the most wonderful godson in the world...

sorry to all you other Fairy Godmothers out there, but I have the cutest godson in the world. Dominic and his brother and sisters and parents went to my cousin's house and we had a little early Christmas celebration. I gave Domi his very first tricycle - he preferred riding it Fred Flintstone-style, avoiding using the pedals and trying to use his feet. Also got him his very first cell phone (okay, not a REAL phone, but one that allowed me to record a message to him telling him i love him) and some clothes. he's such a cutie!

Xmas with dad...

so dad came to visit early for christmas this year - a plane ticket that's $750 during xmas week was $325 last week. he spent a few nights here, coming back this afternoon so we can go to the cemetery with adam before he heads back to Utah tomorrow.

matt and paige and adam and codi were here saturday, we did the xmas with dad thing...i can't believe how grown up my brother and sister are, but i should - it's easy to do the math, after all. matt's 18 now, duh, he's not gonna look like the 10 year old that's stuck in my brain. got the goatee action goin on, playing guitar, working at Home Depot...the typical 18 year old type stuff. paige is her same self - i talk to her a lot more cuz she's always online and we IM each other. things got a bit tense for a while because matt brought up the fact that paige doesn't have her cell phone anymore because she ran up a $900 phone bill from sending text messages! holy crap! i know we all do stupid stuff as kids, but my farkups weren't that expensive!

all in all, a nice visit.

long time no type....

no posts in a long time - not sure if that's a good sign or not - sometimes when the depression lifts, i don't write as much. or perhaps i'm depressed and feeling lazy. probably a combination of the two - get depressed, don't write....feel better, don't write...

so i've pondered closing down the ol' blog, but i just don't know...

Wikipedia Brown, Boy Detective

an interesting combination of those Encyclopedia Brown books of my childhood, and Wikipedia - it's Wikipedia Brown, Boy Detective

somehow, i don't think she'll be able to serve...

i'm still receiving mom's mail, although it should certainly ease up once her estate is closed next month.

today, she recieved a card from the clerk of the marion circuit court - my mother's being summoned for jury duty! errr, sorry folks, she's been dead for almost a year now!! actually, the first day she's supposed to call is the anniversary of her death - how friggin weird.

up at 3:30 for no apparent reason...

perhaps it's the sniffles i'm starting to get - coming down with a cold, perhaps?

saturday's birthday was very nice - joanie, george & brandon came over with a cake...i answered numerous calls and emails from people with birthday wishes...had dinner with kat & john...then on sunday i went to spend some time with dominic - i have the cutest godson in the world, that's all there is to it.

saturday morning, i was filled with a sense of dread - this being my first birthday without mom, i figured everyone would forget and i'd be stuck spending the day alone. nope, not happening - which made me feel very good. i guess people actually DO like me.

reckon i ought to try to go back to sleep now...

Angie Dickinson, Eric Stoltz, Jenna Elfman, Fran Drescher...

they've all got something in common with me - a September 30th birthday!!

granted, they're all older than me (i'm 34 now) but we're all Libras...woo hoo!

trying not to get too sad about the fact that this is my first b-day without mom, but it's hard - last year's birthday sucked because it was shortly after her cancer diagnosis and we were in the midst of chemo and all sorts of crap. *sigh* i miss her so much.

but i know she wouldn't want me dwelling on it, she'd want me to have a good day today, so i'm gonna give it a concerted effort to do so. happy birthday me!

comment of the day...

TotalFark had a discussion titled "Post your favourite saying you say too much. Finer than frog hair split six ways, doesn't count"

i think my fave comment was from sweettoothbear:

"I'm so broke that I have to jack off the dog... just to feed the cat."

that's pretty damned broke.

Bingo!

Kat & i went to play bingo last night...it's been a loooong time since i've done bingo - college, perhaps? - but i managed to watch over 12 cards with ease (for the most part) i won $30 in one of the early birds, and i won a door prize - a Halloween decoration of a purple kitty in a witch's hat - that i promptly gave to Kat. the only major problem is the smoke from all the smokers - i wonder how well a non-smoking bingo hall would do? but we had a good time and will probably go back...

maybe i could make some $$...

perhaps i could sell descriptions of my latest dreams to Rozerem and they would put them on tv - last night involved King Kong in a Hawaiian shirt at the dealership that sold me my car. (i must say, i find the Rozerem commercial with Abe Lincoln and a beaver playing chess to be rather amusing)

i'm so butch...

i'm so butch that i buy my medical supplies at the Tractor Supply store. And i've heard of the things they've had there, even though the cashier looked at me like i was an alien when i asked her if they had cow magnets. maybe she thought it was just another stupid city girl walking in - she told me maybe i should try Kohl's - er, no, i explained to her - not a refrigerator with a pic of a cow on it, a cow magnet that you put in a cow's stomach to attract the metals that it digests to avoid harming the cow...i poked around the store and eventually found them...then i had to explain to her that i didn't have any cows, that i used them to activate my Vagus Nerve Stimulator. hey, bargain hunter that i am, i'd much rather pay eight bucks for three of them than get the "official" version from the VNS company for thirty bucks EACH.

a to-do list 4 miles long...

...but that's okay, because it was 5 miles long - i've managed to cross off a mile of things this weekend. Whoopi's glad about that - i got her fish bowl all cleaned out and fresh water put in, it's crystal clear now!!

success!

the cookout was a success. except for that minor incident with singing a large portion of hair (on the front/top of my head, my eyebrows, eyelashes, and a bit on my forearm. didn't hurt all that much, but it's definitely made me realize that grilling with charcoal is NOT for me - not enough control like there is with a gas grill.

i think kat was a bit disappointed that it wasn't a games night sort of event, but i wasn't about to herd everyone in to the clubhouse to play games when just sitting and chatting was very nice.

i made mom's tropical fruit salad, in the bowl she always used - just a small way of including her in the festivities.

busy busy

kat's been ill lately - looks as though her gall bladder will need to be removed. meanwhile, i'm getting ready to host a labor day cookout - rented out the clubhouse and now i'm in the process of rounding things up and making sure all will be good...

SoaP

goin to a Fark Party tonite - gonna see Snakes On A Plane - i'm predicting it'll be cheezy and stupid, and a lot of fun. *8-)

i have the best godson in the whole wide world

i spent some time with my cousin marian and her family today, including my godson Dominic. the boy is amazing - i just can't even put into words the happiness he puts into my heart. prozac's got nothing on this kid - he ooozes anti-depressant qualities. he's trying to learn to snap his fingers - got the motion down, just not the pressure, so not a sound is made. and he's waving, but for some reason, when he waves with his right hand, he leaves his index finger erect - not sure what that's all about, but it's cute.

the kids are still having difficulties remembering my name, and that i'm Lori and not Linda - makes me think about Mom a lot and how much i miss her.

time for a recipe...

the joy of Fark is finding all sorts of spiffy things - like this recipe from TotalFarker jimmyhaha:

Type II Diabetes

26 1/2 lb Froot Loops
2 1/3 lb butter
1600 Whatchamacallit Bars (crumbled)
26 gal. Dry Gin
1 Couch
1 Tivo
1 xBox 360

Mix the first three ingredients until they form one smooth, flabby ass.
Apply ass to Couch for 18 hours daily, basting liberally with Tivo and xBox.
Serves one.

crippled...

been crippled with depression recently, hence no posts. i'm now in intensive outpatient therapy. it's helping me.

compassion - fuck it!

maybe i've just spent too much time on TotalFark where the current flavor of acronym is DIAF = die in a fire...

but even in real life it seems that people aren't too compassionate these days...

a product of the Bush administration? *shrug*

people suck.

networking problems....

damn lightning hit my building again, and ever since i've had problems getting online with my computers. wish i knew more about networking stuff to fix the danged thing...

it's not just computer networking causing an issue - doctors are annoying the fark out of me as well. i seem to have pissed off the shrink by questioning a medication she prescribed for me, cuz ever since i started taking it my blood sugars have skyrocketed. it's not that i don't trust her, i just would rather be on a different medication if this is gonna happen. *shrug* meanwhile i've had difficulties getting through to my other docs and it's all just a big clusterfuck. argh!!!!!

Click

Adam, Codi and i just got back from seeing Click - the movie where Adam Sandler gets a truly universal remote control. It was amusing, tho Roger Ebert didn't seem to like it as much as i did. i'm not this huge Adam Sandler fan or anything like that, but i did like this movie. Dolores O'Riordan (lead singer of the Cranberries) had a cameo, now i've got "Linger" stuck in my head. whoever picked out the music for the movie did a good job - it doesn't look like they're releasing a soundtrack tho...

making it difficult to cancel...

