imbroglio, sorta...

okay, it's been a while. i have some ground to cover.

first of all, i've decided that for the primaries season, this blog will endorse john edwards. hilary clinton is in second place, but edwards wins because he's more of a socialist.

second of all, i had a temp job, then i quit my temp job because it was far away and i don't have a car and i was carpooling with folks whose project was canned. but i got a new temp job and this one is in pittsburgh! now if only i could find a real job as easily... i'm working on it, though. i figure as long as i don't give up the search, something will inevitably work out.

third, because i'm poor and lame, i couldn't go to maine last weekend for my friend tony's wedding. this saddened/saddens me to no end, because it would have been a marvellous weekend and it's been way way way too long since i've seen tony! instead, though, carson and i drove out to michigan to visit his parents. this trip cost me zero dollars. i like when things cost zero dollars. carson's folks live in a tiny little town on the cost of lake michigan. here are some of the things i saw there:
- swans!
- elk!
- a freaking huge buck with antlers that looked like trees!
- a family of turkeys (including baby turkeys) crossing the road!
- orchards of various fruits! apples! plums! blueberries!
- asparagus fields! did you know that when asparagus goes to seed, it becomes this wispy, bushy, lovely little plant?

and here are some of the things i did there:
- go carting!!!
- mini golfing!!!
- fishing for salmon in lake michigan!!!
we only caught two salmon because the water was too rough to go out early in the day (when the salmon are hungriest), but i was delighted nonetheless. of course, i got sad when i realized that by my own action, i had caused the death of the fish i caught... i'm a jerk.
- gambling in an indian casino!!!
however, i gambled poorly. i don't know what the hell was going on -- perhaps it was my come-uppance from my grand performance in las vegas back in january, but i fared badly. like, worse than the odds. eh, you win some, you lose some.

so yes, i am now in love with northwestern michigan.

fourth, have you guys seen the HBO show "flight of the conchords"? here: watch this! carson and i are planning on memorizing it and performing it sometime, probably after having a few drinks. he'll be jemaine (a.k.a., the hiphopopotamus) and i'll be bret (the rhymenoceros). we'll be memorizing both the lyrics AND the dance moves.

and finally, starting the thursday after labor day, i'm gonna be playing kickball with the pittsburgh sports league! no, i am not a good kickball player. but i've got pluck! i've got spirit, yes i do! and, this is a surefire way to get to hang out with sandy once a week now that she's moved to wheeling. this makes me happy.

okay, bye!

hitting balls with sticks...

friday night, carson and i drove out past monroeville to go to a driving range/batting cage. hooray for hitting balls with sticks!

as far as golf and i go, i haven't swung a golf club since the fall of 1994 when i was a wee freshman in one of my chosen six week rotations for the required physical education class at notre dame (other chosen rotations included ice skating, self-defense, cpr, and FENCING!). i didn't really love golf back then, but these days it seems like everyone in my life is all about the golf, so i figured maybe i should give it a go so that i don't get left behind. well, i still don't love it, but there is something oddly gratifying about sending that little white ball soaring through the air. and while it's frustrating as all hell to swing at the little ball and miss (doh!), the experience wasn't nearly as frustrating as i thought it would be. i even had fun, and would now like to learn how to be an awesome (or at least a respectable) golfer so that my uncles will see me as more than the renegade crazy liberal of the family.

and NO, carson did NOT stand behind me with his arms around me to show me how to swing. that's just dumb.

also, we swung different sticks at different balls in the batting cage. how have i reached 30 years of age never having experienced the joys of the batting cage before? how freaking awesome! you give a machine some quarters and put on a helmet, then another machine tosses you balls that you can totally slam out of the park, erm, cage! fantastic!

i'm just saying...

in a may 4th article in the pittsburgh business times, the director for my law school's career services offices was interviewed, and the article reported that "about a fourth of Pitt's 2007 graduating class of 243 haven't landed jobs yet."

however, in an e-mail sent out from career services this week about an open job (a temporary position in wheeling), the sender failed to make use of the bcc function, so all the names/e-mail addresses of those of us who haven't found jobs yet were viewable. and i counted. because i wanted to know what things look like for the class of 2007. there are 103 of us who received that e-mail. last time i did the math, 103 of 243 is not one-fourth.

thanks, career services.

give me a freaking break...

generally, i think it's a good thing that e-mail and technology have made it easier to keep in touch with people and to reconnect with long lost contacts and friends. it's nice to get that message from out of the blue from someone i spent a lot of time with in high school or a classmate from college. but what i absolutely CANNOT STAND is the resulting epidemic of forwarded messages. delete. delete. delete!

however, today i received something from an old high school friend of mine that has got me so infuriated, so enraged, so offended that i have to respond to it, both directly to my friend and on this blog.

the message is all about how we shouldn't trust barack obama because of muslim influences in his background. it's about how obama was sworn in on the qur'an and not the bible. the message is full of capitalized words like MUSLIM, ATHIEST, RADICAL. and the most offensive part of all? it alleges that obama's run for the presidency is the muslim attempt to take over the united states from the inside.

are you kidding me?!?! i'm all for the first amendment, but this looks a lot to me like hate speech. the message attempts to equate islam with terrorism, and that is flat-out unacceptable and hateful.

what the hell is going on in the world? haven't we learned by now what religious persecution does? if you take these messages (and i use the plural because what i received in my inbox is not unique) and replace the word "muslim" with "jew", you end up with something eerily similar to anti-semitic rhetoric in nazi germany. and have we forgotten what happened there?

come on, people -- wise the hell up. who are you to judge?