gunno

My work at the hiring office is going relatively well. I have a little more then half of my staff hired, and they start training soon. As long as I keep this pace all will be well for grand opening. I checked out this cool Asian market named "Assi" today near the Montgomeryville Mall. Just about everything in the place was imported from Japan, Korea or China. It is also the size of a conventional supermarket, so it was quite a bit to see. Everything was written in Chinese and English, and all of their loudspeaker announcements were in Chinese. They also had this awesome machine that made rice cakes. Another manager took a video of it with his phone, and if I can get it I will post it. It was freakin' amazing, and I definately bought some fresh made rice cakes.

My wife, harrowing_grace, had an incident with her knee yesterday while carrying Ian down the steps. I was sitting at the computer in the basement, and she was coming down the stairs next to me, which is completely blocked from view. She slipped, and being the awesome mother she is, clutched Ian to her chest and fell down several stairs on her ass and her back. Unfortunately for me, she made a horrendous noise while doing so, and yelled "OH MY GOD!" about five times while falling down the steps, of course with Ian crying. Acting only on sound, I had assumed she lost her grip on Ian and the noise of her falling was the sound of my baby bouncing down the steps. There are no words to describe what thinking that feels like. All I can say is I left my bowels on the computer chair and never moved so fast in my life. I fully expected to find Ian at the bottom of the steps, and was very relieved to find Erica holding him. Whew... My stomach still isn't quite right. This is rapidly turning into a long and drawn out post, so more later.

Tonight I got caught up watching "Opening Cases with Howie Mendell". That show is addicting, and I have no idea why.

Erica is the only woman I know who can be enough of a social butterfly to have people she has never met, other then in the virtual world of Final Fantasy, send her things after giving birth to Ian. Not just one package mind you, but several. She got a "cookie bouquet" from one of her clans, and two seperate deliveries of home made baked goods (very tasty ones, btw), from a very nice couple she met there too. Strange...but I'm not complaining, because cookies are good.

Speaking of packages, my good friend cliohdna was very sweet in sending my daughter two My Little Ponies, and a nice little letter talking about having a little brother. Being who she is, she also decided to include about 1,000 little plastic stars. My daughter thought that was amazing, and proceeded to dump them all over my living room floor. This was three or four days ago, and I have learned some things since then:

1. See-through plastic stars blend into brown carpet very well.
2. Plastic stars have sharp edges, and are not pleasant to step on while carrying a hot cup of coffee.
3. I will never find all of them...ever.

Sweet none the less though, and all this from my partner in "unique" porn. In other news, I am considering sending cliohdna some toe nail clippings to even the score.

I'm in the process of compiling some metal songs for a single CD that I intend to take to work and drive my fellow workers nuts. You see, three or four of the other folks that are in wicked early generally monopolize the radio with songs that were popular when they were young, and I promise you, that was a long time ago. It's a lot of the stuff Oldies stations used to play when they really were "Oldies" and not "Classics" like they are now, but I digress.

My little project has gotten complicated, because I couldn't decide what to put on, and so I mentioned it to some of my similar aged coworkers while I was threatening the others with it. It quickly escalated into a CD of "The Greatest Metal Songs of All Time", and there are rules now too. No more then one song from any one band, and equal representation from each decade involved, whenever realistically possible. I need suggestions...

Before I present what will already be on it, and what I already have under consideration, please understand that this is a relatively loose interpretation of "metal". I'll call this my "Bob disclaimer", because I can hear him whining already, and he's 300 miles away. Also remember it is only one CD.

Already on the CD
Pantera - "Cowboys from Hell"
Megadeath - "Symphony of Destruction"
Slipknot - "Wait and Bleed"
Rage Against the Machine - "Bulls on Parade"

Up for Consideration/Under Review
Black Sabbath - "Children of the Grave"
Disturbed - "Down with the Sickness"
Iron Maiden - "Hallowed be thy Name"
Manowar - "Black Wind, Fire and Steel"
Metallica - "Master of Puppets"
Motorhead - "Ace of Spades"
Sepultura - "Arise"
Slayer - "Reign in Blood" or "Seasons in the Abyss"
System of a Down - "Toxicity"

There they are, I am open to any and all suggestions...except the stupid ones.

I think my phone has rung about 40 times since I've gotten home from work. I almost threw it against the wall to make it stop. I'm a little irritated about it. Seriously, if you live upstairs from me, there is no reason to call me five times within an hour, let alone within a night. Come down, say everything you have to say, and go away.

I now offer the following for those who will not stop calling me:

Erica has not gone into labor; I promise everyone will know when Ian is born. Yes, her being overdue is frustrating, and yes, being asked about it 1,000 times a day is as frustrating.