Got a solicitation in the mail from Stamps.com urging me to join their service, to try it out, get $45 free postage and a free postal scale, blah blah blah...

what they don't tell ya is that you get $5 up front and the other $40 ya get when ya sign up for their $15.99/month service, and that's when ya get the "free" scale too...

so i wanted to cancel...amazing how these companies (AOL's notorious for it) make it so difficult to cancel a subscription...

particularly when it comes to actually finding a NUMBER to call to cancel...so, if anyone's looking to cancel a stamps.com account, here's the info, from http://www.stamps.com/cancel/:

To close your account, please contact Customer Support at 1-888-434-0055, Monday - Friday, 6 am - 6pm (PST). Thank you for your patience.

i'm sure the "thank you for your patience" comment comes from the fact that customers get aggravated as hell trying to find the damned number...

so i called the number...went through 3 menus to get to talk to a person...of course, then i was on hold...8 minutes...no doubt people get annoyed and hang up...

thankfully, when i did talk to a person, she didn't attempt to keep me on the phone for 29 minutes begging me to reconsider my cancellation...so they're definitely better than AOL in that regard...

the internet's gonna die on my birthday!

that's what this link discusses - whether or not the net will die on September 30.

signs of the times...

well, you can definitely tell what the owner of Casa D' Ice feels about a variety of issues - he posts it on the signs of his restaurant...

CouchSurfing.com

looks like an interesting idea - "CouchSurfing.com helps you make connections worldwide. You can use the network to meet people and then go and surf other members' couches! When you surf a couch, you are a guest at someone's house. They will provide you with some sort of accommodation, a penthouse apartment or maybe a back yard to pitch your tent in. Stays can be as short as a cup of coffee, a night or two, or even a few months or more. When you offer your couch, you have complete control of who visits. The possibilities are endless and completely up to you."

agreeing with a Fox News anchor?

i know we shouldn't give assholes like family members of Fred Phelps any air time, but i found this YouTube link to be rather amusing...

Father's Day

Father's Day this year was different - i mailed a present off to Dad for the first time in i don't know how long. i guess i had thought about it and realized this past year that he'd acted more like a father than he had in a long time - particularly after Mom's death. even though i didn't want him around, he travelled from Colorado and sincerely (dad? sincere?) seemed to only want to be there to support his kids (psychologically, at least) so i guess that merited a present. *shrug*

another difference was that i didn't have Mom around - in years past i would make a point to give a Father's Day present to her in recognition of her being there more for me as more than just Mom, she'd served the role as both parents an awful lot. so i went to the cemetery yesterday and hung out for a little bit.

dammit, i really miss her.

scion owners are weird...

i'm learning that owners of Scion xB's are kinda weird - guess i'll fit in since i'm kinda weird too...

a few things that are on cafe press that i found amusing:

the weekend...

so, i decided against the detroit idea - it'd be great to see the HNIA show, but the anxiety involved in such a last minute thing just isn't worth it. besides, i need to be home doing some house cleaning. brought in some boxes from the garage, and my place is a huge pile of clutter.

i finally got on the iTunes kick, now i've been downloading tunes like crazy - not just from iTunes, but other sites, as well as putting CD's onto my laptop...

went to dinner with Deb last night - yummy!! bd's mongolian barbeque is up north, so i dunno about making it a regular place to go, but hey, if i'm headed to costco or visiting friends up there, i'd definitely go back...

oh yeah, and there's that little matter of me buying a new car. once i get the check from my aunt (danged trust fund!) i'll be purchasing a new 2006 Scion xB. i don't think i'll be pimping it out like most people in the Scion community seem to do, but who knows. i love the "You just got passed by a toaster" stickers - people seem to have a love/hate reaction to this car, with the "negative" reviewers saying that it looks too much like a toaster. Since mine's silver, i'm sooooo tempted to construct a huge piece of toast out of styrofoam or some such and attach it to the top of the car to really enhance the toaster idea...Heywood Banks would approve, i'm sure.

Unnecessary Censorship

Jimmy Kimmel Live's got a bit called "This Week in Unnecessary Censorship" that i find to be farking hilarious, with a gentle poke to the FCC thrown in for good measure.

www.thatvideosite.com has links to a bunch of em, so if you're looking for a laugh, check these out:

http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/2654.html #20
http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/2547.html #19
http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/2479.html #18
http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/2419.html #17
http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/2267.html #15
http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/2187.html #14
http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/2125.html #13
http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/2068.html #12
http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/1936.html #11
http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/1857.html #10
http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/1803.html #9
http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/1707.html #8
http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/1662.html Unnecessary Censorship: Best of the Year
http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/1653.html #7
http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/1574.html Unnecessary Censorship: Superbowl Edition
http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/1109.html #6
http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/1092.html #5
http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/1087.html #4
http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/1081.html #3
http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/1075.html #2
http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/984.html #1

His Name Is Alive rocks!

the concert in Chicago was great! i'm soooo glad i went. now i'm pondering going to saturday's show in Detroit since it's the last date on this tour. since Detroit's their home town, i'm predicting this would be a kick-ass show. *ponder*

AWESOME...

awesome doesn't even begin to describe it - the concert KICKED ASS. the band that opened for HNIA was NOMO - very interesting, i picked up their CD...Warren Defever produced their disc as well.

still got songs swirling around in my head (and white castles in my belly) so i can't think, but i'm feeling really good right now... *8-)

in chicago...

so, after some traffic snarls we made it. ugh, construction traffic sucks! along the way we saw signs suggesting you call a toll-free number to see how to avoid using the roads - someone shoulda informed mapquest about this stuff. i'm really glad adam was driving - it woulda probably given me an aneurysm, trying to deal with the stress on my own.

so, we got checked into the motel 8 - i think expedia was being overly generous when saying it was a 1.5 star hotel - and we're chilling a bit before concert time...

we found the dunkin' donuts down the street and got a box of donutty goodness. went to the gas station across the street from the motel to get milk. adam teased me cuz i had "a fan" at the gas station - he mentioned liking my purple hair and that he agreed with my t-shirt (the M [peach] W shirt from tshirthumor.com)

we came back to the room - now our bellies full of donutty goodness. i suppose we should have some real dinner, but damn these donuts are good! a guesstimate of my current blood sugar is about 972...

more later...

giddy giddy giddy!

sheesh, you'd think i was going to see santa claus or something - i'm sooo excited about this road trip! a chance for 1 on 1 time with my bro, an opportunity to see one of my all-time favorite bands (and the friggin tickets were EIGHT bucks!!) and a possibility of getting Dunkin' Donuts. i'm sorry, Krispy Kreme just does not match up! i'm debating whether or not to take my glucometer to check my blood sugars, but i probably won't - they've been so out of whack lately anyways, whether or not i'm eating properly.

Jesus H. Christ on a hotcake!

wow - if i get a JesusPan perhaps i can sell Jesus pancakes on eBay and then GoldenPalace.com will bid and pay $248,108 for each one i make!!

Holy images have been popping up all over... A grilled cheese sandwich with the image of the Virgin Mary sold for over 17-hundred dollars on Ebay.
- JesusPan is made from durable steel and topped with a non-stick coating.
- JesusPan is perfect for holiday meals
- Jesus Pan has been featured on Tonight Show with Jay Leno!

Count carbs while getting schnockered!

For the alcoholic diabetics out there, concerned about consuming carbs when they imbibe - links to carbohydrate amounts of booze!

Alcohol Carb Chart

Cocktail Liqueur Carb Count Chart

Low Carb Beer Comparison Chart

optical illusion of the day...

purty cool - after staring at the dot and then clicking on the pic, it appears as tho it's in color, until you move your eyes and then you see it's actually a black and white photo...

http://www.johnsadowski.com/big_spanish_castle.html

Road Trip this weekend!!!!

the brother's agreed, the hotel room's booked, and the concert tickets purchased - adam and i are headed to chicago on sunday to see His Name Is Alive! i'm soo freaking excited i'm about to explode!!!!! they've not toured in years, and i hear their music is going back to their early stuff, which i find much more interesting than stuff they've put out in recent years.

i'm glad adam said yes to being my chauffeur - i think it'll be nice to have a little road trip and some time to talk and hang out away from everything else.

i'm sooooo friggin excited!!!!

learning new words...

The national spelling bee was broadcast on ABC last night, and one of the final words was weltschmerz - seems rather appropriate in this day and age...perhaps one of the word collectors was making a subtle jab at the Bush administration in choosing this word? naah, that thought's even too tinfoil-hat for me...

weltschmerz
Pronunciation: 'velt-"shmerts
Function: noun
Usage: often capitalized
Etymology: German, from Welt world + Schmerz pain
1 : mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal state
2 : a mood of sentimental sadness

misc links...

Introducing - The Cordless Jump Rope! - what the hell?!?!? i dunno why we didn't see this on American Inventor!

i've seen dragon tattoos, but this one is definitely unique (not safe for work, either)

and here's a link to more Really Bad Tattoos

Guaranteed delivery in 30 minutes or less, or we commit Seppuku!

"A dead customer is not a paying customer." - that's a good thing to know if you're planning on becoming an employee of Ninja Burger. You'll learn many things in reading Ninja Burger: Honorable Employee Handbook by Michael Fiegel.

Buy the book on Amazon.com and help a Farker out! - Ninja Burger: Honorable Employee Handbook (Paperback)

OMG!!!

It's kinda creepy - Lisa Welchel blogs like a 12-year-old...

if you're looking to scare the crap outta someone...

the Toilet Monster is probably the way to go!

Index of Psychiatric Disorders

here's a link to the Index of Psychiatric Disorders from the DSM...interesting.

the Sexy Name Decoder...

Antiques Roadshow Drinking Game!

ummm, i think some people may be risking alcohol poisoning.....

