Ecumenism marches on: Methodist leaders sign the 1999 Catholic-Lutheran agreement on Justification.

Cool.

We need Peeeerrrry Maaaaasoooooon!!

...I'm just sayin'...

That's it for now.

(Some here will get it.)

One of the overlooked benefits of drive-through Taco Cabana is that they'll throw in 4-5 little containers of pico de gallo and salsa in the bag as you drive off.

When it gets to be 2am and you're still trying to catch up on work (because you're a dumb ox) these little containers become known as "delicious bites of rejuvenation." You pop the lid off, and throw the tomatoy-oniony-cilantroey-jalapenoey goodness down the esophagus... you feel the cool, juicy goodness sink down into your stomache.

Mmmm.

Last night was spent at the range with Galindo and his old man. The plan originally was to snatch up the private side of the shooting range for some dynamic shooting drills, but some incapable (by the looks of it, a poor grey-haired 40-year-old) police officer was getting some kind of private instruction since she'd apparently failed her marksmanship exam with the force. Given how pathetic I've heard the shooting requirements are... yikes. Doesn't inspire much confidence in the local protectors, if you know what I mean.

At any rate, we were shooting in the lanes for a while, but then we got a chance to set up some targets and cover spots for some timed drills over on the private side afterall. I have to say, it's a completely different (and really, really fun) way to do train. It's a completely different form of control. I surprised myself with how well I did on some of the set ups, and how, um, inadequate I did on some of the other shots. Galindo's got this sweet digital shot counter/timer that will measure shooting duration and splits between shots, and it's pretty humbling to see how not being a slave to time only, but performing only as fast as you're able to be accurate, can really increase the overall effectiveness of your shots (for example, landing a bullet through the head of the target rather than sending two flying off to the side, completely missing the target).

At any rate, if we can get a couple more people to defray the cost, I'd be willing to make it up to those sessions as much as finances and time permit.

You hear that Galindo? You may think your 7-point-something second performance on that third drill is all super-hot, but there's a new gun-slinger - The Baron Holsterhoff - coming for you, and it's not gonna be pretty when I make you cry from jealousy of my uber-marksmanship. (Haha!)

Because this song is so righteously awesome, you must go listen to it. You can either grab it from the link below, or as always, from the link over on the right bar.

Sometimes it's just good to fling names at society.

Nihilistic mystics
Apostolic alcoholics
Messianic manics
Cataclysmic and prolific

In the age of super-boredom
Hype and mediocrity
Celebrate relentlessness
Menace to society

Refuse is our inspiration
Terrorism our trade
Sabotage and piracy
Chaos our mental state

Mesmerizing festering
Intended for the faint of heart
Cultish and anthemic
Untill death us do part

Like a fiendish tropic virus
Spitting bile at all you whores
Razor-sharp tongue-in-cheek
Poking in your open sores

A wolf in sheep's clothing
The ultimate disgrace
Wrapped up as a gift of god
Exploding in your face

This is counter culture from the underground
Eternal revolution this is our sound.

Megalomaniac - by KMFDM

(Full link to a Google-cached lyrics' site: Kosher, virus-free link.)

From the guy's own blog:

'Yes, I know, I know: ESCR offers the "best hope" for new treatments. "The scientists" keep saying it again, and again. The only trouble is, the actual science reported to date seems to tell a different story.'

Story.

'STEM cells taken from human fat can be transformed into smooth muscle cells, offering a way to treat many kinds of heart disease, gastrointestinal and bladder ills, US researchers reported today.'

UN post bombed by Israel was known to be used by Hezbollah for cover.

"the Canadian peacekeeper killed there had previously emailed Mackenzie telling him that Hizballah was using their post as cover."

The correct thing in that situation is try to abscond without getting blown to bits by either side that are blowing rockets towards each other.

The incorrect thing to do would be to stay where you are, get killed, then have the UN grow angry with Israel for "deliberately" targeting your station.

I accidentally archived my ClustR map for this site, so in effect it kind of started over. You can click on the map picture and it will take you to the list of past maps if you want.

