Well here's another fun and exciting use of the USA Patriot Act. I really hate that thing...
And here's a wonderful quote from Moore: "I'm going to hold my tongue on this one because it's going to get around." Moore's tongue gets around. Special...
Well... we did that whole church shopping thing again today. It was fun the first or second week... but it's really starting to get old. Hopefully we have somewhere selected by the end of October... but I'm beginning to doubt it. Maybe my standards are just too high after my church at home, but I am just generally unimpressed by the low-quality exegetics in this area of the world. Granted, the worship is great, but don't you people get it? Worship is the easy part... lots of churches have good worship. Good preaching, solid preaching with depth to it, that's the hard stuff to find. I'll take mediocre worship and a great sermon any day over a great worship and a mediocre sermon. Granted, both are essential. But you can almost always get together with a group of solid Christians and worship together. Good exegetics aren't easily done on your own without years of theological and Biblical training and even then, it's hard work.
On the topic of global politics, you've all known for some time that I hold a special disdain for European Socialism, and contemporary European culture and politics in general. Apparently, there are others who feel that these decisions are rotting away at Europe from the inside. Read this and tell me what you think.
You need to read Oral Roberts' A Daily Guide to Miracles! After all, it's provided so much joy and endless amusement to those of us who have, that I don't feel right holding out on the rest of you. It's all about seed faith and miracle baskets.
Incidentally, I have new disturbed linkage of the Bobbit variety. Blame Jared.
Do you hate Rigoberta Menchu (warning, her site is in Spanish) as much as Jared?
"Not likely" - Jared
"This woman is so ugly, it looks like someone started a fire on her face and used a rock to put it out" -VC
"Yeah, and what little hair there is left attests to what they used to start the fire in the first place" -Jared
If so, check out this link. Contained are several pictures fo this jacked-up old hag and an interesting article on the scholarship of her "biography." Isn't it sad that some academics are still willing to defend the "scholarship" of this pack of lies?
note: the only page linked above that is in Spanish is the old hag's site, which you could just as easily run through babelfish (unless you're a LUser using LetNET)
Well... it would appear that another of the ranks is joining the LU Blogosphere. To be honest, I did do more than a little to help get Jared up and running.... but I'm sure he'll do just fine. As always, linking on the right reserved until his blog really gets underway.
And you thought I was giving up on disturbed links...
Welcome to Aussieland. Screwed up...
Attack of the Geeks! If it weren't trying spin off of such a stupid show, I would be more apt to be amused...
And of course, a nice article on voter fraud courtesy of electronic voting machines. Oh great Council, your time is soon come.
Every now and again I get bored in the labs (big shock) and today I've been especially so. In light of that, I decided to do some bumming around and at the suggestion of Ziggy, started doing some research into buying my own private island. Not that I have the capital to do so or anything... but I just thought it would be cool.
Here's what I've figured out so far:
1) 99.9% of these islands aren't in the US (the very few even available in the US are in the possession of very happy owners)
2) the riskier the country, the cheaper the island (do you want to own property in the middle of a war zone?)
3) apparently, you can appeal to the safety of US protection as far away as halfway between Hawaii and Australia (US global dominance?)
4) amenities like modern construction, running water and power cost a lot extra
5) this isn't a market for anyone who isn't at least moderately wealthy
6) I want my own island
I really need to get back into a market where I can get ahold of the money necessary to get one of these islands.
Want a sample?
Here's a nice one.
Here's an even nicer (albeit much pricier) one.
Here's a place for the SC to set up shop and run continuing operations from.
Yes, I know that post wasn't very bitter and cynical. And those of you who want to go congratulate the Wench for her talent, go for it by all means.
I bummed around today and then went to the Longview Symphony. It was fairly good... 3 pieces that I thoroughly enjoyed. Sadly I can't remember the other two composers, but the middle piece was Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet and it was very well-done. (Aside: Question to Grammar Nazis... How does one punctuate the title of a musical piece?) I got to go with Wilson, Ardith, Moore, his wench, and of course my most beautiful date (yes, it's smarmy... get over it) and we followed the trip to the symphony with dessert (or something like that) at Applebees' with a large number of Bandits and associates. It was good fun and fellowship and all in all a good evening. If only there were more evenings like this with fewer days of work (like Monday) to look forward to. Hopefully I will be able to lay my hands on some good pictures of said event within a week or so. If you're lucky, you might even get a look or I might post one or two.
A parting word to the wise: if you steal something, take good care of it. Especially if it's something that I'm involved with...
