Weblog

Well. School starts tomorrow for the last time ever. It’s a good thing, too, cuz I’m really running out of things to do. All my Blither archives from Cromlech have finally fallen under the grinding gears of Movable Type. The photo indexes have been updated to allow easier navigation back to the main indexes. Photo galleries from camp and Colorado have been uploaded. The individual and monthly archives have been given a beautiful and unified design complete with mountains. The Muffler Man featured on the splash page has stepped down from his podium to allow more mountains.

“I want to see mountains again, Gandalf, mountains!”

“You wrinkly little hobbit, everywhere I look, it’s mountains. Wild wide panoramas of nothing but mountains. Mountains to the north, mountains to the south. Mountains to the east and cranky mountains that spit fire and smoke and orcs to the west. I climb up a spine in the hills and the helicopter zooms by just to show off the stupid mountains.”

This website is knitting for me. I knit keep my hands busy during idle times. I can’t stand being idle… I need to always be doing something. I often take my meals while pacing around the kitchen. My winter break was a whirlwind of activity that has taken me from Duluth to the Cities to Madison to the Cities to Camp to the Cities to Duluth to the Cities to Boulder to Golden to Dillon to Boulder to the Cities to Duluth to Two Harbors to the Cabin to Duluth.

It’s a busy and exhausting life, but I love it that way. Ironically, the less I do the more tired I feel, which is why I’m excited for school to start. Still, tomorrow I don’t have class until 2:00, and all this semester I never have class before noon. This is any college senior’s dream, but I’m going to go absolutely crazy if I don’t make up some reasons to get out of the apartment before noon every day. Often class is the only thing that pulls me away from the computer. I don’t particularly enjoy sitting in front of it, but I keep finding so many neat things to read, and things to do, and photos to edit, and emails to send, and code to fix, that’s it’s easy to get tons of stuff done right here and never venture outside.

Class at 2:00 doesn’t mean I’ll sleep until noon like any normal student. Class at 2:00 means I’ll sleep until 9:00 at the latest, work on the computer, skip breakfast and lunch, check my watch, and barely make it to class on time. This was the rhythm of last semester, the rhythm of the millstone. This, my friends, I cannot allow to be the case again. It was a curious experiment, but more needs to be done that cannot be done here. I have a semester pass at the climbing wall. A season pass at Spirit Mountain. A car that aches for quick drives up the north shore.

There’s still lots to do. Lots and lots and lots to do.

Imagine that. A 12,000 page dossier, and all of it lies, lies, lies.

The teams of UN inspectors sent to investigate Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction arsenal made a stunning breakthrough last week when they uncovered evidence of Iraq’s attempts to build an atom bomb.

The inspectors paid surprise visits to the houses of two of Saddam’s leading nuclear physicists.

Once inside they found what one Western official has described as a “highly significant” batch of documents which, on closer inspection, revealed that Saddam’s scientists were continuing development work on producing an Iraqi nuclear weapon.

I predict we’ll be tearing the roof off the sucker within a month.

Little nuggets of joy, brought to you by the Workers World Party, your favorite leper standing behind International A.N.S.W.E.R.

In addition, the heroic uprising of the Palestinians has mobilized the population of many Arab countries against U.S. imperialism and increased the support for Iraq.

Urm. I wouldn’t exactly call suicide bombings ‘heroic’.

In a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, Clark denounced U.S. policy toward Iraq. “This is genocide,” he said. “The progress that Iraq has made must not be lost at 12 noon on Jan. 20 when George Bush is inaugurated. Inspections teams and the oil-for-food program were both frauds from the beginning. There is no justification for the sanctions. They are a war by other means.”

There was that little thing with Kuwait and the Gulf War, but there are NO JUSTIFICATIONS!

Before returning home the delegates will meet the minister of health and visit a pharmaceutical plant, a school for the blind, the Iraqi Women’s Federation, a food distribution center and a battleground with known concentrations of depleted uranium in its soil, among other places.

And the orphanage and the zoo and the circus and the chocolate factory and the fisherman’s wharf and the pony farm and the micro-brewery and the Wal-Mart and the anthrax plant.

Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein put rumors he was ill to rest by delivering a 20-minute address on Iraqi television Jan. 17. He said the war was a confrontation between good and evil, which was continuing till this day.