From tonkin on TotalFark:

All players drink when/if:

1. The item is worth less because it has been refinished or repaired. Drink twice if it's one of the Keno brothers breaking that news to the collector. Drink 3 times if the item is worth less than 20% of what it would have been worth had it not been refinished or repaired.


2. Anyone says "veneer." (In tribute to Frasier.)


3. Someone uses the word "provenance." Drink twice if the appraiser says the item is more valuable because the collector has documentation of the provenance.


4. The collector found it in the attic/basement of their house when they moved in.


5. The item belonged to someone now dead and the collector had asked for it.


6. The appraiser says "This is one of the best examples of [fill in the blank] I've ever seen!" Drink twice if s/he goes on to say the item is "impossible to value" or "priceless" because it's so special.


7. When asked, "Do you know how much it's worth?," the collector says "I have no idea!" [Must be exact quote.]


8. If it's a letter written by a former president or Civil War hero.


9. If an item is worth more than $100,000. Drink twice if the item is not furniture or jewelry.


10. Anyone is seen wearing a bow tie.


11. If the collector is a child. Drink twice if the child actually seems to know anything about what s/he has brought.


12. If an item is a fake, replica or forgery. Drink twice if it's worth more because it is a fake, replica or forgery. Drink twice if the owner claims that s/he knew it was a fake, replica or forgery, but just wanted to know if it was worth anything anyway.


13. If the collector says "well we'll still enjoy it" when s/he finds out the item is worthless.


14. If the collector paid less than 1/10th the value of the item, or found it. [Inherited items do not count in this category.]


15. If the collector says, "well, I guess I won't be using it as a [planter, serving dish, or other inappropriate use] any more!" after finding out what an item is worth.

16. Any "Signed" item made by L. C. Tiffany, take a drink. Must be signed. (if I see one more Tiffany lamp I'll puke)


17. Take a MINIMUM of 3 drinks if you spot ANYONE wearing a tie with a big fat ugly knot similar to the one worn by the shows' host. (I mean really, where do they get these people.)

Additional items:
Drink if:

* the owner of the item claims to have no idea as to the value of the item.? Drink twice if they give an amount that is hideously low ("Oh, I don't know.....a hundred dollars?" for a Tiffany lamp, for example.)

* the item brought in is larger than the trunk of an average car

* the item is from the Civil War

* the appraiser expresses his/her joy that the owner brought in the item

looney toons...

no posts recently because of an inpatient stay at Community Hospital North - things just got waaaay too overwhelming. things are better now, but i can't seem to stay away from hospitals - now i'm making visits to go see my Aunt Sherry, who's having problems breathing. still not totally sure what the official diagnosis is, she's having more tests done today.

never a dull moment, that's for sure...

sounds dirty, but looks purty cool....

The Rasterbator is a web service which creates huge, rasterized images from any picture. The rasterized images can be printed and assembled into extremely cool looking posters up to 20 meters in size.

got a new digital camera...

bought a new digital camera yesterday - at Aldi, of all places. 8.1 megapixels, baybee! The Traveler DC-8300 - gotta charge up the batteries before i can test it out, but it looks like i got a great deal...

goofy jokes...

a thread on TotalFark reminded me of some goofy (read: STUPID) jokes i enjoy, as well as adding some new ones to the list...


Two muffins are baking in the oven. One muffin turns to the other and says, "Damn, it's hot in here, isn't it?" The other muffin says, "Holy shit, a talking muffin!"



Q: What do you call a female turtle?
A: A clitortoise.



What's brown and sticky?
A stick!



What's orange and sounds like a parrot?
A carrot!



A pirate walks into a bar with a captain's wheel down his pants.

He walks up to the bar and the bartender says "What’s with the steering wheel down your pants?"

Pirate says "Yargh! It's driving me nuts!"



A pirate with a peg leg, a hook for a hand and an eyepatch walks into a bar and the barman sees him and says, "Hey, I haven't seen you in a while, where'd you get that peg leg?"

"I lost me leg to a shark while out at sea", the pirate replies.

"Oh, well, what happened to your hand? That hook is new too."

"Arrh, I lost me hand to a shark as well", answered the pirate.

"Wow, well you didn't have the eyepatch either. Did a shark get your eye too?"

"No," the pirate said, "the first day I had the hook, a bird pooped in me eye."



A man goes to the doctor. He says, "Doc, you gotta check my leg. Something's wrong. Just put your ear up to my thigh, you'll hear it!"

The doctor cautiously placed his ear to the man's thigh only to hear, "Gimme 20 bucks, I really need 20 bucks."

"I've never seen or heard anything like this before, how long has this been going on?" asked the doctor.

"That's nothing Doc. Put your ear to my knee."

The doctor put his ear to the man's knee and heard it say, "Man, I really need 10 dollars, just lend me 10 bucks!!"

"Sir," said the dumbfounded Doctor, "I really don't know what to tell you. I've never encountered anything like this before."

"Wait Doc, that's not it. There's more, just put your ear up to my ankle," the man urged.

The doctor did as the man said and heard the ankle plead, "Please, I just need 5 dollars. Lend me 5 bucks if you will."

"I have no idea what to tell you," the doctor said. "There's nothing about it in my books," he said.

"However, I can make a well educated guess though. Based on life experience I can tell you that your leg seems to be broke in three places."



A blond goes to the doctor and complains she isn't feeling well. The doctor discovers carrots in her ears and lettuce in her nose.

The blonde asks "Doctor, what's wrong with me?"

The doctor replies "You aren't eating right."

if i have an aneurysm in the next 24 hours, sue Hewlett-Packard!

ARGH!!!!!!! like the subj: line says - if i have an aneurysm in the next 24 hours, sue Hewlett-Packard! - they're about to cause my head to explode!!

the background:

so, i sent my laptop off to get fixed last month - it went dead on me. i'd try turning it on - nothing. it was dead. so i had it checked out by the geek squad - was gonna cost $500+ to replace the motherboard. that was quite an incentive to hunt down the paperwork to see if it was still under warranty - and it was, till May 1. so i called hp, they sent me a container to Fed Ex it to them, they repaired it and Fed Ex'd it back. i'd noticed the package i got looked like it'd been knocked around a few times, but figured the specialized foam packaging took care of it. so i open it up, the paperwork says it's been repaired - woo hoo! so i turn it on - i hear it power up, but nothing on the display. okay, i'm not gonna freak out, perhaps they drained the battery - so i let it charge up, but got the same results. argh. so i call hp, they send another Fed Ex box, i ship it off to them. they send me a link to check the progress of repair, etc...

that leads us to today:

i go to hp's website to see the status of my repairs, and find:
Warranty status: out of warranty / Service charge: $698.00
what?!?!? excuse me?!?!? that's a bit different than the Warranty status: in warranty / Service charge: $0.00 that i'd previously seen...

so i call up the 800 number. i always wondered about those people that ranted about call centers based in india - today i got a lil taste of the frustration. although, when it comes down to it, i know it's not the fact that i talked to people in india that caused this TREMENDOUS FUCK-UP - it's the fact that HP DOESN'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT ITS CUSTOMERS.

(errr, can ya tell i'm a bit flustered/frustrated/annoyed/pissed?!?)

so, we go through the explanation about how this is the second time i've sent the laptop to them, they said it worked when they shipped it out last time but when i got it, it didn't work. and i explain it again, and again. i give her case numbers, serial numbers, order numbers, blah blah blah. i get put on hold. she tells me that there was damage to the motherboard, video-something and something else. i tell her that, according to HP, it was sent back repaired. i get put on hold again. then she adds a couple other things that are wrong with it (can't remember now) and that this was accidental damage and that i was not covered with an accidental damage warranty - if i want the machine repaired, it'll be $698.00. i say something else (can't remember specifics, probably just repeating what i'd previously said, since i seemed to say everything 5 or 6 times) and she puts me on hold again. she tells me that there appears to be a spill in the keyboard and that i was not covered with an accidental damage warranty - if i want the machine repaired, it'll be $698.00. it was like every time she put me on hold, they found something new to justify not fixing the machine. i explain to her that i'm not going to pay $698.00 to repair a machine that cost about that much and that won't be under warranty when i get it. she asks if i want it shipped back, unrepaired - i said yes. she asks if i want it shipped back, unrepaired - i said yes, AGAIN. i spent a total of 29:56 on the phone (gotta love that timer on the phone) and they're shipping back a machine that doesn't work.

so now i'm wondering if it got damaged in transit from HP by Fed Ex and wonder if i'm gonna hafta file a claim against Fed Ex - argh!!! the more i think about it, the more i realize how mangled up that box was.

this whole thing's been a huge clusterfuck from the beginning, and i'm thinking i might need an extra Xanax or 6...

2006 ICAAN Scavenger Hunt

On Saturday I took part in a scavenger hunt to benefit ICAAN - the Indiana Canine Assistant & Adolescent Network - they train assistance dogs and do good spiffy things (see for yourself on their website)...

So, Stephanie, Steph, Amy and i formed a team - "The Escalator Accident" - Steph came up with it, and i'm still not quite sure where her mind was when thinking it up, but okay. *8-)

We took pix with Steph's camera, so i'll just send ya to her Flickr set for more details on the excitement... http://www.flickr.com/photos/electrasteph/sets/72057594120250633/

it was lots of fun, very well organized, and the rain held off so that we could complete the race - i'd definitely like to do it again!

