easier than writing by hand…

congress failed to end debate today on the immigration reform bill this morning. since it’s been a while since i gave george something to call me a liberal fool over, here’s a little sumpin sumpin. hell, he may even agree with it.

 Scott O says:

so what was this bill saying

 Scott O says:

legalize whois here already to solve our problem?

 Scott O says:

so that way it can spread the word, come over here cuz you’ll be legalized anyway?

  Zane B says:

think that may have been part of it

 Scott O says:

mabye that was the other issue

 Scott O says:

that america is a push over?

 Scott O says:

I dunno

 Scott O says:

tough problem

  Zane B says:

you know, i really hate that fucking arguement

  Zane B says:

that it’s “amnesty”

  Zane B says:

these are fucking human beings

  Zane B says:

and just because there’s a law, doesnt make the law just

  Zane B says:

or that they dont deserve a better life

  Zane B says:

if you were living in mexico

  Zane B says:

living in poverty

  Zane B says:

with no chance for your kids to advance in life

  Zane B says:

who would give a fuck about the immigration laws of the country next to you

  Zane B says:

human rights trump protectionism IMO

  Zane B says:

besides

  Zane B says:

i dont see hordes of middle class white kids lining up to do field work

  Zane B says:

or work in a chicken rendering plant

  Zane B says:

i dissagree with almost everything that goerge bush says or does, but immigration reform is one that i can find some common ground with him on

  Zane B says:

the ppl that are against this stuff are always isolated idealists that live inland and have never spent time in a border state

  Zane B says:

you want to curb illegal immigration?  how bout making it easier to accomplish legally

  Zane B says:

instead of forcing ppl to try and walk thru the AZ desert in the middle of summer at 120 degrees

  Zane B says:

you have these ppl on the border screaming for fences and patrols to protect there homes from being looted by aliens passing thru in the middle of the night, looking for water

 Scott O says:

well why is it that mexico is trying to filter and purge out their “unwanteds” then?

  Zane B says:

well, how about alleviating the number of ppl trying to cross illegally by making it possible to do it legally

  Zane B says:

where did you hear that BS?

 Scott O says:

saying you have to be of so and so class, non criminal history and it seems harder to obtain citizenship ther?

  Zane B says:

mexico isn’t the fucking cuba from the 70’s

 Scott O says:

I think I saw that like a few years ago in some argument

  Zane B says:

this isnt castro dumping all his criminals in miami

 Scott O says:

lol

 Scott O says:

but if we wanted to go there I read it was though as well

 Scott O says:

to become “mexican”

 Scott O says:

Well why is there a long and lengthy process on immigration anyway?

 Scott O says:

what woudl happen if we just opened up borders?

 Scott O says:

and say “come on in everybody”

  Zane B says:

we’d be flooded probably

 Scott O says:

lol can you immagine the mess?

  Zane B says:

still

 Scott O says:

and then the increased risk of increasing poverty?

 Scott O says:

as everybody fights for jobs

  Zane B says:

hah

  Zane B says:

well, i tell you what

  Zane B says:

the issues of poverty in mexico have nothing to do with america

  Zane B says:

it has to do with mexico and it’s caste system, designed to keep ppl poor

 Scott O says:

but america isn’t so great in other areas as well

  Zane B says:

it’s basically what’s happening in the US now, with the dissappearing middle class

 Scott O says:

as it get’s more corporate

Scott O says:

yeah there’s that threshold now… either you make it or you don’t

Zane B says:

arg, dont get me started

Scott O says:

lol 

Zane B says:

this will prolly make the blog

i’m not saying the bill was perfect here. i’m not even saying it was good. in fact, i’m not saying it should have passed at all, but if there’s one thing that drives me up the, it’s lumping illegal aliens or undocumented workers (whichever side you prefer) in with real criminals and whitehouse aides and cabinet members. escaping poverty is just as legitimate as seeking asylum from an oppressive regime or fleeing a war zone. all three are life threatening and congress, the president, and the american people need to understand that. there are better ways to handle immigration than we do today.

for now i’ll hold off on the roberts supreme court and there so called “strict constructionist” interpretation of the first amendment. so much for respect for precident. what a bunch of self-deluding hypocrits. bring back sandra day!

well, so much for 30 days.  i’d like to say that “it was just too tough!” or that “i lack the mental and physical stamina to compete in such a rigorous intellectual competition!”, but the truth is… i just forgot yesterday.  i got totally sidetracked and when i woke up this morning and realized that i had completely forgotten to get the rest of the movie review post up…

sooooooo….  guess i better get working on that homage page.

