Telling it like it is

So we got the new passport photos, and went back to the INS. They took fingerprints and signatures, then took our employment authorisation cards and stamped our passports. We're in the clear. The passport stamp is good until the greencards actually arrive, which could be up to another year. But we're both authorised to work and travel freely in and out of the country now!

Dory (our new cat) spent the whole night in last night, even with the cat flap available to her. She woke me up about 5:30 - not sure why, but I went to see what was up and she came and curled up on the bed with us.

This morning we went to do the final step of the greencard process only to be told when we got there that we had the wrong type of passport photos. The INS used to need three-quarter photos, showing nose profile and ears etc. Now they just need "regular" passport photos but we didn't know. We have another appointment this afternoon....

The first couple of days with our new cat have been interesting. The first night we shut her in and gave her the run of the house. She ate and drank and used the litter box, and woke us up every hour - just like a newborn baby.
The second night, we closed off the kitchen and left her in there and in the morning I found her hiding behind the washing machine downstairs. Then I made the mistake of test-fitting a collar on her and she took off with it on, trying to get it off. I teased her out with some kitty treats and took it off, and I'm now persona non grata with the cat :-(
I went to World-O-Pets, or Pet-O-Rama, or Kingdom Of Pets or one of those pet superstores and bought a cat flap today. With a little creative thinking, we now have a cat flap in the back door. Creative thinking, in so far as we have a storm door too. The storm door is now minus its bottom panel so Dory can step through it and into the cat flap, or vice versa.
So far, we have to hold the inside door open, and s…

Holy snot. We're just getting reports of a magnitude 9.0 earthquake in the sea off Java. 22,000 people dead from 15m-high tsunamis which swept ashore all around the region. This has happened just three days after the 8.1 deep-sea quake 420km west of Auckland. Both quakes are on the same plate.

I'm in a tryptophan-induced doze at the moment having successfully cooked our first Christmas dinner. Turkey was fine, roast potatoes, carrots in cream and some Paxo stuffing. Mmmmm.
Everything turned out just fine and now I've finished carving, we have about a kilo of turkey breast, sliced and on a plate in the fridge.

We had a visit from next door today, and basically, they wanted to know if we wanted to take over ownership of one of their cats. Dory, the little black and white cat is really unhappy over there with the dog etc. So now she's ours. We've got the scratching post, and Russ has gone to get some eukanuba and some fancy feast so we know what to feed her. We'll be off to the pet store this afternoon for a collar and a bed for her.

"This year's election campaign was marked with the oxymoronic "free speech zones" where people who disagreed with Bush were cordoned off into areas where they would never been seen by the president.

The symbol of free speech restricted to special areas surrounded by barbed wire should make everyone stand up and take notice."

From a thought-provoking look at the similarities between the neocons of today's America and the rising popularity of the Nazis, and ultimately between Hitler and Bush.
Unsettling reading for sure.

http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/bush-hitler.htm

White Christmas! Yay!
It snowed all day yesterday and everything looks nice and Christmassy now. The temperature has plummetted to a -10°C too. Nice and chilly.

I learned an important lesson this morning too. Don't drink Sprite that has been in an open can on your desk for 3 weeks. It's not pleasant.

Blogging will be sporadic for the next couple of weeks because of vacation time :-)

Thisblog is quite an amusing read. The guy predicts a mossad / CIA operation to remotelydetonate a nuke in Houston on December 27th and blame it on Iran. Apparently the device is already there and armed and it just waiting for a button-push.
If it were true, it would certainly be all over the news, not just on one conspiracy site.

Question is of course, that behind most of these things, there's a grain of truth somewhere which spawns the rumourmill. What is the grain of truth in this case? Are the powers-that-be planning some sort of operation to scare the public into supporting an invasion of Iran? We all know B*sh wants to......

So - 22 dead and 51+ injured in an attack of some kind on a US military mess tent near Mosul this morning.

Page 489 of Bush (Snr) and Scowcroft's book, A World Transformed (Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), talking about not taking down Saddam, nor going into Baghdad.

We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different--and perhaps barren--outcome.

