tamakazura

12:16 am: Moved.
Moved.
I found this blog the other day after starting a new one. I couldn't remember the username for this one.
Anyway, the new one is prettier. The address is
http://scrabcake.blogspot.com
Yes. My dirty little secret is out.

01:41 am: The Solution is Here
Since I stayed up to 4 am last night finishing a large fantasy novel packed with all the good stuff*, I slept in until about 2 pm this afternoon, blowing out of the water any grandiose plans I might have had for Saturday.
And being stupid, I volunteered to show up at the office tomorrow.
Liking one's job is such a double edged sword.
So, I flopped out of bed and went to the dry cleaner's. (I am trying to get a kimono belonging to a Japanese doll cleaned. The lady at the dry-cleaner's looked at it, looked at me, laughed and asked me if I'd made it myself. Then, because it was so ridiculous to have someone comming in to get such a tiny little item dry-cleaned, she called in her husband who looked at it, looked at me, laughed, and asked me if I'd made it myself.) Then, I went to a local coffee shop where I ordered a Chai, and a slice of really sugary, gooey, delicious carrot cake.
While I was eating this carrot cake, and daydreaming, and looking out the window at the people going by, I had it:
A revelation.
An epiphany.
A realization that could change the world.
I figured out a simple way to peace in the middle east. Are you ready for it?

POLYTHEISM

Think about it. There were no religious wars when people beleived in millions of Gods. Why? Because no one was challenging anyone else's gods' right to exist! People who worshipped the Egyptian pantheon didn't go and beat the snot out of the people in Babylon because they worshipped Ishtar. In fact, if you beleived in Ishtar in Memphis, you were perfectly entitled to do so. And the king of Mitani (which is near present day Iraq) didn't mind sending off to the king of Egypt for healing statues of goddesses when he was feeling under the wheather.
That's the big problem with Monotheism. We consider the belief in one god the hallmark of an advanced state of civilization, but why? What is primitive about thinking that there are multiple creative forces in the world? When you have one god who has no others before him, you open the door to fanaticism, and you make your culture incompatible with all other cultures which revolve around a different god than yours. You provide a rallying point for people's natural fear of the exotic. Why are those foreigners inferior to us? Well, they worship Allah when there is no other God besides Yaweh. Why should we go invade continent X? Because they worship gods and spirits, and it's our duty to save their souls and lead them to ONE TRUTH, and theyreblackandwewanttheirland but ONE TRUTH! We're saving their souls!
Of course, people in the middle east were still beating the snot out of eachother when they beleived in large pantheons of gods. They were just doing it for different reasons. They wanted to take eachother over. That's addressable.
It's the religious differences that make modern conflicts so hard to arbitrate, because two monotheistic religions are by definition mutually exculsive. You either have one god or the other. Only one group can be right. The other has to be converted/killed/kicked off the land. Land conflicts without religious undercurrents are pretty cut and dry. It is universally agreed, for example, that Germany and Japan should have kept their hands to themselves in world war II. There was a Black and a White in World War II.
But when both sides can be right, whose side should you take?
The world would be such a better place if Allah and Yaweh were both gods in their own right and in the same context. And we could even make the Virgin mary a goddess, and Jesus could be granted full Godhood instead of being just the nice (but snotty) side of his father. There'd be no more conflicts about who should own certain parts of Jerusalem. Mosques built on top of Jewish temples could be converted into double temples for both gods like the temple of Horus and Sebek at Edfu! And hell! We could all worship Ganesh and Vishnu, too!
Can't you just see the religious illustrations? Jesus and Vishnu holding hands, hands, hands while a faceless Muhammad looks on? Now that's utopia.

09:32 pm: BASTARDS!!!!!!
Update on the below. Turns out that the city of New London Connecticut was planning on building a highrise hotel, some offices, and a Pfizer plant.
That's MUCH better.

Which brings me to today's topic:

THE WORLD'S BIGGEST BASTARDS

1) Drug companies. From Merck's shameless covering up of the research revealing that Vioxx caused strokes (this one hits close to home, as I had a grandmother who was taking it shortly before she passed away) to the mind-blowingly high drug prices that pour salt in already bleeding wounds. The CEOs of drug companies are the biggest festering pile of pus that ever crept along the surface of this planet.

2) Evangelical Christian Ministers and Cartoonists (really the same thing). In doubt their bastardliness?
Go to www.chick.com. Like the drug companies, they are constantly in the pants of politicians. They'd be ok if they'd keep it to themselves instead of trying to convert me on the street corners and on the TV and in horrendously written scifi novels. Even that would be tolerable if they would get their hyphae out of legislature.
Someone needs to invent fungicide for fundies.

