American Chopper

I have to admit, though I despise reality TV and I'm not a gear head with a hard-on for motor vehicles, this show is really cool. My theory is that I really like the artistic aspect of building the bikes. The arguing is fun sometimes, too. Now, I'll be the first to tell you that it's sick that people have such a morbid fascination with watching people be evil to each other in all the other pseudo-reality shows, but you know what's different about this show? The guys who are arguing are really real. They aren't beautiful people that auditioned for the show, who are treating each other like shit because they might win $10,000 (and $10,000 can't even buy a car, you depraved weirdos). These guys are family, and at the end of the day they really love each other. I don't know; I'm getting sappy. But that's my rationale and I'm sticking to it. I really do like seeing the evolution of the bikes, though. It's just a cool show. Watch it... or I'll stab you in the face with a soldering iron.

Update: I'm finding it rather ironic that I went on a tirade about reality television in the blog entry immediately following this one. My opinion still stands, however. I would be content to see someone take every piece of media that bears the name of any reality show that's ever been made and dump it all into a huge incinerator, save this show and Cops.

Ever get the feeling that you suck at life?

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Oh yeah...

So I decided to set up two other blogs.

Political Pornography
A new blog that I'm going to make my place for posting my thoughts that come to me while I'm listening to talk radio or watching news analysis shows. Just tonight, I posted my thoughts on the supposed shortage of Oscar nominations for The Passion of the Christ.

Armageddon Clock
Completely satirical. I'll have to see how far I'll go with it.

This blog is staying the same, but more of the national and world political stuff that the pundits chat about will be at my other blog.

I gots brains.

I meant to post this a few weeks ago. I got an e-mail from a guy who visited www.moorelies.com and wanted to save a copy of a message I posted there. I said fine, and now I thought I'd post it here. Tell me if I'm an idiot or not.

It was a two-part post, replying to two different people. The first person said I sounded like a moderate guy, and the second person was a typical Michael Moore zealot asking what's wrong with Moore for telling the "truth." Here's what I had to say...

[person 1]: I like to consider myself a moderate. I do have some right-leanings, which tend to show more than the left ones. Mainly because I run into more far-left people than far-right ones. I really didn't mind Clinton, and I do wish that he hadn't perjured himself and allowed the whole impeachment debacle to happen. I honestly don't think Bush should have won the 2000 election, but I also believe that you can't change the rules if you lose the game (which is basically what the Dems wanted). I also don't think he is as bad as the far left really wants to think. I wouldn't have minded at all if Kerry had won, but I didn't vote for him because I had no idea what he really stood for (yeah, I guess the flip-flopping bothered me). All in all, unity is what will get us all through, and I don't think extremism from either side helps anyone, anywhere, anytime.

[person 2]: I'm still trying to find the truth that every Moore fan insists exists. Guess what? If you want to say that the overall point of Bowling for Columbine was that the attitude about guns is different in America than most other nations, then yes, I agree. If the point of Fahrenheit 9/11 was that the media needs to be more accountable for what it reports on, and we need to ask questions of our government, then yes, I agree. However, neither movie were really up-front about either hypothesis, and never drew any conclusion about them, except to demonize conservative/traditional Republicans. The methods he uses to drive his point home are highly questionable and unethical, all the while leaving undiscerning viewers with extreme ideas about conspiracy theories and revisionist history lessons that simply aren't true. The only people I've come across that believe Moore's word as gospel truth and defend him, haven't fact-checked anything he shows the viewer. I have several friends who were devout Moore fans, but after many a long night of open-minded discussion (something I have a hard time finding among extremists, not just on the right), I was able to convince them that he's not the noble crusader for the little guy that he portrays himself as. One of them was a Chomsky-reading, self-proclaimed Marxist, believe it or not. He no longer defends Moore any time his name comes up in conversation. Just looking at the money Moore makes, the apartment in Manhattan and the "cabin" in Michigan should be enough to convince most reasonable people that he is living the American dream that he claims doesn't exist. Moore fans like to point out how 60% of the profits of Fahrenheit 9/11 went to charity, but they conveniently forget that he was contractually obligated to do so in order to get his movie distributed. Now, if you want to talk to a few Kerry-voters who despise Michael Moore, I can point you in their direction. If you want one-sided, closed-minded "discussion," go to the DU. If you want intelligent discourse, I'm right here, friend.

