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Saturday, June 30, 2001, 11:07pm I think Kurt and Ev are both wrong - you can be friends with exes. I'm living proof. I really don't see the big deal. Just enjoy the person's company as you always had without the "benefits" of romantic relations. Why is this so difficult for so many people? It's quite easy, and I think it's pitiful that so many are incapable of figuring it out. (This doesn't mean that it is always your fault when such a relationship goes sour. Sometimes it's the other one's fault. But I can spot that in a person a mile away, and I simply avoid it.) Restatement: You can be friends with exes. The end. Saturday, June 30, 2001, 12:40am I guess I can let you go now. Tomorrow morning I will wake around 10:00am to prepare for a fun-filled day of driving, Atlanta Braves baseball, more driving, a great dinner, and lots of great conversation with wonderful company throughout the duration of tomorrow's events. So there, another Braves baseball game for me - the second in only a couple of weeks. And so you know, I'll be going to another one in less than two weeks just after the All-Star Game. Yay. So tomorrow's game begins at approximately 3:15, meaning that I will be sitting in the blazing sun for most of the game, meaning that I will fry to a golden brown - hopefully. Greg Maddux will pitch against Al Leiter, which most likely means one of two things: 1. Pitchers duel; Greg Maddux is leading the National League in ERA, and Al Leiter is a great pitcher capable of shutting down the Braves. 2. Hitters' barage; both pitchers throw strikes more than regularly, and if the hitters are jumping on strikes early, it could be a long, fun day! If neither of these scenarios are closely followed, I would expect the Braves' bats to unload on Leiter before I would expect the Mets' bats to unload on Maddux. Still, I have been to about thirty Braves games since 1990, and the Braves have won about three of them, so I'm not expecting much. Hopefully we'll see back-to-back-to-back home runs (by either team - that would just be cool) or I'll catch a foul ball. Oh, and if any of you happened to see Javy Lopez's game-winning grand slam Thursday night, it seemed to land on the seat that I sat in less than two weeks ago. Isn't that fitting?! Ugh. Two weeks late, man. Try that when I'm there - please?!?! Friday, June 29, 2001, 11:59pm I was casually and aimlessly surfing the internet, as I am prone to do occasionally, when I stumbled upon a question: "Are there any good games websites aside from IGN?" I pondered this for a moment, and I realized that I really didn't know of any, so I aspired to find some. This is what I found: GameSpot is a very complex site that could rival the completeness of IGN. It offers, reviews, previews, movies and images, codes, guides, and a few other special features worth checking. GameSpot is definitely a site worth checking for any games platform. (Note: you have to scroll down and choose your platform on the left. Kinda stupid to scroll down, but understandable.) GamerWeb is also a very complex and complete site, hence its listing right up here at the top. It seems to offer all the same things that IGN and GameSpot offer from a different point of view, and it looks different. And we all know that settling for one point of view rarely works. If you want second and third opinions, well, that's what this little list of sites is for. Media & Games Online Network is another incredibly complete site, though it seems to be more concentrated on PC games than others. I confess: for these sites, I am really only interested in the Nintendo and Sony sections, for all I really care about are the Nintendo 64 and GameCube, and the Sony PlayStation and PlayStation 2. Still, all of the sites so far have as extensive PC and Xbox sections as they come right now, so don't worry about that. While there are many company- or console-specific sites like PS2 Faction and Tendobox I feel I have delivered links to the best complete gaming sites. If I have missed one, feel free to enlighten me, but I really don't expect any great clamor over this. Thanks for reading, though. Friday, June 29, 2001, 8:26pm Following nickd.org: Existing Situation: Working to improve his image in the eyes of others in order to obtain their compliance and agreement with his needs and wishes. Stress Sources: Feels unappreciated and finds the existing situation disagreeable. Wants personal recognition and the esteem of others to compensate for the lack of like-minded people with whom to ally himself and make himself more secure. His sensual self-restraint makes it difficult for him to give himself, but the resulting isolation leads to the urge to surrender and merge with another. This disturbs him as he regards such instincts as weaknesses to be overcome; only by not succumbing to them, he feels, can he withstand the difficulties of the situation. Wants to be valued as a desirable associate and admired for his personal qualities. Restrained Characteristics: Feels listless, hemmed in, and anxious; considers that circumstances are forcing him to restrain his desires. Wants to avoid open conflict with others and to have peace and quiet. Insists that his goals are realistic and sticks obstinately to them, even though circumstances are forcing him to compromise. Very exacting in the standards he applies to his choice of a partner. Circumstances are such that he feels forced to compromise for the time being if he is to avoid being cut off from affection or from full participation. Desired Objective: Desires a tranquil, peaceful state of harmony offering quiet contentment and a sense of belonging. Actual Problem: Wants to be valued and respected, and seeks this from a close and peaceful association of mutual esteem. Actual Problem: Depleted vitality has created an intolerance for any further stimulation, or demands on his resources. A feeling of powerlessness subjects him to agitation and acute distress. Tries to escape from this by relinquishing the struggle, and by finding peaceful and restful conditions in which to recuperate in an atmosphere of affection and security. At first I was trying to find a reason to disagree with my existing situation. I thought that I did not really aim to improve my image by obtaining compliance in my needs and wishes. However, I sat back and thought about it carefully, I realized that, for some people, I do strive to justify my beliefs. I do not do it to look better, but I feel that, if it is the most logical answer to something, then others will follow. If it is not, then what is would eventually be exposed to me, and I would change. I can also confirm that I act differently for certain people. I never act outside the bounds of my character - of who I am - but I certainly can act more or less zany, more or less dorky, more or less intelligent around certain people. And I certainly try to hide certain of those aspects from others. Is that so wrong? Reading over my stress sources now, I can see that it is almost completely wrong. The only sentence that I agree with is the last one. Actually, I have taken several stress tests, and the results come back repeatedly that I am as calm and relaxed as they come. I honestly do not feel stressed, althought not having a job, or consequently and more significantly not having money, is particularly stressful at the moment. My restrained characteristics are not inaccurate. Not completely accurate, but not inaccurate. Perhaps I would be best to say that they are vaguely generalized, but accurate nonetheless. My desired objective is very accurate, although I'm sure there is more to it than that. I am most comfortable and most happy around comfortable and happy people. It is difficult to make and to keep people comfortable all the time, so I avoid getting close to too many people. Perhaps that's what it means by "peaceful state of harmony". My first actual problem is not inaccurate, except that I do not consider it a problem. I feel that I am already valued and respected by the few close friends by which I am surrounded, and while my life is a bit hectic right now, I trust that it will settle down sooner or later - if not on its own, then by force. :-) The second actual problem is only half correct, if that. I have no such intolerance and no such feeling of powerlessness, but I am trying to escape from a few escapable things (nothing too major), and I do not deny that I seek recuperation in "an atmosphere of affection and security". Think it's accurate? Think it's inaccurate? Don't have a clue because my results have nothing to do with you? Then take the Color Quiz yourself. And if you like Earth tones, perhaps your results will be similar to mine. Friday, June 29, 2001, 4:56pm Hahah. Everyone read what Nickd learned from Moulin Rouge. Funny stuff, I say. Oh, and remind me to wish happy birthdays to Christy (June 27th), Tina (28th), and Jennifer (today). All three girls turned 19 on each of those respective dates, and all are or were at some point in time or another a very close friend of Liza, from whom my mom acquired her second dog, Kirby, renamed Rascal, and very appropriately so. This has nothing to do with much of anything. Friday, June 29, 2001, 2:20pm Aha! My day has come! I can finally relate the media's evil intentions of always hurting someone because it makes good news (the Democratic Party's way!) to the great game of baseball, and more specifically to the greatest team in baseball, the Atlanta Braves. Last week, the Braves traded John Rocker to the Cleveland Indians, to which the Braves' Chipper Jones responded by telling reporters that, when Rocker had pitched in the last few years, "we held our breath in the ninth inning". To this Rocker responded by calling Chipper "white trash" in a radio interview, and admitted that he had never considered Chipper to be a friend. He also took a shot at the Braves in general, for many other players had spoken negatively about Rocker after the trade. Yesterday, Chipper and Rocker apologized and settled their dispute, and Chipper went so far as to put the blame where I believe it belongs. First of all, I see nothing wrong with criticizing anyone. As long as the criticism is truthful, the criticized person(s) should simply suck it up, be proud or humiliated, and move on. However, when the media does it does and will probably always do and emphasizes the worst comments of all, I can understand how the criticized may get a little upset. Chipper had a little bit to say about his negative comments concerning Rocker: That was a 10-second blurb out of a 10-minute interview. But they don't show all the good stuff about John Rocker because that doesn't make news. They only show the bad things...The media did a good job of getting John and I at each other. There should have been a lot more 'no comment's coming out of this clubhouse." You know, there is a way to make news like that go away, or at least take a back seat to things that matter just a little bit more than Eminem's next verbal target. It's really easy. Stop watching it! Stop caring about it! Do you know what keeps this country alive (but just barely)? People paying attention to real issues. Do you know why this country is going down the socialist highway without showing signs of slowing? Because the people that stand against it are too few. And why is that? Because most of our opinionated population have their noses glued to televisions or entertainment magazines. As long as our government keeps those moronic soap operas and mildly humorous sitcoms coming, America will be happy no matter what laws are thrown out. The only people that care that the government is working on providing a strict book of rules that will cover every aspect of living that everyone will have to follow all the time are the people that are screaming for help, and no one is listening. If you haven't read George Orwell's 1984 or Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, go pick one or both up read about what happens when you give in to government appeasements and let them take control. Friday, June 29, 2001, 1:40pm I feel like speaking a bit more on the New York State cell phone issue. If you recall, handheld cell phones have recently been banned in New York State. The popular reasoning behind it: Drivers should keep both eyes on the road and both hands on the wheel. These reasons are good, I suppose, but checking mirrors automatically prevents one from keeping both eyes on the road, and driving a manual transmission automatically prevents one from keeping both hands on the wheel. Not to mention other more common and less productive distractions, such as CD players, cassette players, applying makeup, or even trying to read a map (or worse, a book or magazine - don't laugh, I've seen drivers try this). I bring this up to share my opinion on the issue. Yes, I agree that drivers should stay focused on driving while behind the wheel and ignore other potential distractions in the vehicle. That does not mean that our government should be restricting our rights behind the wheel. I understand that some drivers are not coordinated enough to talk and drive at the same time. I also understand that most of those drivers are very much aware of that fact. I understand that many cell phone owners have the buttons on their phones memorized, and therefore it is little to no effort at all to dial a number and make a call, and zero effort to press one button to receive an incoming call. But this law destroys all of that. If you are in New York, you no longer have the right to answer your own phone while driving down