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GOP leaders repeat, almost as a mantra, that the estate tax, which they call the "death tax," should be repealed because it is immoral to tax a person after death.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.