3) And the prize for artistic bastardization goes to the execs of game, music, and movie companies who think that rehashing the same bleeding ideas is a good business strategy. Why take a risk on something creative when you can wait for someone else to take a risk and then knock it off when it's highly successful?!
EXHIBIT A. War of the Worlds. So many good fantasy novels out there that are begging to be dramatized. So many screenwriters, musicians and game designers who have great ideas in their heads.
So let's take a RADIO SHOW that had no plot to begin with (the whole POINT of War of the Worlds was that people in the thirties thought that it was REAL) and make a plotless film with lots of explosions which will make fat sacks of cash. THEN, let's crank out a load of sequels to original movies that did well five years ago and ride that wave for a while!
So much for art.
And also, Tom Cruise is gay.

09:16 pm: Waiting for the shit to hit the fan.......still waiting....
I did downtown on foot today, and was both blown away and a little disappointed. There weren't that many good shops (thought there would be more), but those that were good were REALLY good. I went in to a very pricy antique store (Louis XVI bedsteads and all that business), and was very pleasantly greeted by two of the clerks, even though I was wearing my ordinary street wear. I was fully expecting to be treated like a hoodlum and followed and snipped at until I left in disgust (vengefully and audibly mumbling on my way out the door that EBay has better things for less). Apparently I look like a potential shoplifter. You know, not a balding middle aged white man in a collared shirt.
If I ever get four hundred dollars to flit away on trinkets, I'll definitely go back there. See where good service gets you?
Anyway, I was heading towards Starbucks for a drink, being the corporate hooker that I am, and walked past a newspaper box. A minor headline to the side of the paper said (in words that were louder in my head than they were on the paper) "GOVERNMENT SEIZURE OF PRIVATE LAND RULED CONSTITUTIONAL".
Apparently, the city government someplace in Connecticut decided to seize some peoples houses with the intention of evicting their inhabitants, razing the places, and building a mall.
Rewind.
A *MALL*.
Not a park, like some seem to think.
A *MALL*.
The people sued (understandably), and it went to the Suppreme Court. Which ruled that local governments could indeed confiscate people's land if it was for the GOOD OF THE COMMUNITY.
Rewind.
A *MALL*
I was instantly reminded of the Australian movie "The Castle", which deals with a guy about to get evicted (and compensated. The American story doesn't mention compensation, but it had better have been offered.) so that an airline can extend the runway at the local airport. He sues (understandably).
It goes to the high court of Australia.
He wins.
In Australia, it is unconstitutional for the government to whip the rug out from underneath a homeowner. True story
Well, that's one right that Australians have that Americans don't. Australia = 100. America = 99.
*********
What really gets me about this is that no one seems to be up in arms. This is a republican appointed supreme court, and there's a congress full of republicans who could fuss about this.
Isn't preventing this crap from happening what Republicans are for? To stand up for our right to bear firearms? To own land without fearing that some wank from city hall is going to come in and give us the boot off of OUR LAND so that yuppies can shop at GAP where our homes used to be? Aren't property rights a corrolary on the theorem of small government?
Hardcore Republicans like my grandparents, who used to rail on about how Al Gore wanted to end their social security and revoke people's rights to ride motorcycles (don't know where they got that last one). should be rioting in the streets!
Maybe they're not because the definition of "Republican" has changed, and, like a company changing hands, all the employees are shuffled over to the new office without question.
Apparently, if you're not in Bush's pants, you're not a republican, and if you're not a republican you're a traitor. Any sort of ideaology aside from the personal beleifs of the president and his lackeys is out the window. People, when given the choice and a little incentive, will always say "yes, master" before they say "wait a minute...that's just not right". The White House has this figured out and we've been seeing it for the last four years.
So, the grand ol' party is pratting on about Christianity and foetuses and human vegetables, and the danger that gays present to society (riiiiight).
Let's worry about the people whose status as living human beings is not open to debate before we start treading out into the quicksand that is morality.
Time for the Republicans to put the Whore of Babylon that is Evangelical Christianity back on the seedy corner where she belongs and start representing level headed Americans again.
Time for the GOP to stop accusing the democrats of treason, because they're becomming the whinning anchorless sissies whom they proclaim to hate.
Because if they don't get their act together,
Who's going to stand up for us small government people?

