I wish I could download this...

A wonderful interview with Hikki in English here.
(You get to find out what "You Make Me Want To Be A Man" means!)

10 reasons Gay Marriage is wrong

Passed on to me by jupistrahan:
1. Being gay is not natural. And as you know Americans have always rejected unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.
2. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.
3. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because, as you know, a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.
[Well... There is the time a woman married a dolphin... Thanks to alcarilinque for that one!]
4. Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.
5. Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed. The sanctity of Britany Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.
6. Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.
7. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.
8. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.
9. Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.
10. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

( And for your convenience, the woman marries dolphin article )

I must make this day productive!

I will succeed this time! I will stay up all night and day go to bed at 10 pm!
But I want to make this day productive, so...
Things I WILL DO today:
- clean the kitchen (including dishes), bathroom and my room
- do the laundry
- take a shower
- practice kanji from chs. 3-7 (8-12 Monday, 13-17 Tuesday)
- bring cookware I borrowed to the front desk
- change Sashimi's bowl
- finish Wicked
- read and reply to at least 100 LJ entries
- go to Mom's (Shoot... That'll take a big chunk of my time, won't it?... But it might help me to stay up - either that or I'll just fall asleep at my mom's again...)
- fill out Jamba Juice application
- work on Summer Assistant app.
- do some pre-writing for the CA app.
- update cheat sheat and resume
- go through all of my Gmail
- delete obsolete UMN e-mail
- maybe go to church

I also have to remember to take my books to the library on Monday.

[EDIT: At some point before school starts I also need to make Genki MDs, clean my computer, clean my bookmarks... Mmm... Review Japanese vocab and grammar... Go to the doctor... Buy school notebooks... Get grocery bags and wrap my books... Apply for as many jobs as I can... Review study tips... Catch up on LJ... And tons of other stuff, I'm sure.]


You are not European.


What's your Inner European?
brought to you by Quizilla

You're Insanly Smart

What type of Insanity are YOU?
Test by Snow Katt#101

[EDIT: "Urban Law" by Alison Hawthorne Deming

Rush hour and the urban outflow pours
across the Million Dollar Bridge. I wait
for the walk-light, cross-traffic slight but
caution's the rule when the city roars
toward all its separate homes. I get
the sign, little electric man, and step
into the street. A woman turns into
my lane, bearing down, eye-contact,
and still she guns it until I stare and
shake my head in disbelief at her
ferocity. She slows begrudged to let
me pass, runs down the window of her Saab
and shouts, "Why don't you wait for the light?"
and flips me the bird. I feel weepy like
a punished child, mind sinking to lament,
What's wrong with the human race? Too many
of us, too crowded, too greedy for space—
we're doomed, of course, so I head for coffee
and a muffin, walking sad and slow on
the return. I'm waiting again to cross,
picking fingersful of muffin from the
paper sack and watching the phalanx of
cars race by, not even a cell of a
thought in my mind that I might jump the change,
when a man who's got the green stops,
an executive wearing a crisp white
shirt and shiny red tie, and he raises
his palm to gesture me safely across,
making all the cars behind him wait while
I walk, and together at rush hour that
man and I redeem the whole human race.]

news articles

( After a decade, band's 'food store' is stocked once more )

***
( A tiny fish could be a big factor in some development plans )

***
( States Take Lead in Push to Raise Minimum Wages )

I don't actually know where I stand on that one... On one hand, low-profit businesses shouldn't have to pay $7.50 an hour to high-schoolers, on the other hand poor parents shouldn't be payed $5.15 an hour just because they weren't able to graduate from high school. If only we had a better welfare system this wouldn't be an issue... ^^;

***
( China's Youth Look to Seoul for Inspiration )

***
( Russia Cuts Off Gas to Ukraine in Cost Dispute )

Man, I don't think I can keep up reading all the interesting articles of the NYT every day... I think I may end up just choosing to be ignorant of the state of the world after all. *unsubscribes from NYT e-mails*

I love this man! (Meaning Keillor, not Tolkien.)

I won't paste the text, as it's different from the audio (which is how it's meant to be), but I encourage you to go to the 1/3/2006 edition of The Writer's Almanac and listen. If you're not already a J.R.R. (John Ronald Reuel, apparently) Tolkien fanatic, you'll probably learn some interesting things here.

another poem and more articles - and that's enough gmail for a couple of hours!

"The Doctor" by Howard Levy

After days of healing,
he would get away to fish.
Curator of fluff and feathers,
he tied his own flies,
designed his own waders
and up to the lake country
for trout and walleye.

