Don't listen to the pretentious fish

I just got this in my Yahoo IM web client:


My neck head??? That would only make sense to a fish, who arguably do indeed have neck heads.

I don't have the heart to tell this fish that I love him. Raw. With rice and seaweed. And grilled, of course. Pseudointellectualsalmon may not be in my Contacts; but his brother lies quartered in my freezer, the memory of his flavor indelibly into my neck head.

Craigslist

There are some crazy things going on with Craigslist. We just use it to buy patio furniture. I've also purchased a voice recorder, a computer, and ... oh, I think a refrigerator too. Tina and I just haven't advanced to the hookers and rapists yet. I think we're good with household items, really.

New blog up and running

I've decided to make this blog less about all things and instead focus on family and other fun stuff. Like drinking fortified wine (see last blog post). I do have a new blog that is political in nature, where I can rant to no one but myself and have to burden you fine people with my crazy ideas of Obama intentionally destroying America. OK, OK, I promise though, that will be the last time I say anything about it.

Please be sure to put a web filter block on this URL so that you never accidentally stumble upon it: http://sullysoapbox.blogspot.com.

Well - I have to go back to work so that I can continue to earn devalued wages (John, you promised!!). Yeah, yeah. Next time.

Economic Remedy

Invest in all five:

Ewww... creepy!!

Tina and I like to read this blog called Eyes for Lies. She is a human lie detector by nature and by occupation. Anyhow, I just read one of her more recent posts and I found it really disturbing.

What do you suppose this guy was going to do? What was he really after?

How about this instead:

A $17,000,000,000.00 budget and a $3,400,000,000,000.00 budget cut? Let's flip-flop the numbers. I know, that's not at all realistic. But I think we could get away with a $300 - $400 billion dollar annual budget.

My comments, btw, relate to this article.

Let's see if Huff Po publishes

I have no reason to think they won't, but just in case I'm going to paste it on my blog. This was my comment made to this article on Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/republican-political-hack_b_198326.html

COMMENT:
Democrats wouldn't vote for the bill because the pedophile distinction was made? Is it not obvious that pedophiles, as a group, swing both ways? Therefore, isn't it clear that a pedophile would stand to gain added civil protection under the guise of persecution based on sexual preference? I understand the "consensual" qualifier is there for the purpose of handling just such a scenario, but I see the point of explicitly defining pedophilia as not being a qualified orientation. Why let the distinction rest on the collective presumption of what "consensual" means when you can declare the exception explicitly. After all, the possession or distribution of child pornography, I would have to think, qualifies one as something of a pedophile while never requiring the consent of anyone to obtain the images.

And on a separate note, even if this were some sort of dirty political trick, it is hardly unique to one party.

Weird dream last night

I don't know how to interpret it. It was night time, about 3am and the sun was still shining. My sister Kim told me that it was not a big deal, sometimes the sun just sets really late here in FLA. Still, I found it bizarre, and I so I brought Tina's Flip camcorder outside to record the craziness because most people were asleep and wouldn't believe me. I think it was supposedly a local and not a global phenomena, one that just crops up every now and again. It was just an odd feeling to be outside, looking around at all of the starkly contrasted shadows on the ground, having been cast by the leaves and branches of the trees. And all of this during a time when the sun should have been long set. Maybe you just had to be there.

The Manchurian Candidate has been elected

I've been thinking this for a while now, but this article puts it all together. I know the few people who read my blog would disagree. Actually, that's an understatement - they probably think I've gone from middle of the road conservative to certifiable conspiracy whack job. But I have to get this off my chest: Barak Obama, in my opinion, was hand selected to bring about chaos and destruction to the United States. And while I write these words, I'm wrestling with the idea of whether or not I should even bother arguing my point.

I don't think I will go into it fully. Instead, if you're curious as to what has led me off my rocker, I ask that you look into Obama's long time associations yourself. Look into his achievements, voting records, etc. The right-wing World Net Daily had an opinion piece posted days before the election last year that does a fine job of explaining my general point of view.

But you don't need my help understanding my point of view on this; not really. Obama's actions speak louder than any words uttered from this internet soap box.

idiocy

At least he reads the teleprompter well. I mean, he certainly sounds like he knows what he's talking about. You couldn't say that about Bush.

Baez throwing in the towel for a win

I'm becoming more and more convinced that the defense strategy for Casey Anthony is to throw the case and create a mis-trial. Why they would want this, I imagine has to do with money. Unfortunately, this is more of a gut feeling than anything I can back up with facts. I'm not sure what Baez gains in providing a completely incompetent defense. Maybe I'm just giving him too much credit: perhaps he really has no idea what the hell he's doing.

Who done it

Tina turned me on to this blog called "Eyes for Lies". It's written by a "human lie detector" - someone who has been identified by the FBI as having an uncanny ability to detect when someone is lying. She doesn't claim to always be right, but her record is pretty close to that.

Go ahead and read her thoughts on cases that have already been solved and you'll see just how accurate she can be.

Unfortunately, this doesn't bode well for Haleigh Cummings. After reading her thoughts on the case and knowing her success record, it's pretty clear what the outcome will be.

3/7/2009

We went to Epcot today. We were able to get in, complements a good friend of the family. I won't say who that good friend was because Disney has spies everywhere. They're like the cardnalists of 17th century France. Yeah, I know that's exactly what you were thinking. No really, I mean it, because now that everyone is on facebook, I am truly writing to myself. Well, actually I'll bet Tina pops in every now and again. That's because she's a good wife. And a great mom - she planned out the whole Disney weekend get-away and was responsible for the bulk of its successful execution. Of course, I could say that about any day of the week.

