I just took The Bush-McCain Challenge -- an online quiz to see if you can tell the difference between George W. Bush and John McCain. Check it out, and see if you can do any better than I did!I got 5 of 5 in the first round, then only 1 of 5 in the second round. But I aced the Carrot test!
The You've Got Nothing To Hide Act of 2008 (from noted hate site DailyKos)
Here is my proposal. We, the public, should be allowed to spy on you, and all those you come in contact with, with similar promisees of amnesty.
For each member of Congress, I propose we set up a collective internet site. This site will allow interested members of the public to, in realtime, monitor your every activity to assure ourselves that none of you are committing illegal or terrorist-enabling acts at any given moment of the day.
Me and my brother were talking to each other
'Bout what makes a man a man
Was it brain or brawn, or the month you were born
We just couldn't understand"Tattoo", © Pete Townshend - The Who
Does drinking coffee make you a grown up?
If that's true, I realized this morning, I'm wizened well beyond my calendar-years. I remember filling an old tin-lunchbox thermos with a coffee-milk-sugar mixture (hey, give me a break - I was still a youngster!) and stowing it in my locker and gulping from it at class breaks. This served the dual purpose of giving me a necessary pickup during the stultifying hours of education-by-rote and pissing off the teachers serving as hall monitors who would see me tipping the thermos up and immediately home in on me, exulting that they had caught this nerdish trouble maker sneaking quick nips of hooch on school grounds.
When I arrived at college, I arrived with a small coffee pot and a bean grinder (gifts) which I put immediately to a herculean production output. Since then, almost every place I've ever lived in has had a well-used coffee-maker (the exceptions were the two summers I lived in cheap boarding houses - there may have been shared coffee-makers in the kitchen, but I was loathe to interact in any way with my housemates - I instead relied on the office coffee-makers of countless temporary jobs).
I must say, for my years of caffeine addiction, I think I've suffered few or no health problems as a result, though there was a spell when I was drinking three or four 20 ounce trucker's mugs a day thatI noticed odd, sporadic flutters in my chest. On doctor's advice I cut back a little. If anything, I maintain that my coffee habit ironically kept me from smoking because I never felt competent enough to maintain three vices simultaneously (beer being the other).
So here's to you, coffee - I'm a man now, thanks to you!
Welcome to my life, tattoo
I'm a man now, thanks to you
I expect I'll regret you
But the skin graft man won't get you
You'l be there when I die
Tattoo"Tattoo", © Pete Townshend - The Who
Said to an angry neighbor who, upset that my sister-in-law's dog had run on his lawn, threatened 'Keep your goddamned dog off my lawn, or I'll shoot him twice!'"Don't worry, you can always get it right the next time she gets married."
Said to the mother of one of my closest friends as she was fretting about her daughter's - my friend's sister - wedding."Sure! Great band! 'Run Through The Jungle' is one of my favorite songs!"
Said to my oldest and dearest friend after he had just been stung by a particularly venomous jellyfish and we were sitting on the deserted (it was about 3am and we had been night snorkeling) beach pondering our next move. He said he was starting to see mist coming up from the ground and wasn't feeling so good. 'Do you know CPR?' he asked me."It's alright! You're going to be okay....Um, well, maybe not."
To that same friend as we were in the back of a van crammed with loose tools and auto parts driven by the friendly strangers who were taking us to the medical clinic in the Mexican town where were staying. I was holding his hand and comforting him when he suddenly geysered vomit onto his own chest."OK. Hey, avoid the undercooked meats and the fried foods. That stuff will kill you!"
To the same friend again, a couple of nights ago as he closed our phone conversation, in which he told me that the doctors has found a spot on his lung that day, by saying he was going to get a bite of dinner.That friend, the first two times, credits me for helping save his life by taking some of the fear off of him.
'Cuz we all talk about the weather when we want to connect with other humans - it's a universal. Everyone experiences weather and our opinions are never so fiercely or personally held (as in politics or religion) that differences of opinion can lead to fistfights or bloody wars.
Can you think of something else like that? I'm not challenging you, trying to declare that there's nothing else that is universal like talking about the weather - just wondering if anyone can think of a similar subject.
However, like seemingly every other glorious advent of spring I've enjoyed, I'm fighting off the final feeble clutches of winter - this time a stupid sinus thing that's been giving me fatigue and headaches for the last month or so. Every time I try to enjoy outside temperatures that don't immediately freeze the snot in my nose, I realize too late that it's not really that warm yet and I've given myself the sniffles yet again.
Nothing sucks quite so much as seeing the sunshine of a beautiful day (and being on a vacation day, to boot!) and not wanting to leave the couch.
This episode of Too Much Information has been brought to you by your favorite confessionalist poet.
Recent Comments