Friday, January 23, 2004

In looking at my referrer stats, I’ve noticed some new places where I have been linked:

Blogs 4 God linked my post about Roe vs. Wade. Cool.

New to That Roll is Citizen of the State. I’ve seen le renard subtil in the comments at other blogs. Thanks for the link.

If you have me linked in your blogroll and you don’t see a link here, please let me know in the comments. I would love to reciprocate.

Today’s lunch was pizza and wings for a farewell luncheon for one of the deputies. He’s moving to another district.

BBQ chicken pizza has to be my favorite. Yum.

I must wish Craig of mtpolitics a very happy birthday. Please go visit him and do the same. And maybe stay a while and read his stuff - he’s got a good little blog going over there in Montana.

Who knew there was a Museum of Urology?

I heard about it on the radio while driving in to the office this morning. So while googling for the link, I discovered the Quirky Museums blog.

Too funny.

Thursday, January 22, 2004

I forget where I saw the link - it’s all over the blogosphere - so no hat tipping. I took a few minutes to set up a quiz about moi. Go take it, see if you really know me from reading my blog.

My family is not allowed to play, that includes Denis.

I got into a little political scuffle with a couple of deputies. We discussed the electoral college (which they oppose, claiming the old straw man of “Bush was appointed” *sigh*) and the folks vying for the Democratic nomination. I now have to print out Dean Esmay’s defense of the electoral college for them, because he makes the argument much better than I can. I also need to find some info to back my assertion that Carol Mosely Braun is corrupt.

I’m afraid things got a little heated when one of them brought up the “where’s the WMD” thing.

Today is the anniversary of one of the Supreme Court’s worst decisions EVER, imho - Roe vs. Wade. Let me state that I am 100%, emphatically pro-life. I do not believe that abortion is a good idea at any time, regardless of the circumstances of the conception. Yes, I oppose abortion for victims of rape and incest. I am sickened by those who support partial birth abortion - there is never a need for that form of infanticide.

The sad truth is that the vast majority of women and girls who seek abortion do so as a method of birth control - their reasons are ultimately incredibly selfish. Let’s be honest about this fact. Girls don’t want their parents to find out they’ve been having sex. They don’t want to have to give up their dreams of college and career. They don’t want to have the responsibility of raising a child when they are still kids themselves. So they do what they’ve been told is the easiest thing - they abort their babies. Women don’t want the inconvenience of single motherhood - or the financial strain.

The percentages of women who get pregnant as the result of rape and incest are maybe 1 or 2% - those women will be better served by serious counseling for their trauma and adoption options. They don’t have to raise the baby themselves - there are thousands of couples who are on waiting lists for adoption. It’s scandalous that so many babies are murdered when there are loving homes waiting for them.

I grieve for the women and girls, who for 31 years, have been sold a tissue of lies and who have made the dreadful decision to abort their babies. They have been robbed of a precious gift - not to mention the post-abortion complications they experience including guilt, infertility, anger, etc. I pray that at some point Roe vs. Wade will be overturned - for the health of all women and children.

LATER: A link to the National Right to Life info page.

Abortion statistics page

I just hooked up my new and old desktops together with a cool thingy so that I can switch between them both without having to unhook the monitor, mouse, and keyboard. With a series of keystrokes I can switch between the new and old computers. How cool is that?

(Yes, it’s a thingy. As the post category states, I’m no techie.)

Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Horrendous. You’re scaring me. That’s dreadful. You are a terrible, terrible singer.

Just a few of the responses of the judges to the wackos who stun me with their lack of talent.

Seriously, who is encouraging these folks to sing? And in public? Their friends and family should be shot.

What I love is that the judges have challenged a couple of these deluded folks to actually sing in public and let the public decide if they are good or not. So far, the public agrees with the judges that these people suck.

Good grief, people.

All that said, it’s still freakin’ hilarious.

I’m watching Entertainment Tonight and they’re reporting that Mel Gibson showed The Passion at Willow Creek yesterday. Fantastic. One viewer said, “It’s not the film that’s controversial, it’s the subject matter.”

Mel’s pushing hard on promoting this movie and he definitely wants the support of evangelical Christians. He’s targeting every influential group, one-by-one, with his previews of the film. He will get that support with each screening.

***Be aware that the following post is scatalogical. I’m not kidding. Read it at your own risk.***

My dog, like most dogs, loves her owner. She would prefer that her owner stayed home all day, everyday. But alas, her owner must work. And so said owner leaves home five days a week at the same time. There is a routine. The dog knows this. But she does not like it, not one bit.

Like most dogs, Annie shows her displeasure with me by relieving herself on the floor. In the early days it was in liquid form. For some reason she’s graduated to the solid form. Occasionally, like tonight, I arrive home to find both. Nice welcome home, huh? What’s the kicker is that I know she did it in the first 15 minutes after my departure. How do I know that? Because one day I stepped out of the apartment to get something out of the car and when I came back up mere minutes later, there was a gift on the floor in front of the door.

In her defense, she doesn’t do it all the time, usually only when her schedule is disrupted. Given that I just spent a week away and she spent that week with her grandowners, I think she knows that something was up. And so, her retaliation.

Most of the time it’s an easy clean up. Not tonight. She decided to try to hide the evidence (she does this a lot, which cracks me up and grosses me out all at once - she knows that what she’s doing is wrong and does it anyway). She pushed “it” to the wall next to the doorway, where the back leg of my dresser is. There’s a little pocket of blank wall there - she not only pushed it into that pocket, she pushed it into the wall and molding. Ick. Ew. Argh! Yeeeeargh! (Now that’s a good use for that sound clip. Heh.)

