WEstern Thought Wednesday: Same Old Schtick

So science is cool. I like my computer and my cellular telephone and the plane I shall soon fly to the west coast(not that I own a plane or anything). I like drinking clean water, not getting the measles and the glasses I wear to help me see things more than a foot away from my face. Science helps people in a real and quantifiable way. For example, a google search of 'new vaccine' turns up this and this. Intelligent design requires to believe in a supernatural superpower and removes all of our need for ambition. What is the point of asking a question when the answer is always the same? ID is a construct of those who would rather not know anything.

"What makes the Sun so hot, Daddy?" "Well, son, the intelligent designer." "Is that why babies keep coming out of Mommy?" "Well, yes, son, it is."

An intelligent design follower, and I use the word follower because it is a Christianic creationist, umm, creation, upon being diagnosed with small pox should, if this person's belief system were consistent, refuse these vaccines and insist that the intelligent designer would have made us resistant to these diseases if he/she/it wanted.

Let us for a moment appreciate the situation inherent in intelligent design. A being of unfathomable intelligence designed all of existence and everything and yada yada yada. Still with me? Good, cause I am about to get all weird on you. ID requires us to then believe that mosquitoes were designed as were bunnies, elephants, pandas, smallpox, chlamydia, ectopic(sp?) pregnancies, babies, genetic anomalies, penguins, polar bears, birch tree, flukes, tapeworms, etc. You may see where I am going with this. If there is an Intelligent Designer, it sure seems like he/she/it wants us to die and die horribly.

Anyway, I saw a bumper sticker on a Mercedes the other day that read: I sometimes brake for scientists. The irony, and this is a perfect example of irony as opposed to coincidence, of this statement hit me like a ton of bricks. I thought, "Here is a person who just doesn't get it."

But then you have people who say things like this. And I realized that there are levels to the whole "not getting it" thing.

First of all, Aristotle's Prime Mover could just as easily be a Big Bang, as I interpret it. I wish to readily admit for the clarity of my extremely small readership, consisting mostly of family members, that I have an incomplete grasp of Aristotle, but I have read some. His ethics are interesting even if fulsome disagrees. Don't take my word for it, however, go buy a book of Aristotle's and read it. He writes in accessible fashion and a primary source is better than Buchanan or even me.

Second, I am fairly certain that spontaneous generation is not a part of the Theory of Evolution.

Third, where is the 'Made By The Intelligent Designer' stamp on our asses? Prove it. Show me the evidence.

In conclusion, I shall simply say this: I hope you like it hot and steamy cuz, you got served, yo.

UPDATE: In the interests of my own sense of justice, here are some links to sites that support or clarify the Intelligent Design situation.

A publication.
The NY Times.
The Intelligent Design Network.
John Cashill seems to be a celebrated "independent"(their word) author among the creationists and ID people. Please note that his doctorate is in American Studies and not in evolutionary science or any other science.

PS: I guess you were right about me being angry and also about what I am angry. I stand by my prior statements made while slightly drunk on Friday night.

Tarantula Tuesday

I don't have much to say about Helob the Curlyhair Tarantula. He hasn't done much beyond move around his terrarium and eat all the people who break into my apartment to get at all of my useless crap. I would actually appreciate it if someone stole my television. Then I might read all of the great books I have. Probably not.

In case you haven't heard yet, Johnny Cash rocks and you should run out and download all of his music you can. Since I don't get paid for it, I am not linking to Hamazon Women on the Moon or any of those other sites.

Other People's Opinions

These sites are opinions I respect and with whom I generally agree. If you are visiting from an monitored internet connection due to employment or the NSA thinks you are a potential terrorist, I would not click any of these links as they are extremely likely to contain colorful language.

This guy knows a lot about sex and people. And what he doesn't know he looks up.

These people are the only good, solid movie reviewers I have ever read.

This guy is funny. He is also published in the semi-crappy monthly magazine, Rolling Stone.

And the list ends here. This leaves everyone with a few conclusions. Either I don't respect a whole lot of people, or I haven't been to many sites, or I haven't met many people. I'll just let you decide.

My Next Target

This guy thinks he is hilarious. Therefore, I shall now commence with a fifth attempt to get banned from another conservative blog. Some people may wonder what the freaking point of this exercise in irritation is. I thought it was pretty clear, but for the unenlightened, I explain: By being banned from these sights I demonstrate the site owner's complete aversion to the freedoms of our once great nation. The may claim to be the only one's that can properly protect, defend and enforce the constitution of the United States of America, but really they're just bunch of cobags.

Sex Rights for Everyone!

I was going to write about how much I heart Maureen Dowd and want her book for Christmas, but I got a little sidetracked trying to get banned from The (To Borrow A Phrase) Tiny wiener Buffet.

I am currently digging The Legend of Johnny Cash, an album I bought Wednesday while not buying holiday(eat it COBAGS!) presents.

As an added benefit for those who prefer to stay away from buffets, here is the exchange that has got me seriously worked up. I am almost as mad as when I peed on the ceiling and etc of the Blue Lamp's bathroom.

1. Too bad that we are forbidden from teaching proper condom use in sex education in public schools. If men used condoms without shame then there wouldn't be a need for most abortions, I'd bet. That doesn't mean that I agree at all with pro-lifers, just that we should step up to the plate, men, and admit that it takes a penis to inseminate someone. If every woman magically got pregnant every time she 'opened her legs' there'd be babies everywhere.
What you are truly objecting to, by objecting to abortion, is a woman's ability to make a moral decision. Clearly, you all seem to think that you know exactly how all women should act in any situation. However, given the juvenile nature of the prior comments and the post itself, I would hesitate to let make a moral decision involving a jellyfish, let alone a human life.
comment by Chuckles Wednesday, December 21, 2005 @ 2:58 pm

2. Dear Chuckles,
Like you, Margaret Sanger believed that promoting birth control would stop abortions, she was wrong.
Pretty ironic, don't ya think?
comment by canuck Wednesday, December 21, 2005 @ 3:50 pm

3. Actually, that is more coincidental than ironic, but whatever. During the Clinton years, teen pregnancy rates declined, most likely due to the promotion of proper forms of birth control, as opposed to oh so successful abstinence style. If you had actually read my comment, canuck, you would notice that I said most abortions. If repressed people like you felt no shame in buying condoms or using them, the world would be a better place. I must admit that I get a little embarrassed when I buy condoms, but that is part of the life of a responsible sexually active man.
My main point stands and as you took no shots at it, I guess that canuck feels the same way about morality and abortion. Clearly, canuck feels as I do. I don't claim to be able to dictate morality and neither does he. I congratulate canuck for taking a boldly progressive stance and proclaiming that he is pro-choice and for keeping his mouth shut when it comes to someone elseÂ’s decisions in life. Bravo!
comment by Chuckles Thursday, December 22, 2005 @ 8:24 am

4. Chuckles:
That doesn't mean that I agree at all with pro-lifers, just that we should step up to the plate, men, and admit that it takes a penis to inseminate someone.
No argument there. But I think you may have missed the point of the post to make a rather cliched point.
What you are truly objecting to, by objecting to abortion, is a woman's ability to make a moral decision.
No, the point of the post was that abortion, whether your for it or against it, is not a decision that should be taken as lightly as purchasing clothing.
Say, do you think I should be trusted to make any moral decision?
Why can't I summarily execute someone caught knocking off a grocery store? I'm not trusted with that moral decision. And that is good.
Although many people on both sides of the fence differ on when life begins, abortion is killing a human life. Do you think there ought to be at least some legal limitation? Or does it all fall into one of your clever catch-all phrases?
comment by Cranky Thursday, December 22, 2005 @ 9:28 am

5. Dear Chuckles,
Wow, you're wrong on every point about me. Congrats!
Ms. Sanger believed that if women were allowed birth control, they would not have to get abortions. I find it ironic that she was ever so ever wrong about that. Women didnÂ’t stop abortions after being given birth control, at all. I am a supporter of birth control, big fan of it. No problem buying it. I just found amazing that a woman who, at her time, pushed for the use of birth control to prevent abortions, did no such thing . Instead, women use birth control incorrectly, are still getting pregnant, and instead of taking responsibility (and guys too) they are doing what Ms. Sanger said would stop.
I am pro-life. I do not believe a women has the right to kill an unborn child just cause that baby can not fight back -well, they do try to fight back, while being sucked into a vacuum and into a garbage bag, but really, who can win against a vacuum. So, Mr. Chuckles, you can take your congrats and shove it. I would never want the likes of someone you, who thinks murdering a baby is okay, giving me a congrats for thinking I believe in same thing. Ick. Now I feel dirty and must go shower.
comment by canuck Thursday, December 22, 2005 @ 9:29 am