Ah well.

Hmmm.

...the lead plaintiffs in the Massachusetts same-sex marriage case three years ago, Julie and Hillary Goodridge are splitting up...

Roughly one-third of the male fish in British rivers are developing female characteristics, in a frightening trend that could severely upset the ecological balance of the waterways. What's more, the trend could affect humans, with a devastating effect on fertility. The problem is apparently caused by certain chemicals used in pest-control treatment, which cannot be removed by existing methods of sewage treatment. Environmentalists are urgently calling for a ban on those pesticides.

Oh, wait. That's not right.

The first part of the story is true. Male fish are developing female traits, and the implications -- for fish and for humans -- are indeed frightening.

And the problem is caused by chemicals that sewage-treatment plants cannot remove. But those chemicals aren't used by farmers as pesticides. The culprits are estrogens, used by millions of women in birth-control pills.

Needless to say, environmentalists are not calling for a ban on the use of the Pill. Everyone knows that we gotta have our Pills, regardless of the cost.

-from Diogenes/CWN

The brand-new 1998 Ford Taurus is road-worthy. Which is to say: awesome.

I could get used to comfy seats, an unstained interior that doesn't smell, alarm system, power everything... and air-conditioning. The car doesn't even shake when you go over 65MPH... you know that's quality.

Thanks Justin. I owe you.

Bombs launched by Hezbollah falling in/near residential parts of Israel (apparently Haifa).

Just can't imagine what that would be like if it started raining rockets here in Houston...

Scary stuff. Prayers needed.

Brain Age™ is pretty awesome.

Perhaps you heard last week that researchers were able to create (in mice) sperm from embryonic stem cells. What this means is that they reall first created an embryo from an adult cell (via somatic cell nuclear transfer, or some derivative of that technique), thus cloning the first mouse, but then after dismembering the new cloned mouse embryo for its cells, they direct the cells, through some delicate treatments and culturing techniques, to mature into germ cells (the cells that eventually go on to form gametes - sperm and eggs) and then into sperm.

You see, vertebrates specify their germ cells very, very early in development. In zebrafish, primordial germ cells containing high levels of RNA coding for a special gene called vasa are known to exist within the first 13 cycles of cell division, this is before even the three basic cell layers have been established (endo- meso- and ecto-derm), thus making it one of the first major cell specification events currently known. In mice, this sort of specification - that is to say, instructing certain embryonic cells to be germ cells - occurs within 7 hours of fertilization, again extremely early in development.

Hold with me, the cloak and dagger is ahead; you will not be disappointed.

The upshot of this is that these germ cells, the cells that will go on to form testicles and ovaries in humans, are determined and set aside very early during embryonic development, which means there aren't a whole lot of "steps" to get to that state. Put another way, this means that researchers culturing embryonic cells trying to coax them into the germ cell state will not face too many steps in order to arrive at germ cells starting from your standard embryonic cell.

This would be contrasted with a highly derived cell, for example, a neuron functioning in your retina; it takes a dizzying number of steps to produce something this far along down the line and highly derived: you'd have to give the embryonic cell in the dish signals 1.) to instruct it to assume an ectodermal state, 2.) then to become neural ectoderm, 3.) then to become neural cells like those that form the optic vesicle, 4.) then to become specifically part of of the neural anlagen that forms the primary neurulation of the optic vesicle, 5.) then to mature into a functioning, multi-layered retinal cell. (That is, assuming there was no shortcut - if you could find a gene or genes that enabled cells to adopt the mature retinal neuron state directly from an embryonic non-specified state, it would be an incredibly fortuitous short-cut; however there's no reason to think that such a shortcut exists, that the embryonic cell is capable of responding directly to gene activity that would confer the retinal neuron identity to it.) This task is even more daunting when you consider the known role that neighboring cells play in determining how and which cells become retinal neurons during early eye development - in other words you can't just grow a clump of retinal neurons - you need to grow up an entire support system for those cells. How could a researcher hope to mimic that in culture conditions?

