Part public service announcement, part well-wishing...

I'm not sure how many of you believe this, but, well, this is how I look at the concept of New Years'.

How you spend the first day of the year is how you're going to spend the rest of the year, basically. So, hypothetically, if you have a shitty January first, you'll have a shitty 2006.

In other words, I'm advising the lot of you to go and spend your New Years' with people you care about. Family, friends -- whomever. Doesn't matter.

Have a happy, healthy, and blessed 2006, everybody.

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Quote of the Day

"Nabisco owns a third of the world."
"What?"
"Yeah. And they own part of Goodyear. That's how they got Bubbleyum."
"That's impossible! A Canadian company owns Bubbleyum."
"Well, yeah, but Nabisco owns Canada. And Yugoslavia."
"There is no more Yugoslavia."
"See? See?! They over-extended themselves."

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I like sequels. Honest.

It's one thing when you have a dream annually, and, like, every year, it's a continuation of last year's dream.

I can cope with that.


But I keep having these dreams -- and they're all, for the most part, unrelated -- where I'm just wandering aimlessly alongside a highway. And it's always a different highway. And it always leads into a new adventure, because I keep taking new exits.

This morning, I found out where I was going. I'm heading south, apparently. Towards Virginia -- because, apparently, I'm in Maryland.

Yeah. I was wandering along a major road -- it wasn't a parkway or anything, because we all know pedestrains aren't allowed on those. It was just a major road. It lead me to another major road -- Kent Street, I think. Hanging over Kent Street was one of those huge green signs with the white letters. All it said was "3MSJ5". That's it. So I wandered off to the right -- away from 3MSJ5 -- and that took me in a loop, back to Kent Street, and back to the Sign.

I stared at the sign for a bit, before realizing, "Oh! It's the third Maryland State Junction, Number five." (Apparently, in this version of Maryland, there are three sets of Junctions, and this one is number five in the third set.)

So, I take 3MSJ5. And that leads me down to Luke street. And on Luke street, there is absolutely nothing, except for one apartment building.

It's one of those where the staircases are on the outside of the building, so I climb to the ninth floor (of the ten-story building) and decide that I'm going to break into this apartment.

So I do. Do you know why I broke in?

For mouthwash. Or, actually, I may have broken in for toothpaste, but, when I didn't find it, settled for mouthwash. Because I proceeded to pull a toothbrush out of my pocket, and brush my teeth with the mouthwash.

When I checked the front door, the woman who lived there was coming home, so I ran out the back door, and, for some reason, ran into the tenth-floor apartment. I ran through that one, out the front door, and then down all those flights of stairs. Somewhere along the way, I spit out the mouthwash, tapped my toothbrush on the railing, and slipped my toothbrush back into my pocket. (How I got it to fit in there, I'll never know).

And then, I got back on a highway, and started walking again. Walking south. "Toward Virginia."

(Oh, and, on a side note, for some reason, Maryland state license plates, in this dream, are a yellow-to-whtie gradient with black characters -- like New Jersey plates in real life -- and Virgina plates are white, with black characters -- like Marland license plates, without the state seal in the middle.)

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The Night Before a Politically Correct Midwinter Festival

'Twas the night before Christmas and Santa's a wreck....
How to be in a world that's politically correct?
His workers no longer would answer to "Elves,"
"Vertically Challenged" they were calling themselves.
And labor conditions at the North Pole
were alleged by the union to stifle the soul.
Four reindeer had vanished, without much propriety,
released to the wilds by the Humane Society.
And equal employment had made it quite clear,
that Santa had better not use just reindeer.

So Dancer, and Donner, Comet, and Cupid,
were replaced by four pigs, and you know that looked stupid!
The runners had been removed from his sleigh;
the ruts were termed dangerous by the E.P.A.
And the people had started to call for the cops,
when they heard sled noises on their rooftops.
Second-hand smoke from his pipe had his workers quite frightened.
His fur-trimmed red suit was called "Unenlightened."
And to show you the strangeness of life's ebbs and flows,
Rudolph was suing over unauthorized used of his nose
and had gone on Geraldo, in front of the nation,
demanding millions in over-due compensation.