Fred Phelps, if you're reading my blog...

...here's an article from the Indianapolis Star that I'd like you to read:

Citing a verse doesn't make a partisan into a scholar

The next time a Christian partisan shouts a Bible verse at you -- as if citing Leviticus 18:22, Exodus 20:13 or 1 Corinthians 7:4 ended all discussion of homosexuality, abortion or women's rights -- shout back, "Acts 4:32-35!"

Oops!

Yes, that is the passage that might have inspired Karl Marx: "No one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common," and wealth "was distributed to each as any had need."

No free-market capitalism in that biblical economy. No "prosperity Gospel," either, certainly nothing as lax as a tithe of merely 10 percent.

Or you could shout "Exodus 22:25!" about not charging interest on loans, or "Deuteronomy 15:1-3!" about forgiving debts every seventh year, or "Leviticus 19:9-10!" about leaving grain in the field for gleaners, or "Luke 19:8-9!" about Zacchaeus giving half of his wealth to the poor.

You'd be shouting alone, of course. Partisans and politicians won't be quoting those Scriptures in the next campaign on so-called "social issues," even though excessive personal indebtedness, unconcern for the poor and concentration of wealth pose a greater threat to the American way of life than divergent patterns of sexuality and marriage.

Such Scriptures don't apply, modern folks will say. Utopian experiments never work. Without the ability to charge interest, no one would lend money.

Sabbath years of debt forgiveness would disrupt banking and real estate.

Gleaning is fine for ancient grain, but modern managers must maximize profit.

Maybe so. Maybe those Scriptures don't apply. Maybe early Christians were wrong to try communal living. Maybe a modern economy requires better management than the Torah can provide. Maybe Jesus didn't link everyone's salvation to generosity, just Zacchaeus'.

Likewise, maybe Paul's insistence that women be subservient to men applied to one claque of gossipy women, and otherwise he stood with Jesus in welcoming women as equals. Maybe partisans for "protection of marriage" are right to ignore Paul's counsel that believers not get married at all.

Sound biblical scholarship, you see, isn't content to find the one verse that proves a point. Sound scholarship considers the whole, the thousand-year trajectory of Scripture, realities of authorship and changing contexts, contradictions, new directions that emerged in the Christian era, changing manuscripts and evangelists' promise of more revelation to come.

Sound biblical scholarship takes effort and discernment.

Those who claim they are "defending the biblical faith" by demanding a certain doctrine or moral code based on a few convenient Bible passages that prove their point are actually undermining biblical faith in order to get their way.

It is unlikely that we Christians will abandon our 2,000-year quest for power. Like other people, we tend to believe that power, wealth and right opinion will make our lives safe and our days long. But let's at least be honest about our addiction to control and stop calling it faith.

As it is, in flinging carefully selected Scripture-bullets at one another, we sound like children playing: "I got you!" . . . "No, you didn't!"

Instead, we must sit humbly before God, our hearts open to grace and our minds open to God's ongoing revelation.

Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest, writer and computer consultant. His online site is www.onajourney.org.

"the 100 unsexiest men in the world"

from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12190404/from/RL.1/

A magazine in a Boston, Mass., has released its list of the ugliest male celebrities. The Phoenix arts and entertainment alternative newsweekly ranked the "100 unsexiest unsexiest men in the world."

i dunno if that extra unsexiest in there was a typo or not - "unsexiest unsexiest men"?

anyhoo, someone on fark made an interesting point - wouldn't people be all up in arms if an equivalent list of females was made? good question, i think...

now, i don't exactly agree with all the choices - hell, i don't even know em all - but i found it to be an interesting list...

i also find it rather amusing that #1 on the list is revelling in his win - you go, boy!

here's the complete list:

001. Gilbert Gottfried
002. Randy Johnson
003. Roger Ebert
004. Dr. Phil McGraw
005. Alan Colmes
006. Chad Kroeger
007. Mike Mills
008. Osama Bin Laden
009. Jay Leno
010. Don Imus
011. Michael Jackson
012. Wallace Shawn
013. Mike D. of the Beastie Boys
014. Richard Simmons
015. Jon Lovitz
016. Carrot Top
017. Jerry Seinfeld
018. Malcolm Gladwell
019. Chevy Chase
020. Raffi
021. Ron Howard
022. Clint Howard
023. Bill Gates
024. Paul Shaffer
025. Axl Rose
026. Tim Burton
027. Edward James Olmos
028. Gerard Way
029. Don Zimmer
030. Tony Kornheiser
031. Chris Kattan
032. Otis Nixon
033. Julian Tavarez
034. Christopher Lloyd
035. Willie McGee
036. Pat Cummings
037. Scottie Pippen
038. Larry David
039. Michael Moore
040. Al Franken
041. Paris Latsis
042. Rush Limbaugh
043. David Gest
044. Gary Busey
045. Nick Nolte
046. Leif Garrett
047. Andy Dick
048. Scott Stapp
049. Lyle Lovett
050. Ric Ocasek
051. Bill Wyman
052. Danny DeVito
053. Peter Jackson
054. Drew Carey
055. Newt Gingrich
056. Rob Schneider
057. Ed O'Neil
058. Bill O'Reilly
059. Clay Aiken
060. Joe Lieberman
061. Jim Gaffigan
062. Bill Maher
063. John Popper
064. Dennis Miller
065. John Madden
066. Robert Englund
067. Robert Patrick
068. John Ashcroft
069. Joe Gannascolli
070. Kevin James
071. George Steinbrenner
072. Grady Little
073. Harvey Pekar
074. DJ Qualls
075. Joey Buttafuoco
076. Garry Shandling
077. Meat Loaf Aday
078. Joe Walsh
079. Tom from Myspace
080. Art Garfunkel
081. Brian Posehn
082. Howie Mandel
083. Barry Bonds
084. Dick Vitale
085. Richie "La Bamba" Rosenberg
086. Jeff Van Gundy
087. Jimmy Johnson
088. John Clayton
089. Don Vito
090. Lemmy Kilmister
091. Jose Canseco
092. Bill Parcells
093. Ric Flair
094. Ralph Nader
095. Dennis Kacinich (sic) [isn't it Kucinich?]
096. Horatio Sanz
097. Dom DeLuise
098. Emeril Lagasse
099. Kevin Federline
100. Brad Pitt

Points to ponder...

If a doctor has an apple a day, will he have an existential crisis?

You can lead a fish out of water, but you can't teach it not to swim.

If a fish hits its head on the aquarium glass, does its eyes water?

George W. Bush: The Worst President in History?

interesting article from Rolling Stone magazine:

The Worst President in History?
One of America's leading historians assesses George W. Bush

George W. Bush's presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.

From time to time, after hours, I kick back with my colleagues at Princeton to argue idly about which president really was the worst of them all. For years, these perennial debates have largely focused on the same handful of chief executives whom national polls of historians, from across the ideological and political spectrum, routinely cite as the bottom of the presidential barrel. Was the lousiest James Buchanan, who, confronted with Southern secession in 1860, dithered to a degree that, as his most recent biographer has said, probably amounted to disloyalty -- and who handed to his successor, Abraham Lincoln, a nation already torn asunder? Was it Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, who actively sided with former Confederates and undermined Reconstruction? What about the amiably incompetent Warren G. Harding, whose administration was fabulously corrupt? Or, though he has his defenders, Herbert Hoover, who tried some reforms but remained imprisoned in his own outmoded individualist ethic and collapsed under the weight of the stock-market crash of 1929 and the Depression's onset? The younger historians always put in a word for Richard M. Nixon, the only American president forced to resign from office.

Now, though, George W. Bush is in serious contention for the title of worst ever. In early 2004, an informal survey of 415 historians conducted by the nonpartisan History News Network found that eighty-one percent considered the Bush administration a "failure." Among those who called Bush a success, many gave the president high marks only for his ability to mobilize public support and get Congress to go along with what one historian called the administration's "pursuit of disastrous policies." In fact, roughly one in ten of those who called Bush a success was being facetious, rating him only as the best president since Bill Clinton -- a category in which Bush is the only contestant.

The lopsided decision of historians should give everyone pause. Contrary to popular stereotypes, historians are generally a cautious bunch. We assess the past from widely divergent points of view and are deeply concerned about being viewed as fair and accurate by our colleagues. When we make historical judgments, we are acting not as voters or even pundits, but as scholars who must evaluate all the evidence, good, bad or indifferent. Separate surveys, conducted by those perceived as conservatives as well as liberals, show remarkable unanimity about who the best and worst presidents have been.

Historians do tend, as a group, to be far more liberal than the citizenry as a whole -- a fact the president's admirers have seized on to dismiss the poll results as transparently biased. One pro-Bush historian said the survey revealed more about "the current crop of history professors" than about Bush or about Bush's eventual standing. But if historians were simply motivated by a strong collective liberal bias, they might be expected to call Bush the worst president since his father, or Ronald Reagan, or Nixon. Instead, more than half of those polled -- and nearly three-fourths of those who gave Bush a negative rating -- reached back before Nixon to find a president they considered as miserable as Bush. The presidents most commonly linked with Bush included Hoover, Andrew Johnson and Buchanan. Twelve percent of the historians polled -- nearly as many as those who rated Bush a success -- flatly called Bush the worst president in American history. And these figures were gathered before the debacles over Hurricane Katrina, Bush's role in the Valerie Plame leak affair and the deterioration of the situation in Iraq. Were the historians polled today, that figure would certainly be higher.

