In honor of Obama's 'speech on race'

Let America Be America Again

by Langston Hughes
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More - Let America Be America Again

(suggestion - try reading it out loud, and see if you don't tear up a little)

Whatever » Why Experience Isn’t Everything

OK - Scalzi has once again won my vote for 'makes you go hmmm?' thought of the day.

http://scalzi.com/whatever/?p=478

“Suppose you had to choose between two Presidential candidates, one of whom had spent 20 years in Congress plus had considerable other relevant experience and the other of whom had about half a dozen years in the Illinois state legislature and 2 years in Congress. Which one do you think would make a better President? If you chose #1, congratulations, you picked James Buchanan over Abraham Lincoln.”

– “How Good Are Experienced Presidents?”

I mean - this is VERY true ON TOP OF the fact that if Hillary is running on 'experience', how the hell does she expect to win in November against THIS. (ok - now i am certain i am going to the bad place)

From the "Who did What now?" Dep't

Congratulations to Doug and Lauren Deal, proud parents of an 8-lb something baby boy (as of last Friday, i believe)

No confirmation that the name of the baby is going to be Sean Douglas... but no denial yet, either.

Myspace Friend Requests

So - I am very popular. At least from looking at my unsolicited MySpace fried requests.

One thing that I have noticed, however - there is something in common with most of these names (well, something other than the everpresent "user banned for inappropriate conduct" tag 100% of these 'people' share after 24 hours. )

I'll go ahead and give you a list of the ones I've received in the past 2 months:

Declina, Gwenni, Caroline, Elinor, Cristionna, Gusella, Constantina, Bertina, Jordan, Rivalee, Anette, Arabella, Aridane, Anna-diana, Marianna, Ethel, Georgine, Livvyy, Raquel, Maya, Marjorie, Natalia, Elizabeth, Isabelle, Kippie, Sharyl, Atalanta, Hailey, Cora,
Lynn, Helen, Belinda, Aurora, Cheryl, Sofia, Jenna

Barring the Elizabeths and Mayas, very few of them are actually NAMES - at least as far as I can tell. I am reminded of the Penny Arcade comic, regarding spam email names. Which I can not find. Markie?

Who'd *I* vote for today?

(after all of my jibber-jabber about Ron Paul, etc?)



First time voting FOR someone, rather than AGAINST someone...

(someone, please - lower my expectations quickly!

Baby names in the Georgia

Inappropriate chat log from work:


(anon_friend): Baby names in Georgia
(me): ones that I don't understand
SEAN Boy 3,139
SEANNA Girl 24
SEANA Girl 19
SEAN Girl 12
BLAZER 2 - poor child
...it's a family name CHLORINE 1

(anon_friend): I like chlorine that is nice
but things like this
SALTRESEYIAH
TOTally epidural induced made up name, right?

(me): There are almost half as many RAVEN's as SEAN’s?
RAVEN 1,572

(anon_friend): duh that's so raven is a show

(me): (including 46 boys!)

(anon_friend): whoe

(me): !!

(anon_friend): my dad would like KEITHLYN
he always suggests somethin silly like keitharina for a girls name
18 girls named LABRIA
THAT Is wrong

(me): 2 SANGRIAs
6 MIGNON's
and 1 ICE
(ice, baby)

(anon_friend): CLIFFANY
(2)

(me): MNSA-MERIMT-F-NRA
(only 1, though)

(anon_friend): CLETWAN
MENSAH (2)
SHITERIA

(me): KING MARVELOUS (1)

(anon_friend): SHITIYAU

(me): TITILOPE
TITANYONNA
!!!

(anon_friend): THAT is nutzs

(me): (poor, poor girl

(anon_friend): NUTE
71 rhea

(me): QUEEN'S
(apostrophe)

(anon_friend): 1 girl named MANATEE
may as well name her whale

(me): :(
booo

(anon_friend): FAT KIT
wtf

(me): FARTUN Girl 7
FARTOON Girl 1
FARTREZE D'ANGELIC Boy 1
FARTUNA Girl 1
fartuna
...really?