6. Cranky say: No, the point of the post was that abortion, whether your for it or against it, is not a decision that should be taken as lightly as purchasing clothing.
What in all of creation makes you think any woman anywhere takes abortion lightly? After all the flak a person takes just getting into a clinic, what makes you think she would just say, yeah, screw that little bastard, it'll just screw up my partying! You still have not refuted my point. You are making a declaration that your(notice the possessive) morality is better than anyone who might even consider an abortion. Your(still possessive) statement that people do have flippant(look it up) attitudes toward abortion states that their attitudes are foolish and yours are serious and well-grounded because you regard the issue as serious.
Condoms are, if used correctly, 99% effective in preventing pregnancy and without birth control roughly 80% of copulations(that means sex, children) will produce a pregnancy. If abortion kills a baby, as cranky says, then aren't condoms also killing babies by preventing 79.2 babies being conceived in 100 copulations? Why are condoms acceptable? They prevent the baby from even having a chance of being conceived! Holy crap! It is preventative abortion! Just like Bush and his preventative wars!
In all honesty, cranky, I would not trust you with any moral decision. However, that is a personal opinion and not based on any empirical evidence. Given the anonymous nature of the internet, I give you the benefit of doubt.
Canuck, on the other hand, clearly you went to a far superior high school than I did. Sex Ed at my high school consisted of telling us the methods of birth control but there were no props of even pictures of any birth control technique other than Norplant and abstinence. Man, if only I had actually seen a condom before college and known how to use one and not been ashamed to buy one, my girlfriend would not have had to get a morning after pill. We drove around for hours to find a pharmacy that would give us a prescription and it tore me up inside with the decision. Sure, I loved her and I would have raised any child, but I would never have been able to provide for that baby like I could now. So go point your fucking fingers at someone else, you pathetic schmuck. That decision was the hardest one I was ever a part of so go fuck yourself, get pregnant and then see what you would do, you sad sack of shit.
comment by Chuckles Thursday, December 22, 2005 @ 7:40 pm

Oleki Bango Says: Launch the KITTY MISSILES!

It looks like 3Bulls! aren't the only ones with access to Weapons of Cute Devastation!

EAT THIS, COBAGS!1!!1!


Look at the itty bitty kitty hitty!



Isn't that PRECIOUS!? I WILL DESTROY YOU ALL WITH THIS SALVO OF SUGAR!



Uh oh, those bastard bulls are no longer the sole wielders of the dreaded cat-in-a-sink warhead!



Too bad for the bulls, I have developed a Multiple Impact Reentry Vehicle Warhead Cat-In-A-Sink Cutelear Missile!

Morality

Too bad that we are forbidden from teaching proper condom use in sex education in public schools. If men used condoms without shame then there wouldn't be a need for most abortions, I'd bet. That doesn't mean that I agree at all with pro-lifers, just that we should step up to the plate, men, and admit that it takes a penis to inseminate someone. If every woman magically got pregnant every time she "opened her legs" there'd be babies everywhere. Yoga class would be a freaking maternity ward...

Anyway, to borrow a sentiment from Dr. Bitch, what you are truly objecting to, by objecting to abortion, is a woman's ability to make a moral decision. Clearly, you all seem to think that you know exactly how all women should act in any situation. However, given the juvenile nature of the comments and the post itself, I would hesitate to let you make a moral decision involving a jellyfish, let alone a human life.

Does this meet your exacting standards, AG?

Tomorrow: Either a discourse on Aristotelean Ethics or More Offensively Cute Pictures

Place your bets as to which will actually get posted now.

CAPTION CONTEST!

My entry: "Sex Ed got a little more interesting when the Biology department took over from the gym teacher."

A Bold New Offensive of CUTE!

Awww, look a baby animal lying on its back...could you get any cuter?



Golly! Apparently you can get cuter than a baby animal on its back!



Uh OH! Is this a hold up? Reach for the sky, Mr Winky!

Up Next: A Caption Contest!

New Tactics in the War on...Everything

fulsome may be on to something here. I'll just be totally original and switch tactics, too. Besides, that cow is starting to freak me out.



This seems to be 90% of what the post over at 3Bulls! are anyway. And as a final update, I may have been comepletely kicked off the conservative rant page run by the commissary. Yeah, that's right, I'm calling you a military grocery store!

Finally!

Well, I was finally able to get a comment removed by the shit eaters over at the russian wannabes. Apparently, it is alright for some wannabe political blogging cobag to call me an asshole but it is decidedly uncool for me to ask someone else a pretty rude question. My goal has been met, I think I can just go ahead and forget about pretty much the whole thing. You might be wondering why I want to move to some other inanity. Or as is far more likely, you don't really care.

Horse Flogging:

As fun as hassling morons is, it doesn't get anyone anywhere. This is just as bad as the fools who scream at each other and then agree to disagree after 45 minutes. As relaxing as it may be to yell at someone and insult them in their internet realm, people in reality ought to be able to talk about political shit with a level head. I don't want us all to get along, that would be weird, but I would like us(THEM) to stop hating on the smart people who know what's what(ME).

Happy Holidays!

This whole war on christmas has really got to go. What a waste of time. I must give credit where credit is due as I am sure this was spun out by the same brilliant assbags who brought us the Lewinsky Fiasco '99. The (fake)President only had up to go in his approval ratings and the hit machine (Rove?) came up with this winner of a strategy to get the media talking about anything else. This whole thing sounds like a Hill intern's drunken ramblings to a predatory lobbyist fanatic. These guys should be writing for SNL. I received a message from some fucker who used his organizations email newsletter list to send out a picture of a christmas tree and then scream in bold caps "IT'S A CHRISTmas TREE!" (Emphasis left as was sent) Again, this was sent over a corporate email list. I have always liked spending this time alone, but now I want to spend it murdering these morons.

Just Cuz I'm Hating Today

Pinko Punko is not the only one on the receiving end of full bore Chuck hating...I submit this and this for your perusal.

I found this photo while I raided PP's house during the party of some time back. He has a whole stack of things like this hidden under some dirty magazines. I don't understand why these would be mixed in with hetero porn, but there you have it.

A moment of your time if you will, for reality...

Well, I had a nice break from fantasy land at work. Two of my bosses left town for a week, leaving me stuck squarely in reality or as I like to call it, happy time. Happy time is a place that I don't get to go to all that often at work, mostly because my bosses live in fantasy land.

For instance, one boss insists that his email problems are solely the fault of the server and ISP and not at all his to bear because he never deletes anything. Even spam. He has over twenty thousand emails sitting in his Outlook folders without counting the Deleted Items that never get erased. His inbox alone had 3500 emails sitting in it from April through yesterday, until I started moving them while he is at lunch. I have started calling these operations Ninja Archiving because I have to do them in such a way that he will never know. Move too much and he willknow I was in his system, move too little and his system clogs. I even make sure I put his chair back in its prior angle and declension.

My boss' computer has more viruses that are beaten into submission by Symantec the Super Soldier than I have ever encountered. One of my roommates once had a computer without a firewall or virus protection. His computer gave up and shutdown permanently in a week. My boss insists that his computer is running so slowly becuase it is 18 months old and must have been bad from the start. He is starting to sound like people who say that crimes are committed because children are born bad and not because their parent's share any responsibility. I won't even get into this crap or the whole breakdown of our society by right wing loonies.

My boss also has several spyware and adware programs installed so that when you run any of his four net browsers, you get a bazillion popups. He claims he likes to see the ads of other companies. And then he calls me to turn his popup blocker back on after 30 seconds or so.

I am not even trained as a techie. I just know stuff because I watch everything people do to my computer and poke around on my own. I have destroyed several computers of my own by poking around, but that is how you learn stuff in Pokey McProdsalot's world. As a complete aside to this whole shebang, I really like my job which might say something about the quality of either my reality or my employment history.

Tarantula Tuesday: Anybody have a cricket problem?

I am a happy tarantula father. First, on eBaum's World, I saw a tarantula of the same species that I own, kill and begin eating a mouse. You can find it under the extreme videos section here. So, I thought that was cool, because it means that I could maybe get some mice for my guard tarantula, Helob. Although, I don't think that girls will find me any cooler if I tell them about that.

Anyway, this morning I woke up and exercised and shit. I went to check on Helob to make sure he still had water and a cricket left and he was standing on the tips of his legs(toes?) and eating the last cricket! I had turned on the light to get a good look at his dish and he looked really surprised, sorta like a deer in headlights or a roommate caught looking at porn on your computer.

So now I need to find a new source of basement crickets because that was the last one and my parent's house is now someone else's house. Although, I do still have a key...

Why jobs are awesome

When you are unemployed, the weekend just seems like another day. Now that I have a job, the weekend is a time of relaxation and reflection. I have something seriously cool to pine for during the long hard days of sitting on my ass and blogging while at work.

My jobs rocks, just in case you care. I work for a magazine and spend a lot of time doing actual work on the internet and I am pretty good at it. Let's face it, any man with an internet connection that has spent any time being single and unemployed should be able to find anything on the internet in no time. But I digress. Sometimes at work I get to read neat stuff like this, that even relates to my BA!

Although, sometimes I get to read things like this, which smells an awful lot like the studies performed in the fifties, or whenever, to justify institutional racism. Anyway, it is better than watching extreme videos on eBaum all day.

Now That's a BULL!

These are bulls.

These are not.

A topic for discussion:
The members fo 3Bulls! are neither bulls nor are there three of them.
They are also a bunch of tired pansies. Discuss.

Here we go again, thanks Teh...

Clinton did a far better job of things than people want to give him credit.