your own street. Your wife could be in labor, your daughter could be getting married, or your son may be trying to keep you away from home to keep you away from that surprise party that the family is throwing for you, but you can't know about it if you're driving. Basically, this law is catered to remove rights from all New Yorkers despite the fact that the biggest problem with cell phones is probably in New York City. If you want to make it a local law, that's fine. I can actually understand banning driving with handheld cell phones in New York City. I still don't agree with it, but it makes a helluva lot more sense than banning it throughout the state. What about the millions of people living in the backcountry of New York where there is almost zero traffic a lot of the time? So perhaps the law makes driving "safer" for millions of New Yorkers. Just like seatbelt laws make driving "safer" for millions of other Americans. But tell me, is it really okay that your government has more rights in your vehicle than you do? Thursday, June 28, 2001, 1:45pm mp3otd: Ewan McGregor & Jacek Koman - El Tango De Roxanne.mp3 Last night I had one of the strangest dreams that I can ever remember having. Perhaps it has something to do with my summer frame of mind and all the video games that I have played recently, because the plot of this dream felt much like a video game. I can only remember bits and pieces, but I can remember how it all fit together. It's too bad I can't remember any of the names. I was flying an aircraft of some sort. It seemed to me to represent more of a board making the buzzing sound of a small aircraft's propeller while I controlled it with the same stick one might see in a small aircraft or helicopter. Although I do not recall seeing anyone on this small aircraft-like thing that I was flying, I distinctly remember talking to someone, particularly when he decided to fly the thing himself. Oh, did I mention we were flying over water? Because that's exactly where he put the thing - in the water. I could see our landing area miles ahead, but he wanted to dive into the shark-infested waters of what I can only guess to have been an ocean. I say shark-infested because, moments later, a shark began its first of several attempts to bite my legs off. I recall trying to get my aircraft-like thing to take off several times, but the engine was apparently not meeting well with the water. The best way that I can explain my evasive maneuvers is that I merely rode the beast's nose until it landed me on some form of broken gate floating in the water - and yes, it was standing upright. This character that I told you about - my wingman, my copilot, whoever he was - I do not recall picking him up or letting him go, but he was not with me at the gate. However, it turns out that I must have saved him. The next thing I know, I'm driving my '94 Pontiac Grand Am down some unfamiliar road and stopping at some roadside stand that resembled one of those little shacks that a roller coaster would ride through - open at the front, a solid building behind, and red. I had parked my car in the street, apparently. I do not recall having passengers or who they were, but I know that I had some, because they laughed at me when I couldn't unlock my doors because the cement of the street had encapsulated it. Could you imagine your car up to it's doorlocks in cement? That was the situation with my car - the key could just reach the doorlock on either side of the car, but I could not get it to turn. I think now, "what was the point", because turning the lock really makes no sense if the car is encapsulated by a highway. So I walked back into the roadside roller-coaster shack and asked for some tool or another that would not have made any sense, and I also introduced the man that I had apparently saved - the man that I still had not seen and would not see - and I received a lovely standing ovation from a crowded cafeteria that certainly could not have fit into the same building that I saw from the street. Anyway, as the counterman was searching for whatever it may have been that I asked from him, I noticed a mushroom cloud in the distance. Not good, right? It was immediately followed by a shockwave, naturally. As I could see the wave radiating outward from the distant mushroom cloud, I screamed something to the effect of "get down" and I hit the deck, while everyone else figured that it was not necessary. The next thing I know, the building is shattered, but I am protected by the sewer or underground something that I apparently fell into. Next I see a figure that resembled no one I had ever seen before, but had markings on his face similar to, but in a much different arrangement than, Sam Neill's from Event Horizon. He told me to follow, I think, but I apparently did something wrong, and everything stopped for a moment. Suddenly I found myself back in the roller-coaster shack again. This time I saw a very animated green missile-shaped something in the distance hitthe ground, followed by that same mushroom cloud and shockwave. Again, I fell into the, um, place. As the hideous Sam Neill-looking fellow gestured at me, something zoomed in on my vision, and it was suddenly obvious that whatever it was that I was looking at was the reason why I was doing it all over again. This is the only resemblance that any of this has with any video games. Something fairly insignificant happened after that, but it was insignificant. And yes, the redundancy was necessary. It was insignificant because I was awakened a few moments later and whatever it was disappeared. I do remember sitting in my bed and tracing the chain of events for several minutes, but I could not remember much of how it ended. Eventually I went back to sleep for several hours to endure another dream that was also fairly weird, but not so much as the one that I have just described to you. In fact, now that I have finished writing about this one, I can not even remember the second one. And that concludes today's journey into the subconscious of a potentially mad man. Wednesday, June 27, 2001, 1:58am mp3otd: Ewan McGregor & Nicole Kidman - Come What May.mp3 Are you familiar with Ewan McGregor? (Nevermind that hideous years-old picture.) You know, Obi-Wan Kenobi from The Phantom Menace (Star Wars: Episode I, for the uninformed)? He also played the character of Christian in the 2001 movie, Moulin Rouge, co-starring Nicole Kidman. I vaguely mentioned that I thought highly of this movie about three days ago, but I refrained from explaining anything about it. Well let me do that for a moment. (When I rate movies, I look at four things: the story, the central character(s), and the audial and visual effects, and how well the movie fits its genre, or if it fits no genre, how well it accomplished whatever it intends to accomplish.) As a musical, the movie accomplished everything it intended to accomplish and more, I think. The soundtrack is absolutely outstanding, and I am [insert expletive here] amazed at Ewan McGregor's singing abilities. I mean, I know that most in the business have superior singing abilities when compared to the rest of the world, but ... geez, I would buy Ewan McGregor's album if he ever released one. So Moulin Rouge scores highly as a musical. Check one of four. Without spoiling the story, I can only tell you that I thought the story was excellent. Musicals are often corny and somewhat humorous because, well, they're fitting in all these songs when the typical drama or comedy would just throw in some brilliant lines or jokes. Besides, the plot of this movie was wonderful. I actually wanted to see it through to the end to find what happened to our characters... Check two of four. Ah, the characters. Ewan McGregor (Christian) and Nicole Kidman (Satine) deserve nominations for Acadamey Awards for their performances. In fact, Moulin Rouge deserves nominations in several categories, including Best Picture, Best Actor/Actress in Leading/Supporting Roles (I can't tell who was which), Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Sound, Best Visual Effects... Okay, so I could keep naming awards. We won't know the nominations until March 2002. (Oh, and the supporting cast was awesome as well. John Leguizamo played an awesome role.) Check three of four. And so it comes down to those audial and visual effects... Absolutely incredible. Even if this movie sucked in all the other areas, which it didn't, the visual effects were superb. I can understand that the music may have been less than incredible if one was not into the movie, but I walked into the theatre expecting to hate the movie, and I came out loving every second, wanting to see it again, wanting to buy the soundtrack, and looking forward to buying the DVD in several months. Yes, it's that good. And the visual effects are absolutely out of this world. Check four of four. In short, Moulin Rouge has overtaken both Finding Forrester and Save The Last Dance as my favorite movie of 2001. I haven't seen Tomb Raider, The Mummy Returns, or any of a number of other great titles out and about this year, and there's a box office onslaught headed our way this summer and fall, starting with Jurassic Park III on July 18 (my nineteenth birthday - HINT HINT). Not bad for a musical. The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in return. Tuesday, June 26, 2001, 3:22pm Ah, Neal Boortz, my favorite guy to fight, especially considering that he always ignores me completely, so I am free to belittle his arguments or opinions at will and never hear so much as a peep in return. Then again, I rarely get the chance to disagree with him, so I should take advantage of this before it goes away. I would imagine that you have heard that New York State has banned the use of handheld cell phones while driving on public roads. I would imagine that many people are for this, and many others are against this. I am here to tell you why I am against it, and why Neal Boortz is a hypocrite for being against it. I would not go that extra mile to call him a hypocrite had he not denied being one in the first place. He knows he's being a hypocrite, and that's his decision. The least he could do is say it instead of using faulty reasoning to deny it. Let's begin. All libertarians share one defining belief: "that everyone should be free to do as they choose, so long as they don't infringe upon the equal freedom of others." Neal Boortz has just broken that. He has chosen to remove the freedom to use a handheld cell phone while driving on public roads. This is equally as bad as the law that requires one to wear a seatbelt. Perhaps it is generally better to wear a seatbelt, but there is no way that it can be proven that the seatbelt always saves lives. In fact, a friend of my sister's once survived an accident when he was tossed from his vehicle because he wasn't wearing a seatbelt - right before it rolled down a fifty-foot ravine. In short, this law to ban the use of cell phones while driving is a restriction of rights. No, we never had the "right" to talk on phone while in a car, but citizens of New York now certainly have to "wrong" to do it. Cell phones are not the danger in vehicles. If cell phones are such a dangerous distraction, then it's time to get rid of CD players and audio-cassette players, televisions in recreational vehicles, or even cup holders - and especially passengers, for passengers provide the greatest distraction of all. Oh, but you're right, you can choose not to allow that passenger in your car if you feel that the distraction puts you in danger - just as you can choose not to allow cell phone use in your car if you feel that the distraction puts you in danger. What his cell phone law does is remove the freedom to choose something so simple as to use a cell phone. It inhibits liberty, which is everything that libertarians stand against. Neal, you have just violated the only common thread that holds all libertarians together. Oh, I'm not done. I'm going to quote Neal now. He says: "To say that a libertarian should oppose the use of handheld cell phones on principal is to say that he should oppose traffic signals and stop signs." Nonsense, Neal! Without traffic signals and stop signs there roads would be impossible to drive and you know it! With cell phones in our hands while we drive, we simply have a minor distraction that is rarely the cause of tragic accidents. It certainly isn't so great a problem that it needs a law. Neal also argues that you only have one job to do while in a car: to keep the car under control and not hit anything. "You're not there to make a hair appointment or check your voice mail", he says. That's the driver's decision, Neal! You can not tell me that I do not have the right to communicate with the outside world from my vehicle. That is not a decision that you have the right to make. Okay, one last bit on Neal: "Do I use a hand-held while driving? No, I don't. Too many close calls – including running up on the curb one time." Well, Neal, that's a wonderful reason why you shouldn't use a handheld cell phone, but have you ever stopped to think that perhaps some people actually know how to talk on the phone and concentrate on the phone at the same time? There are some drivers that are constantly alert to everything around their vehicles at all times while driving, despite any distractions in or around their vehicles. I listen to loud music, occasionally talk on the phone (when necessary), and I engage in heated conversations while driving. However, I do not look down to dial numbers while driving unless I am alone on the road on a long straight or unless I am stopped