Some stuff,

I have always accepted the stories of soldiers getting spit on coming back from Vietnam. This always seemed to be a blow to the antiwar movement, but maybe it isn't true.

Is it just me or is it kind of surprising that this isn't already a law. I strongly believe if the Democrats make opposition to free trade their main theme they will gain a strangle hold on Washington. Sadly that isn't the case.

This is a interesting look at the upcoming competition between Blu-ray and HD-DVD. It's all about the porn.

Parody meets prey,

Colbert on O'Reilly, O'Reilly on Colbert and of course the microwave. Also the Olbermann analysis. I agree with the why is he battling comedians. He could win every argument and still come out looking like an idiot.

Snowing,

It is nice to see it snowing out and to know I don't have to be out in it for work. Well until tomorrow that is. Yesterday morning it was so cold out that at one point I thought closing my eyes would help. Then the crane broke so we had to just stand around in the cold waiting for a new one to come.

Better late than escalation,

So I am a bit late on this, but my life is harder than yours. Here are some of my thoughts on the presidents speech last week and the escalation defense.

I watched the president speak last week and had two thoughts. Really just two thoughts because I didn't sleep the night before and had a rough first day back at work and was very out of it. All the key points were already released on the evening news. Maybe this is how all president speeches are, but it would seem to me if I was running the show I would want people to listen in to my guy. After all he should be the best one to give his story. As I sat there listening to him talk, not really absorbing anything because of my fore mentioned state, all I could think is "I already hear this today." Why should I watch him speak when I can just watch the news and get all the highlights ahead of time. Second he looked scared and overwhelmed while this isn't surprising considering poll numbers and what not it was somewhat concerning that his appearance showed it.

Every time I hear one of the very few escalation defenders use the defence of what will happen in Iraq if we leave; I want to yell at my TV (and sometimes do) "That is why we shouldn't of gone there in the first place!!!"

Here is Feingold on Olbermann calling for cutting funding for the war.

Lastly this escalation will eliminate McCain's presidential chances. It's already hurting him

Hi Ho, Hi Ho,

I started working for a new company today. Even though the guy that I was working for was really nice I am determined not to write how much better this company is than the last one. I did that twice last year and left both places with a much different feeling than I started with. Let's just say I really like eating pizza.

I don't wanna fight no civil war,

I like to read about American history. I like to read about parts of American history that are not usually part of the mainstream history. Recently I have read books on labor songwriter and martyr Joe Hill and one on Wisconsin's most significant senator Fighting Bob La Follette. My favorite revolutionary characters are not Washington or Jefferson, they are Aaron Burr and Thomas Paine. My next nonfiction book I am going to read is about General "Black Jack" Pershing pursuit of Pancho Villa. What I am trying to say is I think our country focuses a little too much on certain events and avoids others. Not me; WW 2 is interesting, but I want to know more about WW 1.

Anyways one part of American history I have never liked and have always avoided is the Civil war. To this day one hundred and forty years later it is still hard to find an honest objective book on the subject. One hundred and forty years later it is still the south verses the north. I have however recently started to get into the subject a little bit. Most recently I started reading War to the Knife by Thomas Goodrich. The book is about what seems very interesting event in the civil war, if not American history in general, Bleeding Kansas. Basically this is the prequel to the civil war. As Kansas was trying to become a state, free staters and pro slavery groups moved into the state and started killing each other. So I get this book and am very eager to read it. I very much didn't like his style. The book is pretty much just quotes of letters and newspaper article listed in a story type of format. I would of much rather the author use these quotes to create his own narrative, but at this point this is just a minor criticism of the book. Somewhere around page one hundred the author tries to make the point that the slaves in Missouri were better off as slaves. Now I understand that the cruelty of slavery varied depending on location and the type of job that needed to be done (for example the sugar cane fields in the Caribbean was basically a death sentence), but for anyone to say that a man is better in bondage than free is despicable. That was when I first started to notice his bias, the next chapter dealt with John Brown and the bias become blatant.

I debated skimming through the rest of the book, but in the end I decided to put it on the shelf. I got other books I can read and anyone who could publish a book in 1998 and have a pro slavery position just isn't worth my time. I checked Amazon for another book on the subject (since I still am interested in reading about Bleeding Kansas), but it seemed like everything was labeled either pro south or pro north. So, my avoidance of the civil war begins once again.