08:59 pm: LIES
Alright. The tongue isn't sufficiently loosened up for one of the rambling yet ingenious diatribes that you are used to by now.
I'm writing this to make one simple statement. I am NOT drunk. SLIGHTLY tipsy, yes. Drunk=NO. My mother and sister are like "You're drunk. You should go and drink in your livejournal now! Haw, haw, haw." But I am NOT drunk.
(By 'drink' above, I really meant 'write.' But then, you're intelligent. You knew that. It was a slip of my skinny and agile fingers upon this keyboard.")
I told them that being slightly tipsy just made it easier for me to pretend that I'm drunk, but that didn't go over too well.
I would go and elaborate on the delicious explosions of sunshine and happiness that occurred within my mouth during dinner tonight: warm, chocolate spiced creamy coffee and cocoa flavoured cake following rough tasting but subtle stringbeans in hoisin sauce, which made the sides of my tongue tingle while the tip of my tongue savoured the crisp, fresh green taste of the inside of the bean. Tender but not dry chicken accompanied the beans, with coconut sauce and just a hint of lemongrass. I would elaborate on this in a long and overly descriptive paragraph.
But to do that, I'd have to be drunk.
And I am not drunk
So there.

02:02 am: Primal Scream
Ok.
The following is a primal scream.
AHHHHHHHHKKKKKKKKKKKKKHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHUUUUUUUUUHGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGARRRKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKGGGGGGGGGGGGRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIBBBBLOODY-F**KING-HELL!
This is followed by an exclamation of every bad word that I know. (And that's a whole lot of bad words.)
Thank you, and goodnight.

03:13 am: Another drunken escapade.
Well now. I've been working on the genetics final all day. (At least since the time I got up at like uh...three...)Hey, when it's a blanket of grey outside and my room is frigid, I think "hmm...it's warm in my bed and cold out here. I think I'll get in bed to warm up" and then I open my eyes and it's like 3 in the afternoon. Damn. Well, I got up and worked on said genetics final. I hate take home finals because they always make them harder than they would an in-class final. They make them so that you have to think and be creative on every answer instead of just reiterating stuff from the lecture slides. Which reminds me...oh well. Lost my train of thought there because my macaroni was out of the microwave (which I managed not to set on fire this time. Stupid $20 microwave burns tender and moist macaroni like kindling wood.)Man, I really sound like a hick here. Sorry about that.
So, I finished answering pointless questions about two-hybrid screen, which you use to detect two proteins that bind to eachother by attatchig to a DNA binding site and an activating site of dna....which naturally bind to eachother to start duplication of dna. Except when you fuse stuff to them, the stuff you fuse to them will start transcription based on how well the two things you fuse to either end bind to eachother. Four out of ten questions finished, and it's due monday. Hopefully I can drag myself out of bed tomorrow by a decent hour and finish the bugger. Anyway, after that, I went to the grad centre bar with some friends (same friend I was professing my love to in grammatically incorrect German in the last post) and drank up to where I was feeling pretty tipsy...and I was like...gee...I wonder what I would feel like if I had another drink. So I did. And I drank it waaaay too fast. So now I am here writing this "train of thought" journal entry.* Notice how I only write when I'm smashed. One day I'll write when I'm sober and it will be all boring and formal, but still well written, except it will be like one of those scientific papers which I have to read in genetics, which read like the author was thinking "let's explain this in the most complicated way possible and not put two words together without making a cute acronym out of one of them". Will you beleive that there is a chromotography method called "MudPIT"? Stupid biologists trying to be cutesy. There's also a gene named "sevenless" with a gene in the same pathway called "son of sevenless." Haw, haw. Get it? It would be too much to ask for them to name each gene after what it did. No. God knows what the gene "sonic the hedgehog" does. The name is just a reflection of what some bored biolgist was wishing he could be doing instead of cleaning test tubes. When you spend that much time monitoring the protein levels in cells, it's hard to maintain a sense of humour.
The way the spelling of humour comes naturally to me reminds me: I was in the shuttle on the way home and said hi to the driver and was like "Hey, mayyyte." and he replied "Did you just call me mate?" and I responded "Yup, mayyyte". Gee. It's as if he had never heard a faux-stralian speak before. Hahaha.
I try to be like Sydney Carton when I'm drunk...drunk out of my head, but still somewhat aware of what's going on, and still intelligent. Sydney Carton. Oh my god. I love him so much.
Damn.
Anyway, this whole post is going to be like a little treasure chest to me when I wake up, because unlike Sydney-habibi, I have no clue what I said. I'd like to see my future self read this sober. It would be highly amusing.
If you didn't have the patience to read through this, you missed my attempt to explain advanced experimental techniques in genetics while drunk (Somehow it's still more clear than the professor's explanation. I wish everyone in Bio 150 whatever could read this and see the light) , and my confession of everlasting love of Sydney Carton. Bet you'll go back and read it now, eh?
PS. Sydney Losstarot, my icon, is a sexy lot of pixels.

*The train of thought was at the station...and I missed it because I have to be at least five minutes late to everything.

