...a certain shade of [green] what are _you_ waiting for?
30.12.02
a post-st-pete hello from edinburgh! i am tired and don't feel like writing the novel that it will take to explain my trip, so for now just look at what kat has written as a good introduction. more to follow soon...
ok. made first Big Mistake in edinburgh. luckily though, i did not let this turn into a Very Big Mistake. oh phew. have showered, brushed and listerined, and am feeling comparatively better.
more later, it's late and i'm old.
carve your name into my arm
instead of stressed i lie here charmed
[placebo, "every you every me"]
can't believe i almost forgot to post this. happy birthday to you
happy birthday to you
happy birthday dear CCCCHHHHRRRIIIISSSSSSSSS
happy birthday to you!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY #19, CHRISTOFARIUS! when you come to visit me we'll celebrate properly.
[my baby brother isn't such a baby anymore.]
there are folks that say to have a soul you’ve got to suffer
well lately i’ve had my RDA of that
and call it fascist but i know that someday happy
will be all that matters
[dismemberment plan, "memory machine"]
i love a good debate. janet writes in her comment concerning the ted rall article pasted directly below:
Yea, I read about that. Guess our CIA and National Security could only come up with a whimpy response like, "Oh Dear, oops, we'll try to be more careful". If you belive that, then.........
well, see, that's exactly the opposite of the point - the CIA and bush admin *did not* say "oops" because of the nature of the executive order. the order gives them the right never to say "oops" about that sort of thing again. what the admin said instead was that this sort of action is justified based on the "enemy combatant" order - even though one of the persons killed was an american citizen, and thus should have been entitled to constitutional guarantees, the designation "enemy combatant" trumps any invocation of civil rights. so, then, the admin does not need to be more careful, and most certainly did not offer that as a response - what they did offer, in fact, was the opposite. they effectively declared that they will no longer be careful about this sort of thing given the "enemy combatant" executive order and the new powers it gives to the admin.
on a completely different note. will now be staying with kat at her host family's flat for the entirety of my trip to st petersburg, pending her email back to me [the first night will still be at the hostel]. also shot a half-roll of black and white film here in edinburgh, and am saving the rest for st pete. should have many rolls of film to post when i get back!
if it’s a life of possibilities
that you’ve gotta live then
don’t be surprised when they don’t remember you
or simply don’t want to
[dismemberment plan, "a life of possibilities"]
this is absolutely bloody brilliant. i bequeath to ted rall my firstborn child.
A Presidential Impostor Turns Political Assassin by Ted Rall
NEW YORK--First he appointed himself President. Now George W. Bush has declared himself God.
As Americans begin their third year of Supreme Court-ordered political occupation, Bush has just signed an impressive new executive order. You may be surprised to learn that it grants him the right to order your execution. No judge, jury or lawyer. No chance to prove your innocence. One stroke of Bush's pen, and bang--you're dead.
Not even your American citizenship, according to Bush, will save your life if and when he decides to kill you. The only reason you're reading this right now--instead of meeting the Entity Formerly Known as God--is that neither Bush nor one of his "high-level officials" has yet signed a piece of paper declaring you an "enemy combatant." Once they do the paperwork, Administration officials assert, they have the right to murder you.
Bush's secret assassination directive surfaced on Dec. 3, when reporters asked about the Nov. 3 Central Intelligence Agency rub-out of alleged Al Qaeda operatives riding in a car in Yemen. Langley fired a Hellfire missile from a remote-controlled Predator drone into the vehicle, blowing up several men. The CIA later discovered that an American citizen, Kamal Derwish, had inadvertently been killed in the inferno.
"No constitutional questions are raised here," asserted National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, stretching credulity more than usual. Officials claim that a loophole in Bush's order authorizing the CIA to "covertly attack Al Qaeda all over the world" validates Derwish's murder. Since this sneaky directive makes exception neither for Americans nor American soil, these guys say, you and I have no more rights than the now-deceased, not-presumed-innocent Kamal Derwish.
Your life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are now officially subject to George W. Bush's personal judgement--or whim.
