Life Returns to Normal

It's always an initial shock to recieve bad news, but there are times that you're more prepared for it than others, and you're just able to cope better with things. This was one of those times, and I'm very thankful for that.

It seems that while I haven't been paying attention, a new "scandal" has erupted in Washington. This is no doubt exciting for the Democrat Party (Party symbol - the ass), the members of which have as their single minded goal to convince the nation that George W. Bush is worse in every way than Hitler ever was or could have been if he really tried. Meanwhile, I yawn and roll my eyes.

NOT ONE DAMN INCH.

Well, not a lot of good news on the cancer front today. Dad's cancer is on the grow again, with some new spots to boot. Doesn't look good for the long term, to be sure.

I'll tell you one thing though. I'm not going to let this get me down. And it won't be a false front "brave face" either. I'm not giving this disease one damn inch. Cancer can take his body, but can't touch his soul. And it won't touch mine either, God helping me.

So whatever the future holds, be it good or ill - bring it on. I've got God on my side. Just try to move me.

Visiting Compass

In keeping with my recent theme of reminiscing over past experiences (ok, so it was just one post), I'm back at Compass Arts, my old place of employment, and the place where I was probably happiest with the purpose of my work. It's a sweet place in a lot of ways, although it's changed a lot since I left.

When I first arrived here, Compass was a sweet, creamy idea coated in a thick, chocolately shell of high hopes with a liberal sprinkling of nutty co-workers resulting in a whole heck of a lot of flavorful media-related product. Unfortunately, a few months after I started work, things went down the Caroma 270 Tasman dual flush financially. Not really the fault of anyone at Compass, but hard on the organization nonetheless, and I had to be let go.

Now they've re-emerged as a film school, and from what I hear the buzz is back in the building, which is great. I still really love the idea of getting Christians into the media in a good way to truly get a solid presence for the Church in the public square, not in any preachy sort of way, but in a loving, charitable sort of way, which is the way it's really supposed to be anyway.

On and on and on and on and on...

We're roaring towards 12:30 AM and we haven't even hit the fourth quarter yet. Must...stay....awake...

About those ads up top...

Wow, I should really consider paying for blogger, if only to get rid of those ads. Just this evening as I've been looking over the site, I've seen two ads for Howard Dean and one for John Edwards, both candidates running for the presidential nomination of the Very Silly Party. Being more closely affiliated with the Sensible Party myself, I just want to reinforce the idea that I can't stand those guys.

Just like the good old days...

Here it is, Saturday night, 11:00 PM, and I'm running a tape delay broadcast of a local community college football game. No disrespect intended to the Raiders, but this really isn't my idea of a great time on a Saturday night. But hey, they're paying me to run the game, so who can complain, really?

Anyway, this takes me back to the days when I'd spend 14 hours running all sorts of sports events on a Saturday. I'd start at 5:30 AM, getting a high school scoreboard together for 8:00 broadcast (back when I couldn't ad-lib), then I'd go home for a couple hours of snacking or sleeping or TV watching or whatever, and then I'd head back at 11:30 or so for a NASCAR race (an odd thing on radio - lots of car noise going by punctuated by guys named "Eli" or "Darryl" yelling things like "TROUBLE IN TURN TWO!!!"), which would be followed by baseball or college football or basketball or whatever, which, in turn, would lead into an evening game of some major sport, or if I had been particularly bad and God wanted to really punish me, a live broadcast from a local raceway consisting of terrible local race commentators that could literally not be heard above the roar of the race cars. Usually, I'd stagger out of the station sometime after midnight, secure in the knowledge that a radio career was probably not for me, but also secure in the knowledge that I'd have a nice little paycheck waiting for me to get into my hot little hands and waste on inconsequential junk.

Aaah, regret.

Nowadays, radio is more of a hobby for me. I genuinely enjoy being a part of a broadcast (usually), and I get a free shirt out of the deal occasionally (thanks, Jeremy). And it's cool to be able to tell people that I'm on the radio, and to have an on-air name. (Quick tip - if you have a name that's doesn't flow on the air, your middle name can save you. My middle name is "William." On air, I go with "Marc Williams." It's short, to the point, and very sexy. Or not.)