Sorry, Derek, but I have to use you as an example every time I talk politics with people. I still suggest you quit reading Chomsky, though.

State of the State

Governor Tim Pawlenty was in Rochester today to deliver the State of the State address. One of the things he mentioned was working on putting a 4-year university here. I don't have a source to cite, but I was told once that Rochester is the biggest city in the United States without a 4-year college. Basically, Rochester sucks because we're a medium-sized city that wants all the conveniences of a large city, all the pleasantries of a small city, and the negatives of neither. That's what we want, but what we have is a medium-sized city that really has no conveniences of a large city because we're still too small, has outgrown all the pleasantries of a small city, and has a mixture of negatives of both. Ok, really, it's all speculation on my part. And I don't really like this city. At all. But I kind of think a 4-year college will make this town better. Hey, if anything, it will make it less of a black hole town like it already is.

Rrrrrrr....

Ok... I just made a crazy long post... and it didn't post it. So I'll think about posting it later. Or, if you feel like some human interaction, ask me about my day at Full Sail, and I'll tell you about it. That's pretty much what the post was about.

In other news... Darkness, is still a terrible movie.

I think I'm staying

Well, I can't... but I should. I at least need my computers and my car. And my TV... and this lamp... and this ashtray... We went to Titusville and Daytona Beach and ate at a nice place called Shells. I'm not a huge seafood fanboy and I had the only non-seafood dinner item on the menu, chicken tenders, BUT it was a good place. I'd recommend it. We went to Kennedy Space Center right after the place closed, but we might go back again on Monday. It depends. We leave Orlando on Monday, and the Space Center is a bit out of the way, and we're thinking we might go try to find the Cartoon Network place in Atlanta. Maybe stalk Dave Willis. Show him my Meatwad impression. Get escorted from the property. Then stay in Marietta. Try again the next day. Later, foos.

What a difference 15 degrees latitude makes...

I'm now in Orlando, sitting in a hotel. It's 79 degrees, bitches. Do I have to come back? Hmmm...

Florida or Bust

T minus 3 hours, 39 minutes... I can't sleep. This is stupid. I should go to bed. I'll see if I can post with Mike's laptop wherever we're at. Have fun in Crotchester. (I wouldn't)

Oh yeah, and Happy Birthday, Brian Warner. (Better known as Marilyn Manson)

Almost forgot

Should have posted this yesterday, and I was so scared I wasn't going to get the chance, because of the Rapture. It's been two months now. The world hasn't ended yet. Just thought you'd like to be reminded.

I'm thinking about starting a website, called the "End of the World Blog." To watch the end of the world, live, as it happens, over the course of Bush's next term in office. It would be updated regularly with information about the impending Armageddon. I really think I can do this, because look at when I last updated my personal site.

Happy f***ing New Year!

No... SERIOUSLY... HAPPY NEW YEAR!

WITH TEETH IS FINISHED
THE BAND IS REHEARSING
I CAN'T WAIT TO PRESENT THIS MUSIC TO YOU -
ON YOUR STEREO AND IN YOUR TOWN
HAPPY NEW YEAR -
TR
12.31.04

F***ing finally...

I have to be among the first people to see this. nin.com is set as my homepage, and I opened IE immediately after starting up my computer. I just checked my history, and I went to Yahoo mail at 7:55 which was the first thing I did after I started IE, so that's when I saw nin.com and it still said December 10th on the front page. I just opened the browser again, not 20 minutes later and there it was. However... though I'm still engrossed in the initial excitement of this news, there is still a small bit of pessimistic doubt in my mind. The font used for this announcement and for the date on the front page is completely different than the monospaced, typewriter font they've been using since the website changed. This leads me to think that maybe, just maybe, this might actually be a hoax, and that someone hacked the site and did that. However, I'm sticking with the happy thoughts that the album will be in my hands in the next month or two.