*glares meaningfully at parties who know who they are*
Well... another week is done. I really should post more than I do during the week... but you try and come up with interesting posts while you're also trying to balance classes, a wench and the ominous task of being the ubiquitous cynic. The funny thing is, I relaly need to do a bit more of balancing classes. Fortunately, I'm at the 4-week-in mark and I'm doing alright. Problematically, I'm a natural slacker and will skip class and assignments with no real reason at all and I'll get myself in trouble by doing that. Add in a tendancy to rocrastinate too much and a reason to be doing something other than class or homework and I rarely get to work. And that's not good.
So hopefully I'll get on that and get on some backlogged school stuff. At least the job is fine and the rest of my life seems to be sailing along smoothly. And for those of you chuckling about the new, happier Cynic... it really boils down to this. Try staying pissed off or even remotely upset when you're pretty much totally in love and focussed on trying to keep someone else happy. It doesn't work so well...
However, just give me a good reason to be pissed at something and I'll get back to you with a diatribe. Ask the Yellow Jacket monkeys... I'm not done with the evisceration of morons by a long shot, I'm just out of the business of searching out new morons to verbally abuse.
Look at this. If I could be an SBC customer, I would be. Here's their press release related to this.
The long and short story of this matter really is that there's a company who sees something to gain on a PR level from opposing the RIAA. Sure, it's a business and marketing maneuver, but if it manages to protect the privacy of consumers, it's fine by me.
Hey look while we were busy fending off the RIAA, Canada went and did something pretty sweet. Hey, I'd pay a levy on CD-R's if it meant I could freely file-share.
It's funny... I don't post anything all week and then it all comes to a head as I sit in the lab and attempt to convince myself that I really ought to be doing something productive. Well, I have an ethical objection to homework, so I guess that leaves blogging. Not that that's really productive per se, but at least it leaves a mark somewhere that at some time on Sunday afternoon, the Cynic might have been thinking (or at the very least, his fingers jumped to productivity without the leave of his brain and this is what we have to show for it.)
I really miss cynicism on one hand and on the other hand I really don't. The rest of you don't even know what it means whether you like it or hate it, and that mildly annoys me and makes me really wish I could whole-heartedly advocate it like I should.
"So what is cynicism then?" the ingrates intone, as they attempt to salvage some dignity in the futile hopes that I really can't substanciate my assertions of being mentally superior inasmuch as I at least understand my terms. Sadly, Webster hops in a circle on this, but if you spend the necessary effort you can piece together a workable definition.
cynic (n) : 2 : a faultfinding captious critic; especially : one who believes that human conduct is motivated wholly by self-interest
cynical (adj) : 2 : having or showing the attitude or temper of a cynic; especially : contemptuously distrustful of human nature and motives
cynicism (n) : 2 : cynical character, attitude, or quality; also : an expression of such quality
You'll note that each is the secondary definition, due to the fact that cynicism derives from a philosophy of the same name started by the Greek philosopher Diogenes. The general gist of this being the primary tenet of cynicism is the contemptuous distrust of human nature and motives inasmuch suspecting that that all of these are tied up entirely in self-interest. I fully believe all of this... the problem is the contemptuous part and the attempts of some to extend this cynicism to God and a failure to account for the changing power of God in the lives of Christians. That isn't to say that Christians are above base motives, but neither does it excuse one from expecting Godly motives from one's Christian brothers rather than lording their former sinful nature and base motives over their heads. And of course, it's very difficult to be generally contemptuous when one is happily involved in a relationship, but that's neither here nor there. The long and short is that while some will accuse me of abandoning my philosophical basis, I will just say that mine is still cynicism, just slightly modified to include a Biblical worldview. The wide-ranging distrust of human motives, especially among non-Christians, is as strong as ever. Oh, and those who decry cynicism are back on the food chain.
Oh yeah... and welcome to my world
note: I'm sorry I killed your comment Morgan
It's not that I have less to say now than I did during the summer... I just have less time to say it in. As I indicated Friday, I have no lack of desire to write insulting narrative so much as I have a lack of the time required to do the justice that such self-expression deserves. I don't want to be producing third- and fourth-rate drivel like our own student newspaper seems wont to do of late. Anyways, that's more or less a status update: I'm not dead, just a bit out of touch. Stupid schoolwork.
On a more sadistic note: I find it amusing that these guys seem so upset at a taste of their own medicine. "Give and ye shall receive..."
"Hey, it's a new Yellow Jacket... let's read it! Wait a minute... this thing doesn't have a back page on it... I'm gonna go steal one from the stack that does. Hey! None of them have back pages!"
Thus began my experience reading the Yellow Jacket (the LU student newspaper this morning.) I suggest you go pick it up. It's funny in the sense that watching a retard try to color a picture with crayons is hillarious... translation: it's an abortive attempt at self-expression on the part of the editorial staff that should have ended in mass suicide but by an inexplicable act of God ended up in a published format, readily available for school-wide faculty, staff and student perusal. I'm going to go kipe 20 or 30 copies so that I can mail them to my enemies and break one out to burn it every now and again for catharsis.
