12/31/2005

never have i ever

Bowled a strike in my socks. Oh wait, I just did!

maybe i should commit bank fraud too

(P) Remember how we never went to Iraq to control the oil? Well looky at which CIA asset funded by the US government got put in charge of the oil ministry? It's none other than the guy who should still be in prison in Jordan for his various financial crimes, Ahmed Chalabi. I mean, geeze, he only disappeared about $300 million. And it's not like the guy was a wealthy, highly educated, well-connected MIT grad with a U Chi PhD or anything.

12/30/2005

this is somewhat bizarre

Maybe these quizzes are more accurate than I give them credit for. (They're certainly addictive; you can never just take one).

I took a kissing quiz that I have never taken before, and with completely different questions and answer choices to a previous one I have taken, and I ended up with the exact same character at the end.

Me tonight:

You're a Playful Kisser

Kissing is a huge game for you, a way to flirt and play
You're the first one to suggest playing spin the bottle at a party
Or you'll go for the wild kiss during a game of truth or dare
And you're up for kissing any sexy stranger if the mood is right!


And me this summer. Obviously it originated from the same quiz, even though the particulars were different, because the actors in the picture are the same.

This is my last quiz of the night; I swear.

blogger is fun and useful

Maybe they'll give me a prominent location if I say something nice.

Probably not. But what Blogger does is make it much easier for idiots like me who can never remember names to recall them at a later date. Watch this.

Tod, Lindsey, Tim, Mary. Voila. I can now look them up two months from now so that, instead of saying who were those SMS peeps I met through a friend of Holly's two months ago, I can say, hmmm...we had fun seeing the lights at the zoo on a cold night, that must have been around Christmas time; let me check my blog at that time. Which one is engaged to Chris, a guy in Mike's band, The Ladykillers? Oh yeah, Mary. When did he ask her? Christmas Eve (in front of the fam - an interesting choice).

I love computers.

Of course, I don't know whether Tod has one d or two. Does Lindsey spell it with an a instead of an e? What if Mary didn't want people knowing she just got engaged?

Too bad; it's my blog. Only one person gets to spell her name Lindsay, and she has quite the interesting baby picture.

By the way, thanks to Emily for this fun quiz. I'll let you decide whether I liked it due to its truth or due to its complete and utter failure.

Your 2005 Song Is

Since You've Been Gone by Kelly Clarkson

"But since you've been gone
I can breathe for the first time
I'm so moving on"

In 2005, you moved on.


A little bit of both is certainly an acceptable answer.

12/27/2005

busy busy busy

I have forgotten how hectic the holidays get. When you go from a month off to a week, that sure doesn't help any. Here it is Monday night, and I've only slept in my bed at home once this week, while two nights have been at the Plaza! Friday night at the Hampton, then Sunday at the Jefferson. (Can I call it that, Andy?). I sure haven't ever spent Christmas Eve eating breakfast in a hotel lobby in my own home town. It was fun, though: hey, we're from Michigan, we're the Virginia side of the family...yeah, I'm from Liberty [just down the road].

As much as I would love to actually be sleeping a little, there's just too much to do...family during the day, friends at night, even a great Chiefs game. By the way, Detroit, can you please decide to play a game? Next week is really important.

Not to mention presents. Really, what would Christmas be without those? It appears that I will be able to replace my laptop this winter...yay! I love it, but sadly, it is starting to show its age.

Here's to legos and home cooking and games and O'Dowd's and lounging around with family and sleeping in and trying to find a place to hang out at night on Christmas Eve and eating way too much and sleeping way too little and scraping ice off your car and seeing high school friends and engagement rings and lights on the Plaza and birthdays and driving in a city where I don't get annoyed by every other car and watching skyscrapers disappear into the mist and having to use your brights to drive around town and Lord of the Rings Risk and all the other good stuff that is Christmas.

12/23/2005

christmas 1914

I heard a wonderful dramatic reading of the story about British and German soldiers socializing on Christmas day during World War I this morning on my drive to work. I love the holidays! Almost here...just have to get through today. The over/under on me getting to KC looks like about 10:00 PM.

12/22/2005

all i want for christmas

(P) Let's see; instead of humming the song "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth, my two front teeth, my two front teeth..." try humming "All I want for Christmas is an impeachment, an impeachment, an impeachment...".

Actually, more than one impeachment would be good. It's not every day the perpetrators of a serious crime admit to the crime, even going so far as to brag about continuing to do it in the future.

So it's come to this; apart from all of the impeachable offenses of the Administration, it really comes down to one simple question (which is a legitimate choice, by the way):

Do we want a president bound by the rule of law through the Constitution which he swore to preserve, protect, and defend?

Or, do we want a president whose authority as Commander in Chief elevates him (or her, eventually) beyond the law to act unhindered by the law?

My odds for impeachment have now surpassed the 50/50 mark.

12/19/2005

a billion

The People of Lazy days have surpassed a key milestone in our relatively young nation's history. We have one billion citizens.

