Well, just in case you missed it, here's the cell-phone video of Saddam dropping in the noose.

If you've got a free hour, watch the video below. It's the first of three BBC films about politicians and terrorists, and how they use fear to bla bla bla, just watch it. I watched all three, and now I'm all depressed.

The weather isn't depressing at all. It's nice and warm. It's going to be in the forties for the next week. No global warming. Nothing to worry about :)

Otherwise, I got nothing going on. I probably won't get any calls cause it's New Year's Eve Weekend. We got family coming in, so the house is clean.

1. shock and awe
2. mission accomplished
3. bring 'em on
4. makin' good progress
5. as the iraqis stand up, we'll stand down
6. fight 'em there, not here
7. we must not waver
8. a free and democratic iraq
9. adapt to win
10. stay the course
11. central front in the war on terror
12. we'll succeed unless we quit
13. we're winning
14. complete the mission
15. new way forward

I haven’t written in this for awhile. Let’s see. A week ago Sunday I went to this stoner’s house and his 4 stoner teenage hangabout sons couldn’t hook up a wireless router to a cable modem. Three of them were sitting around all high watching the fourth play World of Warcraft. Monday, I fixed a router/printer/Mac networking situation for a lady who had Rush-Limbaugh blasting in the background. Tuesday I cleaned up a wiring mess at an accounting office. Tax season is coming up! Wednesday last week I went way out to Lowel to fix a high-dollar video card and reformat a Compaq. Thursday I returned the PC. Friday I had a customer who thought she had a virus that made the computer come on by itself. Her computer needed a serious cleanup, but there were no viruses.

Yesterday (Christmas Eve) we drove to Joanne’s and had a nice visit. I got a gallon of beer in one of those mini-kegs, which I look forward to tapping later on.

I got a new electric shaver. It’s charging now. The girls got lost of presents, bla bla bla, another Christmas.

had to make 60 of these babies for the girls' classes for treats. An army of snowmen.

Something I should have anticipated: Cleartype makes the PC go hella-slow. But in Control Panel, there's an icon, and after that there is a checkbox "Turn on ClearType" Uncheck it, and it turns off ClearType no problem.

I have manifested a new podcast. #91 is the most recent I've done so far! Check it out!

(Like my liberal use of exclaimation marks?)

~

Today in the news, there are some hikers lost on Mount Hood, Hamas and Fatah are at each other’s throats in Palestine, George Bush is still in denial that his Iraq disaster is a disaster, and Paris Hilton’s spokesman said that Paris didn’t blog about Britney Spears' lack of underpants. I’m not sure how these three stories are related.

It could be that the climbers were in the mountains looking for Britney Spears' underpants, but that’s ridiculous. It could be that they are hiding. Maybe they know what the rest of us will soon find out. George W. Bush and Co. are planning to reinstitute the draft. They are doing a pre-emptive draft-dodge by hiding in the mountains.

Hamas and Fatah are killing each other, possibly to the delight of some Israelis. If they would put their differences aside, they might be able to do something constructive. Maybe they could live in peace, and then they too could read about the misadventures of Britney Spears' Underpants.

Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson had a brain hemorrhage, proving once and for all that God is a Republican and He doesn’t want those Sodomite Democrats running the Senate. Unfortunately for God and the Republicans, in order for the South Dakota’s Republican Governor Mike Rounds to replace the ailing Democrat in the Senate with a Republican, Sen. Johnson would have to either die or resign. According to the Constitution, even if he is incapacitated, he could still hold the seat. Are Conservative Christians across the country going to be praying for Sen. Johnson’s death this Sunday? Hm . . . I ain’t saying they are or anything . . . I think they should pray that Britney finds her underpants instead.

That bicycle guy, Lance Armstrong, is annoying. One reason he’s annoying is because he’s the type of smug overachiever that throws the bell curve off for the rest of us. The other reason is he’s a cancer survivor that was famous before he got cancer, and he beat it, and now he’s all like, hey, I beat cancer and I can still beat a bunch of Frenchmen in a bicycle race, so can you.

Well goodie for you. Ya friggin’ bastard.

It was okay at first; I was like, “hey, good for the bicycle guy”. But then he’s all over the place, staring at me though the TV like, “why don’t you get off your ass and do something? I won like, a million tour-de-Frances, and I only have one nut. What have you done with your life?”

I don’t remember Lance Armstrong being like, “Oh, hey, cancer is bad” before he got cancer. Michael J. Fox didn’t care about Alzheimer’s either until he got it.*

And Christopher Reeve didn’t give a rat’s ass about spinal cord research and crippled people until he fell off his horse during an equestrian tournament in 1995. I always assumed he fell off playing Polo, and I always thought, “only rich assholes play Polo.” So I was wrong.

