YouTube Fridays

I am stealing this from FranIAm, because it is always "teh gays" fault for everything.



And of course Roy Zimmerman to round out the anti-gay marriage satire.

George Carlin R.I.P.

The classic George Carlin seven words routine.


A newer Carlin routine, Pro-life is anti-women.

Music changes everything

I am shamelessly stealing this from Shakesville. It is amazing how much our perception of a movie changes purely based upon the music that accompanies it.

Requiem for a Day Off

I should blog more

I really thought that after moving and such I would be blogging more and I haven't really been doing that. Since I am not currently working, it seems to throw off everything. I just have too much time at home and so I get bored and sleep. I should be blogging more, I keep thinking I should blog more, but my life has become so out of routine, it is difficult for me to think of things to blog about.

YOU can get arrested for blogging

This article discusses the fact that there are many places around the globe where you can get arrested for blogging. You can get arrested in China, Egypt and Iran for expressing your thoughts especially those that oppose the government on a blog. According to a report by the University of Washington, 64 people have been arrested because of blogging since 2003. The Committee to Protect Bloggers reports that 344 people have been arrested in Burma alone for blogging, but it is difficult to verify whether the arrests were for blogging. But it does seem clear that in some places it can be illegal to blog or at least to express a contrary opinion from the government on a blog. But don't worry, it isn't just in Asia and the Middle East that you can get arrested for blogging, it has happened to British, French, Canadian and American bloggers over the past four years.

There is a common joke that I have seen many places on the blogosphere among those of us who are progressive bloggers that we will end up in Guantanamo for blogging. Well, it looks like this is not so much a joke as something that is beginning to happen. As is pointed out in the article , as more people begin to blog, arrests are expected to rise. And as we get closer to the elections and Bush Co. realize that McCain is not going to win the election, we may see more arrests for blogging, but of course it wouldn't be said that it is for blogging. The arrests will be for violating the Patriot Act, of course. But as long as we have a supposed freedom of speech, lets keep expressing ourselves and see ya at Guantanamo.

Moving Pt. 2- The moving gods were not to be denied

So we woke up Tuesday morning, load up the cube at the U-pack place, take stuff to Goodwill, take the truck back to Penske, run home take a quick shower and we are off. The plan was to stop in Asheville, NC and camp that night, but as we drove we ran into two issues. One, it kept raining off and on and we weren't sure about setting up a tent in the rain as neither of us had used this specific tent before and two, we were having issues finding campsites right off the main highway. We drove for about an hour longer than we had intended and it was getting late and both of us were getting hungry, tired and crabby. We tried one campground, but it seemed to be for the river rafting companies in the area and was a bit sketchy. So at this point, we decided to just find a hotel and crash for the night. We found one that would allow us to have Logan in the room with us and it didn't even cost us anything extra, they just said that if he disturbed any of the neighbors we would have to pay for their rooms too. Well, of course there were no issues with this, he doesn't really bark anyway. We decided to go out and grab some dinner as we were both starving. As we were eating, the sky opened up with really heavy rain and thunder and lightning. GG and I commented to each other that the camping gods must have been good to us or something as we didn't have to deal with camping in the rain and we would have probably have had to find a hotel anyway as there was no way we would have been able to stay in the tent with the torrential downpour anyway. This was a goodnights sleep, as I had sold my bed a week or so earlier and so had been sleeping on an air mattress so a real bed was really great. We woke up, had a continental breakfast that had come with the room and laid around for a bit before we took off for Berea, KY, our next stop. We were going to Berea because GG had some friends that lived there and she wanted to visit with them and see the house they were building for themselves. We got to Berea no problems, GG's friend has suggested a camping place for us to stay at so we went to there to set up. The tent camping was in just a big field at the back of the RV camping property, which was fine, but we also were trying to find some shade for ourselves and for Logan. We did find a slightly shady spot for us and I got Logan out and onto his tie-out so that he could be out while we got the tent set up, well, Logan decided that the tent was a good place to pee, so as GG was laying out the tent he peed on it. We got this washed off with some water and paper towels and then got to setting up the tent. It was super easy to do and GG and I worked in a nice fashion of me pounding the stakes in and she figuring out where things needed to go. Until... right as we were finishing up the outer tent which was supposed to act as a rain cover, something came flying onto the tent and the ground around us. A hawk had eviscerated a bird or thrown up or something, but there was bird parts all over the ground and the tent, which was totally nasty. GG cleaned the bird parts up, I just didn't have the stomach to do it, I stood there and gave her moral support and poured water on the bird meat, but I couldn't touch the meat or clean it off in any way really. Logan also got some of the meat before we got it cleaned up, so he had a bit of a snack and seemed to really like this. We finally got the tent finished and went and visited with GG's friends. We had a really great meal with homegrown veggies and some moonshine, mmmmmmmmm. We went back to the tent and started to get ready to sleep so we would be ready for the next and final day's drive. But as we were laying down, we had some creepy guy looking for his friend stop at our tent looking and then later he drove off, which creeped out both of us. The tent was barely big enough for the two of us let alone Logan too, so after trying for a minute or so, he decided he wanted to sleep in the car instead and we did this. But even so, I don't think GG or I really slept well that night and by 5 AM we had the tent taken down and we were on the road north. This final day of driving was really easy, boring at times and we were both pretty tired still so we switched off driving more often and drank a lot of caffeinated drinks. We finally got here to home at about 3 PM and the main part of the adventure was over.

We still need to unpack the cube on Monday afternoon or Tuesday. I had an interview on Friday with a Bright Horizons center in Chicago, which is who I was working for in NC. I have an interview at a Kindercare center on Monday and a second interview on Tuesday at the same Bright Horizons, so hopefully sometime soon I will have a job.

Moving Pt. 1- It was hot!!

Overall the moving process was hot and exhausting. We started when GG came down and I picked her up at the airport on Saturday night. This was a rather relaxed night. The next morning we woke up and spent the entire day cleaning and finishing packing. I had gotten quite a bit of the packing done, but there was more to be down and I had to re-pack some of the boxes to make them more manageable. So I packed and cleaned and GG cleaned a lot too. She was an incredible help with getting things done. It is so great when you have help to get things down and can split up the chores among two of us. This was very hot work, I had the AC on, but still it was warm in my apartment. We were hot and sweaty for most of the day. We then went out for dinner and crashed that night. Monday was a day where we spent much of the morning running around doing errands. We had to take the internet cable server back to Time Warner Cable, get the oil changed among other things that just needed to get done. We then picked up the Penske Truck to load it up to then take it to the Relo-Cube from ABF. This was incredibly hard work. I have about 15 steps that we had to take stuff up and down and it was about 100 degrees outside. We tried to take our time and not pass out bringing things up to the truck. But by the end of getting everything packed in the truck we were tired, but it was only an about two hour packing process. Tuesday morning we woke up and took the truck over to ABF and packed up the relo-cube. The cube was awesome. We even decided to add somethings into the cube we were not planning on moving cause we had the room like a small bookshelf. We still didn't fill up the cube, the cube is a great thing when you are moving and don't want to have to drive a large truck and if when you move you don't have a whole house full of stuff. Then the travel to Illinois started, this was a whole new adventure which deserves its own post and will be forthcoming.