Welcome to mistersite.net, home of... well, something unique, I hope. Be sure to check out all those lovely links to the left to see who I am, what I do, and what I like. Read my blog too... it's right under this paragraph. And leave a comment, so I know you've visited.
Okay, fine, something about my life... gosh you people are picky...
...but first, I share my complete and utter joy. The Cubbies have NOMAH! This is huge! And Maddux is going for #300 tomorrow! What could be better than this? Here's hoping I'll be able to tell you in October.
Now, on to my life. I'm working... a lot. (Only forty hours a week, but to me, that's a lot, seeing as how I'm not a 9-to-5er at heart.) The job is... well, it's a job. It's frustrating sometimes, and a little stressful, and doesn't really challenge me mentally (though there are some who would say I've always been mentally challenged), but it pays me money and money pays for rent and food and all the other nice things in life. Well, the money from this job only pays for a few of the nice things in life after LA rent and food are accounted for. Alas, it's a living. I have a job, and it doesn't involve wearing a blue vest or anything festooned with the accursed golden arches, so I'm not really in a position to complain.
I've also taken up boogieboarding as a pastime of sorts. I tried surfing - one of my goals after moving to LA - but I'm too unbalanced to sit down on one of those things, to say nothing of standing up on one. So I've got my boogieboard and my wetsuit and my fins and I'm going out and catching waves. Usually my buddies and I - Wall from work and Rob from Tribe/Fuller - go early Wednesday mornings, getting to the parking lot at El Porto (which I think is a Spanish abbreviation for "port-a-john," despite its being a pretty nice beach) right when it opens at 6:00am. Which means we usually meet around 4:30. But it's incredible fun... there's nothing like being out on the ocean for a few hours, and going to work with freshly salt-watered hair. If I'm ever in such a mood, I'll bring my camera one of these trips and see if a friend will take my picture.
I'm also landscaping my pastor's backyard. Now I'm the first to admit that I have no prior knowledge when it comes to landscaping. But I'm a quick learner, and I think I need to reconnect to the earth somehow and toil in the proverbial (and actual) noonday sun, and getting my hands full of dirt and making things grow is just the way to do it. I'm going to teach myself how to lay sod, plant trees, and make fountains, among other things. It'll be quite a project. I'm relishing the thought.
I'm also thinking of moving downtown, to the Wilshire area, to be nearer to Tribe... nothing approaching "plans" yet, but it's germinating in my mind.
posted by jimmy at 14:47 -
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"I voted for it before I voted against it"
Funny story, really. Considering it's one of the top obfuscations out there now about Kerry, I feel the need to let my audience know what the real story is. It's been told numerous times by Kerry himself and many "liberal" news sources, but for some reason the "liberal" mainstream media won't touch it. Since conservatives tend not to read the opposition, I present it here for you.
Let's go back, let's go back, let's go way on back when*... back when Dubya requested $87 billion dollars from Congress to support this nice immoral war we've gotten ourselves into. See, the President can't introduce legislation himself, not being a member of the legislative branch, so he has to get a friendly Congresscritter to do it for him. In case you've never seen the Schoolhouse Rock session "I'm just a bill," the bill has to be debated on the Senate floor before becoming law.
Kerry co-sponsored an amendment to this spending bill, which spent the same $87 billion, but actually, y'know, came up with a way to pay for it (by rolling back Shrubby's $umpteen-billion tax cuts for the wealthiest of us) instead of passing the costs on to our children and our children's children and our children's children's children. This bill was the bill John Kerry voted for... same $87 billion, same flak jackets for the uniformed folk, same everything, except that (a) the rich would actually (gasp!) have to sacrifice something for this war so many of them are profiting from and (b) the $87 billion wasn't expected to appear out of thin air.
Since Republicans aren't really into the rich having to sacrifice anything (like a rich young oil baron getting to skip out on that pesky Vietnam draft thing by not serving in the TANG) this bill, predictably, wasn't the one presented to the Senate for voting. The bill the Republicans presented didn't really outline how the $87 billion was going to be paid for when the budget was already in a deficit (due to the aforementioned irresponsible tax cuts.) So John Kerry, in a show of fiscal responsibility (didn't that used to be something Republicans stood for?), voted against a bill which spent money irresponsibly.
So it's really pretty irresponsible and repugnant of the Republicans and the GWB administration to peg Kerry with the label that he doesn't support the troops and doesn't want them to have body armor (which, incidentally, accounted for 1/3 of 1 percent of that $87 billion), when all along he was trying to be fiscally responsible, by ensuring that the American people actually paid their bills. But I guess that pesky "truth" stuff isn't all that important to this administration.
* = Name that song and singer. Worth 10 brownie points.
posted by jimmy at 14:18 -
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Sunday morning blogging...
Ahh, politics. I've been reading David Brock's The Republican Noise Machine: The Right-Wing Media and how it Corrupts Democracy and it's really freaking scary. Coupled with FAIR, Media Matters and other sites I've been reading - sites which actually listen to Limbaugh and watch O'Reilly and, y'know, check their facts (finding most of them wanting in the process) - it's downright sad, how the right-wing has totally overtaken the supposedly "liberal" media (which really wasn't even liberal to begin with).
