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Saturday, January 11, 2003
A very dumb personality test
I have issues!
 | I have issues with... | honesty
drama
theft
submission
pain
| Take Word Association Test
Uh yeah... Basically, the mouse got stuck and I couldn't move it to the right button...
This is my United States of Whatever...
This is my United States of Whatever Part 2
So, I'm reading this one book by Alan Dershowitz called "Why Terrorism Works," and am seriously surprised by some of the things that dear Mr. Dershowitz thinks of ever so matter-of-factly. First off, I have to say, I find the book to be very deeply flawed. I had a feeling that it would be astoundingly pro-Israel, by the sheer profusion of rave blurbs on the back from a number of former Israeli politicians (Sharon and Netanyahu are two of them). Still, I was astounded by just how overt this bias was.
I was actually expecting the book to be about the threat posed to the US by Al Queda, and the like, since Osama Bin Laden's picture is on the front cover. Wrong! Basically, all of the terrorism that has occurred since the 1970's has been blamed squarely on the Palestinians, specifically the PLO. Of course, a shocker! One of the things Dershowitz thinks the US needs to do is to support Israel in all of its dealings with the Palestinians, from the settlements in the West Bank, to the Israeli policy of non-lethal torture, because the Palestinians respect life less than the most life-loving of all the groups, the Jews. Uh ok. I didn't realize that as an atheist, I loved life less than the Jews, but I just learned something new, I guess.
Other things we need to do include opening up a national debate about legalizing nonlethal torture, institute national ID cards, and the like. Funny how the true causes of the WTC destruction were totally ignored (France and Germany were blamed for allowing terrorism to go unpunished, hence putting the US in the position of Grand Target), such as training terrorist groups in Afghanistan (Osama, for example) during the Cold War, or stationing troops all over the world, continuing to use massive amounts of oil (tying us economically to the Middle East whether we like it or not), etc. etc. etc. So, basically, it is all Europe's fault for giving into the PLO's demands that legitimated terrorism, and not due to US shortsightedness in training these freaks in the first place to fight against the former USSR. Ohkay. At least this argument allows the US and Israel to escape all blame for creating some of these same conditions... **sigh**
Great line from a song I heard part of on the radio today:
This is my United States of Whatever
Sums up my assessment of Dershowitz's book pretty well...
Friday, January 10, 2003
This is my United States of Whatever
More ramblings to come later on the nature of the threat to civil liberties, but I just had to post this, extreme Christopher Walken fan that I am... Courtesy of a friend of mine:
What Christopher Walken Character are you? brought to you by Quizilla
Gabriel: Dark Angel with an agenda
All I can say is, c'est moi, c'est moi! :-D
Wednesday, January 08, 2003
People suck!
People suck part 1:
In the call center I work in, there are two definite bands of people, and they couldn't be more different-- there's the quiet, introverted crew, and then there's the loud, screaming extroverted crew. And the extroverts aren't mild ones, they're the flaming, loud, "pay attention to me, pay attention to me, pay attention to me," types. The worst part is that I'm the introvert who is closest to three of the five. They're arranged, in fact, in three of the cubicles in my "quad." They're loud, all day, they're quite inconsiderate-- one wandered into my cube today just to be able to talk to the other two from, I'm gathering, a slightly different angle than she had talking to them from her cube. No respect for privacy, no respect for silence, no respect for anyone who might be straining to hear what their district coordinator is trying to tell them over the phone... I mean, at the very least, GET THE HELL OUT OF MY SPACE! Dayummm!
People suck part 2:
On the way back from Barnes and Noble (bad girl!), I got a fun tailgater. Not an ordinary tailgater, but one who highbeamed me in the lane next to the fast lane. Now, this is what I don't get... You move over into my lane because I'm going just a smidge faster than the car in the fast lane, then you expect me to get out of your way? Helllooooo! I braked, of course, to try to either prompt Mr. Arrogant Dipshit behind me to move one more lane to the right (the lane was empty, by the way), or to move back into the fast lane, and force the other car over into my lane, which you would think would be the accepted procedure when going 80 on the freeway isn't fast enough for you.