11:15, and typing fatigue has set in. I hate laptop keyboards. They make my hands hurt. Better wrap it up. Good night, gentle reader! May angels wing thee to thy rest. Whatever.

GARAGE SALE MADNESS!

So I'm spending my Saturday morning sitting at a garage sale at the in-laws that no one seems to be coming to. It's not a total loss, though, because I get to play with the in-law's dog, Bailey, who just rocks. And the best part of the deal is that we get to dog-sit for him tonight while his owners are out vacationing this weekend.

Bad luck so far on getting pictures added to airliners.net. Those dudes are picky about what they accept. I just got the new camera and took some nice pictures of Northwest's new A330 doing touch and go's at GRR, but they apparently weren't good enough. Not that I can really tell what's not good about them - they look great to me - but I suppose my standards aren't high enough.

I checked my site counter and I'm actually getting hits. That's odd. But to all who show up, welcome! There's really not much here, so I'd be surprised if you came back. But perhaps you like reading nonsense and the minutiae of someone else's life. To each his/her own.

Good Stuff

Lileks is great today. Give him a read.

Having Trouble with This...

Now, I understand that you have to grieve and all, but this? When will the left realize that Arafat is lying, awful scum?

What's Wesley's Deal?

Ain't Done It on the little general.

"...the Union makes us Strong..." or Crappy Teachers Unite to Defend our Lousy School District!

I just wandered over to the grounds of Michigan's beautiful capitol building and encountered a giant marching throng of teachers (if you can really call them that - they seem to have more loyalty to the Detroit Federation of Teachers than to their students, since they cut class to be here today) and a few kids from the Detroit Public Schools protesting the deal that has apparently been reached to create more charter schools within the city.

Now, keep in mind that these people represent a school district with abysmally low graduation and student achievement rates which many parents are clamoring to get out of. As it stands, for most kids a diploma from DPS is a ticket to a lifetime of lousy jobs and continual poverty, if the current conditions within the City of Detroit are any indication.

Now, the argument that these "teachers" are making is that charter schools drain funds from regular public schools and thus hurt the education of everybody left behind. But wait - sure, the public school loses the funding for that student, but don't they also lose the student? If the school district has less students, shouldn't that reduce the cost of educating students for the district?

"NO" they cry, because those that are left behind are supposedly the hard cases that charters and privates won't accept - the special ed kids and handicapped. According to the union, this means that any loss of funding is a disaster for the public schools. It most distinctly does not mean that the traditional DPS system is a horribly inefficient, educationally inept dinosaur. This is also aside from the fact that education spending at the state and federal level per student keeps going up, meaning that the amount paid to educate a student in the DPS system for a year would probably pay the cost of tuition at many private schools one and a half times over.

But wait, didn't the Detroit schools suck long before charters ever came along?

Well, yes, I suppose they did. And they're going to continue sucking as long as the people running them have as their focus maintaining the strongest educational monopoly possible and discouraging any competition that would force them to slim down their operations and concentrate their resources on education instead of taking personal days off to protest instead of teaching.

Good Read

Clifford May writes about W's address to the impotent UN.

On Hold

I'm finding myself very ambivalent about Intuit's hold music. They started with a jazzy version of "Michele" by the Beatles, and they've moved on to a jazzy instrumental version of "I Love You Just the Way You Are" by Billy Joel.

Now they're apologizing for the delay, and asking me to be patient.

There's that sax solo. Wow, Billy Joel was one smooth man. Smooth like pudding.

I guess this is my punishment for ordering two copies of Quicken 2004 accidentally.

Currently, all their representatives are helping other customers, but if I stay on the line, my call will be dealt with in the order it was received.

Now I'm talking with Randall, but he can't seem to find my order number in their system. So I'm back on hold, and I don't recognize this music at all.

Now he's back and we still can't find the order number. All I'm getting in the background is stony silence. And now we're searching based on order number and my name.

This does not inspire confidence.

Now we're searching by order number, name, and phone number.

GOOD NEWS! The second order has already been cancelled, so I won't be charged for it. Nothing like a half hour on the phone to save sixty bucks.

(feels relieved...)

Points of Interest on the Web Today

John Derbyshire at NRO has a good piece on the left's irrational hatred of Henry Kissinger
Also at NRO, Krista Kafer on voucher hypocrisy in Congress

Arafat & The KGB

Thanks to Little Green Footballs, a link to the article from yesterday's Wall Street Journal on Arafat and the KGB.

