Still up in the air, they say... Well it shouldn't be, he won, he really fucking won. Even if by some miracle there's a turnover in OH, the country wants GW to lead, he won the popular vote by over 3.5 million, let the guy have it. I can't deny that he is the man the majority of the voting populace wants. I am not happy about it (except for the secretive side of me that desires armageddon), but that's the way it is. Now the question is, how to separate myself from these freaks. Plus 12 states just added amendments to their constitutions barring a minority group from a key civil right: the right to marry whomever you damn well please. What a fucking country.

[size=xxl] Go Vote!!! [/size]

My good ole' buddy Chamille (e:southernyankee) has left us. Yesterday she took off to start her new life in a bigger city, where opportunity surely will knock. But all of us? We're left without her shining presence to give us oomph and wallah-wallah, all night dance parties, and quick trips for milkshakes. I'll be driving alone to work now (maybe I'll even make it on time now 8* ), lonely car rides to a lonelier work place. But overall I'm happy, I can't be sad when it's something I will be doing soon myself, and I can't be sad for something that will lead to so much good, plus a new vacation destination. So farewell, goodbye, and I hope you fit all that stuff into the new place, which you're probably sitting in at this moment, looking around at the beginning of your new life, at what promises to be the next phase of your happiness!

[size=m]I love and will miss you dearly!!![/size]

Over 100,000 civilians have been killed since the Iraqi invasion began. That's the result of a study done by the highly respected scientific journal, the Lancet. "The majority of victims were said to be women and children killed through military activity, the team of American and Iraqi researchers dispatched to the field found. Hundreds of thousands more innocent non-combatants have been injured or maimed." Violence topped the list as the number one killer, with air strikes the foremost cause, and women and children the primary victims.

What strikes me about this figure is just how high it is. Even liberal groups who have been keeping track, like Iraq body count have estimated a death toll in the tens of thousands. Yet the study claims that after sampling over 1000 families its estimate is "conservative" (for example, they did no sampling in some of the worst areas of violence, like Fallujah, where perhaps the most civilians were at risk). Yet the authors stand behind their work, claiming that "This study shows that with moderate funds, four weeks and seven Iraqi team members willing to risk their lives, a useful measure of civilian deaths could be obtained..." I suppose it wouldn't have been too hard for our government to keep its own tally, thereby having its own estimates to use as a counter-weight to this damning report, but as we all know, "we don't do body counts." Well thank god someone does.

MoveOn.org has a new voter protection card, which provides a list of states and DNC voter hotlines, plus emergency numbers to call if there's trouble at the polls.

And a new report by the ACLU called Puged!, details the problems each state had with the last election, the steps they've taken to remedy them (if any), and what we can look forward to facing on Tuesday.

It's gettin' down to the wire.

These guys are just nuts. Excavations on a little Indonesian isle have unearthed the remains of a real life mini-me.http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/28/1098667866340.html?oneclick=true On AM radio I heard them described as somewhere between man and chimpanzee, this picture certainly agrees.




When I downloaded the picture, from above news website, I noticed that the picture is entitled, main real-hobbit. Strange? I guess it's a pretty accurate description though. Little furry human. The artist's rendering does resemble a pigmy with a chimp head, I must say. The best part is they hunted mini-elephants. Can you imagine a cuter pet?!? Maybe we can convince (e:matthew) to make us an artit's rendering of that too.

Space Probe, Cassini, has passed within a couple hundreds of miles of Saturn's moon, Titan. There're some pretty cool pictures so far, though not many cool predictions as of yet. Titan is an anomaly in our solar system, a moon with an atmosphere and a secretive surface lying shrouded under inclement weather. Will we finally find life there? Well, probably not, but the hope is that Titan is very much today what earth was millions of years ago, a place where the conditions are right for some form of life to be realized. I still hope for little green men.


A series of images of Titan.


A neat look at mother Saturn.

(e:paul) may not have any excuses anymore for not loving the little furballs. A new company has already begun accepting orders on a hypo-allergenic cat. Yup, a genetically altered cat, whose RNA has been tweaked so that it produces nearly none of the protein that leads to allergies in humans. They plan to charge $3,500 a piece in the United States and $10,000 each in Japan, ouch, gotta really love the buggers for that hefty price tag (and in Japan, forget it)

Nice mix, mister (e:shawnr) i thank you for the reference, and so, I assure you, does my Itunes. Though, I am having not so much luck with your actual song, Archeteuthis (Squid Hunter), my WMP doesn't seem to want to stream it correctly, hmmmm... I liked the government is watching me very much...

I also like the Eminem link [inlink]shawnr,28[/inlink] quite the little white-bread revolutionary, eh? But really, I respect that he has the guts to just come out and say it, fuck you Bush, WMD that we elected. Let's get rid of 'em, and vote muthafuckas! Slim Shady does put out the hit or two that I find myself jammin to. He's a little over the edge sometimes, but that's better than sittin on the fence.

And, maybe, just maybe, I might think about writing about that dumb game I'm playing. I just hate to take it that seriously, you know what I mean? It takes up enough of my time (not that I do anything very productive with it otherwise...) already. I will think on it though.

Who knew there were so many people running for president? I knew there were the 2 plus 4 or 5 others. I didn't realize there were over 100 of them! Such choice, though of course it all comes down to the binary decision between Dem or Rep. Money money money!

In the future, says George Carlin "at birth, religions will charge people an initial fee of $50,000 and then pretty much leave them alone." Amen, sir! If only I believed in such a bright future...

So (e:jason) [inlink]jason,22[/inlink] the game is pretty darn fun, though it's my first online gaming attempt so I don't really have a good frame of reference for comparison. We have a dual-processor 2.8 gig with a 256 ATI Fire GL X1 and it works very well (I don't think you need that kinda firepower really), though it does kinda tend to take over the whole system and make everything crash once in awhile (mostly when the server you're attempting to contact is too full). Which is the other problem: they have 10 servers but the one my friend signed me up to is the busiest one, and during peek hours (evenings/weekends) it becomes very crowded. Once you're in you're generally OK (if it's too full you may have to wait awhile to even get in), though if you go to a crowded city it can lag a bit. Gameplay is pretty easy. Standard rpg format: kill monsters for experience, level up, earn new spells/techs, buy new weapons/armor (though this is in my opinion is a bit prohibitively expensive for beginners). Leveling is a little slow. I am now level 21 and I've been playing about 3 weeks for usually between 1-3 hours a day (I know, I need a life). You can form groups and go on quests, you can join a clan...there's tons of stuff to do. And the graphics really are pretty darn cool. So, if you want give it a try. I don't think it's too expensive to try out for a month or two. Maybe I'll see you online (though I might reccomend not using the busy server (Bartz) that I am on).

sidenote: Chief Justice Rehnquist just went through surgery for thyroid cancer. The dude's now 80 and has cancer: he's going soon (one way or the other). This is something that really matters for a very very long time. Maybe it'll even sway me to vote for Evil #2 instead of an alternative... I still am not sure who I'm pulling the lever for on Nov. 2, I'm leaving it to my gut to make the final decision (my head is overtired from thinking about it for years now). But, I really don't want to see a courthouse populated by right-wing nuts and Christian fanatics. Really.