Nope!
Instead, Mr. Dipshit, tails me for another couple of miles, and then as I'm cut off by another car moving more slowly than I was, he highbeams me again, still in the second lane over. I move into the fast lane and speed up. Mr. Dipshit stays behind the car that cut me off, and doesn't tailgate it. In fact, he slows down, and I leave him in the dust. Can someone tell me the point of all of that?
Sunday, January 05, 2003
Some funky writing exercise...
Background: You're supposed to pick a letter out of the jumble, write six words that begin with the letter, then pick one of the words and just write for five minutes. My letter was R.
They were crawling all over her, squeaking and twittering, whiskers atwitch. She couldn't move-- it was as if every limb were tied to the bed, spreadeagled. She looked up, screaming, opening her eyes to the brutal reality she was trying to black out, to deny, to wish away. A pair of black, beady eyes stared into hers, challengeing her to bat it away. She opened her mouth to give a horrid shriek, to sonically get it off of her, but nothing came out. The rat met her gaze and then twitched its nose. She muttered, "no no no no," head thrashing side to side. The rat sniffed again, and began to lick her nose. She rolled over, hearing a squeak of protest, and noticed, gradually coming back from dreamland, that she was lying on her dog's rat-shaped squeak toy.
Yeah it sucks ;-)
How I had my first glass of wine for the New Year or Drunken Ramblings
So, nimrod me locks the keys in her car. And nimrod me does it because I'm trying to get more organized, go figure. So, the story (incomplete):
Once upon a time, there was a nimrod named Elizabeth, who decided to go find out the time of the Writer's Workshop held at Barnes and Noble. Was it every third Thursday, or every third Tuesday? She couldn't remember. She brought her trusty new organizer so that she could schedule every one for the rest of the year.
She arrived in Pleasanton, and instead of bringing the organzier with her, for fear of looking like a dweeb, she decided to only remove the two overview January pages. While she was trying to figure out how to stuff them into her purse, she set her car keys aside, instead of shoving them in her purse as was her usual habit. See, these aren't normal organizer calendar pages, they're Franklin Covey Classic pages, which means that they're just a hint smaller than a standard piece of paper, but too lare to fit into a purse without folding.
So, she closed the door, oblivious to the big set of car keys lounging, relaxed, on the passenger seat. She got her date, walking up to the Barnes and Noble window, and she managed to shove the pages back into her purse, intact. She felt very smug and proud of herself, and her newfound, evolving organizational skills. She bought a George Bushism calendar, and a book proving that alien life exists via probability theory. She was proud of her bargain hunting-- the daily calendar was $6, and the book, $4.
She meandered, she futzed, she paid, she left. On the way to her beloved Scoshi, she fumbled for her big wad of keys. She funbled more. She started cursing. No keys. She tore apart her purse, cussing like a longshoreman. It didn't help. She looked into her car after several minutes of futility, and saw her key wad right on the passenger seat, mocking her.
"Ha, ha, so you think you're organized, do you?" they cackled.
She pushed down on the driver's side window, praying for it to budge, if not roll down slightly. No dice. Passenger window, even fewer dice... Out with the trusty cellphone...
So she ate dinner at Fuzio to unwind after spending $70.00 to get her keys out, since Toyota had no record of her $3000.00 extended service plan... And then she wrote a really stupid thingie over dinner, after writing the above story during the meal, over the "fork meets cork" special:
O gentle pendant lamp
You glow with the light
Of a fire warming a camp.
Blue and glass,
You gently glow
With the joy I feel
Beholding my smaller ass.
Ok, I have nothing
Better to write
On this, a locked-out
Expensive night.
For after spending
Seventy bucks
To unlock a lock
I'm buzzed and so f---'d
That I sit over dessert
With a glass of wine
Writing lame crap
Coming up in my mind
Almost drunk, it's such a crime
To write this garbage
A pathetic waste of time
And I don't even know how to
Rhyme!
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