i made out well during my parent's visit. i spent an enjoyable two days with them, was fed three, free, solid meals, got caught up on the family news and was given a new microwave and futon. pretty good haul for a weekend.
i found this in today's papers:
The Post's Howard Kurtz notes Fox's latest idea for reality TV: Covering weapons inspectors in Iraq. "This is a serious proposal," wrote one Fox News VP in a letter to the UN. "Viewers could decide for themselves if the inspectors are being allowed to do their jobs."
i also found a link to a lot of great sniper/nra cartoons.
well my mom and dad are up here to visit. tomorrow's my birthday so i'm going to try to get a futon out of them, not to mention a couple of meals.
salon has a great editorial blasting the most of the media for playing up the dc sniper's conversion to islam. instead, it is argued, the focus ought to be on how a man with a history of violence toward his ex-wives and a restraining order that should have prevented it, was able to obtain a firearm.
if the pretty girl you've got a crush on grabs your hand and pulls you onto the departing street car, going with her would be a much better idea than remembering you left your computer at the coffee shop and diving out between the closing doors. you could just call your friend at the coffee shop and have him watch it.
apparently there's some kind of movement forming dedicated to stalking people in the apple switch ads. i really like the bit about her mip and bad golf game.
opb has been doing their fall fund drive so i've been listening to kboo to avoid the pleas for money. kboo has some of the most moronic people on the air. in the context of talking about the evils of gmo food one lady was making some arsine statements about how vaccination was causing autism, and as a parent you shouldn't have your children vaccinated. that way they can die of a preventable disease instead.
can't seem to stay away from heaven. tonight there was this guy trying to mix records. mike stat there walking me through the technical reasons he sounded like shit. another guy showed up, kicked him off and proceded to just tear it up. he's been going at it for the last half hour.
News: American F1 Driver Search Finds Its First Four
LE BEAUSSET, France (18 October) -- They came, they saw, four conquered: The inaugural Red Bull F1 Driver Search culminated today in the choosing of four young American racers after nearly a week of assessment at Circuit Paul Ricard High Tech Test Track, a state of the art motorsport facility in southern France. Paul Edwards, Grant Maiman, Joel Nelson and Scott Speed were chosen by a select panel after being judged the most likely to quickly ascend to the world's top racing category, Formula 1.
i went for a ride with one of my father's friends who lives up here and and two of his friends. i'd come up with a list of "reasons" i got worked so badly by a group of 50-year-olds but suffice it to say that the last couple miles were powered by nothing but pride.
in other cycling news, my brother and i are planning on riding the oregon coast this winter break. there's an expression i'm partial to, "you either have good times or good stories", we plan to have plenty of the later.
josh marshall of talkingpointsmeo.com is doing a great job of regularly debunking the wacky voting fraud stories coming out of south dakota's conservative media.
i'm a bit fascinated by the whole sniper thing going on back on the east coast. i really think that a database of firearms "fingerprints" would be a good idea. the nytimes quotes joe vince, with the atf, who put together a national bullet identification registry.
Mr. Vince said, "We test-fired a gun 5,000 times, and the technology was able to match the first round with the last round."
He added: "But no one shoots a gun that many times anyway. A criminal might fire 10 or 20 times with the same gun."
If a criminal put a nail file down the barrel of a gun, as Mr. Fleischer suggested, "the technology would pick this up," Mr. Vince said. Moreover, he said, the firearms bureau has found that criminals rarely tamper with the inside of a gun.
As for the rifle association's view that the system would fail because criminals steal their guns, Mr. Vince responded, "That simply is not true." Criminals want certain guns, usually semiautomatic handguns, and because most of those are relatively new, the best place to get them is from a store or an illegal gun trafficker, he said.
the number of cases that have been solved using the vin number off of cars and trucks is impressive. they linked the rental truck back to the first wtc bombers with a serial number found on an axle. once a sizeable corpus of guns had been stored in the system, it would really start to become useful. apparently the gun database in new york's matched over 700 guns to evidence left at crime scenes since 1996.
general zinni, george's special envoy to the israeli-palestinian conflict has come out against an immediate attack on iraq.. especially relevant were his views on the expectations of the people in a post invasion iraq. the hawks keep saying that the iraqis "will be cheering from their apartment rooftops, as at the onset of the Gulf War. Then they'll be dancing in Baghdad streets, as did those liberated in Kabul." compare that with zinni's comments:
I think that, again depending on how this goes, if it's short with minimal destruction, there will be the initial euphoria of change. It's always what comes next that is tough. I went in with the first troops that went into Somalia. We were greeted as heroes on the street. People loved to see us; when the food was handed out, the water was given, the medicines were applied, we were heroes. After we had been there about a month, I had someone come see me who said there was a group of prominent Somalis that wanted to talk to me. I met with them. The first question out of their mouths was that we'd been there a month, hadn't started a jobs program, and when were we going to fix the economy? Well, I didn't know it was my Marine unit's responsibility to do that.
maybe people will start to see that we're being sold an overly optimistic bill of goods.
while i was stitting in the honors college library reading "a social history of truth" a guy walked in and sat down. we introducted ourselves, he was in the second year of the program. after a bit he asked if i lived in one of the dorms, i said no i live on 11th and columbia. "in the chandler building?". i started to get suspicious, his name seemed familiar for some reason, "yeah. did you live there?". "at the end of the hall on the first floor". right, my apartment, i'd seen his name on some of the bulk rate mail, "nathan ... or current resident". small town.
the ny times reports on the growing use of private military contractors by the pentagon and the lack of oversight they receive. the times predicts the "war on terrorism" will increase their useage.
