Ultranormal

Author: Kevin Lawver

  • The Year After the Year After

    I was going to take today off, but that didn’t happen. There’s too much going on, which in itself is reassuring. I have a full day of stuff to do, things to look into and places to be. I wanted time to reflect on my feelings about today, but with my sinuses being what they are, I probably won’t do much reflecting today either. I didn’t want today to be “just another day”, but it’s turning into that. I guess in way it shows that I’m moving on. I still remember everything about the day, and I still feel as helpless to explain my emotions as I did then.

    I thought it would be interesting to look at what I wrote on that day, and afterwards. I don’t normally go back and look at what I write after it’s posted, but I decided to go look and see what I felt then. It’s pretty much what I felt then, only maybe a little less raw than two years, and then one year ago. See for yourself:

  • Lies

    I just finished reading Al Franken’s book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. It’s an amazing book that I can’t recommend highly enough, with a couple caveats:

    Don’t Read This Book If:

    • You can’t take a joke, especially if it’s about “your guy”. I believe this book is very well researched, and honest in everything it says, but the humor is pretty rough. If you love Bill O’Reilly and think he can do no wrong, well, you’re going to hate this book. Should you read it? Yeah, you should, but be prepared for your guy to get tarred and feathered.

    • You can’t handle profanity. It’s not over the top (ok, this point is totally for my parents), but there is some.

    • You can’t handle the truth. This book will shock you. It will make you question everything that this Administration has done, and you’ll never see those in the Right-wing Media or the Administration the same – which is a good thing.

    Why You Should Read It Anyway:

    • This is a great piece of research. The sources are impeccable, and it felt like Franken went out of his way to not take quotes out of context. It’s an amazing and depressing read. Not depressing because it’s bad, depressing because he’s right.

    • It is funny. It’s really funny. The line about the Malawi Space Program was hilarious. I laughed out loud many many times.

    • It will put lies in perspective. It does a great job exposing the Administrations lies, and exposing the mainstream media’s absolute hypocrisy in not exposing them.

    I loved the book. But, I can take a joke and knew when he was joking and when he wasn’t. I want my family to read this book, but I won’t ask them to because the book doesn’t come in a “humor-lite” version. I want them to see the proof of all the lies, but I know they won’t be able to get past the jokes. They’ll take them too seriously and get so offended by the humor that they’ll shut down to the real meat in the book. I know why Franken wrote it this way. It falls under satire if it’s funny – even though the book is an amazing indictment of the right-wing media and campaign politics.

    Is there a book that’s this well researched that’s just the facts, ma’am? If so, pleeeee-ase tell me!!

  • Dawson Is A Smart Guy

    He knows the emperor has no clothes. It’s time to see if the rest of the Republicans in the country will see that Bush has actually kept one of this campaign promises: to run the government like a corporation. Unfortunately, he’s modeled the government “corporation” after his friend Kenneth Lay’s corporation: Enron.

    Anyone, anyone? Write any letters to McCain this week?

  • Validate While It Lasts

    The front page of this site officially validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional!! The layout’s been fine for a while, but the posts usually broke the validator in the past. Now, the posts (at least the ones on the front page) are fine, and I think will be in the future. Ahhhh, bask in the glory of my geekiness with me. Doesn’t it feel nice?

  • Photographic (Puzzling?) Evidence

    Mr. Coppertop

    Yeah, baby, there it is: my coppertop hair.

  • Los Betos Rides Again

    The Los Betos Mascot

    Fantasy Football was supposed to start this weekend, but we couldn’t get twelve dependable dorks to register for the league in time. So, attampt two drafts on Wednesday. It’s quite a luxury to be able to see your prospective players in action the first week before you have to draft them. My team, as it has been the last three years is Los Betos named after my favorite greasy Mexican place in Tucson. It’s also funny to me because it either means “The Beasts” or “The Dummies”.

    My sinus infection sucks… And in an effort to take my mind off the sucking of my sinuses and the accompanying pain, I decided that Saturday night would be a good time to dye my hair. I don’t have a good picture of it yet, or I would have posted it along with this. The last time I did this (I think it was spring of last year), I went ultra-blond, which isn’t too big a departure from my normal color. Having already done the “one shade off” thing, I decided it was time for something a little more adventurous and Saturday morning picked out “Auburn”, which is a slightly less than ultra-red. I thought my hair would come out a little redder than it did… Right now, I have coppery colored locks (ok, lock? I just got it cut so it’s mighty short). Jen loves it, and I’m pretty happy with it. It’s totally different without being a “crazy teenager” color like purple or blue – not that I won’t go purple someday, I just might.

    I would tell you more, but my face is going to pop any second – CAT Scan’s on Thursday.