It's a shame B*sh doesn't tal…

The FCC has relaxed its regulations regarding cellphones on aircraft. That means that tech companies and the airlines and airframe manufacturers are now free to see if they can accomodate cellphone-idiots onboard and in-flight.
The first person who uses a cellphone within earshot of me on a flight is going to get it rammed up his or her asshole. Cellphones are a technology blight as it is. Being forced into close company with hundreds of babbling morons on these things whilst in-flight is going to be absolute torture.
You know what the next step will be, of course. The airlines will offer more expensive tickets in exchange for "quiet" cabins.....

Paula got a letter on saturday from the Dept. of Homeland Security. I got mine today. Our change of status has been approved. In short - we've got green cards. Next week we have appointments with the INS to give photos and thumbprints whereupon we get the Visas removed from our passports and replaced with "permanent resident" stamps. The cards arrive within 6 months or so.

Verbatim from the Time magazine website:
For sticking to his guns (literally and figuratively), for reshaping the rules of politics to fit his ten-gallon-hat leadership style and for persuading a majority of voters that he deserved to be in the White House for another four years, George W. Bush is TIME's 2004 Person of the Year

Unbelievable. They've made him man of the year for going to war on a lie, bullying politicians into nonsensical decisions, and rigging the vote for another 4 years.
I thought Time magazine was objective but it seems they're red-state patsies.

Today's dumbass story from Florida (obviously) : Man uses stove to light cigarette, but ignites oxygen tank.
A Pasco County man is in the hospital after getting burned in his own house. Police say Henry Laskin was trying to light a cigarette on his stove when the oxygen tank he was wearing exploded.

So this guy is in such bad health that he's already wearing an oxygen mask - probably for emphysema - yet he's still smoking? Why do we waste healthcare dollars on retards like this?

ComCast, the owners of the dire G4 TV channel, have put into motion the final piece of their masterplan to get rid of the far superior TechTV. Following the buyout and "merger" to G4TechTV this year, then the removal of "The Screen Savers", then the mass firing of all prior TechTV staff, ComCast today announced that the channel was going to drop the "TechTV" portion of its name and all remaining TechTV content to once again become G4.
Apparently, they blame the TechTV content for their "miserable viewing figures".

Erm.

No. The reason for the miserable viewing figures is because the station is shite, the shows are shite, the presenters are shite, and you got rid of all the good TechTV shows and presenters when you "merged".

The good news is that this leaves the door open for someone to re-finance a phoenix-like reappearance of TechTV now - ComCast are losing the rights to the moniker.

Still - having suffered at the hands of ComCast when…

Yesterday Microsoft bought Giant Company - the manufacturers of the only working spam-scanning software that works in Outlook. Giant Company also manufacture one of the best spyware scanning programs too. Today Microsoft announce that both products will now become cost-option extras in Windows.
So MS are selling buggy, corrupted code, and then they want to charge for more software that will help patch the holes in their own OS. That wouldn't be quite so bad if they were just going to use Spywareblocker and Spam Assassin "as is", but the fact that their programmers are going to dick with the code to make it more "microsoft-friendly" means that those programs will suffer the same fate - they'll become slow, buggy bloatware.

San Francisco politicians have proposed banning all handguns in the city, except those carried by police, military or security guards. It goes to the vote in 2005. Whilst they've obviously seen the light, being an educated blue state (as oppose to a dumb B*sh state), I wonder if the public would dare to vote it in?

Must. Not. Kill.

Geico are suing Google for $8.35m in lost revenue. Geico claims that Google's AdWords program, which displays the rival ads under a "Sponsored Links" heading next to a user's search results, causes confusion for consumers and illegally exploits Geico's investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in its brand. Their lawyor Charles Ossala claims that "When a consumers enters 'Geico' ... and goes to the sponsored link believing there's a connection, that is where the confusion arises."
Well first off, Charles, "a consumers" ?
Secondly, you'd have to be pretty slow on the uptake to think that a website that didn't link to "geico.com" was anything to do with them.
Sadly, I expect the lawyors will win though.