But I learned something else about Christopher Reeve during extensive research (I typed “Christopher Reeve” in Wikipedia). I learned that in 1987 he saved 77 actors, directors and playwrights from the death penalty in Chile by leading a rally. These artsy-fartsy folks had criticized the dictator Augusto Pinochet and were sentenced to death, but the publicity Reeve got leading the rally saved their lives.

So. How many people did Lance Armstrong save? 1. How many did Christopher Reeve save? 77.

Damn, this was one pointless blog entry. Enjoy

*I stand corrected. MJF has Parkinson's Disease.

Hi fellow laptop users. Let me just say this now: I should have stumbled across this a long time ago. Anywhoo, when I downloaded the IE7 upgrade, I noticed how clear the text was on the new browser. It's something called "cleartype" and I thought, "well golly! why can't I see that clearly on everything?"

Well, I found the cleartype tuner, and I'm here to tell you, it makes the laptop look like a brand new, clearer laptop. check it out. Freakin' awesome.

I wonder if GWB saw this one coming:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Saudi Arabia has told the Bush administration that it might provide financial backing to Iraqi Sunnis in a war against Iraqi Shiites if the United States withdraws from Iraq, The New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing American and Arab diplomats.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia delivered that message to Dick Cheney during the U.S. vice president's brief visit last month to Riyadh, the newspaper said, citing the officials it did not name.

Cheney traveled to Saudi Arabia, a close U.S. ally and the world's top oil exporter, to discuss Iraq and how to break the deadlock in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

During the visit, King Abdullah expressed strong opposition to diplomatic talks between the United States and Iran, which is largely Shiite, the Times said. (from CNN)

I wonder if they thought of this wrinkle in the postwar planning. Oh yeah, I forgot, they didn't do any post-war planning. Nice.

http://www.bostontypewriterorchestra.com/ <--they make "music" with old typewriters. Audio samples.

Here's a sad story for ya: the story of Oliver Sipple, the guy who saved President Ford. No good deed goes unpunished. Check out the chain of events that followed his heroic action that saved President Ford. Poor gay bastard.

Don't ask what random clicking led me to this wikipedia page. It started on Slate.

Wish I had more to report, but I don’t. Deb worked Friday night so Savannah and I went to Olive Garden, had some pasta, and then went to the bookstore. I picked up HP Lovecraft: The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, and The Best American Short Stories of 2006. Savannah got a couple of books. She read one of them in one evening.

Saturday I made a fire in the fireplace, sat in front of said fireplace, and read until about three, when I showered and got my beer ration. Deb and the girls went to a church program, which mercifully, I was able to avoid.

Today is more reading and writing, and that’s about it. Not to thrilling, but I know that thousands of you hang on every word I write here, so I don’t want to disappoint.

Last week I did get a call from a book publisher about sample chapters of a book I had sent them years before. But they want money from ME to publish it. I had them send a sample of books they had already done, and it was unreadable crap. They just want my money. How sad.

Italk. does this even exist?

So the cat puked right in front of my office door. I can’t stand puke. I have a weak stomach. I’m a puss when it comes to vomit and shit.

So. Deb worked last night, so she was asleep. So I’m already gagging, and I haven’t even looked directly at the puke. I’m looking at it with my periphial vision only, just stepping around it, and I’m thinking, “I have to wake Deb up so she can take care of this.” I don’t want to wake her up, cause she’s asleep, and what kind of a puss can’t pick up some cat puke? So I steel myself, hold my breath, and clean it up.

And then I puked. Just a little.

Oh the things I do for love.

Let’s talk about lowering expectations: First, we were warned of a “mushroom cloud” if we didn’t invade Iraq, although Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, and GWB probably knew it. Then we were promised a “democracy” in Iraq so that “freedom” could be “on the march.” Now GWB tells us that

“an Iraq that can govern itself is a noble goal."

Wasn’t Iraq already governing itself when we went in there and turned it into a shithole? Man, we’re friggin’ awesome. Next time let’s not put a friggin’ C student in the Whitehouse.

On a “lighter” note, check out the homemade hovercraft at rocketboom.com

Today I changed the blinker in my 2002 Taurus. 38 cents for the bulb, 10 bucks for the socket and socket adaptor. Being able to turn left, priceless.

Well, first I get hooked on World of Warcraft. I play the crap out of that, get no writing done, and then I cancel the account and burn the CDs. What do I, being the genius that I am? I get a Second Life account and get hooked on that. So today I had to cash out of that and uninstall the software.

It’s like the last thing I want to do is WRITE. Maybe because I’m allergic to WORK. And writing a book is HARD. It takes a lot of TIME. And EFFORT.