I'm not sure this is legal.

I was searching on Google for an article that the Southern Baptist Convention published (incidentally, I found it at ivotevalues.com). I was amused by one of the ads that showed up in the right margin of my screen, based on my search terms:

Hee. I wonder if it's Jerry Falwell? Do you think if I act now, I'll get a free Teletubby?

I am much in prayer today about this presidential election. Not for one candidate in particular, but for a victory for the candidate that is most godly. The man who recognizes the significance and sovereignty of the God of Israel. The man who will turn to Him for wisdom, peace of mind and strength of heart. The man who will make decisions that will be pleasing to God. Our country was founded by men of great faith in God, and it breaks my heart to see us shutting God out of all aspects of public life.

I am very concerned about John Kerry's plans for Israel, should he be elected. If we turn our backs on Israel, there will be grave consequences. But I'm also concerned about the impending Supreme Court vacancies. I fear for my future children, that they will grow up in a country that has used judicial muscle to remove God and traditional values from everywhere except our own homes. I'm afraid they'll go to school and be taught that creation is a laughable "story"; that a "married" same-sex couple is morally correct because it is legal; that human life doesn't begin until birth; that pledging allegiance to our nation "under God" is trampling on someone else's rights. I'm afraid that if they try to have a discussion with their friends about the Bible's condemnation of homosexuality, that they'll be convicted of "hate speech".

My heart is very heavy today for the children that I hope to have, and for the next generation, that they will spend their formative years in a country that our founding fathers wouldn't have recognized, in a country that has denied the Lord. I don't want them to spend their impressionable years, while their minds are being shaped and they are forming their own worldview, in an environment that is saturated with sin and amorality. I can take them to church, but they'll spend the bulk of their time in school and with their peers, and I'm afraid that time will undo everything they learn in church.

I was encouraged by Charles Stanley's sermon this morning, though, and I really recommend reading through the outline:

What Now, America?

Dear Lord, thank You for all of the prosperity and freedom and blessings that You've given America. I pray that you keep us safe during this time, and please, let us choose a president that will be most pleasing in Your sight. Amen.

Who IS still undecided, anyway?

My mom and I were just watching Fox News, and someone was talking about what a tiny percentage of people are still undecided. Mom wondered aloud if that percentage of undecideds included Kerry.

Ba da bum ... chhhh!

Mommy! We were in line for the slickie slide, and that mean al Qaeda jumped in front of us!

Okay, I've had just about enough of Ms. Heinz Kerry. In an Pittsburgh Channel article linked on Drudge today, she says:

"The perpetration of certain myths that diplomacy and alliances are a sign of weakness is Neanderthal," Heinz Kerry said. "I never heard of teaching a child to make enemies so they can get along in the playground."

For crying out loud! Is there any comparison between children on a playground, squabbling over who looked at who the wrong way, and defending this country against countless evil people who will attack and kill thousands of innocent people with no warning whatsoever?

Geesh.

That ridiculously simplified analogy of hers, coupled with that "terror as a nuisance" comment from John Kerry earlier this month, is strong evidence that the Kerry/Edwards camp doesn't have a clue when it comes to measures that are necessary for our safety.

I am impressed, though, that she moved up to a word like "Neanderthal". I was really disappointed that someone multi-lingual couldn't come up with better derogatory terms than "scumbag" and "idiot." Oh, and "shove it." Of course, Judith Thurman of The New Yorker was kind enough to defend HK:

I doubt that she knows the literal meaning of "scumbag," but perhaps, after 40 years in America, nearly 13 of them as a political wife, observing how the flaws and contradictions of a personality as complex as hers are melted down for ammunition by the other side, she should have learned it. Close friends attribute her lapses of discretion to "naïveté."

Now, I've only been in America for 25 years (okay, so I've only been on earth for 25 years) and I know what a "scumbag" is. Then again, maybe it's in that part of my brain that stores the information about Laura Bush being a teacher, a librarian, and a mother. While I was filing that information away, Teresa was probably busy nuturing that "complex personality" of hers.

All that aside, I do admire the strategies that the other side seems to be using to bring others around to their way of thinking:

• Strategery* #1: Call anyone who disagrees with you a scumbag or an idiot. Or both. For good measure, tell them to shove it.
• Strategery #2: Upon failure of Strategery #1 to produce the desired response, obtain a big, gooey cream pie. Draw back and throw. (Corollary: Say you were aiming for ideas, not a person. That way, no one can accuse you of having bad aim.)
• Strategery #3: If you are unable to hit aforementioned ideas with nary a morsel of custard, then get behind the wheel of a Cadillac and mow down your detractors when they are standing on a sidewalk.

