Just like every other year I didn't vote for anyone in the primary. Not being part of one of the two big parties it is kind of a non eventful day in politics for me. I think it is weird to join a party just to vote in the primary and then drop out. It feels liek cheating to me.

Also, reminder to self - go out for Mardi Gras next year - everyone else had so much fun. Last year I went out with (e:mike,38281) There is no reason to do anything else next year.

The reign of Mayor Beaumont over Kenmore, NY is over. In my limited experience with him as a youth I found him to be a great guy. Without him (e:iriesara) and I could have never had the 6th grade homeless sleepout at the Kenmore municiple building, for which we and our friends raised around $60 for the city mission.

First off, Happy Thanksgiving


Rudy Guilliani
No matter how diverse our political feelings are here on estrip. I think that we can probably agree that no one likes Rudolph Guilliani, right? I just can't get over his inability to pronounce the "th" in eleventh.

Check out this mp3

::DOWNLOAD SOUND::

I got it from the september 11th remix site.

The iphone in Germany

I would also like to point out today that German law triumphed in a way over Apple when tmobile in Germany was forced to sell the iphone unlocked (although very expensively).

T-Mobile's new unrestricted phone option will cost €999 ($1,477), versus €399 (US$590) for a locked phone purchased with a two-year T-Mobile contract.

However, what makes it even better is that anyone who already bought the iphone there is getting them unlocked for free. How, the Euro has gotten so expensive or the dollar has gotten so cheap.

Who looks at these advertisments?
I frankly cannot believe that web advertisments work. It seems like every site is having more and more of them, so are the ones they have less sucessful. I find it so easy to totally ignore the advertisments. Like who click on the Garnier advertisment way the frick down at the bottom of the christian science monitor of all place

Look how far down it is. It is even further down on the real non-zoomed out version of the site

Lunch
I ate lunch at the Roswell Cafeteria with Tony and then stopped at (e:imk2)'s desk afterwards. It was so great to eat lunch in the cafeteria again. I really missed it. I also realized just how much I really missed hanging out with (e:enknot) while I was gone.

I have to say I thought (e:joshua) seemed to have a pretty rounded vote. I don't know why everyone is being so hard on him. I checked out the fox page it it seems pretty cool. Not like I would base my vote on it, but the interactive map is interesting to watch as the data pours in. According to Fox News:

President Bush Job Approval
Approve     39.0%
Disapprove     55.4%
Spread: -16.4%

Generic Congressional Vote
Republican     40.6%
Democrat     52.1%
Spread: -11.5%

I also did not vote for Hillary or Hevesi. As part of my tell all mobile fairy tale I took pictures of my votes. I am making one of the most secret events public. I think that it is great that we live in a country where we do not have to fear our lives because of who we vote on. I mean what is the point of having a secret ballot in modern america. Some people are really terrified that you will find out who they voted for. What is the deal with that? Are they party posers that pretend to vote for one party when talking with their friends and aquaintences and then vote on the opposite side once the curtain is pulled.

I mostly voted for Green and Democrat with two family party votes because the green were supporting them and I didn't know any of the candidates for those positions.





The day we close don the house I went to the Erie County Board of Elections to change my address and the worker told me I had missed the deadline. She said I should have come sooner. Ha, I wish I had gotten the house before. Anyways, she instructed us to go to the voting station across from our house but when we went there, they told us we could not vote there because we were not registered. We ended up having to go to our old station over a Lafayette High School. I have to say I think each one of the workers we dealt with had a slight to severe form of mental retardation.

I had no idea how much fancy was in stonewall democrat. Here they have a giant fancy tent set up in the plaza outside where (e:hodown) used to work. The place across from the golden somewhere they have ice skating in the winter.

I hated working at HSBC but some part of me really misses the culture of downtown buffalo business daytime in the summer. It is constantly bustling with people and stuff to do.




By the way gay pride is this weekend. I want to do new estrip interviews. Anyone want to be the interviewer. Maybe (e:jill) again?

(e:terry), (e:lilho) and I went out to vote at 8:30PM. I got out of work then and she graduated! Now granted that is late but it was the only chance we got to schedule it together. When we got to the Lafayette High School they told (e:lilho) she couldn't vote there because she wasn't a resident of their district. She asked them for a paper ballot and they told her it wasn't allowed and that she would have to call the hotline to find out where to vote. If she was someone without a cell phone or car, she would have been denied her right to vote. The nice lady at the Larken house said the people at Lafayette were just too lazy. I think the woman in red is a fucking bitch. I remember her having an attitude at the presidential election too.

So after (e:terry) and I voted we had to ship her off to her voting station at the Larken house. It is so much crappier inside than I expected. Apparently, it is some sort of school now. Anyhow, they let her vote as the last person in Buffalo I think, but they told her that the Lafayette people should have just given her a paper ballot which she had asked for, it was her right. That makes me totally crazy.

Poor judy, all by herself way in the right bottom corner.


The light fixture was nice. It made a great light painting.






When we dropped (e:lilho) off I told a picture of the Nails sign under her apartment to make a light painting with, but the real thing was just as cool, so here it is.

