. Maybe she took acting lessons since then? I have no idea.

Like I said, WHY do people have to make remakes of a movie that just don't need it.

More about this movie

This is the REAL Swept Away starring Giancarlo Giannini. Check that out to see a real italian flix!

Happy Summer Everyone!!!

Now that it is summer, it's also the dreaded *bathing suit* season. GACK!!!! I'd rather be dragged behind a truck on a dirt road than have to wear a bathing suit in public.

Here is a quick article on the History of the Bathing Suit

My biggest question is this, WHY do people who should NOT be wearing almost next to nothing decide to do so? I'm trying not to be that cruel here, but I have a point. Well maybe I don't. Perhaps I'm too into that *thin* or *athletic* look vs a beached whale look?

I think everyone that wants to buy a bathing suit should make an appointment with a professional bathing suit type person and get the right suit the first time. Ya know, one that COMPLIMENTS your body. Not one that shows off all the stuff other people DON'T want to see.

Ok, OK, I know some of you out there are like, "fucking bitch, you are probably a stick figure and have no idea what a REAL woman's body looks like". Well fuck yourself, I do know. I am Italian. I am a small person, with stocky little legs and fat ass ankles. * I was reincarnated when Pompeii decided to pop off and my fat little legs could not tote those damn olives down the mountain fast enough* I KNOW when clothes do not look good on me. I don't TRY to look good in something I know wont work. That goes for skimpy suits.

Mind you, I'm NOT fat, or remotely overweight. I am muscular. But I'm short, so that does not help much. In real life, I am a size 5. Clothes either fit great in the ass or waist, but never both at the same time. That brings me back to bathing suits. It either fits you one place or another.

Hence us small people tend to be not so well endowed up top. Might as well toss out the triangle bikini top right? They tend to have TOO much fabric up there but not enough on the bottom. Not everyone that wear the suits that the model shows you is a size 0.

Color, style, cut, fabric all so important. I mean who wants to buy a nice new suit for over 50 bucks, sit at the side of the pool and get those nasty pulls in the ass of your suit? If that happens, march back to the damn store and demand your money back. Most likely the suit will fall apart in the sink once you wash it.

Have more than one suit. One to swim in and one to look cute and tan in. *tanning is bad m-kay?* Scott says I will look like a leather sack if I keep tanning. So this year, tanning is off. Well, tanning on purpose that is. Walking outside for my exercise and putting tanning lotion on all the exposed bits don't count.

So that brings us to skin care. Wear sunscreen, period. I have yet to go to the Estee Lauder counter to get myself a NICE sunscreen that does not smell like tanning lotion. I'd prolly wear more of the stuff if it wasn't as sticky.

Still want that swimsuit? Pick it out right ok?

Still want that flawless tan? Yeah ok, who doesn't. My Italian grandmother Emily *aka- Nanny* was gorgeous with her deep dark black top tan * we didn’t have a grassy back yard in Yonkers, NY*. She had the PERFECT tan. Ultra dark, exotic, and totally complimentary to her Italian heritage. Made you think she walked off the beach next to the Mediterranean Sea. Still, most people tanning like that will end up like that leather sack Scott likes to talk about. Using a self tanner is the safest way to go. I kinda want to try one, BUT, I KNOW I would fuck it up. End up all streaky and orange. It's bad enough I change my hair color like my panties *all the time ok! you freaks!?*

Ok, so if you HAVE to and NEED to get that bathing suit, go ahead and do so. But please, don't expose the rest of us to bathing suit NO NO's.

Be safe, have a great summer.

Just when I think I really do have something clear and cogent to say about the world, I read something like this, which is to my Pax Americanum what a battleship is to a canoe. Ah well, I guess it's God's way of making sure I stay humble. Very humble. Maybe there is something to this PhD stuff after all?

It's a good read, even if it's very long. People think I'm long winded, I got nothing on this guy. And don't get too upset by the first 1/3rd, as he changes course 180 degrees at that point.

Found it over at Prentiss Riddle's site.

A friend called me at midnight tonight. Yeah.. I WAS sleeping, but she had to call me. This friend is trying this Match.com stuff. Ya know, a virtual personal ad. Now I can't sleep, so I might as well rant about this. :)

So many online ads to choose from. She comes into work everyday with printed out stats, photos, and emails from these guys. She has the first date with some, and ends it there if there is no attraction outside the 'stats' she has gotten online.