at a stop sign or traffic light. I always answer the phone when it rings, for that only requires pressing "Send", holding the phone to my ear, and pressing "End" to end the call. There is nothing dangerously distracting about that. Oh, and about Neal's comments on stop signs and traffic signals, I believe that at least half of the stop signs in my area (middle Georgia) should instead be yield signs. Why? In many cases, it is pointless to waste the gas and time to come to a complete stop. Sometimes you can see half a mile in either direction and there may be no traffic, but you must still wait on the traffic light or stop at the stop sign. However, if it were a yield sign instead, you could just roll through it, given that there is no traffic present. Oh, and Neal, don't you love those traffic lights that keep you stopped at an intersection for seventeen minutes in the middle of the night with zero other vehicles on the road for a mile in any direction? Me too. Let's petition for more of those. Tuesday, June 26, 2001, 2:48am I just found out some very interesting information, and I am looking to confirm it. If you read below, you'll find that I listed the PlayStation 2 at $300 and Gran Turismo 3 at $50. Both are accurate. However, I have also read that, if you buy the two bundled together, it should only cost $330. Okay, so $350 and $330 are not greatly different, especially when figuring for about $20 of sales tax, but that's still a good bit of money saved. That is something to think about. Besides, Gran Turismo 3 is the number two reason why I want the PlayStation 2. Get that for me and I'll hold off of Red Faction for a while. No problem! Sunday, June 24, 2001, 6:05pm I have decided that I want a PlayStation 2 ($300) with Red Faction ($50) and Gran Turismo 2 ($20). I will also pick up Gran Turismo 3 ($50) eventually, and I would also like Medal of Honor ($20) and its sequel, Medal of Honor Underground ($40). There is a conflict, though. I can't afford to buy a PlayStation 2 yet. However, I have a birthday coming up, so anyone that would like to donate to the PS2 for Paul's 19th Birthday Foundation, please let me know. Friends and family may feel free to cooperate. A PlayStation 2 is a fairly expensive item, especially with the necessary peripherals, so working together or even talking to me about it would be an excellent course of action. And yes, take this seriously. But just so you know, I hold no expectations. If I did, I would certainly expect not to get a PlayStation 2 for my birthday. However, no one would ever know to get one if I didn't say something to someone, so I figured I would mention it... Saturday, June 23, 2001, 9:11pm I just want everyone to know that the Net Authority is never to be trusted. Understood? No, you don't. Click the link. Then you understand. (Unless you're nickd.org, in which case you certainly understand without my link.) Saturday, June 23, 2001, 9:08pm My sister tried to kick me out of my room, Fidel Castro fainted, and I just saw Moulin Rouge, which (if I may say so) was an incredible movie. This film was perhaps the most spectacular ocular/acoustic production of the summer, if not the year. I don't have time to write much of a review, but if you like overdramatic, artsy, musical, theatrical type performances or movies, I would recommend this one for you. It was a great movie with a great plot, and the sights and sounds were quite stunning. But don't take my word for it... Friday, June 22, 2001, 12:10am In respond to Reb's mini-rant, this is one of my (many) peeves: people that include the "target=_blank" parameter in their links on their sites. I do not wish to be forced me to open a new window! What are you thinking, Reb?! :) Anyone can very easily right-click and choose to open in a new window without a problem. However, if one does not want to open a new window, it's a pain the ass to keep from doing it. Right-click. Copy shortcut. Paste in location bar. Enter. BLAH! I just want to click the link! If you don't want to stay in the window, make that choice, but don't make the choice for all your visitors - they can make it for themselves! </rant> Thursday, June 21, 2001, 5:55pm What a great game! Pitchers' duels are great - especially when I have plans and need to be home fairly quickly after the game. Pitchers' duels are generally quick games because there is little action - just hitter after hitter victimized by the pitchers. Tony and I had other obligations and needed to be home by 6:00, and Matt wanted to be home because he was working as soon as he got back until 10:00 ... more hours, more money! Zach didn't care, so he went with the flow. Oh, and second row seats in the power alley in left field are awesome! We had three near home runs that fell just short of our grasp. B.J. Surhoff fielded them nicely. Thanks for the tickets Andy! We all agreed that we owe you a hug and a firm handshake for such awesome seats at a baseball game (not to mention the price). Um... thanks again! So we left at the end of the eighth inning to get ahead of the traffic, and the Braves were leading 2-1. Top of the ninth, John Rocker gives up a two-run homer to Derrick Lee. The Braves batters couldn't compete, and so we lost. I didn't have any idea until I was two hours south of Atlanta when I called my mom to assure her that I had safely journeyed to and from Atlanta without a problem. Traffic was abnormally smooth for the hours - even with a bit of congestion on the way back, we were only in the car for about three hours total for 160 miles of driving. So I feel dirty, and Matt, Tony, Zach, and I are substantially sunned. I need shower, and I need to get on with my reason for coming home from Atlanta so early. I like being vague. (On that note, those of you that are close to me need to stop me from doing that some times. Some times I am sarcasticly vague to the point of just being obnoxious, and I don't want to be an obnoxious friend. So let me know when I'm doing it so I'll cut back - please?) Thursday, June 21, 2001, 9:10am Woohoo! Today I go to my first Atlanta Braves game of the 2001 season. Since 1991 I have been to about thirty games, and I get a Braves program every time I go (there are five issues per year, I believe, and I don't get the same one twice). The first two lost their covers some years ago due to my being young and careless. The most recent one has been misplaced, lost, or discarded as a result of my sister not caring for my things. (I was reading a few articles, had left it out, she did something to it during one of her cleaning frenzies - Ugh!) But I guess that's okay. I'll just never know how Andres Galarraga really felt about coming back to the Braves after fighting off cancer. Anyway, today I am watching one of the leagues best surprises - John Burkett is pitching for the Braves, so hopefully this means the game will only last about two and a half hours so I can make it home by 6:00 without leaving in the top of the ninth inning! So... miss me while I'm gone. I don't expect to be able to get back to you until late tonight or the early morning hours, so don't expect anything!  Thursday, June 21, 2001, 1:27am I leave for Atlanta in approximately nine hours. The Atlanta Braves are hosting the Florida Marlins at Turner Field tomorrow afternoon at 1:05pm, and guess who will be in the second row of the left-center field seats! Yep, some friends of mine! And me too. Thanks to Andy for the tickets of course - my friends and will be thanking you all day tomorrow! So thanks again, just because there is no such thing as too much thanks. Thanks. Wednesday, June 20, 2001, 6:42pm California Governor Gray Davis is better cut out to be a stand-up comedian than any type of political figure, as the nonsense that he continually spews forth drops my jaw and proceeds to activate my laugh reflex. I mean, the guy just can't figure out who to blame for his problems. Now he's shifting the blame again: Gray Davis is blaming the power companies! Sadly, though, the Federal Regulatory Commission is doing things his way, what he calls "taking a constructive step forward", or what I call "taking a destructive step back". Does anyone else see that price caps are not the way to go? Is Gray Davis absolutely stupid? Is the mega-population of California dropping yet? Wednesday, June 20, 2001, 1:05pm And so I was reading up on sheepless.net, as all nineteen-year-old males certainly should do (I'll actually be nineteen in July), when I came upon this piece of generalization: women are light years ahead of men, where almost all women have a close network of girlfriends with whom they regularly stay in contact. most women have no qualms with embracing each other or admitting their affection for other women. many men, however, would refrain from embracing fellow males or even telling their mates how much they mean to them (unless they were utterly inebriated, when those "i love you, man"s flow freely) for fear of coming across as homosexual. Okay, so perhaps she has a point about some guys, but this does not mean that she must drag down half of the entire human population based on the specimens by which she finds herself surrounded or of which she has seen or heard through the media, friends, or any other form of gossip. Why do I make such an argument? I am certain that most guys wouldn't. Most guys would think for a moment, "You know, she's right", wish that he could be different, and then put forth zero effort to make any change about it. I, on the other hand, simply don't care what other people think. I embrace my best friends, male or female, as best friends should be embraced. I often spill my guts on how much a person means to me (...more often in writing than in conversation...), whether the person be male or female. In fact, there are only four people with whom I can and regularly do have deep conversations. (For those that may be curious, they are Claire, Mike, Anna, and Tony.) I consider myself to be an open book. I do not mind sharing my life or my inner thoughts, but I often refrain for the sake of pleasing someone or another. It is not that I fear disappointment in others, but I aim to keep my friends happy, and when disruption of happiness can be avoided, I will avoid it. I will not compromise my trust, dignity, or decency. In other words, if you really want to know, chances are good that I will tell you, unless I just have a really good reason for not telling you (such as, "you really have no good reason to know this"). And to be honest, I quite like knowing that I can share my life and have others' lives shared with me. I like to know new things, but I don't have to know. It's just comforting to know that I'm worthy of knowing your information. So anyway, back to my discussion of sheepless.net. If you look to the entry from the day before, one may find another generalized rant against the male gender. I kind of like how it starts: "Guys can be the biggest arseholes. It is as if that stray Y chromosome brings with it insensitivity, tactlessness, and no clue as to how to treat women like human beings." One can see how this may upset about three billion of the world's population. However, she goes on to relate the opening comments to a more personal story concerning one of those good-for-nothing male types. We all know that they're out there. (We all know that there are the good-for-nothing female types, too.) Either way, I have not been reading Ev's site for long, but the little that I have read has definitely caught my attention! She's also quite like me, aside from being the opposite gender, in that she is moved by great music, made happy by seeing other people happy, addicted to trivia, and she likes tall men. Er, I mean, I don't like tall men in that way. I mean, you know, I'm a tall man, so to speak, and so, um, she could like me. Or something. It's okay. She lives in Australia. :) Tuesday, June 19, 2001, 3:23pm Coca-Cola stole Bob's work and passed it off as their own. Then Coca-Cola appears to have used a tainted lawyer, collusion with a judge, and eventually corruption of the whole 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. This is one of the best documented examples I have ever seen of justice gone horribly wrong ... and the standout thing is that it's one of the world's largest companies cleary getting away it ... and the courts playing along. The full story is several pages long, but is a very interesting read. Especially for people like, um, Tony! Tuesday, June 19, 2001, 2:37pm I am going to go do something that I have not done in several weeks: play my Nintendo 64. Which game, exactly? Why, The World Is Not Enough, of course! It's the newest James Bond game, and it's nine months old, and I should have finished it by now. Why haven't I? Because college, family, friends, and other responsibilities have a much stronger command of my time than, say, wasting my time on video games. It's a given that video games are a great way to relieve stress, but they are also a great way to kick back, relax, and have a little fun! And that's what I feel like doing. Ugh. I'm going to have to learn the levels all over again. And I seem to update at 37 minutes past the hour a lot more than any other time. I wonder why that is. It is Mike's lucky number, but that has nothing to do with it. Just another meaningless coincidence, I think. Tuesday, June 19, 2001, 12:43pm mp3otd: Dan Wentz - Red Faction - Two Ton Heavy Thing.mp3 "All good things come to an end." So they say. I have been reading it on the news for almost a day now, and I figure that I should relate myself to it in someway or another. What the hell am I talking about? Cal