Jeopardy

I went up yesterday and stayed at a motel for my Jeopardy tryout today. I barely made it in time, despite being a mere .6 miles (according to google maps) from Sony Pictures, where the Jeopardy set is. I went on in with about 100 other folks and managed to blow the 50 question quiz, missing a lot of easy ones, like what "bird science" is (ornithology, I knew that, dammit) and the capitol of Bulgaria (Sofia, I knew that too). So, I blew my chance at getting on Jeopardy. The good news is that I get to try again next year (which I will).
Other than that I got to see John Otter for a short while, and Kiyoshi for a longer while, which was cool. He gave me some cool Simpsons trading cards (a game, apparently) and he gave Des some japanese chocolates, and bought us a sushi dinner, which rocked. It was all in all a fun time, and I was happy to get to spend some time out in the world with Des.
We stopped off on the way home at a view point near San Onofre and met up with the fattest squirrel I've ever seen. We fed him and his brethren many hot Cheetos, sadly to no hilarious effect. I think squirrels look evil; Desi thinks they look cute. Weirdo.

Bush loves your money too

Here we go! The Bushies want CC companies to force YOU to pay 4% instead of 2% minimum! Hooray! The logic? You'll get out of debt sooner! Um. Of course, if you can't AFFORD to make minimum payments, because, I dunno, you entered into a fucking agreement with certain terms, then tough shit for you I guess. The fucking guy they quote in the article linked says you should...get this...contact your fucking credit card company and "negotiate" a lower interest rate. Yeah, that'll happen. "Why, you want to wiggle out of our main profit center? Sure, here you go!" Riiiiight.

This is Whammy #2, after the bankruptcy bill. You can see the shape of the GOP's servitude to big business. What's better than destroying Labor from the top down? Enslaving it to debt from the bottom up! As Digby put it: "Seriously, I can understand why the credit card companies want to do this now that they are protected from people having their debts discharged when they suddenly can't make their monthly payments. But on what basis does a Republican government excuse its meddling into the private financial affairs of American citizens?

Funny for monday

I know Monday usually sucks big giant hair-matted monster donkey cock, but you know, it's one-seventh of our lives, give or take what day you were born on, which is so infinitessimal it makes me wonder why I bring it up.

Fafblog has a great Lance Armstrong-related post up, I think it's actual reportage from on the scene. Very, very uplifting.

luv, g

What the fuck

Ok,
These attacks are really starting to piss me off.
In the last month they have been trying to blow up London.
Although I don’t know anyone who actually lives in London, It is the capitol of the country I am still a citizen of. Kind of like major bombing going on in DC when you live in Kenya... Kind of gets under your skin a little. But now they are taking it too far, and not just taking lives of the people we love, but seriously fucking with my finances, and my vacation.
Now they are gunning for Egypt
For the last 6 months or so, I have been eating top ramen for lunch every day and ignoring all kinds of wants and needs (except for motorcycles, but that is a different post) to scrimp and save to take a 10 day cruise down the Nile river. Well... We bought the plane tickets (non refundable I might add) last week to get us there, and the tour packages where paid for (also non refundable) a couple of months ago. All told somewhere around 5 grand. And now we are faced with a decision about scrapping it all and fucking off to Mexico for a couple of weeks instead. This pretty well pisses me off. $5K.... 5 thousand dollars... 500,000 pennies. You know what that is? That’s a new car...
That’s a new kitchen and back yard. That’s a thousand pounds of gummy worms. (Could you imagine that?) But here is the fucked up part...
People died.
88 at last count. Hundreds maimed and injured countless losses of tourism and severe economic impact…
And I’m worried about a month and a half’s pay. I feel like a fucking cockbag. I’d rather be out 5 grand than loose anyone I know.
I love my wife. Since the attack she has been keeping up on the Egyptian politics. She has been looking into getting some of our cash back from the travel agents. She has been up all night with me talking about how we could go anyway, and how it is almost our duty to not be afraid. Hell, she even said that if we didn’t go, and didn’t get our money back that we would be, in our small way, helping the Egyptian economy try to get back on its feet with our money. Helping those people who lost their livelihood try to get back on track.
I love my wife. She is an inspiration to me, and I would be lost without her. If anything happened to her, I would be finished. I don’t want to take her somewhere where last Saturday they blew up a hotel where people like us where sleeping.
88 people dead.
Hundreds wounded and maimed.


I wonder how Cancun is in September....
After all... Its only money

I'll tell you the BLEEP I know

This is likely bullshit. Apparently this damn movie's been going apeshit all over the place...Salon.com has a rundown on it. As far as I can tell, it's a movie about how god is described by quantum mechanics. one of the onscreen personalities is a woman who claims to channel a 35,000-year-old spirit named Ramtha...reminds me of Doonesbury, if anyone reads that (obviously, I do). Boopsie channels an ancient warrior spirit who's name excapes me, and who pops up randomly in the cute blonde to snarl and spit. It's pretty funny.

As far as I can tell the movie is, in a big way, trying to recruit people for the Ramtha cult. John Gorenfeld, who's probably my favorite journalist right now, is on it in the above-linked article (read his site for a LOT more disturbing stuff, including the GOP/Moonie operative making off with gorenfeld.com to try and mess with John for pointing out Moonies are insane). His Moonie blog is awesome, as well, and gives a lot of important background on the influence that South Korean convicted tax-evader Sun Myung Moon has on out highest elected officials, including owning the Washington Times and UPI. If you don't read anything else, read this. It's seriously fucked up.