The weekend flew past, obviously. We went to see Ocean's 12 on saturday night. The cinema was packed - standing room only. Film was good. The weather has been giving us a brief respite before the onslaught of the impending no-power, wastelands-of-siberia Christmas storm. It was 17°C on saturday! We finally managed to get the roses trimmed and mulched - the previous snowfall had stopped that activity in its tracks.

I read last night that B*sh has started recalling retired army personnel to active duty. Over 100 60-plussers, and one guy who's 70 have all been recalled to active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's a nice pre-christmas present for some families I'm sure.

Some joyless fucktard just kicked our Santa over in the front garden and ripped out the support lines that hold him upright. I've just spent 20 minutes sewing new hooks and eyes on to him so we could re-anchor him to the ground.

The US military are planning to test B*sh's national missile defense system this week. The $85 million test comes as the military is in final preparations to activate missile defenses designed to protect against an intercontinental ballistic missile attack from North Korea or elsewhere in eastern Asia. During the test, a target missile will be launched from Kodiak Island, Alaska, and an interceptor missile will fire from Kwajalein Island in the central Pacific Ocean. According to the stuffed shirts, "Because the launches will test several new aspects of the missile defense system, the interceptor actually shooting down the target is not a primary goal of the mission."

?

An interceptor missile who's primary goal is NOT to intercept an incoming missle.

Rii-iiight.

I'm a little late on the bandwagon, but apparently the government back in England are frantically putting in toll roads left right and centre because they've discovered how much quicker they can rape the motorist by using them. The propaganda on the M6 Toll Road site is quite blinding in it's simplistic, blinkered view. See for yourself.
I particularly like the bit about toll roads reducing traffic and journey times and thus reducing congestion in surrounding towns and villages. Clearly an idea penned by a non-driver. What do they think happens to the traffic that used to use the road? It hasn't evaporated, it's moved off into the local towns and villages, thus causing more congestion, more dangerous conditions and higher accident and fatality rates. Obviously nobody in their right mind is going to pay road tax AND road tolls, so the miracle reduction in traffic that they've experienced is because everyone's buggered off into the local streets instead.
This…

We went to see "National Treasure" this weekend. Top film - number 1 for the third week running. That's a good omen and could spell at least one sequel.
The weather is still mighty chilly - it still hasn't gone above zero yet. The snow is melting slowly though. Did some sale shopping this weekend. $6 for winter gloves, $4 each for T-shirts, $20 for winter boots. I love the sales :-)

Meanwhile, and I know I said I wouldn't blog about him again, but this is priceless.
El Busho is laying the groundwork for scrapping the federal deduction for state local taxes. "Coincidentally" this will affect the blue states more than the red states. And "coincidentally" the two states predicted to see virtually no effect from this? Texas and Florida. What a surprise. According to the BBC, when asked why this was happening, one congressional staffer said "This is very real. They need the money desperately. It's one of the only things they can attempt t…

The temperature this morning was down to -10°C. Mmm. Chilly.

From CNN (where else?) today :
Did Botox injections lead to Botulism poisoning?

Mmm. I wonder.

In other news, it turns out that getting the flu virus leads to flu, and that cutting your leg off results in having one less leg.

Who knew?

Great headline from Fark today : "Britain's five most-watched movies of all time. Frankly, my dear, the hills are alive with the sound of midgets using the force at Park Lake."

I got the house lights up this weekend for Christmas. We chose LED lights this year from ForeverBright. They're more expensive to buy, but cost 1/10th as much to run as bulbs, are virtually indestructible and a lot brighter too. We've got an inflatable santa in the front yard and five illuminated snowflakes. Looks quite festive.

Actually, on friday. One of the neighbours sneered at me as I was putting them up, but our friend next door said he was trying to get his yardwork out of the way so he could do the same. On saturday it drizzled all day and on sunday morning there were 4 inches of snow on the ground. The sneering neighbour wasn't sneering any more, and the chap next door was wishing he really had got his lights up on friday.

I shovelled some snow but then thought "bugger it…

Twice in one week! ComCast (owned by Rupert Murdoch) are putting their cable rates up for the second time in a year. 14% this time, apparently.
Let's see. RM takes over Sky Television, prices soar in England. RM takes over ComCast cable, prices soar in the US.