Ripken Jr, my favorite baseball player of all time, will retire at the end of the 2001 baseball season. I suppose I saw it coming, especially when looking at his numbers a couple weeks ago, but I wish he could keep playing and set a few more records, or put his name a little higher in those lists in the record books. He's had a great career, though, and so I should not expect or want more from him than he does from himself. Ripken is not my favorite player for any single reason; he has done so many great things as a baseball player that I wish I could do. Although a third baseman when he made his debut with the Orioles in 1981, the team switched him to shortstop in the middle of the 1982 season, the season during which his amazing streak of playing in 2632 games (over 16 consecutive seasons) began. Cal started by winning the Rookie of the Year Award in 1982, followed by the Most Valuable Player Award in 1983. Throughout his career, Cal Ripken has been amazingly consistent. Due to the streak, obviously, he played in nearly every inning of every game for almost sixteen years. From 1982-1991, Ripken hit at least 20 home runs with at least 80 runs batted in. 1991 was perhaps his best season, batting .323 with 34 home runs to win his second MVP award. His offense is not the part of his game that surprises me. Ripken is known for being consistent with his bat for the last twenty years. It has occurred to me, however, that perhaps he is not known for his defensive abilities. Perhaps he is not the best fielding shortstop or third baseman of all time, but he gets the job done, and he won two Gold Glove awards in 1991 and 1992. He also played in over 8000 consecutive innings from early 1982 to mid 1987 - that's five consecutive years when he did not miss a single inning of play. Also, in either 1990, 1991, or a combination of both, Ripken fielded the ball cleanly 591 consecutive times without making an error, a record. And for anyone that would criticize Ripken because you never see him diving, perhaps he is a bit slower at age forty than he was at thirty-two. I remember seeing some incredible diving stops back in the early nineties and late eighties - he just doesn't have the body to get really rough with the turf anymore - and that's why he is retiring. He knows that he can't keep up with the Orioles' youth movement, and he does not wish to slow the progress of the organization. Okay, I know he is not the greatest player of all time. His batting average isn't incredible, his production or power numbers never went through the roof, he was never a basestealer, and he didn't win Gold Gloves ten years straight. But he played consistently, and that's one bat that I would love to have in my lineup for twenty years, knowing that I would be getting a .280 batting average with about twenty home runs and ninety runs batted in. Hey may not have the greatest numbers, but his consistency has added up, and 3100+ hits, 400+ homers, and 1600+ RBI will certainly land him in the hall of fame. In fact, he could do without the home runs and runs batted in - the two thousand six hundred thirty-two games that he played consecutively from May 30, 1982, to September 28, 1998, would certainly get him into the Hall of Fame, even if he never hit a homer (for obviously he would have to be doing many things right for a team to allow him to start in their lineup for that many years). Tuesday, June 19, 2001, 12:46am The great men who gave us the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution must have known that it would be difficult for a democratic society to survive. They crafted a complex and formidable system designed for one purpose: to protect and administer the rule of law. Aware of the limits of their own vision and foresight, they gave the system the ability to modify itself. This was both their most important and most dangerous decision. It would allow the system to grow stronger, to respond to unknown dangers, and to correct flaws in its own design. Yet it would also be a weakness, for the system could be warped into a tool for the greedy. There is a serious difference between the ideal rule of law (expressed in a few simple principles) and the practical administration of those principles (requiring many complex rules). In a society ruled by law, what better way to gain advantage than by changing the rules for one's own benefit? Currently, many of us are ignoring a weakness in our Constitution that has been abused to create laws with self-serving ends. Many of us, acting as reasonable citizens, simply disobey the laws we find objectionable. Many assume that, because these laws are unfair, they will somehow change - if we ignore the problem, it will go away. What people may not realize is that abuses that go unchecked do not go away; they multiply and become worse. A small chink in the armor of the Constitution has spawned a multitude of tyrannical legislation. We have seen intellectual property exchanged for value, and this value aggregated into commercial power, and the commercial power leveraged into political power. History teaches that imbalances in our society (unless they somehow correct themselves) grow until a point is reached beyond which people can no longer ignore them. At some point, draft-dodging becomes draftcard-burning, and that evolves into organized demonstration. At some point, conversations become meetings, then rallies, then marches (and sometimes riots). When will we reach this point? Will we ever? It's easy to cast a skeptical eye toward evidence of cultural and civic apathy, toward the commercial propaganda that is the media, toward the morass of public education, toward the frightening amount of wealth controlled by business interests instead of personal interests. But these factors are really no greater barriers than the poverty and ignorance and aristocracy against which our ancestors struggled. They overcame because they believed and fought hard for their beliefs. We should be no different. Tuesday, June 19, 2001, 12:45am From nickd.org: How can people hate things? Because they attempt to found their logical conclusions on a train of thought based purely on emotions. It's like building the Sears Tower on a mountain made out of Jello. I hope to have these very people serve my pizza and clean the basement of my office building in ten years. Monday, June 18, 2001, 11:55pm I don't care who you are or why, but if you use AOL Instant Messenger, you will love this little program: DeadAIM! "What is DeadAIM?" you ask. Quite simply, the world's greatest gift to AIM users. To be perfectly blunt, it gets rid of all the ads that clutter the buddy list window. No screenshots are necessary; as long as you use a reasonably recent version of AIM, it will work for you. Just make sure that you read the "DeadAIM.txt" file for proper instructions on how to install it - it's very simple. If you are computer illiterate, or if the instructions are not crystal clear, have someone do it for you and pay attention - it is a simple operation that everyone should be able to do these days. (I mean, really, it's just extracting the contents of a zip file to a certain directory and changing some shortcuts' properties.) Monday, June 18, 2001, 11:15pm I have just returned home - like my real home, not Tony's or Claire's, but my home and my computer - and so I have just checked my email! And now for some email statistics:
It's hard to get good email these days. To be honest, the Nickd mailing list is not junk most of the time. However, when I am absent for a week, I consider it to be junk, for jumping into week-old conversations that have since been closed is hardly a good idea. Speaking of nickd.org, make your own Nickd Doll, which is obviously based on the character responsible for the blueness of nickd dot org dot net dot whatever. And just so you know, OH MY GOD it feels wonderful to be home again. I can't wait to sleep in my own bed. (Oh the things we take for granted!) Monday, June 18, 2001, 1:54pm Well, I made it home safe and sound. I had no time to write yesterday, for reasons somewhat less than obvious until I clarify them. First, Tony and Claire decided to keep us up until 4:00am Saturday night, I mean Sunday morning, for no apparent reason. We watched Event Horizon beginning at about 10:15pm and Meet the Parents beginning at about 12:00am, and when all the movies were over at roughly 2:00am Tony decided, as he always does because sleep seems to be much less important to him than to me, that we would converse for about two hours. I was tired, and I thought I was making it very obvious, but it was not until I lay down and pretended to be asleep that Tony and Claire finally (eventually) shut up and went to sleep. Don't worry, I was not bothered... I just don't understand his obsession with staying up until the middle of the morning night after night. And so I awake Sunday morning at what I would guess to be about 9:30 - not exactly the ideal nap before a long drive back home, but I dealt with it. I packed my four bags, two boxes, fridge, grill, television, boogie boards, and fan. The last five items actually belonged to Mike and Nathan; they left Friday in one vehicle, and not everything fit in Nathan's little Eclipse. I packed my car full of my and their stuff, and Tony and I then walked across the street to the Laundromat to wash sheets, towels, and the like that would be staying at the beach house. No problem, really, except it took almost two hours. This gave Claire plenty of time to pack, clean, etc. though, so no big problem there. After getting the last of everyone's bags packed into one car or another, we set off at about 5:00pm, and when you exclude the forty-five minutes' worth of stops to get food and gas, the 250-mile drive took five hours and fifteen minutes. Tony says that the drive back always takes a little longer than the drive down to the beach for some reason - I think that reason is that he was driving about fifteen miles per hour slower than I did on the drive down. (From 70-80mph to 50-65mph, I think I know where the time difference comes in.) No worries though. Had I actually been driving at 75mph during the first half of the trip back home, my car would likely have run out of gas. I had decided to avoid getting gas until I found an Amoco station; I have an Amoco card, and I did not feel like making either Tony or Claire pay for gas elsewhere. I finally decided that I would stop for gas in Camilla no matter what type of station we found because I had a little less than a gallon left in the tank. As luck would have it, we found an Amoco station. I put 13.8 gallons into a 14-gallon tank, if that says anything. (Let's see ... 32 miles per gallon at highway speed ... .2 gallons ... We had about six more miles before my car would have puttered to a stop!) Anyway, we made it to Tony's at about 11:00, my house at about 11:20, Claire's by about 12:15, and to sleep by about 1:30. Ah... vacation. Well, I'm back, and now I must see about getting some sort of positive (incoming) cash flow. Ick, job. *shudder* But look at the bright side! At least I'll be bringing you more of the high-quality crash.neotope.com webloggering that you have grown to know and to love! If, for some bizarre reason, you wish to read or remind yourself of the events which took place while I was at Mexico Beach, the log has been archived. I would suggest starting with the previous Sunday, the day we left, and scrolling upwards to read chronologically, but you may start with the end of the trip and read backwards if you like. Saturday, June 16, 2001, 2:54pm The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: May 9-12, 2001, North Carolina. The Restaraunt at the End of the Universe: June 11-16, 2001, Florida. Life, The Universe and Everything: June 2001...? I have now completed two of the five parts of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. It took a four-day vacation in North Carolina to read the first, and a seven-day vacation in Florida to read the second, but two of five are finished. I suspect that I will complete the next three rather more quickly. It took me a while to pick up the second because it was easy to read only the first. However, know that I have read the second, I can't just stop and not read the third - I must read the rest! So I suspect that I should be done by my birthday (July 18), at which point I will commence my reading of the novel We, the predecessor to novels like Brave New World and 1984. Eventually, I will finish (begin?) my readings of Ayn Rand. I have read very little thus far - mostly from the Ayn Rand Lexicon, which was simply an enclyclopedia of Objectivism which helped to familiarize myself with the philosophy. Her fiction, so I'm told, delivers in part some of the same messages as her philosophy and other works about totalitarian regimes (Brave New World and 1984?), so I would expect to enjoy them. Either way, they are all on my "to-read" list, and so they will be read. Of course, I must acquire them first... :) Saturday, June 16, 2001, 1:29pm Day six will be an incredibly short day. Looking back to day five (Thursday), I had not gotten to sleep until around 3:00am because someone had the bright idea of watching a movie at 11:30 at night, and, when it ended around 2:00am, we then had to arrange sleeping quarters for everyone. Most people simply fell onto their respective beds. Michael and I had to pull ours out, decorate it properly with sheets and blankets, arrange fans (Michael must have fans blowing lots of air on him), and turn out all the lights. You see, sleeping on the futon in the living room, we have access to all the