well, i reckon it's time to check back in with you all. so as such i'm posting and making my rounds most thoroughly tonight.
just got home from work a bit ago. good times. i can't wait to move out to where i can really get to know what i'm selling to folks. that's always the best feeling: knowing what they want and knowing exactly what to give them. by now micah is half-way or thereabouts through boot camp. can't wait to hear from him. it's been an odd void not being able to just go up the street and see him. i suppose that's what happens when you know someone for most of your life. i really do hope he makes it out of the marines without permanent harm done to him- body or mind. my family will be out here for a week and a half but i won't really get to see them that much. i was going to request some time off but the schedule was made before i got in so i'm working the days they'll be in Edmonds. they're out on the ocean for a week before that. maybe i can switch shifts around so that i can see them. i really hope so. i've been back on the exercising routine more lately. and i just got a shirt to help me in my exploits. it's going to be great. it's coolmax. it cost me $16; it's a $32 shirt. i love my discount! that's two shirts that i've gotten for the price of that one. it's amazing. it's great. i'm going to buy a raft.
seriously about the raft, though. that's the next purchase because i really want to go paddling out on the Sound. this is mostly because i've never been so near to so much water in my life.
remember that i come from a state that is classified as desert or nearly for every area within its borders. a huge lake is a resevoir that's over a mile long. we don't have water like the Sound or ocean. so it's a shock. and it's a nice shock. and i want to go our rowing on it.

so yeah. life in a nutshell.
never does live up to what's floating around in your head, does it?
and it just feels like a boring list of things i need to get from the store or something.
oh! and i need some cheese.
that is all.

I want my raft to be built from long, thin straws

hey, i just found this quote today and it's not only the absolutely perfect simile but it's also fucking hilarious!
" Hiroshima signaled a failure of humankind, not just of the United States. The growth of technology has far outstripped our ability to use it wisely. Like a quarrelling group of monkeys on a leaky boat, armed with sticks of dynamite, we are embarked on an uncertain journey.
Humanity's best chance of survival lies in creating taboos against the manufacture of nuclear weapons- such as those that already exist for chemical and biological weapons- and to work rapidly toward their global elimination."
Pervez Hoodbhoy: member of the Pugwash Council and professor of nuclear and high-energy physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan.

On to other pressing matters. What's everyone think of Roberts? i'm looking at you, sumo, but anyone may answer!
i personally actually do like the guy. deep in my heart i'm a bleeding heart strict constructionist. for one thing, we wouldn't have any issues with the PATRIOT Act if we were all strict constructionsists, lol. it's completely unconstitutional.
but at any rate, i think that he's a good choice. he's not going to be an activist judge. yes, he's very conservative and yes he'll vote against a lot of things like homosexual marriage if it ever comes to a supreme court decision but at the same time he has stated that he'll follow the legal precedent of the land. guess what part of that is? Roe-v.-Wade. i'm with him, i don't like the idea of it but i recognize that the option should remain out there. this is not to say that i agree with him about why it should remain. i am very much on the side of the right to choose. i don't believe the government had any business fucking with peoples' lives like that in the first place! the fact that we would even attempt to push morality in this country anymore is silly. we lost our moral authority in the 60's and it's not coming back any time soon.
sara's sitting here complaining that i'm spending too much time online. so i'm going to finish this up.
life is still happy here, don't worry. i've adjusted well and am loving the beach (we went down there today and i walked around and skipped rocks in the Sound, an activity that i love a bit too much.) tomorrow is...let's get off my ass and do something fun day. i'll let you know what happens as soon as possible.
i'll be checking in with you soon.
that is all.

what i thought when i woke up this morning wasn't very nice

i have discovered what are perhaps the two worst forces in all of history. wanna know what they are? i figured so. everyone wants to know the worst and best things about life, just look at all those magazines promising to show you the perfect life. but if you are ready we'll delve into it.
three words are all i'll need: religion and philosophy.

