an easy favor...

If anyone would be willing to go to this post and click one of the google ads at the top of the page for brokerage firms or services, it would really help me out. The annual bill for this site is coming up and it would help me out.

For that matter, if regular readers would be willing to occasionally click one of the google ads it throws a few cents at me ach time. You don't have to buy anything or anything...it's a per click thing. Thanks!

people are wonderful

My brother had a gun pointed at his face last night as three guys robbed the grocery store where he works as an assistant manager. It's the same three guys, perhaps, that have held people up 18 times around the area since late Summer.

Everyone is fine but I can assure you that if I had the opportunity to "discuss" matters with any of the people pulling this shit, there would be some hurtin' going on -- matbe a wicked combination of genitalia, sugar water, and fire ants.

Okay, maybe not, but seriously...this is so uncalled for. I hope they find the fuckers and lock them up for a very long time...with some serial prison rapists, possibly, for fucking with my bro.

spies like us

I don't understand the rationality of caring about someone enough to be hurt by misconstrued second-hand understandings, but not caring enough about that same person to talk. To me, it seems the two would overlap to some degree. That said, I don't understand much of what has happened to me in the last 24 hours at all.

christmas project '05

I'm really impressed by the work that Heifer International does -- that is, provides livestock to the starving nd poor of the world -- and I have a site that draws 20-30 people a day on average. As such, I'm starting a project to raise money for the group.

Between now and Christmas I will be accepting donations on behalf of Heifer. Come Christmas, whatever is collected will be sent on behalf of the readers of this site towards the purchase of livestock for people in need. Any money above and beyond the price of an animal will be donated as a cah donation to Heifer to be used as they see best fit. If not enough money is raised for the purchase of an animal, all money that has been donated by you guys will similarly be donated to Heifer as a cash donation (again, on behlaf of the readers of this blog) to be used as they see best fit.

The goal, as I see it, is to raise $120 for a goat. It would be totally kick ass to raise $500 for a Heifer and I'll still be happy if we only raise the $20 for a flock of chicks. Addtionally, I hope that I can at least make Heifer aware to a few more people...and if you want to make a donation on your own, DO IT!!!

A link to this post will be provided at the top of the right-hand column along with a donate button (the paypal button doesn't want to work in a post for whatever reason). I will also try to update totals as they grow (hopefully they grow -- I'm seeding it with $10). Feel free to contribute more than once, this is a good cause.


The Total:

$10

thus far...

the people on the bus -- nine months post orgasm

I commentd on the bus the other day whn Rosa Parks died, but something else bothers me even more than balck kids sitting in back...that is all the teenage girls (white, black, hispanic...whatever) with babies. It's bad enough that they have them, but lately I've seen a trend towards babies as accessories...not like "all my friends have them" accessories, but like Paris Hilton's little fucking dog accessory -- all dressed up in designer clothes and somehow accentuated beyond what an nfant should be.

It's sick. Really sick, as far as I'm concerned.

wax off

It was funny to watch conservatives bitch and moan in the days and weeks after Miers was nominated to the Supreme Court. It's almost as funny to watch the conservatives play her withdrawl as some sort of brilliant tactical maneuver. Note what Bushanan and Coulter have to say....the first that Miers may have "saved the presidency" and the latter that conservatives can finally ralley around Bush again (it's easy to forgive and forget political betrayal if you're evnagelical and Republican, I guess)...then again, looking at the leadership of the Republican Party, that makes perfect sense.

Tomorrow: The indictment of Karl Rove. (and speaking of indictments, major Bush-contributor of Ohio, Tom Noe, was indicted just today -- gosh Republicans are good, decent people)

history erases itself

Rosa Parks died last night.

It reminds me of something that I always find ironic and sort of sad -- that whenever I ride the bus it seems that the younger black kids always, always, move to the back of the bus. To me it seems sort of forgetful, disrespectful of the past for them to do so...or maybe they're just kids being kids --- moving away from authority.

It does bother me though.

it begins now

I received a catalog in the mail yesterday for Heifer International and I think I know what I'm getting my family for Christmas -- farm animals. I'd heard of the group before, but never really read much about them...in case you haven't, they provide farm animals to the poor and starving in the third world as a way to help them out of their problems -- animals meaning milk, cloth, food, and commodity to people that might not have anything else. You can buy a sheep or goat or pig for $120, a llama for $150, a cow for $500 or several other helpful animals for lesser amounts. Given that I don't care much for the whole giving and receiving of presents -- it seems like a beautiful thing to give a gift to a third party on others' behalfs.