Even worse for the president, the general public, having once given Bush the highest approval ratings ever recorded, now appears to be coming around to the dismal view held by most historians. To be sure, the president retains a considerable base of supporters who believe in and adore him, and who reject all criticism with a mixture of disbelief and fierce contempt -- about one-third of the electorate. (When the columnist Richard Reeves publicized the historians' poll last year and suggested it might have merit, he drew thousands of abusive replies that called him an idiot and that praised Bush as, in one writer's words, "a Christian who actually acts on his deeply held beliefs.") Yet the ranks of the true believers have thinned dramatically. A majority of voters in forty-three states now disapprove of Bush's handling of his job. Since the commencement of reliable polling in the 1940s, only one twice-elected president has seen his ratings fall as low as Bush's in his second term: Richard Nixon, during the months preceding his resignation in 1974. No two-term president since polling began has fallen from such a height of popularity as Bush's (in the neighborhood of ninety percent, during the patriotic upswell following the 2001 attacks) to such a low (now in the midthirties). No president, including Harry Truman (whose ratings sometimes dipped below Nixonian levels), has experienced such a virtually unrelieved decline as Bush has since his high point. Apart from sharp but temporary upticks that followed the commencement of the Iraq war and the capture of Saddam Hussein, and a recovery during the weeks just before and after his re-election, the Bush trend has been a profile in fairly steady disillusionment.

* * * *

How does any president's reputation sink so low? The reasons are best understood as the reverse of those that produce presidential greatness. In almost every survey of historians dating back to the 1940s, three presidents have emerged as supreme successes: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. These were the men who guided the nation through what historians consider its greatest crises: the founding era after the ratification of the Constitution, the Civil War, and the Great Depression and Second World War. Presented with arduous, at times seemingly impossible circumstances, they rallied the nation, governed brilliantly and left the republic more secure than when they entered office.

Calamitous presidents, faced with enormous difficulties -- Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Hoover and now Bush -- have divided the nation, governed erratically and left the nation worse off. In each case, different factors contributed to the failure: disastrous domestic policies, foreign-policy blunders and military setbacks, executive misconduct, crises of credibility and public trust. Bush, however, is one of the rarities in presidential history: He has not only stumbled badly in every one of these key areas, he has also displayed a weakness common among the greatest presidential failures -- an unswerving adherence to a simplistic ideology that abjures deviation from dogma as heresy, thus preventing any pragmatic adjustment to changing realities. Repeatedly, Bush has undone himself, a failing revealed in each major area of presidential performance.

* * * *

THE CREDIBILITY GAP

No previous president appears to have squandered the public's trust more than Bush has. In the 1840s, President James Polk gained a reputation for deviousness over his alleged manufacturing of the war with Mexico and his supposedly covert pro-slavery views. Abraham Lincoln, then an Illinois congressman, virtually labeled Polk a liar when he called him, from the floor of the House, "a bewildered, confounded and miserably perplexed man" and denounced the war as "from beginning to end, the sheerest deception." But the swift American victory in the war, Polk's decision to stick by his pledge to serve only one term and his sudden death shortly after leaving office spared him the ignominy over slavery that befell his successors in the 1850s. With more than two years to go in Bush's second term and no swift victory in sight, Bush's reputation will probably have no such reprieve.

The problems besetting Bush are of a more modern kind than Polk's, suited to the television age -- a crisis both in confidence and credibility. In 1965, Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam travails gave birth to the phrase "credibility gap," meaning the distance between a president's professions and the public's perceptions of reality. It took more than two years for Johnson's disapproval rating in the Gallup Poll to reach fifty-two percent in March 1968 -- a figure Bush long ago surpassed, but that was sufficient to persuade the proud LBJ not to seek re-election. Yet recently, just short of three years after Bush buoyantly declared "mission accomplished" in Iraq, his disapproval ratings have been running considerably higher than Johnson's, at about sixty percent. More than half the country now considers Bush dishonest and untrustworthy, and a decisive plurality consider him less trustworthy than his predecessor, Bill Clinton -- a figure still attacked by conservative zealots as "Slick Willie."

Previous modern presidents, including Truman, Reagan and Clinton, managed to reverse plummeting ratings and regain the public's trust by shifting attention away from political and policy setbacks, and by overhauling the White House's inner circles. But Bush's publicly expressed view that he has made no major mistakes, coupled with what even the conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr. calls his "high-flown pronouncements" about failed policies, seems to foreclose the first option. Upping the ante in the Middle East and bombing Iranian nuclear sites, a strategy reportedly favored by some in the White House, could distract the public and gain Bush immediate political capital in advance of the 2006 midterm elections -- but in the long term might severely worsen the already dire situation in Iraq, especially among Shiite Muslims linked to the Iranians. And given Bush's ardent attachment to loyal aides, no matter how discredited, a major personnel shake-up is improbable, short of indictments. Replacing Andrew Card with Joshua Bolten as chief of staff -- a move announced by the president in March in a tone that sounded more like defiance than contrition -- represents a rededication to current policies and personnel, not a serious change. (Card, an old Bush family retainer, was widely considered more moderate than most of the men around the president and had little involvement in policy-making.) The power of Vice President Dick Cheney, meanwhile, remains uncurbed. Were Cheney to announce he is stepping down due to health problems, normally a polite pretext for a political removal, one can be reasonably certain it would be because Cheney actually did have grave health problems.

* * * *

BUSH AT WAR

Until the twentieth century, American presidents managed foreign wars well -- including those presidents who prosecuted unpopular wars. James Madison had no support from Federalist New England at the outset of the War of 1812, and the discontent grew amid mounting military setbacks in 1813. But Federalist political overreaching, combined with a reversal of America's military fortunes and the negotiation of a peace with Britain, made Madison something of a hero again and ushered in a brief so-called Era of Good Feelings in which his Jeffersonian Republican Party coalition ruled virtually unopposed. The Mexican War under Polk was even more unpopular, but its quick and victorious conclusion redounded to Polk's favor -- much as the rapid American victory in the Spanish-American War helped William McKinley overcome anti-imperialist dissent.

The twentieth century was crueler to wartime presidents. After winning re-election in 1916 with the slogan "He Kept Us Out of War," Woodrow Wilson oversaw American entry into the First World War. Yet while the doughboys returned home triumphant, Wilson's idealistic and politically disastrous campaign for American entry into the League of Nations presaged a resurgence of the opposition Republican Party along with a redoubling of American isolationism that lasted until Pearl Harbor.

Bush has more in common with post-1945 Democratic presidents Truman and Johnson, who both became bogged down in overseas military conflicts with no end, let alone victory, in sight. But Bush has become bogged down in a singularly crippling way. On September 10th, 2001, he held among the lowest ratings of any modern president for that point in a first term. (Only Gerald Ford, his popularity reeling after his pardon of Nixon, had comparable numbers.) The attacks the following day transformed Bush's presidency, giving him an extraordinary opportunity to achieve greatness. Some of the early signs were encouraging. Bush's simple, unflinching eloquence and his quick toppling of the Taliban government in Afghanistan rallied the nation. Yet even then, Bush wasted his chance by quickly choosing partisanship over leadership.

No other president -- Lincoln in the Civil War, FDR in World War II, John F. Kennedy at critical moments of the Cold War -- faced with such a monumental set of military and political circumstances failed to embrace the opposing political party to help wage a truly national struggle. But Bush shut out and even demonized the Democrats. Top military advisers and even members of the president's own Cabinet who expressed any reservations or criticisms of his policies -- including retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill -- suffered either dismissal, smear attacks from the president's supporters or investigations into their alleged breaches of national security. The wise men who counseled Bush's father, including James Baker and Brent Scowcroft, found their entreaties brusquely ignored by his son. When asked if he ever sought advice from the elder Bush, the president responded, "There is a higher Father that I appeal to."

All the while, Bush and the most powerful figures in the administration, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, were planting the seeds for the crises to come by diverting the struggle against Al Qaeda toward an all-out effort to topple their pre-existing target, Saddam Hussein. In a deliberate political decision, the administration stampeded the Congress and a traumatized citizenry into the Iraq invasion on the basis of what has now been demonstrated to be tendentious and perhaps fabricated evidence of an imminent Iraqi threat to American security, one that the White House suggested included nuclear weapons. Instead of emphasizing any political, diplomatic or humanitarian aspects of a war on Iraq -- an appeal that would have sounded too "sensitive," as Cheney once sneered -- the administration built a "Bush Doctrine" of unprovoked, preventive warfare, based on speculative threats and embracing principles previously abjured by every previous generation of U.S. foreign policy-makers, even at the height of the Cold War. The president did so with premises founded, in the case of Iraq, on wishful thinking. He did so while proclaiming an expansive Wilsonian rhetoric of making the world safe for democracy -- yet discarding the multilateralism and systems of international law (including the Geneva Conventions) that emanated from Wilson's idealism. He did so while dismissing intelligence that an American invasion could spark a long and bloody civil war among Iraq's fierce religious and ethnic rivals, reports that have since proved true. And he did so after repeated warnings by military officials such as Gen. Eric Shinseki that pacifying postwar Iraq would require hundreds of thousands of American troops -- accurate estimates that Paul Wolfowitz and other Bush policy gurus ridiculed as "wildly off the mark."