now let me clarify my position. what are some of the greatest evils the world has known? the crusades, the inquisistion, witch burnings, communism in its real world application, fascism, a great many genocides. that's only the few that come immediately to mind. now what links them all?
they took the words of a philosopher or religion out of context and used them to justify actions that are, at their core, intended to hurt other human beings.
now let us say that the purpose of christianity is not to kill, maim or otherwise hurt others. the purpose is to love everyone you come into contact with and do your very best to make sure that their lives are happy and free of strife. it is to treat others just as you want them to treat you. it is, in one word, about love. Love, people! not war, not killing, not fear of the unknown, not persecution; christianity is about none of the things. when you judge another based on a religion you yourself regularly fail to follow you are a hypocrit and are taking the very most precious of God's purposes away from him. do you think that this will make him happy?!? hell no! literaly.
also, let us say that whatever marx said it was a utopia he knew could never exist. and let us also say that whatever was said about the ubermensch that that man was intended to be the author of the idea. neitzche never meant for hitler to take his idea and kill off millions. that was hitler taking words without their intrinsic meaning to their author.

the very most evil people in the world are those who hide behind what they believe as a way of masking their own greed, hunger for power, lust and other avarices. they are the men who would judge you for your actions simply because you are not part of their little club. they are the men, in short, who are too ignorant to see the true meaning of words and are relegated to merely scratching the surface of existence and pretending to know the whole of the world. they are the very thing that death and destruction crave. they are the most evil of men in their ignorance but percieve themselves to be nothing more than the bringer of the new message. Hitler thought it, Constantine thought it, Lenin thought it, Pope Pious IX thought it and so have all the people who have started all the wars we've known since the founding of the school of the ignorant for the ruling of the world. to you who know that i am talking to you i sasy only one thing: we're better off with you dead and gone rather than fucking up everything that you think you stand for.
that is all.

well you all know that i haven't been in the bush camp for a while so i understandably took great pleasure in the stat that his job rating has slipped even further than the last time i checked it. the terrorist attacks in london did nothing for him and in fact might have hurt his terrorism standings as there are more and more attacks in the old world and iraq. i expected him to gain a little ground after london because a lot of people find that he's reassuringly "tough on terror." granted this is a foolish view since he's failing at a war against an idea. gee, couldn't have told you you couldn't kill ideas...
point is he's down to a 44% approval rating.
Why? because he's not percieved as honest by most voters. and why is that? because they lied about Rove's involvement with the case of Valerie Plame! you'd think that after all this preaching of their religious values they'd know that one of the commandments was "thou shalt not kill," that another was "love thy neighbor as thyself." and what have they done to everyone? well we'll say that they have failed both commandments. ironically that's one of the best grades that bush has ever gotten. i mean, 8 of 10...not bad...that's good enough for an ivy league school...

Illuminati Make Terrible Friends

well, i'm feeling like doing nothing all weekend because next week work starts bright and early monday morning. i'm happy to have a job. and for all of you who don't know, which is basically everyone so don't feel left out, i got a job. at a little place called REI. go look it up. my job is going to rock. so there! past that i'm feeling like reading my book and doing nothing else all night long. so i think i will. i'm going to go ahead and be a boring sally. i'll check up on all of you and i'll make sure to comment where appropriate and then i'm going to read and sleep.
that is all.

Cue that Funky Harpsichord Music, Joe.

i've decided i love chocolate a bit too much. now you say this is outrageous. i know. you're thinking, "dude, how can that even begin to be true for a bloke with such a beer belly? obviously it's not the chocolate you've been cravin' nightly." and you may be right that i've got a bit of a beer belly because i do love beer and do crave it almost nightly. like KFC. but this is something completely different.

i want chocolate more than sara.

i want it more than sara on her period.

i want it more than sara after hearing terrible news or when she's depressed or when she has a craving for chocolate. i want good, dark cocoa more than i want water most always. regardless of if i were in the desert with only a few sips left in my canteen there's not question in my mind:

"i'll take the chocolate, mr. wonka. oh, and make it shaken not oompah-loompahed...thank you."
that is all.

