Every once in a while I try to argue with people. These people are usually much more adept at arguing than me and I usually just give up. They think they’ve won, but in reality they just care more about their stupid problem than I do.

Vegans seem to love to talk about being vegan. (I’m a 5th level vegan, I dont eat anything that casts a shadow) I have no problem with a person being against the inhumane treatment of animals. Dog and Cats especially. I do think that some of the meat industry disgusting and there should be tighter regulations (thank you Fast Food Nation). But here’s the problem, we eat meat. Say… 90% of Americans are omnivores, off the top of my head thats about 270ish million people. How can you provide meat for that amount of people and not have some kind of large scale meat industry that keeps the meat movin? We’re really in a no win situation here, either eat, or be nice to the cows/chickens/etc.

What got me started on this is that I just read an article about a little girl (6weeks) who died because her parents were vegan and they starved her to death. Hopefully they will get some deserved punishment. Here’s a link to an Op-Ed piece in the New Your Times that says the rest of what I want to say… because I’m tired of arguing about it.
My favorite line of the article:

There are no vegan societies for a simple reason: a vegan diet is not adequate in the long run.

Later!

The article is about a man being arrested for using a cafe’s *FREE* wifi signal from his car. FREE. Not just unsecured, but FREE. At the end of the day he doesn’t do jail time and his record is clean. But he did have to pay $400 and do 40 hours of community service… I would be pissed. Hell of a price to pay for checking your email.

The article contains this gem of a quote from the arresting officer.

“I had a feeling a law was being broken, but I didn’t know exactly what,” Sparta police chief Andrew Milanowski told the TV station.

via Ars Technica

Hit you with the funk it’s like, “who cut the provolone?”
Government officials put taps on my mobile phones
Nations overthrown hold my own on my zone
prone to leave your dome blown poem after poem homes
Jones for the tones rome with me turn your motor on
Overall this war just just got it goin on
Overgrown child never growin old so when knows pokin notes
Till the never nose ho overdose
On my flows those flows goes deep
Hold your nose bros knows foes yo don’t sleep
slow your row, show my soul, total hold
Domination don’t ya know
Under comet like Muhammad with the verbal ropadope
It’s the..

paragraph president

Blackalicious has the best flows… well this sounds better than it reads. It’s the second verse of “Paragraph Presidents” off of Blazing Arrow. Still one of my favorite albums ever. I’m posting this because I was listening to their new album The Craft and thinking that it was a little sub par.

Later!

There was a digg post today that I found really interesting. It was about one of the strangest natural disasters that I’ve ever heard of. A lake in Africa suddenly bubbled out enough CO2 to fill 10 football stadiums and the cloud of gas settled in nearby valleys and killed 1800 people and 3500 livestock. It’s a weird read.

Neatorama article
Wiki Entry

Later!

Up until now I’ve left it to Bill Cosby to say all the things I as a white guy, can’t say in public about black people. Now it seems I have a new voice, Charles Barkley. This quote from an article in “The New Republic” pretty much says it all… take it away Chuck!

Question: In some quarters Barack [Obama] has been criticized for not being black enough.
Well, that’s because black people are fucked up. One of the reasons that black people are not going to be successful is because of other black people. We tell black kids that if they make good grades, they are acting white. If they speak well, we tell them that they are acting white. We have a lot of demons in our own closet–in our own family–that we have to address. But first of all, we want black men to be intelligent and articulate and things like that. That’s not acting white. That’s the way it should be. … We become our own worst enemy with random black-on-black crime, teen pregnancy, single-parent homes. You know we cannot blaming white America for our ills. Does racism exist? Of course it does. But, at some point, I have to make sure I am educated. I don’t have ten kids and no job. I am not killing other black people. At some point, you have to grow up.

Beyond Basketball: Race, Class, And Politics

Later!

Why is it so annoying to me when I hear a fat slob talking about how he’s been doing karate for 25 years? (pronounced ka-ra-tey)
I know it’s the naive thing to think that I could kick his butt without even trying. But to look at him while he’s talking is ridiculous, he’s seriously shaped like Newman from Seinfeld. You know it’s time to loose weight when your stomach is affecting the way you walk.