07:16 pm: Music: Why must it be so painful?
Today's topic: "Music: why must it be so painful?"
On the insistence of a friend, I decided to go to Yahoo Launch and watch some music videos....heck, I only have to study for a Virology test that I ABSOLUTELY-MUST-PASS (so it's not like I had anything better to do).
Granted, my tour-de-top-forty was a little biased, but I USED to think the top forty was terrible.
Now I realize the truth. You see, five+ years ago, when I was of the top forty listening age, music was merely mediocre. It was bad, but had a tune. It tried not to tread on anyone's toes.
FAST FORWARD: Now, the top forty, as if not happy with being only lame, ACTIVELY SUCKS. It goes out of its way to make your ears hurt deep inside. It makes that lady in Uzumaki who tried to destroy the spiral in her inner ear not look so spiral-crazy.
Case-study:

Hollaback Girl (Gwen Stefani)- I was expecting to sort of like this one since I really liked No Doubt in highschool (before they lost their sense of humour in return of saturn). Man. This song HAS NO TUNE. I was expecting at least a chorus, but it is painfully tuneless. And furthermore, Gwen, you are not black. You are the very pinnacle of *NOT*BLACK*. And what's with the cheerleaders singing about *Bananas*? Nothing slightly relevant, I'm sure. Remind me to add this to my list of dumbest songs EVER. Right next to Beautiful Stranger.

Harajuku Girls (Gwen Stefani)-Slightly less craptacular than the above. At least it has a tune. Even if the lyrics consist of Gwen talking about how her boyfriend bought her some Japanese fashion and how she likes it and how she wishes she could afford more (suuure she can't afford it). This is a new level of inane, folks. And she pronounces harajuku (Hair-uh-joo-koo). And despite her apparently fervent wishes, GWEN STEFANI IS NOT JAPANESE, EITHER.

Do Somethin' (Britney Spears)-Have you ever wanted to see britney drive a pink hummer through the clouds and sing about it?
Me neither. And I hope to never hear it again. The bar has just been lowered. Thank you, Britney. Again, absolutely no tune. Britney can't rap, but she shows us in this song that she CAN squeak and squeal. Heinous.

La Tortura (Shakira)-Watching this was La Tortura, but it was probably the best one I watched. Actually had a tune. Not a memorable one, but we give points for the basics here. This harks back to the good old days of mediocrity. I'm absolutely fascinated by how she can move her thighs and bosoms like that...it's like a "Machine or Sumthin'."

So unless machines do it for you, avoid this one.

In conclusion, I think that the escalation of pure suckage in music has coincided with the rise in lawsuits against downloaders. The suckage of music is why a lot of people download in the first place. I can't count how many albums I bought because a mediocre song on the radio hinted at better things on the album. I think that Cary Sherman and the RIAA are masochists who are innerly wishing for their own demise.
So I'm going to do my part to give them their wish...now where did I stick the exec. for that bit-torrent client?

02:03 am: A Person who Should be Remembered.
So, it's spring weekend, and I'm plastered, after 2 vodkas and one amaretto sours, and a boatload of kosher wine for passover. I'm not jewish, but a christian catholic anglican mutt who had passover this year since my previous passovers have involved bastardized interperetations by Utah sunday school teachers. Jesus, that's a mouthfull. Let's see how well I can string together a sentence. When I am drunk, I have verbal dihorreah even though some of my words don't come out right.
A snapshot of right now: the wind is howling outside and whistling in my window, grr has his head sticking out of the water, and my room is a friggin' mess because I've been working this week and like to toss stuff on the floor when I work.
As usual, I'm going to blab on about politics. This week's fascination being the protests in china against japan. Junichiro appologised, which is fantastic. Good on him. May have been self serving, but the Chinese need to get on with life. Their own country has done far nastier things to them, or if not nastier, things to rival the things the japanese did (which were plenty heinous. You read about these things and start to loose faith in the goodness of mankind...but if Anne frank can beleive that people are basically good, then I suppose I can, too.)
I'd like to mention on this passover, Chiune Sugihara. You don't hear about this ever. I thought it was really interesting when it was mentioned during our seder. Chiune Sugihara was a Japanese diplomat for lithuania who was faced with Jews trying to leave the country because of the Nazis. Even though the Japanese and Nazi governments told him not to, he issued visas for Jews to escape from Japan. He saved THOUSANDS of people. They went to Kobe and Shanghai from there.
During a time when the Japanese were guilty of massacre and horror upon horror, and alied with the Nazis, whose crimes were just as dark (and on a more massive scale), he was a light in the darkness.
There is in fact, a basic goodness in mankind. Maybe when we are thinking about all the bad people in the past, we ought to remember the good ones, too. I read about the Japanese diplomats visiting Yasukuni shrine where the soldiers of wwii are enshrined, along with the war criminals like tojo.
Everyone is up in arms because Tojo and other criminals are burried there, but perhaps ordinary people go there to remember their ancestors who were basically good and just fought for their country.
It's people like Sugihara who should be enshrined and remembered. And all the people whose names we don't know who were the best parts in the worst of times.
By the way, if anyone would like to know about the general attitude the Japanese people had towards attrocities in China, they should read Blind Chinese Soldiers by Hirabayashi Taiko. It's like when something horrible happens, and everyone else is so indifferent and you are distraught, and even more so because no one else seems to care.
oh, god. Time for me to have something to eat or go to bed because I'm waxing extremely melodramatic here.
Guten Nacht, My sweets.
AND OH YES, I GOT DRUNK WITH ANONYMOUS BELOW WHO IS THE SHIZZZZZZZZ. ICH LEIBE DU, ANONYMOUS. SMACK! SMACK!