If you're interested, here is their catalog.

blood for oil and pride

This week it appears that the US will reach another milestone in Iraq -- the 2000th death of a service person -- and for what? I'm still waiting for an answer Mr. Bush...and an apology.

my million dollar baby...almost

So around the beginning of September I saw a news report about the avian flu that got me searching the net for more information -- inducing a low level paranoia after reading a page put together by folks who probably over-prepared for Y2K as well -- and I kept coming across "the nanomask". "Regular masks don't keep out particles as small as flu viruses" several pages kept repeating, "the nanomask keeps out everything!" I'm not denying that, and I've actually given though to purchasing one just in case the bird flu does go pandemic (I can guarantee that face masks will be all the range if and when it happens). I mean, they're cheap.

But I digress. So I look into the company a bit, including their stock info...and find that it's trading at 30-cents. "If I had $500 to invest, I'd put it into that" I told myself. But I didn't, not in a brokerage account anyway. Remember, this is a month ago.

Today the stock closed at $1.05 -- yes, had I done it I would be up over $1000 above a $500 investment...in one month (it went up 20-cents yesterday alone). Of course, since then I have opened an account (with scottrade...if anyone's interested in signing up, a referral lands you and I both three free trades -- e-mail me) and my money is now available to invest. I am not missing another chance like that.

irony is sometimes sad

Joaquin Laguer was getting a tattoo entitled "last rights" when he passed out, fell through a glass countertop -- nearly severing his head -- and died. Stories like this, and the irony involved sometimes almost bring me to the point where I could believe in fate. But alas, I still don't.

everybody gets laid

To meet a good friend, try here...though it's quite possible you'll break-up over the Miers nomination. It's sad, really.

Ew. I can't even imagine the sort of thing tha goes on at that site...nor do I want to. Republican sex is not pretty.

room to grow

This weekend a few things happened to me that forced me to rethink some of my past. Particularly in relation to a girl. The first of these was a Friday night hang-out with a couple of friends that turned familiar when the love-interest of one of the two girls I was with showed up. She's been into the guy for as long as I have known her (and a year or so before from what I hear -- so a little over a year and a half) and, frankly, it's always been sort of dramatic as hell. Anyway, he has pulled away from her -- stopped doing a lot of things that would seem to suggest any desire, but she obviously hasn't. Sitting there on the porch of no-one's apartment tere was a play between the two of them -- he was just trying to be friends, she was nagging him...like they were an old married couple.

I use the phrase because me and a failed nongirlfriend had the same critique before. I had thought it cute -- it told me that she cared for me and wanted me...just as my friend's nagging was telling me on Friday. There was something enduring about it, something that turned me on. But I saw what I saw on Friday and it was horrible...sick even. And it wasn't for the guy that I felt bad for, but her. She was just plain being sad -- not coming to grips with reality, but not realizing that she had lost her grip.

But then yesterday I was cruising around on MySpace and came across the profile of my same exnongirlfriend (I use the term, but some may prefer "friend with obligations" -- to be the couter of "friend with benefits"; that is, a friendship with all the bullshit of a relationship and none of the benefits). It was sad. Too much was written in the negative: an interest was "being around people that don't drain me", who she would like to meet are "people that aren't going to leave within the next year" and the like. I think that first thing was a dig against me somehow, but gay as hell in that it was only through my own snooping that I even found her page. It was sad though, just sad...a glass-half-empty look at her life if ever there was one. ...and I'm not really like that (cynical, maybe, but ultimately pretty optimistic).

It has brought me top that point where I question why I ever felt anything for her...why I've ever felt anything for any girl lik her (and God knows tere are a few like that).

Currently my interests lie in a few girls that seem to be more like me (that and one cute waitress), and I just can't grasp how I could ever be attracted to anyone that wasn't. It's weird. Plaine weird. I mean, maybe it's because of my sudden increase in self-confidence, not feeling that I need to go after the "broken" girls and fix them up to something lovely. Maybe it's that I don't hate myself so much anymore and therefore deserve to punish myself by having those that would punish me around. Or maybe it's that I've recognized my empathetic nature and finally figured out that I tend to absorb the negative when I'm around it -- even though I don't like it so much.

In any case, it's the thought that's been screaming in my head for the last day or two...the question of why I have been attracted to the types I always have, and I'm still trying to figure it out. But hey, that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right, and none of it killed me...so...

if i had a red hot poker...