One person, has apparently has her twitterpated *in love* for the past week now. Tomorrow was supposed to be the first date, but he just HAD to see her tonight. The feeling was mutual.

Needless to say, this friend just got over a bad relationship several weeks ago and is ready to date again. I mean, who wouldn't want to get on with their lives right?

So she is now totally twitterpated. This is a person who tells me everyday she hates children. Now she is ready to have his. He is everything she has wanted apparently. Now I don't know alot about him. He is a very nice person from what I hear. He likes to talk dirty, but what online guy doesn't right? RIGHT???

Men are perverts. They play those little head games to get at you. Make you twitterpated and fall hopelessly in love with them. Plus they spend the REST of their lives trying to make you happy. One false fuck up and all can be lost.

But once you have fallen in love and got that squiffy kinda of butterfly like feelings over someone, the feeling is addictive. You don't want it to end.

But how do you know this is not a head game right? I mean, what if he was just looking for some action, got what he wanted and never calls again? Cruel right? Well yeah. Apparently he was just as twitterpated. So only one can hope all works out well. He is divorced, no kids. She is single, has lots of pets. Perfect match? I dunno. Both are sexually aggressive, so that is a point right there. Both like simpler things in life, and would rather spend the day in the park with the dogs than go to the beach. Point.

Maybe both are done dating and playing around with other people and ready to get on with their lives? All I know, is now I have to deal with someone walking on Cloud 9 until the feeling ends. She has called her mother to tell her to reserve the church, she wants this guy.

Hey, ya never know. It may work out.

Scott and I did.

So I've found this webreview site that looks at bloggs like this and rates 'em. But I'm feeling a little insecure about nominating us. $5 buys us a review that may say we suck the chrome off ball bearings. But it may bring us "more eyes". So I dunno.

Other folks have advised "find other bloggs like yours, then get cross-linked up", but the thing is we don't seem to be much like other bloggs. Most (but not all) seem to be run exclusively by 30-something single women discussing their... ugh... "feelings". Being a lunk-headed caveman with barely enough brains to get out of bed (MEN: Good for Auto Maintenance and Heavy Lifting --Pat Johnson), I don't feel I really have much in common with that crowd.

So if any of you out there have any tips, or if ya run your own weblog and want to cross-link, let's talk!

Did you know that Jesus works for PETA? Yep, he is still an odd fuck*did you know he is a baptist?*, that does not wear fur. BUT will go about a wave a sign on the side of the road for PETA!

He also likes carrots

JUST AS A WARNING TO ALL YOU RELIGIOUS FREAKS OUT THERE....I WILL MAKE FUN OF YOU. I'M CATHOLIC, I KNOW I'M GOING TO HELL NO MATTER WHAT.

Ok, I want to get this done. It's called Lasik

Check out the website. It's pretty neat. I'm really considering to have this done.

Soon

Scott asked me to write about this because it bothers me on a very deep level. PS. I've had several drinks...

I hate family. Not that I hate family as in "don't ever visit me muther fucker" but as in, * do I REALLY have to deal with this?* Always the answer is yes. Isn't this the reason WHY I moved from NY? Isn't this the reason Scott moved from Arkansas? Always the answer is yes.

Now don't get me wrong, I love my family with undying devotion on both sides. *mess with me and I will wear a fucking RED dress to your funeral. Understand?*, but I will come.

Apparently you are not kewl in certain parts of your family unless you have children. *Grandcats don't count, unless you are grandma and have been brainwashed by the 'eyetalian' princess* Hence less family visits, *cause no one gives a shit about the grand cats.* Scott and I are not financially ready. We live in a too small of a place, with 5 cats. *We can barely breathe ourselves.* But family on both sides are wondering when it will happen. Hopefully next year, ok ppl???? We are shooting for a fall/winter 2003 baby. House first, baby next. Those are Ajax's demands. Plus I must get my Oh-so-cute bod in preparation. *must remain a size 5* Scott and I got our first tastes of outcast-ism at his grandmother's funeral. *or it could be due to the fact that I am a goddamn NY hottie and some southern chicks had to compete with me*, OR that I wore fuchsia to a funeral... HEY!!! it's an OK color to wear in a NY funeral OK!!!???