09:51 am: A Dialog Between Japan and China
I should be studying for an exam now. But I think I'm going to post this and then take a nap, seeing as how I'm running on empty right now in the sleep department.
I've been reading about the conflict between the Japanese and Chinese that's been comming to a boil of late. Over textbooks(and islands, and a particularly nasty past) Oh well, I guess the trojan war was started over a woman (and women were of negative value in greek society). So, I've summarized the conflict below in an easy to understand dialog.

China: We feel impotent. People are restless. I know! Let's have a party and trash Japan! What can we use as
a theme for the party? How about the Rape of Nanjing in Japanese textbooks!
Japan: Hmmmm. Our place of honour at the top of China's shitlist isn't as stable as it used to be.
What can we do to piss off the chinese?
China: Don't you dare deny the Rape of Nanjing!
Japan: The rape of Nanjing?....Uh....What?
China: Germany had the balls to appologise and pay reparations to the jews!
Japan: Uh, we have appologised and you guys agreed that we didn't have to pay you reparations!
China: You didn't say it like you meant it.
Japan: Let's talk about something else....All your islands are belong to us.
China: Don't you change the subject! A new generation wants to hear you say how sorry you are for the
horriffic events that happened sixty years ago! And those are OUR islands!
US: Play nice, asians!
China
/Japan:Yeah, you should talk, gaijin. Let's hear about the American Indians. What exactly happened there?
US: Hey, we're America. We can do what we want!
Japan: If you hadn't tried to colonize us (or china), we would not have been trying to smack down Asia
sixty years ago!
China: And we'd still have a Mandate of Heaven. Damn. Those were the days...

10:23 pm: Why Being A Neo Nazi and Listening to Marlyn Manson does not a School Shooter Make
Well, two more days and my soul will officially be sold to EA. :) Now, if I can only graduate.
Lazy day. Played a lot of video games and read my book.
In case you haven't noticed, I like to post on this board when something makes me angry in the news. Today, we're going to talk about school shootings.
School shootings occur in communities that are supposedly tightly knit....small suburbs of Denver where everyone is perfect (well, except that people in the West hate newcomers, and the west's lack of diversity reduces the American Dream to having a blonde boy in the football team and a whispy chaste christian cheerleader for a daughter).
The red lake reservation should have been a community banded together, and I'm sure that on the outside, they were. Though I'm not a minority, I am pretty sure that there are some pretty major identity issues involved in growing up in a society that has been subjugated and oppressed.
These "Stepford-esque" and tradition steeped communities which are supposed to be tightly knit are where school shootings happen, and the reason has to be bullying, and this hierarchical mould that high schoolers are slapped into and sawed off at the ends if they don't fit.
Whenever these things happen, I feel for the victims and their families, but I can't bring myself to think of the perpetrators of monsters and naturally evil people. They are the products of what society has made them.
I'm sure with the red lake shootings, people are going to blame Marlyn Manson. They are going to blame Neo Nazi-ism. Hitler, having been pure evil and also being dead, is a convenient scapegoat for these kinds of things. I think the whole Hitler thing was a symptom, and the Marlyn Manson, hell. That means nothing. There are plenty of goths and plenty of people who listen to Marlyn Manson. I have many friends I love who fit neatly into both categories.

What's really hard is looking into our own small town, and our own neighbours, and our own highschool system and thinking: how did we mould this event? How can we prevent it. The shooter is ultimately to blame, sure. Almost everyone makes it through highschool only receiving and causing emotional damage.
How long is it going to take to realize that that rosy period we'd like to beleive was the best part of our lives has become a Hell for our kids?