Happy New Year and stuff.

Update: It appears that it isn't a hoax, because the post is still up there, and it's been almost a week now. F***in' right, dude.

Have a Political Christmas.

I got Fahrenheit 9/11 for Christmas. It was an accident; my aunt got mixed up as to which movie I asked for, which was Michael Moore Hates America. I just found out tonight, though, that the movie isn't actually out yet, as it was delayed. Originally, it was supposed to come out in mid-December, but it appears to have been pushed back a month. So, I just have to go exchange Fahrenheit 9/11 for something non-fiction, like Highlander.

My immediate family does our gift-giving on Christmas Eve, because we do the big family thing on Christmas Day. So last night, my brother Scott gave me The Political Machine. It's a sim about presidential elections. For my first game, I made my own candidate, myself, and ran against Hillary Clinton. I lost, but I got the hang of the game and ran again against Mister Cardboard-Cut-Out himself, Al Gore. I won with like 300-some electoral votes. Of course, that was with a random setting. You can have the electoral map randomized, so all the states have different electoral vote values, different populations of liberals and conservatives, and so on. But I smoked him, because I convinced the masses that he was for Government-Run TV and that I was against Backyard Oil Drilling (The issues were also randomized). It's a pretty fun game. Matter of fact, I think I'm going to go play another campaign. Let's see how I fair against John Kerry.

Oh, other phat l3wtz was a DVD Burner (Dual Format including Dual Layer), The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (12-hour, 12-disc, ubernerd edition), a sweet pedal for my guitar that does all sorts of nifty shiznit, a copy of my friend Dave's movie "Exquisite Corpse," some clothing, some money, some gift certificates. Well, everyone have a happy week of limbo between Christmas and New Years.

Happy Holidays

Happy Christmas... Happy Hanukkah (even if it's already over)... Happy Kwanza (even if it hasn't started yet)... Happy Free-Day-Off Day, to the athiests... Happy... whatever those scientologist weirdos do around this time of year... Happy Tet (whenever that one is)... Ramadan is over (I learned the Muslim calendar is based on the lunar phases, so Ramadan actually moves throughout the year, so it isn't exactly a set, winter holiday like the others...), but I hope it was happy as well... Whoever I'm forgetting... Happy whatever-you're-doing-today. And to everyone a happy whatever-you're-doing-tomorrow.

Washington only wishes it could be Florida

Those pesky votes are always in the last place you look.

(CNN) -- Unofficial results from a manual recount of ballots in King County have tilted the result of the unsettled Washington governor's race for the first time to Democrat Christine Gregoire.

Republican governor-elect Dino Rossi now faces the prospect of losing a race he led after two previous ballot counts.

Except...

King County, which includes Seattle, is a Democratic stronghold where Gregoire won 58 percent of the vote to Rossi's 40 percent.

So... we had a manual recount in a Democratic safe-haven that pushed her over the edge. Let's start the manual recount in a couple big Republican strongholds and just see where it leads them. If this were the other way around, I'd say the same thing. I'm just mentioning this story once, and leaving it at that. Except maybe an update if one of them finally wins. I don't live in WA, so I'm not going to stick my nose in other people's business, you know, like Jesse Jackson in Ohio. What I do find interesting is how, now that they've manually recounted one county that was likely to give Gregoire an edge, the Dems are calling on Rossi to concede.

No blood for a remedying a humanitarian crisis!!1

If anyone wants to read about the quagmire in Iraq, Opinion Journal is the place to be. I really want to support our troops, but when I hear that we're rebuilding Iraqi schools, improving their power grid, and on the brink of providing thousands with clean water... I just... It just makes me sick. (/sarcasm off)

Seriously... It's a huge article (no, seriously... it's a huge article) about the underreported good things that are happening in Saddam's old stomping ground.

According to the left, they all hate us...

Hey, guess what? They don't all hate us.