(anon_friend): THat is hilarious

(me): LEMONTRAVIOUS

(anon_friend): aren't there laws about this stuff
When life gives you lemons
make lemontravious

(me): HAH

(anon_friend): FOURGITA
CUNECHIA

(me): PENISHA Girl 1

(anon_friend): NO

(me): YES

(anon_friend): WAY

(me): WAY
..."mommy...where did i come from"

(anon_friend): That should be illegal

(me): ..."Well, Penisha"
"funny story"

(anon_friend): Penis HA

(me): LNDIA Girl 1
Linda?
you think?>

(anon_friend): (My cousin the teacher) would always tell me about the crazy kids names like the kid whose name was Jihad Jesus or something

(me): 35 boys named JIHAD
and 1 girl JIHADA

(anon_friend): no OBAMA

(me): SQUIRDARIEN

(anon_friend): YODAH

(me): 14 OSAMA’s
1 BARACK
(prob a lot more next year)
and feel sorry for the one boy HILLARY

(anon_friend): oooh yeah

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's naughty text messages to his chief of staff. - By Bonnie Goldstein - Slate Magazine

Oh, my brother -

When having affairs, and FIRING people iilegally because you want to hide them, PLEASE don't use your work provided cell phone to send text messages:

a) to document your affair
b) to document your illegal firing
c) to document OTHER illegal activities
d) all of the above...

I am ashamed to share a last name...

Eternal Question number 65. What does a durian fruit taste like? « Random thoughts consigned to the scrap heap of cyberspace

Not sure WHY I was trying to explain what a Durian was to LN - but I was.

Oh yes -I remember - Costco seems to have pomelos (according to Wikipedia, the ancestor of grapefruit) on sale. They were huge, and weird, and I kept calling them pupalos. Which don't exist, except, apparently, as the name of a 37 year old Brazilian person.

(hopefully that person does get older, however.)

OK - when it rains, music pours

So - this post is inspired by the recent discovery by Scott Adams that song lyrics are, at best, nonsense when taken away from the catchy tune:

Recently I discovered I am a talented lyricist. This came as a big surprise to me.

It all came together when I realized most songs I enjoy are gibberish. I can TOTALLY write gibberish!

For decades I believed my favorite songs revolved around deep thoughts artistically embedded in metaphors and allusions. It turns out they were gibberish.

My first hint came after reading an interview with Paul McCartney. He admitted that most, if not all, Beatles songs were random words and thoughts strung together. I refused to believe it. So I checked online and read some of the Beatles songs. Holy crap! Gibberish!

He then came up with the first two lines of a song, and asked for the continuation, in a game of online storytelling:

“She had runaway eyes and marshmallow kittens.
My heart heard a dream like ten thousand gay mittens.”

My contribution is below - i feel like it scans OK, and meets the gibberish requirement. Tell me what you, the reader (listener?) think?

When first I saw her vast labrynthine beauty -
I could not believe it - she looked like Doug Flutie!

The comments to his posts are always worth it at least 10% of the time, and this was no exception - For i found this song. (FYI - it is really called "Title Of The Song." )

LN won't feel that it's a 'real song', whatever that means. But it matches my love of acapella with my love of funny songs (covers, whatever.) Such as what has to be one of the all time best funny songs, linked here. (link to the original version, but why?)

YouTube - Sugarland- Stay

(Justin reminded me that sometimes, when you leave relationships, the people involved go on to be really, really successful)

99XWatch.org: Cumulus' Letter to Clients

99XWatch.org: Cumulus' Letter to Clients

Sooooo.... 99x (local radio station) is dead? Leslie Fram (someone who I thought was at least a partial OWNER in the station) is FIRED?

And (this is prob the shocking part for Ogre) Q100 is moving over to 99.7, and (this is the awesome part for Loud Bobby) the Regular Guys are moving to 100.5.

(and THIS is the story it took to get me back to blogging?)

Glassbooth - Quiz to help you choose best 2008 presidential candidate

Glassbooth - Quiz to help you choose best 2008 presidential candidate

This was comforting -
a) my closest match ended up being my main guy, and
b) it was only a 74% issue.

See below my main issues, and how whoever it was matched:

Medical Marijuana and Drug Policy
very similar

Civil Liberties and Domestic Security
very similar

Immigration
similar

Iraq and Foreign Policy
similar

Taxes and Budget
similar

Environment and Energy
different

Sean's world is pretty cool

So - about 1/2 a mile from my house (immediately off Holcomb Bridge Road) there is a 3/4 empty strip mall. There was a Brazilian grocery at some point, but although the sign remained, it has been gone since before I moved in. Cornerstone stores include an Abbadabba's(??), as well as a Subway (which is pretty cool, but would be better if it was a store that did the whole $4 footlong after 4 PM thing.) Of course Subway hasn't been as good since *I* was a sandwich artist there, but I digress. A Dunkin Donuts *sign* has been up about 3 months, but no actual store yet. (similar to the frickin' Little Ceaser's down the way- don't get me started.) In fact, the only actual new store I've seen in the past 3 years is the pawnshop that opened last month.