25 years???? You may need to take up a new hobby.

Later!

I just found an article about a study that claims the face is the #1 attractor of mates. So all those ugly muscle bound guys are just wasting their time at the gym, cause you can’t fix ugly. Meanwhile I’ll just eat brownies and look fine for the ladies… oh yeah

You aint got no alibi

Later!

Just like that river twisting through a dusty land…

I don’t usually write about girlfriends in this blog because I don’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable and I don’t like going back and reading old blogs about them. But I’m going to make an exception here. She’s the first girl I’ve dated in a long time that I feel I can be myself around. With Faith I had to be much more religious than I really am and with Ellen I had to be much more intellectual and political than I wanted to be. (Plus I apparently make weird mouth noises) But Laurel and I just get along so well.

I met her on the internet… Myspace actually, but the internet seems more mature. I got a message from her and I let about a week go by because I thought she was a fake person. (hard to explain, but Myspace is full of fake profiles who just want more friends)It’s hard to believe she even sent me a message, I had a picture of a skull as my profile image. (though it was a totally sweet skull door knocker that I made myself!) So after a few weeks we decided to meet for a date in real life. Which was the best decision evar.

It started out with her getting all my quotes obscure from movies that I’d seen. But that just seems like second nature now. We talk in a language of Simpsons and Zoolander quotes. (I’ve got the black lung, Pa… cough) Then it went on to being able to see what the other person is thinking. You know how couples will finish each other’s sentences? Well I think we start each others. I can’t remember how many times we’ve said “I was just about to say that?!”. Which needless to say is totally sweet.

It’s really weird that we hadn’t met before. We’ve found a couple of our friends know each other. But always 3 degrees away from us. I’d even met a couple of her friends before, but never her. They’re all cool people and we get along really well. It looks like I’m in this for the long run and I couldn’t be happier.

Later!

There’s this guy at work who really annoys me. Annoy… that’s a soft term. When he talks I want to stab myself in the ear with a pen. He punctuates every statement with a series of little laughs, which doesn’t sound that bad… for the first thousand times. So today I’ve pinned down what really makes me cringe. First he talks way too fast, I purposely slow down my speech when I’m talking to him, hoping that he’ll get the point. (which hasn’t worked so far) He has something to say about everything, nothing that matters, he just wants to get the last word in every conversation.

But really it’s this… he talks in circles. Kinda like Yoda, but he starts at the beginning of the sentence. Here is one statement that I heard this morning.

I didn’t see them here last night, they’re usually here by 7. I was here last night and I didn’t see them.

This doesn’t sound that bad. But just think if every sentence was like this. Coming at you at a hundred miles an hour for 8 hours a day. So what lesson did we learn today kids? Say things once… slowly… and take a shower for once dammit!

Later!

I can’t even find a way to start this blog. Does the US as the semi-lone superpower have a responsibility to help everyone? Is China out there in other countries deposing dictators? What about… well anybody else. I don’t think it’s any of our business to get involved in the middle east. What’s my main argument? They’re fucked. They always have been and always will be. NPR Mid East History There’s nothing good that can come from the US being involved in military action in Iraq, Iran, or anywhere else over there.

America decided long ago that we weren’t going to stone people to death for “Dishonoring the Family”. We invented Jerry Springer or shipped them off to boarding school. But would we let random strangers strip them naked in the streets and crush their faces with large stones? The still practice old testament justice, 2500 years later. How do we expect to change that with bullets. If they haven’t evolved yet, they’re never going to. We could nuke the place from orbit and 10 years later they would be stoning adulterers with giant pieces of the glass parking lot.

By living around Washington DC I have know several middle eastern men. I have know Iraqis, Iranians, even a guy from Qatar. 90% of them fit into the stereotype. They only care about money, power and material possessions. They have no respect for women. And these are the ones living in America, I can only imagine what it’s like over there.

So why am I all of the sudden writing this post. Well I came across a story today, complete with video of a young woman being stoned to death in Iraq…recently. I’ve lost all hope for these people. Lets get the hell out, start buying electric cars and give the big fuck you to the middle east.