I would sodomize the hell out of the guys who did this. Seriously, how the hell can someone shoot an eight-year-old kid who was just trying to catch a bug? How sick does can a person truly get? You know, I stand up for some rather unsavory characters from time to time -- just because no one else will and I believe that everyone deserves to have someone that at least tries to see their humanity. I don't think I could do that for people that do this sort of thing. A kid, doing such a kid-like thing...the fuckers.

too close for comfort

If anyone tried to visit this site last night or early this morning (I assume) they would have seen a "verboten" page in German that 1and1 replaced all my web pages with. Freaked out that I'd been hacked I went to their site and discovered that they had cut me off for not paying the bill on too URLs that I own but don't really use...not because I meant to, but because the bank changed my credit card numbers. To make things worse, they had an e-mail address on file that I haven't been using -- so they couldn't get a hold of me.

In any case (I need to learn to stave off the details man), I went to check something on here last night and was verboted...and it freaked me out. It's been way too long since I've backed up this blog (because it's so damn huge it takes up tons of time and bandwidth) and I thought I lost it all...every little bit. That sucked. Suddenly I had a sense of what it must be like to loose all one's family photograph in a house fire; never to see them again.

Luckily, google caches everything so I spent an hour searching out the cache version of every single month (back to what still exists over at blogspot) and saving it to my computer. I was desparate.

Anyway, it was a reminder that I need to back up my stuff -- and that so should you. You never know when these sorts of things can occur; online or in real life.

thanks for nothin

Last night, while sitting alone in the bar waiting for people who had said they'd show up but never did, I got to thinking -- my social schedule is not my own. It is a rare day indeed when I see my friends on my turf, to hang out with them where and when I'd like to...every meeting, every hang out, seems to be called by them with my tagging along. Of course I oblige, I want to see them, I want to hang, I care for them after all and that's what friends do sometimes -- sacrifice to make those you care about a little happier (no?) -- but the favor is not reciprocated, at least not to any liberal definition of equity. It's gotten so bad that there are few things that I even suggest anymore, assuming that the answer will be "no" and maybe "let's go to the bar instead!!!" It's small wonder that I have so little initiative with new people...I've been beaten down to nothing by my friends.

The question, of course, are people that do this to me really my friend?

(and before any feelings are hurt: if you're a friend, you're reading this, and I know tht you are -- that's two people -- you can count yourself out of this minor vitriol...it's other people on my mind)

netflix: a review

I've been a long time customer of Netflix.com. Yes, I've tried the other services (or at least WalMart and Blockbuster), but Netflix is the one company that I keep turning back to. Here's why --

First, the selection at Netflix is by far the greatest of all the mail-order dvd rental companies. Others, like intelliflix claim to have bigger catalogs, but I don't see it. Aside from the adult, Netflix has consistently had every movie I have ever looked for (and I have some weird tastes in indy and documentary films!).

Second, Netflix has plenty of copies of popular movies. With other companies, you may wait days or even weeks for that hot new release to become available to be shipped to you. At Netflix I've only had to wait once, and it was only a matter of days. That's sweet.

Third, Netflix gets its movies out as quickly as possible. Years ago, when I first signed up, it took three days between my sending it out and getting a replacement. I thought that was good (in fact, it was better than WalMart's system and similar to Blockbuster), but it has gotten better -- to two days...one there and one back. Send a movie back to them on Monday and 9 times out of 10 you'll have a new disc on Wednsday. With their three movie plan (at the time I'm writing this, $17.99 a month -- though costs go as low as $9.99 a month for other plans) you can (and I have) watch a different movie each and every day; that's 30 movies in one month (though it takes a lot of time and sending movies back the same day that they arrive). Even if that's not your game, at $18 a month it's still cheaper to do the 3-at-a-time plan than to rent 5 movies from the rental store at $4 a pop.

Going with that comparison to brick and mortar movie shops, Netflix (like most of the online rental companies) doesn't charge late fees. I myself have kept a movie out for nearly two months (no time to watch!) without a penny in fines. Sometimes it happens, you know? In any case, the only downside to doing so is that you won't get another disc sent out to you. That's it! Once you do happen to send it back, the next movie in your queue (the list of movies you have selected to rent, in the order in which you'd like to receive them) will be shipped out immediately -- no harm, no foul!

Last, the customer service is perfect. Though I haven't really needed help, per se, the times that I've had to cancel or change addresses, the response has been as good as one can expect. They are on the ball at Netflix, and that's not something that can be said about just any company these days.

In any case, I whole-heartedly endorse the company and recommend signing up to all of my friends. Several of them have even dropped their expensive cable after realizing that Netflix can offer them just as much entertainment at so much less (and with their extensive compilations of TV shows on DVD you can watch just about any program on TV anyway -- in digital quality!) -- and not a one of them seems to have regretted making the switch.

