Capriciously Incidental...
I got carded for buying a DVD at Meijer, which is borderline censorship. Super Christian Mom can take her four year old to watch Jesus Christ have nails driven through his limbs and his back turned into ground beef with a cat o' nine tails, but I can't buy a Terminator movie without ID. That's some bullshit. When I tutored eighth grade algebra, kids would try and curse me out, as if singing the lyrics to some rap song. I got called nigger one day and honkey another (two separate kids), and it's cool to let these kids listen to 50 Cent, G-Unit, Ludacris (love the spelling there, slick), Nelly, and all these other futureless, brainless assholes, but I can't watch a movie with a few explosions and an intelligent thought about the advance of technology. Something's wrong here. Hell, you can't buy any CD labelled "explicit lyrics" (ie, any CD that's popular) in Wal-Mart or Meijer, instead they sell you watered down crap. So, what's the problem? Parents are fucking yes-men. Baby cries, you say yes and do what they want. Toddler throws a tantrum in the store, get em the toy they want so they shut up and stop embarrassing you. Teenager throws a fit when they get caught drinking, smoking weed, having sex or what have you, so mom and dad give them a stern talking to. No wonder these eighth grade kids have no fear and I have to listen to their immature asses everytime I try and play a game on the computer... ugh, that's another rant.
Steph was in town for the weekend, so we got to hang out last night. Meaning that now, because I slept all day, now I can't fall asleep now. Oh well, it was worth it. She's one of few people that really cares enough to call me without me initiating every contact, and that's special. If I had a middle school aged kid, she'd be the one I'd want teaching. She can actually argue intelligently (most of the time) a liberal point of view, which is rare, and she tolerates my political rantings.
I watched a special on the Deulfer Report on Fox. Interestingly enough, CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS aren't really giving it all that much attention, aside from the single headline about no stockpiles of WMD's being found in Iraq. Wow, take a 1000 page report and reduce it to a 15 second soundbyte that makes Bush look like a liar and run that, and ignore the rest of the report. Why do that? Maybe it's because it makes the French and Russians look like greedy, capitalist assholes willing to sell their veto power at the UN to a dictator in another country. (Kind of Faustian, eh?) Maybe it's because it makes the UN look useless, feeble, and corrupt. Maybe it's because it justifies the "Coalition"'s actions to go in and forcibly evict the corruptor. Or maybe, just maybe, it's because the liberal bastards running those networks are so mired in their disgust for the Bush Administration, they're willing to overlook clear facts and a literal volume of evidence. Interestingly enough, Fox was honest enough to report fairly that American companies were on the beneficiaries list too. Now, in fairness, they took ~$250 million, whereas the French and Russians took 10 times that, EACH. Chevron and Mobil were the main ones on the list of American companies who took the highly discounted Iraqi oil among others, and charitably enough, they then price-gouged the American consumer at the pump. They paid half the market price per barrel of crude and I'm paying over $2/gallon for gasoline, so I guess now I know how the oil companies posted record earnings since the Oil-for-Food program started, while I've had to listen to liberals blaming Bush for an inadequate supply of oil, blaming Bush for going to Iraq to get it, blaming Bush for offering to drill the Alaskan reserve as an alternative to Mideast oil. And now, they're eating crow, because the report says what the Bush Administration has said all along - Saddam needed to go.
I watched my brother kick serious ass at his white belt test Saturday. He passed easily and got his yellow belt, well, he earned his yellow belt, and they'll actually give it to him Tuesday. I got to hang out with Shawn (senior belt, and really cool guy) and Amy (red belt, Illini Club) who I haven't seen in forever. Shawn looked like Wolverine that day, so we ended up talking about X-Men for like 20 minutes, it was awesome! Amy's just freaking brilliant, and it was cool to see her. B started his yellow belt skills today and reminds me a lot of the difficulties I had with those skills because of my shitty balance. Must run in the family. We're fast as hell, wiry little dudes, but we weren't gifted with balance. I'm proud of him.
Did some reading about hip and knee replacement surgeries this weekend, with breaks to read the fun stuff (Stephen King) every once in a while. These systems are beginning to make a lot more sense now as I read the techniques and some of the physics behind the implant designs and as I keep putting effort into really learning them. I'm scheduled to do both a hip and knee tomorrow so we'll see how those go. Hopefully, they won't have Kerry in there so I can first scrub. Did I mention I really want to go to medical school?
