Clean up! Ryan’s keyboard.
“20.1-inch 16:10 widescreen LCD display has a 1680×1050 WSXGA+ resolution, 4 USB 2.0 ports, a thin bezel, a 600:1 contrast ratio, 12ms response time (great for gaming), picture in picture capability, DVI, S-Video, and composite inputs, and an optional speaker sound bar […] pick one up for around $600 with Dell discounts or coupons”
drooooool
Is it really that hard for US Rep John Conyers (D-MI) to produce a document to account for distributing turkeys? A letter stating “we’re giving you a boat-load of turkey. Happy Holidays!” or a news story puff-piece when his office passed them out? What’s the hold up?
The director of a Detroit food bank wants to know what happened to 60 turkeys — 720 pounds of frozen birds — that his charity gave to members of U.S. Rep. John Conyers’ local staff two days before Thanksgiving to give to needy people.
Conyers’ Detroit office promised an accounting of any turkey distribution by Dec. 27, but the Gleaners Community Food Bank had received no paperwork as of Tuesday, said the charity’s director, Agostinho Fernandes.
Fernandes said he became suspicious that the turkeys didn’t get to poor people after hearing from a friend that a federal court worker had said he was offered free turkeys from a member of Conyers’ staff.
I’ve added a new category, “Rants”, to which yesterday’s screed has been reassigned. Filing all of that stuff under Politics was becoming silly.
Looks like you can get a decent landscape renderer from Computer Arts for free; Bryce 4 (the previous version) is on the CD that comes with the magazine. I’ve purchased this from Barnes & Noble before (in-store).
Computer Arts website also has a great download section with lots of tools.
I’m starting a new movement. Actually, it’s quite a big movement already, it just hasn’t caught the attention of the important people in the world; you know them, they go by “progressive”, “liberated”, or “Blue stater”. They’re a huge group of people who are engaged in a grass-roots campaign to split this country right down the middle, both ideologically and geographically. They hate “fly-over states” and all that those huge tracts of land, oh wait, people, espouse to believe in.
My movement is this: shut up or I’ll sick my mom on you.
See, the people in the fly-overs, like my mom, don’t get it. They’re the sorry holdovers from an ideological age long gone (over 10 years old!). And what’s the best way to reach people who are the mirror image of your way of thinking? That’s right! Insult them, use lots and lots of sarcasm and, oh yeah, make sure you rub in their faces the most contentious political issue you can think of.
Like abortion. Or gay marriage. Or, just for fun, turn pro-genocide and watch the disbelief come in waves. Ah, it’s such a joy to accuse people of being wrong about things they had never considered to be up for debate. I know I often taunt my mom with my plans for charging people more money for drugs based on how sick they are. Good times.
Let’s take gay marriage as a for instance. I talked about this before, and it seems that many people are still on about it. (Yes, I’m aware it’s a big issue; that doesn’t mean I like to hear about it every bloody day.)
My parents are everything “progressives” hate. (By the way, a little aside: When you read “progressives” on my blog, make sure to put the same venom and spite that you normally hear when someone uses the word “neocon”. Back to it..) My parents are everything that “progressives” hate: church-going, firmly-convicted, Dutch Reformed Christians. The biggest shock of my life growing up was being able to skip the second service on Sunday. Up until their church took a distinct turn toward the Jesus-feet-style service, they went morning and night.
I would sell tickets to a debate between my Mom and a “progressive” on gay marriage. It would be the most you’d ever pay for 5 minutes of your life. Why 5 minutes? Oh, fine. I won’t sell tickets or set up the debate, I’ll just post the transcript now.
Moderator: Welcome to the first debate between Ryan’s Mom and Gavin Newsom, Mayor of San Francisco. We have one question tonight and no audience members can ask questions during the proceedings. We’ll begin by posing tonight’s question to Mayor Newsom.
Mayor Newsom, should marriage between same-sex partners be legal?
Newsom: (cite) Denying gays and lesbians the right to marry denies them more than a marriage license; it precludes millions of couples from obtaining health benefits, hospital visitation rights and pension privileges. …gay citizens pay taxes and protect our communities as firefighters and police officers, among other occupations.
Ryan’s Mom: It is not our decision as citizens, or even as people, to decide was is right and wrong. God says that homosexuality is a sin. Encouraging a sinful activity is itself a sin. Supporting gay marriage, for a Christian, is wrong.
Newsom: (ibid) There is no rationale for discrimination against any individuals in California.
Ryan’s Mom: I don’t know about California, but it’s not discrimination. Discrimination is excluding someone for no reason or for reasons over which the person has no control, like their skin color or ethnicity. Homosexuality is an activity already judged by the Creator to be wrong. By your logic, it would be acceptable to allow known pedophiles to run day care facilities.
Newsom: That’s a completely unfair comparison. Homosexuals are not convicted felons.
