the animated banner was beginning to irritate me. there are some other little things that are irritating me too, but they'll have to wait until get back Monday. they guys i'm staying with in MO have a dial up connection that's really frustrating to use.

Jean and i were discussing our meager knowledge of jokes and how lame those jokes were. she shared her jokes with the world and has mentioned twice that my one joke, which has been cracking me up for over ten years, is much lamer than any of hers, and that it's even lamer than (dead link) Pete's joke. now, for your edification, i will tell the one joke that i know:

two oranges are sitting in a bathtub. one orange turns to the other and say "Pass me the soap."

the second orange turns to the first and replies, "What do I look like, a typewriter?" *ba duh DUM!*

eh, who asked you anyway.

GOP leaders repeat, almost as a mantra, that the estate tax, which they call the "death tax," should be repealed because it is immoral to tax a person after death. The Democrats have failed to raise even the obvious corollary: What makes it moral to tax the wages of a living person, but not the wealth left by someone who is dead? —David Johnston, in the New York Times.

i'm hoping that 2001 will be the year that i move up the scale into the upper lower class. then, i'll be king of the barrio/retirement mecca that is my neighborhood.

i want to help with the adoption of three whole kudu, but i don't drink coffee. i guess i could keep pencils in it.

buy me this and i'll be your friend forever, even if we've never met!

it's too late. i probably already have it. what's the point of giving up beef now?

'Bat Boy: The Musical

the Supreme Court has some redeeming decisions.

arrangements have been made. i'm going to St. Louis this weekend. it'll be nice to get away from my talks-non-stop roommate for a couple of days. the best part, of course, is that i'll get to eat Whitecastles again before i give up beef completely (it's that whole Mad Cow Hoof disease thing).

i overslept this morning. i was two hours late for work, which really sucks because now i have to make it up at the end of the day, and it gets scary in here when everyone else has left.

another Mad Cow disease article: "remote farm in Greensboro was surrounded by police cars and men wearing bulletproof vests to round up his herd."

not only are school kids packing heat, but now, apparently, farm animals are also.

my past life diagnosis [my comments in brackets]:
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I don't know how you feel about it, but you were male in your last earthly incarnation. [phew! female parts are so icky! (no offense given to any females out there)]
You were born somewhere in the territory of modern Quebec around the year 1075. [good lord have mercy on me. i was Canadian?.]
Your profession was that of a shepherd, horseman or forester. [i'm quite certain, if i was born in Quebec in 1075, that i wasn't a horseman. there were no horses.]
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Your brief psychological profile in your past life:
Person with huge energy, good in planning and supervising. If you were just garbage-man, you were chief garbage-man. [chief garbage man! wow!]
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The lesson that your last past life brought to your present incarnation:
You are bound to solve problems of pollution of environment, recycling, misuse of raw materials, elimination of radioactivity by all means including psychological methods. [environmentalism *is* one of my biggest concerns. this thing is so accurate, it's uncanny! it'd be completely right, if not for the fact that i can barely motivate myself to breathe, to say nothing of taking on any Causes.]

everyone should go check out The Mimsies and download some of their mp3s. i'm only doing this because, if they become really famous, i can go on Hard Copy and spill some dirt on the lead singer (provided there's some sort of recompense).

"The action was the second victory in a week for the mining industry, which was a big contributor to President Bush and the Republican party and which had sued to block the Clinton rules. Last week, coal producers embraced the administration's decision not to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants."

time to go back to vegetarianism. i don't want to end up with holes in my brain.

it cracks me up that there's an "Official" Mad Cow Disease website, though i think it's purpose is to scare rather than inform. most of the BSE sites i found were like that.

on an (un)related note, if you enjoy this type of thing, make the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report part of your regular reading.

i guess he doesn't get out to the movies very often. otherwise, he'd be used to it.

having publishing problems. have to do this a more difficult way.

a radio station in New Zealand has had to apologise to parents after handing out plastic bags of icing sugar as part of a contest at a screening of drug drama "Traffic" with kids in attendance.

heh.

in Montana vs. Egelhoff, "Justice Antonin Scalia... declared that defendants do not have an absolute constitutional right to present all relevant evidence in their defense."

i think there's something wrong with being unable to present evidence that you were physically incapable of committing a double homicide.