Clinton's anti-terror groupies were *actually* hunting OBL and cutting off his fuunding, until they were disregarded and replaced by GWB. Cheney and GWB were all waiting for 9/11 to happen. Those bastards have been making a crapload of money from every disaster they have allowed to happen during their tenure. Cheney even said, "I think these guys[The Clinton Administration] are a little obsessed with this Bin Laden." It is utterly despicable.

Granted, some will say Clinton's economic policies led us to the recession/depression we are in, but trickle-down/supply side economics have been a proven failure since Reagan and Bush the Elder. I won't even speak on Clinton's debt reduction policies, they pretty much speak on their own. Every economist knows that our economy cycles through periods of boom and bust, but this can be mitigated through governmental policies. Some people might say that Clinton's policies could only result in a bust, but while that may be true tax breaks for the wealthy and easing business taxes and regulations only squeeze the little guys.

Please allow me a moment to speak about the 'little guy.' These economic policies of the Commander in Thief (how original of me) are now hurting more of his voters than ever before in the history of the US. People like to say that more people voted for GWB than any other president in history. Well, for you stat whores, more people voted against him than ony other president in history. Now, if you tried to say that he won a higher percentage of the Electorate and Popular votes, you would be wrong. GWB has not won by a higher percentage or by a higher margin. In 2000, disregarding the entire fact THAT IT WAS AN ILLEGALLY CONDUCTED VOTE IN FLORIDA, GWB only won by the seat of his pants. Just like 2004. So, back to the little guy, if more people than ever before voted for the current president, you might think he would take steps to protect all of these people that support him and gave him his job. If only it were so. GWB is out to screw his voters. Don't be foolish in the future, vote for someone who actually gives a shit about you.

Back to rambling about Clinton. So Clinton got some head while he was in the office. Is it more important that he lied about a blow job or that the current lie is killing people every day?(I make no distinction in nationality of those killed.)

So, please, a little respect for a man whose like we are desperate to have again.

I submit: A Topic for Discussion

Why does 3Bulls! suck so hard?

They really suck it raw.

Allow me to get all political on your asses...

I just want to say that before you read all this, it sucks a guy was killed.

The thing that a lot of people don't know about guns on airplanes are these facts:
1: Air Marshalls have been flying with guns for a long time, something like 30 years. Since the start of the program at any rate and I thin the Post said it was in the 60s or 70s.
2: A handgun fired in a plane, even if it directly strikes a window, is not going to cause a massive depressurization of he plane and kill everyone like in the movies.
3: Every system in a plane is at least double redundant. If there is one thing the government does right, it is redundancy. There is no point failure source, except for the pilot and people on board.
DISCLAIMER: The part about the plane's redundancy comes from my brother who works with some guy who flew for the military. As I have not met the guy, it may easily by false. Still, it sounds true enough to me.

And one final note, I don't think we are criminalizing mental illness, so much as ignoring it until it becomes a criminal issue. Which is criminal in another sense. There were lots of state mental institutions until taxes were cut in the 70s and 80s. Since the 50s, our government has been slashing taxes. Our current tax obligation is the lowest ever.

Taxes: they aren't a burden for those who believe in social responsibility.

Tellymar Ketters

So one of my brothers and I were sitting around my parent's kitchen a few months ago when the phone rang. It was a telemarketer calling to ask if we would fill out a survey and pay the shipping charges to have some "Girls Gone Wild" DVDs shipped out to us. I replied with:
FG(Freelance Genius): "I had a friend in college that ordered some DVDs from you guys and his card was ripped off and the DVDs he received were blank. How can I trust you now?"
TM: In a deep, easygoing voice, "Would you like to speak to our security company, they are the ones that handle the credit card collection and processing? It is totally secure now. Online security has been increased dramatically since your friend had those troubles."
FG: "No thanks, I really don't want to give my card out over the phone..."
TM: "I am sure you know the Girls Gone Wild videos from TV, you know what a bargain this is for filling out a survey and paying just the postage-"
FG: "yeah, I know the videos, but I am not too sure right now, how about you just send over some girls? Girls who are going wild? That would be ok."
TM: Stifling a laugh, "You want me to send some girls over to your house? Uhh, how about you give me your information and I'll sign you up for the DVDs and then we'll talk about sending some girls over to your house."
At this point, my brother starts cracking up, as do I.
FG: "No thanks, I really just want the girls, the girls who are going wild."
TM: Getting a little flustered, "These videos have it all, you know..."
FG: "Oh, I know, I've seen the commercials, that's why i was hoping you could send these girls over to my house."
TM: "Right..."
FG: "Thanks anyway, I guess."
TM: Hangs up.

A Sense of Humor So Fine...

You'd almost think we were related.

Check it out.

Will The Fucking Wonders Ever CEASE?

You are Charlie Brown!


Which Peanuts Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Gee flipping whiz. Goddam blockhead has been following me around for my whole fricking life. Chump

Brian is not so much of a cobag

Brian Beer Pong's blog is rather amusing. Even though I spend much more time being smart than I do watching sports, I find it rather Man Bites Dog funny.

Up next, the further exploits of me, 20 or 30 beers, and a Kappa Alpha Theta.

Brian is a cobag, but I am now inspired

In all seriousness, "playing beer pong and porking babes"? This sounds more like a lonely high school sophomore whose sole source of social interaction stems from his DSL connection. Poor kid probably doesn't even know DSL stands for...sigh. Now, if he had said, playing spades, drinking forties and stroking bitches, then I could have believed that he had actually done any of those activities.

But seriously, who says pork anymore? Slapping the salami and bopping your balogna went out with the '80s. Even the 'hot beef injection' is getting old. I was thinking maybe we could try out something related to Ron Popeil's rotisserie oven. Fuck it and forget it? Nah, too derivative. What about a euphemism related to Mathew Lesko's free money books? Free money to masturbate!

Sounds like a new Pepsi Challenge!

BCP, Parte the Seconde

And yes, that is a joke based on my post of some weeks ago on the Home of the Well Rounded People of Higher Than Average Level of the N.E.R.D. genotype. So, where was I? Ah, yes.

We enter the basement and are slightly dismayed at the ratio of fraternity to sorority members. However, the girls are all dancing and the guys are all drinking. I head straight for the bar to discover that pledges has been assigned to ensure that the members always have a beer on hand. This would sound like an ideal situation, but in the Land of Chuckles, this is a sub-optimal situation for retention of both manners and rational thought. To say nothing of the booty shaking that inevitably commences from the intake of copious amounts of alcohol. Telling all the guys from Kappa chapter to start mingling and have a good time, I start working the crowd and meeting guys from other chapters and colleges. This goes well and I have some good conversation until I have had somewhere more than ten beers. They last two guys I was talking to (from Eau Claire, I think) detail their pledge to follow me around and make sure I have beer because they are leaving. The pledge was sober and keeping count for me.

He disappeared after getting me maybe three or four more beers and I completely lost count after twenty some beers in about two and half hours. At which point I met a girl at the bar. She was talking to some guy and I stumbled up and asked for a beer. I started leering at her and asked her what house she was in and she replied with a chirpy "Kappa Alpha Theta!" I responded with a slurred, "My mom was in that sorority and so were all her female relatives. My grandmother was, like, the national regional chairwoman or treasurer or something." Which was music to her ears and seriously pissed off the guy who was talking to her before I wandered over. I asked her if she wanted to dance, which really amounted to waving our drunk asses and arms around the dance floor. We were trying to talk to each other but, really too drunk to hear and some dude bumped my arm and Natty Light went all over her chest. I said, "Here let me help you with that" and shoved my face in her cleavage. I proceeded to lick the beer off of her. Seemed like the thing to do at the time. I tell you now, I have not had a Natty Light since, because the fuzzy memory of the last one was so good, any others will not live up to that memory. Ahh, good times, good times.

The Best College Party Ever

This is a response to the Adorable Girlfriend's challenge. It was Friday or Saturday of the second week in March of 2001. I was taking some new TKEs (my fraternity, Tau Kappa Epsilon) and one of their friend-girls to Madison, WI to show them around and some guy walks right up to me and askes if I am a TKE. While I was wearing a TKE hat. Being a smart ass, I replied with, "If I were not a TKE, then why would I be wearing this hat?" We talk and he invites me and my Kappa chapter bros to the Lambda chapter "Pre Spring Break Bikini Contest Party." Sweeter words will never be asked of me again. So, the guys I was with, call them ZZ Top and Benny Bones, are just sort of stunned and I tell the Lambda chapter guy that we'll be there and we'll bring some beer. The hot blonde on his arm says that is awesome and that she is bring some of her girls from whatever sorority she belonged. And that at least three other sororities were attending. You could have cut the silence with a fisshpop from a beer can. So we shake and say see ya later. Turns out the girl was buying a vibrator while we waited outside.

So we all got back to the house and I proceed to run around telling everybody who is still in town abou the party. It ends up being about 15 of us in three cars. We scrape together enough money for a case of Leinenkugels Pilsner in cans. Tastes great, more filling. We get to the house and I get us all in past some minor difficulties. The scene: The Lambda chapter house basement. The People: About forty dudes and maybe 15 girls, all super hot and all wearing bikins and miniskirts. And I leave you with that image as I should really get back to work. More tomorrow.

