nothing edifying

Only misa, Kitty, and CT can earn any more points. Gaaaaaaaaah!

This is my understanding of what’s going on with Terri Schiavo situation, please correct me if I’ve made any mistakes.

The reason this case has come so into the limelight after fifteen years is that Congress decided to step in after the Schindlers (Terri’s parents) had exhausted all avenues of appeal in Florida. So the Senate and House passed a “Bill to provide for the relief of the parents of Theresa Marie Schiavo,” Senate Bill Number 686 (S. 686) which moved the jurisdiction of the case from the Florida courts to the federal courts. To me, this seems like a violation of the checks and balances of our government — the legislature clearly overstepped into judicial areas. And as if that’s not bad enough, all of the Senators and Representatives and the President were all specially flown in from where they were taking their Easter recess to vote on this one bill that had been v. narrowly written to benefit two people (the Schindlers). Seems like a huge waste of taxpayer money to me. Worse, everything was done in a rush so that most of the Senators and Representatives didn’t have much time to deliberate about things. And these people who are supposed to be representing their constituents clearly didn’t because at least two-thirds of the country don’t think Congress and the President should’ve stepped in, including a majority of Republicans.

So ironically, Congress was v. bipartisan in favor of the bill, but the country was v. bipartisan against it. But you know what? Analysts figure that the religious right will come out ahead on this because even though Republicans “‘are going to get kicked around a lot for this’, the minority that does back congressional action probably supports it intensely, while the majority that disagrees ‘won’t remember this woman’s name in a few months.’” (quoting Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia in the Washington Post) Gaaaaah! This is why the religious right has so much clout. For instance, you hear all the time about pro-life one-issue voters, who will vote for or against people based on their record on abortion, but you never hear about pro-choice one-issue voters.

By the way, the Senate passed a voice vote, so I don’t know how each individual Senator voted, but the House of Representatives passed the bill 203 yea, 58 nay, 174 abstained. You can look up your Senators and Representatives on their respective websites, and you can see how your Representatives voted in the Vote Results.

Just to be clear, let me now state (in public) that if some neurologist ever said that I was in a permanent or persistent vegetative state, or that my brain had been liquefied, please let me die. In fact, even if no neurologist said so, but I had been in that state for a year, let me die. But especially if parts of my brain were liquefied, please please let me die. Frankly, this whole case has made me think about the beauties of Oregon, which as far as I know is the only state in the union to have right-to-die laws. Because the truth is, dying of starvation doesn’t sound like fun. I’d still rather die than not, but morphine or something would be ever so lovely.

On the way home from work, a guy was sitting on the sidewalk with his hand out, saying, “Spare some change? I wanna see a movie,” as people passed by.

I like to preface my NCAA talk with a lil snippet cos then I don’t feel so one-dimensional:p

The scoring breakdown after the first day of Sweet Sixteen.

The good news is the one who said, “Ewwwww. Sports…” when I first made a comment about March Madness is no longer winning. The bad news is, I’m still tied with her. The worse news is, me and her are in second place. Somehow, not one of the six of us expected Arizona, Louisville, or West Virginia to make it to the Sweet Sixteen, or to win. Go fig!

Since everyone was so nice about my previous food post:)

I don’t think that we’ve found the perfect cheesecake recipe yet, but it’s still pretty good:) I like really dense “New York style” cheesecakes. Maybe I’ll try Yan’s recipe next time. She said it was good and easy. If anyone wants to post a recipe, please feel free:)

Anyhows, we have a Frieling 9 inch Glass Bottom Springform Pan which I lurve and recommend.

Weather was crappy and rainy and I left my umbrella somewhere. I’m thinking (hoping) Julie’s car cos then it’s not lost. I mean, it makes sense… I barely got me out of the car, never mind an umbrella!

So an acqaintance and I were making small talk about the weather cos you know, we’re weather wimps around here. If I were somewhere else, I would maybe not complain (though seriously, cold rain sucks), but we’re in California! It’s March!! Stop with the good weather teasing and start with the good weather already:p

Anyhows, she said something about how her girlfriend is from Michigan, so she can’t complain about cold weather cos the Bay Area doesn’t really get cold. (I don’t know why but it’s italics day ’round these here parts.) So my response back was all about how actually she’s (the girlfriend) totally right cos when I was in Maryland, the few Michigan people I vaguely knew (Mr. Yee, dunno why he came to mind) complained about how Marylanders couldn’t drive in bad weather and I guess it’s all relative and etcetcetc inanities. Then she replied back something about how she’s noticed though that her boyfriend (emphasis mine, but who knows, my mind was reeling with OOOOOOOOOPSIES! SHIT!!! maybe I missed her emphasis) deals v. poorly with hot weather. I don’t know how the rest of the conversation went, except I tried to use HE to let her know that I just misheard the first time around and I got it now. Seriously, I was trying to decide if I should’ve apologized or something or if I should just keep trying to subtly let her know that I fucked up and I get it now. Am dumb. Never decided. Just tried to end the conversation ASAP. Honestly, I should just stop talking to people during work. How I managed to get past the interview process, I’ll never know.

This is what happens when we manage to get out of the apartment and go grocery shopping…amongst other things:

Spicy Beef Noodle Soup

Cinnamon Apple Pancake

Bacon Cheddar Omelette (We are going to die of heart attacks any day now.)

I love food pictures:) Course we didn’t leave the apartment this weekend — I blame the NCAA basketball tournament — which also required cooking to achieve. Otherwise we’d have to go pick up food:p

I linked Gravatar – Globally Recognized Avatar in my del.icio.us cos I made a gravatar from my Yahoo!Avatar. It’s kinda cool cos HaloScan (which Seth uses for commenting) and some other services, recognize it, so then a little avatar appears next to my comments. I didn’t even know! I just signed up cos I been signing up for things left and right:p and I thought maybe someday it might come in useful.

