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Disks in Rotation: Books Lying
Open Dreams of Terror and Death, H. P. Lovecraft Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre H. P. Lovecraft What's For Lunch? Soul-Devouring
Worry When I Grow Up:
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Tuesday April 9, 2002 |
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of the Day If a Washington official should choose to hold daily Transcendental Meditation meetings, Spiritualist sιances, Amway rallies, or voodoo magic ceremonies, in his office with his staff, can you imagine what Ashcroft would say? Yet his own personal version of hocus-pocus is acceptable, and is imposed on his employees? -- James "The Amazing" Randi |
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Daily
Blog I think this should probably be illegal. It's not really any different than the religious nuts who want their kid to die of a burst appendix, or turn a simple broken leg into a life long crippling limp by refusing medical treatment for it, since they think only God should heal illness and they just need to pray harder. In those cases there is freedom of religion, and if the idiots want to suffer and not take medicine that's up to them, but they can't inflict the end result of their madness on their children. This case, as the link above points out, is a couple, deaf, who wanted a deaf child. The couple happens to be lesbian, and one of them has some genetic reason for her handicap, so any child she bore would be nearly certain to be deaf also. They knew a man who was deaf and had some genetic reason for it, tested with a doctor that their offspring would be nearly certain to be deaf as well, and went ahead and got her knocked up. (They don't say how, I mean did he whack off and they turkey baster'ed it, or did she submit to horrible heterosexual intercourse for the glorious end result?) Anyway, the baby was born and as expected, it's deaf. A terrible, tragic, handicap, right? Well, not according to the two mommies, since they are part of the militant deaf group who feel not hearing is a cultural thing, or even preferable. The notion is of course absurd; are there blind people who think that's superior, since they can smell better and save money on light bulbs? I see it as a weird form of denial. They can't hear, so they make up some fantasy world where it's preferable to never really know the joy of music, be able to talk or listen with their back to another person, or in the dark, or from another room, or hear their deaf child crying out as she mourns her terrifying, silent world in the night. It certainly takes some nerve to pretend such an absurd claim, but anyway, if it makes the deaf feel better, then goodie for them. But when you intentionally cripple a child in such a way, that's just evil. What if they had a normal child born, and stuck a screwdriver in her ear, or gave her an ear infection and let it go untreated, or sounded an air horn from an inch away? Horrible acts, right? Well what's the difference between that and what they did? All are overt ways to deafen a child, and that's what they did, and that's what they've got. You wonder if they'll be able to so indoctrinate the kid into their delusions that she won't rebel and want to kill them both in 15 years when she finds out why she's like she is.
The "in bed" fortune cookie game is really the only reason to eat Chinese. The game, if you don't know it already, is to just read your fortune, and then add "in bed" to the end of it. This invariably improves the fortune, and is often good for a laugh, especially on the good old-fashioned fortunes like, "You will meet an intriguing stranger!" One I just got is "Your reputation is your wealth" which isn't terrible, but it could be better. It's a stale cookie too.
Brazil sues the Simpsons. It's a relatively absurd article, and you just know the actual Brazilian people will love the episode; this is just the sort of thing official travel agencies get sniffy about. The best quote in the article:
Certainly the Simpsons depiction of Brazil beats the reality of teemingly-overpopulated slums, horrible disease, violent street gangs, etc, that you can read about in any investigative article about the country. |
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So, the first day of work, and I'm not totally sick of it yet, but I'd certainly be fine never doing it again. Which may well be the same thing as "totally sick of it" if you want to get technical about it. Nothing all that idiotic occurred, so no danger of ranting on about it and providing material for my eventual termination. Yet. I made $117 there, pre-taxes, got nickle-sized blisters on both heels from my old shoes, aching shin splints, and slightly sunburned. On the way home I went by Music Trader, Sports Arena, and for a very rare change they had some CDs I wanted, and some were even reasonably-priced. They usually have ones I want, but for full price, $15.99ish, which generally means I don't want it that badly. Feeling punked out from work, and hardly able to walk with my blisters, I got 3 new ones I wanted, and 4 used for $8.99, 2 of which I wanted and 2 of which I am now wondering just how out of it I was to buy this crap. One inexplicable one is some sort of Limp Bizket remix CD. I hate Limp Bizket. I like a few of their songs in a catchy, guilty-pleasure sort of way, but that doesn't make me hate them any less. I've felt that way about a few sexy bitch-women in my real life also, for a rough analogy. Anyway, it's unlistenable. Limp Bizket's rock songs I tend to like, catchy and attitude-rich and decent hard guitars. Their weakest elements are the awful rap attempts and crowd talking crap, which is true for pretty much all "whap" bands. This remix thing is most of their big hits, remixed by various black rappers. Which gives them "credibility", as they say, but since it's bad remixes of good songs; remixes that stress the worst elements of the group's music, I've already removed it from the CD player. My only excuse is that I grabbed it quickly and didn't read the fine print on the back to realize they were all remixes, rather than just a few of them. Maybe some day I'll have a GF who wants to listen to it and will judge me more favorably for my ownership. Of course the odds of me just dumping her on the spot for having such poor taste in music are better than even. Though as a Limp Bizket fan she'd be easy... So $89 worth of CDs (most of which are listed on the left nav bar thingie) heavier, I drove home in a semi-daze, dropped off the music, put on some medical tape and hiking boots with nice heel padding, and went after groceries. $129 later at Price Club, and $13 for Chinese food, $140 from the ATM, and my take for the day is about -$220. I need to get new shoes tomorrow, which will be around $70 for good heavily-added walking shoes, so I'll be nearly $300 in the hole after one day of work. I'm not sure this is how working is supposed to work? Aren't you supposed to make money from it? |
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