I'm at work today, and a coworker smells slightly of the green weed.
Here's a modern day Emily Post: Do you tell people you're around that they remind you of a Phish concert?

I enjoy listening to the debates on climate change, and how China keeps portraying itself as a "developing" country.
I'm sorry, buddy, but if you're consistently ranked as the world's third largest economy (ignoring any eurozone grouping) then you're not developing, you're developed.

However, I would be willing to agree with them if I could officially refer to China, in publication, as "Taiwan's underdeveloped sibling".

See, you can't have face and bitch about being poor and underdeveloped, can you?

So, I've got some money with odd stamps on them, I'm assuming that they're foreign banks, etc.
I decided, instead of saving useless pieces of paper, I'd just scan them and spend the originals.
Apparently, Big Brother Epson doesn't like this. It actually brought up a warning!
and won't let me scan them.
I hate computers.

Back on the Work Train again. Holding steady so far....

I'm now pondering why Arnie Schwarzen-moron signed the silly ammunition bill.
Now I'm going to be treated (more) like a criminal for wanting to go to the range.
And won't be allowed to mailorder ammunition because.... I'm really not sure, the mail truck might explode?
And have to be FINGERPRINTED when buying ammunition, because this will obviously prevent me from shooting someone. Just knowing my fingerprint is out there, pursuing me.
This law will work, though: Criminals commonly obey every other law but the one they're breaking.. No criminal will buy illegal ammunition, that just wouldn't be right. One might say criminal.

I hate politicians, they have an overstated opinion of their durability and strength of their laws. Here's an idea, how about we pass laws that punish people for doing things wrong, such as murdering others, and then enforce them when these things occur? Oh, wait, we ALREADY have them? And they don't magically keep people honest? I know, lets make more duplicate laws! 

So, 7-eleven is weird.
This goes without saying.
I bought a twelve pack of coke, and it came with a free pocket spanish-english english-spanish dictionary.
They're currently pushing Domo-kun merchandise, which isn't weird as much as awesome, but hey...

I'm watching some silly show on BBC, about a blond girl that moves things with her mind, the show switches to two girls making out (shocking!) and immediately segues into a commercial for ANOTHER BBC show advertising it's shocking storyline involving two high school girls who are messing around.

I can picture some staff meeting at the BBC.
"How can we improve ratings"
off in the corner : "How about lesbians"
Old british guy, vaguely drooling "by jove, I think you've got it, Intern Jane, she of the slightly short hair, you're brilliant. Memo to all, across the board: Spice up our storyline's with Lesbians. I want lesbians in all shows. I don't care if it's a show about all gay men, I want lesbians in there! Now excuse me, as I go home to my frosty wife..."

1. The Filmore fire, burning roughly towards my house, currently the big California fire, was started by a "spontaneously combusting compost heap"
2. I bought a Nintendo DSi to learn Japanese again. It's cheaper than an electronic dictionary.

Basically is the new "umm".
Except at least umm is honest. Umm says "I have no idea what to say next, so I'll make a little noise to waste time until my brain catches up"
Basically is just pretentiousness at its worst, and makes the person listening feel like they're being talked down to.

I'm in favor of replacing basically with portentously.

"so, portentously, you need to work on that project"

It adds an air of dread to everything you say.


The old, slightly chubby Steve Jobs used to slightly annoy me, like someone who had too many pieces of pie.
The new, super thin Steve Jobs, actually frightens me.
He reminds me of my mortality.

So today, paying slightly more than I'd preferred, I bought an oddity.
A tie tack, which is supposedly ivory, featuring a polar bear carrying a baby seal cub in its mouth.

So I 'm at starbucks, and the spanish guy across from me has a mouse in the shape of some bodybuilder guy with a large package.
Now, is this "i'm so gay because i have a gay mouse", or "I'm so ironic because I have a gay mouse"?

I'm not sure if yahoo purposely chose this quote, but:

"We want to show how U.S. imperialism has spread across the Pacific and across the world," said Lynette Cruz, an organizer of the Hawaiian Independence Action Alliance. "It'll be fun."

Yes, fun. I think a lot of nutty politicos do things cuz they're fun.

On a side note, did the US "steal" Hawaii? Of course. Just like the US stole everything west of the Mississippi. And like every other country on the planet kicked some other group out to establish themselves.