01:39 am: Evil, Evil People.
Sooo, during a week of stress and sadness, it's time to post something trivial and petty. YAY! I've uncovered an uncanny resemblence between certain celebrities and certain archvillains. I think they're among us and trying to take over the world! Exhibit A:
Michael Jackson. (By the way, you know it's been a nasty week when the most lighthearted news in the paper is about Michael molesting little boys!)
                   -AND-
The Evil Emperor Palpatine! The chin. The ghoulish complexion. The notch in the chin. The sunken, drooping eyes, and the hood. "They look so goshdang like the same person! I say 'you want icecreamcone'? and they both say 'YES!'"

EXHIBIT B
Bobby Fischer: Chess genius and subject of a really f'king boring movie that I couldn't sit through but probably won some prestigious award because every boring pointless movie has to win an academy award. He looks like something that belongs in an AWESOME movie. With living dead. And flesh eating maniacs. And zombies!
Wonder what would happen if you whipped out a chess board in front of Bobby and said "Yo, She-bitch! Let's Go!"
Bet he wouldn't get it. Bet I could beat Bobby Fischer. What kind of sissy goes by Bobby, anyway?

EXHIBIT C
The mad scientist in Nightmare before Christmas (I know I've said this before.) bears an uncanny resemblance to.....
Donald Rumsfeld. I really think they're the same guy. They both pulled wings off of bugs when they were a kid, and they both wear glasses. What more proof do you need?
Signing off,
T.

02:36 am: Disgusting Fundy Bastards
Maybe because I want to escape this !@#$%$ genetics exam that I have to finish by Tuesday, I've been reading a lot about the Terri Schiavo case. Rarely have I been so disgusted by current event.
Let the woman die, alright? It's sick how these people who have no business at all intervening in this case are clustered outside the hospice where Mrs. Schiavo is "living" and singing about the blood of Jesus, and it's even sicker how our president, *our PRESIDENT* flew back to washington to sign a bill (and he just did) to make them keep her alive.
She's a vegetable. She's being kept alive by artificial means, and there's absolutely no evidence to the contrary, except for her parents, who think she's responsive and will improve with treatment. She's been receiving treatment for FIFTEEN YEARS. It ain't getting any better. In fact, her brain is filled with spinal fluid, so it's impossible for her to be "responsive".
Maybe I'm heartless, but it's time to let her go to God.
(My big question for fundies is:where does keeping someone alive artificially fit into God's plan? If "God" had been allowed to have his way, she would have died fifteen years ago.)
No. God really doesn't matter to the fundamentalist. What matters to the fundamentalist is him/herself. Religious fundamentalism is inherently selfish. It's about being able to lever control via claims of moral superiority, and it's about being able to pat yourself on the back and tell yourself what a good boy you are, and the great ego boost that gives you. It's about telling yourself that god is on your side, so you can do whatever you damn well please, the rest of humanity be buggered. That's what fundamentalism is about, and that is what our fearless leader is about.
It's time for her parents to mourn and move on.
It's time for her husband to be able to remarry.
No one should be in a state of mourning for fifteen years.

Mad raving aside, it's been a long time since I've posted. Only gotten wasted once, and recently got a job offer! So looks like I'm going to be doing what I've been dreaming of doing since I was in eighth grade (beleive it or not, it said "I want to be a game designer" in my eighth grade notebook!) So I'm excited, and I'll be graduating and relocating soon. San Fran......here I come! Watchout!

01:53 am: Drunken Adventure
So I went to a CS student's birthday party tonite, and put a bit too much vodka in my drinks. As a result I am now totally wasted. Did accompany some TAs to the grad centre bar, but couldn't get in because of my lack of id...I figured when I left the room that I wouldn't need my ID, so I didn't get in there. Nevermind. Had quite enough to drink at said party. Head is now spinning.
Wandered like Sydney Carton, "unsteadily and stealthily" home and being less prone to procrastination when totally wasted, I decided to take out smelly trash and to clean Grrr! the turtle's tank which was all poopy because I've been too busy and too lazy to clean it. Anyway, put Grrr! in the sink, and started to wash out his tank. I have put a mug in it upside down for him to sit on while he basks in glorious flourescent light. Cleaning out his tank, I dropped it in the shower and it shattered. Being the responsible drunk I am, I decided to clean it up so I didn't cut my little feet in the shower tomorrow morning (probably still will). Cut figer on shards. I look down and there are red blots on the tiles and I'm like "oh, that's funny, I must be bleeding from these shards." Didn't hurt at all, I thought it was something else at first. Maybe that chocolate covered coffee bean I ate wasn't a coffee bean? I'm so prone to go off on tangents when I'm drunk. So I mopped it up with toilet paper and washed my hands obsessively several times. I'm sure you care about this. Sorry for the gross details. Probably froze poor Grrr! who was in the sink when I was washing my hands. Filled tank up, and put Grrr! back in it. Poor guy. It was really cold, but he looks happy enough. Maybe I'll buy him a non-flourescent bulb tomorrow. Hari says his shell will fall off if he doesn't get natural sunlight. Oooh. Nightwish is playing. Niiice. And my finger is now bandaged in a bandaid with skulls and crossbones on it that I have been saving for an occasion such as *this*.
Goodnight y'all!
I'm going to bed.