so i just reminded myself of a moment that embarassed me. ready? this one is even better than my zipper story. if you'd like it i'll let you have it but you'll have to ask nicely. but this one is funnier.
alright so this happened a couple of years ago. two and a half ago or so to be more exact. sara arrived in town to be my prom date. yes, that's right, i had the best prom ever because my date flew in from a city 1500 miles away. so neener neener. anywho i had wisely pulled up directions to her aunts house where she was staying and directions to the events center where prom was to be held and drove that whole route with my dad the day before. this was a huge thing for me because i don't believe in thinking ahead. so the night arrives. i cooked up a picknic. it comprised soda, this great honey-soy sauce-sesame oil chicken recipe i love, brownies (one of her weaknesses which i didn't know before this date), a great salad with mandarin oranges, candied almonds and a whole lot of other ingredients that are far less notable. we hiked up a mesa close to my house and had our picknic as the sun went down. i know, aww factor was stupendous, lol.
we go to prom. kiss. i try to get her to dance for the entire time but she refuses with stubborness i should have noted before it got around to my savings habits...then we left.
downtown anywhere is hard to get around in but you can imaging my embarassment when i got lost in my hometown's downtown streets. this wouldn't be so bad if it didn't go so long. we left at just past midnight and got to where she was staying at 2am. this place is half and hour away. i was driving in circles for almost two hours. granted i figured out where EVERY street down there was but there are better ways.
that is all.

you know what i've realized? i'm not that funny. and don't you even try to console me or anything. i've come to grips with this fact. i have my moments but they are few. but what i lack in humor i make up for with debate skills and general, useless knowledge. like the fact that the platypus is the only venemous mammal or that 1/8 of the population of the U.S. lives in California or that the English owe their nasty weather a lot more than they'd admit when i comes to their defeat of the Spanish Armada. and you know what, i've got another thing: a snappy phrase. oh, and i can punctuate better than most. i even know how to use the : and - - correctly and no, their not for smiley faces in this case. and i know that the best mints come from victoria's secret. you think i'm kidding but i'm serious. i'm that guy you think is creepy. you know why? because i just walk into victoria's secret without any girl with me. i just walk in like i own the place or am a gaylord on par with geezer. and you know what i do? i go straight for the mints. the cinnamon ones. because even though i'm not a fan of cinnamon i am absolutely addicted to those mints. they're my substance of choice for abuse.
that is all.
(see! snappy phrase!!)

feelin' good feelin' great
feelin' great feelin' good
how are you?

i'm chilled out with a glass of wine and a good book to look forward to tonight. simple life. my friend matt is a god for recommending this book because it makes me happy when i read it. great humor about a subject that also requires great humanity. and somehow it's pulling it off. i've been to the point of tears from laughing and from sadness and i'm only 100 pages in. i love how i say that like it's so easy to even write 100 pages. it's tough as hell to write even 10. i am in awe of people who can wait to developed their mind onto the page that long.

past that i'm doing really well today. i had a run with sara ( an activity i am coming to love very much) and did some push-ups and sit-ups. feels good after all the crap i've been eating lately. feels good to feel good, too. let me tell you. being well is something i won't take for granted for a long while. i seem to just get hit with things all at once and suddenly i'm sick for a month like i just got finished with. i don't know how i manage it but i do. but the main point is that i'm better now.

for all of you who don't know, australia has some of the wierdest sounding little shits of animal ever. period. you swear you hear jesse jackson screaming at you from the bush but then it's more like, "oh, nope...wallaby."

you know what the one product they need to make and haven't yet? a frosted nalgene bottle with a white lid. i made one because i had the green bottle with the white lid and didn't like the white on it so i yanked it off and put it onto the frosted one. best ever! it's the coolest looking bottle you could possibly find. other than a bottle of my famous cinnamon-vanilla vodka that i make from scratch. that is the most gorgeous bottle you'll ever, ever lay eyes on. even better than the site of a cold beer after 8 days in 90+ degree heat in the middle of a canyon without any outside contact. but only slightly better. that ranks below the nalgene by the thinnest of hairs.

that is all.

funny story, i'm writing naked for the second time in a row. i love having a computer in my room!
but that's not why i'm here.
i'm here because i've been reminded of another story for all of you who aren't in the states and maybe, maybe sumo.