What I wonder is, what would Hawaii be like if it had NOT been part of the US?
similar to any other pacific Island? occupied by Japan during WW2? Aligned with Russia during the cold war?

Another little nugget: between 1981 and 2005, Hawaii received from the federal government $1.10-$1.56 for every dollar paid in federal taxes:
http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/22685.html

appeared as a paid ad on facebook. I clicked. I regret it now.

What is their purpose???

http://www.roandmo.net/home

So I wandered today over to the World's Fair of Money, a gigantic coin collecting deal at the LA Convention center.
One of the most fun ( and childish) things was a "passport to world coins", where for nine bucks you got a little passport and could go around to various world mints and receive a free coin. Most of the people staffing these booths were interesting, and actually seemed excited to tell you a bit about their countries. The Australians gave us a funny fly hat, and the Austrians gave us T-shirts because I remembered some facts about the coin she gave me.
Everyone put on a good show,except for Mainland China.
Whose booth was staffed a bored looking non-chinese woman, who simply stamped our passport, stuffed the coin in , and sent us on our way.
A little later, we run into the Taiwanese mint, who had their flag omitted from the passport because, you guessed it, the Mainland Chinese flag was in there. Can't have both in a document, or the world might explode. Or Mao's ghost might come back for another cultural revolution. We're not sure which.
The Taiwanese booth was staffed by HYPER friendly people, who jumped around trying to help you any way they could, with a large display of Taiwanese currency. They even forced some beautifully engraved postcards on us, and as we were walking away one of their staff members runs up to my dad and says "Excuse me, I found this on the ground, I think you dropped this".
Lo and behold, he was holding out the Mainland Chinese coin, which had apparently been placed carelessly in the holder and had fallen out at some point.
The irony of the Taiwanese guy handing us the coin wasn't lost on me.

Today I bought a fuji J20 digital camera, becaues I wanna start taking more photos, but I'm paranoid about getting my d90 swiped like the d70 was.
I also bought a coin collecting price guide.
How?
Why, with my $156 out of the coinstar machine, of course! go amazon!

• Some woman rolled by today in a prius, the newer kind, the ones that scream "I HAVE A PRIUS!!!"
  She had no less than five bumper stickers praising our mighty chief, one triumphantly proclaiming her womanhood with an Obama O. She also had a license plate that stated "bettr mpg", or something like that.
  I honestly believe the vehicle was running entirely on smarminess. No other fuel needed but self satisfaction.
  I believe I will come out with a line of bumper stickers to place on such vehicles. They will say "My poop, powered by my inherently higher morality, smells like flowers"

• So Obama has a press interview on his healthcare proposals, and I'm listening to it on the radio. And he ends it by going off on his now much documented "stupid cops" speech. I was totally shocked by this, as the obvious answer to the question was "I was not there, I'm not sure what occurred, so I have no comment". It struck me at the time as bad judgment, and rather amateur in the political realm. He then followed this by talking race, at which point it really went south, as part of the reason I voted for the guy was I thought he had moved on from blaming the past for the future.

So I'm reading Smithsonian, and they have an article on Herod the Great.
Who was apparently quite the ass, Running off to Rome where they eventually set him up as the ruler of Roman Judea, circa Jesustime.
At one point, he believes one of his sons, who says the other two sons are threatening to kill him, and has those two sons killed. Sort of an inverse King Lear. Later on , this son tries to poison him, and gets whacked himself.
the treacherous son's name? Antipater.

Yes. Guy rules for the romans and names his son
anti (ancient greek)i=hostile to
pater (latin)=father.

And is suprised when the son does all sorts of nasty things.

Trying to install on my netbook.
boom "kernel cannot load" error appears, while using their "easy" install, in Ubuntu.
I really can't be bothered to fuck with this.
Thus, I don't care. goodbye.

Seriously linux people, fix this shit. It's been what, ten years of never having a clean easy install?

Verizon is currently runnng this ad, and everytime it rolls around, it makes me grit my teeth.
The basic premise is: Fat frumpy guy pretends to not want a new phone, while the fashionable couple sitting across from h im oddly shows off their phones.



I feel so frumpy.

Apparently, someone is trying to set a record.
The youngest Black teenage female is attempting to fly coast to coast.
How very specific.
She should be worried, since if she succeeds, a left handed black teenage female may try it and overshadow her accomplishment.