So here's the question: If a vast majority of the people in news reporting identify themselves as liberals, and a vast majority of academics identify themselves as liberals, isn't it theoretically possible - even more likely under Occam's Razor - that the information they have access to or their innate intelligence causes them to be liberal, rather than some vast left-wing conspiracy to stack these fields? In other words, isn't it possible that the truth in fact is liberal? I mean, here are (a) some of the most well-informed and connected people in our society (news media), and (b) some of the most intelligent people in our society (academics), and they both tilt heavily liberal. Makes you think, doesn't it.
I'm really worried about this election, to be honest. I think Kerry would win in a landslide if this were an honest election based on the facts, but everything the Bush campaign has engaged in has shown me that this election will be neither honest nor fact-based. The thing that worries me, though, is that Diebold - the company contracted to make election machines in the key state of Ohio and other places - is run by a guy who promised Bush that he would deliver to him the state of Ohio. If this resembles in any way Jebby delivering Florida to Bush in 2000 (i.e. by systematically disenfranchising thousands of likely Dem voters), we've got a problem. I think the neocon and apocalyptic Republican factions currently in the White House would think nothing of the means of tampering with democracy in order to further what they believe to be the justifiable ends of their policies.
posted by jimmy at 11:16 -
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Lovely Bubbles
Jim decided it would be a good idea to let Alisa post on his blog (I had to speak in third person because otherwise you wouldn't know who this was). So here I am, posting on his blog. I thought to myself, "What should I say? Should I pretend I'm Jim but with more color to his writing? Should I express my similar political views with far fewer 'big words'?" I'm still trying to find the answers to these questions and yet, I have already started writing. Crap.
You know, my real last name is Boycott. Seriously. My great-grandfather was sold into the Ledyard family from Charles Boycott, the guy whose name the word derived from. Isn't that weird? He was so hated that he had to sell his children to people in America. I guess the guy who bought my great-grandfather unofficially adopted him and gave him his last name. My dad didn't tell me this until I was 18 years old. He also added, "Oh yeah. There's also a history of epilepsy in our family. Your grandfather had it and it skips a generation." Good luck with that, Alisa.
Jimmy doesn't really tell me anything about himself. He's very... secretive, which is weird because he'll talk about other stuff for hours, but never about himself. Once he told me how he bit a hole in his tongue and I was so excited I almost cried. I don't know why he is so concerned about appearing "self-absorbed" on here, especially because that is what the public WANTS. It's all about the gossip. I told him he was just being difficult to be difficult, which he agreed with.
Jim's very special, though. I guess if I were capable of being secretive I probably would. Unfortunately, I have this odd tendency to tell people I barely know about stuff that they have absolutely no interest in. For example, at work last night (and completely out of the blue), I told my manager that I keep getting a cramp in my groin muscles. And now I've just told all of you.
But Jimmy is a really great boyfriend. He holds the door open for me. Isn't that nice? He also holds the remote for me because I'd just watch more TLC or I love the 90's. I DO love the 90's, though. Well, mainly, I just love Michael Ian Black.
Not that he gets a lot of chances to hold the door open or hold the remote or unlock my car door, but perhaps that will change in the fall. I'd really like to, you know, live closer to him... because I like him. A lot.
And now, so this post isn't completely a waste, the Cubs are down by 2 in the top of the 4th (but hopefully they'll end up winning by the end) and Jenna Bush stuck her tongue out at reporters. CLEARLY SHE'S JUST AS DUMB AS HER DUMB FATHER!
Love,
Alisa
posted by jimmy at 15:42 -
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An update.
I've been told to update, but I really don't know what to update with. Most of my thoughts currently are swirling around politics and religion, which are two subjects I'm trying to avoid broaching on this blog, and to tell you all about what's going on with me would be a trifle self-indulgent, now wouldn't it?
posted by jimmy at 11:37 -
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Good job.
John Kerry apparently does read this blog, and he picked John Edwards as his running mate, ignoring the fact that I accidentally said Gephardt's from Iowa, when in fact he's from Missouri. No matter; he still would have been political suicide. But Edwards is the right choice, in my opinion. He's a populist, he's actually from a blue-collar background (unlike Dubya's Texas-cowboy routine), and he's quite the charismatic chap. I think he's swell.
In other news... well, there really isn't any other news. Work continues. School is taking the summer off, though I did get 3 A's and an A- last quarter, which is quite an accomplishment considering that there were maybe about ten minutes of class time when I wasn't playing Snood. (That's education money hard at work there.)
On Saturday I went to the beach and got sunburnt. Don't worry, mom, it wasn't bad - no blistering or anything, just a lot of redness - but it decided at about 11:30 last night to start itching, and so I didn't get to sleep until around 3:00. I'm sure you all wanted to know that.
I also went to see fireworks Sunday night... me and a few folks from church sat out on the Rose Bowl Golf Course(tm) with the rest of Pasadena. Nothing says "America" to me quite like brightly-colored sparks and loud explosions, especially when they're exploding all around me, since our group seemed to be the only people there who hadn't brought their own fireworks to play with before the big ones started going off. The smell of burnt sulfur is indeed the smell of freedom.
posted by jimmy at 09:14 -
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Log
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