Right Up There

In December of 2004, I met a girl for a date. I had met her by thrusting myself into a conversation she was having with her friends about holiday spice pepsi. Before I continue I need to issue the following homework assignment: Blog Goblins, your assignment is to come up with the next believable, bad idea from an American soda company, like ash wednesday spice pepsi or something.
She thought I was funny, but her friends thought I was clearly touched because she had to shoo them away. I was surprised and we kept chatting while waiting for our coffees. Yes, ok, this happened at a Starbuck's. Coincidence, I tell you, coincidence! So she then gave me her number and I was even more surprised.

Long story short, we meet for coffee the next day. She is cute and interesting and things were progressing amiably until she tells me that she is in grad school writing program and working on a book. I then asked one of the dumbest questions ever. "So you want to be a writer?" We all know why she never called me again.

The Beginning of the...Beginning?

Well, this just makes you wonder. Soon we shall be implanting Walt Disney's thawed brain in a robot body and marching to his merry, greenshirted tune. Oh Happy Day!

Tarantula Tuesday

I put more water in Helob's dish. I am not sure if he is eating the crickets or if they are eating each other. I have seen them eat each other, but I have not seen helob eating any of them. Mostly, he just wanders around the terrarium.

Pretentious Poetry Tuesday!

I'm sitting here,
by and by,
watching the buffalo,
by and by.

Where is in the world is Chuckles San Diego?

I'll give you a hint, AG. fulsome and chuckles went to a college that has the same name as the town in which it resides. The state is Wisconsin and the college was founded a few years before the state was..umm...statified.

Now get your atlases, kids!

First one to guess right wins a kiss!

Second one to guess right is my bitch!

Last one to guess right is a cobag!

Feel My WRATH!

Personally, I can't wait for the Republican agenda to come to fruition. I anticipate this day because then everyone will be unable to deny the horrible disregard these bastards have for our lives and way of life. Only then will we be able to rampage and start anew after the new revolutionary war. Then in two and a half hundred years, we will be revolting again. Although, the situation is pretty revolting as it currently stands...

Well, that was a pretty setup for a lame joke. Anyway, we pass the mic to Ranty McRambles, our correspondent in Aggravation, WI.

The real problem we face is that the right has managed to completely insulate their power base in congress from any repercussions. Look at the Lewinsky Impeachemnt thing. The public was largely opposed to that whole process, yet those morons forged ahead figuring that they could win out and remove the strongest opposition to their plans. They were dead wrong, but yet they are still in power and will likely remain so for a good long while. The right is using gerrymandering and mouthpieces like McCain and the alleged moderates in the Senate as their poster children for change. Nothing has really changed. Everytime McCain and his buddies come out and protest the motions still pass. These guys are on a short leash and only oppose when the motion already has enough votes to pass the Senate. The right has solidified its hold on committees through intimidation and bribes. The Republican party demands absolute loyalty for campaign money and recruits self serving bastards. If the Democratic party could unite and become just as devious, I would despise them as well and we would be truly lost as a nation and the dream would be completely dead.

Essentially, what we need is a complete wash out of both houses of Congress and an absolute end to campaign contributions. The government should finance all political campaigns with budgets based on registered voters in the districts voting for the candidates. Viva la revolution!

The quickest way to a man's stomach is through his brain...

Or something like that. I thought I should post a little bit about myself for a change. I like girls whose primary news sources are The Onion and The Daily Show. We can laugh together. I like girls, and friends, who are smarter and more determined than me. They help me motivate myself. I like girls that are so captivating that when we talk I completely forget to bring up the subject of movies. They prevent me making an even bigger ass out of myself than I normally do over such an insignificant topic. I like girls, and friends, that are still interested in my opinions on such an insignificant topic as movies even after we have been talking about AIDs prevention in Africa.

Looking at this post, one might think that it was written in code. To that, I have only this response: I owe fulsome big time. Big time.

Guess Who!

Which one is Chuckles? The article is titled President Clinton Takes Leave of Office to Stand in Line for Star Wars: Episode 1 in the Onion's archives. By the way ladies, this picture was taken six years ago. Just in case you were wondering, you know...so you could picture me while humping your girl/boyfriend or whatever.

King Stinking Arthur

There have been some bad movies about King Arthur and the associated myth cycle(First Knight, Sowrd of the Valiant, the entire Gargoyles TV show) but Antoine Fuqua's King Arthur really takes the cake and drops a hot, smelly load all over it. Kiera Knightly ran around saying, "Look at me! I'm being coy!" and shooting arrows at people. Clive Owen and Stellan Skarsgaard strolled through the film like they were biding time between great scripts. Everybody just sort of showed and collected a paycheck. The only thing flimsier than the fighting was the plot.

The Defining Moment

There is a point that happens in everyone's life where we choose between two distinct and known paths. These incidents can happen on a daily basis and be wuite trivial, like choosing a donut flavor. Sometimes they are very important. Monumentous even. For me, these two choices frequently involve truth and untruth. I am frequently presented with oppurtunities to lie for my benefit or detrimentally stick with the truth. I have so far chosen to stick with the truth. In my search for my raison d'entre or even enlightenment, this policy has served me well. Financially, my chosen paths have been nothing short of disastrous. I am presented with this choice again. I will make my decision by the end of the day.
UPDATE: My coworker thinks that this is called maturity and not subsuming my dignity. Sounds like pretty much the same thing to me. I guess I'll keep with the dignity destroying choice. On the other hand, someone from China wants me to come teach at their school. Or steal my organs. I am not sure yet.

upDate?

The date was really cool. We just had dinner and talked and then I walked her to her destination and that was that. It was refreshing to have a date in the traditional sense of a conversation about each other over dinner. There was little to no pressure to perform for the crowd in my head. I had a good time. There may be another date and there may not be. If so, then yeah for me, as I would like that, but if not, well, that's life and I need to find someplace else to get coffee, I suppose.

Assault on New York, Part Deux

The bus ride to New York was ok. We stopped in some podunk rest stop and the bathrooms and food selection sucked although the was a, say it with me, Starbucks. I refrained. The bus driver had a couple of movies for us to watch, Guess Who? (sucked, predictable movie with no real punch) and some Benny Hill episodes. I wouldn't have gone with the Benny Hill personally, because it was really obnoxiously loud and designed to satisfy everyone's need to complain. We got to Penn Station/Port Authority and met Timbolo's friend. My friend, who was supposed to meet me downtown so we could hit some cool places, bailed and was still in Flushing. I thought about going to the comedy club with my brother and his friend, but decided to head out to Flushing. This was fine. After one ride out to Flushing last January, I have no trouble with the NY subway systems. The bus systems are not for the faint of heart, however. There are at least 4,000 separate bus companies and they all run all over, as far as I can tell. Some look like tour buses and some like tranist buses and some like prison transit buses. I meet my friend at a Taiwanese place and we had some food and walked to a bar he likes and got good and drunk. As we were leaving, I told the bartender she had great New York boobs. Then we left like the assholes we were that night and walked to his apartment to watch Chappelle Show Season Two.

Hot Flash News!!!

I have a date with the twinkie tonight. I am not really sure that is the best way to identify her, but it is batter than posting her name and address for all you blogstalkers. Anywhoo, we are meeting in Dupont Circle and having a night on the town.

Then, tomorrow morning, I am making pancakes with my Dad in our house for the last time on a Saturday morning. My Dad made pancakes for us most Saturday mornings when we were growing up and lived with the rents. When I went off to boarding school at the government's insistence, that is what I missed most. Well, that and the help my Dad gave me with math. When I came for the various holidays and breaks, I would try to remember to buy maple syrup that the school made from the trees on the grounds. I will miss eating pancakes grilled on the stove in our house. I will miss the house my Dad built. Not just because he did most of the work and what he didn't do, his male relations did. I will miss the crazy orange tree from Africa that is really an Acacia variety and not an orange tree at all. I will miss the three inch thorns on that tree and how they could go all the way through your foot. I will miss the 2 inch diameter pseudo-oranges and miss throwing them into other yarsd and at cars. I will miss my Mom trying to talk to us from the basement when the washer and dryer were louder than her. I will miss mowing the lawn in 70% humidity and 90 degree heat. I will miss the wallpaper my Mom put in that makes itlook like old people live there. I will miss falling down the stairs and putting hy knee through the drywall and my Mom chewing me out about wrecking the wallpaper. I will be sad, but I will move on because that is life and one must put your best knee through the wallpaper.

Assault on New York

This is hellaciously late.

The weekend of Labor Day, this year, 2005, my younger brother and I went to New York to see some friends. We were both staying with friends from college. We meet up in Tenleytown to catch the bus and I picked up a Subway sandwhich to split. My brother, call him Timbolo, scarfs his as soon as he arrives and we cruise into the Whole Paycheck looking for more food for the four hour trip to New York. Whole Paycheck had a couple varieties of cheese for sampling and I bounced between them while Timbolo looked for snacks. I was checking stuff out and realized that while I was eating cheese, the store had become flooded with extremely hot women. It was a little disconcerting. I didn't want to stare, but everywhere I looked there were three or four beautiful babies. It started to affect my sanity and I began eating as much cheese as I could to prevent my mouth from running rampant over my logic. I was able to find relief when my brother found the sandwhiches and we chose a couple, got some water and went to check out. As we were making our way to check out, we kept walking down aisles and being confronted by bodacious booty. It really began to overload my limbic system and the lower brain kicked in. Luckily, it chose the flight response, because it could have gotten ugly.