I guess you have to resort to these "strategeries" if you don't have a logical leg to stand on.

*I adore President Bush, but kudos to Will Ferrell. Strategery is the best non-word ever.

Probably more like 57th pick ...

Bwahahahahaha! These pictures are cracking me up this morning.

http://www.footballfansfortruth.us

Particularly this one:

Hee.

Bush hides the moon from the middle class!

Well, he's done it again. This administration, in another colossal blunder, has taken its eye off the ball ... er, moon. The incompetent George W. Bush has shown once again that he is not on the side of working families, as he recklessly allowed clouds to be moved in front of the moon, blocking the lunar eclipse from 84% of Americans.

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that lunar eclipses are for ALL Americans, not just Bush's wealthy friends. When I'm president, I will not take my eye off of the clouds for a second. I saw clouds in Vietnam. John F. Kennedy and FDR saw clouds. Mary Cheney the Lesbian can see clouds. But THIS ADMINISTRATION, ladies and gentlemen, has its head in the clouds.

P.S. -- I got me a huntin' license.

[/sarcasm]

At this point, I wouldn't be surprised to see a speech like this from Frankenkerry. He just sounds more and more ridiculous by the day!

God help us.

We must re-elect George W. Bush. His "attack on Islam" is not the reason that we're a terrorist target! They attacked us before GWB authorized any action against Al Qaeda or the Taliban. He has never denounced Islam, only the fanatical, murderous sect. John Kerry does not have any idea how to deal with people like this.

Who are the real naive ones?

You know, I was just thinking about a letter that someone wrote to a news magazine in the past couple of weeks (I don't remember which one ... I'm reading so much political stuff these days, it's all running together) about Bush supporters blindly following our fearless leader right off the edge of a cliff, or something like that. Generally, we are assumed to have this naive, ignorant, simplistic view of the world and our place in it.

I don't think that's the case at all. I'm a Bush supporter, and I clearly understand that all actions have consequences. I understand that the United States is not guaranteed the top spot among all the world superpowers. I'm afraid that most people think that nothing can happen to us, that the U.S. will always be this great, prosperous nation no matter what we do. But that's not so.

Making America more respected in the world sounds like a worthwhile goal. But what if the means to that end involve withdrawing some of the support we give to Israel? I read a piece by Charles Krauthammer that outlined a horrifying possibility of the Kerry plan for peace. It's naive to think that we can turn our back on Israel without consequences. We can't.

Allowing two people "in love" to spend their lives together and have their relationship validated by society seems to be something that no one would argue against. But if you dig a little deeper ... what is the purpose of marriage, anyway? Why does the government get involved in a committed, durable relationship between one man and one woman, while they don't issue a license to other types of relationships? The answer is obvious, of course. It's because the majority of these relationships involve children and serve as the first building blocks of a family, and families are a smaller unit of society. This has been true with respect to almost every culture since the beginning of recorded history. To allow a few judges and activist groups to change the definition of "marriage" would have major repercussions on the entire society. It would say that marriage and family do not mean anything in particular. That children do not deserve a mother and a father. That mothers and fathers do not have each have special, unique things that only they can give to a child during their crucial formative years. It would allow a select few, a tiny minority, to redefine something that has remained essentially the same for generations and generations and generations, throughout the whole world, without even giving the people who would be affected a chance to speak on the matter. It would be like replacing one lung with a paper bag and expecting the body as a whole to escape unscathed. That's naive.

Sitting down and reasoning with terrorists sounds like an okay thing to do. We give them a comfy chair and some tissues and ask about their childhood. Maybe throw a sympathetic arm around them. But it's naive to assume that people who commit mass murder in the name of their god would be receptive to this "sensitive" gesture. The reality is that there are people in the world who hate us. And they don't hate us because they hate George W. Bush and therefore want to kill the rest of us by default. We've been hated for years and years, by various nations, because we're powerful. Because we live in such excess. Because a woman like me can speak in public, have a job outside the home, get a doctoral degree, hold an elected office. To assume that you can reason with evil is naive. You can't. The world is just not a kind place to be. It's a fallen world, where evil runs rampant, and attempting to conquer evil with an articulate dialogue would result in evil stampeding over us, our thesaurus, and our speechwriters.

To run from using our military, to shun putting our troops in harm's way, has consequences. We have a multitude of brave servicemen and women, who love their country and who believe that freedom is so precious that they will voluntarily give their lives to ensure that others won't have to live without it. If we stop sending that message to the world, instead demonstrating that freedom is not something worth dying for, that liberty is not something that should be defended, then we'll have to face the consequences.

