Ramble Blog

It was pitiful. . . . I almost felt sorry for him, until I heard someone call him “Mister President,” and then I felt ashamed.”

A week or two ago, Lauren informed me that Hunter was in the latest Rolling Stone. Now, most of you don’t know, but as of 3 or 4 years ago (maybe more), I haven’t been able to stand that magazine. I used to be a dedicated subscriber and reader, but they changed for the worse fast.

They did manage to keep their relationship with Hunter alive, meaning that I have to keep my ears open so that I can read the magazine whenever he appears. This article, titled “Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004“, is all that you expect from a Hunter story. If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, help fight against Rolling Stone by clicking that link and stealing their bandwidth instead of paying for the magazine. Everybody wins!

You never forget your first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty. A towering monument to freedom, democracy and the big-girl aesthetic, she looms over New York Harbor, 225 tons of womanhood, 151 feet from toes to torch tip …[snip]… for macrophiles, she’s something else – the ultimate sex goddess.

Ok, ok, you guys got the best of me. Ever since my spam poetry post, Megawatt Farce, people from all over have been finding this site through Google, Yahoo, and even Jeeves. What have they been searching for?

Shrunken Men

Now, over the last month or so, I have found great amusement in the fact that people are showing up here looking for shrunken men. No, seriously, it cracks me up….

Now, in order show that I intend no disrespect towards anybody’s “personal interests”, here are a couple informative links…

First, head over to Salon’s article on macrophilia (quoted above). It explained the condition/fetish pretty well, and now at least I know what people are looking for when they show up here.

Then, leave this site, because you’re not really going to find anything related other than this post. Even the spam poetry only had the word shrunken in it. If you need a place to go, I’ve done the google work for you already, try: Pete’s Giantess Links. Hope this little pit-stop on the internets helped your search for enlightenment, have fun.

Are you ready for this?

National Novel Writing Month starts in about 4 hours. Depending on your time zone of course, but I’m central and this is my post dammit. NaNoWriMo is a contest that runs for 30 days throughout November. It gives everyone who’s ever wanted to write a novel a chance to write a novel in a month. Of course, you could do this any month you want, but there’s some nice competition and organization helping you along this way.

Hmmmmm, National Novel Blog Month starts in about 4 hours as well. Wow, I wonder what the chances of that are… talk about strange coincidences.

Anyhow…

It looks like all 3 ramblers have decided to participate, so if you choose, you can keep tabs on us by clicking the links on the right (the ones that end in “.novel” for those unable to decipher the link style used here). The end results should be interesting if nothing else, here’s hoping that we all make it to the 50,000 word goal, meet a book publisher, sell the movie rights, and retire to Canada. Unless Bush loses of course, then we can stay where we are and just visit Canada.

Yeah, yeah, you wouldn’t have to deal with this if it wasn’t for the online pumpkin carver. Now, have a fun halloween and try to avoid dressing up as witches so that nobody gets offended.

Jared, I’m happy that 6 years ago you were able to take the initiative and lose 245 pounds while walking to class and spending too much money at Subway. This is something to be proud of.

Subway, I’m happy that Jared has helped you expand so that your number of locations now exceeds that of McDonalds.

Both of you, STOP IT. I’ve been watching these damn ads for almost 5 years now and it’s growing old fast. It’s at the point that if I want a sandwich, I will now:

• a – go to Panera.
• b – go to the gas station.
• c – go to the store and make my own.

You have now dropped to the bottom of the list. And to think that I used to go at least twice a week.

For shame, Subway, for shame.

Baltimore vs Philadelphia at 12pm CST on CBS

Indianapolis vs Kansas City at 12pm CST on CBS

Ok, so I live in Illinois, which of these cities are closest to me?

“I’m going to go with Indianapolis on that one, Jeremy”

Exactly. So why the hell does my “regional viewing area” not cover Indiana. They get me with this every week. Most of the time I have to watch St. Louis or some other annoying team instead of being able to watch somebody like Denver kick ass.