Well, he’s got one thing right.

Reports on the anti-war protests in Washington are comin’ in. It should be known that the principle organizer of these rallies, International A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism… is anyone else concerned that they conflate war and racism?), is really a front for the Workers World Party, a sect that broke off the Socialist Workers Party in 1956. They are pro-Stalinists and anti-Americanists. Capitalism is to fall. Private property is to be seized. Cuba, China and North Korea are to be shining beacons of justice once the U.S. steps off their throats. Oh, and after they kill all their dissenters, of course.

Saddam runs one of the most efficient communist rackets in the world. Iraq cannot be invaded, because if conditions in the country suddenly improve after the Great Satan ousts the jerk, it would kick sand in the face of the socialist movement. The WWP is afraid because they know this will happen, so what are they to do in defense? Prop up A.N.S.W.E.R., recruit some neo-hippies and let them do all the work. America, keep your hands off Iraq because Iraq rocks. Let them develop a nuclear program, point some warheads at Israel, take over the Arab world and let the Reds inherit the earth. I’m willing to take Saddam on his promise of fame and power and glory, aren’t you?

A November 2002 L.A. Weekly article on A.N.S.W.E.R. and the WWP.

Look who else is on their side!

Power Line‘s got pics and words ’bout the rally.

Look, even the Baghdadians are protesting.

There’s always International A.O.W.C.U.T.G.D.F.P.

Be careful who you allow between the sheets.

Surly counselors and surly kids meet one another for a cold winter frolick sans snow. Go nuts.

“IT’S A DOG!!!”

Question: Why did Kentucky Fried Chicken change its name to KFC?

a) They genetically engineered a creature called Animal 37, which is like a chicken but has three breasts and no beak and needs to eat all its meals from a hamster bottle filled with a thin gruel mixture and is affectionately called a ‘cluck’ by people in the biz because that’s the sound it will never be able to make. For legal reasons, Kentucky Fried Chicken could no longer claim that what they sold was chicken.

b) In an attempt to raise funds for a failing public education system, Kentucky copyrighted the name of their state. Now any company that wishes to use the word ‘Kentucky’ in their name must pay the state of Kentucky. Kentucky Fried Chicken, keen both to the lunacy of this newfangled government policy and the fact that their association with the state of Kentucky has nothing to do with the success of their chicken business, changed their name to the mysterious KFC.

The answer may surprise you.

Lots o’ things goin’ on here in Duluth. Pulled in a bit after 5:00 last night, carried some crap into the apartment, took four tons of boxes and trash that had been sitting around since the beginning of the semester out to the dumpster, and went to the Geek Prom meeting at Robin Goodfellow’s (a new and geeky RPG hang in Duluth that has a nice cold basement with rock walls and kids with nicotine patches on their faces playing magic and Warhammer 40K). Our plans are top secret, but I assure ya’ll they are super geeky.

This morning I worked on my webpage and made green tea and boiled off half the water from the teapot before I remembered I put it on the burner. I left the apartment for school to mail a letter, check out the Wooch! lounge and look up the books I’m gonna need for next semester. I wrote down all the names and authors in the Bookstore, then went online and found ’em all cheaper on Amazon.com (with no sales tax and free shipping, too). Saved over $80 buying my books online.

Later I drove to the t-shirt place to look at possible colors for this year’s Wooch! shirts, and on the way passed a random lady that was standing in the middle of the street, holding up traffic from both directions. On the drive back I stopped at Global Village for some Nag Champa incense and KFC for some honey barbeque wings. The two scents did not mingle well.

When I got back to the apartment I found that I forgot to lock the door, but I suppose that’s ok because I don’t even remember leaving the apartment in the first place.

Got a new site design brewing in the pots. A fresh table on the main blog page should make sure everything is lined up and happy in all but the most poorly orchestrated browsers. The templates for the blog, the monthly archives AND the individual archives all look similar, now. Feel free to tell me if ya love it or hate it. What could possibly be next in my bag of tricks? Just wait and see.

Geek Speak has finally come into being, complete with saucy dialogue and typos. Go there if you’re at all interested in all the smoke and mirrors that hold this place together. If there’s anything else you want to know that would be appropriate to know, let me know.