friday night i went with some people i met at heaven to the worst metal show ever. we were looking through the mercury trying to find something all ages to do since a couple of them were under 21. the listing didn't say anything about the type of music but it was all ages. once we got down there it became clear that this wasn't some indie rock show, in hindsight the name of the headlining band, hyperthermia, should have given it's shitty metalness away. of the 20 people in the venue--that i'm told used to be an old porno theater--we were the only people not dressed for a korn concert. i can now say with certainty that hair metal is not dead in portland, i kept waiting for hyperthermia's bass playing singer to get his hair caught in the strings causing sparks and a hair care product based fire. it never happened. something about hearing a local band shout "portland let me hear you make some noise" really got under my skin. they also encourage us to sing the chorus of their new song "date rape", apparently with some success, the singer reported having chills down his spine afterwards. we got the fuck out of there, regretting the $8 cover, and started wandering around downtown. other than shouting back and forth at the gangstas crusing around there wasn't much for an all ages crowd to do. the decision was made to fallback to the hotcake house.
the hotcake house in another portland institution that had been so built up for me that it would have been impossible for the reality to live up to the myth. the food was greasy but not in a wholesome--let's sober up--kind of way, it was more of a plastic--don't bother trying to finish that--kind of way, and it was expensive. i guess the main point in it's favor is that it's one of the few places open all night in a city that closes at 22:00. either way it was still fun hanging out.
last night i met up with a guy from school and some friends of his--again an all ages crowd--and we went out dancing at a club called fx. trying to dance sober was a new one on me, i really wanted to go next door, get smashed and come back. it would have sort of violated my whole sobriety binge though. one highlight was out front talking to this marine wearing his class a's. i made the mistake of saying army instead of marine core and he jokingly called me a "cracked out wolverine looking dude".
tonight: zoobombing
after listening to the senate and house debates on iraq, here's my current position. congress should authorize the president to take military action as part of a multilateral un sanctioned attack. presumably this would be after an attempt was made to reinstate the wepons inspection programs. if husein impeeds inspections and the un can't find the votes to authorize an attack, george should come back to congress and seek futher authorization. congress should, at that point, promptly tell george to fuck off.
salon lays out a pretty comprehensive list of the lies george's administration has told regarding iraq.
an asside: why is saddam hussein always refered to by his first name and other world leaders by their last?
sitting in a coffee shop called heaven. a young man dressed as if homeless--with a rotting front tooth to document his status--sees my copy of hamlet sitting open on the table and tells me he studied shakespeare in college. i talk with him about the play a bit--all the while staring at his tooth. in the back of my mind i could picture myself walking around in his shoes, trying to strike up conversation. he'd had some college. the main thing separating our stations in life being the support of my family. an older co-worker commented to me after his parent's death that he was now on his own, until that point there'd always been someone to throw him a lifeline. i suppose i realized how tenuous my perch in the middle class is.
haven't been updating this much because i'm usually in a hurry when i'm on the internet--between classes, something like that. i don't have dsl or a phone line at home so i can't get on there, though that might change slightly. i ordered a wireless card the other day thinking now i wouldn't be screwed if i needed to get online and the library is closed. it might be a major mistake as far as my academic career is concerned, we'll see.
went zoobombing again yesterday. it was a blast, dumpster dave--an older punk rocker--and i got an extra run in before everyone got up there then met up with everyone else for the second two. the max (the light rail system) people were out in force giving out warnings and tickets to people without fares. i got lucky, someone had given me a ticket. if you're still wondering what zoo bombs is read the story i wrote for the new issue of one speed revolution. i took some of those out and people really like them. i even got the meet the street roots (the homeless newspaper) reporter that i scooped.
across the street from my apartment they're building a new apartment building. every morning i stand in-front of my window eating cereal, drinking coffee and watching them. they're pouring concrete for what i think is the eight and last floor today. now the bottom floors are getting framed, wired and sheetrocked. when i was 6-years-old, i had a richard scary book that showed a cut away of the electric lines and plumbing inside a house, i would have gone completely crazy to get to sit there watching them all day.
classes have been going well. i'm not into the chemistry class at all but i'll stick it through and get it done with. it's a good thing i'm doing it now, i probably wouldn't be so patient a year from now. the math teacher i've got is great, no memorization and he pretty much says "you're calculator will do that, use the technology." exactly what i kept saying all through high school. the irony is that i don't have a calculator, my brother has it on a long term loan, he says he'll be mailing it up soon.
finally broke down and bought a dictionary. it was getting frustrating writing down a list of words to look up while reading hamlet. merriam-webster had a deal where you get a printed dictionary with the contents in a searchable format on cdrom, i snapped it up. now i sit in class flipping back and forth between taking notes in word and looking up words in the dictionary. that whole no flipping pages thing really make me happy.
spaceman and i put issue #3 of the one speed revolution to bed tonight. we're at kinkos right now getting the printing done. you can view a pdf of it here.
it's been a long night, i'm glad to have it done but i've got a quiz in chemistry at 09:00. fuck
bill spaceman and i have been working on the next issue of his zine, one speed revolution. yesterday i went and did the zoobomb so i could do a story on it. there's a whole crew of people that zoobomb twice a week. they meet for pizza and beer then take the lighrail out to the zoo (which is about 800 vertical feet above downtown) late at night, do some hanging out at the top and then riding down the winding streets at high speed. last night it was raining so the roads were all nice and slick, couple of people ended up eating it but no one was hurt. i only took one run, they try to get three in in a night. i have a feeling i'm going to become a regular.
day two of college is finished. i think it's going to be okay. the chem instructor is super hard to listen to, but everyone else seems really cool.