Winter mornings

Well, I was supposed to go to Jonny's radio show this morning, but the snow isn't gone like the forecast said it would be, and in fact predicts freezing rain for the morning. Given that my only car option is a Porsche with wide summer racing tires and about 2″ of clearance, I'm not going anywhere until I either fix the truck or the snow thaws.

(Yes, the trees are coated in ice in the left photo, and some of you may remember about three years ago when I smashed the TT in similar conditions.)

Bushisms

No matter what your political leaning, most of us have chuckled over Bush's various goofy statements (“Dick Cheney is my sounding rod, not my lightning rod”), but worry more about his non-funny ones. When Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward was interviewing Bush during the “war on terrorism” (click here for a summary), he asked him why he was ignoring the experienced experts on his team, even though he personally is extremely inexperienced in international issues of this (or any) sort. Bush's answer:

"I do not need to explain why I say things — That's the interesting thing about being the President — Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."

So not only does the current administration feel that it does not need to be accountable to the public, but the current leader feels he does not need to be accountable to his advisors. Many of the other statements are worrying as well, including his freak-out when the military told Bush that it would take more than a week to launch an assault on Afghanistan, as well as his push for absolutely unrestrained CIA actions…


I just got off the phone with the printer for the scrapbook and the book currently at the bindery. I've told them that I have to ship by week's end so they're making it the top priority. If anything changes (I'll talk to them next tomorrow) I'll definitely let everyone know.

Salad Days

America labeled Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. North Korea almost immediately said, “oh yeah, well we have nuclear weapons and biological weapons, so fuck off” and America has left them alone for the most part. Iraq on the other hand said, truthfully or not, “we have no nuclear weapons, or weapons of any kind.”

So Iraq became the target. But then it got a bit goofy. Israel, which is very public about its nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare possibilities, has said that if Iraq attacks Israel, it will respond with a nuclear strike, which will of course throw the entire region into utter chaos. Israel bets that out of the inferno will leave the entire Middle East region under US and Israeli control, whereas Iraq bets that it will destroy Israel and financially destroy America.

Even if Iraq has WMDs, they probably don't have transcontinental deployment tools and probably don't have weaponry already in place in the US (but you never know). So while Iraq can quite possibly defend itself from being conquered in urban warfare, it can not effectively launch a counterstrike on US soil (that'll be left to unaffiliated terrorist groups). But it can attack Israel, setting into motion the apocalypse described above.

I choose that word “apocalypse” for a reason. If you don't remember my previous entry on it, I'll briefly quote the relevant section here:

While the liberal churches are on the whole opposed to the war, as well as of America's extreme support of Israel (another $10 billion was just pledged for "support of Israel", right?), the far Christian right are extreme supporters both of Israel and of war in the Middle East. If you want the answer why, read Revelations (ie. the "conclusion" of the Bible).

For the apocalypse to happen, Israel must be rebuilt as a Jewish state, which along with war in the Middle East will bring about the second coming of Jesus and the triumph of heaven. (full story*). The crazy punch line is that Bush's extremist Christian team has been quite publicly saying this since day one... Does no one care that the country is in part being run by religious lunatics who are doing their damndest not to bring about world peace, but to bring about the apocalypse?

Anyway, so once we step way back and look at everyone's statements, the potential sequence of events is quite clear. Now read this story: “Baghdad warns that a US strike will lead it to hit back at Israel”. Couple that with the pole shift which is going to happen inside the next ten years, and the world becomes an unpleasant place (the pole shift probably won't irradiate the earth according to the geological record, but it probably will diminish the magnetosphere enough to destroy most satellites — no communications, no weather prediction, no GPS navigation, etc — don't underestimate how important they are nowadays).


* I don't know why, but this article appears to have been taken offline. I'll put reconstructing its evidence on my to-do list… It's a very scary set of facts.



Well, I've got to get to work and my internet connection isn't doing so well (because of problems with their satellite, not because of weather-related signal strength), but I hear through the grape vine that there was a “Shannon sighting” in an old friends portfolio in Sweden. If that was you, drop me a line… Anyway, I'll have an update on the scrapbook shortly.

ATV wrecking

I just got back from giving my sister a ride back to school (Queens U in Kingston). Luckily Rob let us borrow his SUV so the drive was relatively safe. Anyway, on the way back I was wondering just what it was that makes Andrew WK tunes so damn catchy, and I realized what it was: the “laugh track”.

Have you ever watched a comedy from before they used laugh tracks? Notice how they often don't have the punch that modern comedies have? Well, next time you hear an Andrew WK song on the radio, listen carefully and you'll see that in every single song a cheering crowd, singing along with the music, is mixed in at a low level. Subliminal advertising! Since we tend to instinctually like things better if other people like them too.

I really love the snow! When I got back, Jon, Rob, and I went back in the fields to drive the ATV. We should probably be more careful because I'm pretty sure that if Rob is injured his mother will murder us, and if Jon gets injured, it's not like he has health insurance.

It started with just doing laps at high speed around the field (where the truck is parked in the photos above), but then we decided to try out the swamp… You can get quite a run at it, but there are giant (three or four feet high at least) bumps, so if you slide slightly or hit the ramp too fast, you're in serious trouble. I had one small wipeout (caught on tape, below), and then a more serious one. Jon also had a giant one that had him slightly airborne and on the handlebars for probably close to twenty feet before he toppled off.

The link above is a link to a video. Please note that we didn't shoot this on purpose to post or to emulate Jackass; so don't get any dumb ideas in your head (that said, if you do get a dumb idea, I'd love to see it). The swamp is very soft and wet so we knew our chances of getting seriously hurt were slim to none.

Eeeeeeeeeeedje

It's snowing fairly heavily here, and it's quite cold, so I think the snow may stay… I hope not, because I'm supposed to go up to Jonny's radio show tomorrow morning — it's supposed to warm up tomorrow, but if it doesn't, I'm pretty much stranded (the Jeep still needs the top and the diff dealt with, plus it's more of a short range vehicle)… Rachel's Porsche is running summer racing tires and is most definitely not safe in this weather.

I do want to mention that I'm getting a lot more complaints lately about the various edge/hate gangs on IAM (the element of sXe that consider it some kind of universal holy quest, not most straightedge people of course). It's not going to be tolerated. If you harass someone because you've got issue with them “breaking edge”, let me give you a simple piece of advice: mind your own business, grow up, and lead your own life.

And the rampant passive homophobia on those pages isn't going to be tolerated either. You might think it's funny to call each other various gay slurs as insults, but it's not. Think of it this way: what if from now on, every time someone does something immature, people say “oh stop being such a straightedge idiot”. Obviously that would make you feel very unwelcome here, even if it was said as a joke.

You want to do it in your own home, fine, I'm not going to stop you, and there the context is clear. But it's not happening here. There's no way I'm getting tricked into paying to engender a homophobic atmosphere.