The war on terrorism isn't a war, it's a cheesy public service announcement, like the "war on poverty" and the "war on drugs." Like those old un-won campaigns, it involves no declaration of war, no defined enemy, no front. And like them it will gradually fade into embarrassing irrelevance. "Can you believe it?" future citizens will marvel. "People actually took this stuff seriously!" In the meantime, America's Gang of Four--Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft--have brilliantly exploited the nebulousness of nullity. Having no enemy means that anyone can be declared the enemy. Having no battleground means that the battleground is anywhere and everywhere. "The Bush Administration and Al Qaeda together have defined the entire world as a battlefield," writes the Associated Press' John J. Lumpkin.
While the CIA has targeted U.S. citizens in the past, those killings were officially sanctioned only when the person in question was considered an immediate threat to American lives. Scott L. Silliman, director of the Duke University Center on Law, Ethics and National Security asks: "Could you put a Hellfire missile into a car in Washington, D.C. under the same theory? The answer is yes, you could."
Never mind that anyone driving on the Beltway could just as easily be pulled over by the cops. Like the medieval lords who wielded the right of life and death over their subjects, our Texan warlord now claims the droit du seigneur over the American people.
Under his legalized assassination mandate, Bush could theoretically declare the 2004 Democratic nominee an "enemy combatant," Hellfire his campaign bus and coast to reelection unopposed. It would be a heck of a lot easier than preparing for debates.
Granted, it's unlikely that CIA missiles will begin raining down on Berkeley or other liberal burgs anytime soon. Killing Muslims, even those with U.S. citizenship, is one thing; offing "ordinary" Americans is another. As has been the case with previous Bushie infringements on fundamental civil rights--electronic eavesdropping, jailing people without trial or a visit by a lawyer--most citizens believe themselves safe simply by virtue of their not being terrorists.
They may be right. They might be wrong. It's all in the hands of the executioner-in-chief now.
i have never denied a political reason for leaving the states.
i'm feeling cheeky today. i was walking down princes street and saw something quite blasphemous. on the ground, outside marks and spencers or debenhams or some department-store-ish thing like that, i saw a street vendor displaying his merchandise: the wire likenesses of bart and homer simpson, dancing to a techno beat coming out of a boombox next to them. dancing mechanically, i believe, like those dancing flowers in a pot - except that those dancing flowers are anchored, and these wire figures were free to roam about the ground on their dancing wire feet.
um... wot?
i still don't understand.
pop quiz poll. would you rather:
eat live goldfish
or
stir-fry slugs?
i think this is so hilarious. my friends here have said the same thing, but i never really thought it was prevalent until i read this [an article written by a 12 year old british ex-pat living in kansas with his family]. the part i'm referring to:
And I think there's a language barrier because everyone says things like "y'all". At school, I have to slow down how I talk so people can understand it. My friends try to talk like me but just sound like the Queen.
how i got through three years at the university of virginia, in no particular order. 1. healing pillows.
2. 11.5 and 12.5pt font.
3. doc johnson.
4. you.
5. "you, sir - cake or death?"
6. upsilon tau sigma.
7. music, music2, music3... musicn.
8. espresso royale, clemons and cocke.
9. tequila, limes and toilets.
10. nietzsche.
apparently i haven't posted anything in about a week. so then...
saw donnie darko last nite. amazing film. i refuse to believe, however, that the actual plot line is the point of the story. i've got it narrowed down to a meditation on suburban america in the late 80's, with an emphasis on the question of god's existence. you should see it, and then email me what you think.