    UPDATE: Since Dawson asked so nicely, I posted a shot from the Sidekick’s crappy camera to my TypePad Mopho Gallery. It really doesn’t do the absolute coppery happiness of my hair justice, but it’s the best I got.

  • Geez, I Inspire Myself

    I so inspired myself, I decided to write my letter tonight instead of put it off any longer. You can too. Here’s what I wrote:

    Dear Senator McCain,

    I have voted for you twice in my young political life, once as a citizen of Arizona for Senate, and once in the 2000 Virginia Republican Presidential Primary. I had strong hopes back then that you would win the Presidency. The 2000 election was painfully disappointing to me on many levels. I felt you were a better candidate and stronger leader than George W. Bush could ever hope to be, and your politics much more moderate and inline with my own and the rest of the country.

    According to this poll, which I’m sure you’re aware of, a lot of people are unsure of President Bush’s leadership. I am so disgusted by the President, his policies and the people he’s chosen to fill key positions in the government that I no longer consider myself a Republican, even though I respect you, my current Senator, John Warner and many other moderates in the party. I feel the GOP has been taken over by the extreme Right and that’s a dangerous thing for this country. The Administration’s diplomatic failures would never have happened if you were President.

    As I said before, I no longer consider myself a member of the Republican party. But, not so long ago, I considered myself a conservative. The past two years I have watched the Republican party turn from its principles and embrace the wrong issues and for the wrong reasons. I’ve seen the President lie to the American people and take us into an unneccessary war. I thought President Clinton was dishonest, but his lies were never on this scale. I’ve seen an Administration set on serving corporate interests in its “secret” energy task force in which the Vice President possibly broke the law by not turning over documents to the Congress. I’ve heard a President egg on terrorists, putting our soldiers in Iraq in even more danger (if people who were against the war were “aiding and abetting the enemy”, what did the President do in utter those three words?). I have seen a President push for changes in labor laws that will deeply hurt middle class families, and environmental laws that will hurt our environment. All this from a President who promised to return “honor and dignity” and “honesty and openness in goverment” to the White House.

    What’s my point? Why am I writing? I beg you to challenge George W. Bush and run for President in 2004. President Bush has done lasting damage to this country: his diplomatic and military miscalculations, his sops to big corporations and the wealthy at the expense of the middle class, his complete abandonment of his campaign promises (an honest and open government?) and his gutting of the campaign finance reform you worked so hard to get passed. You can save the party from the extremists running it today. I believe you are an honest man, and want the best for our country. I believed in you then, and I believe in you now. Please run and show the world that all Republicans are not the neo-conservative extremists in power today.

    Sincerely,
    \
    Kevin Lawver

  • Anyone Up For Begging?

    Do you think that with this news we could convince John McCain to run? I voted for him twice (once as a Senator, once in the 2000 Republican Primary) – I could be convinced to vote for him again. He’s a reasonable and moderate Republican – not an unreasoning idealogue like the President and his friends. So, who wants to send some letters? Anyone?

  • Sick In The Head

    This morning I found out that my sinus infection is back, the pain in my neck is most likely caused by stress and my doctor said the word polyp in my presence. This wouldn’t be your normal butt polyp (you know, a ‘roid or a boil). This would be a polyp in my sinuses, you know, near my brain. I get to go get a sinus CAT scan (which is the most uncomfortable posistion I’ve ever been in for a medical test, I swear, my neck doesn’t move that way). I don’t get any more antibiotics because they obviously aren’t working. I get Alleve, a pat on the back and a prescription for a bunch of lab tests.

    So, I’m going to listen to the Housemartins, pretend everything fine and that my head doesn’t hurt. I’m going to play with my new toy (DOM hacking in javascript – I hate javascript, but this is kinda fun), and not think about anything else.

  • Keep Your Mac Happy

    It’s the Mac Maintenance Post! Working where I do, us Mac users are outnumbered big time, so calling our internal help group for Mac help is practically futile. So, my boss, my pal and I (all in the same group and all Mac users – go figure) troubleshoot most of our own problems. Here’s a list of indispensible Mac utilities and sites that make our lives easier, and if you’ve got a Powerbook or a computer that’s not on 24/7, will makes your’s better too:

    • MacJanitor: Runs all the maintenance scripts that are supposed to run in the middle of the night. If you turn your machine off at night, they never run, which will make your Mac crawl like mine did until I ran this.

    • RebuildDesktopX: Takes you back to the good ol’ days of Apple+Option booting, doesn’t it? Nope, this is just a little application and does some magical cache deleting and really helped me get some speed back.

    • OS X Troubleshooting: A great site for OS X tips and tricks to keep your Mac happy.