Yummy

One of my favorite things ever is Peach ice cream eaten with Sour Cream and Onion potato chips. It’s totally heaven- sweet and salty and so simple and fresh. Yum! It’s hard to find peach ice cream, so it isn’t a delight I get to partake in often. Kevin thinks it is gross, but what does he know?\
What are some of your wacky cravings?

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Categorized as Jen

Dear Mr. President

(I sent this to comments@whitehouse.gov. I just couldn’t stand it anymore.)\
Dear President Bush,\
You, sir, are a failure as a president. You have disappointed me over and over again the past six years, and it’s only fitting that your most disgraceful act as the president of our country comes on the anniversary of the act I consider the most ridiculous thing any public figure has ever said in public.\
Four years ago, while talking about insurgents in Iraq, you told them to “bring ’em on.” Since then, over 3,500 America soldiers have died, over 30,000 soldiers have been wounded, and untold thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians have died (who, like all your other problems, your administration have just ignored by not bothering to count their deaths). You and your administration have constantly failed to admit your mistakes, correct your course or do more than make excuses and beg for more time. You’ve said over and over again that you listen to your commanders on the ground, yet it comes to light more every day that anyone who disagrees with you is shuffled off to retirement and someone more agreeable to your illusion is put in place.\
That act was a disgrace – the act of a bully who doesn’t fight himself, but puffs himself up with tough talk. But you’re worse than a bully, because it’s not you who’s in the line of fire, it’s the thousands of American troops over there who take the punishment for your mistakes and empty threats – mistakes you can’t admit and refuse to correct.\
You talk tough about the rule of law. Your party supports mandatory minimum sentences for citizens for even the most petty of crimes. Your party is supposedly the party of “law and order”. Yet today, you commuted the sentence of Scooter Libby – who was convicted of a crime. He was sentenced in accordance with the law, within in the sentencing guidelines. Yet, for some reason, you don’t support the rule of law for him, and nowhere near mandatory minimums. You, sir, are a hypocrite. You are a liar, and should be impeached. Why? In the aftermath of Watergate, the judiciary committee released the following:

In the \[Constitutional\] convention George Mason argued that the President might use his pardoning power to “pardon crimes which were advised by himself” or, before indictment or conviction, “to stop inquiry and prevent detection.” James Madison responded:

\[I\]f the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds \[to\] believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty…

Madison went on to \[say\] contrary to his position in the Philadelphia convention, that the President could be suspended when suspected, and his powers would devolve on the Vice President, who could likewise be suspended until impeached and convicted, if he were also suspected.

Scooter Libby was acting on either yours or the Vice President’s orders. Either you, or Mr. Cheney, need to resign or be impeached (take your pick, if lying about an extramarital affair constitutes a high crime or misdemeanor, what do your multitudinous bad acts constitute?). If the series of articles in the Washington Post published last week is the truth, this was all Mr. Cheney’s doing, and you’re just a patsy. How frightening is that? The President of the United States of America is a patsy to a shadow government running out of the Vice President’s office?\
You deserve no less than to be run out of office, even if that means making Dick Cheney president. You should pay some price, under the laws you continually flout and except yourself from, for all the pain, misery and disgrace you’ve brought to your country, its citizens and the world.\
I know that you don’t care what I think. You’ve proven over and over again that reality and the truth have no effect on you. I don’t expect this to have any impact on anything, other than me using my First Amendment rights and putting a stake in the ground that I find your actions unacceptable and a disgraceful use of your authority as president.

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Let’s jam!

To the left, you can read Kevin’s recap of the roller derby. Here is mine:\
I went to my first Roller Derby bout last night! It was fun! The first half an hour I was too amazed with all of the hot chicks there to really pay attention. (I kept making Kevin email a friend to tell him what he was missing.) They were in little gaggles and dressed to the 7’s, like they had gotten lost on the way to some club. I never did figure them out. There was also a huge contingent of computer nerds, goths, bikers, and families. It was surreal.\
The derby itself was kind of insane. It was a flat-track derby, with no rail between the participants and the fans. The first row was called the “suicide seats.” Yeah, we didn’t sit there. I had no idea what the rules or objective of roller derby was but after awhile, I figured out some things and could appreciate when someone made a good maneuver. It’s a rough sport, with lots of falling and elbows. Four girls from the roughly 45 players were recovering from serious broken bones. Youch! The basics are: This is a sport played on roller skates, which leads to all kind of craziness. Each period is 20 minutes (I am not sure if there are two or three periods per bout.) Within each period are several “jams,” where four girls from each team skate in a “pack” and one girl from each team initially skates behind them. These lagging skaters try to maneuver through the pack to be in front and then skate around the track to try to get through the pack again and again. They get one point for every opposing player they pass. These jams are at most two minutes long, which makes for lots of quick action and restarts with fresh skaters. There was some trash talking, elbows flying, and penalties all over the place. One girl even lifted her skirt and patted her ass a few times, to mock the skaters behind her. The audience laughed, the opposing skaters didn’t.\
The players have awesome names. That was probably one of the most fun things about the night. They also have really fun uniforms, with the shortest skirts in the world, that they embellish when not competing. The referees even have fun too. There was a guy in a clown face named John Dewayne Gacey and Refsputin, who would send you to hell if you disagreed with him.\
By the end, I was really getting into it. I felt like if we suddenly moved to somewhere exotic, that in a few short months I would be cheering for their wacky sports too. Cuz watching sports isn’t really about the love of the game, IMO, it is about the appreciation of a tough skill, the opportunity to root for your favorite team, and to be with other people.\
Roller derby is weird! But I enjoyed it anyway! If you ever have the chance, check it out! There is a probably a league near you!

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