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.
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
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!