So I sternly pointed her nose at it and she took off for under the bed where she remained while I cleaned it up. Stupid dog. *sigh*

The rules: Bold the ones you’ve seen. Italicize the ones you want to see. Put an asterisk by your favorites. And one from Solonor [ed note: I’m stealing this from Dave] that I’m adding: Underline the ones you own. Here’s my list:

1. The Godfather
2. The Shawshank Redemption, The*
3. The Godfather: Part II
4. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King* (plan to own)
5. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers*
6. Casablanca
7. Schindler’s List*
8. The Seven Samurai
9. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring*
10. Citizen Kane
11. Star Wars
12. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
13. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
14. Rear Window
15. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back
16. Raiders of the Lost Ark
17. Memento
18. The Usual Suspects*
19. Pulp Fiction (I think I own this, can’t remember)
20. North by Northwest
21. Amelie
22. Psycho (1960)
23. 12 Angry Men
24. Lawrence of Arabia
25. The Silence of the Lambs
26. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
27. It’s a Wonderful Life*
28. Goodfellas
29. American Beauty
30. Vertigo
31. Sunset Blvd.
32. The Pianist
33. The Matrix
34. Apocalypse Now
35. To Kill a Mockingbird *
36. Some Like It Hot
37. Taxi Driver
38. Paths of Glory
39. The Third Man
40. Once Upon a Time in the West
41. Fight Club
42. Das Boot
43. Spirited Away
44. Double Indemnity
45. L.A. Confidential
46. Chinatown
47. Singin’ in the Rain
48. Requiem for a Dream
49. The Maltese Falcon
50. M
51. All About Eve
52. The Bridge on the River Kwai*
53. Monty Python and the Holy Grail* (I want to own this one)
54. Se7en
55. Saving Private Ryan*
56. City of God
57. Raging Bull
58. The Wizard of Oz
59. Rashomon
60. The Sting
61. American History X
62. Alien*
63. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
64. Leon (The Professional)
65. 2001: A Space Odyssey
66. Life Is Beautiful
67. Touch of Evil
68. The Manchurian Candidate
69. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (I think I own this one, can’t remember)
70. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
71. The Great Escape (I want to own this one.)
72. A Clockwork Orange
73. Reservoir Dogs
74. Annie Hall
75. Amadeus
76. Jaws
77. Ran
78. On the Waterfront
79. Modern Times
80. High Noon
81. Braveheart*
82. The Apartment
83. The Sixth Sense*
84. Fargo*
85. Aliens*
86. The Shining
87. Blade Runner
88. Strangers on a Train
89. Duck Soup
90. Metropolis
91. Finding Nemo
92. Donnie Darko
93. Toy Story 2
94. The Princess Bride*
95. The General
96. City Lights
97. Run Lola Run
98. Full Metal Jacket
99. Notorious
100. The Seventh Seal

Man, those days working at Blockbuster paid off.

[via Tepper]

I know I’m a day late on this one, but I can’t resist it.

Lileks has musical variant of the Dean rant thingy from the Iowa caucus. LOL funny.

James at Outside the Beltway has the yeeeaaargh alone.

McGeehee, commenting at OTB, taking a page from Tim Blair’s idea to “do your own Dean rant” came up with…

And you know something? You know something? Not only are we going to Hobbiton, we’re going to Bywater and Bagshot Row and Great Smials and Buckland and Tuckborough! We’re going to Southfarthing and Bucklebury and Westmarch! And then we’re going to Michel Delving. To take back the Shire! YEEEAAARGH!!

I got the following comment from my anti-President Bush brother-in-law (I’ve broken up the questions for style, the content is unchanged):

I asked my friend how can Kerry and the Dems beat {B}ush and this is what he said:

“And he’s got to get the media to start asking critical questions of Bush—the same questions they ask of Democrats. As a start:

how does Bush reconcile his defense of marriage with his adulterous (and embezzling) brother?

Why did his Adminstration give millions of dollars to the Taliban as of Sept 10, 2001?

How does he explain lies by the head of the RNC? Or subliminal ads in his 2000 commercials?

Or his humble foreign policy?

Or abandoning the Hubble telescope for an unnecessary Moon mission?

Or his budget busting?

Or the millions more without health care today than in 2000?

Or the flight of jobs to third-world countries?

Or his rewarding Libya for killing innocent Americans?

Or why didn’t he or Cheney serve in Vietnam when millions of their countrymen were dying there?

Put the Republicans on the defensive for a change. Make the attacks unanswerable and constant. Make them explain why a President should be rewarded for allowing the worst attack on our nation. Make them defend job losses. Make credibility the issue. Make them answer for trying to engineer a coup d’etat. The Dems can’t go overboard; they can’t ask any questions that can be answered or turned around, and they can’t be petty.”

Denis, yes, I watched the speech last night.

I’ve been super busy today. I had a post already to be typed up this morning and then work intruded. I’ve been on the run ever since. Bad news is no blogging. Good news is that I got a lot of stuff done today.

I love the office - the quiet, privacy, and the window. Of course, there’s not much of a view, but at least I can see what’s going on weather-wise.

I talked to our criminal clerk today - remember, she’s the one who had a heart attack and triple bypass last month? She’s been cleared for part time work beginning on Monday. She’s making amazing progress. And she’s bored out of her mind. I can’t wait to see her - she’ll be coming in for a farewell party we’re having on Friday.

Our other admin - the one that had the seizure - is also working part time these days. They are still monitoring her and keeping her on anti-seizure meds. But she’s feeling great.

For those who prayed for these women, thanks. I know that God had His hand on them and their progress is truly remarkable.