rooms, so we are responsible for turning off lights, meaning that we are the last to get to sleep, and probably the first to awake, because we are in the middle of the living room. And, of course, as soon as the smell of coffee filled the air at 9:00am, everyone flocked into the room, and the audible forces of Nathan's voice and the olfactory sensation of the coffee in the air combined with the lack of sleep due to the fans blowing into my face for six hours to provide little more than five hours of sleep, if that. Fast forward to the evening! Tony and Claire are laughing and joking around, I am very tired. I had tried to take a nap twice earlier in the day - the first was interrupted by everyone suddenly wanting to go to the beach; the second was interrupted by wanting to rent a movie - either way, I had gotten no sleep. So by the evening, I was extremely tired. Just before trying to take the nap just before renting the movie, Claire and I had caught the sunset on the beach (just barely - I looked out and it was about two minutes away and told her to get her sandals!) So we did, we returned, I lay down, they got me up, we rented a movie, we visited the store, we returned home, we fixed sandwiches, I sat around for about fifteen minutes, and Claire and Tony started up on their aforementioned laughing and joking around. So only a few minutes after 10:00pm, I lay down to take a nap before watching the movie. They did not wake me, though, and so I slept until almost 1:00pm. Yes, I missed an entire AM. Okay, well, perhaps I didn't. The phone rang in all its 2000-decible-ness at sometime in the morning and woke everyone up for about twelve seconds. Had Tony actually gotten to the phone and found out that it was for me, I would have gotten up. As it were, I simply went back to sleep when the ringing stopped. To make a long story end a little faster, it's 1:30 and I haven't had breakfast yet. I'm still on my first cup of coffee, and the sun isn't shining as brightly as it has been the past four days. (So much for that weather forecast, eh? Aside from the first two days, the weather has been awesome.) And so my day begins... Friday, June 15, 2001, 11:33am Day five is such a sad day - Mike, Nathan, and Jennifer have just departed, leaving us without a Playstation, Playstation 2, CD player (aside from laptops), and pretty much anything that could provide false entertainment (which is what this country lives on, right?). In fact, the lethal combination of Tony, Claire, and me could prove to be, um, well I don't know what it could prove to be, but it's definitely something! We do have a VCR with a couple movies; two laptops; several CDs containing mp3s, X-Files episodes, various Saturday Night Live clips, and various music; and of course we still have our whiffle ball and bat, volleyball, and various other beach toys. Oh, and Nathan left his boogie board ... again. And just so you know, the nearly exacly twenty-four hour periods between each entry here is coincidence - I am not pushing aside my daily activities to schedule these little moments of recollection. No, I simply type to this thing in the mornings, when I awake fully enough to consciously give it a solid effort, and again each evening, before I tire so much so that I would be unable to consciously give it a solid effort. "Green..." "Mile!" "Giant!" "Er... I mean pink." "Oh...um... Panther!" "Yeah." Thursday, June 14, 2001, 11:29pm So day four ends, and I enjoyed nearly every second of it. I can say the worst second of it was about the time Claire and I were quite into a good nap, and Tony decided to fire a few snapper/popper thingies into the wall, scaring Claire, and generally just waking us up. I was not pleased at the moment, but I got over it. I enjoyed dinner, as did everyone else, I think, and afterward we went out to the beach to play a little whiffle ball, volleyball, frisbee, and just generally have a good time. After returning to the beachhouse, several members of our party took soothing showers, and Nathan and I settled down to play a little Gran Turismo 2. Do you know what our most favorite activity while playing Gran Turismo 2 is? We like to select high-power rally cars, pick a good rally track with (a) long straightaway(s) followed by a steep incline providing high-speed jumps and the like. Nathan and I were so enthralled with this that it took nearly two hours of our time, and it became apparent after that while that it was bothering the girls, and so... movie time! We watch Gladiator, which, in my opinion, was the best movie of 2000. The movie is starting - I go now. Happy Birthday Dad! Thursday, June 14, 2001, 11:25am By the way, the sun is now out in all of its glory. The skies are blue with very few (if any) hints of cloud cover, the waves are tiny, but if its any consolation, I'm not going out there! You see, I don't come to the beach to get on the beach or in the water. I come to the beach to get away from the ordinary responsibilities of every day life. This is a vacation. If you read the definition of vacation, you will find that it is simply a word for a "period of time devoted to pleasure, rest, or relaxation". Where in that definition do you see anything about walking on a beach or in ocean/gulf water? Okay then, that's what I thought. I am relaxing, resting, and enjoying myself, so the fact that I choose not to go out onto the beach today is none of your concern. It's funny, actually, how I sit here in this same chair every morning sometime shortly after I awake to type, um, something. It seems to make no sense that I sit here and type while others are playing Playstation, drinking coffee, reading the American Heritage Book of English Usage just to make sure one knows the language correctly, staring blankly at the television (not on, by the way), and also staring blankly at the pile of unwashed dishes waiting on the next person to enter the kitchen. I mean, it just doesn't make sense. So I will fire up the Playstation 2 with a CD or movie, or I will grab my book and begin reading. I am a few pages short of finishing the second of five installations in the trilogy. (I love to emphasize that the trilogy has five parts.) So day four begins, and plans have us eating at Toucan's tonight. I don't really care to eat at Toucan's, because this will leave me with little cash, and after Nathan, Jennifer, and Mike leave, Tony, Claire, and I are on our own buying and preparing food and such. That should not be a problem, but it could prove to be if I have no money to spend on foodstuffs. Oh, and if you're wondering why I'm offering nothing more than straight facts based on recent experience and none of my random opinionative ... things ... it's because I, being on vacation, have separated myself from the outside world for the most part, and so I have no new information or material on/with which to go. Aside from that, I told you I would be gone for a week. You should be absolutely thrilled beyond any reasonable level of excitement that I have found any way to contact you at all. Oh, and Tony's mom called us to let us know that Tim McVeigh had been "whacked" (as Tony puts it). There were various reactions and applauses and indifferences, but most were merely confused looks in Tony's general direction, as we all knew that the morning had been approaching, and local newspaper headlines all had some form of the headline "McVEIGH DEAD" in large black letters, clear for anyone to see. In other words, we knew he was dead. And if you must know, I was one of the indifferent ones. And above anything else, I am sick and tired of every damn news article regarding the bombing emphasizing the fact that 19 children died. Look newsboys: Unless all nineteen children were your children, then there is no way in Heaven or Hell that they are more important or as important as the other one hundred forty (140!) people that died. "But little Jonny could have been the next Einstein!" Yes, and he could have been the next Hitler too! That's "What-If History" and means absolutely nothing when regarding real life. If you want to know what I mean by that, I only mean that the past is done and can not be changed, and remembering nineteen children more than the other one hundred forty people that died is just wrong. I would imagine that the families of the other one hundred forty victims might agree. So there. A little substance. Wednesday, June 13, 2001, 12:03pm So Tony is thumbing through a girlie magazine (Marie Claire, I think), Mike is sipping on coffee, Claire is making conversation about teeth molds, and Nathan is asking me what we should do, and Jennifer is just walking around sipping on juice avoiding all the strangeness in the room. (So you know, I'm sitting in the middle of the room updating my web page, which looks to them as simply typing on my laptop. I woke up so late this morning that I believe I missed breakfast. Nathan had planned to prepare omelets for us this morning, but because it is already 11:40am and everyone seems to have satisfied his respective hunger, I would guess that I just missed it. Either way, the coffee is waking me up. And by the way, Nathan has to pee. And it seems that Tony could own a whorehouse (according to Mike), Mike's hair is looking rather devilish, and Claire believes that Tony is not a Taurus as his birth date would lead one to believe, but an Aries. I recently discovered that I am not a Cancer as my birth date would lead one to believe, but a Leo. It just makes more sense. And so Nathan is playing with the camera and making a story out of, um, us. Maybe it will finish and look cool - probably not. Either way, I'm sure he'll have loads of fun playing with it later. They're heading out to the beach to play some volleyball, something about which I am not particularly enthused at the moment. You see, they begged that I join them yesterday, and I told them that I would burn, and I did, so I did, and now I do not want any more sun for at least a day. So I am taking a day off. I'll play volleyball tomorrow. See you around! Wednesday, June 13, 2001, 12:57am Nathan's little quote thingy:
Ford: "Where does it say teleport?" Arthur: "Well, just over here in fact. Just under the word emergency, above the word system, and beside the sign saying out of order." And so the movie is almost over. When it ends, I think sleep would be a healthy option for most of us, if in fact there is enough room for all of us to sleep. It figures that we would cram six people into a beachhouse that comfortably sleeps only four. I guess that's better than cramming in seven as we did back in March... Tuesday, June 12, 2001, 12:45pm Cool story of the day #1: Feeding sea gulls with Lays potato chips - proof undeniable that the KC Masterpiece flavor is the only reason why Lays potato chips still exist. Without KC Masterpiece, Frito-Lay would likely give in to Ruffles in the chip war and drop the "Lay" from its name to become plain ol' Frito. Ruffles and its kingly flavors, such as "Cheddar and Sour Cream" and "Ranch", is easily the nation's best crisp producer. So anyway, the gulls. Our neighbors upwind was cleverly enjoying his pukka (look it up, really) Lays potato chips of the KC Masterpiece variety, when a swarm of gulls began to gather overhead. In one of the most amazing spectacles of human behavior I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing, our kind upwind neighbor galantly donated one of his kingly crisps to the coastal wind, and in seven graceful swoops, several gulls managed to attack the chip and each of the subsequent pieces of chip formed after the initial crunch of the inadequately small beak of the first gull before any of it hit the ground. This great act of generosity continued for several minutes as our kind neighbor continued to provide this western delicacy, adding the witty comment, "Chips are for the birds!" I was truly blessed when one of the birds dropped a small bit of one of the wonderful crisps, and I daintily floated it above ... to see it gently crushed by the beak of one of the elegantly savage creatures. Cool story of the day #2: Moments after the supply of crisps had been depleted, a man, who happens to be our neighbor here, was caught in the undertow and pitched a nice tantrum in the waves. Rather than reach for his highly buoyant boogie board floating casually nearby, he simply relied on his ability to pitch fits to save himself. His first attempted rescuer was caught in the same undertow, at which point a member of my party (Nathan, to be exact) decided that it would perhaps not be best for him to rescue the man. Moments later another kind rescuer brought the man back to standing depths, and he is currently sitting on his porch at the beachhouse next door. (They are actually closer to the beach than we are, and we are only 100 feet away.) Did I mention that we are only one hundred feet from the beach? Tuesday, June 12, 2001, 10:53am Whoa! Breakthrough! Surprise! What the crap?! For about thirty minutes beginning when the sun rose, going away and coming back again, we have had about thirty minutes of sunlight this morning. The rains have stopped, the clouds have, well, sort of moved out of the way for a bit, and they're trying to let us have a sunny day at the beach! Oh, but what does that matter? I'm not here for the beach. I'm here for the people and to get away from the ordinary, everyday responsibilities of life at nineteen. Inside, outside, rain, shine ... Just being here is serving the purpose of my vacation. (However, I think everyone else here is literally craving the sun, you know, for tanning and beach walking and what not. My question: Rain and beach water are the same kind of wet, so how is it stopping you from walking down the beach?) We watched The Crow last night. Excellent movie. I saw it years ago, and it's still awesome. I caught so many more details the second time around, not to mention the extended scenes, deleted scenes, different effects for the same scenes, and commentary. Just so you know, some of those scenes were cut, deleted, or changed for very good reasons. Some of the extra blood and violence would have hurt the movie's atmosphere. Either way, it was great. It's too bad that Brandon Lee was killed in that movie. :( So here I am waiting for those awesome cinnamon buns again. You just don't understand how awesome those things are. They are literally soaked in frosting - that really really awesome cinnamon bun frosting of which I can't enough. And so they're ready, and so I must depart. Monday, June 11, 2001, 8:29pm Did I say something about rain earlier? Well it's raining again. It's near hurricane weather, although Tony assures us that this is not actually hurricane weather. I assure him that it could be, because the weakest of hurricanes can be mistaken for ordinary thunderstorms... But anyway, the forecast:
So Nathan's grilling hot dogs, Tony's listening to Rush Limbaugh, Jennifer is preparing dishes for dinner, and I'm updating my web site. Oh, and we're listening to my Metallica CD. Oh, and as I am typing this just now, Jennifer has provided us with a quote for the day: "You can't pick me up by my boobs!" Monday, June 11, 2001, 11:14am Day one was simple enough. After stopping for breakfast in Perry, and we hit the road at about 10:40am. Taking a combination of highways and interstates (75, 300, 97, 90, 69, 71, and 386, if I remember correctly, and with all of those numbers, I wouldn't bet on that), we arrived at our destination about 250 miles away after about four hours (not counting two ten-minute stops). Rain was quite miserable at some points of the trip, and water on the road was so thick that, at some points, Nathan and I drove our respective vehicles between the two southbound lanes to avoid the pockets of water on the shoulder. No one else was on the road - so why not? We sorted out our stuff, set up the VCR and PlayStation 2, pulled out laptops and books, and we settled in for a relaxing afternoon while it rained a bit. Nathan unloaded his garbage bag full of chips and snacks (he works for Frito-Lay or something like that), we packed the fridge full of water and sodas, and we eventually grilled some steaks and enjoyed a nice meal. After a couple hours of playing Red Faction (awesome FPS) and Gran Turismo 2 (awesome racer) for an hour or two, we sat back and watched The Whole Nine Yards with Bruce Willis, Matthew Perry, Michael Clarke Duncan, Natasha Henstridge, and Amanda Peet. (I'm sure others were in the movie...) If you haven't seen this movie, go see it - it was great! The serious plot with a good mix of comedy made for an excellent movie, and it wasn't too farfetched to believe, either. Ah, so day one is over. Day two begins at about 10:00am. Note that I am actually ten miles into the Central Time Zone, so it was actually 9:00am over here, but we're operating on Eastern Time. As I finish writing this, Nathan and Jennifer are serving up some delicious cinnamon rolls, so on with my day! Sunday, June 10, 2001, 8:19am mp3otd: NSync - Pop.mp3 And so I depart. For the record, let it be noted that I am leaving my home at 8:20am, so that I may (perhaps) time my journey. I would have logged my gasoline usage as well, but someone just had to use my car last night after I filled it up. Oh well. I'll see you in seven-plus days! And as for what you can do while I'm gone... You see all those links all around the page? You have seven-plus days to familiarize yourself with something linked from somewhere on this page. Seven days. You will be bored; you will have the time! And a suggestion to the anti-political, voting-age, American-citizen persons: read up on some politics. You are old enough to make a difference now, and the state of the world really matters. I would hate to see our country fall apart because the majority of our teen population simply doesn't care. (They don't, and our nation is feeling the pressure - it can't do it by itself!) Might I recommend PoliSci.com ... an online encyclopedia of political science. Very nice. Otherwise, just enjoy yourself. (Oh, and scroll down. I discussed many important things yesterday.) See you June 18. Saturday, June 9, 2001, 11:54pm mp3otd: Depeche Mode - Dream On.mp3 You know, it being about nine hours before I leave for Mexico Beach, Florida, I figured that right now would be an excellent time to begin packing. Let's see. Lots of shirts, socks, and boxers. Some shorts. Some pants. Toiletries. Snacks. Laptop and accessories (including speakers). CD player. Music. And lots more. Stay tuned. Maybe I'll post a list. I plan to update one more time in the morning before I leave this place. Because we leave at promptly 9:00am, I should leave here at promptly many minutes before then, so I should be reporting to you live for one last time (for a week) approximately tomorrow morning. And remember, I will be gone for a week. I will try to honor you with good sites to visit while I am gone. Feel free to ignore them and go about your own business, though. Saturday, June 9, 2001, 11:37pm Confidential to sibling of the female type: I did not spend twenty five U.S. dollars on CD jewel cases just so my CDs could imagine the shells which they once called homes. Also, ask before you take. I'd like them back now. Imagine that I stuffed a few of my CDs (audio CDRs, so you know) in a little traveling case so that I did not have to keep up with twenty four jewel cases while I was gone to the beach. Imagine, then, that this leaves twelve unmarked jewel cases lying on my dresser. Imagine, yes, keep imagining, that my sister then sees them as not in use, and thus clearly open for the taking, and so she takes them. Imagine, finally, that my CDs are tired of the traveling case, which is the equivalent of a really small, cramped school bus (even no seatbelts - some discs just can't seem to hang on to their given seats), and so they are ready to return to their cozy, private homes. Imagine, one last time, that their homes have gone missing. Doubleplusungood. Okay, so big sister is cool for buying me a Dave Matthews tshirt at the concert Wednesday night, but this does not mean that she can simply take my CDs' cases. They only want to go home, and now their homes are missing. How would you feel if Uncle Sam decided to swipe your home and replace it with an interstate bypass? I don't think you would like it very much if your home were suddenly missing, would you? How would you feel if people treated you like you treated CDs? "A scratch here and there won't hurt; besides, they can just be replaced." I'm sure you would love that. Saturday, June 9, 2001, 9:51pm Excuse me while I support the teachers and the children in my own special way. I would love some responses. For your information only, this is my rebuttal to an email that was forwarded to me. I snipped a little of the original message (very little), but for the most part, it is here. The original message is indented with those little greater-than signs, and my comments are throughout, not indented in any way. > Let me see if I've got this right. You want me to go into that room > with all those kids, and fill their every waking moment with a love > for learning. Not only that, I'm to instill a sense of pride in > their ethnicity, behaviorally modify disruptive behavior, and > observe them for signs of abuse, drugs, and T-shirt messages. No. Educate the children. Do your job. Punish them when they misbehave. It is not your job to look for signs of abuse or drugs. If they become a problem in the classroom, then handle it. If not, then ignore it. It's none of your business. As for messages on Tshirts, what a load of crap. Let the kids wear what their parents allow them to wear. It's not your job to undermine the home. > I am to fight the war on drugs and sexually transmitted diseases, > check their backpacks for guns and raise their self-esteem. I'm to > teach them patriotism, good citizenship, sportsmanship and fair > play, how and where to register to vote, how to balance a checkbook > and how to apply for a job, but I am never to ask if they are in > this country illegally. Such is the problem with government education. The war on drugs is a load of crap. It would not be a war if the government wouldn't make a war of it. Familiar with the "thrill of the chase" cliche? It's not so thrilling when it's all available. With the market undermined and availability everywhere, the drug market would decline, and the users would wise up, and the abusers would fade out. The problem is discipline, not drugs. It is not a teacher's job to worry about STDs, drugs, or guns. It is a teacher's job to TEACH. Stop asserting your power over the children and teach them. As for patriotism and fair play, that's a load of crap too. We live in a capitalist nation, not socialist. You have to work hard to earn what you keep. Yes, play fair, but don't expect help from those above you, and don't necessarily offer a helping hand every step of the way. One gets as far as he tries to get, and if he works harder, he'll get further. If you can't help yourself, you have not earned others' help. And as for patriotism, that's just the attitude they want you to have when you support their freedom-robbing agendas. A few more laws here and there to take away freedoms little by little, unnoticeable in the act, but very noticeable as it adds up, and they always blame something else (like drugs, guns, or sex). > I am to check their heads occasionally for lice, maintain a safe > environment, recognize signs of potential antisocial behavior, offer > advice, write letters of recommendation for student employment and > scholarships, encourage respect for the cultural diversity of > others, and oh yeah, teach, always making sure that I give the girls > in my class fifty percent of my attention. Affirmative action and "quotas" or other requirements based on race, gender, religion, whatever ... completely ridiculous. They are simply another form of discrimination that is justifiable, which makes it all that much worse. > I am to be a paragon of virtue and larger than life, such that my > very presence will awe my students into being obedient and > respectful of authority. If teachers (largely as a result of government regulations passed by the states) wouldn't spend so much effort bullying the students into obedience, they would have a greater respect for that authority. When you challenge children, they will come through! When that challenge is in the form of authority instead of knowledge, they will rise up in the form of rebellion instead of academic achievement. > I am to pledge allegiance to supporting family values, a return to > the basics, and to my current administration. I am to incorporate > technology into the learning, but monitor all web sites for > appropriateness while providing a personal one-on-one relationship > with each student. Teach them. Just teach them. See what I'm talking about now? All these rules and regulations passed by your respective governments leave you with no freedom. You are locked into doing it their way. You can not teach the students, you can only supervise them as their learning is guided. They are being taught what the government wants them to know, and nothing that they don't. And you are just the middle man. You're not a teacher, you're just one to keep them under control while the government force-feeds them prescribed information. > I am to decide who might be potentially dangerous and/or liable to > commit crimes in school or who is possibly being abused and I can be > sent to jail for not mentioning these suspicions to those in > authority. In the court of law, your duty is to warn of dangers to soceity, NOT "potential" dangers. More evidence of unconstitutional rules and regulations in our schools. > I am to make sure ALL students pass the state and federally mandated > testing and all classes, whether or not they attend school on a > regular basis or complete any of the work assigned. Attendance is overrated. Some children are brilliant enough to attend class twice per week, run a home (outside of bills), and keep younger siblings, all while keeping their grades up. However, because of attendance regulations, some homes are left in shambles because a child can not progress through the system if he does not attend class regularly. The standardized tests are a joke too. > And you expect me to do all of this without praying? Prayer should not be regulated. People should pray whenever they choose to pray. I agree that no public school should discriminate against one religion or another. Prayer should be allowed in all forms, and it should not be prohibited in any form. Prayer is a large part of many people's lives. To disallow it in school is to remove freedom. And for what? So kids feel better when they don't have to deal with people of different backgrounds? Please. Life can be uncomfortable or offensive sometimes. We need to teach our children that these such things are NOT THE PROBLEM. Saturday, June 9, 2001, 2:45pm I have taken a Mark Steyn article and edited it minimally to represent my writing style and my opinion. Perhaps this would be worthy of a lawsuit in this country. Forgive me for saying so, but that would also be horseshit. :) Not only am I simply agreeing with him without changing his original