I'm digressing - the point is that it's hard. It's way, way beyond what we can do in a lab for probably the next 50 years at least.

But, with primordial germ cells, it appears to be only a couple of steps away from the native and indetermined embryonic cell type (aka "ball of cells"). Meaning you have only to destroy the embryo, harvest the embryo's inner cell mass to culture for embryonic cells, and once they're in culture conditions, you add some kind of treatment to the culture, inducing the cells to adopt the fate of germ cells. I'm not familiar with the technique the researchers used - it could have more steps, but the point is that it's obviously manageable since they accomplished it.

Once you have these germ cells, it's only a short step again to coax some of them to produce functioning sperm, which can then be used to make another embryo. You tell a paper about it, then they start acting like a cure to infertility is right around the corner*.

Suppose, just suppose (I know this would never happen, but we're in "it'll never happen"-land, so just go along with me), that two lesbians want to have a child. Instead of approaching their gay male friend for a masturbation sample, and then only having at most the child be derived from one of the women, suppose they paid Dr. Stacks-of-Cash for a procedure where they nabbed a cell from one of the womans' legs, then performed the aforementioned somatic cell nuclear transfer, thus making a cloned embryo from one of them. But now here's the kicker: they coax the cells from that embryo into becoming germ cells - specifically germ cells to produce sperm. They then take this sperm from the first lady's cloned cells, mix it with the other woman's egg in your standard, garden-variety IVF (in vitro fertilization) procedure... and... you have it - two women making a child together. Each a biological parent as sure as your own mom and pop.

If you close your eyes and wish real hard (maybe try some of that new-age self-actualization and manifestation bullshit), you can almost forget the act of barbarous murder and rape of nature it took to bring about your child. The laughable reality would that it would be the egg-donor's child, but it would be the other's grand-child since the cloned embryo was the actual source of sperm for the child produced, and the cloned embryo was derived from the woman, thus skipping a generation.

It is a most disgustingly elegant form of savagery. A sly twist of molecules, a sly trampling of the first embryo's human rights to exist as a created and existing human. In fact, it's too bad the middle finger isn't one of the first things to form on embryos, so they could at least express themselves as they are sucked apart by microscopic needles to extract their oh-so-useful cells.

But hey, when we're murdering our unborn to actually make our medicine and children, chances are, the real Sickness isn't physical, it's spiritual. Just a hunch. Hey - what's that light that just flipped on in the dash...? Oh, shit...


-_-_-_-_-_-



*Infertility? If a man is using this technique to produce a child with his wife, he is hardly being cured of his infertility. All that's being done is that he's making a cloned embryo, using it for sperm, then tossing it aside. That's not an infertility treatment at all. It's the creation of sperm from a source other than the man's testicles.

The emphasis on infertility seems to do nothing but shift focus away from the reality of the technique and give the reader a false impression that infertility is actually being treated.

Infertility isn't really being treated unless you injected the sperm-producing cells into your testicles. (or ovaries...? The mind boggles at the idea of ejaculating ovaries... Perhaps it would find a strong demand and market among feminists who yet desire for themselves this virile power?)

Sorry, it's super late and I'm not doing much in the way of checking grammar and spelling. Deal with the typos! Consider it a luxury that you exist and can deal with typos; that you weren't hijacked by a scientist hours after your creation and be forced to produce sperm...

Down, down, down you're rollin'
Watch the blood float in the muddy sewer
Take another hit
And bury your brother

And we die young
The faster we run...

Alice in Chains - We Die Young

It remains to be seen what effect this drug would have on human brain, but in rats, it seems to encourage the production of new neurons in the part of the brain affected by Parkinson's Disease.

It's just another example of something else that might work in lieu of, say, cells from unborn children being injected into your face.

[Edit: forgot the Link.]

...sooner or later, God'll cut you down...

I'm up early to get some stuff done before meeting with the boss man later this morning, but I just have to tell you guys a few things.