Anyhow, we had a great time at the magic kingdom yesterday. We're debating whether to continue doing the annual three-day / two-night thing or buying season passes. I always think the season passes are going to be less than they really are until I am reminded when I look at the prices. It would cost us about $1K for the family. And that's with black out dates! Still, there is a LOT to do between just MK and Epcot. We haven't even seen the other two.

I'll try to get some videos of the kids at MK and the character breakfast posted tomorrow. Not that anyone other than Tina and I will see them, but I'm going to put them up anyway.

Facebook - aka - BlogKiller

Now that everyone's resigned themselves to Facebook, our blogs are kind of withering. I suspect this phenomenon will be short-lived. Facebook is good to reconnect to old friends and relatives; but if you've got a soapbox to stand on and opine, nothing beats a blog.

Well, I have nothing more to say. I'm going to facebook now.

A favorite song

I only heard this song for the first time about two years ago. I just love it, even if it sounds rather whiny. I'm whiny. I'm whining about that fact right now. Whaaa..

Anyhow, here's a link to that favorite song of mine. I don't think anyone else will like it, but hey - you never know.

This looks like fun

This band is covering the entirety of Dark Side of the Moon, as well as playing their usual Grateful Dead covers. To me, this sounds like a little slice of heaven. Even though they are "just" a cover band, their sound is pretty good. And I find it impressive that they can recreate Dark Side with such fidelity in a live setting. Maybe it's really not that impressive, but as a musical ignoramus I find it neat-o.

Stumbling on sociopaths

This post is to justify my interest in the Casey Anthony case. I've always been amazed by sociopaths. I'm sure you've known at least one or two in your lifetime. They say its more of an anti-social sliding scale than a simple and singular diagnosis. In fact, it's not a diagnosis at all. But I digress: they fascinate me. When I first heard the story of this 22 year old who claimed someone kidnapped her daughter, but she didn't bother to report it for a month, I thought "Either this person knows exactly where her daughter is and just doesn't want to say anything or she is by far one of the biggest sociopaths I've ever seen." I said that because she was clearly not even a little bit concerned about her kid, so I figured she had to know where she was. Because even a sociopath would be upset that they got caught ... she didn't seem like she had a care in the world.

Well, we know the truth now. She's very far on the anti-social scale, but I don't think as much as Bundy or Ramirez. Especially Ramirez, who actively hates humanity. What I think makes her case so fascinating is the complete lack of forethought that went into her crimes (remember the check-forging, stealing, etc). All the other sociopaths that I am aware of (and obviously I am no expert) had a strong sense of self-preservation. Casey seems completely incapable of worrying about anything except what is happening to her at that very moment in time.

I read a book recently called Stumbling on Happiness. In it, the author talks about how happy lobotomized mental patients are. They found that the reason for this was that the prefrontal cortex controls planning and forethought. In the early days of lobotomies they had assumed the prefrontal cortex was not useful at all, but removing it had the pleasant side-effect of making their most anxiety-ridden patients as calm and happy as clams. The reason being that much of anxiety has to do with what you're thinking might or is going to happen. Take away that part of the brain and poof - no more worries. Literally.

So I got to wondering if Sociopaths have something wrong with their prefrontal cortex. I looked it up and guess what? They do have some strange wiring in the prefrontal cortex after all. Evidently it's well known, but hey, it was news to me.

Here's an interesting article about it: http://indioheathen.blogspot.com/2007/01/sociopathy-and-sado-authoritarianism.html If you're interested, google sociopaths & Prefrontal cortex. You'll get a ton of info about the biological roots of clinical sociopathy.

So who else among you has been following this case? What are your thoughts on Casey's motivations, her psychology, and anything else that would bring a person to the point of murdering their own child and not even bothering to do a half-way decent job of covering it up?

Fuel Alternatives

I'm wondering what the most viable energy alternatives are. Ultimately what's needed is to find a chemical reaction that results in a high yield of energy and a truly harmless waste product. Better still, a useful waste product. Oxidizing (or whatever the right word is) hydrocarbons results in CO2 and H2O. I guess that's where the idea of Hydrogen power comes from: H + O2 and we get an exothermic reaction with a byproduct of ... H2O. And who can't use what amounts to distilled water? They could even put it in a collection tank and you could empty it into a reservoir at your house that is specifically used for waste water. Right now we use the same water source for drinking and flushing the toilet. Why not use our cars' waste for our personal waste? Or... we could make the collection container so that the owner removes it and places it on a water cooler. Obviously you would have at least two of these.

I guess this idea hasn't taken off yet because of the whole "I don't want to be immolated by my car"/Hindenburg thing... Plus, where are we going to get all of that pure O2 and H? And the cost of shipping it ...

Maybe the answer to global warming is reducing hydrocarbon consumption as much as possible while working on figuring out what to do with our bumper crop of CO2 that's just floating around. Surely someone wants a lot of CO2... Maybe there's an interstellar CO2 market that we need to tap into.

I don't know. I'm going back to work now. If there is one thing that we've learned in this monologue its that we need the help of CO2-deprived aliens. And that means we're that much closer to solving the world's energy crisis. You know, having figured out the alien component and all.

Who could have seen this coming?

Yesterday's bombing at the Taj Hotel comes as no surprise. For some historical perspective, check out this bit from the Wikipedia on the Barbary Pirates:

In 1786, Thomas Jefferson, then the ambassador to France, and John Adams, then the ambassador to Britain, met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the ambassador to Britain from Tripoli. The Americans asked Adja why his government was hostile to American ships, even though there had been no provocation. The ambassador's response was reported to the Continental Congress:

It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy's ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once. [13]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_pirates

Up Andrew's world

When Andrew was much younger than he is now, he used to sing Twinkle Star's refrain "Up above the world so high ..." as "Up your world so high ...". Tina and I say that to each other to this day. I tell you because it is now up your world. So high.