When William F. Buckley, the man whom many credit as the founder of the modern conservative movement, writes categorically, as he did in February, that "one can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed," then something terrible has happened. Even as a brash young iconoclast, Buckley always took the long view. The Bush White House seems incapable of doing so, except insofar as a tiny trusted circle around the president constantly reassures him that he is a messianic liberator and profound freedom fighter, on a par with FDR and Lincoln, and that history will vindicate his every act and utterance.

* * * *

BUSH AT HOME

Bush came to office in 2001 pledging to govern as a "compassionate conservative," more moderate on domestic policy than the dominant right wing of his party. The pledge proved hollow, as Bush tacked immediately to the hard right. Previous presidents and their parties have suffered when their actions have belied their campaign promises. Lyndon Johnson is the most conspicuous recent example, having declared in his 1964 run against the hawkish Republican Barry Goldwater that "we are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves." But no president has surpassed Bush in departing so thoroughly from his original campaign persona.

The heart of Bush's domestic policy has turned out to be nothing more than a series of massively regressive tax cuts -- a return, with a vengeance, to the discredited Reagan-era supply-side faith that Bush's father once ridiculed as "voodoo economics." Bush crowed in triumph in February 2004, "We cut taxes, which basically meant people had more money in their pocket." The claim is bogus for the majority of Americans, as are claims that tax cuts have led to impressive new private investment and job growth. While wiping out the solid Clinton-era federal surplus and raising federal deficits to staggering record levels, Bush's tax policies have necessitated hikes in federal fees, state and local taxes, and co-payment charges to needy veterans and families who rely on Medicaid, along with cuts in loan programs to small businesses and college students, and in a wide range of state services. The lion's share of benefits from the tax cuts has gone to the very richest Americans, while new business investment has increased at a historically sluggish rate since the peak of the last business cycle five years ago. Private-sector job growth since 2001 has been anemic compared to the Bush administration's original forecasts and is chiefly attributable not to the tax cuts but to increased federal spending, especially on defense. Real wages for middle-income Americans have been dropping since the end of 2003: Last year, on average, nominal wages grew by only 2.4 percent, a meager gain that was completely erased by an average inflation rate of 3.4 percent.

The monster deficits, caused by increased federal spending combined with the reduction of revenue resulting from the tax cuts, have also placed Bush's administration in a historic class of its own with respect to government borrowing. According to the Treasury Department, the forty-two presidents who held office between 1789 and 2000 borrowed a combined total of $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions. But between 2001 and 2005 alone, the Bush White House borrowed $1.05 trillion, more than all of the previous presidencies combined. Having inherited the largest federal surplus in American history in 2001, he has turned it into the largest deficit ever -- with an even higher deficit, $423 billion, forecast for fiscal year 2006. Yet Bush -- sounding much like Herbert Hoover in 1930 predicting that "prosperity is just around the corner" -- insists that he will cut federal deficits in half by 2009, and that the best way to guarantee this would be to make permanent his tax cuts, which helped cause the deficit in the first place!

The rest of what remains of Bush's skimpy domestic agenda is either failed or failing -- a record unmatched since the presidency of Herbert Hoover. The No Child Left Behind educational-reform act has proved so unwieldy, draconian and poorly funded that several states -- including Utah, one of Bush's last remaining political strongholds -- have fought to opt out of it entirely. White House proposals for immigration reform and a guest-worker program have succeeded mainly in dividing pro-business Republicans (who want more low-wage immigrant workers) from paleo-conservatives fearful that hordes of Spanish-speaking newcomers will destroy American culture. The paleos' call for tougher anti-immigrant laws -- a return to the punitive spirit of exclusion that led to the notorious Immigration Act of 1924 that shut the door to immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe -- has in turn deeply alienated Hispanic voters from the Republican Party, badly undermining the GOP's hopes of using them to build a permanent national electoral majority. The recent pro-immigrant demonstrations, which drew millions of marchers nationwide, indicate how costly the Republican divide may prove.

The one noncorporate constituency to which Bush has consistently deferred is the Christian right, both in his selections for the federal bench and in his implications that he bases his policies on premillennialist, prophetic Christian doctrine. Previous presidents have regularly invoked the Almighty. McKinley is supposed to have fallen to his knees, seeking divine guidance about whether to take control of the Philippines in 1898, although the story may be apocryphal. But no president before Bush has allowed the press to disclose, through a close friend, his startling belief that he was ordained by God to lead the country. The White House's sectarian positions -- over stem-cell research, the teaching of pseudoscientific "intelligent design," global population control, the Terri Schiavo spectacle and more -- have led some to conclude that Bush has promoted the transformation of the GOP into what former Republican strategist Kevin Phillips calls "the first religious party in U.S. history."

Bush's faith-based conception of his mission, which stands above and beyond reasoned inquiry, jibes well with his administration's pro-business dogma on global warming and other urgent environmental issues. While forcing federally funded agencies to remove from their Web sites scientific information about reproductive health and the effectiveness of condoms in combating HIV/AIDS, and while peremptorily overruling staff scientists at the Food and Drug Administration on making emergency contraception available over the counter, Bush officials have censored and suppressed research findings they don't like by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of Agriculture. Far from being the conservative he said he was, Bush has blazed a radical new path as the first American president in history who is outwardly hostile to science -- dedicated, as a distinguished, bipartisan panel of educators and scientists (including forty-nine Nobel laureates) has declared, to "the distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends."

The Bush White House's indifference to domestic problems and science alike culminated in the catastrophic responses to Hurricane Katrina. Scientists had long warned that global warming was intensifying hurricanes, but Bush ignored them -- much as he and his administration sloughed off warnings from the director of the National Hurricane Center before Katrina hit. Reorganized under the Department of Homeland Security, the once efficient Federal Emergency Management Agency turned out, under Bush, to have become a nest of cronyism and incompetence. During the months immediately after the storm, Bush traveled to New Orleans eight times to promise massive rebuilding aid from the federal government. On March 30th, however, Bush's Gulf Coast recovery coordinator admitted that it could take as long as twenty-five years for the city to recover.

Karl Rove has sometimes likened Bush to the imposing, no-nonsense President Andrew Jackson. Yet Jackson took measures to prevent those he called "the rich and powerful" from bending "the acts of government to their selfish purposes." Jackson also gained eternal renown by saving New Orleans from British invasion against terrible odds. Generations of Americans sang of Jackson's famous victory. In 1959, Johnny Horton's version of "The Battle of New Orleans" won the Grammy for best country & western performance. If anyone sings about George W. Bush and New Orleans, it will be a blues number.

* * * *

PRESIDENTIAL MISCONDUCT

Virtually every presidential administration dating back to George Washington's has faced charges of misconduct and threats of impeachment against the president or his civil officers. The alleged offenses have usually involved matters of personal misbehavior and corruption, notably the payoff scandals that plagued Cabinet officials who served presidents Harding and Ulysses S. Grant. But the charges have also included alleged usurpation of power by the president and serious criminal conduct that threatens constitutional government and the rule of law -- most notoriously, the charges that led to the impeachments of Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, and to Richard Nixon's resignation.

Historians remain divided over the actual grievousness of many of these allegations and crimes. Scholars reasonably describe the graft and corruption around the Grant administration, for example, as gargantuan, including a kickback scandal that led to the resignation of Grant's secretary of war under the shadow of impeachment. Yet the scandals produced no indictments of Cabinet secretaries and only one of a White House aide, who was acquitted. By contrast, the most scandal-ridden administration in the modern era, apart from Nixon's, was Ronald Reagan's, now widely remembered through a haze of nostalgia as a paragon of virtue. A total of twenty-nine Reagan officials, including White House national security adviser Robert McFarlane and deputy chief of staff Michael Deaver, were convicted on charges stemming from the Iran-Contra affair, illegal lobbying and a looting scandal inside the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Three Cabinet officers -- HUD Secretary Samuel Pierce, Attorney General Edwin Meese and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger -- left their posts under clouds of scandal. In contrast, not a single official in the Clinton administration was even indicted over his or her White House duties, despite repeated high-profile investigations and a successful, highly partisan impeachment drive.

The full report, of course, has yet to come on the Bush administration. Because Bush, unlike Reagan or Clinton, enjoys a fiercely partisan and loyal majority in Congress, his administration has been spared scrutiny. Yet that mighty advantage has not prevented the indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on charges stemming from an alleged major security breach in the Valerie Plame matter. (The last White House official of comparable standing to be indicted while still in office was Grant's personal secretary, in 1875.) It has not headed off the unprecedented scandal involving Larry Franklin, a high-ranking Defense Department official, who has pleaded guilty to divulging classified information to a foreign power while working at the Pentagon -- a crime against national security. It has not forestalled the arrest and indictment of Bush's top federal procurement official, David Safavian, and the continuing investigations into Safavian's intrigues with the disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, recently sentenced to nearly six years in prison -- investigations in which some prominent Republicans, including former Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed (and current GOP aspirant for lieutenant governor of Georgia) have already been implicated, and could well produce the largest congressional corruption scandal in American history. It has not dispelled the cloud of possible indictment that hangs over others of Bush's closest advisers.