Family sucks. It really does. I look at my dad and his kids, and I should be their Aunt. I'm 20 something years older. That means I'll be in my 40's when they are in their late teens, early 20's. That's just not right. My sister, who is 15, is jealous of me when I visit. When all I do is sit and cross stitch at the kitchen table with my mom while Nina is typing away on the computer to friends downstairs.

I look at my sister and brother in law and wonder why I can't have a house and a family already, and then real life spins back in to tell me that I live in a HIGH COST area, and that typically a 75$ a month kid turns into a 150$ kid per month. I do my math. I'm not dumb. That's one reason WHY I can't have a baby, and it hurts. It hurts to hear my husband say that his dad may NOT be around to see our kid because of it.

It's wonderful to see an 'eyetalian' family LOVE a southerner like they have known him all his life. As if he has been mine forever. It's wonderful to feel a southern mama love her yankee daughter-in-law and take her with a grain of salt and look at her like some alien oddity, yet accept her for who she is.

I think we have come a long way.

Yet family seems to intercede. Almost worming it's way into your most intimate thoughts. They seem to rule. And it's hard. You cannot take sides, yet you try. You try VERY hard, almost brainwashing yourself so. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it feels good to escape them. Most of the time it does.

I was NEVER asked to the prom. I was a total and still am a geek.

My sister is going to the prom tonight with a friend *Tom with the purple hair*. Scott says this is her last night of being a girl. I say no.. let make a bet, shall we??

BTW- my sister is 16, and I hope to GOD she is not dumb enough to fall for that horny teenager shit. I know I waited till Iwas.....19 * oh my god!! Scott is a total cradle robber!!!!!*- good thing I was legal :)

My brother is going to shit in his pants! My bother is a total follower of the Ramones. And now This?

I'm looking into having my Cruiser being given a face/body lift. I was wanting to go hot rod kinda look. But everyone seems to be wanting to do that. Plus it can get way expensive, especially with paint--and once I go that route, there is no turning back.

So, I'm looking into vinyl applications. There is a small company called Demon Wurkz that I have been in contact with to do me a design for my car.

Of course it will have to have a cat theme. But not a girly foo foo design. Somthing morbid. After all, its my mini cat hearse! I just need to put some black curtains in the inside too.

I'll keep you all posted on the updates on it. See what will actually happen. My car will be celebrating its 2nd b-day with me in September, so I wanted to do somthing special.

PLUS! its time for a new tattoo. I can hear it now..."she is doing what again to her body??"

I'll keep ya posted.

Yeah, Ok, you better read Scott's version on the day.

NO, I don't agree with him on all aspects. I do fully admit I am short tempered and have a very small fuse. Hey, it's fucking genetic OK? I am not a patient person. I have never said I was, never will be, so don't expect it ok?

Yes, I was VERY happy that for ONCE Scott and I have been trusted to take a couple kids out to have a good time. NO, it did not kill Janet to leave the boys with us. She was more concerned if we wanted "that kind of trouble". I'd do it again with them despite all the bickering. I had a blast. *especially getting to ride the Merry GO Round. I've always wanted to go on that goddamned thing* For some reason, Scott and I must look like 2 people that cannot handle children, let alone play with them unsupervised. We get the same reaction from both sides, and I tell you, it hurts. It hurts on a very deep level.

I did find it rather funny at the end of the day when we show up to their friends house in Potomac, MD, that they were all standing in the driveway waiting for us. Dad and Janet got concerned when we did not show up exactly at 5. Dad made a comment of getting nervous because I have a horrible tendency to be exactly on time, and never late.

I had a good time. I got sunburned even with and SPF 30 being applied rather liberally. I had a good time even though I had to help tote around two rather too large T-Rex stuffed animals all day.

What does get me, and I don't think Scott will EVER understand is, that when I see my younger siblings get spoiled to the point that they start taking things for granted- it gets to me.*hence having extremly puffy eyes after visiting my family* It gets to me in ways that I will remain upset for days. I see this in both my younger brothers and sister. Why didn't I ever get that? How come I always had to be a grown up, even when I was a kid. They all still expect that from me.