I was the one who had suggested that the 1st person who missed a day would lose, rather than whoever had the least posts at the end of the 30 days.  the idea was that it would add some immediacy and urgency to the  whole endeavor.  and it worked for the most part, which is why i crawled out of bed last night at the last minute and threw something together.  however, since i insisted we do it that way, it would be disengenous of me to try and change the rules now in the middle of the game, to a total post count and the end of the 30 days.  besides… i think ang already has me by 2 or 3 anyways.

i should have tried to enter a clause that excluded the weekends.  i never post on the weekends!  doh!

anyways, i will still update everyday (barring forgettfulness) for the rest of the period.  look for another tonight.

 

i had just laid down to bed when it dawned on me that i had 15 minutes to throw a 150 word post together and that i had completely forgotten about it. the review isnt finished (basically because i got side tracked today), so it will have to wait til tomorrow.

gaming aside, i’ve found that even with school over, i’m pretty damn busy. today for instance. i started with a 9AM breakfast officers’ planning meeting in mukilteo. by the time i got home and, well… took a nap, i only had about an hour to help d with her gardening project before we left the house for the evening. kevin (of the black saab, orange stripe fame) and his wife anzara are apparently season ticket holders to the rat city rollergirls roller derby league and they offered us their tickets for tonight.

today was also the seattle (gay) pride parade and apparently the rat city event was tied to it. they had the tallest drag queen i’ve ever seen do a pre-bout routine where she skated around in a skirt suit with a tie, singing “i need a hero” from footloose and then stripped down to a super(wo)man outfit, complete with cape. the halftime activities consisted of a drag queen relay where they pulled two strait guys from the audience, made them run back and forth while first putting on a dress, then stuffing small soccer balls in them for boobs, putting on a wig, then lipstick and then doing a lip sinc routine to either girls just wanna have fun or i will survive.

then they had two sets of strait girls put on flannels and bandanas and do a u-haul (with wagons) race to pack up all their stuff and do a lap around the track. apparently the joke goes like this.

Q: what does a lesbian bring to the second date?
A: a u-haul!

i have to admit, i can guess that’s supposed to mean they jump into moving in with each other quickly, but otherwise i dont get it.

after that we went across the street and bought $110 worth of mariners tickets for $20 from a scalper trying to finish off the night (it was the 5th inning), went to safeco field and watched til the end of the 8th and then came home to watch x-files on dvd.

yes, ladies and gentle men, that is my exciting saturday evening.

i have one minute to post this, so no pics.  or formatting and pretty colors.

see? this is what i was saying regarding my doubts about making interesting posts everyday…

i dont feel like writing so danielle suggested i complain about her making me do the dishes when we got home.  the way she figures, i should be able to fill up an easy 150 words on that subject.  most likely with words like “demanding” and “slave driver”  and “nag”

but no, that only makes 50 words, so you guys are gonna get something a bit more substantial.  yes friends, it is finally time for my much promised, long awaited (and long postponed) review of snakes on a plane… thru the eyes of a boeing engineer.

let’s get these mutha fuckin snakes off this mutha fuckin plane! (this quote was added to the movie after production was practially finished, JUST BECAUSE it became popular on the internet.  yay internet!)

at this point i should toss a spoiler alert out there, but let’s face it.  if weren’t a big enough of web comic nerd or don’t have an unhealthy samuel l jackson obsession and you didn’t see this one in the 1st week it came out, you’re not gonna go out and rent it now.  unless of course this review convinces you that you can’t continue to live an existance that doesnt include the experience of having seen snakes on a plane.

where do i begin?  i’m not gonna make any comments about the premise.  that hundreds of venomous snakes could be incited to aggressively attack 350 some odd people on a trans pacific airplane, simply by spraying them with pheremones?  i dunno.  maybe that could happen.  i’m not a herpetologist.  that they would spring out of the toilet system in the and bite some guy on the dick, well, i have a bone to pick with that one (lavatory systems are under pressure and sealed).  that a shipping container full of 10 lb snakes, let alone a 400 lb anaconda, could climb into the lighting fixtures and slip out the interior panels, yeah… i gotta take issue with that as well (i’ll explain later why).  and that you could somehow get 12 people to all stand upright on the upper deck of a 747?  i mean come on!  that’s just preposterous!  have these people ever actually BEEN on a 747?