First: the last Johnny Cash album, "American V: A Hundred Highways" is... great stuff! The man wrote it as he was dying - he and his son and a recording engineer did most of the voice recordings in his hospice bed. It's replete with broken and old Johnny Cash breaking his cackling voice, struggling to sing along with haunting melodies and some good gospel-ish and roots rock music. Man, it breaks your heart to listen to it, because he was basically singing out his last message:

Lord, help me smile
Another smile, just one more smile;
You know I just can't make it on my own.

I never thought I needed help before;
I thought that I could get by - by myself.
Now I know I just can't take it any more.
With a humble heart, on bended knee,
I'm beggin' You, please, help me.

Come down from Your golden
Throne to me, to lowly me;
I need to feel the touch of Your tender hand.

Remove the chains of darkness
Let me see, Lord let me see;
Just where I fit into your master plan.

It's almost something that should be said in private between a laboring man and his Lord, but all the same, it's awesome to hear it, and it makes some good music to listen to. It's like when he's singing "Hurt," but without the self-humiliation.

The whole album dispenses with all attempts to avoid death: Johnny's singing about his own death, about his own life, about his fears and faith...

Where the road is dark and the seed is sowed
Where the gun is cocked and the bullet's cold
Where the miles are marked in the blood and gold
I'll meet you further on up the road

Got on my dead man's suit and my smilin' skull ring
My lucky graveyard boots and song to sing
I got a song to sing, keep me out of the cold
And I'll meet you further on up the road.

Further on up the road
Where the way dark and the night is cold
One sunny mornin' we'll rise, I know
And I'll meet you further on up the road.

Now I been out in the desert, just doin' my time
Searchin' through the dust, lookin' for a sign
If there's a light up ahead well brother I don't know
But I got this fever burnin' in my soul
So let's take the good times as they go
And I'll meet you further on up the road.

Second: I found a program called MediaMonkey that basically allowed me to organize and completely correct all the screwed up (or in a lot of places, completely missing) ID3 tags for my mp3 files. It was never really a problem on my PC because I had some playlists made up, or I could easily browze to folders in a few clicks. But on my video iPod, it was a real pain to have over 1300 songs titled "Unknown - Untitled 01" and so on, without artist or track info. Not only that, but it synchs up with Amazon.com's catalogue to automatically download and enter the track/album/artist information. Nifty stuff.

Furthermore, it allows me to delete crappy iTunes from my computer, since it manages the iPod data transfer directly. No more iTunes jacking file associations and other general crappiness.

Third: one of my dad's friends is a snake-keeper, so I'm going to work something out this weekend as regards a python or milk snake or boa... something, anything, will be totally awesome. Apparently he's checking with a lady with animal rescue services to see what they may have available. So it's like a free snake that would otherwise just get tossed out and get run over by a Buick.

Fourth: the 1998 Ford Taurus will be mine shortly. Air conditioning feels so extravagant... I'm so used to just wearing undershirts and changing if they get too sweaty. I suppose it won't hurt anything showing up places I'm driving to not sweaty as a mug. And now that my iPod is all sorted out, it'll be great to have a decent stereo to plug it into. No more CDs everywhere - just an iPod with all my music. Hurray for consumerism. My quality of life is going up.

Fifth: I forget.

Uploaded an MP3 to my server, now you should be able to grab it. :)

I have hosting again! Wootilicious!

I can show pictures (like the logo above and the my picture off to the right).

And load up another .mp3 for you guys to pirate... YARRRR!

I'm going to go to sleep early tonight, and wake up kicking ass tomorrow. Boo-yeah!

Look at what's buried in the last five paragraphs of this article:

U.N. vote on N. Korea sanctions delayed (Such a non-exciting sounding heading...)

That's Japan, saying that a preemptive strike may be within the bounds of self-defense...

I've heard it said that the N/S Korea border is the most heavily armed place on the planet. Something like 2 million soldiers on each side, enough conventional artillary aimed at each other to destroy Seoul and every major city in both countries within a half an hour of the beginning of an all out attack - something like 15 million people dead almost instantaneously.

Would that happen if Japan hopped in and started exploding N. Korea's missile sites?