It's the wars fault,

I was just watching an interview with Michael Gerson on C-SPAN's Q&A. He was George Bush's speech writer and is generally believed to be one of the better speech writers in modern history. During the interview he was asked why G W was hated so much. His reply was basically to blame the war, then he went on to say how he didn't understand it because he thought Bush great, blah blah blah... I was kind of surprised the first time I heard the war being so openly blamed for Bush's popularity (or lack of) by someone who supports the war. It seemed like a refreshing bit of honesty rarely heard out of the warmonger side.

I did say first time however because this is about the third or fourth time I have heard that excuse. It has now become clear to me that this is just a convenient excuse to blame dismal poll number on one mistake rather than a whole presidency. If you can sum up the hatred for the guy with one thing he doesn't seem that bad. However that is just not the case at all. He was widely hated before the Iraq war ever got started. Even though his poll numbers were in the fifties there was still a large number of people who just flat out hated his guts.

In my opinion the hatred goes back to the first election. He beat out McCain using some dirty tactics in the primary and then went on to win in the general with one of the most controversial results in the history of the country. Then he went on to run the country solely for the half of people that voted him, leaving the rest of us to build up a hatred the would take the rest of the population five more years to realize.

How do I do this,

A couple of days ago it was revealed that Bush wants to look at our mail without a warrant. He wants to arrest us with out warrants, listen in on our phone calls without warrants, see what books we are checking out of the library, search our houses...

A few years ago while playing cards with my cousins whenever it was one cousin's turn to deal (Eric) he was gone getting a beer, going to the bathroom, outside looking at the stars. It didn't take us too long to realize he really just didn't know how to shuffle the cards. To this day that is a widely held belief among the cousins. I have come to realize this whole warrant thing is a similar situation. Bush doesn't know how to get a warrant and is too afraid to ask how. So he is just undermining our civil liberties to cover up his embarrassment.

Big day,

So much for the slow news days during the holidays where we got excessive coverage of a minor presidents death and it snowing in Colorado. I don't live in Colorado so I don't care if it is snowing or not, as for our recently departed president how many days does it take to say he was a nice guy (which is pretty much the only thing anyone is saying about him). Plus he screwed up my netflix with the extra no mail day.

Today however the news is overflowing. The democrats officially take over the senate and congress and for the first time a women is head of the house. Then another big mysterious shake up at the white house; Harriet Miers resigns, some theories. John Negroponte gets demoted, some (conspiracy?) theories on this most mysterious move.

To me it looks like Bush is using the big day to hid some stories.

This is my favorite story about the new congress so far. Keith Ellison is the first Muslim elected to go to congress. He said in his private swearing in ceremony he was going to use a Koran instead of a bible. Of course the intolerant right went nuts and Virgil Goode, a congressman from Virgina, wrote a letter to his constituents saying;

"...if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran."

As it turns out Keith Ellison's family has been in the U.S. since 1742. Damn immigrants. And turns out that Koran that he was going to use is coming from the Library of Congress and was donated by Thomas Jefferson. Where is congressman's Ellison sense of tradition.

Factorum,

I watched the movie Factorum based on the Bukowski novel by the same name. It was a pretty good movie if you like movies about a drunk who can't hold a job and has rocky romances that mostly revolves around drinking. The part that I really liked was they ended the movie with the main character sitting in a strip bar watching a girl dance and the voice over reciting a Bukowski poem that I believe is titled Roll the Dice;

If you're going to try, go all the way.
Otherwise don't even start.
This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs.
And maybe your mind.
It could mean not eating for three or four days.
It could mean freezing on a park bench.
It could mean jail.
It could mean derision.
It could mean mockery, isolation.
Isolation is the gift.
All the others are a test of your endurance.
Of how much you really want to do it.
And you'll do it, despite rejection in the worst odds.
And it will be better than anything else you can imagine.
If you're going to try, go all the way.
There is no other feeling like that.
You will be alone with the gods.
And the nights will flame with fire.
You will ride life straight to perfect laughter.
It's the only good fight there is.

A bit of fucking brilliance.

Reading the dictionary,

New Year's resolutions are just things that we need excuses for not keeping up. I could say I want to read, write, work on my house, keep my house clean, work, get in shape, go out... more, but then when I don't do any of that it is just another broken new year's resolution, no big deal. Instead I am going to take on a task; I am going to read the A's in the dictionary. Then next year the B's and so on.

I have always wanted to read the dictionary so I can find new and interesting words like proletariat, last year I didn't know what it meant now I often us it to describe myself. However reading the dictionary seems like a long, boring task that I will never make time for, but if I just have to do one letter every year it doesn't seem like that much. So in twenty five years from now I can say more than "I am fifty five," I can say "I am fifty five and I have read the dictionary". In reality I will probably just be saying "I'm fifty five and I once thought I would have the dictionary read by now."