[size=m]Voting for Judy[/size]
I am going to vote for Judy tonight. As always I am going to vote for who I believe in rather than against the person I want least. I remember when I was a kid that my parents would never tell me who they voted for. Somehow that confused me and lead me to become a staunch republican as a child. I had no idea what it meant. I just liked the elephant tie clip someone got me and I was mesmerized by Ronald Reagan. As an adult, I know my parents were/are not republicans.

(e:jason) [inlink]jason,244[/inlink] Don't you find irony in the fact that you can't stand people protesting the status quo when in fact you believe that your rants are doing exactly that here. They are saying the same thing you are. That they are sick of the way things are and they want them to change and I think we should all support their right to peacefully say whatever the hell they want. I defend your right to that here, even when i whole heartedly disagree. It is what America is based on. Protest is a way for people to inform other people about their views, and it is particularly useful in a place where so many people have no political view.

Why don't you go down there and talk to those people about the issues? There are always plenty of conservatives at any of these events. Maybe you will change people's minds. I am not saying this sarcastically. I mean it, a young, handsome moderate guy with a fresh view is going to have a much better chance of getting a message across than some bible thumper.

Do you really think that mixing issues is liberal thing? Mixing issues worked famously for the republicans in the last election. One of the main reasons that George Bush got elected was people who couldn't bear to think they would vote for a president who might not fight abortion and that is not a fraction or minority of the populations, I am sure it is a huge percent of the people voting. In fact, without mixing of issues, there would never be the need to have anything so broad as political parties, which are formed to help like minded people support each others issues in our representative government.

Have you ever even been to a political event? I have been to hundreds of political events and all of them involve mixing, on both sides. And before you go assuming I have only been to liberal events, I would like to point out that I have attended protests from liberal green peace ones prtotesting gentech soybeans down to neo-nazi rallies in Germany. During my "catholic" years, I even went to an anti-abortion rally once on the side of the anti-abortionists. Don't tell me you haven't seen pro-life signs at events that having nothing to do with abortion. I've even seen them at football games.

Onto the real issue of the troops. Many people at the protest do care greatly, especially the ones who just want their husband, brother, father, sister, mother back safely and as soon as possible. How can you not see that? Imagine the a-political high school sweetheart girl whose boyfriend has been whisked away to war and just wants her "billy" to come home. Do you not believe these people exist? A lot of this is not about political affiliation. I can guarantee that a liberal mother who lost her son in Yugoslavia under Bill Clinton would ask the same questions about responsibilty and reason. Why shouldn't she?

This is especially true as the war drags on and people no longer associate Iraq with Septemeber 11th, leaving many people unsure about what the troops are fighting for anymore. (that was meant to be read sarcastically)

Now for my rant...
You are right though some of those people hate troops. I freakin' hate the troops. I hope they all die, especially the ones in Iraq and I don't care about any excuses about why they are there. To me they are all pawns of satan creating nothing but chaos in an already chaotic place. But that is my personal view and I would say it does not fit into the liberal status quo by any means. In fact I have fought as much with liberals as I have with conservatives about this, just ask (e:holly) who notoriously defended them throughout out friendship.

As I said before, I see no reason to ever kill other people. I value my life and the life of many family members and friends over any political ideology. My brother (just picture (e:mike) with a gun), father, sister, mother, etc are never going to war and likely never will unless god forbid someone attacks the homeland with ground troops and even then honestly, I/they would most likely adapt to the conqueror than fight, Italians ar famous for that.

P.S. Why do you bother to assume they are chubby asses?

Don't assume this is an attack against conservatives, or trying to set up a conservative vs liberal argument as there are plenty of conservative people who are against this war. This is about the ethics of mass killing in the name of some idealogy.

(e:joshua) and all the other service age war mongers. If you are "brave" enough to call for war, then why don't you make the real commitement and join the army. They would love to have you. They even have walk in registration places like the one on Sheridan dr, just before Niagara Falls, blvd.

I am willing to admit I would never join the army for the values that we are fighting for in Iraq and that includes democracy and capitalism. I think that nations will never devlop, anything like we formed, when it is imposed from the outside How would you react if our government was imposed from the outside. And this is not about Saddam Hussein being so bad, because there are hundreds of equally vicious dictators we aren't removing - many of which we installed.

But (e:joshua), you vocally stand up and support this war and these values, so why don't you p byour life on the line. It's so easy to say we need war if you aren't the one fighting.

First, I am sorry for anyone that was personally affected by another act of senseless violence. However, I disagree with Joshua, we can never kill all the terrorists, it is just too ambiguous a target, it will never happen.

It is so typical for people like you [inlink]joshua,15[/inlink] , and I don't mean conservatives here, to deem others less intelligent, followed by a logic-free emotional rant involving the written equivalent of screaming. Clearly, (e:joshua) , you share the same passionate cry for death, that the terrorists themselves used to carry this out.

It is always sad when someone dies for someone else's ideology but we have to remember that Americans and Britons have killed this many Native Americans, Iraqi, Indians, Afganistani, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese civilians a hundred thousand times over in our "greater" interest of free markets and natural resources. We are just witnessing the unfortunate other side of the war on civilians.