I successfully executed yet another "Holterhoff Exit" from my bicycle on the way into work today. Layed the bike down, did two barrel rolls (well, half barrel rolls and half forward flips), landed on my feet, literally standing from the rolling momentum. I did a little hop, then pumped my hands in the air in a victorious gymnast's salute. It was yet another instance of wishing my life were videotaped, since I bet I looked pretty slick. I swear, being a goalkeeper for 14 years (longer?) will really teach you how to fall correctly and without harming your body.

And really, all I have to show for it is gravel ground into the exposed flesh of my hands where they scored against the sidewalk. Beats a broken arm or leg, right?

:)

I just made like four posts. Don't neglect to read the new ones way down there beyond the boring political, religious and snake-related posts.

:P

That's "The Pen is Mightier, not 'Penis Mightier!'"

And the answer (in question, form) is:

What is a "hatchet job!"

Right!

What the heck am I talking about?

A hatchet job is a journalism piece that does nothing but raise questions without attempting to answer them, or report on them.

A perfectly infuriating example is this Wired.com Associated Press article.

Read it now if you can.

Done?

What did it say?

Let me try to paraphrase or something:

"Uh... the Bush administration broke the law."

Wait.

It didn't say that.

Let me try again:

"Uh... the Bush administration didn't tell lawmakers what it was doing. And that's illegal."

Wait.

It didn't say that.

Let me try again:

"IT DIDN'T FUCKING SAY ONE GODDAMNED THING!" (Added a moment later, for emphasis: "AT ALL!"

Really? Really, really?

Really.

A proper paraphrasing would be:

"The Bush administration maybe did something wrong by not reporting something - we won't tell you exactly what that something was, probably/possibly because our anonymous source doesn't know or didn't want to say, so we have no clue - to the House Intelligence Committee. This guy, who has a history of knocking Bush and his cronies, acknowledges that the Intelligence Committee can't be told of everything, but he feels personally that it was kindof a big deal and should have been told. This "may represent a breach of responsibility," were his exact words."

I'm not sure, but I think I can put it even more concisely: "Something (?) may have been done by one of our intelligence agencies, and this might have been better handled by informing the House Committee of it, at least this one guy thinks so on the Committee."

But that's not what you take away from that article.

It's a hatchet job, sexing up the facts - the facts which are so sparce (more or less what I paraphrase) - into something that hundreds of thousands of people who read Wired.com will take as "yet another example of the Bush administration raping our privacy laws and rights." Afterall, what's the article's headline? More Secret White House Intel

But notice that it doesn't say anything about privacy issues (the recent intel scandels), about what is being discussed. How many facts, how many pieces of actual information are brought up? The last paragraph is where most of the facts are reported, and all that does is highlight the dude's history of dissenting against the Bush administration.

It's meant only to be a specter, a claimed territory in your mental real estate, which raises questions about how the Bush administration is abusing power... all this as does no actual reporting on anything.

It's like the news blurbs on evening television for the next day's special report that ask, "Is your child safe at school?!" It's a ploy for mental real estate.

A hatchet job.

I hope I'd pick up on and ridicule a "news report" like this about Kerry or Gore. Who knows. The point is that it's lame.

And sadly, really effective in today's world of shallow thinkers.

The good news, one supposes, is that lots of fed up, beat up, and theologically exhausted Anglicans will probably convert en masse to Catholicism if this Mother Jesus bullshit continues. (Sorry Jesus, not for cursing, but for repeating the Episcopalian Church's Presiding "Bishopess"'s damned pathetic attempt to name you in a transgendered form. [Post edit: here's a link with some commentary on the "Mother Jesus" reference the Bishopess used. Raging liberal warning: NewsBusters is a pretty sickeningly conservative site. Don't blame me if you go blind from click on that link!])

At any rate, in an attempt to patch a flat tire on the plummeting airplane known as the "Anglican Communion" (comprised of many different national churches and sub-denominations - in America it's mainly the Episcopalian Church) apparently Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury (who oversees the Anglican Communion... well... kindof by influence - he has no real authority on theological matters) has proposed a two-tiered system of membership in the Anglican Communion...

