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Saturday, September 07, 2002
I just watched a 1 hour special on VH1 about celebrity asses. This says 2 things to me. #1: I need to find better things to do with my saturday nights, and #2: Our civilization has finally peaked. Time to go build that shack in the woods, it's all downhill from here.
.: posted by Jeremy 9/7/2002
Friday, September 06, 2002
Remember Andy's post about that stupid raid at a Houston K-mart? HPD was looking to crack down on drag racers by monitoring car-club gatherings and following them away from their meeting at this K-mart to wherever they were racing, and then arrest the illegal drag racers. Up to this point, it seems like a fine and decent operation for HPD. The problem is that nobody was drag racing this particular night, so the captain in charge of the investigation got frustrated and ordered everybody in the kmart parking lot to be hauled in, including people eating ice cream at the nearby Sonic, and a mother that was buying diapers. Well, the captain and several other supervisors were fired and now the HPD chief has been indicted for perjury. This makes me happy.
.: posted by Jeremy 9/6/2002
Only in europe would there be a need for a law setting guidlines for naming a child. A name must clearly identify the child's gender and must not ridicule the child or be offensive.
.: posted by Jeremy 9/6/2002
Thursday, September 05, 2002
One more thing, and then I'll be burnt out on posting. This couple in California are being evicted from their tiny corner of the world. The county has known about the couple for years, but when they surveyed the area and found that the homestead was 50 feet inside county property, they arrested the man on a 5 year old misdemeanor warrant and stapled an eviction notice to the tree. I recognize the need for laws in this country, but can't we just turn a blind eye in some cases? What greater good will be served by evicting these two people? No precedent would have been set if we just ignored the whole thing.
.: posted by andy 9/5/2002
This helpful site (from the US government, if you can imagine), has cleared up a LOT of confusion in our household.
.: posted by andy 9/5/2002
A new lawsuit alleges that Saddam Hussein's regime supported and had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks. Based on a column in an Iraqi newspaper column, in which the author "generally praises bin Laden as he thinks 'with the seriousness of the Bedouin of the desert about the way he will try to bomb the Pentagon after he destroys the White House.'"
The lawyers claim that "...this familiarity with Osama bin Laden's aspirations of violence and his advance knowledge of al Qaeda's specific targets -- the Pentagon and the White House, and very likely the World Trade Center towers -- indicates that Iraqi officials were aware of plans to attack American landmarks." The description of the newspaper column never mentions the World Trade Center, but that's not even important. What's important is this: the lawyer's statement implies that Iraq is partially culpable for the 9/11 attacks because they were familiar with "Osama bin Laden's aspirations of violence."
Since 1998, I've been pretty clued into the fact that Osama bin Laden wants bad things to happen to Americans. And if you'd asked me in July of 2001 what some likely terrorist targets in the United States might be, I would've mentioned the World Trade Center, the White House, and the Pentagon. According to Kreindler and Kreindler's criteria, I must be in league with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
Also, Iraq's weapons programs are not considered a serious threat by American intelligence analysts.
.: posted by andy 9/5/2002
One of Karzai's American bodyguards. We're putting our best foot forward, right?
.: posted by andy 9/5/2002
Here's an interesting factoid about Rumsfeld. Apparently within five hours of the Sept. 11 attack, he told his aides to start planning an attack on Iraq, despite no evidence implicating Iraq in the attacks.
.: posted by andy 9/5/2002
Pilots will be allowed to pack heat on a trial basis. Pilots' associations are throwing a kegger to celebrate.
.: posted by andy 9/5/2002
Yeah, I definitely think we'll be successful in Afghanistan.
.: posted by andy 9/5/2002
Wednesday, September 04, 2002
Did anyone know Netscape 7.0 is out? Does anyone care? Apparently no one is using it, unless it's registering as Netscape Comp (AOL users, maybe?). Interesting to see that Opera is at 1%, while Netscape is at 3-4%. How the mighty [lame] have fallen.
.: posted by andy 9/4/2002
Tuesday, September 03, 2002
I'm on vacation. For the last three days I've woken up in the city that never sleeps. I almost posted from the DFW airport, at a data terminal thing, but it was costing me $.25 a minute to use an NCR terminal (the same thing they use as cash registers at McDonalds and 7-Eleven), and it was using a modem for it's connection.
While I've been here I've been looking for a Texas-style BBQ restaurant, out of some sort of morbid curiosity, I guess. I found one that was called Dallas BBQ in the East Village, but they only had baby back ribs and roasted chicken.
East Village is kind of like the French Quarter, very dirty, $7 for a beer, and not all that exciting.
Greenwich Village is cool, but the one place where the Manhattan grid system completely breaks down, so finding your way around can be hard. Lots and lots of restaurants. All the stores come in twos and threes, meaning that there will be three adult novelty stores next to each other, then two fancy pastry shops, then two italian restaurants, then a three little book stores. Seems like they should spread out around the area. Everywhere else seems to have all five and seven story row houses, but everything in Greenwich is two and three stories.
Chinatown was interesting, but not very big. Everything was very cheap, Jenny and I split three entrees for lunch in Chinatown for less than two deserts cost in Greenwich.
Soho was okay, but too yuppie for my taste. Lots of art galleries, most looked like the addition of a velvet Elvis would've elevated the quality of them, but I guess I don't have much respect for pop art. The Angelika isn't as nice as either one in Texas. I really don't like non-stadium seating theaters. If I wanted to stare at the back of someone's head, I'd ride around on the subway.
I just went to Harlem today. That's strange, because I'm staying in Morningside Heights(roughly where the 'v' in 'Claremont Ave.' is), one block from Harlem. There is an odd border. On the Morningside Heights side of the subway station there are escalators. On the Harlem side there are stairs. MH has trendy clothing stores and coffee shops and marble sculpture stores. Harlem has fried chicken and auto parts stores. Harlem is actually cleaner and more taken care of than MH. What little green spaces there are well groomed and taken care of by the residents. In MH, there are very nice parks that are watered and kept mowed by the city, "No Pets, No Radios, No Grills, No Team Sports. Park closes at Dusk", but there are little green spaces that are overrun with weeds and trash. Harlem's buildings are older, smaller, not as fancy, but are generally cleaner. The exception is the Projects. 20-story buildings with three red brick spokes jutting from a central blue tower. They don't have commercial spaces on the ground level, they don't attach to the buildings on either side. They occupy an entire city block and loom over the area. In their shadow are bustling communities, old men playing cards and dominoes on the sidewalk, kids playing touch football in alleys.
Gotta go, the liquor stores close at 9PM here...
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 9/3/2002
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