this one is from air america. basically it's liberal radio. sara and i were in the car driving to our nursing assistant course the other day and we heard about something on the Randi Rhodes show that made me incredibly angry with what is happening in Iraq. i think that by now most of the world and most of the U.S. citizenry realize that the war in Iraq is a sham. we feel terrible for the loss of life in this and we want it to end as soon as possible. there's a good possibility we'll be fighting for 12 more years (this according to Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense) and we've set up what will be a permanent presence in the area. already we have 3 or 4 permanent bases operational. this makes sense and i agree with the intent. our alliance with the saudi royal family is going to end soon because they will be deposed soon. we still need oil and we still need forces in the area to secure our supply so those bases make good sense politically. but there's a kicker to the whole unjustified war, there's a haliburton subsidiary that's supposedly feeding our troops. long story short i could do a better job with a pickup truck and a spatula up my ass.
the issue at hand is that this company has been feeding our troops expired rations and rations that have been compromised by shrapnel and bullets. a whistle-blower tells them that they need to stop and what do they do? send him to the front lines in the hopes that he'll be killed (this is just a theory...)
normally you don't do that unless you want to silence somebody. now if you aren't pissed that these bastards are feeding our troops bad food there's more! yeah, it gets worse...way worse. they save the rations that are actually fresh for themselves and have little "executive dinners" at the taxpayer's expense. oh, and they've been over-billing 5,000 meals every single day for "overflow capacity" that they will never need because they are no longer a staging base so they only have a garrison to feed at this base- called Anaconda i believe.
so...you have a company affiliated with the company our illustrious vice president used to be the CEO for being awarded a no-bid contract to do something we've trained cooks in our armed forces to do and they can't even do what they're payed to do for these troops!!!
i fucking hate this system!

i'm full of pork burrito and i'm sleepy. and naked. just so you all know. i realize it's not cool when it's me or geezer or any guy but i really don't care. i'm like a little nudist at heart. so when i'm in my own space there's a good chance i'm naked. or sleeping naked. i really love the feeling. but that's not what i'm here to talk about.
i'm here to say that i think our president really should just leave now. reasons? i've only got one. i can't say that i KNOW that Mr. Bush didn't orchestrate the bombings in London. i can say that i don't believe he did, i can say i don't think he did but i can not say that i know he didn't. he's lost his authority with me. it's just too convenient: his approval ratings drop to their lowest point in years and suddenly there's another terrorist attack just when he needs it. but i also can't say i know that he has anything to do with it so for now i'll stop insinuating anything.
except to say one thing: if he did indeed plan this or had any foreknowledge and let it go to help his own agenda he is one of the most despicable men alive or dead and he deserves to burn in hell for all eternity for betraying the lives of all of our soldiers in iraq, all the iraqi civilians and all those people in london.
i need to go read or something so that i won't think about this anymore. it's making me quite angry with this country.

Trash Flavored Trash

sitting here headbanging on the latest addition to my room, a computer that actually works. yeah baby1 collections.
la la la lala la low la la la lalalaalow!
level with the trees
i know everything
you're and ugly man
you sold your soul again

i'm in a wierd mood and don't really want to do anything else so

that is all.

well it's a happy day here in the states, guys. since i know we have some international readership here i'll put in the whole speech.
were you aware that the United States, besides being the best fucking country ever in the history of anything, is celebrating its independence from britain today? that's right, bob, sue, jane and jack, independence day is here at last! just for today you get to blow up stuff such as small rodents that you usually have to launch in rockets. and you get to do all of this rocketeering and pyrotechnic displaying because your country just rocks that hard. oh, isn't it nice living in the very best country ever created? what with our superior health care, civil liberties and all that money we make how could any other country hope to compete? why are they still around? because we told them they could and helped police their state and fund their revolution, that's why.
that is all on that thread, i'm starting to critique our government too much, they don't like that and especially not on our big holiday.

but we do get to blow stuff up!! and we're having good ol' fashioned bar-b-que. i need to go help. have a great day, all. be safe and don't lose any fingers to an M-80.