I am not a social person, if you do not have anything to say, don't call me. Please don't expect me to make conversation, because I won't. There will simply be awkward phone silence, which will end with me hanging up.

Yes I have started my new job, and no we have not found a house yet. These both make me tired...a lot. All the more reason not to call me when you don't need to.

Please be like our friend Rachel, and simply pop by for a little while and hang out. This is fine, we like people...really. She didn't call and pester us, she just came over and chilled.

I'm sure there is more, but now this post is starting to annoy me too.

It occurs to me that Iran is somewhat like the attention deprived kid in school that would never shut up until someone kicked his ass. A few days ago Iran announced that it had succeeded in enriching a small amount of uranium, meaning they now have the capacity to at least make a "dirty" bomb (ie: a non-nuclear device that would us it's ordinance to spread radioactive material over a given area). We replied with some useless banter about possible military options, to which Iran replied they had an army of martyrs prepared to suicide bomb targets in the US and the UK. They even provided proof by putting on a parade of soldiers with live bombs strapped to their chests, some 20,000 of them, and allowed international reporters to attend.

Today I read on MSNBC about how we have gained the support of the UN on Iran, and would like to continue towards a diplomatic solution. Would this be the same diplomacy the allies tried to use with Hitler previous to WWII? You know, after he annexed Austria and parts of Checkoslovakia, and then invaded the rest of the country, and the allies continued diplomacy, even after his intent was clear? Perhaps it is the kind of diplomacy that worked with the Taliban, or North Korea, or maybe Iraq? Maybe it's that new fangled diplomacy that is working such wonders with the Hamas led government of Palestine, fresh off of their latest state sponsored suicide bombing of innocent Israelis.

The way I see it is that the world needs glass, Iran has a lot of sand, and we have a lot of bombs. End of story.

Inspired by suncrush, I want to see how much Haiku I can gather in one place, namely this post. It can be any form that you wish. In other words, you can choose to use 17 syllables in any order, or stick to the standard 5-7-5. I am artistically stunted, but here is my contribution:

There was nothing here
Then your soul whispered to me
"Come here and know love"

"The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which; he simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both."


Buddha

Something odd occured to me today. This is for those of you who watch the news, read, or pay attention at all to the world not directly in front of them. Do you recall all of the uproar over the political cartoons printed in Europe depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad? If you don't know what I'm talking about, go ahead and click here to get yourself up to speed.

If you would like to see the actual cartoons in question, click here

Anyway, after the cartoons were printed, and then reprinted all over Europe, some Muslims protested, rioted, and killed people because it is considered blasphemy to actually depict the prophet Muhammad; one is only permitted to write his name (that's the Cliff's Notes version). The thing that occured to me is that back in 2001, South Park depicted Muhammad in an episode about the "Super Best Friends", a playful take on the Super Friends. Never seen the episode? Here is a picture. That's him behind the Buddha and next to Jesus (the others pictured are Krishna, Joseph Smith {founded Mormonism}, Lao Tsu {founder of Taoism}, and Sea Man at the controls - Sea Man is there to parody Aqua Man, who was utterly useless).

So why is it that printing political cartoons in the name of free speech causes muslims to riot and kill, but using his image for comedic purposes on one of the most vulgar shows on American television is apparently okay? Opinions?

I had never seen PostSecret before this morning. It really is an interesting site, where people mail in their secrets anonymously, and this guy picks 10 or 20 to post every Sunday. Some are funny, some sad, but it really is artistic and interesting.

Senseless death is always upsetting, even when you don't know the people involved.

Big news in the Lehigh Valley now is a car accident from Sunday morning at 6:30 AM that killed two of the three teenagers involved, both from Easton Area High School They were traveling down a residential street with a posted speed limit of 25 mph. No word yet on how fast they were going, but the driver lost control and hit a tree hard enough to throw the engine block 60 feet from the car. Yes, the entire engine block brock free of the car, and traveled 60 feet before stopping. The only reason it stopped was because it hit another car. For those of you who are curious, I would guesstimate that the engine weighed somewhere around 400 lbs. Debris was scattered up to 100 feet away from the car, including the rooftops of surrounding houses.

The 16 year old girl (I saw her picture, she looked pretty, and by all accounts was nice) was in the passenger seat and not wearing a seat belt. She was ejected from the car and traveled at least 20 feet. She was dead before she hit the ground. The kid in the backseat also died on impact, and was unable to be recovered from the car for hours as police and emergency personnel tried to recover him. In life's cosmic irony, the driver survived.

I suppose we should all be happy that someone survived, and I am. There is rumor now that alcohol was involved (shock and surprise), and even minus alcohol, these kids were being incredibly stupid. I'm also sure that by surviving, this kid wil get to live in is own personnel hell for a while, and most likely get to spend a good amount of time in jail. Like I said, an altogether upsetting incident.