02:00 am: Thoughts
Haven't updated this for a while because I've had a buttload of work. Man, and I seem to have lost my ability to pull all-nighters. It's 2 am, and I'm ready for bed but I have to stay up because my laundry in the dryer and I want it wrinkle free and folded so my mum doesn't "mention" the wrinkles in my clothing.
Sigh. It's a hard life I lead.
Programming a raytracer now, and at 2 am after five hours of debugging it (it still looks like crap on a bad day, but at least now it's not speckled crap. @#$ing epsilon: you are the tapeworm in the bowels of my code.) Here are some thoughts:
-Carpel Tunnel syndrome is a myth. It is a myth made up by slackers to get attention from people who notice the big bandage they put on their hands, and to get out of doing work. "I can't code....I have carpel tunnel."
Sure you do. Your lies do not fool me.
-You know when you fall asleep chewing gum and wake up and it's in your hair? That's my raytracer code. It's the c++ equivalent of having gum in your hair.
-Remember that movie that you got to watch in 9th grade? Donald Duck in Mathemagic Land?
Mathemagic Land is REAL! I've BEEN THERE. And I was lost the entire time. I was like Alice from Alice in Wonderland, except I was having a conversation with a point in worldspace and it said:
`we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'
`How do you know I'm mad?' said Me.
`You must be,' said the Cube,`or you wouldn't have come here.'

02:12 am: Words of Wisdom
Alrighty then. It's 2 am, time for another cuppa tea and a live journal entry.
Word of advice to all of you out there who are squeamish about maths: never, ever, ever, ever, ever take a computer graphics course. Sure, it said that "linear algebra is recommended but not required." What they really mean is: "If you come into this not knowing linear algebra like the back of your hand, linear algebra will proceed to beat you bloody and leave your raw pulsing corpse in a ditch by the side of the road." All those pretty pictures will become equations to you, and these equations will swim in your head at nights when you are trying to sleep.
Honestly, at this point in my life, ditching school in 9th grade the day we learned about scalar multiplication ranks among the worst decisions I've ever made.
Along with taking this damn class.
My friend (whom I shall refer to from here on out as "beastmaster") joked that I should have taken Operating Systems, which all my friends are miserably slodging through at this point. I shot back that at least I wouldn't be constantly outdone by hotshot sophomore math wizards. In Operating Systems, I'd just be another 'tard in a sea of 'tards instead of a single 'tard on a solitary island of mathematical incompetence.
So yeah. I'm back in my room now, still smarting from the daily spanking by the phong illumination equation. I'd better pass this, too. I've been living in the sunlab like a little sunlab hermit crab.
Speaking of spankings, we looked at a tomb releif from giza in egyptology in which a tax evader was brought into the presence of the tomb owner and SPANKED (not merely a beating, but a spanking!) The caption was something like "giving to him a clap". See? Spanking has a grand and glorious history.
I'm all in favour of giving your kids mild spankings. Keeps the little rats in line far better than any sort of grounding and "time out" does. What kind of kid (who doesn't have an inbred sense of catholic guilt) is going to actually sit and think about what they've done when you make them sit in the corner. No. Spankings are the way!
Spankings for all!

07:20 pm: Cartman Rove
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1617372,00.html
This article reminds me of the episode of southpark where Cartman learns to shit out of his mouth and it becomes a national fad.
"We can't let activist judges thumb their noses at 5000 years of human history." Hmmmm. Well, marriage between a man and a woman has really only been defined that way in biblical history. It's tradition in other cultures but probably not sacred. Even so, is thumbing your nose at 5000 years of human history nessesarily a bad thing?
Slavery has at least a 5,000 year legacy, and is mentioned in the bible, as is wife-beating. I was reading on the daily jolt the other day a post from a woman who said that no one who wasn't married understood the sacred aura that comes with marriage. Maybe *her* marriage, but I'm sure that you won't catch any of the partners from the 1/5 failed marriages in america going on about a sacred aura....
Time to change 5,000 years of history, because 5,000 years of history is ignorant and wrong.
Activist judges my ASS. That's just slang to distract us from the stink eminating from Rove's mouth.

