777.68

Is how much the DOW dropped today.

Pardon me if what keeps going through my head are a few rotating phrases: "the sky is falling, the sky is falling!" "seven hundred billion WHAT?!?" "George Bush said it was going to cost less than that ungodly sum? well sign me up!"

I'm just glad I don't have much money in my 401(k) at this point. I'm in a mutual fund anyway, so I probably didn't lose much overall. But still.

I am also glad that I bank with USBank, one of whose directors in charge of deciding whether they should get involved in sub-prime mortgages said, "I don't understand these" and so it's currently the most stable bank in America.

I'm also glad I don't work for a company whose sole function is financial services. The stock of my company dropped only $2 today, which is fine by me.

But yeah. Henny Penny.

Indecision 2008

Here's to the only worthwhile news on television.

Christ in me

Unfortunately, it appears that this video has been removed. So sorry, because it was HILARIOUS.

Hurricane Ridge

I went up to Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic Mountains with my mom last Saturday (this picture being one of the results:


This is "pre-burn." You see, I frequently forget to use sunscreen here at home, as there aren't all that many days in the year to get burned in Seattle, and the vast majority of the year, it's overcast or raining and I'm inside working at a computer. So in general, sunscreen is not entirely necessary.

Cut to the part where I'm hiking up an open hill with lots of sun - sans sunscreen - for the better part of 2-3 hours.

My shoulders look like the bottom of one of those dry lake beds - all cracked and flaky with deep breaks where the lack of moisture has split the mud into tiny islands. Except it's my skin, and it's itchy and gross.

It's no more than I deserve, I've read all the stuff about wearing sunscreen daily, etc - but at least I had a fabulous time with my mom and finally got outside. :)

Tony Blair on the Daily Show

To see this, go to www.thedailyshow.com.

Jon Stewart dedicated more than 15 minutes of his 21 or so minute show to the interview with Tony Blair. They went over the ground you'd expect them to - the Iraq war, 9/11, international terrorism, and so on, and while I've heard much of the same rationale before, I think I have a great deal more respect for Tony Blair as a result of this interview than I had before. He actually seemed to take Stewart's questions seriously and attempt to answer them as best he could without sounding like a jerk about it. Clearly, they disagreed on nearly every major point, but it was civil and respectful.

I just can't imagine George Bush doing that. I can imagine him, however, making that irritating smirk he always makes after making a statement about something that to him seems breathtakingly obvious and you're just a stupid moron for not understanding something that's so utterly clear to him. I can't imagine at all George Bush engaging in a reasonable, measured conversation in which his opponent disagrees with him entirely without resorting to his usual tactics of asserting that his opposition is just completely wrong-headed and is going to destroy the United States by allowing the terrorists to win.

So good for you, Tony Blair, for going on the Daily Show. More than that, good for you for being a decent human being about it, even if I do disagree with the way you chose to involve your country in my country's greatest mistake in recent history. And good for the Daily Show for keeping what matters in the news and always treating every guest - of whatever persuasion - with the same sense of humor and humanity.

future suicide bomber

I just read this article on msnbc... it's hard to imagine a situation in which the intelligence could be so wrong as to bomb the life out of a large wedding party.

Iraq:
Confirmed US dead: 4151
Confirmed US injured: 30,000
Estimated Iraqi dead: 1,033,000 (as of August 2007) acc to Opinion Research Business survey

Afghanistan:
Confirmed US dead: 582
Estimated Afghani dead: 2700

World Trade Center attacks: 2974

I don't think this math adds up very well.

And I think I might want to join up and fight against anyone who bombed the life out of my future spouse and entire extended family.

dry drowning

I read recently about the case of a boy who died of 'dry drowning.' Essentially, he got enough water in his lungs to start the shutdown of the lungs but not enough for anyone to really notice anything was amiss, other than a general lack of energy and lassitude. Poor kid took a nap and never woke up.

My job is slowly dry drowning me. Just enough at a time that I don't storm out cursing all of them to perdition, but still drowning me, nonetheless. My job should be done by 2.5 people (the .5 working half in German inquiries, half in other organizations) and right now, there's just me. What I remind myself is that I have extraordinary job security (compared to many in the American workforce at the moment) and that the job itself is interesting enough to ignore a lot of the unhappiness that comes attached to being overworked and undercompensated. I wonder how long I'll be able to continue to convince myself of that....