Today's Links to Sane People

The Wall Street Journal opinion page continues to be a beacon of light in an otherwise dark realm of political rhetoric.

Dorothy Rabinowitz on wild, frothing John Ashcroft haters
The lead editorial details the Iraq/al Qaeda connection

Also, not available on opinionjournal.com but well worth the price of admission for the paper version is another editorial on the ridiculous 9th Circuit Court in Cali, and a very interesting piece by a former high-ranking Romanian intelligence officer detailing Yassir Arafat's KGB origins.

Losing the Language

John Pitney, Jr. brings up a good point about the Howard Dean campaign today over at NRO. Dean has been flapping his gums about "taking his country back" from "fundamentalist preachers" and the like.

Now, I'd venture to guess that my brand of Christianity would likely fall under Howard Dean's version of "fundamentalism," or at least under the version espoused by a large number of his supporters. I'm pretty conservative, to say the least. But I'm not some sort of monster. I am a strong supporter of what are commonly thought of as "traditional values": marriage for life between one man and one woman, children raised in two-parent households who were born within the bonds of wedlock, etc. I don't think I have to go through the whole list for you to get the idea.

Perhaps most importantly, I'm not a relativist. I believe that the Bible provides a moral code that exists outside of myself, and that it alone sets the standard that I (and frankly, everyone else) must live up to. In light of that, I am able to look at certain behaviors and situations and make moral judgements - I can say, "that is wrong." And depending on who you ask, that fact alone makes me an intolerant, and likely intolerable, bigot.

In all likelihood, candidate Dean is referring to people like me when he makes the claim that "fundamentalists" and "right wingers" are in control of the country and destroying it. But that's not true, and it never has been. In fact, I'm a pretty average guy, and you'd probably like me if you had an opportunity to sit and talk with me. I'm not really a threat to society; rather, I'm probably a stabilizing factor in that I'm the one who's out here trying to live a normal life, raise decent kids, contribute to the community, etc.

This is one of the major problems that our society faces right now - we've lost the language, primarily on the left. Conservatives aren't just conservatives - they're just like Hitler. They don't really want to reduce the size and cost of government - they want to force children into starvation and kill old people in order to fatten the wallets of their corporate cronies. The war wasn't about fighting terrorism and freeing Iraq - it was a colonialist expansion intended to exploit the oil resources of Iraq and enslave the Iraqi people.

I know good and bad people on both the conservative and liberal sides of the debate. Both sides also have their snakes and rats, too. And I know that, to coin the phrase, we live in interesting times, and therefore the debate gets more shrill. But for goodness sakes, why can't the left engage in a rational debate? Why can't we debate W's policies without someone throwing out the term "Nazi"? What's wrong with these people?

Bad Joke for the Week

A woman is shopping in the local supermarket. She selects the following:

*milk
*eggs
*a carton of juice
*a package of bacon

She unloads her items at the cash register to pay, a drunk standing behind her in line watches her place the four items on the belt and states with assurance, "You must be single."

The woman looks at the four items on the belt, and seeing nothing unusual about her selection says, "That's right. How on earth did you know?"

He replies, "Because you're ugly."

Fun With Tech

This was one of those weekends where everything went nicely. Well, almost everything, but I'm not about to ruin a nice post here with the details of the bad part of the weekend. No, I'm going to dwell on the positive, because I'm a positive guy overall! (<--- bald faced lie.)

This week, I finally got my hands on a digital camera of my very own, and in the space of one day I've completely fallen in love with it. It's a Fujifilm FinePix S5000, and it takes a fine picture. So much better than scanning photos from a 35mm snapshot camera.

It's late, I suppose I should hit the sack soon. More tomorrow. Caio.

The Glory of the Internet

I've noticed a slight drop-off in the amount of stupid blather being dispensed by those who believed that the Internet would serve as some sort of magical tool to make all of the peoples of the world understand and love each other and join in perfect happy communion regardless of race, creed, nationality, or whatever. I consider this one of the happy side effects of 9/11, if there can be such a thing.