I really can't do this thing justice in review, but suffice to say that the blank last page epitomizes the fact that this thing just sucks horribly. In short, it doesn't have a consistent style method (different fonts, sizes and methods of doing by-lines, titles and captions abound to the point that it looks like someone should have dropped in an article in a foreign language or alphabet somewhere), othing is justified, half of the pictures are pixellated and/or out of proportion, there are pages where entire words are lost off the edge of the page, the editorial page is a train-wreck of bad bios and irrelevant pictures, there are articles with no columns, a page consisting entirely of a 3-paragraph press release of unexplained significance and a gramatically offensive advertisement (with unrelated clip-art) and the list goes on...
I think I'm going to sit here and admire how much this thing sucks. Oh, on a bright note, at least the entirety of the editorial staff and contributing authors have their names, pictures and bios in the paper. That says something for accountability... or stupidity. No way in hell I'd sign on to this... and if I had, I would leave the school or preferably the country subsequent to seeing the paper.
Note to self: expensive air fares suck... but this solution isn't worth it. I mean, even economy class on cheap third-world airlines probably beats the accomodations that one can find in a box.
Or how about this nut (thanks Dunny) asking people to crack him over the head with a skateboard? What the hell is wrong with these people?
An amusing story:
On a Trans-Atlantic flight one of the plane's wings is struck by lightning.
One woman in particular loses it. Screaming, she stands up in the front of the plane. 'I'm too young to die!' she wails. Then she yells, 'Well, if I'm going to die, I want my last minutes on Earth to be memorable! I've had plenty of sex in my life, but no one has ever made me really feel like a woman! Well I've had it! Is there ANYONE on this plane who can make me feel like a WOMAN??'
For a moment there is silence.
Everyone has forgotten their own peril, and they all stare, riveted, at the desperate creature in the front of the plane.
Then, a man stands up in the rear of the plane. 'I can make you feel like a woman,' he says.
He's gorgeous. Tall, well built, with long flowing black hair and jet black eyes, he starts to walk slowly up the aisle, unbuttoning his shirt, one button at a time.
No one moves.
The woman is breathing heavily in anticipation as the strange man approaches.
He removes his shirt. Muscles ripple across his chest.
As he reaches her, and extends the arm holding his shirt to the trembling woman, he whispers:
'Iron this.'
As I sit here and read up on the news of the world, this disturbs me more than a little. I've been a staunch opponent of the Patriot Act since it first came out for the simple reason that I don't believe that the American judicial system is capable of functioning properly in secrecy. Without the check and balance of public information of some sort, there is no prevention of corruption.
Do you trust the Justice Department to police themselves? I certainly don't... nor do I think that secret courts will be any better. Classification of criminal matters and stripping the rights of US Citizens without due process on the claim of "national security" seems to be a cop-out. Sure, there should probably be a special court designated with privileges to classify some evidence and prevent it from entering public record, but there should also be intense scrutiny of any time where the federal government attempts to conduct any business outside of the public eye, much less the most important business of potentially stripping someone of their liberty or even life.
I got to watch a bit of football before I came to work today. I really miss getting to do that and one of these days I'm going to make up for the distinct lack of football in my life that I've been experiencing of late. The problem is that with work on Sunday afternoon and other commitments on Saturday, I hardly have any time at all to watch my favorite sport. Just a thought or two as I watch the box scores for the afternoon develop and start to wonder if I could kick on the game on the projector in one of the labs...
So you want to destroy your computer? Check out this handy step-by-step guide. Dealing with homicidal rage and the aftermath of a violent shooting spree? Don't pay the penalty, sue someone instead.
And if you didn't think any of those were bad enough... go buy a bar of soap.
Well... I'm back out from under my rock and on the road to recovery. On Sunday night, a good group of us (including The Wench, Moore, Damian, Toad, Ziggy and Sharon (Wench's roommate)) went to the Cancun restaurant on High Street across from Sonic. Don't go there yourself. While the ambiance was unique and the food certainly authentic, all of this was made up for the following day when we all came down ill in some form or another. Some felt midly unwell and others like myself got violently ill. Ziggy even managed to puke all over the place in Statics class and then decided to stick around. He gets the award for great determination (or great stupidity for dragging himself to class in the first place.) On the other hand, Moore, The Wench and I skipped classes altogether.
Incidentally, if anyone wants to come help us go burn down this place, let me know.
And just as a random aside: here's a guy who deserves some sort of award for his remarkable IQ. I hope they just kill him out of mercy to the rest of humanity. And while I know I might be annoyed if I had tomatoes thrown at my car, this response is unacceptable.