Finally, and most importantly, we can't cleanse this country of God without reaping what we've sown.

Hm. It seems that I'm chatty today.

Toothbrushing could be hazardous to your health.

From The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, via The Week:

"About 2,500 people a year are treated in emergency rooms for injuries sustained while using a toothbrush, according to the FDA. Most of the injuries occur when someone is brushing their teeth while walking or running, and falls."

It's probably quite eeeevil of me, but I find that so amusing. Mia, are you listening? I know you're obsessed with keeping your teeth from getting furry, but since you brush your teeth every five minutes, you're at a higher risk for a TRI (Toothbrush-Related Injury) than most people. So it may be a matter of furry teeth and death. Just keep that in mind.

Stupid injuries are more entertaining to me than they should be. For example, I couldn't stop giggling in my 10th grade driver's ed class when my teacher told us about people who walk away from a car accident with nothing but a burn on their forehead. The part that I found funny was how they got the burn ... they were driving with one hand at at the 12:00 position, clutching a cigarette, and hit themselves in the head when the airbag deployed. Hee.

Incidentally, The Week is the best newsmagazine EVER. I adore it -- it's like a Reader's Digest for the news of the week.

Tick tick tick tick ...

Resurrecting this 17-month-old story on the missing explosives one week before the election to make the Bush Administration look incompetent was pretty good strategy on the part of the Kerry campaign and the mainstream media, I must admit. Unfortunately, they once again counted on the ignorance of the majority of Americans, assuming that not enough people would figure out that it's an ancient story. And people did figure it out, and now everybody's backpedaling.

This plan is totally going to backfire on them.

Also, if 300+ tons of explosives could disappear from Iraq in those months that we were fiddling around with the U.N., I wonder what else could have possibly disappeared? Maybe ... WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION?!?!??! Hmm.

I'm normal. I hope.

I had my medical school interviews last Wednesday (I may hear something by Tuesday evening) and was in a bit of a dilemma about what to wear. Like Cher from Clueless, I went in search of "my most responsible-looking outfit" and discovered that all of last year's Pants of Responsibility are too big. (I love when things are too big! Unless, of course, it's me that's too big.) So I had to go shopping.

Being 25, I'm in that awkward clothing stage where juniors' stuff looks too young, and misses' stuff generally looks too old. (And everything looked too beady, too bumpy, too leafy, too lumpy, too twisty, too twirly, too wrinkly, or too curly.) I was getting terribly frustrated and was on the verge of wearing jeans and my fungus among us T-shirt to the interview, when I found some pants that were satisfactory. Not too high-waisted like pants for people older than me tend to be, and not so low-waisted that half of my rear end hangs out, like the other end of the spectrum tends to be.

And the entire time I was shopping, I had a line from Friends in my head. It's from the episode where Chandler is using one of those subliminal message tapes to stop smoking, and Joey hacks into it and says something like, "Joey is your besssssssttttt frrrrriiieeeennndddd. You want to buy him lotttttttssss of paaaaannnntttttssss." I always wondered why it was pants that he wanted. Anyway.

The interviews went well ... I think the purpose is to make sure you're "normal" and that you would fit with the personality of the classes that they like to build. Generally, the classes are close-knit and not wildly competitive (you don't have people hiding their notes during lectures and stuff.) And thankfully, they didn't ask me any of those horrible questions that are impossible to answer without sounding either cheesy or shallow, like, "If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?" or "What was the best day of your life?"

The 80s! Bad hair and cheesily great music.

Last year for my cousin's birthday, I gave her ten burned CDs, a compilation of good stuff from the 90s. Since then, I became obsessed with including every song that anyone ever got stuck in their head during the 90s.

So this year, I decided to do the 80s. (That's a logical progression, right?) Again, obsession ensued and I ended up with a ginormous list. I thought it would be good of me to share that list, since I compiled it, ran it by people older than me for additions/corrections, and then embarrassingly put it in spreadsheet form. Sorted by year and then by song title. Shut up! It's a little quirk of mine -- if I do not categorize and alphabetize, then I will die.

Anyway, here's the links:

90s Compilation List

80s Compilation List

Guess which decade I'm doing next?

Did I forget anything from either list?

What I Am

I heard this read on a talk radio show the other day (guess whose?) and I thought it was so well-written. This election campaign has been such a fight, such a dirty mess of mud-slingery, and both parties get broadly insulted in the process. I think this guy defended the Republican side very well. I particularly identify with these parts:

WHAT I AM … is an American who’s proud that his President embraces a belief in God; proud of a President who understands, as “politically incorrect” as it may be, there is evil in this world and for the security and safety of all freedom loving people everywhere, it must be confronted… and it must be defeated.