Perhaps this is one of my really weird desperations in wanting my OWN family. NO its NOT the same to play with someone elses kid. Im sorry. It just isn't. Playing isn't fun. Getting out there and giving a new experience is. As you read this, you will think "wow, some deep jealously there"-almost resentful. Well, perhaps. And you know what? I really don't care. You aren't me, you will never be me. You will never know what is really spinning inside my head on this. Perhaps you really dont care. And, I don't really care what you think.

ps. Counsling does not help or even remotefully tinker on the subject. Been there, done that, wearing the fucking t-shirt OK!? *cause I know the little voice in your head is saying "you need some counsling*

This day in history.
May 30 1431

Joan of Arc is burned at the stake, ostensibly because she "heard voices" and refused to wear female clothing. * compliments of The Rotten Daily*

1. it was very bad in that era to wear stuff you just weren't supposed to.( cause you may just look better in those pants)*though, men of the church are allowed to wear dresses--oops! no no....cloaks*
2. 'hearing voices' from God was an act of heresy, not what some people nowadays would call it 'mental illness'.
3. a supposed 'prophet' *hey ya never know-but men did not like that idea for probably the sole reason that she was a girl!*
4. canonized as a saint in the 1900's. wow, takes a long time to determine what makes a miracle real. * ya got to take a break between those poker games to decide important stuff ya know*

Though in my opinion, she was most likely mentally ill. People were very stupid back then- even more so than today, and they would believe anything. You don't see people now a days walking up to the crack-addict supposed prophet on the sidewalk proclaiming he is the second coming. If you do, find the nearest toilet and drown yourself. Schizophrenia and some forms of manic depression can cause delusions/illusions and voices.(where is Zyprexa when ya need it) Hell, and if you are smart enough, you get people to play along! You don't get tossed in some asylum to rot away(not yet at least)

But if it is all true that she was hearing the voice of god, no one would ever really know. Mainly because the church proclaimed her a heretic, therefore if you were a devout church follower, the church IS right. *or you go to hell- say your penance please*

No one will ever really know. I suggest you take it they way you want to see it.

People are just stupid. Especially stupid people owning pets. I love them so much that I have calculated that they have WaStEd about 3 years of my life.

People think that pets should just sit there and look pretty. They should take care of themselves, let alone become full time servents for them. Its the OTHER way around people. You are the servent to your pet.

Wanna pet? Wanna sleep ever again? DON'T get a pet.

Why Pets LIKE to Fuck Around With You When You TRY To Sleep

For those of you that lead a life of denial to this fact, I highly recommend getting somthing else other than a live critter to entertain you. You can go purchase a stuffed animal in place of a real pet. They are economical, don't shed, and they don't even like to eat! Hey! That leaves more money for you to buy some dildo another drink at that bar! ~WOW! ~ Think of the money you will save in the end!

As for you people that actually accept your pet for what it is, a family member: You are smart enough to devise tactics around being disturbed at night. *NO- closing the bedroom door does not count- that's for pussies!* That also tells me you are not very smart to begin with and probably therefore you should give up your pet instantly to the next smartest human standing next to you. But then again, if you are a stupid person, you may make a bad choice anyway. Hire a smart person, they know how to hold hands professionally!~

Be clever, be tactful, succumb to every demand to your pet makes, *especially cats-they plot your death daily, but figure out its easier to keep you because you clean the shit box and feed them.* You should just come to the fact you will lose some sleep from your pet. It's a fact of life, get over it. OR you can take the easy way out and NEVER own a pet.

Oh and by the way, the people that bitch over losing sleep over a pet? I hope you don't have children. You won't ever sleep again if you will. At least owning a pet you KNOW you will at least get 4-6 hours in there somewhere.

I hate weddings. Thats why I technically eloped. I hate planning them, I hate going to them, I hate being in them. I HATE weddings.

Brides forget things, important things. ( I'll leave it at that). Brides also fail to tell the girls in the wedding party that the hairdresser does NOT accept credit cards, nor do they remember to tell the makeup artist that one person from Virginia is comming up and that she has to get colors ready for her too. Not to mention getting up at 4am is not a good thing.