(For a general review of several companies that I did this past Summer, click here)

the mystery of miers

I don't know a damn thing about Harriet Miers, the Supreme Court Justice nominee, and neither does anyone else...and that's a plus. It's been a day since Bush made the announcement and the blogosphere has been abuzz with commentary from the left and right. The short story is that the left is cautious and in wonderment at such a weird call by the president...and the right is pissed as hell. Pat Buchanan cries that Miers' qualifications are "non-existent", William Kristol is "disappointed, depressed, and demoralized", Rush Limbaugh has called it a selection "made from weakness", and even Operation Resuce has announced that they will not support Miers.

Why the discontent? Because the right is seeing what the left has seen all along (finally) and that is that their sacred Bushie is determined to anything and everything to help his friends and supporters with little or no regard to the poplation of the United States, his party, or prestige of the office. In Miers, he has nominated someone who may very well be the least qualified candidate for the Supreme Court in recent history. In Miers, Bush has turned inward, yet again, and returned to a familiar form of nepotism that just recently led to disatrous results in the federal response to Hurricane Katrina (remember Brownie?). In Miers, the right is screaming, Bush has given up a chance to put a known conservative entity on the Court to further ther cause -- the only defense the Bush administration giving for her mysteriousness is a chorus of "trust us" from various officials.

Bush's numbers have been slowly sinking over the past few months, to levels that haven't seen fifty percent since last Spring in most cases. The 40-some percent that have been holding on have been the hardcore right-wingers and "christians" that propped the man back into office last November. They are pissed, and this is good. Very good. The Pat Buchanan's of the world had given up on Bush long ago, but now it's time for the fanatic pro-lifers (I reserve the terms for those who vote largely on the pro-life stance of candidates, few other issues coming into play) to get pissed off, as well as other large segments of the Republican base. That may be because they see Bush's choice as a lost opportunity, a sign of weakness, or good ol' croneyism -- the fact is that the right is going to see some fragmentation from this for at least the next little while...and for that, the left should be happy.

one of those news stories

The Sun is reporting that shark fisherman on the French island of Reunion are using live dogs as bait (WARNING: The picture, if real, is graphic). This sort of story smacks of being made up sensationalism..."bat boy falls in love" sort of bullshit (or, my favorite, the rosy reid thing). If it is true, however, I hope that the Sun is right agian in it's report that the guy has been caught (just for the record, his punishment should being dragged behind a boat by his testicles as shark bait...just my opinion there).

EDIT:

This article (in French) from the island supposedly reports that arrests have been made, which seems to suggest that the story may me true after all (it'd be nice if anyone who knows French could give me a summary of the article). In any case, Snopes is saying that they don't know if it's tue or not...and they're pretty good at calling fake stories pretty quickly if there's no truth to them at all (which seems to suggest that this does happen no and then -- as they seem to conclude themselves).

it's been ten years already

On October 3, 1995 I remember my roommate and his dumber than a load of bricks roommate getting all excited because one of the bigger trials of the century wound down, finding the defendent not guilty. The friend (probably high on one thing or another) threw open the window and was yelling to the campus below, "The juice is loose! The juice is loose!" Yes, he was truly excited...and yes, it was ten years today that OJ Simpson was erroneously cleared of all charges by a jury of his "peers".

He continues the search for his ex-wife's killer on golf courses across the country, but mostly in Florida. How's he celebrating? He's signing autographs in Los Angeles.

revenge of the little guy

So the RIAA has been throwing six and seven-figure fines all over the place for the whole file-sharing thing, but it seems that they may have thrown one at the wrong person. Tanya Andersen is countersuing the RIAA for Oregon RICO violations. It seems that the RIAA claims that the 41 year old, disabled, single mother was downloading gangsta rap at 4am...Tanya claiming she isn't up that late, doesn't listen to gangsta rap, and hasn't downloaded a single song.

What I find scariest is the tactics of the RIAA that it exposes. Whereas I always imagined them going around trying to download music and filing claim against those they successfully downloaded from (the same basic tactic used in other internet stings), they are actively going out and searching computers of suspected people. Yes, someone, somewhere suspected Tanta of downloading music so they made their way to secretly searching her computer.

Grand, ain't it?

Let's hope she is awarded billions and the RIAA's fascist witch hunt can end.

an open letter

Dear Mother Earth,

Please check the thermostatm you old betty. It's October already...I shouldn't be sweating while wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

thanks,
kyle.