What is with people who use their chainsaws at 9:00 in the morning on the weekend?

My professors seem amused by my conviction that invading Iraq is a good idea. What makes it all the more frustrating is I’m using the exact same tools my professors gave me, logic and reason, and yet we are arriving at completely opposite conclusions. We can’t both be right, so let’s duke it out, shall we?

What throws me off my rocker is my profs are still hanging on to sentiments that were new when Bush took office. They still think jokes about Bush’s intelligence are funny, and they play it as a subtle justification for their cause. “Our president can’t form a complete sentence, so his proposed course of action can’t possibly be right. Har, har, har!” I’d love to see the forwards that my profs circulate among each other.

“Hey, you get the one with G.W. Bush and all the monkeys? Har, har, har!”

Now, I’m all for political commentary and keeping the president in check, but could you please act like you’ve thought things through a little bit in the past year? I don’t expect you to instantly agree with my rationale, but at least have some rationale of your own that extends beyond “Bush is an idiot.” I mean, damn. I feel like I’m learning all my logic and reason from idiotarians.

And please, if we’re not actually going to discuss the issue, keep the political commentary out of the classroom. When we’re discussing interragatory sentences, don’t use shit like, “Is Bush impeached, yet?” It’s cute commentary that doesn’t allow a counter-argument, but it is incredibly distracting. With the stupid things I have heard over the past two weeks, I’ve had to hold myself down a couple of times to keep from going ninja and beating people up for no reason. Hey, I’m all for questioning my beliefs, as the only way a thesis can become stronger is if it is met with an antithesis.

‘Saddam does not pose a threat. He does not have the infrastructure to build nuclear missiles.’

We have satellite photos that show new construction around old nuclear facilities in Iraq. I doubt Saddam is building orphanages.

‘It’ll be a big mess. We’ll stir up a hornets nest that will require 250,000 American troops for years, just to maintain order in the region.’

A bigger mess than a new crater in New York? A bigger mess than a couple million infected with anthrax? A bigger mess than the dissolution of the free world in the name of Allah? If we’re gonna play the ‘possible universes’ game, let’s throw in all the possibilities, ok?

“If it comes down to it, would you be willing to go over there?”

That’s an appeal to emotion, and has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of a statement.

‘If we invade, Saddam will use weapons against us that he would have never considered using.’

So you at least admit he has weapons. If he would never consider using them, why, pray tell, does he want them so bad in the first place? Once Saddam has nuclear weapons he has the power to do whatever foul thing he wishes, and can threaten us to back off by dangling a nuke over Israel. That’s the situation we’re trying to avoid; an intelligent madman with the leverage to act on his wild fanaticisms.

If this becomes the case we will need to fight him on his own terms, not ours.

Woke up this morning with firm resolve. Blood like steel. The uncertainties had been replaced by absolutes overnight. I caught myself singing a heavy dance beat of unknown origins, and knew I needed to spoon some music in my ears whist sitting here working.

But who? The decision was of upmost importance. Who can sum up my emotions in as many notes? Who captures the American essence that I am so passionate to defend?

The Beach Boys. 1969. Surf bums drivin’ up and down the shore looking for lovely ladies. Spoiled rotten California kids in fancy cars. An example of the Great Injustice of America, given all those downtrodden who were not granted the opportunity to be surf bums? Proof that we need to further our hand-wringing over who has the better culture?

Nope. A beautiful example of freedom and free will. Some people decide to sing about Californ-eye-aye and Surf Camp. Others decide to blow up Jews. One of these has a future. The other does not.

Time will not wait for me

Time is my destiny

Why change the part of me that has to be free

The love that passed me by

I found no reason why

I can breakaway from that lonely life

And I can do what I wanna do

And breakaway from that empty life

And my world is new

We’ve got somethin’ good going on over here. Let’s keep it that way.

Ahem. Everything looks and feels the same, only it’s now repackaged under a different name. When soft drink companies try to sucker you into thinking 7-Up doesn’t taste like bland-bubble-sugar-water and would be a tasty change of pace, they at least change the packaging and advertising campaign.

I have no advertising campaign, aside from sticking my finger in someone’s eye and telling them I have a website. At one time having a website was rare and cool, and you could discuss with all your friends how much Phantom Menace is going to rock and how much your Rio 8mb MP3 player doesn’t suck. Now every idiot with a vaporous grasp of HTML and a handful of functioning neurons can throw one together in a weekend. I know. I did it two years ago. I did it again this morning.

As for packaging, this lack-luster being is merely a skin graft from the UMD server. The operation was more complicated than I had anticipated and chewed up 2 1/2 hours of my morning. Many healthy cuts of that time were taken up by stupid things like losing directories and forgetting a ” in a line of code. One time I had to delete a folder, but I unwittingly started the procedure by forbidding myself from modifying the folder in any way.

I had a bagel for breakfast, but I can’t remember if I finished eating it or set it down somewhere and lost it. I get the feeling that my ancestors didn’t climb down out of the trees so much as they forgot to hang on.

Read This and Do It.

It isn’t a matter worth putting up to chance.

The All Mighty Senators concert was epic, and is further proof for my conviction that this year will turn out to be the finest in the history of mankind… at least for me, I think. I’m still ironing out the details of the Dane-centric universe, but the proof will come and with it, redemption. Or some crap like that.

