(no subject)

So I've found a place to live. I know, I know I should probably have looked around more and comparison shopped but fuck it, I've got a month to get out of my current place and I just don't want to be dicking around. And I really, really liked the place I saw last night. The manager was incredibly sweet, the people we said "Hi" to throughout the complex were friendly, the complex itself is gorgeous, the neighborhood's nice and the apartment is both larger and better laid out than my current one. Oh and get this, I will have a patio! With actual dirt I've been told I can plant anything I'd like in! I've also got a little storage shed on the patio that could hold up to about 4 bikes if I wanted, but will undoubtedly be stuffed full with boxes so I don't have to have any sitting out in my place.

This place also comes with two bedroom closets (one for clothes, one for costumes), a kitchen full of new appliances (including a dishwasher, woo!), a bigger and very nice bathroom, and a dining room with wood flooring. I didn't get one of the units with its own washer/dryer but the laundry room is close by, open 24 hours a day, works with cards rather than quarters (glory hallelujah!) and is full of new, clean, and numerous machines.

But the best part is not only does the complex have a heated pool and jacuzzi, but a fitness center too with, get this, a sauna!

The only down sides are, it's a) $300 more per month than my current place (which is exactly what I was expecting, still...ouch), b) requires that I deal with utility companies again, not to mention acquiring renter's insurance, and c) isn't officially available until Dec. 31. The manager's going to work with me on this and see if I can get in earlier. If I can be lugging boxes over the weekend before Xmas I'm going to be a very happy camper. So, again, keep your fingers crossed for me, and thanks to everyone who wished me good luck yesterday, it seems to have paid off :)

BTW, if anyone local has empty boxes please consider pinging aelfsciene regarding them. I'm good on my current ones for now, and her need is far more immediate. Also I can borrow them from her when she completes her move so you'd be indirectly donating them to me too, which surely gives you bonus good karma points.

This and that

My intense crush on Jim Webb is only getting worse:

"How's your boy?" Bush asked, referring to Webb's son, a Marine serving in Iraq.

"I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President," Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.

"That's not what I asked you," Bush said. "How's your boy?"

"That's between me and my boy, Mr. President," Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.

Fuck you very much, Mr. President.

On a different note,
this must be read to be believed:

America, Not Keith Ellison, decides what book a congressman takes his oath on

Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress, has announced that he will not take his oath of office on the Bible, but on the bible of Islam, the Koran.

He should not be allowed to do so -- not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization.

First, it is an act of hubris that perfectly exemplifies multiculturalist activism -- my culture trumps America's culture. What Ellison and his Muslim and leftist supporters are saying is that it is of no consequence what America holds as its holiest book; all that matters is what any individual holds to be his holiest book.

... Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible. If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don't serve in Congress....

No More Mr. Nice Blog responds:

I'll stop before we get to the part where Prager compares the Koran to Mein Kampf.

As Barbara at the Mahablog points out, there's no legal requirement that a Bible be used for an oath of office, the Constitution forbids any religious test for holding office, North Carolina law specifically calls for the use of the Koran if the officeholder is a Muslim, and two U.S. governors have forgone the use of the Christian Bible, one in favor of a Torah, the other using a set of Jewish prayer books.

The Republic still stands.

And while we're on the subject of complete fucktards, check this story out:

A Brooklyn judge is courting controversy with a new illustrated children's book that some critics are calling a thinly veiled anti-immigration screed.

Criminal Court Judge John Wilson's "Hot House Flowers" warns of "effects of unregulated immigration" in a plot line about beautiful flowers that wither when dandelions sneak into their greenhouse.

"It's intended to describe defense of home and defense of country, and the reasons for that defense," said Wilson, who self-published the book, listed on Amazon.com at $15.99.

The story tells of jealous weeds that hog all the water and soil in the greenhouse. The other flowers suffer, but don't do anything until it's almost too late -- because they don't want to appear intolerant.

In what Wilson admits is a religious flourish, the flowers are saved at the end by a benevolent master who plucks out all the dandelions. The flowers learn never to let dandelion seeds grow in their greenhouse again.

..."They shouldn't call me anti-immigration, because I'm not," he said. "I know we're a nation of immigrants. But illegal immigration is making a mockery of the rule of law." ...

Steve M. comments:

Y'know, I get the rule-of-law part. It's the ethnic-cleansing-of-the-dandelions part that has me a tad squeamish.

Oh, and the hogging-all-the-water-and-soil part? In my world, it's these folks who are doing that, while illegal immigrants clean their toilets.
[...]
In a review at Amazon, Jonathan Cohen says that the climax of the book comes when the hothouse flowers "burn a vitamin spike on the dandelions' front lawn." I think he's just funnin' us. Or maybe not.

A library where apes evolved from men?

Attaturk points to this story and titles it Bush raises cash for "American Museum of Irony":

He may be a certified lame duck now, but President Bush and his truest believers are about to launch their final campaign - an eye-popping, half-billion-dollar drive for the Bush presidential library.