WHAT I AM … is an American who takes comfort in the knowledge that our President refuses to allow decisions concerning the very safety and security of this nation, to be governed by the political whims of foreign governments.

WHAT I AM … is tired of hearing from leading Democrats who see only negativity in America; racism in her people; class warfare in her society and “political incorrectness” in her character.

WHAT I AM … is a man who believes in the sanctity of life. A man who is repulsed by the pandering of the political left for votes, at the expense of the unborn.

WHAT I AM … is a husband and father who believes in the sanctity of marriage and the preservation of the family unit.

WHAT I AM … is a movie go-er who is repulsed by those insecure, socially inept, elementary thinking, ego-inflated “entertainers” who have appointed themselves “experts” in the fields of national security and geo-politics and then use their forum to attack this nation, its leaders and its actions…. much to the delight and encouragement of our enemies.

WHAT I AM … is someone deeply troubled by a political party which embraces a candidate whose primary “leadership” qualities center around his protesting of the Vietnam war and his labeling the honorable men and women who fought in it, (50,000 of whom gave their lives in that action), as rapists, and war criminals. That same political party then stepped forward this year to block the appearance of a true Vietnam war hero, retired Admiral and former United States Senator, Jeremiah Denton, (a man who spent seven years and seven torturous months in a North Vietnam prison), from speaking before an open session of the California legislature as part of that state’s 4th of July celebration. The reason Democrats gave for refusing to allow this American hero to speak before their state legislature was because of the “conservative” nature of his views. As an American, that troubles me deeply ….as well it should you.

Here's a link to the whole thing -- What I Am by by George J. Esseff, Sr.

Maybe George W. Bush isn't the best person to run this country. He's made mistakes. But John Kerry hasn't done anything to convince me that he'd be anything other than much, much worse. (I don't put stock in what they say ... I am only interested in what they have done. Kerry is trying to be all things to all people, not pinning himself to one position other than "George Bush is a brain-dead, incompetent devil monkey", and if (God forbid) he's elected, he'll be breaking a lot of promises.)

Hey, everybody, look! John Kerry is a gun owner, a hunter, just a regular guy. No, he really is! Here's his picture in camouflage with a rifle, that proves it!

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20041021/D85RTDU04.html

I guess he's counting on voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia being so ignorant they don't see the contradiction between this image he's trying to portray today, and his RECORD. His 20-year Senate record, that thing that nobody in the mainstream media will talk about.

Things like supporting the Clinton Gun Ban and then trying to reinstate it in 2004. And all the actions on this list which includes references to back up their claims.

Also, from CNN "Rock the Vote" Democratic debate on November 5, 2003, via ontheissues.org:

Q: Do you find it necessary to kill animals for photo-ops?
KERRY: I don't think the Democratic Party should be the candidacy of the NRA. And when I was fighting to ban assault weapons in 1992 and 1993, Dean was appealing to the NRA for their endorsement, and he got it. I believe it's important for us to have somebody who is going to stand up for gun safety in America and make certain that we make our streets safe, our children safe, and not allow people to get assault weapons in America.

Second amendment rights are important to me, although I'm not as passionate about that as I am about something like respecting the unborn. The "hunting trip" just inspired a little rant, because it's so obvious that Kerry is pandering (again) and counting on the American people to be ignorant (again) and I can't stand his insincerity, particularly when it's directed at my area. Unfortunately for him, I know a few West Virginia hunters who won't be fooled by his camouflage Halloween costume. I also expect my friends who hunt to snicker at the fact that poor Kerry couldn't even carry his own dead goose, since he stayed up late watching the Sox. Awwwwww. Well, he won't be able to carry our state either.

Hey, they have cappuccino.

There's a small grocery/convenience store that I always pass on my way to school and work (and anytime that I'm traveling from my hometown of Podunkville, USA to the prospering town of Developing Podunkville, USA) that has one of those announcement boards with the changeable letters. Those are all fine and good (when they're spelled correctly, of course) but for the past FIVE YEARS, this one has proudly trumpted, "We Now Have Cappuccino". I remember when they put that message up, because it was in the fall semester of 1999, when I started drinking the stuff. I had just lost some weight and got a little obsessive about it. So somehow, I decided the caffeine would boost my metabolism. DUH.

Anyway, why won't they change it? Why? Why? Are they ensuring that anyone who passes through En Route to Developing Podunkville, USA on a once-every-ten-years* pilgrimage will know that they have cappuccino? Did they lose their ladder, and they're they waiting for a 13-foot-tall person to show up to change it for them? Or are they sociologists conducting some sort of experiment on how long it would take semi-neurotics like myself to fly into a fit of rage over an unchanging sign?