See, the African Anglicans, and many Anglican churches are fuming about how the English, European, and now American churches are throwing all caution to the wind as regards ordaining women, electing women to be "bishopesses," and likewise making openly and sexually-engaged men and women priests and bishops.

Right, what was I saying? Oh yes... Rowan Williams proposes a "two-tiered system" of Communion. Which repulses all sensibilities of logic.

The very definition of being "in communion" means being of one mind. (Look up the word's definition.) As would befit a group of churches, being "in communion" means that they agree on the same ideas and theology. (Bonus irony to be found here: In the case of the Anglican Communion, it would seem like one of the shared founding ideas central to the "Communion" would be that if you disagree with church authority and have power and influence (for example, if your name is Henry VIII) it's fine to forcefully change theological fineries to suit your present needs and that dissenting parties should be persecuted, and locked up and executed all grizzly-like if necessary. That's exactly how the Anglican church broke off from the Catholic Church back in the 1500s... odd that such events could give rise to a religious group that claimed it had anything in common with each other outside of doing whatever the hell they all wanted. But yes, I digress.)

So here's the quick of the argument: you can't have a two-tiered system of "communion" where churches are being overseen and included overall in a psuedo-hierarchy but separated into the two tiers based on different theological foundations... it's a house divided. And not just divided... this shit is busted wide open. One group thinks the other is morally abject, completely bending to secular and political correctness; vice-versa the other group considers the first group to be biggoted and anti-love, close-minded and unaccepting of all the different forms of human love.

This isn't just some kind of superficial semantic argument... this is foundational and basic to all facets of belief in these churches.

It's like the Communist China's attempt to rule it's capitalist provinces under psuedo-democratic representation, but using traditional Communist authoritarianism to rule the rest of China with an iron fist. You read the government documents that extoll the virtues of Communistic (odd that the word "commune" is at the root of even this analogy) socialism, and can't help but smirk at the farcical and hypocritical way that comes off in light of how it preserves the ever-so-successful market economies booming in Hong Kong raking in all sorts of money and technology for China.

At this point, it has become exactly two different "communions" that choose to, in name only, belong to a single "Anglican Communion." It's silly. It's asinine. Moreover, it doesn't gain anything other than saving, in formality, a visible climax of schism in the Anglican Communion's ranks.

Is de facto schism kept silent in the consciences of Anglican believers better than outright schism within the churches?

Honestly, I think either way produces the same results: people believing different things. The point here is that reading about Rowan Williams trying to save the Anglican Communion reminds me of the times I tried to lie to my parents growing up. As if the words that came out of my mouth could mask the reality of the situation. I learned as a kid that that's kind of a silly, 15-second-fix. God, like my parents, can surely smell the bullshit...

Just for the "wow" factor, here are some of the coolest snakes I've seen breeders advertise:

Purple/orange reticulated python

Orange-eyed python

Black Eyed Leucistic (totally white body, awesome looking eyes)

Piebald ball pythons have localized patterned spots and whitely-pigmented spots.

The genetic engineering that breeders employ is actually really quite awesome... I do a lot of fish husbandry, so I can appreciate a good animal breeding strategy. Hahaha!

Had myself a rubusto-sized madura AVO cigar tonight, along with a Rolling Rock. Sometimes it's just good to take an easy Sunday evening chatting it up with friends. Eric and Katie's backyard is really, really nice - they've put a lot of effort changing a square of grass into a sweet backyard. And if you douse yourself in bug repellant, you don't get eaten! I think what helped make it really enjoyable was the neighbor that was playing some Johnny Cash in his garage. Good stuff.

I did some cleaning and maintenance stuff around the apartment, so this weekend I kind of made a point to enjoy my clean apartment, clean clothes, clean dishes, clean car... it's good being clean. :)

Oh, and on a trip to Sam's club, I picked up a giant pack of Terriyaki beef jerky, 2 giants multi-packs of chewing gum, two bed pillows (had to throw out my old saliva-stained pillows from college a while ago), and a Yamaha keyboard. Something I've wanted for a long time, but never really had the chance to get... I've been messing with it for a while now. It's totally sweet. The clincher was that it came with a nice folding keyboard stand, what's more, it's Sam's, so it's $20 cheaper even than Amazon... More on that later.