Part II later or maybe tomorrow or Sunday.

Poetry

I challenge anyone else to start posting home made poetry regularly. No content limits and whatever style and meter you want. Here is my first salvo:

Cold feet in the morning,
Warm bed at night.
Elvis on the radio,
Singing, baby, it's all right.

Can fulsome retaliate? Check out the Nerdspace to find out!

Coffee Update

So I asked out the cute girl at my local Starbucks. I haven't yet determined if this will turn out to be a complete whale hunt or not. Things went pretty bad for a chat up on Thursday. I suddenly turned all shy when I was trying to ask her out. And then there was an audience of people trying to get coffee when previously there had been none. If it weren't for the excellent backup of Superman, Batman would never have gotten to the point of giving her his phone number. Normally, I am not a shy guy, but asking a girl out in front of a bunch of tweaked out cap-heads threw me off my game, such as it is.

Perhaps I should clarify. They know me as Batman because one day when I was really zoned out I went in there with a Batman shirt on. Superman called me Bruce as he gave me my coffee and I thought he had me mistaken for somebody else. So that's a whole injoke between me and him. Turns out the Green Lantern works there, too.

I have forseen this...

I AM ALWAYS RIGHT.

Just remember that whenever you all think of me. This past spring I forsaw a series of events and they have happened exactly the way I predicted. That being said, now I have to find a way to manipulate current and future events so that this all comes to a favorable conclusion.

A Good Buddy's Advice

fulsome has informed me that I am playing with fire. Since I don't like getting burnt, I will stop poking the embers.

Doom

This was bat shit crazy ridiculous! I wasn't able to decide if they were making an attempt at a spoof or an attempt at a scary movie. I left the theater laughing. Almost as good a comedy as Starship Troopers 2 or House of the Dead.

I can't wait for the two part saga of Dungeon Siege by German director Uwe Boll. He is the new Roger Corman, without all the good movies and good people working for him.

Waiting

Loved it. But then I have worked in a crappy pizza joint and waited tables for some truly obnoxious pricks. And their fourteen children. And gotten stiffed on tips.

It was additionally good because Ryan Reynolds wasn't the focus of the movie. He was funny in his schtick, but there were other people who had time on screen. When I worked at the pizza place, I invented a game in which the male servers would flip their aprons over our money and receipt holders and get it to stand straight out from your crotch like a shelf or a thin, flat, wide penis. The end result looked like your boner was holding up the bill folder. The goal was to see how long they could talk to people, with their apron and bill holder sticking out, before the customer made a comment. We only did it to the younger customers or the pretty gilrs. The manager did not appreciate it as much as I did.

In my fraternity, we called this maneuver the 'Cat Brain'. You wouold grab hold of your nuts and pull the skiin of sac really tight so the veins would show and your balls looked like the two hemispheres of a brain. It was small so we called it the cat brain. Some of the guys would meow while they walked around with the cat brain sticking out of their fly. If you looked, you were called a fag and hit. This all took an abrupt turn for the worse when I flicked Chad in the cat brain with my middle finger and he collapsed in pain for the next few days.

In short, I loved the movie Waiting and look forward to watching it with my friends. Who am I kidding, I have no friends.

Serenity NOW!

Lord,
Grant me the wisdom to watch the bad movies and the good,
so that I may know the difference between.
Grant me the patience to hold my tongue in the theater,
because it is so long and troublesome.

Serenity was all around good. I have only seen five of the thirteen episodes of 'Firefly', the show the movie was based on, but they were ok. They were ok like Buffy was ok, but they sucked like Buffy sucked. I think that if the show had been released when Angel was, it would have done as well. Firefly' had the same problems and blessings as Buffy, but couldn't ride the wave like Angel did because it was too distant in time from Buffy.

Serenity was good. I thought the bad guys in the movie were quality and the good guys were a kind of not as slick Han Solo and his buddies, which made them cool as well. The plot flowed and only had one minor problem that I don't mind. A lot of funa nd I look forward to seeing it in focus on my own tv. Which brings me to my next statement.

BOYCOTT REGAL CINEMAS CHINATOWN!!! THOSE PUNKS WON"T FOCUS MOVIES DESPITE TWO COMPLAINTS!!!

We Pursue...

That Which Retreats From Us. The truly weird thing about life is that people always want what we can't have. Stable jobs, money, love, whatever. Now the girl I am thinking about more often lives in freaking Africa and the only reason I keep thinking about her is because I can't hang out with her and she can't drive me freaking batshit crazy like she did when she lived in town. And I don't mean crazy in the good way.

I guess what I am saying is that I seriously need to meet a girl and start driving her away like I always do, so then I can start thinking about her instead of the other. On that note, I vow to ask out the cute girl in the Starbucks near work tomorrow. Maybe I can actually date someone without pushing them to move to Africa.

Since we are already way off schedule...

I have been asked by an ex if she could use me as a fake boyfriend to fend off the relentless suitors. She still has photos of me to use as proof I exist. Is this just a little odd to anyone else? If I were in the same situation with people trying to set me up with their daughters, I would just invent a simple lie and go with it. I must state that I am a flamboyantly flagrant embellisher. I am like that logic riddle with the two guys, one that always lies and one that always tells the truth, except that I am always both. Maybe it is just easier for me.

Maybe it isn't.

Google is a Government Spy!

It is finally official. Google has been outed by NPR as a government agency. In case, you hadn't yet heard, the document that the Nigerian yellowcake uranium case was based on was forged and completely false. Do you know how they, the g-men, proved that it false? The g-men googled the ministers named in the fake document and found out that they were out of office at the time the document claims they were dealing with Saddam Hussein. THEY GOOGLED IT! How the hell could anyone trust a document with such an obvious flaw? How could the Bush Administration have avoided investigating this document with such intense scrutiny as to require such a high security agency as GOOGLE!? This is utterly recockulous. A simple Google search reveals that the document the administration used to take us to war was false and the senate and house are not calling for impeachment. I am infuriated and I just hope somebody tries to support Bush at the Halloween party I am attending on Saturday because I am going to flay them alive.

If you are still supporting Bush and I haven't meet you yet, then you are an idiot. If I have met you, then you are an idiot. You have no defense and should you continue to support Bush, whatever values you claim are irrelevant because it is clear that you are seriously lacking, morally and ethically.

The Chuck Bug: A CDC Proposal

Abstract:The Chuck Bug is a strange virus that seems spread through a strange interaction of vocal patterns with the aural nerve. It is extremely likely that there is a visual component as well, but several colleagues have divergent opinions in this area. The symptoms are peculiar. They consist of an odd attraction, completely without cause, for the individual known as chuckles and a strange sense that this individual is better than he appears.

There is one saving grace. If two individuals are infected with the bug at one event, the infected will often lapse into a state of remission while in proximity to both chuckles and each other. Should the social dynamic change by one of the infected leaving proximity to the source, the infection will wake and assert control.

The individual in question, chuckles, appears to be unable to control the infection in any way. It happens often enough to be remarkable yet in such an uncontrolled fashion as to be hilarious. Infection can happen across a broad range of women and has been known to be decidely awkward in certain social situations, such as weddings.

Vaccination is highly recommended, however, there is only one known cure for this viurs. Dating chuckles is the only known cure and it is an uncertain cure. Some have been cured in a matter of days, while other require months of exposure to the source. Still others never recover and are forever changed by the virus.

It is not yet known whether this is truly a virus or a hormonal, or even pheremonal, result from proximity to the source. Only time and study will tell.

Run for the hills, it's Tarantula Tuesday!

Last week I removed all of the hated crickets and cleaned out Helob's terrarium. I removed the branch that looked cool but was really only a refuge for the food insects. I then removed all the carcasses I could find and cleaned up some of the webbing. I then took great pleasure in removing the crickets that had been making so much noise and causing me great irritation. I used a pair of pliers and grabbed the crickets one by one and tossed them outside my door. This was not a gentle process for the crickets as they died shortly after I grabbed them. What with the crushing of their abdomens and the guts and all. Helob got a little flustered by all this attention, so I left him alone.

The next day I stopped by my parent's house and caught some crickets in their basement. These are big crickets that do not chirp but do breed like, well, crickets. They also jump a lot higher. I must be careful when opening the top. Hopefully, Helob will eat some of these crickets. I have heard from other spider people that tarantulas will periodically go off their crickets and that it is nothing to worry about. I am glad it is nothing to worry about because the spider people creep me out. What with the four extra limbs, fangs, and chittery Aragog-style speech.

Chick Flicks and Kurt Russell

I am disavowing this term. Most of the movies that people describe in this fashion are really just films for idiots. Why we need to describe them as somehow feminine is beyond me.

I have a question for the quiet masses. Who is a better rainy Saturday afternoon movie star? Kurt Russell or Rowdy Roddy Piper?