Yay.

12/17/2005

ooh, pay me for that

You can tell I've had a lazy day at home wrapping presents (all but two are bought and wrapped!) and watching movies (and that frustrating Chiefs game) when I make my fifth post of the day. It's a new record.

But that's not what I just found out about that is important enough to report (not to mention the whole cause/effect relationship of setting a personal record). When I was in 9th grade, one of the first people Brian and I gathered research from for debate was a Senior Fellow at the CATO Institute named Doug Bandow. Apparently, he somehow got involved with the now infamous lobbyist Jack Abramoff to the tune of $2,000 per friendly and topical article about such key economic policy areas as markets in the Marianas. I don't know the details outside of this article, but what an idiot to jeopardize a gig at CATO by not disclosing the cash! He's finished with CATO.

It's so sad. And dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb, Mr. Bandow. It's not that being paid to write is particularly bad; but you have to disclose it. Especially when you work for an organization that wants to be taken seriously for its ideas rather than its PR value or connections.

It makes you wonder if there are any people who haven't taken cash from an Abramoff associate. I had assumed this was just a political scandal, but if he was paying off academics/think tankers, particularly if it's even remotely related to the Administration's own covert pay offs, there might not be any safe establishment figure in Washington. It also makes you wonder if this particular decision making process was sought by President Reagan in all of his assistants.

now i have to root for minnesota

Actually, that's not too tough now that Randy Moss is gone. Fortunately, we've lost to the right teams, so if Pittsburgh also loses we can still make it. Gee, all we have to do is beat last year's AFC West champion and this year's AFC North champion.

The schedulers next year better give us the freakin' easiest one in the league.

those darn conspiracy theories

(P) For those of you that still believe the Reagan Administration stood for values like human rights, political self-determination, and opposing the use of drugs, the scandal in Nicaragua is of course one of the hugest most massive policies you have to completely ignore. For those of you who think the New York Times, Washington Post, and LA Times are remotely close to liberal (or at least anti-Republican), the reporting of the scandal is of course one of the hugest most massive stories you have to completely ignore.

Last week marked an interesting anniversary in the story. A man at the confluence of investigating the policy and being victimized by the mainstream news media committed suicide in December of 2004. If you want to live in the fantasy world where the Reagan Administration, the CIA, cocaine and other drug traficking (ever heard of the Medellin Cartel?), the Nicaraguan Contras, the Afghani Islamic freedom fighters/terrorists, and the failures of the mainstream media are not all related, then you really shouldn't read this wonderful summary of the history of this scandal, its coverup, and its eventual coming to light (sort of).

Whatever happened to that brave, thorough Senator who investigated so much of the serious problems in the 1980's in Central America related to the financial activities of terrorists and drug traffickers?

Oh yeah, he turned into a coward who didn't fight for his country thousands of miles from home. And a sandal.

my cause

I've decided what my cause needs to be for 2006. I don't really have any power to do anything about it, but no matter.

I really really hate ties. I don't say that as some scrub who is always wearing sneakers and holy jeans. I've been wearing suits for ten years. My tie collection could feed a small village in Africa. I've gotten dress clothes for Christmas.

But ties are the most annoying, expensive, elitist, uncomfortable, useless parasite ever invented by man. Except maybe this. But at least heels look good and accentuate the female body. Ties are butt ugly, and you can't kick them off in the middle of a meeting.

Yes, yes I know all about "dressing for success" and the importance of superficial first impressions others make of you and all that crap. If you can show me one iota of productivity gained from tieland, I'll wear one every day for the rest of my life. It's one giant delusion; we all agree to be impressed by somebody in a tie, and more impressed by somebody in an expensive tie, so we're all stuck in this prisoner's dilemma of being forced to wear ties. We just need to all agree that ties grant not the tiniest bit of social stature or utilitarian usefulness, and voila--they wil disappear overnight.

finally out of my funk

If you didn't see the Chiefs-Cowboys game this past Sunday, you'll just have to take my word that it totally took the energy out of my week.

Tonight, we went to see King Kong, and I'm all good. Yay! Quite good. Go see it. You really should. Come on, dinosaurs and unkempt blondes.

I know you will.

On a separate note, I've been getting comment spamming from time to time and have been deleting them. Well today I got one from a reputable company:

"Hey N haniel, alot if information about IDSL on rambling. I have a great resource I can offer your blog readers on IDSL. Stop by yourself sometime too if yah like!"

The link from IDSL, and the title of the post, reference SBC, in particular a promotional effort for their pro DSL. Anybody hear about this? SBC/Cingular have already done several things that make me rather upset. This would be the tasty icing on the cake. If this really is SBC, they need to understand this is completely unacceptable.