History may ultimately hold Bush in the greatest contempt for expanding the powers of the presidency beyond the limits laid down by the U.S. Constitution. There has always been a tension over the constitutional roles of the three branches of the federal government. The Framers intended as much, as part of the system of checks and balances they expected would minimize tyranny. When Andrew Jackson took drastic measures against the nation's banking system, the Whig Senate censured him for conduct "dangerous to the liberties of the people." During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln's emergency decisions to suspend habeas corpus while Congress was out of session in 1861 and 1862 has led some Americans, to this day, to regard him as a despot. Richard Nixon's conduct of the war in Southeast Asia and his covert domestic-surveillance programs prompted Congress to pass new statutes regulating executive power.

By contrast, the Bush administration -- in seeking to restore what Cheney, a Nixon administration veteran, has called "the legitimate authority of the presidency" -- threatens to overturn the Framers' healthy tension in favor of presidential absolutism. Armed with legal findings by his attorney general (and personal lawyer) Alberto Gonzales, the Bush White House has declared that the president's powers as commander in chief in wartime are limitless. No previous wartime president has come close to making so grandiose a claim. More specifically, this administration has asserted that the president is perfectly free to violate federal laws on such matters as domestic surveillance and the torture of detainees. When Congress has passed legislation to limit those assertions, Bush has resorted to issuing constitutionally dubious "signing statements," which declare, by fiat, how he will interpret and execute the law in question, even when that interpretation flagrantly violates the will of Congress. Earlier presidents, including Jackson, raised hackles by offering their own view of the Constitution in order to justify vetoing congressional acts. Bush doesn't bother with that: He signs the legislation (eliminating any risk that Congress will overturn a veto), and then governs how he pleases -- using the signing statements as if they were line-item vetoes. In those instances when Bush's violations of federal law have come to light, as over domestic surveillance, the White House has devised a novel solution: Stonewall any investigation into the violations and bid a compliant Congress simply to rewrite the laws.

Bush's alarmingly aberrant take on the Constitution is ironic. One need go back in the record less than a decade to find prominent Republicans railing against far more minor presidential legal infractions as precursors to all-out totalitarianism. "I will have no part in the creation of a constitutional double-standard to benefit the president," Sen. Bill Frist declared of Bill Clinton's efforts to conceal an illicit sexual liaison. "No man is above the law, and no man is below the law -- that's the principle that we all hold very dear in this country," Rep. Tom DeLay asserted. "The rule of law protects you and it protects me from the midnight fire on our roof or the 3 a.m. knock on our door," warned Rep. Henry Hyde, one of Clinton's chief accusers. In the face of Bush's more definitive dismissal of federal law, the silence from these quarters is deafening.

The president's defenders stoutly contend that war-time conditions fully justify Bush's actions. And as Lincoln showed during the Civil War, there may be times of military emergency where the executive believes it imperative to take immediate, highly irregular, even unconstitutional steps. "I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful," Lincoln wrote in 1864, "by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution, through the preservation of the nation." Bush seems to think that, since 9/11, he has been placed, by the grace of God, in the same kind of situation Lincoln faced. But Lincoln, under pressure of daily combat on American soil against fellow Americans, did not operate in secret, as Bush has. He did not claim, as Bush has, that his emergency actions were wholly regular and constitutional as well as necessary; Lincoln sought and received Congressional authorization for his suspension of habeas corpus in 1863. Nor did Lincoln act under the amorphous cover of a "war on terror" -- a war against a tactic, not a specific nation or political entity, which could last as long as any president deems the tactic a threat to national security. Lincoln's exceptional measures were intended to survive only as long as the Confederacy was in rebellion. Bush's could be extended indefinitely, as the president sees fit, permanently endangering rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution to the citizenry.

* * * *

Much as Bush still enjoys support from those who believe he can do no wrong, he now suffers opposition from liberals who believe he can do no right. Many of these liberals are in the awkward position of having supported Bush in the past, while offering little coherent as an alternative to Bush's policies now. Yet it is difficult to see how this will benefit Bush's reputation in history.

The president came to office calling himself "a uniter, not a divider" and promising to soften the acrimonious tone in Washington. He has had two enormous opportunities to fulfill those pledges: first, in the noisy aftermath of his controversial election in 2000, and, even more, after the attacks of September 11th, when the nation pulled behind him as it has supported no other president in living memory. Yet under both sets of historically unprecedented circumstances, Bush has chosen to act in ways that have left the country less united and more divided, less conciliatory and more acrimonious -- much like James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson and Herbert Hoover before him. And, like those three predecessors, Bush has done so in the service of a rigid ideology that permits no deviation and refuses to adjust to changing realities. Buchanan failed the test of Southern secession, Johnson failed in the face of Reconstruction, and Hoover failed in the face of the Great Depression. Bush has failed to confront his own failures in both domestic and international affairs, above all in his ill-conceived responses to radical Islamic terrorism. Having confused steely resolve with what Ralph Waldo Emerson called "a foolish consistency . . . adored by little statesmen," Bush has become entangled in tragedies of his own making, compounding those visited upon the country by outside forces.

No historian can responsibly predict the future with absolute certainty. There are too many imponderables still to come in the two and a half years left in Bush's presidency to know exactly how it will look in 2009, let alone in 2059. There have been presidents -- Harry Truman was one -- who have left office in seeming disgrace, only to rebound in the estimates of later scholars. But so far the facts are not shaping up propitiously for George W. Bush. He still does his best to deny it. Having waved away the lessons of history in the making of his decisions, the present-minded Bush doesn't seem to be concerned about his place in history. "History. We won't know," he told the journalist Bob Woodward in 2003. "We'll all be dead."

Another president once explained that the judgments of history cannot be defied or dismissed, even by a president. "Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history," said Abraham Lincoln. "We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation."

SEAN WILENTZ

Posted Apr 21, 2006 12:34 PM

la de dah...

so, they're coming on monday to replace the motherboard - nice to know i won't have to wait another week before the thing comes in...

meanwhile, other material things in my life are falling apart...

the remote on my tv has decided that it no longer likes the number 5. so, if i wanna go to the tv guide channel (#95) i hafta punch in 96 and then the down arrow. thankfully the thing's still under warranty, so they're gonna send me a new one - this was after the classic comedy of going to the store and them telling me to call the parts department toll-free #, calling the parts department toll-free # and them telling me to have the store call them. argh! well, it's done and should be in the mail sometime soon...

and my sunglasses have magically disappeared. i purchased a matching pair to go with my glasses when i purchased them from eyeglass world a while back - they're magnetic and not easily replaceable with an off-the-rack pair. sooooo, i go and they tell me that they'll be $99 to replace. WTF?!?!? there's no way i'm gonna pay $99 for a pair of sunglasses! then they inform me that they can give them to me for $45. what in the hell?!?!!?? that's quite a racket they've got there, when they can instantly reduce a price by less than half just because i say i won't pay $99. suffice it to say, i'm gonna keep much closer tabs on these puppies. of course, i hafta wait a couple of weeks before they arrive, as well...

mother fucked!

so, my luck with mothers lately hasn't been so great...

first and foremost, the death of my mother in november...

well, then the motherboard on my laptop got zapped (damned static electricity from new carpet installation in my condo)...

and then last friday lightning struck the condo, and BZZT! i had a power surge and now Best Buy's diagnosed a fried motherboard in my desktop machine! arrrrrrgh! and they tell me that the part won't be in till friday the 28th! meanwhile, i'm still waiting for packaging to arrive to ship off the laptop (thank god the thing was under warranty till May 5!)

so, now i'm learning all this grown-up shit about homeowners insurance - do i need to make a claim? the tv in my bedroom was fried, as well. and i dunno about the condo's insurance and their responsibility in checking out the electrical issues in the building (the unit two floors directly above me was the one that took the brunt of the damage)

so if you've sent me an email and i haven't replied - bear with me...i'm using my brother's machine right now, cuz i needed to take care of some bill paying, etc...i figure i can be a puter hobo till my machines are up and running...guess i'll hafta go back to the old-fashioned way of handling things - PHONE CALLS! eeeek!

how i'm gonna deal with withdrawals from my TotalFarking, i still have no clue...it's painful. *pout*

cool pix!

Timing is everything - Gallery you don't want to miss!

where's my handbasket?

certainly i'm going to Hell for posting this link, but it cracked me up...

now you can dress Jesus up in Wizard of Oz costumes!!

i love my TotalFarking buddies!

so, i bought a couple of goldfish - now they're set up in a bowl, just swimming around and checking things out. i posted a message on TotalFark asking for suggestions for names - i was hoping for some good punny and/or funny ideas, and the only one i'd come up with was Tracey Goldfish...

now i've got a plethora of ideas swimming around in my head (har har)

some of the ideas posted that are still in the running:

do i go back and get two more fish? then i'd name them Dorothy, Rose, Blanche and Sophia - the Goldfish Girls!!