and the list goes on…

i’ll have to finish this with the good stuff tomorrow, but the important thing is, i have already written a lot of it (beyond what you see above).    see?  this is why i dont write much anymore.  they turn into epic diatribes.

danielle seems inadvertently hell-bent sabotaging this exercise right from the start, by always wanting to do stuff in the evening.  yesterday was evil because of the extra trip to ikea, but tonight’s walk to ballard for dinner was particularly heinous, since tonight is raid night on karazhan and i need to be online by 8PM in order to assure myself a spot in the raid.

fortunately however, i remember hearing on the radio one day that the appeal behind being a blogger, as opposed to a professional journalist or editorial commentator, is the lack of time required to produce an article.  according to this particular piece, a blogger wasn’t beholden to minimum content length or a deadline.  one could have an idea or insight, have it written up in 30 minutes and have it published to the web in another 1 or 2.

so this is a test.  a test to see how much i can pump out in 30 minutes.  aaaaaaaaand, that’s gonna be it for tonight.  more prolific tomorrow hopefully.

meanwhile, topics you can look fwd to at some point during the next 30 days

1.    job search
2.    world of warcraft is a timesink of epic proportions
3.    sailing
4.    allergies suck a$$
5.    this seasons race car (not a diesel) and race results
6.    diesel engine rebuild.  (yes it’s gonna happen)
7.    weird al yankovic is a god amongst men
8.    mormons and science fiction (i’m sure this will get hate mail)

as i write this, i’m keeping a constant eye on the word count at the bottom of the screen.  just for the reocord, this one comes out to be 276.

tempted as i am to skip out on this tonight (after driving from home to work in tukwila, then to the plant in everett, then BACK to work in tukwila then BACK home to ballard, then down to IKEA in renton and finally back home again) and then claim i thought it was gonna start tomorrow, well… i’m not that much of a wuss. a wuss maybe, just not quite that much of one. i’m not ready to concede defeat on the 1st night after all, although i do have the embarrasing pictures picked out for her to post.

so where the hell was i? oh yeah. gonna start stuff off slow i think, so today’s topic is baseball.

since moving to seattle almost 6 years ago, i’ve come to really enjoy and appreciate this sport. the nuances of strategy, the skills necessary to hit the ball where you want it to go, the details of the rules and statistics, and the physics behind the different types of pitches. i gotta be honest though, when i was a kid, i abhorred it. i thought it was boring to watch, even more boring to play and i never understood its appeal. that and i just rebelled against it out of principle. when case got signed up for t-ball i refused to let my parents sign me up too because i didnt wanna do the same thing as everybody else.

this is the man (on the left) ultimately responsible for me coming around to baseball. must be my asian fetish.

coming to the game as an adult of course, i have the natural tendency to think i might have missed out by not playing this game as a kid. who knows? maybe i would have really enjoyed it, been pretty good at it (i think i woulda been a pitcher), and today be playing that game, traveling around the country, instead of listening to it on the radio on the way home from work.

the other day i went through one of those minor moments of self doubt, but after a few minutes of introspection i decided i’m glad i didnt play back then. i thought back to all the hard running i did back with the track team during baseball season. i thought back on running 7 mile workouts of 400 meter sprints at 105 degrees fahrenheit. i thought, yeah, that sucked. but at least i wasn’t playing baseball with all the assholes. and let’s face it, 95% of the guys playing baseball were total assholes. the only guy i can think of that played on the varsity baseball team that i was friends with was probably damien. still, a lot of people would consider him an asshole too.

i should be fair here and say that a lot of the people i played soccer with were assholes too. maybe i shouldnt be so judgemental.

oh and bruce willis needs to give it up. making action movies at his age? i mean who does he think he is? swarzenegger?

we’re gonna have to make this challenge for more than 150 words. this is too easy.

soooooo… apparently ang is dissastisfied w/ my blogging inactivity, so much so in fact, that she has decided to issue a challenge. 

the rules:

• A minumum of one post per day for 30 days beginning on June 20th, 2007
• each post must contain a minimum of 150 words

the consequences:

• the first blogger to miss a day loses, regardless of the total number of posts after 30 days
• the losing blogger has to post a glowing web shrine to the winner (an homage, if you will), extoling their virtues and superior blogging skill and stamina.  either that or we’ll post some embarrasing pictures. not sure which yet.

being as i only have this one, general purpose blog, all of my posts have to show up here.  ang actually likes to divide up her topics into seperate locations, so she gets to post on one of her three sites here, here, or here.

i refuse to fail!  i shall be victorious!  prepare yourselves, this could be brutal…