It would be even cooler if Yahoo!Avatars would support operating systems besides Windows OSes and browsers besides Internet Explorer:p And if it would do the globally (sorta) recognized bit!

Maybe they’ll do it though sometime now that they are launching the Yahoo!360° beta. Just when I was wondering if Yahoo! would ever have a blogging service — well earlier this year anyhows:) It looks like they are also going to maybe have a flickr type service (photo sharing) and a del.icio.us type service (online bookmarks) and more! I hate this invitation only beta stuff though:p If any of you people have invites, I want one!

Oh speaking of invitation only beta stuff, which I totally blame Google for, if anyone wants an invite for Gmail or whatever, lemme know:p

And one last thing: I feel like since I stopped using <div>s inside my posts, IE has had fewer troubles with my blog. Anyone else notice this? Maybe the particular version of IE I’m using (IE 6 SP 2 on Windows XP SP2) just doesn’t like nested divs much:p

I don’t even know what to say. Kitty is winning!?!?! The Points Already Lost is the future points you can’t possibly get because the teams you picked to win already lost.

Gladiator is on tv. When we flipped to it, I didn’t know what was on, but Yut guessed Gladiator and then said, “Uh oh! Are you getting sleepy?” Cos we tried to watch this movie three times in the theater and on DVD but I managed to fall asleep everytime:p Bad timing, I guess:)

This is clearly going to be a v. prosaic sort of a post. But I figure I gotta try to talk about stuff besides NCAA basketball for a little! Even if it is March:p

Anyhows, I hate chores, which Yut will attest to (with alacrity:p). Cleaning the bathroom is ok, I guess, but the toilet bowl brush always seems kind of groady just cos. So there’ve been these new products that we’ve seen a lot of commercials for where the basic idea is that instead of a separate toilet bowl brush and cleanser, there is instead a handle and a scrubby thing that attaches to the handle which already has cleanser in it. There are two competing products that I know of: the Clorox ToiletWand and Scrubbing Bubbles Fresh Brush. Since Walgreens had the Fresh Brush on sale recently, we decided to give it a try. Actually, we’ve been meaning to try something for a while now, but honestly, trying out a new toilet product isn’t all that exciting:p I finally threw away the old toilet brush as impetus:p (So why am I posting about it if it’s not exciting? Well, we didn’t leave the apartment today, so besides basketball and this, I got nothin’.)

The Fresh Brush “System”: the two plastic pieces snap together to form the handle, 4 scrubby pads, and some wipes.

The first thing is, I had a hard time putting the two handle pieces together. My excuse is that I tried to put it together before I’d had anything to eat. But I suspect that even if I’d waited til after, it wouldn’t have mattered. I finally got Yut to take care of this instead. Everything after that was super easy though. I like how the handle thing is slightly curvy so it’s easy to scrub under the rim. Since the scrubby pad thing is actually flushable, you never have to fear drippiness. But then again, it’s not terribly scrubby. It got everything clean just fine, so I don’t think it’s a problem, but I suppose if you have extra crazy dirty-ness or stainage, it wouldn’t do the trick. Also, even though it’s nice that the scrubby part gets thrown away, part of the handle does get submerged, so I guess it’s still kinda groady. But really, the worst part of the brush is usually the scrubby part, so this solves that. So yeah, I think this is pretty alright. I dunno how much it costs regularly, but if it’s around $10 like the ToiletWand is, I’d be a little leery of the cost:p But it was about $4, so it’s totally fine:) I dunno why, but while I was peeing this morning, I thought of the Fresh Brush, cos we got it Friday and it was new, so I was kinda excited. So there you have it, things that excite me: innovations in toilet cleaning:p

Okay, done with the toilet talk, on with the basketball talk. Today was actually a great basketball day in objective terms — there were all these upsets (1/2 the games played today?), all these games that were super close (Kentucky over Cincinnati) or both (the West Virginia vs. Wake Forest game, which went into double over time before WVU upset Wake). But I was soooo upset!! I had the ACC going 10-0 the first two rounds and Wake totally messed that up! Gah!

The current scoring breakdown: Yut winning now, Kitty second.

And just for fun:

Washington Post Sports section writer Tony Kornheiser’s bracket:)

Okay, the first thing is, here’s the results now that the first round is complete:

Seth and Yut are tied for the lead. Gah!! Kitty is right behind Seth and Yut, and me and misa are tied, and CT has been let down by Charlotte. I think this means that you should have something calamitous happen to Charlotte-your-sim in retaliation:p Hehe, problem is, since they are out in the first round, and you picked them to win it all… So lessee… Charlotte’s husband will probably cheat on her (Caught my love cheating! I feel as if my heart is breaking. How could he do this to me?! — That’s a paraphrase, I didn’t go look it up, but I think it oughta be close:D) and maybe no one will save her from the grim reaper. Honestly, CT, she let you down!! Hehe, I am like giving you advice on how to torture your Sims. I think there is something wrong with me:p

I been playing Sims and watching basketball on the side all night:p Well with breaks for Jeopardy and dinner. Actually more like a break cos it’s not like it was two separate breaks:p We had pizza:) I dunno why but I loooooove getting anchovies on my pizza, so we almost always get half anchovies, mushrooms, and extra cheese, and half pepperoni and sausage and onions. It was sooo good I threatened to buy jars of anchovies:) Yut said, “Oh look, Walgreens has Listerine buy 1 get 1 off!” :p