27.6.03

Ooooh, the archives are back! Hooray for the new Blogger!
Seven full days of sand and sun have changed nothing about my temperament. It's awfully hot out, you see, and I spend as much time in the water as seems prudent. The rest is spent reading and drinking and eating and sleeping.

This article is good.

There are no clouds, and the water is absolutely perfect for every kind of activity. The entire family is planning to come back here for Thanksgiving, when the tourist season is beginning it's low ebb. I think that's brilliant.

19.6.03

Well, here's the reaction I was talking about. You can read it for yourself, but it's almost as pitiful as the Chinese in my last post. "...Expressing themselves toward a free Iran"?!? What the holy fuck does that mean? This is the best that the leader of the free world, the original large-scale democratic experiment, the world's sole cultural and economic and military superpower, can come up with?

I told Aisling and mum yesterday that I had come to a decision (only partially influenced by beer. Stop looking at me like that.). There are plenty of things in this world to be thankful for and excited about; new medicines, people doing all kinds of volunteer work, these pro-democracy protests in Iran, et cetera. But, taken together with all the Nasty Shit that's going down, like the Afghanistan/Iraq nation building debacle, our contracts with Bectel and Halliburton, the sharp drop in tolerance for American stupidity around the globe, and basically everything else this un-elected administration has it's hands in, I think we can safely say that the bad outweighs the good. H.S. Thompson himself said our generation will be the first in American history to have a lower standard of living than our parents. In other words, things are actively and measureably getting worse, and almost no one seems to care. Anyone with a functioning brain and the willingness to use it can say that there's really nothing, on balance, to be happy about.

Fight the Power Bands. We'll get our chance someday.

14.6.03

I love a good dose of Engrish: "Welcome to Chinese Restaurant. Please try your Nice Chinese Food With chopsticks the traditional and typical of Chinese glorious history. and cultural."

Also, it appears that Iran is experiencing some real uprisings. The best links to news and other Iranian blogs are right here. Anxious to know about the Bush administration's reaction to all this? Yeah, not sure there's been one.

12.6.03

"Just because you feel it, doesn't mean it's there..."

It takes me a good week to digest a new album of music from an artist like Radiohead. There's no easy way to do it. Each song has a story that you have to listen for, a unique pattern that must be deciphered before it can be appreciated. Lyrically this one's a gem, and there are a few songs I already really like.

I detest the idea that I could ever be happy to be rid of a person, but today I am happy that my former boss has finally left the boat. Several months ago he was fired from his position as Submarine Coordinator. Now, the common practice when one is fired from a job is to spend the ensuing time searching for another one. This he did, but not with any great enthusiasm, and in the meantime he kept hanging around our workplace until the head of the whole department took pity on and granted him 20 hours a week to be a "maintenance consultant." He took this as carte blanche to screw around in his old office for a few days a week and get paid while doing absolutely no real maintenance work on our 1,500 ton submarine (that's quite a bit of boat).

In fact, in his ten years of working on the Sub, I think I only ever saw him do real, actual work on two occasions. Add to this the fact that he managed to talk trash about everyone else on the boat (I'm proud to say that I'm an "inept leftist") and we were all glad when he finally left. Now my friend Tak is the Skipper, and we can get some real work done.

The stifling humidity has returned to Anytown, and I welcome it. Mainly because everyone else here seems to really detest the weather, no matter what it is. We had a micro-storm today that blew out windows in our parent building, and by the time they had new glass for them the sky was free of menacing clouds and the sun shone brightly on a scene of minor destruction.

7.6.03

Today and tomorrow are National Ocean Week, and ain't it great that people get to tour our Submarine? I'm having an extreme allergic reaction to People, which is making it difficult for me to do my job. They seem extremely noisy today, for some reason, and smelly.

My religion requires me to wear the bloody skull of a freshly killed mountain lion on my face whenever I appear in public. Therefore, I should be allowed to wear one for my driver's license photo. Otherwise, it's religious discrimination.

Honestly, the ACLU has done some good things, but they also tend to promote the goofiest ideals. I'm not going to apologise for it; if you come to our country and want to live as a citizen, you're gonna have to play by the rules no matter your sensibilities.

3.6.03

Jeezus, how do you fix a broken Human Being? Moreover, should you even try? Experience tells me No, any interference in another person's life is more trouble for the both of you than it's worth. As with all things, no one has a lock on the truth, but there are some times when it's quite obvious that the psyche is not functioning in a healthy manner. I want there to be a good way to help someone else help themselves without sounding like I'm trying to change them or dispensing wisdom from a vending machine. I will give what I can when asked, I will not judge, and I will continue to do the one thing I've always been good at, setting an example.

In the end, I suppose, you have to want to change yourself.