Almost everyone in the Bull Pub was dancing, and dancing hard. Nary a soul left the room that wasn’t drenched in sweat. With two Red Bulls coursing through my blood I soaked through the back and front of my shirt. Intense dancing also revealed an unexpected benefit of having long hair again. While shaking my head around my golden locks seem to act as a tuned mass damper, taking the force off my neck and redistributing it.

Of course, I merely compensate by shaking my head harder and trying to break my neck in the throes of passion, but it’s nice to know I now have the option of avoiding a neck brace for the rest of my life.

I usually don’t link to other sites because I’m too lazy to write the HTML code required to hyperlink. However, today I make an exception because I am horribly addicted to this site:

Quote Database

It is a collection of spicy quotes that cover the entire spectrum of human experience, from super genius to fucking idiot. If you like to be told where to start, just check out a random sampling. Some of my favorites:

(NinjaRyu) atlanta is wigger capital

(NinjaRyu) i saw a guy soup up his parent’s ’86 nissan with a $2500 car stereo and a big ass tailpipe, but the damn thing still couldn’t go above 75

(sortof) i slept on a glowstick wrong

(reuben) somebody keeps jiggling the doorknob on my front door, then running away

(reuben) i don’t know if i should call the police, or hook up some electricity to the doorknob

(cristobal) why don’t you put ice on the stairs

(cristobal) and heat up the door knob

(cristobal) and swing paint buckets down from your two story foyer

(cristobal) then a few years later, fade from the public eye…..

(Phuser) my fan club has a member

(Phuser) my member has a fan club (I hear Chris Fahey’s voice on this one)

This one is uber-nerdy:

(omnius) omnius > join(#www(users()))

(RoBorg) omnius == “dork”

(omnius) omnius == “genius”

(omnius) if (RoBorg() == “omnius is a genius”){RoBorg == true;}elseif(RoBorg() == “omnius is a dork”){RoBorg == banned;}else{RoBorg == “dork”;}

(RoBorg) if(omnius.ban(“RoBorg”)) {RoBorg.violence = 100; RoBorg.rampage(); setTimeout(“RoBorg.alive=false;”, 360000);}

(omnius) omnius(RoBorg -> omnius.string = “omnius is a genius”);

(RoBorg) omnius >> recycle bin;

(omnius) omnius -> undelete(); omnius -> deltree(“c:\\RoBorg”);

(RoBorg) brain://omnius/ == 404

(RoBorg) omnius.split(); omnius.slice(); omnius.explode()

(omnius) $salt = guid(); RoBorg = crypt(“RoBorg”,$salt);

(RoBorg) DELETE * FROM existance WHERE name=’omnius’;

(omnius) RoBorg = broken;

(RoBorg) with(omnius){break;}

(tatclass) YOU ALL SUCK DICK

(tatclass) er.

(tatclass) hi.

(andy\code) A common typo.

(tatclass) the keys are like right next to each other.

(Zybl0re) get up

(Zybl0re) get on up

(Zybl0re) get up

(Zybl0re) get on up

(phxl|paper) and DANCE

* nmp3bot dances :D\-<

* nmp3bot dances :D|-<

* nmp3bot dances :D/-<

([SA]HatfulOfHollow) i'm going to become rich and famous after i invent a device that allows you to stab people in the face over the internet

(Beeth) Girls are like internet domain names, the ones I like are already taken.

(honx) well, you can stil get one from a strange country 😛

I finally got a chance to hit up Lake Superior for some windsurfing. It was different than the wicked session I had on Waconia a week ago. The Waconia Session offered the balls-to-the-wall adrenaline rush that hooked me to windsurfing, but the Superior Session was very subtle. Today there was a bit of wind, but a little more than that.

When I got my board up and planing in the harbor it was exhilarating. Here I was, windsurfing in my crazy northwoods town on the biggest lake on the planet. Beneathe my feet, a modest 130 liters of Lake Superior were being displaced and tamed. I had arrived, but I wanted more. I wanted speed. I wanted to blast over the chop. I wanted to shake the ceaseless spray out of my hair as I laughed from the top of a Red Eye frenzy. I took in as much sail as possible and tried to catch wind that wasn’t there. My meager 4.4 meter sail tried its darndest to grab the atmospheres, but I was asking for too much given the conditions.

So I settled in. I found the sweet spot in my sail, dug in my windward rail and tried to keep everything balanced and moving at the pace I was given. I surfed for two hours, making numerous trips to the middle of the harbor and back. As time passed the runs took less thought and effort. I got a feel for what the conditions would allow me to get away with. I could hold the sail like so and cruise without falling over backwards. I couldn’t step back into my footstraps without spinning out under the ill placement of my weight. One time I dropped the mast on my shoulder. Another time I tried to grab a large gust of wind, but the sail flung me into the water ten feet from my rig. It was fun. It was chill. Every time I returned to shore I rode out the wind as long as possible, risking a trashed fin for the few extra seconds of surfing. I just couldn’t bring myself to cut the runs any shorter.

And then once, for a split second, it was just me, the wind and the huge setting sun. The board and sail were transparent, my mind was cleared. Everything was working together without my conscious manipulation. It was a feeling that lasted long enough only to hint at a greater experience in the future. Things are wonderful, and they can only get better.