So, half the reindeer were gone; and his wife,
who suddenly said she'd had enough of this life,
joined a self-help group, packed and left in a whiz,
demanding from now on that her title was Ms.
As for the gifts, why, he'd never had a notion
that making a choice could cause such a commotion.

Nothing of leather, nothing of fur,
which meant nothing for him. And nothing for her.
Nothing that might be considered to pollute.
Nothing to aim, nothing to shoot.
Nothing that clamored, or made lots of noise.
Nothing for just girls. Nothing for just boys.
Nothing that claimed to be gender specific.
Nothing that's warlike, or non-pacific.
No candy or sweets...they were bad for the tooth.
Nothing that seemed to embellish a truth.
And fairy tales, while not yet forbidden,
were like Ken and Barbie, better off hidden.
For they raised the hackles of those psychological
who claimed the only good gift was one ecological.

No baseball, no footbal...someone could get hurt;
besides, playing sports exposes kids to dirt.
Dolls were said to be sexist, and should be passe;
And Nintendo would rot your entire brain away.
So, Santa just stood there, dishevled, perplexed;
he just could not figure out what to do next.
He tried to be merry, tried to be gay,
but you've got to be careful with that word today.

His sack was quite empty, limp to the ground;
nothing fully acceptable was to be found.
Something special was needed, a gift that he might
give to all without angering the left or the right.

A gift that would satisfy, with no indecision,
each group of people, every religion,
every ethnicity, every hue,
everyone, everywhere...even you.

So, here is that gift, it's price beyond worth....

"May you and your loved ones enjoy peace on earth."

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Christmas bells, those Christmas bells, ringing through the land, Asking peace of all the world, and Good will to man

At any rate, I've come to another unsettling conclusion: It's not Chistmassy. (Yes, I know that "Christmassy" isn't a word, but go with me on this one.) Do you remember back when they actually used to hang Christmas lights and tinsel? And play Christmas Carols, rather than just "holiday tunes"? Do you remember when they used to have Christmas specials on TV?

I haven't heard any Christmas carols. If you go in the bookstore in the commons, they have some "holiday music", but no real Christmas carols. No Lights. No tinsel. No trees. No menorahs. No ACLU suing some town in Rhode Island or Conneticuit over a Nativity scene on the Courthouse lawn.

It's just not Christmassy.

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Thought for the day

This is just a random thought:

In a proper place setting, where the forks are on the left, and the knife and spoon are on the right, where do you put the spork?

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Quote of the Day

"They should make razors gas powered."
"They should make trees gas powered."
"No, wait, trees are already gas powered."

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There are some days that make me wonder why I'm a Social Science major.

"That is so cool! You type things, and it appears on the screen!"

Okay. Just so everyone understands where I'm coming from on this...

My English class has 17 people in it. The Public Affairs Scholars. We're special. It's English 100P, Argumentative Writing. Most of the other people on campus think we're psychotic. Like, one day, we're going to have a heated discussion in English, that's going to turn into an Argument, that's going to end with someone killing someone else.

We're scary.

So, for our final project for the semester, we have to work in groups, to build a website.

About something.

Ideally, the Website invites the student

• to translate language concepts--specifically to reinforce what you say by the way you say it.
• to consistently apply critical thinking about issues of validity, credibility and authority in reference to ALL information you are asked to review.
• to synthesize information into a context which will allow you to effect change in the world.

Anyway, they dragged us to a computer lab in the Engineering building today, so that we could start on them. It was a nice change from having the entire day in the Public Policy building.

I seemed to be the only one to know where the Engineering building was, let alone where the room was in the building.


So then, we start playing on the computers.

We were supposed to be researching.

When our group got bored, I opened up NotePad, and said, "okay, so, what do we want it to look like?"
"I dunno."
"Okay, pick a color."
"How about blue?"
"Okay."

So I type in the basic <head> tags, and our friend, the <body> tag.

We start to play.

I save it, and open it in explorer.

I start to play some more. Save in NotePad, Refresh in Explorer.

And one of my group members blurts out, "That is so cool! You type things, and it appears on the screen!". I was really tempted to say something along the lines of, "Well, yeah, that's how keyboards work," but I didn't.

So now I have a gray-and-blue borderless table thing, and the only text on it reads "The Value of Summer Programs in Education".


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