A Little Something About Me

The first time I went to the Congo was Christmas break of 1996, my first freshman year of college. I got off the plane in DC and had to take a cab or the metro to the house we were renting (long story) and then take some mefluquine and then watch Mom flip out about the packing for a few hours and then walked over to Dave's house to say hello and then goodbye. We left for Dulles about 6 hours after I got into town. Then we flew to Brusselles(whatever) and then the congo.

Christmas dinner was crazy. Mom was only able to find a massive, bigger than my head by far, squash and overcooked it. She was very frazzled being there and tried to make a cheese sauce. The sauce was great and the squash really dry. So we were all trying to ladle as much sauce as possible to make the squash palatable. We had about half the sauce we needed but no one was saying anything about it, we just sat there eating becuase we were worried my Mom would flip out about the whole thing. After my third trip to refill teh water pitcher from the filter in the kitchen my Mom just looked at me as I filled up our glasses and sat down. 'The squash came out a little dry, didn't it?' She asked. Me and Tim agreed and my Dad just sort of wiggled his eyebrows and we all looked at each other for a few seconds before we all started laughing. It was by far the worst Christmas dinner but we were laughing like crazy. hell, we were in Africa, shell shocked and eating an enormous squash that hard been cooked almost hard enough to build a house out of it.

EVEN MORE ARACHNID PHOTOS!

Here are some photos of Helob that aren't blurry. I may be a genius but I am not a great photographer.

Tarantula Tuesday Starts Today!

Who needs a security system when you have the Spawn of Ungoliant living with you?
Just try and break into my apartment now! BITCHES!!!

Microbrew Review Monday

I drank some beers at the Brickskeller the other night. As soon as I get home, I will be posting on their relevance in the face of the unfathomable failure of the universe to instill a sense of humility in me.

Said It Before and I'll Say It Again...

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Friday Afternoon Philosophy: Sex Music

This hasn't been a problem for me as I have been turning down offers of sex for four years now. (In order to clarify that statement, I mean sex, not fooling around, there has been enough of that on a regular basis to satisfy me.) Now, however, as the desire for actual sex rears it's ugly head, I find myself worried about being adequately prepared. I have only one, maybe two, CD's of sex music and very little on my computer that would satisfy that situation. I have The Richest Man in Babylon by DC's own Thievery Corporation and a CD of Late Night Tales as selected by The Flaming Lips. The first album needs no introduction and if you haven't heard the thieves then you have been living in a box, or at least not watching Garden State. The second album is a compilation of music for late night as chosen by the Lips. It has a cool cover of The White Stripes' Seven Nation Army by the Lips, too. Kinda neat. As cool as this is, it only amounts to about two hours of sex music. I think the standard sits around four hours, as some variation and accommodation of taste must be made. I am woefully unprepared.

My younger brother has untold hours of sex music. I could just take his collection and duplicate it, but that would be like duplicating another man's porn collection. Not kosher. Sex music and, by extension, porn say a lot about a person. I am not my brother, thus I must not duplicate his music. Since, he is in Slovakia at the moment, I can't even listen and get some ideas of what I like or what, the currently hypothetical, she might like.

I need to prepare a budget and just start logging some hours at the stores listening. Melody Music in Dupont seems like the place.

My Place in the Schemes of Things

I acknowledge the meaningless, puny nature of my existence in the face of the vastness of the universe, the scope of mythology and the expanse of human consciousness while simultaneously admitting the importance of my life in the perception of those around me. I will move through and beyond this life someday and the greater world will be largely unchanged, yet the smaller realm of this planet and this civilization will mourn the passing of my life. There will be those that will begin to erode my accomplishments and seek to remind others that I was merely a man. There will also be those, I most shamefully declare, that will seek to raise me above the professed humility of my life, but that is their right. After all, it is not for the dead that we remain faithful, but for the living.

Cricket Apocalypse

I have had it. Tonight the crickets die. I am going to kill or maim any live crickets left in Helob the tarantula's cage when I got home from work. The constant chirping will end and I will have peace.

That New Book Smell

I just purchased Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut and Knife of Dreams by the Jordan. I figure that you can't call yourself a patriotic American without having read at least three books by Kurt Vonnegut. As for Robert Jordan, well, even I have my weaknesses. Good thing they are protected by eleven three inch thick books. I wonder if this new book by Jordan will live up to his standard style of three chapters of plot development followed by twenty chapters of fluff and then three more chapters of plot.

I will not read either of these books until I have completed my readings for the past two weeks of WEstern Thought Wednesday. Then I will read Cat's Cradle and follow it with Knife of Dreams.

My New Buddy

I now have a pet curlyhair tarantula. I call it Helob, because I get this vibe that it is a male(and I am not horribly imaginative with names). That may just be the smell of all the testoserone that fills my apartment, but whatever. Helob doesn't do a whole lot. The first night he ate two giant cricket I caught in my parent's basement. Since then, he has eaten maybe one cricket. I wish he would eat one more. The one that keeps chirping. Maybe Helob is holding a hunger strike to get more of the big crickets. He should know that he has to clean his plate before he gets more food. Watching him devour the second large cricket was seriously cool. Helob moved it around with his front little arms and keep stabbing it with his inch long fangs. His fangs are about one quarter of his body length. He is a lot like me in that respect.

This is Weird

You Are Apple Cider

Smooth and comforting. But downright nasty when cold.

Friday Afternoon Philosophy

WHY AM I SO DAMNED GOOD TO PEOPLE?

I just agreed to give away my next weekend to a friend of my parents. He owns a bird watching store and needs help twice a year with his massive seed sale. He sells bird seed (for growing your very own birds) in the 5, 8, 20, 25 and 50 pound bags. I have helped with three of these events and each one has ruined a weekend. I get really damn tired hauling seed bags for a continuous seven hours and get paid seven dollars an hour to do it. I should have just said no this time as I have a steady job now, but his wife is the reason I have the job.

I won't even get any rest this fricking weekend either because I agreed to help my friend's sister move into her fiance's apartment. Sunday, I have to go to church because I want to appear to like people when really all I want to do is help them with certain events and then disappear for the rest of the year. The new vicar is nice and my age and she roped me into spending Sunday evening at some Christian meditation event. So my entire Sunday will be spent at church and I don't even believe! I am an infidel in a fidel's family. But not Fidel's family.

I don't even know why I am so nice to some people. They are the people that just don't matter in my life. I am less helpful to people I care about because I am always doing shit for people that I never see again. Like this girl last night. I walked her to her hotel when I could have just given her directions. She was cute or nothing, I was just bored with the walk home.

Why am I so nice? I never get anything from most of these encounters. I don't think it has anything to do with ethics, either. Giving money to the homeless has no ethical basis, more of a karmic basis actually. If you really want to help the homeless, you need to give to an organization you like. I guess I am just a sucker. These people aren't even hot, usually, so there goes that excuse.

WEstern Thought Wednesday: Charmides

As if it weren't obvious enough, this will be delayed until Saturday because everybody at work seems to think that fourteen hours days are normal even though they won't give me enough tasks to fill an eight hour day.
I am also meeting some people who run a bonobo rescue/research/reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo tonight at The Daily Grill here in DC and tomorrow night is either Serenity or Architecture in Helsinki. Probably the latter.

SAT Words

I have finally gotten to the point where I just can't take it anymore. The Republicans have been making up words for years, to say nothing of the Idiot in Chief, and I must speak out. Certain members of Congress are angered by the administration's 'cronyism'. These morons have apparently never heard of the term nepotism, or they think we are all as dumb as our President. Nepotism, folks, nepotism. The act of placing friends and allies in positions of authority upon rising to power. It is called NEPOTISM!

The Great Sausage Fest of 2002

Its May of 2002 and I had just recently moved to Portland, Oregon and my brother wanted to come visit me from Eugene. He said he had a friend in town that could show us around and we could go have some drinks. We met up with my bro's friend outside a restaraunt, Fellini, which is associated with it's neighoring club, Satyricon. Fellini is known for the strong drinks, but the ones we were given were quite weak.

The Shanghai Tunnel was our next stop and I thought was alright because it had a vodka I liked. The vodka was a Polish style potato vodka and it is smooth as sipping whiskey. We had a couple drinks there and then wandered over to some other bar, the name of which escapes me. The bar was a little lame for me, being a strange mix of hipster and the burgeoning metro style. We had a few more drinks there and I remember them being twice as expensive as the Tunnel's.

It was now somwhere between 9 and 11 and I can not remember where we were, but the friend was talking about a girl he had recently started dating/seeing/screwing. He was not sure what was going on between them, but he was sure that she was hanging out with her gay friend, Todd. They were at some club. A perhaps short while later, the friend suggests that if we want to meet some chicks that really want to meet guys, we should go to this place he knows. He says that it is a little out of the way and will take a bit to walk there. We're all pretty drunk by this time and my brother and I say yes. Which sounded a lot like fuck yeah, but let's not split hairs.