In reality, the web is nothing more than a great big communications device. Sort of like a telephone crossed with a television. Meaning that just like every other area of human endeavor, the quality of the communication is determined by the quality of the people communicating. In practice, this means that the web is largely a big time-wasting device.

All that to say that I love Fancy Chicken Friday!

W or Dirty Harry

Nothing like enjoying some fine, fine food at Panera Bread while perusing the fine, fine editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. Daniel Henninger takes a look at America's new attitude and breaks it down old-school for our European "allies":

Put it this way: Either you can have George Bush's America ("In Iraq, we are helping the long suffering people of that country to build a decent and democratic society"). Or Dirty Harry's America ("But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya--punk?")

Wonderful Day!

Aaah, any day is automatically improved when you can view the amazing adventures of Angle Grinder Man. Link to your right, under "joviality." ----->

Links to Other Sane People

J.D. Hayworth on wild, frothing Iraq policy critics
James Carafano on postwar Iraq vs. postwar Germany
Stephen Hayes on Saddam's Al Qaeda connections

Truer Words are Rarely Spoken

Lileks is worth a read in full today:

Complain, yes! Carp! Criticize! Bitch! Moan! But there’s a difference between criticizing the particulars of the Normandy invasion, and insisting that Hitler can be contained with bauxite sanctions. (Imagine if these people had been running papers in the 40s: enough troops? Supply line problems? Plans in place for getting the Berlin power grid up? Oh no! Battle of the Bulge! Quagmire! Bastogne is a mess! Roosevelt lied, Private Ryan died!) To those who sniff “this isn’t World War Two,” I’ll agree: it’s worse. It’s going to be longer, meaner, and it sprawls across every map. Its ultimate severity won’t be apparent to some people until a band of god-bothering raisin seekers sneaks a nuke into Baltimore on a cargo container.

I'm sure you've heard this one, but here it is again anyway...

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The man consulted his portable GPS and replied,"You're in a hot air balloon approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2346 feet above sea level. You are 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude."

She rolled her eyes and said, "You must be a Republican."

"I am," replied the man. "How did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me." The man smiled and responded, "You must be a Democrat."

"I am," replied the balloonist. "How did you know?"

"Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you're going. You've risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise that you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow now, it's my fault."

Challenge!!!

I haven't mentioned it before, but I really love Homestar Runner. Particularly StrongBad E-mail.

Back to normal

Last week was pretty highly charged with memory and emotion, so it's kind of nice to get back to normal life, which is usually highly charged with wackiness.

A friend sent me this link to Real ULTIMATE Power, which is either amazingly funny or just plain disturbing. But it involves ninjas, and how ninjas hate pirates, and how stupid pirates are, so it can't be all bad, right?


UPDATE!!

Alternate Real ULTIMATE Power...

I am a September 12 American

As an individual, my view of America, our place in the world as a superpower, our vulnerability to attack, and our responsibility to uphold the values of freedom and liberty in the world was reborn two years ago yesterday. I will never forget the horror of that day, the terrible images, and the feelings of anger that I felt at the people who attacked us. And you know what? The sharp edge of that anger is still there for me. It hasn't dulled. That awful feeling in the pit of my stomach may have faded, but my belief that we have work to do in cleaning the scum off the face of the earth before it soils the shores of freedom-loving people is just as clear as it was at noon on September 11, 2001.

I am what is known as a September 12 American. If that means the rest of the world thinks I am a unilateralist, arrogant Yankee, than so be it. I'd rather be hated than dead.

For those who insist on being September 10 Americans, bear witness. How soon we forget. How soon we forget.

On Another Topic...

It is with some, but not much, regret, that I announce the closure of the Super Punditronic 3000 weblog. It was an ambitious goal - writing a parody article every day - and I just didn't have it in me. I guess I just bit off more than I can chew with that one. One blog is enough.

Johnny Cash, RIP

We've lost a great one. The music world is a sadder place after the death of the Man in Black.

Remember

This morning, the world is two years old. Never forget.

W '04

Please note the presence of the George W. Bush news ticker on the right side of your window. I consider it my small contribution to the upcoming campaign-year war on terror. Go W!

As we Approach the Anniversary of the Black Day

9|11 is highly recommended. After the attacks, we all promised that we would never forget. Viewing this amazing film will be my way of remembering.