Eager to begin refurbishing his tattered legacy, the President hopes to raise $500 million to build his library and a think tank at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Bush lived in Dallas until he was elected governor of Texas in 1995...

...The half-billion target is double what Bush raised for his 2004 reelection and dwarfs the funding of other presidential libraries. But Bush partisans are determined to have a massive pile of endowment cash to spread the gospel of a presidency that for now gets poor marks from many scholars and a majority of Americans.

I suspect their collection of picture, comic, and coloring books will be second only to the Dan Quayle Memorial Library...

I love the smell of tinsel in the morning

Gosh the War on Christmas just comes earlier and earlier every year. Bob “These Are the Chains I Forged at Wal-Mart” Marley pops in at World o' Crap to talk some smack about how he and his Christian posse totally pwnt all us heathens this year:

To all you cool-aid drinking secular progressives, I can understand your disappointment, you fought so long and so hard, notwithstanding, we have unraveled in weeks what it has taken years for you to achieve. When we are finished with the stores, the schools are next.

One more thing, we will be on the Fox News Network tomorrow asking all Christians to crusade with us and knock the seculars’ back into corn-“flake” land where they came from.
Again, Merry Christmas to all

Which causes s.z. to fire back with:

NOBODY was expecting a Christmas Crusade! Our chief weapon is stupidity…stupidity and bullying…Our two weapons are stupidity and bullying…and a ruthless sense of victimization. Our three weapons are stupidity, bullying, and a ruthless sense of victimization…and an almost fanatical devotion to being on Fox News. Our four…no… Amongst our weapons…. Amongst our weaponry…are such elements as stupidity, bullying…. I’ll come in again.

And my favorite commentor D. Sidhe returns:

Merry Christmas, Bob. Although it’s still November, so maybe a little early for the “Merry Christmassing”, unless you’re just trying to irritate us, which seems fruitless based on last year where we all wished each other Merry Christmas on, you know, Christmas, but also, I believe, other holidays as appropriate. For example, we wished each other Happy Groundhog Day back in February. You know, any excuse for a little good will.

Interestingly, though this site collects a variety of heathens and religious folk of all types, we seem to get along very well. That may have less to do with “cool-aid” drinking and more to do with not using cheerful greetings as bludgeons against each other. We’re funny that way. But, if you think your God wants you to go around turning salutations regarding his birthday into sarcastic verbal weapons, have at it.

Personally, I hope you have a Merry Christmas. And, as a pagan, I hope you have a pleasant Yule. For that matter, I hope all of December is pretty decent for you, because the alternative seems to be wishing you a happy 25th and a crummy 21st, an okay 24th and a depressing 16th-23rd, etc, which seems petty. I’m hoping to have a quite nice Christmas as well, undoubtedly in ways you’d be horrified by, but no matter, you already wished me a Merry Christmas and you can’t take it back just because you now realize you don’t approve of how I do it.

[...]

But personally, I tend to think that Christmas and the other holidays of winter should be celebrated in some way that brings joy to many people. A banner in the WalMart may not be the ideal way to go on that, but to each his own, I suppose.

So Merry Christmas, Bob. And happy holidays.

Dude, I totally need a War on Christmas icon...

Red Dawn II: Electric Boogaloo

Dear god won't anyone take the keyboard away from Orson Scott Card before it's too late? His latest "novel", Empire, makes my head feel more than a tad explody:

When the president and vice-president are killed by domestic terrorists (of unknown political identity), a radical leftist army calling itself the Progressive Restoration takes over New York City and declares itself the rightful government of the United States. Other blue states officially recognize the legitimacy of the group, thus starting a second civil war. Card's heroic red-state protagonists, Maj. Reuben "Rube" Malek and Capt. Bartholomew "Cole" Coleman, draw on their Special Ops training to take down the extremist leftists and restore peace to the nation...

My mind immediately leapt to this:

RIMMER: So there we were at 2:30 in the morning; I was beginning to wish
I had never come to cadet training school. To the south lay water --
there was no way we could cross that. To the east and west two armies
squeezed us in a pincer. The only way was north; I had to go for it
and pray the Gods were smiling on me. I picked up the dice and threw
two sixes. Caldecott couldn't believe it. My go again; another two
sixes!

LISTER: Rimmer, what's wrong with you? Don't you realize that no one is
even slightly interested in anything you're saying? You've got this
major psychological defect which blinds you to the fact that you're
boring people to death! How come you can't sense that?

RIMMER: Anyway I picked up the dice again... Unbelievable! Another two
sixes!

LISTER: Rimmer!

RIMMER: What?

LISTER: No one wants to know some stupid story about how you beat your
Cadet School Training Officer at Risk.

If a novel were to be written by Arnold J. Rimmer, I think "Empire" would come pretty damn close to the finished product. BTW, I totally think the liberal terrorists should've referred to themselves as the People's Front of Judea. Though I'll bet they all wear jaunty berets!