Image used without permission. From http://www.iapprovethismessiah.com/

poopty peupty pants

That's Lake Chapalla, south of Guadalajara in ol' Mexico. The lake is about as big as I've ever seen in my life...I've grown up in spittin distance of the ocean, and this lake was impressive. I had a lot of fun in Guadalajara, and I was just starting to get the hang of Spanish. Of course, I forgot it all immediately.

I'm reading a book called "Perfectly Legal" (Powell's gives me money if you buy stuff from them with me as a referrer...whee) and it's really disturbing. I'd recommend checking it out.

thursday

The Red Pill

Read this article by the peerless Thom Hartmann. Click the links, listen to the audio, read the transcript. Tell me that there is not a cabal in power with a limited, corrupt worldview that is bent on sucking every single bit of wealth in the world into it's ever-rumbling gut. I fucking dare you.

Lordy

There are things that the government, the one we have that is of for an by the people, SHOULD do. the National Weather Service is one of those things. It generates some of the best weather data there is, the data that private companies use to repackage and sell to radio and TV broadcaster, as well as internet prognosticators.

Rick Santorum (R-PA) introduced a bill to the Senate to limit the amount of info that the NWS can disseminate so that a handful of private companies can charge for the information. Nothing the GOP does is to help you. they help only the very, very rich. if you don't believe me, you're not paying attention. look at the facts, and the actual dollars, and you'll see.

This NWS gambit is built to make already-very-rich people richer, through new government/private shoehorn activities like packaging info generated on the public dime while withholding it from the very public that paid for the shit. Same thing with a buttload of stuff...we pay for research, private concerns get it. we pay for infrastructure, we don't get to use it. Every damn thing in this country belongs to it's citizens. Sadly, nowadays, more than half of everything...everything...every bit of wealth in ths nation, more than half belongs to the top 15% of the wealth scale. more than half! lord, i could go on about tax shelters and living trust gambits all day, and how the mega-wealthy get even more and more, and pass all of the burden of maintaining the nation they extract such fortune from squarely onto your shoulders (unless you are worth more than 89 billion dollars), but i won't.

just this once, write your senator. write your congresscritter. email em! say "dude! Satorum is trying to privatize NWS information! If you vote for that, i will never, ever vote for you or your party again". fucking jerks. they're trying to make it into a giant nation of that have-alls and the have-nones. the middle class are useful idiots. they're being lured along with promises, but they live on credit. they'll be in the muck with the rest of us. i'm dead serious, if you make less than around 3 million a year and have a net worth of less than 80 million, you don't even count as anything other than a potential profit center to the lawmakers in our country, GOP or Democrat. The GOP is the most heinous, but the Dems, with a couple of exceptions, are equally scummy (Daschle, Biden, et al).

It's disgusting. and it's not made to help anyone but the super-super-rich. look it up, i dare you.

okay okay

I've been following the WSOP Main Event (the 10,000 buy-in No-limit hold'em championship, or "The Big One") HERE. Let me tell you, ya gotta be an addict if every word typed in a blog makes you quiver with anticipation. The amazing thing is the chip leader right now, heading into day four or so with several hundred players left, is GREG FUCKING RAYMER, last year's champ! They had over 2,500 entrants last year and over 5,500 this year, and dude's still in it.
Phil Ivey is also in the game, as well as that insufferable jackass Mike Matusow, who I hope gets crushed by some donk pulling a dumbass bad beat on him.
It's almost depressing to talk about my own poker after cogitating on a tournament with a $7.55 million dollar first prize, but I got second in a $25+5.50 for $250 bones, and won a quarter playing 1/2O8 & 1/2HE .50/1.

So that's fun.

London blues

I am pretty saddened by the tragedies in London, and the pain of those afflicted, those injured and those who lost loved ones.
So nothing political on this. Just thinking of Londoners and the old foggy city I've dreamt of. I can't imagine a city that survived the Blitz is going to be intimidated by some punks with suitcase bombs. I hope they find who was responsible.
Some day they'll be peace in this world.

Oldies an goodies

Here is a fun rundown of a book on how Bush speaks. Sounds right-on to me. Too bad it's four years old. Sigh.

Bush is a negative guy. He's a mean guy. The only time he sounds natural is when he's celebrating victory over an enemy. And he's totally willing to do that early ("Mission Accomplished", anyone?). He's angry.

Bush shouldn't be president. He shouldn't be allowed to sully us any longer. He's shallow and ridiculous, a sham of a man, a mighty industrialist aping a lowly "good ol' boy"(cool link). It's the lowest form of theater. And you're all buying it. Even when you say he's a moron you're buying it. He's plenty smart. He just hates everyone who does not look exactly like him, as I and numerous people have been saying for years.

Damn I need something funny to end this with. Poor bastards who read my page. Sorry.

whee

I made a huge, involved post about political stuff early and closed the window, forgetting that I hadn't posted it. Oh well. Also, it seems like all of my friends are losers who don't want to update the site, either. Fuckers.

Terms for female masturbation. I think "stinky pinky" is still one of the best.

Both genders.

There's a hundred other sites too. The one I like that I didn't see was "tossing the ham javelin".

More! Vomit terms.

Yes, I'm twelve, whatever, I WILL KILL YOU, shutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutup

gasp

okay, back to the linking.

Urban Dictionary

Japanese snacks

DUDE, I'm trying out for Jeopardy on July 28. All fingers must be crossed that I get happy categories if I make it. I'm seriously either really good, or really shitty.

Blech, stupid ass link posts. Go to Daily Kos if you want to see what I'm all worked up about.