Hm. Now I'm craving cappuccino.

*What's the word for something that occurs once every 10 years? I'm completely drawing a blank here.

Sweeeeeet.

I came back from Disney World on Friday night (more on that later) and this was great news to wake up to this morning:

Bush Widens Lead in Trio of Polls

The president also gave a great speech in New Jersey today. I hope the lead continues to widen, because the Kerry/Edwards duo REALLY makes my skin crawl. But hey, if they manage to finagle a win, at least everyone will have a job and affordable healthcare on the day that terrorists show up and blow us all to smithereens!

We begin with Dave. Finally.

Finally, I'm getting around to making random comments/observations in regards to my three summer concerts. (I was a spectator, not a performer ... no need to recoil in horror.) I know everyone is shivering with [Frankenfurter] antici ... pation [/Frank], so without further ado:

So, five of us made the three-hour drive to the Polaris/Germain Amphitheater (or whatever it's called this week) in June to see the Dave Matthews Band. One of the drawbacks to living on the hem of the outskirts of a suburb of Nowhereville, WV is that good artists rarely venture into this area. But we all love us some Dave (and my cousin has an unhealthy obsession with Friendly's, the closest of which is in Columbus) so away we went. En route, we saw our lives flash before our eyes multiple times (eliciting several shrieks of, "Blue ... no yellow!" from my friend Victor.) Nevertheless, we arrived unharmed, in the intermission between Dave and the opening band (which we pronounced "oar" because we are so thoroughly old and non-trendy. Oh well.)

The demographic at a DMB concert is interesting. In the seats that are under roof and that are actually, well, seats, you have your yuppie crowd. The cheaper, uncovered section of lawn "seats" contains one giant pile of college-age people who manage to be hyper-aware of all of the world's tragic ills, yet ridiculously happy at the same time. Yeah. They're happy because they're all high, see. If the hovering cloud with the very distinct smell hadn't dissipated already, I'd submit it as evidence. :-) Since our seats were on the back row of the covered section, we spent a lot of time observing the lawn crowd. It was very convenient for those times when Dave et al. were just endlessly droning on and on with their guitar solos and their jamming and all of those weird noises that Dave makes. He's like a human noisemaker with his clicks and tweets and trills ... my theory is that he's too cheap to buy the instruments that will make those noises, so he just trains himself to do it.

I noticed early in the show that every time Boyd was shown on the jumbotron, the crowd (the lawn-dwellers in particular) went, "Woooooooo!" They also went, "Woooooooooo!" when the lights that were mounted all around the stage would flash at us. Actually, I think they were so happy that they'd "woooooooo!" at just about anything. Boyd IS fairly woooo-inducing, though, because he plays one awesome violin or fiddle or whatever it is. Even though he looks like that rastafari Muppet, whose name I can't remember.

A little further down the row from us were four teenage-looking girls wearing short skirts and trucker hats that said "DMB". They thought they were very cute. You could tell.

Sometimes, Dave would turn around and face the band between songs for an extended period of time. I'm sure they were discussing what to do next, but I thought it would be amusing if he had been saying, "Well, crap. Does anybody remember what I came out here for?" Or, "Are they all still out there? WHY WON'T THEY STOP STARING AT ME????"

Victor and I had to translate Dave into Non-Mumblish for my cousin Susan ... a fairly easy task, since he doesn't say much other than, "Thank you very much" and occasionally, "Thank you very much TONIGHT." Oh, and after an encore of Stay, he said something like, "That's it. Go home." Which is actually kind of contridictory to the lyrics of the song, but whatever. A lot of people actually DID stay, because there was another show the next night. I decided this was a good thing after I watched a lot of the happily high lawn-dwellers stumble out to the parking lot.

I just realized that I don't have much to say about the music itself, just that I think Dave is such a phenomenal songwriter. Oh, he did sing a few new songs, one of which I really liked. I noticed that he said "Hello Again" repeatedly in the lyrics, and from that, I deduced that the song is probably titled something like "New Song #12". The music to "Hello Again/New Song #12" is really interesting ... I couldn't tell much about the lyrics, because they sounded like, "Mumblemumblemumble rrrrrrrrrrr click click click tweet! Hello again!" I liked the beat instantly, though ... the hook lives up to its name, because I had it in my head for a while afterward. Weeklydavespeak.com has an mp3 of it, but you have to register for their forums in order to get it. It's really clear, though, to be a bootleg live recording.

That is all. Thank you very much TONIGHT!

Edited to add ... Clifford! His name is Clifford! Whew.