12/10/2005

wash u jargon 101

After much too much shopping fun and parking lots and going from one end of the store to the other and such, I made it to the last stop at the grocery store. There are a couple people waiting outside, so I ask them if they'd like a ride. Well, the guy says he actually goes to SLU, so he isn't headed my way. Interesting, by the way; I must not be the only one to have had bad things happen at the Schnucks near his school.

The other girl could be described as indecisive (yeah, I don't know anybody else like that), but after a second, said that would be nice. Between this and the fact that she is waiting on the shuttle to take her back to campus, I make the reasonable sounding assumption that she must be a freshman. So I start asking things like what dorm does she live in and whether she is headed to the South 40 or main campus and whatnot and each question gets that incredibly fun response of completely not understanding. I literally was talking a foreign language to her, and I kept using different phrases and it kept not helping. At all. She would respond back with statements and questions that I now see made sense, but didn't make any sense in the context of the conversation I was having at the time.

I finally got that she was a grad student in the law school and that she didn't have a whole lot of exposure to the wider Wash U campus. So, my instinct that she was new wasn't entirely off-base, she is a 1L, but it makes perfect sense now how she was not following what I figured everybody at Wash U knew.

So, I think within the Wash U Bubble, we need to add a subcategory for undergrads. Those poor law students are helpless (uh, no offense...I meant that affectionately...please don't sue me for libel or slander or whatever satisfies your whininess).

Barbara, good luck with your finals. The place where I dropped you off is referred to as main campus, also known as the hilltop campus. That is as opposed to West Campus, the South 40, Small Group Housing (errr...the Village), the Loop, Kayak's, the Med School, BJC, and so forth. I'll explain Givens, Bixby, and the Lewis Center later...those people are their own bubbles.

Uh, maybe I should also define Wash U Bubble. This post is sort of dependant upon that. It's like the bubble boy from Seinfeld, where every once in a while we see strangers come into our world, but in day to day life the several thousand people who make up the Wash U community are an island that might as well be surrounded by the ocean as by Clayton, Fontbonne, and the city. Explaining Fontbonne would be a post in itself. As would explaining how a majority of Washington University in Saint Louis really isn't in Saint Louis. As would explaining why Wash U calls itself Washington University in Saint Louis.

Ok, enough of this, I'm going to make dinner. If only I still had some flexes for Center Court.

exercise...sort of

My jog this morning was very pretty through all the snow. It was also shorter than my shower afterward.

But it was for good reason. It's hard to wake up in the morning full 'o energy when you've spent all night loading yourself with sugar and carbs with friends going off to new places. Nice try on the whole attempt to leave at 8:00 this morning.

The Soda Fountain in Lafayette Square, our middle stop of the night (the rather sugary one), was a new place that will definitely require more visits in the future. It doesn't take much really; the breakfast all day is a good enough reason.

12/04/2005

our plan for victory

(P) It's pretty clear. Expropriate natural resources for the benefit of large corporations.

And honestly, this might be necessary; if we're really in a military fight against extremism and our key resources can only be entrusted to Fortune 100 companies, then by all means we should be using our unparalleled, taxpayer-financed military supremacy in Risk-like fashion to occupy strategically important parts of the world and turn them over to the Western world's largest companies. To paraphrase one of my favorite naval quotes (and apologies to my otherwise PG rating), damn the financial and human costs, full speed ahead! If the mission is clear and important, you don't half-ass it, and you accept the loss of a ship along the way.

But that doesn't happen, in our country, by imperial decree. The occupant of the Office of the President is sworn to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. That does not grant kingly powers of war; rather, it requires input from legislators, the courts, and, indirectly, the general populace. in other words, a democratic process premised upon accountability and transparency. In the case of Iraq, either one supports self-determination and free markets, or one doesn't. There are good arguments both for and against. But when the President, the VP, and their advisors say they support these goals but spend their time acting to the contrary, then they forfeit their authority and legitimacy as the head of our nation and should be held accountable for the tremendous costs which they have inflicted upon us.

12/03/2005

a four figure milestone

It hit a thousand! No no no, not the number of people executed. Who cares about the death penalty, anyway? I'm talking about my Roth. Now if only I had a dollar for every person killed by the government...

12/02/2005

dude, audits are not cool

My phone's clock says 5:44pm, and I'm stuck at work. Based on the phat file folder that says AP checks that got stuck on my desk not long ago (not long ago at all) we have a few bills that need to be paid.

Now.

Actually, yesterday for a couple.

Crap, my phone says 5:46pm. Where does the time go? This little audit thingy better be important...

12/01/2005

it's christmastime

I'm driving home past the Children's hospital, and they've got christmas trees up now! And both of my roommies have put up lights and decorations and stuff.

And it's cold. When I get out of my car, I can tell I'm going to be shocked, so instead of closing the door with my hand I do it with my arm.

And still get shocked, through my coat.

But I'm not done...I go up stairs and stick my key in the door.

And I see the spark fly from the key to the lock. Fun times.

Speaking of the holidays, here's a holiday-themed look at the interesting problem of how much more time we spend working these days with so little to show for it.