I got my husband to dance at least. (yes, Scott actually danced! and slow ones too!- I was IMPRESSED) My mother made me dance just about everyother dance with her. Put it this way, my feet f*&ckin hurt! Dancing in heels all day is hard on your feet. -but I will admit I had some bad ass neat looking shoes. (My alter-ego, LOLA picked them out- OH JHEA!!!)

I got to visit with my grandmother. She is a complete character in her own right, and is deaf as a post. My mother's cat Lovie, was entranced by her. Absoloutly in love. The cat never left her side the entire weekend. I also visited my dad and grandfather. It was also my younger brother's Holy Communion. (same day as the wedding, so you can imagine how tired we were)

We came home today. I got a good night sleep last night, but this is how tired I was. I went through the WRONG toll booth. Scott had to get out and walk to the toll building to get me a ticket for the Jesery Parkway. Its not over, get this. I then go down the WRONG exit! YES! I head NORTH again instead of SOUTH. Scott did not say a word, he just noticed he never saw that factory before. I was sitting there going, "How the F*&ck did I end up at exit 13?" Needless to say, I had to turn around and head south. Then I missed getting off at a rest area. Had to travel another 23 miles before the next one. Then (thank the gods) Scott took over driving.

I told you it was a bad weekend. To top it off, I still have to go to dance class tonight. There is severe weather warnings now until late tonight. Yeppers, we are in tornado watches again.( WEATHER UPDATE: good thing we are NOT on the road, Rockville just had a tornado touchdown and is now heading to Baltimore-I am glad I am not on the road right now getting caught in some rain and NOT have my camera)

I am home, thats all that matters. My cats missed me. I still have to do laundry and unpack. BLEH!

My family is very proud of a family of Blue Birds they got to nest in this very special bird box in the back yard. So proud, they asked me if I wanted to look in the box to see the eggs. "Sure", I said. Billy goes and pops the top off of this bird box, I look in. "Billy, there are no eggs. " "WHAT!" *eyes pop out of head in a very dramatic way.

Apparently some other birds, (Wrens) like to wreck Blue Bird nests and then use them for themselves. We knew the Wrens did it. All the Blue Bird eggs were in the grass broken and there were some thick twigs in the bird box.

Billy pulled the old nest out, for the birds to start a new one.

I am in a friends wedding in NY this saturday. I don't want to be in it, but I am her friend. I got stuck being a brides maid. My dress cost $180 bucks (isnt the bride supposed to swing the cost on it?) The altering cost another $100. Shoes $24, matching purse $12, Jewelry $15. I BETTER look good, no I better look GREAT.

I have to be up at 5 am on saturday and go to the hairdressers to get my squirrels nest worked on. All I have to say is, she better not fuck up my curls. Most likely she will make them absoloutly stunning to the point I won't be able to replicate the look EVER AGAIN.

I am also paired up with someone who is over 6 feet tall. I'm only 5'2. Thats a good difference. I just hope I don't trip, since its a horrible habit I have especially on carpet.

Not only do I have to be in a wedding on saturday, but my younger brother is having his First Holy Communion. I HAVE to be there.

All I have to say is that its going to be a busy weekend. THEN I have a belly dance recital on the 19th from 6-9pm. BUSY BUSY BUSY. My costume is kewl though.

I'll keep ya posted

I have NOT had a good day today at all.

1. My damn Alfa Romeo had a dead battery. PLUS, someone siphoned all the fucking gasoline out of it. YUMMY! I hope they got fucking sick from it. Or at least got a nice tongue and throat burn. My favorite would be dying instantly from aspirating the gas and dying from the fumes. Oh well. Not much I can do right now. Bought a new battery, got more gas, car still runs. I'm STILL mad though.

2. I had to get my bride's maid dress fitted for my girlfriend's wedding I'm in. That cost 75 bucks, PLUS another 30 for a sewn in bra. I was told by the bridal party that I could wear a NORMAL bra (NOT). So, not only I bought a new battery for a car, I spent over 100 bucks on a dress to be altered. I do not look good in purple all over. I like accents of purple, or just one item to be purple. I have purple/blue skin undertones and boy do they show with this dress. Oh well, I only have to wear it once.