In other news, I'm about 90% sure that I'm going to be getting a snake for the apartment. It hit me the other day - I've wanted a pet for a while, something that you can actually play around with. Naturally I wanted a dog, but they can be smelly, ill-behaved, and are pretty time-intensive. A snake would be sweet because you can get it out when you want to, but it's totally fine if you ignore it for a few days (you know, making sure it's got water, etc). So... gonna find out about that.

I'm thinking about either a ball python or a corn snake. Both are very docile and make robust pets.

Well, I think it would be sweet. :)

...to my earlier post postulating that children are forced to follow militant Palestinian Arab around as they fight Israel and act as human shields:

Link.

So it appears they are brainwashed into willingly seeking out these clashes and being present for them.

The Man on the Brink™ is currently looking for a new (used) car. If you or a friend, or mother or uncle or neighbor is currently looking to get rid of their car, please let me know. I'm not picky, but it would absolutely great if it had air conditioning. It's hard to be Mr. Classy Man on the Brink™ when you show up places sweaty as a mug.

Unfortunately I think the brake system in the Volvo, which I've known for about a year is on it's way completely out on the front left axle, is audibly starting to wear through, and the estimation was $600-plus for all the componenture. Doesn't seem like it would make sense to repair it.

So there you have it.

(Click picture for link.)

"Militants from Palestinian Popular Resistant Committee hold a news conference in Gaza city, Gaza Strip, July 4, 2006."

Note the kids over there. I think if you pay attention whenever these terrorists move about in public, they always do so with a bunch of human shields kept in close with them. They're not stupid.

Imagine Bush or Kerry holding their press conferences with Kalishnikov riflemen mongering around.

Oh wait, legitimate governing forces don't need to appear in press conferences armed to the teeth in body armor and automatic rifles with identity-masking face covers.

Our kids watch Cliffard or Arthur, or even Sesame Street.

Their kids are shown state-broadcast propaganda instructing them to blow themselves up and go fly kites in Heaven for the Cause.

I shall go with no fear, no tears,
How sweet is the fragrance of the martyrs!
I shall go to my place in heaven,
How sweet is the fragrance of the martyrs!

(And who caught the irony of the propaganda's insinuation that Heaven would be a Western ideal - kite-flying in a park and ferris-wheels in an amusement park...)

That is messed up...

Oh, I just read that a NY state court ruled that same-sex marriage should be decided by elected officials.

Shocking... what is this novel form of government?!

I told my boss that I was considering the priesthood. He didn't freak out.

Oh god, that ignoramus asshole is blowing rockets by the hour over there in Korea...

Can you imagine the outrage, the mind-numbing fear and loathing that the media and other secular organizations would reel with, if George Bush said the same things as George Washington or Abraham Lincoln?

Washington and Lincoln make Bush look like some kind of back-bench casual church-goer who's just there for something to do.

And Washington in his letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Savannah, after he became president, reminded the nation that “the same wonder-working Deity” whose name “is Jehovah” who had rescued the Israelites from Egypt was active in 1776 in “establishing these United States as an independent nation.”

Happy July 4th (a few hours late, yes!) and let us pray that God continues to watch over our country.

I added a counter over there to remind people that it's not a trivial matter, that each day carries some consequence....

Alright. I think I said this already, but my internet hosting ran out. I'm currently trying to find a place to upload and store my portrait and alos the website's logo, which were lost at sea when the host sunk.

Also, I can't remember the other thing I was going to say. Alright.

In honor of the 4th of July, and the birthday (more or less) of America, here are a couple videos to show you how to do it up right this Tuesday:

With firecrackers,

or

Bottle rockers.

O_o

Oh yeah, happy birthday to my sister also, who once agains gains the 2 years advantage over me. :)