We wander around for probably 45 minutes, but I can't really be sure. The friend says we are getting close and wants to explain something. He says that it is not exactly your average club. We keep walking and ask what he means. He is evasive. We are drunk and not worried. We get to this place and the bouncer looks at us like what the fuck are you doing here and that is when I notice the sign, 'The Three Sisters', and the black plastic drapes hanging in the doorway. Irealize that we are about to enter a strip joint and that it is probably a gay strip joint. This takes about five minutes to percolate through my mind, meanwhile the friend is negotiating with the bouncer. The friend says the cover is ten dollars for us. I inquire into the amount of supposed girls inside. Bouncer says there are girls inside. I am drunk and this jives with everything heard so far tonight so I say sure, lets go in.

Well, there was a girl inside. It happened to be the girl the firend was sort of dating and her gay friend, Todd. He introduced himself to me as Todd, Todd the Rodd. I shit you not. This precipitated a protracted argument between Todd and my attraction to women and overall not-gayness. It was pretty funny the next morning, but I'll get to that later. My bro and I are a little annoyed because there are no other women beside the one the friend was seeing. It was all just naked dudes and dudes putting dollars bills into naked dudes pouches. At least there was Pabst on tap. For the most part I sat and watched TV at the bar. This was and is the only bar where I have been happy to see a TV. The movie playing was 'Valentine' and the channel was USA and the bartender wanted to know what the hell I was doing there. I told him we had been duped by our friend into coming here because of all the hot, horny, lonely girls who come to look at cock. He said that they usually come in right before closing. I didn't believe him and tried to avoid getting my butt pinched too much. Ladies, I feel your pain, some dudes are just way too aggressive.

So, after a while, some ladies did come in and I went after them like a cruise missile. I started talking to one blonde and she fit the bill. She wanted to know why I was there and I told her the story about the friend and the girl and the supposed hordes of women. She said that she was a regular because she just wasn't meeting the right kinds of guys. We danced and talked and were generally hitting it off until the lights came on after half an hour. Her friends were pretty drunk and she said that hse ahad to take them home and I was a dumbass and with the sheer volume of penises running through my short term memory I forgot about my own and didn't ask for a number. I never saw her again.

Todd the Rodd disappeared and I never saw him again either, thank you very much, and we all started walking home. Still being drunk, I daydreamed that I was Nemesis Enforcer from the G.I. Joe movie and walked ahead of everybody and fought imaginary beasts with my giant claws and Cobra-la strength.

It turned out that the girl lived in the same building as the friend, so he got some. My bro and I were given the keys to the friend's apartment and told we could eat whatever. I went right to the porch and sat down to clear my head and my bro started cooking something. He comes out onto the porch and says that he found some food and hands me a plate of two cooked sausages. I thought he was being funny and started laughing. He asks what is so funny and starts eating and I said that I had seen way to much sausage that evening. My bro nearly choked on his, ahem, sausage. We both cracked up and ate our sausages and fell asleep on the friends futon.

The next morning the friend admitted that he mostly wanted to see the girl and hadn't expected there to be girls at the club. The girl said that I had made an impression on Todd. I asked her to explain to the guy that it was never going to happen. My bro ad the friend then ripped on me for a while. It was funny.

Thus ends the story of the Great Sausage Fest of 2002.

Three Movies

I want to see Doom, Serenity and Waiting.

Doom seems a little, ok a lot, ridiculous and the games were good until the most recent version. The game has zombies, demons, dark atmosphere and marines. So the movie should be similar to Aliens with hellish influences. The only thing that could possibly make for a more completely awesome movie would be having Uwe Boll directing it. He makes the best suckass movies. Roger Corman movies may be prime 'B' movies, the epitome even, but nobody makes suckass like Uwe Boll makes suckass. I can't wait for the Dungeon Seige movie. That should be a masterpiece of the suckass genre and secure Boll a place next to the Sinbad movie with Lou Ferrigno.

Serenity should be moderately entertaining, although I have my doubts. The series was good, but I worry that there will be too much crammed into the movie for it to be good.

Waiting puts Ryan Reynolds back in the comedy where he belongs. He isn't old enough to pull off the dramatic switch that Tom Hanks has. Nor should he ever do that. Having been a waiter and having been waiting for some change to come along in my life, I will definitely go see this. Van Wilder was awesome and Reynolds was good in Buying the Cow, even if the rest of the movie was silly.

It Happened Again

Last night as I was falling asleep, I heard some animal growling right outside my window. It was a fast, rythmic growl and slowly it dawned on me that the beast was matching its growl to my breathing. It took another three or four breaths before I realized that it was me and I had woken myself up with my own snores again. This has happened two or three times since July. The last time it happened was in high school when I had the flu. Maybe I should get some breathe right strips in addition to some new underwear.

Microbrew Review Monday: Late

Leinenkugels

Its not exactly a microbrew, but since the Red is the only variety available outside of Wisconsin and Illinois, I think it counts. I must admit that I haven't actually drank a beer in more than a week.

The Lager is pretty good, but not exceptional. It has a good flavor with mild complexity of high notes and low notes and all that. Northwoods is far superior to any macrobrew 'premium' beer. It has an odd flavor that I will admit is only for some, but I really like it. It sticks out and says, 'Hey! How ya doin? Come on in! I got some beers in the fridge and I need to make room for the beef for tomorrow's barbecue!' It is kind of oaky, without the crunchy. The two absolute stars of the Leinenkugel's stable are Honey Weiss and Berry Weiss. Honey has a the pleasures of beer with honey. It tastes a bit like a quality lager mixed with mead. Now take that mix and add raspberry and blueberry juice and you have the Berry. Both must be thoroughly chilled to be enjoyed to the fullest. You can even mix them together to create a cool drink. Guys take note: these beers have all the alcohol of beer and the flavor of a pussy ass wine cooler which chicks love. Girls get seriously drunk and you don't look like a dork buying them at the store. I once sat on a swing bench with a buddy and we each drank a cool case one afternoon in September. We got demolished and had a great time.

Verdict: Even in class or at work

WEstern Thought Wednesday: Plato

Phaedo
So this is a week overdue. As much as I like the interaction with the slave boy, tonight I am finally struck by something worth writing about from this dialogue. I am writing this straight from the brain, so forgive me if it wanders a bit. The immortal soul is the subject. According to Socrates, a person has an immortal soul. The natural state of the soul is the time between death and rebirth. Given this, I now depart from the Phaedo.

As we move through life our minds, or soul, are changed by experience. Our choices limit or expand our further choices and our minds. Various events can happen that physically limit the mind, but I will ignore these as the vagaries of chance are irrelevant. Socrates says we should ignore the opinions of the masses but what should we do when we can not take his advice? Napoleon was a guy that could be said to be responsible for modern Europe with his agressive antiestablishment views. Given that he expressed these views with an army that was kicking all kinds of ass, it is now wonder that more than a few nations found him to be a threat. However, his views of empire weren't known until later in his life, after he had quite a few enemies that were worried about him setting up an imperial dynasty in Europe.

Perhaps a better example is Lenny Bruce. This guy was a comedian, then he gets hassled by the gubmint for a while. He ends up losing the comedy and just ranting about the gubmint.

You know, this post has jsut comepletely derailed. The key point is that no matter who you are born, you have the chance to be a good, decent, enlightened person. Some of those choices are hard and some are easy, but the important part is that you make them. The more you choose to sit in your apartment and watch tv, the less choice you will have in the larger world. Not really news to anyone. Charmides here I come! (This is a joke based on comments made by Socrates in the dialogue...hehe)

Microbrew Review Monday

This is late because I had a flat tire on the way home from work. With Six and a Half miles yet to go. And all the bicycle shops closed just as I finally made it to each one. So I had to call my father for a lift from the second shop, after I had walked two and a half miles, which is normally not a big deal for me, but the bike was not cooperating and slowed me up. I ended up spending $70 on more bike equipment and will most likely need another inner tube as the old has two sets of punctures, one right by the valve. Biking may not be free, but at least I am not buying gasoline! Ha HA! Take THAT Bush! Although everything I bought needs petroleum to create as it was either plastic or a rubber or glue. Anyway...on to the review.

Rock Bottom's Hefeweizen, Oktoberfest and Stout

I was misled as to the nature of the beer at Rock Bottom Brewery. I was going there to see a friend and was under the impression that it was a microbrewery and eatery, but it is actually a chain. A crappy chain restaurant. The 'House' burger was adequate along with the fries. The 'German' chocolate cake actually sucked. How hard is it to screw up a dessert? In my opinion, you need to work hard to ruin a dessert. I started with a Hefeweizen which tasted like the monad of hefeweizen. Absolutely unexceptional. I was startled to be disappointed. To compare Rock Bottom's to a decent hefe like Widmer's is like comparing American cheese to cheddar cheese. You take all the flavor out of one and make the color completely uniform and you have Rock Bottom's hefeweizen.

I then tried their attempt at Oktoberfest beer. I can't claim to have ever had an Oktoberfest beer in Germany, but this tasted like an average amber that someone had drunk while smoking dope. They then tried to make tea with day old used teabags and heating the beer for steeping. If Captain Picard had been a beer drinker, he would drink this. It may be somewhat close to a seasonal German beer, but it just didn't come together well.