3. Goblin is sick. She has been moping around all afternoon and of course at 4:30 she had a temp of 104.0. A cat's normal temp is 100.0-102.5 So of course I had to call work, and call Dr V in to help me just in case this cat ate string or is blocked in any other way. My first instinct was a foreign object in her intestines since she is my vacuum cleaner and likes to eat shit she is not supposed to. Especially string and toilet paper. Just so you know, she has pylonephiritis (kidney infection). I had to take the I.V. pump home with me for fluid therapy, and give Ampicillin every 6 hours and Baytril every 12 hours. FUN FUN FUN. So now I have this pituful cat in the bathroom laying on her favorite towel wondering why she has this hose connected to her leg. This makes me want to sleep in the bathtub. I have to work tomorrow and now bring this cat in with me. Not only that, I have to check on this cat every hour to monitor her fluids. BTW- did I mention I had to do a barium series on this cat? Yeah, giving the cat radiopaque cherry flavored (YUM) solution to drink and takes some xrays over 3 hours. FUN.

Hopefully all will be OK as of tomorrow. I have not had a good week. This wonderful orange cat that I know named Darren has kidney stones and went in for surgery friday. (Please think of this kitty-he is so sweet, pray that he heals well). I have also had a nice dog come down with acute renal failure (mind you this is a dalmation,they are prone to kidney stones ect..) Please think of her too. She is a nice dog. Go figure, her name is Lucky. BTW- bad shit comes in 3's!! I'm done according to this curse.

Other than that... it was a busy day, busy week. BTW- Hugs and Kisses to MamaSmurff for sending me a most wonderful package in the mail today. I love the new kitty purse and umbrellla! Of course I dumped out my old purse and promptly filled this one up. Scott thinks its supposed to be a beach bag, I don't care if it is. It has cats on it, I'll tote it around! I LOVE IT! Thanks so much Mama!! XOXOXOXO

Let's hope next week is better.

Finally!! We have gotten out lives back to normal!! First my family, then Scott's. It's alot of work!

I think I'm done though for eating out for the week :) Even though I LOVE eating out. I have leftover chinese food in the fridge that I need to heat up tonight.

BTW- we had fun with ya Mama Smurff!! Thanks for the laundry being done, changing my sheets and keeping my kitties company while we had to work for 2 days. Plus, THANKS for all the other goodies. *HUGS*

This is about a FUCKING STUPID ASS MUTHER FUCKER!!!! I HOPE THE FUCK YOU AND YOUR WIFE ROTT IN HELL FOREVER FOR WHAT YOU HAVE DONE!

I HOPE THE FUCK YOU NEVER HAVE CHILDREN THAT LEARN HOW TO DO THIS TYPE OF SHIT! Obviously you DONT deserve to replicate. Obviously you are a low life piece of shit that should of ended your life a long time ago.

I HOPE THE FUCK ONE DAY YOU DIE A PAINFUL DEATH AND NO ONE GIVES A SHIT AND SPITS ON YOUR GRAVE. I KNOW I will.

Cat

Did I meantion I hope the fuck these people die?

*Breathe, breathe, breathe* This totally upsets me. I cannot even fathom WHY someone would do this and then blame "alcohol" for this. But ya know what? This goes to show you all criminals are fucking stupid and get caught. I mean how FUCKING DUMB are you to get this shit developed at a chain store!?? HOLY FUCKING DUMB!!!! These are the type of people that NEED to be culled from the gene pool permantly.

Apparently I am many things. I'll go over them with you. Clarification of a subject tends to make it easier to understand.

I am SELFISH.

Selfish 1. Concerned chiefly with oneself. or 2. Arising from, characterized by, or showing selfishness.

Yeah, I know I am this. I have also been told this many a times. I don't know why I am. Perhaps its a learned thing. Perhaps I just want to pay attention to myself for once and not worry about other people or things. I do alot of things for people. And still, I'm selfish.

I am ANGRY

Anger 1. Feeling or showing anger;incesed or enraged. or 2. Indicative or or resulting from anger. or 3. Having a menacing aspect;threatening.

I KNOW I am angry. It consumes most of my day. People make me angry. Life makes me angry. Stupidy makes me angry. This is WHY it consumes a great part of my day. The only time I'm not angry is when I am sleeping. I do not understand why people expect me to be happy. What is there to be happy about? I do have things that make me happy, but not 100%* I'm NEVER 100% happy- and this is a problem*. Small nit-picky, dumb-ass shit makes me extrodinarily angry. It's not supposed to, it's not worth it, but it still happens.

