Things I learned from my really drunk girlfriend last night:
1. In discussing Charlton Heston’s death, I learned that there are twelve commandments, not ten. She could not, however, tell me what the two additions were.
2. She won a best butt contest. On-stage. I’m not surprised by this, really. It is rather impressive.
Photo courtesy of dunechaser. Licensed under the Creative Commons.
Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., and I wrote nothing in here about it. From that, you could infer that this factoid is meaningless to me. That inference would be wrong, despite my being born four years (and change) after his death.
I could go on and on about how the world is a much better place for his having been here, and how much poorer we are since his passing, but that would be just repeating the words of others. There’s not much I could say that would add value to the conversation.
Leaders like Dr. King are a rarity. Using only the power of rhetoric, they can make you sit up and take notice of a situation that’s wrong, despite hundreds of years as a practice. They can create change by the force of those words and their willpower. And they can make the world a better place, simply by manipulating the language that binds all of us together and forming it into a mirror that forces us to see ourselves and the world around us not only as we are, but as we should be.
And as a writer, that’s something that inspires the hell out of me.
Photo courtesy of jenn_jenn. Licensed under the Creative Commons.
Finances are coming along. It’s payday and everything’s been paid. I’ve adopted a new policy that I think is going to work wonders for my paying off of everything.
I’m already making more-than-minimum payments on everything. That’s just common sense, right? Right.
In addition to that, I have a new folder full of bookmarks to all the online payment places for my bills. My new policy for credit accounts is to pay something toward them every payday, even when they’ve been paid or there’s nothing due before the following payday. At least an additional $20 each, more if I can swing it.
Really, it’s not that much extra, and it helps get me to my goal that much faster.
So I haven’t anything particular to post about here, so I’m going to break it down into some bullet points and let you wander all over the map with me:
Man, remember when Reagan quoted from “Born in the U.S.A.” without realizing what the song was about?
Well, Hillary, bless her shriveled little heart, likened herself to Rocky today. More to the point:
‘Let me tell you something, when it comes to finishing a fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common. I never quit. I never give up. And neither do the American people,’ Clinton said in excerpts of prepared remarks to be given Tuesday to a meeting of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO.
This, of course, makes me wonder if she’s even seen Rocky?
I mean, really. Rocky loses in the end. To the black guy.
This calls for some serious Photoshopping. I just don’t have the time for such things.
(No, not an April Fools joke, either.)
sr d writes:
even though you are in a bit of a economic slump, you have continued to focus on buying a house, SOON. why is that? does owning your own home have some special significance? do you think that it is the best thing to protect your personal economy?thank you for your answer.
And it’s a great question, even if the “you” definition of economic slump could be applied to me as an individual, or the United States as a whole.
I’m not sure where sr d hails from, but here in the States, there are extremely good tax benefits for owning a home. Furthermore, I’m throwing away $600+ a month in rent for a one-bedroom apartment. Why not invest that money in a house and reap the tax benefits?
As for the economic slump part, I’m going to answer that in two parts: personally and nationally. Read the rest of this entry »
From the Onion, America’s only reliable news source, comes a report on an increase in violence that seems to track with the increasing popularity of Nintendo’s Wii. From the article:
…a report to be released by PAW later this month indicates an alarming correlation between Wii’s growing popularity and a shocking 200-percent increase in wuss-on-wuss violence.
While Clarke wasn’t my first foray into sci-fi, he was the first author I really devoured, back in my early teens. The library was well-stocked with his works, and I tore into them: 2001, 2010, the Rama series, Childhood’s End…you get the idea. He really helped hook me on science fiction.
I’m still hooked, really. Writing it now, too. I’ve kept a little mental list of authors I’ll be sending copies of my first published work to, with a little note of thanks for nudging me to that point. The list really focuses on the authors that I enjoyed in my teens, and Clarke was at the top of the list.
This posting will have to serve as my thank-you, and my send-off to a guy who was, by all accounts, as classy a human being as you could hope for. Thanks, Mr. Clarke, for starting me down this strange little path.
Minneapolis, my hometown and place-of-residence, of the 50 largest cities in the U.S., is ranked #2 for bicycle commuters, with 2.5% of the population choosing to ride to work. We’re second only to Portland, Oregon.
By comparison, the national average is 0.04%. Pathetic, especially when you compare the rest of the country’s climate to Minnesota’s harsh variations.
For more on the awesome that is Minneapolis: http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/bicycles
Photo by Mrs Magic. Licensed under the Creative Commons.
It’s amazing how easy it is to procrastinate, even with a life that includes a full-time job, part-time job, girlfriend, writing, training, and so on. Fighting the procrastination has been part of my New Year’s Resolutions for 2007 and 2008. (The resolution was/is “be more awesome.”)
A few years ago, I was on the GTD (Getting Things Done) bandwagon. The thing is, GTD requires a complete overhaul of habits and it demands them all at once. Read the rest of this entry »
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