oh yes - i quit my job. and here's why [apologies dad, you'll have seen this before]:
well, they insulted me in every possible way. they told me i was too American and needed to get over it [for example, the word ‘done’ is apparently American slang, and no one in Britain uses it – right]. they told me that i asked silly questions, and then yelled at me for not asking enough questions. they yelled for me not answering the phone, and then answering the phone incorrectly, and then not answering the phone [after i had clearly heard a conversation telling someone not to pick up the phone as it was a fax]. the cook got so mad at me that he threw an ice cream scoop across the kitchen because i didn’t hear exactly what he had said and had to ask him to repeat it. they explained why they only hired students [intelligent, fast learners, mannered, etc] and then said that i had to stop expecting to be treated as a student [which, like the other arguments, makes no sense to me]. the manager maintains a “no offense” policy if either she or the trainee decides to end the training, and then after i told her that i wasn’t going to come back she continues to insult me. apparently, according to her, working in the restaurant business is exactly how working any other job is, especially post-graduation, and so i should expect this type of treatment everywhere. she told me, in effect, that i should go back to driving a bus. she lauded herself about her training skills [i beg to differ] and said that anyone unable to make it under her would never make it anywhere. i told her it was a difference of personality, but i had meant to say philosophy, and as i was in the middle of correcting myself she launched into this detailed explanation of why it couldn’t be a difference of personality because i had no idea what her personality was since i had never given her a chance to show it. i hadn’t earned my respect, and apparently no one is respected until they do something to deserve respect. well, i found out more about her personality in the 3 or 4 shifts that i worked there than i probably would have worked in a whole year. she’s the type of person who manipulates every situation to make her the correct person [even if she’s wrong, you are to learn from her mistake, and she yells if you don’t catch her mistake before she does]. she’s a control freak, given that she does co-own the restaurant, but she gives her staff no flexibility at all. she treats you as if you are the thickest person in the world and then expects you to know things she hasn’t even told you. not to mention that i am completely against this whole no-respect thing—i understand that some people find it hard to respect someone until they earn that respect, but even then there’s a level of respect given to someone simply because they are a co-worker, even if it’s only superficial. i can’t endorse, however, a policy which maintains rudeness and caustic treatment of employees until they do something to earn respect and equal treatment. you can’t expect your employees to respect you if you don’t treat them as though they have their own sense of dignity.
ps - if you are bored, take a look at everything in the left-hand column in this page, especially the 'kittens' subsection. yau!
geezus. this fire is about 1/4 mile away from me. in fact, i live right off of the cowgate, on the other side of south bridge. i'll try and get some pictures.
MILAN (Reuters) - An Italian man who packed his bags 44 years ago and told friends he was leaving for America was found dead inside one of the walls of his home. An American woman who recently bought the house near Lucca in northern Tuscany discovered the body Tuesday as she was carrying out renovations, police said. Inside a thick wall in the cellar the woman found human remains, two packed suitcases, a trowel and other equipment to make a wall, a rusted rifle and a bottle with a suicide note. The note, on paper headed with the name Nemo Cianelli, explained that the man had discovered he had an incurable disease and had decided to kill himself. He said he had invented the tale of going to America to avoid upsetting his family. Local newspapers reported in 1958 that Cianelli was missing, and speculated that he might have gone to America, but after a period of rumor and mystery, the story was forgotten. Police said it appeared Cianelli had packed his suitcases, written the suicide note, built a wall up around himself and then shot himself.
have spent last two nights reading both editions of bridget jones saga [in reverse order no less], resulting in desire to
[a] post cv to every possible employer in london and edinburgh in hopes of leading young hip almost-professional life
[b] ignore nagging sense of having 'faked it' through university due to proof that even a graduate unaware of the geographical location of germany can lead a young hip almost-professional life
[c] find colin firth-esque man of integrity, wit, and age [though late 30s is slightly unappealing] to speed entry into young hip almost-professional life by serving as slightly-less-young hip definitely-professional boyfriend.
unfortunate results of above-mentioned reading: have taken evolution to life of fictional character a bit too far, as embarrassing tray-dropping incident in teviot hall in manner of bridget jones clearly illustrates. also, have not been able to break from diary-style of thought processes, including dreams and inner monologues in said style. obviously leading quite sad life.
tony blair wearing a chandelier on his head. i knew blair and bush were of similar orientation.
oh, and the copywriters at bbc news are impressive. caption as follows: 'There is renewed speculation as to who gets to inherit the crown from Tony Blair.'
here's something interesting - if you have msn messenger and feel like having a chat, i am usually on in the evenings here [after 3/2pm est/cst] under my email address [greenshade08@hotmail.com] so look me up :)
