Far South of I-10

I'm not sure why 9/11 struck me so deeply that when I just happened to click onto a history channel show about the hijackings, that I immediately reverted to being extremely pissed off. Apparently I'm not ready to view those events as dry history yet. When people tell me that 9/11 is in the past and I should get over it, or let it go, or that it wasn't that big a deal, only 3000 people died versus thousands in iraq, yada yada yada. I tend to remind people that they weren't trying to kill 3000 people. They were hoping to kill all 110,000 people in the buildings, plus whoever else would be nearby, plus my wife and I, since our vacation to new york was originally scheduled for September 2001. Luckily, my wife went back to school that year, so we moved our vacation to August instead. We got to see the world trade center, but we couldn't go on the roof because of rain. I said at the time "oh well, we'll see it next trip". Wrong answer. I am thankful th...

When I was in England last month I spent most of my time in the pubs of Newark, and mostly in the pub in my hotel, because they would sell me beer after 11pm. I tried to drink guiness one night and ended up too drunk to tell a joke, but I tried to tell the pretty bartender a cajun joke, which made her think that not only was I drunk, but an idiot. Apparently cajun jokes aren't that funny in a non-understandable drunken accent. Here's one that I think is pretty freakin funny: Boudreaux said to Thibideaux, "I got to leave dis piece o' shit town". and looked really downcast. Thibideaux said "why?" and Boudreaux answered: "When I built all dem boats on da bayou, did they call me 'Boudreaux da boat builder'? ...No." "When I built all the houses on da bayou, did they call me 'Boudreaux da house builder'?...No." "But when you Fuck one pig...."

Chester pointed out an article in an egyptian paper: Votes that rebound Washington has determined that a democratised Arab world is in its -- and Israel's -- interest. The assumption is wide off the mark, writes Hassan Nafaa * Elections used to come and go without any one taking much notice, for reasons that are known. But things have changed of late, for reasons that are equally well-known. The region is preparing for a number of legislative and presidential elections over the next few weeks or months, and many -- both inside and outside the region -- are curious to see what happens. Lebanon has parliamentary elections scheduled in late May. Palestinian elections are due on 17 July. Egyptian presidential elections are slated for September, and will be followed by parliamentary elections before the end of the year. All are expected to leave their mark not only on the countries involved but throughout the region, though whether these elections will mark a ...

Acidman is running a carnival of the crappers, so maybe a shitty story can be my ticket to being linked by other blogs. (can you say instacoonass?) Here's my entry: I was working on a drilling rig in colombia, and I apparently ate something that didn't agree with me because I started with full on diarrea. It got so bad that when I tried to drink some cold water to replace all the fluids I was losing, I crapped it out 2 minutes later, still cold. This was really bad because I was supposed to fly back to Bogota the next day, then fly to Dubai, and I was afraid to move more than 5 feet from a toilet. I finally ate enough immodium that I corked up and I flew back to town. The next day I had a 10 hour flight on lufthansa to germany, then 7 hours to dubai. Stupid me, I forgot my precious immodium pills. I was in the middle of 5 seats, so at the precise moment the seat belt sign went off I had to dash to the bathroom, and I could hear the little german kid next to me say some...

Jane Galt is posting about the choice of the pope I'm pretty sure that we're going to see a lot of articles bemoaning the choice of Ratzinger (who is very conservative) and claiming that the Catholic Church is going to implode without ordination of married and female clergy, relaxed standards on birth control and divorce, and so forth. I don't think I buy this. Protestant denominations like the Anglican Communion have been liberalising like mad, and with each decline in membership, they decide that what they need is to liberalise some more I think she's right about liberalization not helping church membership. I was just in the UK, and the town I was staying in had several churches that were closed and were operating as furniture stores. The cathedral I went into looked huge but only had seating for a few dozen, the rest was a gift shop. The joke on the television was that a bishop was so liberal that he didn't believe in God. (I guess that was dry english humor)...

Sometimes NPR is really cool, and a good provider of news and information. They usually interview enough original sources so that even if the news story is slanted, it is possible to pick out some version of the truth. They also have pretty neat filler stories, like the audio expeditions into jungles, or the new item they are doing called "This I Believe" which is apparently of a similar radio show in the 50's. Things that make me think: "I'll write a This I Believe essay and post it on my weblog, then send it to NPR." Then of course the next news item is: "Confusion still reigns in Iraqi town where several days ago it was reported that some people were kidnapped." Maybe confusion did reign yesterday, but it seems to me that by this morning things were pretty clear. I listened to NPR on the way to work, and they had a guy in the town of Madain, and he reported that things were pretty normal and none had been kidnapped. Fine. 12 hours later is eno...

I'm in london for my flight back home tomorrow. I managed to spend the afternoon in the British Museum, sort of a flying visit; to try and see the whole place in 4 hours is impossible. I didn't even rent an audioguide, because to hear it all in 4 hours I'd have to put the audioguide in auctioneer mode: Andheeerewehavethecultureofasia,bluepottery statues&etc.comingupnextwehavethetreasuresofegypt,westole themtoo,mummymummymummystatuestatuestatue&etc. It was all pretty cool anyway, even if you have to wonder how it all got there. "No, we're just taking it back to london to protect it from your thieving native hands". ......"Yes Sahib" [Placeholder for a picture of the rosetta stone.] The underground is one my favorite things about london. I'd like to live in a large city where it isn't necessary to own a car, but it still easy to get around town quickly and easily. London's underground is way better than New York'...

I'm staying in a town called Newark-on-Trent, which is a fairly nice place that has a pub for every single person in the town. Some of them are traditional pubs where only one or two people are leaning over their pints. Others are modern sports bars that just happened to be built into 100 year-old buildings. I walked into the oldest pub in town, which dates from the 16th century, and it was Karioki night. Some guy was doing a high pitched version of AC/DC's Hell's Bells. He was terrible, but gets an A for effort. [placeholder for pictures when I figure out how to load them to blogger] The town also has a castle, or the remains of one that dates from the 12th century. It was where King John died, and later was a royalist holdout during the Civil War. The protestants never captured the castle, but after the roundheads won they demanded to have the castle razed to the ground, but the townspeople only destroyed half the castle before stopping. So the curtain wall facing...