One afternoon I was explaining the passive tense of verbs, and I used an example that came to mind from American culture. I asked them if they knew who was nominated by the two main parties to run for president. "John Kerry was nominated by the Democratic Party, and George Bush was nominated by the Republicans," replied one of the brightest in the class, a veiled Muslim engineering student named Rahaf. "Very good," I said. "Now, who do you think will be elected?" "Bush," cried several of the students at once, smiling. Abandoning my lesson plan for the moment, but curious at this sudden display of interest in the election, I ventured: "Who do you want to win?" "Bush," said Rahaf, while a number of others nodded in solid agreement. I pressed them further for a few minutes, asking individual students why they liked Bush. The same ideas came up again and again: he is a strong leader, an honest man, and, most of all, a believer. Like the winning margin of American voters this year, these Middle Easterners related to Bush's sense of religious conviction and his confident steering of a nation and culture they admired.

And the next paragraph brought up one of the things that bugged the crap out of me during the election campaign.

"But doesn't he scare you?" I asked finally, unable to contain my personal feelings and throwing the lesson plan out the window. "Because of Bush's ideas many people in my country think that all of you are terrorists." Rahaf and most of the others just shrugged. Maybe that was all true, they said, but he was still a good president.

Bush has never tried to make me hate Arabs or convince me they're all terrorists. If you think all muslims are terrorists, you already had some personal issues beforehand, and Bush didn't make anyone hate Arabs. There were no posters up with warm things to say such as "The only good raghead is a DEAD raghead!" There were no commercials saying "Join the Marines and waste some sand nigger scum!" I don't hate Arabs, and I know full well that there are only a teeny group of fundamentalists out there that are twisting their religion for their own ends. Leaders that are squandering their countries and sending the message to their citizens that it's the U.S.'s fault. It isn't the people. People are all born with a clean slate, and the ones that are turning them into terrorist 'martyrs' are the ones that we're trying to weed out. Another thing the article points out...

Though Democrats are often quick to criticize their opponents for seeing the issues in stark black and white, "us and them" terms, perhaps they ought to step back from their own obsession with "red" and "blue" dichotomies and recognize this nuance of Middle Eastern reality.

That's what I found ironic during the days after November 2nd. There was all this horseshit flying around the internet about the differences between Bush voters and Kerry voters, and red states and blue states. Things are not always black and white. No, they're red or blue. No shades of purple... just red and blue, and it's the Democrats that are pushing the message. It's moderate "South Park Republicans" like myself who are willing to reach out and talk to those on the left. From my personal experience, it's typically the way-left liberals are the ones that are one-dimensional, intolerant, closed-minded and angry, and anyone who doesn't toe the socialist line is a brainwashed, Nazi follower of Bushitler. Just shut up and get over it already. Especially you, Jesse Jackson.

Gaseous Anomaly

I filled my gas tank for under 20 dollars ($17.72 to be precise) for the first time in quite a while. We've all heard the jibber-jabber about how the Iraq war was fought over oil, even though gas prices went up instead of down, and no anti-war hippie could explain it. Until they decided to blame the higher prices on Bush as well, but this time it was mishandling of the economy. So, "he was going after oil, but he couldn't even steal oil properly," is basically what these idiots were saying.

Well, gas is sliding down again, slowly but surely. It's consistently slid downward over the last month since Election Day, with one little jump before Thanksgiving, which is quite safe to assume was because of the demand of Holiday travelers. Obviously, this is because we're stealing oil in Iraq again.

I think I figured it out. Whatever goes wrong... blame Bush! AHA!!

I lost my job; BLAME BUSH!

Gas prices are higher; BLAME BUSH!

My dog ran away; BLAME BUSH!

I stubbed my toe; BLAME BUSH AND CHENEY BECAUSE IT REALLY HURT!!

Makes sense to me. I can't finish the second-to-the-last level in Rogue Leader on GameCube, and it's no question in my mind that it's because of this administration.

Update: I finished that level, obviously because of the dissenting Democrats in the Senate, but unfortunately Bush is continuing to push his right-wing agenda on me, and I can't finish the last level. It's a sad day to be an American.