Until Friday! Driving home, I saw the sign - BOOKS. (quick, and to the point)

Once & Again Used bookstore, and I was there on day 2. (i decided to hurry home to LN the first day - hope I didn't miss anything cool.

It's brightly lit, and I imagine (from the walk-in traffic I saw on Saturday) will be in fine shape for business. So - a place to get trade-in credit for my used books, and they have some new and nearly new books as well! I will be able to put off getting a library card for at least another six months!

Amusing corporate story.

Background -

My company is nationwide, corporate headquarters in California, and my offices are in Atlanta. It is also the week after the change to (from? I can never remember) Daylight Savings Time.

So, one of our accounting staff, having been with the company about 5 years or so, was about to leave for the day (at 1 PM, but that's another story,) and asked "Sean - Denver is 2 hours different from us, right?" I responded, "Correct." She continued, "... therefore Corporate is *3* hours ahead."

"Right again," I replied. "But behind."

She: "What?"

Me: "Behind. Corporate is 3 hours behind us."

She: "Ahead?"

Me: "No - behind."

She: "Really?"

Other random coworker: "Behind."

She: "Ooooohh. That explains why they are always at work."

I can understand (almost) people passing through this world for 30 years, and not necessarily being completely comfortable with time zones. (Indiana, for one) The strange thing for me is that she has to deal with our Corporate accounting office (in Denver) *daily*. Why does she not realize that there is a perfectly good reason they are CONSISTENTLY not at work before, say, 10 AM?

Jet returns to Midway after luggage falls out -- chicagotribune.com

Not our flight

but people on our flight were refugees. Photos from wedding uploaded soon.

mightybear: Azoni's

This story was funny because it was true.

Azoni's is a little family run all-you-can-eat pizza and southern food place just down the street. Its closeness and cheapness and family-friendliness bring us there time and time again. Knowing Sean and his love of the AYCE places, we often go there when he comes to visit. Because Mark works late a lot, sometimes it's just me and the kids with Sean.

Because it's family run, we've gotten to know the staff there. Really nice people! However, it's evident how strange we must seem. Me and Mark and the kids, Me and Sean and the kids. . . .as Mark said one day as we were walking in "Which husband is she going to bring today?"

Best part for me - I have a bunch of co-workers who live near there, and I have tried to get them to buy into the whole 'pizza/country cookin' concept, and they just haven't. But it is still really good!

Thanks, Slate!

So, random male coworker just dropped by, stuck his head in the door, and said: "So, what do you think? Asadasd or Asd?"

Me: {uncomprehending blank stare}

Him: "Floyd or De la Hoya?"

Me: {comprehending stare, catching my breath} "Well, from what I've seen, it really looks like De La Hoya is going to get BEAT."

Him: {Random boxing talk}

Me: {holding my own}

I would have just continued the stare uncomfortably long, having no clue what he was talking about, then looking like much less of a straight guy if I hadn't read THIS article at Slate.com yesterday.

Thanks for being my beard, Slate!

Two from Rome at RagnarTornquist.com

Above see link to random Rome post/photos. Everbabe - I could be wrong, but I think that is what you like about Rome, as well- the mixture of the modern and the really, really old.

That and the veal. Yum! When should we head that way? (SuperMark and LN can come too, I guess.) ((maybe even SeanJr and SeanJrJr....))

Diet 7UP Taste Test

Thought you might be interested. I mean hey, it's free!

Amazon - and New Cusak/Gerrold

So, I recieved an email from Amazon.

Greetings from Amazon.com.
Because we reduced the price of your pre-release title between shipment (when we charged you) and the release date, you automatically received a refund.
$0.17 is your additional savings under Pre-Order Price Guarantee.
-----------------------------------------------
"Guitar Hero 2
Bundle" Video Games
Original Price: $89.99
Price you were charged:
$89.99
Lowest price before release date: $89.82
Quantity: 1
Additional
savings: $0.17
Tax refunded: $0.00
We have initiated a refund of $0.17.
You will receive an additional email when this refund is processed.

As an Amazon stockholder, i really really hope that they don't mail me a check. Please.

Secondly:

LN has stolen this book from me, (first book of mine I could get her to read (apparently no time until the school year is over.) So they are making a movie. YAY!