Grrrr…

Back to the business at the polls. I talked to Lauren and as she pointed out, 22% of the voters in her county had voted early this year. So… In a way it is possible that Fox’s numbers were correct with 14%. It is also possible that they weighed the votes of those people differently from others in order to make the poll more accurate. That puts me back at ground zero, still not understanding polls, still not caring enough to look into it even further. There are so many variables to consider this year, between cell phone users, a larger amount of first time voters, and many other things, that it doesn’t really matter until Wednesday. So, I’ll put that to rest.

Part deux…

I have no idea who I’m going to vote for. Kerry pulled a fast one on me during the debates and made me think that he was my guy. I started to forget my entire philosophy on the subject, and became pro-Kerry. Well, maybe not pro-Kerry entirely, but anti-Bush, pro-his.best.opponent.

Phil slapped me upside the head and made me start thinking about it again. This is disappointing because now I have to figure it all out in a few days… Badnerick, Nader, Kerry, Grimes? Ok fine, not Grimes, but in his defense, he’s hilarious. I’m sure there’s more out there, but I’m pretty sure that the best chance I have is by concentrating on the Badnaderry trio… (like that? oh yeah, I got more, just wait!)

So yeah, off I go to put a couple days into this decision and hope for better things to come in November.

Brought to you by the fantastic book, 1984, here are some current events in the language of Orwell.

Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction:

“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’”

Prisoner Torture:

“And in the general hardening of outlook that set in … practices which had been long abandoned … — imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions, the use of hostages and the deportation of whole populations — not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.”

War in Iraq:

“The proles, normally apathetic about the war, were being lashed into one of their periodical frenzies of patriotism.”

And finally, Ann Coulter:

“She had not a thought in her head that was not a slogan, and there was no imbecility, absolutely none, that she was not capable of swallowing if the Party handed it out to her.”

If you haven’t, please read this book now.

It oughta be the, the, the struggle against idealogical extremists who do not believe in free societies who happen to use terror as a weapon to try and shape the conscience of the free world.

Yeah Georgie, screw the fancy “war on terror”, tell it how it is.

Seriously folks, this video is worth it. Watch it at ifilm by clicking here.

I would display more funny parts from the video, but you might as well watch the whole thing, it’s hilarious.

If there is hope, it lies in the proles.

If you’re like me, you’ve always stared at political polls in amazement and wondered how they differ so much. Sites like PollingReportfurther magnify that by displaying them all in once place. You basically find one you like, find a way to convince yourself it’s the right one, and then just go on believing.

Well, that doesn’t work. Especially if you’re a politics junkie and you just need to know what’s going on behind the scenes. Enter Slate magazine with an interesting article on the different parts of a poll as well as detailed information about the background of each major poll. Good stuff to know, some of it you just usually don’t think about.

Hyped up about learning new things, I decided to take my newly learned poll studying skills and head on over to my favorite news station, Fox News. Their poll, available in pdf, was pretty cut and dry. It seemed like they did a good job of wording the questions so that there was no total confusion arising. However, I wasn’t so sure about the final outcome:

Bush – 48%

Kerry – 43%

Now it seems to me that in an election this “close”, it would be a lot closer than 5%. Maybe not, who knows… Then I noticed two questions that I wasn’t so sure of. The first question:

“Would you say George W. Bush is a liberal or conservative?“

This came back with 11% of likely voters claiming that they thought he was a liberal. Now correct me if I’m wrong, but Bush doesn’t seem too liberal. Is it possible that 11% of likely voters across the nation honestly believe that our president is liberal? I highly doubt that. This makes me start to question the final results from this poll.

The other question that raised my attention was:

“In the days before the election do you plan to use a mail ballot, an absentee ballot or some other form of early voting?

Now, that doesn’t seem like a bad question, but when you look at the answers, you find that 14% had already voted! Ok, I know that you can cast your vote early by mail and what have you, but still. Does anybody honestly think that 14% of the people who are going to vote this year have already voted?

Either way, I am now off to look at the full results for more polls. Hopefully others have asked that “vote early” question. Who knows, maybe I’m wrong about that. If every poll shows the same thing, then maybe I have to start trusting Fox News.

Until they become consious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.