Stephen King is a weird as hell guy. Well, his Dark Tower series is weird. Honestly, the more I read it, I get the feeling that it's a work which models the evolution of his vision of the supernatural from the time he started writing to now. He brings in characters, places, and concepts from other books he has written, openly referencing them (ie. Salem's Lot, Carrie, Hearts in Atlantis, The Stand etc) in the Dark Tower books. In book six, he had his main character planeswalk and meet himself as a character in his own book, specifically referencing an incident in 1999 where he was almost killed in a car wreck in Maine. Even the number 1999 has been split up and used throughout his series, 19 (being a superstitious number sort of like 13) and 99 with a vaguely similar connotation. He even has the ethereal evil presence specifically plotting to kill him in the book. It's just a weird concept that borders on autobiography. Even the places visited hint at a sort of psychological dread of death, the unknown, and apocalypse in a way that's impossible to communicate fully without some sort of academic writing that, frankly, I'm too lazy to do right now. So anyway, the book's almost over, and he's hinting at finally killing off his main character, which sort of depresses me, because clearly, King has found no other equitable (re)solution for ending this saga than to simply kill the main character, the epitome of literary laziness (or Writer's Block).
Steph was in town for the weekend, so we got to hang out last night. Meaning that now, because I slept all day, now I can't fall asleep now. Oh well, it was worth it. She's one of few people that really cares enough to call me without me initiating every contact, and that's special. If I had a middle school aged kid, she'd be the one I'd want teaching. She can actually argue intelligently (most of the time) a liberal point of view, which is rare, and she tolerates my political rantings.
I watched a special on the Deulfer Report on Fox. Interestingly enough, CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS aren't really giving it all that much attention, aside from the single headline about no stockpiles of WMD's being found in Iraq. Wow, take a 1000 page report and reduce it to a 15 second soundbyte that makes Bush look like a liar and run that, and ignore the rest of the report. Why do that? Maybe it's because it makes the French and Russians look like greedy, capitalist assholes willing to sell their veto power at the UN to a dictator in another country. (Kind of Faustian, eh?) Maybe it's because it makes the UN look useless, feeble, and corrupt. Maybe it's because it justifies the "Coalition"'s actions to go in and forcibly evict the corruptor. Or maybe, just maybe, it's because the liberal bastards running those networks are so mired in their disgust for the Bush Administration, they're willing to overlook clear facts and a literal volume of evidence. Interestingly enough, Fox was honest enough to report fairly that American companies were on the beneficiaries list too. Now, in fairness, they took ~$250 million, whereas the French and Russians took 10 times that, EACH. Chevron and Mobil were the main ones on the list of American companies who took the highly discounted Iraqi oil among others, and charitably enough, they then price-gouged the American consumer at the pump. They paid half the market price per barrel of crude and I'm paying over $2/gallon for gasoline, so I guess now I know how the oil companies posted record earnings since the Oil-for-Food program started, while I've had to listen to liberals blaming Bush for an inadequate supply of oil, blaming Bush for going to Iraq to get it, blaming Bush for offering to drill the Alaskan reserve as an alternative to Mideast oil. And now, they're eating crow, because the report says what the Bush Administration has said all along - Saddam needed to go.
I watched my brother kick serious ass at his white belt test Saturday. He passed easily and got his yellow belt, well, he earned his yellow belt, and they'll actually give it to him Tuesday. I got to hang out with Shawn (senior belt, and really cool guy) and Amy (red belt, Illini Club) who I haven't seen in forever. Shawn looked like Wolverine that day, so we ended up talking about X-Men for like 20 minutes, it was awesome! Amy's just freaking brilliant, and it was cool to see her. B started his yellow belt skills today and reminds me a lot of the difficulties I had with those skills because of my shitty balance. Must run in the family. We're fast as hell, wiry little dudes, but we weren't gifted with balance. I'm proud of him.
Did some reading about hip and knee replacement surgeries this weekend, with breaks to read the fun stuff (Stephen King) every once in a while. These systems are beginning to make a lot more sense now as I read the techniques and some of the physics behind the implant designs and as I keep putting effort into really learning them. I'm scheduled to do both a hip and knee tomorrow so we'll see how those go. Hopefully, they won't have Kerry in there so I can first scrub. Did I mention I really want to go to medical school?
Stephen King is a weird as hell guy. Well, his Dark Tower series is weird. Honestly, the more I read it, I get the feeling that it's a work which models the evolution of his vision of the supernatural from the time he started writing to now. He brings in characters, places, and concepts from other books he has written, openly referencing them (ie. Salem's Lot, Carrie, Hearts in Atlantis, The Stand etc) in the Dark Tower books. In book six, he had his main character planeswalk and meet himself as a character in his own book, specifically referencing an incident in 1999 where he was almost killed in a car wreck in Maine. Even the number 1999 has been split up and used throughout his series, 19 (being a superstitious number sort of like 13) and 99 with a vaguely similar connotation. He even has the ethereal evil presence specifically plotting to kill him in the book. It's just a weird concept that borders on autobiography. Even the places visited hint at a sort of psychological dread of death, the unknown, and apocalypse in a way that's impossible to communicate fully without some sort of academic writing that, frankly, I'm too lazy to do right now. So anyway, the book's almost over, and he's hinting at finally killing off his main character, which sort of depresses me, because clearly, King has found no other equitable (re)solution for ending this saga than to simply kill the main character, the epitome of literary laziness (or Writer's Block).
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