Update: Gas went down 2 more cents sometime on the 11th or 12th, to $1.679 per gallon. Remember though, it is completely impossible that Bush had anything to do with it. Only when it goes up is it Bush's fault. (Even though the president actually has little to no influence over gas prices.)

Update: Gas jumped up a hair... a week before Christmas. The holiday, I'm sure, had nothing to do with it. It's just Curious George fumbling over which valve flushes the toilet or steals the oil. This will be the last update, too, because it jumped up last weekend and slid down a bit, once again, to $1.699. Oh, and being a delivery person, I pump gas everyday. So... yeah, I get daily updates on the gas prices. (Oh and if you're interested, gas is cheaper in Owatonna, too, so if you somehow think it would be worth it to drive from Rochester to get cheaper gas, that's where to go. C'mon, it's only about 40 miles away.)

Gotta keep 'em seperated

Apparently, integration is not as widely accepted as we thought.

A decision by Wells College (search), which has been all-women since 1868, to begin admitting male students in order to boost enrollment has riled female students.

Many students are threatening to leave the upstate New York college, but two have moved beyond threats and filed a lawsuit that says the decision to enroll men constitutes a breach of contract and fraud.

Those jarhead's come over here and gad-dammit, they took our schools!! (Tuk 'r skoolz!!) (Derk a derr!!)

To be honest, I wonder why any man would want to go to an historically-all-female college, but it sounds like they're just opening their doors to men, as opposed to some man fighting for the right to go. I do have a feeling, though, that the ones that end up going there right away would not be burly, macho date-rapists. But... that just so happens to be exactly what they're afraid of...

"We all leave our doors unlocked. We can run around in our nighties. It's all girls and we feel really safe and that will change," said student Starbuck Hersey.

You leave your doors unlocked? Damn, next time I get my typical-male urges to rape a woman, I should head over there, but I'm not due for another month or so. I guess, with a name like "Starbuck Hersey" you were already screwed from the get-go. I mean, her mom named her after a male character in a horrible sci-fi show from the 70's. That girl ain't gonna come out right.

What...

the...

[explitive deleted]

What's in a name?

Have a look at this.

South Park Republicans are true Republicans, though they do not look or act like Pat Robertson. They believe in liberty, not conformity. They can enjoy watching The Sopranos even if they are New Jersey Italians. They can appreciate the tight abs of Britney Spears or Brad Pitt without worrying about the nation's decaying moral fiber. They strongly believe in liberty, personal responsibility, limited government, and free markets. However, they do not live by the edicts of political correctness.

The South Park Republicans are an incredibly diverse group encompassing a variety of nontraditional conservatives, such as the Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Bruce Willis supported Republicans because of their commitment to lower taxes and fiscal discipline. Rap artist and movie actor LL Cool J recently endorsed NY governor George Pataki.

I like the term "South Park Republican." You can call me that, if you want. I was thinking about "Progressive Republican," but I wouldn't want people to think I'm a "progressive" in the traditional political definition. I agree with the progressives up to a certain point, but most of them take it waaaay too far.

Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Arnold... They're my boys. The other night, I saw a GOP lawmaker from Alabama by the name of Gerald Allen on FoxNews who wants to basically ban all books referencing gay characters such as The Color Purple. He's not my boy. Although, my sense of fairness surfaces again, and I have to let everyone know that Gerald Allen is specifically saying that public funds should not be used in purchasing these books. Though I still don't agree with him by a longshot, he isn't trying to hold a book-burning. And for the FoxNews-haters, they were not praising him, Alan Colmes was grilling Allen faster than he could string words together, though I prefer the No Spin Zone m'self.

Note: I forgot Allen's name, so I had to look it up on the net, and the article I found quoted a board member of Equality Alabama (a gay-rights organization... in... ALABAMA) who said Allen might be "attempting to become the George Wallace of homosexuality." I thought I might remind everyone that Wallace was a Democrat. THPTPHPTHPTHPT.