nothing edifying

I find it really disturbing that in the White House transcript of the State of the Union speech, “(Applause)” is clearly stated. Just in case you didn’t know how impressed and happy people were with the speech, the transcript clearly marks out every instance when the President was oh-so-rudely interrupted. Every other paragraph! No, better than that, every paragraph! Wait! There are even instances of (Applause) in the middle of a paragraph. In fact, sometimes, the start of his sentence is so brilliant, his sentences are interjected with — (applause) –! Is this the same version the President had on his teleprompter? So he’d know to give a little pause while someone starts a round of applause? Gah!

Other fun quotes:

” In the past four years, we provided tax relief to every person who pays income taxes, overcome a recession…” Um… I think I got $50 of tax relief. And I don’t feel a lack of recession:p

“I welcome the bipartisan enthusiasm for spending discipline.” This from the guy who just asked for another $80 billion to support our troops (not that they don’t need to be supported), and created a horrible ginormous deficit. It’s really interesting to me how he thinks that somehow, in a time of war, we’re going to manage less spending and yet with less tax revenue (both from recession and tax “relief”) still “cut the deficit in half by 2009.” I would really like to learn this trick! Not ’til after he’s outta office, though, you’ll notice.

“To make our economy stronger and more competitive, America must reward, not punish, the efforts and dreams of entrepreneurs.” It’s funny how he says he’s so pro-entrepreneur, yet he supports things like cutting the estate tax. Lowering the estate tax benefits not the people who make the money, but their heirs, who don’t have to lift a finger for this largesse.

“…we also need reliable supplies of affordable, environmentally responsible energy.” Hahahaha — environmentally responsible! As if he cares! He’s got the lowest score ever from the League of Conservation Voters!

“work together to give this nation a tax code that is pro-growth, easy to understand, and fair to all.” Yay! A positive thing! It’s true, taxes confuse me, I wouldn’t mind some clarity:p

“It is time for an immigration policy that permits temporary guest workers to fill jobs Americans will not take…” Wow, is he admitting that immigrants don’t “steal our jobs”?!

“[Social Security] is in need of wise and effective reform.” I agree with this. I mean, I’m not sure about his plan, so I won’t comment on the whole private/personal account thing, but it’s true that social security needs reform. Even if we were to have another baby boom right now, saving it for another generation, in the long run it doesn’t make sense; the underlying mechanism for social security needs to change.

“For the good of families, children, and society, I support a constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage.” Gah! I’m sorry, but marriage is too much a civil matter now, and it’s not fair to deny some people civil rights. But Bush himself says it best, later in this speech: “Because one of the main sources of our national unity is our belief in equal justice, we need to make sure Americans of all races and backgrounds have confidence in the system that provides justice.” What a guy, not afraid to contradict himself!

“In the next four years, my administration will continue to build the coalitions that will defeat the dangers of our time.” I had no idea President Bush gave a rat’s ass about coalitions:p

” The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else. That is one of the main differences between us and our enemies. They seek to impose and expand an empire of oppression, in which a tiny group of brutal, self-appointed rulers control every aspect of every life. Our aim is to build and preserve a community of free and independent nations, with governments that answer to their citizens, and reflect their own cultures. And because democracies respect their own people and their neighbors, the advance of freedom will lead to peace.” Huh? This whole paragraph is a contradiction! We have no right, desire, or intention of imposing our form of government on anyone else, yet we’re pushing our form of government cos it makes those nations more free and respectful. Riiiiight.

And yadayadayada. (Applause.)

I messed up my <div> tags! That’s why it wasn’t showing up properly in Safari. Gah! Thanks Lisa for helping me figure this out:) So yeah, I guess I didn’t leave it for long, but if you noticed weird things going on with the template, it’s cos I was trying to fix it. Let me know please if anything else looks weird or bad in anything else.

This morning, I woke up feeling so defeated. It was like a weight on me, making it hard for me to get out of bed. I should say harder, because I’m not a morning person; it’s always hard to get out of bed:p

I guess some people PMS, but I don’t much anymore. What happens nowadays happens in the beginning, instead of before. I am so tired and blah and sore and crampy and whiny. Whiii-iiii-iii-neeee-eeee-y. Did I mention whiny?

I got out of bed late, and was thisclose to calling in sick today, but I had appointments and I didn’t want to miss them because sometimes skipping work just makes more work for later, so I went to work. Blah.

