I think Tam said it best, "It just makes me sad."

Fred Rogers, 1928-2003

I have decided to start working on my autobiography. It will be titled "Bogus Referrers in my Web Log"

It will be, of course, an erotic tail of misadventure.

So, two other poeple have confirmed Julie's statement about the quality of New York City water. I am, however, still a bit dubious. A fair number of my relatives who lived in this fair city have died at a premeture age, and I find it hard to believe that all the smoking and hard liquor had anything to do with it.

This is a bummer...bogus referrers in my web stats:

# Hits      Referrer
----------------------------------------------
5 139 0.17% http://www.online-sportsbook-betting-line.com/
6 134 0.17% http://www.free-blackjack-online-gambling.com/
7 132 0.16% http://www.online-casino-gambling-freebies.com/
8 130 0.16% http://www.free-live-web-cams-sex.com/
9 118 0.15% http://www.free-phone-sex-numbers-lines.com/
10 115 0.14% http://www.free-erotic-stories-xxx-stories.com/
11 114 0.14% http://www.free-casino-games-slot-machine.com/
12 111 0.14% http://www.free-adult-stories-porn-stories.com/
13 109 0.14% http://www.free-online-bingo-money.com/
14 109 0.14% http://www.online-casinos-card-games.com/
15 108 0.13% http://www.free-adult-chat-rooms-women.com/

...bastards!

What's next? They gonna shoot me with a tranquilizer dart, then tatoo URLs on my ass...

The loud little handful - as usual - will shout for the war. The pulpit will - warily and cautiously - object... at first. The great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, "It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it."

Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded, but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the antiwar audiences will thin out and lose popularity.

Before long, you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men...

Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

- Mark Twain, "The Mysterious Stranger" (1910)

A Prophetic Speedometer:

If you are concerned about the eminent arrival of "The Rapture" (not to be confused with that toe tapping early rapping Blondie song), as I know you all are, look no further. Stop watching the Dow Jones, and start monitoring the rapture index. Current index at 174.

The Rapture Index has two functions: one is to factor together a number of related end time components into a cohesive indicator, and the other is to standardize those components to eliminate the wide variance that currently exists with prophecy reporting.

The Rapture Index is by no means meant to predict the rapture, however, the index is designed to measure the type of activity that could act as a precursor to the rapture.

You could say the Rapture index is a Dow Jones Industrial Average of end time activity, but I think it would be better if you viewed it as prophetic speedometer. The higher the number, the faster we're moving towards the occurrence of pre-tribulation rapture.

And, just so your heathen, sinning family and friends know what happened to you after "The Rapture", send them an email from beyond, a Rapture Letter if you will.

After the rapture, there will be a lot of speculation as to why millions of people have just disappeared. Unfortunately, after the rapture, only non believers will be left to come up with answers. You probably have family and friends that you have witnessed to and they just won't listen. After the rapture they probably will, but who will tell them?

We have written a computer program to do just that. It will send an Electronic Message (e-mail) to whomever you want after the rapture has taken place, and you and I have been taken to heaven.

"Our position is that whatever grievances a nation may have, however objectionable it finds the status quo, aggressive warfare is an illegal means for settling those grievances or for altering those conditions."

--Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, the American prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, in his opening statement to the tribunal

Small Favors

The justification for war against Iraq was obscure to begin with--Saddam Hussein may be an evil son of a bitch, but he never had no truck with Al Qaeda--and now looks absolutely ludicrous given the situation in North Korea, a country run by a really evil son of a bitch who does have weapons of mass destruction and is threatening to use them. So of course we're not even thinking about preemptive war there. You know what? We look like complete dipshits. I hate to mention it, but the rest of the world thinks we're out of our tiny minds...

We respond to the U.S. imperialists' hard-line policy with our ultra-hard-line policy.

One thing that I always missed living in Minneapolis was pizza. Oh, they have pizza in Minneapolis, but it is a long way from anything defined as decent. I have a few friends that will argue that Chicago pizza is a much better pie then the thin greasy offerings of New York, but in Minneapolis this argument is moot. There they offer a grade or so above frozen from local pizza joints, or the standard corporate fair of Domino's or Pizza Hut. The struggle to determine the best pie east of the Mississippi still rages, but I have landed, once again, hard on the eastern most side of the issue, and I am loving every thin greasy inch of it. Not to mention the zeppole.

Side note: I did have a fairly involved discussion regarding hot dogs the other night as well, but that'll be for another day...

We are now living with a friend in Brooklyn. On one of our first nights in our new home, she brought out an appliance. Not just any appliance, but the George Forman electric grill (with bun warmer), aka The Lean Mean Grilling Machine. Naturally, I balked at this Ronco-esk device, and spent the next few minutes poking fun of the machine. Tam, who has always had a special place in her heart for George, and always says, "He's so sweet, I like George." Was all in favor of the new machine.

Our roommate proceeded to grill up the tastiest zucchini I have had in a while. I quickly become a convert. We got the idea to try and sear tuna steak on the grilling machine. Having spent all summer trying to sear a decent tuna steak on our Weber grill only to end up with over cooked dry tuna that was barely seared on the outside, I realized that George could have provided the answer to all my fish searing prayers.