Nope. I can't see the correlation.

This is pretty funny. Microsoft have released a screenshot of some of the features of their MSN search engine (the one they're filling using Google results). The funny thing is that the screenshot shows them using Firefox. I guess Microsoft finally came to the same conclusion as the rest of us - IE is a festering turd. A copy of the picture is linked here.

I spent a lazy couple of days blowing stuff up and murdering people in GTA:San Andreas again this weekend. I have to say the game is quite educational. I'm learning all sorts of new profanities and swear words I didn't even know existed. The difference, of course, is that being a sensible regular person, I can tell the difference between a videogame and real life. If you were to believe the hairy-legged no-bra-wearing unwashed anti video-game activists, then this weekend I'll be going out to knock over a couple of convenience stores, run over children and grandparents with my car and indulge in an orgy of hot lead destined to go down as one of the worst killing sprees in history.
Yeah right.
Au contraire, it's the activists who are the real danger. Some of them believe so unwaiveringly in their crusade against games like GTA that they know no limits when it comes to spreading their message. They also clearly don't understand one simple fact : no videogame has ever …

The videotaped shooting of a Fallujah combatant by a U-S Marine has evoked strong emotions in the Arab world and on Capitol Hill. Texas Democrat Sylvestre Reyes says it's time to rethink the presence of embedded reporters in combat zones. During a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee, Reyes compared it to a football game, saying "we don't want to know everything that's going on on the field." Reyes says this is not censorship. In his words, "We should not be providing the Al-Jazeera the kind of propaganda they've had the last couple of three days."

First things first. Obviously this story had to be about a Texan. The illiteracy of this goon is staggering. "The Al Jazeera" ? It's not "The", it's "Al Jazeera" - that is a TV network you idiot. Then "couple of three days" ? So that's six days is it? Or do you mean "two OR three days" ?

This guy clearly favours censorship and would pre…

And so the predicted wholesale looting and raping of the American TV viewing public begins. Rupert Murdoch, owner of DirectTV and biggest contributor to the pockets of TiVO has forced them to remove their commercial-skip facility and replace it with popup-advertising during fast-forward. So rather than being able to skip 30 seconds, TiVO owners will now be limited to an 8x fast forward, during which time they'll be pumped with popup adverts.
Jebus I'm glad our DVR isn't a TiVO. After all - commercial-skip is the number one reason to own a DVR. In the Yahoo article, they mention that 92% of DVR owners have their boxes exactly because of commercial-skip. That should tell the TV broadcasters and advertisers something : we don't like shows chopped into 8 minute segments and we don't want to sit through irritating adverts for stuff we never buy.
Apparently that message isn't getting through though.
So long TiVO - we knew you well.

This political correctness and hypersensitivity to nakedness on TV is going too far. Today, ABC Sports apologized for an "inappropriate" opening of the Philadelphia Eagles-Dallas Cowboys Monday Night Football, involving a sexually suggestive locker room meeting between Eagles wide receiver Terrell Owens and ABC's Desperate Housewives' star Nicollette Sheridan. In the taped segment, Sheridan drops a towel and is shown from a rear angle unclothed down to the lower part of her back. After Owens says, "Aw, hell, the team's going to have to win without me," Sheridan jumps into his arms.

So now it's not even acceptable to see a naked woman's back? Oh come on you people! Don't be so freakin sensitive! It was a woman's back. Not her bum, not her tits, not her genitalia. Her freakin back! ABC - don't apologise - in fact, re-run the segment every opportunity you get. And FCC - go screw yourselves. You're turning into the gestapo fining peo…

During the senate's "lame-duck" session that begins this week, they might be about to vote on HR2391, the Intellectual Property Protection Act, a comprehensive bill that will make many users of peer-to-peer networks, digital-music players and other products criminally liable for copyright infringement. The bill also plans to undo centuries of "fair use" - the principle that gives people the right to use small samples of the works of others without having to ask permission or pay.
The bill lumps together several pending copyright bills including HR4077, the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act, which would criminally punish a person who "infringes a copyright by ... offering for distribution to the public by electronic means, with reckless disregard of the risk of further infringement." That vague language basically makes it illegal, for example, to use Apple iTunes or to even own an iPod.