After lunch Yut and I went to Starbucks to get a Pumpkin Spice latte to cheer me up and cos he hadn’t had coffee all day. It was delish, but I spilled coffee on myself, just like an idiot. Blah. Y’know, this is going to sound weird, but I think the Starbucks coffees in the East Bay (CA) have been better than the ones in Montgomery County (MD). But the pastries tend to be a little better maybe in MontCo. Not scientific! And specific to our last trip to Maryland in December.

Then, at 7pm, I thought, oh yes! I’ll watch Jeopardy Teen Tournament and feel smart and good! Not as good as if it were the kid tournament, but I’ll take what I can get:D But today of all days this week, it was the State of the Union speech. GAAAAAAAAAAAH!!! I mean, I’d been curious what Bush was going to say this year, but gaaaaaaaaaaah!!

I can’t wait for today to be over.

It’s the first of February, this’ll be my 2nd month of blogging (I know, I started on 11 January, but whatever). At first, I wasn’t sure if I was going to continue this after a month, but now I think the harder trick will be to shut me up!

Usually I hate signing up for accounts or registering. But ever since I started blogging, the number of times I’ve given out my information is staggering!!! (Well to me, at least:p) Nevertheless, I’ve really enjoyed writing about whatevers, and trying out all this stuff.

This stuff being all the web applications/services I used and liked:

• for no particular reason except it’s free and looked pretty:) I think it’s been reasonably easy to learn and customize. I also like that it allows anonymous commenting, has a search/nav bar on top instead of a big advert, and it has pretty good help and support. If someone thinks something else is easier or better, I’d love to know:)
• cos I love Y!Mail and myY! and Y!Messenger:) I wish Yahoo! USA had a blogging service; Yahoo! has the best emoticons:p
• for photoblogging and picture sharing. I really like flickr!
• for the RSS feed. For some reason, Blogger does this atom stuff, instead of RSS. I usually use myYahoo! for keeping track of blogs though so I wanted RSS.
• counts my visitors. In January I had 268 visitors:) As soon as I figure out how to make the counter show and fit in with the style of the blog, I’ll think about making it visible.
• for trackbacks, although I have none, except for my test:) I don’t know if I need it, or what’s the point right now, but we’ll see. Someone please feel free to explain:p Haloscan can do commenting, too, but I haven’t decided if I’m going to use it. This way seems more integrated to me. What do y’all think? Comments like on Seth’s blog or just leave it as is?

Considering my lack of design, html, writing, blogging, &c&c skills, this turned out more fun than work:) And that’s a good thing.

For years, even after I turned 21, my mom insisted that drinking was terrible and I wasn’t to overdo it. Except her idea of overdoing it is like a glass of wine or something:p Half a glass every now and then is quite acceptable, but two half glasses, goodness gracious! She was the best anti-drinking propagandist ever. Then a couple of weeks ago, I read that a daily drink helps keep the brain sharp! I forwarded this to my sister, who told my mom. When I called that weekend, my sister and mother were both pretty giggly. Turns out they’d taken the information to heart and had a bit of sake after dinner. I could hear my mom saying to my sister (who was extremely jolly) that she was overdoing it (old habits are hard to break, I guess) and my sister telling my mum, “it’s good for you!” Glad to be of service, as ever:)

Also, it turns out that fidgeting is good for you, too. I have sort of a hard time sitting still — I have to concentrate:p If I’m just sitting, I’ll end up shaking my legs, or swiveling around in my chair, or playing with my fingers or something. Anyhows, my mom hates that! She says it’s not ladylike, and why can’t I just sit still, and stop that! &c&c. But all that fidgeting burns “about 350 extra calories a day!” Oooooh yes!

All I’m waiting for now is to hear that a bowl of chili supplemented with Flamin’ Hot Limon Cheetos (0 grams Trans Fat!) is a good-for-you dinner.