11:10 pm: Dumbass Songs 'n Terrorism
Songs with godawful lyrics.
I hate it when I'm listening to a song that's pretty popular, and all of a sudden the singer spouts something that just wants to make me gouge my ears. These generally aren't songs that are purposely stupid, like Blue, or Barbie Girl...or even songs that have really lame concepts, like that song Bjork sings about dinosaurs and cars...no, these are songs that take themselves perfectly seriously. These are the songs that have one stanza that makes you wonder whether the lyricist had a stroke while writing it, or just rode the short bus in elementary school.
#1) Beautiful Stranger, Madonna. I used to like this song, then I listened a little closer and heard THIS:
"You're the devil in disguise
That's why I'm singing this song"
Oh THAT's why she's singing this song. It would have been less heinous if lyricist X (because god forbid Madonna write ANYTHING herslef) had just tried to rhyme something totally irelevant with "down". Can't be that hard: frown, clown, pound, gown, cow......
#2) Galileo, the Indigo Girls.
"I call on the resting soul of galileo
king of night vision, king of insight"
Yeah. I just have a problem with asking a crusty old dead scientist for advice on your love life. And calling Galileo the "king of insight" bothers me for some reason.
#3)Casey Jones: The Grateful Dead
"Ridin' the train, high on cocaine...."
I admit, "cocaine" is probably the best word you can find that rhymes with "train"....but any song that finds it nessesary to rhyme ANYTHING with "train" is automatically "lame".
#4) Magic: Delerium (I love delerium, by the way. They're one of my favourite groups, which made the following lyric hurt even more.)
"I think we're gonna fly away, up to the stars
And I don't even know who you are
Maybe it's just and old superstition, but,
You're a warlock aren't you?"
Said in the most fakey seductive voice ever. Yeah. I'm a warlock. And I'm going to turn you into a heap of ash for wrecking what could have been a decent song with that terrible lyric.
#5) Yellow :Coldplay (Because I friggin' Hate Coldplay)
" Cos you were all "Yellow,"
I drew a line,
I drew a line for you,
Oh what a thing to do,
And it was all "Yellow."
Oh, gosh golly darn! What a thing to do! If you can't keep your hands to yourself, we're going to have to take your crayons away, and also your nose plugs so you'll stop singing with your sinuses.
//------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The first thing I saw that made me want to write tonight was an article on google news about Arafat wanting to be buried in Jerusalem, and the Israeli minister of justice saying:
"Palistinians will choose where to bury him, but he will not be buried in Jerusalem because Jerusalem is the city where Jewish kings are buried and not Arab terrorists," Israeli Justice Minister Yosef Lapid told Associated Press Television News.
Raanan Gissin, spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said:
"He will not be buried in greater Jerusalem, in the same manner that if Osama bin Laden were killed, he would not be buried in Arlington National Cemetery."

-Yeah. That's going to cement relationships. Love the implication that all arabs are terrorists. And also, how many thousands of years has it been since a Jewish King was burried in Jerusalem? What really gets me is the last statement, comming from the very top: The difference between the Osama being burried in arlington cemetery and Arafat being burried in Jerusalem is that *Arlington is not located on land that belongs to Al Qaeda as well as America!* I think that the reason that there is no peace is not only that the Palestinians are persistently violent, but the people who have power to make peace, the ISRAELIS, DONT WANT TO DO IT if it means that they have to meet anyone half way! Their idea of peace is "The other side kisses our feet, says sorry, and promises to do what we say, and then there will be peace."

01:17 am: Sei Shonagon Doesn't Like Bush Either.
Interesting thoughts
(At Least I think so)
-My turtle, Grrr, who was rescued from a research lab is moulting. He was saved from dissection by a friend who recently moved accross the country, and she foisted him off on me at her going away party. I was kind of sloshed (but I'd agreed beforehand) so she was like "here! Take it!" and handed him to me in a bucket. Anyway, he's moulting, and he's laying on top of an upside down teacup I've stuck in his "tank" with his head down. Poor guy really looks like he's feeling under the weather. I keep thinking that it can't hurt because his shell doesn't have nerve endings, but then I imagine that it might feel like it does when you get a really bad sunburn and peel, and it itches like the devil. Poor little guy.

-The saddest thing in the world must be to die because of your own naivette. I kept up on the kidnapping of Shosei Koda in the news, and read about how people were harassing his family because the government was spending money on him instead of on the earthquake victims. I don't think he was stupid...just naive...like so many people who have never really left their home country or state for very long. He could have been any number of people that I see every day who reduce the world's problems to good vs. evil, or think that they can instantiate peace by walking around with a picket sign. He must have realized how naive he'd been before he died: he appologized to Koizumi for putting his life in the hands of the government, and what's really sad is that he's going to go down in popular memory as being stupid and shameful. He more than paid for it.
Most well-meaning youth from first world nations probably would have been just as obvious and easy a target, and many would be just as willing to put themselves in danger for an idealism that doesn't coincide with reality.