Ryan’s Mom: True, but if no one is the authority on what is right and wrong, nobody can be. Are you wiser than God, Mr. Newsom?
Newsom: My personal beliefs aren’t open to debate tonight.
Ryan’s Mom: That’s not an answer. I’ll answer it for you then. Of course you’re not wiser than God. So, when you tell me that I’m wrong to act on what God has told me is wrong, it really doesn’t hold much authority, does it?
Newsom: You’re still wrong. Discrimination is wrong, no matter what.
Ryan’s Mom: Make sure you tell that to Jesus on Judgment Day.
And that would be it. The great thing about sending people up against my mom is (1) she always gets the last word and (2) you can’t insult someone’s sweet mother and not expect to get some really bad press about it.
In all seriousness, if “progressives” want to reach out to the fly-over states (and that’s how it’s going to have to be), they need to do a couple things. First, they need to stop with this labeling bullshit. Calling yourself “progressive” neither makes you so nor convinces others that you are. Monty Python had that one down a long time ago: “…Why, if I went ’round calling myself emperor because some moistened bint lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!” Just replace “bint” with your pundit du jour. The flip side of this is to stop labeling other people, especially with euphemisms for labels you can’t get away with anymore. Take “neocon”. “Neocons” are either so right of conservative they qualify as nationalistic, and they certainly are not new. So, whatever “progressives” think it means, it probably doesn’t. All that is accomplished by using new terms is to further divide yourself from those you’re trying to reach. (Another aside: I like to use people’s own ammo against them when I can. Read this article and tell me how it would read if it were published in 1938. Discuss.)
Second, take a page from those you’re trying to convince. Evangelize to them. You’ve seen plenty of Mormons in the cities. Organize your own group of pro- or anti- whatevers and buy them plane tickets to Holland, Michigan or Souix Falls, South Dakota. Hell, set up an ideological exchange program. If you do it enough, maybe we’ll wind up with this ideological haze where everyone is kind of happy, but not angry enough to actually do anything about it.
Just as it’s not government’s place to tell me what my morals should be, it’s not yours either. And you certainly won’t be telling my mom what her morals should be. That’s the whole point of having these marriage resolutions on a ballot. When people vote, that’s their way of speaking to you. And they spoke all over the place. Instead of being angry at the messenger, try listening to the message. If you don’t like the message, work constructively to change it.
Or be quiet. I don’t really care.
I totally flubbed this one and now it’s all over the ‘net, but the Mars rover Spirit is one-year old today. Originally slated for a 2-month mission, it’s so exceeded it’s expected performance it’s actually starting to overcome some of the bad press NASA has had in the past few years.
JPL has a really cool Flash retrospective on their site and people on Slashdot are bitching that it’s all a PR stunt. Yeah, ’cause it’s easy to stage a successful mission.
Project Gutenberg, the site with thousands of free books available for download, has posted their top 100 of 2004. It’s amazing to look at the great stuff availble for free thanks to the contributions of thousands of people all over the world. I need to get my Franz Kafka formatted and/or printed.
Ok, someone is even more obsessed than I thought possible and has set down the entire script of the Flying Circus episodes from Monty Python. Check out the homepage for even more weird resources. Very cool.
So, I’m lazy (and busy) but mostly lazy, and haven’t posted my Christmas post. Not that I had some huge thing to post or deep insights into the Season, but it can hardly go without a mention.
Obviously, my big gift to myself was building my computer (and buying the parts). J– got her pink iPod mini (and she was surprised, thankfully!). She gave me a Wusthof Classic Santoku (or Asian) knife, a ton of sushi-making materials (which work wonderfully, I might add), way too much chocolate, and a nice broadcloth white shirt. I know I’m forgetting something, but we had a good Christmas between the two of us, and not just for the gifts. Although, the gifts were nice, especially the stuff from our parents. Automatic coffee maker, with built in grinder, you are wonderful, if a bit noisy. They should put decibels rating on packing for those things.
Of course, it wouldn’t be Christmas without the families. All in all, the gatherings weren’t that bad, considering the sheer volume of parent/famliy exposure we subjected ourselves to, it’s a wonder we haven’t throttled anyone, much less each other.
Oh! I know what I forgot. And I’m wearing it for the love of Pete. J– got me a T-shirt with a Get Fuzzy panel on it! I love that comic. Yeah, it’s a well-worn path of comic strip, but it’s so funny to me because the cat, Bucky, is the perfect example of how I imagine our cat Mina to be. Sarcastic, scheming, and somewhere barely underneath her skin, ready to usurp us at a moment’s notice. I’m trying to find the strip, but Comics.com only makes it easy to find the last 30 days of comics. This one was published on 11/24, if you’re interested.
Anyway, since we’re bored, we’re falling back on on consumeristics roots and going to Costco.. never been there, but I here it’s like a slightly less evil Sam’s Club. Hey, at least I don’t hear about Costco building stores literally on top of ancient ruins.