But the best part is this : using technology to skip any commerc…

Whilst I was wandering the aisles of my local Hollywood Video store this weekend, it struck me why their "MVP" subscription service is such a hit. Bascially, you pay $14.99 a month and certain DVDs are free if you're in the MVP club. "Certain" DVDs. Never the new ones, and almost never the popular ones. It's a clever trick because people will be gullible enough to think they're getting stuff for free after paying their membership. And once that membership is automatically going out once a month from their bank accounts, it will get forgotten about. In the consumer's eyes, "FREE" reigns supreme. So I did a little calculation. Over the last couple of weeks, I've rented a few movies - more than normal - and only one of them was in the MVP free movie category. Had I been in the MVP club, I'd have effectively paid $14.99 for one rental, and $2.99 for the rest. Clever. "FREE" is the lure, and then the bait-and-switch is that no…

The last vestiges of personal responsibility are being swept neatly away back in England, with the introduction of a ban on fast food advertising before 21:00 on TV. This is a pilot scheme. What will follow is "traffic light" colour-coding on all foods, followed by a ban on selling fast food after 21:00. This is all, apparently, in a bid to cut down on obesity.
It's obvious right from the start that it's a scheme thought up by politicians. The first, and most obvious question is : how are they going to police a ban on fast food after 21:00? Are they going to appoint a Cholesterol Tsar? Is he going to hire hundreds of thousands of people to travel around every night making sure those evil kebab vans are not operating? Of course not - don't be ridiculous. This scheme can never work, ergo there must be a financial benefit in it somewhere.
Digging through the fine print, there it is : fines. Ah yes, the light dawns. They'll introduce a ban, knowing full well ther…

ComCast have finally pulled the plug on "Unscrewed" and most of the other old TechTV shows, so G4TechTV is basically now G4 again. Pre-pubescent wankers with no sense of humour, delivering programmes with no content.
Apparently ComCast are concerned about why their viewer figures were so low, and decided it was because of the remnants of TechTV. Hence the decision.

??

Tilt.

Must be run by a Texan to have those sort of blinkers on.

ABC showed Saving Private Ryan tonight, and the run-up and pre-show warnings were classic litigation-prevention doublespeak.
"Saving Private Ryan, uncut, with limited commercial interruptions" was the first spiel.

Then came the black screens with big print white text and the voice of doom.
"Due to graphic depictions of violence, and language, this film is not suitable for younger viewers. Parental discretion is advised."

Then came the next screen.
"The content of this movie has not been editted for television. Due to language and graphic depictions of war and violence, viewer discretion is advised."

Then to the next screen.
"This movie has been editted for television. It has been modified to fit this screen and editted to run in the time alotted."

Well wait a moment. Did you just tell me on the previous screen that this move had not been editted?

Then to the final screen:
"And now, uncut, uncensored and uneditted, ABC presents Saving Privat…

Tony Blah is hopping on a plane to become the first foreign dignitary to come visit "President" B*** since his re-appointment.

Wait.

Hang on - I'm working up to it.

Nearly there.....

Here it comes - I've mustered shock and awe...

Wow!

That was a shocker. Nobody expected Tony "The Lap Dog" Blair to heel at B***'s beck and call did they? No. Not at all.

Arafat -- who was deathly ill, not deathly ill, in a coma, not in a coma, dead, not dead, brain dead, not brain dead, awake and communicating, dead again, then alive and well, then in a coma is now actually dead.


No, really he is.

Power vacuum to maximum, middle east go boom. Big 'splosions. End of world.

Just watched a new show on Discovery called "WingNuts" about a company who take old aircraft parts and make them into art and furniture. Typical confrontational style - two of the guys don't get on etc.etc., but if you look past that to what they're actually doing, it's a fascinating show. Well - for me anyway. Their website is at www.motoart.com.