I would ask him, what is it
out there on the water,
and he would say, all week
I swim lead for my school of patients,
take this, take that,
don't eat this, don't eat that,
I tell them swim away from the hook,
don't take that bait, that bug there
has sharp metal innards,
that worm glints steel,
but we are such dumb fish,
such sorry things that we all get pulled
from our lives.
So, weekends,
I choose to be the redresser of balances.

I know that he hid behind this facile
diagnosis because I went with him once
and as we stood thigh-deep
in the cold and clear lake,
he began his meticulous detailings,
the striations of the bottom rocks
and how each different sediment
reflects the light, the distribution
of firs along the shore,
the speckling of the speckled trout
and each thing, he said,
is a symptom and so a clue
into the fevered chemistry of beauty.

And if you're in the mood for a little contrast...

( Eagan man charged in decapitation death of stepmother )

***
( Pawlenty heading to Detroit to try to head off plant closing [this plant is in my neighborhood] )

***
( The latest must-have for teens: Caffeine )

***
( A billion Chinese, growing older )

I can't help but feel that I'm being given the finger (not that I'm not tempted myself).

Rebecca's ponytail holders are no longer on her door handle where I left them, meaning that unless I'm forgetting having moved them myself, she came by without even letting me know. Not that she has to tell me when she comes to her own apartment, but... I wish she'd friggin' communicate with me!
I should really learn to not care...

Patrick's with his family and loving it :)

I fell asleep during RS today. I was so exhausted.
During Sacrament they were giving testimonies, and I couldn't get past the intentional misuse of the word know. I mean, hell, I don't even know that I'm typing on my computer right now! It could be just an incredibly lucid dream. What you have is a deep faith that these things are true, not a knowledge! But I know what they mean, and I suppose I'm just arguing semantics.
So after talking with some people after they woke me up, I went home, picked up my package from the front desk (Megatokyo volume 3), and... Took a nap. A six hour nap. Heh. So, since the stay up all night thing failed, I'm gonna lock myself down at 10, or maybe midnight. Midnight wouldn't be to bad, either, and I might have more l luck. (Then again, the rest I would get from laying in bed awake for two hours might be beneficial...)
So, even though I won't have gotten much done by the time I go to bed today... I did wash the dishes. Yay me! Of course, I still haven't turned in the baking equipment I borrowed, as I woke up at 8 and the front desk closes at 6. <>;
Umm... Oh yeah! Pat IMed me again today, although I was asleep and wasn't able to reply before he signed off. :( The bad news is, his laptop (The Blue Wonder) seems to have died, and he thinks he needs a new hard drive. The good news is that his host family has a computer with DSL. :) Of course that doesn't mean he'll be able to be on it as much as he's on his computer at home (at least that's my assumption), but that doesn't really matter.
He told me to save his IMs because he wants to post in LJ but he didn't had the energy to. (I assume he's planning to copy and paste them.) I'm wondering if maybe I should post them myself, but I'm not going to.
Other than that, he seems to be doing well. He says he really loves his host family, and that language things are going okay if interesting (that was in my own words).
RedClaw49 (3:15:31 PM): Romain (20) is only here on weekends, but the mother and father are very, very nice and Thomas (12) is very funny. He's also patient with my little guess the word game...
RedClaw49 (3:16:21 PM): I've been trying a bit not to use the dictionary when I don't know a word, and when I do that, I need them to guess what it is.
RedClaw49 (3:17:20 PM): Thomas and I spent 5 minutes on 'flat'. I also got 'smooth' in the bargain. That was the first one, because I used to know those words, I just forgot them
RedClaw49 (3:21:44 PM): Just talked to Jean Claude, explained a bit about my laptop
[insert idle my idle message here]
RedClaw49 (3:21:54 PM): *(hard drive is probably dieing)
RedClaw49 (3:22:10 PM): I am messing with it a bit, but I think I just need to buy a new HD
RedClaw49 (3:22:49 PM): It's hard to explain computer things in french, especially because they aren't too familiar with them
He keeps saying he loves me, which he said he'd try not to do. Not that I mind. ^_^ *hugs Patrick*
Now if only that nice long e-mail he said he'd send me would arrive! I'm kinda wondering if he botched something and didn't actually send it, or if he didn't attach my address right.

And that's that for now.

[EDIT: Oh shit. I seem to have closed my LJ window. Which means stuff has surely scrolled off. Ugh. ><;]

great flash vid

She Freak'in Blocked Me!

By the way, can someone figure out how to download this for me? My rather simplistic technique won't work, since the don't give the address of the .swf file in the source code.

[EDIT: from elyse_navidad
( You know you're a 90s kid if... )

]