Addendum: As ever, BugMeNot.com for registration information, if you don’t want to register. I don’t work for or on BugMeNot.com, btw. Actually, I try to not talk about work — not interested in getting dooced:p

Friday we rented Hellboy on DVD. I know a lot of people care a lot about what’s on the dvd extras, but that’s not my thing, so I have no idea. It was 2 discs so presumably it was chock full of goodies. But anyhows, the movie was good. Like one of those not brilliant, but damn good fun sorts of movies. In the based-on-a-comic genre of movies, though, I think it counts as brilliant:)

Hellboy starts off in the past, with Prof. Bloom leading a bunch of WWII American soldiers on a strange island that is the junction of a lot of ley lines. Unfortunately, Nazi soldiers had gotten there first, and Gregori Rasputin (yes, that Rasputin) is trying to use the energy to open an interdimensional portal to some Hell-like place in Space where the Gods of Chaos slumber. The American soldiers manage to interrupt their evil-doings and break the machine and kill Rasputin but since the portal was open so long, something came through. Turns out it’s a little red demon baby who likes Baby Ruth bars — the soldiers call him Hellboy. Anyways, fast forward 60 years or so, Hellboy is no longer a baby, but he’s still called Hellboy (or HB). He’s part of the FBI’s Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, which the FBI strongly denies the existence of. Professor Bloom has adopted Hellboy and is now head of the BPRD, which cleans up and studies any weird magical messes that arise. I know, it’s like every science fiction/fantasy cliche; the beginning was v. reminiscent of Indiana Jones in a way.

But the tone is so right for this type of movie. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, there’s definitely a lot of tongue-in-cheek. Hellboy also has a lot of heart. His relationship with Professor Bloom is so adolescent teen and dad, and he’s even in love with another misfit he grew up with — Liz Sherman (played by Selma Blair, who I’m glad isn’t playing the frigid girlfriend/fiancee/friend etcetc) who’s a firestarter with a hard time controlling her powers. Ultimately, I felt like it was a movie about love, and what’s good, and normal, and how our choices can define us. And it was good fun:)

I should point out that I’ve never read a Hellboy comic, or even knew that such a character existed, so I have no idea if it was true to the comics.

Rainbow
Originally uploaded by nothingedifying.

Friday, the weather was really strange — it switched between rainy and sunny all day, with maybe a little tiny bit of small hail. As we walked home, we saw the best rainbow I’ve ever seen, stretching horizon to horizon — a full semicircle — with the full colors. It also had a dimmer shadow copy of itself, so 2 rainbows! I wasn’t able to capture its full glory, but it was amazing.

Vice President Cheney was our representative to the liberation commemoration ceremonies. According to Robin Givhan of The Washington Post, “the vice president … was dressed in the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower,” even though “just last week, in a frigid, snow-dusted Washington, Cheney sat outside through the entire inauguration without so much as a hat and without suffering frostbite.”
<sigh>

If washingtonpost.com asks that you register to view the article, and you don’t feel like it, you can go to BugMeNot.com for login information.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… On the way home from work today, I felt like a Chantico, which is like drinking steamed chocolate syrup. I love hot chocolate and chocolate in general, so it’s hard for me to resist:p So I called Yut and we agreed that I would go get a Chantico and then call him and we’d meet up between Starbucks and his office and go home from there. Well, I got the Chantico, but I got all the way to his office and called him again, and he said he was outside of Starbucks. So we were like… how’d we miss each other?! Well so we both started walking, him back to his office building, and me back to the Starbucks. When he reached his office and didn’t see me, he called, and said, “How’d that happen again?! Wait, what street are you on?” Turns out we were talking about different Starbucks — there are two close to his office. He went to the one that was more on the way home and closer to his office, and I went to the one that was between where I was when I first called and his office. But the Chantico was delish!

Speaking of Starbucks, I bought myself a $50 Starbucks gift card this past weekend. Already used up 10 bucks! Gah!

If you’re wondering why I go around buying myself gift cards, it’s like this:
We have one of those cash back credit cards, where they give you a certain percentage back for your purchases, but double that amount back for your purchases at gas stations, grocery stores, and drug stores. So when we went to Safeway on Sunday, I figured, well this is a grocery store! And Safeway has all these available gift cards. So I figure, if I buy from Safeway, I’ll get double rewards, whereas if I buy from Starbucks, I’ll just get regular rewards! So our grocery bill was like $120, $50 of which was my Starbucks card. The checkout lady commented, “Wow, you sure like coffee, huh?” Teeheehee. I am a savings genius! Penny wise, pound smart! Never mind the $2.65 for a 6 oz. chocolate drink:p

Today is the 60th anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.
Two weeks ago, pictures of Prince Harry in a Nazi uniform surfaced.
This month, President Bush declared a goal of “ending tyranny in our world.”
Last year, the United States declared the crisis in Sudan a “genocide,” but in February, the crisis will have been a crisis for two years.