Abe Vigoda?

Lewdfish? (har har, a bit of a pun on lutefisk, which is cool, given my Norweigan heritage) although i think i'd be tempted to spell it Lou D. Fish or Lou T. Fish...

one person suggested if i went with Tracey Goldfish to name the other one Carp Cameron...

Baked & Fried - now that's just evil - i love it! "Lookit my goldfish - Baked and Fried!"

Fluffy and Snowball - hmmm, awfully surreal - i kinda like it.

Sid Fishous

Sushi & Sashimi

James Pond and Goldfinner

one farker suggested Dickface and Sphincterbutt, but i need for them to be named something that i can say in front of children, so i'm gonna hafta cross that one off the list...

the National Day of Action on Immigrant Rights

More than 12 thousand people attended the immigration march downtown - right on! i found it rather amusing that of the one arrest, it was a counter protester pretending to have a big penis by revving the engine on his truck...

April 10 - National Day of Action on Immigrant Rights

from an article in the Christian Science Monitor:

"Coming on the heels of demonstrations in several larger cities, a National Day of Action on Immigrant Rights Monday is expected to involve people in some 90 US municipalities..."

according to April10.org, Naptown is gonna be one of those 90 municipalities:

City: Indianapolis
Date: 4/10
Time: 5:00PM
Location: St. Mary's Catholic Church, 317 N. New Jersey St., Indianapolis, IN
Event Details: We Are All Immigrants - please wear white


i must say, i'm interested to see how this turns out - not quite sure what i think of the whole illegal immigrant issue, other than to say our system as it is is fucked up...

Beakman...

just in case you were wondering whatever happened to Beakman (aka Paul Zaloom), from Beakman's World (no, not the Muppet - that's Beaker!) - apparently he's a "solo political satirist (hunh?), puppeteer (Flavor of the Month!), and performance artist (the Mime of the '00's?), who lives and works in fabulous Los Angeles."

i always did think that Beakman kicked Bill Nye the Science Guy's ass...

oh yeah, and he's queer too. *8-)

I'm gonna be President!


Get your position here

miscellaneous stuff from the web...

a posting of links of interest that i found today...

From SomethingAwful: With 250 billion dollars the United States could have purchased...

Mahna Mahna - the video!

Interesting facts about Mahna Mahna!

WalmartDotGov: Scrimping Our Way Toward a Prosperous Future

World Jump Day

Family reunion...

i really didn't mean for it to happen this way...

all i wanted was a little picnic on race day - like we did when i was a kid - at eagle creek park. i mentioned this idea to my cousins...joanie has now turned it into a huge family reunion, with a luau theme and a list of 42891202 things to do between now and the day before memorial day.

so we got together at marian's today, to get invitations together. well, at least it was another excuse to see Dominic - i feel so sad for all the other godparents out there, thinking their godchild is the cutest, when in fact it's ME that has the cutest of all! and i'm turning into the Human Pillow! i swear, he just loves how squishy i am, and apparently i have some sort of sleep-inducing qualities. he was really cranky, nobody could get him to go to sleep...so i held him and within two minutes he was OUT...

alas, there've been some storms rolling through tonight and i shouldn't be on the computer...

My wonderful godsons...

Saturday was the 1st birthday of my Godsons Dominic and Dametri - it was an occasion full of mixed emotions, for a variety of reasons. the fact that Dametri didn't make it to his first birthday was in the back of my mind, as was the fact that Mom wasn't there either (she's also Godmother to Dominic and Dametri)

it was still a good time though. Dominic (aka Swami) had lots of presents to open and there was family around to watch him attempt to open presents (i say attempt because, although he could slowly remove wrapping papers, it wasn't fast enough - especially when you're surrounded by an older brother and two older sisters. i think Atreyu, Alanis and Alivia played with Dominic's toys more than he did.

The Pacers outfit i got for him fit well, and even though his Dad initially balked at the headband that came with it, he changed his mind when he saw it on his head. Swami's got a bit of a big head, but the headband didn't really accentuate that.

after opening presents, it was time for cake! woo hoo! except Dominic isn't really big on the sweet stuff, apparently. and he was a bit tired as well (we'd had to wake him up from a nap so we could get the party started!) so we sang Happy Birthday and gave him his very own cake to get as messy as he wanted - problem was, he didn't want to. so his Daddy tried to move things along, and that got him really grumpy! he did NOT like the mess! so, being the Fairy Godmother that i am, i proceeded to tell him "Don't worry, your Fairy Godmother will take care of mean ol' Daddy" and then covered his face with cake frosting - ha ha - gotcha back!

so here's a pic of us - birthday #1!

Awesome idea...

Prepixelated Clothing!

A kick in the pants...

well here's a kick in the pants - i've got eleven and a half years to live...

yup, i'm kicking the bucket at 45...

well, at least that's what this Life Expectancy Calculator says...

some more details:

Results
Based on your answers to the above questions, your current life expectancy is 45 years. If you're not happy with the result, consider that by adopting a healthier lifestyle and avoiding various risk factors, you can increase your life expectancy by up to 15 years.

Your "ideal" weight for maximum longevity is: 139 lbs.

The three biggest positive factors that you have going for you are:
1. Age
2. Gender
3. Smoking

The three biggest negative factors that you have going for you are:
1. Family health
2. Weight
3. Diet



i guess it gives me pause to think about changing some habits and living healthier...as for making it to 139 lbs? uh....no. even with radical dieting, surgery AND crazy gluing my mouth shut, that ain't gonna happen...

Current Terror Alert...

what's your inner hair color?

Your inner hair color is brunette.

On the inside, you're mysterious and alluring. You're more likely to ask personal questions than reveal personal information. Your inner self has really nice eyelashes, and you know a good wink is worth a thousand words. Emoticons bug you, because ; ) is such a poor substitute for the real thing. If you're attracted to someone, you'd rather share 30 seconds of intense eye contact than spend an hour chatting on IM.

Funny Quote of the Day, courtesy of google...

"My father would take me to the playground, and put me on mood swings."

- Jay London

Your place in humor 3-space

interesting test, i suppose...


the Cutting Edge
(57% dark, 42% spontaneous, 31% vulgar)
your humor style:
CLEAN | SPONTANEOUS | DARK


Your humor's mostly innocent and off-the-cuff, but somehow there's something slightly menacing about you. Part of your humor is making people a little uncomfortable, even if the things you say aren't themselves confrontational. You probably have a very dry delivery, or are seriously over-the-top.

Your type is the most likely to appreciate a good insult and/or broken bone and/or very very fat person dancing.

PEOPLE LIKE YOU: David Letterman - John Belushi

What Pattern Is Your Brain?

Your Brain's Pattern

You have a dreamy mind, full of fancy and fantasy. You have the ability to stay forever entertained with your thoughts. People may say you're hard to read, but that's because you're so internally focused. But when you do share what you're thinking, people are impressed with your imagination.

What Pattern Is Your Brain?

pic o the day...

from Yahoo

Kill the Care Bears

Take down as many of those obnoxious Care Bears as possible in this game.

back online...

so i was offline cuz the laptop crashed but am now back, since i have internet service and a new desktop system up and running!

images from livejournals

Toothpaste for Dinner's got a random generator of images culled from livejournal pages - interesting to see what pics people put in their journals...

quote of the day:

"If you’re going to masturbate with the help of heavy machinery, for crying out loud, use the buddy system."

- from the article titled "Ouch! With sex injuries, love really hurts" on msnbc.com

where do they come up with this stuff?

so i got the walls painted over the weekend...the living room a shade called "White Palace" (a very light grey), the dining room and kitchen are another color i forgot to write down (a pale pale yellow), and in the bedroom i have an accent wall of "Royal Attire" with the other walls painted in "Fairy Glitter"...i'll leave it to you to guess what those colors are. ;-) dunno how they come up with all these names, but they are amusing to read...

doing grown-up things...

got new carpet on friday, then over the weekend josh came over and painted most of the place (didn't see a need to paint the office or bathrooms, but now that the rest of the place is done, i think i've changed my mind in that regard)...the sofa arrives tomorrow. i'm excited and drained, all at the same time - i just wanna snap my fingers and have it all done.

'nother psych exam on wednesday for disability - i tell ya, if they'd just call up my docs and most of my friends and family, it'd be obvious that i'm too c-razy for the real world

busy busy busy...

today was my psychological testing for my social security disability application. woo hoo. since i was already downtown, i figured i'd make the most of my time out and about and went to see my godson Dominic and the rest of his family. i'd talked to Sherry (my aunt/his grandmother) last night and she'd told me about how big he's getting, and how he's crawling a lot now - says he looks like a little bull dog when he crawls. yup, she's right. that little boy is sooo special to me, and i know the rest of the family doesn't realize it. being a Fairy Godmother's a position i take very seriously.

afterwards, went to the cemetery to see my other godson Dametri and my Mom. i've always been the type that rips off the scabs - at least physically - and that's precisely how it felt when i got to the cemetery, like a huge scab had been ripped off my heart. i can't believe i've been without mom for three months now - i'm just so totally blown away by the whole thing.