Education
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
:: Random ::
In The Air Tonight
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Anything that features Phil Collins’ masterpiece “In The Air Tonight” has to be good.
Don’t Wanna Be No Nerf Herder
Friday, May 18, 2007
Awesome:
What is a “nerf herder?” you may be asking yourself. From Wikipedia:
...a “nerf herder” is a fictional occupation referred to by Princess Leia in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, when she insults Han Solo for arrogantly asserting that she has romantic feelings for him: “Why you stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder!” In the Star Wars Expanded Universe, a nerf herder is a lower class outdoorsman who spends his days safeguarding the nerfs on various planets across the universe. They can best be compared to the American cowboy or shepherds of old in their steadfast pursuit of an independent lifestyle. They generally wear old, worn out work clothes and carry simple projectile weapons as well as staves they use to drive obstinate nerfs out of their hiding places. Due to their significant skills in fieldcraft and gunplay, as well as not having the resources to bathe and change their clothes often, the rest of the “civilized” universe looks down upon them.
Dr. Phil
Sunday, April 22, 2007
So, this isn’t a rant on Dr. Phil, as much as I would like it to be. Rather, it is to announce that I bought 2 tickets for a panel at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books next Sunday, April 29th, with Dr. Phil. Specifically, it is entitled: “Dr. Phil McGraw in Conversation with Mitch Albom.”
Why I did this I do not know.
I actually wanted to attend a panel with Kirk Douglas, but at 10am, I don’t think i’d make it out to UCLA in time. Dr. Phil seemed like the next best thing. Hopefully they’ll allow cameras.
Stupid Cats
Friday, February 16, 2007
I park The Dinomax in the garage, and leave the windows open while the garage is closed. It’s safe.
The other day, I opened the garage to take The Dinomax out for a spin, and I discovered cat fur plastered all over the driver side front door. I opened the door only to discover more fur all over the dashboard and steering wheel. Looking around, I saw that it was all over the two front seats. Of course, the cat wouldn’t limit itself to just the front seats, so I looked at the back and saw that there was a generous helping there as well.
Apparently, one of the neighborhood stray cats has decided to make The Dinomax it’s home.
Stupid cat.
Today, I was taking a closer look at The Dinomax and saw long scratches on the left, front panel and door. Three sets of scratches, with three fine lines in each set, which could only have been caused by this cat’s paws as it tried to climb its way inside my car.
Stupid, stupid cat.
Now, I know exactly which cat this is. I’ve attempted to take photographs of it, cause its light-brown and kinda cute. It roams around The Dinoestate and the neighbor’s property with its BFF, another stray cat. I’m not sure if they’re boyfriend-girlfriend, or boyfriend-boyfriend, or girlfriend-girlfriend, or just good buddies, but they sure do hang out a lot together.
Whatever the case, I know i’ll be spending a good amount of time cleaning the interior of my car. And did I mention the smell? Thank god it didn’t poop or pee in there. But it left a distinct, dirty cat odor. It may be gone by now though. And it also left paw prints on my pristine leather seats. Oh, add another 3-4 hours waxing the exterior to try and get the scratches out.
If this cat goes in my car again, I will kick its ass. Or call animal control and get its ass hauled off to the cat prison.
Stupid, f-ing cat.
There Goes The Neighborhood
Friday, January 19, 2007
A Malibu neighborhood that is. I found the title rather appropriate for a story currently running in LA Weekly (found via Boing Boing).
LA Weekly writes about the purchase of a $35 million-dollar, 16-acre Malibu estate in April 2006, by Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, the son of Equatorial Guinea’s President/Dictator Teodoro Obiang. Forbes lists this sale as the sixth most expensive home sale in the US, in 2006. Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue is also next in line to take over after his father.
Perhaps his politically active Malibu neighbors don’t know that Equatorial Guinea, on the west coast of Africa, with only 540,000 inhabitants, has neither a free press nor free speech. Its people are among the world’s poorest, surviving on less than $1 a day, yet because of plentiful oil and natural gas, the country is the second richest in gross domestic product per capita, just behind wealthy Luxembourg.
...
A rare mention of his arrival in Malibu appeared in a disapproving editorial in the Los Angeles Times late last year — strangely without any news report in the rest of the paper. Of the Malibu newspapers, only the Graphic at Pepperdine University has mentioned that the record-high home sale involves an exceedingly controversial buyer with a globally newsworthy dark side.
Robert E. Williams, associate professor of political science at Pepperdine, tried to alert Malibu papers, but never heard back from reporters. “My guess is that the small local papers don’t want to explore this story, as a big part of their revenue comes from real estate advertising,” Williams says.
...
Watchdog groups and experts estimate the loot siphoned off by the Obiang family ranges from $300 million to $800 million — per year.
On human rights:
Amnesty International found that political opponents are routinely imprisoned and ordinary people thrown out of their homes without warning, to make room for “urban development” by the Obiangs. Transparency International rates Equatorial Guinea 152nd out of 159 countries on its human-rights index, listing it one of the worst for family-controlled government corruption. Sex trafficking and child labor reported by the CIA in 2006 are so extensive that Equatorial Guinea ranks at the bottom of the U.N.’s Human Development Index, below Kazakhstan, Syria and Algeria.
...
“Our promotion of human rights and democracy is in keeping with America’s most cherished principles and it helps to lay the foundation for lasting peace in the world,” said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a speech on human rights in 2006.
Shortly after that, she welcomed her “good friend” President Teodoro Obiang to Washington on an official state visit.
Far be it for me to moral pass judgment on this without knowing all the facts, but W. O. W.
The full article is lengthy, but I recommend reading through it. It presents a lot of interesting information, including Exxon-Mobile’s involvements and interests in Equatorial Guinea. Fascinating stuff, indeed.
Buddhacall
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Indian dude gets busted for cheating on his wife and hilarity ensues:
Probably fake, but entertaining nevertheless.
A blog of all things moderately uninteresting and irrelevant, written by a genius web auteur living in Southern California. 
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