No Title Really, Just A Long Post That Goes Nowhere

“reject confrontation in favor of accommodation”
what the fu...? it's better to accomodate criminal activity than to confront it? and, yes, this is criminal activity. flagrantly so. congress created a law to stop presidents and spy agencies from doing exactly what the president and one of his spy agencies are doing right now. so, the word on the street is that the republicans are going to try and pass a new law that loopholes the last law, because it's their guy in the oval office. and what's the loophole? simply creating a subcommitee that bush has to report to about his illegal spying. and the makeup of this subcommitee? 4 republicans, 3 democrats. someone should tell them to beware abusing power in this manner. the next election just might put a democrat in and he or she would have all of these neat, new ways of endrunning laws. and the republicans would have only themselves to kick in the ass. not that they could it in the first place if there wasn't a lobbyist around to point it out. not that a lobbyist would be that stupid...unless, of course, he's under indictment and hoping to shave years off of his sentence.
if y'all been reading my blog for some time, then you might remember me talking about the possibility of vote machine rigging in florida and a man who exposed a congressman who attempted to buy software that would change vote counts. here is an interesting essay (complete with lots-o-links) that speaks to the national scandal no one wants to touch.
wow. this is not what i would have thought to find: the majority of americans believe god created adam just as described in the bible. no news, however, if eve came out as expected. now, before y'all go off on a rant about how atheistic i am, let me just tell you that this is not a religion bashing note. i like god. i like the idea of a supreme being fucking with the petri dish. i just don't buy into organized religion and i definately do not get on with literalists. i have my church and my sanctuary and my place to go for confession and meditation. and none of those are within a square light year of people who think tithing and sunday church are the golden ticket into heaven. they have their place in the stucture of normal society, but they are balms for the soul, not guarantors of redemption. but anyway, to read that more than 50% of us think adam was made from clay in a day astounds me. perhaps, though, the real truth is that most people just don't want to think...or add...or go to a museum.

have you ever noticed that when waterloo by abba comes on the radio you just want to stop what you are doing and groove to the music? or is it just me? i think muriel's wedding corrupted me. but, man, do i get my groove on. sometimes i think i'm a gay dancer in a hairy hetero body.

so, tomorrow my vacation begins. i catch the train at 10:30. 6 glorious days of not being at work and getting to hang out with some old friends. but not so fast. i had to make the decision to go into to work at 6 in the morning tomorrow so as to calibrate a new hydraulic compression machine so that my lab bitch can run it while i'm gone. fuck me with a swizzle stick. we just bought out two labs and my lab got some neat toys. that's the upside. the downside is that through poor planning my boss waited until the day before i go on vacation to actually go get the equipment. so, i get to find the proper speeds by which we break concrete and grout cylinders of various sizes when i should be sleeping in. trust me, though, i will not be charged a day's vacation for coming in (gotta love being on salary, i walk in for five minutes, sneeze and go home sick and i'm paid for the entire day and tomorrow will be one of those days).
also, i now have an oven that goes to 1500 degrees faranheit (yours only goes to eleven) and will burn oil out of asphalt, tell me how much organic material exists in a sample of dirt and calculate pi to the nearest parsec. ain't that cool.
two amazing toys. if i could bring them home and make love to them i would. and never leave the house again. reminds me of an alteration to a cat stevens song i once heard:
and if i could ever suck my dick
awayyyyyy ayyyy
i'd never leave the house.
but tomorrow i get on the train for a 24 hour trip. and i will need to find the porter who smokes and keep an eye on him. some stops are long enough to get off and have a puff. and the porter knows every one. amtrak no longer allows smoking in the beer car. understandable for the most part, but overnighters like me should have a safe area in which to do our nasty deed. otherwise we tend to fire weapons indiscriminately. and if i had my compression machine with me i just might put the conductor's head in it to check his skull's ultimate psi. anyhoo.
so, this is it. in a day i'm in californighaye and hanging with the heathens.