I am INTELLIGENT

INTELLIGENT 1.Having intelligence. or 2.Mentally acute. or 3. Having sound judgment and rationality. or 4. Appealing to the intellect, intellectual..

I am intelligent, this I know. Now by the time you have gotten to this part of my essay, you are probably thinking I'm stupid. I'm not. I have a college degree, I am a professional in my field of work, I am respected *most of the time*. I just want you to know what other people think of me. It's all true, all of you know me know this.

Whatever, save the compliments. I am a miserable human, this I know. I think I should know myself.

I can be happy. My cats make me happy. Dorking around with my fish make me happy. Learning new things make me happy. Presents make me happy * no I don't expect this-but they are nice to get*. Other things in my life make me happy at times also. Scott can make me happy, sometimes.

I need to learn how to be happier, people would like me more.

Hellooooo!

OK, going to talk about my current favorite subject right now.. BELLY DANCING! WOOOWOO!

I practice, almost daily. One of my biggest problems with this dance is doing a move, and walking at the same time. For some reason, I cannot do it w/out f*ckin up. My mind says to do one thing, but my body does the opposite. I got the basic stationary moves down fine.

Why is it also that I get dizzy when I orbit?? *this is a turn move, usually a quick turn* Even when I look in the direction I move in (like I'm told to do) I STILL get dizzy. My teacher, who is from boston, will shout out "Oh-bit!, Oh-bit!, Oh-bit!" and make it look easy! Everyone in class is dizzy and green from all the orbiting. * you are the earth, now orbit around the sun * - did I mention one foot needs to stay on the ground at all times?

I got 'snake arms' down pat. I can do those. I can shimmy my ass till it jiggles so hard it hurts. "You're supposed to slap those thighs together like a circus seal!!", my teacher says. She makes it look sooo easy! Thank god for video tapes and dvd's. You can actually buy a video to practice with it in between the week of your classes!

Did I mention you wind up using muscles you never thought you had? I think I found at least 5 other leg/hip muscles that have never been used before. I do have good control over abdomen moves. I got a semi-stomach flutter down. One thing that does gross people out (*girls at work*) is that I can push out my lower obliques at an odd angle during certain hip moves. I think this is a good thing! I'm just proud that I have *control*.

My next class is tomorrow night. I think I have improved since then. I'll keep you posted on how it went.

Scott says I need to write something for this site. ARRGGHH!! I must think of a subject.

*ThInK, tHiNk,ThInK*

OK, WHY does Scott hang out with me???

To be totally honest, I have no idea why. Must be my cars. Did I mention I have a 2001 cranberry Pt Cruiser? I also have a 1971 Alfa Rome Spider*its white*. I do belive the actual color code I have for it is "porceline white", like a toilet bowl.

Scott and I "click". I complement him, he compliments me *despite what you all think*. I'm spoiled RoTTeN, and I like it that way. PLUS he is older than I am, and he must BRIBE me with gifts in order to stay with him. *WINK*

I mean, I can be..no wait, I AM mean, cruel, stressful, way too serious, don't fuck with me person. I can't stand stupid people. I CAN be lighthearted, and laugh. It's a rare thing, but it does happen. *rare,rare,rare*

I'm obsessed with cats. He lets me have 5. I spend way too much money on them. Teddy alone costs me a few grand per year. Last time I saw my grandfather, he asked me why I haven't put the cat to sleep since he is so much trouble. I looked at him and said, "Pop, you have had heart surgery, and a stroke. Would you like to be put to sleep? I think you are suffering, and cause trouble". He just looked at me and said he got my point and smiled.

He also indulges all of my other obsessions. He says this is one of the reasons he really loves me. It's when I have an interest, I will totally absorb myself in it(like he will with one of his obsessions). Scott lets me get what I want when I get obsessive..to a point.

My newest obsession is belly dancing. Its kewl, and it's alot harder than you think. I take a class for it monday nights by myself with 30 other people that just need to get out.

Scott and I have been together for 6 years. That can be a long time for some people. Scott and I are like, "damn, has it really been that long?" Sometimes it feels like forever, and sometimes it feels like yesterday.

Must be a comfort thing? I dunno. I do love him, I know that.