For my third and final beer, I tried their stout because they compared it to Guiness and said it would go well with the dessert. I was looking for anything to make the cake better, but alas, this was not it. I will say that it may have been ruined by the awful cake, but Rock Bottom's stout was foofed in some odd way. I shall compare it to Emeril making a pizza. All a pizza needs or wants is a decent sauce that accentuates the natural flavors of the pepperoni and mozzarella, roma and parmesan cheese blend. Too much flicking around with foofy extras ruins it. I almost thought about not finishing the beer, but I never leave a wounded man behind.

Final Verdict: When there is nothing else

The Song of the Century

For those of you demanding my lyrical genius, here it is.

I need some tightie whities,
not just any tightie whities.
I need some tightie whities,
for my BALLS!
(Repeat until you forget how much your crotch hates your bike)

This is the song I was singing to myself on my commute. I was only singing it for about five minutes three quarters of the way to work and I thought I was alone on the trail. After the third or fourth verse, I looked back and this guy was behind me. He passed me, laughing. It seems that every time I try to sing in public people end up laughing, which reminds me that I have yet to post the details of the weekend in New York.

I have begun biking to work for the exercise and so I can avoid giving Bush's buddies anymore of my money. So far, I haven't paid taxes on the vast majority of my income this year, so you would think I was taking it to extremes, but we'll forget that for the moment. I don't want congestion on the bike trail. I thought that by leaving at 730 and not even getting to the trail until its almost 800, I would avoid most of the commuters. I was hoiping that all the people with jobs in the government would wnat to be there by 800. How wrong I was. For about fifteen minutes, I was really cruising probably 25-35 mph and dodging people on the trail. This is exactly what I hoped to avoid. I was wrong. I guess everybody else was probably hoping to avoid congestion, too. It was pretty sweet flying by people on my shitty little bike. Especially when they have the full gear on like the spandex shorts and shirt with all the special saddlebags. My bike lookslike it came from the trash heap behind a bike shop, which it did, and for storage, I have secured an orange milk crate to the rack. Hobo-stylin, indeed.

The Song of the Bicycle Commuter

Here it is. The song I was singing three quarters of teh way through my commute on Friday morning.

I need some tightie whities,
not just any tightie whities.
I need some tightie whities,
for my BALLS!

It was going pretty well until I realised that some dude was biking along behind and then passed me laughing his ass off. I can't sing in public without people laughing at me. Just like New York. I still need to post the story of that weekend.

The Fall of Oscar Medina

I was walking from the bus stop to my new employer's new office and I saw an old man in a long brown coat struggling along a fence. He was walking and holding himself upright with the fence and shaking pretty thoroughly. My previously plotted trajectory took me within a foot of his and I asked him if he was okay when I got within an arm's reach. I think this is a pretty stupid question given his obvious state of non-okayness. I am new to the neighborhood and figured that he could just be perusing the borders of his yard from the outside while overdressed for the heat and humidity and striken by the shakes, but that would be stupid. Anyway, he replied in a timid voice that he was hurt and that he had fallen. I asked him if he needed some help and he proceeded to take a slow motion fall backwards and I was only able to catch him and ease him onto the concrete and the massive line of ants crossing said concrete. I thought that he might be a little demented but then he held his hands up and it appeared that he had indeed taken a tumble. As I was talking with him another older man walked up and I asked him if he knew the fallen gent. The second man said that he had seen the fallen in the area but didn't know him by name. I remembered my First Aid merit badge stuff and asked the fallen his name.

He said, "My name is Oscar Medina." "Can I call someone for you?" I can honestly say that I have never felt more like I was not helping the situation with these moronic questions. How about an ambulance, dipshit? I yelled at myself in my head. So Senor Medina tells me a phone number, but no one answers. He gives me a second number, meanwhile the ants are crawling all over him and the sun is roasting all of us. The second number is answered by a latina and we discuss the facts of the situation and she leaves the phone on the counter and I figure that is the end of the conversation. We, the old men and I, stand, or sit, around like three idiots with our thumbs up each other's butts and try to silently determine Senor Medina's options. I asked him if anyhting hurt, but he kept syaing nothing hurt unless I specifically asked if a body part hurt. He would then say that specific part did hurt. I figured that he was a little out of it. He reminded me of my grandmother before she died and she was gone in the brain.

Up the street come three determined, tiny latinas of several ages. I swear neither of them came up to my waist and they immediately took control of our dumb asses. They spoke with Senor Medina and tried to lift him and get him down the street. With my help, we got him up, but not very far. We got him sitting down on some stairs on the next yard and there was much discussion in high speed spanish (is there any other kind?) and one of the latinas took off. Then the older woman took off. Then the old man took off. Then the youngest latina left me with Senor Medina. I stood up and tried to shield the man from the sun. I looked pretty weird, holding my bag up over his head to provide shade.

Finally, the youngest latina and the eldest come running back with a cup of water for Senor Medina. Then the eldest ran off again. I had no idea what was going on at this point because we weren't in a restaraunt and all of my spanish is vocabularly strictly limited to cooking and serving. So I once again had my thumb up my butt and was back to asking moronic questions. The young latina came back and then I heard a fire truck siren.

I don't know if this is standard, but in DC the firemen show up first and stabilize the patient. They pulled up and asked me if I called an ambulance. I replied, "Yes. He fell down and can't walk or support his weight." I should have told them his name, I suppose but I still had my thumb wedged seriously all the way up into the base of my skull. I could not have been less useful. The three latinas were all buzzing around as the firemen got out their gear to take his pressure and ask him about medications he may be taking. The eldest latina managed to discover that he is taking two medications for prostate something or other. As the firemen took firm control, I did the only thing I could think would possibly be useful. I pulled out one of my cards and gave it to the eldest latina. She told me that she owned the hair salon around the corner. I said thanks for the help and told Senor Medina that I hope he felt better. He waved at me and said thank you from behind his oxygen mask.

I suppose I don't need to further state how much of an idiot I was, given that last exchange. Anyway, end result of the whole thing is that Senor Medina is something around eighty years old and broke his hip. He was an accountant for the hair salon and apparently has no family in the area, except for Coco and her girls at the salon. In order to further reinforce my lack of a clue, I am taking Senor Medina some flowers tomorrow at the hospital which is down the street from my office.

Weekend Off

Now that I have my keyboard working, I am off to New York for the weekend. See you all on Monday. I shall have many wonderful stories to tell the quiet masses. Stories of the worst hookups in my life so far and the best so far. Stories of heroism and the struggle for adversity that makes all men weep...well not really but hopefully they'll be funny.

WEstern Thought Wednesday

This Week's Reading: Crito

fulsome has asked a question about Socrates that is particularly relevant in this dialogue. Was Socrates a martyr? I will give my answer at the end of my analysis (or are these merely comments?). Most of my notes are tied up with this question, but I have some other points that I think are important.

Starting at the start of my notes, I find that on page 32 section 47E, a sort of argument for euthanasia. To quote, "...is life worth living with a body which is worn out and ruined in health?" Taken out of context one could find this to be a statement of Socrates' belief that life as an old man sucks and he just wants to die. This would not be the case. The soul, or mind, is vastly more important than the body and as long as one's mental faculties are intact, life is livable.

Socrates says in a roundabout manner that ethics are matters of eternal right and wrong. Morals are matters of right and wrong that are determined by the public. Socrates was disdainful of any attempt to regard the opinion of the public. I wonder what he would think about the debate about stem cell use. I have read that the Korean scientists were able to create twelve new stem cell lines from sick people in attempts to help cure them. This was overshadowed by the whole clone dog stuff.

There are ways to damage the soul that don't have any physical harm. Breaking the laws of your state are a harm to your soul as are other bad/evil deeds. In the event of a law that is bad, one should strive to change that law instead of breaking it. This is the basis of Socrates' defiance of his friend's attempts to break him out of jail.

Socrates also states that one must never do wrong. This harms the soul. Socrates also says that one must obey the laws and edicts of the city. The city provided the society in which you grew and were educated. A person owes their parents for their life but owes their city/state for the development of the personality/soul. Thus, without Athens (or the U.S.) being the way it was, one would be a completely different person. One must never break the laws of the city. What if Athens had declared war on Corinth because of a thinly held claim that Corinth had developed a new form of spear that could kill men from further away? What if evedince was found before the declaration of war that Corinth had no such spear? What if no one could change the minds of Athens' council and the people had no wish to attack Corinth with no provocation? Would Socrates have gone to war at his city's request in this situation? I think he would have.

To further this argument, if I claim to try to follow a Socratic example then how can I do this without enlisting? I vote and help people cross the street and all that, but I have never been in the military. I know that if I receive a draft notice, I would not hesitate to report for duty but our army needs recruits now and I haven't signed up. fulsome makes the claim that our city has not asked anything of us. There has been no draft or even a public request for people to enlist, to my knowledge, by the President and Thief in Command.

I don't think Socartes was a martyr. Martyrs die for their cause and are usually asked to renounce their cause under some form of duress. Socrates was asked to flee the city by his friends, but he was never given an option to renounce his views once he was sentenced to death. He knew that the sentence would be death and didn't make any claim of deference to the court. Before sentencing, Socrates could have said that he would stop his search for wisdom and stop talking to people about it, but he said that this would be a harm to him. Although, this could all be a support of the position that he was a martyr. I need to ponder this more.

PS. This was late due to another power outage in my apartment. Some butterfly must have been taking a crap in Argentina.