We started slowly. We bought a nice salmon fillet, seasoned it with olive oil, garlic, fresh basil and lemon, and then placed it lovingly on the grill. It turned out perfectly, a finely cooked salmon all around. But cooking a salmon fillet is not a seared tuna steak my friends, no matter what anyone in the grilling business might tell you. A decently seared tuna is a whole other matter.

I swung by the local market to find they had some fantastic looking ahi tuna steaks. I purchased a couple and brought them home. We merely peppered them nicely and threw them on the grill. I was nervous and anxious. We prodded the steaks until they looked done. We removed them from the grill, and much to our delight, the steaks were seared perfectly. Nicely grilled on the outside, but pink and perfectly beautiful on the inside. I think we all had a tear in our eye that night. I came very close to purchasing another Lean Mean Grilling Machine, the extra large of course. But Tamara heeded me to wait and see how the normal sized grill fairs. Needless to say, it has faired nicely.

This evening we cooked up some fine tuna on the grill, some of the best tuna steaks I have had. I post a link to the recipe here for posterity (Note: outcome unknown if cooking without the aforementioned Forman Grill) -

ASIAN-FLAVORED SEARED TUNA WITH GREEN BEANS

Virtual March on Washington

Win Without War is a coalition of 32 national organizations that have joined together to advocate alternatives to war in Iraq. This coalition offers a mainstream, patriotic voice for engaging opinion makers, activating concerned citizens, and communicating to policymakers and the media.

And now, for your listening enjoyment...Stardust.

Not quite the impact of Mr. Armstrong's version...

I figured out how I can build my rep here in Park Slope. Tam and I will go to all the local drug stores. Tam will pick out a pack of Magnum Xtra Large condoms, and take them to the counter while I stand by. As she places the pack on the counter she'll ask, "Do you have anything larger?" as I walk up to pay.

For some reason Tam is unwilling to go through with it?

"What better way to raise money for the hungry than by eating more than 1,400 hamburgers?" (from Pedro).

I think I could possibly come up with a better way...ok, I couldn't, but still...

Another UMD student made the mistake of trying to outdo Born. Steve Peterson finished his 30th and went for 31.

He ended up with less than 30.

Living in Brooklyn has brought a flood of memories of childhood. Funny how small things can take you back, like the way you have to wait for the air to clear in a glass of water befor you can drink it.

Julie says that New York City water is some of the best drinking water in the country...I dunno if I believe her or not.

Made some small mods to the site, so give a shift reload if things look a bit shaky... might need to reload some scripts and css and what have you. No guarantee that it won't look like crap after a reload, but this is implied...

Hulk not much like President. He talk stupider than Hulk. (Hulk's Diary)

I've been watching JAZZ (A film by Ken Burns) via DVD for the past week or so. There's a version of Stardust played by Louis Armstrong that I can't get out of my head...

Sometimes I wonder why I spend the lonely night
Dreaming of a song.
The melody haunts my reverie,
And I am once again with you.
When our love was new,
And each kiss an inspiration,
But that was long ago
Now my consolation is in the stardust of a song.
Beside a garden wall when stars are bright,
You are in my arms,
The nightingale tells his fairy tale
Of paradise where roses grew.
Tho' I dream in vain,
In my heart it will remain
My stardust melody
The memory of love's refrain.

Groups Support University of Michigan Affirmative Action Case

A month after the Bush administration filed a brief with the Supreme Court opposing affirmative action policies at the University of Michigan, more than 300 organizations representing academia, major corporations, labor unions and nearly 30 of the nation's top former military and civilian defense officials, announced that they would file briefs supporting the university by Tuesday's deadline.

Sadly, you'd think George W would support affirmative action, as there is no way in hell that he got into Yale on merit alone.

the snow runith over...

No particular place to go...bla bla bla.

Fear is a powerful thing. I was on a job interview this Friday, and my interviewer was trying to contact her boss via her cell phone. She tried a few times to place a call. Each time she received the message 'All Circuits are busy, please try again later'. She started to panic and said, "What's going on, I never get this message?" She began questioning me and the other interviewer about it. It seems she felt the code orange had become a code dark red or whatever they call it when someone drops the A-bomb or something deadly like that. In the end, it turns out that all the circuits were in fact busy, and, so it would seem, was her imagination.

On a side note: I have fixed just about anything imaginable with duct tape, but who new it could stop mustard gas...ahh, duct tape...is there anything it can't do. If it's all the same to the fed, I'm gonna stick with duck and cover.

I think the thing that concerned me most about moving to Brooklyn was Uther (der gute hund). I thought Brooklyn would be too much for him, and we’d walk him less, and he’d become a sad inside city dog. Instead, Uther loves Brooklyn. The streets are a limitless smell factory. Hundreds of dogs leaving scent everywhere, not to mention all the garbage, have created a paradise for dog olfactory glands. We take him almost everywhere we go.

And the park, Prospect Park, has a long meadow said to be around 75 acres. The city, in its infinite wisdom, allows dogs off leash in this meadow after 5:00 pm. Just another sweet cloud in dog heaven.

skcap, gni-kcap, dekcap #

We've made it to New York...So many things happening, and yet I can't think of anything to say....