message, but I have linked to the original as well. If this is a crime, America has some serious problems. This, ironically, is basically what Steyn has to say. I raise a toast to Jenna and Barbara Bush. Or I would, if I could get a drink around here. The teenage Bush daughters are all over the papers for attempting to buy margaritas with fake IDs at a Mexican restaurant in Austin, Texas, a couple Tuesday nights ago. This comes two weeks after Jenna was ordered to undergo alcohol counselling and perform community service for having been found in possession of a bottle of beer. The judge who passed that sentence has now told reporters that it could be revoked and a more serious punishment sought. [More serious punishment? For simply possessing a bottle of beer? Hell, I don't drink alcohol, nor do I ever intend to do so, but I see no problem with someone having an occasional glass of wine at social gatherings, so long as such a person can control the amount consumed. People can drink without getting drunk, and there is absolutely zero good reason to ban the consumption of alcohol altogether when it has been proven to be a healthy addition to one's diet if consumed in small amounts. Much like most other consumables - naturally, consuming too much of anything would not be a healthy thing. Water poisoning is real, you know.] According to Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor of America's Leftie dronefest The Nation, Jenna Bush has "a problem". "Our DWI President" - that's Driving While Intoxicated - "has set a very, very bad example for his impressionable girls," tuts Margery Eagan at The Boston Herald. "The apples have not fallen far from the tree." Just for the record, the apples weren't driving, weren't intoxicated, and they didn't fall near the tree or anywhere else, although they might have been walking a little unsteadily and mangling three-syllable words. But, then, so does their dad. And, if Jenna Bush has "a problem", then what does Euan Blair, passed out in his own vomit in the heart of our nation's capital, have? [Good point. Most teens go out and get drunk once or twice. A significant percentage of under-21 college students get drunk fairly often. This does not make them alcoholics, nor does it mean that alcohol needs to be banned altogether. They need better discipline, not fewer freedoms.] No, the only "problem" that Jenna has is getting a drink. She and her twin, Barbara, are 19, and, in all fifty U.S. states, it's illegal to drink alcohol under the age of 21. Jenna can drive, vote, marry, own a house, join the army, buy firearms, and hop a flight to Vermont with a lesbian, get one of the state's new "civil union" licences and spend the night having as much sex as she wants. She can do everything an adult can except go into a Tex-Mex restaurant and wash down her incendiary enchiladas with a margarita. She could buy a handgun, shoot up the liquor store and steal the beer. But she cannot walk in and purchase any. So Jenna and Barbara are obliged to have "fake ID". To the average Telegraph reader, "fake ID" probably sounds fairly exotic - the sort of thing you see in thrillers, where the guy needs to get out of town in a hurry, meets a furtive-looking fellow down by the waterfront, hands over $10,000 in small bills, and says he'll need it by Thursday. But, in America, fake ID is now as common as, well, real ID. In college towns, getting a false driver's licence is as easy as getting a haircut. If you're a manufacturer of small 2in x 3in cards or you own a photo booth, you'll be able to retire on the swollen fake ID market. And the economic benefits don't stop there. Fake IDs have prompted the development of machines that can detect fake IDs. The shares of one such company, Intelli-Check Inc, went up 20 per cent on the news of Jenna's latest run-in with the law. These developments are relatively recent. Until 1984, some states had a legal drinking age of 21, some of 18, and some had no restrictions at all. But then a lunatic control freak in the Federal Transportation Department decided that she knew better than anyone the age at which people could drink. Although she lacked the constitutional authority to legislate in this area, she had some financial muscle. She informed all 50 states that she would take away the federal government's highway funding from any jurisdiction that refused to raise the drinking age to 21. South Dakota went all the way to the Supreme Court, but the crazed regulatory megalomaniac won and took her legal team out to celebrate, presumably with Diet Coke. The maniac's name is Elizabeth Dole, and two years ago she resurfaced, as a Republican presidential candidate. On the stump, the helmet-haired Mrs. Dole conceded that she wasn't happy with the legal drinking age of 21 that she'd forced on the nation. No, these days Nurse Ratched thinks it should be 24. Twenty-four! It would make more sense the other way round: instead of starting drinking at 24, you should stop drinking when you're 24, sober up and start going to work. Come to think of it, for anyone over 24, the opportunities for social drinking in most parts of America are already pretty minimal. In my corner of New Hampshire, they're virtually non-existent. [24!? What are you trying to do? Turn America's young working class into drunks? When you take something away from someone, they only want it more. Everyone knows that. Everyone knows the thrill of the chase. I can tell you with knowledge of zero studies that alcoholism in America would decrease with the abolition of the so-called drinking age. Laws against driving under the influence (of any mind-altering substance) are not bad laws. Laws against drinking a single beer at age twenty or smoking a joint of marijuana at age sixty-seven in the privacy of one's own home are very bad laws. A single beer won't make any twenty-year-olds I know drunk, and smoking a joint away from society will not hurt anyone. This war on drugs is only a war because our government makes it one. There was no war before they stuck their noses in. Don't you understand? Casual and social drinkers and smokers are not the enemy - the driving forces that provoke them are. I will not say that those forces are created only by our government, because I know that self-control plays a bit as well, but the government is provoking us all. The government picks at us, strategically makes laws here and there, and when someone takes a stand against a law, the government finds a way to have that person silenced. Oh, government is winning. I see the mapping of a new world, a brave new world... or am I thinking of 1984?] Everyone talks glibly about "the failure of Prohibition" - meaning the years from 1920 to 1933, when the 18th Amendment criminalised drinking and got nothing to show for it but organised crime. But, if you look at the broader picture, the Prohibition movement, which began in the early 19th century, has been a stunning success. Americans today drink far less than they did in 1800, when beer was affectionately known as "liquid bread" and every farm made its own hard cider. The products that especially exercised the Prohibitionists - rum, gin, and other "hard liquor" (or "spirits", in the more convivial British designation) - are headed for extinction. In America, adulthood is so deferred that many Americans exist in a state of perpetual childhood, 300-pound toddlers waddling down the street sipping super-sized sodas from plastic bottles with giant nipples. It's at least arguable that it is healthier for Jenna and Barbara to have a couple of glasses of wine than the sugary Pepsis and Mountain Dews that the law all but forces them to drink. Excessive late-teen soda intake may well be the reason why so many chipmunk-cheeked, perky-breasted high-school cheerleaders are bloated, lardbutts by 22. As New Hampshirites know, it doesn't have to be like that. Just across the border in Quebec, they have the same relaxed attitude to alcohol that distinguishes the Catholic countries of Continental Europe. You can drink at 18, the bars are open till 3am, and the danseuses nues weigh under 250lbs. The jurisdictions that have the least alcoholism are those in which drinking is most socially acceptable and integrated into family life. In Quebec and France, they enjoy drinking. In England and Ireland, they enjoy getting drunk. In the United States, they enjoy getting drunk on insane stigmatisatory excess. It's obvious that Jenna Bush is going to be hounded by the press every time she's within a hundred yards of a cocktail olive. So she may as well become a role model, not for victims of alcoholism, but for victims of the Dole terror. According to polls, the majority of 18- to 21-year-olds have broken Dole's Law in the past month. Mrs. Dole's discriminatory, targeted mini-Prohibition deserves to be overturned. Jenna Bush doesn't need alcohol counselling or community service. After the past month, she needs a good stiff drink. And, if she's ever in this part of New Hampshire, I'll happily drive her over the border to Magog, Quebec, and buy her one. Just so you guys know, I like this guy. I don't know him. I've never read any of his other articles to my knowledge. But I like him. And I don't drink alcohol, nor do I have any plans to do so. What does that tell you? Let me say it this way: alcohol doesn't get people drunk, people consuming alcohol gets people drunk. It can very easily be avoided with a little self-discipline. Or we can elect Big Brother now and save them the trouble of picking at us. Saturday, June 9, 2001, 12:31pm We need to start passing laws preventing parents from teaching their children certain things that would give them advantages over other children. That would be unfair! And anything that gives one child an unfair advantage can not be tolerated! We must jail these children's parents for unfairly teaching them what every child should be learning in a government classroom, where we know that all children are receiving an equal and fair education! I want you to know that the previous paragraph was incredibly sarcastic, and anyone that thinks like that is a Socialist Democrat, should be shot, or both. Saturday, June 9, 2001, 12:27pm Most younger Americans are now aware that the form of democracy they enjoy in the United States today is far different from the republican form of government enjoyed by their grandparents earlier this century. On April 17, 1913, the balance of power in the U.S. shifted from the states to the central government with the illegal ratification of the 17th Amendment. With the "voice" of the states effectively stifled, the federal government under Franklin Roosevelt began the systematic destruction of the Constitution of the United States in 1933. Today, the last vestiges of freedom remain tethered to the Bill of Rights by a thin, raveled thread. Libertarians of the future are going to hate this political age with passion when looking back. For better or for worse, these are the times that have potentially ruined our nation, and only time can tell for sure. Our federal government is sticking laws to everything to which laws can be stuck, and we're losing freedoms little by little as a result. I just wanted you to think about that. I have been sidetracked, though, and so I would like you to visit what has me sidetracked: An open challenge to creationists. It's a very interesting article, although the author is very obviously against creationism. Be objective and ignore his bias, and offer your own two cents on the issue. And please, if you are a creationist, I would love to hear your opinion on the matter. You can even see mine and respond to that if you would like. (Fair warning: there are hundreds of comments below this article - it's popular - so it may take a minute to load. It's worth the read.) Saturday, June 9, 2001, 11:50am Happy June 9th everyone! One year ago today I got my first, my last, my only speeding ticket. I was coming home from the beach at St. Simons Island, and I was just outside of Brunswick, Georgia, the mainland town that connects to St. Simons Island. I had pulled in to fill up my car with gasoline so that it could make the rest of the trip to Tennessee, where a rather huge family gathering was scheduled to take place the next afternoon. Pulling out of the gas station, a family car of about the same color as mine, but some form of Toyota or Nissan or something, zoomed by at what I would guess to be 75mph - I was going about 35mph at the time, as I had just pulled out of a gas station. The speed limit at this point was 55mph, and I had not even gotten to that speed yet when a Georgia Highway Patrol pig (most of them are cops or police officers, this one is a pig) - and this is Glynn County, Georgia, so everyone knows - pulled me over, not the speeder, and wrote me a ticket. When I tried to explain that I had just pulled out of the gas station that was still just under a mile away and within viewing distance. He explained to me that he saw me and he clocked me, etc., and I figured that it would be pointless to argue. You see, not only was I 150 miles out of county, but I was a seventeen-year-old kid driving alone, and even if I were right, no judge would ever believe me. I was apologetic, sincere, etc., all those things that had kept me out of a ticket once or twice before, because I did not want the ticket. After receiving the ticket, I gave him a sarcastic little smile and told him that he should probably speed up the road now and catch the real speeder, and I took off. Needless to say, I drove very slowly for the rest of the afternoon. One dumbass cop can bring your day down, you