Wow. Just watched the first episode of Rebel Billionaire on Fox. For once they have come up with a killer show. It's brutally honest and one of the contestants is a local guy who runs LoveSac here in Salt Lake City. I guess he doesn't win because he's here live on TV right now and if he was the winner - that wouldn't be so.
Branson is using the might of all of Virgin to play the game, and he's doing all the same stunts and challenges as the contestants. "I wouldn't expect the contestants to do anything I wouldn't do" is his philosophy.
Not sure about the prize being to run the Virgin Companies - I suspect that's a bit of an exaggeration, but who cares? The show is awesome. Who thought you'd ever say that about a Fox show (apart from the Simpsons) ?

Arafat -- who was deathly ill, not deathly ill, in a coma, not in a coma, dead, not dead, brain dead, not brain dead, awake and communicating, dead again, now reportedly alive and well insist French doctors.

I think that means he's dead. That huge sucking sound you can hear from the middle east is the sound of the power vacuum.

In the continuing theme of "we're America so we'll do what we damn well like", the US is now ready to put weapons in space, ignoring the treaty banning precisely this development. Now that couldn't be anything to do with the incumbant "president" could it?

Meanwhile, the train crash in Berkshire was obviously pretty big - it made it on to the local news here in SLC last night! Even though Hope Woodside pronounced Ufton Nervet as "Unford Nervay".

After last night's disastrous video rental, tonight I rented Eurotrip and Unbreakable.
Eurotrip made me laugh like I've not laughed in a long time - Vinnie Jones was priceless. Unbreakable...? Unfathomable, basically. Another turd floating in the soup that is cinema.
Ho hum.

Paula knows my intense dislike for "Jared" - the gay fool who wants us to believe he lost 800 pounds by eating nothing but Subway sandwiches. And it seems my gut feeling was right.
In the TV spots Jared claims that three footlong Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki subs have less fat than one Big Mac. Good claim, but probably a little wide of the mark given the lawsuit that was just launched. Why? Those three footlong sandwiches actually contain more than three and a half times as many calories as one Big Mac, nearly four times the amount of cholestorol, six times the sodium, seven times the carbohydrates and fourteen times as much sugar.
So in fact, the Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki that "Jared" is so fond of, should be called the super saturated big fat fucker artery-clogging heart-stopper.
This on the heels of Subway's dig at McDonalds earlier this year with the fat Statue of Liberty holding a Big Mac.
Mmm.
Pot.
Kettle.
Black.
Oh and "Jared" - nobody belie…

Just got through with watching Garfield and Scooby Doo 2. Not even Jennifer Love Hewitt could save Garfield, and as for Scooby Doo 2..... well.... the first film was light entertainment. This one is raw sewage.

My favourite company : Utah Power. Seems there's a flurry of activity around our area at the moment. I wonder if its coincidence, or because I started camping on the phone to them a couple of weeks ago because I'd not seen any changes that they promised to make after last winter's big outages.
Either way, it's pleasing to see the trucks out in the street, coned off, with people up in the cherry pickers doing "something".

Arafat who's health was declining, then he was okay, then in a coma, then not in a coma, then dead, is now not dead.

Reports are circulating that Yasser Arafat has died, rather than fallen into a coma, and the Drudge report is indicating that one of the four horsemen is about to resign. Apparently Attorney General John Ashcroft 'plans to submit his resignation to Bush in the next several days'. Does that and Colin Powells motions about leaving (following the Republican's adamant denial on that) point to dissent in the ranks ?

From an article in the Guardian's G2 section today:

Despondency was instant and lethal. On the way to work, the faces of people on the tube looked like chalk pavement pictures after a downpour. As people got to their desks, a day began of low productivity and high personal email exchange. Dismally, people asked each other how long they had stayed up the night before. "Until 4.30am," said my friend Jim. "Long enough to start crying like a girl."
The first email I received the following morning read: "Fucked off, dejected, our hopes have been blown to shit." The next one read: "As REM once sang: 'It's the end of the world as we know it.' Only unlike REM, I don't feel fine."

There's going to be a brain drain from this country which will leave the Red-State [Republican] morons to fend for themselves," wrote an American on the Guardian talk-boards. "I wonder what the immigration requirements are like in the UK?"…