"Moscow opposes the [national missile defense system] scheme and any revision of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), saying the missile shield would undermine its own deterrent and trigger a new arms race."

i think that's the idea.

is anyone going to go see the Josie and the Pussycats movie? care to tell me why?

i think that having more space on the screen for my posts has only encouraged me to write longer posts. longer posts lead to many more grammatic mistakes.

i think i'm firmly on the side of the Brown University protesters who stole the campus paper. if they can silence all opposition, maybe the Federal government will agree to pay reparations for slavery. then, maybe i'll be able to claim some of that money, since Native Americans were enslaved also.

greed aside, whether i agree with them on the issue of reparations is irrelevant. i have a problem with people who feel justified in silencing someone because they disagree with the person's viewpoint, or in the name of "sensitivity" or "tastefulness." i think it much more distasteful to censor opposing viewpoints and deny or handicap another's ability to think for themself and form their own opinion. i used to think of university as a place where people fought for free press and the expression of unpopular ideas, but i read article after article that make it seem that the students now only fight for the expression of like-minded ideas.

sensitivity and tastefulness have their place, but i don't think they belong in a reputable newspaper. newspapers (and other newsmedia) are supposed to be there for the dissemination of factual information, not to make sure that everyone feels good about what they read. if you don't like the information (or the advertisement, as in the case above), don't throw your outrage against the newpaper. go after the motherfucker who offended you. write a rebuttal and have it published or debate him. don't shout him down or silence him. i'm more likely to listen to a calm and rational discussion than to a mob of screaming protesters.

i'd like to reiterate again that this post has nothing to do with the issue of reparations for slavery outside of linking to an article. it's about what is supposed to be one of the most fundamental rights to a free and informed self-governing society. it's bad enough that there are people out there who are more than happy to spoon-feed opinions and political views to us. there's no need to us to swallow it unthinkingly, reguardless of whether it comes from a like-minded individual.

maybe i should start reading Native American newspapers again. i didn't know anything about this until it was too late to attend.

the Supreme Court should have taken this one. they could have required samples, getting a free lunch in the process.

they probably already get free lunches though.

letting kids convince lawmakers of the virtue of a particular piece of legislation and lawmakers using kids to convince voters. i realize the article has nothing to do with that (it's about banning elephants from circuses), but it irritates me to see politicians and lobbyists gaining sympathy for or against a bill by exploiting the oh-so-cute-yet-naively-profound-pseudo-wise (blech) perspectives of children instead of debating its actual merits (or lack of), or its inherent rightness (or lack of).

it irritates me that people actually fall for that crap. who cares if a particular law is necessary or just. slap the photo of a puppy-eyed second grade kid on it, and suddenly it's the right thing to do.

why listen to these kids? they're friggin' blowing each other away at school. how can you trust them to know what's compassionate and right anyway? you can't.

how many times have you heard or read some Senator's speech, and somewhere within it, they mention that their position was influenced (if not actually decided) by "looking at my daughters as they slept" or "hearing my sons wonder why"? why don't these same Senators ever tell you about the decisions they made while "watching my son empty a clip into that Johnson kid in homeroom," or "listening to my kids talk about how they nailed a cat to some plywood and tossed it into the lake"? you never hear that kind of thing.

according to last week's TVGuide, Bernadette Peters is going to be on Ally McBeal tonight. i may have to watch.

definitely crushing on Jimmy Bond.

i caught the last few minutes of "Malcolm In the Middle" tonight. i don't normally watch it, but i've decided that it can't be a bad show. tonight, it ended with the family beating up a gang of rogue clowns (as we all know, all clowns are rogues, and they travel in gangs. the better to do their evil-doings). i hate clowns. i love seeing people beat the snot out of them.