know? Maybe, if I had actually been speeding at the time, I would have been angry at myself or something. But no, it was that one moron cop that can't tell one car from another. Oh, did I mention that he was driving 60mph in the other direction on a divided highway when he claims that he clocked me? People like him should be skinning potatoes. Friday, June 8, 2001, 8:27pm Some of you might find daCrib worth a look. It's a curiously interesting weblog with some interesting topics, links, and other such things that you might find on a weblog, including a few things that you might not. So give it a click or two. He won't mind. And congratulations to Reb. She is to be married to her man on August 24, 2002. Ah, love. Such a wonderful thing. Friday, June 8, 2001, 8:10pm Suppose someone stated that he was "hugely against political correctness". Suppose someone retorted with a statement like this one: "Just out of curiosity, what would you all say if it was scientifically proven that, for example, white people were significantly more intelligent than coloured people?" Then suppose that I responded with a statement like this: "First, that's "if it were...". Second, I would be one of the lucky ones. Third, I'd still be against political correctness, affirmative action, etc. (Affirmative action could have been a good idea, but in practice is horribly wrong.)" And then suppose that the illustrious Nickd came back with a brilliant response, like this one: As a white, middle-class male who attempted to apply to a series of technical institutions based solely on his scholastic merit, I am slightly biased, but let me say that I have always believed that affirmative action does not work - even in theory. Why? To favor one race/gender/sexual orientation over another is simply tipping the scales in the other direction. IT IS ANOTHER FORM OF RACISM. Worse yet is the fact that it's a socially accepted, "proper" form of racism: it's actually justifiable. Affirmative action is as simple as blacks oppressing the whites: just as equal an evil of social collectivism as before; turning the people who "fight The Man" into no higher than klan members. Racism is the notion of ascribing one's qualifications to their genetic ancestry or their genetic makeup by forming opinions based on an anonymous collective of a person's unknown ancestors. If your sister did pot, would you be blamed for it? If your cousin dropped out of high school, would you be blamed for it? If your dad got kicked out of college, would you be blamed for it? To say something is good in theory but not in practice means you are living in a dream world. To say that communism, or affirmative action, or anything else, is good in theory means you are not objectively considering the situation. It shocks me that I would hear both the tripe of "good in theory" and touting the virtues of affirmative action in a single sentence out of a proclaimed objectivist. And then suppose that I replied, as I am replying now, with a statement such as this: "I am a moderate objectivist, Nick. And you understand this. You should understand this. I do not and can not agree with every little thing that Miss Rand says, for that would not be very objective of me, would it? I must consider my own thoughts and perceptions to conceive my own network of, um, conceptions. I am an objectivist, yes, but moderately." I expect another response soon. Thursday, June 7, 2001, 1:22pm As you should know, last night I attended the Dave Matthews concert at Turner Field in Atlanta, Georgia. We arrived two hours before the show began by accident. We left at 2:45pm to be sure that traffic wouldn't hold us back, and traffic was incredibly smooth, despite the horrendous rain. When we neared Atlanta, which is the worst place for this to happen, the rain became so thick that we had to slow to 30mph just to see what was in front of us - NOT THE IDEAL SPEED FOR HIGHWAYS IN ATLANTA, mind you. Despite the time of departure and weather, we somehow made it to the stadium gates by 4:00pm. That means it took us seventy-five minutes to drive about seventy-miles. Apparently, though, we raced ahead of the rain, or it was just a small patch of clarity, because we had a good fifteen minutes of sun and clouds before it began to rain again - all over the stadium. My sister bought me an awesome shirt (okay, so she rocks), and I got very wet. I wasn't worried about it. My sister ate, I drank, and we mingled with people we didn't know for about an hour. Around 5:00 or so, we began to walk in the general direction of our seats. Luckily section 413 is not far from the center field plaza area. We arrived, cleared off the water with about thirty paper-thin napkins, and settled in. Some West African band performed first, starting at precisely 6:00 as advertised. I apologize for not remembering the name of the band. To be perfectly honest, I think it was actually a West African name, and the lead singer was obviously not familiar with America, because she initially said, "Good evening, Detroit!" before realizing that the uncivilized "civilization" she had found herself in was actually Atlanta. Still. I liked the sound, and she was very peppy, and it showed in her moves. Opening act was decent and lasted about thirty minutes. We then had another half hour before Macy Gray took the stage at 7:15. Forgive me for not liking Macy Gray's voice too much, but the band was great! Actually, Macy Gray was decent for a couple of songs, but I really do not like her voice. After forty minutes of Macy, I was happy to applaud when she was finished. So two opening acts performed for forty-five minutes and were followed by thirty minutes of removing and replacing equipment for one band or another. At about 8:30, fans began to scream uncontrollably for what could only be described as the reaction of one of the world's most popular bands coming into view. After two minutes of this screaming drowning out everything Dave said, the band kicked into their opening number... And now for a set list.
The finale was awesome. That's all I can say. Ants Marching has always been my favorite DMB song, and their stretching it out to give time for each band member to show off ... oh man. Like orgasm to my ears. I loved it. It all came to a stop at about 10:58 after two and a half hours of Dave. Aww... time to go home. Easier said than done. Not only did the stadium sell more tickets than your average Braves game, but there were also field seats, and all the parking lots were open to the public. By the time we actually got out of our parking lot, it was midnight. By the time we hit the highway, it was almost 12:30. We got Claire home at about 1:30, and we got home at about 2:10. All in all, it was a great evening. I wish you could have been there! You will find pictures of the concert, and anything else, as they are developed, scanned, uploaded, and added to the page. Don't worry, the process isn't too complicated. And, by the way, my digital camera isn't functioning too well at the moment. In fact, ever since Ryan, Nathan, and Tony took it out to the beach at midnight one night while I was asleep in March, it hasn't worked. It worked that afternoon and it didn't the following morning, so I'm convinced that they broke it! Besides, it's easier to blame them than me, since its functionality stopped while they were handling it. (It still takes pictures, but it no longer reacts to the USB cable plugging into its port, so I can not transfer the pictures from the camera to the computer or anything else.) So, um, yeah. I'm going house shopping now. Thursday, June 7, 2001, 12:31pm mudgemeister: hey there jpmccord: hi mudgemeister: just wanna say i love your site jpmccord: thanks mudgemeister: one of the few sites with actual content :-) jpmccord: i like yours too... mudgemeister: how do you know my site? jpmccord: caught it through ackpth.org mudgemeister: ah cool ok mudgemeister: i love your quotes section mudgemeister: some of those are really ace jpmccord: by "actual content", what types of "content" do you refer to? mudgemeister: the main blog part mudgemeister: the fact when you update it isn't just links to some other sites mudgemeister: and that you actually write something mudgemeister: rather than copy and paste other people's stuff mudgemeister: like too many blogs mudgemeister: and you update regularly thank god mudgemeister: i always come to check it every day to see and have something tangible to read mudgemeister: rather than sites than hardly ever update and when they do it's "check this out. got to go. bye" jpmccord: :-) mudgemeister: if you know what i mean jpmccord: yeah... that's the worst. jpmccord: I do that once in a while... when something is so cool that my words wouldn't do it justice. mudgemeister: oh yeah i'm not against that mudgemeister: i'm talking about when THAT IS ALL mudgemeister: ever mudgemeister: . mudgemeister: i see you like the Hitch Hiker's Guide Wednesday, June 6, 2001, 12:00pm Macy Gray opens for Dave Matthews in about six hours, and I plan on being there to see it. I'll tell you all about it when I return ... if I feel like it. Have wonderful days, people. Happy hump day! Tuesday, June 5, 2001, 9:53pm Buy me a RioVolt. Now. Please? It plays CDs with regular CD audio, MP3s, and/or WMA. I don't care much for WMA, but the CD audio and MP3 combination is enough to put it near the top of my want list! The cost? $170, give or take a few. It is easily worth it. Not only does it play audio types other than your standard CD audio, but its functionality is far superior to any regular portable CD player. It will play just about any type of CD or mp3 known to man. (I say just about because I'm sure that there's some off-the-wall variable bitrate mp3s that might not play. 99.99999% will.) As I said, I don't care about the WMA, but, for the record, the RioVolt will skip over any "secure" WMA files as if they were not there. Continuing... It supports CD-text, ID3 tags, and it comes with quite a few nice little accessories, including nice little earphones, a remote, a power supply, and its own carrying case. Read the RioVolt FAQ for more information. For only $170, who could pass this up?! My birthday is July 18. Someone buy this for me. Hell, ten of you pitch in $17 apiece and get it for me. That would rule. I just want one. Very much. Tuesday, June 5, 2001, 6:42pm Following a link from zone:38, I found myself cruising through 100000watts.com, and, as a result, I find myself at the Macon, Georgia, FM Radio Directory. You are warned: Macon, Georgia, has the worst selection of radio stations in the country (well, perhaps aside from middle-of-nowhere locations at which every station is a country station). So why does radio suck so badly in middle Georgia? Let me see if I can spell it out: One company owns a rock station, a top 40 station, a country station, an oldies station, and an adult contemporary station. So one group is catering to pretty much every audience there is. That's not all. Another company owns another rock station, a "black gospel" station (is that discrinimatory?), an R&B station, an adult R&B station, and another country station. Still another group owns an R&B station and an R&B oldies station (at least this group sticks to one kind of music, indicating that the stations might actually be decent, if I liked that type of music). In other words, twelve of thirteen local stations are owned by corporations, meaning that listeners have very little say about them. They are not catering to us. They are simply playing music that qualifies and making money. The thirteenth station? WPGA G100.9, a "hot adult comtemporary" station that basically plays everything worth listening to that isn't rap or country. Easily our best station. Why? Because it is privately owned. And, of course, there are other stations, but they are either barely audible or barely in business, and either way they are not middle Georgia stations. Bah. Why do I write on this? It's so depressing. Tuesday, June 5, 2001, 6:28pm I've been keeping up with Major League Baseball for about eleven years now. I first watched baseball when I was about the age of six. I remember hearing my dad talk with his parents while we sat in front of the television and watched Dale Murphy play for the Atlanta Braves several nights per week. At that age, my toys held my interest better, but I remember bits and pieces. I didn't really start to watch until I was eight years old, in 1990, when Dave Justice first came up and won the Rookie of the Year award for the Braves. I also remember that I was upset when the Braves traded Dale Murphy to the Phillies, because Murphy was the only player I had grown up knowing at that point. One night near the end of the season, I remember a Seattle Mariners game in which Ken Griffey Sr and Ken Griffey Jr hit back to back home runs. The announcers made a huge deal out of it because no father-son duo had ever done that before. No father-son duo had even played together before, to my knowledge. From this point forward I was somewhat of a fan of Ken Griffey Jr, and as a result, a fan of the Seattle Mariners. As the seasons passed and the Braves actually started to win baseball games, I became enthralled with baseball and its players, teams, and history. I loved to read about past greats of the game and their accomplishments, and, even moreso, I loved to read about the oddities of the game - strange occurences, coincidences, or good on-the-field jokes. However, nothing thrilled me more than researching the records of the game and watching as today's players etched their names higher and higher in the record books. Nolan Ryan and |