Entries from August 2004 ↓

Keli and I are going tonight to see Garden State, the new movie with Zach Braff from Scrubs. I got to thinking “I wonder if Zach has a blog?” I’ve seen him on interviews and he’s always been hilarious. After a quick little google search I found that he does have a blog. Click here to read it!

Or you can read the following post which is on his site… get ready chuckle with the best of them. Please due note, if you have a moral objection to profanity, don’t read the following quote:

G is for Gay Governor

Wow,
First a movie about the state, now a Gay Governor… what’s next- the World’s Fair?

What an exciting time to be from New Jersey. Why’s he quitting? Hell even Marion Barry hung in as Mayor of D.C. after he got caught taking a sip of the crack rock. A gay affair is nothing. When I was president of my elementary school student council I once purposely peed outside the urinal as an act of civil disobedience for being scolded for sniffing fruit scented markers. What did they expect? They were fruit scented! If you don’t want kids to sniff markers, make them smell like ass, not grapes.

It’s a big day for Garden State. Today we open on more than a hundred screens across the country. So if all goes according to plan we’ll be joined by thousands more people on our little site. So before we expand, I thought I’d take a chance to thank every single one of you who’s been reading this since day one. I’d like to list all your names, but it would take too long. So I will summarize by thanking all the men as Barry and all the woman as Chantelle. Thank you Barry and Chantelle; you’ve made a real difference in the expansion of Garden State.

Some of you have been asking about the rating. Just so you all know, your government doesn’t believe a 16 year old should hear the word “fuck” more than twice in a 2 hour period. The second you say “fuck” twice in a movie your film becomes “R”. No exceptions. Pretty crazy, huh? You can blow someone’s head off, but 2 fucks makes you unwatchable for someone under 17. Unless they have their parent there to explain it to them. “Mom, I understood the first use of the word fuck, but what’s with the second - give me guidance please. I’ve heard one fuck before, but ever since I heard the second one I’ve had this insatiable desire to rob a liquor store and refer to all women as “ho’s”.

Anyway, that’s why the movie’s R. There is a brief shot of a breast - not mine don’t get all excited - but it’s because of the “one fuck” rule.

Source: Zach Braff’s site

As most of you know, I started a second job in the wee hours of the morning a few weeks ago. In adition to doing tech support I also work as the Overnight Online Producer for the Press Democrat. I start work at the Press Democrat at 4am Monday through Friday. It’s taking some time to adjust to the new hours and having to remember that it is no longer feasable to go to bed at 11pm during the week.

My average work day is about 10 hours long and then I go home and get to be a Dad and a Husband for a few hours until Bailey is in bed and I go to sleep. It makes for less family time but the money is definitely better which makes everyone happier and less stressed so it’s worth the long days.

I’m fortunate enough to be able to watch the sun rise most every morning now. I forgot how much I enjoyed watching the sun rise over the hills of Sonoma County and gradually disperse the fog. The air is getting crisper in the mornings which is a sign that fall is on its merry little way.

There’s something to be said about being done with one job for the day at 8am and having actually accomplished something. Tech support is a good job, don’t get me wrong. My employer is a terrific company to work for. But at the end of a long day of tech support, you usually can’t really say you accomplished something. Sure, you can add the calls of the day to your grand total (my total is rapidly approaching 16,000 support calls) and you’ve hopefully made someone’s day better. But when you show up for work the next day, there’s just more calls. More often than not, the very same callers. With working on the Press Democrat website, I can say that I actually accomplished something. I was able to provide news to people. It may not be an earth-shattering accomplishment. And it may not be a very big deal but to me, I enjoy having a little satisfaction in accomplishment, however small it might be.

That and I get to listen to my music and drink coffee. What could be better?

Check out this site:

You can find all sorts of fun quotes like this one:

I know, I’m sure you’re just about as sick of all of this back-and-forth as I am, but I read this on Al Franken’s show on Air America Radio, stole it and posted it here for your enjoyment. This is from the “conservative” Weekly Standard:

[I]n 2004, Republicans find themselves supporting a candidate, George W. Bush, with a slender and ambiguous military record against a man whose combat heroism has never (until now) been disputed. Further–and here we’ll let slip a thinly disguised secret–Republicans are supporting a candidate that relatively few of them find personally or politically appealing. This is not the choice Republicans are supposed to be faced with. The 1990s were far better. In those days the Democrats did the proper thing, nominating a draft-dodger to run against George H.W. Bush, who was the youngest combat pilot in the Pacific theater in World War II, and then later, in 1996, against Bob Dole, who left a portion of his body on the beach at Anzio.

Republicans have no such luck this time, and so they scramble to reassure themselves that they nevertheless are doing the right thing, voting against a war hero. The simplest way to do this is to convince themselves that the war hero isn’t really a war hero. If sufficient doubt about Kerry’s record can be raised, we can vote for Bush without remorse. But the calculations are transparently desperate. Reading some of the anti-Kerry attacks over the last several weeks, you might conclude that this is the new conservative position: A veteran who volunteered for combat duty, spent four months under fire in Vietnam, and then exaggerated a bit so he could go home early is the inferior, morally and otherwise, of a man who had his father pull strings so he wouldn’t have to go to Vietnam in the first place.

Needless to say, the proposition will be a hard sell in those dim and tiny reaches of the electorate where voters have yet to make up their minds. Indeed, it’s far more likely that moderates and fence-sitters will be disgusted by the lengths to which partisans will go to discredit a rival. But this anti-Kerry campaign is not designed to win undecided votes. It’s designed to reassure uneasy minds.

Sources: Weekly Standard and Air America Radio

Also check out the results of an investigation the Washington Post did on the whole Kerry vs Swift Boat Vets issue.

One of Keli’s clients for her work has a bumper sticker on their land yaht that says “Just doing my part to piss off the heathen left”. It thought it was funny and decided to take a look at their website: rightwingstuff.com.

I’ve got to say, this site makes me ashamed to have called myself a Republican for much of my life. It also REALLY and truly pissed me off with some of the things that they’re proudly selling. Here are some examples of the offensive, narrow minded, ignorant slogans they sell on t-shirts, stickers and buttons:

I realize that not all Republicans are this extreme but it still does not paint a favorable picture.